Conscious TV - Wayne Liquorman

Wayne Liquorman - Never Mind

Interview by Iain McNay

Iain: Now, something very significant happened to you, didn’t it? You were living, let’s say, a normal life – mid-thirties, and you were… I say normal - it wasn’t normal in one way: it was quite obsessive. You were drinking a lot, taking some drugs, playing a lot of cards… And I think you went on a four-day binge and then something happened that really changed your life.

Wayne: Yes, at the end of this four-day binge - which was the end of a nineteen-year period of alcoholism and drug addiction (the gambling was secondary) - there was a moment of absolute transformation in which this compulsion I had had for the last nineteen years disappeared. And I felt it go, I watched it go. And I was horrified by it, because I didn’t want to be sober, you see.

Iain: So were you drunk at the time?

Wayne: I was, I was quite drunk. But I became, literally, instantly, sober. And I knew that that period was over, that I couldn’t drink or do drugs anymore, and it was very strange.

Iain: It is an extraordinary thing to happen, that you are drunk and suddenly you get a kind of a life-changing spiritual experience. Many people work for years and years and years, with meditation and workshops and teachers, to find this point, taste this point. And it happens to you because you drink too much.

Wayne: Yes! It’s pretty ironic, isn’t it? Now, I want to be clear that this was the point at which my spiritual seeking began: this was not the end point of the spiritual seeking. It was what I would call the crack in the wall; call it the wall of the ego or whatever. Because up till that moment I was absolutely convinced I was the master of my destiny, that I was making it happen. But when this event happened, and it transformed me to the extent that I went from someone who was drinking a fifth of alcohol a day and doing a gram of cocaine a day, just to get through the day… to have this disappear, and my not wanting it to disappear - this meant that something else was operative in the universe. I couldn’t argue that.

Iain: You saw this clearly at the time, did you?

Wayne: No, I had the sense of it. And I was fortunate to meet someone who had had a similar experience. You see?

Iain: Right.

Wayne: Someone else who had been ‘struck sober’. And he was able to share his experience with me. What I wanted to find out – what I became intensely curious about - was what force in the universe could do this to me?

Iain: But you see, that is a very intelligent response. Not everybody would have that.

Wayne: No, not everyone. But that was my response.

Iain: Yes. And did you stop drinking straightaway?

Wayne: Yes, in that moment the obsession that compelled me to drink disappeared.

Iain: So, OK, it was the obsession that went, which means you could stop drinking, because the obsession was the reason that disappeared. And presumably it was the same with the drugs as well, was it?

Wayne: Absolutely. It went as a package.

Iain: Right, yes. It was like a gift from God in a way, wasn’t it?

Wayne: It felt very much like a gift. You can call it Grace if you like. It felt like Grace and I perceive it as Grace now – though at the time I thought it was horrible. I didn’t like people who didn’t drink, I didn’t associate with people who didn’t drink, and my whole social life was around the bars and the drug houses. And so I wasn’t happy with the state of affairs right after that.

Iain: So what kind of response did you get from your drinking pals?

Wayne: Well, I didn’t have very much in common with them anymore. What we shared primarily was our drinking. That is what we did: we drank and did drugs. When you stop doing that, there is not really much reason to associate any longer.

Iain: Were you functioning reasonably well in life in other ways? I think you had a business at the time…

Wayne: Actually, my business had failed. I had been a bartender, a failed bartender – things were not going particularly well for me at that time. I had the remnants of a business, but it was kept in place by a business partner who was able to work. I was pretty much a mess, but I couldn’t see it. So what happened was that, when the obsession was removed and the clouds cleared, I could see what a mess I was. I was in a horrible shape physically, and spiritually; and emotionally I was bankrupt.

Iain: OK, so what happened next?

Wayne: I began to be very interested in what power in the universe could transform me in this way. This started what we can call the spiritual search. I began to read everything. I was reading Buddhists, Sufis, Christian mystics, Taoists - across the board. And this friend I mentioned had a large spiritual library that he introduced me to. He said, “Come, graze in it. Pick whatever interests you, take it home. If it interests you, read it. If not, come back and get something else”. And that is what I did. I began to experiment and to look into all of these things which are certainly familiar to most spiritual seekers. But it was all totally unfamiliar to me.

