STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT ROBERT ADAMS, HIS TEACHINGS, AND INFINITY INSTITUTE
Those who know me know that I have been no friend of the Infinity Institute's ham-fisted hounding of any and all (especially me) and legal harassment of anyone who posted anything about Robert Adams, from old transcripts, to original photos.
Infinity is the Adams family private business. It has no spiritual authority at all and inflates its copyright claims.
The only true copyright they have is for the book Silence of the Heart. It is only long after I began posting transcripts online, and several sources contributed over 260 transcripts, that the complete works of Robert Adams were available online at various sites.
Many, many coeditors turned the audio tapes into transcripts. When Robert was still alive, the number was about 140 were separately available.
Beginning in 2006 a number of transcribers worked with me and expanded the number available to about 260. INFINITY HAD ABSOLUTELY NO INVOLVEMENT IN ANY OF THESE TRANSCRIPTIONS FROM THE ORIGINAL CASSETTE RECORDINGS that I, AND OTHERS, HAD OF ROBERT’S TALKS.
I and others put together the Collected Works of Robert Adams, and the collection expanded as new cassette tapes were found and transcribed. By 2010 the collection was complete and were published online by various current followers of Robert. I had no hand in maintaining those sites or supplying the materials to them. They were freely accessible from many sources for years, such as from robert-adams.info and many others until they were repressed by legal threats.
It is during this period of time that Infinity downloaded the Collected Works of Robert Adams apparently from the robert-adams.info website, and then submitted a copyright claim to the Library of Congress of works they had nothing to do with creating.
I should mention that Kerima and I transcribed the first 20 of Robert’s talks, and I copyrighted those talks under the name of a publishing company that Robert and I were thinking of forming to be his written expression. I gave Robert $7,000 at that time for permission to do this, and to help him and Nicole out financially. He later changed his mind and wanted to leave the transcripts to Nicole's keeping.
This link to a recording of a phone message left by Nicole Adams in 1995 expresses her gratitude to me for being able to capture the essence of Robert Adams in a short article I wrote about him entitled Guru’s Grace, about my experiences with Robert: http://www.wearesentience.com/nicole-adams-message-of-thanks.html.
Beginning in 2005 or 2006 Infinity and Nicole Adams began stalking me with lawyer threats of lawsuit should I have anything by Robert, including his photos, on any of my websites or blogs.
I had no money to fight any lawsuit, so I just complied as have so many also pursued by Infinity, including many of his close followers, many of whom claimed awakening at Robert’s side.
In 1990 I asked Robert whether Nicole comprehended Robert’s teachings, to which he replied, “She doesn’t have a clue.”
Ditto the staff of the Infinity Institute. None of these people are mentioned in the acknowledgement sections of the original Silence of the Heart, or other smaller publications as having been present at Satsangs during the early 1990s, nor mentioned as having transcribed talks, or written introductions for these books, as I did, and as was mentioned in those acknowledgement sections. I have all of them if anyone needs proof as well as my copyright of many of the original transcripts.
If they were truly 30 year students as claimed, you would think they would have come to Robert's Satsangs in Los Angeles or Sedona. They did not. They are not thirty year students. Robert's teachings are now a family business, nothing more or less.
HOWEVER, THE TIME HAS COME TO STOP FIGHTING INFINITY.
IT WAS ROBERT’S WISH THAT NICOLE CONTROL HIS TEACHING MATERIAL AFTER HIS DEATH. IT WAS HIS WISH TO GIVE NICOLE AND HIS DAUGHTERS A SOURCE OF INCOME FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.
Robert kept copies of all the transcripts (maybe 140 by the time he died), copies of the books I edited or wrote introductions for, and told Nicole this was the legacy he was leaving to his family.
Of course, the stuff Infinity turns out has absolutely no resemblance to what Robert Adams was in life and spirit in any way. It is a Christianized bastardization that adds prayers and new age music to small parts of his actual talks. One can never find Robert or gain his experience through Infinities materials.
