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Timothy Conway is a
disciple of Nisargadatta Maharaj, and the author of Women of Power & Grace: Nine Astonishing, Inspiring Luminaries of Our Time.
He lives in Santa Barbara CA and holds a weekly free satsang. He now has
a website though no org. Links to other discussions of ethics on this
site at page bottom.
I will be briefly discussing this matter of Ramesh
Balsekar’s behavior and Wayne Liquorman’s assessment of the
same, but first a rather lengthy prelude…
Within the nondual dream conjured up by Consciousness, made of nothing
but Consciousness, we have the “relative reality,” the conventional
world of “rights and wrongs,” “justices and injustices,”
“wellness/ease and unwellness/dis-ease(s).”
To heal the various forms of dis-ease and injustice, we have three types
of authentic spiritual figures: 1) The free beings who conduct
themselves in the traditional manner of a sage, saint or adept, that
is to say, exemplars of genuine freedom from attachments and
aversions (the samskaras or vasanas, as Hindu and Buddhist sages term
them), exemplars of peace, bliss, compassion, generosity, courage,
equanimity, and selfless sacrifice on behalf of apparent sentient beings
(recall the wonderful paradox given by the Buddha in the Vajracchedika
[Diamond] Sutra: “one must save all sentient beings” / “there are
no sentient beings”), and these exemplary free beings communicate a
traditional wisdom emphasizing transcendence / immanence of the Absolute,
impermanence and insubstantiality and unreliability of all phenomena,
awakening from the egocentric dream, the need for both earnestness
(“striving”) toward freedom and also gratuitous divine Grace,
methods for awakening, and so forth.
Then there are: 2) The wild men/women or holy fools (avadhutas,
majdhubs, masts, saloi, yurodivye, idiota, yu jen, mahasiddhas, et al.),
within what is sometimes called the “crazy wisdom tradition.”
These rather mysterious folks have spontaneously or deliberately gone
beyond all societal conventions, sometimes simply because
God-realization came for them in such an unusually powerful way that it
blew out the circuits of normal psychological and social functioning.
These wild ones, who usually display no regard for their own comforts
and even many basic bodily needs (food, liquids, sleep, shelter, basic
hygiene), have been known to scream at, punch, push, piss on, completely
ignore and in various ways “abuse” those whom they encounter, with
an unexpectedly quite positive, beautifully transformational affect on
the recipients of such “holy abuse.” In other words, there is a
palpable, just as with the free beings of category #1, there can be an
edifying sense of divine blessing or transmission (saktipat, kripa,
baraka, wang, descent of the Holy Spirit, etc.) that is experienced by
the recipient during or after the bizarre encounter with a “wild
fool” of category #2 -- bringing with it an amazing sense of freedom,
peace, equanimity, bliss, love, and nondual identity with the One and
all beings.
I would say that there is a third type of genuine spiritual figure:
3) the “good friend” (kalyana mitra) or spiritual
teacher/mentor/counselor who may him-/herself not be 100% established in
spiritual freedom, fully awake and always lucid within the dream, but
such a one is nevertheless a very helpful, enlightening figure who
empowers those s/he encounters. This person does not try to “role-play
Guru” by presuming to be fully awake and/or taking responsibility for
the welfare and direction of disciples. S/he just serves as much as
possible, sharing from the heart the wisdom, caring compassion and
gratitude for Divine grace that has served him/her thus far on the
pathless, spaceless journey HOME to full, free Awareness. Such a person
may actually be quite a gifted teacher, healer or catalyst for fellow
sentient beings, truly empowering them with certain wonderful qualities.
Some persons may even become fully awake through association with this
type of teacher/healer who is, himself, not yet 100% free and awake.
