Consciousness Writes: Conversations Via Air Mail With Ramesh S. Balsekar

INTRODUCTION

Agentleman called L, came to see me a few days ago by previous appointment. He was an American – slim, gaunt of face, with a shaven head, and deep piercing eyes. He said he had been travelling for more than two years, for the last eight months in India, in search of Truth, that he had heard so much about India but that he was thoroughly disappointed: in India he had seen nothing but poverty and squalor, corruption and greed even in temples, mere parroting of the scriptures in ashrams , most of which were money-making rackets. He was particularly disappointed that he had not met anyone who had impressed him in any way in spite of the robes and the roles some of them had assumed.

L said he had retired as an engineer some years ago and that he had since been a seeker. At 55 years of age and with no responsibilities or liabilities in life he could travel to his heart’s content. He added that he had done a considerable amount of reading of scriptures of many religions, and was most attracted by the non-duality of Vedanta. It was quite obvious that the man was extremely sincere and earnest, but equally obvious that he had been misguided (although, of course, his journey along the path was part of the destiny of that body-mind mechanism, part of the process of disidentification that was going on).

He talked to me continuously for perhaps twenty minutes, detailing all that he had done and was presently doing. I asked him when he stopped talking suddenly (perhaps realizing that I had not uttered a word while he talked), If you know what you are doing, where you are going, and what you are aiming at, what is your problem? The question stunned him. He replied slowly, Now that you put it that way, I think the answer is ‘I do not know’ to the question. I asked him a second question, "You have detailed the sadhana and the efforts you have put in, in order to get at the Truth as a ‘seeker.’ How can you seek something of which you are not aware? He thought for a while, and again replied I don’t know. I said, One last question at the present juncture: what is it that made you become a ‘seeker’ when there surely are plenty of other known to you who are just not interested in the ‘search?’ Was it any special effort of your own that had started your search, or was it something from ‘outside’ which turned your mind inwards?" This question visibly startled him.

He sat for quite some time, bent over, with his head in his hands, in total silence. I waited patiently for him until he lifted his head, looked at me quizzically, and said, I am afraid you have totally confused me with your apparently simple questions. Nobody has asked me such questions: no where in any scriptures have I come across such questions. I don’t even understand the point of these questions. My answer was, "The point of these questions is that when you find the answer to these questions, you will have found the answer to all your problems.

He remained for quite a while with his eyes closed. When he again sat up, and looked at me with a smile on his face, there was a certain kind of peace in that smile which was actually quite attractive without the tension that seemed to have been a part of that bony face with the shaven head. He said very softly that no one had ever quite put the matter in that perspective. I felt an enormous sense of compassion for him.

I repeated my question: what is it that had made him give up his usual mundane life and turned him into a seeker? Now he was ready to listen without arguing. So, I continued: something outside of yourself turned your mind inwards; you have forgotten this basic and important fact, and have since assumed the role of a privileged person – a seeker – who has done a lot of reading and put in a lot of sadhana, and therefore was entitled to a reward by way of enlightenment. I deliberately waited for his comment, and it came out spontaneously. Yes, he said quietly and very seriously, I do expect to get enlightenment in this very body, and I am prepared to make whatever effort that is necessary.

I replied immediately and spontaneously, You will not. You cannot. Unwittingly, and certainly unintentionally, I must have shocked him to the marrow. He perhaps took it as a curse or something because he turned white under the deep tan he had acquired during his long travels in the heat of the Indian Summer. I hastened to explain, Please understand that I do not mean that enlightenment will not happen through the instrument of the body that you call L. All I am saying is that ‘you’ cannot ‘become enlightened,’ for the simple reason that enlightenment presupposes the annihilation of the ‘me’ as a seeker.

Thereafter we talked for almost two hours. He was on his way to a meditation ashram, some 100 km. away, for a period of ten days. He left saying that he would come back for another talk in due course.

This dramatic narrative, taken from one of Ramesh’s letters, is, as it were, an eye-witness account of a lively dialogue in which the Guru penetrates right to the very core of the disciple’s problem by disabusing him of the belief that he could become Enlightened. This is a particularly important lesson, since every seeker suffers from the same delusion. Once there is the beginning of an understanding that what is called Enlightenment is an impersonal happening that can take place in a particular body-mind only when the illusory egoic seeker has vacated it, then the behavior and attitudes associated with seeking commence to subside.

Ramesh wrote the following comments to a correspondent:

It is interesting that in the case of D., you ‘suspect it may be a lack of sufficient intensity in what Maharaj called earnestness. ‘This is precisely the point I often ‘flog’ The understanding cannot happen unless there is intense earnestness, and earnestness cannot be ‘achieved,’ it can only happen! And until this itself is understood (again, it can only happen), there is pain and frustration.

It is likely, then, since the Gurus say that intense earnestness is absolutely essential for Understanding to happen, that the seeker referred to here, who is said to be lacking in that quality, would still be deeply immersed in the fallacious concept that through his personal struggle he would be able to Liberate himself. But this is precisely the same belief held by Ramesh’s visitor in India, who was extremely sincere and earnest, as noted by the Guru himself. Moreover, his reported behaviour demonstrated that he would do virtually anything to attain his stated goal of Enlightenment. And after devoting years of extraordinary effort in his spiritual search, he remained utterly convinced that he would be able to achieve Enlightenment.

