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Consciousness Speaks: Conversations with Ramesh S. Balsekar
A worthy successor to I AM THAT Ramesh's most accessible and easy to understand book. An excellent place to start or end your search. It is highly recommended both for the newcomer to Advaita and the more knowledgeable student of the subject.
392 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
62 people are currently reading
359 people want to read
About the author
Ramesh S. Balsekar
169 books73 followersRamesh S. Balsekar was a disciple of the late Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a renowned Advaita master. From early childhood, Balsekar was drawn to Advaita, a nondual teaching, particularly the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and Wei Wu Wei. He wrote more than 20 books, was president of the Bank of India, and received guests daily in his home in Mumbai until shortly before his death.
Balsekar taught from the tradition of Advaita Vedanta nondualism. His teaching begins with the idea of an ultimate Source, Brahman, from which creation arises. Once creation has arisen, the world and life operate mechanistically according to both Divine and natural laws. While people believe that they are actually doing things and making choices, free will is in fact an illusion. All that happens is caused by this one source, and the actual identity of this source is pure Consciousness, which is incapable of choosing or doing.
Balsekar taught from the tradition of Advaita Vedanta nondualism. His teaching begins with the idea of an ultimate Source, Brahman, from which creation arises. Once creation has arisen, the world and life operate mechanistically according to both Divine and natural laws. While people believe that they are actually doing things and making choices, free will is in fact an illusion. All that happens is caused by this one source, and the actual identity of this source is pure Consciousness, which is incapable of choosing or doing.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 22, 2021
This book wasn't what I was expecting. In itself, that's not a bad thing. However, my expectations were primed by the fact that Ramesh Balsekar was a student of, and translator for renowned advaita sage, Nisargadatta Maharaj. I expected some continuity. I didn't find it! Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. The truth can be pointed to in many different ways and the Hindu Advaita Vedanta framing of Nisargadatta, infused with his inimitable style, is just one way.
One reason for the very different kind of teaching emerges in the book. This is Balsekar's statements that his main influences are Taoism (specifically Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu) and Wei Wu Wei (Terence Gray), rather than Hindu Advaita, including as reflected in the teachings of Nisargadatta.
But it's not the fact of this divergence from the message and style of Nisargadatta that set off alarm bells early on in my reading of this book. It's that I felt that I was reading a text that was more akin to neo-advaita or pseudo-advaita than to any sort of traditional nondual teaching. I didn't expect that from an Indian born in 1917! The principle signature of this was in the alarming moral nihilism and indifference that the teaching conveys. It came through in the lack of appreciation for the different levels of reality—both absolute and relative—that traditional teachings acknowledge and the way this preserves the necessity for strict attention to the morality of our actions.
Secondly, Balsekar's repeated insistence that there is "nothing to do" to advance towards enlightenment, because there is no one to do anything and nothing to realise, may be true at an absolute level, but that doesn't help the suffering person who is suffering due to identifying as a separate individual, and who needs to be shown, in a skilful way, that this false identification is the problem.
This is what Advaita Vedanta does and what Nisargadatta did. By contrast, Balsekar's "nothing to do" and "no one to do it" approach, in common with other neo-advaita teachings, is worse than useless in that it can de-incentivise people from seeking an authentic way out of their suffering. All they are left with then is a new ideology and their suffering intact.
An ideology, or intellectual "understanding" as Balsekar calls it, can amount to just another dogmatic religion or set of beliefs which may provide some temporary reassurance but does nothing to remove the root of suffering. When that set of beliefs includes the idea, repeated over and over again, that there is absolutely nothing one can set out to do that will help, that seems to me a recipe for depression and despair. The fact is that as long as suffering persists, it's phoney to pretend that one will not do something to try to relieve it. It's totally unavoidable and inevitable that some means of relief will be sought. And deprived of a way forward through genuine spiritual guidance, by being told repeatedly that this is useless, what's left other than reverting back to failed strategies on behalf of a separate self? That is, unless and until one has the wisdom to see that neo-advaita by whatever name is a dead end.
The other possible pitfall is that this kind of teaching can result in people prematurely assuming that they are enlightened and then taking on the mantle of teaching others. That is, they can mistake a merely intellectual understanding for a genuine intuition of truth, while maintaining all their old ego-based neurotic behavioural habits.
Although many of the statements made by Balsekar are true at the absolute level, I found no skilful means in his teaching to help others realise that level. The dialogue too often centred around what it's like to be enlightened, based on the tacit claim from Balsekar that he is, which at times smacked of self-promotion rather than a genuine interest in helping others realise the true Self.