Robert absolutely knew this would happen and that Nicole and others associated with his works through Nicole, would have not the slightest grasp of what he was teaching. BUT THIS IS WHAT HE WANTED. IT IS AS IF HE WANTED HIS WRITTEN AND ORAL TEACHINGS TO DEAD END AS THEY HAVE IN THE INFINITY FAMILY BUSINESS. SO BE IT!
You see, you can never gain Robert’s state through his words. He thought little of his own words. Many times he said they were just entertainment to keep people coming.
One gained awakening with Robert, not through his teachings, but through his presence. One felt his purifying presence permeate them during Satsang, the cool energy, the warm energy, his silence, his famous thousand yard stare, and piercing look into your heart that you felt when he really looked deep into your eyes.
One also found oneself more easily because he would point out to students how they had a wrong opinion of what he or Ramana was teaching. You can read the transcripts and see how he frequently corrected people as to their incorrect understanding.
You see, he answered questions where people were at, and may answer the same question differently asked by different students even a week apart. Thus Robert's teaching seen from the outside all at once are inconsistent; they are only consistent within the context of that questioner and the mind set of the entire body of the Sangha that day. Thus if you try to grasp Robert through his dead words, you will fail to grasp his heart.
Finally, some of the student he let get close to him, he added a bit of cooking: he placed them is life situations that brought up emotions that made them look at themselves and what they were doing.
No dead words could convey Robert's real teachings of his presence, his correcting misunderstandings on the spot, and his cooking of your ego.
Let go of seeking more of Robert’s teachings. They will become harder and harder to find as Infinity cracks down with its new lawyer. What is available through Infinity is lifeless and drab, and totally misses the point of his teachings. Instead, imbibe in his method and Ramana’s method of abiding in the ‘I’, follow it to its source, and find the true I, which s God, and which is you.|
If you missed Robert in life, you missed him. You have to find your own way now. To hold onto even his teachings in accurate transcripts let alone Infinity's is just to hold onto your mind's new teachings, and the Self cannot be reached through the mind. It is far, far deeper.
Robert taught many methods, but it was because he found students needed many approaches, and that the abiding in the ‘I’ or the ‘I Am’ was just out of the reach of many people. His lifeless asking "Who am I?" followed by waiting in emptiness for a response, was meant only for a small group of people not emotionally open at all, and who needed to defensively stay in their minds and in emptiness until circumstances opened them up.
Robert lives on both as a spiritual presence that can be called upon, but also in the still living presence of many of his students. Reading Robert’s teachings without his living presence has led many people to a false and almost Messianic devotions to promoting a misunderstanding of him based on other books they have read, turning Robert into a neo-Advaitin, a Christian, or many other path of teachers.
There was only one Robert. As he said he had his own message that was different from many other Ramana-student-teachers, such as Lakshman, and Poonja. Robert’s written writing really miss his essence. His message is being killed by Infinity, but Robert knew that would happen, but it was his will that his teachings be used to support his family.
Real students, those who only want to find and live in their own experience of Self need to find living teachers of Self, because practicing alone, and just reading texts of dead gurus will never lead you to your own Self, but to their’s, which is their experience of Self as put into dead words, that become more dead over time. Only a living teacher can correct your errors in concepts and methods, which are impossible to correct on your own because your mind filters all teachings that come to you externally.
I guarantee you will never awaken until you give up all teachings, become dumb as a rock, and look within for your sense of I, and dwell there with loving acceptance of all that arises through resting in the Self, including all the traumas of your past, fears, depressions, etc., before you find the joy of Self-Realization. AND, you need to commit to a teacher or a friend, or a lover, or a cat, love that entity, surrender your life to it, and thereby find your soul, the Self, which is God, the Atman within you.
My understanding of Robert that Nicole agreed with according to her phone message above:
http://www.wearesentience.com/uploads/7/2/9/3/7293936/yoga_journal_article_robert.pdf
Those who know me know that I have been no friend of the Infinity Institute's ham-fisted hounding of any and all (especially me) and legal harassment of anyone who posted anything about Robert Adams, from old transcripts, to original photos.
