lies - adams

Robert Adams
Excerpt from: Satsang
Do you follow this?

In every teaching besides Advaita Vedanta, there’s a personal I. Think about that. Let's take Hatha yoga. The I learns postures and the ego becomes expanded. Because you can say, "I can stand on my head and twist my feet," and you give it a Sanskrit name. But you still say, "I can do this," so the I has become inflated.

Take raja yoga, the eight limbed path. Now these things are good. There’s nothing wrong with these things. I'm not putting them down. But there has to be someone to learn the jamas, nejamas, the virtues. There’s someone who is learning all these things. The I has learned to become virtuous.

Take Kundalini yoga. I am focusing on the chakras, on each chakra. There’s always I and I and I.

Take prayer. I am praying to God. Again there’s nothing wrong with these things, but the reason we call this the direct path is because this is the only teaching that investigates the I. We're not interested in the effects. Whatever the effect may be, we realize that the I is behind it. We realize that if we find the I, and follow it to its source, everything else will be wiped out and we'll become free. This is why it is called the direct path.

Also what is the difference between meditation and Jnana marga, because most of you realize that on this path it is not really necessary to meditate? So what's the main difference between meditation and this path?

Student: There has to be someone to meditate.

Robert: True, but that’s not the answer I’m looking for. In meditation there's always an object of your meditation. And again the I is concentrating on certain words, mantra, or whatever. Therefore you're not getting rid of the I. You're concentrating on something else, where you exclude everything except the mantra or the words of your meditation, whether it's God, or whatever.

In this teaching you simply inquire for the source of the I. "Who am I? Where did I come from?" Even when I say to you, "Where did I come from?" some of you are relating to your body, aren't you? You're thinking where did I come from, as a body? But that's not what we mean. You want to know where the I came from, not where you came from. If you find out where the I came from you will realize that you do not exist. You never did and you never will. That's the point. Where did I come from? And as you get used to this kind of thinking, whenever you use the word I, you will never refer to your body again.

For instance, if you have a cold you usually say, "I have a cold." Only now you will catch yourself and you will laugh, because you will say, "I has the cold." Sounds like bad English. I has the cold. It has nothing to do with me. So where did the I come from that has the cold? And as you follow the I it will lead you to the source, where there’s no I, there’s no cold.

You can use this method for everything. "I am hungry." Well catch yourself, and realize that I is hungry. I is not my real self. I is hungry, yet my real self can never be hungry. I'm tired, I'm depressed, I'm happy, I feel beautiful, I feel wonderful. It's all the same thing. As long as you are referring to your body you’re making a big mistake. Separate yourself from I.

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 can't 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. Then suddenly after years perhaps of meditation and 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 it 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?

If you think you've got something to overcome, if you’re going to believe you've got to work on yourself, you've got to make some kind of effort, it will be hard. After all, who makes the effort? The ego. Who's telling you all these things you've got to overcome? The mind. You think you've got to overcome your bad habits, you've got to overcome past karma, you have to overcome samskaras. That's all a lie.