Pychedelics: Ram Dass - Fierce Grace (2001)

One of the most interesting documentaries about spiritual development and psychedelics. I love this man :yes:

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The message of "Fierce Grace" is universal; the film has won acclaim from such diverse sources as Newsweek Magazine (which called it "one of the year's five best documentaries" ), Spirituality and Health Magazine (which named it "one of the year's ten most spiritually-literate documentaries" ), and High Times Magazine (which gave the film its coveted "Stony Award" ). It has been shown at film festivals around the world.

When Harvard expelled faculty members Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary in 1963 for LSD experimentation, Alpert, the son of a wealthy Boston lawyer, traveled to India, met his guru the Maharaji Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately know as Maharaji, and returned to the United States as Ram Dass, or "Servant of God.? Since then, Ram Dass has continued to teach, inspire and serve others for more than three decades. Named by Newsweek as one of the Top Five Non-Fiction Films of 2002, RAM DASS FIERCE GRACE offers an engrossing, poignant meditation on consciousness, healing and the unexpected grace of aging.

Now in his seventies, Ram Dass remains best-known for his 1971 classic bestseller Be Here Now, a book which sparked a generation?s quest for expanded consciousness and meaningful spirituality. The film weaves vivid archival footage from hippiedom's glory days with intimate glimpses of Ram Dass today, as he continues to remake his life since suffering from a stroke?or in his words, ?being stroked?? in 1997. While the illness might have broken others, it has provided Ram Dass with a new passion: using an unexpected, uninvited challenge as a tool for spiritual transformation, and using what he learns to help others face issues of aging, death and dying.

"When I first met Ram Dass 25 years ago," says filmmaker Mickey Lemle, "one of his messages that touched me was that we are both human and divine and that we must hold both simultaneously. He would explain that if one goes too far in the direction of one's humanity, one suffers. If one goes too far in the direction of one's divinity, one runs the risk of forgetting one's zip code. So his stories and teachings were funny, self-effacing, and with an extraordinary grasp of the metaphysical. In form and content his stories are about living on those two planes of consciousness, and the tension between them. His explorations took an uninvited turn, when he suffered a massive stroke. Now, he has been forced to live his teachings in a way he had not expected.

Against the vivid backdrop of half a century of social, cultural, pharmaceutical and spiritual history, RAM DASS FIERCE GRACE is a lively chronicle of a life well lived and a portrait of a spiritual teacher who has reshaped his physical limitations into an act of fierce grace.

Heather Havrilesky

April 19, 2004 | The ace of grace
"I feel like an advance guard who calls back to the baby boomers, and now I call back about aging. Because aging and things like stroke are going to be in their present much sooner than they think." -- Ram Dass

In 1997, psychology professor and spiritual leader Ram Dass suffered a stroke that left him with expressive aphasia and partial paralysis. The Independent Lens feature "Ram Dass: Fierce Grace" (Tuesday night on PBS; check local listings) begins with Ram Dass coping with the physical and emotional challenges of his stroke, but the film quickly expands into a wider examination of his life's work. While you might think you'd be nothing but amused by a documentary in which interviewees stare directly into the camera and say things like "You can't buy into someone else's trip," and "He brought me to my guru. How can you ever repay that?" in fact, this film is remarkably moving. From his pre-Maharaji days as Harvard professor Richard Alpert to his "Be Here Now"-era group meditations on his father's farm, each step of Ram Dass's journey is handled with such patience and compassion, it's impossible not to get caught up in the emotional momentum of the film. And when Ram Dass meets with the girlfriend of a murdered activist, their conversation is at once so devastating and so inspiring, you won't be able to get it out of your mind for days.

Most of all, though, the film bears witness to the ego's struggle with aging. "This isn't who I expected to be," Ram Dass explains. "This is all new because my expectations of me didn't have this stroke in it." By humbly presenting us with his own challenges, Ram Dass does a great service in helping us prepare for those times when our plans get derailed and our lives suddenly don't live up to our expectations.