Webcast Transcript 14 August 2004

> I heard about you from some friends.

Wayne> What did your friends tell you that induced you to come down here?

> They said I should come.

Wayne> Why do you think they told you that?

> I had been to your website and looked at some of the talks. When I first started meditating, the guy who taught me gave me a copy of “No Way.” I told him that you talked and there was a schedule on your website. So they went first and then told me.

Wayne> And who are they?

> Friends of mine from Los Angeles.

Wayne> So they’ve been here?

> Yes, they came last year, I think.

Wayne> How long have you been meditating?

> Seven years.

Wayne> So would you say that you’re spiritual interests are more physical and practical than they are intellectual?

> Yes. That’s kind of the way it was presented to me. You can read about it all you want, but you’re going to have to actually try it and see.

Wayne> What would you say the benefits of these seven years of meditation have been for you?

> Boy, that’s hard to assess, because there was so much going on when I started to meditate (as far as things were changing in my life) that I don’t know if I can pull apart that aspect of it and say what affect that had.

Wayne> So what did you do with it then, if after seven years you stopped the practice?

> Well, I’ve taken some time off it recently; it became something I just do. I never looked at it as a goal-oriented thing, it was just “do this.” I experimented with other things, but it’s always a thing that I did on a regular basis.

Wayne> You’re not doing it now?

> No.

Wayne> So you have a sense that you’re in a transition space?

> No. It feels like I should be sitting, but I just won’t do it. It got really difficult with the group that I sit with. We do these [meditations] for all night. I couldn’t seem to go through it. I miss it.

Wayne> So if you miss it, why do you think it is that you don’t do it?

> I wish I had the answer for that. The work I’ve been doing for the past year (painting) is a lot more physically demanding than what I used to do. I was in the internet business for a long time. I’ve become older in the past few years and it’s harder to get up in the morning and do it – a lot harder. It’s more painful. If I sit at night, which I like doing as well, I notice that I’m having a much tougher time going to sleep. I’m more awake after I sit; it wasn’t working. I feel like I really should do it.

Wayne> “Should” is a very interesting word and a very interesting feeling as well: you “should” do something that you’re not doing. It might be worth investigating the nature of that sentence, “I should be doing something other than what I am doing” because it stems from a very interesting presumption, which is that you are the source of the doing in the first place. Without that presumption, “should” makes no sense. “Should” is only applicable to the situation if you have some creative input to the situation, by creative I mean that you, as a source of action, are responsible for creating this action.

> It feels like the reverse. It feels more negative, like I’m saying no.

Wayne> Whether it’s positive or negative, it’s still doing. Whether it’s the source of the negation or the source of the assertion makes no difference. What we’re looking at is the presumption of being the source, the presumption that “I” am the one responsible for this. Now, there’s no doctrine here; we’re not saying that one thing or the other is true; we’re not about that at all. Rather, we are directing your attention to see what these assumptions you quite obviously hold are all about. I say “quite obviously” because when you articulate that you should be doing something, it only can stem out of one place - this presumption of being the author.

Go back to this presumption and look at it. See if, in fact, you are the source of the negation of the doing, see if that is true. Does the buck stop there? Or is this you – Tim - an instrument through which the “not doing” happens? Is Tim’s aging, the fact that his body reacts that way, within Tim’s control? Is that something that Tim decided to do or is it something that the universe has brought forward into the mix? If it’s a universal influence – of time and space and age, of the constitution of the organization and the affects of the environment - where does Tim’s “should” come from?

What’s making that happen is not Tim. You can see that these influences are outside of Tim’s control, yet they dictate the response - in this case, the negative response. In that seeing, perhaps comes some insight. Not necessarily, mind you, but perhaps.

[Pause]

Wayne> How is it that you find yourself here today, Linda?

> I just read Ramesh Balsekar’s “Ultimate Understanding” and “Consciousness Speaks,” and I looked on the web and stumbled across you. I saw you were speaking here and drove on down. I’m from Riverside.

Wayne> How is it that those two books found their way into your hands?

> Well, I’ve been a student of Ch’an for years and I’ve been studying with a man in Riverside. I don’t always understand what he’s talking about, and I stumbled across him. It helped me understand Ch’an a little better, but still I’m not understanding everything that I need to about this, too. But like you say, it’s very difficult to put these things into words.

Wayne> What do you find confusing or don’t understand?

> How to let go of yourself; how to be as you are to the point where you don’t pay attention to your ego any more, where you experience consciousness. That’s what I’m looking for.

