Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

This is what Robert Adams said on the subject of running from one teacher to another, endless reading of spiritual books, discussion in forums such as Facebook and emails, travel to exotic places seeking perfect meditation venues, etc.:


In Advaita Vedanta, the knower is the last to go. What comes after the knower? Silence! There is nothing else.


Just think how much knowledge you've gathered all these years. Reading so many books. Seeing so many teachers. Having so many discussions, debates, arguments. Can't you see now this is what's been holding you back? This is what has been holding you back. You have believed that you're the knower and that you have to become a knower to become free.


Yet no one has to know anything for there is absolutely nothing to know. Why is there nothing to know? Because there is only omnipresence, infinity, absolute reality and there is no name for this. (Here Robert is talking about what comes after Self-Realzation, knowing Turya, Brahman. He is talking about the final condition.)


In other words, you cannot know absolute reality. You cannot know pure awareness. As long as there is someone who knows about it, it doesn't exist. It's only when you put an end to knowing that you become the Self. The Self has no shape, no form, no identity. It is no thing. Yet you are that. What are you going to do about it?


(Instead of abiding in it…), when most of you walk out this door you'll start discussions, arguments. You'll start thinking about your outside world. You'll start thinking about your body, your material happiness, or your material suffering. And you'll be back where you started.


What I'm saying to you is if you could only learn to be quiet, in your mind. If your mind learns to keep quiet, it will become weaker and weaker and you will notice that all the actions you are doing, and all the concepts you are talking have absolutely nothing to do with you.


Yet you will continue to do things, go places, experience this so-called life, but you are doing absolutely nothing. For there's no one left to do anything. There's no one left to get sick, there's no one left to be healthy. There's no one left to be poor, there's no one left to be rich. There's no one left to possess anything and there's no one left not to possess anything.


There's just no one left, and this is what gives you freedom. And the only way you can get to that place is to keep quiet. To be silent.


(Again, Robert is talking about the final state, going beyond Turya. According to the quotes from Siddharameshwar that I have been posting, the I Am, Turya, Brahman, is the pure knowing state, and eventually even knowledge has to go.
This is even after self-inquiry is finished. But, he even says that his practice of silence, not traveling, not reading, not discussing, can take you all the way. In a sense, by remaining silent, just by looking within, you are emulating the final state. You have to remember Robert here is not talking to advanced students, but is really just talking like this to have them turn their attention away from books, gurus and travel, and turn inwardly towards the Self of all.)


The Knower is the last to go! - 9th January, 1992