Another way to awaken is to trust the power that knows the way. In other words you have to have faith in the goodness of life. You have to have faith in supremacy of goodness. When you have faith in supremacy of goodness you move upward. In other words what I’m saying, when you look at the dastardly things happening in this world and you can look through it and see glory and joy and happiness and peace then you’ve made tremendous progress.
This is why I can only speak of my own experiences and it’s hard for people to understand this. When I give you the illustration of a mirror cannot see itself therefore when I look at the world I’m seeing myself. Now since the Self is consciousness and pure awareness and absolute reality this is the only Self I can see. I cannot see any other Self. This is the reason why I can say these things and tell you that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. This is the truth. This is what I see, honestly, truly. I see such joy, such love, such harmony, such peace and I see yourself as myself. In other words I do not see anything else that separates yourself from me. The love that I see is you. The absolute reality I see is yourself.
Now I’m a mirror and I cannot see myself so I see myself as the world. You are a mirror also and you cannot see yourself. But what do you see when you look at the world. Your mirror is covered with dust. You see man’s inhumanity to man. You see terrible cataclysms, wars, and you become upset, you become worried, you become frustrated. Not realizing that when you become like this it clouds your mirror even more. …

Robert Adams, satsang

Separate The I From Reality!

3rd September, 1992

You did not ask to be born. So what gave you birth? It goes beyond your father and your mother. The truth is nothing gave you birth. Really you were never born. See these things I’m sharing with you sound ludicrous to some of you. You were never born. You’re absolute reality. You’re effortless choice-less pure awareness. You’re boundless space. You have no body. Nothing that you do matters at all. I know to the average person this sounds ludicrous, totally ridiculous yet this is the truth.

This is the reason I take you down a couple of notches to show you that as you progress on this path, as you’re doing your humanhood, [you] find yourself becoming happier and happier, more peaceful. Things do not bother you too much. You take control of your life. And then I say, ‘You have no life. There is nothing to take control of. There is nobody home.’ What a confusion this is. Yet when your mind does get confused this way thinking about these things, your mind becomes a little weaker. This is an important step. I’ll repeat it.

When your mind gets confused thinking, ‘Am I not the body? Am I the body? Am I empty space?’ Just by pondering these questions within yourself the mind begins to slow down and this is exactly what you’re trying to do. To slow down the mind. So be confused, it’s good for you. It’s a tremendous help for your unfoldment.

When you’re not confused you are simply attached to your beliefs, your preconceived ideas, your concepts and your linear thinking. When you are confused your linear thinking begins to break up, your concepts begin to break up, your values begin to break up, everything that you believe and stood for begins to break up. Which means you’re becoming free—and that is the whole idea, to become free.

Robert Adams

Everybody is running around with their problems trying to resolve them and solve them. And ●●I just look, I just ●●watch and I wonder ●●how can you believe you’ve got a problem? ●●Why do you think someone is trying to hurt you? ●●Why do you believe someone is trying to take advantage of you? Why are you hurtable? And you don’t know why.

The answer is simple. Because ●●you are identifying with the personal I. That’s the only reason. Remember you ●●cannot solve any problem by solving the problem itself. You’ve tried it and it doesn’t work. As I’ve said before, “When one problem is solved another one pops up somewhere else.” It never ends. But, when you ●●annihilate the I, when the mind becomes quiescent and it rests in the heart, your natural state which is called the fourth state, after waking, dreaming and sleeping, ensues by itself. It comes by itself. Just like the sun that has been covered over by clouds. Only a fool would say, “The sun doesn’t exist because they can’t see it.” The clouds dissipate and the sun shines once again in all its glory and splendor.

So it is with us. We’re covered with clouds of ignorance that make us believe, I’m hurtable, I’ve been raped, someone is trying to do something to me. I don’t mean raped literally, I mean in your mind. Someone is taking advantage of me, someone is trying to do this or do that to me. Those are all lies. You’re doing it to yourself because you’re thinking past your nose. ●●You are allowing your thoughts to run rampant with you. ●●Your thoughts are taking you over continuously and leading you astray. You are not putting a stop to this you are allowing it to happen. Is it any wonder that you feel anger, frustration, out of sort?
Because you will not put a stop to these thoughts when they begin. This is also true with thoughts of dying, or sickness, or whatever. There is no such thing. Nothing exists but I-am.

