About a week ago I posted a Robert Adams dialogue in which he explained self-enquiry. Since it was very well received, here is another, with the added bonus of some extra stories about his experiences at Ramanasramam.
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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 on 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, Ananda Mayi 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. There were about thirty people in the room. He looked at me and asked me if I’d eaten breakfast. I said, ‘No’. He spoke some Tamil to the attendant and the attendant came back with two giant leaves, one with fruit and one with some porridge with pepper. After I had consumed the food, I just lay down on the floor. I was very tired.
It was time for his usual walk. He had arthritis in the legs and could hardly walk at that time. After his attendants had helped him to get up, he walked out the door. When he was outside he said something to his attendants, and his attendants motioned for me to come. He guided me to a little shack that I was going to use while I stayed there. He came inside with me, and I bet you think we spoke about profound subjects. On the contrary, he was a natural man. He was the Self of the universe. He asked me how my trip was, where I was from, what made me come here. Then he said I should rest, so I lay down on the cot and he left.
I was awakened about 5 o’clock. It was Ramana again. He came by himself and he brought me food. Can you imagine that? We spoke briefly; I ate and I slept. The next morning I went into the hall. After the morning chanting there was breakfast, and everybody sat around just watching Ramana as he went through his routine. He would go through the mail and read it out loud, talk to some of his devotees. I just observed everything. His composure never changed. Never did I see such compassion, such love.
Then people started to come over to him, asking him questions. His replies were very succinct. They weren’t like you read in a book. Apparently, what you read in a book is his reply to three or four people. They condense it all into one question and answer. But people usually asked a question or made a statement. If he agreed, he would nod or say, ‘Yes. That’s it’. If he didn’t, he would offer an explanation in maybe one or two sentences.
There were foreigners at the ashram when I was there, Muslims, Catholic priests, people from all races and all nationalities. The devotees would sit around and say nothing, but the seekers and disciples would ask questions. After I had been there a week or so, two of his disciples were sort of jokingly arguing with him about something in Tamil. I asked the interpreter what they were talking about.
He said, ‘Ramana’s couch is covered with lice, and he refuses to let us kill them. They climb over his body and his legs and he doesn’t care. He even feeds them. We want to exterminate all the bugs on the couch, but he won’t let us.’
So, the next day they tricked him. When he went outside for his morning walk, they sprayed his couch with DDT.
When he came back, he smelled the couch. He smiled and jokingly said, ‘Someone has tricked me’.
He never got angry, never got mad. I don’t think he knew what the words meant.
A couple of weeks later a German lady came to the ashram. Apparently, she had made a donation of some kind, but she wasn’t happy for some reason. She was complaining to Ramana, but he just kept silent.
I asked the interpreter, ‘What does she want?’
The interpreter said, ‘She wants her donation back. She wants to go home, back to Germany.’
So she started to argue. Everything was going on in front of Ramana. She started to argue with one of the managers of the ashram and Ramana just looked.
Then Ramana said in English, ‘Give her back her donation and add fifty rupees to it,’ which they did, and she left.
This was his nature. He never saw anything wrong. He never took anyone out of his love. No matter what they did, who they were, where their ego was, he understood. He loved everyone just the same.
Six months prior to his leaving his body, I went to Bangalore to see Papa Ramdas. While I was there, I was informed that he [Bhagavan] had left his body. I went back to Tiruvannamalai. The crowds had already started to come, thousands and thousands of people. So, I climbed the hill and went into one of the caves. I stayed there for five days. When I came down, the crowds had dispersed. Ramana had already been interred.
I enquired of the devotee who saw him last, ‘What were the last words he spoke?’
The devotee said, ‘While he was leaving his body a peacock flew on top of the hall and started screeching. Ramana remarked to his devotee, ‘Has anyone fed the peacock yet?’ Those were the last words he spoke.
Now, let’s talk about you. Think of the problems you believe you have. Think of the nonsense that you go on with everyday. Think how furious you become, how you always want to stick up for your rights, as if you had any. The problem is, you think. If you would only stop thinking.
You say, ‘How can I function if I stop thinking?’
Very well, thank you! As a matter of fact 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.
What Ramana taught was not new. Ramana simply taught the Upanishads. ‘Who am I?’ has been around since time immemorial. If a teacher always tells you he has something new to teach you, be careful, because there’s nothing new under the sun. Ramana simply revised the ‘Who am I’ philosophy and made it simple for people in the twentieth century. But what did he teach? He simply taught that you are not the body-mind principle. He simply taught that if you have a problem, do not feel sorry for yourself, do not go to psychiatrists, do not condemn yourself. Simply ask yourself, ‘To whom does this problem come?’ And of course the answer will be, ‘The problem comes to me’. Hold onto the ‘me’. Follow the ‘me’ to the source, the substratum of all existence.
How do you do that? How do you hold onto ‘me’? How do you hold onto ‘I’? By simply asking yourself, ‘Who am I? What am I?’ It’s the same thing. Ask yourself again and again, ‘Who am I?’
Forget about time. Forget about space. Forget everything. Keep yourself from thinking. When the thoughts come, ask yourself, ‘To whom comes the thoughts?’
Again, ‘They come to me.’ Hold onto the ‘me’. ‘I think these thoughts. Well then, Who am I? Who thinks these thoughts? Who am I?’
An easier way to do this I have found is to simply say to yourself, ‘I-I, I-I,’ and you will notice as you do this, the I-I goes deeper, deeper, deeper within you into your Heart centre, right to the source. For westerners I have found that saying ‘I-I’ seems to be more helpful than ‘Who am I?’ Again, do not look at time. Do not ask yourself, ‘When is something going to happen?’
A devotee went to Ramana and said, ‘I’ve been with you for twenty-five years, doing “Who am I?” and nothing has happened yet,’ so Ramana said, ‘Try it another twenty-five and see what happens’.
Forget about time. Forget about when something is going to happen. Even if nothing happens in this life, you are ahead of the game, for, if you’ve been sincere, and if you’ve really been working on yourself, you will come back to an environment that is conducive for your realisation, and at that time you may have realisation when you’re about twelve or thirteen years old, because you’ve earned it.
But if you’re like most people and go around minding everybody’s business and saying, ‘I have no time to do this. I’ve tried it for two hours and it doesn’t work,’ then you will keep coming back again, and again, and again, going through all kinds of experiences, until one day, maybe 10,000 years from now you may actually get it and start working on yourself diligently; what you should be doing now.
What do you do with yourself all day long? Think. From the moment you get out of bed, how does your day go? Do you think of God at all? Do you practise or do you think about your affairs and your body? Be honest with yourself. If you’re not making any headway in spiritual life, it’s because you’re not putting anything into it. You have to realise that whatever you see in the world is only a reflection of yourself. If people are mean to you, if they abuse you, it is because you’re seeing yourself as those people. In other words, you’ve got those qualities.
Remember the story of Ramana and the German lady, the one he returned the donation to, plus some extra money?
The following afternoon a devotee asked him, ‘Bhagavan, why did you do that?’ and Ramana explained, ‘When she gave us a donation, to whom do you think she gave it? She gave it to herself, for there’s only one Self. When she took it back, she took it away from herself. When she goes back to Germany, I’m sure she’ll have financial problems until she learns that anything you give is only giving to yourself, for there’s not two or three or four selves, there’s only one Self.’
This includes everything you do in your life, the way you look at another person. Whatever you see, you’re simply seeing yourself.
This is why the only thing I can do for you is to love you, because I love myself and you are myself. When I say ‘I love myself’, I am not referring to Robert. When I use the word ‘Self’ I am referring to infinity, to omnipresence. It includes everything in this universe. So when I love myself, I am obviously loving everyone and everything that exists. I also realise that everything that exists is a projection of my own mind, so I do not identify with the images. I identify with the source, with consciousness, with absolute reality, with ultimate oneness, with nirvana, with emptiness. While I’m talking to you, I realise I’m talking to myself because again there is only one Self. If you can only remember that in your dealings with others, whichever way you deal with anyone else, you’re doing it to yourself. Can you see now why a person like Ramana could never hate anyone or be angry? It wasn’t in his nature.
How do you react to life? When a person displeases you, what do you do? Curse him or her, become angry or violent? How do you handle it? How do you react? Be honest with yourself. It’s the only way. Start from where you are. No human being is perfect. We all make mistakes. Do not feel sorry for yourself, but start from where you are. Where are you? You are consciousness. This is your true nature. Learn to love everything. Learn to see only the good. Realise there’s a reason for everything. If a person displeases you, simply look the other way and forget it. Learn to stop your mind from thinking. You do this by immediately catching yourself when you react to a condition, and enquiring within yourself, ‘Who is becoming angry? Who feels out of sorts?’ ‘I do. “I”.’
Realise you’re dealing with the personal ‘I’, and that all the anger, all the frustration, all the karma, all the samskaras are all attached to that personal ‘I’. Consequently, when you get rid of the personal ‘I’, everything else will go with it. So, don’t try to solve your problems. Do not try to become a better person. Do not try to run away from your life. Simply see who it is who is running, who it is who needs to be a better person. Who has all these problems? ‘I’, ‘I’, always ‘I’. Hold onto that ‘I’ with all of your might, but do not concentrate on the ‘I’. You concentrate on the source of it, which is consciousness, God.
Everybody asks me, over and over again, ‘How do I hold onto the “I”?’
By asking, ‘Who am I?’ or just saying, ‘I-I, I-I, I-I.’ Automatically you will notice the ‘I’ going deeper, and deeper, and deeper and deeper within your Heart, and one day you will become free. But you’re already free. Why not wake up right now? Why go through anything? Everybody is different.
If this appears too difficult for you, if vichara appears hard, then your next best bet is to surrender completely to God. Surrender everything, your problems, your ego, your body, your mind, your work, your world.
Say, ‘Here, God, take it, I want no more of this. I am yours. Do with me as you will. Thy will be done.’
