Ram Dass Quotes

"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."

"If you think you're free, there's no escape possible."

"Your problem is you're... too busy holding onto your unworthiness."

"Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying."

"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."

"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."

"I hang out with my guru in my heart. And I love every thing in the universe. That's all I do all day."

"When you are already in Detroit, you don't have to take a bus to get there."

"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."

"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!"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent."

"Inspiration is God making contact with itself."

"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."

"It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed."

"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."

"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."

"Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom."

"I have always said that often the religion you were born with becomes more important to you as you see the universality of truth."

"My belief is that I wasn't born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that."

"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."

"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."

"Our plans never turn out as tasty as reality."

"My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too."

"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."

"The universe is an example of love. Like a tree. Like the ocean. Like my body. Like my wheelchair. I see the love."

"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."

"I can go all over the world with Skype."