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Who Becomes Enlightened? by Robert Adams

Do not look for results. Because it's your true nature, sooner or later the results must present themselves. But it comes without your help. You cannot help God. God does not need your help. Just be yourself. It's difficult to be totally honest with yourself, yet this is exactly what you have to do. Forget about being a Jnani or enlightened, or having Self-realization. I get too many calls like that. People are calling me from all over the world telling me that they are Self-realized. So now I just say, "Good, what do you want me to do?" They want the confirmation. So I was thinking of printing certificates (laughter) and mailing them out. This is to inform you that you are now Self-realized. Congratulations! It's interesting to note that many people throughout the world are beginning to be attracted to Advaita Vedanta, the non-duality principle. More than ever in the last two years or so, many people who have never dreamed would be involved in Advaita Vedanta are being involved in Advaita Vedanta. Now the amusing and interesting thing to me is that a good 80% of these people become teachers. New teachers of Advaita Vedanta are popping up all over the world.

First of all, what does the word enlightenment mean? I'm not talking about a dictionary definition. To the path of Jnana, what does enlightenment mean? The answer is, there is no such word. No one becomes enlightened. There is no body, no I, no me, there is no thing that can ever become enlightened. The word enlightenment is used by the ajnani, by students.

Absolute Reality, Choiceless Awareness, Sat-Chit-Ananda, Parabrahman —those are all words that do not exist except to the student in order to explain that there is a state beyond the so-called norm. A state of total transcendence, and we give a name to this, enlightenment.

When this actually happens or transpires in a person, the I has been totally destroyed, totally annihilated. The me no longer exists, and to that being, there is absolutely no one who became enlightened. That being is resting in his true nature, in nothingness, absolute nothingness.

No one can become enlightened. No one can be liberated, for the you that thinks it can be liberated doesn't even exist. There is no you. There is no person. There is no human being who is a human being one day and the next day becomes liberated. There is only the liberated Self, and you are That.

The worst thing you can ever do is to search for enlightenment, for liberation. This keeps you back. It keeps you back because there is a self that is searching. There is an I that is searching. There is a me that is trying to become something, and the whole idea is to remove something from your consciousness. Therefore, the process of realization is removal, not adding. Removing this and removing that. Removing all concepts and all preconceived ideas. Removing all of your thoughts, no matter what kind of thoughts they are. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, they all must go. And what is left will be nothing, no-thing. You are that. You are that no-thing.

Doesn't it feel good to be nothing, instead of believing you are thoughts, and you are human, and you have a job to fulfill, and you have a mission?

There are many spiritual people you know who think they have a mission. They have come to save the world. They can't even save themselves, and they're looking to save the world. The world will go on the way it's going on without your help, for or against. Leave the world alone.

There is a power and there is a presence which I like to call THE CURRENT THAT KNOWS THE WAY, that takes care of everything. It is all part of the grand illusion. And even in this illusion which appears in front of your eyes, there is a presence and a power that lifts you up. It will lift you up as high as you can allow it to. Until it lifts you up completely out of your body, out of your thoughts, out of the universe, to a completely new dimension.