Ram Dass Quotes -Richard Alpert popularly known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and author. He was born in April 6, 1931 and passed away on December 2, 2019.
He is the Author of the best-selling book ‘Be Here Now’ which has been described by multiple reviewers as “seminal”, he also helped popularized Eastern Spirituality and yoga in the west.
He founded the charitable organizations Seva Foundation and Hanuman Foundation. He also traveled extensively giving talks and retreats and holding fundraisers for charitable causes in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.
In 1997, he had a strike which left him with paralysis and expressive aphasia. After becoming seriously ill during a trip to India in 2004, he gave up traveling and moved to Maui, Hawaii, where he hosted annual retreats with other spiritual teachers until his death in 2019 but his powerful quotes and sayings live on and have transformed live across the globe.
Here is a collection of Ram Dass Quotes to inspire and affect your mindset.
Famous Ram Dass Quotes To Inspire You
“Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.”
“Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying.”
“Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying.”
“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
“Let’s trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let’s lay down our righteousness and just be together.”
“We’re all just walking each other home.”
“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’re too this, or I’m too this.’ That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”
“In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.”
“Together we are all on a journey called life. We are a little broken and a little shattered inside. Each one of us is aspiring to make it to the end. None is deprived of pain here and we have all suffered in our own ways. I think our journey is all about healing ourselves and healing each other in our own special ways. Let’s just help each other put all those pieces back together and make it to the end more beautifully. Let us help each other survive.”
Popular Ram Dass Quotes for Success
“I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken.”
“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.”
“Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation. Use it!”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 your vulnerable, the universe will find a way to confront you with it.”
“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”
“When you know how to listen everybody is the guru.”
“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.”
“Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we’re so deeply interconnected with one another. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is the supreme creative act.”
“Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.”
“Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear.”
Powerful Ram Dass Quotes To Transform You
“Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.”
“Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize that in our own being. We are enough.”
“All acts of healing are ultimately ourselves healing our Self.”
“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.”
“My life is a creative act–like a painting, or a concerto.”
“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.”
“We’re here to awaken from the illusion of separateness”
“Ask yourself: Where am I? Answer: Here. Ask yourself: What time is it? Answer Now. Say it until you can hear it.”
“What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.”
“You just love until you and the beloved become one.”
“Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.”
“It’s all real and it’s all illusory: that’s Awareness!”
“All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.”
“When the heart is open, it’s easier for the mind to be turned toward God.”
“Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.”
“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.”
“If you want to be surrounded by Souls, become identified with your Soul. It takes one to know one!”
“If you think you are enlightened; go home for Thanksgiving.”
“Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true.”
“Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.”
Deep Ram Dass Quotes about life and Death
“The game is not about becoming somebody; it’s about becoming nobody.”
“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.”
“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”
“We’re fascinated by the words–but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”
“A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there’s work to be done.”
“Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath.”
“Your problem is you’re… too busy holding onto your unworthiness.”
“The stroke has given me another way to serve people. It lets me feel more deeply the pain of others; to help them know by example that ultimately, whatever happens, no harm can come. ‘Death is perfectly safe,’ I like to say.”
“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.”
“If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.”
“Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being, it is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not ‘I love you’ for this or that reason, not ‘I love you if you love me.’ It’s love for no reason love without an object.”
“Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.”
“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion–and where it isn’t, that’s where my work lies.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Be here now. Don’t anticipate. Don’t yearn for things of the past. Let the past go with forgiveness. And let the future go with no anticipation.”
“By acting compassionately, by helping to restore justice and to encourage peace, we are acknowledging that we are all part of one another.”
“As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can’t see how it is.”
“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.”
“Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize that in our own being, we are enough.”
“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”
“Everyone should smile. Life really isn’t that serious. We make it hard. The sun rises. The sun sets. We just tend to complicate the process.”
“The Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it–just don’t get lost in it.”
“What we’re seeing “out there” is the projection of where we’re at–the projection of the clinging’s of our minds.”
Amazing Quotes By Ram Dass On Self Reflection
“You may protest if you can love the person you are protesting against as much as you love yourself.”
“A moment comes when “other” is no longer other.”
“I am without form without limit. Beyond space – beyond time. I am in everything. Everything is me. I am the bliss of the universe. I am everything.”
“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.”
“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.”
“When we see the Beloved in each person, it’s like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us.”
“It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”
“Once you get to your soul, then every person you look at is a soul.”
“Wherever you are, be all there.”
“The greatest thing you can do for another being is to provide the unconditional love that comes from making contact with that place in them that is beyond conditions, which is just pure consciousness, pure essence. That is, once we acknowledge each other as existing, just being, just being, then each of us is free to change optimally. If I can just love you because here we are, then you are free to grow as you need to grow.”
“As you quiet your mind, you begin to see the nature of your own resistance more clearly, struggles, inner dialogues, the way in which you procrastinate and develop passive resistance against life. As you cultivate the witness, things change. You don’t have to change them. Things just change.”
“The next message you need is always right where you are.”
“Don’t compare your path with anybody else’s. Your path is unique to you.”
“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.”
Notable Ram Dass Faith Quotes
“As one individual changes, the system changes.”
“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.”
