Webcast Transcript 19 March 2005

Wayne> Uh, I would say that what we call intellectual understanding is part of the all. So ‘Understanding is all’ is really synonymous with ‘Consciousness is all’ or ‘God is all’. When we say the sage is a man of understanding, it is not that he has something. The unfortunate quality of language is such that you conceptualize what the sage has as a thing. The understanding that we’re talking about when we say ‘Understanding is all’, really means it – it’s all! There is nothing that is not it. So that is what the sage is of course, and the reason we call that organism the sage is because there is no longer the separation from the all. Or not even that there is no longer a separation, but there is no longer a false sense of separation.

> That’s disappointing [laughter] because I thought that was pointing to a very succinct definition, or even that it was saying that the result of enquiry is a kind of understanding that doesn’t put you over the edge, but puts you on the brink. So true enquiry would put you on that brink, and maybe you’d rest there or fall over the edge, I don’t know.

Wayne> Sure.

> That’s what I was hoping that it means – just to get to that understanding.

Wayne> No that is something else – you know, we’re saying this is the potential value of self-inquiry, that you have various insights. But as far as I’m concerned, the true value of self-inquiry is not that it brings you closer to the edge of enlightenment, but rather that it makes your life better. Ultimately, the deeper the understanding, the less fear, the less involvement, the less guilt, shame – all of those kinds of things which bring suffering, you see. So the intellectual understanding can in fact produce less suffering.

> Yeah, that’s what I was thinking might be the case.

Wayne> That which we call the ultimate understanding, or awakening or whatever, is not even worth talking about because it is literally nothing. There’s all this literature of something talking about nothing, but they’re all pointers to that absence of an experiential something. Now the absence of that experiential something is what is called apperception by Wei Wu Wei, but apperception means knowing without a knower.

> So there’s perceiving without a perceiver?

Wayne> So how can you possibly conceive of perceiving without a perceiver? The moment you think of perception, a perceiver arises in the same thought. You can’t intellectually have any concept of perceiving without a perceiver. It doesn’t make any sense – it’s non-sense, and yet that is what is known as the mystical state.

> But prior to that, through understanding, there seems to be a kind of progression – like things can fall off – not the sense of doership, like some ultimate thing, but some prior progress.

Wayne> Yes there can be, and I mean it’s not quite as widely publicized in spiritual circles, but they can also reattach sometimes. I mean when you really look at your spiritual journey objectively, you’ll see that yes, there were insights profound, maybe life-changing, and then as time went by, and other things crept in and altered that conviction; that perception, we could say that you back-slid back into more involvement through various other things. So the spiritual process tends to be much more of an ebb-and-flow, like a kind of pendulum swing into separation and unity. Now if we can hold this thought, I’m afraid the online people are experiencing some problems, so I’m going to see if I can get them back up and running…

[pause]

What sort of work do you do?

> I’m an executive assistant in biotech, in Santa Monica.

Wayne> I see, and when did you get bitten by this non-duality bug?

> It’s been several years now – I’ve read a lot of Ramana Maharshi. Initially I thought that what him and Ramesh say would be the same, but they appear to be very different. There seems to be an emphasis on the self with Ramana Maharshi, as a kind of all-encompassing something-ness, but there’s such an emphasis on nothingness with Ramesh, and of course I know that it amounts to the same, but Ramana’s approach seems a lot more positive.

Wayne> Mm-hmm… I would go so far as to say a lot of Ramesh’s ‘negative’ approach is a counterbalance to the positive approach of Ramana, so that when people come, they have now lifted the burden of Ramana’s teaching as some kind of truth. These utterances and statements that Ramana makes when talking about the self, and the characteristics of the self, and the properties of the self, and discovering the self, and reuniting with the self, and all of those ‘positive’ statements, are readily misinterpreted as descriptors of something. There were so many people who had that kind of indoctrination prior to coming to Ramesh that it had to be stripped away, and one of the ways to strip that away is to counterbalance it with a neti-neti, not-this and not-this approach.

