Ram Dass Quotes

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

"A moment comes when "other" is no longer other."

As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is.

but who’s minding the store?” When I could finally focus on the question, I realized that although everything by which I knew myself, even my body and this life itself, was gone, still I was fully aware!

I had gone through game, after game, after game, first being a professor at Harvard, then being a psychedelic spokesman, and still people were constantly looking into my eyes, like "Do you know?" Just that subtle little look, and I was constantly looking into their eyes "Do you know?"

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

I thought inside "I must really be crazy, now — because craziness is where everybody agrees about something — except you!" And yet I felt saner than I had ever felt, so I knew this was a new kind of craziness or perhaps a new kind of saneness.

I am the thought I.

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.

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.

Drugs had changed me from a selfish, striving academic in search of recognition and power to someone who was aware of the soul. Psychedelics had introduced me to compassion, to recognizing and feeling love for others. Harvard seemed trivial by comparison.

Now isn’t preparation for later. Here and now is it. There is a spaciousness, an acceptance of what is in the moment, that says, “Yes, ah so!” to everything, whether it’s ugly, beautiful, boring, confused, dead, angry, the dark night of the soul, or the brilliant light of the spirit. This is just the way it is. And in just the way it is, is the spirit.

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

I recall starting to "come down" and this huge red wave rolled in across the room. … It was all my identities, all rolling in over me. I remember holding up my hand and saying, "NO, NO, I don't want to go back." It was like this heavy burden I was going to take on myself. And I realized I didn't have the key — I didn't know the magic words, like "Abracadabra" or "Hocus Pocus" or whatever it was going to be that would stop that wave.

Strategies in the book involve ways to use the mind to go beyond the mind, ways to understand states of consciousness that are beyond thought, and ways to identify ourselves other than through our mind, through our intuition, and so forth.