Robert Adams

 The time comes, in our evolution, when we truly understand what the mind really is. And we begin to observe it, realizing that it functions without us. We begin to watch the mind in action. We watch it making us depressed. We watch it making us angry. We watch it making us happy. We watch ourselves when we accomplish something great, and we think we're important. Just the watching alone causes you to go further in your evolution. For it shows you that I possibly cannot be the mind for I have been watching all this time. I have been watching my thoughts bring up the past and make me unhappy, bring fears into my life, as if something bad is going to happen in the future if I don't watch out. We've been watching the mind do this to us.

Then we finally say to ourselves, "Who is this watcher? Who is this person that has been watching the mind?" We honestly have to say, therefore, "I don't know. I don't know who I am. I have no idea who has been watching, but I have to admit ‘I’ have been watching. All these years I thought that when I said ‘I,’ I was referring to my mind. I believed my mind was ‘I.’ But now as I watch myself getting angry, as I watch myself becoming depressed, or becoming happy, I realize that I am separate from my mind. Therefore, “Who am I? Where did I come from? It's amazing that I am able to watch my mind doing all these things to me. But now I know that there is an ‘I.’ Who is this I? I don't know. How can I find out?"

By becoming silent, through silence. By allowing my mind to empty itself of all thoughts, and as I keep on watching my mind in action, without responding, I notice something very interesting happening to me. I notice that I feel happier. I feel more peaceful and I feel more powerful. I notice that I've lost my fears, my frustrations, and even my searching for truth has slowed down, for I am beginning to understand that there is really nothing to search for. It's all here. Everything I've always wanted is here. Amazing discovery. Yet I still don't know who I am. But I'm beginning to understand that I do not have to know who I am. It is not necessary to know who I am. Do you follow? I doesn't have to know who it is. What an amazing discovery. I don't have to go around searching for the I, or wondering who the I was that has been watching the mind in action all these years. I simply have to become still. Be still and know that I am God. And the watching all these years has caused me to become still. In other words, as you practice observation of your thoughts and mindfulness, your mind becomes quieter, and quieter and quieter. And to the extent your mind becomes quieter and quieter, to that extent does your consciousness become revealed to you as absolute reality.

Now when we talk about absolute reality, or Parabrahman, there are no words, for everything I would tell you about that would be superfluous. We therefore learn to keep quiet. We no longer get involved in complications. We keep our lifestyle simple. We actually stop worrying about the future, about our existence or about anything else. Something tells us from within that the same power that knows how to make apples grow on apple trees, flowers bloom so beautifully, mangos grow on mango trees, wheat grow in the fields, and yet there's just enough sun, just enough rain, just enough of everything to sustain and maintain their growth. Something tells me that the same power knows how to take care of me. I can therefore be myself, silence.