In addition to the above two types of authentically free spiritual
adepts and the not-quite-fully-realized spiritual teacher/mentor/friend,
there is another figure in the Divine dream of
manifestation: the inauthentic pretender. This is someone
who is, at best, no more spiritually accomplished or free than
the spiritual teacher/friend mentioned above in category #3, but is
pretending to be someone in category #1 or #2. In other words, here
there are flashes (even frequent flashes) of brilliance but there still
occur occasional (or even frequent) lapses of lucidity into egocentric
states of attachment-aversion toward dream phenomena. These
attachments-aversions, the binding likes and dislikes, what Hindu
Vedanta-Yoga terms “raga-dvesha” and Theravada Buddhism calls
“lobha-dosa,” are also generally known as one’s samskaras or
vasanas. The inauthentic pretender, bless his heart, cannot admit to
others and probably not even to himself that he is still samskara-driven
and bound, i.e., not totally free, and so the pretender must rationalize
(in a classic Freudian defense mechanism against anxiety) that his
lack of freedom is somehow “okay,” “Divinely ordained,” “part
of the perfect manifestation,” “not really a problem because
whatever happens is perfect.” Rather than earnestly endeavor to
realize the insubstantiality of the deluded ego-sense with its
attachments-aversions, and actually live from FREEDOM, the pretender
tries to convince others and himself that he is, in fact, free, while
still dragging around his samskaric chains. Freedom, for these
pretenders, is INSIDIOUSLY RE-DEFINED to include states of being bound
(e.g., a misinterpretation of the old Mahayana idea: “Nirvana is
Samsara”).
In a competitive marketplace of “spirituality,” whether in India,
Japan, China, Europe, the USA, etc., we see quite a lot of this last
figure, the pretender. Such persons chronically present themselves as
higher and freer than they actually are, in order to draw attention and
recognition, lure followings of students/disciples, make money, attain
fame, and get high (psychically inflated) on the subtle or not-so-subtle
adrenaline rush that comes with being granted power, influence and
concomitant comforts by a social group that fawns over them and defers
to them as a “spiritual authority.”
And now we must look at a very specific phenomenon: what happens when
such pretenders, such not-quite-free teachers (or not-very-free-at-all
charlatans), are exposed for certain exploitative behavior,
usually around the good ol’ issues of “lust and
greed” -- inappropriate sexual or financial behavior.
At this point of being exposed, the spiritual pretender and those among
his followers who identify/align with the pretender rather than with the
Dharma (authentic spirituality) usually fall into deeper trouble. The
pretender and the lackeys/cronies (peace and divine blessings be upon
them!), rather than act with authentic courage, sincerity and remorse --
which would include humbly admitting their own lack of freedom
and also include issuing heartfelt APOLOGIES and making some kind of
meaningful AMENDS toward the parties exploited--instead thicken their
samskaric web of complications. Problematic defense mechanisms against
anxiety are hastily deployed, not just passionate identification with
“our righteous cause” (a major samskaric attachment!) but also rationalization
that nothing terribly wrong has happened, denial of either
the claims of injury or severity of the situation (this denial often
involves blatant forms of lying and aggressive cover-ups), and, of
course, projection in the form of blaming the victims and also
any sympathizers who try to bring further light to the dark situation
and remedy the injustice by enacting forms of justice and healing
(including clarifying what is true Dharma and what is not).
One of the classic rationalizations, remember, that the pretender and
the cronies chronically deploy, especially when the flaws of the
pretender are being exposed, is the idea that “nothing is really
wrong,” that his lack of freedom, as reflected in the exploitative
behavior, is somehow “perfect,” “Divinely willed,” “part of
the Divine dream,” therefore “not a problem.” Unfortunately, this
rationalization is easily available to pretenders who labor in the field
of mystical nondual spirituality, because nondual traditions usually
articulate quite clearly this absolute level of truth, the paramartha
satya, over the conventional or relative level of phenomenal truth,
the samvriti satya.
It needs to be stated in no uncertain terms that these pretenders are
actually anarchists, for they attempt to destroy any rational or
intuitive basis for morality and ethics. In this pseudo-nondual realm,
“anything goes” -- at least for themselves and their cronies. There
are no ethical standards by which to determine appropriate and
inappropriate behaviors.
