Sujok Hand Diagram

Four Principles

How can we tell if we're on the path correctly? 
I gave four principles, which I really never do in the waking state. I never have a teaching. 
 But I was giving a teaching, so I'll share it with you. 
I explained four principles, where you know that you're close to self-realization.
 Of course, we're all self- realized already.

Principle number 1:
 You have a feeling, complete understanding that everything you see, everything in the universe, in the world, emanates from your mind. 
In other words, you feel this. You do not have to think about it, or try to bring it on. 
It comes by itself. It becomes a part of you. 
The realization that everything that you see, the universe, people, worms, insects, the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, your body, your mind, everything that appears, is a manifestation of your mind. 
You have to have that feeling, that deep understanding, without trying to.
So you ask yourself, "What do I think about all day long?" 
Of course, if you fear something, if you worry, if you believe something is wrong somewhere, if you think you're suffering from lack, or limitation, or sickness, anything, then you're out of it completely, because you're not understanding that all these things are simply a manifestation of your own mind. 
And if you worry about these things you become attached to false imagination. 
That's called false imagination. 
You've been attached to habit energy for many years, and all these attachments and beliefs come from habit energy.
It's like watching a TV show and becoming one of the characters, when you know that you're not even in the TV. 
But you believe you're one of the characters in the TV show. So it is with the world. Do not get involved. 
I don't mean you become passive.
 I mean your body does what it's supposed to do. Remember, your body came to this earth to do something. 
It will do something without your knowledge. It'll take care of itself. Don't worry. But do not identify your body with yourself. They're different. 
Your body is not yourself. And I'll prove this.

When you refer to your body what do you say? Don't you say "my body?" 
Who is this "my" you're referring to? You say "my finger,” "my eye.” 
Who are you referring to? You couldn't be talking about your body, because you’re saying it's my body, like you own it. 
 Who owns it? This proves to yourself that you're not your body. So do not identify yourself with the body and the world.

Therefore the first principle, to see how close you are to self-realization is: 
You are not feeling that you are identified with the world. 
You're separate. 
 And you're feeling happiness, because your natural state is pure happiness.
 Once you identify with worldly things, you spoil it. 
The happiness disappears, it dissipates. 
But when you're separate from worldly things happiness is automatic. 
Beautiful, pure happiness. It comes by itself. 
So that's the first principle.

Principle number 2 
 I explained to the bodhisattvas was this: You have to have a strong feeling, a deep realization, that you are unborn. 
You are not born, you do not experience a life, and you do not disappear, you do not die. 
You are not born, you have no life, and you do not die. You have to feel this, that you are of the unborn.
 Do you realize what this means? 
There is no cause for your existence. 
There is no cause for your suffering. 
 There is no cause for your problems.

Some of you still believe in cause and effect. 
This is true in the relative world, but in the world of reality there is no cause. 
Nothing has ever been made. 
Nothing has ever been created. 
There is no creation. I know it's hard to comprehend. How do I exist if I was not born, I have no life and I do not disappear in old age? 
You exist as I Am. 
You have always existed and you will always exist. 
You exist as pure intelligence, as absolute reality. 
That is your true nature. 
You exist as sat-chit-ananda.
 You exist as bliss consciousness, but you do exist. 
You exist as emptiness, as nirvana, but you do exist. 

So don't worry about being non-existent. 
But you do not exist as the body. 
You do not exist as person, place or thing.
 Do you feel that? 
If you have a strong feeling about that, then you're close to self- realization.

Principle number 3: 

You are aware and you have a deep understanding of the egolessness of all things; that everything has no ego. I'm not only speaking of sentient beings. 
I'm speaking of the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom. Nothing has an ego. 
There is no ego. 
And do you realize what this means?
 It means that everything is sacred. 
 Everything is God.
 Only when the ego comes, does God disappear, what we call "God.” 
Everything becomes God. 
You have reverence for everything.
 When there is no ego, you have reverence for everybody and everything.

So you have to be aware of the egolessness of all things. Animals have no ego, minerals have no ego, vegetables have no ego, and humans have no ego. 
There is no cause, so there cannot be an effect. 
There is only divine consciousness, and everything becomes divine consciousness. 
So if you look at your fellow man and animals and everything else as being egolessness, you will see them as yourself. Can't you see that?

