“[Your becoming enlightened] may be gradual at first. You notice that things that used to annoy you, no longer annoy you. You notice that people that you live with, the conflicts you’ve had, they stop because you’ve stopped. There’s no more trying to get even. There’s no more trying to win your point. There’s no more trying to find the right book, or the right teacher, or the right anything. You remain centered. You remain free.

When something comes along, whether it’s good or bad, you simply sit where you are and you ask, ‘To whom has this come?’ and you laugh, for you have separated yourself from your body-mind and you begin to realize that your body-mind is going through the experience, but not you.

So there is nothing to worry about. There’s nothing to fear. There’s nothing that can upset you. There’s nothing that can harm you. You realize whatever someone does to your body, physically, or with words, or otherwise, can never, ever hurt you because you are not your body. No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what you see with your eyes, [nothing can ever] affect you, for you are not your mind. You have actually separated your Self from your body and your mind.

That’s only the beginning.

As you go further your body and your mind drop off. I don’t mean that you die. I mean that they become less and less important to you, and you no longer identify with them at all. You actually know, and you feel, and you experience, that your body and mind do not exist, yet you exist. You do not exist as your body or your mind. You exist as absolute reality, as consciousness, and you no longer believe that your body and your mind are a modification of consciousness. You just know that there is no body and there is no mind. You are egoless. There is no reason for your body, mind or the world to exist.

You may first feel this slightly, but you will notice the greater the feeling, the greater the happiness. You are beginning to merge in consciousness. You are beginning to feel reality. The world goes on, people do what they always do, yet you see it quite differently. You no longer see the same world you used to see. It’s like reading a magazine. The images in a magazine are in front of you but you are not the magazine and you are not the images.

Who you are may still be a mystery. Remember, as long as you can express it, it’s not that. Therefore you do not walk around telling everybody, ‘I am pure reality,’ or ‘I am consciousness.’ You remain silent. By their fruits ye shall know them. You become a light in the world of darkness. Automatically people come around you and they just feel good by being around you. You have found peace. It has always been you. You have really not found anything. You have just become your Self.”

~ Robert Adams

HOW COULD THIS MAN’S INSIGHTS NOT MAKE YOU HAPPY ? I love the mere thought of “getting there”!
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“When you begin to feel happy, when you have unalloyed happiness, total happiness and peace, you know you’re getting there. You know you have become something else, when happiness arises by itself, when there is nothing in this external world to make you happy any longer, and you have become total happiness. Then you have become.

Let go of everything else, right now. Let go of the fears, the frustrations, the searching, the dogmas, the preconceived ideas, the concepts, everything you came in here with. Drop it. Just drop it. Let go of everything, and feel your freedom.”

~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)

“People are always trying to change the world. They don’t realize the world is what it is, and nature takes care of it. We live in a world of duality, maya [illusion]. It will always be like this. Some people are dreaming about an Aquarian age. Some people are dreaming about the age of enlightenment, where everybody is at peace with one another. It will never happen. This is not the kind of world we live in. Perhaps there are planets where there is peace, but this is not one of them.”

~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)

I OFTEN MAKE THIS MUCH-NEEDED CORRECTION IN MY THINKING (WOULD THAT IT WERE 100% OF THE ‘TIME’ !!!)
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When you see a homeless person on the street most of you think, “Poor guy I’m glad I’m not like that. I’m glad I have this nice car to drive and a home to live in and food to eat. I feel sorry for that person but I’m glad I’m not that person.”

In truth, you are that person. That person is you, all this is going on within you and your beliefs, your thoughts simply are about yourself. Everything that you think about others is about yourself. For there is only the one Self and we are all that Self. So the beginning of wisdom is when you stop seeing the world as separate from yourself. For you begin seeing yourself as all, as everything.

Then you will inquire, “Then to whom do these things come?” In other words then who is seeing these things, who is feeling these things? And one day you will realize it is the I. “I feel these things. I see these things. I feel hurt. I feel confused. I feel upset. But what is this I? And where did it come from?” You will begin to understand that by only getting rid of this I you will become free. It is the I that is giving you all of this trouble over these years. Not the condition that you behold. Not other people. Not other places and persons and things. It is the I that has caused you all of the problems in your life.

