Webcast Transcript 3 May 2005

> My name is Pat.

Wayne> Hi Pat. Have we met before, Pat?

> I was here about a year ago.

Wayne> I see.

> And in December I was with Ramesh.

Wayne> How long were you in Bombay?

> Just a couple of days. I liked being in his apartment with him, rather than being with a 150 people. It was intense.

Wayne> Sure. It's much more intimate there.

> I had a really wonderful experience, being with him. I loved the teachings.

Wayne> Hm-hm. Do you live here?

> I live in Orange County. I brought my friend up here with me today - Marty.

Wayne> Hi, Marty. [pause] We must have just missed each other by a week or two. I was there from the 6th of January.

> Oh, really? Yes, I left there on the 23rd or 24th of December.

Wayne> So when you were at the flat did you get the opportunity to occupy the hot seat?

> Well, I guess I did, because there were only five or six of us there that day. And there was a man sitting next to me, and I guess his seat was more the hot seat than was mine. But I did get to dialog with him one-on-one.

Wayne> Hm-hm.

> My son had wanted me to ask him a question because my son had seen him about six months before I had been there. He was getting ready to open a restaurant, and he wanted me to ask Ramesh if he had any particular advice for someone who went into business like that. And Ramesh said, “Well, if it's in your programming to be successful at that sort of thing…” Ramesh was using the example that he, Ramesh, didn't see himself as somebody who would want to be an entrepreneur…and then he said, “Of course, whether it is successful or not, that's your destiny.” [laughter]

Wayne> Right!

> So we're still waiting to see.

Wayne> Where is his restaurant?

> In Miami Beach.

Wayne> So did you feel you had all of your questions answered when you were there in Bombay?

> Well, I don't think I really had any questions that much from the time I read his teaching. Probably Peace and Harmony has been sort of my bible of Ramesh. I really accepted the teachings as something that resonates with me but I wanted to be in Ramesh's presence and what I really found helpful that he did at the seminar is that he stayed on the basics, and it seemed important to him to keep going over the basic principles of the teachings, so I felt it made it deeper for me. I was on a kind of high for a month when I got back. I have some of his DVDs and CDs, so I listen to them. I always try to get further depth in the teachings. I have one of your books, too. I know that I have a strong intellectual acceptance of the teachings but I don't always feel like I just totally have it a hundred percent.

Wayne> Hm-hm. [pause] And your name is Marty? Have you read any of the books?

> Oh yes.

Wayne> And have you been to India as well?

> No, I was only an India wannabe! [laughs] It was not in my destiny to go this time. It was very clear to me, so I just surrendered and said, I'll get what she gets, I don't need to go to India to get it [laughs]. I find that staying in my own world is a pretty intense teaching too, at times.

Wayne> And what is your own world?

> Well, about a year ago I embarked on the world of real estate.

Wayne> As an agent?

> Uh-huh. And before that I hadn't worked for a couple of years. I found that it was easy to be enlightened when you’re not pushing the envelope in any way, when you're not opening your space to the world. And going back out and doing what I'm doing has pushed every underlying button. So it's been a really interesting teaching, getting over my sense that I have to do it, you know. Getting here today was a bit of that.

Wayne> How so?

> Well I had a client call on me, "Can you do this?", "Can you show me this?", and I had my day planned. But I thought if I don't meet this person, I'm going to miss out on this business, and my scarcity stuff starts coming out, and I-have-to-please-somebody stuff, you know, all that stuff?

Wayne> Uh-huh.

> And it was just an interesting challenge to stop and say I must honor what I have to do. And I don't usually do that.

Wayne> Hm-m.

> I intellectually know.

Wayne> What is it you know intellectually?

> I know I don't really have to do a thing. In fact I just recently began to really get that: whether I say the right words or do the right thing, it doesn't really matter, this person's either going to work with me or is not going to work with me because it's just the way it's got to be, and it isn't my saying anything or doing anything at the right time and in the right place. You know how you think, "Well, if I had only said this," or "If I had only been available there." You know?

Wayne> Uh-huh.

> I've begun to gradually let go now. It's been a year now and this first year has been extremely stressful because I made it that way.

Wayne> Hm. Why did you do that?

> Good question isn't it? You know, it was automatic.

Wayne> Well, if it's automatic what part of you was doing it, then?

> Yeah. What part of me was doing it?

Wayne> How did the automatic happen then, and then the choosing happen now? The choosing not to be automatic, to break out of the comfort zone, etc? That's an interesting area for investigation.

> You know, when I've heard that before, "Who is doing it?" I go, "You know, there's only one me."

Wayne> And when you say there's one me …

> I kinda go into "I can't quite figure that out, and do I really have to figure it out?"

Wayne> I'm not gonna make you do anything [laughs].

> I told myself, "Don't intellectualize this to death," you know?

Wayne> That's great, except if you have an intellectual idea that "I was responsible for.."

> Yeah.

Wayne> "..for my previous situation and then I was responsible for the change," that's an idea! That's an intellectual precept, that "I was responsible." So the counter to that is to look at this intellectual idea - that I was responsible for it – and to see if it's true. Now, interestingly, what often happens is when you start to get too close to the answer to that you shut down. You go, "Oh, I don't know, that's all too intellectual, I can't figure out that stuff, there's no answer to that." And the process, the insight, is deflected, you see?

> OK, I'll go there with you.

Wayne> So what I'm saying is that after you've looked, then you can draw the conclusion, "This was an intellectual answer," "That was an intellectual exercise," and discard it afterwards. But to describe it before the fact, and to say, "That was just intellectual, and I'm more of an intuitive kind of person," and thus ignore that area of investigation, you might be walking away from an area of tremendous potential insight. That's all I'm saying. So it's an area to look at: how is it that your involvement was, as you say, automatic then, and at that time you "chose" to get involved and "be crazy," and then a year later have a different perspective. How is it that those two things happened? That's really where we're looking. What is the source of both occurrences? Both the involvement and the release from the involvement.

> At the time when the craziness was going on it seemed as though there was no choice. It just seemed to be what was going on. And at this point… it's not like I am choosing, because… it's what's happening [laughs].

Wayne> Well, choosing is happening.

> Awareness is saying, "You don't have to do that, that doesn't have to be that way."

Wayne> OK. By the same argument, then, awareness was saying it did have to be that way in the year before; that you had to "choose" at that point to be crazy and do all of those things. So with that understanding, then, the sense that "I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have been so crazy," no longer has any strength.

> Oh, absolutely, yes. You're right… I was just very grateful when it was over.

Wayne> Sure, one is always grateful when the pain stops. One is grateful when the sickness is over and the health returns, be it physical or emotional or whatever. And there is a big difference between pride and gratitude.

> Oh yeah, I don't take any credit for that.

Wayne> If you don't take any credit for it then there is also no place to take any blame for it either.

> Sure.

[pause]

Wayne> [reading e-mail message] Elaine asks, "Is it better being in the presence of the guru than reading spiritual books at home?" I would imagine that depends on both the guru and the book! [laughter]

[long pause]

> I have a question: it seems so much of the time that there are two consciousnesses living within me, the ego-self and the aware, but how do you explain the ego? Is that… I'm not sure even how to ask the question…it seems there are two of me, because there is the fearful, getting into the limiting, negative thoughts, and then there is the aware, knowing that it's really different. You know what I mean?

Wayne> Yes, I know what you mean. Wouldn't you say that those are alternating states of this organism, this body-mind organism named Marty? Marty, this organism, has varying states of being and they can be classified into two big areas: a state of the unitive consciousness in which there is this presence, and the organism will then shift into a state of involvement in separation. But they are alternating states of consciousness or being that happen through this body-mind apparatus named Marty, OK? And that is very much the general human condition, that there are alternating states of involvement and unity.

> And so it seems that there are two me's.

Wayne> That is certainly one way of characterizing that experience: the good me and the bad me, or the spiritual me and the carnal me, but I prefer to emphasize the fact that they are conditions of the organism, and when we focus on the organism, then we can say, "How does this notion of 'me' relate to the organism?" You're saying, "I am this thing. I am Marty, who is seeing through this [indicates eyes and body] and that Marty-ness is associated with the body-mind apparatus, OK? Now, when we look more deeply into it, we see that what we call Marty is a combination of the physical qualities – her genetics, basically – and the subsequent environmental influences – her conditioning. So you have those things combining to form "Marty," that which calls herself "Marty." But what are these things? What is this genetically-based instrument that is the repository of these memories and these experiences and this conditioning? What is it really? What was it 100 years ago? Just consciousness!

> Not "just" consciousness! [laughter]

Wayne> It is consciousness, it is very much consciousness. So this thing called Marty is an aspect of that consciousness, of that totality. What makes this so interesting is that there is that quality within this aspect of consciousness that is the sense of separation, and as we look into this sense of separation more deeply we see that there are actually two parts. There is the experiential sense of separation, which is a function of the senses. The senses experience things as discrete objects, the senses record and make a distinction between the glass and the chair as separate objects. Now that's a function of the nature of the senses, of the body, of the mind, as it relates to the apparatus of the eye, and how that system works. So it will produce an image on the retina, which is then translated by the brain, into? an object The object appears discrete and separate from that which is perceiving, and so the structure of the perceiving apparatus is one of separation - that "it" is separate from "that." So that is a functional separation. It is a separation that is essential for the functioning of the universe. But there is another sense of separation which is more subtle, but also more critical to what we're talking about, and that is the sense of separation as the author. The sense that I, as this separate being, am not simply a separate object, but am the source of what the object does. That's where it gets really interesting because when you look at it, it is patently not true; the moment you investigate it, it vaporizes. That idea is untenable. It will not hold up under the slightest investigation, yet it persists, which is why Ramesh termed it the "divine hypnosis," because, like a hypnotic suggestion, it appears real. So the sense of authorship persists, the sense of "I shouldn't have done what I did a year ago" persists even with the knowledge that it was consciousness that was doing everything! And the wonderful thing about the phrase "divine hypnosis" is that it isn't "self-hypnosis." It isn't something that you did. It is in fact part of the totality of being that this "misperception" happens. It is integral to what is in this moment. In the next moment every one may "wake up" and there is no longer that hypnotic suggestion in anybody, and things will be different, but in this moment that is the nature of things. Most human organisms have that sense of personal authorship.

> Even when you think you're not doing it, you're doing it. It's so subtle that by somehow thinking you're choosing a wiser course than you did before, you're still under hypnosis. I appreciate the way you use the word "author" because that helps me get it more. It is so subtle. And I think sometimes there is a yearning on my part to just not have that sense of authorship, not fall into that. But I know, reading the teachings, that that is not up to me; I'm not going to author that either. But even – and this is something you and I talked about when I was here a year ago – that even having a small intellectual understanding that I'm not the author has helped me tremendously because I have a lifetime of beating myself up for "I shouldn't have done this" and "I shouldn't have done that" and this could extend to other people as well, that "They shouldn't have done this," and "They shouldn't have done that."

Wayne> It frequently does, actually. [laughter]

> Yes, it's usually one or the other! But I appreciate you bringing up the "divine hypnosis." I guess in Hindu they would call it Lila.

Wayne> Well the Lila translates as "the play," and I understand Lila to be the manifest universe, which is the play of consciousness, where consciousness has populated the stage of the universe, and various actions and characters take place within it. So this is the Lila, the whole thing. The sense that I am the source is the "divine hypnosis," that I as "this" am the author, the fact that that is there despite your intellectual conviction that it is otherwise. That having examined it and having concluded, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you couldn't possibly be the author of your actions. If you were you would author it totally better! You'd be nice all the time, you'd be kind, loving and generous, you'd heal whoever came to you; if you were the author, think of all the things you could do! You wouldn't be limited in any way. But there are "limitations" imposed by the universe. And if there are "limitations" imposed by the universe on things, then the universe dictates whether you live or die, or whether a blood clot forms somewhere and travels to your brain and kills you in the next heart beat. You have no control over that.

> So it's all just happening?

Wayne> Not "just" happening! It's happening! [pounding chair] It is happening passionately! [laughter] It is happening dramatically, you see.

> Thank you for taking the "just" out.

Wayne> You're not alone in that. Virtually everyone, when they talk about a non-egoic occurrence, says it's just happening, it's just taking place, it's just going on, it's just consciousness. It is a curious twist to this "divine hypnosis" that anything which is not my doing is "just happening!" [laughter]

[long pause]

> I didn't feel that I was offering anything that wouldn't be complete freedom. [not clearly audible]

Wayne> That's one of the terms they call it. But it's the same freedom that you experienced today in having walked around all day without a stone in your shoe. You've been free from having a stone in your shoe all day. What's that been like? What has your experience been of having been free from the intrusion of a stone in your shoe?

> Well, I guess I didn't realize that I didn't have a stone in my shoe. I don't usually have a stone in my shoe, so I didn't feel free from having a stone in my shoe.

Wayne> Right. So you don't experience the absence of something. You may call it freedom, and if you're in a room full of people who are walking around with stones in their shoes your state, relative to theirs, is one of freedom, and they might well ask you, "You're free of the stone. Tell us about your day. Tell us what it's like to be free of the stone." And you are free of the stone, you see, but you don't have an experience of the absence of something. You can only have an experience of the presence of something. Now, the moment that is removed, you have a stone, and then it's removed, there is the presence of the absence, in that moment when the stone was there, and it's no longer there, you still have the presence of the absence, but that is a short-term phenomenon. Then you simply have the absence, and there is no experience of the absence. So we call it freedom, we call it liberation, but there is no experience of it because it's an absence rather than a presence.

> When I was with Ramesh, I had a day of a presence of the absence.

Wayne> That is good. That is so good!

> I tried to hold onto it because it was so fleeting. But I know it happened. One of the other students there called it a "taste."

Wayne> Ramesh calls it a "free sample."

> Yes, so I did have a moment of the presence of the absence.

Wayne> Yes, but that is not the sage's state. This is crucial to understand. The absence is the state of the sage, but the spiritual experience, which is of the presence of the absence, is only available to seekers. That is the relative, experiential taste that the seeker gets, but it should not be confused with the state of the sage, which is an absence, not a presence. [long pause]

> One of the things I have found myself dealing with on this journey is my ingrained conditioning that God wants me to suffer.

Wayne> God does want you to suffer. If you're suffering it's not your doing. [laughs]

> I guess where I'm going with this is that having that thought is part of the destiny of this body-mind organism.

Wayne> Whatever thought happens is clearly part of the destiny of the organism. Anything that happens is part of your destiny, part of your history, part of your story, whatever you want to call it.

> I felt that old belief had gone away and so I really began to immerse myself in the teaching and just accept what is happening is supposed to be happening and you might as well just surrender, and up came, " What if god wants you to suffer?"

Wayne> If God wants you to suffer you're going to suffer! If God wants you to wake up then you will wake up. If God wants you to shit in your pants you're gonna shit in your pants. Whatever happens in this moment you could say is God's will.

> Hmm.

Wayne> And that actually extends to everything: the understanding that it's all the functioning of God or consciousness.

> That's what I've had to apply to this thought coming up.

Wayne> I was kind of joking with you before, but normally the idea that was inculcated in one as a child is that God wants you to suffer as a means for your… something to purify you, whatever the explanation is, and it is your job to accept, it is your job to do… whatever the teaching is. There is a dichotomy between God's will and yours, and that is not present in this teaching at all. The understanding is that everything is the functioning of God. Good, bad, or indifferent, it is all part of the same functioning.

> So the thought is part of the functioning.

Wayne> Everything. There is nothing that is not part of the functioning. Everything that is. Everything. Without exception.

> I know what happens to me. There is a part of me that is not accepting that aspect of myself - that all my thoughts and my neuroses are God's consciousness operating through me.

Wayne> And the non-accepting of that is also God's will, is also part of the same functioning of totality. So when there is acceptance, it's great, because there is peace. You say, " I want that." Well, who doesn't? And when there is non-acceptance, there is suffering. I don't like that, I don’t want that, I want more acceptance. So you begin associate that which is desirable with God and that which is not desirable with "me," with man. It's going back to the basic split between the spiritual or the divine, and the carnal or the material. The pointer of this teaching always goes past that to the unity of both, that the spiritual and material are twin aspects of the same thing.

> That's right, because I think there is a non-acceptance: "How can I change this aspect of myself? Maybe I'll have some therapy or an alternative healing session." That's all part of it too.