Wayne> I understand what it is you’re looking for, but that’s not what I’ve got. It’s not what is at the end of that road. That is what the seeker experiences along the way – moments of not being involved with the ego, moments of presence – there’s an experience of that. But the experience of that is dependent upon it coming and going, because the coming and the going encapsulate the present into something – something identifiable, quantifiable - that’s presence.

The going of the involvement and the return of the involvement create brackets around this “what is-ness” and quantify it and make it something that can be experienced. For the sage, there is no ending bracket, there is simply the dissolution of the involvement. There is the presence that’s always been, but without a returning “me” to quantify this presence. There’s simply presence. There’s no experience of presence. You only experience something you’re separate from; you only know something you’re separate from. So, the sage is not experiencing unity in the way the seeker does – from a point of separation, unity, separation, unity. The sage IS the unity. We all are – everything is – that unity. But what is absent in the sage is that misconception which is the experience of separation. So, in the sage that dissolution of the separation is not replaced with something else.

You’re not alone in this. I mean this is the perspective of seeking. It’s the seeking nothing. I mean the very notion, even my paying lip service to the fact that what we’re seeking is nothing, gives the nothing that is being sought some conceptual substance to it for the seeker. The seeker who is seeking the nothing has some idea of what that nothing is based on one’s “spiritual experiences” – experiences of having known nothing, having been in that place of nothingness. “I want that.” The “I” that wants that is the “I” that is absent when “that” is there. So it only has meaning when the “I” comes back. The wanting of that is only in relation to that “I” that has returned. When that “I” is dead, absolutely gone, then there is no relationship possible and no knowledge possible. That is the nothingness which the sage IS, but not what the sage “knows” or experiences.

Having said all that, and one having perhaps heard and understood all of that, and maybe even accepted that totally as resonating at some kind of truth making sense, the seeking may very well still be there – that desire within the organism for unity, for peace, for connection. The seeking energy in that case is part of the organism, part of the meat. So the same way that you have a physical, biological craving for food or comfort, for sex, for love, for companionship, for air, you would have this biological, physical desire to know “it,” to experience “it.”

[Pause]

> You have the scheduled talks on the web site. Do you view the schedule as something you “should” do or “need to do”? What motivates you to sit down and perform this service?

Wayne> What moves me to sit down here is that which moves me to eat and to breathe and to sleep. The very same source, the very same energy is operative in my sitting down here as in my breathing. And there is no more of an egoic attachment to my sitting down here - in terms of claiming authorship, claiming to be the source of this action - than there is to my breathing.

> I used to live in the moment by focusing on sense perceptions and trying to stop mental images of past or future. Now it seems that during the mental image production the ego is actually less involved than when I was trying to control thought. So, living in the moment has become the exact opposite of what I used to think it was. Any comment?

Wayne> Living in the moment is independent of the activity. That is not what activity or lack of activity is. What we call “living in the moment” is the absence of involvement by this authoring “me” – the ego, or whatever you want to call it. The involvement by the ego in what is happening in the moment extends what is happening in the moment horizontally in time into the past and the future. So, it is the [false] claim by the ego that what is happening is “my” doing, that I am the source of it, which extends what is happening in the moment out of the moment.

> The teaching has sort of overtaken me in a lot of ways. It seems like all of the teachings and all of the claims about the manifest world seem absolutely correct and right to me. But when there is a discussion of what cannot be known – the Absolute – it seems to me in some way the pointers are a little off, to be pointing to a dualistic thing. The pointers refer to some thing - a self, a source. Balsekar refers to it as God, an impersonal God, but a God. He refers to some thing, and the implication is that there is some thing that is doing the controlling, and that thing controlling is what we are. I don’t know what it is, because you can’t know it. But there can still be some description of it. The teachers refer to it. They make pointers toward it. Do you understand . . . ?

Wayne> I understand what you’re saying, and this is, of course, the impossible task of the teaching. The moment that you say anything about “it,” then you have objectified “it” as something. The very structure of not only our language but of the mind itself is such that it objectifies; that is the only way it can function. The terms like God or Source have real strong physical connotations for people, so we make it more amorphous – Consciousness, Source, Unmanifest Absolute; the poetic possibilities are endless. Regardless, you’re still objectifying “it” as some thing. There is no getting around it. Other than silence. Ramana said the highest teaching is in the silence.

> The Buddhist tradition uses the heart sutra to introduce form and form as emptiness, and I almost get the feeling that there is some reality of that issue in the description of the self and the Source.