And you should practice that form of meditation. When you inhale you say, “I.”
You exhale you say, “am.” If you have to meditate, meditate on that with your breathing.
●● The day will come when you awaken, and you will not have to do anything. But in the
meanwhile, you do the best you can. But as you are doing the best you can, realize that
●● consciousness is what you are, and consciousness loves you for you are its own. It will never leave you nor forsake you.

If you can’t do anything else ●●surrender to consciousness. What I mean about sur-
render, ●●surrender your ego, your problems, your emotions, your fears, your frustrations, your hurts, your anger. ●●Give it all up. Say, “Take it consciousness.”

If that’s too abstract to you, give it all to me. I will take it and chew it up for you and spit it out. So when you wake up in the morning and feel out of sorts, you feel angry
or frustrated say, ●●”Okay Robert, take this from me. I’m giving it to you.” And I’m happy to take it off your shoulders so that you can carry a lighter load. If that is what you have to do, do that.

But ●●by all means do not get carried away with your emotions. ●● Stop in the middle and watch. Watch your emotions ruling you. ●● Watch your fears controlling you. And watch your anger popping up. ●●Do not try to stop it, just watch, observe, look intelligently and ●●realize who it is that is getting angry or frustrated, It’s ●●not you. It is not even your ego, because there is no ego. It’s not your body, because there is ●●no body. It’s not your mind, because there is ●●no mind. Therefore, what is making you angry? Nothing.

It is like the story I tell of the Zen monk who is in his quarters and he’d get angry every now and again. He would start arguments with his fellow monks, always looking for something wrong, always complaining, whining, always telling people his troubles and he’d get real angry. So this fellow monk said, “Why don’t you go see the Roshi, the head of the monks and tell him to help you.” So he said, “Okay,” and the Roshi lived about two miles down the road. So he went down there and he explained his position with the Roshi. So the Roshi said, “Okay, so here’s what I’ll do, “Take my staff and hold onto it.
Now whenever you get angry my staff will remind you to come to me and I will get rid of your anger for you.”

So he went back to his quarters and that night he really got angry at some other monks. So he looked at the staff, and remembered the Roshi, so he started to run to the Roshi. And he finally got there, he was jogging all the way. So the Roshi said, “What’s wrong?” And he said, “I got angry.” The roshi said, “Show me your anger.” Well in the jogging the anger went away. He had nothing to show him, and he said, “I am not angry right now.” The Roshi said, “Go back to your quarters, and when you get angry again come and tell me about it.” The next day he got angry again. He ran to the Roshi and the same thing happened, in his running to the Roshi his anger disappeared. And the Roshi said, “Where is your anger?” And he said, “It’s gone now.”

This went on about twenty-five times.
Finally the last time, the Roshi said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what you do now. When you get back to your quarters take my staff I gave you and ●●when you get angry beat the living hell out of your anger with my staff.” And this was ●●so funny to the monk that he became realized, he became enlightened. Because he realized he would take the staff and beat himself, and his real Self could never get angry. But it was his body that appeared to be angry. And just that running back and forth twenty-five times and the ●●answer the Roshi gave him made him open his eyes and become enlightened.

So it is with us. ●●Do not look at your problem as a problem. Look at it as a no-thing.●● It doesn’t exist. Again, if your ●●ego does not exist, if your ●●body does not exist, if your ●●mind does not exist, ●●how can you be angry? ●●Where would it come from? ●●Who gave it birth? And is true of every other problem you believe you’ve got.
●●●Just by watching it like I just pointed out, it will disappear and you will awaken to your true Self.

~ Robert Adams Satsangs
T30: The Ultimate Happiness

“Do not concern yourself with this world. There is one that takes care of this world. When you merge with the one, you will understand this. So you do not have to go running around, trying to improve world conditions any longer. Everything is as it should be.

This is something you have to comprehend totally. Everything is in its right place. Everyone is where they belong, karmically speaking. There are no mistakes. None have been made, none are being made, none will ever be made. There is no past, there’s no future. There’s only this moment in which you live.

In this moment ask yourself, ‘Who am I?’ and see where you go. Remind yourself everyday, that you are not the doer, you are not the body nor the mind. Keep reminding yourself daily that you are Parabrahman—beyond Brahman. You are choice-less, effortless pure awareness. You are nirvana, the ultimate reality, the ultimate oneness.”

