Ram Dass quotes on self-love, nature, death will help you to find out who you really are.
Ram Dass formally known as Richard Alpert born on April 6, 1931, was an American spiritual teacher, psychologist, and author who wrote the famous book Be Here Now published in 1971. He has also written many books on yoga and spirituality and helped them popularize in the west.
Ram Dass was a former Harvard professor who researched LSD in collaboration with Dr. Timothy Leary in 1961. When Alpert and Leary were dismissed from Harvard in 1963 because of the controversial nature of their research and became counter-cultural icons, he traveled to India to seek the “source of consciousness”. When he reached India for the first time in 1967, he met his spiritual teacher, Neem Karoli Baba.
Under his guidance, Ram Dass began studying meditation and Hinduism. His guru gave him the name Ram Dass which means ‘Servant of Ram’ and transformed him from Jew to a Hindu guru.
Ram Dass has remained a popular figure in the New Age movement ever since. He started several charitable organizations including Seva Foundation and Hanuman Foundation and travel the world giving lectures and raising funds for the charity.
He had a stroke in 1997 which left him with paralysis and expressive aphasia which is a partial loss of the ability to produce language but he took that as an act of grace and continues to teach and write. After getting seriously ill on a trip to India in 2004, he choose to put a brake on his traveling. He settled in Hawaii in his last years where he hosted annual retreats with other spiritual teachers and died on 22 December 2019.
Here we are sharing a collection of Ram Dass quotes on love, nature, death, and healing to inspire you to work on your inner self.
Ram Dass Quotes
“Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying.”
― Ram Dass
“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”
― Ram Dass
“It’s all real and it’s all illusory:
that’s Awareness!”
― Ram Dass
“All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.”
― Ram Dass
“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”
― Ram Dass
“Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.”
― Ram Dass
“The Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it–just don’t get lost in it.”
― Ram Dass
“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
“The game is not about becoming somebody, it’s about becoming nobody.”
― Ram Dass
“Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.”
― Ram Dass
Baba Ram Dass Quotes On Nature
“When we see the Beloved in each person, it’s like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us.”
― Ram Dass
“The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.”
― Ram Dass
“We’re all just walking each other home.”
― Ram Dass
“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
― Ram Dass
“Don’t treat yourself so gingerly; you can let go of stuff. Sometimes it takes three breaths instead of two to do it, but you can do it. Be a little tougher and don’t cling to stuff. People go around carrying everybody’s stuff all of the time. I just pick it up and put it down. Pick it up and put it down. That doesn’t mean I’m not compassionate, it doesn’t mean I don’t love people. But holding onto people’s suffering is not compassionate… for them or for you.”
― Ram Dass
“I can do nothing for you but work on myself…you can do nothing for me but work on yourself!”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“And suddenly I realized that he knew everything that was going on in my head, all the time, and that he still loved me. Because who we are is behind all that.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“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
Ram Dass Be Here Now Quotes
“Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW…so you stop asking.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“Just because you are seeing divine light, experiencing waves of bliss, or conversing with Gods and Goddesses is no reason to not know your zip code.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“You may protest if you can love the person you are protesting against as much as you love yourself.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“The cosmic humor is that if you desire to move mountains and you continue to purify yourself, ultimately you will arrive at the place where you are able to move mountains. But in order to arrive at this position of power you will have had to give up being he-who-wanted-to-move-mountains so that you can be he-who-put-the-mountain-there-in-the-first-place. The humor is that finally when you have the power to move the mountain, you are the person who placed it there–so there the mountain stays.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“This love is actually part of you; it is always flowing through you. It’s like the subatomic texture of the universe, the dark matter that connects everything. When you tune in to that flow, you will feel it in your own heart—not your physical heart or your emotional heart, but your spiritual heart, the place you point to in your chest when you say, “I am.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“When your center is firm when your faith is strong and unwavering, then it will not matter what company you keep.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“A woman once came to Mahatma Gandhi with her little boy. She asked, “Mahatma-ji, tell my little boy to stop eating sugar.” “Come back in three days,” said Gandhi. In three days the woman and the little boy returned and Mahatma Gandhi said to the little boy, “Stop eating sugar.” The woman asked, “Why was it necessary for us to return only after three days for you to tell my little boy that?” The Mahatma replied: “Three days ago I had not stopped eating sugar.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“The human mind is like that monkey, incessantly active by its own nature, then it becomes drunk with the wine of desire, thus increasing its turbulence. After desire takes possession comes the sting of the scorpion of jealousy at the success of others, and last of all the demon of pride enters the mind, making it think itself of all importance.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
Ram Dass Love Quotes
“I think the message is that you don’t need to go to anywhere else to find what you are seeking.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
“We’re here to awaken from the illusion of separateness”
― Ram Dass, How Can I Help? Stories and Reflection on Service
“Once you have drunk from the water of unconditional love, no other well can satisfy your thirst. The pangs of separation may become so intense that seeking the affection of the Beloved becomes an obsession.”
