Ram Dass Quotes

The search "Who am I"...ends in the annihilation of the illusory "I" and the Self which remains over will be as clear as a gooseberry in the palm of one's hand.

What a liberation to realize that the 'voice in my head' is not who I am. 'Who am I, then?' The one who sees that.

Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

I'm still trying to find out who Paula Cole is. I always am - and I always will be - my real, inside self, which has no name.

There's got to be a voice deep within you that is untouched by definitions. And it is there that you become divinely who you are.

Our identification with the mind and body is the chief reason for our failure to know our self as we truly are.

Reality is simply the loss of ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. Because the ego is no entity it will automatically vanish and reality will shine forth by itself.

Nirvana is something within you. It is not an external reality. No god thunders down from the mountaintop. Just as the great mystics in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths all discovered, God is within the self. God is virtually inseparable from ourselves.

Whatever mistake you have made about who you are is temporary. Your true identity has remained untouched. You have never sinned against it or affected it in any way except to lose touch with it.

When your ego is no more, only then will you know who you are.

Through death you find yourself, because you no longer identify with form. You realize you are not the form with which you had identified ­ neither the physical nor the psychological form of "me". That form goes. It dissolves and who you are beyond form emerges through the opening where that form was. One could almost say that every form of life obscures God.

I think that some people like to be someone other than themselves when acting, while others are most themselves. I fall into the second camp. For me, acting is a great exercise in getting to the truth about myself.

Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own infinitude, and his infinitude is, in one sense, overcome.

Find out who you are and be that person. That's what your soul was put on this Earth to be. Find that truth, live that truth and everything else will come.

At a point in every person's life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is.

That's a song about reaching deep inside yourself where you can completely be who you are.

If there's a common thread to my books, it is that each involves an individual's journey. The individual must stay true to themselves.

I never really did abandon my true self. It's not like I invented this imaginary person and started to be her.

I think a spiritual journey is not so much a journey of discovery. It's a journey of recovery. It's a journey of uncovering your own inner nature. It's already there.

The only journey is the one within.

I came to believe that my true identity goes beyond the outer roles I play. It transcends the ego. I came to understand that there is an Authentic 'I' within - an 'I Am,' or divine spark within the soul.

What is it in you that brings you to a spiritual teacher in the first place? It's not the spirit in you, since that is already enlightened, and has no need to seek. No, it is the ego in you that brings you to a teacher.

The final goal of all human endeavor is the development of the human soul.