The Silence of the Heart (Robert Adams)
A Good, But Not Great, Advaita Vedanta Text
[My four-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Silence of the Heart: Dialogues with Robert Adams’ by Robert Adams.]
I looked forward to reading this book because I knew that Robert Adams (1921- 1997) had spent significant time in the company of the iconic sage Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), easily my favorite Indian guru. I’d heard good things about Adams and this book, and I finally got a copy a couple of weeks ago.
The book started out impressively for me. First, Adams, unlike most Advaita Vedanta and neo-Advaita Vedanta gurus truly understands Ramana Maharshi’s method of Self-enquiry; and second, he knows that the Self cannot be realized via Self-enquiry unless one’s spurious, ego-based ‘I’ thoughts are traced to their Source in the spiritual Heart-center, where they are obviated, or outshone, by the true, transcendental ‘I,’ the radiant Self. Second, Adams also understands that the locus of the Self, relative to one’s body, is just to the right of the center of one’s chest. Echoing Ramana Maharshi, he tells us, “The Heart we’re talking about is on the right side of the chest. Two-digits from the center.” Adams knows that one’s thoughts, the products of one’s samskaras (karmic seed tendencies), originate in the spiritual Heart and travel to the brain, where they crystallize as one’s mind; and almost ceaselessly, he enjoins us to practice Self-enquiry and thereby “pull the mind into the spiritual Heart,” where the false, or ego, ‘I’ is spontaneously dissolved, and supplanted by the true, or transcendental ‘I,” the Self.
The book is long, about 370 pages, and consists of dialogues between Adams and his Satsang students. But the students’ questions are simple and uninteresting (at least to me), and Adams’ answers are long and repetitious. Once I was a third of the way into the book, I got tired of hearing the same discourse and arguments in each dialogue. Although Adams identifies the spiritual Heart, he doesn’t elaborate on it beyond telling students to trace their ‘I’ thoughts into it. Unlike Ramana Maharshi, he doesn’t talk about the severing of the Heart-knot, the Amrita Nadi, and other esoteric aspects of Self-realization.
In addition to Adams’ failure to delve into esoteric dimension of spiritual awakening, he also espouses many philosophical points of view that I reject. For example, when he states that “there is no such thing as the mind, “everything the self perceives is false,” and that “the whole universe is a direct product of your thinking,” I turn off.
I’ve been pulling the mind into the spiritual Heart and regularly abiding in Jnana samadhis for nearly forty years, and I have not cut the Heart-knot. And without cutting the Heart-knot, Self-realization, the non-state of Sahaj Samadhi, is impossible to attain. I very much doubt if Adams’ cut the Heart-knot. Nothing he says in this book indicates that he did. Like me, he is a teacher, not a true guru like Ramana Maharshi.
I’ve been teaching Self-enquiry for decades, and in this time I’ve found very few students who can effectively practice this “mountain path” and pull the mind into Heart-center. And the reason for this is simple: Until one’s Kundalini is awakened, the necessary spiritual power is lacking. Consequently, I also teach other meditation methods. Adams also recommends other methods for students who cannot practice Self-enquiry.
Is Self-enquiry the definitive spiritual method? That’s debatable. The great Adi Da (1939-2008), for example, argues that it is an exclusive-reductive method because it inverts attention into the Heart-center rather than, in contrast to his “Method of the Siddhas,” empowering a yogi to directly and immediately be the Heart and do its function, which is to shine to infinity. In my opinion, Self-enquiry is an incredible method, and I teach it as an adjunct to my version of the Method of the Siddhas, which I call “Plugged-in Presence.”
In summary, I think this is a good book, but not a great one. It pales in comparison to “Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi” (see my Amazon review), which is far more interesting and esoteric. But because of its emphasis on Ramana Maharshi’s Self-enquiry method, it’s better than any other post-Ramana Advaita Vedanta text I’ve encountered.
[My four-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Silence of the Heart: Dialogues with Robert Adams’ by Robert Adams.]
I looked forward to reading this book because I knew that Robert Adams (1921- 1997) had spent significant time in the company of the iconic sage Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), easily my favorite Indian guru. I’d heard good things about Adams and this book, and I finally got a copy a couple of weeks ago.
The book started out impressively for me. First, Adams, unlike most Advaita Vedanta and neo-Advaita Vedanta gurus truly understands Ramana Maharshi’s method of Self-enquiry; and second, he knows that the Self cannot be realized via Self-enquiry unless one’s spurious, ego-based ‘I’ thoughts are traced to their Source in the spiritual Heart-center, where they are obviated, or outshone, by the true, transcendental ‘I,’ the radiant Self. Second, Adams also understands that the locus of the Self, relative to one’s body, is just to the right of the center of one’s chest. Echoing Ramana Maharshi, he tells us, “The Heart we’re talking about is on the right side of the chest. Two-digits from the center.” Adams knows that one’s thoughts, the products of one’s samskaras (karmic seed tendencies), originate in the spiritual Heart and travel to the brain, where they crystallize as one’s mind; and almost ceaselessly, he enjoins us to practice Self-enquiry and thereby “pull the mind into the spiritual Heart,” where the false, or ego, ‘I’ is spontaneously dissolved, and supplanted by the true, or transcendental ‘I,” the Self.
The book is long, about 370 pages, and consists of dialogues between Adams and his Satsang students. But the students’ questions are simple and uninteresting (at least to me), and Adams’ answers are long and repetitious. Once I was a third of the way into the book, I got tired of hearing the same discourse and arguments in each dialogue. Although Adams identifies the spiritual Heart, he doesn’t elaborate on it beyond telling students to trace their ‘I’ thoughts into it. Unlike Ramana Maharshi, he doesn’t talk about the severing of the Heart-knot, the Amrita Nadi, and other esoteric aspects of Self-realization.
In addition to Adams’ failure to delve into esoteric dimension of spiritual awakening, he also espouses many philosophical points of view that I reject. For example, when he states that “there is no such thing as the mind, “everything the self perceives is false,” and that “the whole universe is a direct product of your thinking,” I turn off.
I’ve been pulling the mind into the spiritual Heart and regularly abiding in Jnana samadhis for nearly forty years, and I have not cut the Heart-knot. And without cutting the Heart-knot, Self-realization, the non-state of Sahaj Samadhi, is impossible to attain. I very much doubt if Adams’ cut the Heart-knot. Nothing he says in this book indicates that he did. Like me, he is a teacher, not a true guru like Ramana Maharshi.
I’ve been teaching Self-enquiry for decades, and in this time I’ve found very few students who can effectively practice this “mountain path” and pull the mind into Heart-center. And the reason for this is simple: Until one’s Kundalini is awakened, the necessary spiritual power is lacking. Consequently, I also teach other meditation methods. Adams also recommends other methods for students who cannot practice Self-enquiry.
Is Self-enquiry the definitive spiritual method? That’s debatable. The great Adi Da (1939-2008), for example, argues that it is an exclusive-reductive method because it inverts attention into the Heart-center rather than, in contrast to his “Method of the Siddhas,” empowering a yogi to directly and immediately be the Heart and do its function, which is to shine to infinity. In my opinion, Self-enquiry is an incredible method, and I teach it as an adjunct to my version of the Method of the Siddhas, which I call “Plugged-in Presence.”
In summary, I think this is a good book, but not a great one. It pales in comparison to “Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi” (see my Amazon review), which is far more interesting and esoteric. But because of its emphasis on Ramana Maharshi’s Self-enquiry method, it’s better than any other post-Ramana Advaita Vedanta text I’ve encountered.