Infinity is the Adams family private business. It has no spiritual authority at all and inflates its copyright claims.
The only true copyright they have is for the book Silence of the Heart. It is only long after I began posting transcripts online, and several sources contributed over 260 transcripts, that the complete works of Robert Adams were available online at various sites.
Many, many coeditors turned the audio tapes into transcripts. When Robert was still alive, the number was about 140 were separately available.
Beginning in 2006 a number of transcribers worked with me and expanded the number available to about 260. INFINITY HAD ABSOLUTELY NO INVOLVEMENT IN ANY OF THESE TRANSCRIPTIONS FROM THE ORIGINAL CASSETTE RECORDINGS that I, AND OTHERS, HAD OF ROBERT’S TALKS.
I and others put together the Collected Works of Robert Adams, and the collection expanded as new cassette tapes were found and transcribed. By 2010 the collection was complete and were published online by various current followers of Robert. I had no hand in maintaining those sites or supplying the materials to them. They were freely accessible from many sources for years, such as from robert-adams.info and many others until they were repressed by legal threats.
It is during this period of time that Infinity downloaded the Collected Works of Robert Adams apparently from the robert-adams.info website, and then submitted a copyright claim to the Library of Congress of works they had nothing to do with creating.
I should mention that Kerima and I transcribed the first 20 of Robert’s talks, and I copyrighted those talks under the name of a publishing company that Robert and I were thinking of forming to be his written expression. I gave Robert $7,000 at that time for permission to do this, and to help him and Nicole out financially. He later changed his mind and wanted to leave the transcripts to Nicole's keeping.
This link to a recording of a phone message left by Nicole Adams in 1995 expresses her gratitude to me for being able to capture the essence of Robert Adams in a short article I wrote about him entitled Guru’s Grace, about my experiences with Robert: http://www.wearesentience.com/nicole-adams-message-of-thanks.html.
Beginning in 2005 or 2006 Infinity and Nicole Adams began stalking me with lawyer threats of lawsuit should I have anything by Robert, including his photos, on any of my websites or blogs.
I had no money to fight any lawsuit, so I just complied as have so many also pursued by Infinity, including many of his close followers, many of whom claimed awakening at Robert’s side.
In 1990 I asked Robert whether Nicole comprehended Robert’s teachings, to which he replied, “She doesn’t have a clue.”
Ditto the staff of the Infinity Institute. None of these people are mentioned in the acknowledgement sections of the original Silence of the Heart, or other smaller publications as having been present at Satsangs during the early 1990s, nor mentioned as having transcribed talks, or written introductions for these books, as I did, and as was mentioned in those acknowledgement sections. I have all of them if anyone needs proof as well as my copyright of many of the original transcripts.
If they were truly 30 year students as claimed, you would think they would have come to Robert's Satsangs in Los Angeles or Sedona. They did not. They are not thirty year students. Robert's teachings are now a family business, nothing more or less.
HOWEVER, THE TIME HAS COME TO STOP FIGHTING INFINITY.
IT WAS ROBERT’S WISH THAT NICOLE CONTROL HIS TEACHING MATERIAL AFTER HIS DEATH. IT WAS HIS WISH TO GIVE NICOLE AND HIS DAUGHTERS A SOURCE OF INCOME FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.
Robert kept copies of all the transcripts (maybe 140 by the time he died), copies of the books I edited or wrote introductions for, and told Nicole this was the legacy he was leaving to his family.
Of course, the stuff Infinity turns out has absolutely no resemblance to what Robert Adams was in life and spirit in any way. It is a Christianized bastardization that adds prayers and new age music to small parts of his actual talks. One can never find Robert or gain his experience through Infinities materials.
