Ram Dass Quotes

I would like a world full of love. But remember, that love has no opposite to it. It is simply because you inside yourself have been able, through awareness, to transform your hate into love. Even to say that you have been able to transform it is not right, but what else to do with language? Whatever you say, something is wrong in saying it, something goes wrong in saying it. The fact is, awareness itself transforms your hate into love, not that you transform it. Your work and function is simply to remain aware. Don't let anything happen in your life without awareness.

Yoga is existential, experiential, experimental. No belief is required, no faith is needed - only courage to experience. And that's what's lacking. You can believe easily because in belief you are not going to be transformed. Belief is something added to you, something superficial. Your being is not changed; you are not passing through some mutation.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

Spiritual sadhana is not about making you into something other than what you are, but to erase the false faces that you have created for yourself is not something that you do; it is something that you become.

Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.

Every positive change - every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness - involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master.

When you pray, things remain the same, but you begin to be different. The same thing when a man falls in love, his circumstances and conditions remain the same, but he has a sovereign preference in his heart for another person which transfigures everything!

I'm only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation.

Engaging it produces an intense force, which in turn produces a mutation in consciousness. You become who you really are.

As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.

True progress comes not through action, but through awakening.

So let it be a criterion if you follow the path of awareness, let love be the criterion. When your awareness suddenly blooms into love, know perfectly well that awareness has happened, SAMADHI has been achieved. If you follow the path of love, then let awareness function as a criterion, as a touchstone. When suddenly, from nowhere, at the very center of your love. a flame of awareness starts arising, know perfectly well... rejoice! You have come home.

The ultimate reason for meditating is to transform ourselves in order to be better able to transform the world.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.

You've taught me that we're all needed, even those who sometimes think we're worthless, plain and dull. If we love and allow ourselves to be loved...well, a person who loves is the most precious thing in the world, worth all the fortunes that ever were. That's what you've taught me, fur face,and because of you I'll never be the same.

Love is the answer to any sort of healing.

Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is a supreme creative act.

I do love the evolution of people in general. I think it's a beautiful thing when someone progresses and evolves in life.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

There comes a time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved.

Before I had my child, I thought I knew all the boundaries of myself, that I understood the limits of my heart. It's extraordinary to have all those limits thrown out, to realize your love is inexhaustible.