Jon Bernie Transcript

Jon Bernie Interview

Summary:

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Jon Bernie. Welcome Jon.

Jon: Thank you. Nice to meet you.

Rick: Yeah, I was going to interview Jon last summer and then he had to have eye surgery, he’s had all kinds of eye karma, and so we had to reschedule and here we are. And both last summer I listened to quite a few hours of your satsangs and also now in the last week I’ve listened to about eight hours of your podcasts. I always do that in preparation for the interview I’m about to do, in my trusty iPod while I ride my bike and brush my teeth and all kinds of things. So it’s been enjoyable. One thing that’s kind of stood out for me as I was listening is a lot of the people who sit with you are really cooking. You know what I mean? I don’t know if you attract people who are just cooking or else you get them cooking, but it’s like 75% of the people are either in tears or they’re breathing heavy or something really intense is going on for them while they’re sitting with you there in the satsang. How do you explain that?

Jon: Well, you know, a lot of energy is moving and it’s a powerful environment, so the way I usually talk about it is that the presence or that fundamental nature that we are when it’s really opened to and realized can actually facilitate an emergence of a healing process or a transformative process.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: In the body, mind, and the heart and so forth. So generally when people are coming up they’re in a process usually. They have been cooking as you say, as I often say too.

Rick: So are most of the people who come up and, well, just for the benefit of the audience, generally it sounds like Jon has a gathering and there might be 20-30 people in the room and then one at a time people come up on the stage and sit with you in an adjacent chair and you’ll have a little dialogue. But what I’m alluding to is that very often these people within a minute or two of that, they’re crying or they’re going, “Oh my God!” Some heavy breathing thing or something. So I’m just curious. I’ve seen this kind of phenomenon before of course and others who are on a spiritual path have seen it, but it seems to be characteristic almost of your satsangs.

Jon: There’s a lot of, I would say very simply, there’s a lot of energy happening there. It’s a pretty powerful field, a pretty powerful working field if you want to use that term. And I don’t see any difference between our fundamental nature and just pure energy. So there’s really an alignment with that and I think it clearly has a very powerful effect on people and a powerful healing and transformative effect. So I don’t really see the spiritual process any different than the healing process. They’re really identical in my own experience and in others. So that’s probably, you’d have to be there. You might even feel it now. People tell me, even on the podcasts, that when they’re really tuning in and listening deeply that they can feel the force of that energy which is pretty far out really if you think about it. How is that possible? But I work with people around the world on Skype and they’re very aware also of this connection that we are. I think it goes beyond our rational mind’s conceptual ability to explain what that is. It’s really part of that mystery which we’re all either tapping into or hoping to tap into.

Rick: Yeah, the way I understand it is that, and maybe the opposite of this could also be true, but it’s not so much that something is being transmitted from A to B, but rather there’s an alignment or attunement that takes place that enables the one to get on the same wavelength as the other and thereby to experience a much greater upsurge of energy than they ordinarily might. I think that’s right. I think that’s exactly right. It’s almost like a tuning fork in that your own resonant field starts to vibrate on that frequency.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: And in that there’s a kind of connection, a communication, so-called transmission. People often think of transmission like from point A to point B, but I don’t really think that’s how it works.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: It can seem like that.

Rick: Right, right.

Jon: It can feel like that. That can be the experiential sense of it, but I think it’s much more of a mutual interconnected flow that’s actually always here.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: And we just become, we realize that. You know what I mean?

Rick: I think the metaphors help actually. I mean with tuning forks you can put one near the other and the other starts to vibrate.

Jon: Yeah.

Rick: Because of that sort of affinity with the one that’s already vibrating. Or like logs, for instance, you put one log next to a log that’s already burning brightly and that log begins to ignite. But it does so by virtue of its own inherent chemistry. It’s not like fire is going from A to B, but there’s something that just sort of catalyzes the ignition of the non-burning log.

Jon: There’s a term for it called bioentrainment. And they’ve done studies with it, even with like grandfather clocks where the pendulums are swinging in different rates. If they’re next to each other, eventually they’ll synchronize and they’ll swing the same.

Rick: I’ll be darned.

Jon: Yeah. And they’ve done, even with women, for instance, who are living, they’ve found that their periods will synchronize if they’re living in the same place.

Rick: Right.

Jon: It’s very interesting. There’s a kind of synchronization that happens. Or even blood vessels, I think they’ve, like if one blood vessel is sort of going like this, another one is going like that, when they get close they actually start to go together. I actually posted a video that somebody sent me the other day about swallows, was it?

Rick: Oh, yeah. Oh, murmuration. I got that one, too.

Jon: Yeah. And I think that’s another example of the same thing where we see this phenomenal interconnection of what looks like a bunch of separate entities actually operating clearly connected.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: And I think we are like that even though we don’t even know it. That we’re all sort of blood vessels in some giant body.

Rick: I like that. Yeah, I like that. And it’s kind of fun to think about it in terms of the larger society as well, you know, not just sort of this teacher with this one student, but what may be happening among all

Jon: Yeah, clearly that’s happening, more and more people, and more and more young people. I’m just amazed at the young people who are showing up in their teens, even who have already awake, and you know, they still have their life to figure out, they still have to mature.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: You know, but they have a different perspective because of that ability to see deeply. And I think it’s quite extraordinary.

Rick: Yeah, it’s cool. I mean, you and I are about the same age almost. I think you’re a few years younger, I’m 62, but you know, so we went through the 50s and then the 60s and so on, you know, and there was definitely a zeitgeist in each of those decades, you know, but now what’s happening is it’s kind of inspiring to see with this mass kind of enlivenment or awakening taking place.

Jon: Yeah, it’s great. I love it. It’s wonderful. I mean, there was a time where when I had my first awakening, I didn’t know what even happened to me then, I was 16, and I couldn’t talk to anybody. You know, nobody, or various people. Not until I was 20 did I find out what had happened to me, and then, you know, even then, you know, and now it’s very different. I mean, that was a long time ago, but now it’s like there’s so many people who are sharing this experience, sharing this realization, and really find, we’re all finding our way With it.

Rick: And you’ve probably heard of the 100th monkey phenomenon, right?

Jon: Yeah.

Rick: For those who haven’t, it was this experiment that …

Jon: It was actually debunked.

Rick: Was it?

Jon: Yeah, there was some …

Rick: Oh, well, it was a nice story anyway. It was good.

Jon: I know that they were using that in the, I think in the TM, when a lot of people were learning meditation, with the Transcendental Meditation doing mantra, and thousands and thousands of people were doing it, they had a feeling like if enough people did it, it would sort of change the consciousness. I mean, I think it’s a great intention, who knows?

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Jon: Maybe …

Rick: That’s my background, actually. I’ve been in groups of 8,000 people meditating together, and it was palpable. I mean, boy, the energy in that room.

Jon: Yeah. It is palpable.

Rick: Yeah. And of course, the claim was that it was actually influencing the stock market and the politicians and all that stuff, and that, to me, is speculative, but there’s a lot of scientists who took it seriously. Who knows?

Jon: Yeah, who knows? I mean, I think do we really know what’s affecting what? I mean, I think that’s, ultimately, I think when we really enter into this mystery more and more, we really find that we don’t know, and yet we’re completely aligned with it.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: So it’s not about something. It’s really more about discovering, continually discovering. I think that’s a whole different attitude to have.

Rick: Yeah, I like that attitude. Well, you alluded to an awakening that you had when you were 16. If you don’t mind, let’s go back a bit and kind of trace your odyssey.

Jon: Okay. I had a psychic when I was around 20, a wonderful psychic named Anne Armstrong, and she told me that I’d had many lifetimes as a monk, apparently. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t have access to that, if that’s true, but … and she said that I knew how to set myself up at an early age to have the experience that happened at 16, because clearly, there was nothing in my childhood that would have guided me to that, except I did have a very strong questioning function. You know, I remember being four years old, looking up at the stars and going, “What’s happening? What is this?”

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: And then, at 11, I found myself arguing with the Sunday school teacher about the existence of God, and I wasn’t buying it. You know, I was more ahead of science, sort of science approach. I was very much an empiricist, and you know, seeing is believing.

Rick: Right.

