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Wayne on KAZU Radio
September 1999

Host: Wayne are you on the line?

Wayne: I am indeed.

Host: You are sounding real good you are loud and clear. And it sounds like you are the sort of individual that we can ask questions of like, 'What is Enlightenment?'

Wayne: That is a question that is frequently asked.

Host: Yes, I am just going to start off with that one... that is a pretty major one. I would love for you to tell us about that. What the heck is it?

Wayne: My feeling about enlightenment is that it is a concept that has been widely misunderstood to be a personal sort of development, and what Enlightenment is in fact is an impersonal event that happens through what we would call a body-mind mechanism. Which is simply this package that we consider ourselves to be, a physical body combined with a mind, a mechanism through which God or Totality or Consciousness, if you will, functions. One of the aspects of this body-mind mechanism is the development, around the age of two and half, of a sense of personal doership so that the actions that happen through it are considered to be "my actions". Most people go through their life without ever really questioning whether that is true or not.

Host: So part of enlightenment is asking questions of that process?

Wayne: I would say that questioning whether "I am the doer" or whether I am an instrument through which doership happens is what I call... seeking. Now seeking happens in a relatively small percentage of body-mind mechanisms. Most people are content to get a new car every once in awhile or a better job, or more money. In relatively few people does this quest develop for a direct experience of their true nature. The seeking which begins in certain body-mind mechanisms is a process through which perhaps this sense of personal doership will fall away. When the sense of personal doership falls away this is what is known as Enlightenment.

Host: I should actually introduce you a little further here. Wayne Liqourman a.k.a. Ram Tzu... which is a wonderful name Wayne. It sounds like a combination of a Hindu and a Chinese name.

Wayne: It is.

Host: Anyway I am going to read a little bit here about you, which will interest people especially after your answer to the first question. It says, " Wayne Liquorman teaches ancient Advaita (non duality) in a thoroughly modern, humorous, hard-hitting way, without compromise, religious dogma, or new-age veneer. Wayne offers no cures, exercises, miracles, or techniques to reach Enlightenment. He gives you nothing to join, nothing to do and nothing to attain. His message is utterly clear and simple 'Consciousness is all there is.' With Wayne, you will see that you are already complete, that there is nothing missing and nothing broken, therefore there is nothing to repair and nothing to get." If it is that simple, why is it that we have such a hard time coming to that state of being?

Wayne: (laughs) That is certainly part of the dance isn't it? If we understand that this beliefthat we are the doers, that things should be other than they areis given to us as part of this overall functioning of Totalitycall it Gods Will, call it the Lila, call it Maya there are all kinds of names that are attached to itbut the understanding is that each body-mind mechanism is an expression of the one Consciousness, and as such, every action that happens through it, every thought that happens through it, every effort that it makes is not 'its' effort but rather the effort of Consciousness or Totality or God or Taoit's all the same, it doesn't matter what you call it.

Host: You have an interesting set of words in this introduction "thoroughly modern" when you are speaking of an understanding that has been transmitted from ancient Vedic times. What does "thoroughly modern" mean?

Wayne: The reference is to the fact that I am not classically trained in any particular religious tradition and therefore this understanding that happened through this body-mind mechanismthe body-mind mechanism of Wayneis not conditioned by the spiritual cultures in which so many teachers have been raised and conditioned. As the teaching expresses through me, it reflects my direct experience, and of course my previous experiences, my previous culture. In this case that has more to do with my life as an alcoholic, a drug addict, a businessman and a family man than it does as a spiritual seeker.

Host: How did you come to this? You evidently met somebody who was carrying these teachings and you decided to follow this particular kind of path. How did you come to that? What was the experience like meeting your teacher?

Wayne: I will give you a little bit of background. As I alluded to earlier, I was not a spiritual seeker for most of my life, and in fact, I was someone who believed that I was the master of my destiny, and that I only needed to set my sights, establish my goals and work towards them. I could make my life whatever I wished it to be.

Host: The good old American way.