It's the ego that causes separation. 
When I am full of ego, I become strong within myself.
 I become totally separate. 
So the more you like yourself as a person, the bigger your ego is. 
You say, "Well, I'm not supposed to like myself?” You're supposed to love yourself, but what self are we talking about? 
We're not talking about your body self, because that comes and goes. 
We're talking about your permanent self that has always been here. 
And your permanent self is me, is you, is the world, is the universe, is everything. 
That's your permanent self.
Egolessness. 
That's the only time that you can love your fellow human beings, when you have no ego. 
That's how you can tell where you're at, if you're close to self-realization. That's principle number three.

Principle number 4: 
You understand the Self Realization of Noble Wisdom. You have a deep conviction, a deep understanding, a deep feeling of what self-realization of noble wisdom really is. 

What is Self Realization of Noble Wisdom to you? 
You can never know by trying to find out what it is, because it's absolute reality. 
You can only know by finding out what it is not.

So you say, “It is not my body, it is not my mind, it is not my organs, it is not my thoughts, it is not my world, it is not my universe, it is not the animals, or the trees, or the moon, or the sun, or the stars, it is not any of those things.” 
When you've gone through everything and there's nothing left, that's what it is. Nothing. Emptiness. Nirvana. Ultimate oneness.
Robert Adams
Aug 19, 1990

Cosmic Joke

Wake up! Give up all your foolish habits. There's absolutely nothing to fear and nothing to fight. There's absolutely nothing to overcome, nothing to rectify. There's absolutely nothing to achieve, nothing to want, to desire. How can you desire anything when you are the universe? What I appear to be sharing with you may sound like it is far away someplace, but it's not. You are that. You are that. You are that infinite consciousness which knows no other. You are free. Enjoy your freedom. You must think of yourself from now on as being unlimited beauty and joy, all-pervading, self-contained.
Nothing can ever harm you. The universe is not set up in it's illusory form to harm anyone or to bring dastardly conditions upon any situation. What you behold in this world is an appearance, an optical illusion, a dream. You can accept when you go to sleep, you dream. You can accept the fact that you may dream that you're going to a satsang like this, and you are sitting there listening, absorbing. Then you wake up and there's no one but you. In the same way, you awaken now to your total reality. This has been another dream. You have to question everything. 

 Do not accept anything without questioning it. Ask, "Who's feeling this? To whom does it come?"
Realize that you are not the I-thought. You are not the ego, nor the mind, nor are you the doer. Therefore, "Who am I?" and then whatever else comes to you, deny that also. If something tells you, "I-am consciousness," that has to be denied because I can never be consciousness. Negate everything that comes to you when you practice self-inquiry. Negate absolute reality, God, everything must be gotten rid of, all concepts. They're just words. When you awaken to your Self there will be no words that you speak. You will just become being, absolute being. Not being this or being that, just being, your true Self. Yet, in the meantime, as you are experiencing this mortal dream, deny all the experiences that come to you.

-- Robert Adams, T94: The Cosmic Joke
.

Isn't it wonderful when everything is quiet?

Isn't it wonderful when everything is quiet?

 Especially when I shut up and don't talk anymore. 

Things become much better. 

So let's really sit in the silence.

 When I say: "Sit in the silence", I'm not speaking of human quietness.

I mean the silence beyond human quietness, the silence beyond understanding.

 The silence which is God, Infinite intelligence. 

Let's just sit in that silence.

 Close our eyes, be still, put a smile on your face. 

I am not my affairs.

 I am not my experiences. 

I am not this life I appear to be going through.

 I have absolutely nothing to do with this world even though I may appear to others to be doing things in this world, working, whatever.

 I am free from fears. 

Free from past karma.

 Free from other peoples thoughts.

 I-am-that-I-am. 

I go deep, deep, deep within the Self and then become the Self. 

Realizing that there is only one Self.

 I am touching that place where I've never been before.

 The ultimate reality. 

I am touching that place where there are no thoughts, no emotions, no feelings.

 I am touching that place where there is bliss, eternal love.

 I now go deeper beyond all that where even love, ultimate oneness, self-realization are mere words.

 I go beyond all words and thoughts to that place where there is absolutely nothing and yet I exist.

~ Robert Adams

Your mind is a bunch of waves.

 

Robert Adams: The Collected Works
Transcript 1
You Must Have Your Own Experience
3rd August, 1990
Pages 26/27

R: What we use here sometimes which is a very good beginning is the I-am meditation. You relax your body and you inhale and you say, "I," and you exhale and you say, "am, I-am."

 You can do this while you're waking, while you're walking, while you're washing dishes, while you're resting.

