I awakened to who I was in 1995 because I was with Robert.  
It was not his teachings, which appeared to me as disorganized and filled with Hindu folklore, with a pervading and underlying emptiness. It was due to his presence.

People love to read Robert's teachings or listen to his voice because they find it comforting.

Personally, I don't like the way Robert "taught." Too many people got lost in a depressive occupation with emptiness which Robert never clearly pointed out was different from nothingness.  Emptiness itself is an observable, part of the nature of consciousness, as is time.

People did not awaken around Robert because of his teachings, but because of his presence.

HOWEVER, there are actual teachings that can help you awaken, other than the advice to focus on your own experience.

The first step is to realize you are not your body. You experience and witness your body by means of "your"consciousness.

At some point through the practice of attending to your sense of I Am, and through accepting and loving that I Am, which expands into a sense of presence, at some moment you experience that I Am revealing her nature to you in her full glory as the divine Shakti.  Shakti arises in you as pure light and spirit, as an explosion of inner energy, light, and bliss, and you witness your own divinity as Shakti.

Then for months or years you feel her inside you as body, inside you as consciousness as a divine presence, incredibly active and flowing from within and through you into the world.  This is realizing yourself as the Manifest Self, as spirit, bliss, consciousness.

This allows you to realize one day that you are not your body, you are consciousness that witnesses your body as one localized "object" within the totality of your total awareness, the totality of your Manifest Consciousness.

You are beginning your freedom from identification with your physical body and now identify with the totality of consciousness.

But carefull observation of that consciousness over the next months or years does something.  Even Consciousness no longer appears real.  It comes and goes.  It alternates between waking, dream, and sleep.  Various energies pervade it, alcohol and drugs distort it, and it disappears in deep sleep along with the I Am sensation and your sense of presence when you sleep.

Consciousness is even less stable and mortal than your apparent body.  It awakens and dies each day at least once.  It is fickle, and after a while, even the bliss and energies become much like brushing your teeth.  Something to be endured even if pleasurable.

But something else is happening while this is going on.

You have realized you are not your body, and that your body is just experienced in your consciousness, and in all likelyhood, consciousness has its origin through the life of your body.

You realize that at one time you identified with your body as the entirety of your existence.  Then you disidentified with your body, and identified with your consciousness, Shakti, light, energies, bliss and love as your "true" nature. You have a love affair with the divine, your own consciousness with all of its characteristics and traits. 

However, all this time you recognize that you are the witness of this whole identification/disidentification process.  In fact, you are more and more powerfully aware of yourself as the witness.

But this witness appears to be like a dark void from which consciousness and the Manifest Consciousness arise from each morning.  You become aware of yourself as a dark void, a total nothingness without even empty space.

So, you relax into this nothingness, you disappear as body/mind/consciousness into this total nothingness. And, for the first time you recognize that you have come home at last.  In this nothingness, no consciousness, no mind, no body, you are in complete peace and happiness being nothing.

At this time you can completely disappear even to yourself, until once again the world and consciousness emerges from within you as witness.

Body and consciousness--neither are you.  You are beyond both.  Unborn, not understanding, not knowing, have gone entirely beyond existence.

WHAT IF....

Walk with me for a moment.  Think of this as a thought experiment.

What if instead of being a human body where consciousness awakens each morning to reveal the world and also our bodies, and wherein the mind also comes awake creating your personal world and your identity with your body and mind, that you instead consider yourself to be consciousness itself and not the body/mind object it perceives?

Do you understand the significance of this revolutionary overturning of concepts?

You are consciousness itself.  The body, the world, and even your own sense of existence, of presence, becomes only an appearance in consciousness.  The world arises within you.  Out of the dark, moist emptiness of nothingness, you as consciousness arise, and the world and your associated body arise within you.

This is the POV that Robert wants you to take, and also Ramana.  Consciousness is first, the appearances within it are secondary.

