This page lists some of the all-time best Ram Dass quotes. Enjoy!
“The name ‘Ram Dass’ was useful to me because every time somebody calls you ‘Servant of God’, it reminds you about what your business is about—which ‘Richard’ didn’t really do.”
Page Contents:
- Suffering & Thinking Quotes
- Separation & Identification Quotes
- Spirituality & Awakening Quotes
- Perfection & What Is Quotes
- Doing & Free Will Quotes
50+ Ram Dass Quotes on Separation, Awakening, Perfection, & More
Ram Dass Quotes on Suffering & Thinking
“The pain for each of you is to be living your life in a way that is not harmonious with your deepest wisdom … My whole life has been an attempt to work with the dissonance and integrate my inner truth with the way I live.” — Ram Dass
“Ever since I was a child, I was taught thinking is better—think more, you’re better—and your analytic mind can solve all problems. And, look what a mess it has created for us because it doesn’t recognize the deeper harmony and unity that exists across peoples, and between us and nature, all those levels.” — Ram Dass
“There’s a tendency in the spiritual journey to denigrate thinking, to denigrate intellect, to denigrate analytic mind. We as Westerners, coming out of our history of having the intellect be the highest power that we have, now as we’re shifting the balance it is important that we don’t throw out the baby with the bath. We are inclined to learn how to integrate these two things so that we can honor and delight in the beauty of the intellect without being trapped by it.” — Ram Dass
“When you keep looking for the deepest truths of your being through your senses and your thinking mind—because that’s what you’re used to using—you don’t find what you’re looking for, and you always feel like you’re one thought away from where the action is. You always feel slightly cut off from being in the moment, being here fully, because it is not what here is.” — Ram Dass
“We have gotten fascinated with knowledge, and we forgot wisdom … The best of intellect don’t solve our problems ultimately because our problems require a different level of wisdom. We have worshipped knowledge rather than wisdom, and wisdom has in it a very deep compassion.” — Ram Dass
“The cause of suffering is the clinging of mind … The only reason you’re suffering is because your mind has attractions and aversions.” — Ram Dass
“Every time your mind grabs hold of a model of who you are, where you’re going—an expectation that it’s going to be a certain way—you’re just asking for suffering.” — Ram Dass
“There is a place where you and I are one, and if you are suffering, I’m suffering. And, there’s where social responsibility comes in.” — Ram Dass
“Any disturbing emotion that may arise is wisdom the moment you relax to your natural mind.” — Ram Dass
“If you feel yourself contracted, examine how much you are just sticking inside your little mind box of thought, and right, and control, and mastery, and needs.” — Ram Dass
“Thinking by its nature thinks about something, it takes an object.” — Ram Dass
“Pleasure and happiness is not the business I’m in. I’m in the business of freedom. It’s very different.” — Ram Dass
“Is my lack of happiness in the process a help to the realization of the goal?” — Ram Dass
“If the game is to be happy, the question is whether fulfilling your needs makes you happy, and whether fulfilling your needs makes you any happier than not fulfilling your needs … When you live on the realm of needs, the minute one is done another one appears.” — Ram Dass
“I think the game is to bear the unbearable with a giggle.” — Ram Dass
“If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.” — Ram Dass
“We are already free, we’re just busy being stuck.” — Ram Dass
“Each individual should have a right to do with their consciousness as they choose, and that’s what a free system should allow. It’s amazing how we don’t do that in our society.” — Ram Dass
Ram Dass Quotes on Separation & Identification
“What I would love to be doing is getting free of the source of the issue of suffering itself, the basic ignorance … It’s the ignorance of separateness—not that separateness isn’t part of the dance, but our identification with our separateness. That’s where the source of the suffering is.” — Ram Dass
“‘I’ll make believe you are who you think you are if you’ll make believe I am who I think I am’. You don’t even look to see who it is. You don’t see God is your only friend. You don’t see that could be God in drag. You see who they think they are, and you respond to it. So, everybody is going into the personality realm making it real, and then interacting, and then looking at each other, and when you think your personality is real that’s all you see when you look at other people.” — Ram Dass
“It’s such an interesting dance. It’s such an interesting journey of life because at one level you really think your life is real with your children, with your jobs, with your body, with your coming and your going, and your bills, and the car, and the environmental issues, and the politics, and world governments, and forces, and death, and violence, and suffering. And, there’s another level in which you’re the sky in which the phenomena are arising.” — Ram Dass
