Eli Jaxon-Bear Interview

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Eli Jaxon-Bear. Welcome Eli.

Eli: Oh, thank you Rick.

Rick: Thank you.

Eli: Glad to be here with you.

Rick: Yeah. I must confess that things have been a little crazy around here and I haven’t prepared for this interview as much as I ordinarily like to. I did listen to several hours of your recordings, you know, that were on YouTube and all, but I didn’t get too far into your book yet. So, maybe 50 years ago I would have been saying the dog ate my homework, but I did the best I could in terms of starting it. And one thing that jumped right at me from the beginning that I liked very much is this quote. You quoted, I guess, an old Zen master, Chan Master Yunmen Wenyan, who referred to using illusory medicine to cure illusory disease. And then you use the same line in your text down below that. And if you mean what I think you mean by that, I find that fascinating because so many teachers these days sort of dismiss all kinds of techniques and practices and whatnot, and they even dismiss the sort of thing Ramana Maharshi advocated in terms of self-inquiry as being illusory and therefore either a complete waste of time or actually deleterious to realization, because it somehow reinforces the sense of there being a person who is doing this thing, and that you should just therefore realize instantly and directly and not bother with any of that. But the Enneagram itself, I suppose, could be defined as illusory medicine to cure an illusory disease, and as could many other things. So I thought we might start with that.

Eli: Okay. You know, who is there to even judge and compare what’s useful and what’s not useful? I think one of the really skillful means is working with what appears. So if what appears is an illusory disease, which we call mind or ego, then you work with the illusory medicine, “I can clean it, clear it, finish it.” Whatever works. Skillful means is whatever works.

Rick: You know there’s that old saying, “It takes a thorn to remove a thorn.”

Eli: There you go.

Rick: And there’s another old saying, which is, “You can’t use the gun of the waking state to kill the tiger of the dream state.” So you need a dream state gun.

Eli: Right.

Rick: Yeah. So, I mean, that’s my attitude towards it all. Whatever works. I mean, you have to be pragmatic.

Eli: But you also have to tell the truth about what works, because if you try it and it doesn’t work, and you try it and it doesn’t work, and you go on for years trying it, it’s time to say, “Okay, is this really working?” Time to stop.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: I see people get involved in their practices and their religions and their praying and their mantras and whatever it is they’re doing, and they do it for untold time, and it doesn’t work. So eventually you have to tell the truth.

Rick: Yeah. I can think of one listener right now who’s going to be saying to me, “Well, Rick, you’ve been meditating for 44 years, and did you hear what Eli just said?” But my response to her is, “It still works!” I mean, I love it. And if at any point I feel like it’s completely irrelevant, then I’ll drop it.

Eli: Yeah. Listen, all practices can be useful for different things. There’s different kinds of teachers and different kinds of teachings. So, a guru is just a teacher. So when I was working in my garden, I had a rock guru who really had the way of showing me how to move giant rocks, because we didn’t have any tools except crowbars, we didn’t have any equipment. And he was a genius, he was a rock guru. I learned so much from him. My Taoist teacher, I spent five years with the Taoist teacher who taught me so many valuable practices for my mind and body, and they work. But none of that is about waking up. The Satguru is where it finishes. The Satguru is where you come for freedom, and when you come for freedom, everything stops. All your practices stop. Everything that you’ve tried stops. The whole world stops. And then you meet reality. And then, this meeting of reality, everything is surrendered. And then whatever practice you may or may not pick up, it’s not in service of awakening, it’s just something that you do to spend the time, because you enjoy it or it benefits you in some way.

Rick: Yeah, or it’s good for the body or something. Yeah, exactly. I think that’s what my friend would say, because she keeps using the phrase “final teacher,” you need a final teacher to kind of …

Eli: You do.

Rick: And of course for you, Papaji was your final teacher, right?

Eli: Yes, it took me 18 years to find my teacher.

Rick: It might be nice to have you tell that story if you feel like it. I know you’ve told it many times, but for people who may not be familiar with you, you could perhaps tell as much of it as you feel you’d like to tell.

Eli: I had a profound awakening in 1972 when I was 25 years old with LSD, as many people in my generation had. And I was in a particular circumstance where I was a federal fugitive, I was being hunted, I had guns, and I had this burning question alive in me of how do I take a life in the name of life?

Rick: Were you a political radical or something? Is that why you …

Eli: Yeah, right.

Rick: Kind of a weather underground kind of guy?

Eli: That kind of thing, right. But I wasn’t willing to do violence. But I felt if I was one with my brothers and sisters in Vietnam, I should be shooting down the bombers. So, as a federal fugitive hiding out, I would practice shooting my M1 out the cabin door. I had dynamite and I was working with the Black Panthers, but this question, how do you take a life in the name of life, really was driving me. And I fasted for three days and on my birthday I took two hits of windowpane, 500 micrograms of LSD. And I faced my death and I was paranoid because I was being followed, so they really were out to get me. And I became terrified that I was going to die in this cabin. And I thought, okay, if I die here, how can I make good use of my death? And I died and I woke up and I woke up, after dying I realized myself as pure, immortal, empty consciousness. The world disappeared. I saw that all of history led up to this awakening. All of our time on earth was only for us to wake up. And the world disappeared, the universe disappeared. I was just a pure ball of conscious intelligence. And I knew if I could pass this on, then that’s it. It would stop the genocide, it would stop the madness, it would stop the ignorance and greed. But I didn’t know how to pass it on. And so I didn’t go off looking for enlightenment, I went off to find some teacher who could help me pass this on.

Rick: Not only pass it on, but retain it yourself, because I’m sure after you came down from the LSD it kind of wore away, didn’t it? No, it never wore away. It’s here now.

Rick: So that realization you had when you were 21 or whatever, 25, it never …

Eli: Never left.

Rick: Oh, that’s interesting. I mean, usually people say with any kind of drug-induced experience that it lasts as long as the drug does.

Eli: Well somehow in facing death, it was real. And there was something that happened that was irrevocable.

