163 Spiritual and Inspiring Quotes by Ram Dass

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

Wisdom is one of the few things in human life that does not diminish with age.

My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too.

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.

I have written and spoken my thoughts over many years. Now I'm on new ground and spirit. I want to bring these together. Things like karma yoga, bhakti yoga, conscious dying, conscious aging. Consciousness.

I take the assumption that every religion has been rooted in some mystical or transcendent experience. From that assumption, I just look at all the different systems as metaphors or doorways to God.

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.

A Oneness of all. An evolution in consciousness of us all that isn't about the egos.

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.

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.

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.

I don't have a fear and urgency feeling inside myself about the state of the world affairs and everything collapsing.

You can't build joy on a feeling of self-loathing.

This society is not 'user-friendly' for older people.

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.

If you want to cure the world, don't emanate fear, emanate love.

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

Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.

Faith is what is left after all your beliefs have been blown to hell.

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

You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent.

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.

As one individual changes, the system changes.

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

Science and religion both teach that we are all interconnected, and thus interdependent. And at the very core, we are all One. But how do we live as if we know this?

Drop your identification with the illusion of separateness.

As you dissolve into love, your ego fades. You're not thinking about loving; you're just being love, radiating like the sun.

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.

My understanding of the way a child grows is that you create the garden, you don't grow the flower. You can merely fertilize the earth and keep it soft and moist, and then the flower grows as best it can.

Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.

Remember, Be Here Now.

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.

Be here now.

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

We kill each other over which name to call the Nameless.

Our culture's zeal for longevity reveals our incredible collective fear of death.

Witness your thoughts. Your thoughts are attachments.

If I see one dilemma with Western man, it's that he can't accept how beautiful he is. He can't accept that he is pure light, that he's pure love, that he's pure consciousness, that he's divine.

A man said to me, "You talk to your dead guru?" And I said, "Yeah." He said, "That's in your imagination." And I said, "Yeah!" Because my guru is in my imagination anywhere. Anywhere.

Down there, in your soul, you'll get far more love than you ever got out there.

You find the light within us. You don't find it within politics, but you find it in us. The soul is composed of love, compassion, wisdom, peace, and joy.

Don't take yourself so personally.

Love is the most transformative medicine.
For Love slowly transforms you
Into what psychedelics only get you to glimpse.

I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion -- and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.

My work as a human being is to quiet my mind, open my heart and do what I can to relieve the suffering with as much wisdom, skill, whatever I got.

When you begin to awaken, you see how caught you have been in the prison of your mind about certain reality… and how caught everybody else seems to be.

I have always said that often the religion you were born with becomes more important to you as you see the universality of truth.

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

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.

My belief is that I wasn't born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that.

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.

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.

We're sitting under the tree of our thinking minds, wondering why we're not getting any sunshine!

Inspiration is God making contact with itself.

External silence can be the doorway to inner silence.

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

A being whose awareness is totally free, who does not cling to anything, is liberated.

In the depth of the soul is the atman, the oversoul. And that oversoul is really love and compassion, peace, joy, and wisdom.

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.

Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom.

We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not.

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.

What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.

Counseling has to do with intuition, with work on oneself, with the quietness of one's mind and the openness of one's heart.

Heaven and Hell are both creations of desire.

Truth is scary. Truth has bad breath at times.

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

So we won't take ourselves too seriously. Because taking something serious doesn't make it go away any faster. In fact, it keeps making it a little bit worse.

Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear.

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.

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

The ego is frightened by death, because ego is part of the incarnation and ends with it. That is why we learn to identify with our soul, as the soul continues after death. For the soul, death is just another moment.

If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.

Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.

Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean.

By going into third world countries and serving, by actually feeding and helping people, I've been led to focus a little more on how people here try to be happy by ignoring other people who are unhappy.

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.

Consciousness equals energy = love = awareness = light = wisdom = beauty = truth = purity. It's all the same trip.

To live another's dharma, to try to be a Buddha or to be a Christ because Christ did it, doesn't get us there; it just makes us mimickers.

When we're identified with Awareness, we're no longer living in a world of polarities. Everything is present at the same time.

To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible.

You must come to see every human being Including yourself, As an incarnation In a body or personality, going through a certain Life experience which is functional.

The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.

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

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

When you know how to listen everyone is the guru.

It's very different because the Indians live as if they are their souls and Americans live as if they are their egos.

Faith, consciousness, and awareness all exist beyond the thinking mind.

The fun is having friends who help each other get free.

The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.

If we can give up attachment to our roles as helpers, then maybe our clients can give up attachment to their roles as patients.

Gratitude opens your heart, and opening your heart is a wonderful and easy way for God to slip in.

It's only when caterpillar-ness is done that one becomes a butterfly. That again is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillar-ness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.

I feel vulnerable because my mind -- because of the stroke, my mind doesn't focus. And then I feel vulnerable because I don't understand the world around me.

I'm a Bhakti, meaning I practice devotional yoga and the heart and love, so I say to people, start with your ego and go down to your heart.

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

Prolong not the past. Invite not the future. Do not alter your innate wakefulness. Fear not appearances. There is nothing more than this.

Suffering only shows where you are attached. That is why, to those on the path, suffering is grace.

I can do nothing for you but work on myself...you can do nothing for me but work on yourself!

You may have expected that enlightenment would come ZAP! instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first ah-ha experience, it can be thought of as a thinning of a layer of clouds.

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.

The universe is made up of experiences that are designed to burn out our reactivity, which is our attachment, our clinging, to pain, to pleasure, to fear, to all of it.

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.

I hang out with my guru in my heart. And I love every thing in the universe. That's all I do all day.

Be patient. You'll know when it's time for you to wake up and move ahead.

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

There are no accidents.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

Our thinking minds deprive us of the happiness that comes when we are living fully in the moment.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Real happiness lies in that which never comes nor goes, but simply is.

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.

Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.

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.

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.

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.

We often think that vulnerability is a kind of weakness, but there's a kind of vulnerability that is actually strength and presence.

Now is now. Are you going to be here or not?

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

Don't compare your path with anybody else's. Your path is unique to you.

Don't think about the past. Just be here now.

The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.

The universe is an example of love. Like a tree. Like the ocean. Like my body. Like my wheelchair. I see the love.

Until we know that we can bear the unbearable, we're always running scared.