This is a curated selection of Ram Dass quotes (personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Ram Dass’ books (Amazon).
“The name ‘Ram Dass’ was useful to me because every time somebody calls you ‘Servant of God’, it reminds you about what your business is about—which ‘Richard’ didn’t really do.”
Page Contents:
- Suffering & Thinking Quotes
- Separation & Identification Quotes
- Spirituality & Awakening Quotes
- Perfection & What Is Quotes
25 Ram Dass Quotes on Separation, Awakening, Perfection, & More
Ram Dass Quotes on Suffering & Thinking
“Ever since I was a child, I was taught thinking is better—think more, you’re better—and your analytic mind can solve all problems. And, look what a mess it has created for us because it doesn’t recognize the deeper harmony and unity that exists across peoples, and between us and nature, all those levels.” — Ram Dass
“There’s a tendency in the spiritual journey to denigrate thinking, to denigrate intellect, to denigrate analytic mind. We as Westerners, coming out of our history of having the intellect be the highest power that we have, now as we’re shifting the balance it is important that we don’t throw out the baby with the bath. We are inclined to learn how to integrate these two things so that we can honor and delight in the beauty of the intellect without being trapped by it.” — Ram Dass
“We have gotten fascinated with knowledge, and we forgot wisdom … The best of intellect don’t solve our problems ultimately because our problems require a different level of wisdom. We have worshipped knowledge rather than wisdom, and wisdom has in it a very deep compassion.” — Ram Dass
“Every time your mind grabs hold of a model of who you are, where you’re going—an expectation that it’s going to be a certain way—you’re just asking for suffering.” — Ram Dass
“Pleasure and happiness is not the business I’m in. I’m in the business of freedom. It’s very different.” — Ram Dass
“If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.” — Ram Dass
Ram Dass Quotes on Separation & Identification
“What I would love to be doing is getting free of the source of the issue of suffering itself, the basic ignorance … It’s the ignorance of separateness—not that separateness isn’t part of the dance, but our identification with our separateness. That’s where the source of the suffering is.” — Ram Dass
“‘I’ll make believe you are who you think you are if you’ll make believe I am who I think I am’. You don’t even look to see who it is. You don’t see God is your only friend. You don’t see that could be God in drag. You see who they think they are, and you respond to it. So, everybody is going into the personality realm making it real, and then interacting, and then looking at each other, and when you think your personality is real that’s all you see when you look at other people.” — Ram Dass
“It’s such an interesting dance. It’s such an interesting journey of life because at one level you really think your life is real with your children, with your jobs, with your body, with your coming and your going, and your bills, and the car, and the environmental issues, and the politics, and world governments, and forces, and death, and violence, and suffering. And, there’s another level in which you’re the sky in which the phenomena are arising.” — Ram Dass
“There is a very deep Western predisposition to identify with your thoughts and think you are your thoughts—that who you think you are is who you are … In the Eastern traditions, you spend your life learning how to extricate yourself from your thinking mind and from your identification with your senses.” — Ram Dass
“The rational mind is in the service of protecting your separateness first … The rational mind can never comprehend the system that created it. In other words, a system can’t understand a system meta to it.” — Ram Dass
“The ultimate understanding that I have now is that we have taken a human birth in order to have a series of experiences which are vehicles for our awakening out of the illusion that we are only separate … Separate from the totality of form or what might be called ‘God’, or the formless that lies behind form, or ‘the one.'” — Ram Dass
Ram Dass Quotes on Spirituality & Awakening
“You don’t need to go to anywhere else to find what you are seeking … You don’t go into the totality pushing away any part of your life … To think that working on oneself requires ‘dropping-out’ of society is to miss the point. Certainly you must drop out . . . but the drop-out is internal, not external … Just because you are seeing divine light, experiencing waves of bliss, or conversing with Gods and Goddesses is no reason to not know your zip code.” — Ram Dass
“We aren’t who we think we are. That’s really the basic teaching of it all. You aren’t who you thought you were. You’re much more than that … We’re talking about the dying of who you think you are—then you are what you are … You don’t die. Just who you think you are dies.” — Ram Dass
“You have transcended any attachment to a separate identity, even though you still enjoy the separateness.” — Ram Dass
“I help people as a way to work on myself, and I work on myself to help people … To me, that’s what the emerging game is all about … I can do nothing for you but work on myself. You can do nothing for me but work on yourself.” — Ram Dass
“I’m not any more a Hindu than I am a Christian, or a Buddhist, or a Jew, or a Islam … I think in every one of them is living spirit, and I am completely hooked on living spirit and that which truth brings you to. At the highest or most esoteric essence of each of the religions is that same truth. I am very much attached to Spirit and not particularly to religious forms.” — Ram Dass
“Finally you come to a point where you almost know it all. You are very wise. You are very pure . . . except for the fact that you may well have gotten caught in the last trap . . . the desire to know it all and still be you, ‘the knower.’ This is an impossibility. For all of the finite knowledge does not add up to the infinite. In order to take the final step, the knower must go. That is, you can only BE it all, but you can’t know it all. The goal is non-dualistic—as long as there is a ‘knower’ and ‘known’ you are in dualism.” — Ram Dass
“Was it merely the one of us creating the many in order to come to know itself because there was no way a one could experience itself? So, it plays with dualism? Because as you awaken out of dualism, you realize that the entire thing was like a dream, or a dance, or an illusion.” — Ram Dass
Ram Dass Quotes on Perfection & What Is
“Your understanding of what the universe is all about changes as you proceed further along the path towards enlightenment. As your vantage point or perspective changes, you begin to understand more and more of ‘how it is.’ With this greater understanding comes greater compassion . . . an acceptance of ‘how it is’ . . . an ability to see the divine plan in everything . . . even in your failings and the failings of others.” — Ram Dass
“The way of things is just the way it’s supposed to be.” — Ram Dass
“When I talk about perfection, I’m saying open to just what is.” — Ram Dass
“Everybody has as much guidance as they need. It’s all happening perfectly. That’s what’s so mind blowing. The thing is just unfolding for each person so perfectly.” — Ram Dass
“You slowly realize that this is a form that’s manifesting, and you dance with it. You wear it like your clothing, you honor it, you take care of it, you keep it clean and neat—and you find out how it harmoniously expresses itself.” — Ram Dass
“There’s only one of us in drag, making believe we are the many.” — Ram Dass
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