Transcript:

This transcript was created automatically from the audio recording and has not been proofread yet. It may contain errors, especially with Sanskrit terms and with questions from the audience. Please get in touch if you would like to help improve it! https://robert-adams.de/contact/

Shanti shanti shanti, om. Peace. Good evening. It’s good to be with you again. I welcome you with all my heart. Let me ask you a question. If a friend or a relative inquires of you, what does Robert teach? What would you say? If someone inquires, what do you learn in that class? you go there two times a week and you come home and you look confused as ever.

Or nothing. That would be the easiest thing to say. But yet, they wouldn’t understand what you’re talking about. This is true, what you’re saying. I’m invited, but done it. I’m going to go look it up.

That’s a good idea, too. Most people become perplexed because they have no idea what to say. What did you say? Well, I didn’t answer it directly. I said, I go in the presence of somebody who is never shaken from knowing what it really is.

And that’s what I go for. She understood that. Good. But what are we really teaching? The worst thing you can say is, I believe this and I believe that.

For as you know, you are not to believe anything, especially what I say. You are to find out for yourself. You are to prove this to yourself. So you really do not believe anything. Perhaps you can say something like this. The teaching is that the individual self is only a thought, an idea. This idea is expressed as I, and the I emanates from a spiritual center in the chest on the right side.

When the I goes up to the brain, it becomes I am. Then you say, I am the body, the mind. I feel good, I feel bad, I feel empty, I feel full. I feel sick, I feel happy, I feel rich, I feel poor.

And the I am identifies with the entire world. Thus, suffering ensues. When the I identifies with the universe, that’s when suffering begins. To cease suffering and to find eternal joy and bliss, the procedure has to be reversed.

In other words, the eye has to go from the brain back into the chest to the heart center. When the eye goes back into the heart center you appear as yourself. How do you do this? By abiding in the eye.

Tracing the eye to the source. How do you trace the eye to the source? By inquiring Who am I? That’s abiding in the I.

What you are really saying is, what is the source of I? This is the entire practice. To the extent you go into the self or into the spiritual center,

To that extent, do you become blissful, happy, peaceful, loving. You work on yourself continuously. When thoughts try to invade your thinking, process. You simply ask, to whom do these thoughts come? If you get angry, if someone upsets you, if the world is not turning the way you think it should, you do not get mad.

You do not react. You ask, to whom does this anger come? Who’s feeling out of sorts? Who wants to get revenge? To whom does this come? And then you realize, it comes to I. I feel it. I feel hurt. I feel slighted. I feel anger. Then you inquire again, who am I? This is the entire procedure, the entire teaching. There’s nothing else. You can also say, you can also say, the teaching does not consist of words, or lectures, or speeches, or sermons.

The teaching consists in silence. When you are silent, something within you will tell you what to do. Something within you will turn to itself.

You will automatically turn inwardly and do the right thing. So this is not something you have to memorize. There’s no technique you really have to remember. There appears to be a procedure, but it is different for everyone.

Some people just keep silent. Some people say over and over again, who am I? Others keep asking, to whom do these thoughts come? Because their mind is filled with thoughts.

There’s no particular time you have to sit and meditate. This can be done 24 hours a day, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. You do not have to turn into a yogi and sit on a mountaintop or in a cave or in isolation.

You simply have to remove all of the thoughts that make you believe you’re human. The thoughts that make you believe you are the non-self.

What will be left over will be absolute reality, pure awareness. Therefore, the idea is not to go after pure awareness or absolute reality or the self or God.

Since you are already that, you merely have to remove the something that tells you you’re not. And you do this by inquiring to whom does it come and ending up with who am I. You do not have to get up a certain time every morning and sit in a meditation posture to do this.

You can do it as you’re going about your business. Guys, I am not the body. I am not the doer. And you find that your body goes along with whatever it has to do. It will do its work without your help.

You simply have to quiet your mind by not paying any attention to it. You can quiet your mind by being the witness to your thoughts,

By observing the sensations in your body and in your thoughts and your mind and then inquiring to whom do these sensations come? To whom do these thoughts come?

They come to me. Who is this me? What is its source? You abide in the I, tracing it back to the heart center, the spiritual center, on the right side of the chest,

Until you’re home free. This is basically what you tell people. Can you remember all that? Now let’s talk about the truth. In reality, none of this exists.

