Ram Dass was born Richard Alpert into a wealthy Boston family and received his PhD in psychology from Stanford. In the 1960s, while teaching at Harvard, he spent much of his time studying psychedelics with fellow psychologist Timothy Leary. Their goal was to understand the mind-body connection using these drugs. Harvard found their work too controversial, and both were fired.
Alpert and Leary parted ways. Leary became a well-known figure in the 1960s counterculture, popularizing catchphrases like…