BAY AREA -- Nearly 40 years after he was kicked off one campus, Richard Alpert is back among the college crowd, still on a mission to expand the minds of undergraduates.

Alpert, better known in recent decades as Ram Dass, burst onto the national scene in May 1963, when the 32-year-old psychology professor was fired from his post at Harvard University. He and his research assistant, the late Timothy Leary, had been conducting consciousness-expansion experiments, dispensing psychedelic drugs to college students.

Ram Dass went on to become one of the leading lights of the '60s and '70s, traveling to India and returning as Baba Ram Dass, pushing enlightenment through meditation, rather than hallucination. In the '80s and '90s, the quick-witted guru devoted much of his time encouraging spiritual seekers to do charity work and help promote social justice.

Now, at age 69 and still recovering from a stroke he suffered in the spring of 1997, Ram Dass is back on Bay Area campuses in a program called "Creating Our Future," a series of meditations and conversations on spirituality and social change.

In addition, the author of "Be Here Now," a 1971 counterculture classic, is about to release a new book, "Still Here -- Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying," to be published this month by Riverhead Books.

Ram Dass and his "Creating Our Future" partner, yoga teacher Sat Santokh, hope to build on a recent burst of campus activism spurred by the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle and Washington, D.C.

"Young people have tremendous energy to put toward things, but they don't have the skills," Ram Dass said in a recent interview. "They keep spirit and social activism separate. A lot of social action groups today have forgotten about compassion."

Ram Dass spoke from a wheelchair in the study of his Tiburon home, surrounded by pictures of his Indian guru, Neem Haroli Baba, and a picture window overlooking Richardson Bay. He remains paralyzed on the right side of his body and still struggles to express his thoughts in speech.

"This . . . talking . . . thing . . . is . . . fascinating," he says slowly

"It's like you have a room (in your brain) where your concepts are clothed in words, and suddenly that room is destroyed. You understand the concepts, but can't get the words. Most people see my stroke as a negative thing, but from a meditative space, observing that split is fascinating."

Ram Dass and Sat Santokh hold their next college meeting May 15 at the Ananda Church Auditorium, just south of the Stanford University campus. Two months ago, they attracted about 120 students to a similar discussion at the International House on the University of California at Berkeley campus.

"There's been a resurgence of student activism since Seattle," said Sat Santokh, who in a previous incarnation helped manage the Grateful Dead from 1967 to 1969. "It's given students an idea that they can do something about global issues."

Have today's undergraduates even heard of Ram Dass?

"I was surprised how many knew me," he said. "But they see me as an icon, `the '60s icon.' They see the icon and they forget to say hello. It's like there's a sheet of glass between you and everyone else."

Ram Dass was asked what two- word label he prefers to '60s icon. He paused for a long time, then replied, "Consciousness explorer."

"That pretty much covers it all," he said with a smile.