So curiously, after Ramesh did that for 15 years or so, he then switched to a positive approach. So his latest books are much more about his form of self-inquiry, which is to pick one of the events out of your day that you feel was your doing, and to look at that and see whether it has in fact been your doing – that deconstructing of personal authorship, and you should have heard the screams of the people in the talks when he first rolled this out. They were like, “How can you say this? How can you tell people to do this after you’ve been saying that there is nothing to do and no-one to do it for all these years?” It was easy you see? Because these people now knew that there was no-one to do and nothing to do it… I think I meant nothing to do and no-one to do it [laughter].

> So how did he bridge from one statement to the next?

Wayne> Oh there’s no bridge.

> It’s just a paradox?

Wayne> Absolutely – an absolute paradox, and the paradox is implicit in all these non-dual teachings: ‘Form is nothingness. Nothingness is form.’ What could be more paradoxical than that? It is a very essential pointer.

> So what is this new positive approach? I thought he’d given that self-enquiry for a long time – looking for the doer.

Wayne> No, that’s probably less than five years old. Somewhere between 3 and 5 years – I can’t keep the chronology.

> And what else has he got to say on the positive side, as it were, that’s different from his old style?

Wayne> Oh I don’t know, I mean you can check his newer videos and stuff and see.

> Because it still doesn’t seem to be nearly as positive or advanced as say Ramana Maharshi.

Wayne> I would say that his style is his style. The context that Ramana was speaking in was of course a much more traditional Hindu Advaitic style, and so he was coming from a tradition that was well established in ways of talking about the self, and whether you change the self to Atman or Brahman or these various other terms, they’re interchangeable with the religious precepts. So there is that quality to Ramana’s teaching that calls on his cultural amenity, and that’s where he’s living; what he’s doing; where he’s speaking from. Now Ramesh was western educated, and he’s a voracious reader of scientific stuff, and so there’s a synthesis of all of this in his teaching. And of course the physicists and all these guys are all turning into mystics, because what they’re coming to at the end of the line is that that which is measuring determines that which is being measured, which is what the mystics have been saying all along – that it is the perceiver that is the perceived.

> I feel that there’s almost a temptation to go after spiritual states rather than the natural state, which is of course nothing – practically nothing.

Wayne> Exactly, so I am a big fan of going for whatever moves you – it could be sex, it could be chocolate, it could be spiritual unity – it doesn’t matter to me what it is, but if you’re passionately drawn to something, I say go for it – enjoy, live!

> Well I mean I recognize that it’s just another object, so it hardly seems worth it.

Wayne> Well you see this is exactly what I’m saying – if you look at what you just said: “It’s ‘just’ another object, so it’s hardly worth bothering with.” What I’m saying is that all the objects are the expressions of the totality. They’re not ‘just another object’, they are God incarnate you see? So if you want to know God, there it is! It’s not out there in nothingness land, as if when you get to nothingness land there will be God.

> Well I would have thought it would be better to dis-identify with all that first of all – sort of going without, radically within. That choice isn’t available to me to find God in objects.

Wayne> Okay, so it’s an interesting conviction that what you have is the notion of something we’ll call indefinable – Not-Self, Totality, Consciousness, Unity, God, Tao, whatever – as that thing worthwhile, and all of these objects are mere chimeras, mere nothings, mere trifles [‘trifle’ is really the word I’ve finally reached], that are almost beneath contempt because they’re not that. So what I’m pointing at here over and over again is that all there is, is Consciousness – all of this is Consciousness. You and him and her and me and the computer and the chair and the waterfall and the fish are Consciousness. EVERYTHING is Consciousness, and nothing is any more Consciousness than anything else. So when you say to go within, go within what? What is that which you would go within, other than Consciousness?

> Well in one pointer, there is a self, like a mirror or screen or whatever, and the shadows are playing upon the screen, and one could be more interested in the screen.

