Advaita Vision

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Advaita for the 21st Century

Suffering
'Sailor' Bob Adamson

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'Sailor' Bob Adamson

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The following is the Chapter ‘The Mirage’ extracted from the above book, ‘Presence-Awareness: Just This and Nothing Else, Talks with ‘Sailor’ Bob Adamson’, Non-Duality Press, 2004, ISBN 0-9547792-4-X. It can be purchased from Non-Duality Books in the UK. Available from Amazon.uk but not yet from Amazon.com.

Bob: That separate entity, the belief in that entity or person, has never done a damn thing! It never can and never will. You must realize that you have been lived. That body-mind that you call 'you' is being lived, and it is being lived quite effortlessly. As Christ said, 'Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature?' That separate entity can’t do a bloody thing.

Q: What does that mean in terms of choice, conscious free-will, willing choices that people make or don't make? If I'm following you, there isn't anyone who makes the choice.

Bob: No, there isn't. Choices are made, but there is no choice-maker. What seems to be choices are made. Like, you think you will do something, and you turn around doing something else. That is all coming from that pure functioning. But we take delivery of it and believe 'I am the choice-maker' or 'I have got free-will'. But we have just seen that if you look at it closely the thoughts 'I am' or 'I'm this or that' haven't got the power to do any of those things. You haven't even got the power to think that thought, itself. Thinking happens. It is the same with seeing. Seeing is happening right now. What do you have to do to see?

Q: Nothing.

Bob: It is spontaneously happening. Be that presence-awareness that is spontaneously happening of itself. It is effortless. If that 'I thought', that image you have about yourself, were running the show, what would be the most important thing you would do?

Q: I have got no idea!

Bob: Well, I do! The first thing I would do is make sure I take the next breath, or make sure my heart has got another beat in it. But all those things are happening quite effortlessly. We talk about choices. But if you are the choice maker, why would you ever have an unhappy thought, if you could choose your thoughts? Why would you ever be miserable or sad?

Q. So, the intelligence-energy is vibrating into all these different
forms.

Bob: Exactly.

Q: It is appearing as the chair, this life (pointing to someone in the room), this life, this life. What about the life of somebody who is suffering? Why would it do that? Why would it vibrate into the form of a life of a kid in a war-torn country? Do you know what I'm saying?

Bob: Yes.

Q: From my mind, I look at it and I say, 'That is madness'.

Bob: Yes. It is madness. The intelligence-energy vibrates into the mirage, too. The heat shimmering off the road appears to be a pool of water. But what is it in actuality?

Q: Just vibrating energy.

Bob: Yes.

Q: But that kid seems to suffer.

Bob: Yes. But, as I say, you have got a million microbes crawling around your face right now.

Q: You do that (wipes hand on his face) and you kill them all.

Bob: You just wiped out a few million of them. Some of
them might be suffering. Some of them might be crippled. But you couldn't care less. We think we are so important, but we are only small in the scheme of things. Looking from out in space down on this earth what would you be? You would be even less than a microbe on someone's face! Yet, because we are here, we give ourselves so much importance. In the scheme of things, life is continually living on life. Life appears in all sorts of forms and shapes. But it is still the same life, the same intelligence-energy. And you are that life.

Q: Does compassion fit into what you are saying?

Bob: Yes, there is a natural compassion that comes up of itself. You don't have to try to be compassionate.

Q: No.

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