December 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello my loves,

If you open your eyes and look around, you can't help but marvel. Life in all its amazing diversity there to behold. Like the woman who used to sit on the sidewalk at the corner of Ramesh's block in Bombay selling bananas. Amidst the filth and billowing clouds of exhaust she sat, immaculately groomed and seemingly serene, her round basket of bananas set out before her.

See the patterns the shadows make on the wall? Listen to the sound of the small plane overhead. Someone is up there looking down on where you are and to them it is but a speck, if they notice at all. A bird jumps from the fence to the ground to eat a worm and another bird darts in to steal the meal. Which one eats it is probably of little consequence to the worm, and I certainly have no preference, but the birds seem to care. The wind comes up and the bamboo clacks together in primal music. My stomach rumbles. Somewhere someone has just won the lottery and their financial problems are over, soon to be replaced with a whole set of new ones. My excited daughter calls to tell me she is pregnant again. An email comes announcing the funeral for an old friend. A pretty girl passes and my gaze follows her. Close your eyes and watch the show that plays out on the inside of your eyelids. Smell your fingers and remember where they have been.

Anywhere your attention moves there is something to be discovered. You need only lift your gaze from the demands of your 'self' to realize the miracle that is life and living.

May it find you now.

With love,
Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

Even if the wave on an expanse of water were endowed with sentience, its presence as a wave would still be a matter in which it had no choice. Suppose a wave wished to be a super wave, or considered its presence as a wave to be a bondage and wished to be freed of his bondage. Stupid? Man wanting to be a superman – or wanting freedom from bondage - is just as stupid.

November 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello my loves,

Our only obligation in life is to live it. The word obligation within the Living Teaching simply means we have to do it. We have no choice in the matter. We must live because we are the life force itself, incarnated as a particular name and form.

The most common question that arises with this is, "how do I live my life knowing I am not the author of my thoughts, feelings and actions?"

The fact that the question arises indicates that the comprehension of "I am not the author" is at the intellectual level. A good start certainly, but an indicator that there is a deepening yet to come.

As the understanding deepens there comes the intuitive recognition that we are being lived. Then the question of "how do I live" fades into the mist. It is not replaced with an answer. It is simply gone.

Spontaneous living is always happening but it is only experienced as such in the absence of the false sense of authorship (FSA). When the FSA is present it brings with it the weighty burden of personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is a much glorified concept that everyone knows from their own experience can only sporadically be observed. Still it persists as an exalted goal. The notion of personal responsibility is the most common obstacle to acceptance of the Living Teaching. It is the stronghold of the FSA. Yet as we are privileged to witness again and again, cracks can and do form in the foundations of the most formidable citadels. As the cracks widen and spread they can bring down the entire structure and when the dust settles the simple Truth is revealed.

May it find you now.

With love,
Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

Who seeks enlightenment? The very seeking implies a seeker and there is truly no such thing. All there is, is a body-mind mechanism as part of the totality of manifestation. What is present, here and now, everywhere all the time ever since the world came into existence, is consciousness. All there is, all there has ever been, all there ever will be is consciousness. The simple fact is that so long as it is a 'me' illusion or concept seeking enlightenment, the illusory me can never achieve enlightenment because enlightenment is not an object to be achieved by any 'me' subject. With the apperception of this fact, the 'me' concept with its split-mind disappears, and what remains is enlightenment, that which has always been there – unaware of itself as subjective noumenality and aware of its presence in phenomenality which is its objective expression.

October 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello my loves,

Years ago there was a very popular self-help book entitled Women Who Love Too Much. I never read the book but the title continues to haunt me. Is it actually possible to love too much? I think not. It is certainly possible to expect too much. It is possible to enter into a transactional relationship and get the short end of the deal. It is possible to be cheated and disappointed when the other person fails to deliver their end of the bargain. But that is not my vision of Love.

Love to me is totally selfless and nontransactional. Love like this is known in the giving rather than the getting. Giving everything.