― Ram Dass, Be Love Now: The Path of the Heart
“Faith is not a belief. Faith is what is left when your beliefs have all been blown to hell. Faith is in the heart, while beliefs are in the head. Experiences, even spiritual experiences, come and go. As long as you base your faith on experience, your faith is going to be constantly flickering, because your experiences keep changing.”
― Ram Dass, Be Love Now: The Path of the Heart
“When somebody provokes your anger, the only reason you get angry is because you’re holding on to how you think something is supposed to be. You’re denying how it is. Then you see it’s the expectations of your own mind that are creating your own hell. When you get frustrated because something isn’t the way you thought it would be, examine the way you thought, not just the thing that frustrates you. You’ll see that a lot of your emotional suffering is created by your models of how you think the universe should be and your inability to allow it to be as it is.”
― Ram Dass, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart
“That’s who we all are on this path, spiritual family and friends. It’s just one big family. We’re all relatives until we realize we’re really all the same and there’s only one of us—one loving awareness. May you be one in that love.”
― Ram Dass, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart
“The spiritual journey is not about acquiring something outside yourself. Rather, you are penetrating the layers and veils to return to the deepest truth of your own being.”
― Ram Dass, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart
“The freer I get, the higher I go. The higher I go, the more I see. The more I see, the less I know. The less I know, the more I’m free.”
― Ram Dass, Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita
“The world is won by those who let it go.”
― Ram Dass, Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita
“Knowledge all by itself, without deep wisdom, ends up becoming despair.”
― Ram Dass, Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita
Ram Dass Quotes On Death
“It’s better to see God in everything than to try to figure it out.”
― Ram Dass, Miracle of Love: Stories about Neem Karoli Baba
“As one individual changes, the system changes.”
― 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
“What the word God means is the mystery really. It’s the mystery that we face as humans the mystery of existence, of suffering and of death.”
― Ram Dass
“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”
― Ram Dass
“You two are together in the stars, but not in this world, in this life.”
― Ram Dass
“Love is the most transformative medicine For Love slowly transforms you Into what psychedelics only get you to glimpse.”
― Ram Dass
“You give up not meditating. It’s called meditation action. There’s no way out of it. Meditation means to be constantly extricating yourself from the clinging of mind.”
― Ram Dass
“Once a sadhu offered me some land that he had, so that I could have an ashram for fellow Westerners. I asked Maharajji about it. He said, “He wants to give you his attachment. It’s not a pure gift. If it were pure he’d just give it to you instead of talking about it.” (R.D.)”
― Ram Dass, Miracle of Love: Stories about Neem Karoli Baba
“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
Ram Dass Quotes On Self Love, Healing
“I don’t really believe anything I say. Because the nature of my work concerns the spaces between the words, rather than the words themselves.”
― Ram Dass
“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
“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
“When the heart is open, it’s easier for the mind to be turned toward God.”
― Ram Dass
“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
“I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken.”
― Ram Dass
“Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is a supreme creative act.”
― Ram Dass
“Inspiration is God making contact with itself.”
― 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
“Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that’s what the emerging game is all about.”
― Ram Dass
Ram Dass Going Home Quotes
“Now is now. Are you going to be here or not?”
― 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
“If you want to be surrounded by Souls, become identified with your Soul.
It takes one to know one!”
― Ram Dass
“Our journey is about being more deeply involved in Life and yet less attached to it.”
― Ram Dass
“If you think you are enlightened; go home for Thanksgiving.”
― Ram Dass
“Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize that in our own being, we are enough.”
― Ram Dass
“Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation.
Use it!”
― Ram Dass
“A moment comes when “other” is no longer other.”
― 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
“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
Best Ram Dass Quotes
“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
“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
“Prolong not the past
Invite not the future
Do not alter your innate wakefulness
Fear not appearances
There in nothing more than this”
― Ram Dass
“Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.”
― Ram Dass
“We’re fascinated by the words–but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”
― Ram Dass
“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”
― 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
“Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.”
― Ram Dass
“I’m not interested in being a “lover.” I’m interested in only being love.”
― 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
Guru Ram Dass Becoming Nobody Quotes
“Let’s trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let’s lay down our righteousness and just be together.”
― Ram Dass
“What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.”
― Ram Dass
“As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can’t see how it is.”
― 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
“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
“A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there’s work to be done.”
― 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
“Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true.”
― Ram Dass
“Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear.”
― Ram Dass
Ram Dass Quotes On Aging
“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 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
“The next message you need is always right where you are.”
― 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
“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
“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
“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”
― Ram Dass
“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”
― 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
“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
“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
“Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.”
― Ram Dass
Did you learn something from these Ram Dass quotes?
Ram Dass has been a major influence on Western spirituality and counterculture since the 1960s. He is known for his non-dogmatic approach to spirituality, and his teachings continue to be relevant to people of all faiths.
The basis of his philosophy is to teach people the importance of awareness of one’s true self and once you are fully aware of yourself and the life you have got to live, the path of your journey of happiness will eventually reveal itself to you.
We hope Ram Dass quotes on self-love, nature, healing will teach you how to live in the present and the importance of it.
Do share your thoughts with us in the comment section and tell us which one was your favorite from all of the Ram Dass quotes or if you want to ask any questions or have any queries send them via Contact Us
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