'Becoming Nobody'

When one becomes frustrated with one’s guru, the reason usually circles back to the person asking the questions — and having outsized expectations about the answers, expectations the guru has no obligation to fulfill. 

That’s a lesson the spiritual teacher Ram Dass learned from his guru. It’s one the filmmaker Jamie Catto learns from Ram Dass, and it’s one anyone seeing Catto’s documentary about Ram Dass, “Becoming Nobody,” will learn as they watch.

Catto’s documentary handles the basics of biography, of Dass started his life as Richard Alpert, a Harvard psychologist and author looking for ways to expand his mind. His first experience was when Timothy Leary, the famed advocate for hallucinogenics, first gave Alpert psilocybin. From then on, as Ram Dass describes in lectures preserved in his archives, he tried all manner of chemicals to replicate that high — but every time, he came back down.

On a trip to India, Alpert finally met someone “who never came back down.” That man, Neem Karoli Baba — whom Ram Dass calls “Maharaj-ji” — became his teacher, and gave him the name Ram Dass, meaning “servant of God.” Ram Dass brought Maharaj-ji’s message to America, and became a leading figure of the counterculture movement.

Catto doesn’t give more than a brief synopsis of Ram Dass’ biography. More prevalent here are the reams of footage of Ram Dass’ many years giving lectures and teaching his philosophy.

He talks of acceptance of what life brings, noting the Hindu belief that “you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it’s got you.” He talks of unconditional love, and how so few of us are able to avoid putting conditions on it. He talks of how people strive to become somebody in this world, but that “the game is … about becoming nobody.”

It’s all very deep, and one probably needs to be in the right frame of mind to take it all in. A viewer might wish Catto was doing more to help, like augmenting Ram Dass’ words with images that could broaden one’s understanding of them. On that level, “Becoming Nobody” is a movie that works better as an audiobook.

Catto’s main role is to interview Ram Dass now, living in Maui, in his 80s. Ram Dass appears quite frail, and talks about being ready for death — a topic he has studied for decades, in his hospice work helping others prepare for death. Even in his suffering, though, Ram Dass says he has found a kind of grace that helps him understand what’s going to happen next.

Catto’s interviews, unfortunately, boil down to the filmmaker spouting his opinion about some part of Ram Dass’ philosophy, only to have Ram Dass — like the psychologist he once was — reply something akin to “Is that what you think it means?”

One might hope, watching “Becoming Nobody,” that Ram Dass would berate Catto for his ignorance, like Marshall McLuhan telling the blowhard in “Annie Hall” that “you know nothing of my work.” But Ram Dass instead smiles, displaying that unconditional love toward his acolyte, which may be the point of it all anyway.

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‘Becoming Nobody’

★★1/2

Opened September 6 in select cities; opens Friday, October 18, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language and some sexual content. Running time: 82 minutes.