HAVE YOU BEEN TRYING AND TRYING to calm your zillions of runaway thoughts and fears, but somehow find yourself assaulted yet again? This guy, Robert Adams, knows what he’s talking about when it comes to going deep and staying there! Hint: he even allows a moment or two of self-inquiry to stare down [my words] any particularly obstreperous unwanted thoughts. Here, I’ll let him tell you himself. Remember the key word is SIMPLE :
“I Am is the first name of God. When you want to think of God, you think of I Am with your respiration. I Am is the first name of God. Close your eyes and try. Inhale and say, “I.” Exhale and say, “Am.” Doesn’t that make you feel good? Just by saying I Am to yourself, it lifts you up. So the thing to do is this: Whenever you have a problem, I don’t care what it is, I don’t care how serious you think it is, whether it’s worldly or personal, wherever it came from, the secret is to forget yourself. For the moment, forget about the problem for as long as you can, and do the I Am meditation. If your mind wanders, bring it back again, and do the I Am meditation.
“When I explain this to some people they say, Robert, but you tell us we have to get rid of our minds. We have to annihilate the mind, not think with it. This is true. This is the highest truth. But most people cannot do this. Remember Advaita Vedanta is really for mature souls, people who have practiced sadhana in previous lives. It’s like going to school. Self-inquiry, Advaita Vedanta, is like the university of spiritual life. You cannot fool yourself.
“There are so many people who try to practice Self-inquiry and they give it up. Then I tell them to surrender, surrender completely. That’s the other way. Again this becomes difficult. They try it for a while and they always revert back to themselves, your personal self. So, I give them the I Am meditation.
“Everybody can do that. When nothing seems to work, go back to the I Am. It’s really powerful. Do not take it as simple. I can guarantee you this: if you practice I Am for one day, all of your troubles will be transcended. You will feel happiness like you have never felt before. You will feel a peace that you never even knew existed.
“As you keep practicing the I Am, your thoughts will become less and less. Your personal self will go into the background and you will feel an inner bliss. You will begin to feel that it no longer matters what I’m going through. It makes no difference, because it is God that is going through this, not me. And God has no problems. You automatically become happy, just by using the I Am meditation.
“In the Bhagavad Gita it says, “Out of a million people, one searches for God. And out of a million people who search, one finds Him.[“] It’s sort of difficult. That’s how it appears. But, if you begin to use I Am as a meditation and you allow the I Am to go deeper and deeper, your bodily consciousness will disappear, and the I Am will take over.
If you want to mix Self-inquiry, Atma Vichara, with I Am, that’s permissible. You can use them both together. I’ll explain how. Say you’re using the I Am meditation. In between, thoughts keep popping up. Whether they’re good thoughts or bad thoughts makes no difference, but thoughts keep interfering. You can now inquire “To whom come these thoughts?” Just observe and watch.
“When your mind becomes silent again, you go back to the I Am meditation with your respiration. When thoughts come again you inquire, “To whom do they come?” As you progress in this method, you complete the question. “The thoughts come to me. What is the source of me? Who am I? What is the source of I?”
“You begin to feel and see that the “I” that seems to have the problem is not you. You begin to feel “I” have a problem. “I” am sick. “I” am angry. “I” have no peace of mind. And you begin to laugh. For the realization tells you, “I” has all these things, I don’t. “I” is the culprit. “I” appears to want this and need that. So it is with wants, desires and self-aggrandizement. All of this belongs to the “I.” Who is this I? Where does it come from? If the “I” isn’t really me, then who am I? And you keep still.
“Now you may go back to the I Am with respiration. You inhale and you say I. You exhale and say Am. As you progress this way, you’re going to find out something interesting happens to your life. You’re going to find there’s more space between I Am. It will happen by itself. You will inhale and you will say I, and all of a sudden, nothing will come out of that. Then you will exhale with Am. You will inhale again and say I. Remember you’re not putting this on, you’re not making this happen. It’s happening all by itself and the space between I Am is the fourth dimension of consciousness. After waking, sleeping, dreaming. It is the state of the Jnani. It is your freedom. It is Pure Awareness. And when you keep practicing, “Who am I?” alternating with both of them, there will be a greater space before you say, “Who am I?” again.
