Not about humanhood -RAdams

YOU WANT DOMINION AND POWER OVER ILLUSION AND HYPNOTISM ? FOCUS ON THE ABSOLUTE . IT’S NOT SELFISHNESS AND CONCEIT BUT THE MOST FAR-REACHING AND HELPFUL TEACHING EVER !
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“When you remain in the silence and you do not talk much then the appearance of this world begins to dissolve. The appearance of the body begins to dissolve. You begin to feel differently. You begin to see things differently. You are no longer surviving, trying to make ends meet, trying to improve your condition. You begin to understand there is no condition to improve. You are beyond conditioning. Good or bad. Sickness or health. Lack or limitation or riches. It’s all the same. It’s neither good nor bad. It’s an appearance. And whatever you’re experiencing, you have to experience the other.

It’s like a pendulum swinging back and forth. The pendulum goes to one side then has to go back to the other side. And so it is with human life. So-called human life is the same thing. We experience one side of it then we experience the other side of it sooner or later. But no human being, so-to-speak, ever experiences oneness—it’s impossible. For the whole universe is duality. So, many people when they first get involved with Advaita Vedanta or Jnana believe that it’s a very selfish teaching, believe that it’s a very conceited teaching.

Why? For the idea is to become self-realized. Jnani’s are always expressing themselves, ‘I am Brahman. I am pure awareness, I am the absolute reality,’ and people who do not understand this say, ‘why don’t you think about this world? Why don’t you help the poor? Why don’t you help alleviate man’s inhumanity to man?’ … They say this because they do not understand what we’re talking about.

When a being becomes so-called self-realized the self-realization is not for him or her alone. The self-realization is a universal feeling. I am the universe is a realization. I am the Brahman, the all-pervading one, this is a realization. The realization is not about yourself. This is something we always have to remember. It is not selfishness. This teaching is not conceit. For when you become self-realized there is no longer a you. What you have called a you has disappeared. What you call you has become the whole universe.

Therefore just by being self-realized you are helping the world without thinking about it. Again why? Because you have become the world, you see? You’re no longer Jack or Jane or Mary or Bob or anybody else. A person who touches their self-realization becomes the entire universe. And therefore you see only the goodness. You do not separate goodness from badness, there is no longer any badness in your psyche, in your consciousness you have transcended [so-called] badness.

Everything is good, even the so-called evil, the things we call evil on this earthly plane. You begin to understand that everything that happens to you is for your own good, for your own benefit. Nothing is here to ever hurt you, as strange as it may seem. Everything is here for your [spiritual] advancement, everything. Every situation, every predicament is there for your advancement. Consequently this teaching is the most unselfish teaching there is. For when a Jnani says, ‘I am Brahman,’ he’s not referring to his humanhood.”

~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)

Let your I reverse its course and return to the center -RAdams

Everything is preordained, as long as you believe you are the body. Everything is karmic, as long as you identify
with the world and believe you are the doer.

But as soon as you start to turn within, as soon as you begin to listen to the still small voice within you, as soon as you start practicing self-inquiry, your life begins to change drastically.
You become happy. You no longer search for happiness, for you are beginning to realize you cannot find it externally.

You may appear to find it. In other words, you may get married and you believe “This is great, I found what I’ve always wanted.” Then you may get divorced and you say “This is great, I finally got rid of that person.” You won the lottery and you say “This is great, I’m rich.” The IRS comes down on you, and you wind up in San Quentin, and you say “This is no good.”

All of these different things take place in your life. The world is not your friend. The world is a phenomena that belongs to a dream. You’ve got to be mature enough to ask the question
“To whom does this world belong?
Who lives in the world?
Where did the world come from?”
and your answer to all the questions begins with I. “I live in the world. I partake in the world. I see the world.” And we’re back to I again. You finally get the idea that the whole world is hanging on I. The I has to be transcended.

You begin early in the morning, when you first wake up. Before you become aware of I, you notice that you are in a state of peace, of joy, even if for only a few seconds. I was not present. You are not aware of the world.
Catch yourself tomorrow morning. It only happens in a flash, in a few seconds.
Yet all of a sudden the world becomes real for you. I has awakened. Where did the I come from?

If you investigate you will see that your spiritual heart center is on the right side of your chest, and the I has come out of your chest, out of your spiritual heart, out of the source, becoming more powerful as it emerges and goes into your brain. Then you become aware of your body and you say “I am alive.”
Once you become aware of your body and your mind, you become aware of the world, and then the universe.

Therefore the wise person catches the I before it goes any further. In other words as the I emerges from your chest, you abide in the I. To the extent that you can abide in the I, or focus on the I, something phenomenal will begin to happen. The I will reverse its course and begin to return to its source.

I will repeat this again. To the average person the I begins to become stronger and stronger when you wake up in the
morning. It emerges from your spiritual center and heads up your spine to your brain, where you become cognizant of the world. But for the spiritual aspirant who practices self-inquiry, you begin to watch the I doing this.
You abide in the I.
As you begin to abide in the I, it will reverse its course and head back to the center. When it heads back to the center, it will rest on the circumference of the center. That is as far as you can go by yourself. You will be in an effortless thought-free state. You will be in the void, as it tells you in Buddhism.