The discerning reader will notice that the type of “wild holy fool”
of the crazy wisdom tradition, briefly discussed above as an authentic
spiritual figure in category #2, also doesn’t abide by the
conventional-looking ethics of human societies. Clothed in rags,
sometimes virtually or completely naked, usually ungroomed or even
unwashed, often abnormally silent or using language in bizarre forms,
frequently maintaining strange postures or movements, such wild free
ones, as mentioned, have been known to roundly “abuse” their
visitors and would-be “disciples” (such holy fools often do not let
anyone stay around them for long in the conventional apprentice
relationship found in the traditional lineages of gurus-disciples,
masters-novices, or teachers-students). Again, one hears tales of folks
being hit, struck, yelled at, utterly ignored, and in other ways treated
rather shockingly by these crazy wisdom characters.
But there are huge DIFFERENCES between the pretenders and the authentic
holy fools.
For one thing, disciples of the holy fools feel blessed, not
exploited, after their contact with the holy fool, the opposite of
what happens when trusting disciples are exploited by the pretenders. In
short, there is no empowerment of the disciple, but rather a sense of
having been exploited for the gain of the pretender. The pretender, in
short, functions as a taker, not a giver.
Secondly, the holy fools are quite unattached to whatever happens
in the dream of life, especially concerning their own bodily
welfare, whereas the pretenders are usually quite interested in
making sure they are properly fed, clothed, sheltered, honored and, yes,
remunerated. Rather than rely on spontaneous Divine Grace for
whatever happens, these pretenders and their cronies make definite
plans, arrange things to insure the most pleasing and lucrative
outcomes, and so on. They are clearly operating from the mental
level, not the transmental/transpersonal Identity, in their
strategic planning and calculating of revenues and expenditures,
marketing strategies, schedules, meeting site set-up and configurations,
writing and publishing ventures, etc. Obviously, some of the pretenders
aren’t so much involved in this side of things -- they have their
willing cronies to manage everything or nearly everything for them, and
so the pretender can easily “flow with situations” and trust that
their acolytes (not God) will take care of everything while the
pretenders can appear to be serene and “above it all.”
Thus, for such pretenders and their “true believer” slavish
followers to make the claim that they are part of the crazy wisdom
tradition is utterly bogus. They are not utterly
“abandoned unto Divine Providence,” they are not thoroughly
surrendered. No, they are to some extent or another quite attached to
outcomes. In short, they still labor under the sense of
“doership,” i.e., being egocentric agents of action.
Such persons, I would also submit, are trying to have it both ways:
they want to be seen and valued as lineage-holders of a tradition--this
obviously adds to their status and influence as “an authority.” And
yet they have the audacity to ignore and/or distort their tradition’s
teachings about morality and ethics, and the need for staying as free as
possible from samskaric attachments and aversions. And when anyone tries
to raise the issue of traditional moral requirements for disciples and
gurus, they immediately will say that “they are not bound by
tradition,” that “this is a living tradition that must shock
people out of their hypnotic trance state,” and other such malarkey.
This might seem persuasive to those who chronically defer to them, but
anyone with any discernment can see that these pretenders are trying
to have the best of two opposing worlds: traditional authority and
anarchistic “anything goes” license to act out their samskaras. To
put it in still more words, they exploit, for their own recognition and
aggrandizement, the concept and social institution of the Guru and the
lineage of Gurus, but they do not want any accountability within the
criteria set by that tradition’s previous Gurus for who is and who is not
an authentic spiritual master.
Hence, one finds here a major violation of “Truth in advertising”:
the pretenders are passing themselves off as “Gurus” in a
“lineage” (sampradaya) within a “tradition” of
“advaita” -- and then, whenever it suits them, they anarchically
depart from what that tradition values as authenticity and they engage
in rogue behavior.
These pretenders (may the God-Self spare them from their karmuppance)
are claiming special immunity in putting themselves above society’s
rules on basic decency, and also putting themselves beyond the
conventions of their own sacred traditions from which they try to draw
their high status.
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Now the case at hand: Wayne Liquorman is defending the sexually and
financially exploitative behavior of his teacher, Ramesh Balsekar.
I’ve already written a bunch of words [included among
the posts in GR Forum] about this a few weeks ago, so
I’ll restrict myself here to just a few points.
