Ram Dass Quotes & Sayings

You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don't have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success - none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here. — Ram Dass

Suffering lets us see where are attachments are - and that helps us get free. — Ram Dass

This is the pathless path. Where the journey leads is to the deepest truth in you. It is really just returning to where you were initially before you got lost. — Ram Dass

We gain internal freedom through external actions. — Ram Dass

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

It is only when you begin to understand that if you and I are truly in love, if I go to the place in me that is love and you to the place in you that is love we are 'together' in Love. We start to understand that what love means is that we are sharing a common state together. That state exists in you and it exists in me. — Ram Dass

When I look at relationships, my own and others, I see a wide range of reasons for people to be together and ways in which they are together. I see ways in which a relationship - which means something that exists between two or more people - for the most part reinforces people's separateness as individual entities. — Ram Dass

We reap in age what we have sown, in our values, all along the way. — Ram Dass

Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery. — Ram Dass

The Ego ages ... the Soul evolves ... and to the Awareness, nothing happened! — Ram Dass

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

You see that who you are isn't moving in time. Time is describing the incarnations, the packing changes. — Ram Dass

True compassion arises out of the plane of consciousness where I AM you. — Ram Dass

Potent Quotes "Whatever you do, or eat, or give, or offer in adoration, let it be an offering to me; and whatever you suffer, suffer it for me. Thus you shall be free from the bonds of Karma which yield fruits that are evil and good; and with your soul one in renunciation you shall be free and come to me." - Bhagavad Gita — Ram Dass

Most of us are convinced that we are our egos, which is who we think we are. The ego is part of our incarnation. It dies with the body, which is why we are so afraid of death. Death scares the hell out of who you think you are, especially if you think you are this body. — Ram Dass

Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom. — Ram Dass

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

Religions are institutions that push you up the mountain and then they have their fantasies about the spirit. I mean they try to make God like the human psyche and it's wrong. I mean it's a projection of the mind, and you can use it to get a start and then you must leave it behind. — Ram Dass

I think the question is, how do we live with change? Change in our friends, change in our lovers? Change in me and change in my body, from the stroke. Things have changed this plane of consciousness. We've tried to keep things the same. It causes suffering. This suffering is another step in your spiritual life, in your spiritual journey. — Ram Dass

Relationships only work in a spiritual sense when you and I really see that we are one. — Ram Dass

Pain is the mind. It's the mind. It's the thoughts of the mind. — Ram Dass

You can't build joy on a feeling of self-loathing. — Ram Dass

You have everything in you that Buddha has, that Christ has. You've got it all. But only when you start to acknowledge it is it going to get interesting. Your problem is you're afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. You're too busy holding on to your own unworthiness. You'd rather be a schnook sitting before some great man. That fits in more with who you think you are. Well, enough already. I sit before you and I look and I see your beauty, even if you don't. — Ram Dass

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

You must come to see every human being Including yourself, As an incarnation In a body or personality, going through a certain Life experience which is functional. — Ram Dass

There is only one of us. One consciousness manifesting into different forms. — Ram Dass

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

Knowledge all by itself, without deep wisdom, ends up becoming despair. — Ram Dass

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

We're being trained through our incarnations
trained to seek love, trained to seek light, trained to see the grace in suffering. — Ram Dass

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

This is the pathless path - returning to where you were initially before you got lost. The deepest truth in you is where the journey leads - shedding, like taking off layers of an onion, until you come to your essence. The key to the spiritual journey is not acquiring something outside of yourself. Rather it is shedding the veils to come back to the deepest truth of your being. — Ram Dass

I used to be afraid of things like strokes, but I've now discovered that the fear of the stroke is worse than the stroke itself. — Ram Dass

The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization. — Ram Dass

When humans come together with a true spirit of dealing with the mystery collaboratively, it's incredibly beautiful. — Ram Dass

If you listen to your own inner voice, it will tell you where you are now, and which method will work best for you in your evolution towards the light. — Ram Dass

When you are already in Detroit, you don't have to take a bus to get there. — Ram Dass

The shadow is the greatest teacher for how to come to the light. — Ram Dass

As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is. — Ram Dass

Our journey is about being more deeply involved in Life and yet less attached to it. — Ram Dass

When you live in love
You see love everywhere you look.
You are literally in love with everyone you look at. — Ram Dass

You have all the time in the world, but don't waste a moment. — Ram Dass

Souls love. That's what souls do. Egos don't, but souls do. Become a soul, look around, and you'll be amazed-all the beings around you are souls. Be one, see one. When many people have this heart connection, then we will know that we are all one, we human beings all over the planet. We will be one. One love. And don't leave out the animals, and trees, and clouds, and galaxies-it's all one. It's one energy. — Ram Dass

The intellect is a beautiful servant but a terrible master. Intellect is the power tool of our separateness. The intuitive, compassionate heart is the doorway to our unity. — Ram Dass

Compassion and love, that's all. — Ram Dass

A moment comes when "other" is no longer other. — Ram Dass

Resting in Awareness, we transform all the 'stuff' of our lives. — Ram Dass

You are joy, wisdom, peace, compassion, and love — Ram Dass

I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people. — Ram Dass

The Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it
just don't get lost in it. — Ram Dass

Maharajji would quote Kabir: It is easy to dye your cloth, but it is hard to dye your heart. — Ram Dass

