Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

Robert on having many teachers, many books, much travel, little depth

You and I know many people who have been searching for many, many years, twenty years, thirty years, forty years, for the answers to life, for reality, yet they're still in the same place they started twenty years ago. They have gone through all kinds of things. They've been to many places. They met certain teacher, but they're still the same.

For they've never really investigated themselves. They say they do. They say they've been working on themselves for years, nothing has happened. But have they really been working on themselves? What they've been doing is sort of just thinking about it a little bit, reading books. But they've never dived deep enough in the Self to find the answers. And this is exactly what you have to do.

You have to dive deep, deep, deep within yourself, deeper than you can ever imagine. And the only way you can do this is by giving up the external world, mentally, not physically. In other words, by not reacting to things. To observe things, watch the world go by, leave it alone. It's neither good nor bad. It has nothing to offer you.

Yet at the same time you'll be doing what you have to do, what you came here to do. If you're supposed to work, you will work. If you're not supposed to work, you'll not work. If you're supposed to be married, you'll be married. If you're supposed not to be married, you'll not be married. Everything will happen by itself. Yet you will know within yourself, that this is not you. The situation is not you. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. You are beyond conditioning, beyond situations, beyond experience, beyond everything. Yet you are everything also.

        As you become a little more serious about this work, you will stop taking things so seriously in this world. You will begin to know how to leave things alone. You'll be more interested in diving within yourself, to find yourself, to understand yourself, who you are, what you are. But then the mind comes to play again, and the mind grabs you, makes you give this up for a while, makes you start enjoying life, so called, makes you be a part of life again, hands you things, gives you things, you go through many experiences good and bad.

Again you forget about the Self, who you are. And most people stay like this until they get old and die.

But there are a few people who will not take no for an answer. There are a few people on this earth, who are only after one thing, and that's liberation. This is foremost in their mind. This is the only thing they think about, day and night, to become free. And what you think about, thinks about you.

So first you use your mind to desire total liberation. When you have a strong desire for liberation, something will tell you the mind has to be destroyed, the mind has to go. What I mean when I say, "The mind has to be destroyed, the mind has to go", I'm referring to the mind has to be left alone, without interference, to observe the mind, to watch the mind, without watching, without observing.

This can be done. For when you say, I am observing the mind, I am watching the mind, the 'I' that you're speaking of is the mind also. So what you're really saying is the mind watching the mind and you get nowhere. Yet there's a way to watch the thoughts and to not watch the thoughts at the same time, to observe the thoughts and not to observe the thoughts at the same time. Just be.

You will find out as you keep doing this, everything begins to change all around you. Yet everything is the same all around you. You see things that other people do not see. You become things that other people can never become. For instance, you become all-pervading. You begin to feel your presence, your essence in the leaves, in the trees, in the sky, in the animals, in the insects. You begin to see that all this is the Self, and I am that. This is when you have total reverence for all of life. Everything becomes God.
Everything becomes consciousness. You're no longer saying, "I, I, me, me, I need this, I want that, I feel this way, I feel that way". You have grown out of this. When you use the term 'I', only speak with the people. They do not understand what you are talking about, so you use the term I with them. But you yourself know that I does not exist. There is no longer an I to keep you in bondage. The 'I' has given way to omnipresence.

The good thing about all this, is that anybody can become liberated, at any moment. But this is because you are already liberated. If you were not liberated, you would never be able to become liberated. But because you're already liberated, all you're really doing is taking off the stuff that makes you think you're not liberated, dark clouds, the layers and layers of nonsense, garbage, that you covered yourself with all of these years. The thought, "I am important, I am somebody". This is what keeps you in bondage.

Robert Adams: Who Are You? - 15th November, 1992