The LSD Baba:
“It isn’t Gay and it’s Not Not-Gay”
“Baba Ram Dass opened the door, morning light beaming on his welcoming face. I looked beyond him into his room, which resembled not the residence of a distinguished professor, but that of a simple sadhu.” (C’mon Radhanatha, enuff of this BS. It’s a temporary, rented room, already.)
With these words we learn of Radhanatha’s meeting with Dr Richard Alpert, aka “Baba Ram Dass.” This so-called “baba” was famous for his publicizing the mind-altering (read: “damaging”) drug LSD in the 1960’s along with Dr. Timothy Leary. To understand the origin of LSD and how it became popular during that turbulent era, a little online research is required. An obvious source is Wikipedia wherein we find how the United States government developed the drug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra.
There is a world of evidence online that the American government released LSD on the public as a mass social experiment and, in order to accomplish this, some dignified yet “alternative” personalities were required as spokespersons. Enter Tim Leary and Richard Alpert—as you can see here https://belhistory.weebly.com/timeline.html.
Shrila Prabhupada entered the chaos of American counterculture at a time when LSD was in epidemic proportions. Shrila Prabhupada’s early teachings were to immediately stop his followers from seeking nirvana in a brain-damaging pill. In The Journey Home Radhanatha speaks in glowing terms of how Dr Richard Alpert and Tim Leary “had popularized LSD as a means of expanding consciousness.” (page 254). He even describes how Alpert gave Neem Karoli Baba LSD and found how “his consciousness is beyond LSD.” Radhanatha even goes so far as to call Alpert’s Mayavada-saturated book Be Here Now a “classic.”
Whatever happened to Baba Ram Dass? How has relationship with Neem Karoli Baba improved his life? Look no farther than Wikipdia which gives Ram Dass’ bizarre and mind-boggling quote, “My belief is that I wasn’t born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that. From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it’s got you.”
What enlightenment!—first you leave the religion you were born into and you become a Hindu. Then you find out that Hinduism tells you to go back to where you started. A more bewildering statement about re-cycling through so-called religions would be hard to imagine. And this is coming from an “American guru” whose book of bewildered and sentimental pseudo-aphorism Radhanatha—himself an ISKCON “guru”—calls a “classic.”
But such misconceptions are common for Mayavadis who in the oneness of bleak ignorance are actually clueless and confused about the simplest elements of existence. And Radhanatha realization appears to be no different, as seen from a letter to his father that he quotes on page 180 of The Journey Home:
My beloved father,
I would like to ask something very dear of you. Much of the compassion that you have is reflected from my beloved Grandpa Bill. I believe that the root of his compassion was his all-embracing faith in the Hebrew religion. Grandpa implanted in you the seed of love for Judaism. Please nourish this seed with all sincerity to attain the inspiration of your faith and love for God. I feel that the sacred gift of meditation will give you great insight to reach the depths of Judaism. Hebrew as well as the other great religions can bring all of us closer to the Lord. Please carry on the inspiration of your father and forefathers. I believe this is what you truly want.
Richard
This guy really takes the cake
Whether coming from Ram Dass or Radhanatha—Richard Alpert or Richard Slavin—the idea is one and the same. Leave everything behind, go to India, surrender to some Mayavadi (it does not matter to whom since all are one), and meditate until you end up right back where you started from. Shameful imposters call such religious reprocessing “enlightenment.”
If your stomach is strong and you haven’t had to run out of the room by now to lose your breakfast, then here is something which will really test the mettle of your digestion: Radhanatha’s syrupy description of his meeting Ram Dass in Vrindavana’s Jaipur Dharmsala.
“After offering me a seat, he too sat cross-legged, spreading out his flowing white robes. We faced each other. His graying hair streamed from his balding head and draped onto his back and shoulders. A breeze from the nearby window slightly whisked his peppered beard. His large blue eyes glowed and the faint wrinkles on their corners creased deeply as he smiled. Speaking no words we simply looked into each other’s hearts through the channel of the eyes. Those moments seemed timeless. The long gaze we shared affected my vision in such a way that at times he looked like an innocent child and at other times like an ancient, stoic sage.”
“… A sublime peace filled the room. Perhaps half an hour passed in this way before Ram Dass took a deep breath, slightly shrugged his shoulders and broke our silence with the invocation ‘Om.’”
“‘Could you tell me something about your spiritual journey?’ I asked him.”
Yes, Baba Ram Dass does give a few words of enlightenment about his spiritual journey right on Wiki: “In the 1990s, Ram Dass discussed his bisexuality while avoiding labels. He stated, ‘I’ve started to talk more about being bisexual, being involved with men as well as women,’ and added his opinion that being gay ‘isn’t gay, and it’s not not-gay, and it’s not anything—it's just awareness.’”
Ram Dass’ “review” of The Journey Home appears on the book’s rear cover.