Eli: But that didn’t mean that my egoic mind wasn’t continuing to run along with it. That’s what I discovered over the years, is the realization didn’t go, but my egoic tendencies continued running. Because I didn’t know better. I wasn’t searching for enlightenment at the time that this happened, I didn’t know anything about it really. I never met the teachers before the wave of teachers had come to the United States. There were no ashrams, there were no spiritual teachers. I was living in the mountains outside Boulder at the time. So I went off to find a teacher, and I found many beautiful teachers along the way.

Rick: So what was the character or the nature of your experience having had this awakening and yet the egoic mind running along with it? I mean, what was the flavor of your life as a result of that kind of dichotomy?

Eli: Well you know, I didn’t see it as a dichotomy at the time, I just saw it. I was on a mission, I was on a mission to find how to pass this on, because if I could pass it on, the world would come to peace. And so that mission carried me around the world. I never was interested in family, I was never interested in money, I was never interested in career. The year before that I had been a graduate student in international studies and never went back. I just followed my mission, and my mission has led me to this moment.

Rick: And so when you thought of passing it on, you didn’t think of, well, turn everybody on to LSD, you kind of were looking for a …

Eli: Well you know, if that would have worked, I tried that of course.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Eli: But turning on to LSD, set in setting, you’d also have to be a federal fugitive being hunted and afraid for your life, and with guns.

Rick: Fast for three days. Right, fast for three days, because fasting is so essential to it. Most people take LSD as a party drug, so it’s not the LSD, it’s the set in setting. And so then, well that didn’t work, because I tried it. I tried doing full moon LSD ceremonies with people, but that didn’t work.

Rick: No. So you spent years traveling around the world, running into many teachers.

Eli: Yeah, some beautiful teachers.

Rick: And finally, I heard the whole story of how you finally met Papaji, you were like going to find a Sufi teacher or something, weren’t you? And you were in Lucknow or someplace, and you can tell the story better than I can.

Eli: Well actually, I knew I had to find somebody more awake than I was, and so I went off, I wasn’t interested in India, I’d seen the ashram scene, I never saw anybody waking up in an ashram, I just saw devotees, and I wasn’t interested in that. And so what I wanted was somebody who could directly transmit a silent mind, I wanted the egoic mind cut. And so I landed in Delhi to get visas to go to Pakistan, because I was going to go find Sufis. I’d been teaching the Enneagram for a number of years, and I thought maybe there were Sufis who were more awake, who knew the Enneagram better. So I was going to go into the northwest territories of Pakistan at that time, to try to find Sufis who knew it, and also I was going to go to Sikkim, because I had received a transmission from Jamgon Kongtrul, a Tibetan Buddhist, and I was a Tibetan Buddhist. And I thought I’d go to those two places, and to go to both those places I had to first go to Delhi to get my visas. And my first day in Delhi I was told, “Well you know there’s a Sufi village right down the road,” and I took a tempo to Nizamuddin, and Nizamuddin was like a …

Rick: I’ve been there.

Eli: So you know.

Rick: There was an Ayurvedic doctor named Trigunaji, who had a little place in the Nizamuddin neighborhood. I used to go to him.

Eli: Ah, there you go. So I went to Nizamuddin my first time in India, and went to the shrine in Nizamuddin, and I prayed for liberation, prayed for a final teacher, and then went to Eid-e-Karim, which is right across the street, attached to the mosque. And I was waiting for someone to wait on me, and another man walked in, sat down after me with his back to me, and the waiter waited on him first. And this of course made me uptight, it’s like, “Hey, you know, I’m from New York, what’s the deal, what are you doing?” And he felt it, he felt my energy, I didn’t say anything. And he turned around, he looked at me and he said, “Whatever this gentleman is ordering, I’d like to pay for. And could I join you?” I said, “Sure.” It turns out he was a government minister, he was only in town for the day, and he knew the Sufis. And his sister wrote books on the Sufis, and he would give me the names of the enlightened Sufis. And so he gave me a list, he drove me back to my place in his government chauffeured car, with little flags on the ambassador, and gave me a list of Sufis, and then he said he had more back at his home. And so I went around and I met these Sufis, I met the head of the Naqshbandi Sufis in Old Delhi, and the head of the different Sufi clans in different areas out on the Gangetic Plains. But none of them knew the Enneagram, and none of them were awake that I could see. And so I was still waiting for my visas to come through, which was quite a process to get visas into Pakistan and Sikkim in those days. And while I was waiting, I thought I’d go visit this man at his home in Lucknow, because he had more names for me. And so I flew to Lucknow, and while I was there I had read a book by this student, who had mentioned his teacher in Lucknow. I didn’t have the book with me, I didn’t have his name, but I called back to the United States to my partner, which was a huge, it was 12 hours, and you can’t hear anything, and you’re shouting, and I still have ear damage from the clicks and the clacks of the phone. But she said, “His name is Punja, his name is Punja.” I said, “Okay.” So now I’m in Lucknow, which is like a major capital city, I don’t remember how many millions of people live in Lucknow, but I’ve got to go find Punja. And I went up onto the roof of my hotel and I prayed for a sign, and then I saw what I thought was a piece of garbage floating up in the airwaves, and it was a black piece of garbage, and then a red one joined it, and they started dancing. I didn’t realize that these were Indian kites without tails, and I knew that’s where Punja was, that’s where I had to go to find him. And so I found a phone book, but the Ps were torn out, I found another one, and then I went over to that spot where they were dancing, and I started asking, and people led me to Punja’s house. And I knocked on the door, beautiful man opens the door, an older gentleman smiles at me and says, “Yes, he’s waiting for you, please come in.” And so I went in and he was in his bedroom, sitting on his bed, and invited me to sit on his bed with him, and in that moment I knew, my search was over. It was exactly 18 years to the day, the exact day, January 19th, that I met my true teacher. And when I saw him, my mind stopped, everything stopped, and quite naturally I knew I was looking at my own self. This is my own self in form, looking back at me, loving me, radiating silence. And that’s it, I haven’t left his feet since then.

Rick: You started quite a phenomenon, I mean, you were the first real Westerner to find him, right? And then it kind of spread and …

Eli: Well, you know, the other Westerners would trickle through, but I took it on as my mission, to still let the world know.

