You have become the Self and you can laugh.

The Five Steps To Self Realization - (PART 5 of 5 )

As you continue in this state you fall into the total bliss state.
Bliss is a word again that cannot be described.
It makes happiness feel like nothing.
It is not of this world.
You do not even experience it. You simply enjoy it.
When you are in bliss it is then that you lose yourself completely.
The personal I, the personal self at that time no longer exists.
It has been dissolved forever.
It is a state that you cannot return from.
It is not something that you feel when you are meditating
then you get back to the personal self. 

There is no personal self.
You are finished with your ego, with your personal self
and with the I-thought.
You have become nothing.
You have melted.
You have been destroyed.
Yet you are alive. 

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

~Robert Adams - T98: The Five Steps To Self Realization

The freedom you have is to realize that nothing is preordained

The freedom you have is to realize that
nothing is preordained and
you do not react to anything.
When there is no longer reaction from you
Then preordination does not work any longer.
As long as you walk around as a human being
everything appears to be preordained, everything!
But when you ask yourself,
"To whom does this come?
For whom is preordination?"
You will become totally free
and the world would not exist for your at all.
Therefore think who you are.

~Robert Adams.

The Five Steps To Self Realization -

The Five Steps To Self Realization - ( PART 1 of 5 )

You are realization itself. It is your real nature. 

The reason I'm sharing these five steps with you
is because the five steps are part of the personal self. 

The ego, the I-thought, the five steps are involved in them.
When we work on the five steps in the relative world
we become ourselves, awakened and free.

The first step is: Prayer and devotion.
The second step is: Effortless No-Thought State.
The third step is: Division of Light and Sound.
The fourth step is: The Void, and,
The fifth step is: Bliss.

We'll begin with the first step.
In the beginning when one first starts out on the path and
even when one is on the path for quite a while,
prayer and meditation or prayer and devotion are very important.

You become devoted to God who is within you
and you pray to God within yourself. 

You must therefore begin to totally surrender,
give up everything to God, forget about your troubles,
forget about the world, just give it up.

~Robert Adams - T98: The Five Steps To Self Realization

The Five Steps To Self Realization - ( PART 2 of 5)

As you begin to do this you gently slip into the number two state.
The effortless no thought state. 

As you surrender everything your mind becomes completely calm. 
And you effortlessly drop your thinking mechanism. 

You sort of stop thinking.
Your mind becomes sort of a blank. 

Do not confuse this with the void.
It is a beautiful state of no thoughts. 

Let me also remind you that
you usually do not slip into that state so fast. 

It may take many years, many incarnations
just to get through the prayer and devotional state.

You have to become really devotional,
very prayerful to totally surrender your life
so that your mind becomes still, calm, peaceful.

You begin to feel profound peace.
A happiness you never felt before. 

The world no longer has any value.
You feel good most of the time.

~Robert Adams - T98: The Five Steps To Self Realization

( PART 3 of 5 )

As you continue along this path you gradually slip into the third step.
You begin to see lights and the light increases.
Whenever you close your eyes 
and even when you don't close your eyes.
The light is like the light of a thousand suns.
It appears as if the world is on fire.
Many of you have seen this.
Also you begin to hear beautiful music of the spheres.
You listen and the most beautiful music begins to play.
Sometimes you get them both.
Those are gifts of grace.
The whole universe is filled with light,
it is pure light and beautiful music sounds.
Blissful sounds come into your life.
If people do not understand this they believe this is it,
this is as far as they can go.
But it is only the beginning.

~Robert Adams - T98: The Five Steps To Self Realization

( PART 4 of 5)

As you sit in the silence and become absorbed in the light and
the sounds, you enter the void which is the fourth step. 

The void unlike the effortless no thought state is a deep joy. 

A deep love. 

You are totally free in that state. 

You look at the world, at the universe,
at your fellow man and it becomes void.
There is no thing there but a deep love, a deep peace.
Deeper then you've ever felt before.
You are still aware that you are still experiencing these states.
The void is not dark and is not light.
It has nothing to do with lightness and darkness.
It is something that you have become.
Something so wonderful, so grand,
there is no description of that feeling.

