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Richard Alpert, former Harvard University professor, came to India in 1967. He
accompanied another American devotee to Bhumiadhar ashram to see Baba.
The professor was a psychologist and a man of the world, so Baba seemed
very strange to him. Baba praised the Land Rover in which they arrived
and asked Alpert to give it to him, prompting feelings of anger and
resentment in Alpert. Baba sent both the westerners to have prasad,
and when they returned, Baba looked over to Alpert and said, "You
were standing under the open sky last night. What did your mother say
to you? Your mother died last year? She died of spleen?"
Baba's questions surprised Alpert. The first statement concerned an
incident that had taken place more than a hundred kilometers from
Bhumiadhar the previous night. He had gone outside and enchanted by the
calm, beautiful night, stayed standing, looking up at the stars. He had
felt a oneness with nature as well as his mother's presence. She had
died nine months earlier in America of a diseased spleen. He had not
told anyone about this, so Baba's questions made his mind spin. Unable
to find a rational explanation, he began to weep uncontrollably. He
felt that he had come home. He became devoted to Baba, and Baba gave
him the name Ram Dass.
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