I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.

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.

The soul is not part of the incarnation. It comes into the incarnation. And the soul is not afraid of death because it has done it so many times.

If you could stand back far enough and watch the whole process you'd see you are a totally determined being.

When you want to become free, your righteousness and anger are much less interesting than they used to be.

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It's not 'I love you' for this or that reason, not 'I love you if you love me.' It's love for no reason, love without an object.

It wasn't until after I'd been around Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts, that I started to reflect about issues like the evolution of consciousness.