There’s no one trying to find the self. There is no spiritual center. When practicing anything, I know it sounds like a contradiction, but as long as you believe you are the body,

And you’re feeling the pangs of the world, you’re still becoming angry, you’re still becoming upset, you still believe things have to go your way, or you’re going to get mad.

As long as you feel these things, of course you believe the world is real. So you have to do the practice to take you away from the world being real. That’s what self-inquiry does.

So self-inquiry is not the result. It’s a way to bring the mind back to the source and to be what you really are. But as I tell you so often,

Why not awaken now? What are you waiting for? Why do you still want to play games with yourself? Believing your name is Robert or Charles or Henry or Mary or… And that’s you. You were born, and you’re going through experiences, and then you’re going to die, and be reincarnated, or go to heaven or hell, or whatever you believe.

Why do you insist on believing these things? As long as you believe these things, there will always be a teacher and students giving you procedures and methods on how to overcome the body. But I suppose you’ve got to get real tired of playing these games.

You’ve been at it for many years, many incarnations. You should be tired of it by now. As a matter of fact, I had a lady tell me yesterday, I’m so tired of being angry.

I’ve been angry all my life. It’s no fun. But I can’t follow your practice because it appears too difficult for me. So what should I do?

I told her, as I’ll tell you, the second way to do this is to surrender completely and give all of your problems to God if you don’t know where God lives or where God is you can use one of your favorite saints whomever you choose if you’re a Jesus freak you can use Jesus if you love Moses use Moses Mohammed anyone you choose give them your troubles let them work it out

Take the burden off your shoulders. Ask if she can use me. Why not? I guess that’s why I’m here. If you like, give me all of your problems. I’ll cheer them up and spit them out. Get rid of the self, the small self,

That has been annoying you all of these years. Worrying you. Making you anxious. Making you fearful. When you’re by yourself, if you have a problem of any kind, you can’t figure out what to do. Give it to me. Say, take it, Robert. I’ll be happy to take it off your hands. So you see, you don’t have to carry it with you.

Lighten your load. There is nothing in the universe that wants to see you suffer in any way. There is no thing that wants to hurt you.

There is nothing that wants to cause you pain. So why are you angry? Why do you get upset? Even in your humanhood, you sort of realize whatever comes to you, whatever confronts you, is only your karma.

And if you can be mature enough to realize this, you will see that by reacting to karma, you are accruing more and more karma. That’s all you’re doing.

And that’s a hard lesson to learn for most people. That’s because the ego is so big. As an example, say for some reason somebody walks over to you and punches you. Now the proper thing for a macho guy to do would be to punch him back. Or maybe it’s to her. And then you got even. But did you? You’re only looking at a small part of the picture. Like looking through that keyhole again. All you can see through the keyhole is that someone punched you, and now you punch them back, and you feel great.

But if you open the door, you will see the whole picture. You will see, perhaps, that in a previous life, you were that person’s father, and you used to abuse him in many ways. Now, by him punching you in this life, comically, the score is wiped clean. But if you react, you are accruing calmly again. And you will have to go through that experience again, and again, and again, and again, and again. it’s like people suing other people if you look at the court records you will see that in most instances it’s the same people suing each other all the time one time this person sues somebody and wins the next time somebody sues them and wins and it goes on and on and on like this until you wise up and keep cool and do not retaliate this is why in all of the martial arts when a person or a devotee of the martial arts goes beyond the 8th belt the 8th black belt and the 12th black belt and the 26th black belt and whatever when they go beyond all of that they get to the place where they do absolutely nothing that’s what it leads to nothing they will even allow themselves to be killed at that time because they come to the realization that there’s no such thing as death it’s only when you’re caught up in your own ego that you retaliate and this keeps you from moving forward how can you work on yourself with self-inquiry when all you do or your life is retaliate it sprawls everything for you this is why self-inquiry is not for everyone it’s only for those mature souls who perhaps have been practicing spiritual sadness in their previous lives and they’ve come to the point at this time that the world can not interfere with their self-inquiry.

In other words, it makes no difference what they’re going through. Whether millionaire or pauper, whether Hercules or Woody Allen, it makes no difference. Forget about the body, forget about the world,

And work on yourself during self-inquiry. Now, why do you want to become free? It’s true you’re already free, but you believe you have to become free. by practicing many sadhanas, spiritual practices.

