I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Emily Dickinson, 1830 – 1886
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog
I’m always interested in Aldous Huxley….
“The world is an illusion, but it is an illusion that we must take seriously, because it is as real as it goes, and in those aspects of reality which we are capable of apprehending. Our business is to wake up. We have to find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see. We must not live thoughtlessly, taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not live too thoughtfully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. We must continually be on our watch for ways in which we may enlarge our consciousness. We must not attempt to live outside the world, which is given to us, but we must somehow learn how to transform it and transfigure it. Too much ‘wisdom’ is as bad as too little wisdom, and there must be no magic tricks. We must learn to come to reality without the enchanter’s wand and his book of the words. One must find a way of being in this world while not being in it. A way of living in time without being completely swallowed up by time.”
― Aldous Huxley
“Now why would I, a happy, young, successful business person, be interested in enlightenment? you ask? “Why should I invest my precious time learning about higher Consciousness?”
Because right now you are invested up to your eyeballs in disaster, discord, disease, death. It may be couched in the thrills and excitement of this world – all of which will come tumbling down, as matter is heir to.
Like anybody else I had plenty of reason to think that I was just not ready or not the right person for enlightenment because there were so many other things going on in my life and vying for my attention all the time.
Higher Consciousness won me over as I will elaborate a little later on, and so I have decided to dedicate my entire life to my passion of sharing how to get out of the body – including the body’s mind – once and for all and stay in the Spirit permanently. By the end of the book I’m pretty sure you’ll understand why!
“You” = me. This book is being written for you, in the hopes of reaching those unaddressed areas within yourself that have defiantly refused to be released to your soul. What I’m drawing from is myself – as I was from so-called birth – through my transitioning preparation – sometimes right up until a few minutes ago!
The big difference between “you” and me is that I may have polished up my ability to lie to myself longer and better than “you” have … maybe. I never meant to lie to anyone – least of all to myself. Good grief. But I see now – with all my well-honed techniques for convincing myself that I have arrived, the worst of them all is that I believed my own lies!
But, regarding pure spiritual reality, I’ve been ‘at it’ for a long, long time and one thing I can do for you is to argue on behalf of quitting all self-deception. We’ve got much too important work to do – “you” and me – and we must cut off the impediments as best we can. I’ve even devoted a chapter to “Brutal Honesty” which echoes the same sentiment. We can’t be content with mere superficial attempts to prove the healing truths that constitute Enlightenment.
Dr. Robin Starbuck
ENLIGHTENMENT:
You can heal yourself now
2017
▪︎When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.
▪︎Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.
▪︎Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner space or awareness in which the words on this page are being perceived and become thoughts. Without that awareness, there would be no perception, no thoughts, no world.
▪︎You are that awareness, disguised as a person.
▪︎The equivalent of external noise is the inner noise of thinking. The equivalent of external silence is inner stillness.
▪︎Whenever there is some silence around you — listen to it. That means just notice it. Pay attention to it. Listening to silence awakens the dimension of stillness within yourself, because it is only through stillness that you can be aware of silence.
~ Eckhart Tolle
Robert Adams (spiritual teacher)
American philosopher
Robert Adams (January 21, 1928 – March 2, 1997) was an ●●American neo-Advaita teacher. In later life Adams held satsang with a small group of devotees in California, US. He mainly advocated the ●●path of jñāna yoga with an emphasis on the ●●practice of self-enquiry. Adams’ teachings were not well known in his lifetime, but have since been widely circulated amongst those investigating the philosophy of ●●Advaita and the Western devotees of ●●Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. A book of his teachings,●● Silence of the Heart: Dialogues with Robert Adams, was published in 1999.Quick facts: Born, Died …
Robert Adams was born on January 21, 1928 in ●●Manhattan and grew up in New York City, USA. Adams claimed that from as far back as he could remember, he had had visions of a white haired, bearded man seated at the foot of his bed, who was about two feet tall, and who used to talk to him in a language which he did not understand. He told his parents but they thought he was playing games. He would later find out that this man was a vision of his future guru Sri Ramana Maharshi. At the age of seven, Adams’s father died and the visitations suddenly stopped.
Adams said that he then developed a siddhi whereby whenever he wanted something, from a candy bar to a violin, all he needed to do was say the name of the object three times and the desired object would appear from somewhere, or be given to him by someone. If there was a test at school, Adams would simply say ‘God, God, God’ and the answers would immediately come to him; no prior study was necessary.