Wayne> Right, and I mean that was such a potent teaching image in Ramana’s time, because the whole notion of motion pictures was magical – I mean this is in Southern India in the 30s and 40s – this was unbelievable stuff. So this image that he used, of life playing out on the screen of Consciousness, was very powerful. The problem is that as with all such metaphors, you then objectify Consciousness as a separate thing, in relation to the images playing out upon it. So the initial thrust of the teaching is to shake loose this notion of the ultimate reality being contained within the organism – that’s the first step in this process, to begin to generate a question about this basic assumption that I’m the center of the universe; that I’m the Source. So he’d say, “The Source is much greater, and you are simply an image played out upon the screen of Totality.” but if you take that image too literally you really are then misguided, because in the next instant he’ll come forth with a totally non-dual pointer.

> But I’ve always thought that ideally, in recognizing the screen first of all, there would be unification with the images playing upon the screen, because you would then see that their only reality is the screen, and therein lies the unification – in going towards the images and uniting with them or whatever.

Wayne> Well the problem is that the image is essentially dualistic in nature, because you’ve got a projector, and you’ve got something projecting the image on the screen – it gets messy.

> Better with the mirror then, and the image that plays across the mirror has no basis absent of the mirror - that’s the basis for the non-dualism.

Wayne> Wait, the image on the mirror has no basis absent of the mirror? Or absent of that which is seen in the mirror?

> Well if there was just the mirror, and there are the images on the mirror, then that’s the basis of the unification – that there’s nothing but the screen of Consciousness and that which plays across it, and being concerned with images and not being aware of the mirror on which they play is an illusion.

Wayne> Right, but the curious thing is that you suggest that Ramesh is negative, and yet the most positive spin on the whole thing is that these objects are in fact real, meaning that they’re infused with the reality of Consciousness. The notion that they are simply empty projected images with no substance, that they’re illusion, is a very negative sort of approach. It says that all of this is nothing – nothing in a negative pejorative sense – it has no value. So it’s a matter of taste really, as to what kind of imagery appeals to you, because they’re all essentially pointing to the same basic source – the same underlying essence.

> I don’t find the idea of everything being images on the mirror necessarily negative, or suggesting that everything’s a kind of a vacuum, and therefore unsubstantial and uninteresting. It’s just a ranking. I’m sure this is not a wise thing to say here, but what is a greater reality is the mirror, and the images upon it are a secondary reality because their basis is the mirror. So there was just a ranking, and I’m not being down on that which is. I’m just saying that that which is could not exist without this other thing which has got greater reality, and is certainly more interesting. But that doesn’t mean that I’m just very dismissive to all the images – it just means they are relative to that upon which they’re based.

Wayne> You see when we rank things, we rank them because they are separate, and the essential pointer is that all of these things cannot be ranked relative to Consciousness, because they are Consciousness. So there is no greater Consciousness or lesser Consciousness. There simply is Consciousness as it expresses in its myriad forms.

> Is there such a thing as progress, do you think?

Wayne> There certainly is such a thing as progress, but it’s relative – it’s not absolute. The very notion of progress is an overlay on what is; what happens, and it is evaluated; given certain criterion, and when there is movement which is deemed positive, it is called progress.

> Well if there is the knower; the one who knows all it is not, and the one who doesn’t, that’s a difference – there’s progress away and towards that.

Wayne> There’s a difference, and you could say there’s movement away and towards that, which you will call progress or not according to your values, depending on which you think is better. What you call progress, somebody else will call retardation, because you’re going in the direction that they don’t think is good.

> Okay but say there is no argument as to the goal.

Wayne> There is always an argument as to the goal. There is no absolute value. There is always a relative position, and as long as that’s accepted there’s no problem, because you then say, “This is my position, this is it, and we’ll go forward from there.” That’s fine, but it has to be undertaken with the ultimate humility that this is simply my position, rather than “This is right”, which is where most people come from.

> If you take someone like Ramana Maharshi, being in an absolute state, he’s not troubled with relativity. And if you meet Ramesh Balsekar, he doesn’t see in him…

Wayne> How do you mean by troubled with relativity? I’m not sure what you’re imagining Ramana’s state is.

> An absolute state – something that’s transcendent of relative considerations.

Wayne> Are you talking about the body-mind apparatus named Ramana Maharshi transcending all relative considerations?

> No, I mean what him and Ramesh know is equivalent.

Wayne> But again, are you talking about what the body-mind mechanism knows?