Because something within you has told you even very slightly that you are the universe, that you are not limited to a bodily existence. And if you can only get to the substratum of all existence,

You will become a bliss conscious body. Not only will you become a bliss conscious body, but you will be the bliss of the universe. A universal body of bliss.

Which means there’s no more coming and going. There’s nowhere to go and no place to come to. You just are. Total happiness, total peace, total love.

That’s your existence. Something has told you that. And even if you can’t accept it or believe it as yet, there is still something touching you.

That’s why you keep coming back to a set sign. and you keep practicing self-inquiry because you know there’s something else and that something else is greater than anything you can ever imagine and you want it.

That keeps you going. There are those who cannot feel a thing and those people go through life reacting, getting even, fighting, always having a problem that’s got to work out. People should practice yoga techniques. Pranayama, the Yamas and the Niyamas of Patanjali. And all the other yogas, Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga.

Until they soften up. When they soften up, they will begin to feel what I mentioned. Just a little bit, at first. That they are not the body. They are not their experiences. they are not karma or reincarnation and they start to inquire well whom are these things?

It happens by itself and the answer comes these things are for me well who is me? where did me come from? and they begin to trace the me to the source ultimately becoming free only you know where you are at this moment you know what you are do not fool yourself you have to admit and see where you are at know what you are. If you’re a dirty so-and-so, you have to see that. If you’ve been causing problems to people all over your life, you’ve got to see that before you can go any further.

You can’t sweep these things under the rug and imagine you’re Mr. or Mrs. Nice Guy. See where you’re at and work with that. Look at your faults and ask to whom do they come. That’s the greatest psychotherapy that ever existed.

Say you’re a kleptomaniac and every time you leave this meeting you take one of Henry’s possessions. A lamp. That’s where it’s been going. Henry’s suit.

His comb. Face yourself. Ask yourself, who does this? Who’s doing this? I am. Who is this I? Where did it come from? Who is the I that needs to do these things?

Who am I? Don’t answer. Simply pose the question. And I can assure you, after doing this for a while, all of those bad habits will disappear.

But again, all this talk is nonsense. For as I mentioned previously, none of these things are real. Everything we’ve been talking about is not real.

It is like the water in the mirage, like the snake in the rope, like the sky being blue. there’s no sky, there’s no blue so everything I’ve been saying to you is sheer nonsense but since it’s part of your senses you listen and you do whatever you have to do you’re keeping yourself back by too much analyzation too much trying to figure out the right method, the right procedure remember there’s something within you a power that knows what to do

If you surrender to it, it will take care of you. But if you abide in the ego, you will become a greater egotist. And the problems will become greater and greater. You’ll come back life after life after life, playing these games with yourself,

Until you’re ready to awaken. All you have to do is to awaken. That’s what happened to the Buddha. If you recall the story, the Buddha decided to sit under this tree,

This bow tree, until he awakened or he died, he didn’t care. Because he’d been through everything. He’d been through austerities, various sadness, everything. And he finally said, there is nothing I have to do any longer. I am going to sit right over here under this tree until I either give up the body or awaken. For 30 days he sat there.

His disciples were sitting around him watching. Finally, when the day came, he opened his eyes and smiled. And he was questioned, Did you see God? No. Did you transcend your karma? No.

What happened? And he simply said, I am awake. And that was it. This is all we have to do. It is true you can awaken as I talk to you like this. if you don’t use the words.

Just by being a satsang, things may happen to you to awaken you. When your mind is peaceful, an awakening also can take place. When you get your mind off the world,

The awakening procedure becomes stronger. Take a look at your life. What is it you want more than anything else? You came to the meeting this evening, but what did you do all day long?

That’s important. Was everything you did bring you closer to awakening? How many times did you get lost today in your mind with worry, fear, anger, misunderstanding? You’ve got to catch yourself.

You’ve got to have a deep feeling that the only thing you really care about is to awaken. This does not mean you’re going to shirk your responsibilities.

Again, your body will do whatever it has to do, but your mind will be on the self-inquiry, on the higher self, on Brahman, on consciousness, and your body will do the work.

So don’t worry about getting a job or not getting a job, living in a house or living in a tent, being healthy or being sick.

Forget about those things. Everything was pre-ordained before you came here, and your body will continue on the right path. that it’s supposed to be on.

