My intent here is not to be gross, just to encourage relaxation.
"When someone is a “tight ass” we already know that means they are rigid or resistant to spontaneity. This is more literal than many realize.
Sphincter muscles are like valves in a water system. They are designed to open when our body wants something to pass through, and close when our body doesn’t.
The only good times to clench our rear sphincter is 1) to hold in excrement, or 2) prevent something unwanted from entering. Any other times we clench we are reducing circulation and reducing the flow of sensation.
It’s a final attempt to resist our circumstances: if we can’t control them, we can stop ourselves from feeling them.
My clients who have had sexual problems almost always realize they have been unconsciously clenching their rear almost all day. Clenching is a way to literally reduce your feeling in your body.
Just as it’s near impossible to run slowly while pumping our arms quickly, it’s difficult to do anything gracefully with a clenched butt. An acting teacher told me: “The ability to relax the sphincter in performance leads to more freedom and availability in one’s work.”
Learning to keep that muscle group allows us to feel more and move and think with more flow. Here’s what we ought to know about the anatomy:
We have two sphincters back there
If you were a good student in 9th Grade Bio, you may remember that our anus is made of two sphincters that permit passage through the colon like the alternating locks of the Panama Canal. (Which you’d understand if you were a good student in 8th Grade History.)
The Outer Sphincter is well within our control. We contract it to hold in a fart. We relax it to take in a thermometer (hopefully.) Most don’t realize the Inner can continue clench even after the Outer has been relaxed.
-- Ruwan Meepagala
"Over the past few years I’ve become well acquainted with my inner asshole. I don’t mean the metaphorical part of my psyche that’s a jerk, I mean my literal, physical, anatomical butt."
'Mercy has a human heart. Pity a human face: And Love the human form divine, And Peace the human dress.' ~ William Blake. ________________________ "If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?" ~ Dogen ________________________ All of us human beings, need compassion and growth. My aspiration is to wake up, open my heart and touch yours.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
It Is Enough
"Sooner or later there arises in every human heart the desire for holiness, spirituality, God, call it what you will. One hears mystics speak of a divinity all around them that is within our grasp, that would make our lives meaningful and beautiful and rich, if we could only discover it. People have some sort of a vague idea as to what this thing is and they read books and consult gurus, in the attempt to find out what it is that they must do to gain this elusive thing called Holiness or Spirituality. They pick methods, techniques, spiritual exercises, formulas; then after years of fruitless striving they become discouraged and confused and wonder what went wrong. Mostly they blame themselves. If they had been more fervent or more generous, they might have made it. But made what? They have no clear idea as to what exactly this holiness that they seek is, but they certainly know that their lives are still in a mess, they still become anxious and insecure and fearful, resentful and unforgiving, grasping and ambitious and manipulative of people. So once again they throw themselves with renewed vigor into the effort and labor that they think they need to attain their goal.
They never stopped to consider this simple fact: Their efforts are going to get them nowhere. Their efforts will only make things worse, as things become worse when you use fire to put out fire. Effort does not lead to growth; effort, whatever the form it may take, whether it be will-power or habit or a technique or a spiritual exercise, does not lead to change. At best it leads to repression and a covering over of the root disease.
Effort may change the behavior but it does not change the person. Just think what kind of a mentality it betrays when we ask, "What must I do to get holiness?" Isn't it like asking, How much money must I spend to buy something? What sacrifice must I make? What discipline must I undertake? What meditation must I practice in order to get it? Think of a person who wants to win the love of another and attempts to improve his/her appearance or build his/her body or change his/her behavior and practice techniques to charm the other person.
You truly win the love of others not by the practice of techniques but by being a certain kind of person. And that is never achieved through effort and techniques. And so it is with Spirituality and Holiness. Not what you do is what brings it to you. This is not a commodity that one can buy or a prize that one can win. What matters is what you are, what you become.
Holiness is not an achievement, it is a Grace. A Grace called Awareness, a grace called Looking, Observing, Understanding. If you would only switch on the light of awareness and observe yourself and everything around you throughout the day, if you would see yourself reflected in the mirror of awareness the way you see your face reflected in a looking glass, that is accurately, clearly, exactly as it is without the slightest distortion or addition, and if you observed this reflection without any judgment or condemnation, you would experience all sorts of marvelous changes coming about in you. Only you will not be in control of these changes, or be able to plan them in advance, or decide how and when they are to take place. It is this nonjudgmental awareness alone that heals and changes and makes one grow. But in its own way and at its own time.
What specifically are you to be aware of? Your reactions and your relationships. Each time you are in the presence of a person, any person, or with Nature or with any particular situation, you have all sorts of reactions, positive and negative. Study those reactions, observe what exactly they are and where they come from, without any sermonizing or guilt or even any desire, much less effort to change them. That is all that one needs for holiness to arise.
But isn't awareness itself an effort? Not if you have tasted it even once. For then you will understand that awareness is a delight, the delight of a little child moving out in wonder to discover the world. For even when awareness uncovers unpleasant things in you, it always brings liberation and joy. Then you will know that the unaware life if not worth living, it is too full of darkness and pain.
If at first there is a sluggishness in practicing awareness, don't force yourself. That would be an effort again. Just be aware of your sluggishness without any judgment or condemnation. You will then understand that awareness involves as much effort as a lover makes to the beloved . . . or a mountaineer to get to the top of his/her beloved mountain; so much energy expended, so much hardship even, but it isn't effort, it's fum! In other words, awareness is an effortless activity.
Will awareness bring you the holiness you so desire? Yes and no. The fact is you will never know. For true holiness, the type that is not achieved through techniques and efforts and repression, true holiness is completely unselfconscious. You wouldn't have the slightest awareness of its existence in you. Besides you will not care, for even the ambition to be holy will have dropped as you live from moment to moment a life made full and happy and transparent through awareness. It is enough to be watchful and awake."
– Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love:
The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello
They never stopped to consider this simple fact: Their efforts are going to get them nowhere. Their efforts will only make things worse, as things become worse when you use fire to put out fire. Effort does not lead to growth; effort, whatever the form it may take, whether it be will-power or habit or a technique or a spiritual exercise, does not lead to change. At best it leads to repression and a covering over of the root disease.
Effort may change the behavior but it does not change the person. Just think what kind of a mentality it betrays when we ask, "What must I do to get holiness?" Isn't it like asking, How much money must I spend to buy something? What sacrifice must I make? What discipline must I undertake? What meditation must I practice in order to get it? Think of a person who wants to win the love of another and attempts to improve his/her appearance or build his/her body or change his/her behavior and practice techniques to charm the other person.
You truly win the love of others not by the practice of techniques but by being a certain kind of person. And that is never achieved through effort and techniques. And so it is with Spirituality and Holiness. Not what you do is what brings it to you. This is not a commodity that one can buy or a prize that one can win. What matters is what you are, what you become.
Holiness is not an achievement, it is a Grace. A Grace called Awareness, a grace called Looking, Observing, Understanding. If you would only switch on the light of awareness and observe yourself and everything around you throughout the day, if you would see yourself reflected in the mirror of awareness the way you see your face reflected in a looking glass, that is accurately, clearly, exactly as it is without the slightest distortion or addition, and if you observed this reflection without any judgment or condemnation, you would experience all sorts of marvelous changes coming about in you. Only you will not be in control of these changes, or be able to plan them in advance, or decide how and when they are to take place. It is this nonjudgmental awareness alone that heals and changes and makes one grow. But in its own way and at its own time.
What specifically are you to be aware of? Your reactions and your relationships. Each time you are in the presence of a person, any person, or with Nature or with any particular situation, you have all sorts of reactions, positive and negative. Study those reactions, observe what exactly they are and where they come from, without any sermonizing or guilt or even any desire, much less effort to change them. That is all that one needs for holiness to arise.
But isn't awareness itself an effort? Not if you have tasted it even once. For then you will understand that awareness is a delight, the delight of a little child moving out in wonder to discover the world. For even when awareness uncovers unpleasant things in you, it always brings liberation and joy. Then you will know that the unaware life if not worth living, it is too full of darkness and pain.
If at first there is a sluggishness in practicing awareness, don't force yourself. That would be an effort again. Just be aware of your sluggishness without any judgment or condemnation. You will then understand that awareness involves as much effort as a lover makes to the beloved . . . or a mountaineer to get to the top of his/her beloved mountain; so much energy expended, so much hardship even, but it isn't effort, it's fum! In other words, awareness is an effortless activity.
Will awareness bring you the holiness you so desire? Yes and no. The fact is you will never know. For true holiness, the type that is not achieved through techniques and efforts and repression, true holiness is completely unselfconscious. You wouldn't have the slightest awareness of its existence in you. Besides you will not care, for even the ambition to be holy will have dropped as you live from moment to moment a life made full and happy and transparent through awareness. It is enough to be watchful and awake."
– Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love:
The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello
Here We Are
“In late March my husband scheduled a business trip to San Francisco in an attempt to secure a business contract. Finances being tight, he arranged to stay with a woman he had been spiritually mentoring, someone we had worked and socialized with a few years earlier… When he returned from the trip we enjoyed an affectionate reunion. Life resumed, and as the month went on my fits of anxiety began subsiding. In early May my husband confessed that he was attracted to the woman he was mentoring and felt a heart connection with her. She had experienced a "spiritual awakening," similar to what he had experienced three years earlier. He reported that they connected in deeper ways than we did and that he was confused by the connection and relationship.
The day he told me that news is the day I began dying. I no longer knew who I was or what would happen or what I could base my life on. My reliable counseling practice of fifteen years was changing; my extraordinary marriage was threatened. The inner peace I had felt for years was shattered by the winter of anxiety… Anxiety ceased. Mourning began. Ideas and images about my life arose and died. The myth I had long held about the great love story of our marriage dissolved. It was just a story…
I felt dead. I told myself that "Mary died."… My new anchor was spiritual teacher Adyashanti, a Zen teacher. I listened to his teaching tapes on my daily commute to work. My mind couldn't comprehend his words about spiritual freedom. However my being craved his message about living in the unknown and the promise of spiritual awakening.
During this time, I was in close communication with a fellow yoga teacher who was also in the throes of a marital crisis. A deeply spiritual woman, she was shaken to her roots by the news of her husband's attraction to another woman. We communicated weekly, talking about the death of life as we knew it. One day I timidly emailed this message to her, "I want to be God realized…" A few days prior to leaving for Colorado, I had lunch with my yoga teacher friend. She said her prayer was "God, bring it on, whatever you will, whatever I need for my spiritual growth." She added, "even if it means the death of my body." I swallowed hard, wondering if I was willing to die in order to be united with God.
Armed with twenty-five hours of tapes on spiritual awakening by Zen teacher, Adyashanti and spiritual teacher, A. H. Almaas, my husband and I started our car ride to Colorado on August 14. We talked little, absorbed in talks about opening to true nature. One student of Adyashanti stated "I am so mad. Your other students report these expansive experiences. I feel nothing. I am frustrated and don't want to wait for another life to be self realized." Adya responded, "The fire is burning in you. Stay with the fire…”
In utter vulnerability I screamed silently, "God damn it, do what you have to do. I want to be awakened. I don't care if I die." The light was still on, Rick was still working and I drifted off, mercifully, into the world of sleep. Sometime early morning, before dawn, all there was in awareness was velvet blackness. Words cannot describe but merely and vaguely point to this experience. There was only luminous darkness…
During the morning hike the following day, my internal experience was one of emptiness, nothingness, and "no-body" here. The experience of "going into the void" was one of seeing essential nature, recognizing the real identity of this soul, experiencing oneness. On Tuesday, it slowly dawned in my awareness that the personality of Mary was all manufactured by mind. It is not who I am. I am nobody! As my husband and I walked, I felt strange, like being in a new land, unfamiliar and very alone. There was no Mary there for company. Tears came as, from this place of nobody, I realized profoundly that there literally is no future - no hopes, dreams, expectations, goals, ambitions, things to accomplish - they are all mental constructions. There was nothing but emptiness. I wept more. The implication followed that there was nothing to hold unto - all there is "resting in the unknown." I was all alone, with nothing for security. There was utter aloneness.
In the days that followed, all aloneness became all-is-oneness. The strange vacancy of Tuesday transformed into silent bliss. There was nothing in my mind. All was still, all was silent internally. There was no me. There was no separation from everything. The peace beyond all understanding pervaded… That week began a deep healing between my husband and myself. We connected in new ways and worked through misunderstandings, misconceptions and hurts. We opened up to one another. We talked through our experiences during his spiritual awakening. The walls between us came down and we were able to meet one another emotionally and spiritually. The bonds between us deepened. Something fresh, real and substantial emerged in the relationship.
It has been some time since the miracle of spiritual awakening. Most of the time I experience a deep peace and sense of total stillness internally. At times the experience of "I" is of spaciousness and quiet. Often when I sit with others I see God in their eyes, and am immersed in profound emptiness. I relish time and space to simply be and do nothing. I am utterly grateful and astonished by it all… There is still a Mary, and I experience the re-emergence of a historical sense of self. The difference now is that I recognize ego and I am less energized by its pull. Now the movement is to make space for this realization, to give time for transcendence. The work is to identify ego and allow its hold on this life to be relinquished.