This means you no longer have anything to worry about. If you truly surrender, you will immediately become radiantly happy, for you have given your ego to God. And what’s left is God. You have no body. You have no mind. You have no work. You have no problems. It has been your ego all the time fooling you, making you believe that something is wrong, and you’ve been playing hide and seek, trying to find God here, there and everywhere, when all the time God was within yourself as yourself.
Begin to see the truth. Begin to stand up tall. Become fearless. Become strong. Leave the world alone. It’ll take care of itself. There is a mysterious power that guides the world to its right destiny. It doesn’t need any help from you. If you’re meant to do certain work in the world, it will be done, but you have nothing to do with that. It doesn’t mean that you have to leave your job, or go sit in a cave, or give up your life. Wherever you are, right now is where you’re supposed to be. Just feel, ‘I am not the doer’ and your work will go on. Do not be attached to your work. Do not react to any situation or any condition. Be yourself. Focus your attention on consciousness, and your body will go on doing whatever it came here to do. Everything is preordained. Even when I raise my finger like this, it is preordained. Do not be egotistical and believe that you have any power over everybody or anybody, or that you are the doer. It’s a privilege to have been born on this earth, and the reason you have been born is to find your real Self. Go for it, do it, and become free.
I don’t know why I talk so much. It doesn’t do you any good. I always want to sit in silence, but sometimes we have some new people and they do not understand the silence yet, so I keep on chatting. I wonder if I know what I’m talking about. It doesn’t matter anyway. Any questions?
Question: What is the relationship between effort and realisation, since only the ego is doing this effort. How can the ego doing this effort... ?
Robert: What you call ‘effort’ has been preordained.
Question: Self-enquiry is the ego doing effort?
Robert: Self-enquiry is the ego trying to find itself as the Self, so the effort is brought on through your karma so that you may become Self-realised. It is a privilege to have been able to find in this life the method of self-enquiry. Therefore, it’s been predestined that you should make the effort to find yourself.
Question: Since God or realisation is something that really is like an effortless presence, how could it be ... ?
Robert: When you get on the path correctly, after awhile it becomes effortless. In the beginning there seems to be a little effort you have to take, because you’re breaking away from your old patterns, and as you continue it becomes effortless, easier and easier. It becomes a pleasure. It becomes a joy and you’re always doing it, effortlessly, so the effort is only the beginning stages. It’s not really effort, but when you break into a new habit, the old wants to still stay there and take over. So you still have to push it out as you enquire, ‘To whom does it come? Who feels miserable?’
And as you keep practising and practising it becomes effortless, and pretty soon you do not have to do anything. It just happens by itself. You become happier and happier, more peaceful, and your life becomes a joy to others and to yourself.
Question: I’m confusing the false ‘I’ with the true ‘I’.
Robert: There is only one ‘I’, but for the sake of conversation we say there is a personal ‘I’ which is your ego. The only confusion is your identifying with the personal ‘I’ instead of the real ‘‘I. The real ‘I’ is absolute reality, pure intelligence, Parabrahman, sat-chit-ananda. That is the real ‘I’, and you have a choice.
That choice is: ‘With whom am “I” going to identify?’
Identify with yourself, with consciousness, and there will be no question of two ‘I’s. But again, when you begin, it is your ego ‘I’ that you’re working with. ‘Who am I?’ means the ego. Who is this ego? Where did it come from? Who gave it birth? Why does it exist?
Eventually you will realise, ‘Why, I gave it birth by believing in it. I created my ego myself. I did all this.’
Then it begins to change. The personal ‘I’ becomes weaker and consciousness becomes stronger until the personal ‘I’ disappears altogether and you become free. So, do not keep identifying with the personal ‘I’. Hold on to it. Follow it by asking, ‘What is “I”? Who am I?’
All levels and all teachings are an emanation of the mind, for there has to be someone to experience those levels. Vichara, or self-enquiry, goes right to the heart of the matter. It bypasses every system, negates every system, and awakens you immediately. The mind, as ‘I,’ gives you the problem. When the mind, as ‘I,’ goes, everything else goes with it: all of your past teachings, the world, the universe, God, reincarnation, karma. You become free of the whole mess, and you awaken.
So again, every system is a projection of the mind. In these systems you have to be present to do the work, whereas in this teaching we get rid of the ‘you’ that does the work. So, if the ‘you’ is gone, there’s no work to be done. In other words, who has to meditate? I do. There has to be somebody present for you to meditate. Instead of meditating, ask yourself, ‘Who meditates?’ and the answer will be, ‘I do.’ Then ‘Who am I?’
The lights will come on and you’ll be free. Once the ‘I’ goes there is nobody left to do any spiritual work, for you become consciousness. You become absolute reality, omnipresent, infinite.
Question: So you’re saying these are progressive systems?
Robert: These are progressive systems, and I suppose most people need these things. They’re good. There’s nothing wrong with these things, but the direct path is vichara. You bypass everything.
Question: In the case of the man who spent twenty-five years with Ramana, who isn’t understanding, is he not going through stages?
Robert: On the contrary, he is just there. He’s at peace with himself, and when the time is right for him, he’ll awaken. There are no stages to go through as long as he’s present.
Question: That brings up this question then. If someone comes in here and they never heard this teaching before and they start practising, the first thing they have to do is to recognise that they have a mind and to recognise the storm within. And when they recognise that, then they have a herd of horses within, a stampede. So for a while, for atma vichara and ‘Who am I?’ to work, they have to slow down that stampede by working through a system. So that’s a progressive stage in a way, because there are emotions involved and feelings and sensations that come up. And all of this, for a person to cut through this and to evolve, they must work on those levels.
Robert: How do you know?
Question: Because I’ve been through it.
Robert: Does that mean everybody goes through it?
Question: Well, looking at the average human being, I would say ‘Absolutely’.
Robert: There are some people who just awaken. There are some people who go through stages. There are some people who do a lot of work. There are some people who practise meditation and mantras all day long. There are some people who do nothing and they awaken.
Question: Yes, but the people like that are very few, like Ramana. Ramana was an exception.
Robert: Well, then learn how to do it and become like Ramana. Practise what Ramana practised, and you too can be an exception. Why should you identify with the other? Identify with Ramana’s practice. He said the same thing. Why go through the trouble to go through yoga practices? You’ll come back life after life after life and keep practicing yoga. Find out who’s practising and become free.
Doesn’t that sound reasonable? All you have to do is to find out who’s practising. Who needs to do all these things? I do. Well, ‘Who am I? Where did I come from?’ ‘I-I’. Get rid of that ‘I’ and you’re home free.
Question: What about the identification with the body? I’m confusing the body with thought.
Robert: What about it?
Question: Identification. When there’s pain in the body, you’re just involved in the pain, not the reality.
Robert: The reality is not the pain. The body is in pain, but you are not the body. So, if you stick to your true Self, you will hardly feel the pain. Let the body take care of itself. Do not concern yourself with the body. The body will still eat, it will still go to the bathroom, it will still take a shower, it will still take care of itself, but you have absolutely nothing to do with it. You are not the body, so why identify with the pain. Identify with consciousness, with the Self, and then see what happens.
This is why, when people like Ramana and Ramakrishna were dying, especially Ramakrishna, he literally wasted away, and they used to tell him the same thing they did Ramana: ‘Master, heal yourself. We have seen you heal others. Heal yourself.’
And the answer would always be the same, ‘You foolish people, what do you see? Who sees a sick body? There is nobody to be sick. What are you looking at? Change your identification. See the truth.’
That’s why Jesus was able to say, ‘I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,’ for he realised he was consciousness, not the body, not what appears to be real. Everything that most of you are looking at right now is an appearance. It is not the truth. There is another world of reality where there is only perfection, love, bliss, joy. With whom are you identifying? The choice is yours.
Question: The ‘I’ seems to be such a deeply ingrained habit. It seems like the primary addiction. It seems like all other addictions come out of the addiction of ‘I’. The ego addiction is the primary addiction. That’s the problem: it’s so addictive.
Robert: Indeed. Correct. As you keep referring back to yourself and saying, ‘Who am I?’ the ‘I’ becomes weaker and weaker and weaker. Eventually it has to disappear, and then you’re free.
Question: It’s funny that sometimes I feel a little loosened up, abiding, and at other times it’s all forgotten, and it’s back to the ego again.
Robert: That’s how it appears to work, but as you continue practising and practising and practising, the day will come when you’re home free. That’s why I said, do not look at time, even if it takes more than a lifetime. You’re still ahead of the person going bowling.
Question: Even when you see the thoughts moving and you see how identified you are, it’s almost like the ego enjoys this. It enjoys resisting the peace, silence and intelligence. It’s so used to this, it seems to like its own suffering.
Robert: Are you talking from the standpoint of the ego or the Self?
Question: From the ego.
Robert: So ask yourself, ‘Who’s going through all this? Who’s suffering? To whom does it come?’ Identify with the source, not with the ego. Do not go into all the details of what the ego does. Go into the details of what the Self is, pure intelligence, absolute awareness, sat-chit-ananda, Parabrahman. Speak of those things, and let the ego take care of itself.
Question: The ego doesn’t seem to want all that.
Robert: No, you don’t want all that because you refuse to identify with those higher things. You keep talking about the ego over and over again as if it were a power. It doesn’t even exist. It’s a non-entity.
Question: I guess I’m possessed.
Robert: You’re possessed by God, You can never get away from God, no matter how hard you try.
Question: I’ve been trying with all my might.
Robert: Maybe that’s the problem. Just observe and watch. Stop trying. Watch your mind in action. Observe your thoughts, become the witness, and then you’ll say, ‘Ah, look what’s happening to me. Am I that? Of course not.’ Then it will become easier for you.
Question: It’s really embarrassing to watch my mind, because you feel like you should be committed to a mental institution. It’s total nonsense, total craziness.
Robert: Again, to whom is it embarrassing? It’s embarrassing to the ego. The ego watches, the ego’s embarrassed, and the ego fights back, but you do not react to it. Do not react. Watch, observe and ask the question, ‘To whom does it come?’ That’s all you’ve got to do, and everything else will take care of itself.
Question: Watching it breaks the identification?
Robert: Observing.
