by Stuart Knight, May 2010

PART 1 - What is enlightenment?

Stuart: How's it going everybody? This is Stuart Knight here with another interview for HumanDetour.com. I am here with Wayne Liquorman, who has - I'd like to say flown in just for me, but he's not, he's flown in for a group of people in the city of Toronto from Los Angeles, I believe. And he's here for the weekend to give a talk, and I was lucky enough to be able to swing in just before his next talk and ask him a few questions about, I guess you'd call it spirituality, about the world we live in, about the meaning of life - if you want to call it that - but essentially about who we think we are. And I'm going to tell you about, well Wayne will tell you a bit about his story. But we'll get right into it with some questions about your life. So first of all, thank you very much, I appreciate you're taking the time to meet with me.

Wayne: You're very welcome.

Stuart: Now you can understand the people that watch a lot of these videos from around the world, they tune in, when you say to these people that a person has had a moment, where let's say, and I know these are not the words that many people like to use, but for those that are watching, they've become enlightened, or they become aware of the Self, they transcend away from the sense of who they think they are. This is something that has happened to you, is that safe to say?

Wayne: Yes.

Stuart: It is, okay. And would you mind just giving me a bit of an idea as to how that happened for you.

Wayne: Well I think first I'd like to clarify what it is we're talking about rather than...

Stuart: Fair enough. Okay.

Wayne: The mechanics of how it happened are to me less important than what it is. And I talk about this as - this event that happens in the lives of some people - as the death of the false sense of authorship.

Stuart: Authorship. Okay. Alright.

Wayne: Authorship. Now authorship is a very precise term, and one you may not have heard before in this context. But it refers to the sense that most human beings have from the time they're two-and-a-half years old that, "I am a separate independent, authoring entity." Which is to say, "I make things happen." Okay? That, "I'm the source of it, and I from my own power influence the world." Now this sense - which most people have, and it's integral to your parents, your church, your school, your society, all of which reinforce this idea - isn't necessarily true.

Stuart: It's not true?

Wayne: It's not necessarily true. And the teaching that I have, and that I use to point people
is to question this fundamental belief that, "I am an independent, authoring entity, with the capacity from my own power to influence events."

Stuart: So when people do question this, obviously, and I'm sure you've heard this a thousand times, which is they'll say, "Well, you know I ran an event at my church last week, and we had a bake sale, and I did do that. If I didn't do that, then who did do it?"

Wayne: And this is why I make the distinction between doing and authoring. Because clearly you did it. You ran the bake sale there is no question you ran the bake sale. What we're looking at is a finer plane, which was I am running this bake sale from my own power. That I was responsible. Okay, and that's what we're questioning.

Stuart: That I was responsible. So that when people say, "I ran that bake sale," you're saying that they did do it, but then the sense [of authorship], is it an attachment of who the ‘I' is, is that what you're thinking?

Wayne: Yes. What I call the false sense of authorship is an overriding claim on what happens. So the body and the mind are programmed to do things. And through external events you're moved around and led into certain areas, into a certain church, into a certain position in the church. And then you have whatever skills may actually be necessary to actually run a bake sale. All of these things are not of your creation, it is by the world's creation. You have been given certain qualities and capacities that are then brought forth by the situation, the need for a bake sale.

Stuart: So the same thing is then, when Justin Timberlake gets up on stage, and he sings a song to 20,000 screaming girls, he's doing that. He is doing that. He's been given these talents. Not given, there's no such separate entity, I'm assuming that gives these talents.

Wayne: We'll talk about it as given, meaning that he's not self generated. So he's given it by universal forces, his genetics, the fact that he had the vocal capacity. Then somehow this got trained and got developed. It was clearly a gift of the universe that a teacher came in that was competent, that was skilled, that gave him the ability to rise to the next level.

Stuart: So why do think he has it and I don't. Because I would like to stand in front of 20,000 people and have a bunch of girls screaming for me.

Wayne: Why? I have no answers for why things happen in the universe. I only point to the fact that they do.

Stuart: That they do, okay. Then let me ask you this. If Justin Timberlake is doing when he's singing in front of the audience, so-and-so is doing when they have a bake sale, what is it when I say - to a woman or to a family member or to a friend - I say "I love you." I am loving them. In the process of loving them, am I only just... Because we're all equipped with that. Everyone is equipped, I would imagine, with the ability to love. Am I just doing in those moments? Or am I, I mean what's happening there?