Balsekar talks a lot about the way that everything that's happening is part of the working out of the Totality, the cosmic mind or will. This is akin to the place of Ishwara in Advaita Vedanta and has validity. And in this I would say that Balsekar is notably different from modern neo-advaita teachers who generally completely avoid discussing this dimension. The problem with the way Balsekar approaches this, and it's no small matter, is that it's framed in a way that relieves his listeners of any moral responsibility for their own behaviours. That's dangerous! Again, this results from a fundamental error of confusing absolute and relative levels of reality. If there's one thing that's brought disrepute to nondual teachings, it's this.
Although I persevered with the book to the end, I found it pretty unsatisfactory on the whole, and often just boring and tedious, as it seemed a formula was being mechanically reiterated. The apparent moral indifference resulting from a serious distortion of nondual teachings is a problem of such magnitude that it negates whatever other value Balsekar's work may have. It's not a book I'd recommend. With time being so short, there are so many other, better ones to read for anyone interested in spiritual awakening.
After writing this review to this point, I was prompted to re-read a discussion read some years ago written by Timothy Conway on his site, Enlightened Spirituality, concerning Ramesh Balsekar. https://www.enlightened-spirituality.... I found his observations very accurate and insightful. To quote at length from that discussion:
"Ramesh essentially teaches what has come to be called "neo-advaita" or "pseudo-advaita"—namely, that a cognitive realization of "the Truth" (that there is only Consciousness) utterly suffices, and so there is nothing to aspire toward, nothing to do, nothing to achieve. "Understanding is all," as Ramesh and other neo-advaitins have so often declared. Whatever happens in the dream of life is "God's will," beyond our responsibility. There are really no individuals or persons who could have "free will" or function as a "doer," and therefore no freedom from conditioning or bodily identification need be striven for or can ever be achieved through effort—unless it is God's will for this to happen! In the view of Ramesh and other neo-advaitins, the world is but a Divinely predetermined mechanism playing out mechanistically, and "you" the personality are just a part of the functioning of this mechanism. "You" have no choice or free will about any of this. Que sera, sera. What will be, will be.
By contrast, both Nisargadatta and Siddharameshvar along with Ramana Maharshi and other "real Advaitin sages" taught a subtler, more nuanced view that involves the PARADOX of effort and Grace. They were not constrained by an "either-or" logic but easily and freely utilized an inclusive "both-and" logic of mystical reality.
So these eminent sages affirmed that, yes, on the Absolute-truth level, there is only unmanifest Absolute Awareness, and this phenomenal play of consciousness—the manifest beings, bodies, experiences—is ultimately insubstantial because it is fleeting and not solid, "a dream," and that, Absolutely-speaking, there are no individual persons or souls, free will or choice, and that whatever happens is Divine Will or the lîlâ (play, sport) of consciousness.
But these authentic spiritual masters also taught, on the more "conventional-pragmatic level", that great earnestness, persistence and "effortless effort" are needed, that "you," Consciousness manifesting as the apparent individual or personal consciousness "instrument," can and must dis-identify from narrow identification with the body-mind-egoji. Through radical self-inquiry ("Who am I, really?" "What is prior to the 'I Am' sense?") and receding-returning-relaxing into/as the Source, there is consequent awakening, by Divine Grace, out of the conditioned "me"-dream into real freedom from binding likes-dislikes (the samskaras or vasanas, that is, the egoic tendencies of selfishness and limited individuality).
In other words, there is a transcending of apathy, unhealthy ego-attachments, and mere theoretical understanding to actually living and fully being the Liberated Truth of "only God," only Absolute Awareness.
To be sure, it is quite true that Nisargadatta Maharaj (and Ramana Maharshi, et al.) often succinctly said, for the sake of balance and to undermine egoic identifications, "there's nothing to do" and "no efforts are to be made," so "just be." But Nisargadatta also many times spoke of a developmental process of stages (from individual consciousness to universal consciousness to Absolute Awareness) and he paradoxically urged that we be tremendously earnest about meditating and abiding in our real Nature as the Absolute beyond false identifications, body-based desires, pride, hypocrisy, fears and selfishness. He often said, "You must enquire and meditate on the root 'i am-ness' sense and get free of it." The Maharaj accused certain people of being "pseudo-sages" (pseudo-jnanis) because they had not (yet) genuinely awakened to the Absolute but were still "indulging their beingness" on the level of the bodymind personality. Over the decades Nisargadatta certainly echoed in different ways the message frequently uttered by his guru Sri Siddharameshvar, "Realize the Self and behave accordingly!"