The way, at least as I understand it now, is surrendering to the path of consciousness, "leaving no stone unturned." This is allowing all sensations, thoughts and emotions to come into awareness, so that all habitual and mental activity is seen through… I am grateful for the teaching of Adyashanti who recommends allowing all experience so that awareness can liberate us by coming through, illuminating the experience. By bringing awareness into egoic phenomena, the phenomena dissolve. This is awareness in experience, not witnessing from a distance. Being a witness to experience without being in the experience is not as liberating. It keeps us separate from fullness of being which comes from the dissolution of egoic patterning and the immersion into true nature.
I think often of the dream of dying. Awakening to true nature is indeed a death. We are truly born again. Life this time around is not about becoming somebody. It is about being an expression of true nature. Less is known, defined. Life is more mysterious, unfolding moment to moment. A sense of beingness pervades. We no longer lead nor follow. Here we are, discovering the truth of being alive, in this moment.”
~ Mary NurrieStearns has meditated and practiced yoga since 1991. An advanced level yoga teacher, Mary says, “The yogic path is incredible. It weaves its way through the body, mind and spirit, and leads us into the realization of who we are as spiritual beings.”
Mary has over four decades of professional experience in mental health and maintains a counseling practice in Tulsa Oklahoma. She is author of numerous articles on psycho-spiritual growth, co-author of “Yoga for Anxiety” and “Yoga for Emotional Trauma”, the upcoming “Yoga Mind, Peaceful Mind” and co-editor of “Soulful Living”.
A quiet person at heart, she lives in a wooded area near Tulsa with her husband and pets, amidst the animals of the forest.”
The day he told me that news is the day I began dying. I no longer knew who I was or what would happen or what I could base my life on. My reliable counseling practice of fifteen years was changing; my extraordinary marriage was threatened. The inner peace I had felt for years was shattered by the winter of anxiety… Anxiety ceased. Mourning began. Ideas and images about my life arose and died. The myth I had long held about the great love story of our marriage dissolved. It was just a story…
I felt dead. I told myself that "Mary died."… My new anchor was spiritual teacher Adyashanti, a Zen teacher. I listened to his teaching tapes on my daily commute to work. My mind couldn't comprehend his words about spiritual freedom. However my being craved his message about living in the unknown and the promise of spiritual awakening.
During this time, I was in close communication with a fellow yoga teacher who was also in the throes of a marital crisis. A deeply spiritual woman, she was shaken to her roots by the news of her husband's attraction to another woman. We communicated weekly, talking about the death of life as we knew it. One day I timidly emailed this message to her, "I want to be God realized…" A few days prior to leaving for Colorado, I had lunch with my yoga teacher friend. She said her prayer was "God, bring it on, whatever you will, whatever I need for my spiritual growth." She added, "even if it means the death of my body." I swallowed hard, wondering if I was willing to die in order to be united with God.
Armed with twenty-five hours of tapes on spiritual awakening by Zen teacher, Adyashanti and spiritual teacher, A. H. Almaas, my husband and I started our car ride to Colorado on August 14. We talked little, absorbed in talks about opening to true nature. One student of Adyashanti stated "I am so mad. Your other students report these expansive experiences. I feel nothing. I am frustrated and don't want to wait for another life to be self realized." Adya responded, "The fire is burning in you. Stay with the fire…”
In utter vulnerability I screamed silently, "God damn it, do what you have to do. I want to be awakened. I don't care if I die." The light was still on, Rick was still working and I drifted off, mercifully, into the world of sleep. Sometime early morning, before dawn, all there was in awareness was velvet blackness. Words cannot describe but merely and vaguely point to this experience. There was only luminous darkness…
During the morning hike the following day, my internal experience was one of emptiness, nothingness, and "no-body" here. The experience of "going into the void" was one of seeing essential nature, recognizing the real identity of this soul, experiencing oneness. On Tuesday, it slowly dawned in my awareness that the personality of Mary was all manufactured by mind. It is not who I am. I am nobody! As my husband and I walked, I felt strange, like being in a new land, unfamiliar and very alone. There was no Mary there for company. Tears came as, from this place of nobody, I realized profoundly that there literally is no future - no hopes, dreams, expectations, goals, ambitions, things to accomplish - they are all mental constructions. There was nothing but emptiness. I wept more. The implication followed that there was nothing to hold unto - all there is "resting in the unknown." I was all alone, with nothing for security. There was utter aloneness.
In the days that followed, all aloneness became all-is-oneness. The strange vacancy of Tuesday transformed into silent bliss. There was nothing in my mind. All was still, all was silent internally. There was no me. There was no separation from everything. The peace beyond all understanding pervaded… That week began a deep healing between my husband and myself. We connected in new ways and worked through misunderstandings, misconceptions and hurts. We opened up to one another. We talked through our experiences during his spiritual awakening. The walls between us came down and we were able to meet one another emotionally and spiritually. The bonds between us deepened. Something fresh, real and substantial emerged in the relationship.
It has been some time since the miracle of spiritual awakening. Most of the time I experience a deep peace and sense of total stillness internally. At times the experience of "I" is of spaciousness and quiet. Often when I sit with others I see God in their eyes, and am immersed in profound emptiness. I relish time and space to simply be and do nothing. I am utterly grateful and astonished by it all… There is still a Mary, and I experience the re-emergence of a historical sense of self. The difference now is that I recognize ego and I am less energized by its pull. Now the movement is to make space for this realization, to give time for transcendence. The work is to identify ego and allow its hold on this life to be relinquished.
The way, at least as I understand it now, is surrendering to the path of consciousness, "leaving no stone unturned." This is allowing all sensations, thoughts and emotions to come into awareness, so that all habitual and mental activity is seen through… I am grateful for the teaching of Adyashanti who recommends allowing all experience so that awareness can liberate us by coming through, illuminating the experience. By bringing awareness into egoic phenomena, the phenomena dissolve. This is awareness in experience, not witnessing from a distance. Being a witness to experience without being in the experience is not as liberating. It keeps us separate from fullness of being which comes from the dissolution of egoic patterning and the immersion into true nature.
I think often of the dream of dying. Awakening to true nature is indeed a death. We are truly born again. Life this time around is not about becoming somebody. It is about being an expression of true nature. Less is known, defined. Life is more mysterious, unfolding moment to moment. A sense of beingness pervades. We no longer lead nor follow. Here we are, discovering the truth of being alive, in this moment.”
~ Mary NurrieStearns has meditated and practiced yoga since 1991. An advanced level yoga teacher, Mary says, “The yogic path is incredible. It weaves its way through the body, mind and spirit, and leads us into the realization of who we are as spiritual beings.”
Mary has over four decades of professional experience in mental health and maintains a counseling practice in Tulsa Oklahoma. She is author of numerous articles on psycho-spiritual growth, co-author of “Yoga for Anxiety” and “Yoga for Emotional Trauma”, the upcoming “Yoga Mind, Peaceful Mind” and co-editor of “Soulful Living”.
A quiet person at heart, she lives in a wooded area near Tulsa with her husband and pets, amidst the animals of the forest.”
Living as that Presence
A heartwarming and brief autobiography of living mystic, Robert Wolfe;
one of the many lights on this pathless path:
:: Awakening to Living in the Present Moment ::
"I was born in rural Ohio--during the decade before the end of World War II. My mother was a life-long Baptist; and my father said he was an atheist. My mother was judgmental toward him, and he remained distant. I was raised predominantly under my mother's influence, and thus attended church activities with her. At a county-wide Youth for Christ "tent" meeting, I was swayed by a particular evangelistic speaker, and was baptized at age thirteen.
My parents owned a grocery store at a lake resort, so, aside from the summer months, we were poor. My parents separated when I was sixteen, sold the store, and eventually divorced. My father moved to the county seat and operated a newspaper and magazine distribution route.
My mother, and I, also moved to the county seat. She opened a newsstand, and found a house nearby. I had lived a quiet life, spending much time in the woods around the lake, and had gone to a small local school, attended mostly by farm children. I did not like the city, and so left home to live on my own, at age sixteen.
I went south to a small town in Florida, the home of a friend I had met in Ohio. I worked for room-and-board at a bed-and-breakfast Inn, and completed my high school education there. My mother sent what little money she could afford, from time to time, for clothing, books and the like.
I sometimes attended events at the local Baptist church, and also read parts of the Bible. But throughout my teen years, I was surprised by the hypocrisy and cynicism I saw in church members, assuming their strong belief in 'Gospel' values. Some of the anti-clerical writings I ran across, such as in magazines, seemed more straightforward and rational to me. Within a couple of years of leaving high-school, I no longer considered myself a "believer".
I traveled around, mostly in the Midwest, working at various temporary jobs for about a decade. Eventually, I headed back east and ended up living on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, as a reporter for a small sixties counter-culture magazine, The Realist. I had meanwhile been observing (or participating) in the turmoil in the around me, and asking the normal silent questions, such as: "Why are things the troubling way they are; what is all this; what does it all mean"? I no longer looked to organized religion to answer such perplexing questions.
At that time, when I was about thirty, Zen masters from Japan were arriving in the U.S. to guide Buddhist centers which were springing up. Zen masters were often scheduled to give an introductory talk, after they were settled. As a reporter for a progressive magazine, I covered some of these talks and was impressed by both the teachers and their wisdom.
I read one of the books (Alan Watts, The Way of Zen) which had sparked the interest in Zen here in the United States. Zen seemed to me to be a "religion" which was intent on putting itself out of business, so I became interested once again in "spiritual" matters.
Not long afterward, I left Manhattan and emigrated to a Zen farming commune in California, 150 miles north of San Francisco, in Mendocino. Outside this coastal village generally an arts-and-crafts community was a quiet setting called Big River Farm. There were about a dozen people, mostly young men and women living there in several rustic buildings. We jointly maintained a few goats, chickens, ducks, geese, an organic garden and orchard.
We had no Zen teacher in residence: our general guide was Suzuki Roshi's book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. We sat a couple of forty-five minute periods of meditation, morning and evening, but none of us felt qualified to engage in real dharma discussion. After a couple of years at the Farm, living a meditative life in relative monastic isolation, and studying some Zen texts--I felt that I had gotten that there was to get, under such circumstance: and so l moved out into the community of Mendocino.
I started a landscape-gardening business, and lived a more "normal" life, in the village of Mendocino. Within about six years, and while in my early forties, I met Linda--a school teacher, whom I married. With a down-payment given by my mother, and the help of Linda's steady income, we had a house built. Mendocino gets about thirty-eight inches of rain throughout December, January and February. Since I was generally out of work during those months and providing little family income, Linda pressed me to find a more stable occupation. With this in mind, I developed what was called a financial-planning practice. Basically, I was licensed to sell various investment securities and insurance products. Within about six years, I began to have a steadily growing income (surpassing Linda's). However, I was putting in about sixty hours a week (compared to about thirty hours for Linda).
Linda and I were married for about ten years. For me, it was a happy and satisfying marriage--and I have since felt no need to attempt to repeat it. However, Linda was always somewhat discontented. She finally developed a relationship with another man; decided that she wanted to be free to be with him; and so we separated and divorced. I grieved over this for about a week (as if she had been killed in an automobile accident) and then let go of it in an act of conscious detachment.
We sold our house, and (with my share of the equity) I bought, and paid cash for, a campervan. The van was entirely self-sufficient; it was my home for about the next seven years. Some friends had a summer cabin in the redwood forest not far from Mendocino on a dirt logging road next to a creek. I parked my van there, plugged into the pumphouse electricity, and lived on their land as a rent-free "caretaker". About once a week, I drove into town for groceries.
Living on savings, I was free to spend the next few years as I pleased. When Linda had decided that she wanted to leave, I had quit my career. My original motivation for pursing financial stability had been to provide for our retirement; with Linda out of the scenario, I no longer had a motivation to fuel my career. I realized that: a) I did not intend to have a marital relationship again, and b) I did not intend to be a homeowner again.
I also recognized that I had some unfinished business; while I had gone from Big River Farm to a successful financial career, I was persistently reminded of the hollow values that my life revolved around. Interestingly, the more deeply enmeshed I became in the world of business (which is what I had understood that Linda wanted), the more my spouse reacted to it. While I was reading mutual-fund brochures at night she was reading "new-age" prophets. When we separated, she gave me a book by Shakti Gawain, and said she hoped I'd find some comfort in it. (It was Living in the Light; clearly I was, at least as far as Linda was concerned, living in the dark). On perusing, I was reminded of how far I'd come away from the insights I'd known at the Zen farm. I went to a bookstore and bought a number of "spiritual" books. Through these, I became acquainted, for the first time, with the writings of Krishnamurti ("K").
For three years, while living alone in my van in the woods, I did little but study K's "teachings", take walks that were hours long, and contemplate. While Zen had provided the cobblestones, K provided the mortar. Also included in this mortar were writings by Ken Wilber, and Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics.
I sometimes left the woods for a week, or a month or so, at a time, to house-sit for friends. During this period of ferment, I had been constantly making notes--often waking up at night and turning on the light to write paragraphs. One cold day, as I sat near the fire reading and contemplating, I left the (Krishnamurti) book, went to my friend's typewriter and typed out a single page, setting down the connections that were suddenly swamping me. When I took it out and read it, I realized that I now understood something that I had never before understood. And I knew, without doubt, that which I now knew.