Jon: So, I told my mother that I wasn’t going to Sunday school anymore and I was too busy practicing the violin. I kind of became an agnostic at 11 years old and felt that my friends and all their respective religions were being brainwashed, basically. Why should I just believe this without having an experience? That’s kind of how it was.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: But by the time I was 16, I was really questioning. You know, it was 1969. There was a lot going on then, and here I was in the San Francisco area, and the peace movement and just a lot of, there was a lot happening. I really was questioning of life. I was really questioning, and what that questioning brought forth was a kind of inner search that wasn’t related to anything I was reading or anybody I was talking to. I think it went on for about four months, and there were various points along the way where there were various insights, I guess, or revelations. I guess the first question I had was, is there some kind of creative force in the universe? Because I was very science-oriented and physics and so forth, and laws of gravity and things like that. I was wondering if there was some kind of force, like gravity, that actually evoked life, evoked matter. That was the first inner question, really cooking. The first insight that came was, of course there’s some kind of creative force because there’s all this stuff. There are trees, animals, people, and planets. For some reason or another, it became profoundly important for me to find out what this was. Find out what this force was. It became the most important thing to me. I didn’t know why I was working so hard. I was a straight-A student, a concert violinist, going to Stanford Medical School, and I was thinking, what am I doing this? I was questioning. What am I doing? The next insight was that I could discover what this was because I’m a part of it. Somehow or other, I came up with a plan. I had a big, furry beanbag chair. I was going to sit down in the chair and move the wall. I wasn’t going to move until I discovered it. I was going to wait until my parents went to bed. Ironically, I was doing concentrated meditation practice and didn’t know what it was. They went to bed and I sat down in the beanbag and stared at the wall. My arm itched and I wouldn’t scratch it. My mind would wander and I wouldn’t let it wander. I knew a little about breathing from acting, because I did some acting in high school. Things started happening. It blew my mind. The walls started to – almost like they were breathing. They were like a wave of undulation. Not only that, I could feel it. I could feel this. Not only that, there was a radiant light coming from it. I could feel that. I had the sense that I was going in the right direction. I went with it and it got stronger and stronger and more powerful. Eventually, it became so intense, it became terrifying. The way I described it then was like I was in a race car and the pedal was stuck to the floorboard. It was going faster and faster and I was going to go off an abyss. I was going to go off the edge of a cliff. I knew that I had to. I felt like I had to sit there until I discovered this. It was as important as being alive for me. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it was. This voice, believe it or not, came to me and said, “Just stay with your breathing.” It was clearly not in my head and I was like, wow. I did and the movements got stronger and the light was incredibly bright and the feeling was strong. I was terrified and then there was an explosion. There was no more room and no more me. All there was was the way I described it was like I had become the sun. It felt like a million times orgasm. I don’t know how long consciousness was in that state, but awareness came back into the body and the room. It was like the whole room was imploded through me and then exploded out of me. I felt like I was being ripped apart. The movement, this kind of ripping apart thing, was in sync with the breathing. I started shaking and crying and I got up to get a blanket to cover myself and I looked at the clock and I’d been there for three hours. The thing that was amazing, Rick, was that after this experience, life had meaning. Before it, I didn’t have a meaning. I looked back at my past and everything seemed disjointed. What is this all about? Everything forward didn’t have a sense of what. After that, everything felt connected. I felt the complete meaning of everything that had happened and a sense of guidance and trajectory into the so-called future. Ever since then, I could see and feel what I called the light. Now as I found out, and not until I met my first main teacher, Jean Klein, did I realize that he was coming from that place that I had clearly opened to at that age.

Rick: That’s impressive. Boy, when I was that age, I was just goofing around, you know, playing drums, chasing girls, getting drunk. Here you are, a straight-A student and a concert violinist.

Jon: Well, I was going to the Fillmore, and don’t worry, I wasn’t cloistered or anything, but there was this inner process that clearly was pretty strong. And then I ended up becoming a Buddhist monk. I didn’t go to medical school. I went to college for a while and then dropped out and ended up realizing that I had to follow what had happened to me. And that’s what led me to many years of Buddhist practice, Zen and Vipassana, and then with Jean Klein and the teachers that I was with.

Rick: Did you have more experiences like that or was it just that one big one and then after that you kind of had to pay your dues and get into a practice and work along more slowly?

Jon: That’s a good question. I think that there was, you know, I think what I realized after that experience, once I started understanding what had happened, was that there was a lot of sort of, I don’t know, there was a lot of healing that this body and mind went through. And so, I became involved in the Healing Arts Act, not only as a recipient but also as a practitioner. And so, it was kind of a dual development of both a kind of spiritual path and also a healing path. And I began to see that they really were not separate.

Rick: I like your emphasis on that actually because to my way of thinking, you know, the body is the temple of the soul. It’s like the instrument through which, if we are to live awakening or spirituality or whatever we want to call it, it’s through this body-mind structure. And if you trash that, your experience isn’t going to be so clear. If you fine-tune it and purify it in various ways, it’s probably going to be more clear. I mean, there’s not a one-to-one correlation. You hear stories of alcoholics kind of having big, sudden awakenings and everything changes, despite what they’ve been doing to their nervous systems, but as a general rule it seems to apply.

Jon: You know, also to answer your other question is that, yes, there have been many experiences along the way. There have been various, what I would call very significant changes that have happened. That was the first one. That was the big one. But then there was one that happened with Jean Klein that I think was what I would call the end of seeking, where there was a 180-degree shift in my understanding of so-called spiritual practice. Where prior to that, there was this effort to be conscious. I had to effort to be conscious and after that, it was effortless to be conscious, to be connected in the presence. It felt at that moment that my personal life, my professional life, and my spiritual life became one thing. So that was another major, significant shift. And then that was probably in the late 80s, and then in the mid-90s …

Rick: So you had actually gone through your whole Zen monk phase and then you were with Jean Klein, so we’re talking a couple of decades before this shift where you stopped seeking.

Jon: From ’69, almost 20 years probably. I didn’t understand really, I didn’t have anybody who was mirroring that. The teachers that I had weren’t what I … I don’t know. I don’t want to say much about that, but I think it wasn’t until I met Jean Klein did I realize what I had been missing, I guess, in terms of feedback and kind of a resonant clarity. But then when I was with Robert Adams in the mid-90s, there was another major shift that happened, I would say, which I would call the end of fear. It was like, there was a kind of being connected in to this presence. Many people, I see this all the time in my groups and gatherings and privately, that people can access but there’s a kind of full letting go or something that maybe hasn’t quite happened yet, and a kind of contraction or a fear that arises, and I had that many, many times. And that seemed to finish with when I was with Robert, and that was very profound, very profound change, I’d say.

Rick: Let’s probe into both of those things a little bit more. So there was the end of seeking transition with Jean Klein, and you said that all the sort of different aspects of your life all kind of came together at that point. And you know, as a lot of teachers these days are all saying to their students, “Oh, just stop seeking.”

Jon: A lot.

Rick: Yeah, to me that seems a little premature perhaps. It’s like the guy on the mountaintop shouting, “Okay, stop climbing!” You’re going to stop when … seeking stops naturally when finding occurs, it seems to me, you don’t have to try to stop seeking.

Jon: Exactly, exactly. And I think that’s why in Zen they say, “If you have it, we’ll give it to you, if you don’t have it, we’ll take it away,” because otherwise, okay, stop seeking, well that’s going to become another seeking, isn’t it?

Rick: Yeah, or just a mood or an attitude. I mean if people really took that seriously they’d stop coming to the meetings at which they’re being told to stop seeking.

Jon: Why are the teachers even there?

Rick: Yeah, and in my own kind of assessment of that, my own experience, it seems to me that I understand what is meant by stop seeking. It’s like when a certain level of fulfillment has been established, there’s no longer that yearning, craving, “Oh God, I’ve got to have it or I’ll die,” sort of feeling. There’s a solid as a rock contentment, but it doesn’t mean you lose interest in all these sorts of things. You can be totally fascinated, listening and writing and talking, as you do, professionally really.

Jon: Well I think you realize you are that, it’s that simple. The end of seeking is you realize you are that, and whether or not you’re always in some blissful state of samadhi, there’s no point. Some people might be, okay, whatever, but it’s not a problem anymore. Once you know you are that, profoundly, it isn’t an intellectual knowing, it’s completely in the ground of your bones. That’s what I would refer to as the end of seeking. In my own experience, I refer to that as the end of seeking.

Rick: Yeah, and also would you agree that the end of seeking…

Jon: I was quite an achiever, as you probably could tell. And so being a meditator, I was a hardcore meditator. Everything I did was, as I used to jokingly say, I used to make a type A look catatonic, so even as a meditator.

Rick: Yeah, kind of like Adyashanti carrying his bicycle racing over into his meditation practice.

Jon: Right.

Rick: And would you also agree that stop seeking doesn’t necessarily mean, and certainly doesn’t mean stop growing. It’s not like you’ve reached the sort of penultimate state of human development.

Jon: Yeah, that’s I think a complete… I mean I think that’s a real, I think the reality is that when you really become aligned with this creative life force that we really are, then you’re nothing but discovering. It’s different than seeking. You’re constantly discovering, you’re part of the creative flow. And so every moment is a moment of discovery. And so it’s not about like now you’ve attained something, because a lot of the language, at least in terms of the limitation of language, is I think it’s almost like it sounds like you’ve attained something.

Rick: It kind of objectifies something which is really very subjective, it seems to me.

Jon: My experience is that everything is brand new every moment. So each moment of awareness is absolutely new, every revelation is constantly happening.

Rick: Yeah, that’s great.

Jon: And then people don’t feel so freaked out when they’re like caught in what I call an ego flare-up, or some reactive pattern gets activated, or some deep wounding, or some deep, what can I say?

Rick: Constriction.

Jon: Maybe, or some maybe early, early wounding that finally comes to the surface and is ready to be healed. Because that certainly can happen if one is truly open.