Iain: And what books particularly drew you at the time?

Wayne: The books that drew me were the Taoist texts. The Tao Te Ching drew me very strongly; Chuang Tzu drew me very strongly. I was interested in some of the Buddhist things - Ikkyu… I read Ram Dass… Those kinds of things spoke to me.

Iain: And then did you try some workshops and talks as well, or you just...

Wayne: I went to a few workshops and talks; I went to hear Ram Dass speak. I began to do Tai Chi, started meditation practices. So I was trying all sorts of things. It was like walking through a spiritual bazaar - you know, like a Turkish bazaar. And there were all these people saying, “Oh, try this! This is a very fine practice, sir - you’ll enjoy this very much”. OK! I was game. I was game to try just about anything.

Iain: It must have been a really exciting time actually!

Wayne: It was - it was marvellous. And for two years I was intensely involved in trying all kinds of things. You know, really, it almost didn’t matter what it was – just bring it on, bring it on!

Iain: And then I think you went to the first American talk by Ramesh Balsekar, didn’t you?

Wayne: Yes, it was interesting because we had gone - the friend of mine who had introduced me to all these books and things - we had gone to hear Ram Dass. You know, the Timothy Leary compatriot - that Ram Dass. And he was involved with the Seva Foundation and doing talks to raise money for them. And so I attended one of these with my friend, and he got on the mailing list. And the fellow who brought Ramesh to the US – Ramesh is my Guru - got this mailing list and he sent it out, so my friend got one. And they were only charging a buck, so we said, “What the hell, what have we got to lose!” And we went. This was Ramesh’s first public talk ever.

Iain: Were there many people there?

Wayne: Oh, there were probably fifty, sixty people I would say, yes. And he got up and he delivered a speech, because he had been a banker…

Iain: I was aware of that, he was President of the Bank of India.

Wayne: Yes, he had retired from the bank about five years earlier. He had up till that time only been talking about Advaita informally in his home, to people who would come, because he had three books published on the subject. But there was nothing formal set up. At his home in India people would just stop by the house and he would serve them tea and they’d talk. But in LA it was his first formal talk about Advaita, and he did what he had always done in his life, which was, when he was addressing a large group of people, he’d write a speech. And he wrote a speech about Advaita and delivered it. And I had never heard about Advaita, I knew nothing about this Hindu-based non-duality. And I didn’t understand a word the man said. It all went right over my head.

Iain: Was the fact that he was a banker… did that somehow give him more credence because he had made it in the world?

Wayne: That he was a man of the world rather than a figure in an ashram was certainly intriguing. Though, after that first time, I never thought I would ever see Ramesh again, because I was bored stiff.

I went to Korea on a business trip and, when I came back three weeks later, it was as if something had bitten me in this talk that Ramesh gave and had incubated in the three weeks. So after I came back, I went to hear him again. There was just something about that guy. He was speaking daily in a private home up in the Hollywood hills, and it was a small group of maybe twelve, fifteen people that gathered to listen to him and sit in his presence.

He came in and he sat down and he started to talk informally, kind of like we are talking now. I was mesmerized, I was captivated. I realized I was in the presence of a very profound truth, something significant. I didn’t know what it was, but what happened was my heart burst open. And even though I had no intellectual comprehension whatsoever of what he was saying, in the space of my heart flowed an incredible, powerful truth. And I was drawn back to that, like a moth to a flame.

Iain: So when you say your heart broke open, what was that? What was the feeling there? Emotion or…?

Wayne: It was a sense of love. It was very much like falling in love. I hope you have had that experience in your life, where you have met someone…

Iain: Absolutely.

Wayne: And you just… you can’t stop thinking about them and you feel this desire to be with them and to experience the quality of their presence. All of that was there, you see? So I couldn’t stay away - I had to go back. And as I went back, of course, the teaching, the pointers of the teaching, started to click in me.

Iain: Because, I guess, you had a good mind, you were successful in business, you had read a lot, so you had the framework to absorb and develop the ideas he was talking about; and, from that, you could then build a bigger picture somehow.