Over the years many persons asked me if I still had the typed single-page produced in relation to this pivotal moment in awakening. After inspecting a large ring-binder of pages and monographs, I chose the following as possibly the original page, or if not at least an extremely close approximation. So here it is.
:: In a Nutshell ::
You can't initiate a communication with It; the communication can be to you, not from "you". And it won't communicate with you if something is in the way. Questions are a barrier. It will not flow through the fishnet of a barrier, such as desire. To hold onto any-thing is a desire. The questions, the desires, are protecting "you". It will not communicate with "you". You are an idea; It is not an idea. To move into It, the mind must be free. You can't set up perimeters in the Boundless. It has no cause, it is spontaneous: it will not be summoned or even invited.
There is not anything that is separate from death. The particular dies into the universal, and the universal also dies. The "universal" is not infinite. The universal principles that man strives for have no meaning. Everything of the universe that becomes, dies.
There is no relationship to It. If you are to be in communion with it, you can have no relationship. You must sacrifice all the concepts, such as "pleasure" and "pain". The "relationship" is to have no relationship, to look for no meaning, to have no motive. The "I" can't live with the idea that there is no meaning, no continuity, or hope, no link with God or the infinite. The death of the "I" is to remove the barrier to It. When there is no "I", there is no desire, concepts, hopes, motives, continuity or questions.
My primary concern, since then, has been how to convey this revelation to others--especially since I had known so many others, during my lifetime, who claimed to also want to know this truth. I began to talk about it, with the few friends I had at that time. But they were more interested in the pursuit of worldly success, pleasure, seeking and improvement of "self-image". I soon found that I had no one to whom I could talk, about the more transcendental discoveries. An opportunity for conveying this "good news" turned up eventually, when I later moved to Ojai, California.
***
Traditionally, the word enlightenment has been used interchangeably with "realization" and "awakening". I prefer the word realization, for its accuracy: firstly, to real-ize semantically means "to make real", secondly, when we realize (that is, "recognize" or "apprehend") something, it is an action which is instantaneous. The substance of "enlightenment" that is realized, I found is realized immediately: it is (in more ways than one) like looking at one of those optical illusions which, in a single moment, reverses the perceptual field so that we see the presentation entirely differently. And once we have recognized the actuality of doing that, we can always (or constantly) do it.
In this sense (only), realization might be said to be a "psycho-logical" shift, a revolution of the psyche, almost like reversing the left brain with the right brain. It is primarily a perceptual shift, as is the consequence of a change in perspective or position. As with the example of the optical illusion (above), one is beforehand of "not seeing what some others say they've seen"; but afterward is aware of having perceived something which previously had not been recognized. In this "knowing", there is knowing that there is "knowing". However, while this realization may be "instantaneous", to absorb (or appreciate) the entire panorama which is presented will likely be a matter of extended induction; having now penetrated the "optical illusion", one now re-assesses the entire picture, "image by image".
Put another way, I had come to the teachings, as we tend to do, with the desire to end personal suffering. K repeatedly asserted, "where there is division, there is conflict"; and he frequently used the phrase--as have sages since recorded time--"no division". I began to contemplate, "Is it possible that the truth of actuality is that there is no division whatever in any possible time, or at any conceivable place"? Suspending the usual perspective and probing the implications of this (tentative) actual truth, I came to recognize (during that three-year period of my isolation in the woods) that my previously-held identification was a false identification; that to put it as it has most succinctly been put, "the observer is the observed". The false optical illusion falls away to reveal the truth.
This realization, or awakening, was not accompanied by lights and bells and whistles (such phenomena do not seem to have ever been a constituent of this particular psyche). It was basically as quiet and simple as putting a sheet of paper in a typewriter and typing out a state-ment, on a single page, of con-firm-ation of the truth which appeared imminently present. When I read what had been written, I recognized it; I realized that this was so. I had awakened, as we always do, to the truth that is in the present moment (therefore, in "every" moment).
The inseparability of all things, which has been referred to persistently by mystic sages for 3,5000 years of our written history, is commonly spoken of as "oneness" (or Oneness). There is an aspect of this oneness which is rather apparent to most any attentive mind. But the aspect which seems to give many of us some difficulty has to do with our personal, "individual relationship" to this oneness. This latter aspect is the matter which had now become clarified for me. It was not that something was added to my fund of knowledge; it was that I saw the truth in what was already actually present but which had been overlooked or ignored. The situation is similar to one of those "optical illusions", again, which you have probably encountered: what appears to be, say, a black candlestick and its holder is displayed against a white background. But in addition to this apparent picture is a picture which is not so apparent; if the white portion is viewed as the foreground and the black, candlestick portion seen to be its background, an entirely different picture emerges: the outline of two matching profiles whose noses nearly touch.
My relationship to the whole of existence was now revealed in a radically different light. If you were to view a fish in an aquarium, for instance, directly head on, what you would perceive would be remarkably different from what you would perceive if you were to shift your perspective so as to observe it broadsided . It would not be a different fish than it had been--and nothing would have been added to it--but your perception of it would now be thoroughly different.
This radical, and sudden, shift in perspective was liberating. Where before there had been confusion and perplexity concerning the relationship of the individual to the whole of existence, now there was a calming clarity. There was profound resolution of the uneasy questing which had punctuated my prior 18 years, a resolution which was not transitory because it has not since been apart from my general awareness.
I had hoped to share the good news, particularly With those whom I knew to have quested concurrently with myself. I knew, from my own experience, that a certain element of this unitive understanding is communicable from one mind to another; the analogy is sometimes given of a flame leaping from one torch to another torch. Probably a more apt analogy is that of a center-fielder in baseball making a throw to homeplate: if the catcher is not fully attentive, there is nothing within the center-fielder's power which will complete the transmission. But the fact that the transmission may rarely be received is not a reason for inaction.
There is a certain reasonableness, or even "logic", to the unitive understanding up to a Beyond which logical progression will not take you. At that point, only an intuitive connection can be made. But once the tumblers have fallen into place, it matters not that a hairpin replaced a key. A subsequent and even less experiential -deepening of this dis-identification is more difficult to describe. I no longer felt the need to confine myself to the Northern California forest; it occurred to me that I was free to live in a warmer and dryer climate, if I now chose to. I relocated to a little valley near EI Cajon, which is a small town, inland from San Diego. Specifically, I lived in my van for one year at Swallows Sun Island, a small nudist resort in a dry, sunny valley.
Aside from a weekly trip to town for groceries (and aside from exercising in the gym or pool, hot tub/sauna, and attending our weekly dance), I had nothing to do but "contemplate". There was a remote, sandy, shady spot at one end of the "park", where a couple of oak trees framed the view of a lone distant hill. For sometimes as many as forty hours a week (day or night), I would sit (usually in a deck chair, which I kept there) "sitting quietly, doing nothing". Doing nothing. Doing not anything, save for being present--open, and present.
***
Toward the end, I wrote a booklet: "Elementary Cloud-watching: Contemplating the Meaning of Living in the Moment." The resource was later self-published, but is now out of print. A sample piece is presented below.
:: Sunday Matinee ::
It is not just quiet today, it is still. It is a stillness which you can almost hear, or feel. It is not a stillness in which the grasses are not rehearsing their Ballet to the Breeze, but there is a silence of the earth.
Past noon, it is likely the warmest day we've had this year. You can hear the birds, but you scarcely note any movement. Even the flies and bees are all but absent. It is a day in which a limb can suddenly drop from a tree.
And, there is quiet. Mother's Day: perhaps everyone in this hemisphere is at dinner with their mother. Even the few airplanes seem remote, and the atmosphere is clear without the slightest haze. It's breathtaking.
The colors are rich. The pale blue sky, the dark green of the tight oak leaves against their shadowy branches; the wild garden, up the slope, with dark blue spikes that appear, from here, to be larkspur, and the pink of what looks like godetia, among the bright yellow of mustard and the glowing white of morning glory; the wild grasses which in the past weeks have yellowed to golden straw; the tan/sandy path at the base of your bare feet.
Few can afford the luxury of this time and place: a Sunday afternoon in spring in a wooded ravine. To be here now is too expensive: it is to give up a day of gold; to forego the washing of the car; to ignore obligations; to forsake companionship--all prices to be paid for being civilized.
Civilization and stillness--quiet, inactivity--do not go together. Civilization is a continual process of choices; stillness comes without choice. There is nothing which can be done to create this stillness. It is not something which is to be acquired; it has no value as currency. It is, put another way, priceless.
One must relax, to breathe this stillness. Not just the body: the mind, the psyche. One must relax ambition. Ambition and stillness are not compatible. There is no ticking of the clock here. There is no effort in stillness.
***
During that time, on a particular day, there was a feeling of immersion into that which is indivisible, a sense of something without limitation which I have not felt the need to inculcate since. It was a feeling of validity, which one need have no cause to doubt. It was not a spectacle, in any way--therefore un-spectacular; just quiet.
***
I had gathered (from K's biography) that there was a small community of people who still lived in Ojai, who had been influenced by him--some of them very personally (such as his former companion, Mary Zimbalist). It occurred to me that I might feel more at home among that community. So about 12 years ago, I attended one of the semi-annual "dialogue" weekends in Ojai, where I presently live and conduct discussions with persons interested in clarifying the truth of "no division"--the condition where there is that in which there is truly only one thing; and that one thing is the Absolute.
For the past half dozen years, I have conducted a considerable number of discussions (both individually and in groups) with persons who indicated their interest in resolving and in recognizing that they had resolved what has been called the perennial question. I have carefully observed the junctures at which their confusion compounded. I have also observed that for a few individuals there was no point at which their confusion was not surmounted, to their satisfaction.
The essence of the unitive understanding is that it is liberating; the marvel of the unitive understanding is that it is basically effortless. Its liberation is a consequence of the non-attachment it engenders. This is not detaching of piece from piece, item by item. It is an across-the-board release of attachment, which even includes non-attachment to the continuity of one's life. This dispelling of attachment is, in the same moment, the dispelling of correlated fear--and that is dynamic liberation.
And, so, it is not that one first removes fear; removes attachments; and then the unitive revelation falls into place: it is that the latter is coincident with the former. This is the true marvel of the unitive realization, the effortlessness of the deconstruction.
As a consequence of my attempts to share the enlightenment teachings with scores of others, I have read widely from other nondual (advaita, in Sanskrit) teachings. This has made it possible for me to be increasingly more effective in communicating the essence of the realized state. After thorough study, I have found the most direct teachings to be those of the South Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi (who died in 1950). Less direct but also well-grounded are the teaching of another Indian sage (also now deceased) Nisargadatta Maharaj. A living relative of Ramana Maharshi conducted interviews with 63 persons who were awakened to Absolute presence by late (Indian) H.W.L. Poonja ("Papaji").
Papaji attracted a number of spiritual seekers, after Ramana had died, particularly English-speaking. (Ramana spoke his native Tamil; Papaji spoke English). Among these was an American woman who now teaches in the U.S., using the name Gangaji. One of her awakened students, John Sherman, now lives and teaches advaita in Ojai .
Nisargadatta, too, has an English-speaking lineage (though he, again, didn't speak in English, except through a translator). The Indian man who was his translator, Ramesh Balsekar, is recognized as Nisargadatta's successor. One of his awakened American students, Wayne now gives teachings in that lineage here in Southern California .
But probably the most prominent American teacher in the advaita tradition today was formerly, for about 15 years, a zen student--using the Sanskrit name Adyashanti. From an organizational center in San Jose, California (south of San Francisco), his videos, DVDs, tapes and books have made a consistently sought-out teacher who has already brought many seekers to the end of their spiritual quest.
And so today, in addition to my own writings and materials which I provide to those who desire them, I urge those I communicate with to augment our explorations with the wisdom provided conveniently by Adyashanti; and the transcriptions of the message of Ramana and Nisargadatta (or those of their successors). My own study of the transmission methods of the advaita masters aided my ability to transmit the message of nondual realization in the most direct way. It expanded the perception I'd had from my days in the Mendocino forest.
And it is this simple, direct realization of the nondual actuality of our existence which activates and guides my life, from day to day. My life is the life of the Absolute. Thus my foremost interest in life, now of 70 years, is the transmission of the awareness of our infinite true nature. My days are spent in communication with those who seek spiritual truth: in person, by letter, or by phone (I have no computer). I live on a small pension now, in a federally-subsidized low-rent apartment complex. For those to whom I can be of assistance, I can be contacted at: 999 East Ojai Avenue, apartment 98, Ojai California 93023; telephone (805) 646-1739. Ojai, where Krishnamurti lived and died, is north of Los Angeles and inland from the coastal town of Ventura. Though a town of only about 8,000 population, many contemporary spiritual teachers have visited here. For me, it has been a journey from "belief" in the Omnipresent in Ohio, to living as that Presence, now in Ojai--a journey of unpredictable unfoldment!"
