If you want peace of mind stop reacting to life’s situations. Turn within to yourself. Nothing can keep you back from knowing yourself except you. Know yourself! Who am I? Where did I come from? What is the cause of the I? These questions must be pondered within yourself and inquired within the self over and over again. In all situations at all times. Do not think about what I’m saying to you. When you think about it you spoil it. Do not accept anything I’m saying to you. If you accept it there will be a fight within yourself. Your ego will fight you at every turn. So how are you to react to me? You’re not to react to me at all. Listen to the words I speak to you. Just become still within yourself. Never attempt to analyze anything I say. Empty yourself, and the truth of life will be revealed to you.

Robert Adams

Transcript 225
Who Were You Before
You Were Born?
21st February, 1993

When you concern yourself with your body, when you concern yourself with worldly conditions,
when you try to improve something,
all you’re doing is admitting that you are a fool.
In truth, this is all nonsense.
Everything is nonsense.

Therefore, why not be happy?
Why think about conditions, situations? Just be happy.
Do not try to analyze what happiness is. Do not even try to be happy.
Just be happy.

How do you become happy?
By not thinking.
If you have to think about it, it is not happiness.

The worst thing you can ever do is to try to change your condition, to be dissatisfied with the way things are.
Things are the way they’re supposed to be. Do not try to think about it or to analyze it. Things are exactly the way they’re
supposed to be. When you think about this you spoil it.
There are no mistakes.
No one is right, and no one is wrong.

~ The Collected Works of Robert Adams Volume 1, Chapter: The Body and the World

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. That’s when you’re free, completely absolutely free. Not when you accumulate knowledge yet you keep on doing it. And you will keep on doing it until life throws you around so much, that you’ll get disgusted with this world and start searching for answers within yourself.

Then you will know that you have to give up everything, not gain anything. You’ll have to drop everything you ever learnt. Everything that you’ve learnt in school, in your travels. All of this must be given up if you want to be free, if you want to be liberated. Liberation is your very nature, your swarrupa. Absolute reality is what you really are. Pure awareness. But it’s emptiness. These things are totally empty of anything. Pure awareness, absolute reality does not carry any knowledge to it. It does not contain any bit of knowledge whatsoever. It is emptiness. Total absolute emptiness. Emptiness is what makes the universe comes to pass. It is out of the emptiness that the universe grows. Everything comes from nothing.

Robert Adams

Transcript 225
Who Were You Before You Were Born?
21st February, 1993

Whatever is going to happen, will happen. You simply watch. You do not react. And you realize it’s all for the good. You are not what you appear to be. You think you’ve made decisions today of what you should wear, where you should go, what you should eat. Every thing has been made for you. What I’m trying to say to you is you do not have to carry the load.

It’s like when you go on a train and you have your suitcase in your hand. Do you sit with the suitcase on your head and carry the load? Or do you put the suitcase on the train in the compartment? You will still get to your destination. It’s the same with life. You’re going to your destination. Your destination is awakening, liberation. You do not have to carry the load. The load is desire. You want it very bad, and the more you want it, the more you’re pushing it away, because a strong want, a strong desire, is a strong ego. It’s not desire you want to develop, it’s love, compassion, understanding. Let everything happen as it may. When the smoke clears, you will still be who you are, and you’ll be totally free.

Robert Adams
Transcript 57
You Have to Have Bhakti
28th April, 1991

You observe your body, you watch your body doing its thing, but you are not that. You never were the body and you will never be a body. You are pure awareness, the absolute reality. As you think about these things you become them. The worst thing you can do is think about troubles and worries. Always think about the heart. Always think about the Self, which is forever. If you think about anything else it is only temporary, it comes and goes. The good things, the bad things of this world, they come and go. Think only of the Self, the heart. This is your reality, beauty, joy. This is being-ness. This is the I-am that I-am.

Remember all the time it begins in the morning when you first open your eyes and get out of bed. That’s when you catch yourself. If your mind starts thinking about the work that you’re going to do and the problems of the day, catch yourself and change…make the change. Say to yourself, “I’m not my work. I’m not my thoughts that come to me. I’m beyond these things. I-am that, which has always been and will always be. That which remains the same forever. The substratum of all existence, the absolute reality, I-am that.” Just thinking about these things in the morning makes you feel wonderful.

Robert Adams
Transcript 239
Take Refuge In Your Heart
15th April, 1993

So what pack of lies am I going to share with you today. I call it a pack of lies because all the world loves a lie. Therefore when I speak the truth, it thinks I’m telling a lie. After all it is a lie to believe that you were ever born, that you prevail and then you disappear.