Wayne: Right.

Iain: And then one day he said… I don’t know how long it was, “Come back tomorrow - Wayne is giving the talk tomorrow”.

Wayne: Oh, that is quite a bit later.

Iain: That is quite a bit later.

Wayne: Yes, you see, at that time, that first year that he came… this was now twenty-two years ago. In that first year, it was all about me getting as much as I possibly could get from him, from the teaching. I was just like a sponge trying to get more.

Iain: So you felt like a separate ‘me’ on your path moving somewhere. And you felt that he could help you find yourself, or develop yourself, or whatever. Was that how it felt to you?

Wayne: Certainly, certainly, and the separate ‘me’ remains to this day.

Iain: OK.

Wayne: And by a ‘separate me’ I want to be very clear what I am talking about. The ‘separate me’ that was there then and is here now, is the ‘me’ that is named ‘Wayne’, that has a history, that is associated with this particular body. That is the ‘me’ that learns, that experiences, that thinks, that feels, that talks. That ‘me’ has continued from my birth, through that experience to this moment.

Iain: But there are a lot of people here who teach non-duality who would say that, when the big event happens, they disappear.

Wayne: Right.

Iain: That they don’t exist.

Wayne: Yes. Well, that’s an interesting way to talk about that which can’t be talked about, and it certainly can get people thinking. But I prefer to talk about it differently. I try to be more specific about what disappears. Because to say there is no ‘me’ is sort of like throwing the baby out with the bath water. The way I talk about it, there is a ‘me’, a functional ‘me’, that responds. The ‘me’ is a programmed instrument through which things happen. Because of my genetics and environmental conditioning, I do things. I talk, I think, I feel. And I do those things in a way that is unique to me. The way I talk about it, the ‘me’ has to remain in order for there to be functioning.

Iain: It’s also changing, isn’t it?

Wayne: Oh, absolutely, because the conditioning is ongoing. We are learning, we are experiencing, we are seeing new things all the time. This changes the organism.

Iain: Also unconditioning, as you had with your big experience.

Wayne: Well, that is just a change in the conditioning, if we look at the whole thing as conditioning. Everything that happens is conditioning and then the organism changes by this new event. So this insight, this new event, has changed the programming of the organism – which is the genetics plus the environmental conditioning combined to make the programming. So we can say the programming is constantly changing as the conditioning changes, and as the organism itself physically changes. As you grow older, as your hormones change, your outlook and the way that the organism responds changes.

What is absent in this enlightenment, as I define it and talk about it, may be different from the way other guests have talked about it. But the way I talk about it is: what is absent in enlightenment is the sense of personal authorship. The sense of personal authorship is what arises in you at the age of two and a half, where suddenly you stop reacting from a place of being an aspect of the whole and begin to feel that “I am an independent entity capable of making things happen from my own energy, because I am independent and powerful”. I call that, for short, the false sense of authorship.

Iain: OK.

Wayne: OK. And it is that which makes suffering in life. And it is that which disappears in enlightenment. What remains in enlightenment is the functioning organism that continues to do things.

Iain: You are using the word ‘enlightenment’.

Wayne: Yes.

Iain: Now some people would say that there are a lot of stages to, or even within, enlightenment.

Wayne: Right.

Iain: Do you see that it is something that comes as an event and then essentially someone has ‘got it’, or hasn’t got it, as the case may be? Or do you see it as something that happens as a gradual process?

Wayne: What I see, in my definition, is that the process is the journey to the edge of the cliff.

Iain: OK.

Wayne: The journey to the edge is the process; the final step off the cliff is instant and irrevocable. And it results in the death of that which was progressing.

Iain: But in your case, something happened without any journey, or without any conscious journey.

Wayne: No, no, no. When we talk about this moment of awakening, if you will, in which the seeking awakened in me, that was not enlightenment.

Iain: OK, that’s the beginning of the journey.

Wayne: That is the beginning of a story that we call a spiritual journey. What is understood now is that everything that went before that moment and after that moment was part of the journey.

Iain: OK. So was there a particular point in your life you fell off the cliff?