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

Your problem is you're ... too busy holding onto your unworthiness. — Ram Dass

That Bhagavad Gita instruction to be unattached to the fruits of your actions is the key. If you are a parent raising a child, don't get attached to the act of raising the child. That doesn't mean you're not a loving, active parent. Your job is to love and nurture, feed and clothe, take care and guard the safety of the child, and guide him or her with your moral compass. But how the child turns out is how the child turns out. Ultimately he or she is not your child; who they turn out to be is up to God and their own karma. Your — Ram Dass

Witness your thoughts. Your thoughts are attachments. — Ram Dass

The way we regard death is critical to the way we experience life. When your fear of death changes, the way you live your life changes. — Ram Dass

My colleagues and I were 9 to 5 psychologists: we came to work every day and we did our psychology, just like you would do insurance or auto mechanics, and then at 5 we went home and were just as neurotic as we were before we went to work. Somehow, it seemed to me, if all of this theory were right, it should play more intimately into my own life. — Ram Dass

So you work on yourself as a gift to other human beings. Then you use every situation you have with other human beings as a vehicle to work on yourself by seeing where you get stuck-where you push, where you grab, where you judge, where you do all the stuff. — Ram Dass

Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings. — Ram Dass

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

We come into relationships often very much identified with our needs. I need this, I need security, I need refuge, I need friendship. And all of relationships are symbiotic in that sense. We come together because we fulfill each others' needs at some level or other. — Ram Dass

In meditation we can watch the itch instead of scratching it. — Ram Dass

Don't compare your path with anybody else's. Your path is unique to you. — Ram Dass

You may have expected that enlightenment would come ZAP! instantaneous and permanent.This is unlikely.After the first ah ha expereince, it can be thougth of as a thinning of a layer of clouds. — Ram Dass

I love everybody and they, in turn, love everybody, and that's spreading love heart to heart to heart. That's my approach of my work. — Ram Dass

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

There are no accidents whatsoever in the universe. — Ram Dass

We kill each other over which name to call the Nameless. — Ram Dass

We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another. — Ram Dass

Let the natural flow of the universe, course through your being, and harmonize your soul. — Ram Dass

Faith is what is left after all your beliefs have been blown to hell. — Ram Dass

the journey across the great ocean of existence Is a journey inward ever in deeper and deeper and the deeper you get in the more you meet truth — Ram Dass

These are planes of consciousness, and I think human beings exist on two planes of consciousness, the soul and the ego. — Ram Dass

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

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

I can go all over the world with Skype. — Ram Dass

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

Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound. — Ram Dass

In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric. The secret isn't that you're not being told. The secret is that you're not able to hear. — Ram Dass

If a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets." Then he'd get up and leave. Or he'd write, "If you wear shoeleather, the whole earth is covered with leather." These were his ways of teaching me about how motivation affects perception. — Ram Dass

The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can't be organized or regulated. It isn't true that everybody should follow any one path. Listen to your own truth. — Ram Dass

Remember, Be Here Now. — Ram Dass

When we practice dying, we are learning to identify less with Ego and more with Soul — Ram Dass

In the course of your journey it is most likely that your day-to-day companions or friends may change. Some may fall away as your interest in the Spirit pulls you from the worldly interest which brought or kept you together, but new friends who share your current interests will appear. Of — Ram Dass

The World is perfect as it is, including my desire to change it — Ram Dass

Once I was chastising Maharajji for giving photos to people who were worldly and didn't care about him. He said, "You don't understand me. If I tell a man he is a great bhakta (devotee). I am planting a seed. If a person already has the seed planted and growing, why should I plant another?" I said, "You are telling these drunkards, liars, and dacoits that they are real bhaktas. They will just go home and carry on their old behaviors." Maharajji said, "Some of them will remember what I said of them, and it will make them want to develop this quality in themselves. If ten out of a hundred are inspired in this way, it is a very good thing. — Ram Dass

When you get old, everything changes - your body changes, your family changes. You can't do what you've always done, anymore. And, either you can complain about things changing - or you can be content. Instead of complaining, you can say: "Oh, yesss! Look at all this change!" You can welcome it. — Ram Dass

Our souls are evolving towards becoming the one. That's what we're doing and we're using our incarnations as teaching devices. — Ram Dass

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

If I'm going to die, the best way to prepare is to quiet my mind and open my heart. If I'm going to live, the best way to prepare for it is to quiet my mind and open my heart. — Ram Dass

The universe is an example of love. Like a tree. Like the ocean. Like my body. Like my wheelchair. I see the love. — Ram Dass

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

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

As we acquire a certain degree of equanimity in self-image, we are that much more likely to feel empathy for those around us. We know what it's like to be a "self" moving through the world of "others." When someone feels particularly isolated or in pain, we don't need a great deal of information in order to come to his or her aid. — Ram Dass

Wisdom is one of the few things in human life that does not diminish with age. — Ram Dass

Maharaj-ji, in my first darshan, my first meeting with him, showed me his powers. At that point I was impressed with the power. But subsequently, I realized that it was really his love that pulled me in. His love is unconditional love. — Ram Dass

It's all real and it's all illusory: that's Awareness! — Ram Dass

you base your faith on experience, your faith is — Ram Dass

When our hearts open, when we know that we are in fact the world, when we experience the pain of others in our own blood and muscle, we are feeling compassion. — Ram Dass

The richness of a moment comes when it's both full and empty at the same time. The truth is, we live simultaneously in time and timelessness. — Ram Dass