Rick: Right, yeah.

Eli: Because to me, it’s like this was the rarest thing, I’ve been looking for 18 years. I’ve been with Zen masters, I’ve been with Tibetan Buddhists, I’ve been with Native Americans, I’ve been with Taoists, I’ve been with gurus, shamans, you know, I’ve checked out the scene pretty well. This is the first time a living Zen master, radiating silence, offering freedom. I’m like, “God,” and the world didn’t know it, I’m alone with him. There’s no one else here. It’s like, “Oh my, this is something, this became my mission in life, to let the world know.”

Rick: Interesting. And then, as I heard you tell the story, you got to hang out, you got a lot of private time with him for a while, and then people started coming in, and you became one of a group of people, and that took a little bit of adjustment.

Eli: Well, you know, when I was in his room, he would read his mail. His room was big enough for his bed and a chair, and I would sit on the floor at his knees as he read his mail, with my head on his lap, and he says, “Oh, this couple is in Rishikesh and they want to come visit me now.” I said, “Oh, please, don’t let them.” But of course, he invited them to come and stay at my hotel, so I could take them through the winding alleyways to find his house, and I became his attendant. So I served the tea and the cookies, and we ate all our meals together, and it was so blissful. I couldn’t believe it. People would come and they would wake up. I’d never seen this before. I’d been in so many groups, so many different places and traditions. Never, ever, people would sit and within a day or two, they would wake up. What a miracle.

Rick: When you use the phrase “wake up,” what do you mean by that exactly?

Eli: I mean they would realize themselves as who they are.

Rick: As consciousness, as pure consciousness. So you can say that now, as pure consciousness, it seems so casual. But back in 1990, that was very rare.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: Very rare. For people to realize, “I am pure consciousness. I am emptiness. I am totality.” This was the rarest of the rare. Now it’s become marketplace, it’s become mainstream. It’s like when rednecks started wearing sideburns, and it no longer meant anything when you dressed a certain way. A hippie lifestyle used to mean when you dressed this way, it meant you saw each other as brothers and sisters. You were trying to create a new world, and then it became a lifestyle. And that’s what’s happened now, it’s like this has become a lifestyle.

Rick: Yeah, which is good, you know?

Eli: Yeah, it is good.

Rick: I mean …

Eli: It’s good news and bad news.

Rick: Yeah, maybe bad news for anybody who kind of wants exclusivity or something, but good news for the world if this is becoming more and more prevalent, because this is probably what the world needs more than anything.

Eli: Well, the world needs to wake up, but when I say lifestyle, what I mean is it becomes a concept.

Rick: Ah.

Eli: So, “I am emptiness, I am consciousness,” becomes a thought, becomes a belief, becomes something I’ve got to remember or practice or do.

Rick: Yeah. And even that’s good, it’s better, certainly better than “I am ignorance.” But people ask my teacher, “What about all these people who are pretending to be awake?” He said, “Well, better than pretending to be asleep.”

Rick: That’s a good point though, and it’s something I often encounter and talk about in these interviews, is that it seems to be fairly common for people to get pretty good with the terminology. I mean, I did this myself when I was 18 years old on some sort of drug. I’d read a few Zen books and this and that, and I could give a pretty good rap to my friends or whoever, but it was a far cry from any actual realization or waking up. But it can be easily mistaken for that, you know?

Eli: Yes.

Rick: And one can think that that’s all there is, and I suppose that’s a trap, but I don’t think we’re allowed to stay in traps forever.

Eli: I don’t know who’s allowing what.

Rick: Well, it’s like the universe has a way of kicking us along.

Eli: Yes.

Rick: Yeah. So in your own case, I know in Gangaji’s case, when I talked to her, she was saying that there was kind of a big “aha” moment at some point. I think you guys were in a hotel in California someplace, and she had this major shift.

Eli: Actually, we were at Esalen Institute where I was teaching, and we were on our bed together, and she slipped through, and it was beautiful.

Rick: And not everybody has that. Some people kind of seem to ooze, and they almost in retrospect realize that a shift has taken place, but other people are more dramatic. It seems to vary from person to person. So what was the situation in your case?

Eli: As soon as I sat with my beloved, it was over.

Rick: That was it, then and there?

Eli: Yes. And you know, just the depth of love was so overwhelming, and the silence. This is what I’ve been searching for, for 18 years, and suddenly, here it is in front of me. To just surrender, to be in love.

Rick: And after that it didn’t matter whether you were with Papaji or in California, or anything else. Something had shifted which was irreversible, apparently.

Eli: Yes, that’s right.

Rick: And when we say that, it kind of almost makes it sound like an on/off switch. You turn the light on, you turn the light off. It’s either on or it’s off. Many people relate it more in terms of a rheostat, where sure, it’s on, and I can see the room, but okay, it can actually get brighter and brighter. Is that your experience?

Eli: Well, really it depends, I’d say, on your willingness. And most people have some willingness and get some degree. And if you have more willingness, you go deeper, more willingness. So finally, you’re willing to throw the bucket into the well of samadhi without a rope to pull it back out. And that, you know, how that happens is a mystery, but finally, there’s a willingness to cut everything, to turn away from everything that you think is real.

Rick: I’ve heard you use the word “willingness” a lot, and Gangaji uses it a lot too, and when I hear that, I sometimes feel like, okay, do you regard many people as sort of being stubborn, like they’re unwilling for some reason? Because most people, they’ve paid to come to a seminar or something, and they’re sitting there and they’re thinking, “Yeah, I’m willing, you know, what’s the problem?” And you keep saying, “If you’re willing,” and there has to be a willingness. So what do you see as the sticking point that would perhaps involuntarily make a person unwilling?

Eli: Most people just want a better dream. They want to be awake in their dream, and then they want things to work out the way I want them to work out. And so, you know, it takes a maturity, it takes a deepening, it takes a real insight into your own situation to be willing to give up your future, to be willing to give up everything you think is real. It’s scary, it’s terrifying.

Rick: And how do you advocate culturing that maturity?