~ Robert Wolfe
one of the many lights on this pathless path:
:: Awakening to Living in the Present Moment ::
"I was born in rural Ohio--during the decade before the end of World War II. My mother was a life-long Baptist; and my father said he was an atheist. My mother was judgmental toward him, and he remained distant. I was raised predominantly under my mother's influence, and thus attended church activities with her. At a county-wide Youth for Christ "tent" meeting, I was swayed by a particular evangelistic speaker, and was baptized at age thirteen.
My parents owned a grocery store at a lake resort, so, aside from the summer months, we were poor. My parents separated when I was sixteen, sold the store, and eventually divorced. My father moved to the county seat and operated a newspaper and magazine distribution route.
My mother, and I, also moved to the county seat. She opened a newsstand, and found a house nearby. I had lived a quiet life, spending much time in the woods around the lake, and had gone to a small local school, attended mostly by farm children. I did not like the city, and so left home to live on my own, at age sixteen.
I went south to a small town in Florida, the home of a friend I had met in Ohio. I worked for room-and-board at a bed-and-breakfast Inn, and completed my high school education there. My mother sent what little money she could afford, from time to time, for clothing, books and the like.
I sometimes attended events at the local Baptist church, and also read parts of the Bible. But throughout my teen years, I was surprised by the hypocrisy and cynicism I saw in church members, assuming their strong belief in 'Gospel' values. Some of the anti-clerical writings I ran across, such as in magazines, seemed more straightforward and rational to me. Within a couple of years of leaving high-school, I no longer considered myself a "believer".
I traveled around, mostly in the Midwest, working at various temporary jobs for about a decade. Eventually, I headed back east and ended up living on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, as a reporter for a small sixties counter-culture magazine, The Realist. I had meanwhile been observing (or participating) in the turmoil in the around me, and asking the normal silent questions, such as: "Why are things the troubling way they are; what is all this; what does it all mean"? I no longer looked to organized religion to answer such perplexing questions.
At that time, when I was about thirty, Zen masters from Japan were arriving in the U.S. to guide Buddhist centers which were springing up. Zen masters were often scheduled to give an introductory talk, after they were settled. As a reporter for a progressive magazine, I covered some of these talks and was impressed by both the teachers and their wisdom.
I read one of the books (Alan Watts, The Way of Zen) which had sparked the interest in Zen here in the United States. Zen seemed to me to be a "religion" which was intent on putting itself out of business, so I became interested once again in "spiritual" matters.
Not long afterward, I left Manhattan and emigrated to a Zen farming commune in California, 150 miles north of San Francisco, in Mendocino. Outside this coastal village generally an arts-and-crafts community was a quiet setting called Big River Farm. There were about a dozen people, mostly young men and women living there in several rustic buildings. We jointly maintained a few goats, chickens, ducks, geese, an organic garden and orchard.
We had no Zen teacher in residence: our general guide was Suzuki Roshi's book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. We sat a couple of forty-five minute periods of meditation, morning and evening, but none of us felt qualified to engage in real dharma discussion. After a couple of years at the Farm, living a meditative life in relative monastic isolation, and studying some Zen texts--I felt that I had gotten that there was to get, under such circumstance: and so l moved out into the community of Mendocino.
I started a landscape-gardening business, and lived a more "normal" life, in the village of Mendocino. Within about six years, and while in my early forties, I met Linda--a school teacher, whom I married. With a down-payment given by my mother, and the help of Linda's steady income, we had a house built. Mendocino gets about thirty-eight inches of rain throughout December, January and February. Since I was generally out of work during those months and providing little family income, Linda pressed me to find a more stable occupation. With this in mind, I developed what was called a financial-planning practice. Basically, I was licensed to sell various investment securities and insurance products. Within about six years, I began to have a steadily growing income (surpassing Linda's). However, I was putting in about sixty hours a week (compared to about thirty hours for Linda).
Linda and I were married for about ten years. For me, it was a happy and satisfying marriage--and I have since felt no need to attempt to repeat it. However, Linda was always somewhat discontented. She finally developed a relationship with another man; decided that she wanted to be free to be with him; and so we separated and divorced. I grieved over this for about a week (as if she had been killed in an automobile accident) and then let go of it in an act of conscious detachment.
We sold our house, and (with my share of the equity) I bought, and paid cash for, a campervan. The van was entirely self-sufficient; it was my home for about the next seven years. Some friends had a summer cabin in the redwood forest not far from Mendocino on a dirt logging road next to a creek. I parked my van there, plugged into the pumphouse electricity, and lived on their land as a rent-free "caretaker". About once a week, I drove into town for groceries.
Living on savings, I was free to spend the next few years as I pleased. When Linda had decided that she wanted to leave, I had quit my career. My original motivation for pursing financial stability had been to provide for our retirement; with Linda out of the scenario, I no longer had a motivation to fuel my career. I realized that: a) I did not intend to have a marital relationship again, and b) I did not intend to be a homeowner again.
I also recognized that I had some unfinished business; while I had gone from Big River Farm to a successful financial career, I was persistently reminded of the hollow values that my life revolved around. Interestingly, the more deeply enmeshed I became in the world of business (which is what I had understood that Linda wanted), the more my spouse reacted to it. While I was reading mutual-fund brochures at night she was reading "new-age" prophets. When we separated, she gave me a book by Shakti Gawain, and said she hoped I'd find some comfort in it. (It was Living in the Light; clearly I was, at least as far as Linda was concerned, living in the dark). On perusing, I was reminded of how far I'd come away from the insights I'd known at the Zen farm. I went to a bookstore and bought a number of "spiritual" books. Through these, I became acquainted, for the first time, with the writings of Krishnamurti ("K").
For three years, while living alone in my van in the woods, I did little but study K's "teachings", take walks that were hours long, and contemplate. While Zen had provided the cobblestones, K provided the mortar. Also included in this mortar were writings by Ken Wilber, and Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics.
I sometimes left the woods for a week, or a month or so, at a time, to house-sit for friends. During this period of ferment, I had been constantly making notes--often waking up at night and turning on the light to write paragraphs. One cold day, as I sat near the fire reading and contemplating, I left the (Krishnamurti) book, went to my friend's typewriter and typed out a single page, setting down the connections that were suddenly swamping me. When I took it out and read it, I realized that I now understood something that I had never before understood. And I knew, without doubt, that which I now knew.
Over the years many persons asked me if I still had the typed single-page produced in relation to this pivotal moment in awakening. After inspecting a large ring-binder of pages and monographs, I chose the following as possibly the original page, or if not at least an extremely close approximation. So here it is.
:: In a Nutshell ::
You can't initiate a communication with It; the communication can be to you, not from "you". And it won't communicate with you if something is in the way. Questions are a barrier. It will not flow through the fishnet of a barrier, such as desire. To hold onto any-thing is a desire. The questions, the desires, are protecting "you". It will not communicate with "you". You are an idea; It is not an idea. To move into It, the mind must be free. You can't set up perimeters in the Boundless. It has no cause, it is spontaneous: it will not be summoned or even invited.
There is not anything that is separate from death. The particular dies into the universal, and the universal also dies. The "universal" is not infinite. The universal principles that man strives for have no meaning. Everything of the universe that becomes, dies.
There is no relationship to It. If you are to be in communion with it, you can have no relationship. You must sacrifice all the concepts, such as "pleasure" and "pain". The "relationship" is to have no relationship, to look for no meaning, to have no motive. The "I" can't live with the idea that there is no meaning, no continuity, or hope, no link with God or the infinite. The death of the "I" is to remove the barrier to It. When there is no "I", there is no desire, concepts, hopes, motives, continuity or questions.
My primary concern, since then, has been how to convey this revelation to others--especially since I had known so many others, during my lifetime, who claimed to also want to know this truth. I began to talk about it, with the few friends I had at that time. But they were more interested in the pursuit of worldly success, pleasure, seeking and improvement of "self-image". I soon found that I had no one to whom I could talk, about the more transcendental discoveries. An opportunity for conveying this "good news" turned up eventually, when I later moved to Ojai, California.
***
Traditionally, the word enlightenment has been used interchangeably with "realization" and "awakening". I prefer the word realization, for its accuracy: firstly, to real-ize semantically means "to make real", secondly, when we realize (that is, "recognize" or "apprehend") something, it is an action which is instantaneous. The substance of "enlightenment" that is realized, I found is realized immediately: it is (in more ways than one) like looking at one of those optical illusions which, in a single moment, reverses the perceptual field so that we see the presentation entirely differently. And once we have recognized the actuality of doing that, we can always (or constantly) do it.
In this sense (only), realization might be said to be a "psycho-logical" shift, a revolution of the psyche, almost like reversing the left brain with the right brain. It is primarily a perceptual shift, as is the consequence of a change in perspective or position. As with the example of the optical illusion (above), one is beforehand of "not seeing what some others say they've seen"; but afterward is aware of having perceived something which previously had not been recognized. In this "knowing", there is knowing that there is "knowing". However, while this realization may be "instantaneous", to absorb (or appreciate) the entire panorama which is presented will likely be a matter of extended induction; having now penetrated the "optical illusion", one now re-assesses the entire picture, "image by image".
Put another way, I had come to the teachings, as we tend to do, with the desire to end personal suffering. K repeatedly asserted, "where there is division, there is conflict"; and he frequently used the phrase--as have sages since recorded time--"no division". I began to contemplate, "Is it possible that the truth of actuality is that there is no division whatever in any possible time, or at any conceivable place"? Suspending the usual perspective and probing the implications of this (tentative) actual truth, I came to recognize (during that three-year period of my isolation in the woods) that my previously-held identification was a false identification; that to put it as it has most succinctly been put, "the observer is the observed". The false optical illusion falls away to reveal the truth.
This realization, or awakening, was not accompanied by lights and bells and whistles (such phenomena do not seem to have ever been a constituent of this particular psyche). It was basically as quiet and simple as putting a sheet of paper in a typewriter and typing out a state-ment, on a single page, of con-firm-ation of the truth which appeared imminently present. When I read what had been written, I recognized it; I realized that this was so. I had awakened, as we always do, to the truth that is in the present moment (therefore, in "every" moment).
The inseparability of all things, which has been referred to persistently by mystic sages for 3,5000 years of our written history, is commonly spoken of as "oneness" (or Oneness). There is an aspect of this oneness which is rather apparent to most any attentive mind. But the aspect which seems to give many of us some difficulty has to do with our personal, "individual relationship" to this oneness. This latter aspect is the matter which had now become clarified for me. It was not that something was added to my fund of knowledge; it was that I saw the truth in what was already actually present but which had been overlooked or ignored. The situation is similar to one of those "optical illusions", again, which you have probably encountered: what appears to be, say, a black candlestick and its holder is displayed against a white background. But in addition to this apparent picture is a picture which is not so apparent; if the white portion is viewed as the foreground and the black, candlestick portion seen to be its background, an entirely different picture emerges: the outline of two matching profiles whose noses nearly touch.
My relationship to the whole of existence was now revealed in a radically different light. If you were to view a fish in an aquarium, for instance, directly head on, what you would perceive would be remarkably different from what you would perceive if you were to shift your perspective so as to observe it broadsided . It would not be a different fish than it had been--and nothing would have been added to it--but your perception of it would now be thoroughly different.
This radical, and sudden, shift in perspective was liberating. Where before there had been confusion and perplexity concerning the relationship of the individual to the whole of existence, now there was a calming clarity. There was profound resolution of the uneasy questing which had punctuated my prior 18 years, a resolution which was not transitory because it has not since been apart from my general awareness.
I had hoped to share the good news, particularly With those whom I knew to have quested concurrently with myself. I knew, from my own experience, that a certain element of this unitive understanding is communicable from one mind to another; the analogy is sometimes given of a flame leaping from one torch to another torch. Probably a more apt analogy is that of a center-fielder in baseball making a throw to homeplate: if the catcher is not fully attentive, there is nothing within the center-fielder's power which will complete the transmission. But the fact that the transmission may rarely be received is not a reason for inaction.
There is a certain reasonableness, or even "logic", to the unitive understanding up to a Beyond which logical progression will not take you. At that point, only an intuitive connection can be made. But once the tumblers have fallen into place, it matters not that a hairpin replaced a key. A subsequent and even less experiential -deepening of this dis-identification is more difficult to describe. I no longer felt the need to confine myself to the Northern California forest; it occurred to me that I was free to live in a warmer and dryer climate, if I now chose to. I relocated to a little valley near EI Cajon, which is a small town, inland from San Diego. Specifically, I lived in my van for one year at Swallows Sun Island, a small nudist resort in a dry, sunny valley.
Aside from a weekly trip to town for groceries (and aside from exercising in the gym or pool, hot tub/sauna, and attending our weekly dance), I had nothing to do but "contemplate". There was a remote, sandy, shady spot at one end of the "park", where a couple of oak trees framed the view of a lone distant hill. For sometimes as many as forty hours a week (day or night), I would sit (usually in a deck chair, which I kept there) "sitting quietly, doing nothing". Doing nothing. Doing not anything, save for being present--open, and present.
***
Toward the end, I wrote a booklet: "Elementary Cloud-watching: Contemplating the Meaning of Living in the Moment." The resource was later self-published, but is now out of print. A sample piece is presented below.