~ Robert Adams
Transcript 176
Forget About Self-Realization
6th August, 1992

“No matter whether you’re rich or poor, sick or healthy, you’re still going to turn into a bag of bones. This is what happens to the body. That’s what I look forward to.
If you would only go within yourself and know the truth about yourself, then this becomes a mirage. When you discover you are eternal life, that you’ve never been born, you can never die, you discover bliss is your real nature.
There is a real world that is full of happiness and joy and peace. A world that has no beginning and no end. That world is you! You are that!”

~ Robert Adams

SELF-ENQUIRY & SELF-ABIDANCE: DIRECT METHOD:

“How do you arrive at The Self?:
… Well here is another – interesting way, of getting to that;

And if you get up in the morning – if you feel a little depressed, or out of sorts – if you do this, you will start to laugh at yourself, and you will feel better.
… It will make you happy all day.

And here’s what you do:
As soon as you get up say to yourself: ‘I am not my arms’, ‘I am not my legs’, ‘I am not my torso’, ‘I am not my head’, ‘I am not my bones’, ‘I am not my blood’, ‘I am none of these things!’

… For most of these things are functioning without my knowledge. My heart beats – ‘i’ didn’t tell it to beat.

‘i’ have to go to the bathroom – ‘i’ didn’t give my body permission to go to the bathroom.

The body wants to eat – it gets hungry.
‘i’ never told my body to be hungry.
… It appears as if ‘i’ have nothing to do with my body at all?!

You go further:
You say to yourself, “How about the world? ‘i’ am not the world. The world didn’t exist a few moments ago, when ‘i’ was asleep.”

Now that ‘i’ am awake, ‘i’ think about the body, the world, God, work, food, the bathroom.

All these things happen, when ‘i’ wake up.
Well, if I’m not those things – who am ‘I’?
Who is the ‘i’, that is experiencing all this?
… I don’t know?

Be honest with yourself.
Don’t say, ‘Oh the ‘I’ is ‘Consciousness’!
That’s the worst thing you can ever do!:
… To memorize certain words or phraseologies, and use them at your own time.

When you ask the question:
‘Then who is experiencing the body?’
… ‘Who is experiencing the world?’

Be honest with yourself and say, ‘i’ don’t know? – ‘It’s a mystery’. Well then, ‘to whom’ is it a mystery to? … To ‘me’!

It therefore seems that if everything is a mystery to ‘me’! … ‘me’, ‘me’, ‘me’!

If I got rid of ‘the me’, there would be no mystery. Now how do I get rid of ‘the me’.
… Who is ‘the me’?

The ‘me’ is another word for ‘i’.
… ‘i’ believe that everything is a mystery. ‘I’ have nothing to do with my body – or the world.

So you get back to ‘i’/’I’.
‘Who is this ‘i’? ‘I don’t know?!’
… ‘It’s a mystery!’

There’s that mystery again!

So I’ll ask again:
‘For whom is the mystery for?’
… For ‘me’.

‘Who am I? ‘i’ don’t know. It’s a mystery!’
… ‘For whom is the mystery for?’

As you keep talking to yourself this way, something wonderful is going to happen.

Your question will begin to slow down,
and you will feel yourself becoming Happy.

You may even start laughing at yourself.
And your mind will become quieter, and quieter, and quieter.

You will begin to feel enormous Joy.
… Just by doing that technique, without coming to any conclusions.

As you keep asking yourself:
‘For whom is the mystery?’
… Pretty soon you will stop saying, ‘i’ for ‘me’.

For there will be a larger and larger Space; between the question, and the answer.

When you say:
‘The mystery is for ‘me’; ‘i’ think It’s a mystery’.., there will be a large pause.

… And as you keep reiterating the question; the pause becomes larger and larger.

Now the good news is:
That ‘Pause’ – is ‘Consciousness’!

That ‘Pause’ is your ‘Reality’, because you will find – if you keep doing the process – that in ‘That Pause’, there are no thoughts.
… There is a calmness, ‘Emptiness’, and you feel wonderful!

~ Robert Adams ~

Look at the world.
The world is a cosmic joke.
It appears to be real.
The good things, the beautiful things, the horrible things. They are all imposters.

