“What are you doing with your life? How do you spend your days? The appearance is that your body is getting older and older, and if you’re still judging by appearances, you try to look younger and younger by putting creams on your face, by exercising day and night, by buying the finest clothes. It’s like beating a dead horse. The so-called body is not meant to last. As soon as you were born, you began to die. Therefore find out… Who was born? Who dies? Who has experiences? Who is going through this entire mess? Who needs it? Who wants it? Wake up!”

Robert Adams

Do not try to accumulate more knowledge. Rather, empty yourself out of the knowledge that you already have. It is knowledge that you have that’s keeping you back from your self-realization. It is all your beliefs, your preconceived ideas, your concepts. And every time you read a book, you add on more and more concepts.
You learn more words. You become a knower of words. Whereas, the truth is in reverse. You have to know less and less words. You have to do less and less reading, less and less debating, less and less arguing. It all has to go!

Robert Adams

One of these days you will fall into the self, and you will disappear. There will be no body, no image, no concept, no I, no mind, no universe, no God, yet you will appear to be all of those things.
That’s the paradox.

You will appear to people as an ordinary human being, but you will know that you are the screen upon which images are super-
imposed. You are not the images which keep changing. You are forever, eternal, unborn. You are the one. You are total freedom. Your real image will shine forth, and the whole universe will emanate out of you. You will not have normal feelings, but for want of a better word, you will become bliss. You have always been bliss. You have simply awakened to reality.

Again, what are you doing with your life now?
What do you believe?
What do you do every day?
Do you allow the
pressures of the world to cave in on you? Leave the world alone.
Do not attempt to figure it out.
Do not attempt to argue about it, whether it’s real or not. You must find it out for yourself. In the process all will go well for you, no matter how it appears.

Your job is to find out your true reality, to surrender to yourself, to surrender your ego, your mind, your body, the world, the universe, God.
Surrender all of that to yourself.
Let it all go into your spiritual heart, on the right side of your chest.
Above all do not worry about anything.
You are well taken care of.
The self which you are, knows when
the time is right for you to discover your reality.

Have faith in yourself. Know it’s there inside of you, awaiting your surrender.
No longer will you fight this world.
No longer will you react or respond to this world.
No longer will you be frightened by this world.
Your wants will become simple.
You will awaken and be free.

The Collected Works of Robert Adams

From: Everything Is What You Believe

If you’re living in the eternal now, if you exist this moment, and you do, in this moment is there a problem? There’s no problem in this moment, it’s only when you begin to think of tomorrow or the next week or the next week. But if you learn to stay centered in the moment where nothing is happening, this moment will become the next moment. And the next moment will become the next hour, the next day, the next week, and the next year. This is how to live, from moment to moment. But what do we do? We stretch out those moments to days. We like to see the future. We think something’s going to happen to us tomorrow or the next day or the next day. But nothing can ever happen to you unless you allow it. You allow it by believing it, by thinking about it. You give it power by fearing it. But I say to you in truth, there’s nothing to fear in this whole universe. There’s no fear. Fear doesn’t exist. Only the Self exists. […] I say to you again, “Stop thinking. Live in the moment. Stop worrying about the past or the future. Awaken to yourself. Be happy. Be free. You are not alone. You have divine forces right now taking care of you, guiding you, directing you to your ultimate good. Trust these divine forces. Have faith in them. All they want is your recognition. When you recognize there are divine forces taking care of you then you will find they are working for you and you find infinite joy.” But when it’s taken in reverse and you believe life is against you, there are forces against you, then you create your own hell.

So:

Number one:

Stop thinking. Take control of your mind.

Number two:

Live in the here and now. Forget about yesterday, forget about the future. Live in the moment and be happy in the moment. Do whatever you have to do to be happy in the moment.

Number three:

Do not be judgmental. Do not judge anybody or anything, ever, no matter how it looks, never judge anybody.

Number four:

Leave everything alone. You did not come into this plane of existence to change anybody or anything. You’re not here to fix anything or anybody. You’re here only to become free and liberated by knowing the truth.

Number five:

Always catch yourself and say, “I am Brahman.” When you say, “I am Brahman,” you’re not talking about your physical body, or your ego. You’re talking about the truth about yourself. Reality itself is Brahman. It has nothing to do with your body. Your body doesn’t exist. It never existed, it appears to exist but it doesn’t exist. Your nature is pure consciousness, pure awareness.

Always remember these things, learn these things. You have a lot of tools to work with. If you only can use these tools every moment of your life, you will never be unhappy again. How can you be unhappy if you know the truth? You were not born to suffer or have problems. You are here to rejoice! To be still and know that I-am God. […] You’re ready to be out of the show, the show of materialism, the show of relativity, materialism and relativity. You’re ready to break out of that shell. Let it happen. The mind will create all kinds of situations to stop it from happening. It will show you all kinds of nonsense. But you know now that you have the power to change these things, to turn from the nonsense, to reality! You can do it. Work with it. Peace.

— Robert Adams, T241: Still The Mind

We give everything a name, that’s the problem. We say this is cancer, this is poverty, this is an earthquake, this is a million dollars, this is a new home, this is a new car, this is a war, this is a dog, this is a cat. We have names for everything. What if we forgot about those names, and we stopped seeing things as something? What if we just observed things, watched things without giving them a name, without coming to a conclusion? What do you think would happen? You would transcend everything. Whatever you’re no longer attached to, gives way. Whatever you’re no longer holding on to, no longer holds on to you. And as you let go of your opinions toward person, place and things, you find that you’re growing, you’re evolving. You’re beginning to become something that is ineffable, something that cannot be explained, something that’s so wonderful, you never dreamed that something like this existed. Yet it does.

