We are nearing the end of our tour here in Australia.  We love the people, the culture and the countryside. The sangha here is deep and true.  Many people have reported  first being in retreat with Gangaji at her Blue Mountain Retreat fifteen years ago.

• • •

A college professor at the Research School of Pacific & Asian Studies of The Australian National University in Canberra was relating to his new wife how he had become radicalized. He mentioned my name, she googled me, and he flew to Sydney for a satsang meeting and dinner.

Pete now, Dr. Van Ness then, had been my mentor in charge of my doctoral dissertation at the Graduate School of International Studies in Denver. (Condi Rice was a few years behind me, and he says she was a liberal before she went to the dark side.)

The last time I saw him in a classroom setting, my name was Elliot Zeldow. I was 23 years old. I walked into the room with a jug of wine and a joint to announce that we were shutting the school down and setting up Woodstock West on the campus lawn. It was spring of 1970, and we were protesting both the trial of Bobby Seal of the Black Panthers and Nixon’s announcement of the illegal bombing of Cambodia. ( The shooting of the students at Kent State happened during these nation-wide protests).

Pete came to satsang and was deeply attentive. He wanted to know how my life had turned out. It was such a gift to see him and love him. I am so grateful for all that he did for me in my former life, almost forty years ago. I was twenty-two and I had been working in a steel mill in Pittsburgh when my then- wife applied to graduate school for me. The Graduate School of International Studies gave me a fellowship that brought me out west, and Pete allowed me to pursue my interests with a free hand. I became immersed in China, Pete’s specialty, and that influence has continued throughout my life. (You can’t imagine his surprise that in the early eighties I became a dealer in Ming Dynasty Chinese Paintings, and that there are paintings in a museum attributed to “Eli Jaxon-Bear”)!

Yet how to get from there to Papaji took us a dinner and a few glasses of wine. Forty years of memories came up and out. Not used to wine and having a willing ear, I babbled the whole time.

• • •

I have been getting my weekly chemotherapy while here. It is very interesting to note the differences in protocol in each location. No one in Australia has a dual port in his or her chest apparently, and nurses would come by to view mine. In Sydney they required that I lie on a bed to access it. In Melbourne they put me in a chair like a barber’s chair and pumped me up into the air. Hygiene protocols differ widely as well.

But here is a shocking bit of information on how the pharmaceuticals are over-charging us. In the U.S. I never see the drug except in a syringe. Here, I have to buy it before it is administered, so I got to see the actual medicine in a vial. One vial costs around two thousand dollars. My dosage, which is based on body weight, is pretty high, about half a vial, and the rest is thrown away! The drug company only makes one-size vial that perhaps no one would be capable of using in one dose. The waste is mind-blowing.

The good news is the good-hearted people I have gotten to meet in the chemo rooms. The nurses, staff and patients are open, friendly and helpful.

• • •

Jill and Tim have been great on the tour. Both are so willing and easy. They have interacted with volunteer teams in each city and have handled everything that came their way. Jill has been taking thousands of photos at satsang. We have posted a few on the website.

Although I once dressed up as Santa for a visit to an old-age home twenty years ago, I usually have a hard time with Christmas. As Ali G once said, “it is a miracle that Jesus was born on Christmas isn’t it? And that is why there was no room at the inn right?”

We don’t get bombarded with Christmas jingles here. One Christmas in Oz we rode our bicycles in a park between the river and beach where families were quietly having their Christmas lunch as a picnic on the grass. It was almost nineteenth century in feeling and the best Christmas I have ever had. So please forgive me for not wishing etc. or buying you anything.  = : 0

In deep love and peace for all beings,

eli

Baden Baden, Germany

Sixty of us gathered together to lift the veils. We came in as coaches, trainers, therapists, mothers, printers, pilots and more. We saw through the veils to what is untouched by all identity.  We discovered what it is to be a true friend and the power of trance work to reveal and finish the unfinished business that keeps us clinging to our unresolved egoic identity even after many deep and profound realizations.

For me this event was coming full circle in the teaching as well. Before meeting my beloved, Papaji, the bestower of silence and liberator of all souls, I had spent a decade using trance work and the enneagram to facilitate waking up from the trance of personal identity. 

Because of the response from the people, I see the usefulness of this work. As a result I will be incorporating Lifting the Veils and beyond into the U.S. Three Year Intensive. This started in August with very good results. Also, after this latest Baden Baden retreat I have been asked to start a Three Year Intensive in Baden Baden that will focus on passing on the insights and skills of this work. This will begin next September.

