Knowledge And Silence

Adam Wes All right, welcome, everybody. Namaste. Oh, there's Kira. We're missing Ariella and David. Did you text Ariella? Please do.

Colleen I'll do it.

Adam Wes Thank you. Welcome, everybody. Namaste, Rafael. Nice to see you.

Rafael F I was going to say, it's an honor.

Adam Wes It's great to have you here. Hi, Kira.

So, just a refresher on what we did last week. We talked about Sanskrit. I don't know if anybody had a chance to review this. Here's the transcript, the full transcript. We've got video and the audio recording, an adapted essay, mostly verbatim. There's a study guide. It's a great thing to look over.

Kira, how was your Sanskrit study this week? Nice. There she is.

Let's see. Namaste, Ariella. Welcome!

Today, we'll talk about knowledge and silence. This is a very central part of enlightenment. In fact, when you read Krishnamurti, sometimes it seems like he's talking about nothing but this.

Let's just take one more moment. I want to hear from somebody. Let's connect a little bit before we start. Anybody want to share about their week? Related to, not randomly, enlightenment and the practice.

Kira Sure, I can share. Or, Rafael, were you going to share? Go ahead.

I just realized, after we reviewed the Sanskrit last week, that I knew what karma was, but when we actually put our focus on it, throughout the week it brought things to light. I was able to see karma at play, and I was able to inhibit or discontinue some negative karmic behavior, whether that's mental or...

Adam Wes Bye, karma.

Kira What did you say?

Adam Wes Bye, karma.

Kira Bye, karma. Yeah. That actually really helped. Having even just awareness of the word allowed me to have awareness in my life about that, so I was able to see and then stop certain negative karmic activity. Also, on the contrary, I could see the opportunity for creating positive karma and how that relates to the other words. It didn't take much effort. It actually was simply that we looked at the words and had awareness of them, and then it blossomed quite naturally.

Adam Wes Thanks, Kira. Wonderful. Yes, exactly.

Andrea, you asked last week, "What's the benefit of this?" Well, when we have a word for something, we become aware of it. It becomes a part interwoven into our life. If you're even just aware of this word karma, or just aware of the word shakti, or aware of the word sangha, these things become interwoven into your life.

I mean, you could just literally read the list before bed every night. It'll take you 20 seconds. Read a list of Sanskrit words just to stay attuned to something deeper than the superficialities of the world as we mostly encounter it.

Beautiful. Thank you, Kira.

All right, so today we'll be talking about knowledge...

Oh, Colleen.

Colleen I just wanted to say, I looked at the words last week, and I chose shakti because I like what it stands for: power, energy, to be able to do something. What's the other one? To have power, to be able. I felt like that's how I wanted to be this week.

Adam Wes Beautiful. Thank you for sharing. You said it was shakti, shakti was the one you chose.

Colleen Shakti.

Adam Wes Beautiful. Wonderful.

Rafael, did you want to share anything? Everybody welcome Rafael. I went live for Rafael. The universe said, "There is somebody out there," and we found each other. He showed up on time with such beautiful sincerity, and it was really adding so much. I'm so grateful to see you here. Thank you.

Rafael F It is an honor to be with all of you. Wow, this is really special to me. It was a synchronicity. You guys know how synchronicities go, so it just aligned, like the stars, and I'm here. I have my mind empty like a cup.

Adam Wes That's beautiful.

Rafael F I'm here to learn from you guys. I had a question about karma and dharma. Isn't dharma the opposite of karma?

Adam Wes No. By the way, you should take a look at the practice hall. This is currently open to the public. If you go to Spirituality on the website, then Practice Hall, there's Essential Sanskrit down here.

It just so happens dharma and karma are right next to each other. Karma means action. Dharma means truth.

Rafael F Oh, okay. Gotcha.

Adam Wes But there are subtleties within a spiritual context. Karma means the effects of actions that we take and the way they inform our minds, leading to liberation or to bondage.

Dharma means the ultimate unfolding of reality, the truth. There's a suchness, a reality, that we're all a part of, which is what that word is pointing to. Sometimes it's translated as duty.

If you think of it that way, the truth is, I am a techie math person who loves spirituality. That's just what I am. That's the truth of it. My duty then becomes to live that, to be that, as a part of the totality. Each of us has a dharma, and we live within the totality.