“That space is bliss. You’ll feel something you’ve never felt before. An inner joy. An inner delight. You will just know that the whole universe is the Self, and I Am That. As the months progress, the words become less and less. You may start off with I Am, and then you will be in the Silence. You will not say another word. You will just experience the Silence. That Silence is Nirvana, Emptiness. It is no thing. It is the nothing I was talking about. You will just sit in the Silence.”
ROBERT ADAMS
I AM Meditation
Silence of the Heart
pages 101-104
Take a look at your life right now. Think what’s going on in your life. Are you happy, are you miserable, are you healthy, are you sick, are you rich, are you poor? Doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is everything you are is what you have identified with, somewhere, somehow. There is no power outside of your Self. There is no world outside of your Self. There is no creation outside of your Self. There is no universe outside of your Self. There is no God outside of your Self. You have given birth to all of these things. You are playing a game with yourself. You’re putting on an act. Why? Ask yourself.
When you really understand who you are, you will experience unalloyed happiness. Happiness that you only dreamed about, happiness in the Silence, when nothing is happening but you’re happy. Always happy, always at peace. All of the Gods that you have been praying to all your life, all of the Buddha’s you’ve taken refuge in, the Krishnas, the Kalmias, the Shivahs, the Christ, Allah, they’re all within you. You are that. There is only the one Self and you are That. Ponder this.
The knowledge of this brings you eternally infinite happiness instantly. When you begin to understand who you are, your Divine nature, that you are not the body, you’re not the mind, once you understand your Infinite nature, who you really are and there’s nothing else, you immediately become instantly happy. For happiness is your very nature. Happiness, the Self are synonymous. Consciousness, Absolute Reality, Pure Awareness, are all synonymous. There is only One. It has many names, but the One pervades all of space and time. And it is the only existence and you are That. There is no other existence. Awaken to this truth. You are the only One that does exist. And you are Consciousness. ~Robert Adams
And this ‘knowing’ is our self, aware presence. In other words, all that is ever experienced is our self knowing itself, awareness aware of awareness.
~Rupert Spira
BIOGRAPHY of Robert Adams with JSG, RM, Yogananda, NYC
Robert Adams with Ramana Maharshi
Robert Adams (spiritual teacher)
American philosopher
Robert Adams (January 21, 1928 – March 2, 1997) was an ●●American neo-Advaita teacher. In later life Adams held satsang with a small group of devotees in California, US. He mainly advocated the ●●path of jñāna yoga with an emphasis on the ●●practice of self-enquiry. Adams’ teachings were not well known in his lifetime, but have since been widely circulated amongst those investigating the philosophy of ●●Advaita and the Western devotees of ●●Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. A book of his teachings,●● Silence of the Heart: Dialogues with Robert Adams, was published in 1999.Quick facts: Born, Died …
Biography
Early life
Robert Adams was born on January 21, 1928 in ●●Manhattan and grew up in New York City, USA. Adams claimed that from as far back as he could remember, he had had visions of a white haired, bearded man seated at the foot of his bed, who was about two feet tall, and who used to talk to him in a language which he did not understand. He told his parents but they thought he was playing games. He would later find out that this man was a vision of his future guru Sri Ramana Maharshi. At the age of seven, Adams’s father died and the visitations suddenly stopped.
Adams said that he then developed a siddhi whereby whenever he wanted something, from a candy bar to a violin, all he needed to do was say the name of the object three times and the desired object would appear from somewhere, or be given to him by someone. If there was a test at school, Adams would simply say ‘God, God, God’ and the answers would immediately come to him; no prior study was necessary.
Awakening
Adams claimed to have had a profound ●● spiritual awakening at the age of fourteen. It was the end of term finals maths test and Adams had not studied for it at all. As was his custom he said ‘God’ three times, but with a phenomenal and unintended outcome:
Instead of the answers coming, the room filled with light, a thousand times more brilliant than the sun. It was like an atomic 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, everybody, everything was immersed in light. All the children seemed to be myriads particles of light. I found myself melting into radiant being, into consciousness. I merged into consciousness. It was not an out of body experience. This was completely different. I realised that I was not my body. What appeared to be my body was not real. 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 remembered was the teacher shaking me. All the students had gone. I was the only one left in the class. I returned to human consciousness. That feeling has never left me.
