200 Inspirational Quotes by Ram Dass on Love, Life and Spirituality
Last updated on March 14th, 2024 at 02:19 pm
Ram Dass, formerly known as Richard Alpert, embarked on a transformative spiritual journey in the 1960s. As a Harvard University professor, he explored Eastern spirituality and psychedelic substances. However, he discovered that genuine spiritual growth required a different approach. His quest led him to India in 1967, where he encountered Neem Karoli Baba, his spiritual teacher. Through practicing bhakti yoga and meditation under Baba’s guidance, Ram Dass experienced a profound awakening and developed a deep connection to love and compassion.
Today, Ram Dass’s teachings continue to inspire spiritual seekers, offering guidance on finding inner peace, cultivating love, and bridging Eastern wisdom with Western perspectives. Listed below are some of his enlightening quotes that serve as a valuable resource for those on a path of spiritual development.
Ram Dass’s Spiritual Symphony of Quotes
Ask yourself: Where am I? Answer: Here. Ask yourself: What time is it? Answer Now. Say it until you can hear it. – Ram Dass
In India, there’s a way of seeing life as a cosmic play. It’s called Lila. I can watch my life, and I can see my guru playing with me. – Ram Dass
Faith is what is left after all your beliefs have been blown to hell. – Ram Dass
All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion. – Ram Dass
If you feel a sense of social responsibility, first of all keep working on yourself. Being peaceful yourself is the first step if you want to live in a peaceful universe. – Ram Dass
My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too. – Ram Dass
To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible. – Ram Dass
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
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
Turn your melodrama into a mellow drama. – Ram Dass
Treat everyone you meet like God in drag. – Ram Dass
Now is now. Are you going to be here or not? – Ram Dass
Gratitude opens your heart, and opening your heart is a wonderful and easy way for God to slip in. – Ram Dass
If you want to be surrounded by Souls, become identified with your Soul. It takes one to know one! – Ram Dass
Inspiration is God making contact with itself. – Ram Dass
There are no accidents whatsoever in the universe. – Ram Dass
When you know how to listen, everybody is the guru. – Ram Dass
Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying. – Ram Dass
The person who says, ‘I’m enlightened’ probably isn’t. – Ram Dass
We’re here to awaken from the illusion of separateness – Ram Dass
If you think you are free, there is no escape possible. – Ram Dass
Thoughts are going by like a river; awareness simply is. – Ram Dass
Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true. – Ram Dass
I am not this body. I am in this body, and this is part of my incarnation and I honor it but that isn’t who I am. – Ram Dass
If you think you are enlightened; go home for Thanksgiving. – Ram Dass
The shadow is the greatest teacher for how to come to the light. – Ram Dass
If you think you’re enlightened go spend a week with your family. – Ram Dass
Once you get to your soul, then every person you look at is a soul. – Ram Dass
The game is not about becoming somebody, it’s about becoming nobody. – Ram Dass
The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering. – Ram Dass
The ego is a tool. You don’t separate it. It’s a tool for the spirit. – Ram Dass
Real happiness lies in that which never comes nor goes, but simply is. – Ram Dass
One of the ego’s favorite paths of resistance is to fill you with doubt. – Ram Dass
There is only one of us. One consciousness manifesting into different forms. – Ram Dass
Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us. – Ram Dass
We’re fascinated by the words, but where we meet is in the silence behind them. – Ram Dass
What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution. – Ram Dass
The Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it – just don’t get lost in it. – Ram Dass
You give up not meditating. It’s called meditation action. There’s no way out of it. – Ram Dass
Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama. – Ram Dass
The soul is not ruled by time and space. The soul is infinite. It blends with the One in infinity. – Ram Dass
Suffering only shows where you are attached. That is why, to those on the path, suffering is grace. – Ram Dass
If you rest in the silence inside, all those you meet will have their spiritual hearts resuscitated. – Ram Dass
You see that who you are isn’t moving in time. Time is describing the incarnations, the packing changes. – Ram Dass
External silence can be the doorway to inner silence. – Ram Dass
It’s all real and it’s all illusory: that’s Awareness! – Ram Dass
Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize that in our own being. We are enough. – 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
In meditation we can watch the itch instead of scratching it. – Ram Dass
All acts of healing are ultimately ourselves healing our Self. – Ram Dass
It’s very hard to grow, because it’s difficult to let go of the models of ourselves in which we’ve invested so heavily. – 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
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
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
I have always said that often the religion you were born with becomes more important to you as you see the universality of truth. – Ram Dass
The way you come to fully appreciate the infusion of the Spirit is to more and more come fully into the moment, where this moment is enough. – Ram Dass
Behind everyone’s learned behaviors and odd eccentricities lurks a soul, ready to make contact if only coaxed out through a crack in the ego. – Ram Dass
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 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
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
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. – 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
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