> I don’t know. What they know is that they are not that, so I wouldn’t say that. You have to point somewhere in order to discuss, so I point in the general direction of Ramana Maharshi and say I’m talking about the knowing over there, but I don’t obviously want to locate it in the body, because…

Wayne> So if the absolute state is not located in the body – if it’s everywhere – what’s the objective?

> I don’t doubt that it is everywhere, but for example in the direction over here, where I’m at, there is a lack of awareness of the fact, whereas again, in the direction of Ramana Maharshi, there is awareness of the fact.

Wayne> There is no awareness of that fact. The awareness is relative. There is no awareness of that fact, because there is no separation in the organism named Ramana Maharshi, so what has happened is that the whole question has dissolved. The notions of separation and unity are no more. Because he’s a body-mind apparatus who’s concerned about language, he’ll talk in terms of presence and absence, but there is no knowledge of presence, because there is no-one separate to know presence. There IS presence. And that’s why the negative way of talking about it is more useful, because at least you can’t hold on to this idea that he’s got something; that he’s attained something, and that if you’re clever enough and industrious enough, you’ll acquire it as well. So that’s why the emphasis is on the absence of something to be acquired, as characteristic of the ultimate understanding. The organism named Ramana Maharshi had definite reactions to things, you know – the accounts from around the ashram of stuff he liked and stuff he didn’t like, stuff he wanted done – he wanted the kitchen to be made this way, and when his brother wanted to do it another way, there was ‘conflict’. He wanted it to be done this way – he had a desire – and so he acted to bring about his desire, so he went in the middle of the night and started painting it himself, just to piss everybody off and embarrass them, you know? So because of his nature, he didn’t yell and insist that people do it this way or that way; he was a very much a gentler spirit, and he went and got his way, another way. But he was still getting his way, the way he wanted it. So what we’re talking about is a human apparatus with preferences – liking certain things and disliking others – and that doesn’t go away. If it did, the sage would be this slab of human tofu with no qualities or characteristics of its own.

> But I don’t have a problem with that, I mean he doesn’t identify with that – there’s a program running and the body-mind’s running all over town, but so what? It’s not a problem. It’s a problem for me of course, because I identify with myself, and I’m concerned with what I’m doing and not doing. So again, there is a difference – that identification’s my problem.

Wayne> There is identification in this organism, and there is not in that one – or more precisely, there is arising sometimes of involvement in this one, and there never is in that one. That’s really a better description. So you’re like Ramana some of the time, but you want to be like Ramana all the time.

> Sure.

Wayne> That’ll probably be the next Nike ad: ‘Be like Ramana’ [laughter].

> So you admit to that difference just for the purposes of conversation. And also what I said at the beginning about understanding.

Wayne> Oh absolutely – the basis of phenomenality is observable difference. Without observable difference, there is no phenomenal manifestation of course. So we can talk about observable differences eternally.

> Well the state of mind we’re talking about isn’t particularly observable – I’m running around all over town, he’s running around all over town, he’s doing it without identification and I’m doing it with identification – it’s subjective; it’s not observable, but there is a difference…

Wayne> You cannot observe the involvement or the lack thereof – that is absolutely correct. But when we talk about them, we can talk about them as phenomenal states. So in that case, it’s observable in the most abstract sense, rather than observable by the sensory perception.

> So then, why can’t the path and progress be identified as a process of dis-identification?

Wayne> It can.

> Oh good [laughter].

Wayne> You can call it whatever you like. But you can only be certain it was a process of dis-identification if the dis-identification happens. Then you can historically, with conviction, say it was a process of dis-identification. Up until the time the dis-identification happens, you can only speculate.

[pause]

> I read somewhere that in the 60s and 70s Buddhism was the thing, and now Advaita is the thing, and so Advaita is just another wave; another interest that comes and goes. What do you think about that?