I could not have imagined being able to resume my teaching schedule in the condition my body was in two years ago. Or even less could I ever have imagined teaching Lifting the Veils. By what mystery of the mind projection does it all retake its form and continue its play? It is a mystery filled with gratitude.

I am enclosing email correspondence between myself and someone who attended the retreat. I am also enclosing a few photos that I took of Baden Baden. (The baby just caught me as I was walking by).

In deep love and gratitude for all,
eli
 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Eli,
i want to share with you what is happening after the Retreat in Baden-Baden  which was and still is such an overwhelming gift for me.
 
When I was sitting next to you, you told me about the nightmares which maybe could occur that night. And something really strange happened, not during my sleep, it was not a dream, because i woke up very early, around 3.30 am and i knew immediately after waking up from sleep now the "nightmares" which you mentioned would happen.

The state of consciousness shifted somehow and I found myself as a jew in a concentration camp during the second world war  and i was walking with other jews to the gas chamber. but i was not going  inside to die there because for what reason ever i just led the people  inside knowing that they were going to die there. it was a kind of a "job"  to do that knowing that if i would not do it i would going to die there also. after the death of the people in the chamber my "job" was also to  bring the dead bodies out and to bring them to a place for burying. i dont  know how long and often i did this "job", but finally i died like the other  jewish people in the gas chamber.
after seeing this like a movie and at the  same time being part of that movie it stopped and i got time to integrate  that within me and to learn from it. suddenly i`ve understood all the deep  deep guilt i was experiencing my whole life already, all the fear and panic  of dying, all the feeling of chocking on something and having a lack of air.  I`ve immedieately understood why i was so deeply connected with the  Holocaust my whole life and why it moved me so deeply whenever i came in  contact with. Why I felt all this guilt whenever I met jewish people.

after  that a new movie started and i found myself in the middle ages putting to  death for being a witch and tortured and dying for that. then i found myself  incarnated as an insect and as a fish in the water and i got finally some  insights seeing me in india sitting in a cave and deeply immerged in  meditation. then the movie stopped again to give me the time to learn, to  integrate what i have seen.

after seeing all that i knew deep in my heart  for sure that this body, this mind, this emotions, this .... can never be  what I really am. then the ordinary consciousness came back and i found  myself back in maya, in leela, in trance but now with the deep and certain  knowing what is real. It was mind-blowing and i will never be able to  describe with words what i really saw and experienced there. Since this  moment everything has changed inside of me and all i want is Truth.  Everything else is beside the point.

Now after the  retreat for me it seems as I had never left you since then or that you had  never left me. for the first time i begin to "understand", not with my mind  but with my heart, what it means that the teacher who appears in front of  you is your own Self, seeing you, knowing you and loving you. because thats  just what i experience with you. As my Self you are always with me and I´m  always with you, there is no separation, no distance, only the same heart,  the same love, the same consciousness, the same emptiness, the same silence.  Oh wow!

and so all my worrying about what will happen when the retreat will  be over and you are gone and i find myself back in the daily life and its  activities and the worrying about loosing all the silence, the joy and love  which i`ve found so deeply during the retreat, just dissolved and to my  surprise and now to my great joy and bliss it even deepens more and more and  i find myself really in awe for what is happening inside of me.

of course  the mind is also coming back with its thoughts and stories and fears but  even that is for me just a teacher and a welcoming to go deeper and not as  before something i have to be in war with. and that alone brings that much  freedom, peace and stillness which i`ve never experienced before.

 I become  so bestowed and overwhelmed from my Self with silence and emptiness, with  love and joy even when I`m in places which are completely crowded with  people, noise or hectic and stressful life around me or when i find myself  in really challenging and difficult situations and circumstances, so that  i`m standing sometimes in tears of gratitude, love and joy about all these  gifts I receive.

When I`m alone and at home or in nature for a walk the "I "  dissolves more and more and then i see myself walking or sitting or doing  whatever i do but it is not me who is doing all that, who is acting. theres  nobody who performs all these things and activities, there are no  activities, there are no objects with which i have to do anything. there`s  only emptiness, silence, peace, love and consciousness and out of that  actions, thoughts or emotions arise. everything is perfect, theres nothing  which should be different, nothing to fix, nothing to change, all is as it  should be, everything is an expression of an overflowing love whatever form  it takes, even the ugliest, the most disgusting one...

after all that its  very painful to find myself back in the egoic mind, in the fear mind, in the  life of the fixation, finding me back in betraying my Self and denying my  Self again with doubts and fears and telling stories inside and not to be  able of letting go completely. but as i told already i`ve stopped fighting  with that and so it has started happening to find silence and stillness even  in the old habits and in the tight states of the fear/egoic-mind and that  discovering and experience is really mind-blowing. Silence is everywhere,  nothing is seperated from it, it includes everything!