:: Sunday Matinee ::
It is not just quiet today, it is still. It is a stillness which you can almost hear, or feel. It is not a stillness in which the grasses are not rehearsing their Ballet to the Breeze, but there is a silence of the earth.
Past noon, it is likely the warmest day we've had this year. You can hear the birds, but you scarcely note any movement. Even the flies and bees are all but absent. It is a day in which a limb can suddenly drop from a tree.
And, there is quiet. Mother's Day: perhaps everyone in this hemisphere is at dinner with their mother. Even the few airplanes seem remote, and the atmosphere is clear without the slightest haze. It's breathtaking.
The colors are rich. The pale blue sky, the dark green of the tight oak leaves against their shadowy branches; the wild garden, up the slope, with dark blue spikes that appear, from here, to be larkspur, and the pink of what looks like godetia, among the bright yellow of mustard and the glowing white of morning glory; the wild grasses which in the past weeks have yellowed to golden straw; the tan/sandy path at the base of your bare feet.
Few can afford the luxury of this time and place: a Sunday afternoon in spring in a wooded ravine. To be here now is too expensive: it is to give up a day of gold; to forego the washing of the car; to ignore obligations; to forsake companionship--all prices to be paid for being civilized.
Civilization and stillness--quiet, inactivity--do not go together. Civilization is a continual process of choices; stillness comes without choice. There is nothing which can be done to create this stillness. It is not something which is to be acquired; it has no value as currency. It is, put another way, priceless.
One must relax, to breathe this stillness. Not just the body: the mind, the psyche. One must relax ambition. Ambition and stillness are not compatible. There is no ticking of the clock here. There is no effort in stillness.
***
During that time, on a particular day, there was a feeling of immersion into that which is indivisible, a sense of something without limitation which I have not felt the need to inculcate since. It was a feeling of validity, which one need have no cause to doubt. It was not a spectacle, in any way--therefore un-spectacular; just quiet.
***
I had gathered (from K's biography) that there was a small community of people who still lived in Ojai, who had been influenced by him--some of them very personally (such as his former companion, Mary Zimbalist). It occurred to me that I might feel more at home among that community. So about 12 years ago, I attended one of the semi-annual "dialogue" weekends in Ojai, where I presently live and conduct discussions with persons interested in clarifying the truth of "no division"--the condition where there is that in which there is truly only one thing; and that one thing is the Absolute.
For the past half dozen years, I have conducted a considerable number of discussions (both individually and in groups) with persons who indicated their interest in resolving and in recognizing that they had resolved what has been called the perennial question. I have carefully observed the junctures at which their confusion compounded. I have also observed that for a few individuals there was no point at which their confusion was not surmounted, to their satisfaction.
The essence of the unitive understanding is that it is liberating; the marvel of the unitive understanding is that it is basically effortless. Its liberation is a consequence of the non-attachment it engenders. This is not detaching of piece from piece, item by item. It is an across-the-board release of attachment, which even includes non-attachment to the continuity of one's life. This dispelling of attachment is, in the same moment, the dispelling of correlated fear--and that is dynamic liberation.
And, so, it is not that one first removes fear; removes attachments; and then the unitive revelation falls into place: it is that the latter is coincident with the former. This is the true marvel of the unitive realization, the effortlessness of the deconstruction.
As a consequence of my attempts to share the enlightenment teachings with scores of others, I have read widely from other nondual (advaita, in Sanskrit) teachings. This has made it possible for me to be increasingly more effective in communicating the essence of the realized state. After thorough study, I have found the most direct teachings to be those of the South Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi (who died in 1950). Less direct but also well-grounded are the teaching of another Indian sage (also now deceased) Nisargadatta Maharaj. A living relative of Ramana Maharshi conducted interviews with 63 persons who were awakened to Absolute presence by late (Indian) H.W.L. Poonja ("Papaji").
Papaji attracted a number of spiritual seekers, after Ramana had died, particularly English-speaking. (Ramana spoke his native Tamil; Papaji spoke English). Among these was an American woman who now teaches in the U.S., using the name Gangaji. One of her awakened students, John Sherman, now lives and teaches advaita in Ojai .
Nisargadatta, too, has an English-speaking lineage (though he, again, didn't speak in English, except through a translator). The Indian man who was his translator, Ramesh Balsekar, is recognized as Nisargadatta's successor. One of his awakened American students, Wayne now gives teachings in that lineage here in Southern California .
But probably the most prominent American teacher in the advaita tradition today was formerly, for about 15 years, a zen student--using the Sanskrit name Adyashanti. From an organizational center in San Jose, California (south of San Francisco), his videos, DVDs, tapes and books have made a consistently sought-out teacher who has already brought many seekers to the end of their spiritual quest.
And so today, in addition to my own writings and materials which I provide to those who desire them, I urge those I communicate with to augment our explorations with the wisdom provided conveniently by Adyashanti; and the transcriptions of the message of Ramana and Nisargadatta (or those of their successors). My own study of the transmission methods of the advaita masters aided my ability to transmit the message of nondual realization in the most direct way. It expanded the perception I'd had from my days in the Mendocino forest.
And it is this simple, direct realization of the nondual actuality of our existence which activates and guides my life, from day to day. My life is the life of the Absolute. Thus my foremost interest in life, now of 70 years, is the transmission of the awareness of our infinite true nature. My days are spent in communication with those who seek spiritual truth: in person, by letter, or by phone (I have no computer). I live on a small pension now, in a federally-subsidized low-rent apartment complex. For those to whom I can be of assistance, I can be contacted at: 999 East Ojai Avenue, apartment 98, Ojai California 93023; telephone (805) 646-1739. Ojai, where Krishnamurti lived and died, is north of Los Angeles and inland from the coastal town of Ventura. Though a town of only about 8,000 population, many contemporary spiritual teachers have visited here. For me, it has been a journey from "belief" in the Omnipresent in Ohio, to living as that Presence, now in Ojai--a journey of unpredictable unfoldment!"
~ Robert Wolfe
Go through me like Chinese food
“I grew up in a time where I was a closet homosexual. That was what I called myself. I had a girlfriend, and I did the whole double life thing.
I was a psychotherapist in the University Health Services, and they began to see that I was quite successful with people that were easily confused about sexual identity. So pretty soon, they gave me all the homosexual cases. They had no idea about my sexual orientation. I mean, this is in the therapeutic counsel, and at one point a young man who I had met, and who was staying at my apartment, I loaned him my car for the day, which was a rather distinctive car.
He tried to pick up one of the psychiatrists, and it had a health service sticker on the back of the car, so I was called in by the head of the psychiatric services, who said, “Dick, one of your patients used your car.” I saw they were trying to protect me from the implications of that, and I said, “No, it wasn’t a patient. It was a fellow I was sleeping with. You have my resignation.” To their honor, they didn’t accept my resignation and instead they said, “No, you’re a very good therapist. Go ahead. Your sexual orientation is your own.”
But that wasn’t true actually, I mean, the word spread through the whole community, and everybody acted differently to me. I mean, I know all the stuff that I think is also most of the stuff that I think most of you know too, but in my lifetime I’ve watched the whole game change tremendously to where groups like this can even meet.
Allen Ginsberg is a very close friend of mine, and for a long time, because Allen was being very much publicly gay in his writings and his writing at work, I questioned whether that was my role too. I saw along the way, because of my drug history, that I was identified by many people as being a “druggie.”
I began to see that every one of these roles and labels was both a way of having a feeling of comfort in a group identity, while also being a defining concept in my own mind. I see people who have labels in their mind of who I am. I found it a little too complicated to have any labels at all.
Immediately, a person needs the label in their head to make the world more efficient, and I see that instead of reacting to that, by getting defensive or agreeing or disagreeing or something, I allow people’s projections to go through me like Chinese food.
They come and go and I see them as their projections, and if they want to hold that model, that’s their business, not mine.
Whatever I am, I just am, and from inside that allows me to be at home in the universe.”
-Ram Dass, from a lecture at Omega Institute entitled “Honoring Our Journey” in 1995
"Ram Dass first went to India in 1967. He was still Dr. Richard Alpert, a prominent Harvard psychologist and psychedelic pioneer with Dr. Timothy Leary. He continued his psychedelic research until that fateful Eastern trip in 1967, when he traveled to India. In India, he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately known as Maharajji, who gave Ram Dass his name, which means “servant of God.” Everything changed then – his intense dharmic life started, and he became a pivotal influence on a culture that has reverberated with the words “Be Here Now” ever since. Ram Dass’ spirit has been a guiding light for three generations, carrying along millions on the journey, helping to free them from their bonds as he works through his own.
Since 1968, Ram Dass has pursued a panoramic array of spiritual methods and practices from potent ancient wisdom traditions, including bhakti or devotional yoga focused on the Hindu deity Hanuman; Buddhist meditation in the Theravadin, Mahayana Tibetan and Zen Buddhist schools, and Sufi and Jewish mystical studies. Perhaps most significantly, his practice of karma yoga or spiritual service has opened up millions of other souls to their deep, yet individuated spiritual practice and path. Ram Dass continues to uphold the boddhisatva ideal for others through his compassionate sharing of true knowledge and vision. His unique skill in getting people to cut through and feel divine love without dogma is still a positive influence on many people from all over the planet...
On February 19th 1997, Ram Dass suffered a near-fatal stroke, which left him paralyzed on the right side of his body and expressive aphasia limiting his ability to speak, along with other challenging ailments. The after effects of the stroke have once again changed his life and vastly altered his day, but he has been able to resume teaching and continues to share and teach. In 2004, following a life threatening infection, Ram Dass was forced to curtail travel and focus on recovering his health.
Ram Dass now resides on Maui, where he shares his teachings through the internet and through bi-yearly retreats on Maui. His work continues to be a path of inspiration to his old students and friends as well as young people who are just discovering the path of Being Here Now. His most recent books include Be Love Now (2011), Polishing the Mirror: How to Live From Your Spiritual Heart (2013) and Conversations with Ram Dass (2014)." ~ ramdass dot org
I was a psychotherapist in the University Health Services, and they began to see that I was quite successful with people that were easily confused about sexual identity. So pretty soon, they gave me all the homosexual cases. They had no idea about my sexual orientation. I mean, this is in the therapeutic counsel, and at one point a young man who I had met, and who was staying at my apartment, I loaned him my car for the day, which was a rather distinctive car.
He tried to pick up one of the psychiatrists, and it had a health service sticker on the back of the car, so I was called in by the head of the psychiatric services, who said, “Dick, one of your patients used your car.” I saw they were trying to protect me from the implications of that, and I said, “No, it wasn’t a patient. It was a fellow I was sleeping with. You have my resignation.” To their honor, they didn’t accept my resignation and instead they said, “No, you’re a very good therapist. Go ahead. Your sexual orientation is your own.”
But that wasn’t true actually, I mean, the word spread through the whole community, and everybody acted differently to me. I mean, I know all the stuff that I think is also most of the stuff that I think most of you know too, but in my lifetime I’ve watched the whole game change tremendously to where groups like this can even meet.
Allen Ginsberg is a very close friend of mine, and for a long time, because Allen was being very much publicly gay in his writings and his writing at work, I questioned whether that was my role too. I saw along the way, because of my drug history, that I was identified by many people as being a “druggie.”
I began to see that every one of these roles and labels was both a way of having a feeling of comfort in a group identity, while also being a defining concept in my own mind. I see people who have labels in their mind of who I am. I found it a little too complicated to have any labels at all.
Immediately, a person needs the label in their head to make the world more efficient, and I see that instead of reacting to that, by getting defensive or agreeing or disagreeing or something, I allow people’s projections to go through me like Chinese food.
They come and go and I see them as their projections, and if they want to hold that model, that’s their business, not mine.
Whatever I am, I just am, and from inside that allows me to be at home in the universe.”
-Ram Dass, from a lecture at Omega Institute entitled “Honoring Our Journey” in 1995
"Ram Dass first went to India in 1967. He was still Dr. Richard Alpert, a prominent Harvard psychologist and psychedelic pioneer with Dr. Timothy Leary. He continued his psychedelic research until that fateful Eastern trip in 1967, when he traveled to India. In India, he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately known as Maharajji, who gave Ram Dass his name, which means “servant of God.” Everything changed then – his intense dharmic life started, and he became a pivotal influence on a culture that has reverberated with the words “Be Here Now” ever since. Ram Dass’ spirit has been a guiding light for three generations, carrying along millions on the journey, helping to free them from their bonds as he works through his own.
Since 1968, Ram Dass has pursued a panoramic array of spiritual methods and practices from potent ancient wisdom traditions, including bhakti or devotional yoga focused on the Hindu deity Hanuman; Buddhist meditation in the Theravadin, Mahayana Tibetan and Zen Buddhist schools, and Sufi and Jewish mystical studies. Perhaps most significantly, his practice of karma yoga or spiritual service has opened up millions of other souls to their deep, yet individuated spiritual practice and path. Ram Dass continues to uphold the boddhisatva ideal for others through his compassionate sharing of true knowledge and vision. His unique skill in getting people to cut through and feel divine love without dogma is still a positive influence on many people from all over the planet...