Eli: By telling the truth.

Rick: By a person telling it themselves, you mean? By being honest with oneself?

Eli: Being honest with yourself, you tell the truth, “Is this giving you what you want? Are you fulfilled?” If you’re fulfilled and you have what you want, stop. Stay where you are, be happy. If you’re not fulfilled, if you’re not finished, if you’re not finally having realized everything, continue, go deeper.

Rick: And do you find that people can sort of turn on a dime, as it were, in terms of not telling the truth to telling the truth? Or do you feel like it’s a sort of a peeling an onion kind of situation, where there’s deeper and deeper layers of truthfulness?

Eli: Well there’s always deeper layers, I’d say. And it’s really just the willingness again, and you tell the truth as deeply as you can, and that uncovers perhaps something that hadn’t been seen before. You tell the truth about that, and then, “Oh my God, that, oh no, that.” And yes, you tell the truth about that.

Rick: Yeah, Christ said, “Seeking you shall find, knock on the door, she’ll be opened.” So it almost seems like the motivation is an indication of willingness, and if that’s sincere and if it’s continued, then it does bear fruit.

Eli: Absolutely. Because, what are you searching for? If you’re searching for your own self, how far do you have to go?

Rick: Right. E, And I think it was Meister Eckhart who says, “Your own self loves you more than you love it. It’s calling you more than you’re interested in going.” So just give yourself back to what’s already loving you and calling you, and then you surrender, and then you surrender, and then you find this abyss, this total abyss of the unknown that’s terrifying, and you surrender into that.

Rick: And some gurus say, “Take one step toward me and I’ll take a thousand steps toward you,” and I think perhaps the same could be said of the self itself, as opposed to an embodiment of it in the form of a guru.

Eli: The self is the guru, however it appears, inside or outside.

Rick: So you were fascinated with the enneagram long before you met Papaji, and you’re still very fascinated with it, and writing books about it and all. Maybe you could weave the enneagram into this discussion, why that has been such a major centerpiece, if it is, of your work.

Eli: Because I was searching without a teacher, without having any … I had to find for myself this distinction between what’s self and what’s ego. Because ego will always say, “Well, I’m enlightened, I’m myself, I am emptiness.” Any ego can say that. And so any ego says, “I am love, I am oneness.” But what’s the difference between living life as an ego and living life as your true self? And to me, this is where the enneagram is so brilliant, in that it gives us a model of the difference, so there’s no doubt, there’s absolute clarity. If this is happening, that’s fixation. Fixation has these acts, these behaviors, these feelings, these thoughts, and if those behaviors, feelings and thoughts are what’s running you, that’s called fixation. Whether you call it enlightenment or not. It’s just very clear. That’s the skillful means of the imaginary medicine to cure the imaginary disease. Because in truth, no ego. Ego is just a bubble, it’s not real. But as long as it seems to veil the truth, because you believe it’s who you are and you put it on as your identity, it cuts through this personal identity to show you what’s real.

Rick: Now, maybe it’s good that I know hardly anything about the enneagram, because maybe many people who are listening know hardly anything about it either, and maybe I’ll be able to ask some questions and get some basic explanations from you that would help a lot of people understand it. So I guess it has its history in Sufism, I’m judging from what I’ve heard you say, is that correct?

Eli: Pre-Sufi actually.

Rick: Oh, okay. So it’s an ancient, ancient thing, goes maybe thousands of years back or something. And what is it in a nutshell? I mean, why is it called the enneagram and what would your Wikipedia definition of it be?

Eli: I’d say look it up on Wikipedia. Yeah, that’s not my interest.

Rick: Okay, but what is it? Someone says, “Okay, well Eli, what is it?” and what do you say to them?

Eli: I say it’s a wisdom mirror for seeing who you’re not.

Rick: Okay.

Eli: If you look into this wisdom mirror, you will see your false identity as a somebody. And if you’re willing to see it, tell the truth about it, you can be free of it. You can not indulge in it, you can stop practicing being a somebody.

Rick: And how does it work? How does it bring that about?

Eli: By showing the false identities where we identify ourselves physically, emotionally, and mentally as a somebody. The whole egoic idea of me, me, mine, is based on an identity that I am this body, I am this form. Whether it’s a mental body, emotional body, physical body, I am this, and this is who I am. My name, Eli, refers to this body, these thoughts, these feelings. And what the Enneagram does is shows us that there’s only nine models of humans, and we’re fixated either mentally, emotionally, or physically. Some of us are fixated mentally, some of us are fixated emotionally, some of us are fixated physically. And when you start to just notice that distinction, it becomes profound. And then there’s only three styles of each of those fixations. And then you see, some of us are introverted mentally, some of us are extroverted mentally, some of us are introverted physically, some are extroverted physically. And this creates a false identity of me. They have the emotional, mental, and physical bodies combined, and are run by the drives of the animal. Sex, survival, relationship. Those are the drives. Every animal runs on a sex drive, a social drive, and a self-preservation drive. We as humans. The Enneagram shows how one of those drives gets used by the personal identity to form me. And so some of us are running on self-preservation drives. Other of us run on sexual drives. Others run on social drives. And when you start to notice these distinctions in yourself and others, it’s mind-blowing. You start to have finer and clearer language for making distinctions between what’s real and what’s not real. What’s been running that I think has been me that I haven’t examined. It allows you to shine a light before there was darkness.

Rick: So, when you have, let’s say, worked with the Enneagram for a while, and maybe you’ve identified yourself as an introverted mental type, let’s say, and some liberation or breaking of the fixation has occurred as a result of that process, are you still an introverted mental type who has moved from fixation to freedom, or do you actually become a different type altogether?

Eli: No, that’s right. The animal doesn’t change. It’s like you can suddenly become aware that your eyes are blue or your eyes are brown. They don’t change. They stay as they are. This is actually something that’s genetic. It’s part of the genetic constitution. So, your body type doesn’t change. But what does change are the habitual addictions of fixation. So, some of us are addicted to fear and doubt. That can stop. You don’t have to doubt anymore. Then you can meet fear as it is, instead of using fear to generate doubts. Other of us are addicted to our desires, and so you start to notice the difference between love and desire. Other of us are addicted to our emotional dramas, and so you start to notice what’s real and what’s fixation.

