Ram Dass Quotes

#1. The offering up or cleaning up ego stuff is called purification. Purification is the act of letting go. This is done out of discriminative awareness. That is, you understand that you are an entity passing through a life in which the entire drama is an offering for your awakening.

Ram Dass

#2. If you think you are enlightened; go home for Thanksgiving.

Ram Dass

#3. I remember my first visit with my guru. He had shown that he read my mind. So I looked at the grass and I thought, 'My god, he's going to know all the things I don't want people to know.' I was really embarrassed. Then I looked up and he was looking directly at me with unconditional love.

Ram Dass

#4. Pain is the mind. It's the thoughts of the mind. Then I get rid of the thoughts, and I get in my witness, which is down in my spiritual heart. The witness that witnesses being. Then those particular thoughts that are painful - love them. I love them to death!

Ram Dass

#5. The next message you need is always right where you are.

Ram Dass

#6. Spiritual practices help us move from identifying with the ego to identifying with the soul. Old age does that for you too. It spiritualizes people naturally.

Ram Dass

#7. We're receiving information from all the planes of our consciousness all the time, but we don't acknowledge their existence; we treat the information as static, as noise.

Ram Dass

#8. All of a sudden the progress will stop one day, and you will find yourself, as it were, stranded. Persevere. All progress proceeds by such rise and fall." - Vivekananda

Ram Dass

#9. Religions are founded by what mystics say when they come back;
but what the mystics say is not the same as what happened to them.

Ram Dass

#10. If you want to be surrounded by Souls, become identified with your Soul.
It takes one to know one!

Ram Dass

#11. My belief is that I wasn't born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that.

Ram Dass

#12. Gratitude opens your heart, and opening your heart is a wonderful and easy way for God to slip in.

Ram Dass

#13. I take the dust from the lotus feet of the guru to cleanse the mirror of my mind." So begins a sacred ode to Hanuman.

Ram Dass

#14. It wasn't until after I'd been around Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts, that I started to reflect about issues like the evolution of consciousness.

Ram Dass

#15. A Tibetan Lama said to me, "The best place to stand, Ram Dass, is halfway between hope and hopelessness." So I can write a scenario for the 21st century in either direction. One is that it all goes to hell and that it's truly the dark age.

Ram Dass

#16. There's much more in any given moment than we usually perceive, and that we ourselves are much more than we usually perceive. When you know that, part of you can stand outside the drama of your life.

Ram Dass

#17. A Oneness of all. An evolution in consciousness of us all that isn't about the egos.

Ram Dass

#18. My whole academic career was totally out of Jewish anxiety, and issues surrounding achievement and adequacy.

Ram Dass

#19. The dance goes from realizing that you're separate (which is the awakening) to then trying to find your way back into the totality of which you are not only a part, but which you are.

Ram Dass

#20. Death has such great importance in this society that it affects everything. I learned from my guru that death is not the enemy, I see it as another moment. Yet it's the end of an incarnation and means going on to other incarnations.

Ram Dass

#21. If we are to help heal the world, we need to remember that it is a sacred place. Our actions need to be positive statements, reminders that even in the worst times there is a world worth struggling for.

Ram Dass

#22. When you know how to listen everyone is the guru

Ram Dass

#23. It's all real and it's all illusory: that's Awareness!

Ram Dass

#24. When I look at my life, I see that I wanted to be free of the physical plane, the psychological plane, and when I got free of those I didn't want to go anywhere near them.

Ram Dass

#25. If you keep examining your mind, you'll come to see that thoughts of who you are and how it all is are creating the reality you're experiencing.

Ram Dass

#26. I will treat all my negative reactions to this form of meditation as merely thought forms prompted by my ego to keep me from taking it seriously. I will suspend judgment, criticism, and doubt.

Ram Dass

#27. As we grow in our consciousness, there will be more compassion and more love, and then the barriers between people, between religions, between nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down the separateness.