Furthermore, Nisargadatta and advaita tradition, while revealing the ultimate truth of "only the birthless-deathless Self, no soul-karma-rebirth," do teach on the expedient level the plain experiential fact of karma-driven rebirth for those still identified with the narrow self. Whereas, by contrast, Ramesh and neo-advaita refuse to talk at all on this expedient-pragmatic level, constrained as they are to always talk in a dangerously one-sided, imbalanced, "Absolute-only" style of parlance (the language of "Absolutish").
What's more, and not just for persons of a devotional temperament, Nisargadatta and his Guru both occasionally spoke in glowing terms (as did Ramana Maharshi, Sankara, et al.) of the great usefulness of devotion (bhakti), and even mantra-recitation, things that Ramesh usually ignored or quite glibly dismissed in the years i knew him. It is obvious, too, that Nisargadatta speaks much more than does Ramesh about various aspects of living from authentic realization of Absolute Awareness, and his words have the resonant "ring of Truth," a majestic intuition of real Freedom, Power and Clarity. This is no mere conceptual formula about "Consciousness, the world-mechanism, and nonexistence of the individual" (the bulk of Ramesh's teaching), leaving us stuck, smug and satisfied with status quo mediocrity."
For anyone interested, Conway's discussion is well worth reading in full. Perhaps if I'd it retained it better the first time I read it, I wouldn't have bothered with 'Consciousness Speaks', just as I won't be bothering with any more books by Ramesh Balsekar. I'd rather read Nisargadatta Maharaj.
One reason for the very different kind of teaching emerges in the book. This is Balsekar's statements that his main influences are Taoism (specifically Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu) and Wei Wu Wei (Terence Gray), rather than Hindu Advaita, including as reflected in the teachings of Nisargadatta.
But it's not the fact of this divergence from the message and style of Nisargadatta that set off alarm bells early on in my reading of this book. It's that I felt that I was reading a text that was more akin to neo-advaita or pseudo-advaita than to any sort of traditional nondual teaching. I didn't expect that from an Indian born in 1917! The principle signature of this was in the alarming moral nihilism and indifference that the teaching conveys. It came through in the lack of appreciation for the different levels of reality—both absolute and relative—that traditional teachings acknowledge and the way this preserves the necessity for strict attention to the morality of our actions.
Secondly, Balsekar's repeated insistence that there is "nothing to do" to advance towards enlightenment, because there is no one to do anything and nothing to realise, may be true at an absolute level, but that doesn't help the suffering person who is suffering due to identifying as a separate individual, and who needs to be shown, in a skilful way, that this false identification is the problem.
This is what Advaita Vedanta does and what Nisargadatta did. By contrast, Balsekar's "nothing to do" and "no one to do it" approach, in common with other neo-advaita teachings, is worse than useless in that it can de-incentivise people from seeking an authentic way out of their suffering. All they are left with then is a new ideology and their suffering intact.
An ideology, or intellectual "understanding" as Balsekar calls it, can amount to just another dogmatic religion or set of beliefs which may provide some temporary reassurance but does nothing to remove the root of suffering. When that set of beliefs includes the idea, repeated over and over again, that there is absolutely nothing one can set out to do that will help, that seems to me a recipe for depression and despair. The fact is that as long as suffering persists, it's phoney to pretend that one will not do something to try to relieve it. It's totally unavoidable and inevitable that some means of relief will be sought. And deprived of a way forward through genuine spiritual guidance, by being told repeatedly that this is useless, what's left other than reverting back to failed strategies on behalf of a separate self? That is, unless and until one has the wisdom to see that neo-advaita by whatever name is a dead end.
The other possible pitfall is that this kind of teaching can result in people prematurely assuming that they are enlightened and then taking on the mantle of teaching others. That is, they can mistake a merely intellectual understanding for a genuine intuition of truth, while maintaining all their old ego-based neurotic behavioural habits.
Although many of the statements made by Balsekar are true at the absolute level, I found no skilful means in his teaching to help others realise that level. The dialogue too often centred around what it's like to be enlightened, based on the tacit claim from Balsekar that he is, which at times smacked of self-promotion rather than a genuine interest in helping others realise the true Self.