Rick: So, would you say maybe that with the 9 types, there could be a kind of a pathological version of each one of them, which is characterized by fixation and bondage, and then a sort of a healthy version of each one of them, which is…

Eli: You know, most of the Enneagram that’s out in the world is about Enneagram of personality. That’s not what this is.

Rick: Oh, okay. This is not Enneagram of personality. It’s not what… I mean, you know, I’m friends with Helen Palmer, we’ve had dinner together. She really founded the Enneagram of personality lineage that Don Riso and so many others have taken off on. This is not that. This is Enneagram of character fixation, it’s what’s deeper under the personality. So it’s not about becoming a healthier ego.

Rick: Right.

Eli: It’s waking up from the fixation.

Rick: And is it something that one can study and do on one’s own, such as reading your book or whatever else you would advocate, or does it necessitate engagement with a master of it?

Eli: You know, most people get their fixation wrong because they don’t know themselves very well. People believe their own propaganda. And we each, all of us have a story justifying why we do what we do. Either I’m a victim or this happened, or whatever it is, there’s always a story to say, “I’m a good guy, I didn’t do… and this happened.” All our stories are a way of running a story on top of the fixation which is running under the story. So to be able to see deeper, for some people it’s very clear and obvious, for others it’s not as easy. It’s not as obvious. And so many people I see who come to me after going to other fixation teachers, Indian camp teachers, it’s been years working on the wrong fixation. You know, it takes some insight.

Rick: Yeah.

Eli: Because people generally tend to go to the story of it, like, “Okay, I act this… I’m shy so therefore I’m a 5,” or “I act like this, so I’m very sad and I have a lot of emotional trauma, I must be a 4.” That’s the most superficial way and that doesn’t work that way.

Rick: That’s pretty much all I’ve ever heard of it. Some friends will say, “Oh, you’re a such and such,” or whatever.

Eli: Correct.

Rick: Okay.

Eli: That’s the misuse, that’s the poison. That’s like using LSD to go to a party.

Rick: Right.

Eli:LSD is a sacred substance. If you fast for 3 days, you focus yourself, you sit in meditation and you use it, you have a very different experience than if you take it and you go out dancing.

Rick: Right.

Eli: So Enneagram is the same thing. Take it to heart and you use it as a wisdom mirror, you’ll have insight. If you take it as something casual, like, “Oh, you’re a 4, that’s why you’re acting that way,” or “I’m just a 6,” then it becomes actually a further burden. It becomes more of a justification for acting out my fixation.

Rick: Yeah, it’s like palm reading at a party. “Oh, you have a long lifeline, here’s your love line.”

Eli: Yeah. Everything sacred gets abused.

Rick: So let’s say a person listening to this conversation says, “This sounds intriguing, I think I really want to seriously look into this.” What course of action would you advise for them?

Eli: Tell the truth, wherever you are. You start by telling the truth to yourself. You start to see what it is you really want. And when you stay true to what you really want, that will guide you, that will lead you, that will take you where you need to go.

Rick: Well, let’s say someone says, “Well, I think the Enneagram would really be something useful for me, should I go and take a course? Does Eli teach courses? Should I just read his book? How do I actually seriously engage in this?”

Eli: Yeah, well I’ve got an Enneagram retreat coming up on Maui in a couple of weeks, and then I do one in Toronto, and then I’ll be in Regensburg, Germany doing one, and then I do one in Amsterdam. So I do them around the world, and it’s available.

Rick: Okay.

Eli: You know the book I wrote after this was called “Sudden Awakening.”

Rick: Yeah, no, they sent me this one. And “Sudden Awakening” is about Enneagram or something else?

Eli: No, no, it’s about …

Rick: Tell us about that.

Eli: It’s about how to wake up, how to stay true to yourself and wake up.

Rick: Apropos what we were saying 10-15 minutes ago.

Eli: Yeah, the whole discussion today. It’s possible for everyone to wake up, and what’s happened, the way I see it, is like if you look back to the 1950s when there was a barren wasteland in this country, where no one was doing yoga, there was no gurus, there were no teachers, there were no teachings, there was no … the idea of oneness, the idea of now, the idea of … it was just foreign.

Rick: Yeah, there was maybe Yogananda and the Vedanta Society, and that was about it.

Eli: Exactly. You know, there were maybe one or two around, but I never knew of them. There was nobody in Boulder, Trungpa hadn’t come to Boulder yet. It was a wasteland that way. And then, you know, when “Be Here Now” came out, when Ram Dass came back in ’71 and brought out “Be Here Now,” this is the first of the psychedelic hippies that went off to find gurus. And that’s really how the whole spiritual thing starts, is psychedelics. Psychedelics gives you a spiritual experience, and the whole generation went off to find the gurus that would bring it back. And so when “Be Here Now” comes out, really the only ones interested are the psychedelic hippies. Then, the power of now comes out, makes it onto Oprah and it’s mainstream. So the difference between “Be Here Now” and the power of now shows the degree that this country has been saturated with a spiritual consciousness, with a possibility of awakening, that has gone beyond the hippie psychedelic fringe and has entered the mainstream through Oprah, you could say. So now, I mean, now “zen” is a common term. It’s not something unusual or sinusiteric. Everybody wants to be in the now. So what happens is, that’s the good news is, is now the idea has spread through a huge part of the mainstream, but it still is a concept and a belief and something to be practiced or remembered, or something to be put on your refrigerator or something to remind you, and that’s good. That’s a good start, but you find eventually that’s not enough. Eventually you find you’re trapped in a belief, and the belief is not fulfilling. And so then you have to be willing to turn away from all belief, every belief. The most enlightened belief, the most beautiful belief, you turn away from it. Every concept, you turn away from it. Every thought, every mantra, every idea, you turn away to face the totality of the unknown and surrender, and that’s where you discover yourself.

Rick: Can you see that becoming as mainstream 20 years from now, as “Be Here Now” is? As much of a jump from today as today is a jump from the Ram Dass book?