“There is a very deep Western predisposition to identify with your thoughts and think you are your thoughts—that who you think you are is who you are … In the Eastern traditions, you spend your life learning how to extricate yourself from your thinking mind and from your identification with your senses.” — Ram Dass
“Stress is a product of the fear that exists in an unstable situation in which everybody in the situation is caught in their own separateness and has lost the balance that they are part of systems.” — Ram Dass
“The rational mind is in the service of protecting your separateness first … The rational mind can never comprehend the system that created it. In other words, a system can’t understand a system meta to it.” — Ram Dass
“We’ve gone from individualism to a beginning sense of the common good—of the recognition we are part of systems.” — Ram Dass
“Many of the greatest minds in history have gotten caught in this trap of wanting to be God and at the same time to retain their separate identity. They are caught because they still have energy attached to the desire for ego power. And to be God is obviously the ultimate power trip.” — Ram Dass
“We come together through roles, through personality structures, through all these things. These are the vehicles through which we meet. The identification with the vehicle becomes a tremendous trap.” — Ram Dass
“All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.” — Ram Dass
“Meditation is a trap. You don’t want to end up a meditator, you want to end up free.” — Ram Dass
“One of the bits of wisdom I’m passing on is not to take yourself so seriously, to take it all lighter … You can feel the process going on of lightening up, of not taking the personality so seriously, of not getting so trapped in the dramas of life—passionate involvement and emptiness, a joy that doesn’t deny what is in the world and isn’t trapped by it.” — Ram Dass
“I invite you to examine the way in which your identity with your roles and your personality dynamics are creating a very rigid system with other people—and whether or not you are using the relationships in a way to get free from that. First of all, do you realize you’re entrapped in them?” — Ram Dass
“Make your human relationships your yoga. Make your human relationships the vehicle for becoming free rather than the vehicle to stay entrapped.” — Ram Dass
“The ultimate understanding that I have now is that we have taken a human birth in order to have a series of experiences which are vehicles for our awakening out of the illusion that we are only separate … Separate from the totality of form or what might be called ‘God’, or the formless that lies behind form, or ‘the one.'” — Ram Dass
Ram Dass Quotes on Spirituality & Awakening
“You don’t need to go to anywhere else to find what you are seeking … You don’t go into the totality pushing away any part of your life … To think that working on oneself requires ‘dropping-out’ of society is to miss the point. Certainly you must drop out . . . but the drop-out is internal, not external … 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
“If I were to define what I am, I’d say I’m in ‘nobody training.'” — Ram Dass
“We aren’t who we think we are. That’s really the basic teaching of it all. You aren’t who you thought you were. You’re much more than that … We’re talking about the dying of who you think you are—then you are what you are … You don’t die. Just who you think you are dies.” — Ram Dass
“You have transcended any attachment to a separate identity, even though you still enjoy the separateness.” — Ram Dass
“My life is my message (attributed to Gandhi). What you realize is that you work on yourself and you become an environment which allows another person to grow if they are in the point of evolution with a wish to grow. And if they aren’t, you leave them alone.” — Ram Dass
“I help people as a way to work on myself, and I work on myself to help people … To me, that’s what the emerging game is all about … I can do nothing for you but work on myself. You can do nothing for me but work on yourself.” — Ram Dass
“I’m not any more a Hindu than I am a Christian, or a Buddhist, or a Jew, or a Islam … I think in every one of them is living spirit, and I am completely hooked on living spirit and that which truth brings you to. At the highest or most esoteric essence of each of the religions is that same truth. I am very much attached to Spirit and not particularly to religious forms.” — Ram Dass
“Let us help each other awaken. Let us help each other remember together.” — Ram Dass
“Look at your relationships as vehicles for awakening … It is up to the most conscious person in a relationship to create this space where the relationship can grow.” — Ram Dass
“We lost our connection to the wisdom that is non-conceptual which is the root of our being … The vast part of yourself is not conceptual and is not knowable by the usual methods of knowing—that in a sense you can be it, but you can’t know it.” — Ram Dass