In one of his letters of response, Wayne glibly uses the pejorative
term, “dead Indians” to dismiss the case made by sincere teachers
who endeavor to illustrate the impeccable moral criteria of the Hindu
Advaita Vedanta tradition by quoting passages from highly respected
texts and teachers in the tradition. Wayne implies: they’re all just
“dead Indians,” so why bother referencing them when you have someone
of Ramesh’s incomparable freedom and loftiness upon which to rely for
your guru-connection?
But one can ask Wayne or anyone in agreement with his position, just
where would he be today without those dead Indians? Specifically,
his fame comes from being Ramesh’s sycophant son, and Ramesh’s fame,
in turn, comes from exploiting the name and memory of dead Indians --
starting with his physically deceased Guru, Nisargadatta
Maharaj, and the lineage of “dead guys” before Nisargadatta in the
Navnatha Sampradaya (i.e., Siddharameshvar Maharaj, et al.). As I have
written before, it is most likely (one can’t ever say for sure) that
Nisargadatta would strongly chastise Ramesh for sullying the memory of
the Navnatha lineage of teachers with his financial and sexual
shenanigans and trying to dismiss it all with some rationalization that
confuses the absolute and conventional levels of truth. This is NOT
authentic advaita. Nisargadatta was always acutely interested in whether
people who claimed to be jnanis were actually, entirely free of
“desires and fears.” That’s a matter of public record and was
directly heard by those of us who spent any time with the Maharaj. Wayne
never met Nisargadatta, and, to my recollection, never met any teacher
of advaita before he met Ramesh in the late 1980s (I am open to being
corrected on this latter point). Even if Nisargadatta authorized Ramesh
to do any teaching, that does not mean the authorization stands
for a lifetime and cannot be revoked due to bad behavior and distortion
of Maharaj’s teaching, which behavior and distortion by Ramesh have
also now been more-or-less documented.
Further on this topic of “dead Indians,” for one of Ramesh’s most
important early projects, he dared to write a commentary/interpretation
(and Wayne has published it -- both of them benefiting financially from
the project) on the famed 13th century poet-saint-sage
Jnaneshvar, and his Amritanubhava. And on it goes….
So, again I ask, where would Ramesh and Wayne be today if not for these
illustrious dead Indians?
Well, enough of such words, save to say that I wish Wayne and Ramesh
full enlightenment and liberation at their earliest possible
convenience, and that they be utterly forgiven (“Father forgive them,
for they know not what they do”) for their lack of clarity and
consistency, which is no ultimate fault of their own -- Divine Sakti is,
as we say on the absolute level, doing everything, responsible for all
karmas.
I and many others interested in authentic advaita would have no
problem if Ramesh and Wayne came along and said they were
representing the “anything goes” “bad-boy” school of
pseudo-Dharma, and not claiming (in Ramesh’s case) to be the
successor of Nisargadatta Maharaj and thus, by implication, a
lineage-holder in the Navnath Sampradaya. But then, if Ramesh and Wayne
marketed themselves in this way, I doubt they’d have much of a
following, or at least any following worth having.
So let me lay down a friendly challenge: either Ramesh and Wayne
1) formally announce that they have nothing to do with the lineage of
Nisargadatta and authentic nondual Vedanta (including Yajnavalkya,
Sankara, Jnaneshvar, et al.) and are on their own as representatives of
a new “anything goes” school of “Understanding”; or 2) they make
proper apologies and amends to those they’ve exploited and then try to
straighten out their own behavior.
I hope that none of the above words offend, but are taken in the spirit
of Love and Truth in which they are offered. Ramesh, I treasured my time
with you, and Wayne, I enjoyed seeing you those few times inside and
outside of satsang with Ramesh. I wish you both all the very best!
May all be awake, free and, yes, also deeply, compassionately, and
lucidly “involved” in the Divine Dream.
Your dream-brother,
Your own Self,
Timothy
Ratings "Red flags" criteria explored deeper: hype, abuse, money,
scandal etc
On Ethical Standards: An interview with Pema Chödrön
from Tricycle
More on Guru Ethics: How the student sells out to the corrupt guru
by Andrew Cohen
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