Wayne: The good old American way. The problem is that it is very difficult to do, as anyone who has tried it discoverslife seems to have other plans. The way I dealt with the misery associated with believing that I was responsible for creating my entire destiny and then not being able to do it was to use drugs and alcohol. I used them in copious quantities until the point where it consumed my life. Even though I was in dreadful shape I would have told you that I was choosing to do this. That I was choosing slowly, actually not so slowly, to kill myself. Then at one moment in the middle of the night that compulsion that I had for nearly 19 years, which was central to my very being, disappeared. It just went away in an instant.

Host: All by itself with no...

Wayne: With no apparent cause... and in that instant I was faced with a horrible intellectual dilemma: If I was in fact the master of my destiny, and I was in charge of everything, what the hell had just happened to me? What had done this to me? I knew that I hadn't done it. Nothing that dramatic had ever happened to me before, and it was clear that my life was all of a sudden going in a radically different directionI wasn't steering.

Host: You had no thoughts like, "Well it would be nice and helpful if I could stop these compulsions" you were saying, "I chose these and that is the way my life is." Then suddenly, bam, it was gone.

Wayne: Exactly. That is precisely how it was.

Host: Gosh if you could bottle that for the folks that are struggling with these things.

Wayne: Well, yes. And if I had done it, if there was even a modicum of the sense that I had done it, then I could just tell you how I did it, then you could do it that way, then we could start a string of centers and all get rich. But I didn't do it, and it was clear I didn't do it. There was no way that I could even pretend to myself that I had done it. That sent me on this path that the great Hindu sage, Ramana Maharishi said is the point at which your head goes into the tigers mouth, the jaws close and there is no escapeyou are a seeker. I was a seeker in that moment. I had to find out what power, what force was there in the universe that could do that to me. That surge led me through a wonderfully exotic spiritual bazaar.

Host: Oh, share some highlights from your journey. What did you touch into?

Wayne: I picked up Ram Dass books, Be Here Now, Grist for the Mill, that kind of thing. I read

Thich Nhat Hanh, I read Rajeneesh, I took up Tai Chi Chuan, I was out on the beach every morning doing a 30-minute Tai Chi exercise...

Host: That must have been a lovely way to start a morning.

Wayne: It was wonderful! I was sitting in Vipassana style meditation. I tried going to hear various teachers. After 15 months of that I got a flyer in the mail that a teacher from India, Ramesh Balsekar was coming to southern California. I went to hear one of his talks, and this fellow was truly unique as Indian Sages go. He was the retired President of the Bank of India, a man very much of the world. He was educated at the London School of Economics, a husband, a father of three, a very successful executive, a Hindu Brahmin, and someone who, after retiring from the bank, became the translator for Nisargadatta Maharaj, the sage whose words were captured in the book I Am That. After a couple of years of translating for Maharaj, Ramesh had this direct intuitive understanding of his true nature. He started writing books about it, and he was finally brought over to the United States where I met him.

Host: Wayne, how old were you when you woke up in the middle of the night with this freedom from your compulsions?

Wayne: 34 years old.

Host: So it was two years after that that you met your teacher.

Wayne: That is right.

Host: So you must have had a hot house for 15 months?

Wayne: It was fantastic. It was such a joy because everything was new. I was just pregnant with the possibilities. It was really like walking through a Moroccan bazaar where everyone is offering these various shiny objects, these bottles and beads and everything glitters and captures your eyes, and it seems to have such promise and polish. It was a very exciting thing.

Host: How old are you now? Asking people's age is a bit rude perhaps. How long has it been since you met your teacher?

Wayne: I met him in September 16, 1987.

Host: So you have had a long journey since then working with these things?

Wayne: In these intervening 11 years and one day I......

Host: 11 years and one day is that what it is today?

Wayne: Today is the 17th I believe....

Host: Yes.

Wayne: I called Ramesh yesterday, as I do every year on the 16th of September to reminisce about what an incredible change my life took on that day and what an astonishing Grace it was. So in these intervening 11 years there has been a huge shift from the awareness that walked into that room when I first met Ramesh.