Eli: It seems to be going in that direction. You never know what the future will bring, but it seems to me, in my short view, is that what we’re living in now is the pre-dawn. It’s like when you stay up all night and you’re waiting for the dawn, before the dawn actually rises there’s a morning light that just heralds the dawn. And I say that’s where we are in this culture. The dawn is coming, the pre-light is here. The pre-light is now the confirmation that the dawn is on the way. What comes next, who knows?

Rick: Nice.

Rick: I have a friend named Phil Goldberg who wrote a book called “American Veda,” and I interviewed him a while back, but in any case he traces this whole thing we’ve been talking about, about how even back to a certain extent with the founding fathers, and then of course with Emerson and Thoreau, and then moving into the 20th century and the 60s phenomenon, and the Maharishi and the Beatles, and all this stuff, how it all sort of infused itself into the culture.

Eli: It does. We are standing on the shoulders of the first enlightenment. First you have this radical statement, “I think, therefore I am,” radical at the time. It means not kings, not slaves, not serfs, I am, merely because I think. And this creates the break from the superstition and darkness. The enlightenment of that age is the break from the superstition of the church, the darkness of how the world works, into the scientific method and into individuation. And this individuation is what’s crucial. Without it, we wouldn’t have the choice, we wouldn’t have the possibility of freedom. Also, this individuation makes us separate. We no longer have the church, we no longer have our beliefs, we no longer have anything to stand on, and to the degree that we become separated, we become alienated. And that’s the good news, is that in our individuation is the power to choose freedom, and also in our individuation is the complete alienation from everything that causes disillusionment. Disillusionment is crucial for waking up. We have to be disillusioned to give up the illusion. And so this great enlightenment that we’re standing on the shoulders of brings the individuation and the disillusionment, and that sets the stage for where we are now, to be able to be free enough, and individuated enough, and disillusioned enough, to be willing to turn our back on everything.

Rick: That’s an interesting point. I was talking to Marianna Kaplan the other day, who wrote that book, well she’s written a number of books, you’re probably aware of her, but we were speaking about the word “disillusionment” and how it actually has a positive connotation, because if enlightenment or awakening is to be free of illusion, then you want to get disillusioned as much as possible.

Eli: Exactly, that’s the point.

Rick: And sometimes that disillusionment comes in the form of actually being disillusioned by this or that spiritual teacher, you know, in a way it kind of shakes us out of perhaps a starry-eyed adulation that may not actually be healthy for us.

Eli: Possibly. That happens when the teacher isn’t real, but also I’ve seen people become disillusioned with true teachers, because people have an illusion about what they think the teacher is supposed to act, and how they think the teacher is supposed to behave. And when the teacher doesn’t meet that criteria, even though the teacher may be transmitting freedom, even though the teacher may be transmitting truth, it doesn’t fit their idea of what the teacher is supposed to do. They become disillusioned and leave. So I’ve seen that happen as well.

Rick: Yeah, I mean this is a delicate point and I’m not going to dwell on it, but you and Gangaji have been very honest about the travails that you went through in the recent year or two, or whenever the time period was.

Eli: Six years. Six years, and I found that, personally I found that very inspiring in a way, but your honesty, you know, and “Okay, here’s the situation folks, and we’re dealing with it,” and very human, no attempt to spin it or anything like that. So, as I said, I don’t want to dwell on it or put you in an awkward situation, but perhaps you were even alluding to that when you spoke of disillusionment with teachers and having perhaps false expectations as to exactly what a teacher should be. Could you care to reflect on that a little bit?

Eli: Well actually I was thinking about Papaji. I saw people turn away from Papaji because they expected a guru to act a certain way and be a certain way, and he didn’t care what they expected. I mean, he was just being himself as he is, and if it offended them, that’s their problem. He didn’t even know they offended him, he was just being himself. And yet people judge him, “Oh, that’s not the way he should be acting.” So, yeah, I hadn’t been considering myself, but of course, same situation. You know, I mean, people expect you to act a certain way, behave a certain way, to never make mistakes. That’s not my teaching. My teaching is that we make mistakes to learn. If you haven’t learned something, you will make the mistake and learn it. That’s the nature of life. So mistakes are not shunned, they’re not evil, mistakes happen. And mistakes, if they happen, they can be very beneficial, painful, but beneficial.

Rick: So perhaps the takeaway point from this, maybe among others, is that self-realization or waking up to one’s true nature doesn’t make one immune from mistake-making. You know, you can still be a bozo and screw up in this and that way.

Eli: Of course.

Rick: Now, in the process of making those mistakes, at that time, is the self-realization clouded? Is one’s judgment, or is self-realization and judgment not even that tightly correlated? One can be self-realized and have misaligned judgment.

Eli: That’s right. Judgment is relative.

Rick: Yeah

Eli: Judgment is relative based on relative circumstances. So this is not about becoming a super person who has perfect judgment in all realms. It doesn’t work that way. You know, the Dalai Lama tells great stories about himself, and anybody who has any self-awareness recognizes the mistakes. And once somebody told Ramana Maharshi that a book had been written about him, about how bad he is, and they’re selling this book on the ashram steps about what a bad person he is. He said, “Oh, they should have come in and asked me first. I could have told them many more stories.”

Rick: That’s great. This is a very important point, I think we should talk about it for a little bit more. And I think it’s something that has been a real conundrum for a lot of spiritual seekers over decades, is they do tend to define enlightenment or realization in terms of external criteria, like what your personality is going to be like, what your habits are going to be like, what your behavior is going to be like, and so on and so forth. “Oh, this person did that, he couldn’t possibly be enlightened or awakened.” And what you’re saying is it’s more like an enlightened violin player could make mistakes in his concerto, just as an enlightened human being could make mistakes in his behavior, or whatever.