Question: It’s funny, when you start to forget to observe, you melt into the identification of it so easily. You melt into the identification with the ego. That’s what is wonderful about enquiry, that it breaks it.
Robert: Don’t get caught up in too many details. Make it simple, very simple. The simpler the better.
Question: I think part of the problem is, speaking for myself of course, is that I don’t believe it will happen. I feel it happens just to a favored few, like Jesus, Buddha or yourself. What’s the sense of trying it if it’s not going to happen?
Robert: Well, if you don’t feel it’s going to happen, what can you do? Go see a movie. You’ve got to realise you are greater than you think, and you’ve got the same power within you as everybody else does. It may appear to be asleep, but as you work on yourself, work on yourself, work on yourself, you will awaken it, and one day it will become stronger than you are and take you over completely and you’ll be free. But you’ve got to keep on working on yourself, and stop putting yourself down. The worst thing you can do is put yourself down. That’s blasphemy because you’re putting God down. Think of yourself as a higher person, love yourself, worship yourself, bow to yourself. You are greater than you think.
Question: Robert, at first when you were speaking to Bob, you said to make things simple and follow self-enquiry of ‘Who am I?’, and at the same time you said, ‘Don’t make it like a mantra’. If you keep saying ‘I-I’ or ‘Who am I?, I am me,’ you get caught in a circular answer and question thing. You said not to make it like a mantra.
Robert: ‘Who am I?’ is never a mantra. You simply observe yourself, ask yourself the question, ‘To whom do these things come? To me,’ then say ‘Who am I?’ or ‘I-I’, ‘I-I.’ It’s not a mantra. As you keep doing it to yourself, you will awaken.
Question: Even if I do the question and answer, even though I come into a circle of three questions with three answers, and I kept going around and around, it’s not a mantra?
Robert: No it’s not. But you can ask yourself, ‘To whom do these things come? To whom do the three questions come?’ There has to be a person to experience the three questions. Get rid of that person and you’ll be free.
Question: Would I be breaking self-enquiry if I got rid of the me with, ‘To whom to these questions come? They come to me.’
Robert: Self-enquiry is only for the ego.
Question: I’m like Bob then. I’ve got a big ego.
Robert: Keep practising. Keep practising and you’ll break it down.
Question: Robert, you said, when you ask yourself the question, you don’t answer because when you answer, that just comes from the mind. When you ask, ‘Who am I?’ just rest, don’t question.
Is consciousness observing the self-enquiry?
Robert: Consciousness is self-contained. It has nothing to do with self-enquiry. Only the ego does.
Question: Then why do we have to do self-enquiry?
Robert: Because you have to use the ego to get rid of the ego.
Question: So consciousness is noticing all of the self-enquiry then?
Robert: It doesn’t notice anything. As you practice self-enquiry, your mind will disappear and your true Self will come forth all by itself.
Question: Isn’t our true Self here now?
Robert: Yes, you will awaken to it, but you don’t believe it is, so you must practice self-enquiry.
Question: How do you trace it to the heart, when you say that with self-enquiry you trace it to the heart?
Robert: Another term for the heart is consciousness, so the heart is really consciousness. You simply enquire, ‘Who am I?’ It takes care of itself. The ‘I’ becomes weaker and weaker and disappears.
Question: Your attention then should always be focused on the source. When you hold onto the ‘I’, that’s just a way of focusing attention on the source from whence the ‘I’ arises.
Robert: Yes, when I say hold onto the ‘I’, I mean you’re witnessing the ‘I’. You’re watching where it goes. From whence it came from and where it goes back to.
Question: When you say that consciousness or God dwells in you as you, that ‘as you’ is not referring then to the ego?
Robert: No, it’s referring to consciousness.
Question: It’s redundant really.
Robert: Yes. Consciousness is your true existence and nothing else. Everything else we talk about, everything else we do is to make you realise that your true nature is consciousness. Then everything becomes redundant, but we have to talk like this because you believe you’re human. You believe you’re the body. When will you stop believing that?
Question: Robert, if a person believes that they’re happy in this alleged consciousness that we all possibly share, I mean your students, is that the same thing? Being in love with nature as being in love with life. Is that about on the same level in your eyes as...
Robert: All of these things that you’re referring to are a projection of your mind. You create your universe, and you create your world, and you create the trees and the birds and everything else. So get rid of your mind and everything else will go.
Question: There won’t be any trees?
Robert: You’ll be the tree. You’ll be everything you like.
Question: So then it’s really the ego that has all the beauty.
Robert: You can say that, yes. You bring fresh flowers into your room and then they die in a couple of days. So how can that be real ultimately? Everything you fall in love with gets old and dies. So how can you say that’s real? Contact reality and you will always be happy.
It was time for his usual walk. He had arthritis in the legs and could hardly walk at that time. After his attendants had helped him to get up, he walked out the door. When he was outside he said something to his attendants, and his attendants motioned for me to come. He guided me to a little shack that I was going to use while I stayed there. He came inside with me, and I bet you think we spoke about profound subjects. On the contrary, he was a natural man. He was the Self of the universe. He asked me how my trip was, where I was from, what made me come here. Then he said I should rest, so I lay down on the cot and he left.
I was awakened about 5 o’clock. It was Ramana again. He came by himself and he brought me food. Can you imagine that? We spoke briefly; I ate and I slept. The next morning I went into the hall. After the morning chanting there was breakfast, and everybody sat around just watching Ramana as he went through his routine. He would go through the mail and read it out loud, talk to some of his devotees. I just observed everything. His composure never changed. Never did I see such compassion, such love.
Then people started to come over to him, asking him questions. His replies were very succinct. They weren’t like you read in a book. Apparently, what you read in a book is his reply to three or four people. They condense it all into one question and answer. But people usually asked a question or made a statement. If he agreed, he would nod or say, ‘Yes. That’s it’. If he didn’t, he would offer an explanation in maybe one or two sentences.
There were foreigners at the ashram when I was there, Muslims, Catholic priests, people from all races and all nationalities. The devotees would sit around and say nothing, but the seekers and disciples would ask questions. After I had been there a week or so, two of his disciples were sort of jokingly arguing with him about something in Tamil. I asked the interpreter what they were talking about.
He said, ‘Ramana’s couch is covered with lice, and he refuses to let us kill them. They climb over his body and his legs and he doesn’t care. He even feeds them. We want to exterminate all the bugs on the couch, but he won’t let us.’
So, the next day they tricked him. When he went outside for his morning walk, they sprayed his couch with DDT.
When he came back, he smelled the couch. He smiled and jokingly said, ‘Someone has tricked me’.
He never got angry, never got mad. I don’t think he knew what the words meant.
A couple of weeks later a German lady came to the ashram. Apparently, she had made a donation of some kind, but she wasn’t happy for some reason. She was complaining to Ramana, but he just kept silent.
I asked the interpreter, ‘What does she want?’
The interpreter said, ‘She wants her donation back. She wants to go home, back to Germany.’
So she started to argue. Everything was going on in front of Ramana. She started to argue with one of the managers of the ashram and Ramana just looked.
Then Ramana said in English, ‘Give her back her donation and add fifty rupees to it,’ which they did, and she left.
This was his nature. He never saw anything wrong. He never took anyone out of his love. No matter what they did, who they were, where their ego was, he understood. He loved everyone just the same.
Six months prior to his leaving his body, I went to Bangalore to see Papa Ramdas. While I was there, I was informed that he [Bhagavan] had left his body. I went back to Tiruvannamalai. The crowds had already started to come, thousands and thousands of people. So, I climbed the hill and went into one of the caves. I stayed there for five days. When I came down, the crowds had dispersed. Ramana had already been interred.
I enquired of the devotee who saw him last, ‘What were the last words he spoke?’
The devotee said, ‘While he was leaving his body a peacock flew on top of the hall and started screeching. Ramana remarked to his devotee, ‘Has anyone fed the peacock yet?’ Those were the last words he spoke.
Now, let’s talk about you. Think of the problems you believe you have. Think of the nonsense that you go on with everyday. Think how furious you become, how you always want to stick up for your rights, as if you had any. The problem is, you think. If you would only stop thinking.
You say, ‘How can I function if I stop thinking?’
Very well, thank you! As a matter of fact 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.
What Ramana taught was not new. Ramana simply taught the Upanishads. ‘Who am I?’ has been around since time immemorial. If a teacher always tells you he has something new to teach you, be careful, because there’s nothing new under the sun. Ramana simply revised the ‘Who am I’ philosophy and made it simple for people in the twentieth century. But what did he teach? He simply taught that you are not the body-mind principle. He simply taught that if you have a problem, do not feel sorry for yourself, do not go to psychiatrists, do not condemn yourself. Simply ask yourself, ‘To whom does this problem come?’ And of course the answer will be, ‘The problem comes to me’. Hold onto the ‘me’. Follow the ‘me’ to the source, the substratum of all existence.
How do you do that? How do you hold onto ‘me’? How do you hold onto ‘I’? By simply asking yourself, ‘Who am I? What am I?’ It’s the same thing. Ask yourself again and again, ‘Who am I?’
Forget about time. Forget about space. Forget everything. Keep yourself from thinking. When the thoughts come, ask yourself, ‘To whom comes the thoughts?’
Again, ‘They come to me.’ Hold onto the ‘me’. ‘I think these thoughts. Well then, Who am I? Who thinks these thoughts? Who am I?’
An easier way to do this I have found is to simply say to yourself, ‘I-I, I-I,’ and you will notice as you do this, the I-I goes deeper, deeper, deeper within you into your Heart centre, right to the source. For westerners I have found that saying ‘I-I’ seems to be more helpful than ‘Who am I?’ Again, do not look at time. Do not ask yourself, ‘When is something going to happen?’
A devotee went to Ramana and said, ‘I’ve been with you for twenty-five years, doing “Who am I?” and nothing has happened yet,’ so Ramana said, ‘Try it another twenty-five and see what happens’.
