Richard Alpert, commonly known as Ram Dass, is a clinical psychologist, contemporary spiritual teacher, former academic, and the author of the 1971 bestselling novel Be Here Now (amongst many others). He also founded several charitable organizations, such as Hanuman Foundation and Seva Foundation.
He is known for his professional and personal associations with Timothy Leary (American psychologist and writer), as well as for his travels to India and his relationship with Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba who also gave him the name “Ram Dass,” which means “servant of God.”
Although Ram Dass had a stroke in 1997 that left him with expressive aphasia, he continues to teach via his website and even produced a podcast to share his teachings. With his attitude about love, life, and relationships, he is undoubtedly one of the most inspiring people to have walked the earth.
We have compiled 29 of the best Ram Dass quotes and sayings about love, life, faith, death, and so much more.
Table of Contents
Ram Dass Quotes About Love
1. “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.”
2. “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.”
3. “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.”
4. “I remember my first visit with my guru. He had shown that he read my mind. So I looked at the grass and I thought, ‘My god, he’s going to know all the things I don’t want people to know.’ I was really embarrassed. Then I looked up and he was looking directly at me with unconditional love.”
5. “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 the relationships are symbiotic in that sense. We come together because we fulfill each others’ needs at some level or other.”
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.”
7. “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.”
8. “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.”
9. “I hang out with my guru in my heart. And I love everything in the universe. That’s all I do all day.”
10. “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 Quotes About Faith
1. “Inspiration is God making contact with itself.”
2. “I have always said that often the religion you were born with becomes more important to you as you see the universality of truth.”
3. “When the faith is strong enough, it is sufficient just to be. It’s a journey towards simplicity, towards quietness, towards a kind of joy that is not in time. It’s a journey that has taken us from primary identification with our body and our psyche, on to an identification with God, and ultimately beyond identification.”
4. “Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom.”
5. “It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”
6. “My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too.”
Ram Dass Quotes About Life & Death
1. “Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath.”
2. “Your problem is you’re… too busy holding onto your unworthiness.”
3. “The stroke has given me another way to serve people. It lets me feel more deeply the pain of others; to help them know by example that ultimately, whatever happens, no harm can come. ‘Death is perfectly safe,’ I like to say.”
4. “In working with those who are dying, I offer another human being a spacious environment with my mind in which they can die as they need to die. I have no right to define how another person should die. I’m just there to help them transition, however, they need to do it.”
5. “If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.”
Ram Dass, More Quotes And Sayings
1. “I can go all over the world with Skype.”
2. “When you are already in Detroit, you don’t have to take a bus to get there.”
3. “Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying.”
4. “Our plans never turn out as tasty as reality.”
5. “I feel vulnerable because my mind – because of the stroke, my mind doesn’t focus. And then I feel vulnerable because I don’t understand the world around me.”
6. “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!”
7. “You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent.”
8. “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.”
If you want to know more about the life and works of the inspiring guru, we would suggest you read one of his bestselling books, Be Here Now to learn all about his spiritual journey.
