Monthly Archives: September 2020

I Am That -NM

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: What does it mean to go beyond the mind?

M: You have gone beyond the body, haven’t you?
You do not closely follow your digestion, circulation or elimination. These
have become automatic.
In the same way the mind should work
automatically, without calling for attention.

This will not happen unless the mind works faultlessly. We are, most of our time, mind and body-conscious, because they constantly call for help. Pain and suffering are only the body and the mind screaming for attention. To go beyond the body you must be healthy: to go beyond the mind, you must have your mind in perfect order.
You cannot leave a mess behind and go beyond. — the mess will bog you up.
‘Pick up your rubbish’ seems to be the universal law. And a just law too.

Q: Am I permitted to ask you how did you go beyond the mind?
M: By the grace of my Guru.

Q: What shape his grace took?
M: He told me what is true.

Q: What did he tell you?
M: He told me I am the Supreme Reality.

Q: What did you do about it?
M: I trusted him and remembered it.

Q: Is that all?
M: Yes, I remembered him; I remembered what he said.

Q: You mean to say that this was enough?

M: What more needs be done?
It was quite a lot to remember the Guru and his words. My advice to you is even less difficult than this — just remember yourself. ‘I am’, is enough to heal your mind and take you beyond. Just have some trust.
I don’t mislead you. Why should I? Do I want anything from you? I wish you well — such is my nature. Why should I mislead you?
Commonsense too will tell you that to fulfil a desire you must keep your mind on it. If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed.

Q: Why should self-remembrance bring one to self-realization?

M: Because they are but two aspects of the same state. Self-remembrance is in the mind, self-realization is beyond the mind.
The image in the mirror is of the face beyond the mirror.

Q: Right. But do I need a Guru? What you tell me is simple and convincing. I shill remember it. This does not make you my
Guru.

M: It is not the worship of a person that is crucial, but the steadiness and depth of your devotion to the task.

Life itself is the Supreme Guru; be attentive to its lessons and obedient to its commands. Whey you personalize their source, you have an outer Guru; when you take them from life directly, the Guru is
within.

Remember, wonder, ponder, live with it, love it, grow into it, grow with it, make it your own — the word of your Guru, outer of inner.
Put in all and you will get all. I was doing it. All my time I was giving to my Guru and to what he told me.

  • Excerpt from: I AM THAT.
    Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
    Chapter: LIFE IS THE SUPREME GURU

Freedom comes when you’re empty, know nothing -RAdams

Empty Fullness

There have been those few people in the world who have gone beyond birth and death. There have been those people, very few, who know the secrets, the answers to life, to the mysteries of life. Yet they can do nothing for you until you can find out yourself who you really are, what you really are, what you’re all about.

For if you believe you were born you begin to accumulate knowledge, as soon as you’re born. You become aware of your environment, then you become aware of other people. Your parents feed you all kinds of knowledge and all this does is expand your ego. Your ego begins to live. It’s fattened up by thoughts, knowledge. Just like the body is fattened up by food. When you’re about four or five years old you go play out in the street with your friends, you acquire further knowledge. You go to your particular church or school, you acquire further knowledge. And the more you grow up the more knowledge you receive. And the ego expands and expands until you believe you know something. When you believe you know something the ego has taken over completely and you become an ego. So when some of us believe there must be an answer, or this is not the answer, there must be an answer to the riddle of life, we start to give ourselves further knowledge by reading books, searching out teachers, listening to lecturers and we receive further knowledge. It appears to help but it’s fooling you. The appearance is a lie.

You become intellectual, you’re able to debate, you acquire more knowledge at university, you study philosophy and soon you become a walking encyclopaedia. You’re now filled with knowledge, filled with relative knowledge, worldly knowledge. Has this done the world any good? Look at the precarious condition the world is in. Has all the knowledge of lawyers, politicians, doctors, indian chiefs done this world any good? Knowledge seems to be destroying this world not making it a better place in which to live. The great secret is we have to unlearn everything we’ve learnt if we wish to become free and liberated. No matter how many times I say this to you, you’re still acquiring more knowledge, some of you. Think of the books you read recently. The news you’ve watched on TV. The newspapers you read. Aren’t you acquiring more and more knowledge? What is this knowledge doing for you? Expanding your ego and your ego grows and grows and encompasses the whole world, the whole universe. You have complete knowledge of the universe, of the world in which you live and you think this is going to free you. Freedom comes when you’re empty, when you know nothing.

Robert Adams

You’ve got to know yourself -RAdams

Adams, Robert

The only way you can ever help other people is by knowing yourself. The only way you can ever be of service to others, is by knowing yourself. The only way you can give anybody anything, is by knowing yourself. For when you know yourself, you know others. You will find the others are yourself. There is only one Self. Everything is that Self, everything. Every leaf, every plant, every cloud, everything is the one Self. That one Self is you.

Robert Adams

Don’t waste your energy! -RAdams

Adams, Robert, Non-duality

Most people are stuck in a spot in time where they go through many relative phenomenons, good and bad, off and on, and always trying to change bad for good, always trying to remove the bad and hang on to the good. But they are both impostors. You should never try to do this, you’re wasting your energy.

You should be using your energy to become totally free and liberated, not try to make yourself a millionaire or to heal yourself of every disease known to man, or make yourself famous somehow. All these things will pass. These things come and go. You experience one then the other. You want to become totally free.