Wayne: Now this is what my teaching is encouraging you to look at. Rather than telling you, "This is how it is." People have been telling you how it is for your entire life. And sometimes you believe it, sometimes you don't, and that changes. What I'm interested in, and what I'm interested in helping people who are also interested in, what I'm trying to facilitate, is your own direct seeing of ‘what is'. So that you see what's going on. Not that I'm telling you what's going on.

Stuart: Okay, so then what I see, when I'm loving somebody, is I'm seeing an ‘I', I'm a sense of me. Now I recognize that my name is Stuart, but it could have been Jim or could have been Bob. So that much I get. But I still feel that in my heart when I'm loving someone, it feels really true, and it feels that only I could be the one doing it in this particular moment.

Wayne: Clearly.

Stuart: But is that me? Who is the one doing the loving?

Wayne: Well, this is again what I'm encouraging you to look at. To look deeper into the nature of that one who is doing the loving. And part of that one as you get deeper into it you'll begin to see, that there is a functional one, who is a product of your genes and your particular experiences, your conditioning.

Stuart: Who makes breakfast in the morning, that's the functional one?

Wayne: That one.

Stuart: Okay.

Wayne: Okay. And also functional, who is capable of loving because of your particular conditioning. You have been nurtured, you have been loved yourself, you have a certain measure of trust of other people. Other people are conditioned in ways that they have been abused, they have been systematically beaten down to a point where they don't trust, they can't open in the way that you have. Now they didn't make that happen to themselves. So you have been given this capacity. But this is all part of your functional being, what you've been given. Overlaying on top of that is a false claim of authorship, which is the sense that I'm responsible for this. That, "Look, I'm loving this person." And there's a pride associated with having the capacity to do that. When you begin to see through that, what that pride is replaced with, is humility. A true humility which is, "What a gift!" It's replaced with gratitude that I've been given this capacity to love.

PART 2 - What is love to a sage?

Stuart: So when you love, or when you make love, or when you, I don't know, when you compliment somebody. I would imagine for many of us when we compliment somebody we have a selfish motive. We have a, "I'm complimenting you because I want you to like me and the reinforces my sense of self," or "I want you to maybe go and tell other people that I'm a good guy." But when you, based on where you are currently at right now, in the sense of awareness that you have for yourself, what does it feel like when you're complimenting someone, when you're loving someone, you're making love to someone, whatever it might be, what is it for you that is happening? From what perspective do you see it from? Because I would imagine you experience it differently than I do.

Wayne: I would say that we have the same essential type of physical experience. And of course everybody experiences differently because we're all programmed differently. But because we're human beings, we have similar kinds of perceptions, but certainly not exact.

Stuart: No, they wouldn't be.

Wayne: They wouldn't be. So attempting to compare what my reaction would be, or experience of something is to yours, is a difficult comparison because I really can't know what yours are.

Stuart: Okay, fair enough. For you specifically though, when you do tell... I'm sorry are you married?

Wayne: Yes I am.

Stuart: You are married, so you tell you wife, " I love you." Which I hope you do, of course. So you say, "I love you." I think that so many men, when they tell their wives they love them, there is a sense of self behind it. Is there a sense of self behind it for you?

Wayne: Of course. But to get back to what we were talking about before, there is a functional self - that's an identity of Wayne, who was born at a particular time, who has had certain experiences - that identity, that person which is embodied in this particular body, that person loves this other person. Now what is absent in this body, which is present in most others, is a secondary claimer of what is happening. So there is an absence of something, rather than the presence of something else. Often when we talk about, in the literature and things, when enlightenment is talked about it is quite glorious and sort of luminous. And to me it's very ordinary, the most ordinary possible kind of state.

Stuart: I've heard this before, I wouldn't mind touching on that. This idea that people do expect that when a person becomes enlightened, when they go into a deeper sense of self, that all of a sudden you now you mediate, you float around your home, and somehow all these, like you said, luminous things happen. But really though it is, it seems it goes the opposite way. When I've spoken to other people who have experienced this, they seem to be like, "No, it's a lot more regular, a lot more common." Like how do you describe it?

Wayne: I would say, it is pure presence. There is ‘What Is'. What is happening is happening. What is absent is the suffering that comes from feeling that, "I am responsible for what is happening."

Stuart: So then if you let's say, find yourself in a situation where we'll go back to your wife, and you've done something that perhaps has bothered her. You've irritated her and she gets angry. You have probably been responsible for that pain. But you don't have an attachment to that responsiblity?