The world is a world of duality.
For every good there has to be a bad.
It has to balance.
For every bad there has to be a good.
For every up there is a down. For every forward there is a backward.

We can never understand this world. It’s too complex. Get out of it. Not by committing suicide, but by transcending the mind and body, and awakening to your real Self.
That’s how you get out of it.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Stop paying so much attention to your thoughts, to the world, to your body.
Let come what may.
Surrender totally to your Self.
Your Self is God, Consciousness.

Begin to identify with the “I-am”, not with conditions.
Leave conditions alone.
As I told you before, you are not responsible for anything.
Get rid of your guilty feelings.
Mentally, you have to feel in your heart the Oneness of Eternity. And until we mature and this comes first in our lives,
we will only go so far on the spiritual path. Where your heart is, that’s where God is.

Today, think,
“What is this thing I’m attached to?”
What is so meaningful for me in this world? And realize it is that which is keeping you back. Let go of it mentally, by turning within, and realizing that “I” feel this. I feel I need this.
Where does the ‘I’ come from?
Follow the ‘I’ thread to the source and become liberated.

~ SILENCE OF THE HEART
1999 edition
Dialogue with Robert Adams

Robert Adams
Excerpt from: Satsang
‘Is Robert Unhappy?’

All of this is the self, and I am that. The self is like a gigantic screen, with images superimposed on the screen. I am aware of the consciousness and of the images. I realize the images are false, yet I see them. My feelings, my thoughts, if there are any thoughts, are observable, but my awareness is always on consciousness. What does this mean? It means I can be watching a movie or television, I can go to an opera, I can be involved in all kinds of activities, but I am not involved in anything. I am free of them. Yet to others it appears that I am involved.

This is why I am no fun to be around. People can’t understand how I can stay home by myself. They want to take me somewhere, be with me or feel sorry for me, thinking “Robert is by himself.” They say, “He should go out more often.”

But where would I go? It really makes no difference where I am. Dana used to take me to a movie every once in a while. I would make out that I was enjoying myself. After the movie she liked to discuss it. I would never know what happened. I had no idea of what was going on.

Often people tell me about this place or that, actors and actresses, or about Iraq or other things. What do I have to do with that? I realize it is a problem with others, but it’s very dim, it’s like a dream. I am totally aware of consciousness. Everything else is like a little dream, some far away someplace.

So I can be anyplace and it is the same. For example, three different people arrived at my house to take me to satsang. Somehow they were not coordinated by someone. While they were there the carpet was being cleaned and they saw people working on my carpet. The hot water radiator leaked and the carpet was flooded. But all day I was watching these goings on sitting on the chair and I was totally happy. What kind of happiness does this mean?

People can be living or dying, working or whatever. How can they be unhappy? Nobody dies. Nothing is wrong. All is well. So how can I possibly be unhappy? It is impossible.

As long as you believe you are human, you are the doer, and you are a personal I, then there’s a personal god, and that’s where prayer comes in. You can pray to your personal god, and you will be helped. Your personal god will take care of you if you surrender and submit to him or her, whatever your personal god is. But when you submit, you are giving up your ego, are you not? You’re saying I am nothing and you’re everything. This helps you. As you keep going in that direction one day you will awaken to the fact that the god you’ve been praying to is none other than your Self. For how can this god be separate from you? Where would he live? What would be his nature? You begin to understand, I am that. You find freedom in your Self. You begin to see that god is not within myself, actually, I am in God. What I call God, is consciousness. I am conscious. I am aware. I exist. I am. And there’s nothing else. You begin to see yourself as omnipresent. You are no longer limited to your body or to the personal I. You have broken through and you live in glory.

Robert Adams

“Anything you have to do in this world to bring you happiness does not last, for the world is a world of constant change. When you look to the world for your happiness, for your peace, for your harmony, you’re making a mistake. Look at this world. Is anything ever the same? Things appear, they stay for a while, and they go.

Consequently, if you identify with the things of this world, you’ll be totally confused and confounded. … You own something, you lose it, it burns, disappears out of your life. You live with a person, they change, they leave. This is the way of this world.”

~ 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, in a situation, you don’t like. This just holds you there more. “

~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)