Ram Dass quotes

Ram Dass was an American spiritual teacher, psychologist, and author, best known for his book "Be Here Now." His teachings combined Eastern philosophies with Western psychology, inspiring generations to pursue spiritual growth and mindfulness. He influenced countless people by encouraging compassion, love, and self-awareness. Here are 115 of his quotes:

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

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

The next message you need is always right where you are.

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

Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.

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

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

Ram Dass

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

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

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

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

Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.

Ram Dass

The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody.

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

Let's trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let's lay down our righteousness and just be together.

Ram Dass

It's all real and it's all illusory: that's Awareness!

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

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

Every time I went to a family gathering, I was the boy who made it. I was a Professor at Harvard and everybody stood around in awe and listened to my every word, and all I felt was that horror that I knew inside that I didn't know. Of course, it was all such beautiful, gentle horror, because there was so much reward involved.

Ram Dass

He [Bhagwan Dass] wasn't the least bit interested in all of the extraordinary dramas that I had collected ... He was the first person I couldn't seduce into being interested in all this. He just didn't care. And yet, I never felt so profound an intimacy with another being. It was as if he were inside of my heart. And what started to blow my mind was that everywhere we went, he was at home.

Ram Dass

His [Bhagwan Dass'] teaching seemed to be no teaching because he always taught from within ... that is, his lessons aroused in me just affirmation ... as if I knew it all already.

Ram Dass

Whenever anybody that I trusted brought along some new chemical, I would open my mouth and off I'd go.

Ram Dass