Be Here Now by Ram Dass (Quotes and Excerpts)

Profound spiritual quotes and excerpts from the highly influential book: Be Here Now by the American spiritual teacher Ram Dass.

If you wish to read the book in its entirety, here is a link to amazon



Ram Dass Quote: Only when I know who I am will I know what is possible.

Only when I know who I am will I know what is possible.

Ram Dass

If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.

Ram Dass

It's only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly. That again is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.

Ram Dass

Ram Dass Quote: The witness is always in the Here and Now. It lives in each instant of living

The witness is always in the Here and Now. It lives in each instant of living.

Ram Dass

If you could stand back for but a moment you could see that if man were more conscious from moment to moment he could transcend most of the difficulties he now faces: poverty, war, pollution, neurosis, disease.

Ram Dass

Ram Dass Quote: Just because you are seeing divine light, experiencing waves of bliss, or conversing with Gods and Goddesses is no reason to not know your zip code.

Just because you are seeing divine light, experiencing waves of bliss, or conversing with Gods and Goddesses is no reason to not know your zip code.

Ram Dass

If you see yourself as God and then you come back from this state and somebody says, "Hey, Sam, empty the garbage!" it catches you back into the model of "I'm Sam who empties the garbage." You can't maintain these new kinds of structures. It takes a while to realize that God can empty garbage.

Ram Dass

Ram Dass Quote: Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW... so you stop asking.

Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW... so you stop asking.

Ram Dass

I can do nothing for you but work on myself... You can do nothing for me but work on yourself!

Ram Dass

Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.

Ram Dass

Ram Dass Quote: We were exploring this inner realm of consciousness that we had been theorizing about all these years and suddenly we were traveling in and through and around it.

We were exploring this inner realm of consciousness that we had been theorizing about all these years and suddenly we were traveling in and through and around it.

Ram Dass

We had gotten over the feeling that one experience was going to make you enlightened forever. We saw that it wasn't going to be that simple. And for five years I dealt with the matter of "coming down." The coming down matter is what led me to the next chapter of this drama. Because after six years, I realized that no matter how ingenious my experimental designs were, and how high I got, I came down.
At one point I took five people and we locked ourselves in a building for three weeks and we took 400 micrograms of LSD every four hours. That is 2400 micrograms of LSD a day, which sounds fancy, but after your fist dose, you build a tolerance; there's a refractory period. We finally were just drinking out of the bottle, because it didn't seem to matter anymore. We'd just stay at a plateau. We were very high. What happened in those three weeks in that house, no one would ever believe, including us. And at the end of the three weeks, we walked out of the house and within a few days, we came down!
And it was a terribly frustrating experience, as if you came into the kingdom of heaven and you saw how it all was and you felt these new states of awareness, and then you got cast out again.

Ram Dass

Be Here Now Quote: In the course of your journey it is most likely that your day-to-day companions or friends may change. Some may fall away as your interest in the Spirit pulls you from the worldly interest which brought or kept you together, but new friends who share your current interests will appear.

In the course of your journey it is most likely that your day-to-day companions or friends may change. Some may fall away as your interest in the Spirit pulls you from the worldly interest which brought or kept you together, but new friends who share your current interests will appear.

Ram Dass

Grace is at the nexus of love and awareness. There it’s all open and it’s all love.

Ram Dass

Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean.

Ram Dass

You may protest if you can love the person you are protesting against as much as you love yourself.

Ram Dass

When your center is firm, when your faith is strong and unwavering, then it will not matter what company you keep.

Ram Dass

I thought inside "I must really be crazy, now — because craziness is where everybody agrees about something — except you!" And yet I felt saner than I had ever felt, so I knew this was a new kind of craziness or perhaps a new kind of saneness.

Ram Dass

It would be best not to impose a model too soon, because the model that exists in the west for these states is pathological, and the model that exists in the primitive cultures is mystical and religious.

Ram Dass

There are three stages in this journey that I have been on. The first. the social science stage; the second, the psychedelic stage; and the third, the yogi stage.

Ram Dass

Which thoughts are useful to repeat? There are different kinds of mantras (phrases). Different mantras take you to different planes. Some seed (beej) mantras resonate within in such a way as to open one of your chakras (energy centers). There are power mantras to strengthen your will, and other mantras to open your heart in such a way as to deepen your compassion.

Ram Dass

To begin we must begin at the beginning. At the beginning is the spirit. Spirit is a Latin word meaning breath. It's like breathing out and breathing in, NO THING-yup, no thing. And this no thing is basic for our life. Breathe spirit, this spirit which sustains and maintains, without which we die to this form. This no thing is the foundation upon which all must be based. Life must be dedicated to the spirit alone for as it has been laid out . . . seek you first the kingdom of heaven and all else shall be added to you . . . so . . . with the family sadhana as with all sadhana this is where we begin. The family and all it is thru/by/in extension must be dedicated solely to the spirit.

Ram Dass

Get in the habit of remaining silent for a few hours a day. This is most easily done when one is at home or around people who understand what you are trying to do. (In India if you are silent everyone immediately says, "Ah, Mourn/' and honors you. In the West people either interpret silence as a sign of your hostility towards them or as a physical illness about which they feel pity. Either of these reactions makes your work more difficult.) At first you may want to remain by yourself during these few hours. Later you will be able to be around people comfortably without having to speak.

Ram Dass

I thought at that moment, "Wow, I've got it made. I'm just a new beautiful being — I'm just an inner self — all I'll ever need to do is look inside and I'll know what to do and I can always trust it, and here I'll be forever."
But two or three days later I was talking about the whole thing in the past tense. I was talking about how I "experienced" this thing, because I was back being that anxiety-neurotic, in a slightly milder form, but still, my old personality was sneaking back up on me.

Ram Dass

Before March 6th, which was the day I took Psylocybin, one of the psychedelics, I felt something was wrong in my world, but I couldn't label it in any way so as to get hold of it. I felt that the theories I was teaching in psychologydidn't make it, that the psychologists didn't really have a grasp of the human condition, and that the theories I was teaching, which were theories of achievement and anxiety and defense mechanisms and so on, weren't getting to the crux of the matter.
My colleagues and I were 9 to 5 psychologists: we came to work every day and we did our psychology, just like you would do insurance or auto mechanics, and then at 5 we went home and were just as neurotic as we were before we went to work. Somehow, it seemed to me, if all of this theory were right, it should play more intimately into my own life. I understood the requirement of being "objective" for a scientist, but this is a most naive concept in social sciences as we are finding out. ... Something was wrong. And the something wrong was that I just didn't know, though I kept feeling all along the way that somebody else must know even though I didn't. The nature of life was a mystery to me. All the stuff I was teaching was just like little molecular bits of stuff but they didn't add up to a feeling anything like wisdom. I was just getting more and more knowledgeable.

Ram Dass

Be Here Now Info

Published: 1971

Be Here Now is a book written by the American spiritual teacher Ram Dass, also known as Richard Alphert.

The book explores the nature of the spiritual experience and the role of psychedelics in this journey.

Read the whole book