dennis waite - interview with non-duality magazine

16/06/2014 21:43DENNIS WAITE interview with non-duality magazine

sur 22http://www.nondualitymagazine.org/nondualitymagazine.2/nonduality_magazine.denniswaite.interview.htm

July 2010NDM: When and how did you first become aware of "neoadvaita" and can you please tell me what your immediateimpression was?

Dennis Waite: I think my first exposure to those teachings (which Idid not come to know as ‘neo-advaita’ until much later) was throughthe Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK around 1999 – 2000. Theyused to have a regular newsletter, in which they advertizedforthcoming satsangs (without necessarily endorsing the teachers) anda quarterly journal of essays, satsang and book extracts etc. Aroundthat time the names of Tony Parsons and Nathan Gill began to appearand, later, there were some intriguing extracts. Initially, I found theirmaterial fresh and exciting. It spoke of the ‘here and now’ and seemedimmediately relevant. I bought Tony’s book ‘The Open Secret’ andNathan’s booklet ‘Clarity’ after reading the essays.

NDM: What exactly happened when you read TonyParson’s book, "The Open Secret”? How did it go from itbeing fresh and exciting to something other than this? Wasthere a particular moment, a sentence or a paragraphwhen you began seeing red flags?

Dennis Waite: I can’t remember much about what I read yesterday, sothere is no chance of remembering from 10 years ago! What I havedone for the past 5+ years, however, is to mark up (in 3B pencil) anypassages in books I read that trigger comment or seem particularlyuseful. And I know that, for example, by the time I came to read bookssuch as Nathan Gill’s ‘Already Awake’, I was scribbling quite a fewcomments, not always complimentary! I guess that it was simply the



case that, as I read more in general and came to understand Advaitamore and more, I became more critical. Probably because of myscientific education, I have always insisted that any teaching that Iencounter is totally amenable to reason. There is a proviso here that Iam prepared to take something new ‘on trust’ temporarily if I amsufficiently familiar with previous books or teaching of thatauthor/teacher and therefore know that they are ‘trustworthy’. (This iseffectively a practical definition for the Sanskrit term ‘shraddhA’.)

NDM: Do you know who first coined the term "neoadvaita”?

Dennis Waite: I don’t know who first coined the term. I know thatGreg Goode has attributed it to me but I don’t think this is strictlyaccurate. Probably someone else casually used it in an email and Ithen started referring to it regularly through my website and then latertook it for granted in my books. Certainly it is an obvious term, whenthe proponents claim to be speaking of non-duality but reject thetraditional teaching, so I don’t think any kudos should be attached toits inventor!

NDM: Do you see that this would also apply to othertraditions such as Zen, Sufism, Kaballah, Taoism,Gnosticism and so on? Does it apply to anything thatdeviates from traditions? Or does this just apply toVedanta?

Dennis Waite: I don’t know anything about other non-dual traditionsbut since the final message is presumably the same, I guess theremight be people trying to teach those and bypass the relatedmethodology. In fact, I suppose that it is only because of a particular



teacher’s background, or the background of their attendees, that onecan identify a ‘neo-teaching’ as related to Advaita rather than anothertradition.

NDM: What are the criteria for being labeled a neoadvaita teacher? Is it simply someone who teachesAdvaita, but without the traditional methods of meditation,self-enquiry, study of the scripture, use of the Sanskritterminology and so on?

Or is it someone who has not been initiated by a Guru, butdeemed qualified by the sampradAya system, through asuccession of linage? As Wright and Wright put it, ‘If onecannot prove natal legitimacy, one may be cast out as abastard. The same social standard applies to religiousorganizations. If a religious group cannot prove its descentfrom one of the recognized traditions, it risks beingdismissed as illegitimate".

Dennis Waite: A neo-advaita teacher typically claims that the worldand the person are unreal. Consequently, there is no one searching forthe truth and no one who can help them to find it (i.e. neither seekernor teacher). There is therefore no point in wasting time and effortlooking for the truth; the scriptures are of no value and so on. So no,you cannot say that ‘they teach advaita but without the traditionalmethods’ because the traditional methods are really what constituteadvaita. Advaita is a proven methodology for helping seekers toremove the ignorance that is preventing them from realizing thealready-existing truth, namely that there is only Brahman (orwhatever you want to call the non-dual reality). Neo-advaita makesthe same claim but offers nothing at all to help the seeker remove the



ignorance.