~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)

Now let’s talk about you. ●●Where are you on the spiritual path? Be honest with yourself. When you get together with your friends what do you chat about? Other people? You gossip about others? You talk about your troubles. You talk about how you’ve been wronged. How your wife left you for another person. How your husband divorced you. How your boss hates you. How this is wrong and how that’s wrong. Do you realize what you’re doing if you’re doing this? You’re exacerbating the condition.

Things will become worse and worse. You’re ●● using the power of thoughts to increase the condition that you want to get rid of. Always realize that everything is karmic and ●●everything is preordained. You have absolutely nothing to worry about and ●● nothing to concern yourself about. When you can become calm mentally and your thoughts have subsided a little bit then you can go to the higher teachings. Then you can understand what I mean when I say, ●●”The world is but a dream. It’s maya.” Then you can understand what I mean when I say, “All is well. No matter how things look. ●● All is well and everything is unfolding as it should.” Then you can understand what I mean when I say, ●●”All this is the Self and I am That.” There is ●● only consciousness, absolute reality, pure awareness and you are That!

When your mind is calm you can accept this. When your mind is disturbed, full of your own thoughts, thinking about problems. When I say, “All is well,” you feel funny. When I say you are consciousness, you are not your body, you are not the doer, you are not your mind, you think I’m crazy or you don’t believe me or you feel hurt because you are enmeshed in your so-called belief of problems. And even those of you who are experiencing the good life so-to-speak, you say to your- self, “I don’t have to be consciousness, I don’t have to be the Self, I’m having fun.”

…the ●●world has nothing for you. You will function. ●●God knows what it is you have to do. It has nothing to do with you. If you begin to ●● act spontaneously, if you begin to live in the present and take it a day at a time you will be amazed at how this mysterious power called God will maintain and sustain you and give you untold happiness. Even in the relative world. But never outline what this happiness is supposed to be. Do not believe or think that it has to be this way or that way or it has to be this thing or that thing or you have to live in this state or that state and live with this person or that person. Forget about those things. What we call God will take care of you when you think about God. When you think about I-am. Do it! Find out for yourself and see what happens.

SK: Robert, this is my first time here and two things occur to me, when I hear you say the words “I-am,” all it does is like make me think of I as a separate ego because the language is not inspiring at all to me, it’s just like words are dropping back on me as a special self-centered thing so it’s not the kind of words that make me think in any special way.

The second thing that occurs to me is that I can relate pretty much to what you’re saying about the karmic thing. Except for the aspect on the relative level you seem to apply such a total passivity. For instance like if someone is addicted to cigarettes to kind of like there is nothing to really think about or we’re kind of like we have to have food in order to survive even karmically we have to have nutritious food so there’s decisions to be made to be getting those kinds of things. Those are only the two things that arose in me as you were speaking.

R: Thank you. ●● You’re coming from the standpoint of the ajnani. Which means the standpoint of spiritual ignorance. Which is no insult. You’re speaking of the ●●relative world. When you begin to ●● turn within, the I-am becomes stronger and stronger for you. You begin to realize ●●that I-am is your Self. The more you practice I-am in the silence without thinking about it the stronger you will become and will reveal itself to you.

Now as far as you’re concerned you have been brought up to ●●believe that you have to make all the decisions or else they will not be done. ●● This is the maya, this is the ego that makes you think this and it’s very strong in most people. But from personal experience I can tell you that ●●you are not the ego. You are not the person that needs to make a decision or needs to do anything like that at all. There is a ●●purpose why your body is here on this earth. If you get yourself out of the way it will fulfill it’s purpose. It will know when and how for you to stop smoking, it will know how to make decisions.

I know it sounds unusual for you because you’re here for the first time and you’re hearing these things for the first time. It ●● seems that there are two of you but no there’s one. ●●You have to transcend the thoughts, the mind and the body. You have to ●● become still. You have to ●●stop your thoughts. Then ●●something else takes over that will be able to take better care for you or of you than you could ever do for yourself. ●●Your mind will be on I-am and yet your body will know what to do, in order to maintain and sustain it.

Robert Adams
Satsang : The world is but a dream. It’s maya.

Spiritual life means a letting go, a giving up, a release of all the things that have turned you on up till now. All the things that seem important to you, good, bad, in-between and mentally letting go. For it doesn’t matter whether you live in a palace or a hut, whether you have a million dollars or five cents, whether you’re dying of cancer or you’re healthy as a horse, it shouldn’t make any difference.

