Interview Transcript

Louis: This is Louis Allport for ForwardView Foundation, and today I’m speaking with Jim Eaton. Hi Jim, thanks very much for your time today.

Jim: My pleasure Louis.

Louis: Often these interviews are broken up into three parts.  As in, initially your story or your journey.  And then maybe focusing more on what you communicate, how you communicate, and I guess that’s related to your perspective, or the perspective you choose to share. And lastly, any suggestions you may make that may be beneficial for people.  For people’s lives, for their well being. And just before we started this interview, you mentioned that really those last two sections blend together for you, if that’s correct?

Jim: Yeah, that’s right.

Louis: So I guess initially, we’ll talk about your personal story.  And then it will lead to the next section, which will be a mixture of what you communicate and suggestions… as you said the two are very much related for you. And it may be quite a big question to start with, but what initiated your seeking?

Jim: Yeah, it is a big question. And maybe this sort of gives a bit of light on what we were just saying about those last two sections kind of blending together. Because for me, there was always this sense of something’s missing. And people I work with, this is a very common thing.  A very common theme, that something feels like it’s an unscratchable itch, right? So there’s always been a longing in me to express myself fully and freely.  Authentically.  To feel fully expressed and not kind of restricted and held back and suppressed. So, the journey has really been to find that free expression.

And I kind of fell into spirituality on the way to that actually, interestingly.  I’ve never been interested in what people call liberation or enlightenment or awakening. That was never really on my radar. I just wanted to feel free of this kind of constriction that I experienced, this kind of inner tension that I felt kind of spiralling inside me. So when I think back, Louis, I can remember, from as long as I can remember, feeling something’s up.  Something’s up, right?

And even as a kid, looking at adults around me and feeling like everyone’s pretending. Why are you pretending? But then of course as I got older, I started pretending too. I got sucked into that way of operating. I couldn’t really have said it at the time, but when I kind of reverse engineer my life, I can see that I was really miserable.  I felt deep down that I was inadequate, unworthy, and kind of superimposed on top of that, because I found out I was clever, at school I found out I was good at academic things, so that became a kind of identity.

And then… I love music. I got into music and playing in bands. So I was up on stage in a really great band. So that kind of added to this kind of clever, cool identity, which I perfectly sculpted. But beneath that exterior, I was just miserable. And so I did well at school and got into a great university, got into Oxford University.  Studied Maths.  So on the outside, it all seemed like I was being very successful. But really in truth, it didn’t count for anything.

So when I left Oxford, I basically carried on with music.  Lots of my friends were going into big jobs, and money, and all the rest of it. And I went on the rock and roll, literally right.  On the dole.  And on the rock and roll, doing music and trying to follow that, because that felt more real for me, more true somehow. And so I did that for a few years. I had a band, we had an agent, and we were touring and writing songs, which was great.

But like everything, because it wasn’t coming wholly from that place of authenticity, it started to fall apart, and whatever the essence that I bring is, wasn’t shining fully through that. So that was a really difficult period, that falling apart.  And what happened then is I got interested in acting. I went to drama school, which was amazing. It was beautiful that I got into drama school not having any experience really in theatre or drama.

I had a friend who sort of coached me a bit to do the auditions.  But when I got there, it was kind of horrific, because there are all these… I was in my mid 20s and there were all these younger people that were just so open and free.  They just didn’t have the same restrictions on their expression that I did. So it was a real challenge to kind of free myself up and get used to feeling that fear of being in front of people and exposed. Things like improvisation, which is terrifying, because you had nothing to hold on to. So looking back, I can see that this was the beginning of my finding seeking proper.  I didn’t really realize it, but I was starting that seeking process.

It was actually after drama school, I was doing a play… in one of the plays I was doing, and he used to sort of disappear after rehearsals every Thursday evening or something. And he would be very mysterious about it. So one day I followed him. I was like a detective, I kind of followed him. Where’s this guy going? And he was going to these meetings, and they were some kind of Gnostic cult it turned out to be.

But I kind of made him come clean and I joined him in that. So that was when I first understood the idea of seeking in terms of spiritual seeking. And that was all about knowledge. That was Gnostic. So knowledge about chakras and self observation, and meditation techniques, and all this kind of stuff. So that was great for a while, and I kind of got into that. But again, it didn’t really feel like enough. And I always get a bit rebellious. When I get into that place, and I start feeling like… I start asking awkward questions, and being a bit mischievous and cantankerous. So I end up having to leave really.

I also got involved… I had a girlfriend whose dad was part of the Gurdjieff Society. I remember chatting to him, and he introduced me to some people, and I joined a group there.  And that was great as well. I don’t know if you know much about Gurdjieff’s work, but they do these movements, which are really beautiful.  Very sophisticated movements, where you’ve got your arms, and your body’s doing this, and it gets increasingly complex. So that you can’t really orchestrate it from your rational mind, right? And you have to start to let go of trying to control it. And then suddenly, you start to experience your body just doing this stuff. So that was really, again, another kind of hint, another kind of glimpse at what it was that I was being drawn towards.

I always had that strong sense of something other.  It sounds a bit romantic, but I always remember looking up at the sky, at the stars or the cosmos, or into the undulating waves of the sea, or the sort of dancing flames of a fire, and just being kind of mesmerized by something greater, that my immediate environment wasn’t talking about.  Nobody was telling me about this. So that was always my kind of strong pull.

But again, with the Gurdjieff society, it’s too obscure, it should be more obvious, somehow.  I needed something more direct. So then after that, it was a really difficult time really, because I’ve never really bought the mainstream lifestyle, right? I never got involved in building a career path, it just felt instinctively, even though I had a lot of academic qualifications, it just never felt that it was for me. So I just remember going through this time, and just seeing people I know, hitting all the milestones of a successful life.  Like earning the money, and then buying the flat, or the car, or getting married and the family, the house, all these kinds of milestones being hit. And I was seemingly going nowhere right.  It was very difficult to not get drawn into just trying to do what everyone else was doing. And I say that, but it wasn’t difficult, actually.  It was the easiest thing of all, I just knew that wasn’t for me. So I’ve always had this very strong pull to inquire, and to explore what reality is.

Actually, I want to credit Gurdjieff because I remember, I hadn’t really read anything in these books at all and it was typical of me and my sort of intensity, I remember going to this bookshop meeting this ex-girlfriend’s father… so I had this name Gurdjieff in my mind, and the only book they had by Gurdjieff was… I don’t know if you know about his books, but there’s this massive tome called Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson.  And it’s a huge book. I mean, it’s the biggest book I think I’ve ever read. And I just bought it and I just sat down, and I used to read this thing, nothing else, just like really intensely.  And it’s so crazy, it’s so out there, it’s so bonkers, that you just cannot get your rational mind around it. Whether that was his intention, I don’t know, I suspect he was a very mischievous character.

But what it does is… if you’ve got quite a powerful mind like I have, a rational mind, you’ll keep trying to make sense of it, but you just can’t. So something happens in that process, because I was reading it so intensely, I kind of gave up, something gave up. And that was really where I first had a very profound experience of what I am, beyond what I imagined myself to be. And it was a real sense of, “Right, there’s no going back now, this is it.  You can’t unrealize what you just saw there, right?”  So I do have a lot of respect for Gurdjieff.

I think this was around sort of 30 years old, and I just remember thinking, “My God, why is it that I’ve been alive for 30 years and nobody has even talked about this? How can that be?  It’s just so extraordinary, how can it be that it’s so hidden, and so not in our common mainstream vernacular.”  So it was around that time that I discovered non-duality. And that felt immediately like what I was looking for, because it’s so direct, so clear.  It’s like everything, all the kind of packaging is stripped away, and you just get the direct message.  The Direct Path, I love that expression, the direct path.

So that really struck home as soon as I came across that message. I was going to see all the usual suspects. I was living in London, at the time I was in Kentish Town. I was going to see all the people who are still around now.  Tony Parsons, and Roger Linden, he was living very close to where I lived. And Unmani, she was around at that point, she became a good friend. And then Rupert Spira… yeah, a long time ago.

And so slowly that realization I’d had started to get clearer and clearer. And I can feel as I’m speaking, something in me wants to start going into the material, but maybe I just won’t do that for now, because of the way you want to do this. Because there’s kind of two stages… I split this into three bits, right? One I call, Discover Who You Really, Really Are. And the reason I put “really, really are” is because sometimes when we say who you really are, we mean, the kind of authentic version of the personal self right, rather than the facade that we offer.

