Essay, 1995
The Realization of Truth
“The Way does not require cultivation – just don’t pollute it. What is pollution? As long as you have a fluctuating mind fabricating artificialities and contrivances, all of this is pollution. If you want to realize the Way directly – the natural Mind is the Way. What I mean by the natural mind is the mind without artificiality, without subjective judgments, without grasping or rejection”
– Chan Master Mazu –
Who could deny the obvious truth expressed by Mazu? The question has always been how to achieve this exalted state.
The great gift of the Enneagram is that it gives us a reflective surface for the artifices of mind to be displayed. Pollution, or the fluctuating mind, is revealed to be generated by character fixation. Grasping, rejecting, subjective judgments and artificiality are the hallmarks of fixation. Character fixation is a crystallization in mind-stuff of aeons of desire waves, or fluctuations. This crystallization is experienced as, “me and my past.” The waves are thoughts of, “me and what I want.”
By Bertrand Coquoz, Geneva, Switzerland
Recto-Verseau Magazine, March 1999
“Drop all thought. Drop into silence, turn your back on all manifestation and see who you really are.” – Eli
How do you usually present yourself? Your name is Eli Jaxon-Bear. Do you have anything to do with Indians?
Most people just call me Eli. I have had many different names just in this lifetime. Since I was a revolutionary in the ’60s, I had to use different names. When I was a federal fugitive during the Vietnam War, my name was once Norman Brown. During a ceremony with a Mescalero Apache in 1973 I was given the name Eli Jaxon-Bear and it stuck. Now, as some karmic joke, my daughter just named my granddaughter Reagan!
Berlin – Germany, 2000
As an international teacher, do you see a similarity or a connection between us now and the circumstances that gave rise to Hitler and his power?
Yes, there is a deep connection. This connection is fear based on selfishness. As long as fear runs people’s lives, they project the enemy as some foreign force. Fear is based on insecurity, which is rooted in ignorance of the truth. This fear is what keeps the whole system running, keeps everyone economically enslaved. Unemployment has nothing to do with foreign workers, but is a function of a capitalist free market economy. This economy runs on fear and greed based in deep ignorance. It is a lot easier to imagine that the enemy is a Turkish worker and not the entire system of economics.
What advice would you give people so that this does not happen again?
Connections Magazine, May 2001
What is satsang?
Satsang is sitting with a fully realized teacher who transmits silence and realization. Anyone can speak the words of satsang. My teacher, Papaji, used to say you can teach a parrot to speak the words of satsang. And since the words are so powerful, they will have an effect. But the words are only pointing to what is beyond the words.
The true teacher is satsang, not the words that are spoken. I have been with very powerful teachers who had very strong shakti (spiritual power), but they were not transmitting freedom. When I met my teacher, his living presence was the emanation of silence. His words were used to cut through the false identification of mind. So both the transmission of silence and the intelligent insight into the condition of the human mind are the two sides of satsang.
Visionen Magazine
August 2002
It seems important for me to address in this specific moment when committing myself endangers my protections. Giving the true answer each time brings me to face the fear and helps me to fall into a deeper natural trust and unknown silent truth. In this subject, here are the questions:
Speaking about Truth turns often into speaking about some mystical thinking. This thinking was some years ago, quite unknown in our society and it starts to become usual. The words of the saints that come into our culture are even used in advertisement. Can you explain this whole issue of Truth.
Advaita Journal
Humberg, Germany, December 2003
I have been asked to write about evil. Evil is a wonderful word in English because if you look at it in a mirror it reads Live. Evil is anti-life. As long as there is the appearance of life there will be the appearance of anti-life.
The great danger is looking for evil outside of ourselves. We project evil and then fight against it. Since this act of fighting is itself anti-life, the possibility is to stop the war where we are. This means stopping the projection of evil and instead meeting it in our own mind.
Of course we can see the madness of one group calling another evil. George Bush and Osama Bin Laden are in many ways just mirror-images of each other. Each is certain that he is right, that God is on his side, and that he is a freedom-fighter, fighting evil. This shows us the great trap of being a recruit in any war against evil or the dark side.
Wegweiser Magazine
June/July 2003
What are the roots of all this madness, not only in Iraq, but also in Congo, Afghanistan, in China, Korea, and all over the world? What is the reason for constantly harming our beautiful planet and ourselves?
The root cause of all suffering is ignorance. Ignorance gives rise to fear, greed, and aggression in the human psyche. All the horrors we see in the world today stem from ignorance giving rise to selfishness, which appears as fear, greed, and aggression.
Ignorance is ignoring the truth of the situation. When things are ignored they tend to run sub-consciously, or just below the surface.
Connections Magazine
Interview with Gangaji and Eli, April 2003
Betrayal is a word that sounds very dramatic to me, associated with being condemned to death. One betrays one’s country, one’s church, one’s faith, the trust of our fellows, our vows, the truth, etc. When you speak about self-betrayal, what do you mean?
Eli and Gangaji: Over the years of speaking with thousands of people we have both had the experience of watching moments of true understanding blossom in many people. A moment of expansion and recognition of oneself, infinitely more than what is confined to an individual body-mind.
Sein Magazine, 2003
Every person I meet desires to be in peaceful relationship with others. So how is it that human relationships, within which there is the chance of a true meeting, turn so often into never-ending war, even if this war only stays cold?
The body, like all living bodies, is a survival machine. As long as we overlook our unexamined identification as a body, the body’s survival circuits subconsciously run us. The ego is the most advanced survival circuit developed by the kingdom of bodies. It allows mankind to rule and destroy the earth. Since the ego is a survival machine, and since most humans are living an egoic life, the patterns for survival take precedence over all others.