Totally, absolutely free and liberated. You want to know that you’re all-pervading. There is nothing but the Self which is you, nothing else exists. The Self is absolute reality, self-contained. … The Self is bliss, nirvana, I-am. This is what you are right now. This is your true nature, right now! This is reality right now!

Robert Adams

Does every post require a lengthy explanation re its background? -rjs

Definitions, English for enlightenment, Language (linguistic) distinctions, Levels, Robin Starbuck

If you are interested in pursuing higher (or deeper) consciousness and
If you have read a sufficient amount of background on the topic and
If you have carefully weighed the various approaches to the topic and
If you can find the time to see it to its logical conclusion and
If you have the energy, the stamina, to proceed and
If you have the stick-to-itiveness to persevere and
If you can maintain a single focus throughout and
If you’ve dealt with issues of motivation and selfishness and
If you’re able to rearrange your life to accommodate this new program
THEN
You must blab blah blah blah.

QUESTION: Does a person need to preface every post with all of the above prior to writing a brief, encouraging meme? Isn’t there such a thing as a “GIVEN”?

[Confession: I often post encouraging directives without the laborious list above.]

DrRobinStarbuck

Spiritual awakening vs. cult of ego

Awakening

Let’s talk about being one of the ‘in’ crowd. You know what I’m talking about — part of Q, in the know, not one of the uninformed and out of touch sheep.

Here’s what that gives you:

1.Something to believe in . You get to be right; others get to be wrong.

  1. Favored status. You are one of the special ones who get it; others aren’t.
  2. Off the hook. You get a free pass for the disasters; others are to blame.
  3. Saved. Someone out there is going to save you because you were smart enough to see what others missed; others will not be saved.
  4. A sense of ease and safety. Your life is neatly compartmentalized and lacks messy uncertainty; others who disagree with you are simply wrong, not worth engaging.

Now let’s look at what spiritual awakening is all about:

  1. You are stripped of everything you hold dear; including ideas about other people and lose many friendships as well.
  2. You are relieved of your beliefs; even beliefs about others. It is impossible to judge another without those beliefs.
  3. You discover that you don’t have any power; and recognize that no one else does either. The idea of blame drops like a brick as this one penetrates deeply.
  4. Without an identity which dropped with the beliefs and your sense of personal power, you remain here-now in the present moment, realizing that everything else is make-believe; ideas about what is going to happen, what should happen, even was has happened fade away.
  5. Your ideas of self-importance dissolve in the recognition that you aren’t even a you; the whole gains importance — everything and everyone. You trust the paths of those who no longer trust you because what remains after everything falls away is awareness of the One Power which is the benevolent unfolding of all life.

Anything that creates separation (us and them), that allows judgement of others (right and wrong) and fosters blame (you have the power to do wrong) is not part of waking up, is not a spiritual awakening. It is a cult of ego.

If anything in these words resonates you are capable of walking away, of opening your mind and looking again. So many dear ones are being swept into the pull of separation consciousness unawares. It is tricky. It looks so inviting. It even feels right but if you step back, just one step, you will see it isn’t.

I love you. I care about you and all those hurts that have gone untended. You are loved. Let us rejoin the shattered pieces of our hearts and heal together.

Amaya Gayle Gregory

Remove all from your thinking patterns -RAdams

Adams, Robert

“You have to go way beyond thoughts, way beyond reasoning, way beyond anything and everything you have ever understood, to be consciousness, to understand consciousness. In order to do this, everything you believe must be dropped.

Everything you’ve been led to understand must be transcended. Everything that you can think about has to go. Your ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, up and down, frontwards and sideways, all these things have to be totally transcended, totally removed from your thinking patterns.”

Robert Adams

You are sat-chit-ananda, ultimate ONENESS -RAdams

Adams, Robert, Oneness

Good afternoon. I welcome you with all my heart. I see a couple of new
faces here. If you’ve come to hear a speech or a lecture forget it. I do not give lectures nor
do I make speeches. I speak nonsense, no sense. It has nothing to do with your senses so
it’s nonsense.
For instance: I say to you your true nature is absolute reality. You are pure awareness.
You are sat-chit-ananda. You are ultimate oneness.
Does that make sense to some of you? It’s nonsense because you identify with the
body-mind phenomena and you believe you are your experiences. You live your experiences,
your thoughts about the body, the world, the mind. And you are always thinking,
thinking, thinking that you’ve been hurt, you’ve been slandered, something is wrong. You
watch the news on the TV, you hear the radio and you identify with all the wrongs of the
world and then you feel out of sorts. That’s nonsense, none of that exists. Only absolute
reality exists and you are that.
So to put ourselves in the mood, take out your song sheet. And we shall sing “Joy
to God.”
Again, I welcome with all my heart, good afternoon. And let me reiterate during
the course of the talk you’ll hear me speaking nonsense.
I don’t make any sense to a sense bound person. Most people are bound by their
senses. They can only understand what they read in the paper, what they watch on TV.
When I try to express the truth, that you are not the body and you are not the mind, you
look at me as if I’m crazy. Of course I am crazy so you can look at me any way you like.
But my experience has been that there is no body, there is no mind, there is no
universe, there is no God, there is no person, there is no experience, there is only consciousness
and you are that. Not the you that thinks that they’re the ego, but the real you.
The real you is divine, absolute reality, nirvana, total emptiness. This is the real you. When
you get a glimpse of what you really are you have unalloyed happiness, total joy, bliss.
And then you begin to see your fellow man, the world the universe as yourself.

Excerpt Transcript 59
How to Develop Compassion
and Humility
5th May, 1991
Robert Adams