A person who says, "I'm enlightened," probably isn't.

knowledge certainty doubt bias enlightenment

About Ram Dass

Portrait of Ram Dass

Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931 – December 22, 2019), also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and writer. His best-selling 1971 book Be Here Now, which has been described by multiple reviewers as "seminal", helped popularize Eastern spirituality...

More quotations from Ram Dass

There are no accidents whatsoever in the universe.

…you are no longer a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew or a Moslem. You are love, you are truth. And love and truth have no form. They flow into forms. But the word is never the same as that which the word connotes. The word "God" is not God, the word "Mother" is not Mother, the word "Self" is not Self, the word "moment" is not the moment. All of these words are empty. We're playing at the level of intellect. Feeding that thing in us that keeps wanting to understand. And here we are, all the words we've said are gone. Where did they go? Do you remember them all? Empty, empty. If you heard them, you are at this moment empty. You're ready for the next word. And the word will go through you. You don't have to know anything: "that's what's so funny about it. You get so simple. You're empty. You know nothing. You simply are wisdom. Not becoming anything, just being everything.

You may have expected that enlightenment would come like zap! Instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first "aha" experience, it can be thought of as the thinning of a layer of clouds.

experience enlightenment

More quotations tagged with “enlightenment”

Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.

truth destruction happiness enlightenment untruth

Freedom in not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.

—Henry Steele Commager in Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent

freedom security prosperity luxury enlightenment

No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.

vision recognition enlightenment

Enlightenment is not an attainment; it is a realization. When you wake up, everything changes and nothing changes. If a blind man realizes that he can see, has the world changed?

perception change realization nothing the world enlightenment

Who cares if you're enlightened forever? Can you just get it in this moment, now?

now moment forever enlightenment

History

11 Jul 2015 Added