Ram Dass > Quotes

“We're all just walking each other home.”
― Ram Dass

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
― Ram Dass

“We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”
― 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 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

“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

“Be here now.”
― 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

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”
― Ram Dass

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

“Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.”
― 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

“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”
― Ram Dass

“Let's trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let's lay down our righteousness and just be together.”
― Ram Dass

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

“Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.”
― Ram Dass

“If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now

“I'm not interested in being a "lover." I'm interested in only being love.”
― Ram Dass

“The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody.”
― Ram Dass

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

“Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.”
― 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

“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”
― Ram Dass

“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”
― 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

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

“The next message you need is always right where you are.”
― Ram Dass

“It's all real and it's all illusory:
that's Awareness!”
― Ram Dass

“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

“Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.”
― Ram Dass

“The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.”
― Ram Dass

“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

“What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.”
― Ram Dass

“Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.”
― 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

“It's only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly. That again is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now

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

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

“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

“Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.”
― 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

“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

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

“All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.”
― Ram Dass

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

“A moment comes when "other" is no longer other.”
― 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

“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

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