"When you realize the truth, it is virtually impossible to enjoy the world. The world keeps changing, changing, changing...."

3-25-08 - on Robert Adams - from Andrew Main in Santa Fe

[Andrew sent this note as an attachment and I didn't notice it till today because I'd saved his note mentioning Robert Adams and had Googled him and put up a link to the site below that Andrew expressly doesn't recommend. Sorry Ananda didn't hear it. - dc]

You've mentioned that Ananda likes hearing from Ramana Maharshi; he might like Robert Adams also. I wish I could be there and read to him myself.

I was introduced to Robert Adams a few years ago when a friend gave me his book, "Silence of the Heart"

Robert Adams was an American Jñani with a most interesting story, which you can read here.

This is a website put up a few years ago by one of his students, a fellow named Ed Muzika who apparently also spent quite a while around the Zen circuit; it's kind of rough, but has a lot of good material, including a couple of recorded talks. Robert's advancing Parkinson's Disease affected his speech, making him increasingly hard to understand toward the end.

I particularly like "Good for Nothing Man," both because it's funny and because, well, I haven't amounted to much either. An audio file of this talk, with a preface by Ed Muzika, plays automatically when you go to this page. (I know of no way to stop it; you can just turn off your computer's speakers if you want.) It's about an hour and a half.

"Yesterday I received a phone call from my brother. I have not talked to him for fifteen years. The first thing he asked was 'Robert, are you still good for nothing?' (Laughter.) I said, 'Yes I am, thank you.' He then asked, 'Have you accomplished anything worthwhile yet? Are you still a nothing?' (Laughter) I said, 'I've accomplished nothing, and I am nothing, thank you. Are you something?'"

"Cosmic Joke"  is another good one, also with an audio file (38 minutes) that plays automatically when you go to the page.

"We are nothing. You have no reason to exist. As a matter of fact, you do not exist. (Laughter) You have never really existed. It is all a cosmic joke. There is no reason for you to be alive and to be here. This may sound like an insult--it is! (More laughter) But it is the truth and the truth hurts."

It occurred to me Ananda might like to listen to these MP3 audio files.

There's a lot of great material on this site. This page (linked only from the home page) is the most recent material, over a hundred of Robert's talks transcribed. They could be printed out for reading to Ananda.

"I want to let you in on a little secret. There are no problems. There are no problems. There never were any problems, there are no problems today, and there will never be any problems. Problems just mean that the world isn't turning the way you want it to. But in truth, there are no problems. Everything is unfolding as it should. Everything is right. You have to forget about yourself and expand your consciousness until you become the whole universe. The reality in back of the universe is pure awareness. It has no problems. And you are that."

There is another website about Robert Adams called "Infinity Institute" [Robert Adams Infinity Institute], apparently put up by his widow and some other people; it doesn't appear to me to have much to do with what I understand him to have been saying, though they seem to be rather aggressive in trying to exert control of any material associated with him, as Ed Muzika tells the story.