Eli: Exactly, and it’s all relative. See, the absolute is the absolute, and the absolute permeates the relative, but it doesn’t mean you become a superman in the relative. So Muktananda, Swami Muktananda, Baba Muktananda’s guru, Nityananda, would sit in a tree and throw rocks at people, sit in a tree naked and throw rocks at people when they came by. He didn’t want to be bothered. So, you know, you say, “Well, what kind of guru is that, to sit in a tree naked and throw rocks at me when all I want is an honest answer?” So that’s not your business to judge who he is, either. If you receive something of benefit, you do. If you’re open and you receive it. If you’re open and there’s nothing to be benefited, go somewhere else.

Rick: Yeah, and I suppose, in line with this discussion, one could be in certain relative respects, very, very saintly, and yet not be Self-realized.

Eli: Exactly. A perfect example of that is Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa, definitely a saint in her behaviors, my God, the things that she would do, taking care of the most destitute, and yet not an enlightened person, not a happy person, not a realized person, someone who is actually tortured, who felt separate from God, felt separate from her beloved, separate from Jesus, and was doing all of this to kind of atone and become a better person. And so, in the outward world she’s a saint. Inwardly she hasn’t even begun.

Rick: Yeah, which is not to say that, well I wouldn’t say hasn’t begun, I mean she could very well be a very highly evolved person serving a specific role, but in terms of that dimension of Self-realization, hasn’t happened yet.

Eli: Exactly. You know, and someone like Nelson Mandela, you know, a hero. I love Nelson Mandela, to me he’s a saint. He’s a living example of the human possibility, but he’s not Self-realized, that’s not his issue, that’s not what he’s going for.

Rick: Or Martin Luther King, or you know, a great many of them.

Eli: Exactly, a great many saints not realized, and a great many realized beings who are not saints, not saints. Saints is not a requirement. If freedom had some kind of physical requirement it wouldn’t be free. If freedom meant you had to do this or do that, that’s not freedom. Freedom is absolute and causeless.

Rick: Oh good, this is good. Now on the flip side, sometimes people have used this line of thinking as a justification for really shitty behavior, you know, it’s like, “Oh, I’m not doing this, therefore I can do anything.”

Eli: That’s the great trap, is that the ego owns it, and then since I can do anything I want, and I’ve seen it, I’ve seen people in Satsang who have been with madmen, and they come up and say, “Hey, it doesn’t matter what,” and it’s madness. It’s egoic madness that has claimed non-duality. That’s the great trap.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, I interviewed a guy recently who, this guy called him up and he said, “You know, I really want to have this affair, and, you know, my wife, but I want your reassurance that it’s not really going to be me who’s doing it, you know, so I can kind of do it with a clear conscience.”

Eli: Yeah, that’s really sad. People gave me advice, you know, when my affair broke and these therapists used it to create a scandal because they were anti-guru, and this whole thing blew up, people said, “Oh, tell him, you know, just nothing ever happened.” That’s misuse, that’s using the non-dual realization to try to manipulate in this realm of relativity, and that’s just the misuse of it.

Rick: I don’t know if you know my friend Timothy Conway, he lives down in Santa Barbara and he’s written some books, and in fact I think Gangaji is in one of his books, he talks about women who have been self-realized. But he offers an interesting model in an article he wrote about how you can sort of look at reality in various levels, and on the gross, obvious level there are all sorts of gross, obvious rules. You don’t jump off buildings because gravity is going to do its thing, or you be kind to people, or you do what you can to help the environment, and so on. And then you can take it down another level to sort of the Divine level where everything is Divinely orchestrated, whatever happens is perfect exactly as it is. And then you can take it to the next level, which is that nothing ever happened, there’s no one ever doing anything or no one has ever done anything. And all three of these things are true in their own domains.

Eli: Exactly.

Rick: Yeah, and if you get locked in any one of them to the exclusion of the others, then something is lopsided.

Eli: That’s right. My teacher would say, “Don’t land anywhere.”

Rick: Aha, good one.

Eli: Don’t even land in that landing.

Rick: There’s that verse from the Bible, “For the foxes have their holes and the birds have their nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head.” What about egregious examples of people who are supposedly enlightened but are alcoholics or something, like that Chögyam Rinpoche fellow?

Eli: Chögyam.

Rick: Yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t pronounce his name right, but that kind of gets me scratching my head a little bit. I mean, to what extent can you take this principle of you can’t judge a book by its cover?

Eli: You know, who’s to say? I never met Chögyam Rinpoche. Clearly the man did some egregious behavior, falling down drunk as he walked onto the stage, having sex with his devotees in wild, abandoned ways. But you know, I never met him, I never got any benefit from my relationship with him, so I don’t know. But I can say this, if you met him and you received the transmission of freedom from him, that’s what you stay with. All the rest of it, don’t get involved. Don’t take it. Don’t have sex with him if you don’t want to, don’t drink with him if you don’t want to. What I’m saying is that if the transmission is there, take the transmission. If there’s no transmission there, forget about it.

Rick: There was a line from a song by the band, the night they drove old Dixie down, the line was, “Take what you need and you leave the rest.”

Eli: That’s right. “You shouldn’t have taken the very best.”

Rick: Right, great song.

Eli: Yeah, great song.

Rick: So I’m enjoying this, and I hope you are, and there may be … whenever I conclude an interview I always think, “Golly, I should have asked that,” you know, or “I should have asked this,” or “That was a dumb question to have asked,” or whatever. Do you feel like there’s any kind of real nuggets that we’re not getting at here because I’m just not thinking to ask you the right questions?

Eli: No, I’m happy.

Rick: Now I … oh, well here’s something that just came to mind. I understand, and I’m sorry to hear that you have some form of cancer, leukemia or something?

Eli: Yeah, multiple myeloma. It’s a rare form of leukemia.

Rick: And what is the prognosis on that?

Eli: Well it’s very fast acting, lethal, deadly, no cure was the prognosis when I looked it up on the web, when I found out that I had it.

Rick: And yet you seem to be pretty rosy-cheeked and bushy-tailed.

Eli: I’m in an experimental protocol that seems to be working. I mean, when I first got diagnosed I was told I was in the last stage, three stages, I was in stage three. My counts were off the charts. I mean, 80% of my bone marrow was compromised, I had five broken vertebrae in my back, and I’ve shrunk a couple inches shorter than I was as my spine collapsed, and I was facing death, and it was beautiful.

