50+ Ram Dass Quotes on The Meaning of Life

Welcome to our blog post on Ram Dass quotes!

Ram Dass, also known as Richard Alpert, was a spiritual teacher and guru who became popular in the 1970s for his teachings on spiritual transformation and the path to enlightenment.

He was born in 1931 in Boston, Massachusetts, and received a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University.

In the 1970s, Ram Dass became a well-known spiritual teacher, sharing his insights and experiences with students and followers through lectures, workshops, and his best-selling book "Be Here Now."

He was a pioneer in bringing Eastern spirituality to the Western world and his teachings have inspired many people to seek a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.

Ram Dass passed away in 2019 at the age of 88.

In this blog post, we will share some of the most inspiring and thought-provoking quotes from Ram Dass that will surely leave you feeling uplifted and motivated. So let's dive in and explore the wisdom of Ram Dass together!

Ram Dass Quotes

“If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.”
— Ram Dass

“I'm not interested in being a "lover." I'm interested in only being love.”
— Ram Dass

“I can do nothing for you but work on myself...you can do nothing for me but work on yourself!”
— Ram Dass

“Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.”
— Ram Dass

“The next message you need is always right where you are.”
— Ram Dass

“Let's trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let's lay down our righteousness and just be together.”
— Ram Dass

“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”
— Ram Dass

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

“As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is.”
— Ram Dass

“Be here now.”
— Ram Dass

“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”
— 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

“We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”
— Ram Dass

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
— Ram Dass

“We're all just walking each other home.”
— 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

“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

“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

“Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.”
— Ram Dass

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

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

“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

“It's all real and it's all illusory:
that's Awareness!”
— Ram Dass

“The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.”
— Ram Dass

“Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.”
— Ram Dass

“Souls love. That’s what souls do. Egos 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. 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

“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 hang out with my guru in my heart. And I love everything in the universe. That’s all I do all day.”
— Ram Dass

“When somebody provokes your anger, the only reason you get angry is because you’re holding on to how you think something is supposed to be. You’re denying how it is. Then you see it’s the expectations of your own mind that are creating your own hell. When you get frustrated because something isn’t the way you thought it would be, examine the way you thought, not just the thing that frustrates you. You’ll see that a lot of your emotional suffering is created by your models of how you think the universe should be and your inability to allow it to be as it is.”
— 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

“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

“When you are already in Detroit, you don’t have to take a bus to get there.”
— Ram Dass

“Our plans never turn out as tasty as reality.”
— 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.”
— Ram Dass

“As one individual changes, the system changes.”
— Ram Dass

“The human mind is like that monkey, incessantly active by its own nature, then it becomes drunk with the wine of desire, thus increasing its turbulence. After desire takes possession comes the sting of the scorpion of jealousy at the success of others, and last of all the demon of pride enters the mind, making it think itself of all importance.”
— 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

“Our journey is about being more deeply involved in Life and yet less attached to it.”
— Ram Dass

“I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken.”
— Ram Dass

“A moment comes when "other" is no longer other.”
— Ram Dass

“Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.”
— Ram Dass

“Inspiration is God making contact with itself.”
— Ram Dass

“Now is now. Are you going to be here or not?”
— Ram Dass

“The world is won by those who let it go.”
— Ram Dass

Continue Reading: 50 Swami Vivekananda Quotes for Deep Wisdom