Webcast Transcript 30 August 2004

> Before realization were you like I am now; i.e. attracted to that presence and pursuing it?

Wayne > Absolutely! Once you taste that presence it’s like a drug; you go after it. It’s great. So you pursue it in accordance with your nature. If you’re a wild man, you pursue it wildly. If you’re more restrained, then perhaps you’ll pursue it in a more dignified, restrained fashion. But pursue it you will.

> Do you know if that helped or hindered the process that eventually led to realization?

Wayne > In my mind it had nothing whatsoever to do with realization. It was an independent event. Al I can say for certain is that in my case the experience of presence and the seeking for that experience of presence preceded the event of realization. But I would stop far, far short of saying that it caused it or hindered it.

> You said that the sense of intention is an aspect of the sense of authorship. Then all the other aspects of it, such as worry, fears, etcetera, must be impersonal happenings as well.

Wayne > Yes. The pointer of the teaching is that all of the occurrences that happen through the organism are ultimately impersonal, meaning they are not personally sourced or personally authored. It is important to understand that there are two aspects of personalization that arise following the occurrence or action. The first aspect is a functional personalization in which the organism relates the occurrence to its physical form. It says, “I felt that. I experienced that.” There’s a functional identification with what happens and, thus, what happens becomes personalized as “my” experience.

The second aspect of personalization is where there is a claim of authorship where the ego personalizes the action as being my egoic action or my sourced action. The egoic personalization and the functional personalization are often indistinguishable; they are intertwined and you can’t readily see where one starts and the other stops.

The ultimate understanding is that they all are impersonal happenings. They are happenings that are part of the functioning of Totality. Every thought, every action, every feeling is part of the functioning of Totality – and they are then subsequently personalized.

> Was the presence you were attracted to and pursued before realization the same presence after realization? Or was the elimination of the sense of separateness the only difference?

Wayne > It was a quantum difference, not an “only” difference! It changed the whole ballgame. My point is that before the final understanding and realization there is an experience of presence. After the realization – which is the absence of the separation - the one who would experience the presence is no more. You can only experience something if you are separate from it. Therefore, the experience of presence no longer has any meaning because there is no separation. There is only presence.

> There was a quote by Ramesh in your last newsletter about walking the dog. The understanding I had was that because there’s no thinking mind there, there is no separation for the dog.

Wayne > That is correct.

> Would it be correct to say that is in a sense a step of evolution - or that we’re a step of devolution -

Wayne > It depends on who is making the evaluation whether its evolution or devolution.

> But then is the sage closer in equivalency to an animal than to –

Wayne > It depends on who you ask! I know what you’re saying. What characterizes the organism we call the sage and what differentiates the sage organism from the baby or the animal (both of which are without a sense of personal authorship) is that the sage organism developed the sense of authorship and then it went away. It is this event, this “going away” of the sense of authorship in the organism, which defines the sage. So it is distinct in that regard from the animal or the baby.

> And still it apparently has the capacity for self-reflection. It can talk about it. I mean it has other capacities it can verbalize.

Wayne > Well, the point is that because it is human it can talk and it can conceptualize in human terms. I can’t imagine a sage organism being moved to talk about “it” in the absence of someone coming to ask about “it” because there’s nothing to talk about. In essence, it’s not talking about something. If there were a something, then you could talk about it. There is only “what is.” The only thing to talk about is in relation to the questions of the seekers. That is what we engage in during these types of gathering – when we’re talking.

> It’s like all the concepts and everything are just something to talk about.

Wayne > Yeah. In the bhakti path, we sing bhajans to pass the time. Here we talk about “what is.” There are different ways to occupy oneself during satsang. In the karma yoga path, you just do something – helping. All of this “fills the time.” It is the activity that describes the various paths. But what is truly happening is underneath all these activities, which is this presence.

So you can step outside of whatever you’re doing and say, well, this is stupid; tt’s stupid that we’re talking about this or it’s stupid that we’re singing these songs and always one lyric. It depends on whether you’re involved in it, because it may be quite entertaining and equally meaningful. It’s either subject to critical attention or its being involved in it and enjoying it. It depends on where you are in the relationship.

> It occurred to me that there is a hint that comes up occasionally that there is this thing I’ve heard you call the “cumulative effect” of intellectual understanding that could have some benefit to the organism.

Wayne > Yeah. It doesn’t have anything to do with enlightenment, though. It has to do with living; just doing.

> That’s almost like the one thread that you just removed from being absolutely ridiculous.

Wayne > But you can’t hold on to that one. The big word there is “could.” The cumulative effect could be negative as well. I could point to cases where we could arguably say that the cumulative effect has been negative, meaning that person’s life was in the can. They didn’t have a peaceful, happy life as viewed with a deep, intellectual understanding. From where I sit, I’m gratified to see when the teaching (apparently) has a positive impact on someone, and I’m saddened to see when it has a negative impact on someone.

> It would be hard to even suggest that those are direct causal relations, wouldn’t it?

Wayne > Oh, of course. Ultimately, we understand that this is the story in phenomena that we tell about something. We say, “It’s the teaching that brought about this.” Historically it seems that way, but that is part of this phenomenal way of interacting. We talk in terms of cause and effect relationships; we tell stories about things; it’s part of that drama of life. And we react accordingly to all of it as human organisms.

There is an interesting book that Ramesh asked me to take a look at called “Visual Intelligence” by Donald Hoffman. The main message is that the brain creates reality. Specifically, the book made the case of how what you see is dependent upon rules in the brain. The brain uses rules that it applies to the patterns that register in the eye. Basically, the patterns have no meaning until the brain interprets those patterns according to its rules. It doesn’t memorize each scene and then check that scene against its database because things are constantly changing. It has to evaluate and process according to rules. The book breaks down those rules of vision.

This also applies to the fabrication of our total reality: it is a process of the brain. Brains organize “what is” and human brains organize “what is” generally in human terms. So there is a “human” reality. It’s very different from a dog’s reality or dolphin’s reality, because the sense organs are different and the processing cues inside the brain are different as well. Obviously, the realities are going to be vastly different.

We’re not talking about some kind of objective reality that we all perceive. It’s that we’re assembling a similar kind of reality, a shared reality, based on the properties of the organisms. Because the organisms are essentially similar, we develop similar kinds of realities. But as we’ve discussed, if you’ve ever lived with anybody you know that two people experiencing the same thing can have different realities, different perceptions of the event. “What just happened?” What each person thinks just happened can vastly differ. Yet, because of the generalized structure of the human brain, there is a commonality of realities. When the brain does not form the “normal” structures, we end up with “crazy” people, those that we call autistic, or whatever. Their brains are processing differently from the “normal” shared reality - the reality of society.

[Pause]

Wayne > Have you ever looked at the Advaita Press logo?

> I’m sure I have.

Wayne > Here is the title page from “Acceptance of What Is.” Look at it closely.

So, how many cubes are there?

> There appear to be five.

Wayne > Okay. Now look at it a little more deeply.

> It keeps changing.

Wayne > To how many?

> I now see three.

Wayne > You can ask someone how many cubes are there and they’ll say there are three. You then ask someone else how many cubes are there and they say there are five. There can’t be three and five. Are there three or are there five?

This is similar to the types of questions that people ask such as, “Is there free will or is everything determined?” But what they really are asking is are there three cubes or are there five cubes. So, you can point out the three cubes and give the answer that there are three, or you can point to the cubes and say there are five cubes. But if someone asks, “How many cubes are there?” really, there are no cubes are there at all; it’s a flat piece of paper with some lines on it. Back in the early days, I had a t-shirt that had the logo on it and it said “It’s all in how you look at it.”

> That relates to your definition of a concept. Some people are going to see three cubes; some people are going to see five cubes. It’s also true with any concept apparently. A concept can be taken in different ways by different people. So everything you talk about is interpreted depending on how that person looks at it.

Wayne > That’s right. Everything.

> And like you’ve also pointed out, it changes from moment to moment - the hypnosis, the realization. In a second it’s forgotten and not even noticed.

Wayne > Exactly. You’re looking at it in one moment and it’s three cubes; in the next moment it’s five cubes. The exact image is seen entirely differently one second later. And you can’t see both three cubes and five cubes at the same time. It’s absolutely impossible. You can switch back and forth really quickly, but you can’t see them both at the same time; it’s either one or the other.

> Does the sage also have the same experience seeing three cubes versus five cubes?

Wayne > Of course. That’s a physical phenomenon. We can say that in terms of the sage’s perspective on reality there is an understanding that the reality is total; it embodies everything – the three and the five and the flat; it embodies it all. So, it is not a relative understanding. That’s what we point at as the understanding of the sage – the apperception in which the question dissolves entirely.