But I’m talking about who you really, really are, right? So that would be the first part of what I offer.  Then the second part I call The Alchemy of Transformation. So that’s when the way you’re showing up in life actually does transform. And then the third part, I would call A New Paradigm for Living. So that’s talking about a new model of reality, a new way to understand reality. It’s still a model, so it’s not the truth. It’s a conceptual model, but we like models. And having a powerful model that is more explanatory than the current mainstream materialist model that we grow up with.

So the reason I’m saying that now is because Discover Who You Really, Really Are, this first bit, which is what I’m sort of talking about, it seems to have two phases. People can realize that their nature is awareness, this kind of eternal essence that they are, but there can still be this sense of separation in that the world still seems outside of them. So they’re like the witness, it’s often called The Witness. And so that was what opened for me first.

And then it was a few years after that, when the kind of witness sort of collapsed into wholeness. So that needed a different kind of seeing, and that’s where I think a lot of people get blocked, because it requires you to realize that what you think is reality, isn’t. And that can be really terrifying. It’s not terrifying, it’s totally inspiring, but initially, it can seem terrifying. Maybe we’ll talk more about that later as well.

So that happened, and then that’s when things kind of change, right? Because you see the wholeness, you recognize wholeness, and you see that it’s always already that way. And it’s just out of habit that you get drawn into a kind of mind version of reality. And so you seem to not acknowledge or appreciate the wholeness that’s already here. So when you really acknowledge that and deeply appreciate that, that kind of seeking… there’s nothing to seek in that sense anymore.

But it’s not the end of the story, in fact, I would say it’s the beginning. And I don’t mean to say that to put people off right.  Because what happened to me was there’s a kind of a real blissful wonder in that realization. Absolutely, and it’s very profound. But I was fortunate enough to then meet my wife, and have two children, and basically have all of my shit reflected right back in my face. So all of the fear based patterning, all of the kind of stuff that had grown out of the misbelief that I was a separate limited entity.  All of that stuff doesn’t just disappear. That’s my experience and it’s the experience of everyone that I’ve worked with. Although I’m not going to say that’s the way it is.  There are people out there that say otherwise and I totally respect that. I can just say, it’s not been my experience.

So there was a real humbling… to get really humble, and humility, to realize that yes, even though there’s a realization, it’s been a very profound realization.  I haven’t even begun this other journey. And that other journey is from that realization, from that ground of being, to start to really meet and acknowledge all of these kind of split off aspects to the psyche, that are kind of completely dissociated. And it’s that stuff that’s running your life. So I would say, if you have a really, really deep, profound love of truth and freedom, then you can’t neglect that secondary part to the journey.

Because for me, like I said at the beginning, that was the driving force all along… to express unashamedly, unreservedly, unapologetically right.  To be who you are, that essence to shine into life fully and freely. So when I realized that that wasn’t happening, then that became the next journey.  And it’s a different journey.  I would say it’s not like seeking in the same way. It’s more of a kind of archeological dig to these sort of layers that have been suppressed, or so suppressed, that they’ve become repressed.

That’s why I would say, you can’t have any sort of judgment about it. If you had spoken to me, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago, I would have said, “I don’t have any of that”.  I was so naive, right? As in, “No, I’m fine mate, everything’s good here”.  But that wasn’t because I was being dishonest, it was so unconscious, that I just didn’t know it was there. So this is the Alchemy of Transformation. The second part.  So my journey on that, it’s been over the last 15 years, 10, 15 years, I can’t really remember the numbers of years. But really, going into deeper and deeper layers of this unconscious material and bringing it into consciousness.

Well, those aren’t the right words, it’s all consciousness, but this kind of obscured part, this dissociated part of consciousness, bringing that, illuminating that, bringing it into that light of consciousness, that discovery. And that’s really the journey I’ve been on ever since… ever deepening, ever widening, and kind of living this truth and seeing more and more the magical nature of reality, as opposed to thinking of it as being this kind of entity moving through this independently existing physical world, right? Actually really living a very different way of seeing.

And also, just to round off the story side of it. I would say, I started to get interested in how can you present a different way of interpreting life. So still acknowledging that it’s a map, but because our current map called scientific materialism, which most people don’t even realize is a map. They think it’s just the truth, right? We’ve kind of mistaken the map for the territory. So what I’m interested in now, and is the third part, A New Paradigm For Living, is asking this question, can we come up with another model that doesn’t…

Well, let’s look at materialism, right? It makes us feel isolated. It takes away meaning from life. It’s, I would say, part of the cause of so much mental illness and depression and anxiety in the world. And the kind of selfish way in which we learn to live our lives.  According to the scientific paradigm, what else could there be to do other than grab as much stuff as you can before you die? I mean, life would seem pretty meaningless and absurd from that perspective, if you really think about it. And I think most people don’t realize the implications of that perspective. Maybe that’s something else we can talk about briefly, when we get to it.

So the question is, is there some other model we can present that kind of resolves those issues, and makes us realize our wholeness – that we are all intimately connected?  Not even connected, we’re all partial expressions of the same wholeness. And I think that would have a huge effect on the way we collectively operate. So those last two are where my focus has become more, in recent years. Although, I still very much honor that first… discovering who you really, really are, because it’s like the entry point for me into those other two aspects. How does that sound Louis, is that good?

Louis: Yeah, that’s really interesting. And I’ve been making a lot of notes as you’ve been speaking. And I think, rather than sticking to the structure I sent you, I think the notes I’ve been making are going to cover a lot of that. So maybe that’s the best way to proceed. And some questions have popped up. And also, I mean, probably quite a few questions, actually. But initially, could you just clarify the difference as you see it, or how you talk about it, you said the Witness versus the Wholeness?

Jim: Yeah, yeah. So there’s this kind of self-inquiry that maybe some of your listeners, or readers, if they’re reading or listening, will be aware of where you start to look at your experience, and you see that the sounds, if you just close your eyes, you can notice the sounds that you’re hearing are coming and going. And when a sound disappears, right, you don’t disappear, whatever you are doesn’t disappear. Maybe I should say, to really get the most out of this, you have to really become very childlike. And so let go of your presumptions and just meet the experience freshly. And you notice that the sounds come and go, but you don’t. So it’s kind of telling you that you’re not the sounds, right? Because if you were the sounds, when they’re not here, you wouldn’t be here either. So you’re not made of sound right.  And you can do the same thing with sensations, if you sort of pinch the back of your hand, right, there’s a sort of sharp sensation. And as I’m just doing it now, as that sharp sensation fades away, you don’t.

So that sensation is something that comes and goes, but you don’t come and go, you’re not the sensation. Feelings, right? A feeling of joy, right? I’m really happy, I’m really happy. And 10 minutes later, I’m really sad for some other reason.  And then when the joy disappears, I don’t disappear.  When the sadness disappears, and there’s a kind of neutral feeling, I don’t disappear, right? So I’m not the feeling.

And you just keep going. Well, what about the smell?  What about the taste? Well, no, that comes and goes too.  And then you get to thoughts, right? So the gap between two thoughts.  In that gap, I don’t disappear either. So if I was made of a thought something would disappear, I would black out or something would kind of… I don’t know, some kind of light would go out, but it doesn’t. So that’s just a very brief sketch over self inquiry. So you see that, what I am, isn’t any of these things. So what is it? And then often the mind goes looking for something, because that’s what we’re used to doing, but of course, anything you find is another sound, smell, taste, color, sensation, thought right? And you’re not that.

So then I encourage people to just notice that grabbing and that trying to grasp, and then you just relax, you go the other way, you let go of trying to understand, let go of needing to know. And as you let go more and more, here now, just allowing yourself this natural resting, and then what’s left is just being aware. Or I like to switch those words around, just call it aware being.  Aware being. That’s what’s here.

If you get a sense of that now, as we’re meeting, so if we’re not trying to understand anything. But it’s difficult for me not to go into process here like working with you. I’m so used to doing it. I’m not used to talking, I don’t run meetings like this, they’re very, very interactive. So it’s quite unusual for me just to talk like we do in an interview. But from that space of aware being, it still seems like those sounds and smells and tastes and thoughts and feelings, they’re all out there. So the witness is like witnessing life happening. So it’s a helpful step, because what it does is it kind of dissolves this conviction that you’re somewhere inside the body, looking out through two eyes.

Philosophers call it Naive Realism.  As you’re looking at the screen now, or say someone’s listening to this, or reading it in a book, right? It seems like the book, or the phone, or the screen is out there in front of you, and you’re in here, sort of listening to it through your ears or seeing it through your eyes, right?

Often I ask everyone to just be really honest, point to where in your physical body you are. And most people point to this, to their head, inside the skull somewhere. Some people might point to their heart. Occasionally, people will point to their gut. And just the fact that people point in different places says something already, right?