Balsekar talks a lot about the way that everything that's happening is part of the working out of the Totality, the cosmic mind or will. This is akin to the place of Ishwara in Advaita Vedanta and has validity. And in this I would say that Balsekar is notably different from modern neo-advaita teachers who generally completely avoid discussing this dimension. The problem with the way Balsekar approaches this, and it's no small matter, is that it's framed in a way that relieves his listeners of any moral responsibility for their own behaviours. That's dangerous! Again, this results from a fundamental error of confusing absolute and relative levels of reality. If there's one thing that's brought disrepute to nondual teachings, it's this.
Although I persevered with the book to the end, I found it pretty unsatisfactory on the whole, and often just boring and tedious, as it seemed a formula was being mechanically reiterated. The apparent moral indifference resulting from a serious distortion of nondual teachings is a problem of such magnitude that it negates whatever other value Balsekar's work may have. It's not a book I'd recommend. With time being so short, there are so many other, better ones to read for anyone interested in spiritual awakening.
After writing this review to this point, I was prompted to re-read a discussion read some years ago written by Timothy Conway on his site, Enlightened Spirituality, concerning Ramesh Balsekar. https://www.enlightened-spirituality.... I found his observations very accurate and insightful. To quote at length from that discussion:
"Ramesh essentially teaches what has come to be called "neo-advaita" or "pseudo-advaita"—namely, that a cognitive realization of "the Truth" (that there is only Consciousness) utterly suffices, and so there is nothing to aspire toward, nothing to do, nothing to achieve. "Understanding is all," as Ramesh and other neo-advaitins have so often declared. Whatever happens in the dream of life is "God's will," beyond our responsibility. There are really no individuals or persons who could have "free will" or function as a "doer," and therefore no freedom from conditioning or bodily identification need be striven for or can ever be achieved through effort—unless it is God's will for this to happen! In the view of Ramesh and other neo-advaitins, the world is but a Divinely predetermined mechanism playing out mechanistically, and "you" the personality are just a part of the functioning of this mechanism. "You" have no choice or free will about any of this. Que sera, sera. What will be, will be.
By contrast, both Nisargadatta and Siddharameshvar along with Ramana Maharshi and other "real Advaitin sages" taught a subtler, more nuanced view that involves the PARADOX of effort and Grace. They were not constrained by an "either-or" logic but easily and freely utilized an inclusive "both-and" logic of mystical reality.
So these eminent sages affirmed that, yes, on the Absolute-truth level, there is only unmanifest Absolute Awareness, and this phenomenal play of consciousness—the manifest beings, bodies, experiences—is ultimately insubstantial because it is fleeting and not solid, "a dream," and that, Absolutely-speaking, there are no individual persons or souls, free will or choice, and that whatever happens is Divine Will or the lîlâ (play, sport) of consciousness.
But these authentic spiritual masters also taught, on the more "conventional-pragmatic level", that great earnestness, persistence and "effortless effort" are needed, that "you," Consciousness manifesting as the apparent individual or personal consciousness "instrument," can and must dis-identify from narrow identification with the body-mind-egoji. Through radical self-inquiry ("Who am I, really?" "What is prior to the 'I Am' sense?") and receding-returning-relaxing into/as the Source, there is consequent awakening, by Divine Grace, out of the conditioned "me"-dream into real freedom from binding likes-dislikes (the samskaras or vasanas, that is, the egoic tendencies of selfishness and limited individuality).
In other words, there is a transcending of apathy, unhealthy ego-attachments, and mere theoretical understanding to actually living and fully being the Liberated Truth of "only God," only Absolute Awareness.
To be sure, it is quite true that Nisargadatta Maharaj (and Ramana Maharshi, et al.) often succinctly said, for the sake of balance and to undermine egoic identifications, "there's nothing to do" and "no efforts are to be made," so "just be." But Nisargadatta also many times spoke of a developmental process of stages (from individual consciousness to universal consciousness to Absolute Awareness) and he paradoxically urged that we be tremendously earnest about meditating and abiding in our real Nature as the Absolute beyond false identifications, body-based desires, pride, hypocrisy, fears and selfishness. He often said, "You must enquire and meditate on the root 'i am-ness' sense and get free of it." The Maharaj accused certain people of being "pseudo-sages" (pseudo-jnanis) because they had not (yet) genuinely awakened to the Absolute but were still "indulging their beingness" on the level of the bodymind personality. Over the decades Nisargadatta certainly echoed in different ways the message frequently uttered by his guru Sri Siddharameshvar, "Realize the Self and behave accordingly!"