Given that there is only Brahman, we are obviously already That. Butclearly we do not know this to be true. Simply saying that it is true isof little help, but this is effectively all that the neo-advaitins do.

NDM: When Nisagadatta was asked about this by aquestioner who wished to join the Navnath Sampradāya,he said, "The Navnath SampradAya is only a tradition, away of teaching and practice. It does not denote a level ofconsciousness. If you accept a Navnath SampradAyateacher as your Guru, you join his SampradAya... Yourbelonging is a matter of your own feeling and conviction.After all it is all verbal and formal. In reality there isneither Guru nor disciple, neither theory nor practice,neither ignorance nor realization. It all depends upon whatyou take yourself to be. Know yourself correctly. There isno substitute for self-knowledge".

Question: How does one become a Navnath; By initiation orby succession?

Maharaj: Neither. the Nine Masters' tradition (Navnath Parampara)is like a river – it flows into the ocean of reality and whoever enters itis carried along.

Question: Or is it simply acceptance by a living masterbelonging to the same tradition?

Maharaj: Those who practice the sādhana of focusing their minds on"I am" may feel related to others who have followed the same sādhanaand succeeded. They may decide to verbalize their sense of kinship by



calling themselves Navnaths, It gives them the pleasure of belongingto an established lineage.

So if this is the case, could anyone who has realized the "IAm" call himself or herself a Navnath (As Nisargadattastated here)?

Or would that still not make them legitimate enough toteach advaita?

Dennis Waite: The usage of the term ‘sampradAya’ is not in accordwith the tradition as it comes down through Shankara. The key pointabout teachers in a sampradAya is that they are qualified to pass onthe teaching of that sampradAya. And the key point about suchteaching is that it has been proven time and again to work. Thus, inorder genuinely to ‘belong’ to a sampradAya, one has to have studiedwith a teacher of that sampradAya for however long it takes fully tounderstand all of the aspects (i.e. many years). (In the past, this wouldhave meant learning scriptures by heart, in the original Sanskrit, andknowing how to explain their meaning to a seeker.) And in order tobecome a teacher oneself, one should also have the appropriate skillsof a good teacher. Ideally, one should be enlightened, too, butShankara himself pointed out somewhere that this is actually of lesserimportance.

NDM: What about the sampradAya roots of theseoften followed teachers: Sri Ramana and Papaji. WhichsampradAya system did Sri Ramana belong to? WhichsampradAya system did Papaji belong to?

Dennis Waite : Ramana did not belong to any sampradAya. He issomeone who is acknowledged to have attained enlightenment



without any of the usual prior teaching and is therefore held up asproof by many modern teachers that prolonged studies with aqualified guru are not necessary. Unfortunately a single example doesnot disprove the general rule, and history shows that most do needprolonged formal teaching. Papaji is generally regarded as havingbeen a disciple of Ramana. He did not belong to any recognizedsampradAya either. As far as I am aware, neither formally recognizedanyone as their ‘successors’ either, although numerous teachers nowclaim that they were ‘authorized’ to teach by Papaji.

NDM: There are a number of teachers in the United Stateswho advertise and claim lineage from both of theseteachers. Such as this one see here: www.gangaji.org/index.php?modules=content&op=lineage

Would this lineage claim be considered legitimate or ratheran illegitimate lineage according to the sampradAyateaching system?

Dennis Waite: The term sampradAya (for Advaita) implies a lineageeffectively stretching back to Shankara and Gaudapada in acontinuous guru-disciple chain. So, the answer to this question is thatno one claiming to be a follower of Ramana and/or Papaji belongs to asampradAya.

NDM: So in effect this chain (please seehere) www.advaita.org.uk/teachers/ramana_parampara.htmis an offshoot? There are about 75 well known teachers herefrom all across the world who give satsang, write books,give seminars, retreats and so on.

http://www.gangaji.org/index.php?modules=content&op=lineage

http://www.advaita.org.uk/teachers/ramana_parampara.htm



Since none of these can prove natal legitimacy to thesampradAya dating back to Shankara andGaudapada, should they all be cast out as a "bastards" soto speak? Or to put it in polite terms, considered neoAdvaita?