Not long after this experience, Adams went to the school library to do a book report. While passing through the philosophy section he came across a book on yoga masters. Having no idea what yoga was, he opened the book and for the first time saw a photo of the man he had experienced ●● visions of as a young child, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
●●Paramahansa Yogananda
Journey to the Guru
At the age of 16, Adams’ first spiritual mentor was ●●● Joel S. Goldsmith, a Christian mystic from New York, whom he used to visit in Manhattan, in order to listen to his sermons. Goldsmith helped Adams to better understand his enlightenment and ●●advised him to go and see Paramahansa Yogananda. Adams did so and visited Yogananda at the Self-Realization Fellowship in Encinitas, California, where he intended to be initiated as a monk. However, after speaking to him, Yogananda felt that Adams had his own path and should go to India. He told him that ●●his satguru was Sri Ramana Maharshi and that he should go to him as soon as possible because Ramana Maharshi’s body was old and in ill-health. Sri Ramana Maharshi lived at Sri Ramanasramam at the foot of Arunachala in Tamil Nadu, South India.
Ramana Maharshi
With $14,000 of inheritance money from a recently deceased aunt, Adams set off for India and his guru Sri Ramana Maharshi in 1946:
When I was eighteen years old, I arrived at Tiruvannamalai. In those days they didn’t have jet planes. It was a propeller plane. I purchased flowers and a bag of fruit to bring to Ramana. I took the rickshaw to the ashram. It was about 8:30 a.m. I entered the hall and there was Ramana on his couch reading his mail. It was after breakfast. I brought the fruit and the flowers over and laid them at his feet. There was a guardrail in front of him to prevent fanatics from attacking him with love. And then I sat down in front of him. He looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back. I have been to many teachers, many saints, many sages. I was with Nisargadatta, Anandamayi Ma, Papa Ramdas, Neem Karoli Baba and many others, but never did I meet anyone who exuded such compassion, such love, such bliss as Ramana
Not long after this experience, Adams went to the school library to do a book report. While passing through the philosophy section he came across a book on yoga masters. Having no idea what yoga was, he opened the book and for the first time saw a photo of the man he had experienced visions of as a young child, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
Paramahansa Yogananda Journey to the Guru At the age of 16, Adams’ first spiritual mentor was Joel S. Goldsmith, a Christian mystic from New York, whom he used to visit in Manhattan, in order to listen to his sermons. Goldsmith helped Adams to better understand his enlightenment and advised him to go and see Paramahansa Yogananda. Adams did so and visited Yogananda at the Self-Realization Fellowship in Encinitas, California, where he intended to be initiated as a monk. However, after speaking to him, Yogananda felt that Adams had his own path and should go to India. He told him that his satguru was Sri Ramana Maharshi and that he should go to him as soon as possible because Ramana Maharshi’s body was old and in ill-health. Sri Ramana Maharshi lived at Sri Ramanasramam at the foot of Arunachala in Tamil Nadu, South India. Ramana Maharshi With $14,000 of inheritance money from a recently deceased aunt, Adams set off for India and his guru Sri Ramana Maharshi in 1946: When I was eighteen years old, I arrived at Tiruvannamalai. In those days they didn’t have jet planes. It was a propeller plane. I purchased flowers and a bag of fruit to bring to Ramana. I took the rickshaw to the ashram. It was about 8:30 a.m. I entered the hall and there was Ramana on his couch reading his mail. It was after breakfast. I brought the fruit and the flowers over and laid them at his feet. There was a guardrail in front of him to prevent fanatics from attacking him with love. And then I sat down in front of him. He looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back. I have been to many teachers, many saints, many sages. I was with Nisargadatta, Anandamayi Ma, Papa Ramdas, Neem Karoli Baba and many others, but never did I meet anyone who exuded such compassion, such love, such bliss as Ramana Maharshi.
Adams stayed at Sri Ramanasramam for the final three years of Sri Ramana Maharshi’s life. Over the course of this time he had many conversations with Sri Ramana Maharshi, and through abiding in his presence was able to confirm and further understand his own experience of awakening to the non-dual Self. In the first of these conversations, Ramana Maharshi told Adams they had been together in a previous life. After Sri Ramana Maharshi left the body in 1950 Adams spent a further ●●seventeen years travelling around India and stayed with well known gurus such as Nisargadatta Maharaj, Anandamayi Ma, Neem Karoli Baba and Swami Ramdas to name but a few. He also spent time with less well-known teachers such as Swami Brahmadanda “the Staff of God” in the holy city of Varanasi.