Dharma is truth and the natural unfolding of what is. It's a subtle word. You could contemplate this word for your whole life and continue to deepen your connection with it.

Rafael F Understood.

Adam Wes Thanks for the question. So, yeah, welcome, Rafael.

Let's get started, because the goal is to keep the sermon to about 14 minutes. Maybe we'll go two minutes over since we'll talk, but then we'll have a 30-minute meditation after that.

Knowledge and silence. I'm so excited to share this with all of you. It is a very special topic.

We live in a world addicted to information. Even when we know each other, we say, "Oh, Andrea, I'm going to get to know you." Well, if I get to know you, what's actually happening? I have this collection of data points. Andrea is this. She's nice. She's smart. She does something with business and the commerce people in Mexico. I've built up this whole image of you.

There's something nice about having an image of somebody, right? We get to know each other in a way through time, but there's a different kind of knowing that's a collection of information. Knowledge means I look with my heart, with empathy, and I notice the whole energy of you, even the way your finger's on your mouth and you're kind of thinking. Because that's what we do when we're thinking. The body language, right? We apprehend the energy of somebody.

To know somebody does not require the accumulation of past experiences. That's two images interacting with each other. To know somebody is to see them as they are right now.

I'm trying to reposition knowledge by differentiating words: information versus knowledge. Knowledge is always in the moment. Information is always in the past.

Knowledge is from the heart. You know by becoming the other. You know by feeling and describing the feeling and the field of consciousness that you become while perceiving. The perceiver and that which is perceived become one in perceiving, and that perceiving is a form of knowing.

Information is in the head, and understanding is usually a descriptor. If I wrote a poem that's beautiful and deep, and it alludes to something ineffable beyond words, when I write this poem, I'm using beautiful linguistic syntax, metaphor, imagery. I have the capacity to put it into words, like a musician has the capacity to play notes on their instrument. There's a technical element, but what are we transmitting?

The transmission is something so much more. This is the substance of life. It's the depths of our heart. Do we have something to share, something to say? Did Mozart have something to share? It wasn't just that Mozart was brilliant with music theory. He had something to share that touched you, that moved you. Something came from another dimension.

How does something come from another dimension? Well, it requires silence.

Knowledge equates to listening. Information is the past.

Listening means I am empty. I liked how Rafael said, "My cup is empty." Well, my cup is empty too. We have to stay empty, right? An empty cup is one that can apprehend, that can see, that's always ready to learn and empty all the things we learn out from moment to moment.

We're like a millionaire who makes a million dollars every second and gives it all away. We're constantly making a million and giving it, making and giving it, so we stand naked to the universe. We're totally free.

This happens in meditation. When we sit down and meditate formally, we are learning to empty the mind and listen, and deepen our capacity for knowledge.

Knowledge and beauty go together. Our capacity to perceive beauty, to become beauty in a perception of it, requires stillness. It requires listening. Then we also structure our minds beautifully so that we can hold those states, describe those states, and transmit those states.

This morning, I had a beautiful experience meditating, because I meditate every morning, like we all do, right? I was silent, and when I go silent, all of a sudden answers come to me.

What should I be doing? How should I do this? Whoa, that's how I do the code. That's the answer to the math question. That's the business thing that I need to do. That's the problem in my friendship right there.

They come to me. In fact, all kinds of interesting knowledge can come to you beyond just those epiphanies. They come out of silence.

As long as we're thinking in the grooves of whatever healthy or unhealthy patterns, like, "I can't do this, I can't do that," then you never do it. Or, "I'm the greatest, I'm the greatest," and then you miss something else that is meant for you. As long as we're in the grooves of habitual thought, how can we know? How can we make the quantum leap?

My Paramguru, my teacher's teacher, says, "The shortest distance between two points is not a line." He says it's your mind.

It's an interesting thing that he was conveying. Interestingly enough, he was talking about how computer science cultivates enlightenment. He was literally talking about computer science, believe it or not. This is the lineage I come from. Enlightened being, moksha, jivanmukti.