This is not true. It is a lie to believe that the world exists as the world all by itself, that’s a lie. It is a lie to believe that there is an anthropomorphic type of a God who looks down upon you and sits in a little room with a big book with your name in it. (laughter) And tells you you’re going to go to heaven, you’re going to hell.

But all the world loves a lie and everything I say is a lie. Due to the fact that I have to share things with you that you want to hear to make you feel better. When you try to improve your health. When you try to improve your finances. When you try to live a better life. That is a lie.

Only consciousness, only God exists. It is what we call God or consciousness that is the world, that is the universe. Nothing exists on its own. Everything in this universe comes from your mind. It isn’t real by itself it’s like a dream. You believe what you see with your eyes, what you hear with your ears, what you speak with your mouth, what you smell with your nose. You believe all these things are real. They are not real. They are lies. You believe you exist as a human being and you make decisions, you make choices. You do certain things in this world. This is not true.

It is consciousness that does everything. You are like a puppet manipulated by the laws of karma. And everything that you do is the result of that karma. It’s a lie. For in truth karma does not exist and in truth you’ve never done anything because you were never born. There is absolutely nothing that you can ever do. You are spirit! All-pervading! Omnipresent! Not a little body like it looks and appears.

Robert Adams
Excerpt from: Satsang
“Feel the truth”

Robert Adams
Excerpt from: Satsang
‘You’re only playing games with yourself’

When your mind begins to think, stop it, catch it, put an end to it. Many of you are still under the impression that you come to hear lectures, talks. Let me ask you, how many lectures, how many talks have you been to all of your life? And what has it done for you? It simply adds more confusion. Always remember what you are trying to do. You’re not trying to add more knowledge to your ignorance. You’re trying to empty yourself of all your knowledge, all of your ignorance, everything that you have accumulated. You want to become empty.

Yet most people seem to go to different teachers, read many books, and they add on. They keep adding, adding, adding, adding, adding. Yet the day must come in your life, when you stand naked before God, so-to-speak, when you have no crutches to hold onto. All the books are gone, there are no more teachers for you, there’s no one to ask for help, there’s no one to ask if you’re on the right path. It is then that your sadhana actually begins. Ponder this very well. Your sadhana, your spiritual practice does not begin when you’ve gone to many teachers, and you’ve read many books.

It actually begins when you give up everything. That’s when real sadhana begins, when you have surrendered everything, when you’ve emptied yourself of all knowledge, all desires for liberation. When you have become an empty shell, then your spiritual life begins. Until that time you’re only playing games with yourself.

No-thing page

“[If you stop thinking] you will function much better than you do now, for you will always be taken care of. The universe loves you. It will always supply you with your needs. Forget about other people, what they do, what they don’t do. Do not listen to malicious gossip.

Be yourself. Understand who you really are. You are the absolute reality, unconditioned consciousness. Work from that standpoint. Do not work from your problems. Do not get lost in meaningless gossip. Understand your true reality. Be yourself.”

~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)

Bliss is a word again that cannot be described. It makes happiness feel like nothing. It is not of this world. You do not even experience it. You simply enjoy it. When you are in bliss it is then that you lose yourself completely. The personal-I, the personal self at that time no longer exists. It has been dissolved forever. It is a state that you cannot return from. It is not something that you feel when you are meditating then you get back to the personal self. There is no personal self. You are finished with your ego, with your personal self and with the I-thought. You have become nothing. You have melted. You have been destroyed. Yet you are alive.

You feel that you are alive and you do not know how you live. For so-called life that you have been experiencing previously no longer exists for you. You have become the Self and you can laugh. For you realize that you have always been the Self. There never was a time that you were not the Self. You are free, totally free. The world is no longer the world that you once knew. You continue to see the images but the images are like chalk writings on the blackboard. And you are the chalkboard. You’re free, totally absolutely free.

Robert Adams

If you look into the life of every sage, they didn’t come here to make you happy. They came here to take away your so-called human happiness. They came to show you that human happiness is transitory. It is not permanent. They came to upset you, to upset your lifestyle, not to bring you happiness.

We still have a tendency to believe that when we get into a spiritual teaching, all of our humanhood will improve drastically. If we are sick we’ll be healed, if we are poor we’ll be rich, if we have mental anguish, we’ll have joy and happiness. But that’s not a spiritual teaching. Your feelings and your life so-called and your body have nothing to do with spirituality. You gotta understand this once and for all.

True spirituality goes beyond the relative world. It has absolutely nothing to do with the human condition. Yet you’ve heard me say many times that your humanhood also improves, so it sounds like a contradiction. But what I meant was this: when you make the transcendence, when you awaken to your true self, you have no idea what’s going on with the body. You are in a different dimension so to speak.

Robert Adams