When experienced in this way, one’s attention becomes fixed on consciousness itself and its vagaries, and with this change in orientation, consciousness begins to change too.

You begin to experience/perceive/understand that consciousness flows out of the dark nothingness that is you like light out of a lighthouse or projector.  You can “feel” it emitting from you.  You begin to experience the energies that seem to circulate within your body and your sense of presence.  Your sense of presence, your experience of your own existence, expands and becomes more powerful.  

The life force in you becomes more clearly manifest.  You experience bliss and great joy. Light and energy pour out of you into the apparent external world.  You feel totally alive and also totally vulnerable because your apparent body has become totally alive, and nothing within is repressed because nothing within or without frightens you anymore.  No need to hide feelings or vulnerabilities.  

That sense of vulnerability brings you alive as never before. Your love and compassion also expand and you perceive that life force within that has so many names, Shakti, Ma Kali, Kundalini, Chi, is experience as God, as the Other who is also you. The life force dwells within and lives through you.  God finds expression through you.

But then things begin to change again.  The waking and sleep processes slow down. The morning awakening which used to be instantaneous now seems to take minutes.  You see/perceive consciousness arising within the darkness that is you in the morning.  You perceive “you” as consciousness arising out of the “you” of dark nothingness, and you realize then that you as consciousness have been aware of the deep sleep state for many hours.  This discovery only happens after the mind awakens and makes that discovery as a memory.

Now you fully understand consciousness’s three states of waking, dream, and deep sleep.  And within the waking and dream states the sense of I, or I Am arises along with the mind.

Consciousness now begins to change again.  Now you are not so much interested in the bliss and energy of the life force, your manifest destiny so to speak, but now your interest is on consciousness itself.

What is it?  What is its origin?

And with this attitude change, your intensity of self-investigation and self-abidance increases.  

Now you swim in consciousness and your identification with your body and even your sense of I Am-ness weakens, and your attention turns to the question, “Who or what observes all this?”  Who is it that has moved from perceiving one’s own self as a body/mind, and then moved to identify with the life force, Shakti, then moved to identifying with the totality of your manifest consciousness as nothingness, dream, and the body/world?

Consciousness no longer seems so real.  It flickers and changes and with it the objects within consciousness flicker and change.  Your concern with your body is passing away because you no longer identify with it.  It has become just another appearance in you as consciousness which has arisen out of nothingness.  As such, everything takes on the character of nothingness, no longer of a hard and sometimes brutal external world. 

Consciousness itself becomes less bright, less solid, less “present,” and your POV shifts backwards more towards the witness of this show, this totality of the manifest consciousness, and with it, you begin to feel the warm embrace and utter peace of nothingness, and thereby you begin to transcend death, for you now know that the body and your identity as a human are just appearances within your as consciousness, and consciousness itself is just an appearance arising out of a dark void.

You no longer have any identity.  You no longer know who or what you are for you have entirely transcended the human condition and your identification with your body.  You know that when “your” body dies, you as consciousness do not die, for consciousness is everywhere and exists in all things.  Only its manifestation through you as a body ceases, but you no longer identify with either your body or with consciousness.  You are that from which both have arisen, and the peace is utter and complete.

It is this identity, or lack of it, that Robert and Ramana call Consciousness with a capital C, and Nisargadatta calls the Witness, Parabrahman (before or transcending the manifest consciousness), or the Absolute.  Now you are entirely free.

So many spiritual seekers equate spirituality with reading about spirituality. Read Ramakrishna, Ramana, the Vedas, Krishnamurti, and learn the concepts.

Maybe 20% of these actually try a practice such as self-inquiry, Chakra Yoga, just sitting meditation. Some practice for a year, some for ten, some for 40.

But then there are those rare ones who just throw themselves into a practice, such as self-inquiry, or better, abiding in one's own self. This is real spirituality.