Wayne: Yes. That was some two years after I met my guru.

Iain: Can you talk about that?

Wayne: I can, but there is not a lot to talk about.

Iain: Falling off a cliff is quite big business!

Wayne: It is to the extent that it is significant to the seeker. During the search the seeker says, “This is the thing - this is what I am after”. After the event the seeker is gone, and what is realised is that there truly, truly, truly never was any differentiation. There never was any distinction between the seeker and the enlightened one. And this is where it gets really, really difficult to talk about.

Iain: But let’s go.

Wayne: But it all becomes poetry now. What I say is spoken as poetry, but it is usually heard as a description. Seekers want to know what it is they are in for…

Iain: True!

Wayne: …what am I going to get? What is this all about? What is the pay-off in all this? And any description of it is, as I say, poetic and not descriptive. So I am really, really hesitant to get too deeply involved in describing something that is not truly describable. What interests me far more, and which is the entire thrust of my teaching - what I call the Living Teaching - is to bring people into a state of awareness that may precede the falling off the cliff.

Iain: OK, let’s talk about that.

Wayne: OK, and this is where one begins to see what one truly is.

Now, a metaphor I like to use to talk about this is that of the ocean and the wave. In this metaphor, everything is ocean. This is Conscious TV and we often use other words for the ocean, such as Consciousness, or Source, or God. It means that it is everything. So this ocean is without anything else - there is no land, there is no sky and there is nothing in reference to it. It is everything.

So this ocean, when it goes into movement, forms waves; the waves are the manifest universe. Each wave represents something; be it an atom, a galaxy, a human being – we understand that as a wave. It is something that has a beginning, a duration and an end. It has dimension, so we can describe it, we can catalogue it, we can talk about it. That is what the wave is. It is the building block of duality.

But what is a wave? What are we? What are all these things? A wave is only ocean; that is what is crucial in understanding this non-duality.

Iain: So a wave doesn’t think it is separate being a wave… it would think that it is part of the ocean.

Wayne: OK. Let’s now look at human waves – because in our metaphor everything that exists is a wave. So Iain is a particular wave with a particular structure. You had a birth, you have an existence and will have a death. At the age of two and a half, Iain had a very extraordinary thing happen that is unique to human waves. Iain, at two and a half, felt “I, Iain, am separate and independent of the ocean. Since I am separate and independent, I can, of my own power, make things happen”. This is an extraordinary notion but it is common to all human beings. And if you talk to anybody out in the street, they will say, “Well, of course you’re independent; of course you can do things. You just put your mind to them and then you do them”. It is never ever questioned and it’s part of our culture; it’s part of our law; it’s part of our religions. It is everywhere.

But in this teaching I call the Living Teaching, what we’re pointing back to is this basic question: is this sense of authorship true? Is this wave that you are independent of the ocean? Non-duality - which is a blanket term for these kinds of teachings - is pointing to the fact that everything is the ocean. It is so often misinterpreted to mean that, since all there is is ocean, the waves don’t exist. I prefer to talk about the waves as an aspect of the ocean and that they do exist as part of the ocean. So rather than denying this ‘me’, this wave, in the Living Teaching we are expanding our understanding of the ‘me’ to include ‘me’ as the ocean. Simply put, “I as the wave, am the ocean.”

Iain: And this is hard for a lot of people to get.

Wayne: Extremely hard.

Iain: Because they will say, “Well, I know because I made a decision to go and do this. I made a decision to start this and it worked”, or it didn’t work. And the way society is built in the media and in everything else - and personal relationships support that - it is like a whole structure there supporting something that isn’t true.

Wayne: Yes.

Iain: The other side of that is, as a human race, we are heading towards oblivion somehow. Because of that, and because more and more we are trying to get more for our separate selves, we are forgetting that we are also part of the planet. The planet has only finite resources. Somehow we have to work together and appreciate what we have.

And it is this thing - it took me a long time to get this - but still as a human being… one of my very fundamental programmes is, “I want to be happy”. So I try and move to what I think is going to make me happy, and move away from what I think is going to be unpleasurable; I mean pain or whatever. And that, as separate selves, is what we are doing. Somehow we have lost the picture completely.