Later years
In the 1960s Adams returned to the United States and lived in Hawaii and Los Angeles before finally moving to Sedona, Arizona in the mid 1990s. He was married to Nicole Adams and fathered two daughters. In the 1980s Adams developed Parkinson’s disease, which forced him to settle in one location and receive the appropriate care. A small group of devotees soon grew up around him and in the early 1990s he gave weekly satsangs in the San Fernando Valley, along with other surrounding areas of Los Angeles. These satsangs were both recorded and transcribed. After several years of deteriorating health, Adams died on March 2, 1997 in Sedona, Arizona, where he was surrounded by family members and devotees. He died at the age of 69 from cancer of the liver.
Controversies xxxxxxx
Teachings
Confessions of a Jnani
“
The teacher is really yourself. You have created a teacher to wake you up. The teacher would not be here if you were not dreaming about the teacher. You have created a teacher out of your mind in order to awaken, to see that there is no teacher, no world – nothing. You’ve done this all by yourself.
”
Adams did not consider himself to be a teacher, a philosopher or a preacher. What he imparted he said was simply the confession of a jnani. He said he confessed his and everyone else’s own reality, and encouraged students not to listen to him with their heads but with their hearts. Adams’ way of communicating to his devotees was often funny, and with interludes of silence or music between questions and answers. He stated that there was no such thing as a new teaching. This knowledge could be found in the Upanishads, the Vedas and other Hindu scriptures.
Silence of the Heart
Adams did not write any books himself nor publish his teachings as he did not wish to gain a large following. He instead preferred to teach a small number of dedicated seekers. However, in 1992, a book of his dialogues was transcribed, compiled and distributed by and for the sole use of his devotees. In 1999, a later edition of this book, Silence of the Heart: Dialogues with Robert Adams, was posthumously published by Acropolis Books Inc. As conveyed by the title of these dialogues, Adams considered silence to be the highest of spiritual teachings:
The highest teaching in the world is silence. There is nothing higher than this. A devotee who sits with a Sage purifies his mind just by being with the Sage. The mind automatically becomes purified. No words exchanged, no words said. Silence is the ultimate reality. Everything exists in this world through silence. True silence really means going deep within yourself to that place where nothing is happening, where you transcend time and space. You go into a brand new dimension of nothingness. That’s where all the power is. That’s your real home. That’s where you really belong, in deep Silence where there is no good and bad, no one trying to achieve anything. Just being, pure being.
Advaita Vedanta
Robert Adams – I Seem That. Robert Adams talking to students at satsang (4 November 1990)
Although Adams was never initiated into a religious order or spiritual practice, nor became a renunciate, his teachings were described by Dennis Waite as being firmly based in the Vedic philosophy and Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta. Advaita (non-dual in sanskrit) refers to the ultimate and supreme reality, Brahman, which according to Ramana Maharshi, as interpreted by some of his devotees, is the substratum of the manifest universe, and if describable at all, could be defined as pure consciousness. Another term for Brahman is Ātman. The word Ātman is used when referring to Brahman as the inmost spirit of man. Ātman and Brahman are not different realities, but identical in nature. Adams used a metaphor to explain this:
A clay pot has space inside of it and outside of it. The space inside is not any different from the space outside. When the clay pot breaks, the space merges the inside with the outside. It’s only space. So it is with us. Your body is like a clay pot, and it appears you have to go within to find the truth. The outward appears to be within you. The outward is also without you. There’s boundless space. When the body is transcended, it’s like a broken clay pot. The Self within you becomes the Self outside of you … as it’s always been. The Self merges with the Self. Some people call the inner Self the Ātman. And yet it is called Brahman. When there is no body in the way, the Atman and the Brahman become one … they become free and liberated.
Those in search of liberation from the manifest world will gain it only when the mind becomes quiescent. The world is in fact nothing other than the creation of the mind, and only by the removal of all thoughts, including the ‘I’ thought, will the true reality of Brahman shine forth. Adams taught self-enquiry, as previously taught by Sri Ramana Maharshi, in order to achieve this.
Self-enquiry
Sketch of Robert Adams in 1996.
