Enlightenment Who Cares! (A seeker's quest for Enlightenment with Ramesh S. Balsekar): Enlightenment Series, #3

By Madhukar Thompson

All conversations featured in this book were recorded, transcribed and edited by Madhukar Thompson.
Brimming with earnestness and authenticity, they document Ramesh's unique ability to adapt ancient Advaita Vedanta teachings to suit the predicament of the modern-day seeker. The text is illustrated by a series of cartoons, full of enjoyment and liberally sprinkled with laughter.

"I no longer care if I get enlightened or not. In fact, I don't care even if I do care!"
Such is the seeker's attitude just prior to the occurrence of enlightenment, according to Ramesh S. Balsekar - a life-long devotee of Ramana Maharshi and disciple of Nisargadatta Maharaj.
This book - the sequel to Enlightenment May or May not Happen - deals with a wide range of topics including karma, reincarnation, the nature of manifestation, the guru-disciple relationship and the contrast between enlightened and unenlightened experience.
The central theme, however, is the spiritual search and what can or cannot be done to speed up its progress.
All conversations featured in this book were recorded, transcribed and edited by Madhukar Thompson.
Brimming with earnestness and authenticity, they document Ramesh's unique ability to adapt ancient Advaita Vedanta teachings to suit the predicament of the modern-day seeker
. The text is illustrated by a series of cartoons which serve to remind us that even the serious business of spirituality has its funny side, and which ensure that the book, and the seeking itself, are lively experiences, full of enjoyment and liberally sprinkled with laughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CreatiVentures Publishing
• Release date: Sep 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502286390

Book preview

ENLIGHTENMENT?

WHO CARES!

Other Books by Madhukar Thompson:

Books

• Enlightenment: An Outbreak

• Enlightenment May Or May Not Happen

• Enlightenment? Who Cares!

• Teachings en Route to Freedom

• Odyssey of Enlightenment

Postcard Books

(Sets of cards taking a light-hearted look at different

aspects of spirituality and the search for Truth)

• Enlightenment by Airmail

• Enlightenment à la Carte

• Satsang

• The Path of Celebration

• The Seeker and His Search

• Meditation

• Enlightenment

• Master!

2

ENLIGHTENMENT?

WHO CARES!

A Seeker's Quest for Enlightenment with

Ramesh S. Balsekar

Edited by

Madhukar Thompson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage

and retrieval system without prior written permission from the

publisher or his agents, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Copyright © 2000 by (Madhukar Thompson)

Copyright © 2014 by Dr. Joji Valli

Published by

CreatiVentures

C-22, Karan Gharonda

Sainikwadi, Pune – 411014,

Maharashtra, India

Mb. 9689257575 | 9881843756

E-mail: [e-mail]

www.creativentures.in

Printed by:

Mudra PRESS

ISBN-10: 8188360384

ISBN-13: 9788188360383

(NetiNeti ISBN: 0966524527)

Contents

Biographical Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

17

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

19

God’s Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

Chapter 1

1.1 The Seeker is Like a Potato Baked in Clay; The Teaching’s

Hammer Tap-Tap-Taps the Shell Away . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25

1.2 Phenomenality is in God's Charge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

26

1.3 How Much Money should I Give to my Guru? —

A Question of the Working Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

1.4 Sadhana and Enlightenment are Destined.

Sadhana does not Produce Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

28

1.5 Past-Life and Enlightenment — Are all 10,000 Preceding Body-Mind Organisms also Enlightened? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

31

1.6 Enlightenment: Destined not Programmed.

Body-Mind: Programmed with Receptivity for Enlightenment . . . . 34

1.7 The Process of Disidentification and Enlightenment: Evolution

in the Leela of Phenomenality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37

1.8 Leela: Life has no Meaning nor Purpose;

Enlightenment: Realizing and Accepting Leela . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41

Chapter 2

2.1 Spiritual Danger: Not Following One’s Dharma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

42

2.2 My Message to Pune: Acceptance of Thy Will Be Done =

More Happiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

45

2.3 The Guru’s Lie may be What the Seeker Needs —

A Lie can be the Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

46

Chapter 3

3.1 My Way is the Only Way to Enlightenment:

A Guru’s Erroneous Notion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49

3.2 The Presence of a Living Master does Something;

Exactly What is not Known . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

50

3.3 Given with the Authority of the Guru: A Mantra . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

52

Chapter 4

4.1 Waking State: the Me Exists for the Ordinary Person, but not

for the Sage; Deep Sleep: No Awareness and No Me for Both . .

