Neither Nothing Nor Something - Robert Adams

What do you have to be to become nothing? What do you have to know to be nothing? To be nothing is a misnomer, for you make the nothing into some thing. If you're trying to be nothing, then you're trying to be something, aren't you? Because the nothing is something, that you're trying to become. Consequently, you should never strive to be nothing and you should never strive to be something, for they're both erroneous concepts. None of them really exist.

The question therefore is, "If something doesn't exist, and nothing doesn't exist, well what is?" And the answer is silence. Absolute silence. For the human mind and the human thinking, the human thoughts, can never comprehend what silence is. You try to put it into words, and you spoil it. There are no words that can interpret the silence, for when you go into the true silence, you go beyond nothing and something. Yet everyone has experienced this true silence who has gone beyond nothing and something, and appeared to have to first become something and nothing, in order to be silent.

There's something you have to know: No. 1. Nothing is as it appears. You have to feel this deep in your heart. Nothing in this whole universe is as it appears. So do not be fooled by appearances. You do not allow the appearance to get to you, to make you feel this way or that way, no matter what the appearance may be. You are to look at the appearance as you would look at a mirage. And this is scientific, for the appearance will change sooner or later anyway. Therefore when you feel something from an experience, it is subject to change. You'll not be the same again. This is why the average person keeps going up and down like a yo-yo. They respond to a condition, then the condition changes and they respond in a different way to the same condition, and this changes and you respond again to the condition. They keep responding again and again to what they see as a condition.

No. 2. Do not say that the world is maya, for if you say the world is maya, that's a concept you have. And this is a non-duality concept, but nevertheless it's a concept, for you're holding on to the fact that the world is maya. In reality maya does not exist. There is no maya. Therefore everything that appears to come from maya, must also not exist. Do you follow this?

Whatever you think does not exist, is a concept. It becomes a thing, something to hold on to. You go around saying, "Everything is maya, everything is maya, the universe does not exist." But that maya exists, and this is the biggest mistake you're making, for you think maya exists. What is maya? An illusion. To whom comes the illusion? To the one who believes maya as a concept, maya as a thing, a belief. In other words, everything that you believe up to this point is erroneous, and it should be dropped.

The same is true with the words of absolute reality, pure awareness, Brahman, sat-chit-ananda. These things become a safe haven for you, and they keep you back from your full realization, for you are holding on to these beliefs that there is absolute reality, there is sat-chit-ananda, there is nirvana. Where would these things come from except from your own mind? It is you who gave these things names. We have given names to something we do not understand. We call it reality. What is reality? Something that never changes. And the something that never changes, becomes a concept and you hold on to that.

Is it any wonder such few people are self-realized? Is it any wonder that certain people only are liberated, very few people liberated? For we have simply exchanged terms. We say the world does not exist but maya exists. We say everything comes from consciousness, everything comes from the absolute reality. We merely change words, change terms.

There is no absolute reality. There is no sat-chit-ananda. There is no Brahman. It is we who made these terms up, and we feel safe and secure by holding on to them. At one time we used to say, "God is with me." Now we say, "Consciousness is with me," or, "I am the absolute reality." We've just changed the names. That's all we've done.

No. 3 is: you are not even the silence, for as long as you can express the word silence, that's not it. You have to get to the place where you have absolutely nothing to hold on to, nothing to lean against. Even when Buddha said to take refuge in the Buddha, take refuge in the sangha, take refuge in the eight fold path, this again is a mistake. I'm not saying the Buddha made a mistake. What I'm saying is the reason he said this, is because he was speaking to ignorant people who had to hold on to something. But the Buddha realized there's nothing to hold on to. There never was anything to hold on to. Even when you’re told you're total freedom, the word freedom becomes a concept for you. As long as you can lean on to it, as long as you can hold on to it, and you feel good in it, it's a mistake.

Again, this is the reason so few people are self-realized. You're holding on to something. You're attached to something. Whether it's a teaching, or a person, or a satsang, or a sangha, you can never become free while you're attached to something.

So the question is, what shall I do? You do exactly what you're doing now, but do not think about it. This is the important point. Do not try to find some new profound teaching, that will give you new words, or new methods, or new rules and regulations. You merely do what you're doing now and you do not think about it, you do not attempt to analyze it, you do not think this teaching is higher than any other teaching. You leave yourself alone. When you learn to leave yourself alone, in body and in mind, you have arrived. Do not ask, "Where have I arrived? To what have I arrived?"

This spoils the whole thing. That's what I'm trying to explain to you. Do not look at something that I say, and attempt to analyze it, tear it apart, try to make something out of it, or take refuge in it. Just be. Be neither this nor that.

If you were only able to do what I tell you, you would immediately feel a tremendous happiness, a tremendous bliss inside of you. You would feel a tremendous joy welling up within yourself. This happiness, this bliss and this joy is your very nature. It has nothing to do with words, places or things. It is what you are when you let go of everything that you've been holding on to.

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