~Robert Adams - T98: The Five Steps To Self Realization

Higher Attractor Fields of Consciousness

Begin to realize your divine nature.

an

12 mins

There's only one I actually, and that I is consciousness.
When you follow the personal I to the source,
it turns into the universal I, which is consciousness.
Begin to catch yourself. Begin to realize your divine nature.
And you do this by keeping quiet.
The fastest way to realization is to keep silent.
Yet you have to know why you are keeping silent.
This is why you can't tell this to the average person.
If a person has no inkling of Advaita Vedanta,
you cannot say keep silent.
For to them it means just to be quiet.
They don't realize it means to go deep, deep, deep, deep within,
to that place where absolute reality lives, and that's the silence.

Actually the human body cannot keep silent.
There's something else that enters the silence.
It has nothing to do with your humanity.
It's only after years perhaps of meditation in previous lives,
that you can be mature enough to really know
what this path is all about.
When I give you these practices, it's not for you as a human being.
You appear to be able to go through it as a human being,
but I can assure you your humanity has nothing to do with it.
When you enter the silence you enter a profound peace,
bliss consciousness, pure awareness.
That's what the silence is. It's not being quiet. It's beyond that.
It's not just quieting your mind, like I say all the time.
It's understanding that there's no mind to quiet.
When you realize there's no mind, you automatically become silent.
When you still think you've got a mind,
you make every effort to quiet the mind, and you can't.
How many of you believe you can quiet the mind through effort?
You can't do that. It's not the effort that makes you quiet your mind.
It's the intelligent understanding that
you have no mind to begin with.
Then you just keep still and everything takes care of itself.
If you have to meditate, by all means meditate.
This path is never against any other method,
due to the fact they all eventually lead to awakening.
You have to do whatever you have to do.
But for those who can understand what I'm talking about,
and realize you're dealing with no mind, no body, no world,
no universe, no God, an awakening comes immediately,
because there's no one who is sleeping.
Do you follow this?
-Robert Adams - T52: Jnana Marg

-Robert Adams - T52: Jnana Marga

There's only eternal life.

There never was a time when you were not,
and there will never be a time when you disappear.
There is no birth for you,
there's no prevailing of the body,
there's no disappearance.
There's only eternal life.
- Ponder this.

~Robert Adams - T178: The Imponderables

Your job is to find total realization, to become absolutely free,

You do not know how much time you have left in this body.
You may be called home tomorrow. 

You may leave your body tonight, this very hour.
What have you been doing with your life? 

For it is this which determines where you go from here. 
This life is a continuum. It doesn't end.
It merely continues from where you left off. 

This is why people who commit suicide make a grave mistake,
for they think they are going to become totally free and liberated. 

On the contrary, you will take a short rest, on one of the astral planes, and then you will continue where you left off. 

Your job is to find total realization, to become absolutely free,
and not come around the circle again and again. 

Rebirth, problems, trying to get off the wheel, this is for children.
Become free by inquiring, "Who is it that's bound?" 

- Ponder this.

~Robert Adams - T178: The Imponderables

To gain liberation what is the relationship between grace and effort.

Student: To gain liberation what is the relationship between grace and effort.

R: Grace and effort? A little of both. (SK: Both?) 
In the beginning you use effort. 
As you practice self-inquiry, practice surrendering when you've gone far enough, grace takes over.

 Grace is another term for the Self. 
The Self is grace and grace pulls you in. 

But grace comes when you make effort. It's sort of a contradiction. 

The whole of spirituality is contradictions. You have to make the effort and then you have to give up the effort.

This is why in Advaita it is really for people who have had spiritual experiences from practicing sadhanas for many years in former lives. 

 They're in the last stage then grace comes. 

But if you're still quarreling with the world, still quarreling with yourself, still have personal problems, you still think your body is important, your affairs are important or this is important or that's important, it's virtually impossible to have grace, because you're too engrossed in the ego.

 If you are still worrying what is going to happen to me tomorrow or I'm not happy once I do this or do that, then grace cannot come.
 It only comes when you give up everything. 

When you have sort of a care free attitude. 
 Not my will but thine. 

You give up your personal will, personal power.
But that's not a weakness, there's a strength in this. 