Actually for one of my online courses, I went to Exeter Town Center, my local town center and I went around asking people that question, “Point to where in your physical body you are”.  And most people point to the head, some people point to the heart, some people point to the stomach. And I had one guy actually pointed to his feet.  And I asked him, “Why did you point to your feet?”, and it was raining and his feet were wet. So where he was identifying was where there was a most prominent feeling. This kind of wetness in his feet, that was what was showing up most. So that was where he was identifying himself.

So it just shows you that we have this very, very fluid way of identifying ourselves. Some of us it’ll be in your head because of the perspective of the experience. Some of us it will be the heart because maybe we’re identifying with a kind of a felt sense of compassion or loving kindness or something. Maybe we’re feeling a lot of anxiety that we might point to the guts, like literally gut feeling.  So it just shows you, it’s a very subjective idea where this entity inside the body is. So it’s a useful way of starting to free up the conviction we have about who we are.

So that’s what kind of strengthens this idea of being the witness, “I’m the entity that’s looking at life.”  So that self inquiry takes you away from being an entity in the body, so the sensation of being in the head, is a sensation appearing.  Or the loving kindness that you’re sensing in the heart is a feeling appearing.  Or the anxiety in your belly is a feeling appearing, or a sensation appearing. And so you’re none of that, you’re what’s aware of that, you’re the awareness, you’re the witness.

But then that won’t leave you satisfied. We talk about our nature as infinite, eternal, right? How can it be infinite if there’s some boundary between you as a witness and life out there, life happening out there.  So we have to turn our attention away from exploring ourselves as a subject, and on to the objects of the world.  So I’m kind of skipping over lots of things here. I’m talking about subject-object now.

So what I mean by that is, this is what are our kind of traditional… the kind of way we interpret life, this is our map that we learn and grow into in our culture.  Which is that there are essentially two kinds of things, subjects and objects.  So, Louis, Jim, we’re subjects.  And my mouse, computer mouse, my keyboard, these are all objects.  And so I’m aware of the object.  So as the witness, all we’ve done is we’ve taken that a bit further, and we’ve said, “What I thought was me, Jim, or Louis, is another object. And I’m like the kind of ultimate subject that even the subject I thought I was, is also appearing to.”  So that’s the witness. Does that make sense Louis?

Louis: It does, I think it does. Yeah.

Jim: So I have not talked about dissolving the witness now. So I just want to make sure the witness bit is clear.

Louis: So if I’ve got it correctly, when you say the witness, it’s witnessing without attachment to any particular object?

Jim: Yeah, you could say that. It’s just pure witnessing.  So, I can just feel hundreds of things firing off in my head all the time, so I want to kind of stick to what we were talking about. So what we then do is we turn our attention away onto the objects that we’re supposed to be witnessing, right?

And so the invitation again, is to become childlike. And so when we become childlike, what we start to realize is… and I’m going to talk about it because it’s an interview, rather than a week long retreat. When we start to drop into that experience, without trying to make sense of it, we realize that what we’re calling objects are literally spontaneously arising perceptions. So these sounds that we’re calling my voice, without a story attached to them, they’re just spontaneously arising sounds. Or if you’re listening to this, these sounds that you’re listening to right now are spontaneously appearing in the moment.

So the mind puts a story around it. It says, “No, no, they’re not.  They’re sounds coming out of my speakers… blah blah”.  And there’s a whole sequence of story around it. And there’s nothing wrong with that story, that’s included too. But when you drop any interpretation, you see that it’s just literally spontaneously arising right now. As is the feelings, as are the sensations, as are the smells and tastes… as are the colors, the colors that create this as if experience of a spatial environment, right? That’s a really, really tough one. Because we’re so used to this naive realism of, “No, I’m inside a skull looking out through eyes, listening through ears, at something out there.”

And that’s where we keep going back to you, but when we drop our interpretation, that’s not what reveals itself. So I sometimes like to help people to that realization by actually reminding them of what mainstream science says.  Not because I’m trying to support that view, I mean, it’s an interesting story.  But it is helpful because people put so much stock in science, right? It’s been so successful over the last three centuries, that worldview.  All the gadgets and gizmos and technology and things that we’ve invented, that people trust science.  Science knows, but maybe not so much in recent times.

If you look at your biological textbook, it would tell you that your eyes and ears and skin and nose and everything, is absorbing data from the environment, and it all gets sent to your brain. And then supposedly this miraculous process happens in your brain, where this material thing supposedly, suddenly creates this virtual reality.  So even if you’re going with regular science, mainstream science, what you’re experiencing right now, the depth, the vivid detail, everything, is a virtual reality, it’s spontaneously appearing.  It’s rendering itself on the fly, spontaneously.

So it’s really, really important to get that, and this is what a lot of people get stuck on. Because it seems too crazy, too woo-woo or something. But it’s not, right? This is mainstream science. So the tingling sensations in your face… if you walk down the street, the sense of movement of your limbs, the smells that pass you, the images of passers-by, the shops, the cars, the trees, the sky, all of it is spontaneously appearing. Now, when I explain it in that way, then the invitation is then to let go of the scientific story now. So just stay in this virtual reality experience, stay with that.

And what we do then is you just bring these seeming two together, right? So the sense of what you are, the awareness, the witness, and this spontaneously arising happening, this flow of perceptions that creates life… and you basically bring those seeming two together and you just ask yourself, “Can I divide them apart?”.  So if I’m Jim, sitting on a chair, looking at Louis out there in the world, then yes, I can divide them apart. I’m over here, you’re over there, and there’s about, well, if we were in the same room a couple of meters between us.  Or the screen is there that I’m looking at you on, that’s a half a meter away, there’s a separation. But now switch, switch to the work we’ve just done. You’re aware being. Where’s aware being? Just here. Can’t point to it.

And where is this image appearing?  It’s appearing here. Even with its sense of spatial position.  All of that’s appearing here. So how are you going to measure a distance between here and here? Where are you going to start measuring? Where’s awareness? Where’s aware being? Where are you going to stop measuring?  Normally, these questions start to not make any sense, and you just let the whole thing collapse together.  So this kind of seeming glass wall that divides life from the witness of life, you let it collapse, and you let it fill.  It’s like the emptiness fills with all the sounds, all the smells, all the sensations, all the thoughts and feelings, all the colors, everything. You let the emptiness of the awareness fill with all of life. And then what’s left is this wholeness, this fullness. So that’s what I’m talking about with that extra step.

Louis: So, I’ve got some notes here, listening to what you’ve been saying. I guess I’m just trying to rearrange it in my head into a series of questions. So maybe as a starting point, let’s say you’re speaking or you’re working with someone who’s brand new to this, and whatever it is that drew them to this, and let’s assume this is happening when we’re actually allowed to be around people again. So let’s say you’re in the room with them. Do you tailor the way you speak about this or the way you work with them entirely on the person or do you have a set approach? How do you tend to approach this?

Jim: I tend to speak at the beginning about what brings us all into this.  That sense of yearning, of longing, of recognizing that nothing in life is giving us that sense of true satisfaction, of contentment, that we’re longing for. Whatever the relationship is, whatever success we might have in our careers, or whatever money or power or whatever it is, even family life, children…  There’s nothing wrong with any of those things, they’re all beautiful in their own way. But they can’t scratch that unscratchable itch, right?

Often we then move into therapy, or spirituality… the journey, instead of looking outwardly it starts looking inwardly.  And again, that can bring a lot of ease into our life, and we can feel better. But it still doesn’t quite do it, right? And other people might just try and escape through obvious things like drugs and alcohol, but less obvious things like just being busy, just being really busy all the time.  Overworking, overthinking, just keeping themselves occupied, so that they don’t have to recognize that underlying sense of dissatisfaction.

So normally, I talk about that kind of thing to make people realize that they’re in the right place, they can relate to that.  But then, you have to swiftly move into, “Well, what’s causing that issue? What’s the real cause of that?”  And that’s when we come to that subject-object split, because as soon as you take on that belief that you’re a subject, in a world of objects and other subjects, what you’ve done there is you’ve isolated yourself.

And it’s that sense of isolation that creates those feelings of anxiety, of longing, and that something’s missing, because it is missing, right? You split yourself off from the whole. So that’s kind of the premise, that’s kind of where you have to start, empathizing with what people are experiencing, and then introducing them to the true cause of what they’re experiencing.  And then the question is, what are we going to do about that?  We’ll have to look into it, and that’s what we’ve just been talking about, how do we look into that.  And in looking into it, that subject-object sort of collapses together. And then we’re no longer experiencing ourself as that separate isolated unit, we experience ourself as the wholeness.  So that’s really in a nutshell, what that journey is about.