Here is an email from one such person who just threw herself into practice:

Dear Edji, Namasakar to you,

The sinking continues and it's bringing different aromas:) some times it' bliss, then it's ecstasy then it's total silence and peace. The change is that during all these I was restricting myself as a witness. Then suddenly I started to experience this pull from my gut like I am literally in a labor pain .. Then I was not a observer anymore but I started to feel the sensations.. It was like my false I was holding me back from experiencing ..now I am in the centre allowing all these sensations washing through me..of course the enquiry continues of who is experiencing even all this? Even though there is no answer I sense a presence, a mute witness or stillness in the background.

In waking state the emotions are still going on and I am ever ready for them to come and when they leave I can't help but smile ..and I know that they will be back again. Now I am more open to them. There is no background talk of I should have done this or that..because now it's just the show continues for whatever the script is there ...

Sometimes mind does catch me and I let it hold me for sometime and it leaves me back to my space:)) the happiness I experience is so different from the happiness I experience from material world... The strong faith and trust towards the energy or God which/who is doing all this and there is no doer inside me who wants to claim .. But when negative emotions arises I have to hold on to that trust strongly because the pull towards the other side is strong too..and to let go of those fears is very liberating. Old thought patterns are recognised the moment it arises and it goes to the empty space from where it came..
Edji, I also wanted to tell you that I downloaded the collective works of Robert Adams talks..I am reading few pages everyday and I share it with my husband . I felt Robert in those pages ..it's like I am part of those talks ..and he is cooking me too..:)) thank you for every thing .. may your guidance continue to take me in the path...

Taking your blessings ..

REALIZATON THAT WE ARE CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF, NOT A BODY/MIND OBJECT THAT TAKES ITSELF AS SUBJECT

Discovering and owning that we are not a body/mind object in space and time, immersed in a three dimensional world with billions of other apparent human objects, and trillions of other sentient beings, makes for astounding change in everything about us.

When we think we are a body/mind, we immediately arose a fear of death because we identify with an objective entity.

But when we identify the consciousness, our bodies and minds become objects within our consciousness, and as such, only consciousness themselves.  Our bodies and our minds are observed within our consciousness, and themselves are consciousness.

That is, when we have a dream, it takes place within our sense of self as a dreamer.  But when we wake up, the world, our bodies, our minds, and our sense of existing and being alive arise in exactly the same way as does our dream world and dream bodies. They are all part of our sense of being.  In that sense, we are waking dream creators of the vast world around us as well as of our bodies and minds which appear added onto our existence in our consciousness.

THE AWAKENING EXERCISE

So many spiritual paths are very effortful. Chakra Yoga, Kriya Yoga, Patanjali You, Kundalini Yoga, and even Bhakta Yoga with all its sturm and drang of weeping, pining, lonEliness, followed by relief an great happiness.

Robert's spirituality is not really effortful at all: just immerse yourself into the totality of your experience as consciousness and lose your identity as body mind, thereby becoming the Manifest Self, Brahman.

There is one simple but incredibly powerful exercise that helps you realize this new identity as consciousness itself instead of your body mind.  Robert mentions it all the time in his talks but I will expand upon it a bit.

This exercise will not work if you wake up five minutes before you have to be up by means of an alarm clock. 

There can be no alarm clock used because it tends to stun you into awakening.

When you awakening in the morning, be aware of the process.  What happens and in what order?
For most, at first there is awareness of the world, then the mind awakens too, and at that moment you realize that you are, that you exist and the world exists separately from you.

But try this.  Instead of getting up, stay in the sleepy state as long as you can, and try to watch yourself go back to sleep reentering nothingness.  When you come awake again, watch the process of the arising of consciousness in you. 

Practice this for several months and the process of the arising of consciousness in you will slow down and you can watch every detail.

You begin to see the beginning of the awakening process where an inner light arises within the dark, moist, and very peaceful emptiness within, arising from your gut and flowing upwards into the brain. Once it hits your brain, your ordinary consciousness and mind appear.