Dennis Waite: You will see the note at the top of the Ramana ‘lineage’:“(Note that a solid line represents a direct teacher-disciple link ('inthe flesh') and a dotted line an 'influence' only. All entries are to thebest of my knowledge and may be mistaken.) N.B. Strictly speaking,Ramana Maharshi never authorized anyone to teach in his name.This is therefore not a formal lineage.”

I derived pretty much all of the information for these charts by lookingat the websites of the teachers mentioned. So, in many cases, a teacherhas been added simply because his or her website states that they wereinfluenced by Ramana – i.e. I trust what they say.

You seem to be making much of this sampradAya issue. Not formallybelonging to a sampradAya does not mean that a teacher is ipso factonot worthy of reading/listening to. What it means is that they aremuch less likely to have a complete grasp of all of the teachingmethods and aids, stories, metaphors and so on that wouldautomatically be handed down, learned and totally understood withina sampradAya. But they may still be a good teacher by virtue of theirown reading, understanding etc. and because whoever taught themhad a good grasp. The point is that the probabilities are imponderableoutside of the sampradAya. It is unfortunately the case that there aremany self-claimed teachers who are simply in the business of makingmoney (a sampradAya teacher would never ask for money), and whoare neither good teachers nor enlightened.



NDM: I don't see Mooji on the list by the way. Shouldn't healso be on this list since his Guru was Papaji?

Dennis Waite: The ‘home page’ of the lineage information has thefollowing statement:

“In the charts, I have listed teachers as accurately as possible, giventhe limited information I have available - i.e. primarily the Internet. Ihave not contacted every living teacher to ask them where theyconsider they should be placed. Also, there will no doubt be manyteachers who do not have an 'Internet presence' so that I will beunaware of them. Finally, my judgment as to whether a giventeacher is a teacher of Advaita is often dependent upon a quickappraisal of the content of their website. Some indicate othertraditions as being specially influential (e.g. Zen or Dzogchen) butnevertheless write articles that 'read' as if they were Advaita - I havegiven these the 'benefit of the doubt' in some cases. Others may havebeen excluded because there is simply no material on their website bywhich to make an assessment. Some teachers may appear on morethan one chart. Accordingly, I am asking for help from all visitors tocorrect errors, suggest additions (or deletions) etc.”

Despite this, I think only about 3 or 4 people have ever contacted meto tell me about errors or omissions. So thank you! I have now addedMooji to the Ramana chart – and my apologies to him if he reads this.

NDM: So what about Nisargadatta and his line? How doesthis differ since according to your chart, his line only seemsto go back to the 13th century and not to the 8th centuryand Shankara?/www.advaita.org.uk/teachers/navnath_sampradaya.htm

http://www.advaita.org.uk/teachers/navnath_sampradaya.htm



However, doesn't his line go all the way back toDattatreya?

Dennis Waite: As before, I have only been able to take whateverinformation I could find on the Internet. I am not setting myself up asany sort of authority.

You also have to accept that, in the past, Indians had no real interestin documenting any personal history. In advaita, after all, the personis not a real entity. Even in the case of Shankara, academics still argueabout when he lived, with conclusions being anything from several

centuries BC to around the 8th century AD. (Most agree that it wasprobably the latter.) The only probably valid historical records oflineage are in the Shankara mathas.

NDM: Can you give me the names of any western teacherstoday who belong to the lineages dating back as far asShankara?

Dennis Waite: Westerners probably only began to learn about thisteaching with the advent of people like Ramana and Nisargadatta andwe have already spoken about these. Teachers such as SwamisChinmayananda and Dayananda are associated with Swami Sivanandaand the former now have Western disciples who are teaching. Forexample James Swartz was a disciple of Chinmayananda and MichaelComans of Swami Dayananda. But I don’t know if Sivananda andTapovanam can be traced back to Shankara. John Lehmann, of theAdvaita Meditation Center in Massachusetts receives guidance fromShri Bharati Tirtha Swamigal, who is the present Shankaracharya ofSringeri Sharada Peetham; so maybe he is the only Westerner I amaware of who can trace back to Shankara. But then he has not been



formally accepted into the lineage as far as I am aware so that reducesthe number to zero!

NDM: Why do you think that no westerner has beenaccepted up to this point? What are they missing? Is ittheir skills or something else? Wouldn't His Holiness ShriBharati Tirtha Swamigal make this decision, being thepontiff of Advaita Vedanta?