Do not think that you'll become weak or passive, no you don't. You become very strong. For the world can no longer hurt you. 

There is no fear any longer. You realize who you are and what you are. And you're at peace with yourself and everybody else. So grace and the Self are one.
Robert Adams - 4/12/93

There's only eternal life. - Ponder this

There never was a time when you were not,
and there will never be a time when you disappear.
There is no birth for you,
there's no prevailing of the body,
there's no disappearance.
There's only eternal life.
- Ponder this.

~Robert Adams - T. 178 The Imponderables - August 13, 1992

Everything is unfolding as it should.

There are no problems .
There is nothing wrong.

Everything is unfolding as it should.
Space and time are illusions.

They really do not exist.
They are stationary.

Causation does not exist either.

Nothing has a cause,
therefore, nothing has an effect.

Cause and effects are again products of your mind.

When the mind is quiet, KARMA CEASES.

Samskaras are non-existent.

There never was a cause for anything.

But if you feel that in a previous life
you did something wrong and now you are paying the price,
or if you think you did something wrong in this life and you are paying the price,
then you will pay the price,
because that is what you think.

~Robert Adams

There is nothing you have to overcome.

There are no real problems in the world.
There are no challenges in the world.
Some people like to use the word challenge for some problem. 
Who wants to challenge you? there is nobody who challenges you. 

There is nothing you have to overcome.
There is nothing you have to fight.
There is nothing you have to attain and
there is nothing you have to become. 

All you have to do is see this clearly for it to happen.
Just see it clearly. Not cloudy but clearly. 

When you SEE IT CLEARLY
YOU BECOME THAT WHICH YOU SEE.

What have you been seeing all of these years?
What have you been seeing?
What have you been looking at? 

Have you been seeing problems, lack, limitation, feeling unloved,
feeling as if there is something wrong someplace? 

This is the reason why you see things outside of yourself to.
THE WORLD BECOMES WHAT YOU SEE and
YOU HAVE THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE WHAT YOU SEE.

That is the only freedom you have.
Everything else is preordained. 

This doesn't mean you're stuck in karma or it doesn't matter
what you do because whatever you do is preordained. 

It means that : 

AS YOU SEE THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUR LIFE,
YOU BECOME FREE.

In other words to the extent you can see the truth about your self
that you are really Brahman, God,
that you are that which will never change,
that which is permanent and totally free of anything,
to the extent that you can see yourself this way,
to that extent are you free.
If you see yourself 20% this way you're free 20%,
50%, you're free 50%,
100% you're free 100%.

How can you tell what you're doing?
BY THE WAY YOU REACT TO CONDITIONS.

What frightens you.
What makes you mad.
What makes you angry.
What makes you think something is wrong. 

This will tell you where you're coming from.
When you are filled with peace and harmony
nothing can ever hurt you. 

You become unhurtable. 

But when you believe what you see,
when you believe what you hear,
when you believe what the world tells you is true,
then you have to experience all the things
that you see and believe and hear.

It's so simple.
Lift your head to heaven and you'll be in heaven.
Lift your head down to hell and you'll be in hell.
~Robert Adams - T217: How To Get Rid Of Problems

Sitting in the Silence.

The wise person  does really not look to change anything.
 They become quiet. 
They have patience. 
They work on themselves. 
They watch their thoughts, watch their actions and observe themselves getting angry, observe themselves getting depressed, observe themselves getting jealous and envious and the rest of it.

 Little by little they realize, "That's not me. That's hypnosis, that's a lie."
They do not react to their condition. 
To the extent that they do not react to their condition, to that extent do they become free. 

They no longer care what anybody else is doing. 
They compare themselves with no one. 
They compete with no one. 
They simply watch themselves. 
They observe themselves.
 They see the mental confusion. 

They don't run around shouting, "I am absolute reality. I am God. I am consciousness."
 Rather, they see where they're coming from and they leave everyone else alone. 

Such a being unfolds at a fast rate. 
It makes no difference what predicament such a being is in.
 It doesn't matter, for such a being is already free.

When the mind rests in the heart, that means when the mind does not go out any longer and identify with the world, when the mind rests in the heart there is peace, there is harmony, there is pure being. 

