The Inadequacy Of Words
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Quotes about the inadequacy of words related to Advaitism.

It is like standing on the North Pole. Whichever way you move, you start heading south again. So once you start to say anything, you immediately suggest false dualisms. Even the teaching of non-duality is false. Like all paths, it is just a pointer. All pointers are false because there is only oneness. There is no need for a path because you are already what you are seeking.

... those who relinquish words in favor of immediate inner knowing realize a depth of peace and certitude that is the most real and intimate experience of life.

Yes, ultimately everything is only the oneness, including war, crime, murder, brutality, mayhem and so on. However, these acts and expressions generally arise out of a fundamental basic ignorance, the belief in the existence of a separate 'I' apart from the oneness. Rather than speak of these things as an expression of the one, which is strictly true, I am inclined to trace their source to its root cause. I am more interested in the living experience of clarity and the resolution of human suffering rather than maintaining an extreme non-dual stance in language. That is just my expression of the oneness!

I prefer to be a bit more down to earth and practical, even at the risk of contradicting myself and compromising the adherence to non-dualism in language. There is no benefit for me to try to make my language free of contradictions.

I have no position to maintain, not even of being a non-dualist or being consistent with myself.

There is no teaching. There is no consistent verbal formula. There are no ultimately 'right' words. Everything that comes out of our mouths is pure bullshit. But the saving grace is that what is being pointed to has nothing to do with words. It is a communication of a non-verbal recognition of being or presence. The words are just messengers. The real message is the source from which the words are arising. The actual truth to be known is the fact of your own being. Seeing this, there is a relaxation and release of the attempt to 'get it right' in words.

No written word is clear - it is simply an attempt to point to something that is beyond it.

Somebody wrote ... 'What I've done for years and years is to try and understand enlightenment; I've tried to work it all out. And now I see that that is like trying to take the ocean home in a jam-jar'. Alan Watts wrote: 'Trying to understand God is like trying to fall in love with a kilometer'.

Let's be clear about this -- it is a mystery. You are never going to work this out. In a way, words are completely useless. All the words that are used here are lies. If there is a readiness to hear something else that is happening under the words, then there is a readiness to hear it. If there isn't, then it won't be heard. It's as simple as that. Mind will do anything not to hear this. Anything at all.

Words are difficult. There are several words you could use for what I call the source -- the light, presence, the absolute, the nothing which is everything, the emptiness, consciousness, the beloved ... I often call it the beloved. Those words all mean one thing.

When I say to you that you are the source, that is strictly speaking not accurate. There is only the source. There isn't anyone there that is the source -- there is only the source, there is only presence. There is only awareness (awareness is, for me, another word for source) ... These are words. They can't express what you are. It's impossible.

Out of the source emanates unconditional love. Stillness is the nature of the source and everything in the world or in the appearance has that nature of unconditional love, stillness, impersonality.

Again, these are words -- there is no way in which they really express what is. So you'll have to forgive me for the words. Also really, I should use the word 'apparent' in front of everything I talk about -- the apparent 'you', the apparent wall, etcetera ... It is all only apparent. It is all only a metaphor, a parable, a suggestion, a reflection of another possibility.

How can I communicate this? How am I ever going to tell anybody what this is? Because you can't communicate this, there is no way it can be communicated, and yet it is the most wonderful, simple gift there is. There is nothing else worthy of this; there is nothing else that even comes near this.

And so that is the passion, really. You know, the passion is expressed in the words in the book (As It Is). I tried to write a book that was very simple and very to the point and that wouldn't confuse people. Actually, the strange thing is that it is not very good, that book; there is still the possibility of being confused by that book

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