Louis: Okay, so I’m going to take that and relate it to something I’m familiar with. And then I guess, give it back to you with that language, because it may help me as well speak about this. So would you say your focus then is making people… bringing to their attention, their sense of separation?

Jim: Yes, good. Part of your last question was, “Do I treat people differently according to where they’re at?” So it’s related, because what I find is that people can enjoy exploring everything I’ve just said, all the things I’ve just said up till now, in this interview, and they can kind of intellectually appreciate it actually, and find it fascinating.  It might be a bit scary, but they’re kind of, “Nice”.  But then they still feel that there isn’t this completeness, right?

So this is where, when I work in meetings, I don’t sit at the front like the all-knowing kind of guru disseminating the knowledge.  I invite people up to sit with me and I get them to listen intuitively to what’s happening.  So not necessarily to their rational mind, but if they do have rational mind questions, that’s okay, we can deal with that too.  But to really listen, what’s coming up, what fears are here, what self-judgments are here… so this is utterly tailored to the individual person that’s speaking, to exactly what they need and where they’re at.  But this starts to go into that second territory that we haven’t talked about yet.  So I’m just going to put that on hold for a second.  What were you asking then for that second question?

Louis: Well, you say it goes into the second territory, I’m happy to keep a fluid structure with this interview if that helps…

Jim: Just to finish up what you were saying… so they can have an appreciation of what I’m talking about.  That it’s the fact that they believe they’re separate that creates that sense of longing and lack. And this feeling that something’s missing. So they can explore that, and maybe it can even have an insight and a felt sense of the wholeness I’m talking about. But what happens is that it’s not enough, Louis, it’s not enough.

And so if you’re honest, you have to admit that.  And there are a lot of people walking around that understand non-duality, and they understand they’re already whole, already complete, that there’s nothing to get, there’s nowhere to go, it’s already done. And yet, in their lives, there’s still longing.  And so I try and get people to acknowledge that, to really be truthful with themselves.  And this is where we now start getting into that secondary territory which says, “I realize that although I understand this, and I can see the truth of it, and maybe I even experience it sometimes… actually, in the majority of my life, I still feel sad, or longing, or unexpressed, and that I’ve got so much more to offer.”

I mean “I”, as in my real nature, to offer as Louis-ness or Jim-ness, as this expression.  And it’s not happening, why isn’t it happening? So that’s me going to that secondary territory. And what we realize is, the reason it isn’t unfolding is because there are all kinds of dissociated fragments of the psyche that are still running around in their kind of short circuit, based on whatever it was that you experienced, that fragmented you.  So whenever we get overwhelmed, particularly when we’re much younger, and we can’t deal with the situation, we split, something splits.  It’s a kind of unique talent that we have, instead of busting the hardware, instead of the system getting broken because it’s too overwhelming, right?

We have a sort of safety mechanism, which is to split. We freeze it down. I had this image once of frenetic activity that’s so overwhelming.  If you freeze it all down, then it slows and it slows and it slows, until it’s ice, and then it stops.  And then it’s like a relief.  So this is what we do, we get overwhelmed.  And then part of us freezes in that moment. And it dissociates, it’s like a fragment that gets buried in what we could call the unconscious, it’s the part of the psyche that we’re not aware of.  And I would say that the reflection of that is the physical body, so there will be a corresponding clench or a tightness somewhere in the physical body.

So if you add up all of those fragments that build up over a lifetime, or maybe longer than that depending on your view of reality, then you have a very dense, tense, physical body.  And what that does is it reinforces the sense of separateness.  If you just clench your fist right now, in the clenching of the fist, it feels more present, more here.  So if you imagine that you’re clenching subtly your whole body, or maybe not so subtly, just don’t realize.  Clenching your whole body makes you feel more separate.  And it’s like a suit of armor, it’s literally a protection.

So doesn’t matter what you see, the truth of what you see, and understand, that stuff is still there.  This is what I experienced.  Some people claim they have one huge, energetic explosion and the whole thing just sort of unravels all in one go.  Well, great.  That’s not my experience.  My experience is, there is a journey of listening.  This is what I mean now by deep listening.  So it can be very powerful when we work together.  I’m like the guide, and I’m showing how when you meet what’s here from that place of wholeness, which isn’t a place, from our true nature which is completely unconditional.  So it’s whole and complete, has nothing to get, has no reason to judge or have conditions. So it’s completely accepting, by nature, it’s not something that you have to do.

And it’s from there that you allow these aspects, these characters, to slowly emerge. And you greet them from this unconditional welcoming. And my God Louis, when you start that process, when that door opens, it’s really wow.  You’ll find down there the narcissist, the self-judger, the tyrant, the inner dictator, the sad little one shivering in the corner that feels hopeless and broken.  Just so much that’s been denied and repressed and buried.

And here’s the wonder, because as you meet and integrate the fearful one, it becomes a doorway, a doorway into reclaiming your true essence energies of strength and power and courage and passion and excitement.  As you’re able to meet the kind of shame and guilt that you feel, that we all feel that’s all buried down there, and we start to connect with this kind of sensuality, creativity, self expression, personal boundary setting, right?  We respect ourselves suddenly, and then we hold strong boundaries.  Self expression, it’s clear.  We’re not afraid to stand, to express ourselves clearly, honestly, authentically.  Sadness, grief, that becomes a doorway into compassion, sensitivity, tenderness, softness.

It’s like all of these incredible energies that are a part of our essence, they sort of come online.  They come online, we’re able to access them.  And so the way we show up in life starts to be a free expression of our aware being.  So this is where it gets really exciting because then it’s like you’re kind of an unconstrained, undistorted agent of wholeness in the world.  That’s why I call what I do authentic living because I think, all the great spiritual traditions, this is where they’re head towards.  It’s non-action in Buddhism, it’s Wu Wei of Taoism.  It’s when all your activity is coming straight out of the ground of being, rather than being constrained by the fear-based patterns of a personal self.

Louis: Okay.  So just to help me understand this… when I speak about this, in interviews or just in general, I guess I separate the… just to to help me categorize things, I put the non-duality aspect with the philosophical part of it, or the philosophical discussions in one section, and the more practical things which may help you have a more well being, a better life, and so on, in another section.  And I think I’m trying to understand how you would work with someone.  For you, do those two work in parallel?  Or are they all the same thing?  And how do you work with people?  And maybe I’m just reiterating a lot of what we talked about, but if you can maybe give me examples of how you communicate with different people, depending on maybe where they’re coming from?

Jim: Yeah, it’s a good question Louis.  I don’t want to separate them anymore, I want to really mix them together.  Because what I found is… giving the analogy, a friend of mine is a therapist and he told me this story once about another therapist friend of his that told him, this guy was coming to him, very intelligent guy, super super clever, very wealthy, very successful.  And they went through a whole eight-week intense thing of therapy, I think it was even longer than that, I can’t quite remember.  And this guy telling him all these things and everything, and they went through all this kind of deep, deep stuff.  And then they got to the final session.  And then right at the end of the final session, the guy finally admitted… he said, “My wife won’t sleep with me, and it’s doing my head in.”

And the reason I’m saying that is because sometimes I feel people get locked up in the philosophy.  They want to try and understand the nature of reality.  They want to try and understand what on earth Jim’s talking about.  They want to get it.  And the thing is, I don’t think that’s what they really want.  What they really want is to live a fully expressed life, and to feel that wonder of their being shining into life.  I think that’s what we all really want.  I think that’s what the universe wants, right?  I think it wants to really express, fully and freely, and really be all that it can be.  And I don’t mean that as a judgment, but I mean it’s when we misunderstand who we are, that it creates all this restriction.

So I see it as a kind of means towards the real discussion which is, what is still being suppressed and needs to be welcomed in?  But the reason it’s important, and this is why I don’t divide the two, is because you need to have that ground of being as your support in order to open up the unconscious, what I would call the unconscious.  Because otherwise it would be too horrific, it would seem too much.  You’d think you would go mad or something.  But when you’re grounded in being, then it’s okay.  There’s this unconditional welcoming, and everything’s allowed to come.

And what I’ve also seen is as people feel supported in opening to what’s here, their sense of establishment in their being also grows.  So that’s why I would not divide the two.  They start to face into a deep fear that they’re holding and they see that it’s okay.  And they allow more of it to come, and more of it to come, and you see it’s okay, and you see it’s okay.  And what that’s doing is they’re becoming less and less identified with the fear-based character, and they’re becoming more and more identified with being the ground of presence, of being.  So this is why I would say they’re intrinsically linked.

