The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray) / quote 86 of 125
Neem Karoli Baba takes LSD
During the ’60s, when the debate as to whether psychedelics afforded an authentic mystical experience was at its height, there had appeared to be only one solution: to find someone who had experienced both states and could affirm or deny their identity. The only person who had managed to pull the scoop off was Ram Dass, when he gave his newly found Indian guru Neem Karoli Baba two hefty doses of LSD. These, or so the popular version of the tale went, had no observable effect on Neem Karoli, who merely made a disparaging comment to the effect that LSD did not produce “true” samadhi. The story was well known at the time, but when I came to read Ram Dass’s own account of what happened, as he records it in The Only Dance There Is, I found something considerably more ambiguous . . . and considerably more interesting. Ram Dass (the name itself came from Neem Karoli) used to be the Richard Alpert who was Tim Leary’s right-hand man during the crusade to legalize LSD of the early and mid-1960s; but by the end of the decade, Alpert had realized that the psychedelic scene was spiraling out of control and went to India looking for a guru. Thus the background to the story is that Alpert/Ram Dass wanted to get away from the drug counterculture and yet was still not very familiar with Hindu philosophy. What happened was that during one of his first visits to Neem Karoli, the guru had casually asked Ram Dass whether he had any LSD. Ram Dass did, and on Neem Karoli’s insistence had given him some 900 micrograms, which indeed had no visible effect. Again, on a subsequent visit, Neem Karoli had asked him if he had any more and promptly downed the remainder of Ram Dass’s stash of 1,500 mikes. This, Ram Dass assured him, would take effect within the hour. At the end of the hour he says, “You got anything stronger?” I said no. “Oh.” And he said these substances were known about in the Kulu Valley, long ago, but all that knowledge is lost now. Then he said, “It’s useful, it’s useful, not the true samadhi, not the true samadhi, but it’s useful.” What he said after this Ram Dass does not quote but paraphrases: He said it will allow you to come in and have the visit—the darshan—of a saint, of a higher being of a higher space—higher consciousness is how you can translate it. But he says you can’t stay there—after a couple of hours you gotta come back. He said, you know, it would be much better to become the saint, rather than to go and have his visit; but having his visit is nice. He said it strengthens your faith in the possibility that such beings exist.2 Neem Karoli’s rudimentary English and Ram Dass’s unfamiliarity with Hindu terminology give a somewhat misleading picture here. Darshan, literally the sight of a holy object or enlightened being, is a highly charged concept for Hinduism, not far from the Western idea of Grace. No way can it be translated as “visit.” What Neem Karoli was saying is that LSD is an authentic opening to spirit, though certainly not…