Wayne> That is a poetic couplet that is more attuned to your organism than the other ones. So go with that one. Not one of them is better than the other; all of them are equally worthless in terms of being descriptions. Their value is simply in their usefulness to a particular person.

[Pause]

> Are you saying that there is nothing that I can do to get “there”? That Consciousness will decide when I am to finally to understand - or never understand.

Wayne> That is absolutely not what I am saying. What I am saying is that you need to look for yourself and see whether what you do is sourced by you. Clearly, there are all sorts of things that you do that lead to various results. The question is who is the source of this doing?

> May I ask a question?

Wayne> Of course, what is your name?

> My name is Jean. One of the problems that I’m having right now is also about letting go and the ego. What I’ve been hearing (that is if I’m hearing it properly) is that ego has this self-perpetuating motivation. I’m having difficulty getting around that concept of, well, that the ego is tricking you now. I’m beginning to get to the point where I can’t quite understand, I’m questioning everything that I’m doing: am I taking the right path? Am I seeking the right thing? Are you in agreement that the ego has that motivation?

Wayne> I can only talk from my model, and the model I use is that what we call the ego is in fact a false claimer. The sole function of the aspect of self that we call the ego is to claim what is happening – “I” am doing it - not as a functioning element, but rather that “I” am the source of it. This is a crucial distinction between being the source of what is happening as opposed to being the instrument through which things happen.

It is no question that these forms, these body/minds that we’re identifying with as what ‘I” am, do things, all kinds of things. They think, they feel, they act - they do all those things. The genetic coding that enables these apparatus to do what they do is mind-boggling in its complexity and its strength in terms of determining what these organisms do - up to and including learning, up to and including having conditioned responses based on experiences. So, the programming of these instruments and apparatuses is dynamic, changing every instant.

There is the additional quality that is uniquely human and that arises at around the age of two-and-a-half which is a sense within the organism that “I” am separate and “I” am the source of my thoughts, feelings and actions. It is an incredible occurrence when it happens. If you have children, you’ve likely seen this take place. We call it the “terrible twos” because it’s such a disruptive, painful process for the organism to go through. This process of moving from a state of essential unity and direct functioning with the universe to separation and the feeling “I’m” in control when I clearly am not can be incredibly painful.

There is continuous evidence of the universe that you are not this incredibly powerful, central figure that your ego says you are. So there is this clash, this huge problem of reconciling this continuous message of independence and autonomy with the ongoing experience of the universe of our impotence. Most people “grow up” and adjust to this conflict within themselves in a variety of ways. In a few organisms, a questioning of this assumption arises: “Wait a minute. This doesn’t feel right.” Even if it’s not articulated in quite that way, there is a sense that this isn’t the way it seems to be. This isn’t it. There’s some other way that this holds together. That is the seed of the seeker and it expresses in a variety of ways.

One of the occurrences in the body/mind organism that happens from time to time, not necessarily connected to the seeking, is that the sense of separation, of claiming the operation of the organism as “my” egoic doing, dies. It’s gone - in the same way that it arrived: it came and now it’s gone. That occurrence is what we call enlightenment or awakening or ultimate understanding. In my lexicon, there is a very precise definition of what we’re talking about. This event of enlightenment is an event in the history of the organism in which something specific happens. That specific happening is the dissolution of that false sense of authorship. That’s precisely what happens. And it does happen.

> Can the ego stay gone?

Wayne> The “stay gone” is the enlightenment. The coming and going is what we call spiritual seeking. What’s confusing is that sometimes it’s gone for a while, so you are thinking this is it. But your thinking this is it is not it.

> Is there any other event that you know of that’s been discussed somewhere, but that’s different from the event you described where the sense of doership is permanently removed – sometimes it’s called names such as samadhi, and where they are in a kind of presumably permanent state - that connects to these pointers? I haven’t heard you actually describe any other event. You’ve talked about that these occurrences happen to people; they come and go. Is there anything that is similar to the event that you described, although it’s a different event?

Wayne> No. Samadhi is a state; it is defined by the fact that it ends. When someone talks about going into the samadhi state, it only has relevance because it ends. Anything that you can talk about is a state. Otherwise, it would be indistinguishable from a coma.

> Isn’t samadhi considered enlightenment?

