The name Ram Dass applies to two people. 1. Dr. Richard Alpert (born April 6, 1931), also known as Baba Ram Dass, a contemporary spiritual teacher best known for writing the 1971 bestseller Be Here Now. 2. Ram Dass (Khalsa), (born July 28, 1987), a classically-trained musician, composer, and producer from Berkeley, CA. He is best known for his appearance on Snatam Kaur's album, Live in Concert, and his own album, The Alchemist's Prayer. 1. His spiritual journey began at Harvard University, where he and colleagues Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner began experiments with the (then legal) psychedelic drugs psilocybin and LSD. Due to his experiences with these chemicals, and the subsequent backlash from authorities in the USA, Alpert headed to India in the late 1960s. There he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and took the name of Ram Dass ("servant of God"). After staying with the guru for a time, he returned to the United States, and has given talks and retreats since that time. 2. Ram Dass Khalsa grew up in a musical family in the San Francisco Bay Area. As music was in his blood, he took to it very quickly and was raised on artists ranging from the Beatles to Beethoven and Prokofiev, John Coltrane to Ravi Shankar. He has performed regularly alongside Snatam Kaur, Guru Ganesha Singh, Manish Vyas, and Tanmayo, Ram Dass produced Prabhu Nam Kaur's album "Seasons of the Soul" featuring Snatam Kaur as well as tracks on Simrit Kaur's album "The Sweetest Nectar". His official website is www.ramdassmusic.com Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.