“When I had my spiritual awakening, I was fourteen years old. This body was sitting in a classroom taking a math test. And all of a sudden I felt myself expanding. I never left my body, which proves that the body never existed to begin with. I felt the body expanding, and a brilliant light began to come out of my heart. I happened to see this light in all directions. I had peripheral vision, and this light was really my Self. It was not my body and the light. There were not two. There was this light that became brighter and brighter and brighter, the light of a thousand suns. I thought I would be burnt to a crisp, but alas, I wasn’t … I felt a love, a compassion, a humility, all at the same time. That was truly indescribable. It wasn’t a love that you’re aware of. Think of something that you really love, or someone that you really love with all your heart. Multiply this by a jillion million trillion and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. This particular love is like no thing that ever existed on this earth, consciously. There is nothing you can compare it with. It is beyond duality, beyond concepts, beyond words and thoughts. And since the I which I was, was all pervading, there was no other place for anything else to be. There was no room for anything, because there was no space, and no time. There was just the I Am, ever present, Self existent. The love of everything was the love of the Self.”

— Silence of the Heart pgs 8 - 10

“There is something more beautiful, more grand, more wonderful, than you could ever imagine, that exists within you, which is the substratum of all existence. Yet in order to feel this joy, this bliss, in order to find total freedom from life’s so-called burdens, you have to dig for yourself. You have to give up something. You can’t stay the way you are, with the same disposition, the same values, the same preconceived ideas, the same concepts, and be free. You cannot do this. You have to do an about face and totally give up all your ideas about life, totally surrender your ego, your mind, your body, your preconceived ideas.”

— Silence of the Heart p. 124

To watch the After Skool illustrated YouTube video of Ram Dass’ talk How to Keep Your Heart Open in Hell click here

For an account of Ram Dass’ first meeting with Timothy Leary, see here

“Maharaj-ji’s teaching is love. That love stays with you wherever you are. The more open you are, the more you can receive the love. It’s the beginning, the middle, and the end.”
— Be Love Now, chapter 7

“Having been in the presence of Maharaj-ji, I have come to trust the way a being like that is in the universe. It’s like knowing somebody who lives a little farther up the mountain and can see farther than you can. The view from there is perfection — not perfection as something to be achieved, but perfection in what is. Maharaj-ji kept saying to me in various ways, “Ram Dass, don’t you see it’s all perfect?” And yet Maharaj-ji spent all his life being there for people, helping them with their lives, feeding them, and just loving them. The art of life is to stay wide open and be vulnerable, yet at the same time to sit with the mystery and the awe and with the unbearable pain — to just be with it all.”
— Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart, chapter 6

“The way of it is so strange, it’s like liquid geometry, always flowing into the right order. No matter what happens, the love flows out, nothing can interrupt it, no cry or scream or laughter; it’s always at work, always recognizing, present, vigilant, meticulous. If you could understand how I see these two feet on the coffee table right now, you’d laugh until you fell helpless onto the floor. The seeing would kill everything but the pure joy of what sees.”

— A Thousand Names for Joy p. 134

“Ignorance is the failure to discriminate between the permanent and the impermanent, the pure and the impure, bliss and suffering, the Self and the non-Self. Egoism, the limiting sense of ‘I’ results from the individual intellect’s attributing the power of consciousness to itself.”

— Chapter II verses 5 & 6, as translated by Alistair Shearer

“Divine happiness, even the tiniest particle of a grain of it, never leaves one again; and when one attains to the essence of things and finds one’s Self – this is supreme happiness. When it is found, nothing else remains to be found; the sense of want will not awaken anymore, and the heart’s torment will be stilled forever.”

— Words of Sri Anandamayi Ma, translated and compiled by Atmananda, chapter 22; (Orig. published 1961; Centenary edition 1995)

“It’s rigged - everything, in your favor. So there is nothing to worry about.”
— Love Poems from God by Daniel Ladinsky, pg. 85

“I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.

Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, Let's buy it.”

— The Essential Rumi interpreted by Coleman Barks, pg. 37

“I gave everything for this.
And still I laughingly wonder:
How could it have been so cheap?”

— My Secret is Silence pg. 100 (author’s emphasis)

“See! I am God. See! I am in everything. See! I never lift my hands off my works, nor will I ever. See! I lead everything toward the purpose I ordained it to from without beginning, By the same Power, Wisdom and Love by which I created it. How could anything be amiss?”
— Revelations of Divine Love pg. 39

“I saw that our Lord was never wrathful, nor ever shall be. God’s lucidity and unity will not allow this. God is the goodness that cannot be wrathful. Our soul is oned to God, unchangeable goodness, and therefore between God and our soul there is neither wrath nor forgiveness because there is no between.”
— Revelations of Divine Love pg. 77

“The beauty of unbroken perfection is revealed to us as Reality here and now and at once we can see God. Siddhartha Gautama knew when he said, ‘Do not complain and cry and pray, but open your eyes and see. For the light is about you and it is so wonderful, so beautiful, so beyond anything that man has ever dreamt of or prayed for—it is forever and ever.’

The “hidden” light shining in every creature and every form is not hidden if we open our eyes and live wide awake with Life. It smiles through every fellow pilgrim, every tree, every stone or every form we pass. It seems free and aglow with the light of loveliness …

I can live in natural correspondence and steady consummation. Each face and each form that I greet through my senses responds. It is as if Life smiles across in recognition of Itself. Life is seen by me as the “One”— exceedingly rich and freely nourishing.”

— Dancing with the Void: The Innerstandings of a Rare-Born Mystic, ch. 2: Pilgrimage to India

“Nothing seems to be unnecessary or out of the place to a mystic. Harmony reigns in the mystic’s vision; unbroken perfection is in and over all. It is a perfect blending of all into an indescribable expression of grace, joy, peace, beauty, love, compassion, and wisdom awareness. The One is the non-dual experiencing, the non-thing-ness. To know God is to be God. Being Awareness Grace. Tat Twam Asi.

There is a new dimension, a realization that “all is well” now and always, that the power of love, empathy and “participation mystique” absorbs all and transcends all. Self, God, Grace is an ever-present reality that enfolds us always. In it, we live and move and have our Being.

This is the mystic’s experiencing in wholeness and grace awareness … Love pervades everything. All conflicts and sufferings are like surface waves upon the quiet ocean depth.”

— Dancing with the Void: The Innerstandings of a Rare-Born Mystic, ch. 18: Mysticism