bax (or baxishta if he’s feeling uppity) does not consider himself fully awakened, but knows for sure that he’s recognized glimpses of the self. He says this puts him in an awkward position and insists on starting off with this apology,
if what i’ve seen is true
then i’m a hypocrite
every time i speak about it
no better than the man who
having awoken briefly from his dream
rushes back to tell his friends what he saw
“you’re all in my mind”
he informs them
and they laugh at him twice
once for being obviously wrong
and once for being right
and therefore talking to himself
my only defense is that
even hypochondriacs do get sick
and even hypocrites do awaken briefly
bax’s motto is “self is solid”, and he considers himself a student of Ramana Maharshi, whose favorite description of the self was “a dense mass of self-knowledge”. He considers himself a post-new age thinker, and feels that most of what is discussed today goes only halfway to Shankara’s great ‘three laws of self-knowledge’. Specifically, much is said about consciousness but not very much about the self itSelf.
Summary and transcript of this interview
Interview recorded 2/17/2010.
YouTube Video Chapters:
00:00:00 - Introduction and Background
00:04:03 - Self-Discovery, Music, and Health Issues
00:07:13 - Fact and Fiction
00:10:43 - Different Dialects for Different Schematic Regions
00:14:01 - A Near-death Experience
00:16:53 - Affective Flatlining
00:19:10 - Coming out of Nothing
00:22:24 - The World Lacks Existence
00:25:02 - The Experience of Solid Existence
00:28:23 - Recognizing the Glimpse of the Real
00:31:19 - Solidness as the Measure of Reality
00:34:34 - Mini-cycles of Seeking and Depressions
00:37:33 - The Evolution of Personal Development
00:41:11 - The Deep Dark Density
00:44:26 - Unpacking Points: Solidness and Intelligence
00:47:50 - The Paradox of Existence
00:51:01 - The Illusion of Consistent Laws
00:54:25 - Brahman as the World
00:57:54 - The Phases of Seeking
00:58:58 - Uncertainty
00:59:45 - The Marvel of Creation and Divine Intelligence
01:04:08 - Embracing Contrarianism
01:07:02 - Being a Trouble-maker
01:10:18 - The Cycle of Thought
01:13:25 - The Scale of a Thought
01:16:53 - The Presence of Self in Contrasting Situations
01:20:10 - The Clarity of Perception
01:23:22 - The Importance of Defining Words with Care
01:26:13 - The Importance of Truth and Half-Truths
01:28:53 - The Beauty of Existence and Non-Existence
01:31:13 - The Urban Guru Café