Ram Dass Quotes: Quote of the day by Ram Dass: “The quieter you become, the more you can hear”; wisdom from the Harvard psychologist who found his guru in Neem Karoli Baba

In our hyper-connected world, true quiet is a rarity, leading to a subtle exhaustion from constant information intake. Spiritual teacher Ram Dass, known for ‘Be Here Now’, suggests that embracing silence allows us to hear our inner voice and the world’s subtle cues. This simple practice, like mindful walking or sitting still, sharpens attention by reducing mental static.

Think about the last time you sat somewhere with absolutely nothing, sitting completely idle without a podcast, music, scrolling, or a half-watched screen paused in the corner, just be with yourself.Interestingly, for a lot of us, that moment is hard to even remember. We have grown so used to a constant background hum that the actual quiet can feel uncomfortable, like a room that is somehow too empty.We have become so accustomed to this setting that we are hardly aware of the kind of tiredness that comes with it. Not the exhaustion of doing too much, but of taking in too much, in the form of a low, constant static that we rarely realise because we have stopped noticing it is there at all. We fill every silence, answer every ping, and then wonder why our own thoughts feel just slightly out of reach.Spiritual leader, guru, and the author of ‘Be Here Now’, sheds light on this thought beautifully and dives into the nuances.Let’s dig in to find out

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Quote of the day

What does the quote mean?

The quote, mostly attributed to Ram Dass, reads like simple advice and advises us to talk less and listen more.Although it might seem to be talking on the surface level, but the “quiet” actually points to mostly internal. The real noise is not only the traffic outside or the chatter of a crowded room, but the constant, unconscious need for the sound around us and then the running commentary inside our own heads.When we give a silent and quiet time to ourselves, we actually realise what lies beneathRam Dass means that it is when that inner racket finally settles, something opens up. We begin to catch the silent signals that we usually talk over or unknowingly ignore, in the form of our own intuition, the mood beneath someone else’s words, the small details of the world right in front of you.Surprisingly, none of this requires anything extraordinary to test. Just a small action like walking somewhere without their phone, or sitting still for a few minutes before the day begins, and it is then that a strange sharpening of attention arrives once the static drops away.

Who is Ram Dass

Ram Dass was an American spiritual teacher and a student of Neem Karoli Baba. He was born Richard Alpert in Massachusetts in 1931 and was a Harvard psychologist who became a well-known early researcher of psychedelics in the 1960s.A trip to India in 1967 changed his direction entirely, where he met the guru Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass, meaning “servant of God”. Later, he died in Maui in 2019, aged 88.