Connections Magazine, February 2004
In my first meetings with you, I understood that my chance to meet you was due to a request from Poonjaji in the realm of therapy. What was this request, and how did this request arise in your relation to Poonjaji, or Papaji as you call him?
When I first met Papaji the bliss was overwhelming. I fell instantly into the deepest love and peace in our first meeting sitting on his bed. I soon told him that I only wanted to sleep outside his door and take care of him. He laughed and said he had plans for me beyond my wildest dreams.
He then told me that a candle that lights other candles is really something. But a candle that lights other candles that light other candles is something else again. I understood then his mission. Not just to enlighten all who came in his door, but for those who received the transmission and caught fire to carry the light to others as the flame passes around the world.
Pathways Magazine
By Gangaji and Eli, April 2004
“Simply because you are alive and intelligent enough to read this, you are ready for the next evolutionary leap, from the isolated selfishness that is destroying the world, to the bliss of union, which holds the healing of the earth.”
It is possible to awaken to the depths of one’s true nature through honest and sincere self-investigation. There are two essential questions critical to this investigation: What do I really want? and Who am I?
Surprisingly, most people have never asked themselves this first question with any depth. Indeed, most people live their entire lives without ever questioning what it is they really and finally want. Most make do with whatever shows up. They are content to settle for some version of what their parents had or wanted. Others may rebel and want something totally different from what their parents had.
Visionen Magazine
Interview with Inge Hasswani, March 2004
With the growing interest in satsang-advaitas in Europe, there is some confusion around the meditation subject. I’d like to bring up this concern with you. The traditional Buddhist teaching enhances the role and importance of meditation, the neo-Advaita followers seem to think that there is no need to put in regular time for meditating.
Maybe you could start by defining the subject of meditation and the traditional purpose of the meditation.
To start at the beginning, meditation in Sanskrit is the word Dyana. Dyana is the absence of all thought and the intelligent clarity of open awareness. There is no one doing anything at all.
When Buddhism was brought to China by Bodhidarma, the word Dyana (which is pronounced in the Northern Indian dialects by dropping the last “a”) becomes Chan in Chinese. When Chan was imported to Japan, the same word was pronounced Zen. So the no-mind teaching of Buddhism is the same as the original Sanskrit.
Article and Interview in Australia’s NOVA Magazine
Vol 12 No 6, August, 2005
At first glance, the Enneagram appears to be simply a rather pretty geometric shape, a nine-pointed star with enough symmetry to please the eye, and just enough irregularity in its form to make you curious. But this ancient Sufi design is far more than just an eye catching geometric oddity. According to the renowned teacher of the sacred Enneagram, Eli Jaxon-Bear, it is a profoundly revealing-and potentially liberating-wisdom mirror, reflecting back to us the truth of who were are not, and implying beyond that who we really are.
Eli Jaxon-Bear says the Enneagram is a powerful psycho-spiritual tool that describes the drives and patterns of the human ego, pointing out that which the mind tries very hard to avoid seeing. As he explains it succinctly: “The real purpose of the Enneagram is to wake you up — to wake up from the false identity of fixation and bring you home to freedom.”
Eli Jaxon-Bear interviewed by Bertrand Coquoz
KGS Magazine – Humburg – Germany, 2008
BC: Last night, as I knew that an interview with you was taking place, a subject appeared: Self Realization.
This concept is much used and seems central to the mankind quest for happiness since forever. What does that mean for you?
To realize your Self is the fruition of a human life. Each flowering of a human incarnation contains within it the potential to bear fruit. Until this present time this fruiting was a very rare event. Most human flowers bloomed, reproduced and died without ever reaching the fruiting stage.
Connections Magazine Interview
Germany – May 2010
“ama ergo sum” I love therefore i am.
(Our take on Descartes cogito ergo sum -“I realize, therefore i am”)
What has love to do with the Essence and the identity of Man?
How important is love for being?
To ask how important is love for being is like asking how important is light to fire. Fire and light are inseparable but even more so are Being and Love. Being is Love. Love is Being. This is the true essence of Self. Self is the true identity of Man.
For Connections Magazine 2010
The editor asked,
“Inside and Outside” is it really all one?
Eli responds:
From the perspective of the one asking the question the answer is, “Of course not.” In order to ask this question one must be in a point of duality assuming that the dualistic mind can find the answer. In this state the answer will always be either the direct experience of duality through the senses, or a belief in some idea of unity. Even if Einstein’s Theory of Relativity proves that time and space form one continuum and therefore everything that appears within the time space continuum must be of that same fabric, this abstract mental answer is never satisfying to the questioning mind. So, instead we usually turn toward belief or faith or opinion.
From an 2011 interview with Eli for the book ‘How Do You Pray’ – by Celeste Yacaboni
Before you asked me this question, I never really considered how I have prayed. As I look back on my life I would say I never did pray for most of my life. From the time I was three years old I was questioning if there was a god. I remember once when I was around eight years old locking myself in the bathroom. I went inside and I said, “If you exist I need a sign. Anything at all.” I listened and I looked. I only saw blackness and I heard silence. The longer I listened the deeper I fell into the dark silence. After a while I came back and felt that I did not receive any sign at all and while this was not a sign that God did not exist, I could not know if there was a God or not.
Religion seemed pointless to me. It all seemed fake. So while I would mouth the prayers as long as I was required to attend, I never prayed.
Article for Connections Magazine, April 2011
We all love to laugh. When we are laughing we are not thinking and this brief relief from thought adds to the feeling of happiness that we get from laughing.
A confirming sign of awakening is to laugh so hard you can barely breath as you look back on what you thought was your life. This sort of laughter is very contagious and spreads the deep bliss of the moment to all who join in.