Wayne: That's right. So that's where the term ‘responsible', we have to get very fine about it. I was certainly the instrument through which the pain she's experiencing occurred. It wasn't somebody else, it was this one, there is a recognition of that. But there isn't the secondary claim of being the source of that which I do. So yes, I'm certainly the instrument of what I do. And if I hurt my wife, I make an effort to make amends, to clean it up. But not from guilt, not out of a sense of guilt or shame for what I have done. That I shouldn't have done it. The understanding is, it happened. It could not have been otherwise.

Stuart: So what's your motivation to make it right?

Wayne: I love her. I don't want her to be in pain. I care for her.

Stuart: Okay. And it's not your mind that cares for her. It's something else.

Wayne: No, no, no. It is the body and the mind and the emotions. They're all tied together, they're not separate.

Stuart: So then, what's it like then for you with respect to worrying about things? You're saying you're in the presence, do you worry about things? Are you angry with yourself

Wayne: I do not worry in the sense of, "What will become of me." I may have concerns about, "Okay, what if the plane is delayed any further, then I'm going to miss this connection, and I have all these people coming to a talk, and I won't be able to make it." I have those kinds of concerns.

Stuart: And they're concerns.

Wayne: They're concerns. But there isn't a personal worry that is suffering.

Stuart: So there's no part of you that's thinking to yourself, "All those people are going to show up at my talk, I'm not going to be there, they're going to have judgement upon me," because that part of you can't be hurt.

Wayne: That's correct.

Stuart: But for someone like me, I can guarantee you, I'd be like, "Oh these people are going to think that I don't care, they're going to thing that I'm irresponsible, or that I'm not motivated to be there," and that's the suffering.

Wayne: That's correct.

Stuart: I see. And so you don't get worried about the future, you have concerns about the future. So what's it like for you then to be surrounded by people who are continuously worried. We're such a worry-wort society. How do you not go crazy? Don't you just want to shake people around you.

Wayne: No because my understanding is that they aren't doing it as the authors. They are the instruments through which the worry happens. It is the universe, the entire universe, that is worrying through them. They have been constructed perfectly to do what they do.

Stuart: But where does the worry start then? I mean the perfection of the universe, you would think it would have had it right from the beginning, wouldn't you?

Wayne: It does have it right from the beginning.

Stuart: So then where does the worry come from?

Wayne: The worry is part of the perfection. You have an idea of perfection which is other than ‘What Is'. You say, "If it's only changed like this, like my conception of how things should be, then it would be perfect." What I'm saying is, that it already is.

Stuart: So even the worry, the pain...

Wayne: Even the worry, the pain, the suffering, the misery, the ugliness, the horror, is all part of the perfection of ‘What Is'.

Stuart: So then of course I know that people watching right now would want me to ask, "Okay, so what about the dying child in Africa, what about the woman being raped in New York City right now?

Wayne: That hurts us to see, that hurts us to experience, if we're sensitive people.

Stuart: But it's okay?

Wayne: It's not okay, it is. It is part of the ‘Totality of What Is'. And it is a product of vast forces.

PART 3 - Why do things happen?

Stuart: Vast forces? Is it even a product of things that happened 200 years ago? Is that part of it as well?

Wayne: Absolutely. It's part of a Vast Wholeness that contains everything. I don't know if you're familiar with the Yin-Yang symbol?

Stuart: Um, hm.

Wayne: This circle that is composed of opposites, of beauty and ugliness, of good and evil, of joy and sorrow, health and sickness. These opposites form the whole. So the perfection I'm talking about is the wholeness which contains both, and the good defines the bad.

Stuart: Like as a reference point in a sense?

Wayne: They are in relation to each other. The whole point of the symbol is that the Wholeness is composed of the opposites. That in order for there to be one, there must be the other. Because if you look closely at the symbol, within the black there is a seed of the white. So the wholeness of the white is contained within the black and vice versa. Within this half which is white, there is a little round circle, which is the entirety of the black within it. So even if you try and separate it, and say, "I only want the good, I only want the white," as soon as you take it apart, it's all there.

Stuart: It's all there.

Wayne: It's all there.

Stuart: So in order to avoid the suffering, or to, I guess, release yourself from the suffering, then would you suggest to people that they in fact embrace the suffering? So if I am worrying, to not say, "Oh Stuart stop worrying." Just to be like, "I am worried." Or if I'm sad about someone breaking up with me, should I embrace these kinds of things? Does that help me kind of get to this state?