Rick: Yeah, well good point. What you’re saying is that that openness can actually catalyze a greater purging or unfoldment or resolution or coming to the surface of buried stuff, right?

Jon: Absolutely. Well that’s where we started the conversation, that’s exactly what happens in the so-called work that I’m doing, that’s exactly what’s happening. And I think many people are really needing the support of that because they go to groups, they go to events which are kind of large events often, and they don’t get the one-on-one attention that they very well may be ready to benefit from. I was very lucky that I had that, and with all my teachers, pretty close relationship. And I think that there’s definitely a place for that. Not everybody needs that, but I think that often at a certain stage it can become almost essential I would say.

Rick: Yeah, which is why it’s nice I think that there’s so many teachers around these days and they’re of differing levels of effectiveness perhaps and clarity and so on, but people gravitate to whoever is going to be effective for them, and if they’re no longer effective they’ll move on to somebody else.

Jon: Exactly, exactly.

Rick: So it’s really cool that you got to hang out with Jean Klein and Robert Adams, and these are some of the real heavy hitters of recent spiritual scene. I don’t mean that in a trendy, faddish kind of sense.

Jon: I mean for me, I wasn’t really interested in meeting, I wasn’t somebody who was looking for teachers ever. I was mostly dragged to these people, I mean I didn’t even want to go and meet them actually. And then things happened and I couldn’t deny it, so that’s more how it worked for me. I guess because my trajectory has been so long that the opportunities just sort of came along the way. So yes, I’m very grateful, deeply, profoundly grateful.

Rick: Yeah. Who’s that gentleman whose picture is over your left shoulder there?

Jon: That’s Robert Adams.

Rick: Oh, that’s Robert? Okay, I didn’t know what he looked like.

Jon: That’s Robert.

Rick: Cool. So now during the Robert Adams phase you said you had a second awakening, what was that again, a second major shift?

Jon: Yeah, that was what I’d call the end of fear. The end of fear being the light I guess, of being fully kind of that. There wasn’t any, I mean I think there’s, I don’t know, that’s how I would describe it, you know, that was my own experience. It used to be a kind of opening into awareness that would then kind of stop a little bit, because there was a fear of complete loss of something, and that seemed to have just completely ended at that point.

Rick: Huh. Was that during like a meditative practice? You would hit a fear blockage and kind of retract from that, or was it just 24/7, you were sort of like holding?

Jon: No, no. It only happened once in a while when there would be a certain amplification of awareness, when it got very, very, very intense, there would be some holding back, a little bit of holding back I would say. That finished. Whatever that holding back was stopped holding back.

Jon: So that just kind of dissolved with Robert Adams.

Rick: Yeah. And so what practical impact did that have on your life? Anything anyone would notice, just who happened to know you well?

Jon: Yeah, I would say that, well I think it took me about a year and a half to integrate that, and I was in a very altered place for probably six months. But then you know, you get reorganized in a way, and things become ordinary. So I can’t really.

Rick: Were you able to function normally during that year and a half?

Jon: Oh yeah. I was, but quite honestly, all I wanted to do at the time was basically just wander. I mean I totally understood this sort of wandering sadhu reality. I mean I was just in profound bliss for all the time, and it was very intense. And it was fine, I could function, but I really just wanted to wander, just sit around and wander. But I knew enough to kind of stay grounded in so-called reality and keep functioning.

Rick: So you didn’t fulfill that desire to wander?

Jon: I didn’t need to, but I could see the impulse to do that. Not the impulse, but I could see that that could be a natural outcome of that kind of shift.

Rick: Yeah, in a way I think wandering can serve a purpose at a certain stage, because it can prove, if you’re at a stage where you need to sort of not get attached to anything, it can kind of, of course you can get attached to wandering, but it can, letting the dogs in and out, it can create a certain freedom on a relative level, don’t you think? Just sort of always something new, something new, something new, I don’t know. I went through a phase like that, that’s why I’m saying it.

Jon: I just don’t think in our culture being homeless works that well. I mean not to put that, not to be pejorative in any way, but I think in India it might be easier to be homeless and have a lifestyle where you’re just wandering around and you’re a beggar or whatever. I think in other cultures and probably other climate zones, it’s probably easier to kind of do that one. It wasn’t like an identity or anything like that, it was just this, it was obvious that that could happen.

Rick: Right. Okay, so mid-90s, Robert Adams, end of fear. So what was next?

Jon: Oh, I don’t know, just the next thing, you know, I mean just living, life going on. It’s …

Rick: I saw a picture of you and Adyashanti kind of arm in arm. Did you become a student of his at one point?

Jon: We became close, and we are close actually. And he actually sort of formally asked me to teach, which was nice. And so we’ve had a connection for I don’t know how long, 10 years now, something like that. Yeah, he was wonderful, he had a wonderful impact with me and really helped me in a way, some really important subtle ways there. And so yeah, we’re …

Rick: Yeah. He came here to my town last April and …

Jon: Oh, nice.

Rick: Yeah, kind of set it up for him to come.

Jon: Oh, great. How nice.

Rick: Yeah, it was really nice. That’s how I got to interview him, because I was able to sort of pin him down at lunch and say, “How would you like to do this?” He couldn’t say no. So can you elaborate on those subtle ways? It would be interesting to sort of delve into that. You know, I mean, because many people think, “All right, you realize you’re awake, what more do you need to do?” But you’re kind of alluding to subtle fine tunings that take place and that maybe even are taking place now for you, I don’t know.

Jon: Yeah, I think I don’t have any … I don’t hold up some, you know, what?

Rick: Sign.

Jon: Yeah, I mean, I don’t … does anybody know where we really are at any time, actually? I mean, I think the more we align with that which we are, the less we really know.

Rick: Yeah, I like that.

Jon: And so for me, you know, I sometimes have very deep material I found out, you know, I had very early birth trauma and I think some of that still is being healed. I think to a great, to a large degree it has been and I’m pretty free of it, but I think some of that was still coming up and it was very deeply buried in the nervous system. And I’ve even seen this with various, I don’t want to mention any names, but I’ve seen this with some very celebrated teachers where, you know, given certain circumstances, aspects of their sort of human conditioning were brought to the foreground and they, you know, and people were often shocked because they, I think there was a naive belief that somehow people become perfect.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: Like, they’re somehow like purified or sanitized or something like that and I think many, many people are very grateful to hear or hear me be honest about that it’s okay to be a human being and that you don’t have to be perfect and there may be parts that are still broken, unhealed, unseen, unfelt and they may come up and you’ll allow them to heal. What’s the problem?

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: You know, does that mean that you’re somehow, you know, not spiritual or something? You know, I wanted to share with you somebody who really inspired me when I was quite young was Sri Aurobindo.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: And he, you know, founded, was it in Pondicherry?

Rick: Yeah, Pondicherry.

Jon: Pondicherry, India. And he wrote The Life Divine, which was quite a major work and I didn’t read, I mean, I would just read one line and it would be enough for a month, basically.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: But what I loved about what he said was, one of the things he said was he really inspired me to find out how to live this sort of so-called spiritual life in the midst of ordinary reality. Not just by being a monk and having robes and shaved head and living that lifestyle, even though that was my lifestyle for a while and it might very well be very valid for a whole life, depending on one’s, what’s right for someone. In any case, I think what he said though that was so powerful, he said, you know, the greater the sinner, the greater the saint. And the way he described it was that if you start with this much experience in your life, let’s say one inch base of a triangle, right? When you go up to the point up here, when you get up here at the pinnacle, try to stay in the camera.

Rick: That’s all right.

Jon: You have a very thin, little, tall triangle.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: And he says that’s how much you can help people. That’s where you can help people. He said, but if you start way out here, you have a bigger life experience, right? The greater the sinner, right? Then when you get up here, it may take a little longer, whatever, but then you have this that you can offer. And I thought, now, isn’t that great? I mean, that’s like, not only is that a deep understanding of our humanity, but it’s a great understanding of the compassion and forgiveness and of our condition. Whatever it is, no matter how horrific it is. And I think that there’s value, but most people need to be heard. They need their humanity to be heard and to be seen and felt in a way that comes from that presence. That is that space of unconditional, non-judgmental awareness. And that’s certainly what’s happening in my group. That’s why people are, like you were describing, having healing. Because the light heals. And so, it really, like you say, it’s really the alignment with ourself. It’s really coming back into balance. So, I think that it’s, you know, I think most people that I know are, I think people grow much more rapidly, so-called, spiritually, when they don’t try to deny their humanity. I’ve seen nothing but more repression and more kind of, I think the spiritual identity is probably the hardest identity to actually become free of.

Rick: Yeah, interesting. When I was up at the Science and Non-Duality Conference in San Rafael a few weeks ago, and I was in one of the sessions, there was a panel discussion among 3 or 4 different well-known spiritual teachers, and somebody in the audience said, “Can any of you say anything to us which would make you more human? You know, can you say something which enables us to relate to you as human beings?” Which is funny because one of the people was Kenny Johnson, who spent half his life in prison, and that seemed human enough to me. But I understood the lady’s point, you know, because there’s this tendency to put spiritual teachers on a pedestal and to think that they don’t have all the same bodily functions that we mortals do.

