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