In his weekly satsangs Adams advocated the practice of self-enquiry (ātma-vichāra) as the principal means of transcending the ego and realising oneself as sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss). After acknowledging to oneself that one exists, and that whether awake, dreaming or in deep sleep one always exists, one then responds to every thought that arises with the question “Who am I?”:
What you are really doing is, you’re finding the source of the ‘I’. You’re looking for the source of ‘I’, the personal ‘I’. ‘Who am I?’ You’re always talking about the personal ‘I’. ‘Who is this I? Where did it come from? Who gave it birth?’ Never answer those questions. Pose those questions, but never answer them … do nothing, absolutely nothing. You’re watching the thoughts come. As soon as the thoughts come, in a gentle way you enquire, ‘To whom do these thoughts come? They come to me. I think them. Who is this I? Where did it come from? How did it arise? From where did it arise? Who is the I? Who am I?’ You remain still. The thoughts come again. You do the same thing again and again
Four Principles of Self-Realization
Adams rarely gave a sadhana to his devotees, however, he did often have visions, and in one such vision he gave a teaching as the Buddha. He visualised himself sitting under a tree in a beautiful open field with a lake and a forest nearby. He was wearing the orange garb of a Buddhist renunciate. All of a sudden hundreds of bodhisattvas and mahasattvas came out of the forest and sat down in a semi-circle around Adams as the Buddha. Together they proceeded to meditate for several hours. Afterwards, one of the bodhisattvas stood up and asked the Buddha what he taught. The Buddha answered, “I teach Self-realization of Noble Wisdom.” Again they sat in silence for three hours before another bodhisattva stood up and asked how one could tell whether they were close to self-realization. In reply, Adams as the Buddha, gave the bodhisattvas and mahasattvas four principles, which he named The Four Principles of Self-Realization of Noble Wisdom:
First Principle: You have a feeling, a complete understanding that everything you see, everything in the universe, in the world, emanates from your mind. In other words, you feel this. You do not have to think about it, or try to bring it on. It comes by itself. It becomes a part of you. The realization that everything you see, the universe, people, worms, insects, the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, your body, your mind, everything that appears, is a manifestation of your mind.
Second Principle: You have a strong feeling, a deep realization, that you are unborn. You are not born, you do not experience a life, and you do not disappear, you do not die … You exist as I Am. You have always existed and you will always exist. You exist as pure intelligence, as absolute reality. That is your true nature. You exist as sat-chit-ananda. You exist as bliss consciousness … But you do not exist as the body. You do not exist as person, place or thing.
Third Principle: You are aware and you have a deep understanding of the egolessness of all things; that everything has no ego. I’m not only speaking of sentient beings. I’m speaking of the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom. Nothing has an ego. There is no ego … It means that everything is sacred. Everything is God. Only when the ego comes, does God disappear … When there is no ego, you have reverence for everybody and everything … There is only divine consciousness, and everything becomes divine consciousness.
Fourth Principle: You have a deep understanding, a deep feeling, of what self-realization of noble wisdom really is … You can never know by trying to find out what it is, because it’s absolute reality. You can only know by finding out what it is not. So you say, it is not my body, it is not my mind, it is not my organs, it is not my thoughts, it is not my world, it is not my universe, it is not the animals, or the trees, or the moon, or the sun, or the stars, it is not any of those things. When you’ve gone through everything and there’s nothing left, that’s what it is. Nothing. Emptiness. Nirvana. Ultimate Oneness.
QUOTES
● There’s something within you that knows what to do. There is a power greater than you that knows how to take care of you without your help. All you’ve got to do is to surrender to it. Surrender your thoughts, your mind, your ego, to the current that knows the way. It will take care of you. It will take better care of you than you can ever imagine.
● Well, you know, the mind is nothing. The mind is only a bunch of thoughts. Thoughts about the past and the future, that is all a mind is. But, the Heart is a center of stillness, of quietness, of Absolute Peace. When you rest your mind in your heart, you feel a joy and a bliss that overwhelms you, and you will Know. Surrender your mind to your Heart, and you will feel it.
● I want to let you in on a little secret. There are no problems. There are no problems. There never were any problems, there are no problems today, and there will never be any problems. Problems just mean that the world isn’t turning the way you want it to. But in truth, there are no problems. Everything is unfolding as it should. Everything is right. You have to forget about yourself and expand your consciousness until you become the whole universe. The Reality in back of the universe is Pure Awareness. It has no problems. And you are That.
● Change no one. Change nothing. React to no one, react to nothing. Do not live in the past and do not, worry about the future. Stay in the eternal now, where all is well. After all you are me and I am you. There’s no difference. Do not react to the world. Do not even react to your own body. Do not even react to your own thoughts. Learn to become the witness. Learn to be quiet.
