Mickey Lemle's documentary Ram Dass, Fierce Grace is a portrait of Ram Dass (Richard Alpert), author, 60s guru, spiritual teacher, cohort of Timothy Leary, & author of Be Here Now, one of the most influential books of the 1970s. The film begins in the present, as Ram Dass deals with the effects of a massive stroke he suffered in February 1997 that left him physically incapacitated, & with impaired memory & speech. Interweaving current conversations, interviews with people in his life, & archival footage, Lemle then looks back at his childhood, the controversy surrounding his research with Timothy Leary in psychedelics at Harvard, his studies in India with Neem Karoli Baba, who renamed him Baba Ram Dass (Servant of God), his work with the Seva Foundation in social action projects dedicated to relieving suffering in the world, & his impact as an author & guru to millions of followers. Several examples are shown of his compassion & his ability to feel the pain of others. In an early sequence, his beautiful "Rachel's Letter" comforts a family after their daughter was murdered. In the final sequence, Ram Dass listens to a young woman struggling to overcome her grief at her boyfriend's violent death. She brings him to tears when she tells him about a dream she had in which her boyfriend speaks to her from beyond with a reassuring message. When Ram Dass received the "fierce grace" of being "stroked," he admits he did not have any unusual spiritual epiphany. He recalls, "Here I ...
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