There’s no use thinking about that. You’d rather keep your mind on the infinite. Feel deep inside that your true nature is absolute reality. Consciousness, Brahman,

Nirvana, emptiness, ultimate oneness, I am that I am. That is your true self. Awaken to it and become free. Now I know you’ve got a lot of questions or statements or comments.

Let’s get into that. How do I know? How do I know anything? Everything comes through by itself. I do know that in reality there’s no body.

The body doesn’t exist. But as long as you believe you are the body, then you believe you are the body during many incarnations. Therefore, if karma and reincarnation exist for the body, everything has been planned. Everything is preordained. There’s no time, there’s no space. Everything is happening now, as it’s supposed to happen. That has been my experience. There’s someone there that’s ordained those. If you believe that you are the body, then you have a god. And the god called Aswara is the god of karma. And it is he that takes care of all the karmic activities of your body.

When you realize that you are not the body, you are not the mind, that you are consciousness, everything else becomes redundant. But as long as you identify with the body, the world, the universe, reincarnation, karma, God, exists. Well, scientifically, we know that the further out of the space you go, the slower time is.

In other words, if you were in a spaceship traveling the speed of light, And you went out into space for 20 years, and it took you 20 years to get back to the Earth. The Earth would have aged maybe 400,000 years, while you only age 40 years.

Time slows down the faster you go. The atoms of the body spin in a certain vibration. The more we find something else is, the faster it spins. And you can tell what an object is by the vibration of speed it turns, or fast it turns. When everything turns at a certain speed, everything becomes one. So there’s really one atom that created the entire universe. Science tells us that everything was created out of a nitrogen atom. If you go back to the source, there’s no time and there’s no space. Therefore, everything that’s going on is an optical illusion. It doesn’t exist. But as long as your mind identifies with conditions, it appears as if you’re going through time and space.

But as you go deeper within yourself, by practicing self-inquiry, you get to the Source. And the Source is ultimate Oneness. There is no duality in the Source.

That’s why when you become the Source, or the Self, you become the Universe. In other words, the universe is superimposed on you as consciousness.

It doesn’t exist. It’s a superimposition on yourself and you as that self. More of a, do you see it as more of an illusion? It starts to lose its… It’s not really understanding.

As you progress, as you say, in knowing, everything comes together. Everything becomes you. It’s like watching a movie. You do not see the screen. You see the images. You believe the images are real. But when the movie is over, there’s the screen and the images are gone. So it is with the self. The images of the world, of the universe, come closer and closer to you. You realize they are simply images on the screen of life. If you try to grab them, you grab consciousness, which is none other than yourself.

Therefore, the self alone is real, and everything else is a mirage, or a superimposition on the self. You just don’t seem to appear in duration. They’re just like there, there’s no duration. They were never born and they never died. It’s like a dream. When you dream, there’s no duration.

The dream just begins anywhere and ends when you wake up. And so it is in this dream of life. It just appears. There never was a beginning. Everything appears like a dream.

That’s why you have the inevitable question, what came first, the tree or the seed? The chicken or the egg? Nobody knows because nothing came first.

Everything just appeared. No dimension whatsoever. Consciousness has no beginning and no end. It can be the size of a dot or the size of a universe. It depends how you perceive it. But it’s neither.

It is neither a thought nor is the universe. It just is itself. It is absolute reality. Pure awareness. There is nothing that you can comprehend by words.

It cannot be explained. It cannot be spoken of. For the finite can never understand the infinite. It is only something that you experience. Because you are that. When you speak of size, that is the mind at work. when the mind is transcended a source like that did not come size, dimension, shape those things have to do with the mind what is the usefulness of meditating on the heart on the right side of the chest?

It’s a procedure it’s a sadhana what it does it causes the mind to become quiescent, still when the mind is still then there is a void emptiness and the guru within yourself pushes you forward and you become the self you awaken it begins by going into the center of your heart the spiritual center, the right side of the chest that’s the beginning stage that’s the spiritual practice besides that it has no significance yes The individual self is only a thought, an idea. It is called the I. It emanates out of the heart center. When the I comes out of the heart center, it goes up to the brain. Once the I merges with the brain, a mind is created. And in the mind, the I identifies with the world and the universe. I am a man. I am a woman. I am strong, I am weak, I am happy, I am sad, and so forth.