So the last part of your question, if you came and sat with me in a meeting, I would… well first of all, we would look at each other.  I would invite you to meet me, directly.  We’re not staring at each other, it’s just a kind of gentle gaze.  And we start to listen, what’s here?  If that’s too awkward, or if it’s distracting, you can close your eyes, it doesn’t matter.  But all I want you to do is so simple.  Just listen, deeply listen to what’s here.  Intuitively, not with the rational mind.

And maybe there’s nothing.  So we start with nothing, there’s nothing.  Or there’s a numbness.  And then slowly, we start to notice other things, because we’re listening.  And maybe there’s a sadness that starts to come through, and then we’ll kind of roleplay.  And I’ll start asking questions, sentences that seem to come very naturally, and then we’ll see where it leads.  Maybe the sadness opens up into a sense of shame.  And maybe that opens up into a sense of being kind of wrong or bad.  And that I need to be something, I need to prove myself or I need to be special, in order to get love or get attention.

And all this stuff, when you’re very still and listening, it just reveals itself so easily.  And if there’s an atmosphere which is welcoming and conducive to that, then it unfolds very easily.  And then we welcome those characters in, so people might get very upset.  Might be a lot of grief coming up.  Or they might get very angry, really furious.  So we allow that energy to come up but we’re not getting lost in it, we’re not getting possessed by it, we’re not acting it out.  No.  We’re being with it, integrating it.

And like I said before, like fear, anger, it’s another beautiful energy that when we can meet it and integrate it, becomes a doorway into that strength and power, into that kind of excitement and passion.  It’s like virility, lifeforce.  So that’s how I work.  I mean, if we had time, I’d do it now.  You’re welcome to join me, I do very regular sessions on Zoom, you’re welcome to join.

Louis: Okay, so outside of meetings, do you also offer approaches or techniques you found helpful to people, and do you share those?  And related to that, and tell me if I’ve got this wrong, is a lot of what you do, a lot of your approach, is it very feeling-focused?

Jim: Is it feeling focused?  Well, yeah feelings are included.  But what we’re really doing is working with the felt sense of separation in the body.  Because the sense of separation of body, like I said earlier, is a reflection of what’s still being held onto in the psyche.  They’re two sides of the same thing.  So the psyche and the patterning we’re holding in the psyche, is a reflection of the tensions, and the felt sense of holding in the body.  So what we’re doing with that philosophy is we’re talking about the ideas and we’re unravelling the intellectual hooks in the mind.  And with that secondary process, we’re going for the felt sense of separation in the body and unwinding that.  And so the way we’re doing that is by listening to what naturally reveals itself, the characters that naturally reveal themselves when they’re given the opportunity and the space to come up and reveal themselves.  I don’t know if you want to call that feeling-based, or sensation-based, or psychosomatic.  We can call it whatever you like, I just call it transformation.

Louis: Okay.  Obviously, this interview isn’t at all about me, but I guess I was trying to relate it to my experience.  A lot of my releasing experience has been very feeling-based.  I can maybe touch upon that a little bit later.  But I just wondered on your approach.  And so outside of a meeting, do you offer techniques or approaches that allow people to sit on their own and…

Jim: Yeah, yeah. I mean not even outside of the meeting.  Everything that I discover, that I think is useful and helpful, I bring into the meetings, that’s what we’re doing.  So the meditations that I do at the beginning of sessions are kind of designed to bring us into that childlike simplicity, that innocence.  So that we’re letting go of all the investment in our ideas and beliefs and presumptions.  So they’re designed to soften that.  Or some of them will be designed to allow this sense of aware being, kind of percolating into the body like a sort of healing balm.  Oozing into the tensions and the clenches, and just allowing them to soften, this unconditional welcoming.

So all those kinds of things, and the process that we do, when people come up, when we sit together, what we’re doing really is modelling what they can do themselves, anytime they choose.  It does seem that in the sessions, because there’s a group there, and they’re being witnessed, it does act as a kind of catalyst.  So it’s an amplifier, you’re able to see what you’re holding much more powerfully.  It’s much more present, so you get to see it.

And you also have the support to really meet it more deeply than maybe you’ve allowed yourself previously.  So that’s really powerful for the meetings.  But then the invitation is that people see what’s possible in the meetings, and then they slowly start to take that on for themselves.  I make no bones about the fact that you, you listening to this now, not just you Louis, but whoever is listening to this… or the you beyond the personal self… which is me.  You, me, I, talking to itself again.  But, whatever we are is the true master.  That’s why I love the word intuition, inner tuition, inner tutor, inner master, right?  You’re the one.  So nobody else is going to give it to you.  So there are guides like me along the way.  But my job in a way is to keep handing it back to you.  Because you’re the one.  Yes, you.  You who’s hearing this now, or reading this now.

And just feel that, when I give it back again, that’s the point.  And so we come together to support each other in that recognition, again and again and again, until it becomes more and more established, more and more felt.  I’m always bringing new stuff in.  I’m a singer, right, I’m a musician.  So I write songs, I sing songs in sessions as well which helps to really open the heart, enables people to really allow deep, deep feelings to kind of well up, deep holdings to unravel.

I use music, recorded music as well.  I’ve started using movement more and more, encouraging people to allow whatever wants to move in their body to move.  Doesn’t have to look like anything.  Maybe it’s curling up in a corner and trying to hide, allowing these characters that come out in the physicality, as well as talking about it or feeling it.  So I’m really interested in allowing my retreats and sessions to become richer and richer in that way.

Louis: That kind of leads to a question I’ve written down as you’ve been talking.  Where did your approach come from, how did you develop your approach… Yeah, I guess where did it come from?  How did you find it?  How have you developed it, and how has it potentially changed over time?

Jim: Yeah, that’s a good question. I started off, like I shared at the beginning, just feeling unhappy and wanting to express myself.  So my search for that led to… first academic, so I was developing my mind, my rational mind, thinking the rational mind will solve the problem.

And then into music, self expression.  And then into acting, which is self expression throughout the whole body in a sense.  So in a way I can see I was picking up different skills along the way.  And then when I got into spirituality, and seeking proper I would say, knowing I was seeking, then the way that really resonated with me was the non-duality.  So really, the three sections I’m speaking about are kind of a reflection of my own journey.

So the first way I speak is the kind of non-duality message.  Which I give my own flavor to, the way I break it down is very me.  So that really is speaking to the rational mind.  And I’m trying to get the rational mind to understand that what it thinks is true, is what it’s believing is true.  It’s not what’s true.  I mean that in itself is a kind of awakening.  Because, like I think I said earlier, most people believe that the way they think life is, is the way life is.  They don’t realize it’s the way they think life is.

And so, when you start to realize that the things you take for granted, I don’t know, the divisions between countries or nations, or date lines, the clock system, the number system, the words we use for things, the concepts we use, the ideas… these are like building blocks that we’ve constructed our whole modern society out of.  They’re maps, they’re all maps.  It just so happens that over so many centuries, or so many millennia, a period of time… well 50,000 years supposedly since we really exploded with self reflection, and conceptual… it’s become so dense that map, that now growing up we forget it’s a map and we think it’s reality.

So actually realizing that you can never understand reality with the mind.  You can say, “It’s A”, but then why is it A?  “Well, because of B”.  But why is it B?  “Because of C”.  You either go on ad infinitum, you can never come to a kind of answer.  Or you say, “Oh, it’s C because of A”.  And you get caught in a circularity.

See, if you really understand that, it’s so liberating.  That you can use different perspectives without having to say they’re right or wrong.  You can use whichever perspectives are most optimal, I love that word, optimal.  Like what’s optimal now?  Well, going to the GP, and I don’t know… getting my arm plastered because I broke it, right?  That’s the most optimal response.  But then I might want to connect with my ancestors, so I won’t go to the GP, because they’ll just think I’m nuts, right?  I’ll go to the… I don’t know, a shaman, and do some ceremony, because it is a different world view, right?  It doesn’t mean that it’s wrong and the other one is right, or vice versa.  They’re different world views that have different functions.

And that’s liberation itself, it opens you up to an infinitude of perspectives.  So, I’m not dissing the rational mind, quite the opposite.  In fact, that was one of my revelations.  Because I did go through a period where I was… and this often happens, when you see through something that you believed in, you then trash it.  And so I did exactly that, and I was really critical of my critical mind.  You see the irony in that?  And so it was a real liberation for me to be able to really fall in love with my intellect again, and see that it’s another function, it’s another tool.

