Ram Dass Be Here Now Quotes

Be here now.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible.

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

I didn’t arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.”—A. Einstein

Now is now. Are you going to be here or not?

Those who know do not talk And talkers do not know.”—Tao Te Ching

I think the message is that you don’t need to go to anywhere else to find what you are seeking.

Illusions are like mistresses. We can have many of them without tying ourselves down to responsibility. But truth insists on marriage. Once a person embraces truth, he is in its ruthless, but gentle, grasp.”—Rabazar Tarzs

The human mind is like that monkey, incessantly active by its own nature, then it becomes drunk with the wine of desire, thus increasing its turbulence. After desire takes possession comes the sting of the scorpion of jealousy at the success of others, and last of all the demon of pride enters the mind, making it think itself of all importance.

Ephrem the Syrian says, ‘Good speech is silver, but silence is pure gold.’ ”—Way of a Pilgrim

And suddenly I realized that he knew everything that was going on in my head, all the time, and that he still loved me. Because who we are is behind all that.

This love is actually part of you; it is always flowing through you. It’s like the subatomic texture of the universe, the dark matter that connects everything. When you tune in to that flow, you will feel it in your own heart—not your physical heart or your emotional heart, but your spiritual heart, the place you point to in your chest when you say, “I am.

Free yourself from the illusion of good and bad days. Labeling time makes us nostalgic of the past and demanding of the future. There is only here and now. Let it be.

The cosmic humor is that if you desire to move mountains and you continue to purify yourself, ultimately you will arrive at the place where you are able to move mountains. But in order to arrive at this position of power you will have had to give up being he-who-wanted-to-move-mountains so that you can be he-who-put-the-mountain-there-in-the-first-place. 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.

A moment’s reflection will show you that you play many roles in the course of a day . . . and that who you are from moment to moment changes. There is the angry you, and the kind you, the lazy you, the lustful you—hundreds of different you’s. Gurdjieff points out that sometimes one “you” does something for which all the other “you’s” must pay for years or possibly the rest of this life.

A woman once came to Mahatma Gandhi with her little boy. She asked, “Mahatma-ji, tell my little boy to stop eating sugar.” “Come back in three days,” said Gandhi. In three days the woman and the little boy returned and Mahatma Gandhi said to the little boy, “Stop eating sugar.” The woman asked, “Why was it necessary for us to return only after three days for you to tell my little boy that?” The Mahatma replied: “Three days ago I had not stopped eating sugar.

How are we to know that the mind has become concentrated? Because the idea of time will vanish. The more time passes un-noticed the more concentrated we are . . . All time will have the tendency to come and stand in the one present. So the definition is given, when the past and present come and stand in one, the mind is said to be concentrated.”—Vivekananda

A relationship starting out as one that awakens love can only remain a living vehicle for love to the extent that it is continually made new or reconsecrated.

Oh! I’m going to do good things for my child. Balony! That’s all ego. Just work on yourself And: Everytime you work on yourself, you get calmer you hear more you sense more you are more you’re more present What are you offering a child? not a set of social roles passing in the night. . . . youre offering a child here and now — ness The treasure of consciousness The treasure of awareness.

This getting straight not only applies to people but to things as well, such as favorite music, disliked foods, special treats, avoided places, all your toys, etc. Everything must be rerun through your compassion machine.

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

All of a sudden the progress will stop one day, and you will find yourself, as it were, stranded. Persevere. All progress proceeds by such rise and fall.”—Vivekananda

True love is unconquer able and irresistable; and it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches. Meher Baba

Don’t think about the past. Just be here now.

Trust the messages coming from your heart and intuition.

If a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets.” Then he’d get up and leave. Or he’d write, “If you wear shoeleather, the whole earth is covered with leather.” These were his ways of teaching me about how motivation affects perception.

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. Of

There was some point as a professor at Stanford and Harvard when I experienced being caught in some kind of a meaningless game in which the students were exquisite at playing the role of students and the faculty were exquisite at playing the role of faculty. I would get up and say what I had read in books and they'd all write it down and give it back as answers on exams but nothing was happening. I felt as if I were in a sound-proof room. Not enough was happening that mattered — that was real.

If you listen to your own inner voice, it will tell you where you are now, and which method will work best for you in your evolution towards the light.

The quieter you become the more you can hear.

Just relax and trust the process.