Wayne> Exactly. Whether you go to the therapy session or the alternative healing session, or whatever it is you go to is part of the same functioning, and the outcome of that is part of the same functioning. If you go to a crap therapist who screws you up so badly that you kill yourself – it happens all the time – there are some real nut-cases out there who get into people's lives and are really screwing them up. And if you go to a yoga class where you overdo it, and rather than heal your body you injure yourself, you tear something and really screw yourself up - whether it's beneficial or hurtful is also not in your hands.

> We're not gonna have anything to talk about any more!

Wayne> Would you like to make a bet on that? [laughter] It's always useful when talking about these matters, as a form of satsang. It may well serve to remind each other of, and to point back for each other, to the essential non-dual quality, you see?

> That's a question I was going to ask you. How could we support each other in this teaching?

Wayne> It's not a question of how. I'm just pointing out that that may happen. It may happen that you misunderstand what you've heard and you reinforce each other in a really sick idea! There is no way of knowing what the outcome is going to be.

> And that would happen as it happens as well?

Wayne> Of course.

> In one of Ramesh's videos he says, "No one is doing anything."

Wayne> [nods] And that's why I prefer, for myself, when I talk, to use the term "author;" so that no one is "authoring" anything, and that the notion of authorship is false. No one is ever authoring anything, never has. Obviously, people are doing all kinds of things. Doing is life. Doing happens. But it is this question of authorship that is crucial. What is the source of the doing?

> And our culture so much supports the idea that this person is doing this and they're not doing that.

Wayne> But that's practical, you see. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with authorship.

> But don't you feel when we say, "This person is great because they did this," "That this person is bad because they did that," – we're just surrounded by that -

Wayne> Of course we are, but that is the nature of the matter, and even with the understanding – I mean Ramesh will sit and yell at the T. V. When the news comes on he's yelling, "Bloody idiots, these politicians!", and he gets all excited about it.

> He doesn't sit there and say no one is doing it! [laughter]

Wayne> Yes, because once the understanding is there, the whole issue of should and shouldn't isn't there. It's not a matter of what he should and shouldn't have done, it is purely a correct response of the organism in accordance with its conditioning of what it likes and what it doesn't like. So he's an Indian and he doesn't like the Pakistani stuff, what they are doing, right? And because he's got his perspective he doesn't like what this general is doing or what that politician is doing. So he'll say "He's an idiot, he's a bloody fool!", with great passion and excitement. So he's very much alive in that regard. So it's really important to realize that this teaching does not take the color out of life, it doesn't take away the vibrancy of differences. It doesn't remove personal preference. It removes involvement in that preference. The preference is a function of "me," the conditioning: I like chocolate or I don't like chocolate. It's a preference that's part of the conditioning of the organism. It's the involvement - "I shouldn't like what I like," or " I should like something else," which is the sense of personal authorship, which is completely absent in the sage. So what you get is the direct response by the organism in the moment without any secondary involvement by the egoic me, the authoring me. So you look at the behavior of the sage and you say, "That isn't sage-like behavior, that's egoic behavior." There is no egoic behavior. There is only egoic involvement in behavior. Behavior is driven by the conditioning of the organism, by what its properties are, and that those things happen independent of the sense of personal authorship, which comes afterwards and then claims, becomes involved, in what happened.

> I know in one of his books he talks about being a "super-enjoyer." If you had the understanding and you went out and ate a chocolate ice cream cone because this organism loves chocolate ice cream cones, the person of understanding would just super-enjoy that ice cream cone rather than the egoic me which might say I shouldn't have eaten that, that's bad for my weight, it's bad for my heart, or I should eat that because I deserve it, I've had a really rough day or something like that. Those are the ego things that come in, whereas the person of understanding would just enjoy it.

Wayne> He "just" would! [laughter]

[long pause]

> Could we talk about destiny?

Wayne> Sure, we can talk about whatever you like.

> I was wondering if you could maybe review the teachings regarding destiny with me?

