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In 1987 when Ramesh Balsekar was brought to the U.S. he was taken to
a restaurant where he ordered the house special—a potato baked in a shell
of clay. With great fanfare the potato was rolled to the table. The waiter
then produced a small silver mallet with which he tap-tap-tapped on the
clay until it broke and the potato was revealed.
Ramesh commented that his Teaching was a similar process. He tap-
tap-tapped with his conceptual hammer of “All there is is Consciousness”
and there was no way to predict how many taps would be required.
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This is a beautiful and evocative account of a seeker's journey and their relationship with a spiritual teacher. The passage captures several core themes of Advaita Vedanta (non-duality) through personal experience:
The Dissolution of the "Me": The text highlights the central paradox of spiritual seeking—that the ultimate realization (often called enlightenment or the Final Understanding) is not an acquisition for the ego, but rather the dissolution of the separate sense of self ("me") that was seeking in the first place.
The Illusion of Doership: A major realization described is that the individual is not the author of their actions. Instead, actions and events unfold naturally through the "body/mind organism," a perspective that often brings a profound sense of relief and freedom from the burden of personal responsibility and guilt.
The Role of the Teacher: The description of Wayne (likely Wayne Liquorman, a well-known student of Ramesh Balsekar) emphasizes a teaching style that does not offer comfort to the ego, but rather dismantles its stories and attachments. This "burning of bridges" is framed not as cruelty, but as the highest form of compassion and friendship, as it aims to free the individual from the root cause of suffering.
The passage serves as an intimate introduction to a book of transcriptions, illustrating how the process of working on the text itself became a living demonstration of the teaching for the writer, Christa.
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