Forget about time. Forget about when something is going to happen. Even if nothing happens in this life, you are ahead of the game, for, if you’ve been sincere, and if you’ve really been working on yourself, you will come back to an environment that is conducive for your realisation, and at that time you may have realisation when you’re about twelve or thirteen years old, because you’ve earned it.
But if you’re like most people and go around minding everybody’s business and saying, ‘I have no time to do this. I’ve tried it for two hours and it doesn’t work,’ then you will keep coming back again, and again, and again, going through all kinds of experiences, until one day, maybe 10,000 years from now you may actually get it and start working on yourself diligently; what you should be doing now.
What do you do with yourself all day long? Think. From the moment you get out of bed, how does your day go? Do you think of God at all? Do you practise or do you think about your affairs and your body? Be honest with yourself. If you’re not making any headway in spiritual life, it’s because you’re not putting anything into it. You have to realise that whatever you see in the world is only a reflection of yourself. If people are mean to you, if they abuse you, it is because you’re seeing yourself as those people. In other words, you’ve got those qualities.
Remember the story of Ramana and the German lady, the one he returned the donation to, plus some extra money?
The following afternoon a devotee asked him, ‘Bhagavan, why did you do that?’ and Ramana explained, ‘When she gave us a donation, to whom do you think she gave it? She gave it to herself, for there’s only one Self. When she took it back, she took it away from herself. When she goes back to Germany, I’m sure she’ll have financial problems until she learns that anything you give is only giving to yourself, for there’s not two or three or four selves, there’s only one Self.’
This includes everything you do in your life, the way you look at another person. Whatever you see, you’re simply seeing yourself.
This is why the only thing I can do for you is to love you, because I love myself and you are myself. When I say ‘I love myself’, I am not referring to Robert. When I use the word ‘Self’ I am referring to infinity, to omnipresence. It includes everything in this universe. So when I love myself, I am obviously loving everyone and everything that exists. I also realise that everything that exists is a projection of my own mind, so I do not identify with the images. I identify with the source, with consciousness, with absolute reality, with ultimate oneness, with nirvana, with emptiness. While I’m talking to you, I realise I’m talking to myself because again there is only one Self. If you can only remember that in your dealings with others, whichever way you deal with anyone else, you’re doing it to yourself. Can you see now why a person like Ramana could never hate anyone or be angry? It wasn’t in his nature.
How do you react to life? When a person displeases you, what do you do? Curse him or her, become angry or violent? How do you handle it? How do you react? Be honest with yourself. It’s the only way. Start from where you are. No human being is perfect. We all make mistakes. Do not feel sorry for yourself, but start from where you are. Where are you? You are consciousness. This is your true nature. Learn to love everything. Learn to see only the good. Realise there’s a reason for everything. If a person displeases you, simply look the other way and forget it. Learn to stop your mind from thinking. You do this by immediately catching yourself when you react to a condition, and enquiring within yourself, ‘Who is becoming angry? Who feels out of sorts?’ ‘I do. “I”.’
Realise you’re dealing with the personal ‘I’, and that all the anger, all the frustration, all the karma, all the samskaras are all attached to that personal ‘I’. Consequently, when you get rid of the personal ‘I’, everything else will go with it. So, don’t try to solve your problems. Do not try to become a better person. Do not try to run away from your life. Simply see who it is who is running, who it is who needs to be a better person. Who has all these problems? ‘I’, ‘I’, always ‘I’. Hold onto that ‘I’ with all of your might, but do not concentrate on the ‘I’. You concentrate on the source of it, which is consciousness, God.
Everybody asks me, over and over again, ‘How do I hold onto the “I”?’
By asking, ‘Who am I?’ or just saying, ‘I-I, I-I, I-I.’ Automatically you will notice the ‘I’ going deeper, and deeper, and deeper and deeper within your Heart, and one day you will become free. But you’re already free. Why not wake up right now? Why go through anything? Everybody is different.
If this appears too difficult for you, if vichara appears hard, then your next best bet is to surrender completely to God. Surrender everything, your problems, your ego, your body, your mind, your work, your world.
Say, ‘Here, God, take it, I want no more of this. I am yours. Do with me as you will. Thy will be done.’
This means you no longer have anything to worry about. If you truly surrender, you will immediately become radiantly happy, for you have given your ego to God. And what’s left is God. You have no body. You have no mind. You have no work. You have no problems. It has been your ego all the time fooling you, making you believe that something is wrong, and you’ve been playing hide and seek, trying to find God here, there and everywhere, when all the time God was within yourself as yourself.
Begin to see the truth. Begin to stand up tall. Become fearless. Become strong. Leave the world alone. It’ll take care of itself. There is a mysterious power that guides the world to its right destiny. It doesn’t need any help from you. If you’re meant to do certain work in the world, it will be done, but you have nothing to do with that. It doesn’t mean that you have to leave your job, or go sit in a cave, or give up your life. Wherever you are, right now is where you’re supposed to be. Just feel, ‘I am not the doer’ and your work will go on. Do not be attached to your work. Do not react to any situation or any condition. Be yourself. Focus your attention on consciousness, and your body will go on doing whatever it came here to do. Everything is preordained. Even when I raise my finger like this, it is preordained. Do not be egotistical and believe that you have any power over everybody or anybody, or that you are the doer. It’s a privilege to have been born on this earth, and the reason you have been born is to find your real Self. Go for it, do it, and become free.
I don’t know why I talk so much. It doesn’t do you any good. I always want to sit in silence, but sometimes we have some new people and they do not understand the silence yet, so I keep on chatting. I wonder if I know what I’m talking about. It doesn’t matter anyway. Any questions?
Question: What is the relationship between effort and realisation, since only the ego is doing this effort. How can the ego doing this effort... ?
Robert: What you call ‘effort’ has been preordained.
Question: Self-enquiry is the ego doing effort?
Robert: Self-enquiry is the ego trying to find itself as the Self, so the effort is brought on through your karma so that you may become Self-realised. It is a privilege to have been able to find in this life the method of self-enquiry. Therefore, it’s been predestined that you should make the effort to find yourself.
Question: Since God or realisation is something that really is like an effortless presence, how could it be ... ?
Robert: When you get on the path correctly, after awhile it becomes effortless. In the beginning there seems to be a little effort you have to take, because you’re breaking away from your old patterns, and as you continue it becomes effortless, easier and easier. It becomes a pleasure. It becomes a joy and you’re always doing it, effortlessly, so the effort is only the beginning stages. It’s not really effort, but when you break into a new habit, the old wants to still stay there and take over. So you still have to push it out as you enquire, ‘To whom does it come? Who feels miserable?’
And as you keep practising and practising it becomes effortless, and pretty soon you do not have to do anything. It just happens by itself. You become happier and happier, more peaceful, and your life becomes a joy to others and to yourself.
Question: I’m confusing the false ‘I’ with the true ‘I’.
Robert: There is only one ‘I’, but for the sake of conversation we say there is a personal ‘I’ which is your ego. The only confusion is your identifying with the personal ‘I’ instead of the real ‘‘I. The real ‘I’ is absolute reality, pure intelligence, Parabrahman, sat-chit-ananda. That is the real ‘I’, and you have a choice.
That choice is: ‘With whom am “I” going to identify?’
Identify with yourself, with consciousness, and there will be no question of two ‘I’s. But again, when you begin, it is your ego ‘I’ that you’re working with. ‘Who am I?’ means the ego. Who is this ego? Where did it come from? Who gave it birth? Why does it exist?
Eventually you will realise, ‘Why, I gave it birth by believing in it. I created my ego myself. I did all this.’
Then it begins to change. The personal ‘I’ becomes weaker and consciousness becomes stronger until the personal ‘I’ disappears altogether and you become free. So, do not keep identifying with the personal ‘I’. Hold on to it. Follow it by asking, ‘What is “I”? Who am I?’
All levels and all teachings are an emanation of the mind, for there has to be someone to experience those levels. Vichara, or self-enquiry, goes right to the heart of the matter. It bypasses every system, negates every system, and awakens you immediately. The mind, as ‘I,’ gives you the problem. When the mind, as ‘I,’ goes, everything else goes with it: all of your past teachings, the world, the universe, God, reincarnation, karma. You become free of the whole mess, and you awaken.
So again, every system is a projection of the mind. In these systems you have to be present to do the work, whereas in this teaching we get rid of the ‘you’ that does the work. So, if the ‘you’ is gone, there’s no work to be done. In other words, who has to meditate? I do. There has to be somebody present for you to meditate. Instead of meditating, ask yourself, ‘Who meditates?’ and the answer will be, ‘I do.’ Then ‘Who am I?’
The lights will come on and you’ll be free. Once the ‘I’ goes there is nobody left to do any spiritual work, for you become consciousness. You become absolute reality, omnipresent, infinite.
Question: So you’re saying these are progressive systems?
Robert: These are progressive systems, and I suppose most people need these things. They’re good. There’s nothing wrong with these things, but the direct path is vichara. You bypass everything.
Question: In the case of the man who spent twenty-five years with Ramana, who isn’t understanding, is he not going through stages?
Robert: On the contrary, he is just there. He’s at peace with himself, and when the time is right for him, he’ll awaken. There are no stages to go through as long as he’s present.
Question: That brings up this question then. If someone comes in here and they never heard this teaching before and they start practising, the first thing they have to do is to recognise that they have a mind and to recognise the storm within. And when they recognise that, then they have a herd of horses within, a stampede. So for a while, for atma vichara and ‘Who am I?’ to work, they have to slow down that stampede by working through a system. So that’s a progressive stage in a way, because there are emotions involved and feelings and sensations that come up. And all of this, for a person to cut through this and to evolve, they must work on those levels.
Robert: How do you know?
Question: Because I’ve been through it.
Robert: Does that mean everybody goes through it?
Question: Well, looking at the average human being, I would say ‘Absolutely’.
Robert: There are some people who just awaken. There are some people who go through stages. There are some people who do a lot of work. There are some people who practise meditation and mantras all day long. There are some people who do nothing and they awaken.
Question: Yes, but the people like that are very few, like Ramana. Ramana was an exception.
