quotes by Ram Dass

"The quieter you become, the more you can hear."
— Ram Dass

"If you think you're free, there's no escape possible."
— Ram Dass (Be Here Now)

"In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight."
— Ram Dass

"We're all just walking each other home."
— Ram Dass

"We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them."
— Ram Dass

"Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them."
— Ram Dass

"The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back."
— Ram Dass

"Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness."
— 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

"It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed."
— Ram Dass

"The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody."
— Ram Dass

"What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution."
— Ram Dass

"Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise."
— Ram Dass

"Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us."
— Ram Dass

"All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion."
— Ram Dass

"A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there's work to be done."
— Ram Dass

"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

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

"The next message you need is always right where you are."
— 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

"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

"The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it's in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me."
— Ram Dass

"Let's trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let's lay down our righteousness and just be together."
— 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

"Inspiration is God making contact with itself."
— Ram Dass

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

"Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation.
Use it!"
— Ram Dass

"We're here to awaken from the illusion of separateness"
— Ram Dass (How Can I Help? Stories and Reflection on Service)

"When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us."
— Ram Dass

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

"I'm not interested in being a "lover." I'm interested in only being love."
— Ram Dass

"Be here now."
— Ram Dass (Be Here Now)

"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

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

"Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize that in our own being, we are enough."
— Ram Dass

"Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying."
— Ram Dass

"As one individual changes, the system changes."
— Ram Dass

"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

"Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it."
— Ram Dass

"Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true."
— Ram Dass

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

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

"I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken."
— 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

"be here now..."
— Ram Dass

"My life is a creative act--like a painting, or a concerto."
— Ram Dass

"When the heart is open, it's easier for the mind to be turned toward God."
— Ram Dass

"You and I are the force for transformation in the world. We are the consciousness that will define the nature of the reality we are moving into."
— Ram Dass

"What we're seeing "out there" is the projection of where we're at--the projection of the clingings of our minds."
— 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