Yet most Buddhists think the void is self-realization. That’s a mistake. The void is when your I is resting on the circumference of your heart center. When that happens you’ve come a long way. You are a mature disciple. Yet the self has to pull the I inside the heart. Then you become liberated. This is very rarely done by the self or by yourself.
I’m speaking of the small self. Only in a very few, will the I go directly into the heart center and be extinguished.

That is why sages are necessary. That is why satsang is necessary. For the sage, who may be a 1000 miles away from you, as long as you have a direct line to the sage mentally, the sage is omnipresent, all-pervading. Therefore the sage, and the self, and the guru and God are one. So that even if you are away from the proximity of the sage, if you have a close association with that particular sage, or that sage is your guru, the self, which is really the sage, will pull the I into the heart, and you will be liberated.
That’s how it appears to work. The rest is up to you.

~ The Collected Works of Robert Adams Volume 1, Consciousness is the only power

East vs West non-duality: compatibility possible?

Those of us who learn step by step from our reading, listening and experiencing don’t need to be deprived of the clearing-the-mind-entirely (TM) type of meditation and all the benefits it affords.

Nor do those who sit erect in lotus position need to deprive themselves of the discipline of an astute rigorous pondering of well-researched spiritual topics.

These two disciplines are really quite compatible – like kissing cousins!

DrRobinStarbuck 2018

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YOU WANT DOMINION AND POWER OVER ILLUSION AND HYPNOTISM ? FOCUS ON THE ABSOLUTE .
▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎
“When you remain in the silence and you do not talk much then the appearance of this world begins to dissolve. The appearance of the body begins to dissolve. You begin to feel differently. You begin to see things differently. You are no longer surviving, trying to make ends meet, trying to improve your condition. You begin to understand there is no condition to improve. You are beyond conditioning. Good or bad. Sickness or health. Lack or limitation or riches. It’s all the same. It’s neither good nor bad. It’s an appearance. And whatever you’re experiencing, you have to experience the other.

It’s like a pendulum swinging back and forth. The pendulum goes to one side then has to go back to the other side. And so it is with human life. So-called human life is the same thing. We experience one side of it then we experience the other side of it sooner or later. But no human being, so-to-speak, ever experiences oneness—it’s impossible. For the whole universe is duality. So, many people when they first get involved with Advaita Vedanta or Jnana believe that it’s a very selfish teaching, believe that it’s a very conceited teaching.

Why? For the idea is to become self-realized. Jnani’s are always expressing themselves, ‘I am Brahman. I am pure awareness, I am the absolute reality,’ and people who do not understand this say, ‘why don’t you think about this world? Why don’t you help the poor? Why don’t you help alleviate man’s inhumanity to man?’ … They say this because they do not understand what we’re talking about.

When a being becomes so-called self-realized the self-realization is not for him or her alone. The self-realization is a universal feeling. I am the universe is a realization. I am the Brahman, the all-pervading one, this is a realization. The realization is not about yourself. This is something we always have to remember. It is not selfishness. This teaching is not conceit. For when you become self-realized there is no longer a you. What you have called a you has disappeared. What you call you has become the whole universe.

Therefore just by being self-realized you are helping the world without thinking about it. Again why? Because you have become the world, you see? You’re no longer Jack or Jane or Mary or Bob or anybody else. A person who touches their self-realization becomes the entire universe. And therefore you see only the goodness. You do not separate goodness from badness, there is no longer any badness in your psyche, in your consciousness you have transcended [so-called] badness.

Everything is good, even the so-called evil, the things we call evil on this earthly plane. You begin to understand that everything that happens to you is for your own good, for your own benefit. Nothing is here to ever hurt you, as strange as it may seem. Everything is here for your [spiritual] advancement, everything. Every situation, every predicament is there for your advancement. Consequently this teaching is the most unselfish teaching there is. For when a Jnani says, ‘I am Brahman,’ he’s not referring to his humanhood.”

~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)

Serious students save themselves first -JSG

Those who are seriously directed to the spiritual path should understand that their work at this moment is not to concern themselves with trying to save the world or even their relatives, but first of all with being saved themselves. This may sound selfish, but it is the very opposite of selfishness. Our primary function is to be concerned with only one thing, and that is that we attain conscious union with God. The rest of the world may have to battle out their woes by themselves while we stand by. We have to keep right on seeking the kingdom of God, seeking to attain our conscious union with God. If meanwhile the world swallows itself up, we cannot help it. It has always been that way.
There have been many civilizations destroyed in the past, and there are going to be quite a few destroyed from here on, but there has always been a remnant of those who were saved when civilizations were destroyed. Always after that destruction there were the few, who not only were saved, but left a record that helped save those of future generations. So it is that the Bible, the scriptures of all peoples and the mystical writings of all nations, these are the things that are helping you and me right now.
We are helped by those who have passed from our sight. Never believe that there is a retrograde step from developed spiritual consciousness. If an individual attains spiritual consciousness on earth, he is a blessing to everyone who brings himself within range of his consciousness and even to some who are not aware of what is going on. But when that individual leaves this human plane of life, his spiritually developed consciousness continues on just the same. It cannot be put into a grave. Those who have meditated with the I know:

‘I was never born and I will never die. That I was never confined in a physical body, much less will I ever be confined in a tomb.’