On February 19th 1997, Ram Dass suffered a near-fatal stroke, which left him paralyzed on the right side of his body and expressive aphasia limiting his ability to speak, along with other challenging ailments. The after effects of the stroke have once again changed his life and vastly altered his day, but he has been able to resume teaching and continues to share and teach. In 2004, following a life threatening infection, Ram Dass was forced to curtail travel and focus on recovering his health.
Ram Dass now resides on Maui, where he shares his teachings through the internet and through bi-yearly retreats on Maui. His work continues to be a path of inspiration to his old students and friends as well as young people who are just discovering the path of Being Here Now. His most recent books include Be Love Now (2011), Polishing the Mirror: How to Live From Your Spiritual Heart (2013) and Conversations with Ram Dass (2014)." ~ ramdass dot org
Duck!
"The year was 1992, and I was traveling from San Diego to Phoenix via Los Angeles. At the crowded transit airport in Los Angeles, an elderly American lady approached me and asked, “Are you from India?” When I said, “Yes”, she very affectionately added, “This evening, a very pious man is giving a talk on Hindu spirituality in a friend‟s house. I am going and I would like to take you there.”
I asked, “What is the name of this pious person?” and she answered, “Robert Adams.” I said, “This evening, I am giving a talk at Phoenix. So I cannot come. Please accept my apologies.” She was disappointed, but being a beautiful person she said, “I am sorry that you will not be able to come. Will you permit me to give you the transcripts of some of his talks? Could you go through them?”
She handed over a bunch of print outs which I started reading on my flight to Phoenix. The very first page caught my rapt attention. Glued to the transcripts, I completed reading them in a state of ecstasy. I was the editor of The Mountain Path. The editorial team at that time was keenly interested in focusing on those blessed devotees who had realized the Self in Sri Bhagavan‟s presence.
We were planning to base all the issues of 1993 and 1994 on them. The entire team had devoted their time to this cause and we had collected quite a few articles on the subject, albeit with stiff opposition from certain quarters. I felt that young and new seekers who pursued Self Enquiry would be highly motivated if they read such accounts, as most people feel that the path of wisdom, jnana marga, is very difficult and suited only for a chosen few. Whereas the truth is that it is a simple, direct and natural path meant for all.
Finding the address of Robert Adams in the transcript, I wrote to him requesting the details of how he attained Self realization in the presence of Bhagavan. I received a long letter: “I am Robert Adams. I was born in New York in 1928. As far back as I can remember, even when I was in the crib, I recollect that a man about two feet tall, with white hair and a grey beard would always appear at the foot of the crib and speak gibberish to me.
Being a child, I could not understand anything that he said. When I was about five or six years old, I told my parents about it, but they thought I was playing games. I told my friends. They also laughed at me. I stopped talking about it. These visits by the small man stopped when I was around seven.” Robert Adams also added that he did not know what to do. He could not share what was happening with anyone.
Then, something strange took place. Whenever he wanted anything, whether it was a pencil, a chocolate or a violin, it would appear through someone when he uttered the word "God‟ three times. If he found that someone needed a pencil in class, he would utter "God‟ three times and the pencil would be there and he would hand over the pencil to the person who needed it. It happened during his exams too. He was not interested in studying.
During his exams, he would utter "God‟ three times, and the answers would appear before him and he would write them down. This is how he passed the exams. When writing a mathematics paper for which he was not prepared, he did the same thing. He held before him the question paper and uttered "God‟ three times.
He expected the answers to appear as always, but what happened was something entirely different: “The whole room was filled with a light a thousand times more brilliant than the sun. It was a beautiful, warm and shining glow. Everything and everyone in the room was immersed in the light. All the children seemed to be mere particles of light, and I found myself melting into a radiant being of consciousness.
I then merged into consciousness. It was not an out of the body experience. This was a completely different experience. I realized that I was not my body. What appeared to be my body was not real. I went beyond the light into pure radiant consciousness. I became consciousness and my individuality merged into pure and absolute bliss. I expanded and became the universe. The feeling was indescribable. It was total bliss and total joy.”
After this experience, Robert Adams could no longer carry on all his activities as usual. Being a teenager, he wanted someone to guide him. At that time, people regarded Joel Goldsmith as a true Christian mystic. Many people suggested that he approach Joel Goldsmith and therefore he went there.
(Years later, Joel Goldsmith kept constant contact with Arthur Osborne and me. He contributed some original and brilliant articles to almost every issue of The Mountain Path.) Joel Goldsmith listened to Robert Adams and suggested, “Go to Paramahamsa Yogananda in Encinitas. He will guide you.” Robert Adams went to Encinitas in a state of excitement and ecstasy. A strange thing happened.
There were many people in the presence of Paramahamsa Yogananda. Robert, however, was standing outside. Paramahamsa told his secretary, “There is a boy outside. Call him in.” Robert Adams prostrated before the great man and said, “You are my guru.” Paramahamsa answered, “No, I am not your guru. Your guru is Sri Ramana Maharshi. The Maharshi is not well, go to him immediately.”
After coming out, Robert felt the need to read a book in the library. He was browsing through the philosophy section, when the book, Who am I?, caught his attention. When he saw the picture of Ramana Maharshi on thebook, his hair stood on end, because this was the very person who used to appear before his crib and speak to him.
So, with the strong recommendation of Paramahamsa Yogananda, he reached Arunachala in 1947. Here is an account of what happened in the presence of Ramana Maharshi: “I arrived in Arunachala at the age of eighteen. I took with me some flowers and a bag full of fruits and offered them at the feet of the Maharshi. He looked at me and smiled; I returned the smile.
The very first look of the Maharshi engulfed me in a flood of light, peace, quietude and bliss and it opened my inner eye and I instantly recognized the meaning and purpose of all my experiences - that I was never the body and that I was ever the unborn Self, the eternal silence. The Maharshi exuded compassion, love and bliss on the very first day.
He looked at me and asked whether I had eaten breakfast, and when I said, "No‟, he asked the attendant to bring fruits and porridge and told me to eat. I lay down and went to sleep in the Old Hall itself, and when I woke up, the Maharshi guided me to a shack and asked me to take rest. In the evening
too, he sent me food. I ate and again went to sleep.
The Maharshi himself paid great attention to what was needed for my body to rest and relax.” The next morning, Robert went to the Old Hall to meet Bhagavan. What happened in the presence of the Maharshi guided him deep within, while the silence and quietude of Bhagavan engulfed him. When he entered the hall, he saw Bhagavan‟s attendant, Krishnaswami, approaching Bhagavan again and again to complain about some people.
After some time, Bhagavan looked sternly at Krishnaswami and said, “Remember the purpose for which you have come here. Attend to it. Keep quiet!‟” Robert took this as his very first upadesa, or instruction, from Bhagavan. He did not take it as an instruction given to Krishnaswami.
From then on, every moment of the three years he stayed there was precious. He dived within, and remained in a state of silence; he neither interfered in anyone‟s personal affairs, nor in the ashram management. Inwardly, he was established in truth and outwardly he was a recluse. There was no need for him to talk to anyone, not even to Bhagavan. This is why nobody knew Robert Adams, even though he stayed for three years in Arunachala. Later, when I went to verify, one or two old devotees said that there was a young fellow who was possibly mad. His name was, perhaps, Robert Adams.
Theyalso said that he followed Bhagavan‟s teachings and did not have anything to do with others. He never spoke, for all the time he was doing sadhana, remaining in that state. Robert himself shared with me the fact that even Bhagavan dropping his body did not affect him because he saw Bhagavan only as the Self. Even when Bhagavan was present physically, he experienced Bhagavan only as the Self. So, he felt no sorrow or loss now as he plunged deeper and deeper into the Self.
Once, Bhagavan appeared in Robert Adam‟s dream and said, “Go to Benares. There is an old swami there. Stay with him.” The swami was ninety years old. Robert went to Benares and sat in his presence every day. No conversation was necessary. One day, the swami informed people who had gathered before him, “I know my end is approaching in three days. I have not completed my mission. The moment I drop my body, a youth on the road will also die for no reason whatsoever.
I will reside in his body and continue my mission.” On the third day, just after the swami dropped his body, a young boy around fourteen or fifteen years of age was crossing the road. He suddenly had fits and died. After around twenty minutes, the boy woke up and disappeared into the forest. This gave further meaning to Robert‟s belief in the Self. The appearance or the disappearance of the body did not in any way concern him. of Self Enquiry, how to attain Self realization and how to stay in the state of „I AM‟ to seekers in America.”
Bhagavan very specifically stated, “Do not start an institution. Do not be a guru. No publicity! If more than fifteen people gather around you, go away from that town and continue to spread the teaching elsewhere.” Robert Adams travelled, but there were no articles about him and no publicity. None except a select few knew about him. On reaching Hollywood, he was afflicted by Parkinson‟s disease and was forced to remain there.
A beautiful woman named Mary, along with her friends, attended on him. They also helped him disseminate the teachings of Bhagavan‟s Self Enquiry. He conducted satsangs and had small gatherings. His presence was very powerful. He would sit in the hall in silence for twenty minutes and everyone around him would become absolutely silent. It did not matter how many people were gathered there, or who was there. Ultimately, after the period of silence, Robert would speak for a few minutes.
When I wrote to Robert Adams asking for permission to meet him, he replied, “You can meet me in Los Angeles.” At the time, the president of the Course of Miracles, Dr. Tara Singh, was at Ramanasramam and he invited Anuradha and me to stay in their headquarters in Los Angeles. “I will arrange for you to meet Robert Adams,” he said.
He arranged the meeting with Robert in a restaurant. We met there because the master had no institution, not even a house to call his own. I was thrilled, because he had called us for a lunch meeting. It reminded me of Bhagavan, who not only imparted wisdom but insisted on anyone visiting the ashram to partake of the food. As we approached the table we could only see Robert‟s back, but that was more than enough.
The spiritual aura, the peace, the friendliness and the vibrations were palpable even from a distance. Robert had a great sense of humour. I requested him again and again to tell us about Bhagavan for I wanted to hear it from his own lips. He recounted all the incidents that he had earlier written to me - of how he saw Bhagavan at the foot of his crib and the other incidents - and concluded by saying, “In the evening, we are having a satsang in Mary‟s house. Please do come.”
Seventy people had already gathered when I reached there. There was such a profound and serene silence! A special seat had been arranged for Robert since he had Parkinson‟s. Behind him was a picture of Bhagavan. I too was given a special chair. After Robert sat down, he looked at everyone for about twenty minutes and in those twenty minutes he silenced everyone‟s minds and put them in a complete state of samadhi.
Afterwards, he took the mike and spoke. He announced, “I welcome my master Ramana Maharshi‟s grand nephew, Ganesan, and his secretary, Anuradha. I would like Ganesan to speak.” I spoke for nearly half an hour, at the end of which he happily said, “I entirely agree with every word that Ganesan has spoken today.”
I would like to share an incident of great significance that took place when I was there. After the speeches, I sat at Robert‟s feet. Another person was also there, a John Wilkins, I think, who had been Robert‟s friend for more than twenty years. Out of the blue, John suddenly asked, “Robert, I want you to tell me: what is the truth and what is untruth? What is reality and unreality?
I do not want you to quote from the scriptures or use any philosophical jargon. You must make me experience these right now at your feet.” I was thrilled because I wanted to know how Robert was going to answer these amazingly difficult questions. Robert looked happy for some time and then became very serious. He looked at John and asked, “Who are you?” John thought that Robert had forgotten him because of the disease he had.
He replied, “I am John Wilkins.”
Robert gave him the most gracious smile that I have ever seen and said, “I AM is the truth and John Wilkins is the untruth. I AM is the reality and John Wilkins is the unreality.” Everyone went into a state of samadhi. This was not a mere answer; it was a statement that transported everyone into a state of silence and samadhi.
Robert Adams invited me to come again the next year, but said that he might shift to Sedona since Bhagavan had selected the place. He invited me over saying that everything had been arranged.
Accommodation was given to Anuradha and me in a couple‟s house. I attended his satsangs and he always made me speak. He used to listen to my sharings with great appreciation. One day, Anuradha felt so grateful that she held Robert‟s hands and said, “I want to do something for you. Please tell me what service I can render.” He replied, “Yes, you can give Ramanasramam food.
I am very fond of the food there and I will eat it if you make it for me.” Anuradha happily agreed. There were not enough vessels to make South Indian food, so we had to look for these vessels. When someone lent us a vessel, they also said, “We too will come for the lunch.” Robert had said that only six people were invited.
Then, every two hours Robert would send word that six more people would be coming for lunch. It ultimately added up to sixty people! Anuradha and a few others prepared the food from very early in the morning, since Ramanasramam food meant sambar, rasam, vegetables, yogurt, pappad and payasam.
Some people told us that it was enough if Robert was served; the others could take the food as prasad. However, Anuradha was firm that everyone be fed because she remembered that Bhagavan in his lifetime wanted himself to be served last, so that everyone else could be fed. The next day, a sumptuous and delicious lunch was served.
Anuradha herself served Robert. Everyone else helped themselves. He had three or four helpings of each and he was delighted. We were all very happy that Robert ate the food with so much relish. After lunch, Anuradha in all her innocence asked Robert, “Robert, was it like the ashram food or was something missing?” Robert answered, “Yes, it was perfectly delicious.