Jon: Exactly, exactly. Well, yeah, and I think that even putting anybody up on a pedestal is already, right, it’s potentially, you know, if that projection is still going on, that’s going to be an obstacle.

Rick: Yeah, for both the teacher and the student.

Jon: Totally.

Rick: You can’t think of too many contemporary teachers who haven’t fallen off their pedestal at one time or another.

Jon: Yeah, I mean, I think it would be a lot more helpful for people just to know that, you know, I like what Jean Klein said, you know, when there’s no one taking themselves to be a teacher, and no one taking themselves to be a student, then teaching is taking place. I don’t have any identity of being a teacher. I know that that’s the projection that’s going on out there and I know I’m in that so-called role, but personally I do not have that perception at all.

Rick: What do you perceive?

Jon: I’m just right here. This is what’s happening, and I’m available. Availability is here, there’s openness, there’s interaction. But there isn’t some sense of I’m doing it or I’m a healer or I’m a spiritual teacher. And I know that those people have those beliefs about me, but I don’t. Do you know what I mean?

Rick: Yeah, I see what you mean.

Jon: It’s not functioning.

Rick: And it would seem to me…

Jon: How could it be?

Rick: Yeah. And I mean, I imagine the whole, you’re learning as much as they are, if we want to speak as students, you know?

Jon: Absolutely. You’re my teacher. This is my teacher right now. This is where I’m, this is how I’m finding my way. It’s like when I had that awakening at 16, what happened then was something started guiding me and it hasn’t stopped. And I’m willing to question, I’m willing to change my frame of mind and my attitude about things so I’m not stuck in some particular belief. Otherwise, I never would have left the monastery. In fact, when I did leave the monastery, I was shocked how narrow my thinking had become. You live in a community and you can become like almost inbred, in a way. And I had become very narrow-minded. I don’t think it was helpful.

Rick: No, I agree. I mean, as I mentioned, I was in the TM movement for many years and it has its monastic component, which I was a part of. And you know, we would go on these long courses in India or Switzerland or someplace and be meditating 6, 8, 10 hours a day for 6 months at a time. But, you know, and it was segregated, men’s group, ladies’ group. And you could really get deeply entrenched in your idiosyncrasies. It’s like there was nothing to kind of bounce you out of it. And you know, I mean even now you go to a monastery or even a Catholic monastery place and you see some very, very sincere, sweet, but idiosyncratic people who have become kind of deeply entrenched in a way of thinking that they haven’t had the opportunity to kind of break out of because they’ve been cloistered like that.

Jon: Yeah, well I think we naturally, no matter what, even whether it’s religious or not religious, we do tend to get institutionalized as members of a group. It just happens. I think it’s just part of human psychology. I’m not an expert in that, but you know, I think that it’s, and clearly even in those environments there are people who become free and live within the confines of those structures and yet can be a very, you know, beautiful force for change and healing. I loved what Robert Aitken… Robert Aitken was a Zen teacher that I had a relationship, that I had a friendship with many, many years ago, and he, I loved what he said referring to Zazen, which is Zen meditation. He said, “Enlightenment is an accident. Zazen makes you accident-prone.”

Rick: Oh, I’ve often used that quote, but I didn’t know where it came from. I thought it was, I forget who I thought it was from, but I love that, yeah.

Jon: Yeah, and then I usually add at the end, “Maybe.”

Rick: Yeah, right.

Jon: Maybe it makes you accident-prone, maybe not. No guarantee. But I think a lot of times people today, I’m finding even now, where people have had awakenings, very powerful awakenings, they go to Satsang, whatever, there’s a lot of energy, a lot of presence, they open up, and then they don’t know how to, they’re actually decompensated, they’re actually becoming destabilized, and they’re now having to kind of backtrack and learn the yogic techniques that people have learned for thousands of years so they can start to open up the channels in their bodies, so they can handle these greater flows of energy. A lot of the work I’m doing is teaching people how to do that. They didn’t learn that ahead, they’re having to learn it now. I know Adya and I both have a Zen background, and he did a lot of sitting. And also, he’s an athlete. When someone has had a lot of physical training like that, their body can be much more finely tuned to opening up energies and much more conscious. Many, many people are having to learn to really become embodied, I would say.

Rick: That’s great. I mean, I hear that word more and more. I think it’s kind of catching on, people are realizing that that’s necessary, because there have been a lot of voices out there that have just sort of de-emphasized that or trivialized it and said you don’t need it, and it’s just a concession with duality or whatever to do this practice or that physical therapy or whatever.

Jon: It doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t have to be a concession with duality at all. Yeah.

Rick: So I think it’s good for people to hear this and not to feel ashamed of going ahead and engaging in this, that, or the other thing that may be helpful to them. There’s a whole potpourri of things they could do, and we don’t need to even get into specific ones. You’ll kind of follow your heart and find the right thing.

Jon: I agree. Well, many years ago when the Dalai Lama first came to the United States, I was probably in my 20s, I think, I don’t remember, but he wasn’t as well-known as he obviously is now, and a group of us went over to see him in Berkeley at I think the Nyingma Center, which was a Tibetan center, and there weren’t that many people there. It was a small gathering, and he gave a little talk, and I thought he was great. He said, he goes, “You know, in the West here,” he goes, “you have many things that can help you.” He goes, “You should take advantage of as much as you can because you need all the help you can get.” I thought, I like this guy. I knew people that were like Zazen uber alles. If you did anything else, you were some heretic, basically. I thought, argue for your limitations and they’re yours. Some people paint themselves into a corner and have to learn yoga to live in the corner. I wasn’t going to be limited by the practice I was doing, ever.

Rick: Yeah. I mean, on the flip side, there’s always usually a paradoxical opposite to anything. A person can become a dilettante and just dabble here and dabble there and never get serious about anything.

Jon: That’s a good point, too, and I think today with so many people running around teaching that people can often just sort of be skimming the surface, but like you were saying, when people are ready for the next thing, they’re going to find it. When they’re really ready, readiness moves them forward, not their belief that they’re ready. People often want to be ready or they think they’re ready, but like we’re in control? Like we’re running the show? I don’t think so. So I think you’re right that when readiness is ready, we are guided to that which is really going to support us on the next level.

Rick: Yeah. Presuming we understand that there are levels. That’s another popular theme out there is that there aren’t any levels and the whole idea of progress is a dirty word and you should just give up the search and you’re there. But anyway.

Jon: You know, that’s where language really … you can see why the Zen guys didn’t talk much. I mean, I think in a lot of ways, I think language can really become an obstacle on this path, and I think that ultimately you have to be honest with yourself and really see what the truth of your experience is and how it’s showing up for you and are there any blind spots, even in your so-called awakening, are you deluding yourself? Because I think sometimes people really think they’ve attained something and then they’re rudely awakened that something is still going on there. So I think that there’s a lot of … I mean, again, I use standard language just because I don’t want to limit the way I speak, but I think we figure out in our conversation, our dialogue, any misunderstandings that may arise from using so-called subject-object relationship or dualistic language. Just because we change our language doesn’t mean that our reality has changed.

Rick: No, heck no.

Jon: And if we’re free, it doesn’t matter if we use the word “I.”

Rick: Yeah, I remember when I was a teenager, the first time I ever did LSD, we were sitting around with friends and everybody was into this language, like you wouldn’t say, “Please pass the salt,” you’d say, “Ego to ego, would you pass the salt?” As if to make sure we knew what we were talking about, but it was kind of silly. In fact, I interviewed a guy recently who said that he was with the Papaji crowd over in Lucknow and when they all came back, they were all talking that way, “This person would like to go walk over there,” rather than just saying, “I want to walk over there.” There was an attempt to kind of use certain verbiage that would somehow put you in a state or something, but to me it all seems very unnecessary and unnatural.

Jon: Yeah, I don’t know what that is. My sense is that when things drop away, you don’t have any rules anymore. It’s just that you’re not operating out of some belief or identity about how it should be.

Rick: What’s your whole take on the whole idea of, speaking of the word “identity,” of personal identity? I mean, some people say that if you’re really there, really awakened to the nth degree, that there isn’t going to be any sense of personal identity left. And I never understand how that could be possible, but I give them the benefit of the doubt because I don’t claim to have reached the nth degree, but I sort of feel like there’s got to be some modicum of personal identity or you wouldn’t be able to function. What’s your take on that whole thing?

Jon: You know, I don’t use that way of describing what I experience or what’s happening, so I can’t really speak for those people. I really don’t know what else to say about it. I guess there’s a sense of that there isn’t, yeah, I guess maybe that’s already true for me, I just don’t even think about it actually. I think that’s been going on for so long, it’s just not, I don’t even talk about it or think about it. I guess that’s probably more like it. But I think in a way it’s what I was saying about teaching, I don’t have a sense that I’m, it isn’t Jon, you know what I mean? That’s not what’s happening.