When you allow your mind to go out of your Self it begins to compare, it begins to judge, it begins to feel offended, and there is no peace. 
There's no rest. 
How do you begin? 

Well, first you realize the place that you're in right now, whether you think it’s good or bad, whether you think you're happy or sad, whether you think you're rich, or poor, or sick, or healthy, the place where you're in right now is your right place. 

That's the beginning. You stop trying to be someone else.
 You stop trying to change your life. 
You're in your right place, right now, just the way you are.

 If you can become happy and peaceful in the place where you are right now, all of a sudden you will find circumstances will change in your favor, and then again you will be in your right place. 

Whatever change comes along as far as your body-mind is concerned, you are in your right place.

The more you can see that, the more you can look at what I just said intellectually, intelligently, the more peaceful you become, the more the karmic patterns begin to break away and you begin to awaken.
It may be gradual at first.


 You notice that things that used to annoy you, no longer annoy you. 
You notice that people that you live with, the conflicts you've had, they stop because you've stopped. 

 There's no more trying to get even. There's no more trying to win your point. There's no more trying to find the right book, or the right teacher, or the right anything. 

You remain centered. You remain free. When something comes along, whether it's good or bad, you simply sit where you are and you ask, "To whom has this come?" and you laugh, for you have separated yourself from your body-mind and you begin to realize that your body-mind is going through the experience but not you. 
So there is nothing to worry about. There's nothing to fear. There's nothing that can upset you. 

There's nothing that can harm you. You realize whatever someone does to your body, physically, or with words, or otherwise, can never, never hurt you because you are not your body. 
 No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what you see with your eyes can never affect you, for you are not your mind.
You have actually separated your Self from your body and your mind. 


That's only the beginning. As you go further your body and your mind drop off. 
I don't mean that you die.
 I mean that they become less and less important to you, and you no longer identify with them at all. 

You actually know, and you feel, and you experience, that your body and mind do not exist, yet you exist. 

You do not exist as your body or your mind. 

You exist as absolute reality, as consciousness, and you no longer believe that your body and your mind are a modification of consciousness. 

You just know that there is no body and there is no mind. 

You are egoless. 
There is no reason for your body, mind or the world to exist. You may first feel this slightly, but you will notice the greater the feeling, the greater the happiness. 

You are beginning to merge in consciousness. 
You are beginning to feel reality. 
The world goes on, people do what they always do, yet you see it quite differently.
 You no longer see the same world you used to see. It's like reading a magazine. The images in a magazine are in front of you but you are not the magazine and you are not the images. 

Who you are may still be a mystery. Remember, as long as you can express it, it's not that.
-- Robert Adams, Transcript 39, Sitting in the Silence.

to the sage there's only silence.

The silence is another way of saying
to keep your mind stayed on God all the time. 

God is the silence and you are that. 

Feel the silence right now. 

You can feel it. 

It's a thing of beauty. 

You know when you're getting into the true silence,
you begin to become happier, and happier and happier
for no reason. 

It makes no difference what's going on in the world. 

The world is in one place and you're in another place. 

In the deep silence you are identifying with
the substratum of creation. 

Always remember to go into the silence. 

A sage is always in the silence. 

A sage may be talking, listening, partaking of activities,
but to the sage there's only silence.

~ Robert Adams

Surrender leads to self-inquiry.

For some people it's easy to surrender to let go of everything. Surrender leads to self-inquiry. 

Automatically when you give everything up in your mind something answers you, or something tells you inside, "Who gives it up?" it comes by itself when you surrender. 

It'll happen by itself. 
Don't be afraid to let go, you'll never be alone.
 The universe is your friend.
 It will always take care of you if you do your part first.

 That is to surrender and allow the universe to take care of you.

It's like the story of the man who went to a cave and he felt a beautiful breeze coming from the cave. 
He wanted to find the source of this beautiful breeze. He was a fat man weighed about four-hundred pounds. And there was a tiny hole in the cave he couldn't get through. 
 He was so enamored by a breeze and its fragrance he just had to find out the source of this breeze. So he went on a diet, he lost weight, he wouldn't eat and he still couldn't squeeze through. So he gave up everything.
 He gave up his job, his home, his family. His only thought in his mind was, "I've got to find some of this breeze that smells and feels so beautiful." He wouldn't eat at all. But he was determined to find the site of the breeze.

