Ram Dass Was My First Guide

I was 23 when I woke up in a way I still can’t fully explain.

Something in me cracked open. The old life didn’t make sense anymore, but nothing new had formed yet. I was in between.

That’s when I found him.

Not in person.

Not in a temple.

Ram Dass.

His words didn’t teach me something new.

They reminded me of something I already knew but hadn’t put words to yet.

He was my first guide.

I found Ram Dass and Ramana Maharshi at the same time.

A colleague at work, B looked at me and said, "You haven’t heard of Ramana Maharshi or Ram Dass? Find out. "So, I did.

And that was it.

I would walk my border collie Zep for hours out in the rain or under the sunshine listening to Ram Dass lectures.

Just his voice, his raw sincerity, his stories about stumbling and surrendering… it blew my mind open.

Not in a psychedelic way but in a real, grounded, irreversible way.

It felt like someone was telling the truth.

Not just spiritual truth but human truth.

And it radically shifted something in me.

Before he was Ram Dass, he was Richard Alpert, a Harvard psychologist with a PhD and a growing emptiness.

He had everything the world told him to want.

And still, it wasn’t enough.

That part hit me.

Because I’d seen that in myself, chasing things, succeeding at them, and still feeling like something essential was missing.

So when he talked about taking LSD and seeing God and then not being able to hold onto it, I understood.

When he met his guru in India, Neem Karoli Baba and something deeper than the mind surrendered I felt it in my bones.

That wasn’t a story. That was a transmission.

He didn’t claim perfection.

That’s what made him trustworthy.

He still got jealous. Still stumbled. Still forgot.

But he brought presence to his humanness.

He let it be part of the path, not something to fix or escape.

“We’re all just walking each other home.”

— Ram Dass

That quote is everywhere now but back then, when I first read it, it cut straight through.

Not sentimental. Not clever.

Just… true.

When I didn’t know what I believed anymore, I’d listen to his talks.

When I couldn’t meditate, I’d play his voice and sit anyway.

He didn’t speak at me.

He sat with me through the recordings, through the silence between his words.

He reminded me that the spiritual path didn’t mean pretending to be above it all.

It meant being with it all... consciously.

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”

— Ram Dass

When he had a stroke in 1997, his speech slurred and his body half-paralyzed and he still radiated presence that deepened the teaching.

He called it “fierce grace.”

He didn’t sugarcoat his suffering.

He just used it to go deeper.

“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”

— Still Here

That one stayed with me.

Because I wasn’t trying to bypass pain anymore.

I was learning how to include it the way he did.

He gave me permission to be on a spiritual path without pretending to be a spiritual person.

He gave me room to question, to stumble, to cry, to laugh.

To be human and divine at the same time.

“You don’t have to get rid of the ego. You just don’t want to be run by it.”

— Ram Dass

When I think of Ram Dass now, I don’t just think of quotes.

I think of presence.

Of someone who let his life be his teaching right down to the end.

He left the world in 2019.

But what he left in the world still breathes.

And I’ll always be grateful.

Because when I was 23 and my inner world cracked open

he was the first voice that said:

You’re not crazy. You’re waking up.

Echoes from Ram Dass

“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”

— Be Here Now

“We’re fascinated by the words — but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”

— Still Here

“I am loving awareness.”

— Ram Dass (mantra)

“The most exquisite paradox… as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all.”

— Grist for the Mill

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment.

The mind judges and holds back.”

— Be Here Now

“Death is not an error.

It is not a failure.

It is taking off a tight shoe.”

— Still Here