Wayne> That’s the problem with these terms; there has been basically a couple of thousand years of mixed level messages. There have been people with genuine understanding who have attempted to articulate that which is impossible to articulate. Then there are others that carry that message forward, alter it and modulate it here and there, and answer questions based on their own understanding. Sometimes these are very highly respected people, but the message gets really complex and convoluted. So, the attempt here is to just kind of clear as much of the board as possible and come back to a very simple, direct definition and talk from there - with the emphasis that this definition is not the truth, either. Even these pointers are not representations of what is being pointed at; they are the pointers. The classic example is the finger pointing towards the moon. It’s not the state of the finger.

[Pause]

> I was in India in the month of July and missed you so much. I met a yogi by the Ganges. I had a talk with a swami, but he only spoke about discipline and how many hours one must meditate to reach samadhi. I find myself much more interested in how to be attentive and conscious about the moment, about the fact that no one really exists, about the fact that there is only one consciousness. Could this be a trap of mind to escape discipline?

Wayne> As I mentioned earlier in my talk, the ego (or the mind that you’re talking about that would do something to escape discipline) is ultimately a false claimer. You have to look and see if what is happening – these actions to escape meditation, if you will – are in fact the product of the organism. Are they sourced by the organism? Or is that avoidance of the discipline and the interest in the non-dual subject a product of forces outside of your egoic control? That’s the question raised by this teaching, and it does not provide you with an answer. It simply asks over and over the same question.

> Can I ask you about your experience? I’ve read the introduction to “Consciousness Speaks” where you talk a little about your relationship [with Ramesh Balsekar]. After you began studying with Balsekar, did you just constantly question, “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who is doing this?”

Wayne> No. There wasn’t any formal kind of process that I engaged in. I can tell you my own story, and it’s just my story - stories vary from person to person - it is not instructive in any way. When I met Ramesh, I essentially fell in love with him. I was drawn very much like a moth to a flame. There were all types of motivations, parts of my character that were not of the purest and the highest. They were very crude types of motivations: wanting attention, wanting recognition, wanting to connect to this incredible power and source so I could have it. These were very personal kinds of desires, not expansive, loving, generous, open kind of “wanting to give” energy. It wasn’t that kind of love; it was grasping and acquiring.

However, the energy shifted pleasantly. That was the gift of this process: a movement from this inquisitive, acquiring, getting energy to an expansive, wanting to give, be of service, see how I could contribute energy. In that energy, there is more freedom. The wanting to get it so I could have it was just spiritual materialism. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to get another hundred thousand dollars, a bigger car, a bigger house, or more spiritual potency so that the ego can control more, it’s still a form of materialism, acquisition. That’s what the ego is constantly concerned with, shoring up this state of impotence. It can in and of itself do nothing except falsely claim what happens to the organism. When you really look at the structure of what happens to the organism, it becomes absolutely clear that the ego isn’t doing a thing. If the ego really could do it, your life would look a lot different. Let’s face it.

> All is consciousness. So, absolutely nothing – no event in our life – can go against the will of consciousness, right?

Wayne> Yes. By definition, if everything is part of Consciousness, then there is nothing that is not part of Consciousness. When we talk about the “will” of Consciousness, it gets kind of messy because we are objectifying Consciousness as some thing that is exerting will, and that is a very human type of notion. Will is a power that you ascribe to people. And ascribing human properties to the Source is something that people have done for millennia. First, you objectify it as a thing; then, in order to understand it, you give it human characteristics – personality, purpose, meaning – all of those kinds of human motivations and qualities. We’re attempting to point beyond such limited kinds of definitions to the source of a bigger, broader total.

[Pause]

> Why don’t we accept the ego and separation?

Wayne> You really have to look at what we mean by accepting the ego. When I talk about acceptance, I don’t mean it as a thing that you egoically do. Acceptance is understood to happen as part of the functioning of totality, and that acceptance is total. It’s not conditional; it’s not accepting something and not the other thing. The acceptance I’m pointing at is total and universal.

> How did we all get so screwed up? It seems that everyone identifies with the ego, when in reality we are not separate from one another. How is it that billions and billions of people are so caught up and feel so separate?

Wayne> This is described in Ramesh’s phrase “the divine hypnosis.” It is really a lovely image. This hypnosis is divinely placed, meaning that it is not that “we” screwed up. It is not that we fell from grace through some mistake on our part, starting with eating the apple, to just one bad decision after another. Religions have promulgated that notion for millennia; it’s good for business. That has no place within this teaching.