He was saying, how do you realize the system architecture of a computer program? Well, you have to see the solution. It's not a modification in continuity. You don't take it and mold it, mold it, mold it, mold it, mold it, mold it from here to there. From one point to another point, there's a line between. There's no continuum of molding. It's a flash of insight. It's lightning in the sky. It comes from nowhere.

It comes from silence, because the sky is silence. It's emptiness.

When we sit and meditate, if you have things you need to see, things you want to know, go into silence. Become emptiness. Become knowledge. Then your words can describe what you're seeing.

It's a completely different epistemology. Great word in philosophy. Epistemology means the study of knowing.

What is the epistemology of mathematics, of physics? How can we know something? How do we know there's a star or galaxy out there? This is all relevant to epistemology. How do we know there's a God or an energy? This is a field of philosophy, and clearly that word relates to our topic today.

Boom.

We're always so rushed to speak in our relationships. There's never space between the notes. If you're standing before somebody and you go silent for 30 seconds, they'll feel very awkward.

Why?

Why can't we be in silence and let knowledge come of its own accord? Words come through us when they're ready to.

Part of the practice is to become silent and notice the chattering momentum of our karma. That's what karma is. It's a momentum. It's an inert momentum. There's an inertia to it.

Shakti is the opposite of inertia. It's the capacity to change.

In physics, an asteroid may glide through space to the Boötes Void, which is a giant void in space where there's nothing for light-years and light-years and light-years. It just glides through, inert. It means it's not alive. There's no change. There's no transformation.

Karma is inertia. We have a momentum and a direction, and nothing will change unless we do something about it. Shakti is that transmutive energy to become something more.

What's the difference between Krishna and a sinner, Jesus and a sinner, Buddha and a sinner, or some enlightened being, Ramana Maharshi or somebody? Well, they've transmuted themselves. They've become something more. They've changed their momentum. They've used power.

Actually, Newton described this very beautifully. He said, "Unless there's a force..." Newton's first law: everything in motion continues in motion unless acted on by an outside force.

Force and acceleration are actually the same thing, essentially. They're proportional. More mass means less acceleration for a given force, but think of them as the same thing. Momentum is just velocity, no acceleration, no change in velocity.

I'm speaking in physics because Jacob's here. It's also because I like it. You connect with that, Jacob? You see why I'm seeing Newton's laws as very much human laws? They're part of life. They apply to matter. They apply to life, the human condition.

I'm becoming silent to see if there's anything else I should share about this.

Knowledge and love go together.

Love is, in a very trite description and a very correct description, union.

But in what sense?

In love, we become the other. We become the other because we know the other. We know the other because we've expanded our circumference of self so that it's not me and you, separate.

In love, there's empathy naturally, because I feel for you, you feel for me. We are one.

We become the dharma. We become the totality of truth, the concurrence of the universe evolving. We are one Supersoul. There's an underlying field of consciousness that makes us all one. In meditation, we can become love.

In becoming love, we come to know things beyond what we can read in a book. A book can allude to these things. That's why I read a lot of my books over and over again, sometimes to really understand what's being said and sometimes just to attune to such a beautiful wavelength.

We have this book. Colleen, Mom, thanks for ordering this. Let me just flip open to a page. You can always just read a single page before bed, that sort of thing. It'll tune you to it.

All right, any questions? We'll talk for a couple minutes, and then we'll get started.

We could talk about this for hours, by the way. There's a lot here. In Greek, there's a word, gnosis, G-N-O-S-I-S.

The ultimate knowledge, of course, is enlightenment. There's a knowing of the most quintessential layer of reality that's inside of everything. If you get still enough, you can know these things. You can know nirvana.

There's a knowing where there's no self anymore. You're knowing so much that there's no reflection of, "I am knowing." That would only obscure the knowledge. Why do you have to add on the knower when knowing is enough?

There's no idea of, "Oh, Adam is knowing something." There just isn't.

This has a lot to do with enlightenment.

Rafael F Pardon me. I don't know if I'm lagging. Can you hear me?

Adam Wes It's a little laggy, but you're coming through fine.

Rafael F Okay. Since you mentioned the book, this book, I don't know if you can see it. Can you read it?

Adam Wes It's a little blurry. Read the title to us.

Rafael F It's called Lamb by Christopher Moore.

Adam Wes Okay.

Rafael F Lamb by Christopher Moore.

Adam Wes I think I've heard of that, actually.

Rafael F It's actually about Jesus' best friend, Biff. It's a fictional story about Jesus. Biff tells the story of Jesus through the account of Biff, his best friend. It's super funny. But what you just said just now, the book literally covers that.

Adam Wes Beautiful.

Rafael F Yeah.

Adam Wes A lot of this, when Jesus says, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," he's actually talking about this. I mean, it's my interpretation. There's a reality that we can look at, and he's looking at something. I think he's looking at the same thing, which is this: if you know your neighbor as yourself, meaning whatever I behold is my very self, and I know it and I am it through love and knowledge, then why would I act for me alone and not for what is righteous, what is good, what is on behalf of all?

You have to be pretty bold to go this way, because you might change your diet. You might change your career. You might change a lot of things if you really feel that you are the animal you're eating.

Usually, I don't go there. But just think about it, right? Do whatever you like, but consider that whatever we do in life either lets us feel one with all or causes a dissonance. There's a karmic repercussion that's natural.

I may want to make a whole bunch of money, and if I do it in this way and it doesn't help somebody, then I have to live with that, especially if it hurts them somehow. Or if I eat an animal, then okay, maybe I needed to, maybe I didn't, maybe I wanted to. But what are the karmic repercussions?

This is personal. It's not about some sort of morality imposed upon you. It's, "What is the act and the result?" That's karma. We get to live with that.

If you give everything away and live like Mother Teresa, there's a beautiful karma that comes to you too. You live like Nelson Mandela with forgiveness, or Mother Teresa with her hard work and the squalor that she lived in and met people in, sick people and starving babies and things.

These are saintly actions. They actually benefit very much. We benefit from giving because we learn to become the other.

Business is important too. We should feel that we're holding people in freedom. We're just the business on the corner. They do business, hold space for people to come, and do their best to represent themselves accurately, all of those things.

Speaking of food, I wanted to make a very special suggestion this week. If anybody's up for it, it's the full moon tomorrow. This is a powerful time to go further, to dive into the abyss of the universe.

Kira's diving in.

If you eat, make it a goal every day, this is just a suggestion, to eat seven pieces of fruit. An apple, an orange, a banana, a handful of blueberries. Seven servings of fruit every day. It doesn't matter what else you eat. You can have your steak, your ice cream, whatever. It doesn't matter.

But if you eat seven pieces of fruit, this positive focus can introduce something very powerful, a wavelength of sattva. Fruit is very harmonious, and it also is very light on the body, so it's conducive to deeper meditation and greater energy flow. Also, beyond all of that, it's extremely healthy.

Instead of saying, "Don't do this," you're saying, "Do this." It's a different approach to dietary transformation.

Anybody like that? Nice. Organic fruits.

Colleen I think Jacob had a question.

Adam Wes Yeah, Jacob. Thank you. Hi, Jacob!

Jacob Connecting back to what you said about Newton's laws of physics, for every reaction, there's an opposite and equal reaction. Also, regarding what you said about all the decisions that we make making us who we are, Newton's second law: the sum of your actions makes you.

Adam Wes Absolutely. Jacob, contemplate that. Really go into that. That's beautiful.

I only said the first and second laws. Jacob's like, "Adam, you're forgetting the third law." It literally is the third law that he just told me. It's funny.

All right, let's meditate!

We'll do a 25-minute meditation. This meditation will be about how we achieve silence.

You need to become absorbed in spirit. I know that's a very esoteric suggestion. We're going to seek to focus on spirit, become absorbed in spirit. Spirit is the power that is within everything.

The fragment of the mind cannot still the other fragments of the mind. It just keeps activity going. You have to become nothingness. Become power. Become impersonal.

Focus on the light. Focus on your heart.

Rafael, we do a form of light meditation. What I'm going to do is gaze with everybody. We open our awareness very large, and it's not like staring. I'm not looking at the screen. My eyes are centered on the screen, but I'm looking at everything.

In doing that, I expand my awareness field. Everything becomes a part of my awareness field, and I soften my hold on it. Instead of fixing it in a physical form of solidity, I allow it to become light. Everything is made of light.

Just the suggestion might be enough for you. Also, there's a sort of empathic transmission that occurs, so try to see light.

