80 Wise Ram Dass Quotes on Love, Life, Death, Relationships & More
80 Wise Ram Dass Quotes on Love, Life, Death, Relationships & More
Ram Dass born as Richard Alpert was a former American psychologist and a professor in the Harvard, who transformed into this great spiritual teacher under the mentorship of Indian Guru, Neem Karoli Baba.
Richard was given the name “Ram Dass,” meaning “Servant of Ram” by his loving Guru Maharaj, Neem Karoli Baba. He became one of the greatest devotees of Neem Karoli Baba and learnt about spirituality, human consciousness and different techniques of self-healing from him.
Ram Dass authored several books with the intent to help westerners to develop interest in Eastern spirituality to help them to live a fulfilled life. Through his lectures, books and meet ups, he has helped many people to recover from great personal losses.
He also Founded various Charitable Organizations such as:
- Seva Foundation which treat visually impaired patients in India, Nepal and other developing countries.
- Hanuman Foundation which aims to improve the spiritual well-being of society through education, media and community service.
- He also helped in creating The Living/Dying Project which was earlier known as the Dying Center was the first residential facility in the U.S., where people came to die “consciously”.
- He also served as the faculty member of the Metta Institute, where he gave training on mindful and compassionate care of the dying.
Life of Ram Dass:
Richard Alpert aka Ram Dass was born into a wealthy family. He was an active child, who enjoyed playing sports and reading books. His parents loved him dearly and he was was the joy of the family.
On completing his studies, Richard joined the Harvard University in the early 1960s. Richard along with his friend and colleague Timothy Leary started experimenting with psychedelics, and how it can be used for its medicinal properties.
During this time, Richard and Timothy conducted a research in which they observed the effects of psychedelics on their students. It was the first controlled double blind study of drugs on students to observe its mystical experience. Though the use of drugs was not illegal, but their study was highly scrutinized for including students.
As a result of which, they lost their position at the Harvard University. This when, Richard began his journey to study psychedelics and it led him to India, where he met his Guru, Neem Karoli Baba.
Ram Dass’s Work Life:
He learned how to practise unconditional love and after returning to his country. He wrote some of his best selling books, Be Here Now, Grist for the Mill, How Can I Help? and Polishing the Mirror.
When he founded the Hanuman Foundation, he donated all his book royalties and profits from his teachings to his foundation, NGOs and other charitable causes.
Unfortunately in 1997, he suffered a stroke which left him with paralysis and expressive aphasia. He took this event as an act of grace and continued to teach and author books.
In 2004 during one of his trips, Ram Dass became seriously ill and decided to give up travelling. He then moved to Maui, Hawaii, where he hosted annual retreats with other spiritual teachers until his last breath.
Let’s have a look at some of the teachings of Ram Dass by reading~ 80 Wise Ram Dass Quotes on Love, Life, Death and more.
80 Wise Ram Dass Quotes on Love, Life, Death, Relationships & More
Ram Dass Quotes on Love:
1. “As you dissolve into love, your ego fades. You’re not thinking about loving, you’re just being love, radiating like the sun.”
2. “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.”
3. “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.”
4. “I hang out with my guru in my heart. And I love everything in the universe. That’s all I do all day.”
5. Souls love. That’s what souls do. Ego don’t, but souls do. Become a soul, look around, and you’ll be amazed-all the beings around you are souls. Be one, see one.
6. “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 Quotes on Love
7. “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.”
8. “The universe is an example of love. Like a tree. Like the ocean. Like my body. Like my wheelchair. I see the love.”
9. “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.” – Ram Dass Quotes on Love
10. “You just love until you and the beloved become one.”
11. “I’m not interested in being a “Lover.” I’m interested in only being love.”
12. “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 Quotes on Love
13. “I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion – and where it isn’t, that’s where my work lies.”
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Spiritual Ram Dass Quotes:
14. “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!“
15. “Before the stroke, I was on a very spiritual plane. I ignored my body, took it for granted. 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. But the stroke reminded me that I had a body and a brain, that I had to honor them.” – Spiritual Ram Dass Quotes
16. “Meditation means to be constantly extricating yourself from the clinging of mind.”~ Ram Dass Quotes
17. “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.”
18. “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.”
19. “We’re fascinated by the words – but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”
20. Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.
21. “Let’s trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let’s lay down our righteousness and just be together.”
22. “Once you get to your soul, then every person you look at is a soul.”
23. “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.”
24. “It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”
25. “We’re all just walking each other home.”
26. “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.” – Spiritual Ram Dass Quotes
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Ram Dass Quotes about Relationships:
27. “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.”
28. “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.” – Ram Dass Quotes about Relationships
29. “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.”
Baba Ram Dass Death Quotes:
30. “The ego is frightened by death, because ego is a part of the incarnation and ends with it.”
31. “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.”
