Nonsense-Adams

Robert Adams
Excerpt from: Satsang 
Nonsense

Realization will come to you when you empty yourself out of all these burdens that you've carried so long. It will come by itself. But in the meantime, don't walk around saying, "The world is an illusion," or "the world doesn't exist," when you're feeling the world for you're talking nonsense. When you discover the world is an illusion, you will have nothing to say about it. There will be absolutely nothing to say! For you will have become that.

In the meanwhile, practice loving kindness, compassion. Help your fellow man all you can. Do good deeds and work on yourself continuously, twenty-four hours a day. By working on yourself I mean, know the truth about yourself. Say to yourself something like this, "The world I see seems real. My body appears to be real. My mind appears to be real. My thoughts have hold of me. My body has a hold of me and tells me I'm this, I'm that. But I know there's something else, something more profound, something more beautiful than I can ever imagine.

There is something beyond my thoughts, beyond my feelings, beyond my body. Perhaps I have not discovered what it is as yet, but I know it exists."

And give yourself examples. Say to yourself something like this, "The water in the mirage seems real enough, but upon close investigation you realize that it's a mirage. It's not real at all. The snake and the rope seems real enough, but upon investigation I find out it's only a rope. It's not a snake at all. The sky is blue seems real enough. But upon investigation there is no sky and it's not blue. These are all optical illusions, if these are optical illusions then my body must be an optical illusion also. The world I see and believe in must be an optical illusion because it keeps changing all the time. It's never the same. What can I call real in this world? What is real? Everything changes, nothing is real?"

Then you can ask yourself, "Then who am I? If nothing is real and everything is an optical illusion, am I also an optical illusion? Yet I can think. I can reason. Where do thoughts come from? To whom do they come? Who thinks them? What is their source?" As you keep prodding this way day after day, as you keep pondering these things day after day, the day is going to come when you find release from all this. It will! You'll find total release, total freedom. And you will laugh at yourself so much for you'll understand what this world is, a dream, nothing but a dream.

But again, if you're feeling the world do not say it's a dream. It's not a dream to you if you're feeling it and it upsets you, its real. And I'm not going to convince you it's not? I will not tell you it's an illusion at all because you're feeling it! I can only tell you to go within yourself and find out for yourself. What is the truth about yourself? Find out. The answers are all within you. Yes the day will come when you realize there is no body but until it does practice your sadhana. Forget about the spiritual games and spiritual entertainment. This is your life. Work on yourself.

Do whatever is necessary to make your environment better so you can have more time to work on yourself. If something is disturbing you put an end to it once and for all. If you hold on to those disturbances that happened fifty years ago, thirty years ago, twenty years ago, or even yesterday this keeps you back from spiritual advancement. For your mind is contemplating the foolishness that you think is so important. Somebody hit your car and drove away and now you've got to pay for repairs. What happened? That's the way it is. Do not dwell on this. Do what has to be done and get it over with and continue. Go forward. Never dwell on a problem! It expands the problem in your mind and builds up your ego! Dwell only on God. How do you dwell on God? By surrendering all your stuff to God. Giving up all of the misery, all the attitudes, all the anger, depression. Give it all up to God! God will chew it up and spit it out and you'll be free of it.

Try to remember that your life is more than the body that appears to you right now. We forget about who we were before we were born. We have many experiences but we've forgotten all these things. We're so wrapped up with our life right now that we think it's so important. We're forgetting there was a before and there will be an after. It's up to you what happens. You have been around for millions of years. You've been around forever! You have many experiences as other people. You've had many experiences. So why should this one worry you and bother you? This is only another experience, that's all it is. In universal time you're here today and gone tomorrow. You're only here for a few seconds in universal time. You did not come here to get involved in circumstances and predicaments. You came here to find yourself, discover your real nature.

Now what are you doing to make this happen? It's up to you. I can lead you to the gold mine but I can't do the digging for you. You have to dig for yourself. I share with you my experiences. I can assure you that this world does not exist. Not because I read it in a book some place or somebody told me about it. It has been my experience! There is no world and yet it appears. The question, therefore, is: "To whom does it appear?" Not, "Why does it appear?" but "To whom does it appear?" Find out!

I can also assure you and tell you that no matter what experiences you're going through right now, what is worrying you or disturbing you, if anything, this too shall pass. Therefore, cut through the jungle of maya. Remove all the fears from yourself. There is absolutely nothing to fear, nothing to change, nothing to fix, no body to straighten out.

This whole world is preordained, predestined. Everything that happens is supposed to happen but you're not supposed to react to it. It is true that you're absolute reality. It is true that you are sat-chit-ananda, Brahman. It is true that you are pure awareness, but you have to have the experience. And again, you cannot have the experience if your mind is filled with all the garbage of this world. If you think about it, it makes sense.

How can you entertain the soap operas of this world and expect to have realization! You can have one or the other! The choice is yours! You can vehemently make up your mind that from this day on you are not going to judge by appearances whether in your life or somebody else's life. Just going to watch, to be aware, look and let go, or you can stay the way you are and keep worrying and keep fretting. The choice is yours again, it's always your choice. Yet if you will find out who you are and let go of this world awhile, you will be surprised what happens. Find out who you are. Spend the time doing that. Are you really this body that appears to be a man or a woman, a boy or a girl? Are you really this person? Find out! Who are you? You have been given all the tools to work with. The factory of intelligence is within you. All you have to do is dive down and check it out. And you will be amazed what you find.

So in conclusion, the world is both real and unreal, depending on where you're coming from. It makes no difference what I tell you or what anybody else tells you. You're the one who needs to have the experience for yourself. You can run all over the world, visit many gurus, Sages, teachers, read many books, yet until you're ready to give all this up and do some serious work within yourself you will only build up your intelligence, that's all. That's all you will do. You will know about the different traditions, spiritual traditions.

You know all about spiritual life and yet you have not experienced this and in the end you go crazy, true, I've seen many people do that. They've read so much, seen so many teachers, they went mad.

Yet spiritual life is the easiest thing you could ever do. All you have to do is sit by yourself in the silence, keep still and watch your thoughts. That's all you have to do. Observe your thoughts. What could be easier than that? As you con- tinue to observe your thoughts, you automatically go deeper and deeper and deeper within yourself until you begin to question, "Who am I? Where is this I? Who does this I belong to? Where is the source of it? It's not me. It never was me." And everything will take care of itself. Everything will happen by itself. Become free, for you're already free. Peace. (tape ends)