So I understand what you are saying, but it seems to me that the gap is so big towards what the truth is and where we are that it is almost unbridgeable.

Wayne: Well, that is certainly one perspective. I don’t see it that way at all, I must tell you. What I see is that there is no gap. There is absolutely no gap. That what you are, as you are in this moment, is the ocean; that even the sense of separation is the ocean in movement. So even this sense that “I have to get mine” is part of what is.

Iain: You mentioned earlier that you help prepare people to move towards the edge of the cliff. How do you actually do that?

Wayne: Simply by continuously pointing to what is. To the basic inseparability of what they are as the wave with the ocean.

Iain: Is it a kind of a reminder of something that we have all forgotten?

Wayne: Precisely. And more than anything it is a support for your own investigation. So, rather than it being a teaching that you internalise, that you learn and then you believe to be true, it is to facilitate your own curiosity. If the curiosity wasn’t there, you wouldn’t be here talking about this. We wouldn’t be having this conversation, if you didn’t have this curiosity.

Iain: Yes, but you see, what triggers the curiosity? In you it was something completely unexpected; in me it is more of a gradual process. It just seems it is very different in certain people.

Wayne: It is. But it is the story of what triggers it that is different in each person. If we go back to the source of what triggers something, we very quickly come back to the same animating force. The same lifeforce that is flowing through Iain to make Iain do Iain things is flowing through Wayne to make Wayne do Wayne things.

Iain: Well, I am not sure how to respond, so that is why I am not saying things straightaway.

Wayne: [Laughs]

[Silence]

Iain: So personality-wise, what happens? What happened to you when you fell off the cliff? Personality-wise.

Wayne: In all people personality changes as a result of a change in conditioning. This event of falling off the cliff was something that was part of the change in the conditioning of this organism named Wayne. It was another influence, another thing that happened. But it was one of many things that happened and changed the programming of my organism so that I respond differently.

I can’t connect a single change in my being to that event. But what I can say is that, after that event, there is no longer any suffering in this organism. After that, pride no longer arose, guilt no longer arose, because there was no longer a sense that I was the author of anything for there to be pride or guilt. Pride and guilt arise from the sense that ‘I’ am responsible for something; ‘I’, of my own power, made that happen; ‘I’ shouldn’t have done that; ‘I’ could have done it differently. When that ‘I’ has gone…

Iain: It’s like certain programmes in the mind are wiped… almost.

Wayne: You could say that.

Iain: Because that is what suffering comes from, isn’t it? It is the incessant programmes in the mind saying that something should be different.

Wayne: Correct, and I give those programmes the name ‘the false sense of authorship’. Under this umbrella is the feeling that “I am responsible, I should have done it differently I should do it differently in the future”. And it is that should, that sense of should, that produces the suffering.

Deep down, you know it is a lie. You already know your own limitations. You may try to fool yourself by saying, “I made it happen. I said I was going to start a business and I did and it was successful. Just look - you can see what I did”. But you ignore the fifty other things that you said you were going to do and you didn’t do them, or they failed. You only pick out the ones that support your proposition that you are in charge, and ignore all the times that you had great intentions and made tremendous efforts and it didn’t turn out the way that you intended it to.

So you know in the core of your being the claim of being the author is a lie. And you have known that since you were two and a half years old. And that is what we call the terrible twos. Do you have kids?

Iain: No, no I don’t. So what is the terrible twos?

Wayne: The terrible twos is a time in a child’s development that every parent knows. It is a period where the child, at roughly the age of two to two and a half, suddenly starts throwing fits and tantrums and things. They become really quite difficult to deal with, because the sense of authorship has taken hold. And now they are not only unhappy when they don’t get what they want, but they begin suffering because now they feel as if things should be different. Before this, they wanted something and if they didn’t get it, they were unhappy. Now they are unhappy if they don’t get it, but it is combined with the frustration of feeling powerful, “I should be able to get my mummy to come, but she is not coming!” The universe is out of order. This is very different from simply not getting what you want, because now everything is screwed up. And there is this disconnect internally, “I should be able to make this happen - I am powerful!… But I can’t”. And that frustration is what manifests in all kinds of negative behaviour in two-year-olds and it goes on until we, as human beings, begin to be able to manage this frustration.

