Ram Dass was born Richard Alpert in 1931 in Boston and taught and did research in the fields of human motivation and clinical pathology at Harvard. In 1967, he went to India and met his guru Neem Karoli Baba who gave him the name Ram Dass, which means "Servant of God."
This paperback consists of talks given at the Menninger Foundation in 1970 and Spring Grove Hospital in 1972. Here the author shares his understanding and appreciation of Eastern consciousness which takes seriously the body's energy points, the vibrations that human beings give off in their interactions with others, the limitations of knowing, love as a state of being, teachers as conveyers of the universe, "Eastern" and "Western" models of people, desires, and living beyond dualism.