Wayne: I don't use the word ‘should' on anything, in terms of what people should or should not do. What I invite people to do, is to look at what they do, what they actually do. Forget what to do in the future, "What should I do in the future, what should I do next?" But, what have you done, what did you just do? And use that as a door to walk through into seeing what made you do it. What is the source of this thing you just did.

Stuart: I think I get that, I think I kind of get that, to a certain extent. So if I'm like, "What did I just do." Even as simple as walking through the door, I just walked through a door, to not have a story in my head about it, just be like "Why did I walk through, who walked through the door." Is that what you're saying?.

Wayne: No, I'm saying that walking through a door isn't a very dramatic one, because generally we don't claim to have been the source of walking through the door. You see.

Stuart: I see, okay. So I read that book let's say, so I would be saying, "I'm the one who read that book, or wrote that book," for that matter.

Wayne: Right. Okay, now writing that book is generally something that people claim as authorship. You say, "Well yes, I was the one who did it." And there's pride of having been the source of these beautiful words and beautiful ideas that were set down. And people often feel tremendous authorship for their work. But curiously you will also hear from artists, authors and painters, when they're being completely honest, they'll say this image, these words, this poem, whatever, came to me when I got out of the way. It flowed, it just came full blown into my consciousness and I just recorded it, I just put it down, I just translated this vision that came into my head onto the canvas.

Stuart: I've had moments like that where it's as if I'm being dictated to.

Wayne: Right. So what I'm pointing to in this, is this is the absence of the claim of authorship.

Stuart: That bothers people, because we want to believe. That bothers me as a performer. I want to believe that somehow I am so smart, and such a genius, that I am the one that made that crowd laugh. I am so clever put those words together. And it really bothers me to know, to think that it was something else and not this sense of me.

Wayne: That's why I do not suggest to people that they investigate pride.

Stuart: Really, okay.

Wayne: Because there's no motivation to do it. If you're going to engage in this kind of investigation what I recommend is guilt.

Stuart: To investigate guilt?

Wayne: Yes, because when you're feeling guilty, you're suffering. And there is an impulse, there is an impetus to get out of it. So there is motivation for looking beyond. And that's all this teaching is about is looking beyond you assumption about things. And guilt is that, "I could have and should have done that thing differently. That which I feel guilty about, I could have and should have done it differently." And what we're asking is, "Is that true?" And then you take that action that you did, clearly you did it, and you say "Okay, what's behind that action? What were the circumstances? What was going on with me? Was I in control of all of that?"

Stuart: You see, when I hear that, I think about. and I agree with you there, I definitely think that... I have a bit of a mathematical mind sometimes, and I'll think to myself, just based on level of probabilities, I could have done a million different things in any particular scenario, I could have strung different words together to make a different meaning. Is it based on the fact that I could have, the thing you're feeling guilty about, I could have done it a million different ways. So the fact that I could have done it a million different ways would mean that none of them are me. Does that make sense?

Wayne: Well, yes it does. Clearly there are infinite number of scenarios, of possibilities. The question we ask is, "What is the determiner, what determines that one scenario happens and not another?" Now most people will say that, at least part of the time, the determiner was me. And by me they mean, a powerful separate entity capable of independently determining something. And it's this independence that's crucial, because we have to ask, "Are we truly independent?"

PART 4 - Are we truly independent?

Stuart: And the idea is that we are not separate, we are one energy, we are one form, one universe?

Wayne: The metaphor that I like to use is of the ocean and the wave. So if we imagine that everything is ocean, then when the ocean goes into movement, it forms waves. Now waves are things that have a beginning a duration and an end, they have shape, they have substance, they have form, they have dimension, you can name them and compare them because they're different and say, "This one looks like that." And so if you think of each person as a wave that has independent qualities - not true independence. Because what the wave is is the ocean, everything the wave does is the ocean's movement, it's not the wave's movement. And yet we talk about what the wave does, how the wave interacts with other waves, we can talk about all of that. But what is the determiner of what the wave does?

Stuart: So we think that we are a wave, separate like there's a cut between the water, a wave lifts up and goes to another place and it just crashes to the shore by itself independently.

Wayne: Yes, I mean, it's not even logical, I mean it's not sensible. And yet this is a sense that 99.99% of human beings have from the age of two-and-a-half.

Stuart: Right, and you say, what happens at two-and-a-half, or around that time?

Wayne: The terrible twos.

Stuart: Besides all the crying.

