Baba Ram Dass, a former Harvard University professor who became a spiritual leader after a trip to India in the 1960s, has died at the age of 88, his foundation announced Monday.
Ram Dass, who was born in Boston as Richard Alpert, died on Sunday at his home in Maui, Hawaii, his Love, Serve, Remember Foundation said.
Alpert was teaching at Harvard in the early 1960s when he befriended a fellow psychologist, Timothy Leary, and the pair began experimenting with LSD.
Alpert and Leary, who went on to become a leading American counter-culture figure, were fired from Harvard in 1963 for experimenting with psychedelic drugs.
Alpert went to India in 1967 and returned as Baba Ram Dass after meeting his spiritual guru Neem Karoli Baba, also known as Maharajji.
Ram Dass became a spiritual teacher himself, melding beliefs and practices from Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufi and Jewish mysticism and other faiths.
Ram Dass was the author of numerous books including "Be Here Now," published in 1971, which his foundation said describes "how to live joyously a hundred percent of the time in the present."
Ram Dass was also the co-founder of the Seva Foundation, which provides health care for Native Americans and works to wipe out curable blindness in India and Nepal, among other projects.
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