Acceptance of What Is (Wayne Liquorman)
The Seed and the Tree
[My 1-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Acceptance of What Is: A book About Nothing.” By Wayne Liquorman.]
If you read this book, you will, repeatedly, see author-teacher Wayne Liquorman refer to his beloved guru, Ramesh Balsekar (1917-2009). Balsekar, who was a translator for the iconic Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, was considered by many to have been a Self-realized sage, but I’m not one of the many. In accordance with Balsekar’s detractors, I consider him to have been no more than a cerebral Advaita Vedanta “talking head”—a pseudo-Advaita Vedantist--and not a particularly ethical or well-behaved one at that. If you’re interested in the dirt on Balsekar, Google: Ramesh Balsekar controversy.
About twenty years ago, I attended a three-day Jean Klein retreat at the Mt. Madonna Center, just outside Santa Cruz. I had a couple of conversations with Francis Lucille, now a spiritual teacher himself, and I asked him about Ramesh Balsekar. He smiled and said, “He’s not fully cooked.” If that was Francis’s opinion of Balsekar, you can be sure it was also Jean Klein’s.
In short, I’m not a fan of Balsekar, and I’m likewise not one of Wayne Liquorman, his chief disciple. In my opinion, Liquorman peddles a perverted version of Advaita Vedanta, one that I will deconstruct in this review.
Liquorman informs us that “No one in the entire history of the universe has ever been enlightened. There are no enlightened people.” This is contrary to the teachings of the foremost spiritual traditions. For example, Mahayana Buddhism calls Buddhahood “Bodhicitta”—which means Conscious Light, or En-Light-ened Consciousness. And Kashmir Shaivism also describes the state of spiritual En-Light-enment as Conscious Light. Even if “Enlightenment is an impersonal event in phenomenality,” as Liquorman describes it, there is still a person, an incarnationl vehicle, that receives and radiates the impersonal Clear-Light-Energy.
Liquorman describes his “awakening” as “understanding that everything was happening in accordance with the will of God, or the play of Consciousness, or the dance of Shiva, or whatever you want to call it.”
Unbeknownst to Liquorman, if he were truly surrendered to the Divine Will, then he would be overwhelmed by Divine Power, the Supernal Influx. But in his case, his “acceptance of What Is,” or “accordance with the will of God,” is merely mental, a figurative understanding rather than a literal opening to and reception of the Holy Spirit, Light-Energy from above. It’s no different than a conventional Christian placidly, mentally accepting whatever happens in his life as “God’s will.”
Like most Advaita Vedantans, Liquorman has a superficial understanding of nonduality. He writes, “The experience of Oneness is always a dualistic experience. By nature there has to be a subject and object.” Unbeknownst to Liquorman, the experience of Divine Oneness is dyadic or intradeical rather than dual; it is Siva uniting with Shakti, so that the Divine Being (Sat) can recognize Itself as Divine in the context of a human incarnational vehicle. The two “vines” of the Di-vine Being are Siva (or Consciousness) and Shakti (or Energy), and when Siva, the “Subject,” unites with Shakti, the “Object,” then there is only the single and singular Divine Being or Self--and all that arises in that Context is spontaneously intuited as a derivative manifestation of the Divine.
But Liquorman doesn’t understand what “Divine” means. He writes, “Your body-mind is the Divine. It has no need to enter anywhere. It is never NOT there.” Unbeknownst to Liquorman, the Divine, the uncreated Godhead, is outside time and space. Whatever is created, included the body-mind is, by definition, NOT Divine, or Holy. The Salvation of the created body-mind is the uncreated Divine—and only by, literally, being en-Light-ened (or divinized) by Grace, palpable Blessing/BlissingPower from on high, can one be “Saved.”
Liquorman doesn’t grok what What Is is and what acceptance of What Is entails. Like a B.F. Skinner on ‘roids, he babbles on about humans having no free will—which is nonsense because God gave people free will (though it’s not always exercised)—and fails to identify the Divine’s Will as Power--the Christian Holy Spirit, or the Buddhist Sambhogakaya, or Hindu Shakti.
Liquorman equates What Is, Understanding, and Being, but never defines Being. Being (or Sat) = Cit (Consciousness)-Ananda (Blissing/Blessing Energy), but Liquorman never broaches the subject of Being as dynamic Blissing Power stemming from immutable Consciousness.
If there is a more surface-level neo-Advaitan than Wayne Liquorman, I haven’t encountered him or her. If you want to understand what Self-realization, or Enlightenment, is really about from an Advaita Vedanta perspective, read Ramana Maharshi, specifically “Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi” (avoid the dumbed-down Inner Directions version) and “Sri Ramana Gita.”