But this has to be noted. YOU have witnessed the arising of consciousness arising out of your original state of that dark, most, and all-comfortable emptiness. You are witnessing the experience of beingness before consciousness and mind arises into the waking state, which makes you realize that consciousness comes to you.  You already are prior to the arising of consciousness.  You witness its arising, and after it arises, your body, your sense of existence, and the world all arise simultaneously.

This marks the totality of your Manifest consciousness, your Manifest Self, Brahman, and you are that.

You are aware of your body.  You are aware of the world. 

You are aware of space, both inner and outer, and you are aware of your own presence, your own existence, your I Am simultaneously. All are experienced as objects within you as the totality of consciousness.

Yet all of this Manifest Brahman has rising out of that rich, moist, darkness, that nothingness which is you before the arising of consciousness.

In meditation too, we go to the same place of nothningness, but in meditation, the nothingness is not dark.  It is indescribable because you go to a place where the mind does not exist, and thus this place has no characteristics, no form or name, no description.

How much simpler and effortless can spirituality be?  No huffing and puffing, no full Lotus, no visualizations, or guiding prana, no reading of the Vedas or Gitas. Just watching and being your self. It is all on you. 

RECOGNIZING YOUR SELF AS PRIOR TO CONSCIOUSNESS

Many times now I have brought you to the place of identifying with the I Am sensation. Finding the I Am sensation, accepting it aND loving it. Eventually the I Am grows into a great sense of "presence," like a new energy body that pervades one's body sensation and extends into the world.

Then you learn to love that I Am sensation and the extruded sense of presence, and joyfully you run around loudly saying "I exist," or "I have come alive; from emptiness I have come alive!" Around this time you have happen to you something like Robert';s awakening experience, where there awakens in you an explosion of light, bliss, and infinite energy arising from somewhere within, and exploding upwards into the brain and beyond into the world. You become aware of infinite bliss, light and energy that pervades your body, your sense of presence, and the world.

This is becoming Brahman, becoming one with consciousness and feeling the endless movements of internal energies, the life force. It is at this point, if it is to happen, that you may develope siddhis, or powers such as of healing, telepathy, knowing the future, astral projection, etc., and for a long while you will dwell in these energies, light, bliss, and love.

But something tugs at you. The presence of the witness.

Once you become aware of the I Am sensation, accept it and abide in it, and lastly identify with it as your Manifest Self, you are also simultaneously aware of a witness watching the whole process. You may try to observe this witness, but it evades you.

Instead, do as Rajiv Kapur did and fall backwards into the witness-sense. Rather than observe the witness, become the witness and fall backwards into that dark background ehind you, thereby becoming the witness.

What happens then?

When you even begin to do this you recognize that the I Am, your body, and your experience of the world are all simultaneously perceptions by you, the witness. You, by becoming the witness are simultaneously aware of your body experience, your sense of I Am, your sense of presence, and the world. The entirety of your consciousness is now set before you as an object. You are no longer just the body, no longer just the I Am sensation, no longer just your mind, no longer just the world, yet all are observed by you.

At this point you are likely to identify with that totality of manifest consciousness, recognizing that the totality is you, Brahman.

Robert states it thus:

"I know there are many of you who like to go hiking, like to climb Mountains, like to become part of nature. That’s OK, but do not believe that these things are external from yourself. These things are yourself. You are That. When you question, “To whom does this come?” you again realize, “It comes to me, I perceive it.” Then you remember that you are not I. “I” perceives it. Yet in reality, you are not the perceiver. You are not the witness. “I” perceives it. “I” is the witness. This is a very important point, and I want you to understand it because it can change your whole life. Whatever you see in the world, you are to realize that “I” perceives. But do not look at I as being the self. You have to catch yourself and say, “I” perceives. This does not mean that you perceive it. It is “I” that perceives it. When you separate yourself from the I, all is what? Consciousness. It is only when you believe that you are I, that your humanhood comes into play. But as soon as you perceive that I is the universe, you have separated yourself from I. And then Consciousness comes into play, you have awakened. In other words, when you can separate from your I, you will be awakened and liberated."