I’m quite helpful with people who get caught up in that.  There’s so many cul-de-sacs to that.  Even in nihilism where you say nothing means anything, it’s still the rational mind.  It’s like, “If I can’t have it my way, I’m going to destroy everything, make it all meaningless.”  So it’s still ruling the roost.  And what we’re talking about is getting beyond the rational mind.  So I’m still very much happy to talk to people in ways that connect with the rational mind, to unravel the rational mind.  Because that’s an important process.  And then we lose identity with it, and it becomes another tool.

So I would say, because of my intellect I’m very much interested in that aspect, talking about that aspect.  And talking to people’s minds, and trying to sort of gently unravel their certainties.  But then, because in my own journey I obviously got to the point where I realized that the rational mind can’t do it… it’s not difficult, it’s impossible.  That doesn’t mean the rational mind isn’t important.  But I like to guide people to kind of the end of thought, to get them to realize that whatever questions they’re asking, it’s in the asking of the question that they create the very structures about which they’re asking.

When you can really see that, then you get to that point where there is just this.  There is just this.  And if you say anything about it, you’re already dividing it somehow.  Even to call it being, you’ve called it something.  So you’ve distinguished it from non-being.  So that’s not true.  So in the end, you’re just left… there’s just this.  And even to say “this” is to distinguish it from “that”.  And there is no “that”.  It’s the this that has no that.

So in the end you have to get to the end of thought.  I’m really happy to go there because I’ve really traversed that ground.  But the reason that I then speak about this other stuff, is because I know from my own experience, and from all the people I work with, beautiful as that recognition is, it’s not enough, because you find that you still have that yearning.

And because I really think that what we’re truly longing for is that free expression.   In becoming civilized, in gaining self reflection… in becoming civilized and having civilization, societies, in the process we’ve had to suppress our naturalness.  We all have this wildness in us, this wild ecstatic expression.  And we’ve had to suppress it in order to enable societies to work.

Because historically you can’t be a wild man, because it’s dangerous.  People are afraid of it.  And maybe in the past that’s true, because we haven’t had the presence to be able to be with it, so it just possesses us.  We get this feeling of anger, and we just go out and kill someone or attack someone, which actually still happens of course, when people lose control.  You kind of destroy something, because you can’t be with that energy.  So we learn to suppress it.  But what I really think is that what’s being asked, and right now is really happening, is we can’t do that anymore.  It will not be repressed.  It will not be.  And so it comes up… comes up in inopportune situations, like drive-by shootings, and all the rest of it.

But what’s being asked is using the wisdom of what we truly are, realizing our fundamental nature, and to then turn towards these energies again, and allow them to emerge.  Allow them to come up.  And again, that’s inspired by my own experience.  Which has been when you do that, all of that aliveness, all of that expression, all of that joy and passion and excitement, it just comes back.  It’s like the exuberance of childhood, the wonder of childhood, that you never know what’s going to happen next and it’s so exciting.

All of that comes back, right, and that’s what I think we’re really longing for.  And I think that’s what… well, we can get into the third part of what I was going to speak about, but I think if you look at the history of the universe, the story of the universe, it’s only a story.  It’s a story.  It’s a time-space based story appearing in the presence that we are.  However, that story is a story, and it seems to have a narrative to it.

Which is like 10 billion years of inorganic noodling along.  And then the emergence of single cellular life, and multicellular life.  And an experience through life, the essence that we in experiencing something.  And then another 4 billion years goes by until we evolve into this, where not only is it experiencing, but there’s a self reflection.  It can know that it’s experiencing, and then we get all the gunk that creates.  Because now we’re self-conscious.

So there’s a double edged sword.  Now we can know that we’re experiencing, but there’s all this gunk that it creates.  So now, we’re being invited to the next step.  This is the next developmental stage.  Which is now we’ve got self reflection, but instead of the ending here in the personal self, it goes back to the true self, the true ground of being, the true identity.  And then when it does that, when all of this suppressed material can come up because it’s got the ground now, it’s literally transmuted.

It’s the doorway, it’s a portal, into all those essence qualities being realized in the play, in the game, actually in the field of manifest experience.  This is the genius, this is the extraordinary possibility that’s being presented.  So what I’m offering, and the sequence in which I’m offering it, has literally come out of my own journey.  I never say anything that I haven’t experienced or hasn’t come out of my own meetings with others, and the understanding and the wisdom that’s come from those interactions.  I’m not interested in empty slogans.

Louis: So you say this leads to the third part of what you want to talk about. I assume you’ve been touching upon that already, but how do you want to talk about that part?

Jim: So that part comes back to… if I speak to people that aren’t in the world of non-duality, spirituality, and self exploration, this is all… well, what is it?  They might be interested, “Oh, that’s interesting.”, but they’re not drawn to it as yet.  But what sometimes does connect is when you say, “Well look, do you realize what you believe, without knowing it, or what you’re subscribing to, without knowing it?”.

And many people don’t.  And they don’t understand that our current scientific materialist paradigm, although we might not be told it specifically or explicitly, we implicitly take it on from the day we’re born, in the way that we interact with one another, and the way our parents, education system, everything, society is predicated on.  Is basically saying what the world is, is basically material stuff that is not conscious, it’s non conscious.  It’s not even unconscious, because if it was unconscious it would be consciousness but not quite aware of itself.  It’s just non-conscious.  It’s just dead, essentially.

So there’s this big space of dead stuff called matter.  Well actually, now it’s waves, quantum waves.  Then ripples within the waves create particles that then create material stuff.  So the idea is that the world is spatial, and made of matter.  And then everything, like literally everything that you can see and touch and feel, including your own body, and brain, and nervous system, is all made out of arrangements of this stuff, like Lego bricks.  And when your body dies, that’s it.  Because there’s only the stuff, there’s nothing else.

Just think about it for a minute.  Your brain and your nervous system is doing everything, according to this philosophy.  You’re nodding your head right now, as I’m speaking.  There isn’t an entity nodding its head.  There is just purely mechanical processes going on, receiving signals, processing according to what’s held in different parts of the brain and nervous system, and accessing and kind of executing different commands.

You’re basically a machine, you’re a machine.  And not only are you a machine, but I’m a machine, and the whole universe is like a gigantic machine.  So there’s this gigantic machine that is not made of anything conscious, that’s just lumbering through its steps from the Big Bang to the end of time.  I mean, what could be more meaningless, and purposeless?  So it’s not like there’s… we talk about the entity in the head or the heart.  It’s not saying that there’s no entity.  It’s not saying that the entity in the head or the heart isn’t doing anything.  It’s saying there is no entity, there’s just a machine.

And not only that, but the entire universe, and all of time and space is like a four dimensional block, and it’s all determined, and it is literally like we’re just… we’re non conscious machines living through a predetermined block of universe.  And when we’re dead, we’re just dead, and that’s it.  I mean can you imagine something more meaningless and absurd?  Not really.  You’re an isolated unit in that.  So we wonder why everyone’s running around, being selfish and greedy, and grabbing as much as they can.  And the environment is going down the toilet, and politics is going down the toilet, and economy is going down the toilet.  I mean, you can’t sustain that kind of model.

So what I say to people, is there another model that we can use?  And I think there is, and I think it’s obvious, and it’s not new.  It’s been around for millennia.  Probably longer than that.  Proabably as long as humans could have conceptual thoughts.  There are a number of things we have to bear in mind.  If we’re going to have a model, we have to explain things like, why is it that I’m speaking now, and I’m seeing your face, and you seem to be hearing what I’m saying.  So there’s some kind of shared reality.  So we have to account for that.

So this isn’t non-duality now.  In non-duality, we don’t have to account for that because we’re deconstructing everything, we’re not reconstructing a new model.  That’s really important.  Some people think non-duality is solipsism, which means it’s only my mind.  Because I say, “I, the witness, am being the experience”.  But solipsism is a model, and it’s not a very good one.  So if you want to be a solipsist, you’re very welcome, but that’s not what non-duality is saying.

And some people make that mistake.  They’re still in a model, it’s called solipsism.  Real non-duality is getting rid of everything, until all that’s left is this.  And even say it’s solipsism, like we said before, you’re saying something about it, it’s not true.  Gone into concept.  So that’s why I like to make this distinction.  It’s really important.  So solipsism is a model, it’s metaphysics, it’s a philosophy.  So what we’re doing now is we’re back into philosophy and metaphysics.  So that’s not what non-duality is, just want to be really clear about it.

So we can use our non dual understanding to build a new philosophy that makes sense, according to that.  But we’ve got to accommodate the fact that we’re having a shared experience, you’ve got to accommodate for the fact that if you mess around with my brain, then it seems to affect the nature of my experience, there’s some kind of relationship there.  So we need to find a way of accommodating those facts of experience, but also maybe having an extended explanatory framework that can include things that normal materialist science can’t explain.