I thank you so much with all my heart and send you my deep deep  love and gratitude 

Gb

Dearest Gb,



I am so happy to receive your report and your good news!
 Thank you so much for letting me know.

I would like to post part of your email on our website as part of the reports  from the European sangha. Is that OK with you?

You are an inspiration for all who meet you when your mind is silent and your heart is  open.



In deep love and joy---eli


dearest Eli,



but now the last one in this issue! ;-)

at first I did not want you to use my name. now take from the mail whatever might be useful for you with name or without name. it doesn’t matter, it has anyway nothing to do with who i am.,but with your question i felt pride and arrogance arising in me, a kind of being special now and i thought without name it would not be there, it would disappear. but it didn’t of course. ;-)

but it did when i stopped touching it, when i stopped giving it any meaning. then finally the arrogance and the pride and all the imaginary ideas of being special dissolved! following the thoughts I´m bonded in space and time, in me and mine, in concepts and ideas, in separation of me and you, in being happy and unhappy... if i don´t touch any thought, if i don´t allow the mind to land anywhere there is only space and emptiness and silence, there is not-knowing-anything, no concepts, no ideas, no future, no past, not even presence, there is total freedom, there is only Self, never changing, never coming or going, never dying. and this Self is everywhere, in every form, in every sound, in everything. everything is one, never separeted. trying to grasp it, to cling to it it will dissapear, I can only BE that. What a revelation!

Thank you so much for this beautiful test! ;-)

in deep love,
gabi
 

I have been coming to Europe to teach since 1983. As an outsider I could feel the atmosphere of the different cultures that I passed through. Teaching in Budapest, at a communist youth camp and community center, it was unavoidable to feel the depression and despair that hung in the air throughout the city.

There was a different flavor in the air coming into Germany. It was rigid and uptight in strange ways. The people at the front desk of the hotels were often suspicious and seemed hostile as they checked us in. The atmosphere felt oppressive and we were always glad to move on.

I was scheduled to return to Germany in 2007, but at the last minute it was discovered that my body was racked with disease and two days before flying, I had to cancel. I came last year but my body was still very weak and I only met with a small group of former students for a weekend in Hamburg.

In the ensuing years something that started so small has grown. In the eighties, when I worked with people, they were all focused on fixing their story and having a better life by changing their behaviors or circumstances. They had not heard of the possibility of freedom, or it was a concept that they believed required a lifetime of yoga and hard work. Now, there is awakening everywhere. There are too many teachers of non-duality to count.

Coming back after just three years absence the change is remarkable. Close to 500 people came to Gangaji’s and my meeting in Berlin. They were alive and bright and deep. The questions reflected a depth of experience and insight that I had not seen before on such large a scale.

We are in Baden Baden now, in a silent retreat with 150 people from all over Europe. We have been leading retreats like this for years here. But this time is different. People we were just meeting, people we have known for years, people from other teachers, no teachers, young people and old, all are reporting a depth of consciousness and realization that we have not seen before on so large a scale.

And, yes, the hotels greet us with openness and warmth, and the air is freer now as well. Could this be my own projection? Of course. And yet in my twenty-five years of coming here, it is a new and startling experience for both Gangaji and me. 

I am not one given to premature shouts of hope. I have seen all the various predictions come and go over the past forty years. Our commune in Oregon supported Tim Leary’s vision of the comet Kahoutec in 1973, as the coming of the New Age. A decade later Gangaji and I sat on a mountaintop in support of the “harmonic convergence,” and I am aware of the Mayan calendar and all the other predictions of the dawning. I have become a bit skeptical over the years.

But I must say loud and clear, from my perspective the dawn is here now. Consciousness conscious of Itself has spread to a critical mass. People are discovering themselves and living lives of freedom and peace on an unprecedented scale. The fire is alive in many hearts and is spreading.

It is our opportunity to jump into this holy fire ever more deeply, to surrender ourselves ever more fully; to light up the day with the fire of love. The Truth is true and alive in the land. We can celebrate the widespread shining of love by being the love that is alive in each heart. We are the fire and we spread from heart to heart. We may not live to see the daybreak spread across the planet, but we are the sunrise and the fingers of dawn are here.