Ep. 295 – Across the Decades: Ram Dass On Expanding the Boundaries of Consciousness

Jan 12, 2026

Ram Dass, also known as Richard Alpert, is a pioneering spiritual teacher and former Harvard psychologist. He discusses his transformative experiences with psychedelics over the decades. Ram Dass reflects on the optimism of the 1960s about LSD revealing our shared humanity. He explains how psychedelics can dissolve social roles and promote collaboration over competition. The conversation touches on the balance of set and setting in sacramental use versus recreational use, as well as the profound insights and challenges these substances can provide in understanding consciousness.

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INSIGHT

Psychedelics As A Doorway

Psychedelics served as a doorway that initiated Ram Dass's spiritual path rather than being the whole path.
The substances catalyzed a shift that later matured into sustained spiritual practice and service.

INSIGHT

From Separate To Shared Essence

Psychedelics shift perception from individual differences to underlying sameness, revealing a shared essence.
This experience undermines the cultural habit of seeing only separateness and categories.

ANECDOTE

First Psilocybin Death–Rebirth

Ram Dass describes his first psilocybin session in 1961 and the sequence of social roles dissolving before him.
He experienced a panic when his body disappeared but then found a lucid witness-awareness that remained intact.

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Speaking across the decades from the 1960s through the 1990s, Ram Dass shares his thoughts on expanding the boundaries of consciousness through the use of psychedelic chemicals.

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This episode of Here and Now is a compilation of Ram Dass exploring the use of psychedelic chemicals.

We begin in the mid-1960s, back when Ram Dass was still Richard Alpert. In this interview with the CBC, he talks about how the psychedelic experience can help us see past individual differences.
The next stop is 1968 and the famed WBAI radio talks. Ram Dass details his first experience with psychedelic chemicals and the process he went through of losing his attachment to his social roles.
We move on to 1977 and a radio interview at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ram Dass touches on the role of these chemicals in the spiritual awareness of people, recreational versus sacramental use, and the importance of set and setting.
Up next is a retreat in 1989 where Ram Dass answers questions from a breakout group. He gives a brief history of psychedelic chemicals and talks about how they can provide a fresh look at the universe, expanding the boundaries of consciousness.
The final stop is a psychedelic conference at Chapman University in 1994. Ram Dass reflects on the impact that psychedelics had on his life and how they influenced his work with death and dying.

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“And the predicament is that as you develop a model of who you are and how the universe works, it’s extremely hard to get out of that, which is called the ego, really. It’s very hard to get out of that. And what the chemical allows you to do is set that aside for a moment and see the universe from a different vantage point and find places in yourself, which is why it was used in religious traditions, find the deeper parts of your being that lie behind your thinking mind.” – Ram Dass

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