“You wish to be involved in worldly games. You wish to be involved in gossip, anger, greed, bewilderment and occult practices. These are the things that hold you back. You have to develop a sense of trust and faith. Trust and faith in what? In the power that knows the way. …
It’s within you. It will guide you, it will lead you, it will take care of you. There’s nothing to worry about, nothing to concern yourself about. You have with you a joy, a compassion, a love, a peace, if you only knew existed, you would go mad, it’s so grand and beautiful. You are that.”
~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)
Never pray to God for release of your problems.
Never pray to God to change your life, and to give you something better.
This is wrong prayer.
If you have to pray to God, pray to God to give you the strength and the wisdom and the courage that you need to be able to handle the situation that you’re in. This is correct prayer.
Do not try to change anything. Be yourself. Work on yourself. Begin to see things in a new light. See your situation differently. There are no bad things, there are no good things. But thinking makes it so. Stop thinking of the extremes, good and bad, right and wrong.
Rather look at yourself in the moment.
Stay centered.
See yourself as a Divine Being, an Infinite Being, totally free and liberated. Do not feel sorry for yourself because you are in a position and in a situation you don’t like. This just holds you there more. And again as we mentioned before, even if you run away from a situation, you will attract some of the circumstances elsewhere.
Running away is never the answer. Changing yourself is the answer.
Take a look at your own life and see if it is not true what I’m saying. The changes you’ve gone through in your life. I know so many people who have left their home and family and gone to India to meditate, to find gurus, teachers. They have come back very depressed, even suicidal. For they’ve given up everything. Remember, there’s nothing you have to give up. Only mentally do you give up attachment.
Always look at the world as a reflection of you. You are the world. The world can be nothing without your approval. It sounds strange, but true. You have to stop identifying conditions apart from yourself. I know it seems hard to do. When you see the riots we’ve just had, the murders, the looting, it seems really difficult to realize you are one with this. But think about this.
Why should you only think you are one with the good things? If you are One, you are One with everything. Never just the good things that you enjoy and you like and bring into your life. You are All-Pervading,
Omnipresent, and you are One with all there is.
The correct way to observe this is to look at everything in the world intelligently without any comments, without any
reactions.
Do not be for or against anything.
Train yourself to observe, to watch, to look without any reaction.
~ Silence of the Heart, Dailogues with Robert Adams.
“All is well, just the way it is. You are perfect just the way you are. There is nothing that you have to do. There is no one you have to please. There is no God that you have to appease. You are the one. All of these ideas that are going through your mind of people, places, things, Gods, are all you. You are creating everything. Everything that you can think about you’re creating.
Everything comes out of yourself. Just like you’re dreaming. The mistake we make is we try to awaken from the dream, the mortal dream, from this dream. Yet who is to awaken from it? The person that wants to awaken doesn’t exist. Do you see what I’m saying? Nothing exists that has to do anything. The person who wants to be free does not exist, has never existed.
The person who is looking for moksha does not exist. Then again what does exist? Total silence exists. Pure profound silence. Never try to comprehend these things. For you’re using the mind, you’re using the cells that are the mind, that are connected to the cells of the universe and you make your life miserable by doing this.”
~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)
“You have taken your role as a male or a female too seriously. You have taken your role as a wife or a husband too seriously. You have taken your role as an employee or an employer too seriously. In other words you believe in your self, with a small s, and this is what keeps you bound. You want to change all this.
I know you want total freedom, total joy, total bliss, total happiness, without any fluctuations. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could be totally happy all the time, not just when you’re getting something good in your life. Not only when you get what you want. Everybody can be happy then, that’s nothing.
If you won $50,000,000 you’re going to be happy, right? If you buy a new car, you’ll be happy. If you buy a new house you’ll be happy. If you find the man of your dreams or the girl of your dreams, you’ll be happy. That’s what you think. How long does it last? Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with these things if you see them in the right light.”
~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)
“A [truly enlightened Sage] avoids name and fame like the plague. If a Sage has transcended the ego why would he or she need name or fame? If a Sage claims to be enlightened why would that being want to be known? To have a following, to write books, to advertise, to go into magazines, television. Can you imagine a real Master doing something like that? For what purpose?
If you inquire of a person like this they would say, ‘Well I’m here to help people.’ Bullshit! The only way to help other people is to become self-realized and leave everything alone. Why a self-realized person is all-pervading, omnipresent and automatically people find peace by the person being self-realized.