53

4.2 "Being in Lucknow with Poonjaji, Why Should you Feel Ramesh

in your Heart?" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

4.3 Truth is What-Is at this Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57

Chapter 5

5.1 The Living Dream Appears and Continues for the Dreamer

Who is Everybody Who is Awake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59

5.2 Consciousness itself is the Bliss and the Misery;

Consciousness cannot Enjoy Bliss or Suffer Misery . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

67

Chapter 6

6.1 No Control over the Arising of Thought, but No Involvement

in Further Thinking: The Sage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

70

6.2 A Two-Week, 18 Hours-a-Day Enlightenment Intensive Course:

What Happens 2 Weeks after the 2 Weeks? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73

Chapter 7

7.1 In the Absence of the Me, the Observer and the Observed

are One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

77

Chapter 8

8.1 What is Right with Witnessing and Wrong with Involvement? . . . .

79

Chapter 9

9.1 If Gandha — Then Smell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

82

Chapter 10

10.1 The Complete Manifestation Exists already, and is Served out

Bit by Bit, in a Self-generating Process — a Speculation . . . . . . . . . . .

84

Chapter 11

11.1 Deep Sleep — No Awareness of the Body or the Manifestation

for Sage and Non-Sage Alike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87

11.2 The Personal Dreams of the Sage are Psychological Reactions

to Actions in the Waking State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

90

Chapter 12

12.1 "If We Want Life to Continue as We Know it, We Should Try

Not to get Enlightened" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

92

Chapter 13

13.1 Grace Happening in the Guru’s Presence: The Grace of God . . . . . . 100

13.2 In True Meditation there is No Meditator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

13.3 When Enlightenment Occurs, What Happens with God’s Will? . . . . 103

Chapter 14

14.1 Enlightenment: The Peace of Acceptance is not

a Permanent Blissful State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Chapter 15

15.1 Even A Mindful Sage Can Break His Leg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Chapter 16

16.1 The Four States of a Sage: Working Mind, Witnessing,

Non-Witnessing, Samadhi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Chapter 17

17.1 Destruction of the World: Balance of the Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Chapter 18

18.1 Can one Have a Direct Experience of Deep Sleep? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

18.2 Rebirth And Reincarnation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Chapter 19

19.1 A Terrible Obstruction: I Am Enlightened . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Chapter 20

20.1 Lucid Dreams: The Dreamer is Aware that He is Dreaming;

Enlightenment: No Concern with Lucid Dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Chapter 21

21.1 Enlightened or Not? What are the Criteria? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

Chapter 22

22.1 Work is Meditation: What about the Workaholic? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Chapter 23

23.1 What was First, the Chicken or the Egg? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Chapter 24

24.1 The Guru and his Teaching: A Hope for the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

24.2 Karma, Rebirth and the Pool of Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Chapter 25

25.1 Satsang in the form of Gossip about Contemporary Gurus . . . . . . . . 141

25.2 Lineage Means: My Lineage is the Best Lineage . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Chapter 26

26.1 I am Sorry to Say You are not Enlightened . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

Chapter 27

27.1 Thought is Connected with Consciousness and not with the

Body-Mind Organism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Chapter 28

28.1 "I Love Food, so I Strive to Be a Mahabogi" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

28.2 When All Questioning Stops: The Most Powerful Understanding

166

28.3 Initiation of the Thinking Process — an External Impulse;

Cutting Short The Thinking Process — Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . 167

28.4 Fish or Chicken, Sir? Are they in your Mind, or on the Menu, or on the Plate in Front of you Now? Working Mind — Thinking Mind . . . 169

Chapter 29

29.1 My Mission Or Poonjaji’s Mission? — Gangaji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

Chapter 30

30.1 Enlightenment can be Bought with Money —

And the Fake Guru Takes it! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Chapter 31

31.1 Rajneesh’s Mala and Balsekar’s Sacred Thread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Chapter 32

32.1 Enlightenment: the End of Wanting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

32.2 Poonjaji said: You are Enlightened! —

And Then He Went Away . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Chapter 33

33.1 My Action — God’s Karma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

33.2 Enlightenment: The Eruption of a Volcano or the Blooming

of a Flower? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

33.3 Sex, the Sage and the Working Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

33.4 Why Does God Create Misery? — Why Not! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

33.5 Is Gratitude a Precondition for Enlightenment to Happen? . . . . . . . 222

33.6 Enlightenment Happened in My Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

33.7 Grace or Practice? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Chapter 34

34.1 God has a Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

Chapter 35

35.1 I Hate Your Teaching! — Sadhana is both Necessary and Not Necessary for Enlightenment to Happen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

