How Robert Adams and I Differ in Teaching and Method:

ROBERT ADAMS:

All that there is, is Consciousness, but even Consciousness is an illusion. You as a person do not exist, nor does the world exist, the only “entity” that exists is Consciousness and that keeps changing, meaning it too is not real. The existence of things depends on our minds’ abilities to see, name and experience forms.

Practice is to watch every aspect of oneself: emotions, thoughts, reactions, and to not get involved or attached to anything or any experience because they are temporary and will pass; only you as the totality of consciousness is real.

The more specific practice is a narrow form of self-inquiry, whereby we ask ourselves, “Who am I?” just once, and wait for a response. When a verbal or thought response arises, ask “Where is this answer coming from?” The intent is to see if there is a center or nucleus of self-awareness, a Self.

CONCLUSION:

There is no ego, mind or central self as it cannot be found by searching. Conclusion is I don’d exist as an entity, there is nly an unending string of perceptions, experiences, events, unfolding in a pattern fixed by karma and the Power That knows the Way.

ED MUZIKA

Robert’s truth only holds if you define “real” as unchanging.

There is no such “thing” as one’s true nature. Everything is you, is the Self, including thoughts, emotions, reactions, our bodies, our energetic bodies, Kundalini and Shakti, the underlying Fourth State of Existence, Knowledge and Bliss, and all that appears in Consciousness (and beyond), including the witness of all, what Nisargadatta called Parabrahman.

The aim is not the peace and bliss of Robert’s silent immersion in unmoving Consciousness, but to identify with everything we are, including raw emotions, our bodies, and to come to terms with death of the physical/mental/emotional entities we are by being completely open to our ephemeral and very vulnerable humanity and relationships. Accepting death as opposed to denying death by denying we also exist as temporary human entities.

The method is complex: look within to find the I-Am sensation, focus on it, love it, play with it, entice it into your heart. Loving the I Am will take one deeper into Consciousness than the immediate sensual “Nowness” or “Beingness” of the neo-Advaitins, into one’s energy body, human emotions, Turiya, bliss, and then the absolute Witness, Parabrahman

ROBERT ADAMS: PITFALLS

One often gets lost in the beauty and tranquility of the cool silence of non-moving witness, watching everything unfold, and eventually one can die to one’s humanhood, to our emotional self, to humanity. The LifeForce seems attenuated because there is no emotional power in one’s life.

Robert never speaks about the energetic body either, subtle energies, Kundalini, and/or “Shakti” that fills one with a sense of aliveness and an identification more with the subtle and physical body level.

Many or Robert’s students got lost in depression and suicide because they did not find the bliss he promised, but found deadness instead.

Otherwise one tends to get lost in dysfunctionality as nothing in this world is so attractive as that which lies within.


MUZIKA METHOD-CONTINUED

Listen to sacred chanting as often as possible, especially the old Muktananda style chants, Krishna Das, Yogananda chants, Amma chants.

This will cause you to experience amazing flows of internal energy within, spontaneous happiness, sadness, crying and helps the arising of long dead emotions and memories.

Most importantly, use all occasions of human love of all sorts to learn about what love is, see that it is located within you and your physical/subtle bodies and deeper, that you created it and the “other” is merely a trigger.

IdentiFy with that love, see that it is part o your true nature, then turn that love around to love your sense of I Am.

This allows a channel for the depths of the I Am sensation to arise into your awareness, and for the first time, Self becomes Self-Aware and self-identified as love and as the power of the Life-Force. The divine and I are one.

Read the Nisargadatta Gita, especially the parts about abiding and loving the I Am.

Absolute Self-Knowledge is attained, both as the manifest Self of Atman, the incarnation of the divine, but also the human self. You are both human and an incarnation of God.


MUZIKA PITFALLS:

Dysfunctionality. One can be carried away by emotional storms that emerge as the Shakti releases long denied or suppressed memories and emotions, depression, intense anger, rage, hurt. Just the sheer volume of positive and negative emotions, and the fear of their intensity can result in dysfunctionality.

Later, the constant intensity of unbelievably powerful waves of love, bliss, and ecstasy can result in long periods of feeling unable to do anything. One feels that one’s slightest movement will result in the disappearance of the joyous happiness. One becomes “God Intoxicated.”

One’s long repressed psychotic core of paranoid delusions, fear, rage, may manifest, rarely resulting in hospitalization. THIS IS RARE, AND THE PERSON USUALLY JUST REJECTS THE PATH OR THE TEACHER RATHER THAN SINK INTO THE PSYCHOTIC CORE. Then this person often runs into extreme criticism of the person and method that got them so close to their core dysfunctionality, and will fixate there until a new sinking into the core begins.

You see, the divine love is released and it does not fit within the rigidity of day to day conventional life, and for a while you may be torn between conventional life and the Life Divine of unfoldment by Shakti.