Rick: But at the very same time, is there a sense of Jon? I mean, it isn’t and it is, I mean both paradoxically, one and the other together. I mean there’s Jon who has his problems with his eyes and who might have this health problem or this financial issue or who fell down on the sidewalk, I heard you tell that story. I mean there’s, to observers at least, there’s an apparent person to whom these things are happening. From the inside, what’s the perspective?

Jon: Yeah, when I fell down it was interesting, it wasn’t like I fell down, it was like the sidewalk came up to meet me, it was really interesting. And then I had to give a talk for, I don’t know, a hundred people or something like ten minutes later and I had been injured and I just had eye surgery. You know, it was just the next thing. I mean I think that it isn’t about, I’m not living in the story of Jon, let’s put it that way. So that’s not happening. Even when I, I don’t know if you know, but I lost my life savings in the Bernard Madoff scandal.

Rick: Oh, I’ll be darned, I didn’t know that.

Jon: And then two months later I found out I might go blind and so, and people who knew me thought, you know, it was because I was functioning at a pretty high level, were like wow, you really walk the walk, don’t you? You know, you’re not just talking the talk and I wasn’t identified. I never had the story, I lost all my money, I lost my life savings, it wasn’t like why me? That didn’t, that never happened. The only question that ever arose in that was how could somebody do this?

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: That was the question I had. And of course I had to make some changes, you know, I had to reorganize, I had to get into action which happened immediately, I went into action immediately. And but you know I think that we, it isn’t that we don’t have human experience, it’s not that if a friend of mine dies I don’t cry.

Rick: Right.

Jon: You know I’m a human being, I have feelings. We all have, I mean human feelings are part of our humanity, aren’t they? Do we become free of our humanity? Does it mean we don’t have, we don’t taste food anymore? We don’t enjoy the flavor of food or if we eat something rotten we’re not going to know it and take it out of our mouth?

Rick: I guess people would say well tasting happens, you know, but there’s no person, there’s no one who tastes.

Jon: So I don’t, so I don’t, yeah, I mean I think that when you’re aligned with awareness you know you are that. It isn’t, I think there’s a big emphasis on this loss of, I mean I think the realization of that is I guess what the Buddhists have said forever is that there’s no self, that’s all they’re talking about. There’s no personal self. Yeah, that’s my experience. I mean you can’t talk about it, it’s actually, it’s sort of a catch 22 to even talk about it.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: You know if you were in the Zen monastery now they’d hit you on the head with a stick.

Rick: For talking too much?

Jon: For talking about it. Just go wash your bowl.

Rick: Yeah, I guess I won’t try to conduct interviews in Zen monasteries.

Jon: You know, Poonjaji, I spent, he invited me to come to Lucknow and wrote me a wonderful letter back in 1990 I think, and I went and spent about six weeks with him and loved him and had a wonderful time with him. He was very real, he was just a beautiful, radiant being, joyful, and you know, I don’t know, he felt pretty natural to me.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: And we’d eat dinner at his house and put his arm around me and we’d laugh our heads off about stuff and you know, I remember he would look at everyone and go, “You are my children, you are all my children.” You know, like that. And you know, he was just really loving, he was incredibly loving, very affectionate.

Rick: How did he know about you to write you a letter?

Jon: I wrote him a letter. I wrote him, I was interested in coming and seeing him, interested in meeting him, and he wrote me back and said, you know, can I have the letter, and it’s a handwritten letter, it’s nice. And I went and spent about six weeks with him and then when I was leaving I was in his room and I said, well, I’m going back to San Francisco and he goes, “So soon? So soon?”

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: He was wonderful. He was very loving and geez, man, you know, we’re all human beings, come on. Yeah, some of us are really radiant and really loving and I mean, my question would be, are You realizing that what this life is really about is being fully human, is being able to realize we are connected so that there’s love and connection? I mean, if we’re not discovering that, what are we doing?

Rick: No, that’s all great. There is a lot of emphasis in spiritual circles about there being no person, you know, and so I think it may be a great clarification for some people but it might also be a source of confusion for some people because people feel like, “Well, I feel like there’s a person, you know, I’d feel bad if I lost my life savings or if I, you know, injured myself in some way.” There seems to be a me to whom things are still happening, you know, and so when people hear this talk of there being no person, it can be a bit perplexing.

Jon: Yeah, I don’t know how useful that whole discussion is for most people. I don’t go there because I think you’re right. I think if anything it produces more confusion than is necessary. Truth is that what we are fundamentally is already free, and when we’re aligned with that, that’s what’s happening. And so, again, otherwise it becomes another anticipation or another expectation to not be somebody. It’s like it becomes another identity of not being anybody. It’s sort of ironic, but I think that when freedom is when one is really aligned with that, I guess you could say, yeah, there’s no personal identity functioning. It’s not the same anyway. It’s a different perspective. I think fundamentally it’s the shift. It’s not that one doesn’t know that there’s a personality there, that’s just an imprint. Or an ego or something. There’s a certain dynamic that we’re basically constructed as that just functions. It’s a function, right? But when the shift is when we realize we are that, and I would say that’s the end of thinking that you’re separate. I’m not saying that you still don’t have separate experiences, you may still. There may still be some of a healing process going on, as we’ve talked about. I don’t know if that clarifies it.

Rick: I think it helps. I mean, could you say it this way, that it’s a matter of where the predominant orientation is. I mean, if the predominant orientation is “I am a wave,” and that’s all I am, then that’s one thing. If the predominant orientation is “I am this ocean,” and then I also happen to be this little wave, which is part of this ocean, then …

Jon: Yeah, I would say there’s an absence of even the thought “I am” anything. I don’t even think the thought “I am” …

Rick: Yeah, I’m just trying to put it in words.

Jon: To me it never occurs. The “I am” thought never happens, period. It just isn’t there. So it’s just being aware. But if I’m sitting here having to describe what’s happening, awareness, sounds, sensations, imagery, energy, vibration …

Rick: Feelings.

Jon: Yeah, I could describe it in some way. Or we may be sitting here together, and even though you’re where you are across the country and I’m here, as we listen in a certain way, we actually can feel the connection. That it’s palpable, you know, “We are that,” I would say. But again, there isn’t a sense of like if I’m riding my bicycle or driving my car or I’m up in front of a group of people, so to speak. There’s no self-consciousness.

Rick: Right.

Jon: There just isn’t. That it’s not happening. That it’s just not there.

Rick: Yeah. And let’s say when the Bernie Madoff thing happened, there was probably a wave of feeling of, “This sucks,” but …

Jon: Well, Adya called me the next day and said, “Man, it must feel like you got hit by a truck, hit by a train.” I go, “Yeah.” I said, “You know, there’s a lot of money going out, all of a sudden, and none coming in.” And I thought there was income. It was definitely, it was viscerally pretty intense, and I had a wonderful retreat place in the country in Bolinas that I had to let go of, that I’d had for a few years, and I had to make some changes. But hey.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: Life guides us to the next step, whatever that is, right? And we don’t really know. You know, at any moment, this little dance we’re in is over, right? For everybody.

Rick: Yep.

Jon: It’s … hold on a second. I wrote something down that I wanted to … where did I put it? Oh, that’s different. Okay, never mind. Sorry.

Rick: What is it? Do you remember?

Jon: Oh, yeah. Well, it was … you know, this life that we’re living, it’s like, “What are we doing?” It’s like I said, I was talking about the to-do list, like, “Does it ever end?” You know? “Are you ever going to get everything done?” And so the question that I had was, “Does the to-do list disappear after you’re dead?” You know?

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: Like, “When are you going to get it done?”

Rick: I often … I’ve thought about that from time to time, like, “You have all these things you’ve got to do,” and what if I were to … what if this were to be my last breath? What would happen to that whole list, and how significant would it be anymore?

Jon: Well, I think awakening and really realizing your … what we’re talking about is freedom, I think that is that reality that even though there’s an endless to-do list, you can only just be right here. You know, this is just what you can take care of and you do the best you can. And some people might just sit around and do nothing, and other people might run a multinational corporation.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: Be head of a government. I mean, it’s … you know, it’s not …

Rick: According to your dharma or something.

Jon: It’s not going to indicate a particular lifestyle. It could be anybody, anywhere.

Rick: There was a … speaking of Jean Klein, there was this woman named Suzanne Segal who wrote a book called …

Jon: Wow, I was really close to her.

Rick: Oh, cool, yeah, “Collision with the Infinite.”

Jon: Yeah, yeah, that’s … Stephan Bodian wrote that book about her.

Rick: Yeah, and her little catchphrase was, “Do the next obvious thing.” She kept saying that, you know, she spent that ten years freaked out, not knowing, you know, trying to find a personal self and not being able to, but she just, meanwhile, raised a daughter and got a master’s degree or something, a PhD maybe, but she kept saying throughout her book, “Do the next obvious thing,” and I just kept doing the next obvious thing, which is …

Jon: She was in fear after that experience happened, or she was in fear for ten years.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Jon: Of no self, and she came to see John Klein. Actually, I was there that night, she got up and talked to him, and she had a shift, and we actually became quite close, and interestingly enough, she tragically died, you know …

Rick: Brain cancer, yeah.