Our existence as embodied beings is purely momentary; what are a hundred years in eternity? But if we shatter the chains of egotism, and melt into the ocean of humanity, we share its dignity. To feel that we are something is to set up a barrier between God and ourselves; to cease feeling that we are something is to become one with God.”—Gandhi

To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible.” And

As long as one feels that he is the doer, he cannot escape from the wheel of births.”—Buddha

as soon as you give it all up you can have it all

Love is essentially self-communicative. Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it.

you do what you do because that’s what the harmony of the universe requires. If I am a potter I make pots

I found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard ‘new things’: that is, things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new.”—Ouspensky

To reconnect consciousness with the unconscious, to make consciousness symbolical is to reconnect words with silence; to let the silence in. If consciousness is all words and no silence, the unconscious remains unconscious.”—N.O. Brown

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.”—Samuel Johnson

NO ACCIDENTS If you could stand back far enough and watch the whole process you would see You Are A Totally Determined Being

If you wear shoeleather, the whole earth is covered with leather.

to do anything with attachment. With desire . . . with anger..greed..lust . . . fear.. is only creating more karma, which is keeping you in the game . . . on the wheel of birth and death once you see through that. . . Desires can’t help but fall away

Potent Quotes “Whatever you do, or eat, or give, or offer in adoration, let it be an offering to me; and whatever you suffer, suffer it for me. Thus you shall be free from the bonds of Karma which yield fruits that are evil and good; and with your soul one in renunciation you shall be free and come to me.”—Bhagavad Gita

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

If you observe well, your own heart will answer.”—de Lubicz

And, to my suppressed dismay, I found that this stance was considered acceptable by most of my colleagues who seemed, in their attempt to become “scientific”, to think of personality in terms of variables.

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.

As you progress with your sadhana you may find it necessary to change your occupation. Or you may find that it is only necessary to change the way in which you perform your current occupation in order to bring it into line with your new understanding of how it all is. The more conscious that a being becomes, the more he can use any occupation as a vehicle for spreading light. The next true being of Buddha-nature that you meet may appear as a bus driver, a doctor, a weaver, an insurance salesman, a musician, a chef, a teacher, or any of the thousands of roles that are required in a complex society—the many parts of Christ’s body. You will know him because the simple dance that may transpire between you—such as handing him change as you board the bus—will strengthen in you the faith in the divinity of man. It’s as simple as that.

What is important is that you get your house in order at each stage of the journey so that you can proceed. “If some day it be given to you to pass into the inner temple, you must leave no enemies behind.”—de Lubicz For example, if you never got on well with one of your parents and you have left that parent behind on your journey in such a way that the thought of that parent arouses anger or frustration or self-pity or any emotion . . . you are still attached. You are still stuck. And you must get that relationship straight before you can finish your work. And what, specifically, does “getting it straight” mean? Well, it means re-perceiving that parent, or whoever it may be, with total compassion . . . seeing him as a being of the spirit, just like you, who happens to be your parent . . . and who happens to have this or that characteristic, and who happens to be at a certain stage of his evolutionary journey. You must see that all beings are just beings . . . and that all the wrappings of personality and role and body are the coverings. Your attachments are only to the coverings, and as long as you are attached to someone else’s covering you are stuck, and you keep them stuck, in that attachment. Only when you can see the essence, can see God, in each human being do you free yourself and those about you. It’s hard work when you have spent years building a fixed model of who someone else is to abandon it, but until that model is superceded by a compassionate model, you are still stuck. In India they say that in order to proceed with one’s work one needs one’s parents’ blessings. Even if the parent has died, you must in your heart and mind, re-perceive that relationship until it becomes, like every one of your current relationships, one of light. If the person is still alive you may, when you have proceeded far enough, revisit and bring the relationship into the present. For, if you can keep the visit totally in the present, you will be free and finished. The parent may or may not be . . . but that is his karmic predicament. And if you have been truly in the present, and if you find a place in which you can share even a brief eternal moment . . . this is all it takes to get the blessing of your parent! It obviously doesn’t demand that the parent say, “I bless you.” Rather it means that he hears you as a fellow being, and honors the divine spark within you. And even a moment in the Here and Now . . . a single second shared in the eternal present . . . in love . . . is all that is required to free you both, if you are ready to be freed. From then on, it’s your own individual karma that determines how long you can maintain that high moment.