You don’t even have to be in the proximity of a saint, a Sage, a real Master. There is no reason [for] being in close proximity to a person like that. That being is all-pervading, everywhere present. Such a one has found total peace within the Self. They’re not looking for anything. They’re not looking for students to impress, followers to follow them. They avoid this like the plague. …
A real Sage feels at home wherever he or she lives wherever they go. A Sage can be happy in a cave or in a mansion, makes no difference. It makes a difference to the onlookers. They always see something wrong and talk about it. But a true Sage is total freedom, totally happy within himself.”
~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)
“All I can really do for you is to confess my own reality, and my own reality is also your reality. I am sat-chit-ananda [existence-consciousness-bliss]. I am Parabrahman. I am ultimate oneness. I am divine love, pure consciousness. I am that I am, emptiness, nirvana. There is nothing else. All of your worries, all of your fears, have no foundation. There is only the one and you are that. Why will you not accept it?”
~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)
How do you become detached? By simply observing what’s going on around you and not attaching yourself to it. By being awake to your reality. Understanding yourself that you are not the doer.
You have to let go mentally of all conditioning, of all objectivity. And you must still your mind. Make your mind placid, like a motionless lake. Then reality comes of its own accord. Happiness comes of its own accord. Peace comes of it own accord. Love comes of its own accord. Freedom comes of its own accord. These things are synonymous. They happen without you ever thinking about them. But first you must get rid of the notion, that I am the body, or mind, or the doer and then everything will happen by itself.
You have attached yourself to sickness, to health, to good, to bad, to happiness, to unhappiness, these are all concepts. You’ve attached yourself to person, place or thing. You have forgotten that this is a dream. You believe it’s real and because you believe it’s real you suffer accordingly. When you leave your body you will have to come back again and again and again, all part of the dream, until you become detached.
“Everything is sacred. The ground upon which you walk is holy ground. … You should have reverence for all things. All things are God, so-to-speak, the leaf, the cockroach, bedbug, the mass murderer, everything is God. But most people do not understand this. They judge by appearances and they want solutions immediately with the things that they see.
But as you become evolved you begin to intellectually understand this thoroughly. The whole universe is Brahman. The whole universe is effortless, choice-less, pure awareness, sat-chit-ananda [existence-consciousness-bliss]. So a realized being is all pervasive and is all of these things.”
~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)
Your job is to relax, to take it easy, to be peaceful. To observe, to watch, to look, never to react.
As you begin to go deeper within yourself, whatever you need to know will be revealed to you. Whatever you have to do will be done.
Yet what you really are has absolutely nothing to do with these things. Your true nature, Brahman, absolute intelligence, pure wisdom, sat-chit-ananda, is always available. It is always there. You are that.
To see your true self, and to feel your true self, and to be your true self, you simply have to negate everything else in this world. By negate everything in this world, I mean you have to look at a situation and never react to it, and realize this is not you. Good things, bad things, whatever you call good and bad, they’re all the same. They are not you. You are not that.
You are absolute freedom.
You have nothing to do with anything.
The world appears like a dream. It comes and it goes. You know by now that everything is subject to the law of change in this world, in this universe. Everything is going to change whether you like it or not. Why be disappointed?
Why be upset?
Change is the nature of living, yet what you really are, your real nature, can never
change.
Identify with your real self.
Again, how do you do this?
By not identifying with the world. When you do not identify with person, place or thing, you are automatically identifying with yourself, and then you become your self. In other words you become your self by not being yourself.
You have to awaken, now. And let go of the dream world. Many of you are so concerned with your future. You’re so
worried about your past. You have all sorts of plans in your mind. You’re conditioned to believe this, to believe that.
This is what is keeping you back from waking up. You must let go, in its entirety, of any hold the world has on you.
You have to stand naked before God. In the last analyses you have to be your self without the help of books, teachers, systems, governments, religions. You have to step out of that rut of your conditioning. Become totally unconditioned, as if you were just born. Reading too many books simply adds to the confusion.
As you begin to dive deep within yourself, without the help from books, from teachers, you make mistakes in the
beginning. As you learn to dive deeper within yourself, as you learn to go within, those mistakes are good, for they push you forward. Never judge yourself. Never put yourself down. Never believe that this is too hard for you, or you have too much bad karma, or something is holding you back. Nothing can be further from the truth.
The only thing that is holding you back are your thoughts. Get rid of your thoughts and you’ll be home free. Quiet your mind. Keep yourself still and leave the world alone. When I say leave the world alone it becomes confusing somewhat. I mean mentally. Keep your mind empty and your body will do things that it came to this earth to do.
Your body will not sit still all the time and do nothing. But you can be still in your mind and be thought free. No judgments, no fears, no bewilderment, no apprehensions. Not thinking about tomorrow, forgetting about yesterday,
living in the now.
Being spontaneous and leaving the world alone.
~ The Collected Works of Robert Adams Volume 1, page 302.
