Too simple! (Sailor Bob Adamson)

Q: It is almost too simple for my mind to grasp.

Bob: Exactly! Let the mind go. It is that simple, so simple that we miss it. It is pure simplicity itself Stay with that subtleness,

that silence and stillness, and you will see things and understand the ancients when they say, ‘The peace that passes (beyond) all understanding’. It cannot be understood by the mind. There is no peace of mind. It is the nature of the mind to chatter.

You are not that chatter. The mind oscillates between the pairs of opposites. Peace is where the mind is not.

Q: Is there any way to stop this chatter?

Bob: No. Do you chatter? Understand and watch it. If you haven’t got a vested interest in it, what is going to happen? It is going to die down. You see, when the chatter starts and I attribute it to ‘me’ and ‘I want this’ or ‘I don’t like that’ or ‘He said so and so’ and ‘blah, blah, blah, blah’ I have a vested interest in it. Now, in that vested interest what is happening? The energy of ‘I’ and ‘this’. The ‘I’ is a thought, and the ‘this’ is a thought. But that energy is opposed to itself. 

It is a dissipating energy. It is in conflict with itself. But if I understand that there is no centre here and that it is just chatter and I am aware of it, then there is no ‘me’ that wants anything out of it. There is nothing resisting it. It is just what is. Then there is no energy going into it.

Now, can a thing live without energy? No! So, in the watching of it, in the awareness of it without bothering about it, in seeing it for what it is, that it is false, it is going to die down of its own accord. So, there is no need to try and stop it. In trying to stop it, the mind will be in conflict with the mind. That will get you into all sorts of trouble, which it has done until now.

Q: How do we stop? I see that chatter but I am still giving it value.

Bob: Well, keep watching it and ask yourself who is this ‘me’ that is giving it value? Until it comes up that you see that this ‘me’ is only an idea. Where is this centre? Where does this so called me start? Look and try and find a centre or a spot in your body which you believe is ‘me’. or in your mind which you. believe is “me’. Look as hard as you like. If you can find it, you come and tell me! I know for certain that there is no particular place in this body or this mind of which I can say ‘This is where I begin’, ‘This is where it all starts’.

In your own looking you will find that the false cannot stand up to investigation. You are not the hand; you are not your ear; you are not your nose. There is no particular spot where you can say ‘This is where I began’. Have a look at the body. It started off as a single sperm and a single ovum, which were the essences of the food that your mother and father ate. Where is that cell? That would be the centre, that would be the start of it all, but that cell has doubled and redoubled and it is long gone.

From another angle, am I this mind? The mind is just composed of thought. Which particular thought am I? Am I this ‘I’ thought, but where is that ‘I’ thought if I am deeply asleep or if I am unconscious? It is not there! That would be the finish of me if

I was that ‘I’ thought. But the breathing is still happening; the functioning is still happening; there is no centre there.

So, when the chatter goes on and you see that there is no centre to attribute it to, then it must lose its hold. It becomes laughable.

Q: So, even if there is no chatter, in this consciousness, one is living and being. One consciously knows that one is an expression of the One, and it is an illusion of duality that is creating an experience for the One to know itself.

Bob: No. If you say it’s an illusion, you’re putting the separation on it. If it is just what is, you can’t say anything about it at all !

Q: What my consciousness says is that I don’t experience it on levels that I know other people do experience it. I heard a well known Swami talk a number of years ago and he said that with yoga practices, with meditation practices, one gets to know the mind, to use the mind to go beyond the mind. It seems to me that consciousness cannot know anything outside of consciousness. That seems to be the dilemma. Our interaction here is on the level of consciousness. So wouldn’t it be the technique to learn how to ‘be still and know that I am God’? Wouldn’t meditation practices be the best you could do to get there, if there is somewhere to get?

Bob: Whatever this Swami or anybody experienced, it is still not it. The so called transcendental states are still not it. It does not matter whether there is silence here or chatter because both to me are still experiences. But that pure knowing, which they both appear in, that pure registration of everything, that is beyond experience. That is pure experiencing.

If it is understood with the mind that no matter what experience appears can never be it, the answer is not in the mind, then you are not concerned with wanting to experience some so called ultimate state or non state. You just stay with the subtleness of ‘being now’ and see what is in that. See what appears from that, the uncaused joy, the uncaused happiness and the pure

compassion that comes up. As soon as they are expressed through the mind, that is the name that you give them, but you cannot say ‘I am experiencing”

Sailor Bob Adamson