Furthermore, Nisargadatta and advaita tradition, while revealing the ultimate truth of "only the birthless-deathless Self, no soul-karma-rebirth," do teach on the expedient level the plain experiential fact of karma-driven rebirth for those still identified with the narrow self. Whereas, by contrast, Ramesh and neo-advaita refuse to talk at all on this expedient-pragmatic level, constrained as they are to always talk in a dangerously one-sided, imbalanced, "Absolute-only" style of parlance (the language of "Absolutish").
What's more, and not just for persons of a devotional temperament, Nisargadatta and his Guru both occasionally spoke in glowing terms (as did Ramana Maharshi, Sankara, et al.) of the great usefulness of devotion (bhakti), and even mantra-recitation, things that Ramesh usually ignored or quite glibly dismissed in the years i knew him. It is obvious, too, that Nisargadatta speaks much more than does Ramesh about various aspects of living from authentic realization of Absolute Awareness, and his words have the resonant "ring of Truth," a majestic intuition of real Freedom, Power and Clarity. This is no mere conceptual formula about "Consciousness, the world-mechanism, and nonexistence of the individual" (the bulk of Ramesh's teaching), leaving us stuck, smug and satisfied with status quo mediocrity."
For anyone interested, Conway's discussion is well worth reading in full. Perhaps if I'd it retained it better the first time I read it, I wouldn't have bothered with 'Consciousness Speaks', just as I won't be bothering with any more books by Ramesh Balsekar. I'd rather read Nisargadatta Maharaj.
August 31, 2014
Wow, this book is a must read for you that interested in Advaita philosophy, Balsekar was the enlightened teacher who become enlightened after an intense meeting and translating his guru, the great saint Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. This book is in the Q&A format that accessible for a beginner and advance student of Non-duality. It deals with a wide range of topics such as karma, ego, the Self, reality, the nature of consciousness, causality, etc. This book can be summarize with the quote: "All there is, is consciousness". Along with Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, he had the profound impact in my life.
May 30, 2012
A brilliant book that really gets to the nub of that infamous question 'Who am I'
Ramesh rips apart your illusions and points you right at the answer to this question. If you follow the direct way, this book is a must.
Ramesh rips apart your illusions and points you right at the answer to this question. If you follow the direct way, this book is a must.
March 7, 2015
One of the more comprehensive "purist" nonduality books, written by Balsekar. This one pretty much sums up his whole teachings over the course of several hundred pages. I would place it in the top Ramesh Balsekar books, and one of the better "Neo-Advaita" books.
November 26, 2018
Love the message of the book. It’s communicating the same message of self realization along the lines of Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj. Wish I connected with it more than I did beyond that. It was interesting to read some of the anecdotes about Nisargadatta, and to get a glimpse what his journey towards self realization looked like. However, some of the parts of the book, particularly near the end, seemed to be providing anecdotes to prove why it’s ok for him to teach, or to justify his differences from other spiritual teachers that he learned from. The spiritual books I connect with the most are the ones that are a meditation that takes place beyond the reading process. I just didn’t connect with this book in that way. When I read the Ramana Maharshi transcriptions by Good translator it feels like the words are speaking right to me. Maybe it was the way I read the book, or my expectations, but this book didn’t resonate with me that way.
July 15, 2021
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, and like many other spiritual books I've read feel I gained more insight into whatever it is I'm trying to understand. I also found this book to be one of the more heavily analytical books on the subject matter, and feel I will need to reread or revisit it to gain further understanding into the author's words and insights.
Even with my limited understanding I did very much find his words insightful, maybe I should try reading it while I am not stoned, I bet that would help.
Even with my limited understanding I did very much find his words insightful, maybe I should try reading it while I am not stoned, I bet that would help.
July 1, 2018
To summarize "Consciousness is writing the review and consciousness is reading it".
One of the best book which is collection of talks by Ramesh S Balsekar a modern sage who lived in Mumbai.
Worth reading for those interested in the subject
One of the best book which is collection of talks by Ramesh S Balsekar a modern sage who lived in Mumbai.
Worth reading for those interested in the subject
March 13, 2013
Format lead itself to repeating itself a bit. Other than that, its a good book about freewill. For the spiritually advanced. Or not. If you find yourself with the book in hand and reading it, as the book says, it couldn't be otherwise.
September 8, 2008
Great book if you are interested in the Advaita philosophy. The book goes into detail about predestination vs free will, enlightenment, and the meaning of the ego. Very clearly written.
August 29, 2012
If your serious about discovering the truth or, more properly, letting the truth find you, this is a good book to read.
April 10, 2017
Is a perfect Pointer to the Truth of who one is and away from who one *thinks* they are.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews