Robert Adams (spiritual teacher)

Robert claimed to have donated a jeep to the Ashram when no jeep or car was ever possessed by the ashram until 2018.

According to Ed Muzika in his Yoga Journal article of Jan/Feb 1998,

In the late 1960s, Adams returned to the United States and lived in Hawaii and Los Angeles before finally moving to Sedona, Arizona in the mid 1990s. He was married to Nicole Adams and fathered two daughters. In the 1980s Adams developed Parkinson's disease, which forced him to settle in one location and receive the appropriate care. A small group of devotees soon grew up around him and in the early 1990s he gave weekly satsangs in the San Fernando Valley, along with other surrounding areas of Los Angeles. These satsangs were both recorded and transcribed. After several years of deteriorating health, Adams died on March 2, 1997 in Sedona, Arizona, where he was surrounded by family members and devotees. He died at the age of 69 from cancer of the liver.

In 1992, Ramana Maharshi's nephew V. Ganesan had a chance encounter at an airport in Los Angeles, where a student of Robert Adams approached him to ask if he would like to attend Satsang. V. Ganesan eventually met Robert Adams on multiple occasions and acclaimed him to be a fully realized Jnani. H.W.L. Poonja, a direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi who was a vehement critic of most contemporary teachers, liked Adams' teachings enough to read them out during several of his own Satsangs. Rupert Spira, the Advaita teacher, author and potter visited Robert Adams two days before Adams' death in 1997, where he learned about his then to be teacher Francis Lucille, who had previously met Adams. Many of Adams' students went on to become teachers, including Ed Muzika, Luis De Santiago, Stuart Schwartz, Pamela Wilson and John Taylor.

Adams did not write any books himself nor publish his teachings as he did not wish to gain a large following. He instead preferred to teach a small number of dedicated seekers. However, in 1992, a book of his dialogues was transcribed, compiled and distributed by and for the sole use of his devotees. In 1999, a later edition of this book, Silence of the Heart: Dialogues with Robert Adams, was posthumously published by Acropolis Books Inc. As conveyed by the title of these dialogues, Adams considered silence to be the highest of spiritual teachings:

Robert claimed to have personal English conversations with Ramana without a translator apparently not knowing that Ramana generally never spoke English without a translator. Robert told one such story at length during his August 2, 1992 satsang about a chat at the Osborne house in which he says the two talked about various things such as self-enquiry, the maturity and sincerity of seekers, and a number of other topics. Kitty Osborne noted the unlikelihood:

In his Aug. 9th 1992 satsang, Robert told a story of sadhus rolling boulders down the hill from the caves above Skandashram attempting to murder Ramana, apparently unaware that there are no caves above Skandashram despite previously claiming to have lived there for years. Something that would have been noticed in minutes by anyone who was actually there.

Adams stayed at Sri Ramanasramam for the final three years of Sri Ramana Maharshi's life. Over the course of this time he had many conversations with Sri Ramana Maharshi, and through abiding in his presence was able to confirm and further understand his own experience of awakening to the non-dual Self. In the first of these conversations, Ramana Maharshi told Adams they had been together in a previous life. After Sri Ramana Maharshi left the body in 1950 Adams spent a further seventeen years travelling around India and stayed with well known gurus such as Nisargadatta Maharaj, Anandamayi Ma, Neem Karoli Baba and Swami Ramdas to name but a few. He also spent time with less well-known teachers such as Swami Brahmadanda "the Staff of God" in the holy city of Varanasi.

Apparently Robert failed to realize the unlikelihood of a Scotsman donating dollars and the fact that $40k in 1950 could have likely bought the entire town of Tiruvannamalai and most certainly would have at least been noted by someone at the ashram itself.

With $14,000 of inheritance money from a recently deceased aunt, Adams set off for India and his guru Sri Ramana Maharshi in 1946:

Many of Robert’s fictional stories involved money that did not take into account for the monetary inflation that happened in India between the 1940s and 1990s such as his story of Henry Wells:

Robert Adams (January 21, 1928 – March 2, 1997) was an American Advaita teacher. In later life Adams held satsang with a small group of devotees in California, US. He mainly advocated the path of jñāna yoga with an emphasis on the practice of self-enquiry. Adams' teachings were not well known in his lifetime, but have since been widely circulated amongst those investigating the philosophy of Advaita and the Western devotees of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. A book of his teachings, Silence of the Heart: Dialogues with Robert Adams, was published in 1999.

Robert Adams was born on January 21, 1928 in Manhattan and grew up in New York City, USA. Adams claimed that from as far back as he could remember, he had had visions of a white haired, bearded man seated at the foot of his bed, who was about two feet tall, and who used to talk to him in a language which he did not understand. He told his parents but they thought he was playing games. He would later find out that this man was a vision of his future guru Sri Ramana Maharshi. At the age of seven, Adams's father died and the visitations suddenly stopped.

Robert Adams claimed to have private personal visits with Ramana inside the Osborne house when in actuality Ramana never went inside a grihasta (householder’s) home after 1896 and did not leave the ashram front gates after 1929 except on two well noted occasions, neither of which involved going to the Osborne house.