Ram Dass

#28. The World is perfect as it is, including my desire to change it

Ram Dass

#29. You are joy, wisdom, peace, compassion, and love

Ram Dass

#30. Don't think about the past. Just be here now.

Ram Dass

#31. I experience each moment like baklava: rich in this layer, and this layer, and this layer.

Ram Dass

#32. My work as a human being is to quiet my mind, open my heart and do what I can to relieve the suffering with as much wisdom, skill, whatever I got.

Ram Dass

#33. There are no accidents whatsoever in the universe.

Ram Dass

#34. If you want to cure the world, don't emanate fear - emanate love.

Ram Dass

#35. If you feel a sense of social responsibility, first of all keep working on yourself. Being peaceful yourself is the first step if you want to live in a peaceful universe.

Ram Dass

#36. I sit with people who are dying. I'm one of those unusual types that enjoys being with someone when they're dying because I know I am going to be in the presence of Truth.

Ram Dass

#37. You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent.

Ram Dass

#38. The world is won by those who let it go.

Ram Dass

#39. In meditation we can watch the itch instead of scratching it.

Ram Dass

#40. Our journey is about being more deeply involved in Life and yet less attached to it.

Ram Dass

#41. Let the natural flow of the universe, course through your being, and harmonize your soul.

Ram Dass

#42. Each person tells you who they think they are, and who they think you are.

Ram Dass

#43. The dark night of the soul is when you have lost the flavor of life but have not yet gained the fullness of divinity. So it is that we must weather that dark time, the period of transformation when what is familiar has been taken away and the new richness is not yet ours.

Ram Dass

#44. Ask yourself: Where am I? Answer: Here.
Ask yourself: What time is it? Answer: Now.
Say it until you can hear it.

Ram Dass

#45. Caring is a reflex ... You live, you help.

Ram Dass

#46. As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is.

Ram Dass

#47. The ego is a tool. You don't separate it. It's a tool for the spirit.

Ram Dass

#48. Wisdom is one of the few things in human life that does not diminish with age.

Ram Dass

#49. The power of God is within me. The grace of God surrounds me.

Ram Dass

#50. A being whose awareness is totally free, who does not cling to anything, is liberated.

Ram Dass

#51. The soul is not part of the incarnation. It comes into the incarnation. And the soul is not afraid of death because it has done it so many times.

Ram Dass

#52. In our relationships, how much can we allow them to become new, and how much do we cling to what they used to be yesterday?

Ram Dass

#53. If you meditate regularly, even when you don't feel like it, you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see how your thoughts impose limits on you. Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature.

Ram Dass

#54. The most exquisite paradox ... as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.

Ram Dass

#55. Our culture's zeal for longevity reveals our incredible collective fear of death.

Ram Dass

#56. To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible.

Ram Dass

#57. Institutions don't change the world in fundamental ways. The way the world changes is heart to heart to heart by individuals, not by institutions.

Ram Dass

#58. Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom.

Ram Dass

#59. The thinking mind is what is busy. You have to stay in your heart. You have to be in your heart. Be in your heart. The rest is up here in your head where you are doing, doing, doing.

Ram Dass

#60. You may protest if you can love the person you are protesting against as much as you love yourself.

Ram Dass

#61. Compassion and love, that's all.

Ram Dass

#62. Let the clock and the earth do their own thing ... Let the comings and goings of life continue ... But YOU stay HERE and NOW. This exercise is to bring you to the Eternal Present where it all is.

Ram Dass

#63. Faith, consciousness, and awareness all exist beyond the thinking mind.

Ram Dass

#64. I can do nothing for you but work on myself ... you can do nothing for me but work on yourself!

Ram Dass

#65. The reality we live in is selected by our conceptual definitions. You and I may be in the same physical space, but each of us will see it as entirely different.

Ram Dass

#66. Suffering brings me so close to God.

Ram Dass

#67. I think the game is to bear the unbearable with a giggle. With your heart breaking. And then do what you do.

Ram Dass

#68. When you are already in Detroit, you don't have to take a bus to get there.

