Recently, Richard [Reuven Halevi] Alpert passed away. He is known more famously as "Ram Dass". He was a "spiritual seeker" who grew up without a proper Jewish education ["hollow" as he described it], so he assumed that there was nothing there. Instead, he spent his life seeking spirituality through heavy drug use and various forms of idolatry. He died at the age of 88, never having returned to his roots.
So incredibly sad.
From an article about him, describing a talk he had given:
He noted the many years he’d spent in psychotherapy. He noted his years of psychedelic drug use. He noted the dissatisfaction he still felt until he encountered his Indian guru Neem Karoli Baba in 1967 and his years of meditation.
The audience collectively leaned forward, waiting for Ram Dass to sum up all he had learned that presumably allowed him to tame his monkey mind and attain the happiness so many of his listeners undoubtedly craved for themselves. I listened from the back of the hall as he reached the telling moment that would make the conference’s steep admission price worth it. You could hear a pin drop.
“And after all that,” I remember him saying. “After all that effort, I can tell you” — here he paused for maximum impact — “I have not overcome one single neurosis.”
May his neshama find some rest and atonement.