Host: You will be teaching at the yoga center. There will be an introductory talk and it's kind of open and people can come and listen to you and get a sense of it and if they want to go deeper with you on Saturday and Sunday. Is that how it works?

Wayne: Yes, basically.

Host: There is a donation for the introductory talk.

Wayne: For the talk on Friday night that is correct, and then if there is what I would call resonance, there is an 'intensive' on Saturday and Sunday. This resonance which is the connection that one experiences... It is what I experienced with Ramesh. I sat with him and as he spoke, it was clear to me that I was in the presence of something quite profound. Now I assumed that this was blindingly obvious to anyone! So I called my friends and said, 'You have got to come hear this guy. He is absolutely extraordinary, you sit, just sit and listen to him talk and the universes fall away before you, you see into the very heart of the matter.' They said; "Well sure, we'll be glad to come and have Universes fall away and see into the heart of the matter." They came along with me the next time and at the end of the hour and a half talk, I said, "Huh, well, was it wonderful or what?" They nodded their heads in a very polite way and said unenthusiastically, "Yeah he was a very great little Indian guy. Seemed to have some really fine things to say." So it was clear that the direct experience I was having in his presence was not universal. What was crucial and what I have come to see over and over again over the course of these years is that without this quality of resonance existing between the Guru and disciplethere is no Guru!

Host: Sounds like this must be a kind of grace that happens rather than something obvious.

Wayne: Grace is certainly a word that I would apply. Of course you know what grace is? Grace is just a fancy spiritual term for good luck. If it is good luck, we call it Grace. If it is bad luck, we call it God's will.

Host: I am holding a copy of your book, which has a wonderful photograph, more like a drawing. The book is called No Way for the Spiritually Advanced and this sounds like the title of your intensive also. The cover shows a crossroads with a couple of suitcases, and all these wonderful signs on a post like you see at crossroads and one says Buddhism, one says Taoism, Yoga and Prayer and Zen and Psychotherapy, and they are all pointing in different directions. It is a great image.

Wayne: And actually the suitcases sitting at the crossroads are left there when the one who is traveling the path has disappeared.

Host: Explain.

Wayne: The Enlightenment, the Awakening is the utter and complete dissolution of the one who is seeking. What is left is the baggage. What is left is the body, the mindall the genetic materials developed through its various experiences that have been conditioned by its subsequent experiences. That is what is left. But the seeker, that which believes itself to be seeking, that which believes itself to be doingis gone!

Host: Don is here with me in the station and he has been looking quite interested so I thought I would let him ask you some questions and make some comments.

Don: In that last part that you were talking about, you say there is a necessary phase that one must be in and very few enter into... seeking, um... once one enters into seeking, after that, then the seeking dissolves. I am curious, it dissolves into pure presence in the world, but no where to be... but here? Am I following that line of your thought?

Wayne: Yes, you can say that it dissolves into Pure Presence. I would say rather than dissolving into something, it is dissolution of the one who believes himself to be separate, and who believes himself to be a seeker, when what is revealed is what was here all alonga seamless unity.

Don: Which takes one back to where they were before they were a seeker in some sense, but there is a difference: Instead of the sense of separation evoked by the personal in early growth, one moves into the impersonal, an impersonal relationship?

Wayne: I would say that the impersonal relationship is an experience along the path. It is what one would say is the ultimate or mystical experience, which is the highest, most wondrous and delightful of phenomenal experiences. However, it is still a step along the path of seeking and virtually every seeker has experienced that at some point or anotherthat melding into the oneness, from which at some point, be it a minute, or 5 minutes, or an hour, or 5 days later, the sense of the me as the doer reemerges. What I am talking about is the utter and complete dissolution of that which would experience even unity.

Don: You will have to say a little bit more about that.

Wayne: Ok, to experience Unity there has to be separation. Any experience requires subject/object relationship. The Unity that underlies that is non-experiential. It simply is.

Host: When you are working with people in 'intensives,' how do you help them to come to a deeper understanding perhaps on a nonverbal level?