Dennis Waite: The formality of the lineage is part of the Hindutradition. I understand that only saMnyAsI-s are given the title of‘Swami’ and a new name, and I don’t think that lifestyle appeals tomost Westerners! Also, as I said earlier, Advaita did not really come tothe attention of Westerners until very recently, relatively speaking.But I think this is another red herring; it doesn’t say anything aboutability or worthiness. Certainly a number of Westerners have studiedwith Swami Dayananda and become excellent teachers in their ownright. Michael Comans is now ‘Sri Vasudevacharya’.

I think the other point about the tradition is that, as implied by thename, procedures are long-established. I don’t think any individual,Shankaracharya or not, could unilaterally decide to do thingsdifferently.

But all this discussion is really outside of my field of expertise. If youwant to ask Indian cultural-type questions, you need to ask someoneelse.

NDM: Can you please take a look at this question andanswer below with Suzanne Foxton and tell me howmorality is understood according to traditional AdvaitaVedanta?



Where does morality (right and wrong) play into thisequation?

Suzanne Foxton: There is no right or wrong.There is what is. Including many differing ideasabout what is right and what is wrong. However,compassion often seems preferable; yet if everyapparent individual were consistentlycompassionate without exception...gag, barf!How dull would THAT be? AND there'd probablybe a loved-up population explosion.

We live in Utopia. We are Utopia. We are theperfect, dualistic playground with everypossibility shining, weaving, tearing, growing,destroying, creating NOW.

Dennis Waite: Hindu dharma is a vast subject with many entire bookswritten about it. And I am certainly no expert! Very simplistically(according to my understanding), the key point is similar to Kant’s‘moral imperative’: behave towards others as you would wish them tobehave to yourself. You try not to hurt others, either physically oremotionally, just as you would not want others to hurt you. You allowothers to believe what they like as long as, by doing so, it does notcause you any harm.

NDM: Do you believe that some neo advaita teachings areviolating Hindu Dharma by misleading others about thenature of reality and truth?

Dennis Waite: As I said, I know very little about Hindu dharma but I



think that is a red herring here, anyway. In the context of spiritualseeking, the function of a teacher is to help the disciple to realize thetruth. The seeker usually has a lifetime of misconceptions anderroneous convictions about this and the process of resolving these isnecessarily a gradual one, requiring skill and patience on the part ofthe teacher. It is ludicrous to expect that one or two satsangattendances, probably with different teachers who know nothing aboutthe seeker’s personal level of understanding, can bring aboutenlightenment. A qualified teacher will know this and acknowledgethat any implication to the contrary is both misleading and effectivelyimmoral.

Having said this, most neo-advaitins deny that they are teachinganyway so one might argue that they avoid this contradiction andescape any possible charge of deception or dishonesty. But then theydo advertize their satsangs and residential courses and they do chargeseekers to attend them. So, at the very least, it is a somewhatambiguous situation.

NDM: Can you please tell me about your awakening? When was it and how did it happen?

Dennis Waite: As I mentioned in a previous answer, it is impossible toknow whether or not someone else is enlightened so the answer to thisquestion is irrelevant to anyone else. What do you conclude ifsomeone tells you that they are enlightened? It smacks of egoism,hubris or superiority, none of which are traits one would associatewith enlightenment. In addition, there is the very significant problemthat most do not have a proper understanding of what is meant by theterm. Accordingly, if you answer ‘yes’, they can only interpret this inconnection with that misunderstanding. So, suffice to say that I do not



have any specific ‘enlightenment experience’ to communicate.(Experiences, in any case, have a beginning and an end in time so havenothing to do with the ever-present freedom of mokSha.)

NDM: Can you tell me more about this mokSha? What isthis freedom like? Is it like a state of constant bliss? Whatdoes this do to your vAsanA-s? Do you still have anydislikes or likes, aversions or desires?

Dennis Waite: You are still mistaking the terms, here. Enlightenment= Self-knowledge, which means that you know that ‘brahman is thetruth; the world is mithyA; the individual is not other than brahman’.You no longer have any doubts about this. What you appear to betalking about here is jIvanmukti – the peace, detachment; lack ofworries; indifference to results and so on. This is the condition whichresults either a) on attaining enlightenment, when sAdhanachatuShTaya sampatti had been fully satisfied beforehand or b)following enlightenment, after further nididhyAsana for as long asnecessary.

