Mumbai, Maharashtra·1917 – 2009
रमेश बालसेकर
Ramesh Balsekar
The Banker Who Became a Sage
He turned the diamond of Advaita so the Western mind could see every facet.
“The thinking mind is what is busy. You have to stay in your heart. You have to be in your heart. Be still in the heart and let the thinking mind dissolve.”
Life
Born on 25 May 1917 in Mumbai into a devout Hindu family, Ramesh Sadashiv Balsekar had a distinguished worldly career before his spiritual flowering. Educated at the London School of Economics, he rose to become the president of the Bank of India, one of the country's largest nationalized banks, retiring in 1977.
After retirement, he was drawn to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's tiny loft in Khetwadi, Mumbai. Balsekar became Nisargadatta's primary English translator, a role that placed him at the very heart of the transmission. For three years, he sat at the master's feet, translating the fierce, uncompromising Marathi of Maharaj into precise English for Western seekers. During this period, his own understanding deepened into a permanent, unshakeable recognition.
After Nisargadatta's death in 1981, Balsekar began receiving visitors at his own home in Mumbai. His style was markedly different from his guru's: where Nisargadatta was volcanic and confrontational, Balsekar was urbane, patient, and methodical. He would carefully dismantle the sense of personal doership with the precision of a banker auditing accounts.
For nearly three decades, seekers from around the world came to his living room for morning talks. He wrote over twenty books, gave public talks across Europe and America, and became one of the most influential Advaita teachers of the late twentieth century. He died peacefully on 27 September 2009 in Mumbai, at the age of 92.
One Heart
“There is no entity that has any power to do anything. All there is, is a happening. All there is, is a functioning of Totality.”
Teachings
No Individual Doer
The core of Balsekar's teaching: no human being has ever done anything. All actions arise from the totality of Consciousness according to the cosmic law. The sense of personal doership ('I did this, I decided that') is the fundamental illusion from which all suffering springs.
Consciousness is All There Is
There is only Consciousness, functioning through billions of body-mind organisms. What we call 'me' is simply an instrument through which Consciousness operates, like a character in a movie who cannot step off the screen.
Understanding Brings Peace
When the understanding that there is no personal doer becomes total and irreversible, guilt and blame dissolve, both toward oneself and toward others. This understanding is not intellectual but a lived recognition that brings deep, abiding peace.
Works & Publications
Pointers from Nisargadatta Maharaj
Balsekar's distillation of three years of daily talks with his guru, widely regarded as the clearest introduction to Nisargadatta's teaching.
Consciousness Speaks
A collection of conversations presenting Balsekar's own mature teaching in dialogue form, showing his precise, patient method of dismantling the sense of personal doership.
Who Cares?! The Unique Teaching of Ramesh S. Balsekar
A comprehensive presentation of his teaching on non-doership, showing how the complete absence of volition brings total freedom from guilt and blame.
An Inspiration
Balsekar's teaching on the absence of personal doership threads through Ananta's satsang: the recognition that what we call 'our' actions, thoughts, and even spiritual seeking are all movements of Consciousness itself.