[My 1-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Acceptance of What Is: A book About Nothing.” By Wayne Liquorman.]
If you read this book, you will, repeatedly, see author-teacher Wayne Liquorman refer to his beloved guru, Ramesh Balsekar (1917-2009). Balsekar, who was a translator for the iconic Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, was considered by many to have been a Self-realized sage, but I’m not one of the many. In accordance with Balsekar’s detractors, I consider him to have been no more than a cerebral Advaita Vedanta “talking head”—a pseudo-Advaita Vedantist--and not a particularly ethical or well-behaved one at that. If you’re interested in the dirt on Balsekar, Google: Ramesh Balsekar controversy.
About twenty years ago, I attended a three-day Jean Klein retreat at the Mt. Madonna Center, just outside Santa Cruz. I had a couple of conversations with Francis Lucille, now a spiritual teacher himself, and I asked him about Ramesh Balsekar. He smiled and said, “He’s not fully cooked.” If that was Francis’s opinion of Balsekar, you can be sure it was also Jean Klein’s.
In short, I’m not a fan of Balsekar, and I’m likewise not one of Wayne Liquorman, his chief disciple. In my opinion, Liquorman peddles a perverted version of Advaita Vedanta, one that I will deconstruct in this review.
Liquorman informs us that “No one in the entire history of the universe has ever been enlightened. There are no enlightened people.” This is contrary to the teachings of the foremost spiritual traditions. For example, Mahayana Buddhism calls Buddhahood “Bodhicitta”—which means Conscious Light, or En-Light-ened Consciousness. And Kashmir Shaivism also describes the state of spiritual En-Light-enment as Conscious Light. Even if “Enlightenment is an impersonal event in phenomenality,” as Liquorman describes it, there is still a person, an incarnationl vehicle, that receives and radiates the impersonal Clear-Light-Energy.
Liquorman describes his “awakening” as “understanding that everything was happening in accordance with the will of God, or the play of Consciousness, or the dance of Shiva, or whatever you want to call it.”
Unbeknownst to Liquorman, if he were truly surrendered to the Divine Will, then he would be overwhelmed by Divine Power, the Supernal Influx. But in his case, his “acceptance of What Is,” or “accordance with the will of God,” is merely mental, a figurative understanding rather than a literal opening to and reception of the Holy Spirit, Light-Energy from above. It’s no different than a conventional Christian placidly, mentally accepting whatever happens in his life as “God’s will.”
Like most Advaita Vedantans, Liquorman has a superficial understanding of nonduality. He writes, “The experience of Oneness is always a dualistic experience. By nature there has to be a subject and object.” Unbeknownst to Liquorman, the experience of Divine Oneness is dyadic or intradeical rather than dual; it is Siva uniting with Shakti, so that the Divine Being (Sat) can recognize Itself as Divine in the context of a human incarnational vehicle. The two “vines” of the Di-vine Being are Siva (or Consciousness) and Shakti (or Energy), and when Siva, the “Subject,” unites with Shakti, the “Object,” then there is only the single and singular Divine Being or Self--and all that arises in that Context is spontaneously intuited as a derivative manifestation of the Divine.
But Liquorman doesn’t understand what “Divine” means. He writes, “Your body-mind is the Divine. It has no need to enter anywhere. It is never NOT there.” Unbeknownst to Liquorman, the Divine, the uncreated Godhead, is outside time and space. Whatever is created, included the body-mind is, by definition, NOT Divine, or Holy. The Salvation of the created body-mind is the uncreated Divine—and only by, literally, being en-Light-ened (or divinized) by Grace, palpable Blessing/BlissingPower from on high, can one be “Saved.”
Liquorman doesn’t grok what What Is is and what acceptance of What Is entails. Like a B.F. Skinner on ‘roids, he babbles on about humans having no free will—which is nonsense because God gave people free will (though it’s not always exercised)—and fails to identify the Divine’s Will as Power--the Christian Holy Spirit, or the Buddhist Sambhogakaya, or Hindu Shakti.
Liquorman equates What Is, Understanding, and Being, but never defines Being. Being (or Sat) = Cit (Consciousness)-Ananda (Blissing/Blessing Energy), but Liquorman never broaches the subject of Being as dynamic Blissing Power stemming from immutable Consciousness.
If there is a more surface-level neo-Advaitan than Wayne Liquorman, I haven’t encountered him or her. If you want to understand what Self-realization, or Enlightenment, is really about from an Advaita Vedanta perspective, read Ramana Maharshi, specifically “Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi” (avoid the dumbed-down Inner Directions version) and “Sri Ramana Gita.”