For after all to whom does this happen? Not to you, but to I. It is the I-thought that experiences all these things, you don’t. You are totally free. Yes you are. You are totally free, absolute reality. Your nature is sat-chit-ananda [existence-consciousness-bliss]. You are nirvana the ultimate oneness. There is absolutely nothing you have to do to attain this state. You don’t have to even wake up.

Many times I tell you to wake up because I’m using words. But in reality to wake up means that someone was asleep. Who is there that sleeps? Who is there that is disillusioned, ignorant? Is there one who is [really] ignorant? There is no ignorance.

Robert Adams, American Advaita mystic

Always try to remember that satsang is not a lecture. Satsang is being. Being with
the Self. The reality of all existence. It has absolutely nothing to do with a sermon or a talk.

Just by being you can overcome all your problems and become the real person you are.
Just being.
Not being here, or being there, just being. Being yourself. Satsang is being.

What do you think you are, when I say being?
Do you identify with birth, with existence, going through life, hurrying, scurrying, trying to make things happen, trying to overcome your so called problems, searching for a better life. You’re doing the wrong thing. What you should be doing is letting go of everything you’ve ever believed, perceived, conceptualized. Becoming like a little child. Watching the world and not reacting to it. Observing and inquiring,
“Who is the observer?”
Never coming to any conclusion.
No beginning, no end. Not comparing, not analyzing, not judging, just being.

When you are just being, you are the Self. When you are being this and being that,
you are your humanhood. When you are your humanhood you identify with the world and you go through the vicissitudes of life, having problems, trying to solve them, having opinions, being judgmental, concerning yourself with what others say or what others do.

As long as you’re doing these things you can never really know what spiritual life is.
Spiritual life is being empty, totally empty. No opinions, no beliefs. It is only when
you become empty that you become fulfilled. You’re not trying to add on new knowledge to what you already have. You’re not trying to learn some mystical way of becoming self-realized. You’re not really trying to do anything to find liberation. You’re merely letting go of everything you’ve ever had.

If something is bothering you or annoying you during the day, during the night, no matter how justified you may feel, you have the problem. It makes no difference what anybody else is doing. As long as you feel hurt, as long as you feel slighted, as long as you feel doubtful, apprehensive, you must realize it’s the me, the personal I, that feels this way.

People ask me, “What is the reason, what is the purpose of becoming liberated?
Why can’t I just live a hedonistic existence, enjoying everything on this earth. Why should I become liberated?” That’s an interesting question. There’s really no answer, for you have to feel something in your own heart to cause a change to come upon you. You shouldn’t believe anything I say. I can only confess my own experience. I share my life with you. Yet that’s my experience. What is your experience? What are you going through?

Trying to become something is the first mistake you make.
Trying to overcome your problems is the second mistake you make.
Even trying to understand reality is a mistake.
The only thing left to do is to let go of everything else you’ve got, your fears, your
frustrations, your concepts, your ideas, your ego. Everything must be given up. There is absolutely nothing to gain. There is absolutely nothing to gain due to the fact that you are that already.

Wherever you go in the world, whatever teacher you may fall upon, whatever book you may read, whatever teaching you may discover, is really to no avail, until you
decide to give up everything you’re holding on to, and that hurts. Yet that’s exactly what you have to do. You have to give up your so called pleasures. Say your pleasures are drinking, smoking pot, doing all those good things. All those things are doing for you is making you a little high. And as you know when you come out of it, you feel worse thanyou’ve ever felt.

Now you have to give up also your love for trees, for flowers, for life itself, due to the fact, that whatever you hold onto keeps you earthbound. When you think about liberation, moksha, freedom, bliss, absolute reality, this is your state, beyond your addictions. As long as you’re doing things to make a better life for yourself in the world, you can never know reality.
Yet you may ask, and rightly so, “You mean I shouldn’t care about my job, my family, my love for flowers or for mountains or for rivers? I shouldn’t care for any of these things?” Mentally, you shouldn’t. Your body will continue to do what it does and will feel better doing it. Everything is given up mentally. When everything is given up mentally, your vasanas, your habits, the things that have held onto you for so long, will automatically break loose, and you will find freedom.

~ Robert Adams Satsangs
Transcript 84, Just Being