● For most people to be happy, there has to be a person, place, or thing involved in their happiness. In true happiness, there are no things involved. It’s a natural state. You will abide in that state forever.
●
Publications
Adams, Robert (1999). Silence of the Heart: Dialogues with Robert Adams, Acropolis Books Inc. ISBN978-1889051536
When will you grow up?
It is only what you experience that matters to you. It’s not what you read.
So what if you learn a truth you haven’t learned before?
So what if you say this teacher expresses it this way and now I know it from this angle and that angle?
I must remind you again, knowing truth intellectually does absolutely nothing for
you. You might as well take LSD, because you only get psyched up. Then again as soon as something comes your way that you don’t like, you become an imbecile, angry, mad, upset.
You want to know if you’re making progress on the path?
When was the last time you got angry? When was the last time that something mattered to you?
When was the last time you thought the world was hurting you?
When was the last time you became over-elated over something good that happened to you?
That shows you you’re still in
possession of your human faculties. You have not transcended.
You cannot escape in a book. Many people, when they are upset and they don’t want to think, will turn on the TV.
But people on the spiritual path will open a spiritual book. It’s like turning on the TV except you are memorizing spiritual truths. I won’t say that that’s not any better than TV. Of course it’s better than watching TV. But all the same, you can do that for a 1000 years and you hardly make any progress.
How do you make progress?
By using books for reference only. By practicing the methods I share with you. By
practicing self-inquiry. By watching as you go through life’s experiences and not reacting. Watch yourself become depressed. Watch yourself become angry. Do not deny it, but observe it. And if you observe yourself correctly in that calm way, you can ask yourself,
“Who becomes angry?
Who is feeling depressed?”
and follow it through.
Do this over and over and over again, as many times as you have to. One day the anger will leave you, the depressions
will leave you, your thoughts will leave you. And you’ll just be.
Until that happens do not fool yourself. Maya is very powerful. Maya is apparent reality of the world. As long as you believe you are the body, then the world is going to be very real to you. This is why you work on yourself first.
Remember your body, as well as all the universe, is a manifestation of your mind. Therefore when the mind begins to dissolve, so does your body, and so does the universe. Also remember when everything dissolves you do not see
consciousness.
As I mentioned in the beginning, you do not walk around and see empty space. One person even told me he read in a book somewhere that a sage walks around in a fog and sees fog-like people. Where do they get these ideas from?
I remind you again. The only difference between the sage and yourself is you see the world and you identify with it.
You think it’s real. A sage sees the world and he knows its a superimposition upon consciousness. So he identifies with consciousness. Consciousness is not a thing. You cannot describe it. It is not the opposite of the world, and it’s not an object, and there is no seer to see it.
Consciousness is another word for being. Being what? Being no-thing.
Now we go beyond the realm of creation, where it becomes ineffable and indescribable. That’s why we can only
explain to you what consciousness is not. Consciousness is not the world. Consciousness is self-contained, absolute
reality. It is yourself when you do not identify with the world, and that only happens to the average person just as
they are falling asleep and just as they wake up. At that time you are consciousness. But the feeling leaves you almost immediately. You begin to identify with the world. You forget about reality.
The method to remember is to catch yourself all during the day. “Who believes this? To whom does this come? Who feels this?” over and over again. When you say, “Who am I?” for some people it is better to say, “Who is I?” the same thing. What you are really doing is you’re finding the source of the I. You’re looking for the source of I, the personal I.
Who am I? You’re always talking about the personal I. Who is this I? Where did it come from? Who gave it birth?
Never answer those questions. Pose those questions, but never answer them. Keep it up. Don’t give up. Do not look for results. Because it’s your true nature, sooner or later the results must presume themselves, but it comes without your help.
You cannot help God. God does not need your help.
Just be yourself.
The Collected Works of Robert Adams. Abiding in the I
Now this is an important point. Most people read books, Advaita Vedanta, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, whatever and they see what they did, but yet they do not do anything like that themselves. They never inquire. They read the books and they obtain intellectual knowledge, mind knowledge, head knowledge. If they have a good memory they can quote passages, remember phraseologies, certain clichés, certain sayings, but they never have the experience. The experience only comes when you have complete humility. When you just let go of yourself, your little self. When you stop worrying about yourself. Stop thinking of your little self so much. Stop saying, “I need this and I need that,” and “I’ve got to become this, and I got to get this.” Give up all desire. Give up all attachments to person, place or thing. Relax. Make your life very simple. Sit in silence, investigate. Find out who has problems. Find out who feels depressed. Find out who is not enlightened and you will laugh. For you are a radiant light in a world of darkness. You are divine. You are a wonderful being. Never criticize yourself. Never put yourself down. Think of yourself as God and act the part.