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 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
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
If you meditate regularly, even when you don’t feel like it, you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see how your thoughts impose limits on you. Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature. – Ram Dass
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
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. – Ram Dass
The dark night of the soul is when you have lost the flavor of life but have not yet gained the fullness of divinity. So it is that we must weather that dark time, the period of transformation when what is familiar has been taken away and the new richness is not yet ours. – Ram Dass
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. – Ram Dass
Quotes By Ram Dass On Mindfulness
When the heart is open, it’s easier for the mind to be turned toward God. – Ram Dass
Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery. – Ram Dass
Our thinking minds deprive us of the happiness that comes when we are living fully in the moment. – Ram Dass
We’re sitting under the tree of our thinking minds, wondering why we’re not getting any sunshine! – Ram Dass
Emptiness is not really empty; emptiness is fully of everything. The ‘everything’ just isn’t manifest. – Ram Dass
When you want to become free, your righteousness and anger are much less interesting than they used to be. – Ram Dass
What we’re seeing out there is the projection of where we’re at–the projection of the clinging’s of our minds. – Ram Dass
When you are completely identified with your thinking mind, you are totally separate from everything else in the universe. – 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
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
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. – Ram Dass
Within the spiritual journey you understand that suffering becomes something that has been given to you to show you where your mind is still stuck. It’s a vehicle to help you go to work. That’s why it’s called grace. – Ram Dass
The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back. – Ram Dass
Meditation means to be constantly extricating yourself from the clinging of mind. – Ram Dass
All that you seek is already within you. In Hinduism it is called the Atman, in Buddhism the pure Buddha-Mind. Christ said, ‘the kingdom of heaven is within you.’ Quakers call it the ‘still small voice within.’ This is the space of full awareness that is in harmony with all the universe, and thus is wisdom itself. – Ram Dass
Ram Dass Quotes on Love and Compassion
I hang out with my guru in my heart. And I love everything in the universe. That’s all I do all day. – Ram Dass
If you want to cure the world, don’t emanate fear – emanate love. – Ram Dass
Look at the people you don’t love and see them as an exercise for you to open your heart. – Ram Dass
Love is the most transformative medicine for Love slowly transforms you into what psychedelics only get you to glimpse. – 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
Nature is really important because it’s a manifestation of love that hasn’t been run through human minds. – 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
I like to look at a tree and see that it’s love. Don’t you? – Ram Dass
Love flows. Love doesn’t know boundaries. The mind creates boundaries. The mind creates the boundary of separate me and you. The heart just keeps embracing and opening out. – Ram Dass
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. – Ram Dass
I’m not interested in being a lover. I’m interested in only being love. – Ram Dass
Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear. – Ram Dass
When you see the beloved all around you, everyone is family and everywhere is love. – Ram Dass
Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings. – Ram Dass
You may protest if you can love the person you are protesting against as much as you love yourself. – Ram Dass
We’ve gotten lost in our Ego and have forgotten that our Soul’s only motive is to merge with the Beloved. – 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
When we see the Beloved in each person, it’s like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us. – 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
As you dissolve into love, your ego fades. You’re not thinking about loving; you’re just being love, radiating like the sun. – 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
Compassion is the ability to see how it all is. – Ram Dass
You just love until you and the beloved become one. – 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
I’ve got to love the souls of people. Because I can’t love every incarnation. To love their souls, I have to identify with my own soul. – 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
From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it’s got you. – 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
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
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
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. – Ram Dass
The sooner one develops compassion in this journey, the better. Compassion lets us appreciate that each individual is doing what he or she must do, and that there is no reason to judge another person or oneself. You merely do what you can to further your own awakening. – Ram Dass
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. – Ram Dass
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. – Ram Dass
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
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
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. – 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
Motivational Ram Dass Quotes on Life
A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there’s work to be done. – Ram Dass
All you can do for another person is be an environment in which if they wanted to come up for air, they could. – Ram Dass
As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can’t see how it is. – Ram Dass
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. – Ram Dass
Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it. – Ram Dass
Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation. Use it! – Ram Dass
I can do nothing for you but work on myself…you can do nothing for me but work on yourself! – Ram Dass
The reality we live in is selected by our conceptual definitions. You and I may be in the same physical space, but each of us will see it as entirely different. – Ram Dass
We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. – 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
We kill each other over which name to call the Nameless. – Ram Dass
Wherever you are, be all there. – Ram Dass
The gift you offer another person is just your being. – Ram Dass
The next message you need is always right where you are. – Ram Dass
My life is a creative act–like a painting, or a concerto. – Ram Dass
Who you think you are will always be frightened of change. But it doesn’t make any difference to who you truly are. – 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
Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise. – Ram Dass
I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken. – Ram Dass
You have all the time in the world, but don’t waste a moment. – Ram Dass
Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness. – Ram Dass
Don’t compare your path with anybody else’s. Your path is unique to you. – Ram Dass
Be patient. You’ll know when it’s time for you to wake up and move ahead. – Ram Dass
Until we know that we can bear the unbearable, we’re always running scared. – Ram Dass
It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth. – Ram Dass
Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom. – Ram Dass
Wisdom is one of the few things in human life that does not diminish with age. – Ram Dass
When you are causing suffering to others, you are causing suffering to yourself. – Ram Dass
There is a larger frame to the painting than the one that bounds our life’s events. – Ram Dass
Don’t take yourself so personally. – Ram Dass
We’re all just walking each other home. – Ram Dass
The world is won by those who let it go. – Ram Dass
A moment comes when other is no longer other. – Ram Dass
Don’t think about the past. Just be here now. – Ram Dass
You can’t build joy on a feeling of self-loathing. – Ram Dass
Our journey is about being more deeply involved in Life and yet less attached to it. – Ram Dass
Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey. – Ram Dass
Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them. – Ram Dass
Our plans never turn out as tasty as reality. – Ram Dass
The quieter you become, the more you can hear. – Ram Dass
Let’s trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let’s lay down our righteousness and just be together. – Ram Dass
As one individual changes, the system changes. – Ram Dass
Each person tells you who they think they are, and who they think you are. – Ram Dass
Prolong not the past. Invite not the future. Do not alter your innate wakefulness. Fear not appearances. There is nothing more than this. – 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
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
When I look at my life, I see that I wanted to be free of the physical plane, the psychological plane, and when I got free of those I didn’t want to go anywhere near them. – Ram Dass
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.
You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent. – Ram Dass
Creativity springs from the yearning to be the fullness of who you are. – Ram Dass
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. – 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
I think that people will find a tremendous joy and fulfillment in service to other human beings, and that often this is what is missing in their lives. – Ram Dass
If you want oneness in society, you have to teach people to go inside instead of going outside, because if they want peace, they need to find it within. – 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
As you look at many people’s lives, you see that their suffering is in a way gratifying, for they are comfortable in it. They make their lives a living hell, but a familiar one. – 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
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
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
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
The offering up or cleaning up ego stuff is called purification. Purification is the act of letting go. This is done out of discriminative awareness. That is, you understand that you are an entity passing through a life in which the entire drama is an offering for your awakening. – 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
Ram Dass Quotes on Death and Beyond
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 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
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. – Ram Dass
Our culture’s zeal for longevity reveals our incredible collective fear of death. – Ram Dass
When someone we love dies, we get so busy mourning what died, that we ignore what didn’t. – Ram Dass
Birth, death, and suffering all bring us to the very edge of what our minds can understand. – Ram Dass
I sit with people who are dying. I’m one of those unusual types that enjoys being with someone when they’re dying because I know I am going to be in the presence of Truth. – 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 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. – 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 our Western culture, although death has come out of the closet, it is still not openly experienced or discussed. Allowing dying to be so intensely present enriches both the preciousness of each moment and our detachment from it. – Ram Dass
Pain is the mind. It’s the thoughts of the mind. Then I get rid of the thoughts, and I get in my witness, which is down in my spiritual heart. The witness that witnesses being. Then those particular thoughts that are painful – love them. I love them to death! – 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
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
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