35.2 Enlightenment Cannot be Enhanced in Any Way,

Though Money Can Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

35.3 The Seeker’s Earnestness for Enlightenment,

Or Free Entertainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Chapter 36

36.1 Poor Fool, You Don’t Understand the Teaching! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

36.2 The Seeker Leaves the Guru and Tells him Why . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

36.3 The Seeker’s Last Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

Final Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

Postscript: From Ramesh to Adi Shankara, and Back Again . . . . . . . . . . 281

Glossary of Concepts — Ramesh’s Teaching According

to Classical Advaita Vedanta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Photo by Marc Beuret

Ramesh S. Balsekar with Madhukar Thompson in Bombay

Biographical Notes

Ramesh S. Balsekar was born into a devout Hindu brahmin family in Bombay, on May 25, 1917. After his studies at the London School of Economics, he joined the Bank of India in 1940. He rose to become the bank’s General Manager, and retired after thirty-seven years of service. Sri Balsekar married Sharda in 1940, and they raised three children.

Although Sri Ramana Maharshi (whom he never met in person) was one of his most important spiritual mentors, his personal guru for more than twenty years was Sri Vithal Rao Joshi who lived in Pune, a city some 180 kms south-east of Bombay. Sri Balsekar met his second and final guru — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj — in Bombay in 1978. One year later, during Diwali (the Hindu festival of lights), Sri Balsekar attained enlightenment in Maharaj’s presence. On September 6, 1981, Maharaj passed away, and Sri Balsekar began teaching in his own right. Since 1987 he has taught at public seminars held in Europe, the USA and India. He has also written ten books on the teachings of Advaita Vedanta.

Sri Balsekar meets seekers and answers their questions every morning from 10:00 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. at his residence in Bombay (Mumbai). During the last half-hour of these sessions, devotional songs ( bhajans) are sung in his presence. Sri Balsekar’s address is: Gamadia Road — Sindhula Bldg. (off Warden Road, near the French Consulate), Mumbai - 400026 (tel. [phone]). Sri Balsekar is affectionately known as Ramesh, and is addressed thus by his devotees and other visiting seekers.

Madhukar Thompson’s first-hand experience of Eastern spirituality began in the early seventies while travelling in India and South East Asia from 1971

through 1973. Eventually, in 1980, he devoted himself whole-heartedly to the search for enlightenment, and was initiated into neo-sannyas by Sri Osho Rajneesh. He spent the next twelve years in his guru’s communes in Pune, India and in Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA, but when his master died in January 1990, Madhukar had still not found enlightenment.

In 1991 he travelled to Lucknow, India, to meet Sri H.W.L. Poonja and, soon after, became one of his close disciples and personal assistant. On several occasions, Sri Poonjaji declared that Madhukar was enlightened but eventually, in 1993, feeling that his search was still incomplete, he left Sri Poonjaji and spent the next three years travelling all over India in search of a guru who could help him to realize final and total enlightenment. It was during this period that he met Ramesh S. Balsekar, moved to Bombay and stayed with him until 1996.

Madhukar has lived in India for the past 10 years, and during this time he has compiled extensive audio and video recordings of his conversations and interviews with Sri Poonjaji, Sri Balsekar, and several other Eastern spiritual masters and teachers whom he met in the course of his search for enlightenment.

This material is currently being prepared for publication by Neti Neti Press, a publishing company he founded in 1998, in the hope that the interviews and the close personal exchanges it contains will assist other seekers in their search for truth, peace, enlightenment, and understanding.

Preface

This book documents the Advaita Vedanta teachings of Ramesh S. Balsekar, as expressed in conversations with seekers who visited his residence in Bombay over the period from November 1995 through to March 1996. It follows on from its companion volume Enlightenment May or May Not Happen which was based on recordings made from July — November 1995. Both volumes contain Ramesh’s responses to questions and comments voiced by myself and other seekers regarding the spiritual search, meditation, practice, the guru-disciple relationship and enlightenment.

Readers who are already familiar with the earlier volume Enlightenment May or May Not Happen can skip the rest of this Preface (it doesn’t contain the story you might be looking for — that’s in the Introduction below). This section is intended for new readers only, and ends with a few words on laughter.

First though, for the record, a few details should be noted.

The extracts contained in each chapter were all recorded on the same day and, like the chapters themselves, they are presented in chronological order.

One chapter — Chapter 33 — features the complete unabridged transcript of one of the morning sessions in its entirety. On occasion, the names of certain participants have been changed so as not to impinge on their personal privacy.

Throughout the book, for the sake of clarity, questions and remarks made by myself and other seekers have been set in italics, to contrast with the comments and answers given by Ramesh. Where essential, light editing of grammar and syntax has been undertaken to ensure that the text is readily comprehensible.

