Ram Dass: Fierce Grace

Richard Alpert seemingly had it all: the beloved youngest son of an influential Boston family, Alpert's life trajectory was like a wonderful golden arc that led to a promising teaching career at Harvard. Sometime in the early 1960s, however, that path took startling new directions, when Alpert met another young researcher named Timothy Leary, who introduced him to his research on hallucinogenic drug experiences. Both were ultimately booted from Harvard, and the rest is counterculture history. Alpert eventually embarked on spiritual quests in India, hooked up with a guru--Maharajji--who dubbed him Ram Dass (God's Servant), and returned to the U.S. to become a hippie avatar, spreading his spin on Maharajji's teachings through lectures, workshops, and books (including the best-selling Be Here Now) for the next 30 years. In 1997, Ram Dass's path radically shifted again, when at 66, he was--as he puts it--"stroked," leaving him partially paralyzed, with some speech aphasia. Longtime friend Mickey Lemle's Fierce Grace is an enormously captivating record of Ram Dass' search for spiritual and emotional meaning in this personal catastrophe, as he looks for ways to incorporate its lessons into his teachings and into his life (the phrase "fierce grace" is Ram Dass' way of characterizing the stroke as a kind of divine favor, a way to a higher consciousness). More broadly, the video is also a meditation on coming to terms gracefully with aging (as Ram Dass muses, he hopes to become "like an advance guard who calls back to the Baby Boomers" about his experiences). A superb and heartfelt program that captures its subject's engrossing personal and spiritual history, as well as his struggle to make peace with a radically new identity and life, Fierce Grace is extraordinarily moving (even to a hardcore, anti-mystical cynic like me). Highly recommended for a wide variety of collections, including health sciences, religious studies, and those focusing on contemporary American culture and life. Aud: C, P. [Note: DVD extras include six additional scenes, a three-minute “Hanuman Puja” prayer song to the Hindu monkey God--performed by Chant Master Krishna Das and accompanied by a Maharaj ji photo montage (with English and Sanskrit lyrics included on the insert), and text bios for Dass and filmmaker Mickey Lemle. Bottom line: a nice extras package for a moving documentary.] (G. Handman)