Everyone is already ‘free’, irrespective of whether or not they areenlightened. Also, the jIvanmukta will still have desires etc, albeit to alesser degree, but the point is that there is no elation if they arefulfilled or disappointment if they are not. Everything is taken ‘as itcomes’ with equanimity. (Or so I understand!)

NDM: Yes at an absolute level they are free, but whatabout on this empirical level. What if someone has self-knowledge, know that they are Brahman, yet still have anuncontrollable predilection for chasing after beautifulwomen or men, gambling, drinking and drugs? What kind



of mokSha is that; being a slave to these unwholesomedesires? How is that going to stop them from beingreincarnated as a jackrabbit in the next life?

Dennis Waite: One who is enlightened still has a body-mind andvAsanA-s but also knows that ‘he’ does not act; and any action will notaffect his Self-knowledge. Action is only at the level of the body and itis the mind that enjoys the result, albeit that both take place only byvirtue of Consciousness. As an analogy, the petrol provides the motivepower for the tank or the ambulance but is not affected by the motivesof either. As explained elsewhere, the extent to which one gains the‘fruits of enlightenment’ (jIvanmukti) is determined by how mentallyprepared one was prior to enlightenment’. One who was justsufficiently prepared to be able to ‘take on board’ the Self-knowledge,will still retain the maximum (commensurate with enlightenment) ofnegative mental attributes. In order to be able to interact in the worldat all, there has to be an ego and some degree of ‘identification’. ThejIvanmukta has very little and consequently has virtually nodesires/fears etc. The person who only just made it will still have a lotand it is this person who may be perceived to act in ways that wewould deem to be inappropriate.

Another way of looking at it is that the j~nAnI (enlightened person)still has to use up the prArabdha karma that brought this body intomanifestation in the first place. Thus he will (have to) experiencecertain desires and attachments and so on. When the prArabdha hasbeen burnt up, the body falls and there is no rebirth for that ‘person’.

It is understandable that there should be strong feelings on this issueand these have no doubt been exacerbated by the behavior of somewho had been acclaimed as enlightened but who presumably were not.



But it is also unreliable for the unenlightened to makepronouncements on the basis of what they may perceive asinappropriate actions. An obvious example would be Nisargadatta’sapparent addiction to bidis, obviously knowing that they were bad forthe health of his body. Yet most Western seekers today seem to acceptthat he was enlightened.

NDM: How do you know if someone has attained mokShaor is faking it? For example, some of these gurus have themokSha shtick down pat. Some even quote from thescriptures, have Indian sounding names, smile all the time,have dots on their foreheads, wear beads, orange robes andso on? See here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1i3sMVOBg4

Dennis Waite: You cannot know the mind of another. Unfortunately,all you can do is to listen to them teach (or if that is not possible) readtheir written material or transcripts of their talks. For as long as youcontinue to learn useful things from them (as determined by yourintellectual discrimination), they are good teachers and thereforeuseful. If you are in their presence, and they say something with whichyou disagree, you can question them and maybe they will clarify theissue. If you are reading a book they can’t do this. If he or she is a verygood teacher, then maybe you will eventually become enlightenedalso.

Regarding behavior, this is not necessarily indicative of their status as‘enlightened’. There is ample evidence of accepted enlightenedindividuals displaying anger or pain or sadness etc. And someone whois not a jIvanmukta may also exhibit behavior that is popularlydeemed to be inappropriate for someone who is enlightened. As long

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1i3sMVOBg4



as you remember that enlightenment relates only to Self-knowledge,you should be able to answer any similar questions yourself.

NDM: Yes, Ken Wilber said something like “a schmuckbefore enlightenment, a schmuck afterenlightenment” based on the old Zen quote. How does oneknow whom to trust with so many scandals breaking out?

Dennis Waite: If you do not have direct experience yourself, you willhave to rely on the words of someone who does. And in order to beable to believe them, they must have proven themselves to betrustworthy. This is why you accept what you are told by a personalfriend when you would question it if told by a stranger. Failing that,you must fall back upon what I said above regarding learning usefulthings.