However magnificent this experience is, this knowledge is, it is still not the end, for you begin to feel that this totality of consciousness is not you. You, the background principle are observing it, witnessing the totality of consciousness, but yourself not part of it. You, as witness are not part of the Manifest Self or the Manifest Universe.

In this state you realize that you are beyond consciousness, you are prior to consciousness, and therefore prior to birth and death, prior to existence as consciousness and non-existence of non-consciousness. You are the unborn principle from which consciousness springs and creates everything.

THE TOTALITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Once you have located your sense of I Am-ness as a separate entity within your heart area, you immediately perceive that it is a different kind of experience than your experience of your body or mind. Focusing on that I Amness sensation causes you to begin to feel a global sense of presence with and around your physical body.

This presence is sometimes referred to as the Subtle Body. It is experiencing yourself something like an energy being, a cloud of awareness permeating your body and the world.

Focusing on the experience of your Subtle Body, your sense of presence, you know you are not just your physical body anymore. You are also something else entirely: consciousness itself.

Not only are you feeling your body from the inside, but you are also something more subtle, an energetic being that seems to permeate the body as a separate entity, and also extends beyond the body. That I Am sensation is the same as your feeling of your growing sense of presence.

At this point you are able to "step back" in a sense, and watch the totality of your experience of your body, your presence, and the world as a total experience, as if you were enwrapped by and permeated by consciousness itself. Your consciousness is self-contained, you are aware of the totality of your consciousness. 

This consciousness feels more pure than the body and at first it feels like you have been filled by the divine, by grace, by purity.

At this point you understand consciousness in an entirely different way. The world and your body do not seem so concrete and permanent as when you only considered yourself as a body with a mind. They become merely appearances in you as consciousness.

Consciousness then appears to be ever so changeable and flowing from waking to dream, to deep sleep, as well as being altered by medications, alcohol, hallucinogens such as LSD and Marijuana, etc. Consciousness is not fixed nor any object in it. Thus the whole world begins to be experienced as illusory, temporary and flowing compared to how you felt it to be real and solid becoming aware of the I Am sensation. 

The waking world begins to be perceived in a way similar to how you experience your dream worlds: as temporary images, which at Robert called optical illusions. The only "reality" appears to be the totality of consciousness, its total manifestation, and it and you no longer seem so real.

This is not the final step.

The final step Robert saves for last, and I won't take you there now.

HERE IS A MESSAGE SENT TO ME ABOUT SOMEONE WHO HAD AN AWAKENING EXPERIENCE BUT STILL EXPERIENCES NEGATIVE FEELINGS.

Hello Edward, please I need some help from you.

10 years ago I was just stopping my drug abusing and went in total shift with my life. Meditation and slight isolation. After short period of meditation 2 times per a day for around 15 min each I was fully aware that I was not the body or mind. I lost every fear and every desire, witnessing through the day the movement of body, mind, and thoughts.

I was at perfect peace for 6 months. After that, one day in the shower, I notice that there is no more me, there and then fear started bcz I didn't have nothing to cling anymore. I also didn't knew anyone from my town to help me with that fear neither I knew some teacher or basically anybody..

In short I had a lot of anxiety before that but by observing it or witnessing it I was gone. Until last year I was living relatively ok but last 1 year anxiety and phobia of travelling in tunnels subway airplane or just through motorway road.. It is really not nice to live like that and I am lost I don't know how to deal with that and my life is about lot of some short trips to work or private matter.

Last 10 year at least 1 time I do 30 min meditation but usually more.. Please do advice me how to step out from that state of fear of phobia of mentioned things. Thank you!

-----------------------------------

MY RESPONSE:

You step out by eating that fear and phobias. That is, let them take you over. Accept the feelings. Let them into your heart. Love the feelings. Become them. Identify with them.

