For TaKeTiNa – The Power of Rhythm PodcastBy Reinhard Flatischler In this podcast, Eli meets an old friend and uses the metaphor of rhythm and vibration to transmit the possibility of waking up from suffering. Addressing the essential question of “what do you want” and “what to do” in the face of our crumbling world … Read more
by Hélène T. Stelian, July 25, 2018
What is your life’s purpose?
To serve world peace and freedom through everyone waking up.
How are you living your purpose?
I have given my life to pass on what has been given to me: a direct realization of my true nature. I do this by meeting with people in events around the world and by training a staff of trainers in the skills of passing it on.
The Native Society, July 24, 2018
Bio:
Eli Jaxon-Bear is the author of An Outlaw Makes It Home, Wake Up and Roar, Sudden Awakening, and Fixation to Freedom. He has worked as a mailboy, dishwasher, steel-worker, teacher and organic farmer. He was a community organizer with VISTA in Chicago and Detroit before entering a doctoral program at the Graduate School of International Studies in Denver, Colorado. He has been living with his partner and wife, Gangaji, since 1976. They currently reside in Ashland, Oregon. Eli meets people and teaches through the Leela Foundation.
The Primal Happiness Show, Episode 194, 2018This week’s show is Eli Jaxon-Bear, the author of An Outlaw Makes It Home. A life long search for freedom took Eli around the world and into many spiritual traditions from a Zen monastery in Japan to a Sufi circle in Marrakesh, among others. His search ended when he was drawn to India (1990) where … Read more
Conscious Connection Magazine, June 17, 2018 Our Declaration of Independence states that we are all created equal and enjoy the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The sad joke here is that the “pursuit of happiness” almost never leads to lasting happiness, whether for George Washington or anyone else. Before we examine … Read more
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.
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.
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.
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.