‘“I and my Father are one,” and therefore I am never limited to time, space, or place. I and the Father within are one, and that One is immortal. Therefore I go on forever and forever and forever. That I which I am is the state of consciousness which I am.’

Joel S. Goldsmith: Living The Illumined Life. Chapter Eight: The Fourth Dimension; A Developed Spiritual Consciousness Functions Eternally; Kindle: page 138-139

Turn within vs Layers of Ignorance

“For some strange reason you’ve covered yourself with layers of ignorance. You have become conditioned. You have a covering called a body which appears to you to be the Real McCoy and you go through life trying to appease the body. Trying to make the body happy. Doing things to the body so you’ll be satisfied. Yet with a little investigation you will begin to see that you are not the body.

The body belongs to the I-thought. The body belongs to the ego, to the mind. Consequently you begin to work on yourself by removing the ego, the mind and the I. As you continue to observe this and see this in yourself you begin to realize that the I-thought is the main culprit, for you say I all day long. I love this, I hate this, I feel this, I don’t feel that, you’re always using the first pronoun I. Therefore everything is attached to this I.

Your spiritual sadhana becomes one of removing the I-thought totally and completely. For if you remove the I-thought everything else will go with it and you will be totally free. It’s like trying to take off the layers of cloth on the light. If you take them off one by one it will take a long time but if you go directly to the source, which is the light, the cloth will burn up by itself.

This is what we do here in Advaita Vedanta. We understand I am the light, I am Brahman. I have always been Brahman. I am Shiva, I am Krishna. I am all of the gods and goddesses. I am that. I may appear as the body but I am not the body. There is no mind that controls me at all. For I am the light of the world. I am that. Nothing else exists but that.

You turn within to that. You turn within to the Self. By turning within I always refer to negating the body totally and completely trying to realize even intellectually there never was a body to begin with. There is no body, there is only the light, consciousness, self contained absolute reality that’s what I-am, I-am, I-am.”

~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)

NDEs, OBEs & Afterlife VIDEOS

One woman died in the operating room. She went through the tunnel and found herself no longer bound by the human body at all. She could see beyond her wildest dreams. She had “multiple simultaneous levels of awareness”, could see out of the back of her head, remembered things that happened before and after she was born. She was an attorney and made sure her pertinent information was well documented. Her descriptions of what it was like being entirely free of the body were amazing. The love, the joy, the peace and comradery when she wanted it. Without these bodies we have freedom we never knew was possible. She didn’t want to come back but acquiesced when she realized she could be of great help to those of us who want to know. To me, this points to Brahman the indescribable state of bliss.

Emptiness better than human love -RAdams

“How can emptiness be better than human love or human happiness? Again there are no words to describe it because it’s ineffable. You have to realize what emptiness really means. Emptiness means that no-thing exists in it, no human concept, no human feeling, no human entity.

Where there is total emptiness there is Absolute Reality. And Absolute Reality is total bliss, happiness and joy. And it’s omnipresence. So you not only feel it personally but you have become the whole universe and you see it wherever you look, and you hear it wherever you listen.”

~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)

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“The words that I speak do not mean too much. It is the silence that is eloquent. And the silence is the same with all of us. Silence is the Self. If you rest in silence you become the Self.”

~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)

Finally surrendered & victory! -rjs

Have you ever tried and tried
And tried some more
To get Spirit fully infused
In your conscious awareness
But nothing ever worked until
You hit an emergency situation
Where hope had vanished and
Help was nowhere in sight?

In utter desperation you had an
Epiphany: “Nothing else matters
In this sorry mess of mine
Or anywhere else in the world.
I don’t care anymore, that’s all I know.
God, divine Spirit, I want only You …..
Everything was SUDDENLY HEALED?

You were astonished beyond measure
Sure you were dreaming – how could
It be that you … unworthy for lack
Of insight and perspicacity … you
Could have received such an
Unspeakably amazing miracle
Midst all the sad drama of yesterday?

But now that’s months ago already
And you’re trying, trying, trying
To keep the elation, the astonishment
Alive. You want to bask in it forever
But how? What to do? Should I dare
Recreate an hideous, horrible, Life-
Threatening situation?

Think deeply now: it’s not the situation
But the exact same degree of intense
Critical commitment that you finally
Had in place the last time — moments
Before you SURRENDERED ABSOLUTELY
EVERYTHING – AND WANTED NOTHING
WHATSOEVER except proof that Spirit,
God, was fully in charge.

Robin Starbuck