Independent Lens

Season 5

Episode 21: Ram Dass: Fierce Grace

“Ram Dass: Fierce Grace” follows the hippie-era consciousness guru as he ruminates while recovering from a 1997 stroke. It's “like a whole new incarnation,” he says. Directed by Micky Lemle, an Emmy nominee for his 1992 PBS profile of the Dalai Lama, the profile also recalls Ram Dass's association with Timothy Leary at Harvard in the early 1960s (when he was known as Richard Alpert); his discovery of the Indian guru Maharaj Ji (“a doorway towards God”); and his own impact on people who consider him to be a guru. He was, says one, “a light at the end of my tunnel.”