September 4, 2019

I haven’t posted here in a while so here is an edited transcript of a 1990 Robert Adams talk called “You Are Not The World”, found in his book “Silence of the Heart”. It’s long but worth reading.

“This is not a formal talk. I can only tell you about my own
experiences, not what I read. I can tell you that nothing exists
the way it appears. Everything is appearance. The trap is, that
we get pulled into the appearance. We react to it. We feel hurt.
We feel slandered. We feel something is wrong. We have
negative emotions because we are falling for a false premise-
that the world is real.

In fact, the world is not real and neither are you. What we
have to do is stop reacting to anything. The only way to do that
is to discover who you are. When you discover your true
nature, everything becomes perfectly clear. You are at peace.
If something works out, it works out. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.
Your feelings have been transmuted. You never even feel what
human beings feel. You just have a great love and compassion
for all things. You know that the substratum of all existence is
harmony, peace, emptiness. You feel wonderful all the time.
What can disturb you if you are at peace? If you find true
peace, what can possibly disturb you?

The world comes and goes. One day it is like this, the next
day, it is like that. But what does it have to do with you?
Nothing. You are free, you are not the world.’You are not your
body, you are not your mind. You are total freedom, total joy,
total love. You have to awaken to this fact-it’s truth.

We speak many words and take many actions, but to what
avail? Does it matter in the end? We build our life, we earn
positions, we father children, and what happens at the end?
Poof! It’s all gone. Everything disappears. (Robert laughs)
There is nothing. So what’s the purpose?

People say, “I must leave this world better for my children.”
They are dreaming. The world will never be better or be
worse. The world is a dream of existence; like this one day, like
that another. But you are not the world. Awaken to that fact.

You are not your thoughts, you are not your karmic
expressions, you are not your inclinations from past lives.
These things appear real as long as you believe in them. If l believe
in the devil, the devil would appear to me. I would create him
myself. If you believe in God, your god would appear to you.
Ramakrishna believed in the goddess Kali. Kali became very
real to him. He used to dance and sing with Kali. (Robert
laughs) He created Kali. That is why no one else saw Kali but
him. That is how we create our lives.

Think of the things you fear in your life. You fear becoming
sick. You fear poverty. You fear getting divorced, you fear
getting married. Whatever you fear is a concept created by
your own mind. There is no question of should I get married
or shouldn’t I get married. It doesn’t matter. What matters is
how you react to it and what you expect of it. This is true in
every aspect of your life. That is what you have been trained to
believe since you were a little kid. Your teachers brainwashed
you, your parents brainwashed you, the outside world brainwashed
you, and here you are.

You are filled with ideas, concepts, emotions, attitudes, and
that makes you what you are-miserable. (laughter) As soon
as you wake up, all that disappears. Nothing can ever happen
to you of a destructive nature. There is absolutely nothing that
can destroy you. You cannot be destroyed. Your body may
appear to vanish, but that is like a dream. You dream that you
are doing something, then you get shot and disappear. Then
you wake up.

My question to you is, “What do you believe about yourself
and about the world? What is most important to you?” I feel
that a true spiritual path should be the first thing of importance
in your life. Why? Because it wakes you up. No matter
how good a life you live, you may become the richest and most
famous person on earth, you’ll have to experience the other
side of the coin one day and be the poorest, most miserable
person on earth. That’s the way it works. You may say to me,
“My neighbor never has any problems. It’s like he fell into a
pot of gold. Everything he touches turns into money. He’s as
happy as a horse. He’s got a beautiful wife, a big house,
everything he could possibly need, and look at me! You know,
that guy’s life hasn’t changed for forty years.”

You’re making your own conclusion. He has earned this
karmically, and if he doesn’t pull away from it, he might spend his
whole life in goodness, human goodness. But then he will be
drawn back again by the law of karma, which is in his mind and he
doesn’t know it, and next time he will be a homeless person.
Whatever he does, he won’t be able to make a dime. He’ll try his
best, but he’ll always be poverty stricken. He won’t be able to earn
a dime no matter how hard he tries. This is why we should never
judge. You have no idea what your neighbor’s going through.
Never say he or she has a wonderful life and look at mine. Why am
I poor, why am I sick, why am I this way or that way. The idea is
to wake up, not to look at yourself, not to feel sorry for yourself, not
to compare yourself with others, but to awaken.

When you awaken, something happens that is unexplainable.
There are no human words to explain it. When you
awaken you just understand, you know, you feel-and these
words are inadequate-you become Divine harmony. You are
no longer fooled by person, place or thing. You no longer
react.

As an example, someone tells you that you won the lotto,
you won fifty billion dollars. You do not become a slave to
that. Someone tells you that you lost fifty billion dollars. Same
thing, same reaction. You do not become a slave to that. What
happens in the human life does not matter. When you know
who you are, you do not say it doesn’t matter. You simply
exist. You exist as yourself. You’re at peace. No one can ever
take the peace away from you no matter how hard they try.
You are not fooled by things.

What you do is deal with yourself£ You can give of yourself
because you become your living self. Therefore, you can give
yourself away and you’re still there, for you’ve become the Infinite
Self, the Divine Mother, Omnipresence, Total Oneness with all
things. So you can give of yourself, and yet you’re always there.

When Ramana Maharshi was being robbed, his devotees
wanted to attack the robbers, and he said, “No, no, no. It’s our
dharma to be what we are, and it’s their dharma to be what
they are. We should not interfere with their dharma, therefore
give them what they want.” That’s very profound. We are
spiritual people. The world is not. We act in accordance with
spiritual principles.

What this really means is that we, as human beings,
become last, not first. That’s what Jesus meant when he said,
“Those who go first will be last, and those who are last will be
first.” You have to develop great humility. Do not long for
anything. Do not want to be rich, or famous or great, and do
not say, I want to be poor and have nothing, either. They’re
both wrong. Just be yourself. When you are yourself, you will
be amazed how the universe takes care of you.

It’s like the body with vitamins and medicines. Your body
is a natural healing factory and able to heal itself. When you
start taking too many vitamins, when you start taking medicines
too much, the body says, “Well, you’ve made that into
your God, so now you have to depend on it.” Then you have to
keep taking vitamins for the rest of your life or you get sick.
Think about that.

You’ve got to depend on yourself to take care of everything.
Now, your Self is yourself. There’s one Self, so we take care of
each other. Did you ever think of that? When you think of
others you’re making a mistake. The feeling will come to you
one day that you are all others. There are no others, there is
just the Self appearing as others. So, how do you treat others?
As you treat yourself. You don’t think about it. You don’t think
that that person’s worthy and that person’s not, so I’m going
to help this person, not that person. You give of yourself
automatically. You do not think about it because everything is
yourself, and that includes the mineral kingdom, the vegetable
kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom, and
everything else you don’t understand. They’re all part of the
One. What you do to the One, you do to everything. How you
treat one person is how you treat the whole universe because
everything is One. ….. ponder these things.”