This causes suffering. To get rid of suffering, you trace back the eye to its origin, to the spiritual center. When the eye goes back to the spiritual center, you automatically see yourself as the self. Your individuality disappears, and you become free. the thought is I am the body it never did it appears to have all these things are appearances nothing ever happened and most people can’t understand this therefore you explain that I just did that’s why I always go back to the mirage when you’re walking in the desert you see water and you believe the water is real it fools you that’s like most of us we believe things are real it fools us so we react in the desert you react by running to get the water but when you pick it up you have sand the next time you pass by you’re not going to be fooled you will laugh and you will say ah, that’s not water, that’s a mirage

And so it is with life. As you go through the vicissitudes of life, you’re fooled over and over again until the day comes when you say, uh-uh, you can’t fool me any longer and you stop reacting. At that time you become free.

Therefore, all of these practices are to bring you to that point where you realize the universe, including God, realization, liberation, bondage, sadhana they are all part of the mirage.

None of those things exist. As long as we believe I am the body then they do exist and we have to act accordingly. We consequently practice sadhana to remove the idea that I am the body. surrendering to a so-called God or whatever.

I mean, whoever is surrendering for whatever I’m surrendering to, either in fear or in revenge or anger or whatever, again, I’m surrendering to something that I’m making up, another idea I’m making up. Yes, but you are stuck in a worse illusion. You’re therefore using the mind to give it all up and when you give it all up your mind becomes clearer your mind becomes quieter it becomes emptier and you’re able to focus and concentrate on your spiritual practice whereas before you were not able to do that it makes you free it is true, it’s just another message another way of getting there but it’s a good way it’s better than staying angry or being upset and not knowing what it’s all about when you can just empty yourself out and give it all away and say something like take it God I give it to you, I’m free it gives you the freedom to go further what if you find that difficult to do?

Well you can become the witness to your thoughts observe your mind in action but not react to it Or you may ask yourself, to whom is this difficult?

In real life, it’s only difficult to your ego, not to you. For me, and the universe that I create moment by moment, surrounding the me, I guess if I hold on to that and see the unity of it all, it seems like maybe at some point it might burst, but I don’t know what is the catalyst to help it to burst do not be concerned about those things it just bursts everything takes care of itself and then after the burst there is nothing as far as you know forget about anything bursting simply do the practice and then it takes care of itself it will lead you it will show you the way I like to call it the current that knows the way it will bring you home do not be too technical do not be too analytical make it very simple simplify everything be my guest forget about time do not think of the world too much but do your practice whatever practice you have to do and let the results they give themselves well give it all away give it all away give it away how can I if I’m creating it all with my mom because you’re saying take this God I don’t want this creation any longer and be free of the whole thing who is this God the one that’s your body who is your body body or buddy Body.

What? Your body. My body is my God? Your body is the same substance that God is made out of. To surrender to my body? Surrender to your God-like body. Same thing. God is your body.

In other words, there’s only one. So if you believe you are a body, that’s also a God. It’s the universe. It’s karma. It’s reincarnation. It’s everything. It’s all attached to your body.

So if you believe you are the body, then surrender everything to God and be free. I read somewhere it says the obstacle to reality is thought. And so thought is like is my ego and my so-called religious self that just thinks about with fears and just me, you know, it’s not right out there for me, which makes me everything that I don’t want to be or everything I don’t want to feel. So not to, not, to not, I mean, to not think is just, you know, I mean, it happens occasionally. So the best I can do is look at it. Keep working on yourself. idea again of everything being predetermined and karma and free choice as long as you believe predetermination and free choice seem to be in conflict as long as you believe you are the body the only free choice you have is to turn within and realize you are not the body and you are not the world everything else is predetermined The free choice you have is not to react to anything.

Everything that happens to you besides that is predetermined. Otherwise you’d be an automaton. You’d be a robot. So you have the free choice not to accept your condition.

Not to accept your bondage. Free each other and whether or not you can make that choice? Not usually. You have the freedom to turn with them. And to become totally free. To wake up. Because you are already determined to be God, you are already realized.

Therefore, you have that freedom. Because you’re not really you. Let’s become a soul now and go deep within ourselves. Let’s close our eyes. Watch your breath.

Ask yourself, who is watching the breath? What’s your respiration? As you inhale, say, who am I? Before you exhale, say consciousness. And with your exhalation, say, I am not the body. Am I, you inhale. Before you exhale, I am consciousness. As you exhale, I am not a body.