Wayne> Yeah that was me [laughter]. I was observing that there have been fashion waves through the spiritual world, and Zen was first, and there was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the Zen of Archery, the Zen of everything – that ran through 6 or 8 years or whatever. Then there was Tao – you had the Tao of Physics, the Tao of Relationships, the Tao of Power, the Tao of everything. And now you have Advaita in its various forms being expressed in popular culture by Wayne Dwyer or whoever, quoting Nisargadatta Maharaj in helping you co-create your reality [laughter]. You know, you’re teaming up with God to make shit happen, so great! So it’s a somewhat curious Advaitic teaching, but Advaita is being utilised – like the ‘Power of Now’ guy – they popularize these various things and turn them into prescriptive self-help kinds of methodologies where you can empower; you can get the power of God to get what you want, essentially. And so this is what has happened through all these different mystical teachings, that they have been popularized and brought into the mainstream as methodologies – ancient secret exotic ‘from the east’ methodologies.

> Care to predict what the next wave will be?

Wayne> No, if I knew I’d get on it! I’d be the first one out on it [laughter].

But interestingly, out of that popularization, people are then introduced to things that might never have reached them in any other way, and then they go into it more deeply, and trace it back to its roots and connect it back to the essential teaching. When I talk about how all those things are happening, they can have very ‘positive’ benefits for people in all kinds of ways.

> In terms of acquiring the power of God and all that, still Ramesh has said he’s noticed that when there’s the relaxing into the flow, life seems to go better. It’s not acquiring the power of God, but it’s more getting into the flow.

Wayne> Hmmm…

> Okay, what’s that about?

Wayne> Grace.

> I can appreciate that that can’t be engineered, but it just seems like an incredible coincidence, nonetheless. There’s a sense of doership, and there’s a sense that problems occur through resisting, so there’s at least that – there’s resistance. I’m certainly at least not in control of the good, but I’m in control of the bad, as it were.

Wayne> You say you are in control of the resistance?

> That’s my experience – I mean philosophically I don’t think that, but experientially it’s the opposite – resisting things produces an absence of flow, and I can conceive of letting that resistance go, and therefore…

Wayne> Well do it! By all means if you can do it, do it.

> Okay I take your point, if I can do it…

Wayne> Because what you are observing is that when there is less resistance, there is more flow; there is more peace. ABSOLUTELY, that is an excellent observation. Now the curious thing was the leap to saying, “I can do that.” Now I’m not here to tell you that you can’t, but I’m here to ask you, what are you waiting for?

> I take what you’re saying about how there is no doer, and if I could do it I would have done it already. I was just noticing – Ramesh said he had noticed that, which I assume is what some of these popularizers are talking about – there is no control, but there is a noticing that things can improve when something is let go of.

Wayne> Well that is absolutely true. What you’re saying is that you’ve noticed that when you stop hitting yourself with the hammer, it feels better. You go, “My God, it’s a miracle!” and I’m saying this is an observable fact for most people, that when the hammering stops, it feels better. And the seeing of that may precede the stopping of the hammering, and you go, “Aha, I saw that and the hammering stopped. Therefore, seeing it causes the hammering to stop.” That causal link is difficult to verify.

> Yes I know, because you say, well I see it now, and of course I’m not stopping the hammering, but that’s kind of why I’m here, not to get the dissolution as it were, but greater understanding.

Wayne> Well that’s the story you tell about being here and about doing the reading, that the reason that you’re doing the reading and that you’re here, is in order to get that. But really you’re here and you’re reading those things as a product of a lot of things, much more profound than such a simple rationale.

> True. But anyhow, there is that kind of negative sense of doership – by resisting, it seems there’s problems, and by not resisting; by getting into a sort of witness sense or whatever…

Wayne> No no, the sense of doership is attached to the resistance and the not resistance. The resistance happens or the nonresistance happens. Then the sense of doership comes in afterwards and says, “I resisted” or, “I let it go.”

> You quoted a bit from the Heart Sutra a while ago. Can you explain that? Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.

Wayne> No, it’s impossible.

> I’m reading a commentary on the Heart Sutra, and there’s a very poetic explanation about the interconnectedness of being – that all objects are contained in all other objects, which I understand in some way, but I’m not sure what that has to do with form and emptiness.

Wayne> The phrase we would use here is ‘Consciousness is everything; everything is Consciousness’. That’s the language we use here for that same statement.

> Thank you.