“At first, there’s this little teeny thread of consciousness, and it only happens now and then. You flicker into awareness that the worldly trip isn’t quite what it’s all about. And then, through a whole set of circumstances that are a process of evolution of the individual consciousness, that little thread becomes a string and the string becomes a rope. The percentage of time you get lost in the world starts to diminish, and there’s a critical moment when it becomes less than 50%. As long as it’s more than 50%, it still seems like you’re caught in the world. And, then it starts to get down until pretty soon your faith gets strong enough that you are in essence a spiritual being who’s living in the world—which is what Christ is talking about when he says you are in the world but not of the world.” — Ram Dass
“Finally you come to a point where you almost know it all. You are very wise. You are very pure . . . except for the fact that you may well have gotten caught in the last trap . . . the desire to know it all and still be you, ‘the knower.’ This is an impossibility. For all of the finite knowledge does not add up to the infinite. In order to take the final step, the knower must go. That is, you can only BE it all, but you can’t know it all. The goal is non-dualistic—as long as there is a ‘knower’ and ‘known’ you are in dualism.” — Ram Dass
“Was it merely the one of us creating the many in order to come to know itself because there was no way a one could experience itself? So, it plays with dualism? Because as you awaken out of dualism, you realize that the entire thing was like a dream, or a dance, or an illusion.” — Ram Dass
“Once you have started to awaken and extricate yourself from identification, one of the first things you break the identification with is your own body … Can you work to preserve your body, and at the same time be ready to let it go?” — Ram Dass
“You could give something to somebody in one way where you’re identified with the ‘giver’ which forces them to be the ‘receiver’, or you could give something to someone and yet not be caught in ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ but just be in shared awareness.” — Ram Dass
“The journey of awakening leads one from thinking that the reality that you grew up with is real giving way to understanding that that’s only relatively real. There are many types of realities, not only cross-cultural, but planes of awareness as well.” — Ram Dass
“You see models as merely models, and you start to rest in your awareness that lies behind the models … In that awareness, that spaciousness around the forms, is the equanimity.” — Ram Dass
“Every time you let go of your model of who you were and how the world is, you are open. There’s a little teeny space in the veil that you could use as a vehicle for awakening.” — Ram Dass
“The exploration of new ways of living that support new ways of being is a movement that arises from the awakening of compassion — the dawning realization that the fate of the individual is intimately connected with the fate of the whole.” — Ram Dass
“In the old days, I used to have some estimate of when I’d get enlightened, but that has long gone.” — Ram Dass
“If you look at the wheel of births and deaths in which you go from the one into the many and then awaken back into the one—and then stand back from that wheel outside of time and space—you see that there is nothing happening, there is no beginning and there’s no end.” — Ram Dass
“The complete cycle is going from the many into the one, and then coming back into the many to delight in the forms of individual difference.” — Ram Dass
“I see another human being just like me, but in a different package. All the individual differences become packaging.” — Ram Dass
“What an incredible joy to be with another human being and be free.” — Ram Dass
Ram Dass Quotes on Perfection & What Is
“Your understanding of what the universe is all about changes as you proceed further along the path towards enlightenment. As your vantage point or perspective changes, you begin to understand more and more of ‘how it is.’ With this greater understanding comes greater compassion . . . an acceptance of ‘how it is’ . . . an ability to see the divine plan in everything . . . even in your failings and the failings of others.” — Ram Dass
“The more spontaneous the moment, the more fully we will be here together.” — Ram Dass
“Don’t prolong the past. Don’t invite the future. Don’t alter innate wakefulness. Don’t fear appearances. There’s nothing more than that.” — Ram Dass
“Let’s just stay open to what’s happening and find whether we can be peaceful in the process of change rather than in always resisting the change.” — Ram Dass
“Can you allow the changes, and delight in them, and look for the wisdom inherent in each change rather than resisting it? … You can look at change without freaking because your awareness is not identified with that which changes.” — Ram Dass
“The issue is one of balance where the sense of separateness and the basic identity with all that is are perfectly equally balanced in yourself—that you’re clinging to neither of them, but you’re celebrating both of them.” — Ram Dass