If you can do that, they will dissipate into the greatest bliss you can know. Their energy will be added to you.

ROBERT'S AWAKENING EXPERIENCE

Many people who read Silence of the Heart or the book of his complete transcripts, believe that the understand Robert's teachings. But for them, they only understand their own concepts based on an identification with their bodies, and as bodies that are alive, are human, and are embedded in family and society.

No one can undderstand Robert unless they have had similar awakening experiences which result in the beginning of disidentification with their bodies, their minds, and their humanities, and begin to identify with consciousness itself.

For Robert, that first experience happened when he was 14 in his famous math-exam awakening. Someone should locate his description of his experience and post it as a comment.

But basically, his consciousness became aware of the life force within his own body and its dynamic identity with consciousness itself.

It was experienced as a great white light, as bright as a thousand suns, yet jot burning hot. This light carried his consciousness upwards and outwards, quickly filling the universe, and he was that light, that consciousness that suddenly became aware of itself finding his new identity as consciousness itself, not as his former identity as the human named Robert.

In that brief experience Robert realzed himself as God, as Consciousness, as the life force transcending his identity as Robert.

Until you have a similar experience, you cannot really own Robert's teachings as your own, for they will only be concepts based on your reading, education, and identity as a human. You can only think about transcending your humanhood, but you can never really know what it is like as a liberating experience until you have this kind of disidentification with the body and mind experience.

In my own estimation, of all the many teachers out there claiming to not have a self, maybe one in 50 or 60 have had a similar experience to Robert's.

There are other types of awakening experiences that lead to the same result, but this is the juciest type of experience because everything within you is awakened to the inner light of consciousness, the presence of the life force within, discovery of the potential purity of consciousness not identified with the messiness of life as a human.

This is certainly not the final awakening, but it is an essential component of the total process of becoming a Jnani--the goal of Advaitin teachers. Eventually consciousness itself must be transcended.

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The Power That Knows The Way

Robert never had many students.  The messages, "You don't exist; the world is an optical illusion; you are nothing, your mind is your enemy; do nothing; be still," is not a message that appeals to many westerners.

Nor is the message, "You are not your body or your mind, you are consciousness itself," that helpful unless you define what consciousness is.   Many people when they hear that begin to imagine or create special states or imagine transcendent states, something new and special.

But Robert was talking about your everyday consciousness, the one you awake with each morning.  That 16-hour a day consciousness is all that there is for you.  It contains all of your knowledge, all of your experience, all of your memories right now in consciousness, and that consciousness is not very steady or reliable.  It comes and goes, and with it, comes and goes our experiences of self-existence, of being alive, and in that totality of sentient experience lies your body and mind, with which you identify, even though the body disappears at night when consciousness disappears.

Without consciousness your body does not exist for you.  Consciousness comes first, then the body and mind and the world.

All your spiritual knowledge too is contained in your every day consciousness.  It is your only inheritance.  Your most basic tool.

But by focusing on this consciousness, by making consciousness itself an object, you loosen your identification with the body and mind, because they are just small parts of your consciousness.  There is the external world, sounds, sights, smells, etc.

And inside that consciousness, many people can locate a sense of I or I Am, as a center of gravity of consciousness within your self-experience.

Focusing your attention on that I, that sense that you are, that you exist, can bring you to the most exquisite state of self-realization, when you realize that this consciousness is infinite, divine, and is God itself.

Many of my students have discovered this within themselves which  first appears to be separate from your sense of existence, like a divine object, like God within.  I call this the life force, some call it Shakti.  Robert called it "The Power That Knows The Way."

That is, in sefl-realization, your consciousness becomes aware of the divine energies within, their expansions and contractions, and how they fill your body and your sense of presence with life.  You become aware of the root, the impersonal power of the life force that lives through you and which you are now aware of.

With this experience of self-realization, consciousness begins to reveal all of its secrets to you.  After that there is a continuous, spontaneous unfolding of the power that knows the way without you needing to do anything more.