Ram Dass

The humor is that finally when you have the power to move the mountain, you are the person who placed it there-so there the mountain stays.

I experience each moment like baklava: rich in this layer, and this layer, and this layer.

We've gotten lost in our Ego and have forgotten that our Soul's only motive is to merge with the Beloved.

Be patient. You'll know when it's time for you to wake up and move ahead.

We gain internal freedom through external actions.

Faith is in the soul. Belief is thought. Faith is so rich. Faith gives me my spiritual self.

The next message you need is always right where you are.

The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.

Compassion and pity are very different. Whereas compassion reflects the yearning of the heart to merge and take on some of the suffering, pity is a controlled set of thoughts designed to assure separateness. Compassion is the spontaneous response of love; pity, the involuntary reflex of fear.

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.

We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.

In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric. The secret isn't that you're not being told. The secret is that you're not able to hear.

The root of compassion is not empathy; that is kindness. Kindness is great, but it is not the ultimate compassion. Ultimate compassion relieves the suffering that comes from separateness. The suffering that comes from separateness is relieved only when you are fully present with another person, not when you are separately present.

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

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

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

When your mind is quiet, you enter into the flow of love, and you just flow from one moment to the next as naturally as breathing. Whatever arises, I embrace it with love in the moment. This is my practice of polishing the mirror to reflect love. In this moment there is just awareness and love. If someone asks me how to get into their heart, I give them this practice: I Am Loving Awareness.

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.

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.

I remember my first visit with my guru. He had shown that he read my mind. So I looked at the grass and I thought, 'My god, he's going to know all the things I don't want people to know.' I was really embarrassed. Then I looked up and he was looking directly at me with unconditional 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.