Adams claimed to have had a profound ●● spiritual awakening at the age of fourteen. It was the end of term finals maths test and Adams had not studied for it at all. As was his custom he said ‘God’ three times, but with a phenomenal and unintended outcome:
Instead of the answers coming, the room filled with light, a thousand times more brilliant than the sun. It was like an atomic bomb, but it was not a burning light. It was a beautiful, bright, shining, warm glow. Just thinking of it now makes me stop and wonder. The whole room, everybody, everything was immersed in light. All the children seemed to be myriads particles of light. I found myself melting into radiant being, into consciousness. I merged into consciousness. It was not an out of body experience. This was completely different. I realised that I was not my body. What appeared to be my body was not real. I went beyond the light into pure radiant consciousness. I became omnipresent. My individuality had merged into pure absolute bliss. I expanded. I became the universe. The feeling is indescribable. It was total bliss, total joy. The next thing I remembered was the teacher shaking me. All the students had gone. I was the only one left in the class. I returned to human consciousness. That feeling has never left me.
Not long after this experience, Adams went to the school library to do a book report. While passing through the philosophy section he came across a book on yoga masters. Having no idea what yoga was, he opened the book and for the first time saw a photo of the man he had experienced ●● visions of as a young child, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
●●Paramahansa Yogananda
Journey to the Guru
At the age of 16, Adams’ first spiritual mentor was ●●● Joel S. Goldsmith, a Christian mystic from New York, whom he used to visit in Manhattan, in order to listen to his sermons. Goldsmith helped Adams to better understand his enlightenment and ●●advised him to go and see Paramahansa Yogananda. Adams did so and visited Yogananda at the Self-Realization Fellowship in Encinitas, California, where he intended to be initiated as a monk. However, after speaking to him, Yogananda felt that Adams had his own path and should go to India. He told him that ●●his satguru was Sri Ramana Maharshi and that he should go to him as soon as possible because Ramana Maharshi’s body was old and in ill-health. Sri Ramana Maharshi lived at Sri Ramanasramam at the foot of Arunachala in Tamil Nadu, South India.
Ramana Maharshi
With $14,000 of inheritance money from a recently deceased aunt, Adams set off for India and his guru Sri Ramana Maharshi in 1946:
When I was eighteen years old, I arrived at Tiruvannamalai. In those days they didn’t have jet planes. It was a propeller plane. I purchased flowers and a bag of fruit to bring to Ramana. I took the rickshaw to the ashram. It was about 8:30 a.m. I entered the hall and there was Ramana on his couch reading his mail. It was after breakfast. I brought the fruit and the flowers over and laid them at his feet. There was a guardrail in front of him to prevent fanatics from attacking him with love. And then I sat down in front of him. He looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back. I have been to many teachers, many saints, many sages. I was with Nisargadatta, Anandamayi Ma, Papa Ramdas, Neem Karoli Baba and many others, but never did I meet anyone who exuded such compassion, such love, such bliss as Ramana
Not long after this experience, Adams went to the school library to do a book report. While passing through the philosophy section he came across a book on yoga masters. Having no idea what yoga was, he opened the book and for the first time saw a photo of the man he had experienced visions of as a young child, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Journey to the Guru
At the age of 16, Adams’ first spiritual mentor was Joel S. Goldsmith, a Christian mystic from New York, whom he used to visit in Manhattan, in order to listen to his sermons. Goldsmith helped Adams to better understand his enlightenment and advised him to go and see Paramahansa Yogananda. Adams did so and visited Yogananda at the Self-Realization Fellowship in Encinitas, California, where he intended to be initiated as a monk. However, after speaking to him, Yogananda felt that Adams had his own path and should go to India. He told him that his satguru was Sri Ramana Maharshi and that he should go to him as soon as possible because Ramana Maharshi’s body was old and in ill-health. Sri Ramana Maharshi lived at Sri Ramanasramam at the foot of Arunachala in Tamil Nadu, South India.