Robert: Well, then learn how to do it and become like Ramana. Practise what Ramana practised, and you too can be an exception. Why should you identify with the other? Identify with Ramana’s practice. He said the same thing. Why go through the trouble to go through yoga practices? You’ll come back life after life after life and keep practicing yoga. Find out who’s practising and become free.
Doesn’t that sound reasonable? All you have to do is to find out who’s practising. Who needs to do all these things? I do. Well, ‘Who am I? Where did I come from?’ ‘I-I’. Get rid of that ‘I’ and you’re home free.
Question: What about the identification with the body? I’m confusing the body with thought.
Robert: What about it?
Question: Identification. When there’s pain in the body, you’re just involved in the pain, not the reality.
Robert: The reality is not the pain. The body is in pain, but you are not the body. So, if you stick to your true Self, you will hardly feel the pain. Let the body take care of itself. Do not concern yourself with the body. The body will still eat, it will still go to the bathroom, it will still take a shower, it will still take care of itself, but you have absolutely nothing to do with it. You are not the body, so why identify with the pain. Identify with consciousness, with the Self, and then see what happens.
This is why, when people like Ramana and Ramakrishna were dying, especially Ramakrishna, he literally wasted away, and they used to tell him the same thing they did Ramana: ‘Master, heal yourself. We have seen you heal others. Heal yourself.’
And the answer would always be the same, ‘You foolish people, what do you see? Who sees a sick body? There is nobody to be sick. What are you looking at? Change your identification. See the truth.’
That’s why Jesus was able to say, ‘I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,’ for he realised he was consciousness, not the body, not what appears to be real. Everything that most of you are looking at right now is an appearance. It is not the truth. There is another world of reality where there is only perfection, love, bliss, joy. With whom are you identifying? The choice is yours.
Question: The ‘I’ seems to be such a deeply ingrained habit. It seems like the primary addiction. It seems like all other addictions come out of the addiction of ‘I’. The ego addiction is the primary addiction. That’s the problem: it’s so addictive.
Robert: Indeed. Correct. As you keep referring back to yourself and saying, ‘Who am I?’ the ‘I’ becomes weaker and weaker and weaker. Eventually it has to disappear, and then you’re free.
Question: It’s funny that sometimes I feel a little loosened up, abiding, and at other times it’s all forgotten, and it’s back to the ego again.
Robert: That’s how it appears to work, but as you continue practising and practising and practising, the day will come when you’re home free. That’s why I said, do not look at time, even if it takes more than a lifetime. You’re still ahead of the person going bowling.
Question: Even when you see the thoughts moving and you see how identified you are, it’s almost like the ego enjoys this. It enjoys resisting the peace, silence and intelligence. It’s so used to this, it seems to like its own suffering.
Robert: Are you talking from the standpoint of the ego or the Self?
Question: From the ego.
Robert: So ask yourself, ‘Who’s going through all this? Who’s suffering? To whom does it come?’ Identify with the source, not with the ego. Do not go into all the details of what the ego does. Go into the details of what the Self is, pure intelligence, absolute awareness, sat-chit-ananda, Parabrahman. Speak of those things, and let the ego take care of itself.
Question: The ego doesn’t seem to want all that.
Robert: No, you don’t want all that because you refuse to identify with those higher things. You keep talking about the ego over and over again as if it were a power. It doesn’t even exist. It’s a non-entity.
Question: I guess I’m possessed.
Robert: You’re possessed by God, You can never get away from God, no matter how hard you try.
Question: I’ve been trying with all my might.
Robert: Maybe that’s the problem. Just observe and watch. Stop trying. Watch your mind in action. Observe your thoughts, become the witness, and then you’ll say, ‘Ah, look what’s happening to me. Am I that? Of course not.’ Then it will become easier for you.
Question: It’s really embarrassing to watch my mind, because you feel like you should be committed to a mental institution. It’s total nonsense, total craziness.
Robert: Again, to whom is it embarrassing? It’s embarrassing to the ego. The ego watches, the ego’s embarrassed, and the ego fights back, but you do not react to it. Do not react. Watch, observe and ask the question, ‘To whom does it come?’ That’s all you’ve got to do, and everything else will take care of itself.
Question: Watching it breaks the identification?
Robert: Observing.
Question: It’s funny, when you start to forget to observe, you melt into the identification of it so easily. You melt into the identification with the ego. That’s what is wonderful about enquiry, that it breaks it.
Robert: Don’t get caught up in too many details. Make it simple, very simple. The simpler the better.
Question: I think part of the problem is, speaking for myself of course, is that I don’t believe it will happen. I feel it happens just to a favored few, like Jesus, Buddha or yourself. What’s the sense of trying it if it’s not going to happen?
Robert: Well, if you don’t feel it’s going to happen, what can you do? Go see a movie. You’ve got to realise you are greater than you think, and you’ve got the same power within you as everybody else does. It may appear to be asleep, but as you work on yourself, work on yourself, work on yourself, you will awaken it, and one day it will become stronger than you are and take you over completely and you’ll be free. But you’ve got to keep on working on yourself, and stop putting yourself down. The worst thing you can do is put yourself down. That’s blasphemy because you’re putting God down. Think of yourself as a higher person, love yourself, worship yourself, bow to yourself. You are greater than you think.
Question: Robert, at first when you were speaking to Bob, you said to make things simple and follow self-enquiry of ‘Who am I?’, and at the same time you said, ‘Don’t make it like a mantra’. If you keep saying ‘I-I’ or ‘Who am I?, I am me,’ you get caught in a circular answer and question thing. You said not to make it like a mantra.
Robert: ‘Who am I?’ is never a mantra. You simply observe yourself, ask yourself the question, ‘To whom do these things come? To me,’ then say ‘Who am I?’ or ‘I-I’, ‘I-I.’ It’s not a mantra. As you keep doing it to yourself, you will awaken.
Question: Even if I do the question and answer, even though I come into a circle of three questions with three answers, and I kept going around and around, it’s not a mantra?
Robert: No it’s not. But you can ask yourself, ‘To whom do these things come? To whom do the three questions come?’ There has to be a person to experience the three questions. Get rid of that person and you’ll be free.
Question: Would I be breaking self-enquiry if I got rid of the me with, ‘To whom to these questions come? They come to me.’
Robert: Self-enquiry is only for the ego.
Question: I’m like Bob then. I’ve got a big ego.
Robert: Keep practising. Keep practising and you’ll break it down.
Question: Robert, you said, when you ask yourself the question, you don’t answer because when you answer, that just comes from the mind. When you ask, ‘Who am I?’ just rest, don’t question.
Is consciousness observing the self-enquiry?
Robert: Consciousness is self-contained. It has nothing to do with self-enquiry. Only the ego does.
Question: Then why do we have to do self-enquiry?
Robert: Because you have to use the ego to get rid of the ego.
Question: So consciousness is noticing all of the self-enquiry then?
Robert: It doesn’t notice anything. As you practice self-enquiry, your mind will disappear and your true Self will come forth all by itself.
Question: Isn’t our true Self here now?
Robert: Yes, you will awaken to it, but you don’t believe it is, so you must practice self-enquiry.
Question: How do you trace it to the heart, when you say that with self-enquiry you trace it to the heart?
Robert: Another term for the heart is consciousness, so the heart is really consciousness. You simply enquire, ‘Who am I?’ It takes care of itself. The ‘I’ becomes weaker and weaker and disappears.
Question: Your attention then should always be focused on the source. When you hold onto the ‘I’, that’s just a way of focusing attention on the source from whence the ‘I’ arises.
Robert: Yes, when I say hold onto the ‘I’, I mean you’re witnessing the ‘I’. You’re watching where it goes. From whence it came from and where it goes back to.
Question: When you say that consciousness or God dwells in you as you, that ‘as you’ is not referring then to the ego?
Robert: No, it’s referring to consciousness.
Question: It’s redundant really.
Robert: Yes. Consciousness is your true existence and nothing else. Everything else we talk about, everything else we do is to make you realise that your true nature is consciousness. Then everything becomes redundant, but we have to talk like this because you believe you’re human. You believe you’re the body. When will you stop believing that?
Question: Robert, if a person believes that they’re happy in this alleged consciousness that we all possibly share, I mean your students, is that the same thing? Being in love with nature as being in love with life. Is that about on the same level in your eyes as...
Robert: All of these things that you’re referring to are a projection of your mind. You create your universe, and you create your world, and you create the trees and the birds and everything else. So get rid of your mind and everything else will go.
Question: There won’t be any trees?
Robert: You’ll be the tree. You’ll be everything you like.
Question: So then it’s really the ego that has all the beauty.
Robert: You can say that, yes. You bring fresh flowers into your room and then they die in a couple of days. So how can that be real ultimately? Everything you fall in love with gets old and dies. So how can you say that’s real? Contact reality and you will always be happy.
45 comments:
A wonderful account from Robert Adams .Thanks for sharing this .
Wonderful post. Robert Adams explanations cut to the chase! Its amazing how we (me included) keep asking the same questions, and people like Robert and Ramana keep answering patiently.
Also, there seems to be a mismatch between the details of Robert's visit mentioned here versus some earlier post where he seems to have seen him coming down the mountain and told I was waiting for you, Get up Get up.
Any thoughts on this inconsistency?
For communication sake I say, any one that has been with Ramana, Nisargadatta, and others that have
realized the cosmic joke of being a human, self feels if though I the prodigal son/daughter has come home for good, enough of the play, only when you`ve been away, and come back, one realized the gem of oneness, it`s like coming home after a cheap holiday, one value the small things, that one took for granted.
You are absolutely right, Anonymous, about the way we keep asking the same questions, and the answers just keep coming, from whatever source. I myself never seem to tire of hearing it again and again.
David, this post is truly excellent, even more helpful, I think, than the previous Robert Adams piece. One thing that has been coming into my mind the past two days is something that I read a couple of years ago, maybe in one of your books or on your website, but perhaps somewhere else. I have forgotten enough of it that I want to ask you about it and see if you can refresh my memory. It had to do with people who have been born into their lives with unusually active minds and who find it harder than the average person to turn the mind off and be still. There was a name for this, but I can't remember what it was. If you know what I'm talking about could you explain it here? There may not be much more than what I've said already but I recall being fascinated and would like to be reminded of any details.
