Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Ram Dass (American Hindu New Age Pioneer)

Baba Ram Dass (1931–2019,) born Richard Alpert, was an American Hindu spiritual teacher. After first gaining notoriety as a psychedelic pioneer, he gave up the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s and embraced traditional Hindu mysticism. A devotee of Eastern religion, Ram Dass devised a New Age spiritual teaching that drew from Buddhism, Hinduism, Sūfīsm, and Jewish mystical studies.

Born to a Jewish family in Newton, Massachusetts, Alpert received his B.A. from Tufts University, his M.A. in motivation psychology from Wesleyan University, and his PhD in human development from Stanford University. He joined a teaching and research post at Harvard University and, with Timothy Leary, researched the potential therapeutic and mind-altering effects of LSD and psilocybin.

After quitting to promote psychedelic drugs as the path to inner enlightenment, Alpert traveled to India and met the Hindu mystic Neem Karoli Baba, who gave the name Baba Ram Dass (meaning God’s servant.) Ram Dass explicated his “spiritual rebirth” in the influential book Be Here Now (1971.) This popular book provided a road map for the burgeoning New Age movement of spirituality.

Ram Dass dedicated the rest of his life to studying and teaching spiritualism in the United States. He became a much-loved spiritual teacher to many around the world, including to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and the Beatle George Harrison.

Ram Dass’s many publications include Doing Your Own Being (1973,) The Only Dance There Is (1974,) Journey of Awakening: A Meditator’s Guidebook (1978,) Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service (1991,) Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying (2000,) Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gītā (2004,) and Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying (2018.)

In 1978, Ram Dass co-founded the Seva Foundation, a charity to fight blindness and other health problems around the world. Dass’s memoirs are Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart (2013.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Ram Dass

Creativity springs from the yearning to be the fullness of who you are.
Ram Dass

If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.
Ram Dass
Topics: Freedom

It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.
Ram Dass
Topics: Experience

You and I are the force for transformation in the world.
We are the consciousness that will define the
nature of the reality we are moving into.
Ram Dass

You must come to see every human being including yourself,
as an incarnation in a body or personality,
going through a certain life experience which is functional.
Ram Dass

Turn your melodrama into a mellow drama.
Ram Dass

Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the Mystery.
Ram Dass

The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of all suffering.
Ram Dass
Topics: Realistic Expectations

The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal.
It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that
everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.
Ram Dass

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.
Ram Dass

You may have expected that enlightenment would come Zap! instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first “ah ha” experience, it can be thought of as the thinning of a layer of clouds … .
Ram Dass

Caring is a reflex. Someone slips, your arm goes out. A car is in the ditch, you join the others and push…You live, you help.
Ram Dass
Topics: Kindness

You spent the first half of your life becoming somebody. Now you can work on becoming nobody, which is really somebody. For when you become nobody there is no tension, no pretense, no one trying to be anyone or anything. The natural state of the mind shines through unobstructed—and the natural state of the mind is pure love.
Ram Dass

Your problem is you’re … too busy holding onto your unworthiness.
Ram Dass
Topics: Confidence, Awareness, Acceptance, Realization

Our journey is about being more deeply involved in life and yet less attached to it.
Ram Dass

Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.
Ram Dass

When you are already in Detroit, you don’t have to take a bus to get there.
Ram Dass
Topics: Spirit, Spirituality

The most exquisite paradox? As soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can’t have it. The minute you don’t want power, you’ll have more than you ever dreamed possible.
Ram Dass
Topics: Power

Our minds are often permeated by memories of the past
or worries about the future. What gets missed is the present and
right there in the moment is the doorway into timelessness.
Ram Dass

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