Ramana Maharshi
With $14,000 of inheritance money from a recently deceased aunt, Adams set off for India and his guru Sri Ramana Maharshi in 1946:
When I was eighteen years old, I arrived at Tiruvannamalai. In those days they didn’t have jet planes. It was a propeller plane. I purchased flowers and a bag of fruit to bring to Ramana. I took the rickshaw to the ashram. It was about 8:30 a.m. I entered the hall and there was Ramana on his couch reading his mail. It was after breakfast. I brought the fruit and the flowers over and laid them at his feet. There was a guardrail in front of him to prevent fanatics from attacking him with love. And then I sat down in front of him. He looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back. I have been to many teachers, many saints, many sages. I was with Nisargadatta, Anandamayi Ma, Papa Ramdas, Neem Karoli Baba and many others, but never did I meet anyone who exuded such compassion, such love, such bliss as Ramana Maharshi.
Adams stayed at Sri Ramanasramam for the final three years of Sri Ramana Maharshi’s life. Over the course of this time he had many conversations with Sri Ramana Maharshi, and through abiding in his presence was able to confirm and further understand his own experience of awakening to the non-dual Self. In the first of these conversations, Ramana Maharshi told Adams they had been together in a previous life. After Sri Ramana Maharshi left the body in 1950 Adams spent a further ●●seventeen years travelling around India and stayed with well known gurus such as Nisargadatta Maharaj, Anandamayi Ma, Neem Karoli Baba and Swami Ramdas to name but a few. He also spent time with less well-known teachers such as Swami Brahmadanda “the Staff of God” in the holy city of Varanasi.
In the 1960s Adams returned to the United States and lived in Hawaii and Los Angeles before finally moving to Sedona, Arizona in the mid 1990s. He was married to Nicole Adams and fathered two daughters. In the 1980s Adams developed Parkinson’s disease, which forced him to settle in one location and receive the appropriate care. A small group of devotees soon grew up around him and in the early 1990s he gave weekly satsangs in the San Fernando Valley, along with other surrounding areas of Los Angeles. These satsangs were both recorded and transcribed. After several years of deteriorating health, Adams died on March 2, 1997 in Sedona, Arizona, where he was surrounded by family members and devotees. He died at the age of 69 from cancer of the liver.
| “ | The teacher is really yourself. You have created a teacher to wake you up. The teacher would not be here if you were not dreaming about the teacher. You have created a teacher out of your mind in order to awaken, to see that there is no teacher, no world – nothing. You’ve done this all by yourself. | ” |
Adams did not consider himself to be a teacher, a philosopher or a preacher. What he imparted he said was simply the confession of a jnani. He said he confessed his and everyone else’s own reality, and encouraged students not to listen to him with their heads but with their hearts. Adams’ way of communicating to his devotees was often funny, and with interludes of silence or music between questions and answers. He stated that there was no such thing as a new teaching. This knowledge could be found in the Upanishads, the Vedas and other Hindu scriptures.
Adams did not write any books himself nor publish his teachings as he did not wish to gain a large following. He instead preferred to teach a small number of dedicated seekers. However, in 1992, a book of his dialogues was transcribed, compiled and distributed by and for the sole use of his devotees. In 1999, a later edition of this book, Silence of the Heart: Dialogues with Robert Adams, was posthumously published by Acropolis Books Inc. As conveyed by the title of these dialogues, Adams considered silence to be the highest of spiritual teachings:
The highest teaching in the world is silence. There is nothing higher than this. A devotee who sits with a Sage purifies his mind just by being with the Sage. The mind automatically becomes purified. No words exchanged, no words said. Silence is the ultimate reality. Everything exists in this world through silence. True silence really means going deep within yourself to that place where nothing is happening, where you transcend time and space. You go into a brand new dimension of nothingness. That’s where all the power is. That’s your real home. That’s where you really belong, in deep Silence where there is no good and bad, no one trying to achieve anything. Just being, pure being.
Robert Adams – I Seem That. Robert Adams talking to students at satsang (4 November 1990)
Although Adams was never initiated into a religious order or spiritual practice, nor became a renunciate, his teachings were described by Dennis Waite as being firmly based in the Vedic philosophy and Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta. Advaita (non-dual in sanskrit) refers to the ultimate and supreme reality, Brahman, which according to Ramana Maharshi, as interpreted by some of his devotees, is the substratum of the manifest universe, and if describable at all, could be defined as pure consciousness. Another term for Brahman is Ātman. The word Ātman is used when referring to Brahman as the inmost spirit of man. Ātman and Brahman are not different realities, but identical in nature. Adams used a metaphor to explain this:
A clay pot has space inside of it and outside of it. The space inside is not any different from the space outside. When the clay pot breaks, the space merges the inside with the outside. It’s only space. So it is with us. Your body is like a clay pot, and it appears you have to go within to find the truth. The outward appears to be within you. The outward is also without you. There’s boundless space. When the body is transcended, it’s like a broken clay pot. The Self within you becomes the Self outside of you … as it’s always been. The Self merges with the Self. Some people call the inner Self the Ātman. And yet it is called Brahman. When there is no body in the way, the Atman and the Brahman become one … they become free and liberated.