David,
This is simply fantastic. The words are so direct like arrows. Thanks for posting this treasure. Especially, his emphasis on relentless practice is so pushy.
Could you clarify a few of the following?
1. This "I am the doer" idea..everyone says that we have to give up. How do you do that? Should we just keep repeating that I am the doer? How does it happen?
2. Like others, Robert too tells that after questioning "Who am I", you need to catch the I and go deeper. Why dont he use the crucial sentence "hold onto the feeling of I". I have seen that only you and Sadhu Om ever mention this sentence. Personally, I would have never understood Self Enquiry without this sentence. Imagine if someone tells "question who am I and go back to the source". What can I understand by that?
Regards Murali
If everything is projection of the mind...lets say for example the Niagara falls [even a picture of the falls], how come everybody's mind project the same way my mind does? or in other words, how is that you and me agree with appearance of the falls?
Hope my question is clear!
"how come everybody's mind project the same way my mind does?"
Let's say you're having a conversation with your friend by the Niagara falls, enjoying the grandeur of it all, watch a big boat full of excited people go by and then you wake up!! That's how everything is a projection of your mind - you'll know that everything is a dream - including 'everybody' who is a part of the dream only when you wake up to your true Self.
@Murali,
"Should we just keep repeating that I am the doer?" That's an exercise in futility. The "I am the doer" idea is nothing but ahamkara(ego) - so you get rid of it by self-enquiry.
Anonymous (1)
Some of the blog readers seem to be experts on Robert. One or two have emailed me to say that they spent time with him while he was alive. Perhaps they could answer your question better than I can.
My feeling is that he had a 'pick-and-mix' approach to telling stories about himself. He might relate incidents that popped into his mind, if he thought they illustrated some point, but he rarely joined up the dots and gave a continuous narrative that included all the stories in the correct sequence.
Jupes
It doesn't sound like anything I said or wrote. However, if you can narrow it down a bit and convince me that it was something I said or wrote, I would be happy to comment or elaborate on it.
Murali
I think you meant to say repeating "I am not the doer", so I will proceed on that basis.
Affirmation (I am Brahman) and negation (not this, not this) will not end this identification; you might convince yourself that the repeated statement is true, but this conviction will not actually remove the erroneous identification.
The nexus between the 'I' and the body only disappears when the 'I' goes back to its source and stays there. For that, enquiry and/or surrender is needed.
I am surprised you haven't managed to find the statement 'hold onto the feeling of I"' in either mine or Sadhu Om's explanations of enquiry. I always explain self-enquiry in terms of continuous attention to the feeling of 'I', and so does Sadhu Om. You may not have found those exact words, but I am sure you found that same idea expressed in slightly different terminology.
anonymous (2)
I suspect you will probably find this odd, and possibly unbelievable, but Ramana says that the person who agrees with you on what Niagara Falls looks like is actually your own projection. He or she is not an independent observer who exists when you are absent. Everything you see is a creation of your own mind.
David,
I was writing that ONLY you and Sadhu Om mentioned that "hold onto the feeling of I". Nobody ever mentioned this and that is what surprises me. The entire Self Enquiry made sense only after I have read this from your writings. I was wondering why nobody else mentioned this. Everyone says "question Who am I and go back to the source". Normally, if I had read that, I would have questioned who am I and would have been immediately worried "how should I now go back to the source?". Without this crucial sentence "hold onto the feeling of I", which you and Sadhu OM alone have told, it would have been impossible to know the correct thing.
Regards Murali
anonymous(2) here :)
"He or she is not an independent observer who exists when you are absent. Everything you see is a creation of your own mind." Does that mean people I know, the world I know seemingly come into existence to define my 'reality' when I am in the waking state? In that case the world can seem totally different to a different observer? I guess the only way I'll ever truly know the true nature of myself and the world is when I abide as the Self.
Anonymous
The idea of there being different observers is an illusion. The point was brought out in this interesting dialogue between Bhagavan and Madhava Tirtha, a vedantic scholar who visited Bhagavan in 1944:
[Madhava Tirtha] The subjects of knowledge and ignorance, and of the knower, knowing and the known, are naturally connected to ideas about the reality of the world. Before I give some of the Maharshi’s view on this subject, I should mention that it is a subject I had long been interested in myself, so much so that I had, prior to my visit, authored a small book entitled Maya in which I had attempted to relate certain Indian ideas on the reality of the world to those propounded by Einstein in his theories of relativity. I had sent the Maharshi a copy prior to my visit and was very curious to know what he had thought of my basic thesis.
Question: Professor Einstein has recently proved by the method of mathematics that space, time, objects, form, weight and speed, etc. are all relative to the sight of the seer. A small booklet called Maya was sent to you on this subject.
Maharshi: Yes, what you say is true. I liked it and I have read it fully. By correcting the seer, everything gets corrected. In the book there is talk of many seers, but in reality the seer is only one. The many are in the imagination of the seer only.
In this answer and in the answer that followed the Maharshi was gracious enough to point out a mistake in my treatment of the subject by showing me how I had based my arguments on a wrong presumption. He explained to me the correct viewpoint at some length. My purpose in writing that book was to prove that the concept of maya as propounded by Sankara is fully borne out by the modern theory of relativity. This theory, as is well known, maintains that time and space are purely relative notions dependent entirely on the conventions governing the observer and the object under observation, and that there is no such thing as objective space and time. When two observers, taking different positions in space, observe a particular event, they obtain different time-space measures that will conflict with each other and necessarily vitiate any conclusion they may arrive at concerning the particular event. Sri Maharshi pointed out to me that the very presumption of two observers being situated at two given points is itself an unwarranted one. It was a revelation to me that Sri Maharshi could judge off-hand, as it were, such modern theories as that of relativity, proceeding entirely on the basis of his own experience of the absolute.
David, I found a clue as to what I was talking about in my earlier comment. I looked at an old email I sent you 3 years ago and ran across a reference to "dirty chemicals," in relation to an extra-cluttered mind. I must have read something on your website, in an interview perhaps. Does this now ring a bell with you?
Murali
Apologies for misunderstanding your intentions.
It's strange how teachers of enquiry take one aspect of what Bhagavan said and often exclude other portions. Sadhu Om rarely mentions asking the question 'Who am I?', preferring instead to tell people that holding on to the 'I'-thought is true self-enquiry. Robert Adams leaves out the 'holding on to the "I"'and puts the emphasis on asking the question.
Bhagavan, of course, advocated both approaches. I like his description in Maharshi's Gospel where he says:
Maharshi. Self-enquiry by following the clue of aham-vritti ['I'-thought] is just like the dog tracing its master by his scent. The master may be at some distant, unknown place, but that does not at all stand in the way of the dog tracing him. The master’s scent is an infallible clue for the animal, and nothing else, such as the dress he wears, or his build and stature etc., counts. The dog holds on to that scent undistractedly while searching for him, and finally it succeeds in tracing him.
____________
Holding on to the 'I' is the clue, the scent that takes you back to the source, the place where the 'I'-thought arises. Continuous attention to it reveals its origin.
Annamalai Swami also had a different way of explaining enquiry, one that put emphasis on affirmation and negation. Generally, Bhagavan did not recommend such techniques, regarding them as being merely intellectual, but Annamalai Swami, I think, was justified in passing on this teaching because it was the teaching that Bhagavan himself gave him. It definitely worked for him, so he had no hesitation in passing it on to other people.
Jupes
The 'dirty chemical' idea is one that comes from Nisargadatta Maharaj. He didn't teach reincarnation, so he needed another explanation for why some people realise the Self easily, while others don't.
He said that we are all issued with a script at conception that is derived from factors such as genetics, future family environment, astrology, and so on. Good scripts are 'clean chemicals' while bad ones are 'dirty chemicals'. The chemical analogy seemed to come from the chemicals on a roll of film.
People with clean chemicals realise the Self easily, or with a little effort or practice. People with very dirty chemicals don't have a chance, and are most likely not even interested in trying, whereas those who only have a little dirt to wipe away can succeed by listening to the Guru's words and putting them into practice.
Personally, I prefer to accept Bhagavan's teachings, which are that past life efforts and samskaras determine future births. For example, in the recent post 'Yes, but what do I do?' I included a quote from Bhagavan which said that those who could naturally keep quiet in their current lives had practised in previous ones.
Robert Adams has proved to be popular again. I'll hunt up some more dialogues and post another one in about a week.
Meanwhile, I need to take a break for a few days. I have legal business in Chennai to attend to, and a trip to Pondicherry to see how my printing work is coming on. Both of these will be all-day affairs. I will check the blog every day and reply to any new comments, but I don't think I will have time to make any new posts until the beginning of next week.
Dear Robert Adams, I am
reading this blog for the first
time. Excellent articles and
comments.
David,
hope your work gets done..see you Monday on the blog..
It's interesting that Robert Adams does mention holding onto the 'I' but then, in answering HOW to hold onto the 'I' he reverts back to 'Who am I?'
"... Simply ask yourself, ‘To whom does this problem come?’ And of course the answer will be, ‘The problem comes to me’. Hold onto the ‘me’. Follow the ‘me’ to the source, the substratum of all existence.
"How do you do that? How do you hold onto ‘me’? How do you hold onto ‘I’? By simply asking yourself, ‘Who am I? What am I?’ It’s the same thing. Ask yourself again and again, ‘Who am I?’"
~~~~
I also find it interesting that he says it's more helpful for westerners to say 'I-I' than to ask 'Who am I?' As a westerner (from the U.S.) I would say this is true at least part of the time, although I don't know why.
"An easier way to do this I have found is to simply say to yourself, ‘I-I, I-I,’ and you will notice as you do this, the I-I goes deeper, deeper, deeper within you into your Heart centre, right to the source. For westerners I have found that saying ‘I-I’ seems to be more helpful than ‘Who am I?’ Again, do not look at time. Do not ask yourself, ‘When is something going to happen?’"