So the way we do that, we come back to the ground of being.  So there is the ground of being.  The ground of being is like one mind, it’s one mind.  And that mind, what we’re saying is no physical reality.  There is no material reality.  Or you could say physicality is the experience.  We call it physicality, but it’s actually a spontaneously arising perceptual experience, flow of perceptions.

So we could say there’s one mind, and within that mind it has this ability to somehow constrain itself, contract itself down to experience from a particular location within itself.  Like a point of view within itself.  So what it’s experiencing, you as Louis right now are the whole, contracted down to an individual perspective on the whole.  So what you’re seeing as you look around, you’re seeing the thoughts of the one mind.

But you’re seeing those thoughts rendered as an experience.  A human specific experience.  If you were the ground of being that had contracted itself down to being, I don’t know, a frog.  But then you would be experiencing the same mind from a different location, but also as a different species-specific experience.  Still just the one mind, but it can contract itself down in these different forms, seeming forms, and experience its own mind.  So that would explain why we have a shared experience.

Without you, Louis, having to be separate from me, Jim, we’re still the one, we’re still the same essence, but if you like wearing a different costume.  So then if that was our paradigm, if we learned that, if that was implicit in everything we do since the day we’re born, then we would have no problem in realizing that ultimately I am you, and you are me.  And then the thought of wanting to do you harm, or be unkind to you, wouldn’t really be a very good idea, because you are me.  It’s just logical, we don’t even have to be moralistic about it.

So that’s one thing, and you can see the effect of that.  Then you could say, “But hold on, if I mess around with your brain, then your experiences… so it’s got something to do with the brain?”  So we could say yeah.  So we have to introduce this kind of dual aspect.  And the dual aspect says, there’s an external, and there’s an internal.  So as I look at your now, I’m seeing a physical body.  And if I opened up your skull, I would see a physical brain, and there would be a nervous system.

So what we could say is that experience of Louis, that image, that icon, if you like, is a representation, third person representation of Louis’ first person experience.  So the infinite experience that you’re having of the one mind from a particular location, that first person experience, what that looks like from the outside is the body and brain and nervous system of Louis.  That’s what it looks like in my first person experience.  So if you see a frog, the image that you see of a frog, is the human-species-specific third-person-image of the first-person experience of a frog.  Or a first-frog experience of a frog.  And the same goes for everything.

So now what you’re doing is you’re enchanting life.  Everything you see is like the external image of some kind of internal experience.  So the whole thing… you’re not walking through some dead, inert, outside world.  You are the whole world itself, kind of experiencing itself, and seeing other experiences and what they look like, from the outside.  The outside image of an inner experience.  So that’s why, if you twiddle with my brain, it changes my experience.  It’s not because the brain is causing the experience, it’s because the brain is like a symbol of that process, by which the whole, the one mind, contracts itself down to experiencing itself from that location.

If you do psychedelics or plant medicines, things like that, then you see changes in the chemistry of the brain.  And again, it’s an image of the process that’s going on, that’s creating the first person experience.  So we can find a way of explaining what we see in the world in first person experience, or the data that we see in the world, but from a different model that doesn’t make us believe that we’re these separate, limited, isolated units.  Which then creates all these problems.  I don’t know how that’s landing, there’s so much more I could say about that.

Louis: That’s really interesting.  Something that jumps to mind, I think I read about it earlier today, and somewhat related maybe, and I just thought quite interesting, is apparently scientists are getting quite excited that the shape of the universe is very similar to the shape of the brain.  And that’s something they’re looking into a lot more.  I just thought that was quite interesting, and maybe ties into that a little bit.

Jim: Yeah, right. Well, that would be interesting, because then you look at the universe with enough distance and you could say it looks a bit like a brain… all the different synapses.  I’m not saying it is a brain, but it’s the one mind.  You see the problem is science, I don’t know if you’ve looked into all of this, science is at a really difficult place now, because it believes that reality is material, and not conscious.  What it’s done there, because obviously all we have is actually our conscious experience, this first person experience is this virtual reality that I was talking about earlier.  That’s all we have.  You can’t look beyond it.

Einstein talked about this.  It’s like the watchmaker that can’t see inside the watch, you can’t get inside it.  You can’t look outside of your experience, you’re going to look at the hands of the clock… I can’t remember the exact analogy, I’m not remembering it very well.  But the point is that you can’t step outside your experience to see what reality is.  Because if you did, by definition it would be your experience.

So what we’ve forgotten is that this supposed world of material stuff in space and time, is a concept, it’s a philosophy, it’s a map.  But what we’ve done is we believe that the map is the territory.  So now we’ve got to this really weird place, where we’re trying to work out how the brain creates conscious experience.  This experience you’re having now, we can’t work out how the brain creates it, because the brain is material and non-conscious, and this is a conscious experience.  But the point is that we’re never ever going to work that out, because that isn’t how it works.

What we’re trying to do there, is trying to work out how the map gives rise to the territory.  Can you see, that’s never ever going to work.  Because we’ve forgotten that we made the map up, and we think it’s the real thing.  So when you get that’s just the philosophy, and then we think, “What other philosophy could we have, that really works better than this?”.  This is so much more elegant, because that problem disappears.  The brain doesn’t create the experience, it’s a symbol in the experience for the process that consciousness is going through, creating this contracted perspective from this location.  And that’s why if you mess around with it, it affects the way it appears.

It’s so much more powerful, and it doesn’t get rid of all the powerful discoveries of science that we’ve made to date.  It just says they’re explaining how the appearance functions.  So we still include all of that knowledge, but we include it in a more expanded view.  So electromagnetism, gravity, all of these things we’ve discovered, all these elegant formulas to relate to these different quantities, those can all still exist, but they explain the nature of how things appear.  But the reality behind the appearance, that’s not in space, it’s not in time.  Space and time are like the kind of parameters that we use to spread out those ideas so they can be experienced.

Louis: Maybe to wrap this up, I’ve written three questions from some things you’ve talked about already, and some you’ve only just touched upon.  Are you okay if I quickly pass these by you, and just answer them however you’d like.  So one, you touched on this briefly, and it interests me because… from my own experience, answers coming to me… I say finding your own answers, but answers coming to me, and life presenting answers to me.  Or even life pushing me in certain directions, were really helpful lots of times.  I guess the word you used is intuition.  So just wondered if you could just expand on that a bit?  I guess maybe some people are going to want to know, how can they connect to their intuition?  And also, how do you talk about it, and what role do you see it playing?

Jim: So now that we’ve talked about that model, that we just talked about, then that serves as a healthy way to explain that.  When you’re very rational-mind dominated, so you’re very caught in the map… that contraction that I’ve just talked about, the one mind contracts, the universal mind you could say, contracts down to the individual mind and experiences itself from within itself, from a particular location.  When that contraction is very strong, then it feels very separate from the field around it, from the general field.  And so then it kind of runs almost wholly from its own internal database if you like.  The personal memories and experiences that it’s had, it’s limited to that.

When you start to loosen up that boundary, that contraction, then you start to have access to this kind of wider field.  Now remember the universal mind, universal consciousness, it’s not in space or time.  So it’s all here, it’s all here.  So the more that contraction opens, then the more access you have to that deeper reality.  Now I would say, going back to the story of earlier, the universe has been bumbling along in the manifest form, in the space-time kind of manifest form, for what… was it 13.6 billion years, or whatever.  Then it’s amassed quite a lot of wisdom.  There’s a kind of deep wisdom in that mind.  And also, it’s like our infinite being is the ground that gives reality to all of that.

So as that contraction starts to relax, you start to get access to more and more of that collective wisdom.  So what you’re understanding, those insights that are coming, it’s like they’re seeping in from the deeper reality.  And my experience has been that the more you ease and soften into being, and the less you’re focused into the contracted, into the rational mind and its maps… you can still use those, I have to keep saying that, you can still use those as useful tools.  But the reality value that you invest in them, that starts to soften, and you open to here-now.  Then you become more and more open to those influences.  That has been my experience.

And so my advice to anyone would be if they’re interested in that, then everything we’ve been talking about is the way into that.  First of all, see where your rational mind is hooked up, see what it believes is true, and then gently explore those beliefs.  Are they really true?  And let them slowly unravel.  And then start to meet the contractions, the physical contractions.  Start to meet the characters that have been suppressed through overwhelm in your life, in your life situations.  Start to allow them to come up.  And then as you meet them from that ground of being, more and more relaxation in the system, and then you’re more and more open to connecting with that deeper wisdom of the whole, of the wholeness, of the one mind.

