When will you grow up?
It is only what you experience that matters to you. It’s not what you read.
So what if you learn a truth you haven’t learned before?
So what if you say this teacher expresses it this way and now I know it from this angle and that angle?
I must remind you again, knowing truth intellectually does absolutely nothing for
you. You might as well take LSD, because you only get psyched up. Then again as soon as something comes your way that you don’t like, you become an imbecile, angry, mad, upset.

You want to know if you’re making progress on the path?
When was the last time you got angry? When was the last time that something mattered to you?
When was the last time you thought the world was hurting you?
When was the last time you became over-elated over something good that happened to you?
That shows you you’re still in
possession of your human faculties. You have not transcended.

You cannot escape in a book. Many people, when they are upset and they don’t want to think, will turn on the TV.
But people on the spiritual path will open a spiritual book. It’s like turning on the TV except you are memorizing spiritual truths. I won’t say that that’s not any better than TV. Of course it’s better than watching TV. But all the same, you can do that for a 1000 years and you hardly make any progress.

How do you make progress?
By using books for reference only. By practicing the methods I share with you. By
practicing self-inquiry. By watching as you go through life’s experiences and not reacting. Watch yourself become depressed. Watch yourself become angry. Do not deny it, but observe it. And if you observe yourself correctly in that calm way, you can ask yourself,
“Who becomes angry?
Who is feeling depressed?”
and follow it through.
Do this over and over and over again, as many times as you have to. One day the anger will leave you, the depressions
will leave you, your thoughts will leave you. And you’ll just be.

Until that happens do not fool yourself. Maya is very powerful. Maya is apparent reality of the world. As long as you believe you are the body, then the world is going to be very real to you. This is why you work on yourself first.
Remember your body, as well as all the universe, is a manifestation of your mind. Therefore when the mind begins to dissolve, so does your body, and so does the universe. Also remember when everything dissolves you do not see
consciousness.

As I mentioned in the beginning, you do not walk around and see empty space. One person even told me he read in a book somewhere that a sage walks around in a fog and sees fog-like people. Where do they get these ideas from?
I remind you again. The only difference between the sage and yourself is you see the world and you identify with it.
You think it’s real. A sage sees the world and he knows its a superimposition upon consciousness. So he identifies with consciousness. Consciousness is not a thing. You cannot describe it. It is not the opposite of the world, and it’s not an object, and there is no seer to see it.

Consciousness is another word for being. Being what? Being no-thing.
Now we go beyond the realm of creation, where it becomes ineffable and indescribable. That’s why we can only
explain to you what consciousness is not. Consciousness is not the world. Consciousness is self-contained, absolute
reality. It is yourself when you do not identify with the world, and that only happens to the average person just as
they are falling asleep and just as they wake up. At that time you are consciousness. But the feeling leaves you almost immediately. You begin to identify with the world. You forget about reality.

The method to remember is to catch yourself all during the day. “Who believes this? To whom does this come? Who feels this?” over and over again. When you say, “Who am I?” for some people it is better to say, “Who is I?” the same thing. What you are really doing is you’re finding the source of the I. You’re looking for the source of I, the personal I.
Who am I? You’re always talking about the personal I. Who is this I? Where did it come from? Who gave it birth?

Never answer those questions. Pose those questions, but never answer them. Keep it up. Don’t give up. Do not look for results. Because it’s your true nature, sooner or later the results must presume themselves, but it comes without your help.
You cannot help God. God does not need your help.
Just be yourself.

The Collected Works of
Robert Adams.
Abiding in the I