“Inspiration is God making contact with itself.”
“Prolong not the past. Invite not the future. Do not alter your innate wakefulness. Fear not appearances. There is nothing more than this.”
“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.”
“As you dissolve into love, your ego fades. You’re not thinking about loving; you’re just being love, radiating like the sun.”
“Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.”
“When we’re identified with Awareness, we’re no longer living in a world of polarities. Everything is present at the same time.”
“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?”
“The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.”
“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.”
“I’m not interested in being a “lover.” I’m interested in only being love.”
“As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can’t see how it is.”
“I can do nothing for you but work on myself…you can do nothing for me but work on yourself!”
“Emptiness is not really empty; emptiness is fully of everything. The ‘everything’ just isn’t manifest.”
“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.”
“To rest in awareness also means to stand free of the prejudices of mind that come from identifying with cherished attitudes and opinions. We can listen without being busy planning, analyzing, theorizing…and especially judging. We can open into the moment fully in order to hear it all.”
“I have always said that often the religion you were born with becomes more important to you as you see the universality of truth.”
“When the faith is strong enough, it is sufficient just to be. It’s a journey towards simplicity, towards quietness, towards a kind of joy that is not in time. It’s a journey that has taken us from primary identification with our body and our psyche, on to an identification with God, and ultimately beyond identification.”
“Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom.”
“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”
“My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too.”
Fascinating Ram Dass Quotes On Self Love
“Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your Transformation. Use it!”
“Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom.”
“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”
“When you are causing suffering to others, you are causing suffering to yourself.”
“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”
“If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.”
“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”
“What how your mind judges. Judgment comes, in part, out of your own fear. You judge other people because you’re not comfortable in your own being. By judging, you find out where you stand in relation to other people. The judging mind is very divisive. It separates. Separation closes your heart. If you close your heart to someone, you are perpetuating your suffering and theirs. Shifting out of judgement means learning to appreciate your predicament and their predicament with an open heart instead of judging. Then you can allow yourself and others to just be, without separation.”
“Love is the most transformative medicine for Love slowly transforms you into what psychedelics only get you to glimpse.”
Ram Dass Quotes on Wisdom
“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”
“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”
“Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom.”
“Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.”
“Knowledge all by itself, without deep wisdom, ends up becoming despair.”
Ram Dass Quotes On Connecting With Others
“You just love until you and the beloved become one.”
“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.”
“Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.”
“When you know how to listen everybody is the guru.”
“Let’s trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let’s lay down our righteousness and just be together.”
“We’re all just walking each other home.”
“In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.”
“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”
“Once you get to your soul, then every person you look at is a soul.”
“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”
“We’re here to awaken from the illusion of separateness”
“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?”
“Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear.”
“By acting compassionately, by helping to restore justice and to encourage peace, we are acknowledging that we are all part of one another.”
“You may protest if you can love the person you are protesting against as much as you love yourself.”
“When your center is firm, when your faith is strong and unwavering, then it will not matter what company you keep.”
“A relationship starting out as one that awakens love can only remain a living vehicle for love to the extent that it is continually made new or reconsecrated.”
“The art of listening comes from a quiet mind and an open heart.”
Special Ram Dass Quotes about Love
“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.”
“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.”
“If I go into the place in myself that is love, and you go into the place in yourself that is love, we are together in love. Then you and I are truly in love, the state of being love. That’s the entrance to Oneness. That’s the space I entered when I met my guru.”
“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.”
“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 the relationships are symbiotic in that sense. We come together because we fulfill each others’ needs at some level or other.”
“Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not ‘I love you’ for this or that reason, not ‘I love you if you love me.’ It’s love for no reason, love without an object.”
“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.”
“When I used to perform weddings, the image I always had was the image of a triangle, in which there are two partners and then there is this third force, this third being, that emerges out of the interaction of these two. The third one is the one that is the shared awareness that lies behind the two of them.”
“I hang out with my guru in my heart. And I love everything in the universe. That’s all I do all day.”
“I hang out with my guru in my heart. And I love everything in the universe. That’s all I do all day”
“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.”
Frequently Asked Questions
One of the most love Ram Dass books are ‘Be Here Now’, ‘Miracle of Love’ and ‘Walking each other Home’
Ram Dass was talking about finding our wholeness. Knowing who we are at the deepest and most profound levels of our being and building our lives upon that foundation bearing it in mind that we need each other.
Ram Dass had a stroke on February 19, 1997, and it left him paralyzed on his right side, impairing his mobility as well as limiting his verbal communication to short, concentrated bursts.
Final Note
Haven been a renowned spiritual teacher, Ram Dass has affected a lot of lives positively with his teachings, books and quotes making him quite a fulfilled man.
Many times in life people feel stock after a long time of struggling and pushing and many resolve to quitting, and other time people get this feel that you are never enough.
From our collection of Ram Dass Quotes, you will get words that will inspire you and make you see the light ahead of you, words that will help you know yourself better, words that will help you love yourself more and great words of wisdom that you can share with others.
Reference
upjourney.com – ram dass quotes
everydaypower.com – ram dass quotes
positivethinkingmind.com – ram dass quotes
wikipedia.org – ram dass
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