If you rest in the silence inside, all those you meet will have their spiritual hearts resuscitated.

Love flows. Love doesn't know boundaries. The mind creates boundaries. The mind creates the boundary of separate me and you. The heart just keeps embracing and opening out.

We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not.

Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.

We kill each other over which name to call the Nameless.

Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound.

Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true.

I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people.

If we are to help heal the world, we need to remember that it is a sacred place. Our actions need to be positive statements, reminders that even in the worst times there is a world worth struggling for.

I used to be afraid of things like strokes, but I've now discovered that the fear of the stroke is worse than the stroke itself.

Our plans never turn out as tasty as reality.

Don’t compare your path with anybody else’s. Your path is unique to you.

The ego is a tool. You don't separate it. It's a tool for the spirit.

I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

Ask yourself: Where am I? Answer: Here. Ask yourself: What time is it? Answer: Now. Say it until you can hear it.

I think that people will find a tremendous joy and fulfillment in service to other human beings, and that often this is what is missing in their lives.

A Tibetan Lama said to me, "The best place to stand, Ram Dass, is halfway between hope and hopelessness." So I can write a scenario for the 21st century in either direction. One is that it all goes to hell and that it's truly the dark age.

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.

When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us.

At the moment when there's nothing more to lose, the Ego breaks open - and then we see who we are behind who we thought we were.

You're afraid, you will just keep making the fear. If you want to change it, you change from your soul.

You have everything in you that Buddha has, that Christ has. You've got it all. But only when you start to acknowledge it is it going to get interesting. Your problem is you're afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. You're too busy holding on to your own unworthiness. You'd rather be a schnook sitting before some great man. That fits in more with who you think you are. Well, enough already. I sit before you and I look and I see your beauty, even if you don't.

The gift you offer another person is just your being.