NDM: So what about the sublation of Dennis, the momentin apparent time when this "apparent Dennis" put his headin the mouth of the tiger and this apparent Dennis wasdevoured by this tiger. He realized that he was not thisphysical form, mind, the five sheaths and so on, which hehad been identifying with all his life. When this non-duallight of awareness entered into the picture, he knew for thefirst time that he was not the snake, but the stick. That hewas Brahman.

Are you saying that "Dennis", not the Self, Brahman,always knew this from his physical birth? That Denniswas always never ignorant about this, that he wasenlightened on a relative level as well as an absolute level?



That you were born an avatar of some kind like Krishna,Vishnu or Shiva?

Dennis Waite: You still seem to be hung up on the idea of a suddentransforming experience. It does not have to be like this.

I guess the first hint must have been when I was about 6 – 8 years old.My parents sent me to a Methodist Sunday School and I attended formaybe 6 – 9 months. I eventually stopped going and I recall telling myparents that it just did not make any sense – if there was a God, thenhe couldn’t be in heaven; he had to be everywhere.

But I didn’t actively begin seeking until my early twenties, by whichtime I was convinced that I was never going to gain any lastingsatisfaction from worldly pursuits and decided that I had to look tophilosophy for some explanations. I began attending the School ofEconomic Science in response to the ‘Course of Philosophy’ lecturesthat they advertized on the London Underground. And I stayed for acouple of years until they wanted me to part with a week’s salary to beinitiated into TM. But at that time, they were still mainly influenced byOuspensky and their teaching was a bit weird to say the least.

After a break to get married, have a child, get divorced and re-marry, Ireturned to SES in the mid eighties, by which time their teaching wasmuch more influenced by Advaita. And I stayed until around 1998, bywhich time I had myself been tutoring for a number of years. I leftbecause I had realized as a result of outside reading that the school’sadvaita was corrupted by other philosophies such as Sankhya, Yogaand Grammarians. I also followed Francis Lucille for a while at thisstage.

After being made redundant in 2000, I tried to set up my own



computer consultancy for a couple of years and wrote a book onEarned Value metrics. When this didn’t work out, I started the websiteand began to write on Advaita full time. It was really this process –setting down all of the aspects of Advaita, asking questions, readinglots of books until any points that I did not understand were clearedup – that consolidated my understanding. Basically, I have been doingthis every day, evenings and weekends included since 2002. And, overthe period of say 2004 – 2008 for the sake of argument, I came to therealization that I had no further questions. I was totally convinced ofthe truth of the teaching and found, through the question and answersection of the website, that there was no question that I could notanswer (to my own satisfaction!) (Note that this does not mean I cananswer all questions to other’s satisfaction. A lot of this teaching isstepwise and you cannot leap to the top step without traversing theintermediate ones. Also, some seekers may require lots of quotationsfrom scriptures to back up an answer, and I am not always able toprovide these, one reason being that there are still lots of scripturesthat I haven’t read!

And , of course, some seekers are so entrenched and committed totheir existing mistaken beliefs that they cannot open up to any newones. The parable of pouring more tea into a cup that is already fullapplies here.)

But, again, I am not sure that you appreciate the significance of all ofthis at the transactional level. Dennis still quite definitely exists. It is amistaken belief that the person somehow disappears onenlightenment. The person continues until death of the body, drivenby prArabdha karma (the arrow continuing to its target once the bowstring has been released). And I am certainly not a jIvanmukta. As Ipoint out in a Q &A just posted to the site, I am still prone to the usual



human failings. One does not gain the mental/emotional benefits(j~nAna phalam) unless one is fully accomplished with respect tosAdhana chatuShTaya sampatti prior to enlightenment. And,unfortunately, I never became fully accomplished!

NDM: Was Francis Lucille of any help at this point in timewith his pointers and satsangs?

Dennis Waite: Francis was very helpful. I emailed him a number ofquestions a year or two before meeting him and he answered them indetail (they appear in his book ‘Eternity Now’). And I was veryimpressed with the satsangs in general and the way that he answeredquestions. (This is not to say that I always agreed with what he said.)

NDM: When you say, "Dennis still quite definitely exists. Itis a mistaken belief that the person somehow disappears onenlightenment."

What about the identification with this "persona", themask of Dennis? Do you mean you still identify with this,or that you know that it’s mithyA (false, transient, notconstant, not permanent) and so on like any other object?