The comparison of these two seekers serves to illustrate the fact that the feeling I am going to do it! is tenacious beyond comprehension, deluding seekers of all levels of earnestness. Letting go of the seeker mentality is one of the final developments in the process.

On the other hand, it may well be that the earnestness of Ramesh’s visitor had brought him to the Guru at the time when he would be most receptive to having the seed of Understanding planted by means of this very dialogue. In telling a correspondent about another disciple in whom the seed of Understanding actually had been planted, and who exhibited great earnestness in ways similar to those of the seeker in India, Ramesh said:

If J. says, ‘… he has given up all seeking,’ what he truly understands – and means – is that seeking has ceased. He has really got it all.

The point to be emphasized in all of this is one that Ramesh repeatedly brings to the attention of his disciples by stressing that it is not through their personal initiative and efforts that they have become involved with Advaita, since the person they believe they are, the one they are convinced is making all the decisions and carrying them out, does not really exist. It is a fabrication of the mind. Whatever happens in the universe, including the actions of the body-minds of all seekers (and all Gurus), is inevitable. Ramesh tells us about yet another Bombay visitor who upon first hearing about this from the Guru came to an unusually clear understanding:

The fact that the totality of manifestation is merely an appearance in Consciousness and that its functioning is an impersonal and self-generated process in phenomenality, made a profound impression on him. He himself came to the spontaneous conclusion that therefore the individual human being, as the mere instrument through which this impersonal process occurs, cannot possibly have any autonomy or independence of volition and choice. He said he had waited more than 30 years for this authoritative confirmation of what he had ‘felt’ since he was five years old!

This Introduction is intended to help the Reader to enter into the Teaching with at least an open, or perhaps even a receptive mind. In the case of Advaita, such an approach may not come easily, because this Teaching contradicts our most cherished and deeply held belief, namely, that we are the person we think we are.

To help us find the Truth about who, or what, we are, Advaitic Gurus sometimes recommend a simple procedure known as Self-enquiry. In a letter Ramesh gives an exceptionally lucid explanation:

In Self-enquiry, Who am I? – or Who is there to suffer? – or – Who wants to know? – or …, the basis is not for the me to ask the question and expect to get an answer, but to feel the absence of any entity, any phenomenal entity which depends for its very existence on sentience or Consciousness, and thus has no independent existence of its own. Admittedly, in the beginning it is the me, the mind which asks the question (and expects an answer); but if the underlying principle – the cutting off of conceptualizing – is not forgotten, the earlier mental activity which takes the form of a thought or a feeling or a perception or a desire, or whatever, gradually gives away to a subjective feeling of I, totally disassociated from the earlier identified thought or perception: the identified thought gives way to the no-mind state (at least temporarily in the beginning) without any conceptualizing. Such intermittent subjective experiences gradually lead to an effortless awareness of the subjective I, the real doer, wherein the individual doing goes further and further into the background. And along with this me goes into the background the suffering that was associated with the me.

Actually, as Ramesh has often said, there is no who, since the pronoun implies a person. So, coming to understand what one is begins by coming to know what one is not. And, there is an intimately related process of coming to know what the Guru is through becoming aware of what he is not, since the seeker erroneously takes the Guru to be a separate, individual person, because that is the same distorted image he has of himself. Some insight into the subtlety of his distinction between the conventional image of the Guru and the nature of True Guru is given through a number of candid statements Ramesh has made about himself, which will be presented later in the section, THE GURU. However, at this point it would seem appropriate to briefly consider some of the more gross misunderstandings in the form of common stereotypes concerning the Guru. But in order to do this it is first necessary to explain a rather unusual facet of Ramesh’s correspondence.

From time to time Ramesh will enclose something else with his letter. Thus, as already noted, it may be a copy of a letter sent to one correspondent which he feels will now be of benefit to another. But also, on occasion, in response to a query put by a correspondent, the Guru may write an essay on the subject (up to 15 pages in length) and enclose it with the next letter. And, at the annual Kovalam Beach retreat, Ramesh prepared for the attendants a number of essays that have been included with letters to some correspondents.

Six excerpts, taken from several of the enclosures sent by Ramesh to his correspondents in the year 1990, present the Guru’s thought on a number of widespread erroneous assumptions, such as: the legitimacy of a Guru can only be conferred upon him by his Guru through the proper investiture; Gurus must display magical powers to instil confidence in their followers; the Guru has the same perspective of the Guru-disciple relationship as the disciple; even though the Guru may be there to direct him, it is really up to the disciple himself to choose to make the struggle to succeed in his quest; an Enlightened Guru should live a life of renunciation; and a Guru is supposed to tell his disciples the things they must do to attain Liberation. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that in the final excerpt Ramesh quotes the words of another Advaitic Guru, much revered by him.

It must be clarified straightaway that, in the ordinary sense of the word, a guru can only be one who has been invested with the right to initiate disciples and prescribe a spiritual discipline for them – and in this sense, a valid investiture would be necessary for his actions to have the necessary validity, in precisely the same way as a valid ordination would be necessary for the religious rites performed by a priest to have any validity, regardless of what may be the quality of his intellectual calibre, behavioural rectitude, or moral integrity. In the same way, the genuineness of a guru and the validity of his discipline and initiation would be dependent not on his own inherent and acquired attainments, but on his legitimate