The understanding is that Consciousness is everything, including the placement of this sense of separation. It clearly is part of the drama of life. Life as it is experienced, as it is known, is integrally connected to the sense of personal authorship and sense of separation. As you may well say, “If I were creating the universe, I would do it differently.” You’re going to have to make your suggestions to a power greater than me about how things might better be constructed. I’m solely concerned with looking at “what is” and identifying and pointing to the nature of “what is.”

> Does your model recognize suffering in the world? I know that you acknowledge that there is suffering. I guess what I’m saying is that in the model I’ve been studying that is the focus. Suffering exists. I’m not too familiar with your model. Is suffering pertinent in it?

Wayne> Suffering does exist, clearly, as part of the functioning of Totality. We can identify the source of the suffering as the involvement by the ego. In the absence of that, there’s no suffering. Yes, we can point to all of those things. That is very much a part of this model.

> But I guess what brought that question to my mind was the fact you said the functioning of us as separate thinking egos is part of what was divinely placed. It’s almost like the suffering is integral, to use your word, but not necessarily something that should be displaced or escaped.

Wayne> There is no “should” involved at all. The whole notion of “should” has no real significance in the context of the teaching. Yes, this is how it is. In the next instant, everything can change. Suffering is very much part of the model as it has existed historically and as it is experienced presently. What will happen in the next instant – absolutely anything is possible.

> But the suffering is a function of the ego.

Wayne> Yes. The involvement by the ego in “what is” is how suffering is produced. The ego isn’t the source of the suffering. It is the instrument through which suffering is produced. That’s the whole point. The ego is impotent. It does nothing. It will claim that it is producing the suffering, because it is in its nature to claim potency. But it’s a false claim. It has none.

> And when you remove the self, the suffering still exists, I suppose. I guess I’m not formulating it well, but in my mind, I’m trying to see if the suffering is as much a part of your model. You admit it exists and you say the ego instrument is through which it is perceived.

Wayne> No, through which it is created.

> Created.

Wayne> Yes. So if the ego is absent then there is no possibility of it being created through that organism. In that way, the sage does not suffer. The enlightenment is the end of suffering, but it’s not the end of suffering for any one. Simply, the suffering does not arise through that organism anymore. There is no longer any one egoically identified with the organism.

> So you’re saying in that way things are just happening?

Wayne> What I would say is almost exactly that, except I would take out the “just.” Things are happening. They’re happening, really happening! Check this: the ego says, “If I’m not the source of it then things are just happening.”

> The fear is, okay, you have this ego and you know you should just let go of the ego and let things happen.

Wayne> Who is going to let go of the ego and let things happen? The ego says, “I’m going to let go of ego and just let things happen and then everything is going to be great. Then I’ll have mastered this situation.”

> But in some sense, isn’t there an effort of letting go of being in control?

Wayne> There may well be some effort exerted in letting go of being in control. Who is exerting the effort?

> The ego.

Wayne> The ego does nothing. It only claims that it is exerting the effort - falsely claims. The organism exerts the effort. Whatever effort is required comes about as a result of untold forces of the universe. The ego says, “I did that.”

> But the organism is still doing its thing?

Wayne> Absolutely, until it’s dead.

> You see the thing that gets into my head that is fearful of the ego is, okay, if I didn’t do that, then what can you do if you don’t name it? Does that make sense?

Wayne> What the ego claims is, if “I’m” not doing it nothing is going to get done!

> It will never get done!

Wayne> It will never get done and everything will go to shit. Right?

> Yes.

Wayne> That is another of the observably false claims of the ego. Now, one of the ways that you can trace that and crack that is to look at your own life. Take the three biggest lessons, the three most extraordinary events that you would consider the biggest blessings that have come in your life up to now and see if you created them. Most people, when they look at them, report that they realize they didn’t even know these things existed prior to their appearance.

> They just happened, but they’re just there.

Wayne> They happened. And, again, the ego says, they “just” happened and they’re “just” there because “I” didn’t put them there. It minimizes this incredible thing that happened. They are there as part of the gift the universe has produced. It is reduced in value by the ego. “Anything I’m clearly not producing is just happening, just there.”

I assure you, you are not alone in this. You sit in this room and you hear it over and over and over and over again, the same phraseology, the same diminution of that situation. So, you can see that if the ego was in charge, if it was the controller of the situation, the three most extraordinary events in your life would not have happened. If you were really in charge, you would have short-changed yourself. But the ego says, if I’m not in charge you’re going to be screwed. In fact, you can see there that if you were in charge you would have been screwed.