~~~~
David, thank you for refreshing my memory on the 'dirty chemical' idea. I think what fascinated me so much three years ago was that, upon first hearing the idea, I imagined myself as one of those people born with 'extra dirty chemicals', with no chance of ever realizing the Self, and that this accounted for my inability to be consistent with self-enquiry. I look at this differently now but am glad to be reminded of where I was then.
There is only ONE SELF that projects - that is why everybody sees the 'same show'. Would that be a correct explanation?
Sonachala
The world is a creation of the one who sees it. When the seer goes, the world goes with it. The idea of 'everyone' (i.e. lots of different people seeing a common world) is your imagination.
This is what Bhagavan had to say in Guru Vachaka Kovai, in a section entitled 'One jiva'. The comment following the verse is from Bhagavan; the paragraph afterwards is my comment; and the final quote is from Annamalai Swami's book.
534
Let the heroic one who possesses a powerful intuition accept that the jiva is only one, and thus become firmly established in the Heart, consenting to the view that the jivas are many only in order to be understood by those in whom this intuition has not blossomed.
Bhagavan: Jiva is called so because he sees the world. A dreamer sees many jivas in a dream, but all of them are not real. The dreamer alone exists and he sees all. So it is with the individual and the world. There is the creed of only one Self, which is also called the creed of only one jiva. It says that the jiva is the only one who sees the whole world and the jivas therein. (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no. 571)
It is a fundamental tenet of advaita that the world is projected by the individual mind that sees it. Some people think that this means that each individual jiva projects its own world, but Bhagavan taught that this is not the correct perspective. He maintained that the jiva which sees the world is the only jiva that exists, and that all the other people whom this jiva sees are merely imagined projections of the first jiva. Since all things and all beings are merely the externalised projection of the jiva who sees them, it follows that when this jiva is absent or destroyed, the other beings and things simply cease to exist. Chadwick once questioned Bhagavan on this topic:
‘If the world exists only when my mind exists,’ [Chadwick] began, ‘when my mind subsides in meditation or sleep, does the outside world disappear also? I think not. If one considers the experiences of others who were aware of the world while I slept, one must conclude that the world existed then. Is it not more correct to say that the world got created and is ever existing in some huge collective mind? If this is true how can one say that there is no world and that it is only a dream?’
Bhagavan refused to modify his position. ‘The world does not say that it was created in the collective mind or that it was created in the individual mind. It only appears in your small mind. If your mind gets destroyed, there will be no world.’ (Living by the Words of Bhagavan, 2nd ed. p. 236)
In support of David's comment - "I suspect you will probably find this odd, and possibly unbelievable, but Ramana says that the person who agrees with you on what Niagara Falls looks like is actually your own projection. He or she is not an independent observer who exists when you are absent. Everything you see is a creation of your own mind."
My recollection is that when people asked Maharishi how come that what we dream cannot be validated by others who are with us now in the waking state - he used to say that if you ask the people who appear in the dream they would all have the same experience.
For example if during your dream you see Niagara Falls in flames, Maharishi will say that everybody in that dream will see Niagara Falls in flames. The dream is clearer to us that its a mental projection. But waking is no different!
Wonderful post.
Vichara explained by You ,Sadhu Om, Michael James and Robert Adams is helping so many people in the world and. I read your book "Be as You Are". Great book, unique.
Is there another book of yours that point out the explanation of Vichara?
Thanks a lot David!!
Other than The Path of Sri Ramana, Part One, there is no book that explains in detail how self-enquiry should be done. Some of Robert Adams' talks have been collected in a book entitled Silence of the Heart. There is some good advice there, but the book is not specifically about enquiry.
David,
I didn't quite get your explanation. Are you saying that the world and its people are my creation? Did my individual self project all of you and If I were to die, then David, Murali ,Anonymous etc... will have no existence?
Shouldn't it be the world and its inhabitants are projected by the ONE SELF and identifies with each of them so that they appear to be separate individuals. All the illusory individual selves [us]then see the same world through that ONE SELF?? Would appreciate your comment.
These are my experiences and may or may not be helpful to anyone else.
In attempting to know the truth, one attempts to find the truth of oneself.
The heart/mind is conditioned, by experiences, ideas, thoughts, the language itself, filtering reality through many screens.
First there is radiant light, in which nothing is, then layers of body and mind are superimposed, then the world arises and spills out of the heart.
The mind creates time and space, a "me" over here and everything else over there. If the "me" dissolves, there's no boundary anywhere.
It's like a light bulb coming on and the light spilling out into the room.
Atma Vichara is not thinking "I" but feeling "I", attempting to trace the "I" feeling back to it's Source.
I picture a wooden paddle, with an elastic band attached to a ball. The ball(mind)goes out. The elastic band (Atma Vichara) pulls it back to the wooden paddle (the heart), over and over.
Atma Vichara causes a churning in the nadis, pulling identification inward, away from the body/mind sheaths. The Atma Sphurana is then felt as a pulsing. If one's attention is held on this pulsing, the knot in the heart, between the sentient and insentient is dissolved. The mind, which goes outward, creating the body and world cannot accomplish these things. It's job is to be silent and humble. All second and third person objets have to be given up.
The light of the heart is the purest radiance. What is seen and heard as "world" is dependent on the purity of the body and mind. When they are pure enough, then all is experienced as arising and dissolving moment by moment. The mind is dissolved by the light of the heart and will not function.
That which is high (the mind) must be brought low, humbled, and that which is low (the heart) must be lifted.
Summa, I have read your post four times and each time I am more struck by the beauty of it, of what you're saying, how you say it and, most importantly, what's behind the saying of it. Your experiences, which seem absolutely genuine, are at a level beyond anything I would hope to achieve in this lifetime. Everything you say makes sense to me, but I'm wondering if you would mind saying more about the purity of the body and mind. That is, what makes a body and mind pure enough to be able to experience the "arising and dissolving moment by moment," for instance? I can think of things that would affect this, such as how one thinks about the world and others, how humble one is, the amount of old trauma stored in the body, etc. But I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
Thank you!
"what makes a body and mind pure enough to be able to experience the "arising and dissolving moment by moment,"
Who you are is already pure, already home. The effort, I feel, is to remove the obstacles to knowing, to experiencing it, the obstacles to peace, to love, to purity, to pure presence.
I feel that the real and unfailing attempt to live ahimsa, gentleness, non harming in thought, word and deed, Ramana's instructions about pure, sattvic food in small quantities, moderation is speech and sleep, purify the mind.
When one is really committed and sincere, help arises from the heart to inform the mind.
Gratitude (I am hoping David will write about his experiences).
Ramana said we should be grateful for everything, not just the things we like.
It's of tremendous help to ask Him in the heart, every night before falling asleep, that the body/mind and all aspects of your being will be purified of all that should not be there, all that blocks His love and peace and grace, while you are sleeping. There is so much that you cannot get at, using the mind. Bhagavan will do it for you.
We keep making mistakes. So I would say "Sit down and cry your tears, then, after a rest, get back up and start over, over and over and over. Just never give up. And ask for His help constantly.
I feel I am writing too much, as this is David's blog.
Summa, thank you so much. This is wonderful!
Sometimes it seems there are so many obstacles that it is overwhelming. And yet, I know that if I can stay centered in the feeling of 'I', in the Self, then truly there are no obstacles at all.
David, do you have anything to add to what Summa has written?
Summa
Thanks for the account of your experiences and practices. I particularly liked some of the novel imagery. Please don't feel constrained to write more because you feel it is 'my' blog. I contribute the initial posting and answer any questions that come up, but the 'comments' section is open for people such as yourself to make your own contribution. I know that devotees like to hear about each other's practices and experiences, so don't feel that you are treading any anyone else's toes by discussing matters such as these.
Sonachala
The correct image to keep in mind when one thinks about creation is the dream world. The dreamer creates a world and populates it with dream characters. The Self did not create that dream world and then allow dream characters into it to see it. When the dreamer wakes up, the dream world and all the other dream characters in it disappear.
Then consider Bhagavan's statement in Who am I? in which he says that there is no difference between the walking state and the dream state except that one is short and the other long.
David's answer on mind projection & niagara falls was very convincing.
But now i have an another question. If my mind projected the other seer of the falls who agreed with me... in an other situation why would my mind project another human being who is not agreeing to my views? eg., i want $xxx dollars salary & my "mind projected manager" is not agreeing to it.
So if everything is my projection, i expect everything to be in my favor & no disagreement at all.
Please clarify.
sd,
Again, finding collaboration in the dream world is the answer. In dreams, horrible scary things can happen to us...not necessarily things which are in agreement to us. Still, dream is the creation of the mind.
I think the clue is to know that a dreamer can never know that the people and events he is seeing are the creation of his mind. Only a waker can know that.
Similarly, a waker can never know that what he is seeing is the creation of his mind. Only a "super-waker", i.e., Jnani, can know that.
Looks like God has given us dreams only to understand this by the way of analogy.
Infact, I realized that there seems to be an insight we can get to the problem of "Free-will and destiny" also by analysing the dreams. Does the dreamer has Free-Will? The dreamer definetely thinks he has a free will in the dream world but from the stand-point of the waker, the dreamer does not have free-will because the waker knows that the dream is created by the mind and every event is crafted by the mind, including the dreamer himself. Does this not elegantly explain the free-will/destiny concepts and their co-relation? If we apply that to our waker world, the waker always seem to have free-will but the "super-waker" know that the waking world is creation of the mind including the all the events.
I hope what I am writing is not stupid.
David: You promised a full blown article on this dhristi-shristi-vaada. I am eagerly waiting for that..
Regards Murali
The dream world is not projected so that you can fulfill all your dreams and fantasies. Bhagavan speaks of the atom-like black spot, the accretion of vasanas which is the prism through which the world is projected. Your pending vasanas cause your world picture to come into existence, and if those vasanas are full of fear of suffering, that's what your world will be like.
Thanks for the reminder about drishti-srishti vada. I have made a few promises over the last few weeks that I haven't managed to fulfill yet. I hope I will have time to do something about them in the not-too-distant future. If any of you are still waiting for answers or articles on other topics, send me a reminder and I will make a to-do list.
