Who Cares?!- The Unique Teaching of Ramesh S. Balsekar

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Consciousness is all there is. So 'who' is to know or seek 'what'? All there is is the impersonal functioning of Consciousness, or God, reflecting within Itself the totality of manifestation. Live life making decisions and accepting the consequences as if you have free will - knowing it is Consciousness seeking, doing, living, deciding...
Ramesh Balsekar was an awakened sage whose long life had been devoted to Ramana Maharshi and whose final Guru was Nisargadatta Maharaj. He perfectly reflected both East and West - born and raised in Bombay, India, thinking and speaking in English, student of Sanskrit and translator of the Bhagavad Gita, intimately familiar with the Taoist and Chan classics as well as the new paradigm (Consciousness is all there is) which has emerged from quantum mechanics. Poignantly clear and precise and delightfully humorous, his teaching makes life simple.

The unique teaching happening through Ramesh is pure Advaita.
Why pure? Because the entire teaching is unequivocally a single concept - Consciousness is all there is. It is not two, the meaning of a + dvaita. There is not the manifestation and all of its objects plus Consciousness, or whatever name you call that which cannot be named. All there is Consciousness. There is no ego deciding to do spiritual seeking. If this were the case, then there would be two - Consciousness and ego. There is only One without a second. Pure Advaita. Consciousness is all there is!
Why unique? Because Advaita has never been presented precisely the way the teaching happens through Ramesh. Ramesh repeatedly points out that whatever he says is not the Truth - "Anything any sage or any scripture has ever said is a concept and consequently can be either agreed or disagreed with." His teaching is unique because he tells the seeker not to try to remember what has been taught - "In every effort to remember, the ego is present. The ego is absent only when the understanding brings about the remembering." There is uniqueness because he says, "Accept the ego! Resisting the ego only nourishes it." And there is uniqueness in that Ramesh begins with bhakti, or devotion, and ends with jnana, or final understanding "... accepting that 'T' am nothing, that 'T' am merely an object at the will of God is basically nothing but pure devotion, or bhakti. So what I say strictly begins with bhakti: thy will be done." Finally, if there is intent listening or reading, then there will be no doubt as to the exact teaching happening through Ramesh.
The importance of this last point is easily missed. Ask yourself the same question that Ramesh often asks seekers attending satsang for the first time: "What is the understanding now?" In other words, as a result of all the seeking, whether having had teachers or reading books, what exactly is the understanding that you, the reader or listener, has right now? Very few can say!