Iain: But it still pops up.

Wayne: Oh, it does, throughout our lives. But the fact is that it is managing a lie, it is managing a fundamental lie that is, of course, supported all through your education. You should do better, you should try harder, you should do this and you should do that. Sometimes you are lucky and you do it and then you are rewarded. You tell yourself, “I am good - everything’s good!” But sometimes you don’t do it. Then the guilt arises: “I should be better, I should have tried harder, I should have done it differently”.

Iain: Have these things completely gone in you? The guilt, the frustration, the anger - do they come up sometimes?

Wayne: Oh no, no guilt. Anger still comes up, but anger doesn’t come up as a product of a sense of authorship. It comes up as a simple human characteristic.

Iain: So again, talk about the difference.

Wayne: A sage, in my definition, is a human for whom the sense of personal authorship has died, gone over the cliff; it is gone. They often confuse sages with saints. Now my definition of a saint is someone whose behaviour embodies the highest values of the group. So you point to someone and you say, “This guy’s a saint”. Or she is a saint. Because she acts in a way that we, in our group, admire and we all hold in regard. Now a saint in one group may not be considered a saint in another, because groups have different values. So a saint is all about behaviour, and we often mistake the saint and the sage and get very disappointed in the sage when he is not a saint. Meaning that his behaviour doesn’t match what we think is the highest.

Iain: Absolutely.

Wayne: OK. Because in my definition the sage is simply someone for whom there is no longer a sense of personal authorship. Their programming plays out as it does for everyone. Whatever the organism has been programmed by the universe to do, it does.

Iain: So is the sage… moving on to be a saint?

Wayne: No, no, they are totally independent.

Iain: Why would that be the case? Surely the movement in consciousness is somehow going to want the sage to reach the potential of the saints?

Wayne: We can’t even agree what a saint is.

Iain: Well yes, but, somehow, we do. If you and I (I’m not sure I want to do this - we are going to run out of time) sat down and we looked at certain qualities in mankind, we would come to some kind of consensus. I think probably most western people would come to some kind of consensus, unless they are too extreme in religion or something.

Wayne: Unless they are different!

Iain: Well, there are always extremes in things. And what interests me is, it is quite a central point here.

Wayne: Yes, it is.

Iain: There are sages who act sometimes in a way that appears to be quite unconscious. And they get quite pissed off about something and angry. And I know… I never actually had any contact with J Krishnamurti, but I knew people who were very close to him. They said that he got really pissed off at times. He used to shout at the old ladies, as he called them, at the front, when he didn’t like some of the questions. And he seemed to act in a very unaware, unconscious way at times. And my question to you would be, “Well, why is that?” Because for me there seems to be something that isn’t fully developed there.

Wayne: Oh, because you have a fantasy of what this understanding is. You have a fantasy about how, when consciousness evolves, it is going to look like this and it is going to be your picture of what is right and good. Someone else’s picture is going to be different.

Iain: Maybe it is not my fantasy - it is the feeling of my truth.

Wayne: Maybe.

Iain: You see, I honour that in myself. And I think, well, something here…

Wayne: What if you are wrong?

Iain: …doesn’t quite tie up.

Wayne: What if you are wrong? What if you don’t know, Iain?

Iain: Well, then I start going in my mind… Because at the moment I am clear that this is something that intrigues me… that doesn’t quite add up. Then if I go in my mind, I can get in a whole muddle… And maybe I am wrong, but I don’t want to go there at the moment…

I think, there are certain values. Say you went out, as a sage, and someone annoyed you and you hit them across the face and they were taken to hospital. This is a fantasy, I know, but let’s say that happened. Then that for me would just absolutely not add up. And you could say, “Well I didn’t meet your expectations”. You understand what I am saying?

I know, I am sorry to give you a hypothetical situation, but there are certain values that we have - certainly that I have - which I think are real; they are based on something fundamental for me. They come from an inner truth.

Wayne: If this man was trying to rape my wife, and I hit him across the face and sent him to the hospital, what would you say about that?