Wayne: The reason for all the crying is that suddenly the child is starting to suffer. Because the sense is, "I'm independent, I'm powerful, I can make things happen." And that's a profound sense that arises in children at the age of two. But the universe doesn't cooperate. You say, "I'm powerful, I can make things happen." And in the next instant, that which I feel I should be able to make happen doesn't happen. You say, "I cry and my mommy comes. I'm gonna cry and my mommy will come." And the child cries, and his mommy doesn't come. Before two there's just unhappiness. After two there's a feeling, "The universe is out of order. Mommy should come. I should be able to make her come, because I'm doing this."

Stuart: Right. But how do you avoid that? Because I can't imagine that...

Wayne: You don't.

Stuart: You don't? Because every child...

Wayne: Every child has that happen at the age of two-and-a-half. For a very few people, somewhere in life a crack forms in that false claim of authorship. And it is that crack which we're attempting to exploit here now. And if it exists in your listeners, if it exists in you, this talk may have driven the first little wedge into that false sense of being an independent authoring entity. And where that will proceed, we'll just have to see.

Stuart: But when someone does have that moment, when they do reach that level, is there a real beauty behind it? I mean it's that the end of suffering you'd say?

Wayne: It is the end of suffering.

Stuart: And is it an increase in happiness?

Wayne: It is an increase in happiness and an increase in pain, because you are present equally for both.

Stuart: No kidding. The pain of just yourself, or the pain of others?

Wayne: The pain of life, the pain of being alive.

Stuart: So you almost increase your sensitivity to it, is that what you're saying?

Wayne: Yes, your presence, for what is actually happening.

Stuart: Man. Does it make you want to stick around?

Wayne: I find it fascinating. Life is so rich in it's beauty and it's ugliness, it's joy and it's sorrow, in it's pleasure and it's pain.

Stuart: So you just see it for what is, I guess.

Wayne: For what it is.

Stuart: As opposed when you turn the television on you see Alex Trebek talking kids and dying in Africa, many of us feel guilty like, "I'm not doing enough, I don't care enough." But you're saying you see it for what is.

Wayne: I see it for what is, and my heart may open, and I may take out my checkbook and send a donation, or I may not. But there is no guilt or pride associated with what I do.

Stuart: I see, I see, you just do.

Wayne: I do what I do, in accordance with my nature, as does everyone of course.

Stuart: And just before, because I know we're going to finish off soon, but I wanna say that then, I can see why it would, you know, be an unfortunate thing to feel guilty for not doing it. But then some people might say but you're missing out on the joy of feeling good about yourself when you do do it, when you do write that check.

Wayne: Yes, but there is a difference between guilt and pride, and say satisfaction and dissatisfaction. And we all know what that is, what that difference is within ourselves.

Stuart: Okay, so you still feel happy. If you help a child in Africa do you feel happy?

Wayne: Absolutely, I'm happy when I help people and I'm unhappy when I hurt people. And I do both, because this body is human.

Stuart: Right, but there is no attachment to either.

Wayne: There is no secondary involvement by an authoring me in either. But you can call it attachment.

Stuart: This is very interesting. It's too late to live in Los Angeles. I'd like to bring you out for...

Wayne: I come out here in Toronto every year for these talks.

Stuart: Oh you do? Well we're going to have to bring Wayne Liquorman into the Human Detour world again, because clearly we've only just scratched the surface. For those out there who'd be interested in getting more of this type of information, is there a website that they can go to?

Wayne: It's advaita, which is A-D-V-A-I-T-A-dot-ORG.

Stuart: Advaita.org. And I'm sure if they did a Google search on Wayne Liquorman. Is it L-I-C-K....

Wayne: No it's like the stuff you drink, liquor. L-I-Q-U-O-R-M-A-N.

Stuart: No kidding, okay, Wayne Liquorman. Did you make that name up for yourself?

Wayne: No, I was born with it.

Stuart: You were born with it, okay, very cool. Wayne Liquorman, look him up on Google, or go to the website and learn more. And I know you also are an author, not that you attach yourself as an author, but he has written, how many books have you written? Have you written a couple?

Wayne: There's four books out.

Stuart: Four books, so check out his books. You can read up on this, and really delve into this whole sense of self that we have, and perhaps you might even find yourself suffering a little less, or you might get rid of the suffering altogether, which wouldn't be such a bad thing. So Wayne, I really appreciate it, thanks very much for your time.

Wayne: Pleasure.

Stuart: And I know that the people who are coming in for his talk next are going to very much enjoy themselves. This is Stuart Knight with another Human Detour interview with Wayne Liquorman.

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