If I dream that I AM a bird, then a bird family, a nest, worms to eat, wings and the flying experience are all a seamless part of the dream. When I awaken, the whole dream and all bird-problems dissolve.
For me, it's easier to go back to the beginning, before anything is.
Imagine you are the All, everything, pure radiance, pure power and there is no not-self. In order for there to be a creation, you have to split yourself into over here and over there, a seer and a seen, a picture, space between the picture and a "me", time in which to view the picture and the seer of the picture.
Now I forget that I have done this and believe that there is a boundary of space and time between the seer and the seen. I feel I am looking outward, at other, instead of inward, at myself. Now I feel that I love this and hate that. If one can trace how the mind does this at the moment of waking, there is an aha.
Nothing is objective, as words might suggest. The meaning is completely dependent on the seer, the reader, the hearer.
The mind has to be still, because the moment I say tree, I have split reality into two, a tree and a not-tree.
Whether enquiry as 'Who am I?'
and 'holding on to the 'I' thought'
refer to 'vichara' and 'dhyana'
as given by Bhagavan to Q 27
of Sivaprakasam Pillai in 'Who am I?' Or is it different? You have said that Robert Adams preferred
'Who am I' to Sadhu Om's 'holding
on to the 'I' thought'. You also
said that Annamalai Swami followed the positive type which
Bhagavan gives very rarely. Is it
'I am Brahman' instead of 'I am not this and I am not that.'
Question twenty-seven of Who am I? asks:
What is the difference between enquiry and meditation?
Bhagavan replied:
Enquiry consists in retaining the mind in the Self. Meditation consists in thinking that one's self is Brahman, existence-consciousness-bliss.
Bhagavan is setting the bar quite high for this definition. He is saying, in effect, that real self-enquiry is what happens after the 'I' has been compelled to sink into the Heart through asking the question 'Who an I?' or holding on to the 'I'-thought. This comment is interesting and quite unusual since it defines enquiry by the results it achieves, rather than by the processes through which those results are attained.
Annamalai Swami taught affirmation and negation: holding on to the belief 'I am Brahman' or 'I am consciousness' and rejecting all other identifications as ''not I'. According to the definition given here, this means that it is meditation, rather than enquiry.
I would not say that asking 'Who am I?' is enquiry and classify holding onto the 'I'-thought as meditation. They are both ways of discovering the Self through self-attention and as such they both belong in the 'self-enquiry' category.
Dear David, Thanks for your
clarification on Q 27 of 'Who am I?' In fact, everyday, I am reading 'Who am I?' and everyday
I get new insights or new doubts!
Again under Q 26, Bhagavan says:
'Desirelessness is Wisdom. The two are not different. Desirelessness is refraining from turning the mind towards any object. Wisdom means the appearance of no object." Whether contemplating ' I am
Brahman' is a desire, while merging in Brahman is wisdom?
"It only appears in your small mind. If your mind gets destroyed, there will be no world."
So, basically I am the only one that exists. I am the only seer. I am the only one that's trying to realize the self.
All of you guys only exist in my imagination. You only exist when I read your comments.
This makes my ego feel sad and lonely. =(
On the 'creating reality/projection of mind':
Question: When you say that consciousness or God dwells in you as you, that ‘as you’ is not referring then to the ego?
Robert: No, it’s referring to consciousness.
Question: It’s redundant really.
Robert: Yes. Consciousness is your true existence and nothing else. Everything else we talk about, everything else we do is to make you realise that your true nature is consciousness. Then everything becomes redundant, but we have to talk like this because you believe you’re human. You believe you’re the body. When will you stop believing that?
Question: Robert, if a person believes that they’re happy in this alleged consciousness that we all possibly share, I mean your students, is that the same thing? Being in love with nature as being in love with life. Is that about on the same level in your eyes as...
Robert: All of these things that you’re referring to are a projection of your mind. You create your universe, and you create your world, and you create the trees and the birds and everything else. So get rid of your mind and everything else will go.
Question: There won’t be any trees?
Robert: You’ll be the tree. You’ll be everything you like.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's nothing personal. It's not that 'you as a personal self' is creating all the 'other personal selves', but that the mind is creating/projecting a 'sense of personal selves', that is all. When the 'sense of self' is divined all 'sense of else' disappears/disapates.
Believing in the personal sense of 'me' necessitates the listening to definitions of the senses as guides for living.
Realizing the true sense of Self all is awared without need of 'definition' and the body is as it will be, without the protective anxiety of 'my survival'.
Can 'I' say this is how life is lived here fully? No, only that this has been revealed and that it is recognized that when there is a belief of 'me' the definitions and anxiety are present. As well as, most importantly, the compassion for them. Not empathy, but purely compassion. Not rationalizations(these to are mind plays), merely pure unthought Love that conveys 'all is well'.
Recent floem(I realize that some relative understanding and subtle conveyance of the metaphorical in this poem relies on knowledge of some of the 'entertainment references' mentioned, but I don't feel it matters to the essence of what is being spoken of and that most, if not all, will feel it):
Liberation: purging of self
Yep...
...Life(GraceDivineEssenceBeingYou) has it's way
of having it's way with you (me-that-thinks-its-'it'). ;^)
Existence~Being~Bliss
that 'EBB' of flow
strips away
that 'day to day'
existence
quicker than
Jenna Jameson
poledancing
that latest craze
of exuberant
lonely housewives
what drives
Us?
What's the Force
that wields
these sabers
of Light
tripping fantastically
tipping fanatically
over the holy cow
would you look at that
not a bird
or a plane
no wings of desire
to take you higher
nor a super man
can take you
where You already
ARE.
That's what
the Beloved does
whether we're
ready or not
here it comes
up from the depths
to rest at Your feet
is all we really want
Beloved
this purging of 'self'
that leaves only You.
So don't wait
forgo the bait
and shoot straight
to the Heart
of the matter
in the midst of chatter
is revealed silent
s t i l l n e s s
Why start
following that cart
of 'goodies'
cause there's
no beginning
no end
only this Friend
that is no 'other'
not yer Mother
not tha Poppa
not even Dennis Hoppa
can breathe in this
~ F R E S H N E S S ~
of a spring rain
that knows no pain
is the reality
of Life
even strife
has it's pleasure
how else could we measure
'good and bad'
if all we had
was suffering?
Yet, this ground
upon which all sound
reverberates
is not something
to own
or can be thrown
away
even as we say
"Buenos dias!"
from all these ideas
comes only ignorance
of the Dance
dance revolution
without evolution
that circles within
every being.
In truth
there is only seeing
no self
to be purged
or urged
into re-action
but this cannot be known
until it IS.
So...ohsaycanyouseebythedawn'searlylight
that there is nothing to fight
with
but 'yourself'
is all that is creating
the war
and that shuts the door
in the face
of compassion
making a fashion
out of fascism
comes the desire
for freedom.
All is serving
and never swerving
from the path
that leads
No(w)here
cannot
be thought
only sought
by that which thinks
and ever blinks
on and off
like the light
at night
before deep
sleep.
Read this again
and again
my friend
until
there is no end
to
Awareness.
Scott Fraundorf:
Robert adams is just full of great advise, and explains it so well. I don't think he departs at all from Ramana, but similar to RamanaGiri, he had a mix of pranayama breathing and Inquiry. That really makes alot of sense to me, especially when our minds are wondering fiercely. For myself, I'm happy to be a beginner, because I know that the way to get good at something is always to start at Square 1. O.K, I've tried it that way, but now I'll try it this way. And I do make progress, when I say progress, the reality of the world isn't so overbearingly real, there are feelings of peace and bliss, where there used to be feelings of panic and despair. Not so much progress in a direction from the ever present Self, and since the peace isn't completely firm, I know I have to continue. When it's absolutely firm, and the idea of being a thinking individual seems as insane as believing I'm Napoleon, so counter-intuitive, then being Realized will no longer be a question. With all of these guys, they prescribed the medicine, it's just a matter of taking it, and even making the attempt of taking it, and being flexible, it's clear that this is the greatest thing anyone could do for themselves.
Scott Fraundorf:
"""It only appears in your small mind. If your mind gets destroyed, there will be no world."
So, basically I am the only one that exists. I am the only seer. I am the only one that's trying to realize the self.
All of you guys only exist in my imagination. You only exist when I read your comments.
This makes my ego feel sad and lonely. =(""
I don't necessarily think this is the correct way of looking at it anymore. The I, that is individual, doesn't exist. So it's not solipsism where only the individual exists, and everything else is taken to be in the imagination of the individual. i think I had some solipsism in my original interpretation. It's that only the impersonal Self of bliss, courage, truth, kindness exists, where everyone and everything is me, and there is only the One when the individual dissipates. That me, that would feel sad and lonely, and all alone is not real, and there is only Oneness, connection in the Self, because everyone I see, care about is just the One Self, Brahman. The ego gets in the way of love, mistakes attachment, infatuation for love, only feels seperation, we are distinct individuals, the deeper I get, the more I look into someone's eyes, there is no seperation. So Self-REalization, in my case the striving for it, is not an occassion for feeling sad and lonely. The ego, which is solipsistic, and only concerned with personal problems, is in my experience always sad and lonely.
Hello all,
I have 'discovered' Maharshi about 7 years ago; I have gone around from Vipassana to Enquiry to doing nothing at all to being confused by it all. But now, I feel a renewed energy and stability in the Enquiry method... like this is what I want to do (and am doing). But sometimes one tries to rationalize things and then stops because one can't go after a point. And the doubts begin anew. Keeping it simple is sometimes the most difficult thing to do.
"It only appears in your small mind. If your mind gets destroyed, there will be no world."
So, basically I am the only one that exists. I am the only seer. I am the only one that's trying to realize the self.
All of you guys only exist in my imagination. You only exist when I read your comments.
This makes my ego feel sad and lonely. =(
If you would like to hear Robert speaking or to read the transcripts they can be found at www.RobertAdams.us
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