Only one thing was missing - the banana leaf on which the food is served there!” Everyone wanted a satsang after lunch. Robert said, “I am not going to talk today. Only Ganesan will talk and he should talk on the topic chosen by me. Your topic, Ganesan, is Bhagavan and the monkeys.”
I must have spoken for about twenty minutes. Everyone laughed a lot and enjoyed the talk. Then, someone from the audience told Anuradha, “We have heard about Bhagavan from Ganesan. We would like to hear about Ganesan from you.” Robert intervened and said, “Anuradha, I will give you a topic.
Talk about Bhagavan and Ganesan.” Anuradha gave an account of my childhood, my relationship with Bhagavan, how Bhagavan taught me to serve salt, and a few other incidents. She said, “Bhagavan was known for his „thanga kai‟ or „golden hand‟. Whatever Bhagavan touched, thrived and prospered. In Ramana Nagar, Ganesan is called "the funeral hand‟ because he lights the funeral pyre of those old devotees who die in Ramana Nagar and in Ramanasramam.”
There was a burst of laughter from the audience when they heard this. Robert pretended to become very serious and said, “All those who are afraid of death, run away from here because the funeral hands are here.” I was at his feet at the time. He bent towards me and said, “Ganesan, extend your hands. I am ready.” At that time, we all thought that he was just joking.
When it was time for Robert to leave, Sharmila, who was a good singer and a great devotee, began to sing. Everyone joined in the singing; Robert got up and danced to the tune of "Hit the road, Jack. Don‟t come back no more, no more, no more‟. He was always dressed informally and he was
wearing a T-shirt, jeans and a cap turned backwards.
He was a simple man, natural, humourous and constantly joking - most of the jokes were at his own expense. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. I want to share an important feature that repeatedly took place in the presence of Robert Adams. The moment I met him – whether it was at Hollywood or at Sedona – he would extend his hand.
I always carried in my pocket two small packets of vibhuti and kumkum, taken from Sri Bhagavan‟s shrine as his Prasad - even now I continue to do so. When I first met Robert Adams at Hollywood, he asked me why I was wearing the religious marks of vibhuti and kumkum on my forehead. I told him that Viswanatha Swami once told a dear friend and fellow devotee,
“You have a very broad forehead. It would look appropriate if you adorn it with vibhuti and kumkum!” After some time, when this devotee met Viswanatha Swami at the ashram, he noticed that this devotee was not wearing vibhuti and kumkum. Viswanatha Swami did not say anything to him.
Instead, he turned to me immediately and in my friend‟s presence itself commanded me, “Start wearing them on your forehead – for my sake!” I was never a ritualist and Swami knew that very well. Yet, since such a powerful command had come from him, from that day onwards, I started wearing them - not only as prasad from Sri Bhagavan but also as a blessing from Viswanatha Swami.
Instantly, Robert Adams said, “Whenever you meet me, please put Sri Bhagavan‟s prasad on my forehead too!”. I did it and received the added blessings of the “American Siddha Purusha”, Robert Adams!
Soon, we were back in India and staying at the Krishnamurti Foundation in Benares. One day, I was told that there was an international call for me. It was Robert Adams. He addressed me by my name, but he could continue no further. His assistant, Richard, spoke to me. He said, “Robert invites you to come to Sedona and spend three months in spring with him. He is very insistent.
He would like Anuradha also to come with you since he understands that you cannot travel alone. He will make all the arrangements. Sharmila will pick you up. The other devotees will take care of your needs. Please come for the spring.”
Back at the ashram there was a letter for me in Robert‟s own handwriting, “Ganesan, please come and spend the whole of spring with me.” I was very moved by the invitation. Anuradha and I landed in San Francisco - exactly at the time that Robert dropped his body in Sedona. Was it one of his practical jokes? I recalled the time when he said, “Take me in your funeral hands!” It was literally true now.
There was something that Robert definitely wanted to convey to me. Anuradha and I continued our journey to Sedona where we met Sharmila, a wonderful and beautiful lady. She did not have a house of her own. We stayed with her in three or four different places as she was "house-sitting‟.
The old devotees of Robert wanted me to participate in their satsangs. I talked about Self Enquiry, and how by practicing this we can attain that state of quietude and silence - the silence that Bhagavan had given Robert and the silence that Robert had given to all the devotees. This was to be carried on.
This is why Robert had asked me to come there for three months. I too learnt a lesson from Robert. I understood that one has to look on all the happenings outside of oneself to be a mere dream. This was the knowledge that Robert directly and indirectly imparted to me.
Even during his last days, Robert retained his sense of humour. When he was bedridden, a young man named John attended on him. John knew fully well that he was serving a realized soul.
Robert‟s wife was not happy with the situation of John serving her husband. She was constantly driving him away; but John had to attend on Robert since Robert was bedridden.
One day, Robert wanted hot water and John had to go into the kitchen to get it. Robert‟s wife was frying something in a big pan at the time. She became so angry that she was ready to hurl the pan at John. John became so alarmed that he shouted for help, “Robert! Robert! She is trying to hit me with a big pan. What should I do? Please help me.”
Robert, who was lying down, said, “Duck!” This was the kind of person Robert was - he was always half serious and half humourous.
By way of paying homage to Robert, I quote a few passages from Robert‟s teachings: “The highest teaching in the world is silence - there is nothing higher than this. A devotee who sits in the company of the sage purifies his mind just by being with him. The mind automatically becomes quieter.
No words are necessary. Silence is the ultimate reality and everything in this world exists through silence. This means, literally, going deep inside yourself to the dwelling where nothing is happening; this place transcends time and space. This is a brand new dimension of nothingness. That is our real home and the place to which we actually belong.
In this state, there is only deep silence - there is no good, no bad and no state of trying to achieve anything. It is a state of pure being. The ultimate freedom is to reach this state of deep silence in which you transcend your body, your affairs and the universe. The other lesson to be learnt is that you are real.
What you appear to be is false.
Identify yourself with the real you and not the false you. Do not accept everything that you see as reality. The only freedom that you have is to turn within. One day, you will awaken from this dream, for this is also a dream, and you will be free, liberated.
There is no such thing as birth or death. Nobody is born, nobody dies and nobody prevails in between. Nothing that appears exists. Only the Self exists. All this is the Self and I am that. You are the absolute reality. You are consciousness, emptiness, and sat-chit-ananda - existence, consciousness, bliss- that is your true nature.
Why not abide in it and be free? Empty your mind and become still; everything will happen of its own accord. There is really nothing that you have to do - just be still. Be still and know that "I AM‟, God. "I AM‟ is the Self. Accept that and be free.”
Salutations to Robert Adams, the great master!"
~ V. Ganesan (grand nephew of Ramana Maharshi)
I asked, “What is the name of this pious person?” and she answered, “Robert Adams.” I said, “This evening, I am giving a talk at Phoenix. So I cannot come. Please accept my apologies.” She was disappointed, but being a beautiful person she said, “I am sorry that you will not be able to come. Will you permit me to give you the transcripts of some of his talks? Could you go through them?”
She handed over a bunch of print outs which I started reading on my flight to Phoenix. The very first page caught my rapt attention. Glued to the transcripts, I completed reading them in a state of ecstasy. I was the editor of The Mountain Path. The editorial team at that time was keenly interested in focusing on those blessed devotees who had realized the Self in Sri Bhagavan‟s presence.
We were planning to base all the issues of 1993 and 1994 on them. The entire team had devoted their time to this cause and we had collected quite a few articles on the subject, albeit with stiff opposition from certain quarters. I felt that young and new seekers who pursued Self Enquiry would be highly motivated if they read such accounts, as most people feel that the path of wisdom, jnana marga, is very difficult and suited only for a chosen few. Whereas the truth is that it is a simple, direct and natural path meant for all.
Finding the address of Robert Adams in the transcript, I wrote to him requesting the details of how he attained Self realization in the presence of Bhagavan. I received a long letter: “I am Robert Adams. I was born in New York in 1928. As far back as I can remember, even when I was in the crib, I recollect that a man about two feet tall, with white hair and a grey beard would always appear at the foot of the crib and speak gibberish to me.
Being a child, I could not understand anything that he said. When I was about five or six years old, I told my parents about it, but they thought I was playing games. I told my friends. They also laughed at me. I stopped talking about it. These visits by the small man stopped when I was around seven.” Robert Adams also added that he did not know what to do. He could not share what was happening with anyone.
Then, something strange took place. Whenever he wanted anything, whether it was a pencil, a chocolate or a violin, it would appear through someone when he uttered the word "God‟ three times. If he found that someone needed a pencil in class, he would utter "God‟ three times and the pencil would be there and he would hand over the pencil to the person who needed it. It happened during his exams too. He was not interested in studying.
During his exams, he would utter "God‟ three times, and the answers would appear before him and he would write them down. This is how he passed the exams. When writing a mathematics paper for which he was not prepared, he did the same thing. He held before him the question paper and uttered "God‟ three times.
He expected the answers to appear as always, but what happened was something entirely different: “The whole room was filled with a light a thousand times more brilliant than the sun. It was a beautiful, warm and shining glow. Everything and everyone in the room was immersed in the light. All the children seemed to be mere particles of light, and I found myself melting into a radiant being of consciousness.
I then merged into consciousness. It was not an out of the body experience. This was a completely different experience. I realized that I was not my body. What appeared to be my body was not real. I went beyond the light into pure radiant consciousness. I became consciousness and my individuality merged into pure and absolute bliss. I expanded and became the universe. The feeling was indescribable. It was total bliss and total joy.”
After this experience, Robert Adams could no longer carry on all his activities as usual. Being a teenager, he wanted someone to guide him. At that time, people regarded Joel Goldsmith as a true Christian mystic. Many people suggested that he approach Joel Goldsmith and therefore he went there.
(Years later, Joel Goldsmith kept constant contact with Arthur Osborne and me. He contributed some original and brilliant articles to almost every issue of The Mountain Path.) Joel Goldsmith listened to Robert Adams and suggested, “Go to Paramahamsa Yogananda in Encinitas. He will guide you.” Robert Adams went to Encinitas in a state of excitement and ecstasy. A strange thing happened.
There were many people in the presence of Paramahamsa Yogananda. Robert, however, was standing outside. Paramahamsa told his secretary, “There is a boy outside. Call him in.” Robert Adams prostrated before the great man and said, “You are my guru.” Paramahamsa answered, “No, I am not your guru. Your guru is Sri Ramana Maharshi. The Maharshi is not well, go to him immediately.”
After coming out, Robert felt the need to read a book in the library. He was browsing through the philosophy section, when the book, Who am I?, caught his attention. When he saw the picture of Ramana Maharshi on thebook, his hair stood on end, because this was the very person who used to appear before his crib and speak to him.
So, with the strong recommendation of Paramahamsa Yogananda, he reached Arunachala in 1947. Here is an account of what happened in the presence of Ramana Maharshi: “I arrived in Arunachala at the age of eighteen. I took with me some flowers and a bag full of fruits and offered them at the feet of the Maharshi. He looked at me and smiled; I returned the smile.
The very first look of the Maharshi engulfed me in a flood of light, peace, quietude and bliss and it opened my inner eye and I instantly recognized the meaning and purpose of all my experiences - that I was never the body and that I was ever the unborn Self, the eternal silence. The Maharshi exuded compassion, love and bliss on the very first day.
He looked at me and asked whether I had eaten breakfast, and when I said, "No‟, he asked the attendant to bring fruits and porridge and told me to eat. I lay down and went to sleep in the Old Hall itself, and when I woke up, the Maharshi guided me to a shack and asked me to take rest. In the evening
too, he sent me food. I ate and again went to sleep.
The Maharshi himself paid great attention to what was needed for my body to rest and relax.” The next morning, Robert went to the Old Hall to meet Bhagavan. What happened in the presence of the Maharshi guided him deep within, while the silence and quietude of Bhagavan engulfed him. When he entered the hall, he saw Bhagavan‟s attendant, Krishnaswami, approaching Bhagavan again and again to complain about some people.
After some time, Bhagavan looked sternly at Krishnaswami and said, “Remember the purpose for which you have come here. Attend to it. Keep quiet!‟” Robert took this as his very first upadesa, or instruction, from Bhagavan. He did not take it as an instruction given to Krishnaswami.
From then on, every moment of the three years he stayed there was precious. He dived within, and remained in a state of silence; he neither interfered in anyone‟s personal affairs, nor in the ashram management. Inwardly, he was established in truth and outwardly he was a recluse. There was no need for him to talk to anyone, not even to Bhagavan. This is why nobody knew Robert Adams, even though he stayed for three years in Arunachala. Later, when I went to verify, one or two old devotees said that there was a young fellow who was possibly mad. His name was, perhaps, Robert Adams.
Theyalso said that he followed Bhagavan‟s teachings and did not have anything to do with others. He never spoke, for all the time he was doing sadhana, remaining in that state. Robert himself shared with me the fact that even Bhagavan dropping his body did not affect him because he saw Bhagavan only as the Self. Even when Bhagavan was present physically, he experienced Bhagavan only as the Self. So, he felt no sorrow or loss now as he plunged deeper and deeper into the Self.
