Wayne Liquorman

Wayne said that he had an almost twenty year long history of being an alcoholic and of being a drug user. He said that as a successful business person he used up much of his money on these vices. Then he said, he was blessed one night when suddenly, without any notice or preparation, the need for these crutches left him. He no longer drank to excess. And of course as anyone would, he wondered why this had happened - why had he suddenly lost the need to be an alcoholic, to take psychotropic drugs, and so on? While some people enmeshed in the science would have looked toward brain chemistry and neurological changes for an answer, Wayne went instead to India. And to Ramesh Balsekar.  At first Ramesh seemed very odd to Wayne, but after a while, he began to feel that Ramesh was his teacher. And after some more time began teaching himself, for as he later said, Ramesh had  that Wayne was his spiritual son.

At a satsang conducted by Wayne others who had been with Ramesh in India questioned some of the things Wayne said about Ramesh. Particularly one woman who had been singularly unimpressed by her visit with Ramesh... or with Ramesh's veracity, conduct, and as she said, extreme misegany. But Wayne shouted them down (literally - Wayne is a big, loud guy). At one point when someone was being a tad insistent that he had something to say, Wayne literally screamed at him to shut up, saying that if he wanted to speak he could leave and set up his own satsang somewhere. Several people were visibly upset by Wayne’s action, and left.

Throughout he seemed to rejoice in harsh treatment of what he perceived to be foolish questions from people, rationalizing of course that he was just exposing their habits and needs. Silly, but there it is.  He also did the long eye-contact unblinking gaze thing so common to the neo-Advaita crowd. Yet such long staring seems to me to be rather, not to put to fine a point on it, fake.

Ultimately of the perhaps thirty attendees at the satsang, all but five left. The remaining five then had a nice chat with Wayne, laughing and telling jokes and discussing non-dualism. But when the discussion became serious, Wayne very strongly insisted that he had the answers, and others - including other neo-Advaita teachers - did not.

It seemed to me that Wayne was typical of many neo-Advaita folk who set themselves up as teachers. Their lives are unhappy, then for one reason or another they have an epiphany, a profound earthshaking experience which changes them forever, and suddenly they feel they are ‘there’. They feel that they have 'arrived' and are 'awakened'. Yet perhaps any epiphany no matter how profound, is just another experience. And as such has nothing whatever to do with the permanent absence of the presence of the one to whom the epiphany appears to occur.