Ram Dass

#69. In working with those who are dying, I offer another human being a spacious environment with my mind in which they can die as they need to die. I have no right to define how another person should die. I'm just there to help them transition, however they need to do it.

Ram Dass

#70. Compassion is the ability to see how it all is.

Ram Dass

#71. It's very different because the Indians live as if they are their souls and Americans live as if they are their egos.

Ram Dass

#72. Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.

Ram Dass

#73. By acting compassionately, by helping to restore justice and to encourage peace, we are acknowledging that we are all part of one another.

Ram Dass

#74. The art of life is to stay wide open and be vulnerable, yet at the same time to sit with the mystery and the awe and with the unbearable pain - to just be with it all.

Ram Dass

#75. Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts.. if we can keep them open to God, will find their own intuitive way.

Ram Dass

#76. The spiritual journey is not about acquiring something outside yourself, rather, you are penetrating deep layers and veils to return to the deepest truth of your own being.

Ram Dass

#77. The universe is made up of experiences that are designed to burn out your attachment, your clinging, to pleasure, to pain, to fear, to all of it. And as long as there is a place where you're vulnerable, the universe will find a way to confront you with it.

Ram Dass

#78. I'm ensconced in the soul ... and I look around and everything is love.

Ram Dass

#79. I take the assumption that every religion has been rooted in some mystical or transcendent experience. From that assumption, I just look at all the different systems as metaphors or doorways to God.

Ram Dass

#80. Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation.
Use it!

Ram Dass

#81. The healing begins when we can start to feel more gratitude that our child came into our life than despair and outrage that our child died. The gratitude is what heals the despair.

Ram Dass

#82. We're fascinated by the words
but where we meet is in the silence behind them.

Ram Dass

#83. Pain is the mind. It's the mind. It's the thoughts of the mind.

Ram Dass

#84. I'm not interested in being a "lover." I'm interested in only being love.

Ram Dass

#85. Give it all up and you can have it all.

Ram Dass

#86. I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion
and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.

Ram Dass

#87. Suffering only shows where you are attached. That is why, to those on the path, suffering is grace.

Ram Dass

#88. There are wars and poverty and so on - it's based on fear. You can cure that with your being by not being afraid.

Ram Dass

#89. I've firmly come to the conclusion that there are no 'themes' for me anymore. I can't be told who to hate, who to fight, who to subdue - I only see an 'us' in my heart.

Ram Dass

#90. I'm a Bhakti, meaning I practice devotional yoga and the heart and love, so I say to people, start with your ego and go down to your heart.

Ram Dass

#91. The giving and receiving is the tricky thing. It's not the gift. It's what the heart says in giving the gift, and from my point of view, one doesn't give or receive - that's a role we have to play. But the gift - it's God's gift. I think that it's better to be souls than roles.

Ram Dass

#92. Inspiration is God making contact with itself.

Ram Dass

#93. When we're identified with Awareness, we're no longer living in a world of polarities. Everything is present at the same time.

Ram Dass

#94. A man said to me, "You talk to your dead guru?" And I said, "Yeah." He said, "That's in your imagination." And I said, "Yeah!" Because my guru is in my imagination anywhere. Anywhere.

Ram Dass

#95. Compassion and pity are very different. Whereas compassion reflects the yearning of the heart to merge and take on some of the suffering, pity is a controlled set of thoughts designed to assure separateness. Compassion is the spontaneous response of love; pity, the involuntary reflex of fear.

Ram Dass

#96. From a personality point of view, you develop judgment, but from the sou's point of view, you develop appreciation.

Ram Dass

#97. I love everybody. Even George Bush.

Ram Dass

#98. By going into third world countries and serving, by actually feeding and helping people, I've been led to focus a little more on how people here try to be happy by ignoring other people who are unhappy.

Ram Dass

#99. In the depth of the soul is the atman, the oversoul. And that oversoul is really love and compassion, peace, joy, and wisdom.

Ram Dass

#100. You're afraid, you will just keep making the fear. If you want to change it, you change from your soul.

Ram Dass