Dennis Waite: Dennis still moves around in the world, doing all of thesorts of things he used to do and outwardly appearing as normal. Iknow that this body-mind is mithyA but still sometime behave asthough I don’t. Note that this habit of not saying ‘I’, or referring tooneself in the third person, is really not something I approve of. It isan affectation really. Pedantically knowing that ‘I am not this person’does not escape the fact that it is this person who is speaking as far asmost hearers are concerned! So to use this method of speaking istantamount to saying to the other person “Just remember that you are



not speaking to another ‘ordinary’ person but to someone special!”And ‘I’ am not special – ‘who I really am’ is ‘who you really are’.

NDM: As far as not being a jIvanmukta; what kind ofmeditation, karma yoga, bhakti yoga, along with j~nAnayoga, had you done previous to your realization?

Dennis Waite: No bhakti; probably around 15 years of karma andmeditation twice per day for 30 minutes.

NDM: Did you ever experience nirvikalpa samAdhi prior tothis realization?

Dennis Waite: I’m going to cut short this line of questioning. Answersto questions such as these are really of no help to any other seeker.Each one’s path, glimpses of the truth, realization gradual or suddenetc will differ. Examining the minutiae of any one person’s experiencereally is pointless.

NDM: Yes, is that because it is also misleading and cansend others barking up the wrong tree so to speak? Like ifsomeone has a sudden enlightenment holding a bucket ofwater over their head while dancing the Macarena; willothers think that by holding buckets of water over theirheads while dancing the Macarena, that it will also bringthem enlightenment?

Dennis Waite: That’s a good way of putting it, yes! The bottom line isthat only Self-knowledge can give enlightenment because Self-knowledge is enlightenment. Whatever one might be doing, whereone is or what is happening at the moment that final, full Self-knowledge dawns, is totally irrelevant.



NDM: What is evolutionary enlightenment? Does this haveanything to do with Shankara’s interpretation of theUpanishads or Advaita Vedanta? Andrew Cohen, Papiji'sdisciple was in India recently promoting his ideas about"evolutionary enlightenment". He says he doesn't believethe purpose of enlightenment is to attain freedom fromincarnation. He says it’s to come back again and again andagain and again to enjoy this physical world. He alsostates that he is challenging the ancient traditions with hisnew teaching. At 17minutes and 10 seconds into the videohe talks about this.

www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-huston/spiritual-life_b_514189.html

Dennis Waite: I don’t have any direct experience of Andrew Cohen’steaching. Comments that some trustworthy contacts have made abouthim did not inspire me to find out more. What he says above wouldseem fully to justify this decision.

NDM: In sutra number 18 of your book, Enlightenment,Path Through The Jungle you say that some Neo Advaitateachers may be helpful; particularly the ones who try toembody some methodology in their teaching. What kind ofmethodology were you referring to? Is there any teacheryou can think of who is doing this?

Dennis Waite: I’m referring to the traditional prakriyA-s or systematicprocedures that are given in the scriptures and ‘unfolded’ by a skilledteacher. These include such things as the three states of consciousness(avasthA traya), differentiation between seer and seen (dRRik

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-huston/spiritual-life_b_514189.html

http://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Through-Jungle-Dennis-Waite/dp/1846941180



dRRishya viveka), the five ‘sheaths’ (pa~ncha kosha); and the classicalmetaphors such as rope-snake, pot-space and pots, gold andrings/bangles etc. There are many of these and they are alldemonstrably valuable for showing a seeker how to look at things in anew way and thereby overturn habitual patterns of thinking.

NDM: In sutra 22 you speak of the terminology to be used,such as Brahman and atman; what would you say is thedifference with using the word awareness?

Dennis Waite: The problem with using English words that are used ineveryday conversation is that they can lead to confusion ormisunderstanding. Even seekers who are familiar with ‘spiritualdiscussions’ may not clearly understand what is meant, or may use aword in a way which is understood differently by the other person. Theword ‘awareness’ is a common example, particularly becauseNisargadatta uses the words ‘Consciousness’ and ‘Awareness’differently from most other teachers. By using the correct Sanskritterm (and it is acknowledged that one has to learn what these meanbefore using them in conversation), this difficulty is avoided.

dennis waite - interview with non-duality magazine

Documents