Wayne> Well, destiny is simply a way of talking about what is. When we talk about what is, we have to talk about the way it is organized, to make sense of it. One of the ways in which the totality is talked about is in terms of destiny. It's an overlay. It's an intellectual, organizational overlay on top of the totality of what is. Another way [to talk about it], which is equally valid, is free will. And, of course people who subscribe to one overlay have endless arguments with people who subscribe to the other overlay. There is, ultimately, neither destiny nor free will. There is only what is.

> And I'm programmed to subscribe to one overlay rather than the other?

Wayne> And you will. As a conditioned organism you will order the what-isness somehow, because you must. You see, the what-isness is too vast to take in without a framework. The framework allows you to pick out a couple of aspects of the what-isness and cobble them together into a reality. If you had to take in the entire what-isness your organism would fry – there is too much what-isness to possibly be processed by such a finite apparatus as the brain. So what the brain does is it imposes upon the what-isness a box and says, okay, within this box we will make sense of things by linking this event with this event – cause and effect – and relate these various objects together. That's called knowledge, you see. And you have, within this framework, a world view, and it is by definition a human one, first of all, because it is constrained by the limitations of the human brain and the human senses that define the nature of what is in the human box. And one of the things that's part of the human box of such questions as free will and destiny, the relationship between that which we like and that which we don't like, good and evil – these kinds of relationships are what are imposed by either the individual being or the collective human consciousness, the collective human experience, which is our history, our science, our philosophy, all of these are accumulations of thoughts and investigations put together by humans. So they have that human-centric kind of perspective. But one thing Ramesh said a very early on is that the universe is not human-hearted, so that this particular box of human perspective is minuscule in terms of the vastness of what is, and it's not central, you see? We like to think the human perspective is at the very heart of the manifest universe; a difficult proposition to support. But the most cursory investigation into astronomy will reveal that this planet is a little speck of dust in a backwater part of the universe, it's not central to the whole goddamn universe, it's way off to the side! So aren't you glad you asked about destiny? [laughter]

> Well, I like the concept that you either subscribe to free will or destiny… I mean I have discussions with other people about this. I'm a yoga instructor and the teachers who teach in that particular tradition that I teach are very much part of a belief in free will, that you can alter your destiny by practice, spiritual practice, and I feel that I've had new conditioning in my life on that and other non-dual traditions that has helped me to embrace destiny more.

Wayne> Well, you see, each tradition has its strengths and weaknesses and the arguments are, of course, endless and ongoing. And they have been ongoing for millennia. So if you find it entertaining to engage in that with people, why not? It's fun. But understand that your and Ramesh's teaching, and whatever you hear, is not the truth. It isn't that you have the true way of describing the universe as destiny and predestination or whatever, and that the people who believe in free will and the randomness of events are mistaken. Neither of them is true. They are simply different ways of organizing what is. You may find, and what you will see for yourself is, and what many people who get more deeply into the teaching find, is that as this way of understanding deepens it really brings more peace. That, inevitably, when you are reliant on yourself to bring about success in your life you're always a step behind. You may capture it for a second but then it eludes you again, because what you get isn't it. So you're always in a state of chasing. Now the benefit, of course, of that is that you can measure progress. You can always say I haven't got it yet but I'm getting better. So I'm better than that guy, I'm certainly better than you, therefore I'm OK! [ laughter] But when you go to sleep at night and you don't have anybody else around there is this quality within yourself of "I'm not making it, I'm not good enough, I haven't gotten there yet," you see, and it is insidious. So the peace that comes with the acceptance of everything being an aspect of the whole is much more subtle, much more elusive, but it is there, and it is a peace that, when it comes, does surpass all understanding.

> Thank you.

[pause]

Wayne> So I am off for a month to visit Mother Russia.

> Is this your first visit there?

Wayne> No, it's my second. I was there last year.

> How are the teachings being accepted there?

Wayne> Very beautifully and very warmly, graciously, actually. The groups are really thirsty for the teachings.

> Wonderful. How did they come to be there?

Wayne> Well, Russia is connected to the rest of the world, the Internet, books and that, and the thirst is there, especially with the Internet, you can get it anywhere. From a little village in India or in China you can connect to the information, and increasingly people who have language skills are translating, so there are now books and web pages available on everything in virtually every language, so the amount of information is just staggering - and so it's happening. [ pause] See you tomorrow.

> Thanks.