Once, Bhagavan appeared in Robert Adam‟s dream and said, “Go to Benares. There is an old swami there. Stay with him.” The swami was ninety years old. Robert went to Benares and sat in his presence every day. No conversation was necessary. One day, the swami informed people who had gathered before him, “I know my end is approaching in three days. I have not completed my mission. The moment I drop my body, a youth on the road will also die for no reason whatsoever.
I will reside in his body and continue my mission.” On the third day, just after the swami dropped his body, a young boy around fourteen or fifteen years of age was crossing the road. He suddenly had fits and died. After around twenty minutes, the boy woke up and disappeared into the forest. This gave further meaning to Robert‟s belief in the Self. The appearance or the disappearance of the body did not in any way concern him. of Self Enquiry, how to attain Self realization and how to stay in the state of „I AM‟ to seekers in America.”
Bhagavan very specifically stated, “Do not start an institution. Do not be a guru. No publicity! If more than fifteen people gather around you, go away from that town and continue to spread the teaching elsewhere.” Robert Adams travelled, but there were no articles about him and no publicity. None except a select few knew about him. On reaching Hollywood, he was afflicted by Parkinson‟s disease and was forced to remain there.
A beautiful woman named Mary, along with her friends, attended on him. They also helped him disseminate the teachings of Bhagavan‟s Self Enquiry. He conducted satsangs and had small gatherings. His presence was very powerful. He would sit in the hall in silence for twenty minutes and everyone around him would become absolutely silent. It did not matter how many people were gathered there, or who was there. Ultimately, after the period of silence, Robert would speak for a few minutes.
When I wrote to Robert Adams asking for permission to meet him, he replied, “You can meet me in Los Angeles.” At the time, the president of the Course of Miracles, Dr. Tara Singh, was at Ramanasramam and he invited Anuradha and me to stay in their headquarters in Los Angeles. “I will arrange for you to meet Robert Adams,” he said.
He arranged the meeting with Robert in a restaurant. We met there because the master had no institution, not even a house to call his own. I was thrilled, because he had called us for a lunch meeting. It reminded me of Bhagavan, who not only imparted wisdom but insisted on anyone visiting the ashram to partake of the food. As we approached the table we could only see Robert‟s back, but that was more than enough.
The spiritual aura, the peace, the friendliness and the vibrations were palpable even from a distance. Robert had a great sense of humour. I requested him again and again to tell us about Bhagavan for I wanted to hear it from his own lips. He recounted all the incidents that he had earlier written to me - of how he saw Bhagavan at the foot of his crib and the other incidents - and concluded by saying, “In the evening, we are having a satsang in Mary‟s house. Please do come.”
Seventy people had already gathered when I reached there. There was such a profound and serene silence! A special seat had been arranged for Robert since he had Parkinson‟s. Behind him was a picture of Bhagavan. I too was given a special chair. After Robert sat down, he looked at everyone for about twenty minutes and in those twenty minutes he silenced everyone‟s minds and put them in a complete state of samadhi.
Afterwards, he took the mike and spoke. He announced, “I welcome my master Ramana Maharshi‟s grand nephew, Ganesan, and his secretary, Anuradha. I would like Ganesan to speak.” I spoke for nearly half an hour, at the end of which he happily said, “I entirely agree with every word that Ganesan has spoken today.”
I would like to share an incident of great significance that took place when I was there. After the speeches, I sat at Robert‟s feet. Another person was also there, a John Wilkins, I think, who had been Robert‟s friend for more than twenty years. Out of the blue, John suddenly asked, “Robert, I want you to tell me: what is the truth and what is untruth? What is reality and unreality?
I do not want you to quote from the scriptures or use any philosophical jargon. You must make me experience these right now at your feet.” I was thrilled because I wanted to know how Robert was going to answer these amazingly difficult questions. Robert looked happy for some time and then became very serious. He looked at John and asked, “Who are you?” John thought that Robert had forgotten him because of the disease he had.
He replied, “I am John Wilkins.”
Robert gave him the most gracious smile that I have ever seen and said, “I AM is the truth and John Wilkins is the untruth. I AM is the reality and John Wilkins is the unreality.” Everyone went into a state of samadhi. This was not a mere answer; it was a statement that transported everyone into a state of silence and samadhi.
Robert Adams invited me to come again the next year, but said that he might shift to Sedona since Bhagavan had selected the place. He invited me over saying that everything had been arranged.
Accommodation was given to Anuradha and me in a couple‟s house. I attended his satsangs and he always made me speak. He used to listen to my sharings with great appreciation. One day, Anuradha felt so grateful that she held Robert‟s hands and said, “I want to do something for you. Please tell me what service I can render.” He replied, “Yes, you can give Ramanasramam food.
I am very fond of the food there and I will eat it if you make it for me.” Anuradha happily agreed. There were not enough vessels to make South Indian food, so we had to look for these vessels. When someone lent us a vessel, they also said, “We too will come for the lunch.” Robert had said that only six people were invited.
Then, every two hours Robert would send word that six more people would be coming for lunch. It ultimately added up to sixty people! Anuradha and a few others prepared the food from very early in the morning, since Ramanasramam food meant sambar, rasam, vegetables, yogurt, pappad and payasam.
Some people told us that it was enough if Robert was served; the others could take the food as prasad. However, Anuradha was firm that everyone be fed because she remembered that Bhagavan in his lifetime wanted himself to be served last, so that everyone else could be fed. The next day, a sumptuous and delicious lunch was served.
Anuradha herself served Robert. Everyone else helped themselves. He had three or four helpings of each and he was delighted. We were all very happy that Robert ate the food with so much relish. After lunch, Anuradha in all her innocence asked Robert, “Robert, was it like the ashram food or was something missing?” Robert answered, “Yes, it was perfectly delicious.
Only one thing was missing - the banana leaf on which the food is served there!” Everyone wanted a satsang after lunch. Robert said, “I am not going to talk today. Only Ganesan will talk and he should talk on the topic chosen by me. Your topic, Ganesan, is Bhagavan and the monkeys.”
I must have spoken for about twenty minutes. Everyone laughed a lot and enjoyed the talk. Then, someone from the audience told Anuradha, “We have heard about Bhagavan from Ganesan. We would like to hear about Ganesan from you.” Robert intervened and said, “Anuradha, I will give you a topic.
Talk about Bhagavan and Ganesan.” Anuradha gave an account of my childhood, my relationship with Bhagavan, how Bhagavan taught me to serve salt, and a few other incidents. She said, “Bhagavan was known for his „thanga kai‟ or „golden hand‟. Whatever Bhagavan touched, thrived and prospered. In Ramana Nagar, Ganesan is called "the funeral hand‟ because he lights the funeral pyre of those old devotees who die in Ramana Nagar and in Ramanasramam.”
There was a burst of laughter from the audience when they heard this. Robert pretended to become very serious and said, “All those who are afraid of death, run away from here because the funeral hands are here.” I was at his feet at the time. He bent towards me and said, “Ganesan, extend your hands. I am ready.” At that time, we all thought that he was just joking.
When it was time for Robert to leave, Sharmila, who was a good singer and a great devotee, began to sing. Everyone joined in the singing; Robert got up and danced to the tune of "Hit the road, Jack. Don‟t come back no more, no more, no more‟. He was always dressed informally and he was
wearing a T-shirt, jeans and a cap turned backwards.
He was a simple man, natural, humourous and constantly joking - most of the jokes were at his own expense. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. I want to share an important feature that repeatedly took place in the presence of Robert Adams. The moment I met him – whether it was at Hollywood or at Sedona – he would extend his hand.
I always carried in my pocket two small packets of vibhuti and kumkum, taken from Sri Bhagavan‟s shrine as his Prasad - even now I continue to do so. When I first met Robert Adams at Hollywood, he asked me why I was wearing the religious marks of vibhuti and kumkum on my forehead. I told him that Viswanatha Swami once told a dear friend and fellow devotee,
“You have a very broad forehead. It would look appropriate if you adorn it with vibhuti and kumkum!” After some time, when this devotee met Viswanatha Swami at the ashram, he noticed that this devotee was not wearing vibhuti and kumkum. Viswanatha Swami did not say anything to him.
Instead, he turned to me immediately and in my friend‟s presence itself commanded me, “Start wearing them on your forehead – for my sake!” I was never a ritualist and Swami knew that very well. Yet, since such a powerful command had come from him, from that day onwards, I started wearing them - not only as prasad from Sri Bhagavan but also as a blessing from Viswanatha Swami.
Instantly, Robert Adams said, “Whenever you meet me, please put Sri Bhagavan‟s prasad on my forehead too!”. I did it and received the added blessings of the “American Siddha Purusha”, Robert Adams!
Soon, we were back in India and staying at the Krishnamurti Foundation in Benares. One day, I was told that there was an international call for me. It was Robert Adams. He addressed me by my name, but he could continue no further. His assistant, Richard, spoke to me. He said, “Robert invites you to come to Sedona and spend three months in spring with him. He is very insistent.
He would like Anuradha also to come with you since he understands that you cannot travel alone. He will make all the arrangements. Sharmila will pick you up. The other devotees will take care of your needs. Please come for the spring.”
Back at the ashram there was a letter for me in Robert‟s own handwriting, “Ganesan, please come and spend the whole of spring with me.” I was very moved by the invitation. Anuradha and I landed in San Francisco - exactly at the time that Robert dropped his body in Sedona. Was it one of his practical jokes? I recalled the time when he said, “Take me in your funeral hands!” It was literally true now.
There was something that Robert definitely wanted to convey to me. Anuradha and I continued our journey to Sedona where we met Sharmila, a wonderful and beautiful lady. She did not have a house of her own. We stayed with her in three or four different places as she was "house-sitting‟.
The old devotees of Robert wanted me to participate in their satsangs. I talked about Self Enquiry, and how by practicing this we can attain that state of quietude and silence - the silence that Bhagavan had given Robert and the silence that Robert had given to all the devotees. This was to be carried on.
This is why Robert had asked me to come there for three months. I too learnt a lesson from Robert. I understood that one has to look on all the happenings outside of oneself to be a mere dream. This was the knowledge that Robert directly and indirectly imparted to me.
Even during his last days, Robert retained his sense of humour. When he was bedridden, a young man named John attended on him. John knew fully well that he was serving a realized soul.
Robert‟s wife was not happy with the situation of John serving her husband. She was constantly driving him away; but John had to attend on Robert since Robert was bedridden.
One day, Robert wanted hot water and John had to go into the kitchen to get it. Robert‟s wife was frying something in a big pan at the time. She became so angry that she was ready to hurl the pan at John. John became so alarmed that he shouted for help, “Robert! Robert! She is trying to hit me with a big pan. What should I do? Please help me.”
Robert, who was lying down, said, “Duck!” This was the kind of person Robert was - he was always half serious and half humourous.
By way of paying homage to Robert, I quote a few passages from Robert‟s teachings: “The highest teaching in the world is silence - there is nothing higher than this. A devotee who sits in the company of the sage purifies his mind just by being with him. The mind automatically becomes quieter.
No words are necessary. Silence is the ultimate reality and everything in this world exists through silence. This means, literally, going deep inside yourself to the dwelling where nothing is happening; this place transcends time and space. This is a brand new dimension of nothingness. That is our real home and the place to which we actually belong.
In this state, there is only deep silence - there is no good, no bad and no state of trying to achieve anything. It is a state of pure being. The ultimate freedom is to reach this state of deep silence in which you transcend your body, your affairs and the universe. The other lesson to be learnt is that you are real.
What you appear to be is false.
Identify yourself with the real you and not the false you. Do not accept everything that you see as reality. The only freedom that you have is to turn within. One day, you will awaken from this dream, for this is also a dream, and you will be free, liberated.
There is no such thing as birth or death. Nobody is born, nobody dies and nobody prevails in between. Nothing that appears exists. Only the Self exists. All this is the Self and I am that. You are the absolute reality. You are consciousness, emptiness, and sat-chit-ananda - existence, consciousness, bliss- that is your true nature.
Why not abide in it and be free? Empty your mind and become still; everything will happen of its own accord. There is really nothing that you have to do - just be still. Be still and know that "I AM‟, God. "I AM‟ is the Self. Accept that and be free.”
Salutations to Robert Adams, the great master!"
~ V. Ganesan (grand nephew of Ramana Maharshi)
Friday, April 6, 2018
Are you Willing?
"Q: I work full day and have no time to practise. Rinpoche please advise.
A: To be honest with you, there is no time that you don't have a time. You have time to waste, chit-chatting on phone or watching TV. But you don't have time to practise. That's fascinating. Don't ask the question how to practise if I don't have time. Ask yourself why you first joined Dharma, why got into all practice. Why. You must answer yourself. There's always time. The only thing is - are you willing enough?"
~ Dilgo Khytense Yangsi Rinpoche, public talk, Malaysia 2017 10/29/
Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche is the incarnation of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche who passed away in 1991 at the age of 81.His Holiness the Dalai Lama confirmed that this child was the tulku or reincarnation of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
1st Photo ~ Mingyur Paldon, H.H Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi rinpoche and Rinchen Dewey Ngodrub Kalu
4th photo ~ at Hong Kong International Airport
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)