 What it does is it makes your mind one pointed, so it'll stop thinking. 

In other words, you use whatever method you have to, to still your mind. 

The whole secret is to quiet your mind. To keep it from thinking. To keep it from being active. 

Your mind is a bunch of waves.

 You want to stop the waves and you want your mind to become still and the fastest way to do that is by self-inquiry or by observing your thoughts, watching your thoughts, becoming the witness to your thoughts.

SS: I was in a group for ages, are you familiar with Maurice Nicoll? (R: No.) He wrote, Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. He talked about doing self-observation. I thought it was too intellectual, too much trying. 

They say, "What am I observ ing?" "I'm observing anger," and they would bring up, what is the opposite of anger, and then they would say what would be the feature of consciousness. But I felt that was a whole... (R: It's a whole procedure.) ...procedure just like any other school or clinic and I thought I couldn't do that any- more. (R: Whatever you think you need.) I have a question about illness. (R: Okay) Are personal questions appropriate?

 (R: Sure.) This one I call I, in November of ‘88 became ill, became very tired, went to the doctor, it was after some treatment. They can't do anything for me, he called it "chronic fatigue syndrome, S. T. 

R. I.” So somebody suggested to me to go to a naturopathic doctor. I feel that I felt myself trying to do those things and it came to me that as long as I am seek ing health, I will always have an illness. And when I no longer care that there is a state of health or there is a state of illness, that's the place where I want to be. (R: You're on the right track.) There is no teacher that earnest and you know what you're to do now and that's all there is.

R: Whatever your karma is, is going to happen, no matter what you do. So why concern yourself?

(SS: Yet do I ignore the body?)

 See whatever you're going to do, you will not be able to stop.

SS: I know, I find that. I write down, I say, "Why do I allow myself," I observe myself, look I went here, I went here, I went to this person, I asked this person, I see what I'm doing why do I allow it? When I can be here in this peaceful state sitting in my rocker looking out at the trees or whatever and yet I do that, but each time I do it, I feel like I'm learning a little bit.

R: The way to see it is like this. 

Let your body do whatever it has to do. 

Do not think about it too much.

 Do not identify with it.

 Do not attach yourself to it. 

Everything was preordained before you came into existence. 

(SA: But still there has to be a rational process?)

 It will take care of itself. The apples grow, the grass grows, the sun shines, there's warmth to make human life exist, there is a power that takes care of everything and it has nothing to do with our thoughts.

SA: Okay, now let me throw this back at you. I know you made a move recently, to move your apartment. You didn't tell me this I think it was Dana who told me this. As she was saying you moved into a better apartment and there were various advantages. Obviously some form of thinking went into this, you just didn't decide you were going to move into an apartment. So...

R: On the contrary, it just happened.

(SA: You didn't think about it?) 

No, it became available, I just did it.

SB: But wouldn't it be intelligent to find out the needs of the body and then supply those needs and then just forget it.

R: If that's your Karma, I'll give an example: At one of my experiences in India, I was with a yogi called Nimkarali Baba. And one day a bunch of us, and one of the people there was Ram Dass, you remember Ram Dass he was there too. We were sitting in front of him, when an old lady came up to him and spoke in Hindi, whatever language they were talking I forgot. 

And what she said was that her husband was dying, "Would you please come and save him, because only you can come and save him.” And Nimkarali Baba looked at me and said, "Should I go?" and I said, "yes go, let's all go." 

So we walked about two miles to a little shack and the husband was lying on the cot dying of some kind of disease. And he looked at him and all of a sudden the candles began to flicker. So he turned around and ran out the house (Robert laughs) and started to run back to the ashram and we all followed him. And we said when we finally stopped we said, "Baba what happened? Why did you leave?" and he said, "Ah, God wants him to die," and he died.

The point is this: your life, your health or your sickness, your riches or your poverty has all been preordained by the law of Karma.

 And whatever you're going to go through, you're going to go through. If you're supposed to become a health fanatic and watch your health and eat the right things all the time, you will do that and if you're not supposed to, you won't. 

If you're supposed to take the middle path you will do that.

 Everything is ordained, planned before time.

The only freedom we've got is to not identify with the process, even though your body's going through it.

 Do not attach yourself to what your body's going through.

 Keep your mind above it, keep your head in heaven and your feet on the ground. So we have no choice in the matter. 

Whatever is going to happen will happen. So if we have to do all kinds of things and we find ourselves running from one doctor to another doctor and so forth, do not attach yourself to that but do it anyway because you can't help it.