> Curious to see how a spiritual adept would react to LSD, Alpert gave Maharaj-ji a whopping dose. It had zero effect on the holy man.
This is oversimplified and maybe a bit misleading.
Ram Dass's own account[1] of giving Neem Karoli Baba the "Yogi Medicine" is more colourful and to me suggests that there was some effect and that the Baba was able to tolerate it for the first hour, after which Ram Dass was possibly not present with the Baba for further observations.
Your comment is leaving out the last part, which is crucial:
And then we waited. After some time he pulled the blanket over his face, and when he came out after a moment his eyes were rolling and his mouth was ajar and he looked totally mad. I got upset. What was happening? Had I misjudged his powers? After all, he was an old man (though how old I had no idea), and I had let him take twelve hundred micrograms. Maybe last time he had thrown them away and then he read my mind and was trying to prove to me he could do it, not realizing how strong the “medicine” really was. Guilt and anxiety poured through me. But when I looked at him again he was perfectly normal and looking at the watch.
At the end of an hour it was obvious nothing had happened. His reactions had been a total put-on. And then he asked, “Have you got anything stronger?” I didn’t. Then he said, “These medicines were used in Kullu Valley long ago. But yogis have lost that knowledge. They were used with fasting. Nobody knows now. To take them with no effect, your mind must be firmly fixed on God. Others would be afraid to take. Many saints would not take this.” And he left it at that.
I left out the whole thing, actually, but my opinion took that into account. I get the impression that Ram Dass was a bit of a Karoli Baba fanboy and certainly the drug had enough of an effect that Karoli Baba felt something, even if he didn't outwardly show it; or perhaps Ram Dass was too starry-eyed to note it as such.
The same narrative replays with many successful people - Bruce Lee (Jiddu Krishnamurthi), John Lennon, Brian Josephson (Mahesh Yogi), Steve Jobs etc etc. And from there it becomes myth for the rest of the population.
Taking drugs/performing a ritual/chanting a prayer/meeting yoda (authority figure) etc - is people trying to cope with something that has happened in their life.
Therapy options weren't great back then, and people had to work out by themselves, what we take for granted in a modern psychology textbook today, all while going through some traumatic life event.
Even today it's not straight forward to do and it becomes easy to poke holes in the path people took and even currently take. Which then leads to defensiveness and reactions, which further misguide and mislead everyone.
It also points at the need of some smart people for an Authority Figure to validate whatever new narrative they are trying to rebuild about themselves and the world after they go through some trauma and their existing narratives break down.
I didn't intend to come across as poking holes into Alpert's telling of the Karoli Baba/LSD story. If anything, Alpert told it seemingly without deliberate exaggeration.
It's the retelling of the story in this oversimplified version (as I've even heard Sam Harris tell in a podcast) of a Himalayan Yogi taking LSD with no effect that I wanted to highlight as incorrect, in the sense that it diverges significantly from Alpert's own account.
And yes, I also think he was a bit overly enthusiastic about Karoli Baba at the time. Don't we all act like that at many points in our lives?
This is oversimplified and maybe a bit misleading.
Ram Dass's own account[1] of giving Neem Karoli Baba the "Yogi Medicine" is more colourful and to me suggests that there was some effect and that the Baba was able to tolerate it for the first hour, after which Ram Dass was possibly not present with the Baba for further observations.
[1] https://www.ramdass.org/ram-dass-gives-maharaji-the-yogi-med...