Robert Adams
Transcript 8 The Three Vehicles 2nd September, 1990
If you want to make this world a better world in which to live look within yourself and inquire, “Who lives? Who’s world is this? To whom does this world belong?” Some of you are saying to yourself, “It belongs to God.” How can it belong to God if you don’t even know what God is? The word God is just a word that you’ve been trained to say.
You picked up the word in your church, in your synagogue, in your mosque, in your temple, God. People kill for God, rape for God, murder for God, do all these dastardly things in the name of God, their God. My God is better than your God. It’s like a world full of kindergarteners, fighting with each other, killing each other, murdering each other. Trying to achieve success for ourselves or we step on somebody else. We’re filled with fears, frustrations, most of us become psychopaths and we think we’re living. You’re not living until you know who you are, until you find out what you are. What you are doing now is vegetating. Most of us are not satisfied with our lives and we try to improve our lives and what do we do we try to improve everything external to ourselves and this can never be done. We try to change our environment, meet certain people, do certain things and we think this will make us happy. But it only lasts for a short time doesn’t it? And you’re back to what you were before. This world can never make you happy, it’s impossible. It may appear to make you happy for a while because you’re gaining something that you want. But it will only last a short time. True happy … true happiness comes from nothing. When your happiness arises from nothingness then you’re really happy, because nothing made you happy and nothing can take it away. If something makes you happy then if something takes it away you will be miserable. But if you learn to achieve happiness from nothing this is everlasting. It will never leave you because there is nothing to change.
Robert Adams
T225: Who Were You Before You Were Born?
If you want to make this world a better world in which to live look within yourself and inquire, “Who lives? Who’s world is this? To whom does this world belong?” Some of you are saying to yourself, “It belongs to God.” How can it belong to God if you don’t even know what God is? The word God is just a word that you’ve been trained to say.
You picked up the word in your church, in your synagogue, in your mosque, in your temple, God. People kill for God, rape for God, murder for God, do all these dastardly things in the name of God, their God. My God is better than your God. It’s like a world full of kindergarteners, fighting with each other, killing each other, murdering each other. Trying to achieve success for ourselves or we step on somebody else. We’re filled with fears, frustrations, most of us become psychopaths and we think we’re living. You’re not living until you know who you are, until you find out what you are. What you are doing now is vegetating. Most of us are not satisfied with our lives and we try to improve our lives and what do we do we try to improve everything external to ourselves and this can never be done. We try to change our environment, meet certain people, do certain things and we think this will make us happy. But it only lasts for a short time doesn’t it? And you’re back to what you were before. This world can never make you happy, it’s impossible. It may appear to make you happy for a while because you’re gaining something that you want. But it will only last a short time. True happy … true happiness comes from nothing. When your happiness arises from nothingness then you’re really happy, because nothing made you happy and nothing can take it away. If something makes you happy then if something takes it away you will be miserable. But if you learn to achieve happiness from nothing this is everlasting. It will never leave you because there is nothing to change.
Robert Adams
T225: Who Were You Before You Were Born?
Cause and effect exist because of time and space. If there were no time and space, there would not be cause and effect. In reality there is no time and space and there’s no cause and effect. But in the relative world there is. Cause and effect is another name for the law of retribution. For as you sow, so shall you reap or the law of karma. And as long as you are under that law, you have to deal with the God of that law. That God is called Ishvara in Hindu, Jehovah in the Hebrew religion, Allah in Mohammed religion, and it goes by many other names.
Those Gods exist as long as you believe that you are the body-mind phenomena. And so does cause and effect. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. That’s the law of physics. It’s the same as the law of cause and effect. Everything you do ends up in a result, there’s no escape from it. Unless you turn within and you no longer react to anything. Then you transcend the law and become free. But as long as we are still body conscious, we are under that law.
