For all you Lost fans

So.  I picked up a book the other day, The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America , a sprightly narrative about a group of Harvard professors from the 1960s/70s who experimented with hallucinogens by feeding them to students. Timothy Leary was the most famous. They got canned.

One of them went off to India, came under the influence of a Hindu guru, changed his name to Ram Dass, and came back to the States, touring the country and giving lectures on spiritual enlightenment, doing good, supporting charitable causes.  Ram Dass is still alive.

Now, the kicker:

Ram Dass’ birth name was Richard Alpert.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Notes on Anosmia

John Wilson

One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…

Empire of Unreality

Algis Valiunas

Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…

The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist

Peter J. Leithart

It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…