Jon: The majority of her brain …

Rick: Tumor, yeah.

Jon: But she actually, interestingly enough, went back into fear before she died, which was very interesting, and I mean, I think that … and I don’t think it means anything, I think that the body is just a separate dynamic from this sort of realization that we are this … she used to use the word “vastness,” which I like a lot.

Rick: I like that too, yeah.

Jon: But she was wonderful, I love Suzanne, and that was a real loss that she passed away.

Rick: Well, you know, I mean, the changes taking place in her brain as a result of that could easily trigger the fear. I mean, any one of us, take yourself, take Adyashanti, inject you with the right chemicals, and who knows what would happen, you know, there could be a huge … because we are living this through a nervous system.

Jon: Yeah, yeah. So …

Rick: Yeah, interesting. So, what haven’t we covered? We’ve been going through a kind of a chronology of teachers you’ve been with, and this and that, and stages of realization. I mean, is there anything else, any milestones that you haven’t really mentioned that you want to touch upon?

Jon: I’d have to think about that, I don’t know.

Rick: Maybe there aren’t, because those several big ones stand out in your memory.

Jon: Yeah, those are the, I would say in terms of significant shifts, those were pretty significant. I mean, I don’t know, I’m learning all the time. I’m discovering and I feel like learning is happening all the time, and it’s awesome, totally awesome. And I think that’s the, I think that, you know, the purpose of our life is to become fully alive, and awakening is part of becoming fully alive. I don’t think it’s the transcendence of being human, we’ll be transcending human soon enough. It’s like, why push it? You know, and like, what’s the point of being here, if it isn’t about to be fully alive? And so I think that’s, I’m discovering life all the time, and I’m learning as a human being all the time. And I’m very grateful and appreciative of, you know, the wonderful people around me, and the love, and the discovery that we’re all having together. I just led a retreat last weekend and it’s amazing what’s happening with people. Phenomenal, phenomenal healing and transformation. And it’s just, it’s such an honor and privilege to be a part of that, just to be a part of that discovery, and I’m so grateful that sort of, you know, what I’ve devoted my life to really has, is actually helping other people. I mean, I don’t have that sense of that, you know, I don’t have an identity about that, but it’s clearly, I’m seeing that so much and I’m just thinking, wow. You know, a friend of mine who’s very pragmatic, I wouldn’t really call him a spiritual person, so he’s been coming on the retreats for years and very observant, and he said, wow, it’s just amazing to see people come back on these retreats and how much they’ve changed. He goes, this really works. You know? And so that’s, I’m, I think for me, because, maybe because we grew up in the 60s, you know, we had a strong sense of social responsibility and wanting to help and wanting to make a better place for us to live. And it’s just great to see that, you know, that, you know, if we’re bringing more light into the world, that’s a good thing.

Rick: Yeah, I agree, and I’ve enjoyed listening to your podcast and sort of hearing the, you know, the expressions of appreciation and growth that the people were giving. It’s obviously been quite profound for many people. Do you have a, do you actually, yourself, have any sort of formal spiritual practice that you engage in, or do you just get up in the morning and brush your teeth and go about your day, and that’s your spiritual practice?

Jon: Well, I used to, no, I don’t have any formal practice. I mean, I did, obviously, for decades. No, I mean, I just, you know, this morning, I don’t know, I was making the bed and I sat down and just kind of was being vastness for, you know, just kind of enjoying that and then got up and continued making the bed. I mean, it’s not, it isn’t, I mean, it was lovely to go on a retreat because there’s silence sitting retreat, it’s one of the few times where I actually get to sit around. But I love, I mean, I love going out to nature. I think, I think being in nature is one of my greatest pleasures, really. It’s just being at the ocean or in the redwoods and just, you know, that’s such a wonderful, wonderful thing. Or, I love hiking and bicycling and, you know, being with friends. But as far as a formal, I have a lot of tools in my toolbox, you know, and sometimes maybe I do just sit, you know, depending on what’s going on. Obviously, I’m working with people, I see people privately and I’m working with people

Rick: Wow, you mean you’re that busy with people?

Jon: Oh yeah.

Rick: That’s amazing.

Jon: I am busy. And then I’m teaching publicly too, so I’ve got various public gatherings. I’m very busy, I barely have time to go to the, you know, post office. And so, it’s, so I guess that maybe my spiritual practice is just being with other people right now.

Rick: Sounds like it to me, I mean, it’s cool, you know, you have your attention on this process all the time with all those people.

Jon: Pretty much.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: Pretty much, you know, and it’s really, you know, it’s just being a mirror.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: That’s all it is, I don’t really see it as anything other than that. And pointing out, you know, in terms of what I really see a lot of what I’m, what my role is if you will, is really pointing out what I call the blind spot. And that’s where, you know, people are very focused on what they don’t want, the object of what they don’t want, or they’re very focused on the object of what they want. For example, they have fear coming up and they don’t want it, or they don’t want some kind of anxiety coming up, so they’re very focused on that. But what they miss, ironically, is just the not wanting. Because the fear or the anxiety, all that will just move naturally, it’s just a river, we’re just, our emotions are just a river. It’s just a weather system that goes through us. So often they need just that mirror to bring attention to that, where that resistance is. That’s the suffering. Suffering is just the resistance to what is, it’s not what is. Whether it’s losing all your money and going blind, whatever, that’s not, that’s just what’s happening.

Rick: Yes.

Jon: So the resistance to it is the suffering. So it’s not like that. So what they’re missing is the fact that they’re resisting, or the fact that they’re …

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: The Buddha pointed that out 2,500 years ago. That’s what he meant. That’s exactly …

Rick: When he said what?

Jon: Well that the cause of suffering is clinging, is greed, hate, and delusion, is wanting, not wanting, and trying to figure it out, is the way I put it.

Rick: Right.

Jon: So we have to watch the same realization so that when you can give attention, so satsang or even personal meetings, that what happens here is not like we sit down and figure out how you can get a better job, even though that might happen.

Rick: Right.

Jon: But, you know, or take, or heal your cancer, or whatever it is, you know what I mean, or grieve the loss of your loved one. You know, all the experiences that we go through as human beings, the huge range of experiences that we go through. But it’s … I’ve got myself on a mental track and I just lost all of it, it just went poof. That happens.

Rick: You’re saying it’s not that we figure out the specific problems, but it’s more like we get to the root of …

Jon: What it is …

Rick: … the resistance to allowing things to be as they are. I think that’s what you’re …

Jon: But it is that we offer the condition …

Rick: Right.

Jon: … into the space of awareness. It isn’t about figuring out how we’re going to get from point A to B, it’s that we just say, “I don’t know how to get from point A to B,” and that construct, that dynamic is offered into the space and all of a sudden, there’s a shift.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: That’s the miracle of satsang. That’s the miracle of really meeting in oneness. It isn’t that we figure it out. It’s not that we do the next thing. That’s what it means to have non … that’s the direct method. You follow me?

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: It’s not that … it isn’t that we fix something. It isn’t that we figure it out. It isn’t that we get rid of something, but that we fully bring it into the space of awareness and somehow, miraculously, the whole orientation to it shifts. That’s the possibility. That’s what happens in the offering. Satsang is really just an offering. That mirror of awareness allows that cooking to take place. It’s like alchemy. It really is alchemy. It’s amazing. It’s amazing that we … it’s like the shackles of our resistance are removed and all of a sudden, our perception, our perspective of what’s happening completely can change. All of a sudden, we cannot be in struggle with it anymore. It’s so important to be honest to say, “I am in struggle with it.” Who cares? Does somebody like giving you a grade? “Oh, you’re not very spiritual. You’ve been meditating for 30 years and you’re still struggling?” Like who cares? End blame, end shame, end guilt. Drop all those. Useless. Or, if they’re functioning, notice that they’re there. I’m really ashamed. I’ve been meditating for 30 years and I’m still struggling with what is. So, at least you can tell the truth about it. That’s just important. Not that we struggle, but that we can be honest. Once you can be honest about it, you can be free of it. When it’s really expressed and offered in that space of awareness, it’s amazing, it’s a miracle, and I’m sitting there in awe all the time watching this happen, and it’s incredible.

Rick: That’s great. So if you had to summarize what happens in your satsangs, in your meetings, would you say that that’s the crux of it, that somehow it enables people to shift into a different style of functioning?

Jon: Yeah. I mean, awakening is just the beginning. I mean, people make a big deal about awakening. It’s not a big deal.

Rick: Right.

Jon: But people are doing awakenings all over the place. Most of them don’t even know they’re having them. Suzuki Roshi said, “Practice begins with enlightenment.” How could you find your way if you didn’t know who you fundamentally were? Some people claim that, “Oh, when you discover that, it’s the end of all of it.” Well, sometimes it is, but I think for most people, it’s really the beginning of the path, so to speak, up to start.

Rick: Yeah. Maybe it’s both. End of one phase, beginning of an even more.

Jon: How could the infinite have a beginning and an end?