Wayne: Quite frankly, I do absolutely nothing at any point in the process.

Host: (laughter) What happens in the process? What can people expect or look for in the 'intensives' with you?

Wayne: There is virtually every conceivable range of experience. If there is resonance, if there is this Grace, if there is this good luck to experience that deep and profound connection then there is an experience of Unity, there is an Impersonal seeing. As I said before, it is the highest and most deeply moving of human experience. Everybody else will sit around wondering just why the hell they came.

Host: Like you and your friends and your teacher.

Wayne: Yes, "What are these other people talking about?"

Host: I noticed that humor seems to be important to you, what is the role of humor in moving through all of this?

Wayne: Humor is just an aspect of this particular body mind's nature. So the expression of the teaching when it comes through me has a lot of humor attached to it because it is part of the character and quality of the instrument.

Host: Yes, does your teacher have a good sense of humor?

Wayne: Yes, he does. He is a much more serious... fundamentally a more serious person than I am, but he certainly has a very fine sense of humor.

Host: It sounds as if he recently asked you or gave you permission or something to carry these teachings more fully into the Western world is that correct?

Wayne: Yes, it was about 2 years and a couple of months ago, I was in India with Ramesh during one of his talks, the room was filled with seekers, and unexpectedly he said to everyone, 'You should all come back tomorrow, tomorrow Wayne is giving the talk.'

Host: How did that make you feel?

Wayne: It did not delight me. I wrote the book No Way under the pen name Ram Tzu because, as it said in the beginning of the introduction, I didn't want a bunch of miserable seekers cluttering up my living room. I was not interested in being a teacher.

Host: Why not?

Wayne: Because, as I had traveled extensively over the years with Ramesh and edited his books and all of that, it was clear to me that all that was being said, all that was being written wasn't true. These were simply pointers at very the best, and for the most part people that came to hear them took them as some kind of truth and utterly and completely misunderstood them.

Host: So what did you do with all of us miserable seekers who clutter living rooms, and your there having to teach with some man telling his students that you are giving the talk? How did you deal with that?

Wayne: How does one deal with it? Well, I said to Ramesh, "Thank you very much. I think I'm quite honored that you would have me do this, however you are doing a masterful job of teaching." As far as I was concerned, he was alive and able to carry on. It would be impertinent of me to be talking about his teaching. He responded, "Nonsense my dear boy! Nonsense! If they come, talk to them." So I figured that I was safe.

Don: So did they come?

Wayne: They came!

Don: What did you talk to them about?

Wayne: I just started talking.

Don: And what came out when you spoke?

Wayne: What came out was this teaching that has continued to evolve over these last 2 and a half years. It started with the teaching that Ramesh gave to me and then evolved into words of Ram Tzu. When people came and started asking questions, it brought out through this organism a teaching. And when I told you before I literally don't do anything, I really meant that.

Don: I think I can understand that. But what I am hearing is that innate in every question from a being who is a seeker, is a response that is invoked in you that there isn't a separation but rather a connection and it flows from... the part that is missing... seems to flow from you.

Wayne: Where there is this connection that happens. And the value of it is quite wonderful. Some will come and hear the concepts that are being articulated and will mistake them for some kind of truth.

Don: Can you give us an example of one or two of the concepts and maybe we can misunderstand them.

Wayne: (Huge laughter) Certainly, the fundamental concept is that "All there is is Consciousness. Consciousness is all there is."

Don: Now tell me how I can misunderstand that? (laughing)

Wayne: The way you can misunderstand that is to believe that what you have conceptualized from that, as meaning, is inherently true.

Don: Uh huh, all right.

Wayne: It is not.

Don: The universal imagination... The divine imagination...

Wayne: The great sage Lao Tzu saw this very clearly. The first line of the Tao Te Ching is that "The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao." Then he went on to write another 98 or so verses. Such is the irony when talking about that which ultimately can't be talked about. It can't be done but we do it anyway!(laughter)

The host brings the exchange to a close.