When you see any sort of blurring or mistiness, that's the light happening. That light starts to get so intense that it washes through your body. You can feel it's like a phenomenal experience of an energy that's coming from some other dimension, washing through your body. It's a divine, sacred energy, and it purifies you. It subdues the mind so that one can enter into the silence and apprehend knowledge.

Let's do it.

All right, can you hear the music?

You're welcome to close your eyes or gaze with me. If your eyes are closed, try to focus on the light as the light. We don't see it with our eyes, per se, although it's a visual experience.

We're doing silence.

We allow the momentum to settle. The first step is just to become aware, perhaps the only step.

If you feel not still, just observe yourself as you are. You're not reacting. We're observing.

There may be thoughts. There may be blissful silence. Whatever it is, just observe.

If you're keeping your eyes closed, just notice the field of awareness. Reach out. Expand your field.

The light emerges in gentleness, weakness. Soften the fixation on manifestation. Let everything become fluid, turn to light.

Just focus on the light, the ambient energy, vitality and luminosity permeating existence.

If you feel you have the capacity to direct the light, make sure it is washing through your astral body, your spine, the astral tube in the front called the Sushumna, your chakras, and your physical body.

Don't take it from the environment around you. Just make sure that it's an ocean of light that you're inside of. The ocean of light.

Let's make sure to bring attention to the heart center while we do this. In the middle of the chest is Anahata, the heart chakra. Always stay connected to the heart.

Let's take a moment and bring our attention to the third eye. It seems like an appropriate focus for today's talk.

The third eye is right in the forehead, a little bit above. You want to try to feel the vitality, the magnetism in this location. You can hover your finger without touching your head. You can touch your head too. There's a vortex of energy here. It's good to activate it.

It may seem strange, but if you look at me, I'm going to activate it very intensely. There's a sort of entrainment, a pattern recognition of the energetic structure. Do it. Think of it as a transmission of something that is beyond words.

Yeah, Praveen, do it with me.

Feel this.

Feeling the third eye.

Why is my hand here? I'm actually making a connection with my middle finger.

This will be our final song. You'll feel your heart, your third eye, and the light at the same time.

Just take a moment and become aware of the sky, society, the stars.

Let's reach out. Expand your scope like Ariella did last week. Feel your heart.

All right. Namaste. Thank you.

Colleen, Mom, I'd love to hear your share. How was your meditation?

Colleen Good. Is Kira okay?

Adam Wes Kira's in another dimension right now.

Colleen Yes. I go straight into the red light, but today something interesting happened. It felt as if somebody opened the blinds and put on the light.

Adam Wes Oh. Were you meditating on your third eye or your crown when that happened?

Colleen No, way before.

Adam Wes Okay. Amazing.

Colleen It lasted for quite a bit, and then it went away. Then I had my usual purple, pink, and green colors coming on.

Adam Wes Wonderful. I love that you experience the red so consistently. That is such a warm, heart-centered energy.

Colleen It happens immediately.

Adam Wes That's very special.

Colleen Namaste.

Adam Wes Thank you. Rafael, how about you?

Rafael F I saw images, imagery. I was in a house. I have no idea where that house was. Then I saw a dog that I've never seen before. It was a German shepherd, but it was in a different location from the other one.

I saw colors, a purple color, something zooming in like that.

Adam Wes Tell me about this. You're saying it was going like this?

Rafael F The opposite way. Inward.

Adam Wes Okay.

Rafael F Picture a blob like that, and then it just closes in like a fractal. It was like a fractal.

Adam Wes Did it look like little colored clouds or a little watercolor?

Rafael F It looked like a cloud, but it was very prominent in the eyes. It would just close like that, and it would come back again like this.

Adam Wes Okay, this is fantastic. What color was it?

Rafael F Purple.

Adam Wes Fantastic. Have you seen that before?

Rafael F Yes.

Adam Wes Very good. Great.

What he's describing actually has a name in Sanskrit. It's called soma. Soma etymologically means a transmutive force. That's the energy you want because it'll wash through you. Just sit in the soma when it comes. If you've got the soma going, nothing else matters.

You're like, "Sorry, I'll be late for whatever's coming up. I'm in the soma now. God has opened the door for me."