For many years before I met Maharajji I was searching, going here and there, studying this and that. I began following strict yogic codes—brahmacharya, 3:00 A.M. risings, cold baths, asanas, and dhyan. It was during a period when I had given up coffee and tea that I met Maharajji. Tea was being offered to all of us, and I didn’t know what to do. I said nothing but did not accept a cup of tea, and Maharajji leaned over to me, saying, “Won’t you take tea? Take tea! You should drink the tea. It’s good for you in this weather! Take tea!” So I drank the tea. With that one cup of tea, all those strict disciplines and schedules were washed away! They seemed meaningless and unnecessary; the true work seemed beyond these things. Now I do whatever comes of itself.

I started to get extremely, extremely depressed. I’m sure part of it was due to the hashish.

I must really be crazy, now—because craziness is where everybody agrees about something,—except you!

the journey across the great ocean of existence Is a journey inward ever in deeper and deeper and the deeper you get in the more you meet truth

Healing is not the same as curing, after all; healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.

Begin to notice that wherever you go or whatever time it is by the clock . . . it is ALWAYS HERE AND NOW.

you don’t need to go to anywhere else to find what you are seeking.

It’s all right now But later?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . forget it baby That’s later Now is Now Are you going to be here Or not? It’s as simple as that!

Don’t think about the future. Just be here now.

We are born into the world of nature; our second birth is into the world of spirit.”—Bhagavad Gita

I was just getting more and more knowledgeable. And I was getting very good at bouncing three knowledge balls at once. I could sit in a doctoral exam, ask very sophisticated questions and look terribly wise. It was a hustle.

And there was some point as a professor at Stanford and Harvard when I experienced being caught in some kind of a meaningless game in which the students were exquisite at playing the role of students and the faculty were exquisite at playing the role of faculty. I would get up and say what I had read in books and they’d all write it down and give it back as answers on exams but nothing was happening. I felt as if I were in a sound-proof room. Not enough was happening that mattered—that was real.

At night he didn’t seem to sleep like I did. That is, any time I’d wake up at night, I’d look over and he would be sitting in the lotus position. And sometimes I’d make believe I was asleep and then open sort of a half-eye to see if he wasn’t cheating—maybe he was sleeping Now—but he was always in the lotus posture.

I am not sure exactly what healing is or looks like, what form it comes in, what it should feel like. I do know that when I was four, I could not lift a gallon of milk, could not believe how heavy it was, that white sloshing boulder. I'd pull up a wooden chair to stand over the counting, pouring the milk with two shaking arms, wetting the cereal, spilling. Looking back I don't remember the day that I lifted it with ease. All I know is that now I do it without thinking, can do it one-handed, on the phone, in a rush. I believe the same rules apply, that one day I'll be able to tell this story without it shaking my foundation. Each time will not require an entire production, a spilling, a sweating forehead, a mess to clean up, sopping paper towels. It will just be a part of my life, every day lighter to lift. Ram Dass said, Allow that you are at this moment not in the wrong place in your life. Consider the possibility that there have been no errors in the game. Just consider it. Consider that there is not an error, and everything that's come down on your plate is the way it is and here we are. I don't believe it was my fate to be raped. But I do believe that here we are is all we have. For a long time, it was too painful to be here. My mind preferred to be dissociated. I used to believe the goal was forgetting. It took me a long time to learn healing is not about advancing, it is returning repeatedly to forage something. Writing this book allowed me to go back to that place. I learned to stay in the hurt, to resist leaving. If I got stuck inside scenes in the courtroom, I would glance down at Mogu and wonder, if I really am in the past, how did this blinking thing get in my house? I assembled and reassembled letters in ways that would describe what I'd seen and felt. As I revisited that landscape, I grew more in control, could go and go when I needed to. Until one day I found there was nothing left to gather.

Rilke advised, “with all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek for the answers that cannot be given, for you wouldn’t be able to live with them, and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now, and perhaps without knowing it, you will live along someday into the answers.

Now isn’t preparation for later. Here and now is it. There is a spaciousness, an acceptance of what is in the moment, that says, “Yes, ah so!” to everything, whether it’s ugly, beautiful, boring, confused, dead, angry, the dark night of the soul, or the brilliant light of the spirit. This is just the way it is. And in just the way it is, is the spirit.

