There is a lot of fake spirituality wherein a supposedly enlightened person, recognizing they do not exist, stops using the word 'I' and substitutes phrases like: 'this person', 'this body/mind mechanism', or 'we', or a referral to themselves as Zero, or in the third person, such as 'Charlie'.

I have no idea why they do this. Though one sees I and the world as illusory, non-existent, who is this person announcing his/her nothingness to? That is, why announce non-existence to a non-existent audience? There is a posture of teaching, of another to which you are teaching by eliminating self-referral. But this is a game. In "real life," that is, the dream we appear to live everyday, this kind of pretense only creates confusion.

Robert referred to himself in private as I, as did Ramana and Nisargadatta.

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Brief Bio

Edward Muzika was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended Case Western Reserve University, attaining a BA in philosophy, and Masters in Public Management. He moved to Detroit entering a doctoral program in Economics at Wayne State University. 

At this point he clearly saw the futility and emptiness of all academic and scientific investigations using the mind, and began a search for the real, truth, knowing even then inquiry into the self is the only way, and visited his first teacher, Roshi Phillip Kapleau at age 27. Previously he had been initiated in Kriya Yoga at the Self Realization Fellowship when he was a teenager and had started meditating at that age as well.

To make a long story short, he traveled to Los Angeles and studied under several Zen masters including Sasaki Roshi, Seung Sahn Soen Sa, Maezumi Roshi and Thich Tien An for several years throughout the 1970s and was ordained as a Zen monk in 1972 by Dr. Thich Tien An and Seung Sahn.

He taught Zen at five University of California Extensions as well as at the College of Buddhist Studies until the early 1980s. For 20 year he practiced meditation daily and led retreats as well as teaching Zen.

However, frustrated at not having found that for which he was seeking, which he thought was absolute knowledge, he left spiritual inquiry to become a psychologist, and received a Ph.D in clinical psychology from Sierra University in Costa Mesa, becoming a psychological assistant in 1986. He has been practicing psychology, performing evaluations, administering and interpreting testing, and writing and editing medical reports ever since.

In 1988 he met Ramesh Balsekar in Los Angeles and once again shifted back into spirituality, where soon thereafter, he met his true teacher, Robert Adams, also in Los Angeles. The story of their eight year relationship can be found on Ed’s website: http://itisnotreal.com, and his blog: http://itisnotreal.blogspot.com.

Ed also spent a lot of face to face and telephone time with Jean Dunn, one of two of Nisargadatta’s students who Maharaj told to teach. Jean gave Ed the private publication booklet “Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization” by Nisargadatta Maharaj, which was first posted on the Internet on the Itisnotreal.com website in 2005 as well as her private photograph of Maharaj during their last meeting before she died of emphasema.

It was through Robert and Jean that Ed found that which he had been seeking: complete peace, happiness and understanding who he was—Nothing!

In 1997 he traveled to Seoul Korea at the request of a Zen abbot in Los Angeles, and was appointed the First American World Teacher of Chogye Zen Buddhism. 

Ed now lives in the San Fernando Valley, a few miles from where Robert lived.