Iain: I would say that was completely justified.

Wayne: OK, but you were just describing a situation in which I struck a man across the face and sent him to the hospital.

Iain: I didn’t come up with the detail.

Wayne: But you didn’t know - you don’t know what is going on. You are only picking out the striking him across the face and sending him to the hospital and you say, “Oh, he is not conscious, he is not awake because he struck someone across the face and sent them to the hospital!”

Iain: Well, I should have used the word, you know.

Wayne: The point is that you don’t know. You don’t know what is behind an act necessarily, and yet you are making a judgement about a person and their state of consciousness. And you don’t know.

Iain: It is true I don’t know, but I also know what I feel.

Wayne: Yes, but sometimes you are wrong, Iain.

Iain: OK, we have about five minutes left. I want to move away because the programme is about you, not about me. So let’s try and use those last five minutes as positively as we can and getting your teaching - and maybe we are doing that perfectly!

Wayne: [laughs] I hope so. I hope so, because the teaching is difficult, Iain - it is really challenging some very basic fundamental beliefs you have about this.

Iain: OK.

Wayne: So it is important. I am not being gentle with you, but I am really pushing you to look at some things that you are holding as truths. Things that you feel, “This is the way it is - this is true”. I’m saying, let’s take another look at that and see if it really is true.

Iain: Yes! So when you work with people over two days - you had a weekend workshop in London - what are the main things that come up for people, that you see that are in their way?

Wayne: Exactly what we just went through! They know, they already know. They say, “I feel this”, or “I believe this deeply - this is true”. And it is precisely what you believe and what you know to be true that blocks you from directly seeing what is. So what I do over the course of these weekends is expose as much as possible these beliefs that stop you from moving forward…

Iain: OK.

Wayne: …into a deeper seeing of what is.

Iain: I am letting all this go away now, and just sitting here with you.

Wayne: Wonderful, wonderful, because the truth is here. It is here.

Iain: It’s funny - I didn’t do a lot of preparation for the interview; I watched a little bit of you on YouTube, and I had read through your book. And the impression I had of you is quite different, because what comes across here is the brightness from your eyes. You have a real… you are a big man, you were telling me you are six foot five tall, and you have a big presence, a very alive presence. And it is interesting because the impression I got before was that you were a bit grumpy and you were going to be a bit difficult maybe, and it’s not…

Wayne: Wasn’t I just being difficult?

Iain: No, you were being yourself, which is what I love. I try and be myself - you are being yourself. And maybe we have different ideas of what self is but it doesn’t matter. It’s authentic. I think that is one of the things that you are also encouraging people to do, isn’t it? To find, as much as they can, their authenticity.

Wayne: Right. And by authenticity I mean themselves, their wave-ness. To find out what they are as the wave. As seekers, people often say, “Oh, let’s just chuck the wave part and get to the ocean” - as if the wave was something else than the ocean. You see, that is the fundamental split that we are trying to heal.

Iain: And, of course, every wave is different, just as every human being is different. I guess you never find two waves that are exactly the same.

Wayne: That is right, and the organism we call the sage is a wave. We have a fantasy about that organism; we say, “Oh, he is now the ocean”… That is really what people are saying. Now that that wave knows he is the ocean, he is going to behave differently as a wave. But everyone is behaving the way that they behave because the ocean makes them behave that way! This applies to everyone, regardless of whether we call them a sage or not. So, when you see what behaviour is - that it is the movement of the ocean and that there is behaviour we like and behaviour we don’t like - it all comes clear.

Iain: Wayne, we are going to have to stop there. Fifty minutes has gone very fast.

Wayne: It has gone fast, hasn’t it?

Iain: But I have enjoyed it a lot.

Wayne: I have too.

Iain: And it has been stimulating, which is always good. And I want to just hold up Wayne’s book here - Never Mind - A Journey into Non-Duality, which I think is a great title. And to thank Wayne for coming to speak with us.

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To watch the original video interview click here. This transcript is included in the book: "Conversations on Non-Duality: 26 Awakenings" published by Cherry Red Books. The book is available from amazon.co.uk, amazon.com and as a kindle edition.

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