Including your self. It is impossible to give too much in such a relationship. It is impossible to be cheated when you expect nothing in return. To receive such Love is to be totally accepted as you are.

To give such love is to know Peace.

With love,
Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

The ignorant man involves himself with his worldly activities all the time, and takes some time off for meditation or prayers because he feels he must; the man of understanding regards the manifested world as merely the objective expression of his only subjective true nature, and is therefore constantly in meditation even as he carries on with his normal worldly activities.

September 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello my loves,

It has been two years now since Ramesh left this realm. I think of him often. His spirit infuses me like the air I breathe. Apart and of me at the same time. Thinking of him makes me smile. Sometimes its a sad smile as I realize that I can't pick up the phone and talk to him...not that either one of us were sparkling conversationalists on the phone...but the sound of his voice and knowing that he was sitting in his chair in his bedroom brought me comfort and pleasure. Usually when I think of him it is with a smile of wonder and delight as I feel his presence within me.

But what I feel most often is Gratitude. I am so grateful for the gift that Ramesh is in my life. To meet and know one's Guru is the greatest of miracles. For me it has been twenty-four years and ten days since our first meeting. My biggest smile is reserved for the memory of that day and the recognition that walking into that room I had no clue that my life was about to be radically transformed in ways I couldn't possibly imagine. Such is the exquisite beauty of life and living...like licking honey off a thorn.

I know many of you reading this were also deeply affected by Ramesh and his Teaching. I am sure you will join me today in celebrating the life of this extraordinary Being.

With love,
Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

Do not ask someone if he is enlightened. Ask him instead, if there is the deepest possible understanding of what life is all about, whether there is the willing and contented acceptance of all that life might bring; whether death is accepted as the mere natural end of the process of life – the interrelated opposite of what is called “birth”; whether the individuals with neither independent existence nor volition appear to be merely characters in the dream that this life presents like a great dream. If the answer is an unqualified and immediate 'yes', then there has been enlightenment.

Do not ask someone if he is enlightened. Ask instead, whether there is the deepest understanding, without any reservation at all, that the individual as such has neither any autonomous existence as a separate entity nor any independence of choice and action as volition, that life is indeed a great dream in which events merely happen, with the individuals as mere characters without any control over the dream; and that therefore, the only thing “to do” is to witness every moment as what-is without the slightest desire to change anything. If the answer is a ringing 'yes', there has been enlightenment.

August 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello my loves,

Where I often see people getting stuck in the Teaching is in the relationship between the Absolute and the relative. Obviously in daily life we have the relative, the dualistic in which there are polaric opposites...me and you, truth and falsehood, sickness and heath, good and bad. Yet what all the spiritual teachings are pointing at is Oneness beyond the dualistic. How often have you heard, "I am not somebody, I am That!" When taken from an imagined non-dual perspective the inevitable question is, “How can there be relative if its all One?”

That there can experientally be the appearance of the many without destroying the Wholeness is the incredible, beautiful paradox that is implicit in being alive.

Within dualistic experience there is the appearance of separation, an appearance of this and that even though inherently it is all One. Oneness can best be understood as the container for the dualistic. The polaric opposites are the building blocks that make up life. That is why I like the image of the Ocean (Source, God, Stillness, Oneness) and the waves (you, me, stars, quarks) so much. Within this image both exist simultaneously. There are billions of unique waves and yet all a wave is, is Ocean. A wave is nothing more and nothing less than an energetic movement of Ocean. Despite its appearance, a wave isn’t a moving packet of water. What we call a wave is simply a movement of energy through the Ocean. It doesn’t have any identifiable substance other than as a momentary shape of Ocean. So does a wave actually exist?

I think Ramana Maharshi answered it best, "It is as real as You are."