And as a therapist I felt caught in the drama of my own theories. The research data showed that Rogerian patients ended up saying positive statements, and Freudian patients ended up talking about their mother because of subtle reinforcement clues—it was so obvious. I would sit with my little notebook and when the person would start talking about his mother, I’d make a note and it didn’t take long for the patient to realize that he got his “note” taken, he got his pellet, every time he said certain things. And pretty soon he would be “Freudianized”.

You'll lose it, you'll come down, but that's okay. Don't knock it. Because the grace to experience the possibility of yourself keeps helping you aim and redirect — and as you learn how to do it, every time you start to come down — the things that bring you down are your own clinging, fears, unworthiness, self-pity, stuff like that. And you just start to ‘here ma you take it, here Ram Dass you take it, you take my stuff, I don't need it anymore.’ And everything that interferes with your tuning to God within yourself, you just start to let it go. No big deal about it, you just start to let it go.

For example, if you never got on well with one of your parents and you have left that parent behind on your journey in such a way that the thought of that parent arouses anger or frustration or self-pity or any emotion... you are still attached. You are still stuck. And you must get that relationship straight before you can finish your work. And what, specifically, does "getting it straight" mean? Well, it means re-perceiving that parent, or whoever it may be, with total compassion... seeing him as a being of the spirit, just like you, who happens to be your parent... and who happens to have this or that characteristic, and who happens to be at a certain stage of his evolutionary journey. You must see that all beings are just beings... and that all the wrappings of personality and role and body are the coverings. Your attachments are only to the coverings, and as long as you are attached to someone else's covering you are stuck, and you keep them stuck, in that attachment. Only when you can see the essence, can see God, in each human being do you free yourself and those about you. It's hard work when you have spent years building a fixed model of who someone else is to abandon it, but until that model is superceded by a compassionate model, you are still stuck.

The seeds of the ability to be able to confront, and even disagree with, an existing institution and know and trust that inside place that says it’s all right. It’s something I could never have done without anxiety until that moment—until that day.

must be transcended. What are the steps of the process of calming the mind? Think of a lake in whose depths lies hidden what you seek. You try to see down into the lake, but you can’t because the surface is covered with waves going in all directions . . . choppy water . . . thoughts coming from all directions . . . from your senses, from your memory . . . habits of thought learned unconsciously, running off mechanically . . . the causes of which are too subtle for your analytic mind to grasp. Now, create an artificial wave . . . consciously add a new component . . . choose a single thought . . . and consciously set about making that

thought dominant . . . so that a continuous sequence of even waves all coming from one direction overrides all the choppy water, as an ocean wave absorbs all the eddying waters at the shoreline. Now each wave is that same thought over and over again . . . no other thought can capture your attention which remains fixed upon the single thought. Does this mean that other thoughts stop? No. Thoughts continue as a natural process in nature, but you run them through on automatic (base brain)—the same way most people drive an automobile, that is, without attending to each movement of the accelerator or steering wheel. We function under the fallacy (cogito ergo sum) that we are our thoughts and therefore must attend to them in order for them to be realized. To break your identification with your own thoughts is to achieve inner freedom. So you identify with this new thought you have added, until you and that thought become one and all other thoughts are passing just like clouds in the sky. When you have arrived at the point where that

but who’s minding the store?” When I could finally focus on the question, I realized that although everything by which I knew myself, even my body and this life itself, was gone, still I was fully aware!

Around 5 in the morning, I walked back, plowing through the snow to my parents' home, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice; I'll shovel the walk—young tribal buck shovels the walk." So I started to shovel the walk and my parents' faces appeared at the upstairs window. "Come to bed, you idiot. Nobody shovels snow at 5 in the morning." And I looked up at them and I heard the external voice I had been listening to for 30 years, and inside me, something said, "It's all right to shovel snow and it's all right to be happy." And I looked up at them and I laughed and did a jig and went back to shoveling snow. And they closed the windows and then I looked up and inside they were smiling too. That was my first experience of giving a contact high! But also, you can see in that moment in the early morning the seeds of the breakaway. The seeds of the ability to be able to confront, and even disagree with, an existing institution and know and trust that inside place that says it's all right.

As they say in the Sikh religion—Once you realize God knows everything, you're free. I had been through many years of psychoanalysis and still I had managed to keep private places in my head—I wouldn't say they were big, labeled categories, but they were certain attitudes or feelings that were still very private. And suddenly I realized that he knew everything that was going on in my head, all the time, and that he still loved me. Because who we are is behind all that.