Rick: How long ago was that?

Eli: That was in July of ’07.

Rick: Oh, so four years later you’re still alive and kicking and traveling all over the world.

Eli: Yeah, on the web at that time it said ¾ are dead in three years and half of what’s left are dead in five years.

Rick: Huh, are you doing chemo or anything?

Eli: Yeah, I do chemo.

Rick: Even now?

Eli: Yeah.

Rick: Wow. And so, you know, you’re saying this, you’re smiling, I think you just said it’s beautiful. I mean, what was facing your mortality more directly than most of us face? What was your gut reaction to that and so on?

Eli: Well, since I’d already faced my death in 1972 when I died and woke up, I was ready. I am fulfilled. So, if this is my last breath, it’s a good day to die. And I was very…

Rick: A little bit mad.

Eli: I look back on my life actually at the time, because there was a time where I was too weak to, when my pillow fell behind my bed I was too weak to pick it up, I couldn’t dress myself, I couldn’t cook. And I was examining, okay, I’m dying here, so the only regret that I found in my life is that I didn’t have life insurance. I hadn’t prepared for my wife. I never expected to die before my wife died, and I never considered life insurance, or we never had savings. I didn’t financially prepare, so I felt the regret of that. And I apologized. But then I was ready to die, and then I realized, you know, if my death serves a good purpose, beautiful. And if I live through this, then that will serve a good purpose. And so my life was dedicated to the same thing it’s dedicated to all along, and if death serves it, beautiful, if life serves it, beautiful. Here I am.

Rick: Great. I’ve had a number of people whom I’ve interviewed say to me, three or four people, say that their first introduction to spirituality was that they were just walking down the street or sitting in a bedroom or something, and all of a sudden they had Ramana Maharshi came to them, very tangibly, almost as if in physical form. Pamela Wilson said this, and Bert Harding, and a few other people I’ve interviewed, and they didn’t even know who he was, they’d never heard him before, read his books or anything else. And so you wonder, what’s going on there? Is Ramana Maharshi still serving a function in an actual manifest way, going around doing a Tinkerbell number on people to kick-start their evolution? And the second part of this question is, do you feel that, facing your own mortality, do you feel that there is sort of, or did Papaji teach that there is sort of a continuation of some form of individuality even after physical death and even after liberation, by virtue of which we remain functional in some realm or another? Or is that pure speculation? Who can say?

Eli: Exactly, that’s speculation. But what’s certain is that Ramana’s transmission of silence is what we are discussing here today. It’s Ramana’s transmission of silence, it’s the grace that allowed Papaji. And so it’s Ramana’s transmission of silence that transmits Papaji, and Papaji’s transmission of silence that there’s now satsang all over the world. Every country I go to, there’s satsang teachers springing up, just like there’s yoga studios in every corner, there’s satsang teachers in every country, there’s satsang teachers in Eastern Europe, in Africa, in Asia, there’s satsang teachers in Australia, everywhere. And this is, there was no satsang teachers before I met Papaji that I knew of. So this is Ramana’s grace. This is Ramana’s transmission of silence. If someone has received it through Ramana, through Papaji, through Papaji’s devotees, and from there they’re receiving Ramana’s transmission of silence. So certainly this power is alive and working. And I must say I’ve had Ramana appear in full dimensional bliss, as one of the most blissful moments of my life, but I don’t know how that works, or what that is, I have no idea.

Rick: Yeah, me neither, but it’s fascinating. I mean I’m not ordinarily a real ooga-booga, esoteric kind of guy, but that kind of thing really makes you wonder.

Eli: Yeah, to me I’m not either, but there’s a certainty. I mean Ramana has come alive from a photo. My wife’s sister got healed through the television, you know, so who am I to say?

Rick: Yeah, interesting. Well that might be a good note to wrap it up on. It was beautiful the way you put it. Here’s this little guy in a loincloth, you know, had this awakening when he was a teenager, spent 26 years meditating in caves, came down from the mountains, people started coming, and whoom, it just spread all over the world.

Rick: Yes, so lucky, because there’s a case where there was both a saint and an enlightened being together, that’s the rarest. You have saints without an awakening, you have awakening without saints, but an awakened saint, that’s the highest form that this humanity produces.

Rick: Yeah, good point.

Rick: Well thank you Eli, this has been a very enjoyable discussion. Some of my interviews have gone as long as two hours, and I always get feedback from people saying, “You don’t have to go that long, just let the person tell their story, wrap it up after about an hour.” So I think we’ve done it.

Eli: We have, actually there’s Ramana right there.

Rick: Yeah, there he is. No, he’s been visible throughout the whole interview, we’ve been seeing him beaming down on us.

Eli: Yes, that’s beautiful.

Rick: Great. So let me make a couple of concluding remarks to those listening. You’ve been listening to an interview in an ongoing series, which we call “Buddha at the Gas Pump,” to imply that even in the most ordinary of circumstances these days, you’re going to encounter enlightened people. It’s not some guy who lived 2000 years ago necessarily, but here and here and here and now. And I’ve been speaking with Eli Jaxon-Bear. I will be linking to his website from mine, as well as to the books he’s written, so it’s convenient for you to go to his website or to buy one of his books. And as Eli mentioned during the interview, he is teaching Enneagram courses, I guess you call them, and retreats in several locations around the world, have been scheduled. So, if you’ve been listening to this on YouTube or something and you’d like to be notified of future interviews, just subscribe to the YouTube channel, or you could come to www.batgap.com, sign up for an email newsletter and you’ll get one every time a new interview is posted. There’s also a discussion group there that gets kind of lively with each interview, and you can sign up for a podcast there if you’d like to listen to this on your iPod while you’re commuting or whatever. So, thanks for listening or watching, and thank you again, Eli.

Eli: Thank you, Rick, appreciate it. Really fun.

Rick: Yeah, thank you, and we’ll see you all next time. I think the next interview scheduled is Sharon Landreth, who lives down in Crestone, Colorado. So, thanks, Eli.

Eli: Thank you, Rick. Bye.

Rick: Bye-bye.