Ram Dass Quotes

To live another's dharma, to try to be a Buddha or to be a Christ because Christ did it, doesn't get us there; it just makes us mimickers

In India when we meet and part we often say, “Namasté,” which means: I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where, if you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us. Namasté

That thought brought enormous gratitude for the moment of light and breath I was living — how sweet, how rare, to be given a body in which to move about this world!

We are sneaking psychedelics back into our society through research like the MDMA research that's going on, through the research for the use of marijuana for pain, through research with the dying [with psilocybin], and ultimately we will do the same kind of stuff about alcoholism, about prison rehabilitation, so on. I mean, its obvious that psychedelics, properly used, have a behavior-change psychotherapeutic value. But from my point of view, that is all underusing the vehicle. The potential of the vehicle is sacramentally to take you out of the cultural constructs which you are part of a conspiracy in maintaining. And giving you a chance to experience once again your innocence.

The art of spiritual growth has to do with how quickly you recognize attachments and how quickly you can release them.

"How do I know if a person is my guru?" a devotee asked Maharajji. "Do you feel he can free you from all desires, attachments, and so forth? DO you feel he can lead you to final liberation?"

The thing about perspective is:
something happens.
it means nothing.
we make up a story about what it means based on what we feel.
this story becomes our truth.
this story creates our reality, our world, what is possible and what is not.

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.

Maharajji invited a famous pundit to come to Kainchi and recite the Shrimad Bhagavatam. This man was used to reciting before large and very receptive crowds, and he complained to Maharajji that on this occasion he had to recite to only a few illiterate villagers. Maharajji gently rebuked him and said, “Don’t worry. Hanumanji is listening.

affluence has bought us privacy, and the apparent power to guard it against the encroachments of other people’s adversity.

SEE GOD IN EVERYONE. IT IS DECEPTION TO TEACH BY INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND KARMA.3

At certain stages you will take your sadhana very seriously. Later you will see the wisdom of the statement of Jesus that to seek the Lord, men need not disfigure their faces. Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.

The abstract point of this is that we don’t do anything to anybody else, anyway. Actually, people do things to themselves, and we are merely the environment in which they do it when they are ready.

It was as if the whole western mind-training of individual differences had been made background instead of figure, so that you'd look at another human being and say, "Here we are." You'd see differences more as clothing, rather than as core stuff.

At times Maharajji’s behavior reminds me of a story Ramakrishna tells of a saint who asked a snake not to bite but to love everyone. The snake agreed. But then many people threw things at the snake. The saint found the snake all battered. “I didn’t say not to hiss,” said the saint.