With love,
Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

The split with universality is itself only a misconception, and all that is necessary for the supposed split with universality to be healed is a readjustment to the state of universality which is always present as our normal, permanent, real nature. The conscious experience of this state is denied us only because of the conceptual existence of a phantom experiencer. Until this phantom is exorcised, we cannot experience the state of universality and this phantom can be exorcised only by being exposed, not by any 'doing' by the phantom itself!

July 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello my loves,

I think it bears repeating that the Living Teaching is about living. Sometimes in the thrill and excitement of chasing Ultimate Understanding or Silent, Still Spaciousness it is possible to lose sight of the miracles that abound all around us. Quite simply, life is amazing! But please don't take my word for this or ask me to elaborate on which things are so fantastic. Far better that you look for yourself. With Grace these words will trigger something in you. Perhaps you will pause from reading this long enough to take a look around you or in you. Perhaps you will catch a glimpse of the underlying unity of all things that is made manifest in everything. What could be more miraculous?

I can think of nothing more wondrous than walking the earth comfortable inside your own skin. This Gift accompanies the direct seeing of who and what you truly are.

May it find you now!

With love,
Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

Perfect Understanding is the floodlight vision of the whole universe in this functioning, exhibiting it as a harmony of intricate patterns. The spotlight vision of the split-mind of the illusory individual entity sees only each pattern by itself, section by section, and concludes that the universe is a mass of conflict. It is the limited spotlight vision which would give a sense of horror to the normal universal phenomenon of the species in the biological world being the food of another. The broad perspective - the floodlight vision of the Perfect Understanding - would see things as they are: that birth and death are really nothing but the integration and disintegration, the appearance and the subsequent disappearance of the phenomenal objects in manifestation.

1989

June 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello my loves,

If you were fortunate enough to have visited Ramesh in Mumbai then you will likely have had the pleasure to meet his brother Chaitan. Chaitan shared Ramesh's lifelong interest in Advaita and the two would often visit the Talks of Nisargadatta Maharaj together. I recently received a new book entitled Dream of Consciousness written by Chaitan and was delighted by its simplicity and clarity. It is truly a lovely book. It presents the often difficult Teachings of Ramana, Nisargadatta and Ramesh in a light and accessible way. I recommend it highly.

I am about to depart on my favorite trip of the year. This weekend I will visit with old friends and new in the lovely city of Barcelona before heading east to Moscow and Kiev. I am blessed beyond measure to have the opportunity to share this magnificent Teaching with so many wonderful people.

The trip culminates with a week long gathering on the island of Ibiza during which we meet daily for Talks, a swim and a superb lunch. It is a great pleasure for me to spend a week with the same group of people and watch the Silence grow and the Seeing deepen.

The beauty of the Living Teaching is that it embraces the entirety of life and living. It is not afraid of pleasure nor does it make a virtue of austerity and renunciation. All is understood to be a manifestation of the Life Source. So enjoy if you can and suffer if you must but realize that ALL is playing out in perfect harmony.

With love,
Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

For those who are intensely and deeply affected by the experiential touch with universality there occurs a tremendous transformation in their attitude to life. Spontaneity in life, their own experience with the eternal present moment when touched by universality, and the resulting sense of fulfillment - all those bring about an astonishing sense of freedom from the confining feeling of individual volition and responsibility. It is not that there is a sense of irresponsibility, but that the faith in the ultimate responsibility and efficiency of the Supreme Identity relieves the sense of personal responsibility based on the sense of personal doership: all that the personal, individual organism can do is to do its best - it simply cannot be responsible for the results.

May 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello my loves,

Personal power is the belief that 'I' have the power to make things happen. It is the sense that 'I' control myself and my environment. It stems from the observation that the more power you have, the more control you can exert. The difficulty with this premise is that it continuously proves to be false. The fact is that the power is never yours. It flows through you and controls you. Deep investigation may even reveal that this power not only flows through you and controls you but it IS you.