Those in search of liberation from the manifest world will gain it only when the mind becomes quiescent. The world is in fact nothing other than the creation of the mind, and only by the removal of all thoughts, including the ‘I’ thought, will the true reality of Brahman shine forth. Adams taught self-enquiry, as previously taught by Sri Ramana Maharshi, in order to achieve this.
In his weekly satsangs Adams advocated the practice of self-enquiry (ātma-vichāra) as the principal means of transcending the ego and realising oneself as sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss). After acknowledging to oneself that one exists, and that whether awake, dreaming or in deep sleep one always exists, one then responds to every thought that arises with the question “Who am I?”:
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 … do nothing, absolutely nothing. You’re watching the thoughts come. As soon as the thoughts come, in a gentle way you enquire, ‘To whom do these thoughts come? They come to me. I think them. Who is this I? Where did it come from? How did it arise? From where did it arise? Who is the I? Who am I?’ You remain still. The thoughts come again. You do the same thing again and again
Adams rarely gave a sadhana to his devotees, however, he did often have visions, and in one such vision he gave a teaching as the Buddha. He visualised himself sitting under a tree in a beautiful open field with a lake and a forest nearby. He was wearing the orange garb of a Buddhist renunciate. All of a sudden hundreds of bodhisattvas and mahasattvas came out of the forest and sat down in a semi-circle around Adams as the Buddha. Together they proceeded to meditate for several hours. Afterwards, one of the bodhisattvas stood up and asked the Buddha what he taught. The Buddha answered, “I teach Self-realization of Noble Wisdom.” Again they sat in silence for three hours before another bodhisattva stood up and asked how one could tell whether they were close to self-realization. In reply, Adams as the Buddha, gave the bodhisattvas and mahasattvas four principles, which he named The Four Principles of Self-Realization of Noble Wisdom:
QUOTES
● There’s something within you that knows what to do. There is a power greater than you that knows how to take care of you without your help. All you’ve got to do is to surrender to it. Surrender your thoughts, your mind, your ego, to the current that knows the way. It will take care of you. It will take better care of you than you can ever imagine.
● Well, you know, the mind is nothing. The mind is only a bunch of thoughts. Thoughts about the past and the future, that is all a mind is. But, the Heart is a center of stillness, of quietness, of Absolute Peace. When you rest your mind in your heart, you feel a joy and a bliss that overwhelms you, and you will Know. Surrender your mind to your Heart, and you will feel it.
● I want to let you in on a little secret. There are no problems. There are no problems. There never were any problems, there are no problems today, and there will never be any problems. Problems just mean that the world isn’t turning the way you want it to. But in truth, there are no problems. Everything is unfolding as it should. Everything is right. You have to forget about yourself and expand your consciousness until you become the whole universe. The Reality in back of the universe is Pure Awareness. It has no problems. And you are That.
● Change no one. Change nothing. React to no one, react to nothing. Do not live in the past and do not, worry about the future. Stay in the eternal now, where all is well. After all you are me and I am you. There’s no difference. Do not react to the world. Do not even react to your own body. Do not even react to your own thoughts. Learn to become the witness. Learn to be quiet.
● For most people to be happy, there has to be a person, place, or thing involved in their happiness. In true happiness, there are no things involved. It’s a natural state. You will abide in that state forever.
●
Just something to consider…. [Mark Bates]
Events happen, deeds are done, but there is no individual doer thereof.
~ Buddha
When one sees oneself as neither the doer nor the reaper of the consequences, then all mind waves come to an end.
~ Ashtavakra Gita
All your activities happen spontaneously and they will continue to happen.
Your claim of being the doer is totally false.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
There is neither creation nor destruction. neither destiny nor free will. neither path nor achievement. This is the final truth.
~ Ramana Maharshi
How foolish it is to believe that you are doing the writing �when, in fact, you are merely the pen in the Writer’s Hand.
~ Wu Hsin
Self-Realization or Enlightenment is nothing more than the deepest possible understanding that there is no individual doer of any action – neither you nor anyone else. Also you are not the thinker of any thoughts, nor the experiencer of any experiences – they happen. When IT happens, no bright lights are likely to flash in your head!