Robert Adams

Awakening is a Direct Experience.
An ‘Instant Experience’. It happens.

But prior to Awakening,
Comes a Complete Surrender.

Not ‘visions’ – Not ‘spiritual experiences’, but a total and complete surrender to The Self!

When I say IT’s a ‘Complete Surrender’, it’s exactly what I mean.

You Surrender your entire life!

This means:
All your problems, All the things you think are bothering you.

All the good things,
All the bad things; Everything is Totally Surrendered to The Self.

And – as you’re doing this,
You automatically become Compassionate, and have a tremendous amount of Humility, transpiring within yourself.

These are the three things that happen to you, prior to awakening:

There is a Total Surrender to God. Not certain things.

I know some of you like to surrender the bad things. Forget about that!

You just Surrender.
Totally and Completely!

The bad and good things, are all part of the ‘relative world’. And the whole relative world has to be Totally and Completely surrendered;
… Totally given up!

Then a Great Compassion, and a Great Humility, will come by ITSelf.

You see, we’re not trying to ‘do’ these things -‘physically’. We just let ourselves fall into The Space, where all these things happen by themselves.

And this comes from ‘sitting in The Silence’.

You see how all these things, are connected to each other.

As you sit in The Silence
Without desire,
Without want,
Without trying to change bad for good.

All of a sudden, you will feel yourself Surrendering.

Surrendering all of your ego:
The body-mind surrenders.
Everything lets go!

And you become The Epitome Of Compassion. A Tremendous Humility wells up within you.

When you can feel these things.
The next step – is to Awaken Totally!

Robert Adams

“Those of us who have been studying Advaita Vedanta, the non-duality concepts, have come across the one principle of Advaita and remember it intellectually. The one principle being, ‘Everything is Brahman. The whole universe is Brahman. Only Brahman exists and this world that appears to you is a hallucination.’ You’re hallucinating by believing the world is real. Non-dualists understand this, they realize this.

And yet some people have a hard time in grasping the truth of this, what this really means. Brahman cannot be explained. It is beyond words and thoughts, there is no valid explanation for Brahman. You can only know Brahman when you leave your senses behind. When you go out of your mind. This is the only time when you will know Brahman.

So when somebody tells you you’re out of your mind say, ‘Thank you.’ It’s a compliment. You want to be out of your mind. It’s no fun being in your mind. For in your mind you relate to the world. You relate to person, place and thing. So you want to be out of the mind, totally out of the mind. “

~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)

Do not be disturbed by events in this world. Do not take life so seriously. Be of service to humanity. When you see people suffering, help. Come to the aid of the homeless, the poor, the sick. When you realize there is only one, who are you helping but yourself?

To whom are you giving service but yourself, who is benefitting but yourself? Be kind, be loving, everything else will take of itself. You are the one, the holy one, the mighty one, the true one, the loving one.

Robert Adams

This is how Robert Adams realized the Self at age 14 …

“It was the end of the term, and we were taking our final test. This was a math test. I never studied for it, so I didn’t know anything. So I said, “God, God, God.” Instead of the answers coming, the room became filled with light, a brilliant bright light, a thousand times more brilliant than the sun. It was like an atomic bomb, the light from the bomb, but it was not a burning light. It was a beautiful, bright, shining, warm glow. Just thinking of it now makes me stop and wonder. The whole room was immersed in light, everybody, everything. All of the children seemed to be myriads of light particles, and then I found myself melting, sort of, into radiant being, into consciousness. I merged into consciousness. It was not an out-of-body experience. An out-of-body experience is when your soul leaves your body. This was completely different. I realized that I was not my body. What appeared to be my body was not real. And I went beyond the light into pure radiant consciousness. I became omnipresent. My individuality had merged into pure absolute bliss. I expanded, I became the universe. The feeling is indescribable. It was total bliss, total joy. The next thing I remember is the teacher shaking me. All the students had gone. I was the only one left in the class. The teacher was shaking me, and I returned to human consciousness. That feeling has never left me.”

See how many people read books one after the other. Most of you here have read every book on earth till there is nothing left to read. and you’re still in the same place you’ve always been. Most of you have gone to many lectures, heard many speakers. Yet there is hardly any change in you. You have to awaken to the point one of these days in your life that you are the answer. The answer is you, the answer that you’re looking for.

What is the meaning of life? Who am I? You are the very answer to these questions. Make your life very simple. Do not be too profound. Do not go looking to teachers and thinking they have a special answer for you. There is no special answer, there is no special teachings. Everything you’re looking for is within yourself. Where else would it be?

Robert Adams

Do not give your energy to this world. For the whole world is a cosmic joke … and it will suck your energy out, make you weak, make you start searching for remedies, solutions to your problems. You will go through life after life doing these things. The time is now, there is no other time but now. Now is the time to become totally free and liberated. Awaken, for you were never asleep! Awaken from the mortal dream. Let not another day go by where you react to people, places or things. Quit it! Stop it! Do not react to your own body, your own feelings. Quit it! Stop it! Understand who you really are.

Robert Admas