Rick: Right.

Jon: That’s absurd.

Rick: Maybe it’s better to call it a milestone, but there’s no beginning or end point.

Jon: Even the Buddhists have described many, many levels of enlightenment and all this. Yeah, I mean, how could there be an end to it? I’m sure I’m constantly … who knows what discoveries will happen, how great that they can keep happening.

Rick: I’m with you. I mean, I love that orientation, that’s the way I think of it, and I’m perplexed when people tell me that they’ve reached some static finality, and I think, “Well, I don’t know.”

Jon: My only question for them, do they believe that?

Rick: They seem to.

Jon: Yeah, but you know …

Rick: But maybe they’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Jon: Isn’t that a red flag, that they believe? I think being liberated, there isn’t really … you can’t have a belief. Who can have a belief? Who’s having a belief?

Rick: In fact, it’s like a stock question for me in these interviews, usually towards the end I say, “Okay, well where do you see it going from here? Do you see some kind of unfoldment taking place, some refinement?” And some people say yes, Adya said yes.

Jon: Good for him, that’s why he’s my buddy.

Rick: Gangaji said yes.

Jon: Good for him, she’s an old friend too, and I love her.

Rick: And in fact, she actually alluded to Nisargadatta more or less on his deathbed having said, “Oh, I am that.” That was like kid stuff. There’s been so much more growth since then, you know?

Jon: People need to hear this. Let’s take … come on guys, start showing your dirty laundry, let’s be honest. Stop trying to hold up some illusion. Yeah, get on! You know, who believes this? This is the question. If somebody’s got a belief, I think that’s questionable.

Rick: And what is the advantage of believing it? I mean, what does one gain? I mean, if it’s true, fine, I’m all for it, but what does one gain by latching on to this attitude?

Jon: Well, I think you just said it. Belief is all about security, and as long as there’s still the need for security, there’s still somebody who’s identified. That’s the point. It’s not possible to have a belief in freedom. It doesn’t exist there. Belief only exists in the ego, in the organism’s need to function and survive. Otherwise, in the realm of awareness, it doesn’t exist. It can’t.

Rick: Yeah. I mean, it can as a belief, but if you don’t calcify it, if it’s like, “Okay, well this is a perspective, but it’s not like the absolute perspective, and who knows what might happen to it,” then that’s the right orientation.

Jon: Yeah, I have this perspective, but I’m not holding on to it. There’s no security in it. It’s not believed in the sense of “I know.” We could describe this this way right now, it’s a useful form.

Rick: There’s a nice little commentary in my former teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in his commentary on the Gita. He defined humility as being the quality of not insisting that things happen any particular way. And I would say you could say the same thing about belief, you know, not insisting that things are any particular way in a sort of a static, rigid kind of way.

Jon: I agree. Yeah, I agree completely. You know, something that was really beautiful that Robert shared with me, Robert Adams, I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but he said, “You know, most people who become free are just ordinary people living ordinary lives. They don’t become sages or saints or teachers, spiritual teachers, you know, they’re not celebrities. They’re just ordinary people living ordinary lives. And unless you were open, really open and awake, and unless you were hanging out with them over some time, you wouldn’t even know it.” And I thought, “Now isn’t that right on?”

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: Isn’t that beautiful? You know, and everyone has that within them. Everyone has that seed of discovery within them. Whether or not that’s their journey in this life, who knows?

Rick: Yeah, I have this friend here in my town who is an artist, a designer, but he works in a factory and has a wife and two kids. He has the most extraordinary level of clarity of experience of anyone I’ve ever spoken to, I mean, just amazing stuff going on. He refuses to be interviewed. His business partner of 15 years doesn’t have a clue that any of this is happening with him. He’s a private person, but boy, what an inner life is being lived.

Jon: Yeah, no, and we all are really, and when you come from that place you see everybody from that perspective. Everyone becomes Buddha, actually, whether they know it or not.

Rick: That’s a nice point too, because there can be a kind of a spiritual haughtiness that one subtly may develop in terms of, “Oh, I’ve been on this path for so long and I’m so enlightened, and this clerk in the grocery store here, who, you know, he’s … ”

Jon: I would turn around and run as fast as possible if you see that. That’s a giant red flag in my book.

Rick: So with your students, do you have like, aside from they sit with you in a satsang, either personal or group, and then what do they do all week? Do you have any kind of practice that you prescribe or anything from your toolkit, or is it more like, “Okay, I’ll see you next week”?

Jon: Well, I would say that each individual in certain circumstances may very well benefit from certain kinds of feedback, so I don’t really make any general pronouncements at all about what’s appropriate for an individual. It really varies quite a bit, actually. And then I have people that are close to me who also come to my groups and we hang out just as friends, and that’s nice, right? And then there’s … so it’s … that’s … yeah, I would say that’s very individually tailored. But I … you know, it’s interesting though, Rick, in the groups too, you find that somebody will come up and they’ll share what’s going on and some very profound thing may happen with them, and that might affect a lot of people in the room.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Jon: That it actually, it’s not just … you know, I tell people, it’s not just the person up there, it’s everyone that’s up here. Even the people listening to the podcast a month later. It’s amazing that this … that what we’re doing when it really has that intention, it’s coming from that place of oneness, actually everyone is connected in.

Rick: Yep.

Jon: So, it … but it isn’t like because one person may need to, you know, I … again, I hesitate even talking about that, but I’m usually very specific if somebody, for instance, really has a lot of energy moving through them but is very ungrounded, and is having symptoms, physical symptoms as a result of that, even maybe not able to function or be able to go to work.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: Then I’m going to very specifically work with them with various ways of being aware in their body and their breath and so forth to help ground what’s happening, to help open their channels. Or maybe they need to be in therapy and do therapy and work with their psychological issues. That’s very common. I know even Adya refers people to therapy, which I’m so glad to hear him do that, because I think some people, you know, this … of course, if it wasn’t needed, it wouldn’t be there.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: You know what I mean? So, I think again, it’s not like one-stop shopping. People are like, “Well, I just want, you know, I just need more Shakti. That’s all I need and then I’ll be enlightened.” But I’ve seen people who’ve been on Shakti highs for 30 years all of a sudden have their whole life fall apart on them.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: And rudely awaken, like, “What was I doing?” They were attached to Shakti.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: It was great, let’s face it. It’s a good drug. But it’s, you know, mostly it’s just energy and it’s going, and if it’s really understood deeply, it’s like what Sri Aurobindo said, you really find out how to live this life from the whole perspective of a human, which includes our Divinity, which includes the vastness of no identity, and it includes the little me.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: It includes the whole thing. Nothing is excluded, you know?

Rick: That’s kind of what I was trying to get at before, in terms of this discussion of “me, no me,” that kind of thing. It’s like there’s this whole package, and maybe the ratios are different for different people between the predominance of the me versus the vastness and so on, but it’s not really germane to dwell on it too much.

Jon: I tell people the proof is in the pudding.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: They come to retreat and they have a major change, life change. I have people come with major life change, they have major changes happen, many actually. People who are like judges coming from the Midwest somewhere, they don’t even have this background.

Rick: You mean actual judges in courts, those kind of judges?

Jon: Yeah, yeah. I’m saying people who have all kinds of, they’re not just on some spiritual path, right?

Rick: Right.

Jon: They’re just, you know, they’re grandma, they have children, grandchildren, you know, and they come and it’s like their whole world shifts, and the life changes, and it’s like the proof’s in the pudding.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: It’s like, what’s, is it working? My question is, is it working? Are you really living more fully? Are you loving more fully? Are you forgiving yourself for being imperfect? You know, are you, is it really happening for you?

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: And that’s, what I’m seeing is that it is, you know, and it has and continues to and we’re all in this together, let’s just be honest about it, let’s just share notes. Let’s not find, let’s not believe one person’s right or somebody, I mean, you know, let’s face it, the spiritual identity has been the cause of a lot of suffering in our human history.

Rick: If you happen to remember the Firesign Theater, which was a comedy.

Jon: Oh, I do.

Rick: Remember, we’re all bozos on this bus.

Jon: I sure do. In fact, they used to, they had another album called, “How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Nowhere at All?” I loved them. I used to go to the Committee Theater in San Francisco when I was a kid. I used to go, they were another improv group, comedy group. Yeah, they were great.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: In fact, the Firesign Theater had a political button, a political group they came up with for a while. Do you remember? It was Not Insane. They had a little political button that said, “Not Insane.”

Rick: That was a good one. Well, it kind of fascinates me because I’ve always been a technique kind of guy. I learned to meditate when I was 18 and I still meditate a couple hours a day. I actually have people encouraging me to stop. They say, “You’ve done enough. You shouldn’t bother meditating anymore. It could be holding you back.” But I just don’t feel like stopping. I personally find it very enjoyable, soothing, rejuvenating. It’s a nice part of my day. If I weren’t meditating a couple hours a day, I’d probably be sleeping a couple hours more. But it fascinates me to see the dynamic of your approach, and of course your approach has been similar to mine at times in your life, but where you have a group of people and they all just start popping like popcorn just because of the collective consciousness that’s taking place in that group, and they walk away with lives transformed. I mean, I’ve been participants in that kind of thing myself, but it fascinates me to see that as a sort of a practice in and of itself, which is almost sufficient unto itself.