That's quite literally opening the door to heaven. This is the metaphor, isn't it? I'm in the soma.

Let that soma wash through, because it's a little different from pure shakti, which is the luminosity. It's different from kundalini, which is formed energy. It's astral structural energy. It has structure, and yet it's shakti-like.

This is the transmutive force, and it comes from the causal into the astral plane, washing you clean.

Namaste, Jacob. We're going to stop in a few minutes anyway, everybody, but Jacob has a student. I'll see you tomorrow, Jacob. Thank you. Namaste.

Wonderful, Rafael. Good job. I would recommend that you meditate twice a day on the soma if you can access it.

Those astral experiences, those images that you're seeing, could be an occult metaphysical ability that's accompanying it. That's an interesting thing to cultivate. You might be doing remote viewing. You might be having energetic perceptions of things that are being symbolically represented.

My mom, Colleen, usually sees interesting things, like a stadium of people wearing green and red shirts. Where does this random stuff come from, right? A donkey with roller skates, weird things like that.

Wonderful. Namaste, Rafael. Thanks for being here.

Ariella, do you want to share really quickly? We have to hear from you, and then we'll stop.

Ariella Yes. That was an amazing meditation. Thank you, Adam.

Adam Wes You're welcome.

Ariella There were lots of different things that happened. For the first time ever, I saw green and purple for a short time.

Adam Wes Beautiful.

Ariella There were a bunch of other things. I'm not even remembering at the moment. I spaced out for a short time. I don't know why I can't remember them.

Adam Wes That's part of knowledge. If we don't write it down, it goes away. That's okay.

Sometimes you just have to stay with the flow, and the moment is complete unto itself. We don't need to bring anything with it. Just keep going back in, and it'll always be new and fresh. It'll be like a brand-newborn baby every single time.

Ariella One of the things was when you had us hold our hand up. There was a connection, and my middle finger was vibrating.

Adam Wes Nice. Was it tingling?

Ariella I couldn't feel tingling, but I could see that it was moving.

Adam Wes Interesting. That's possible.

Your nervous system is affected by your astral body, and your astral body is affected by your causal body. It's all connected. It's a full-spectrum cosmology of our biology.

There are different layers. We're not just, you know...

There's more than what biology understands, obviously, and there always is. We've come a long way in 200 years, but we've got more to go.

Namaste, everybody. Thank you. Good job.

Ariella, I don't know if you saw that I emailed you and texted you.

Ariella I just saw it before I joined you, so I'll go back and check.

Adam Wes Great, wonderful. I figured you probably might have missed it.

I'll see everybody next week, Tuesday, same time. Look, we're only four minutes over. I think that's okay.

Bye, everybody! Happy full moon! Eat your fruit.

Thank you. Bye, Rafael. It was so good having you.

Rafael F It was an honor.

Adam Wes It was an honor having you here. Thank you. Bye, Mom.

Knowledge arises through silence, listening, and present perception. This stillness allows awareness, love, and the power to change karmic momentum.

• Dharma is truth and the natural unfolding of what is.
• Information is always in the past. Knowledge is always in the moment.
• Knowledge is from the heart and equates to listening.
• Silence and emptiness make space for insight beyond habitual thought.
• Meditation deepens the capacity to listen, perceive, and know.
• Karma is inert momentum. Shakti is the capacity to change.
• Knowledge and love go together. In love, we become the other.
• Karma concerns the act and the result, rather than morality imposed from outside.
• Awareness can expand while fixation on physical solidity softens into light.
• The heart, the third eye, and the field of light can be held in awareness together.

Enter silence and allow the momentum of the mind to settle. Become aware without reacting, expand the field of awareness, focus on the light, and remain connected to the heart. Let knowledge come of its own accord.

• Awareness of the difference between accumulated information and present knowledge.
• Moments of silence before speaking in relationships.
• The chattering momentum of karma and the capacity of shakti to change it.
• The act and the result in daily choices.
• Observing thoughts and feelings without reacting.
• The ambient light, vitality, and luminosity permeating existence.
• Connection with the heart while awareness expands.

• What becomes known when the mind grows quiet?
• Where do I notice karmic momentum in my life?
• What is it like to see another person as they are right now?