I Am That - Advaita's Pointing Illustrated

The Five Prerequisites

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The first prerequisite:

Shut up.

Be quiet.

Stop debating.

Stop arguing.

Stop trying to prove a point.

Even if someone knows something that you don’t, whether they share it with you or not, makes no difference, for you have to come up with your own truth.

There’s really no one in this universe that can hand you realization on a silver platter.

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The second prerequisite: You have to let go.

You have to let go so completely that it becomes scary.

You have to totally let go mentally.

You have to stop depending on person, place or thing for your self-worth.

You have to start depending on the infinite invisible, on what you cannot see, taste, touch, or smell or feel.

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The third prerequisite: You must look at the world but never react to anything.

You must watch your feelings and your emotions, observe them, and as they come into contact with you, you must become the witness, realizing that you are not those emotions.

You are not your bad temper.

You are not the depression.

You are nothing that goes on in this world.

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The fourth prerequisite: You must develop a tremendous humility, a stupendous humility.

This is more important than anything else.

If someone tells you something that you don’t like to hear you do not become upset.

You do not hold it in.

You let it go through you and it dissipates, for it has no energy except the energy you give it.

You are responsible to yourself.

If you fool yourself you’re just going to get disgusted in the end and give up all spiritual life, for you’ll say you’ve gotten nowhere, nothing has happened, it doesn’t work.

It doesn’t exist.

I suppose this is the reason I am with you.

To tell you,

“Yes, there is an invisible realm of perfection beyond this world, interpenetrating this world, that makes this world look like kindergarten”.

Yet you must be able to see it yourself.

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The fifth prerequisite: You have to want it so much that you don’t want it.

You have to have such a strong desire to be free that all desire stops.

When all desire stops there is a quietness, a stillness, that takes place within you.

It is only when this stillness, this quietness, comes when you’re able to see clearly, not with your physical eyes, but with your spiritual eye, not with your little ‘I’, not with the ‘I-thought’, but with the ‘I-am’.

And you will see in all directions.

You will see up, you will see down, you will see sideways, you will see backwards.

The only thing you will see is total perfection which is another name for pure awareness.

You have to take this thing seriously and you’re not to be serious about this thing at all.

You have to reject everything yet you also have to accept everything.

You have to surrender and you have to realize that you are the Self.

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There is something inside of you that knows how to do all this.

You can help by becoming quiet, by becoming still, by not making a lot of noise, not making a big commotion.

Let the world do what it will, yet you become silent and peaceful, compassionate, have humility.

Just watch, look, observe, quiet the mind.

~ Robert Adams

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