~ Ramesh Balsekar
People, confused by ego, think they are doers of all kinds of work while it is being done by the energy of nature.
~ Bhagavad Gita
Nothing to do, Nothing to force, nothing to want – and everything happens by itself.
~ Lama Gendun Rinpoche
LIFE ISN’T THAT
If you would only dispense
For about two minutes
With the notion that your
Or Your Country’s wisdom
Is superior to all other wisdom
Throughout all eternity …
Oh, if you’d only hear the
Ancient oracles, you’d know
You’re facing catastrophe
As it were a comic book.
Life’s for succulent,
Albeit succinct
Pleasures –
Nice and tidy
Till Nevermore comes!
What if instead you had trained
Up your spiritual listening muscles
And other avenues of reception
To hear the instructions
Aimed at You?
But, oh no, everybody loves you,
Your wit, your charm, your nothing!
When you realize at last:
Oh no! Life wasn’t that!
DrRobinStarbuck
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Emily Dickinson, 1830 – 1886
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog
Emily Dickenson
KAY FAIRCHILD article
People can get quite upset when you mention the Bible these days. I believe that one of the reasons some have a hard time where the scriptures are concerned is because many have ministered and focused on the ‘letter’ rather than the ‘spirit of the word’. Many have made allegorical stories literal and literacy allegoric. Scripture states that Jesus taught in parabolic language only. Now, the book of Revelation states in chapter 5 that there is a book ‘within’ (esoteric in Greek) which is the book of spirit. Jesus told the religious lawyers that ‘they take away the KEY OF KNOWLEDGE by not turning within themselves and they hinder those who desired to turn within’. The inner book of spirit will often times lead us to the outer book to confirm what has been spoken to us from within. Many people have lost heart where the Bible is concerned due to literal interpretations and eschatological teachings of ‘gloom and doom’. I totally get that! Been there–done that–got the t-shirt!
For example, literal interpretations of the Old Testament picture God as a retributive wrathful God; yet people have failed to understand that the writers of the Old Testament were influenced by the former false ‘gods’ which they depended on to bless them or, very often would curse them according to whether or not they would offer sacrifice. Some of those false gods are even mentioned in scripture. In John 1:18 it states that ‘NO MAN saw God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him’. Not until Jesus revealed the love of the Father did many of the Old Testament writers see the love, grace and mercy of the Father. Someone may ask, ‘But what about the verse in II Timothy 3:16 which states that ‘ALL SCRIPTURE is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine…’ Many teach that every word in the Bible is inspired. The Greek rendering of that verse states that ‘every God-inspired word is profitable…or, every word which was inspired of God is profitable…’ That is a far cry from stating that ‘EVERY WORD’ is inspired. When one cannot reconcile that reality in their awareness they will usually continue to struggle with scripture.
Now, back to my original thought for this post: If we can see that which is symbolic, spiritual, parabolic and allegoric, we will come away with an entirely different view of scripture. For example, I have been looking at the different dimensions of things in the Old Testament which were measured in cubits, and I came to realize that everything measured in cubits depicts consciousness and reveals how important it truly is. One cannot birth outwardly (visible) except from that which is true inwardly (invisible). As I began to look at all of the different things measured in CUBITS and beheld how perfectly they depict the number 9 which is the number inferring consciousness, I could not help but think how beautifully assembled the scriptures truly are; which we see when we are focused spiritually, allegorically, parabolically and symbolically. However, if we are not thus focused, then to us there can be a lot of confusing things written therein. I believe that is largely why people have difficulty and end up losing confidence that there is anything of value written in the Bible. I do believe that turning within to the ‘book within’ is our first source of revelation, since only our spirit can quicken truth to us to begin with; but I honestly love the scriptures and the synchronicity that I AM finding therein as wonderful confirmation to what is being revealed to many people at this time! Yes, Christ Jesus IS the word made flesh and WE are One as Christ in the earth, so let us realize that there are many glorious things written which were explained by the writers in literal terms that are HAPPENING in/as us today! Kay Fairchild
“I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar With angels bless’d; but even from angelhood I must pass on: all except God doth perish. When I have sacrificed my angel-soul, I shall become what no mind ever conceived. Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence Proclaims in organ tones, To Him we shall return.”
RUMI (The Persian Sufi poet)