“Even the hard parts are playful which is really strange. It starts to become like dancing, or floating, or surfing, or something like that.” — Ram Dass
“The way of things is just the way it’s supposed to be.” — Ram Dass
“Everybody has as much guidance as they need. It’s all happening perfectly. That’s what’s so mind blowing. The thing is just unfolding for each person so perfectly.” — Ram Dass
“When I talk about perfection, I’m saying open to just what is.” — Ram Dass
“You go into some way of being with what is where you become one with it—there’s no longer subject-object, there’s no longer thinking about, there’s no longer relationship. It is as if I am it … You have become experience. You transcend the dualism, the separation between subject and object.” — Ram Dass
“You look at your life, and the exciting part is that it’s always slightly different, it always stretches, it’s always better because it’s more than you imagined it would be even at your best imagination. Fantasy isn’t nearly as great as what is.” — Ram Dass
“Trust your inner wisdom that out of you would come actions not out of ‘ought’ or ‘should’ but out of the essence of what is.” — Ram Dass
“You slowly realize that this is a form that’s manifesting, and you dance with it. You wear it like your clothing, you honor it, you take care of it, you keep it clean and neat—and you find out how it harmoniously expresses itself.” — Ram Dass
“There’s only one of us in drag, making believe we are the many.” — Ram Dass
“Imagine there isn’t anybody anywhere. There’s only one of us. There’s just awareness.” — Ram Dass
“If I were giving the advanced course, I’d be talking only to myself.” — Ram Dass
“The art is to be one and dance as two.” — Ram Dass
“God just is. God isn’t going anywhere. It always was, is, and will be.” — Ram Dass
Ram Dass Quotes on Doing & Free Will
“Watch how creative the mind is in keeping you being somebody doing something … The statement in the Dao ‘one does nothing, and nothing is left undone’ means you’re getting very tired being somebody doing something, and there’s a whole other way of being in which you are the thing itself and whatever happens happens.” — Ram Dass
“If you could stand back far enough and watch the whole process you would see You Are A Totally Determined Being. The very moment you will wake up Is Totally Determined. How long you will sleep Is Totally Determined. What you will hear of what I say Is Totally Determined. There are no accidents in this business at all. Accidents are just from where you’re looking. To the ego, it looks like it’s miracles and accidents. No miracles. No accidents. It’s just your vantage point that you’re sort of. . . . .stuck in.” — Ram Dass
“Freedom has nothing to do with miracles at all. Miracles are just reminding you that it’s not the way you think it is, and that frees you a little bit to be able to wonder how is it.” — Ram Dass
“Play your role in the Divine Dance, but know it to be such and worship its divinity.” — Ram Dass
“There is writing happening. Maybe thats hard for you to understand. I am here but ‘I’ am not here. I am writing but ‘I’ am not writing.” — Ram Dass
“The simple rule of the game, repeated in the most profound mystical texts, reminds us that it is not my but THY will, O Lord . . . not my trip but THY Trip.” — Ram Dass
“If the truth is in all of us, if you can resonate that truth, everybody has the potential of hearing … The more clearly you hear, the more your actions will be in harmony with the Way . . . with His Will. Then you will truly understand: Not my but Thy will, O Lord.” — Ram Dass
“You are constantly listening to hear what your function is, and the quieter you become, the more you hear your function is that of service … I have adopted the role of listening to the universe to hear the part I play rather than thinking that I am so much of a choosing instrument.” — Ram Dass
“It seems to me that the entire universe of forms is lawful in its unfolding, and that it is not by chance that each event occurs … It merely is a set of lawful interactions.” — Ram Dass
“You do what you do because that’s what the harmony of the universe requires. If I am a potter, I make pots. But who is making the pots? I am not under the illusion that I am making the pots. Pots are. The potter is.” — Ram Dass
“You do what you do, but you do not identify with the doing of it. All ‘doing’ is happening as part of the dance of nature . . . and though your body and mind speed about their business, you remain in your calm center . . . HERE . . . ‘where we all are.’” — Ram Dass
“There is only the rising and the falling of the breath. That’s all there is in the universe. There isn’t even you watching your breath rising and falling which is a thought about it.” — Ram Dass
“It’s not me doing something for you. It is a process in which we are a part in which who’s doing and who isn’t doing is just one dimension of reality, and behind it here I is.”
“There’s nothing you’ve got to do. There’s no doer to do it anyway.” — Ram Dass
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