One of the surprising gifts of the Living Teaching is to discover your own personal powerlessness. Personal powerlessness may not seem like a gift on the surface, in fact if you google the term 'powerlessness' you will quickly see that the world-at-large considers powerlessness to be a condition requiring treatment. It is another of the paradoxes of the Teaching that personal strength is to be discovered in the realization of your own personal powerlessness. Personal strength comes from the relief of the burden of trying to exert power and control that is not yours to begin with. Suddenly you find yourself with all the extra energy that was formerly being poured into the fruitless attempt to make things go your way.

As with all aspects of the Living Teaching, what I am pointing to has to be seen to be believed. Consider what I am saying and test it for yourself. Look within to discover the Truth that is as close to you as your breath.

May it find you now.

With love,
Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

The sense of unity with all and everything is not a nebulous state of mind, a sort of trance, in which all form and distinction is abolished, as if man and the universe merged into a luminous mist of pale mauve. Just as process and form, energy and matter, myself and experience, are names for – and way of looking at – the same thing, similarly one and many, unity and multiplicity, identity and difference, are not mutually exclusive opposites. To discover that the many are the one, and that one is the many – like the body and the organs – is to realize that both are words and noises representing what is at once obvious to sense and feeling but an enigma to logic and description.

April 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello my loves,

One of my favorite things in life is to watch the Teaching take root in someone and begin to grow. It is the excitement of Spring. Blossoming and unfolding.

The most fun is when the person isn't already a spiritual seeker, but someone that the Universe has simply dragged out of their familiar life and thrust into the bizarre world of one of my Talks. They come not knowing what to expect, usually a little hesitant and confused by the new language and strangely charged atmosphere. They listen for a while and then their brow furrows and a question rises to the surface like a bubble long trapped underwater.

Do you really mean that?

I do. But you need to look and see it for yourself.

I can see it on their face, the insight unfurling like a plant from a seed in a time lapse movie, straining towards the light. Suddenly it breaks free and there is a rush of activity as all the implications branch out. Well then that would mean.....and that would mean.....and what about personal responsibility?

It is literally mind blowing. All the assumptions about who and what they are come crashing down. How will I live? What do I do now?

This Living Teaching is capable of inciting enormous changes. Once the truth of What Is is glimpsed, they can never go back to full ignorance. The progression may be fast or slow but it is inexorable. As Ram Tzu says,

Once the Teaching takes hold
You have a cancer
It will gradually replace you with Itself
Until you are gone.

With love,
Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

The expression 'pathless path' is often used to describe man's spiritual goal. It may seem as if the jnani uses such expressions deliberately to confound the seeker, but that is not so. This expression and many another similar one, expresses the difficulty, one might say the impossibility, of putting esoteric knowledge into words. The significance of the expression 'pathless path' is essentially that we are not bound in the first place and therefore there is nothing to be done, nowhere to go, in order to achieve any liberation. And yet the jnani sees that the seeker is terribly unhappy in what he considers his misery. Therefore in his compassion the jnani has to use such an expression, the meaning of which is that all that is necessary is the clear apprehension of 'what-is'. The Guru's advice to the disciple concerning the 'acquisition' of this understanding could be in a sense considered as the path. And yet the path leads no one anywhere. There is nothing to be done, nowhere to go. Therefore, the path is pathless.

March 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello my loves,

Advaita often gets a bad rap when it comes to the subject of morality. It is mistakenly assumed that if everything is understood to be One then good and bad, right and wrong don't exist. In the Living Teaching morality is seen to be an integral part of the human experience. In this moment all of us have a set of values that is linked to our behavior. For example , we likely feel it is wrong to be unkind to those that we love. To hurt someone we love would violate our moral code. Yet most of us from time to time find ourselves doing just that. We hurt the ones we love with anger or neglect even though we know it to be wrong. Why do we do it? How is it that we act in opposition to our own moral code? Could it be that we are powerless to control our own behavior at least some of the time? If so, then what IS controlling our behavior? It may be worth investigating...