32. “What the word God means is the mystery really. It’s the mystery that we face as humans the mystery of existence, of suffering and of death.”
33. “Death is perfectly safe, I like to say.”
34. “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.”
35. “Death is our greatest challenge as well as our greatest spiritual opportunity.”
36. “Birth, death, and suffering all bring us to the very edge of what our minds can understand.”
37. “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.” – Baba Ram Dass Death Quotes
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Baba Ram Dass Quotes on Life:
38. “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.”
39. “Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation. Use it!”
40. “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.”
41. “Our journey is about being more deeply involved in life, and yet less attached to it.”
42. “Without remaining open to change, we can not remain open to life.”
43. “I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn’t create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people.”
44. “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.”
45. “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.”
46. “I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken.”~ Ram Dass Quotes
47. “My life is a creative act–like a painting, or a concerto.”
Ram Dass Quotes on God:
48. “to him, to Krishna, to God. To use your daily life and work as a conscious spiritual path means relinquishing your attachment to the fruits of the actions, to how they come out. Instead of doing it for a reward or a result, you do your work as an offering, out of love for God. Through love for God, your work becomes an expression of devotion,”
49. “The Hindu deity Hanuman offers a similar example of devotional service. Every act he performs becomes an offering to Rama (God). His service brings him to the very edge of unitive love. How powerful his vision: “When I know who I am, I am you,” he says, kneeling before Rama, “when I don’t know who I am, I serve you.” – Ram Dass Quotes on God
50. “Inspiration is God making contact with itself.”
51. “It’s better to see god in everything than to try to figure it out.”
52. “That Bhagavad Gita instruction to be unattached to the fruits of your actions is the key. If you are a parent raising a child, don’t get attached to the act of raising the child. That doesn’t mean you’re not a loving, active parent. Your job is to love and nurture, feed and clothe, take care and guard the safety of the child, and guide him or her with your moral compass. But how the child turns out is how the child turns out. Ultimately he or she is not your child; who they turn out to be is up to God and their own karma.” – Ram Dass Quotes on God
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53. “Who in all his works sees God, in truth he goes to God.”
54. “The true devotees of God never wear saffron, carry malas (prayer beads), or put on sandalwood. You can’t know them unless they want it, and then you can only know them as much as they allow.” – Ram Dass Quotes on God
55. “Instead of filling your mind with the daily news, fill it with stuff that helps you become more conscious, that liberates you. As you become more aware of what gets you to God and what doesn’t, you will naturally let go of what doesn’t. That’s purification. You do it to get to God, not for the sake of being pure.”
56. “Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection are such a brilliant, spiritual statement for the relief of suffering of other beings. He’s just saying so clearly, “I am not this body. I took a human birth. You aren’t this body either. If you hear this, you’re free. Look, I’ll go get crucified and I’ll be back in a few days and show you.” In that sense, he did make a statement that could take everybody’s suffering away. Let those who can hear, hear. I love it in its symbolic, exquisite sharpness, its clearness. And how it was misused! Christ would turn over on his cross! Yet, I can sense in him the knowledge that this would happen, too.”
57. “I think of Jesus as a storyline and I think of Christ as that consciousness, or that love, that is the same as the Buddha mind or pure awareness or Brahma. I think of it as the One. Jesus is a semi-historical storyline that has a certain teaching in the story itself. To say that Jesus is the only way is a perversion. To say that Christ is the only way is a certainty. We are all the Christ and it’s the only way.” – Ram Dass Quotes on God
Ram Dass on Faith:
58. “As you find the light in you, you begin to see the light in everyone else.”
59. “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.”
60. “Faith is not a belief. Faith is what is left when your beliefs have all been blown to hell.”
61. “When the faith is strong enough, it is sufficient just to be. It’s a journey towards simplicity, towards quietness.”
62. “When your center is firm, when your faith is strong and unwavering, then it will not matter what company you keep.”
63. “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 Quotes on Faith
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Baba Ram Dass Inspirational Quotes:
64. “It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.” – Inspirational Baba Ram Dass Quotes
65. “The world is won by those who let it go.”
66. “Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.”
67. “Give up the anger. Working it through is making it something. Just give it up.”
68. “Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”
69. “Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”
70. “I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”
71. “Be patient. You’ll know when it’s time for you to wake up and move ahead.”
72. “The next message you need is always right where you are.”
73. “Let’s trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let’s lay down our righteousness and just be together.” – Inspirational Baba Ram Dass Quotes
74. “We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not.”
75. “The minute you don’t want power, you’ll have more than you ever dreamed possible.”
76. “We’re here to awaken from the illusion of separateness”
77. “You may protest if you can love the person you are protesting against as much as you love yourself.”
78. “The art of listening comes from a quiet mind and an open heart.”
79. “If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.”
80. “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.” – Inspirational Baba Ram Dass Quotes
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