 He finally got down to a skeleton and he shoved his head through the hole in the cave and half of his body got stuck. He couldn't go in or out.
 Finally he gave up. 
He said, "I've done all I can. There is nothing more I can do."

 Then the Self pulled him through the hole and he became self-enlightened, self-realized.

What this story means to us is when we
 stop fighting so much, 
stop trying to change things, 
stop trying to make things happen and we let go, depending on God, on consciousness, on the absolute reality, then God will pull you through.

 In other words you become self-realized. But as long as you rely on one person place or thing then you're alone fighting your battles. 

This is why true spirituality is not for everyone.

 For most people are not ready to let go of everything. They still want to hold onto things. So they get involved with spirituality and it makes them pure.

They become involved in various meditations, pranayamas, kundalini, tantra, not realizing all these things come from your mind. 
They're all mental things and they will never lead you to self-realization. 
They will only increase the size of your ego. 
So true spiritual life is very easy. 
You just need to surrender, let go of everything.
 Take refuge in the Buddha or the Self or consciousness, whatever you like to call it. 

It's all names. And you take refuge in this by not allowing the world to make you feel anything.
 As long as this world makes you feel something good or bad, you're worldly, and you have battles to fight. 
But when good and bad never impress you again, then you're free. 
Only you can make that choice.
Robert Adams - 4/12/93

This approach was unique to Maharaj

WHY DID NISARGADATTA INSIST ON ASKING QUESTIONS?
Many were puzzled why Maharaj insisted on asking newcomers to put questions to him, even before they got acquainted with his mode of teaching.

 This approach was unique to Maharaj.
One day, he turned to me and said, 
“What a sadhaka (seeker) knows consciously about himself is only one-ninth of his being. The rest is buried as the ‘unconscious’, like an iceberg! 

He has no means to unknot this huge quota of his ‘unconscious’. 
With a single glance, a Saint can unravel a seeker’s entire ‘unconscious’, layer by layer. 

We want to work on it, tackle it and destroy it.

 To do that, we need the ‘password’ from the seeker, the approval of the seeker.

 Each Saint has a unique method of raising this hidden ‘unconscious’ of the seeker to the surface so that he can catch it and work on it. We are only interested in the hidden part of the seeker’s ‘unconscious’. 

As a matter of fact, we also deal with the one-ninth of his conscious level, as well.

 Ramana Maharshi used “Who am I?” 
Swami Ramdas used “Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram”. Shirdi Sai Baba used “Allah Malik”. 

I insist on the newcomer putting me a question. This is my method. I answer the question but it is only of secondary importance. 
When the seeker spells out his doubt, his ‘unconscious’ raises itself without his knowledge to the surface through his words.

I catch it immediately and start working on it! 
This is a mystery which no ordinary mind can understand. What is great about dispelling the doubts coming from the one-ninth conscious level, the tip of the iceberg? There are plenty of books which can do that. 

But then, what about the hidden unconscious?
Sri Ganesan, ‘Meeting with Sages and Saints’

The whole universe is a puppet show.

There is no-one on this earth who does anything.
The whole universe is a puppet show. 

We're dancing the dance of Shiva. 

We think we're something important. 

But we're really nothing as we appear. 

Your job is to observe to watch, to see what's going on and
not to react to anything that is happening
but to stay separate from the happenings.

To separate yourself from what is happening.

What's happening is happening to the 'I', to the ego, not to you. 

Nothing can ever happen to you. 

For your true nature is Brahman, absolute reality, pure awareness. 

This is what you really are whether you like it or not. 

Yes you are God whether you like it or not. 

Whether you care or you don't, you are God. 

So what are you going to do about it.
All you really have to do is to know who you are, to know yourself. 

Not intellectually, not physically, but consciously. 

When you see yourself consciously as God
you will see the whole universe as your Self. 

Everything in this whole universe will become you. 

There will be no separation between you and your fellow man,
the animals and the minerals and the flowers.
It will all be one.
They'll be you.
You are that!