Morality is simply the evaluation of our behavior according to a standard. The much deeper and revealing question deals with the the Source of our behavior. Once we begin to understand what is the true Source of all that we think and do and feel the following moralistic evaluation loses its cruel energy. It is still there as part of our human makeup but it no longer causes us to suffer. We do not claim authorship of our actions but we are not sociopaths. Our morality signals an opportunity to try to right any wrongs we have done without the enervating sense of guilt and shame. We can look the world in the eye, admit we were wrong, clean up any mess we may have made and then get on with our lives. What a blessing!

May it find you now.

With much love,
Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

We are neither here nor there, we are nowhere or everywhere. We are neither this nor that, we are nothing or everything. We are neither in the past nor the present nor the future. - we ARE the present moment.

1989

February 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello my loves,

Spring comes
And the grass
Grows by itself

I love this exquisite haiku. It captures the subtlety and simplicity of this Living Teaching. The coming of spring is a happening. The growing of the grass is a happening. The human brain links these happenings in a simplistic (not simple) relationship of cause and effect. The simple (not simplistic) understanding is that these two happenings are aspects of an unbroken Wholeness, inseparable from each other and from everything else.

The ever practical brain wants to know what earthly good is such esoteric understanding? How does it help us grow more and better grass? How does it feed us? How can it enrich us? The answer is that it is of no practical value. It does not help us to manage life better.

But its mystical value is immeasurable. It enables us to be at peace even when our minds and bodies are in turmoil...not as an act of skill, not as an achievement but as an act of Grace.

May it find you now!

With love
Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

NO ENLIGHTENED INDIVIDUALS

Enlightenment is essentially a process in the totality of functioning of manifestation. It starts with the impersonal (or universal) consciousness identifying itself with the individual body-mind mechanism, and ends with the dis-identification taking place at the appropriate time in an appropriate body-mind mechanism. The individuals concerned in this process are merely instruments thorough which it occurs. It should be noted that the process itself takes several 'lives' (not of the same individual) for the evolution of a suitable psychosomatic apparatus which could be capable of sustaining the experience called enlightenment. To think of an individual achieving enlightenment through his own efforts is to miss the point altogether: the individual and enlightenment are contradictory terms.

January 2011

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE

Hello My Loves,

Many thanks to all of you who helped me celebrate 60 years of life! It was a wonderful party and I was quite moved by the outpouring of love and devotion so many of you expressed. Of the many gifts given me in this life I count chief among them the gift of having met Ramesh and being graced with this amazing Teaching. That I am today able to share this gift with others fills me with wonder and gratitude. That others find what I do valuable pleases me greatly.

As you know, I am the most unlikely of teachers. Neither my history as an alcoholic and drug addicted businessman nor my introverted (some would say asocial) temperament fit the image of what a spiritual teacher looks like. It is clear to me that I live the way I live today and do the things I do today not because of any plan or aspiration on my part but because the Universe has unfolded in this particular way.

Humility and gratitude are not things to accomplish; they are the natural and inevitable consequence of seeing What Is, here and now, in this eternal moment. How this seeing comes about is the essence of the Eternal Mystery that surrounds us.

With much love,

Wayne

A LIVING GEM FROM RAMESH (previously unpublished)

Whatever is said about the Absolute would be wrong because the Absolute is prior to all conceptualization. When the Absolute is not concerned with any objective experience, is there any sense in saying that the Absolute denotes bliss? Thus, when all the three aspects - Sat, Chit, Ananda - are clearly seen as being totally inadequate to describe the indescribable Absolute, what is left other than the void of potentiality? Even the idea of oneness as the subject is intolerable because 'one' is necessarily associated with 'two.' Non-duality has reference to duality whilst the Absolute is beyond--or prior to--both duality and non-duality. But when all there is is bliss, where is the experiencer to talk about the experience of bliss? The Absolute, in short, is not susceptible even to its own awareness.

1988

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