Sanskrit words which occur in the text are explained in the Glossary of Concepts —

Ramesh’s Teaching According to Classical Advaita Vedanta given at the end of the book. This Glossary — written by Upanishad scholar and teacher Ananda Wood

— gives a concise exposition of Ramesh’s teaching from a classical Advaita Vedanta perspective. It enables the reader to gain a deeper understanding of the main tenets of Ramesh’s Advaita teachings, and is expressed with such elegance and precision that it can also be read as a valuable guide and reference work in its own right.

The text has been illustrated by a series of cartoons in which I express my personal views and understanding (and, at times, my misunderstanding!) of Ramesh’s teaching. The ideas for each cartoon arose spontaneously while I was transcribing the talks, and at first I paid them little heed. As the ideas accumulated, however, I began to realize their potential. Cartoons, after all, are excellent vehicles for swiftly conveying information, and are particularly suited for commenting on events and pointing up the humor underlying them.

The inclusion of these cartoons is intended to illustrate and underscore key aspects of the teaching they accompany. They emphasize and clarify, helping 17

the reader’s own understanding of Ramesh’s Advaita teachings to evolve. And, of course, the cartoons are also meant to entertain, and to make the seeker (and hopefully the guru!) laugh. They provide light-hearted touches of humor, generating amusement and laughter without losing sight of the teaching that informs them. Indeed, the cartoons not only reinforce the teaching, they actually hit the bull’s-eye, landing the seeker right in the Heart whenever they provoke an outburst of laughter. For it is not possible to think and laugh at the same time — the two events are diametrically opposed to each other. Either one is thinking or one is laughing. What happens when one laughs totally? In such laughter, mind evaporates. The me, the ego, the one-who-laughs disappears and only laughter remains. No sense of a separate me-entity can accompany it.

Laughter is a sort of no-man’s land — or better, a no-me land — where the seeker and his search, the doer and his goal, all cease to exist. There is no thinker, no thinking, no thought — time stops. Thus, in pure laughter we are granted a free sample of what we are all seeking: Sat-Chit-Ananda — Truth, Consciousness, Bliss.

So, dear reader, as you make your way through this book, I sincerely hope and trust that you will find something herein which resonates with your own experience and illuminates it with the direct recognition of Truth. While you read on, the cartoons are there for your enjoyment.1 God willing, they may sometimes raise a smile or a laugh that transports you, albeit briefly, across the seemingly vast, disheartening (but ultimately illusory) distance which lies between you and the enlightened state that you long for.

1 Selected examples of the cartoons featured in Enlightenment Who Cares and in its companion volume Enlightenment May or May Not Happen have been published separately in Neti Neti’s postcard series under the titles Enlightenment à la Carte and Enlightenment by Airmail. Each collection consists of a set of 20 detachable full-color cartoon postcards which readers can send to amuse and enlighten their relatives and friends.

18

Introduction

Ramesh S. Balsekar teaches that all actions and events — including the search for enlightenment — are God’s actions and events. For it is God (or Consciousness) that is functioning through all the billions of sentient and insentient beings. This functioning is all-pervasive and totally impersonal, and it is against this background that the illusion of me as a separate entity arises. As part of the process of manifestation, impersonal Consciousness identifies itself as personal consciousness, thereby creating the me-entity with its sense of individual free will and personal doership. The spiritual search is simply the reverse of this process, in which the apparently separate me-entity with the sense of individual free will and personal doership gradually weakens, finally dissolving back into the impersonal Consciousness from which it arose.

If we accept that, in common with all other events in manifestation, the spiritual search is merely part of an impersonal process that is moved entirely by the Will of God (or Consciousness, or Totality, or the Absolute — label It how you will), this has highly significant repercussions. For this teaching necessarily implies that neither the seeker nor the guru can in any way influence or determine the form the search takes or its outcome. The seeker’s seeking is truly God’s action. It was God’s Will that turned a person into a seeker, and it is He who will decide what sort of spiritual practice or sadhana (if any) the seeker will do, and when (if ever) enlightenment will happen in that person’s case.

Ramesh, therefore, does not prescribe any particular practice or advocate any method for attaining enlightenment. Rather, he teaches that the process of seeking (whatever the form it takes) can only be witnessed and, in due course, it will turn out that the one who witnessed — the individual — never existed.

The witnessing is and has always been impersonal. The one who is seeking is that which is sought. The seeker and the sought are this-here-now — that which is always present: the sense of presence, Consciousness.

So, dear reader, if you are looking for a how to guide giving some kind of method or recipe for enlightenment, you are bound to be disappointed.

Ramesh maintains that nothing can be done to speed up the spiritual process —

no personal efforts by the seeker, nor the guru’s support, teaching or power will help. For some seekers this understanding brings about a sense of relief and freedom — freedom from the sense of responsibility, failure and guilt. For others, the opposite effect occurs: a sense of helplessness, defeat