Jon: It could be. It very well may be. I have no position on it at all. Somebody wants to meditate all day long, fine. If they want to run or they do something else, I mean, again, I’m always looking and seeing how it’s working for them. I don’t have a position about it. But one’s approach could change as well.

Rick: Sure it could, yeah.

Jon: So I think what you want to develop, I think what I encourage people to develop is a flexible mind, a flexible attitude. If you don’t have that, then you’re in trouble.

Rick: Yeah, I was interviewed by a guy this morning that had a sort of a blog talk radio show, and I was just making the point that, you know, look at it from God’s perspective, you know, big universe, lots of souls, many paths. I mean, if somebody wants to chant Hare Krishna or be an atheist or be a fundamentalist Christian or be a Mormon or whatever, or be a yogi or this and that, there’s such a huge diversity of life and everybody’s doing the best they can, and if they become dissatisfied with what they’re doing, they’ll probably do something else. But you know, it’s just …

Jon: Sometimes people break away from these. I mean, I’m working with somebody right now who’s breaking away from a very, what can I say?

Rick: Dogmatic?

Jon: Very, you know, very strict and very, you know, a tradition that is, I would say, you know, if you don’t follow the rules, you’re, you know …

Rick: Going to hell or something?

Jon: Big time. Yeah. And, you know, and then to start to find your own truth and realize it’s different than what a bunch of people are telling you or what you’ve been conditioned, that’s a very powerful, you know, path, and I’ve worked with a number of people like this who, you know, were very afraid to really follow their truth because, you know, they’re basically being, you know, excommunicated or they’re considered heretics. And you know, how long ago was it that people were burned at the stake or, you know, nailed on the cross for not going along with the party line?

Rick: Yep, not that long.

Jon: So I think this is really where we have to be careful is about having any party line. You see, I think this is where beliefs have to be questioned.

Rick: Absolutely.

Jon: I think any belief that can’t be questioned is questionable.

Rick: And that pertains not only to the sort of blatantly fundamentalist types of groups but also many contemporary spiritual groups which you and I may have belonged to or something.

Jon: Yes, some of the most dualistic people I know are non-dualist.

Rick: Very good. Yeah.

Jon: Yeah, I think it’s, you know, again, we can poke fun but we’re all human, let’s face it, we’re all human.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Jon: And I think if we can look at ourselves honestly, really, and be willing to be vulnerable as a human being and really not be so, what, self-assured? I mean …

Rick: Self-important?

Jon: That’s not it.

Rick: Not it?

Jon: Sure isn’t.

Rick: Yeah. What’s not it? Self-important or self-assured?

Jon: Neither. Those aren’t hallmarks of freedom.

Rick: No, no, of course. Yeah, I see what you’re saying. Yeah.

Jon: No, I mean those are things that you want to question.

Rick: Correct.

Jon: It’s not the party line. It’s not being able to … It isn’t about talking the talk, it really is about being it. And being it is, there is no identity in being it, that is for sure. Yeah.

Rick: Good.

Jon: There’s no self-consciousness about being it.

Rick: Well I think we beat that point to death, but I think it bears a certain amount of, it warrants a certain amount of emphasis and exploration, you know, because there’s so much of it going on and I don’t claim to be utterly non-guilty of it myself. I mean it’s easy to sort of slip into those things, even subtly, you know, the subtle tendrils or remnants of being stuck in particular beliefs or attitudes, having not questioned certain assumptions and so on. And you can always dig a little deeper and get a little clearer.

Jon: People want the instant fix, you know?

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: It’s sort of human nature, maybe it’s the American way, you just want a pill, or you just want the, you know, maybe the enlightenment pill, I don’t want to waste, I don’t have time to waste with this. But you know, people want the instant fix and anything that sort of promises a quick fix is going to be appealing, it’s going to be appealing. But you know, let’s face it, if the acorn became an oak tree overnight, we’d have a real problem.

Rick: We would.

Jon: Yeah, the acorn takes some time and maybe does the acorn sit around and go, “Gee, I wonder if I’m going to sprout, I wonder if I’m going to become an oak tree.” But it’s got the oak tree within it, doesn’t it? It’s got the oak tree nature there, and will that acorn become an oak tree? Who knows? And if it starts to sprout, it starts to make, how long is that, you know? I think a gradual evolution is probably more what’s true for most people, and whether people need practices along the way or therapy or body work or just whatever they need, I’m sure like you say, they’re going to find. And the nourishment that they need will come to them.

Rick: And even a, I mean, theoretically at the age of 16, when you had that big flashy experience, you could have interpreted that as having been, you know, the final deal, you know, “I’m awake now, I’ve had my enlightenment experience.” But now it’s been decades later, and even after that there’s been this continual, gradual, sometimes not so gradual, refinement and unfoldment and growth. So it’s like both can happen, you know, there can be big breakthroughs and big ahas, and there can also be gradual growth, and the two go hand-in-hand, paradoxically.

Jon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I didn’t, you know, I didn’t even know what happened. You know, a friend of mine, I was sitting in class in high school going into these profound states and a friend of mine, a very close friend of mine, ended up in a mental hospital and I got afraid. I thought, “Well, maybe I’m going crazy,” so I actually blocked that from happening. I stopped it.

Rick: Yeah.

Jon: I actually blocked it. I mean, who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t, if somebody had been around to mentor me, saying, “Hey, you know, this is okay, go with this.” You know, I didn’t even know what meditation was. I didn’t know what enlightenment was, I didn’t know any of that. But I’ll tell you that whatever opened then is still here today. Whatever started guiding me then is guiding me right now. That has not changed.

Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? The very same element, the very same foundation is there.

Jon: That’s why they say …

Rick: But there’s been so much growth at the same time.

Jon: I think it’s why in Buddhism they say the beginning of the path, the middle of the path, and the end of the path is the same, that the fundamental realization of the glimpse of the truth is identical to the final embodiment and becoming fully established in that truth. That is absolutely my experience.

Jon: I’m glad we continued this interview long enough for you to say that because I heard you say that during one of your podcasts and I really liked that phrase and meant to bring it up. Say it one more time if you would.

Jon: The beginning of the path you mean?

Rick: Yeah, yeah, that quote.

Jon: Well, that the beginning of the path, the middle of the path, and the end of the path is exactly the same thing, and that the realization of the truth, even the glimpse of the truth, is no … even if it’s just a mini little glimpse, is no different than the ultimate full establishment in that truth. So whatever happens in between is what we discover, what we find, our healing process, all of it. Everything is all allowed, everything is welcome, everything is allowed, nothing is excluded, nothing. How could anything be excluded from that?

Rick: And when you say it’s no different, the end than the beginning, it doesn’t mean that they are identical in terms of the maturation that is taking place, but in terms of the essential ingredient.

Jon: I think it’s what Buddha said is discovering that everything is changing except one’s true nature, that that is the unchanging, that is the I am. When Nisargadatta is saying “I am that,” that’s what they’re talking about, that the realization of that is what I’m talking about.

Rick: Yep.

Jon: But it’s not a belief, obviously.

Rick: No, it’s a living reality, if you want to call it that.

Jon: As that other quote, “For those that know, no explanation is necessary. For those that don’t know, no explanation is possible.”

Rick: Good. Okay, well …

Jon: Well it’s been a pleasure talking to you, Rick.

Rick: The way my mind works, we could probably do this for the next three hours, but at a certain point I feel merciful and I feel, “All right, I better let this guy go.”

Jon: And I think my bladder may need a break.

Rick: Or it will, one or the other. Good, so let me make a quick wrap-up point or two and then we’ll let you go. So I’ve been speaking with Jon Bernie and I will be linking to Jon’s website on mine, which is www.batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and I’ll also link to any books Jon has written and so on, so that you can conveniently find those. This interview with Jon has been part of an ongoing series, there’s a new one each week. Next week will be a fellow named Mooji, who is also a Papaji student. And if you would like to be notified each time a new interview becomes available, you can either subscribe on YouTube or you can go to www.batgap.com and sign up to receive an email each time a new interview becomes available. There’s also a little discussion group there on BatGap where various people get involved in chatting about what was discussed in each interview, so you can do that if you like. And it’s also available as a podcast, so as I’ve been listening to Jon’s podcast, you can sign up and get this through iTunes and then put it on your iPod and listen to this while you’re commuting to work, or whatever. So thanks again for listening, watching. Thank you Jon very much, I’ve really enjoyed this.

Jon: You too, a real pleasure Rick, really.

Rick: Yeah, maybe in a year or two from now, since we’re both kind of growth-oriented guys, we’ll do it again and see what’s unfolded by then.

Jon: That’d be great, any time, any time.

Rick: So thanks, and thanks to those who watched or listened, and we’ll see you next week.

Jon: Okay, take good care.

Rick: Take care.

Jon: Thanks for having me. Rick, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.