~ Robert Adams

Therefore you have to transcend the mind,

The world, as it appears, does not exist.
The universe, as it appears does not exist.
Yet you are, and you will always be.
What are you and what will you always be?
Silence.
There is no answer for that, for the mind can never
comprehend the unknown, the transcendental, the Self.
The mind can never know these things.
The mind only knows itself as a body, as a doer.
Therefore you have to transcend the mind,
transcend the thoughts,
transcend the world,
transcend the universe,
and enter the silence,
where there is total bliss, and peace and harmony.

~Robert Adams - T. 191 Just Be – October 15, 1992

Remain yourself, remain what you are”

From ~~~ Ramana Smrti, P. 201.

Once a visitor started weeping suddenly
and cried out that he was a horrible sinner
who could not reform himself.

He asked Bhagavan if there was any hope for him
and declared that Bhagavan was his Guru
and as his Master he must save him.

On his insistence Bhagavan told him
that fees were due to the Master.
The man said he would give him all his merit
and whatever good he had done.

Bhagavan told him that was not enough
and demanded his sins too.
The man was aghast and refused to offer his sins.
But Bhagavan was adamant.

He said,
“Either give me your sins along with your merits,
or keep both and don’t think of me as your Master”.

Finally the visitor surrendered and declared
that he was giving away all his sins
and their results to Ramana.

Bhagavan said,
“From now on
there is no good or bad in you.
You are just pure.
Go and do nothing,
neither good nor bad.
Remain yourself,
remain what you are”.
A great peace fell over the man and over us all.
He was never seen in the Ashram again.
This was not an isolated incident.

To everyone who deplored his sins
Bhagavan said,
“What do you know about yourself?
What do you know about good and evil
except what is in your mind?

When you see
that the mind invents everything,
all will vanish.
The good will vanish,
the evil will vanish
and you will remain as you are”.

Thus Bhagavan was most tender with people
who thought themselves for some reason or other
to be miserable sinners,
and went to him torn by repentance.
~~~~~

After all, for who is the suffering?

After all, for who is the suffering?
For the one who identifies with the thoughts.

As an example, somebody gets fired from their job.
They start to worry about that and this leads to worrying
about the future, because when you worry about the past,
getting fired, you're going to start worrying and thinking,
"How will I pay my rent next month? How will I buy food?" 

And the mind loves that. It starts feeding you more.
Pretty soon you imagine yourself evicted from your house
and you see yourself in the welfare lines, and you see yourself
become a homeless person, and sure enough you do,
because that's what you believe. 

That's where your mind is leading you.

As long as you feel you have a mind,
it becomes very, very powerful. 

Then you can say that, "Thoughts are things,"
for your thoughts will materialize in this world of effects,
that which you believe is real. 

Subsequently, if you start worrying about your job, being terminated,
and you start worrying about food, and you start worrying about evictions
and all that stuff, you're really saying to yourself mentally,
"That's what I want to happen," and you always get what you want. 

You've got to watch yourself.

The secret is not to change your thoughts,
but to get rid of your thoughts completely.
We're not trying to change negative thoughts to positive thoughts,
for all positive thoughts lead to negative thoughts,
negative thoughts lead to positive thoughts, that's duality. 

We're trying to transcend the whole bowl of wax, to go beyond,
and that's what happens when you live spontaneously,
it happens by itself.

Living spontaneously is a meditation. 

Do not concern yourself with the fruits of your efforts. 

Everything will take care of yourself, of itself.

In other words, what I mean by that is,
if you're in a job for twenty-four years, do not concern yourself
if you get terminated or you don't, that's not the point. 

The point is who do you think you are? 

Do you believe that you're that frail human being
that has been terminated, or that frail person
who has lots of marital problems,
or that frail person who doesn't know if he's going to die or live? 

Forget about all these things, go beyond it. 

Identify with the absolute awareness. 

Identify with the total reality which you really are. 

You do not identify with those things by affirming them.
You identify with those things by what? 

By silence. 

You see the difference?
-Robert Adams - T. 20 - Before I Am - 1st November, 1990

From Whence Did I Come?