You might think of renunciation in terms of some external act like a New Year's resolution, or leaving family and friends to go off to a cave. But renunciation is much more subtle than that—and much harder—and much much more continuing. On the spiritual journey, renunciation means non-attachment. To become free of attachment means to break the link identifying you with your desires. The desires continue; they are part of the dance of nature. But a renunciate no longer thinks that he is his desires. "What is the necessity of giving up the world altogether. It is enough to give up the attachment to it." — Ramakrishna

The witness is not evaluative. It does not judge your actions. It merely notes them. Thus, if you perform an act because of desire, such as eating something that is not sattvic (helpful to your sadhana), and then you put yourself down for having eaten it... the witness—when it finally appears—would merely note: (a) he is eating such-and-such, and (b) he is putting himself down for eating such-and-such.

Find a muscle in your abdomen, just below your rib cafe, which moves when you breathe such that it (the muscle) rises and falls. Attend to it. Every time the muscle rises, think "Rising," and every time it falls, think "Falling"... rising...falling...rising...falling. Let all other thoughts drift by and keep your attention focused on this muscle. Don't lose heart. At first the mind will wander frequently. Each time it does, follow it immediately. upon becoming conscious of its wandering. Note where it wandered to, and then immediately return to rising...falling...rising...falling.

Find a muscle in your abdomen, just below your rib cage, which moves when you breathe such that it (the muscle) rises and falls. Attend to it. Every time the muscle rises, think "Rising," and every time it falls, think "Falling"... rising...falling...rising...falling. Let all other thoughts drift by and keep your attention focused on this muscle. Don't lose heart. At first the mind will wander frequently. Each time it does, follow it immediately. upon becoming conscious of its wandering. Note where it wandered to, and then immediately return to rising...falling...rising...falling.

You may have expected that enlightenment would come ZAP! instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first "Ah Ha" experience, the unfolding is gradual and almost indiscernible. It can be thought of as the thinning of a layer of clouds... until only the most transparent veil remains. There is, in addition to the "up and down" cycles, an "in and out" cycle. That is, there are stages at which you feel pulled in to inner work and all you seek is a quiet place to meditate and to get on with it. Then there are times when you turn outward and seek to be involved in the market place. Both of these parts of the cycle are a part of one's sadhana. For what happens to you in the market place helps in your meditation and what happens to you in meditation helps you to participate in the market place without attachment.

Perhaps the most appropriate initial step in view of your present predicament is to continue with you daily life in the customary manner with the simple addition of a mantra. Such a mantra can initially be used for 15 minutes in the morning and evening as suggested by Maharishi Mahesh in his program for Transcendental Meditation. You can set up a corner of your room for this purpose.

Did I ever tell you about the time that Tim and I . . .” And he’d say, “Don’t think about the past. Just be here now.” Silence. And I’d say, “How long do you think we’re going to be on this trip?” And he’d say, “Don’t think about the future. Just be here now.” I’d say, “You know, I really feel crumby, my hips are hurting . . .” “Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean.

The more conscious that a being becomes, the more he can use any occupation as a vehicle for spreading light.

As we grow in our consciousness, there will be more compassion and more love, and then the barriers between people, between religions, between nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down the separateness.

At this moment

At certain stages you will take your sadhana very seriously. Later you will see the wisdom of the statement of Jesus that to seek the Lord, men need not disfigure their faces. Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.

As long as you think there is a ‘do-er’ you are still caught in the wheel of birth and death.

Gesha Wangyal

of it. I felt that the theories I was teaching in psychology didn’t make it, that the psychologists didn’t really have a grasp of the human condition, and that the theories I was teaching, which

And then there was a still less frequent experience where one looked at somebody and he started to see the other person as cellular structure or patterns of energy rather than as a person. And finally, a few subjects (maybe 3% or something like that) transcended all form and saw just pure energy—a homogeneous field. It has been called the White Light.

The goal of the path is to BE high, not GET high.

Having, therefore, ascended all these degrees of humility, the monk will presently arrive at that love of God which, being perfect, casteth out fear; whereby he shall begin to keep, without labour, and as it were naturally and by custom all those precepts which he had hitherto observed through fear. No longer through dread of hell, but for the love of Christ, and of a good habit and a delight in virtue: which God will vouchsafe to manifest by the Holy Spirit in his labourer, now cleansed from vice and sin.”—Rule of St. Benedict