Robert absolutely knew this would happen and that Nicole and others associated with his works through Nicole, would have not the slightest grasp of what he was teaching. BUT THIS IS WHAT HE WANTED. IT IS AS IF HE WANTED HIS WRITTEN AND ORAL TEACHINGS TO DEAD END AS THEY HAVE IN THE INFINITY FAMILY BUSINESS. SO BE IT!
You see, you can never gain Robert’s state through his words. He thought little of his own words. Many times he said they were just entertainment to keep people coming.
One gained awakening with Robert, not through his teachings, but through his presence. One felt his purifying presence permeate them during Satsang, the cool energy, the warm energy, his silence, his famous thousand yard stare, and piercing look into your heart that you felt when he really looked deep into your eyes.
One also found oneself more easily because he would point out to students how they had a wrong opinion of what he or Ramana was teaching. You can read the transcripts and see how he frequently corrected people as to their incorrect understanding.
You see, he answered questions where people were at, and may answer the same question differently asked by different students even a week apart. Thus Robert's teaching seen from the outside all at once are inconsistent; they are only consistent within the context of that questioner and the mind set of the entire body of the Sangha that day. Thus if you try to grasp Robert through his dead words, you will fail to grasp his heart.
Finally, some of the student he let get close to him, he added a bit of cooking: he placed them is life situations that brought up emotions that made them look at themselves and what they were doing.
No dead words could convey Robert's real teachings of his presence, his correcting misunderstandings on the spot, and his cooking of your ego.
Let go of seeking more of Robert’s teachings. They will become harder and harder to find as Infinity cracks down with its new lawyer. What is available through Infinity is lifeless and drab, and totally misses the point of his teachings. Instead, imbibe in his method and Ramana’s method of abiding in the ‘I’, follow it to its source, and find the true I, which s God, and which is you.|
If you missed Robert in life, you missed him. You have to find your own way now. To hold onto even his teachings in accurate transcripts let alone Infinity's is just to hold onto your mind's new teachings, and the Self cannot be reached through the mind. It is far, far deeper.
Robert taught many methods, but it was because he found students needed many approaches, and that the abiding in the ‘I’ or the ‘I Am’ was just out of the reach of many people. His lifeless asking "Who am I?" followed by waiting in emptiness for a response, was meant only for a small group of people not emotionally open at all, and who needed to defensively stay in their minds and in emptiness until circumstances opened them up.
Robert lives on both as a spiritual presence that can be called upon, but also in the still living presence of many of his students. Reading Robert’s teachings without his living presence has led many people to a false and almost Messianic devotions to promoting a misunderstanding of him based on other books they have read, turning Robert into a neo-Advaitin, a Christian, or many other path of teachers.
There was only one Robert. As he said he had his own message that was different from many other Ramana-student-teachers, such as Lakshman, and Poonja. Robert’s written writing really miss his essence. His message is being killed by Infinity, but Robert knew that would happen, but it was his will that his teachings be used to support his family.
Real students, those who only want to find and live in their own experience of Self need to find living teachers of Self, because practicing alone, and just reading texts of dead gurus will never lead you to your own Self, but to their’s, which is their experience of Self as put into dead words, that become more dead over time. Only a living teacher can correct your errors in concepts and methods, which are impossible to correct on your own because your mind filters all teachings that come to you externally.
I guarantee you will never awaken until you give up all teachings, become dumb as a rock, and look within for your sense of I, and dwell there with loving acceptance of all that arises through resting in the Self, including all the traumas of your past, fears, depressions, etc., before you find the joy of Self-Realization. AND, you need to commit to a teacher or a friend, or a lover, or a cat, love that entity, surrender your life to it, and thereby find your soul, the Self, which is God, the Atman within you.
My understanding of Robert that Nicole agreed with according to her phone message above:
http://www.wearesentience.com/uploads/7/2/9/3/7293936/yoga_journal_article_robert.pdf
Good post.
ReplyDeleteYeesssss.
ReplyDeletethanks Edji. It was nice . I am working om dwelling in I am.
ReplyDelete