This is how it works. If you want to grow oranges and you do not know anything about seeds, you would grab a lemon seed, plant it in the ground and expect an orange tree to grow. The cause is the planting of the lemon seed. The effect, the lemon tree. The seed is planted in the earth. The earth is your mind and the seeds are your thoughts. And the effect is the result you get from planting seeds. So you plant a lemon seed and a lemon tree grows. But then you start crying and screaming about it, “I wanted oranges,” you say, “I demand oranges.” And you have a tantrum, you have a fit. Nobody cares. You planted the seeds and this is what you’re getting as a result. Lemons. Of course you can always make lemonade, but you wanted oranges. So why did you plant a lemon seed? You don’t know. Maybe you planted a lemon seed in a previous life. You set up the cause at that time. For the effect can back to you many lifetimes from now, as an orange tree, as a lemon tree rather. And you’ll still scream, “Why did I plant a lemon seed, I wanted oranges instead.” So it is when we see things we do not understand. For instance, when Mahatma Ghandi died, he got shot, why would an honorable man like that get shot? The last word he said to his attacker was, “I forgive you and thank you my son.” For he realized that in some other life he had set the cause in motion. And this is the effect he gets back. This is called “Delayed Karma.”
Now there’s instant karma. Like when you step on the edge of a rake. You step on a rake, what happens? It hits you in the head. That’s called instant karma. Who takes care of this karma? The God of karma is, Ishvara, Allah, Jehovah. It is he who hands out what karma you’re going to experience in each life.
Let’s take another example. Henry invites me to his house. I come into Henry’s house and I go to the refrigerator. I say, “What’s to eat?” I eat him out of house and home. Then I say Henry can I borrow your car? And Henry’s a good guy and he says, “sure.” So I borrow his car and I wreck his car. Break his headlights, his windshield and come back and park it like nothing happened. And Henry being the good guy that he is, doesn’t say anything. Then I say, “Henry can you lend me five hundred dollars?” So Henry being a good guy says, “sure.” And I never expect to pay him back, I just take his money. Now what happens?
By not reacting, Henry becomes neutral. When you’re neutral, you do not accrue karma again. You’re finished with that part of your life. When you react you accrue karma. What happens to me? I’ve got to experience the effect sometime, somehow, of what I’ve done to Henry. It’s got to come back to me somehow. Maybe not even in this lifetime, but it will come back, there’s no escape. This is why when we see certain things in life and we do not understand, we should never judge because everything is working out like it’s supposed to. All is well and everything is unfolding as it should.
Robert Adams
Transcript 23
The Law Of Cause And Effect
11th November, 1990
Humans get angry. Therefore when you’ve reached self-realization, do you still have feelings of anger, of rage, or outrage?
A question like this is usually asked by a seeker or a disciple. A devotee couldn’t care less. When you ask a question like this you’re asking from the viewpoint of the ajnani, and there are different answers. It’s very paradoxical.
It reminds me of the time I was initiated by Paramahansa Yogananda in self- realization when I was 17, prior to going to India to see Ramana Maharshi. And during the initiation I was on my knees and he put his hand on my head and he said, “Robert, do you promise to love me no matter what I do, or no matter what you think you see me do?” I hesitated. I said to myself, “What is he going to do? Is he going to kill somebody, and wants me to love him no matter what he does?” But then I also realized that I didn’t have all the answers. So I said, “Yes.”
It’s only by being around two or three months that I realized what he meant. He reacted differently to different people, to different personalities. It was Christmas and he was living with the monks in Encinitas at that time. So I recall one monk came over to him and said, “Master,” they called him Master, “may I go visit my family at Christmas time? I’ll be gone two weeks.” He became very sweet and he said, “Of course you can. You should see your family. They miss you. Go and have a good time and come back in two weeks.”
Then somebody else came and kneeled before him and he said, “Master, may I go see my family during Christmas?” He became outraged and started screaming at the monk and said, “How dare you ask me a question like this. Why do you want to see your family? They don’t want to see you. Of course you can’t go. Don’t ask stupid questions. Go back to your quarters,” This was the dilemma, same questions different answers.
I consequently realized that he was able to read into the person. He knew exactly what was going on with each person. He couldn’t possibly give the same answer to two different people. He realized the first person had a loving family, and the first person had high self-esteem, so it wouldn’t matter where the person goes. Their heart is always on truth, on reality, on God. But the second person had a low self-esteem, and if he left he would be dragged by the powers of maya back into reality, of materiality that is, the reality of materiality and he probably wouldn’t even come back again. That’s why he gave that answer.
Robert Adams
Transcript 35
Does a Sage get Angry?
January 6th, 1991
