IT COULD HAVE ENDED THERE. But then Consciousness got merciful again, or brutal again, same difference; brutally merciful; and, totally out of character, signed the david thing up for a course, which led to exposure to a certain dynamic duo of self-styled teachers of Advaita. In time, they turned out to be almost entirely ego, way off the mark as spiritual teachers go. But, quite brilliant and with a good intellectual grasp of the teaching, so obviously, coming from zippo in that regard, I could learn a lot there. Odd experience, because some of what she talked about tingled, like maybe she knew… but then obviously she didn’t.

Gradually learned and pieced together that there’s a whole culture out there of the blind leading the blind, that there has been enough of a sprinkling through the eons of occasions when seeing happened, and the eyes through which was seeing, knew they were not. Enough writings by Buddha-things, Rumi-things, Seng-Ts’an-things and Ramana-things, that other things who thought they were things but it was not them thinking, who didn’t see, (but it’s all a joke because ‘they’ is the I-ness that is the Is-ness of all seeing) could read and think they comprehended; and in the interim between the occasions when seeing happened, there would be the developing of whole structures and systems around a theory of seeing, and some would get many others to follow them and worship them because nobody knew the difference. Nobody knew the bloody difference, so they are so easy to fool!

So that was odd. And meanwhile of course always everywhere perfect Brilliant Stillness, outpouring constantly.

It is said that when you need a teacher you will find one. Of course, this assumes that you need teachers at all, which is a highly dubious assertion. The universe is on a need-to-know basis, and for the most part, we don’t need to know. But when, in the overall grand picture, it is necessary for a body/mind to know something, then they will hear it, and in a way that it can be taken in. This may take the form of finding a teacher; or, it may be that a conversation is overheard, or a taxi driver makes a comment, or, simply, a thought occurs. How can it be otherwise? Consciousness is all.

In the jungle, everything stopped; david stopped; the world stopped. And for a time there was being in this and this only, without concepts or thoughts in which to frame it. Then, there was coming across those first two, and finding that the ideas they talked about corresponded somewhat with the unspoken knowing that occurred in the jungle. There is simply following the natural trail that emerges, seeing only the next step. Which, after all, is all we get to see.

In any case, just about the time there was figuring out that some basic intellectual framework was about all that could be learned from these two, one day in a talk she mentions the name ‘Ramesh,’ who she refers to as one of her teachers.