Louis: Okay.  Another question I have… so everything you’re talking about, how do you relate it to, let’s say, doing and non-doing?  People often talk about all sense of doing is nothing’s actually being done.  I think people often struggle, the ability to control.  I mean the ability they think they have to control, and often people think they have a remarkable ability to control their lives, in the face of all evidence to the opposite.  And that seems to be something people hold onto very tightly.  And that ability, or wanting to control, seems to be tied very closely to doing.  Maybe I’m not really leading with a particularly concise question, but what are your thoughts on that?

Jim: I hear you.  It’s difficult to talk to people about it, because you have to be really clear where you’re speaking from.  So a good analogy is the television screen.  Let’s say Jim and Louis are having a conversation in a room.  Then from the point of view of the conversation in a room, it feels like Jim is thinking up things to say, and then moving his mouth and saying the things.  And then Louis is hearing it, and he’s contemplating it, and then he’s having to think about it, and he might be saying something back.  So there’s lots of cause and effect going on there.  Lots of doing going on, right?

Now we say we’re watching that on a TV screen.  So Jim talking is color appearing.  And Jim’s voice is sound appearing.  And in fact, the only reason I call it Jim is because I’ve learned that there is a distinction between these pixels and these pixels, and I cut the Jim pixels out and say that’s a Jim, and that’s a Louis.  And let’s say now the screen is multisensorial.  So there’s a thought appearing on the multisensorial screen, like a colored pixel.  And there’s even the thought that, “I am definitely thinking this thought” appearing.  And then there’s the hearing of that thought appearing, and then another thought appearing as a Louis thought.  So if you’ve got this multisensorial screen, then it’s all appearing on that screen.

Is there anything cause-and-effecting going on there?  Or is it all just appearing… it’s all appearing, right?  And the idea of a cause-and-effecting is part of the thought structures appearing, that are then interpreting what’s appearing.  Now of course, if you’re identified with that thought structure, you’re going to fight for it, to the death, because as far as you’re concerned it is your death.  Because you’re identified with it.

When you’re not identified with it, nothing changes, you just see that it’s all appearing on the screen.  So yes, it appears like I’m doing, when I’m believing that screen is the reality.  So I’m speaking from the perspective of the character in the screen.  But when I step back and I see that it’s a screen, multisensorial screen, and I am the screen, my real nature is the screen that is dancing as this different flow of perceptions.

Then there is no individual doer, but there is a will, it is showing up as something.  That’s nothing to do with the individual, the individual is part of what’s showing up.  And so the real mover and shaker is the ground of being.  That’s the true will if you like, the will of the unfolding story.  And that’s you.  And it’s me.  It’s I.  Connecting with itself now.  So it’s difficult to talk to people about that, because if they can’t make that shift in where you’re speaking from, then they won’t understand it.

And it’s the same thing as “nothing ever happened”.  Again, take that same analogy… you’re looking at the screen, and from the perspective of the characters in the screen, there’s a lot going on.  Now take the perspective of the screen.  What’s happening?  Nothing.  The screen isn’t going anywhere.  It’s not changing shape.  It’s just the screen, doesn’t move, doesn’t change.  Again, it depends where you’re standing, where you’re looking from.

So this is another big problem with non-duality and the communication, when people aren’t clear, because maybe they’re not clear themselves, then they can’t make these clear distinctions, and then people get confused.  That’s why people think non-duality is solipsism.  People think it’s about being passive.  It’s not about being passive!  When you realize you personally are not the doer, you might be the most doing person on the planet.  There’s no contradiction.

But people become lethargic, and they just collapse on the sofa, “There’s nothing worth doing”.  That’s not non-duality, that’s the mind. That’s the mind not letting go of control.  And it’s saying, “If I can’t have it my way, fuck you, I’m not going to do anything.”  You have to be clear.  And this is why it’s difficult to just have a sort of normal conversation with people, because they will misunderstand it.  Unless you’re very, very, very clear.

Louis: Exactly as you’ve said, the assumption is made when you say when you don’t have control, “I don’t have control, why do anything?”  But that’s exactly what you said.

Jim: Yeah, there you go.  You can’t even decide not to do anything.  If you do, it’s like trying to outsmart thought with thought.  That will keep you going for a few decades.  So my advice to people who want to interest other people in this, would be like you asked me, “What do you say to people who don’t really know about this stuff?”  So you appeal to their actual experience.

You say, “Do you ever feel like something’s missing?  Whatever you achieve, maybe initially you feel really high, great.  I did it, I did it.  And then a few days later, it’s kind of like, so what.  What’s the next thing?  Do you ever feel that?  Or do you ever feel you’re yearning for something, you can’t quite put your finger on it?  And it’s not your girlfriend, or your boyfriend.  It’s not your kids.  That’s all great.  It’s not your career.  It’s all great, nothing wrong.  But it’s about something else, and you can’t quite nail it.  Do you ever feel that?”

In my experience, people start looking at you going, “Yeah, yeah, yeah I do.  Well man, you’re like reading my mind.”  Because I think we all do.  But we learn not to… like it’s self indulgent to somehow acknowledge those things.  We’re being too self indulgent.  I hear this a lot.  “Oh, if I sit and listen to what’s going on, that’s like navel gazing.”  This is the idea we have.  So just saying things that resonate with people, that get them interested in maybe looking a bit further, and then feeling out what it is that might be the next best step for them.

Maybe I can say just briefly Louis, this year I had a real strong guidance that I should offer everything for free.  And I just ask for donations.  So that’s what I’ve been doing.  And I do weekend online retreats, one coming up this weekend.  I do once a month free webinar.  And it gives people a chance to kind of see what’s going on.  I do invite people to come on, but they don’t have to, they can sit in the background and just get a sense of it.

And I’ve got three online courses that each speak about those three different aspects, that I just talked about briefly.  But really break it down for people so they can really understand deeply what’s going on here.  Those will hopefully be up next year.  So I encourage people to get involved in those.  And there they’ll be able to… there’ll be forums and things as well.  And also communities that they can start to meet people who are similarly like minded, like hearted and interested.

And also my music, which I love.  Music is such a beautiful part of what I do.  Because it’s like a main line to that kind of felt sense of what it’s all about.  I’ve got an album that will be coming out shortly as well.  So there’s lots and lots of things to look forward to in 2021.  I don’t know when this is coming out.

Louis: That’s great. Interestingly, that ties very closely into the goal of the foundation.  One of its core goals is to offer everything for free.  Because I felt it was important to make it accessible.  That was particularly important to me.  And I understand everyone needs to make a living, and obviously people can run their businesses however they choose.  But in this case, I wanted… my story shall we say, what’s been particularly valuable for me is meditation somewhat, but I’ve been a sporadic meditator.  And non-duality meetings, and a lot of emotional releasing, which is why I specifically asked the question about feelings.

And those three have been very valuable for me.  And I just want to share that, and approaches someone like yourself share, because I feel it’s of value and I want it to reach a wider audience.  So that’s why it’s particularly important for me that it’s offered for free.  So that’s interesting, and I noticed on your website for one-to-ones, you have a sliding scale as well.

Jim: So I have to charge for those, otherwise I’d be doing them all day every day, and wouldn’t earn a living.  I do have to earn a living, and I make it very clear when I do the events that this is what I do for a living.  So if you feel that you get value from it, then I do invite you to make a gift of a donation.  Because that’s important.  And why it’s really beautiful is that people do donate, and so they have a sense of giving something back.  And then I have a sense of being grateful for the gift that I’ve received.  And so it’s win-win.

Rather than charging a price for something, it’s win-win.  And some people don’t pay anything, and that’s fine.  And some people pay more than I would charge, which is fine too.  Great.  And so in the end it all seems to balance out, which means that for me, it’s beautiful evidence that the gift model of business can really work.

Louis: Personally, I’m forever grateful to certain people.  For example, I won’t name him just in case he gets overwhelmed with inquiries, but there’s a non-duality teacher in London, who also does one-to-ones with I guess a focus on… he does one-to-ones as well, he does some meditation in those, or he takes very various approaches depending on the person.

And he doesn’t turn people away, and he very much offers a sliding scale.  And I think his standard rate is perhaps, I don’t know how much with inflation, but maybe £50 or £60 an hour.  But it really is pay what you can, all the way down to nothing.  And you don’t get turned away, and he gets booked quite a long way ahead.  But then if you inquire, he’ll fit you in, and so on.  So it’s a similar approach to you in a way.  And in the past when I didn’t have much money to spend, but I was very much in the seeking lifestyle shall we say, I’m forever grateful to people like him who I guess supported me and were really helpful during this period.

Jim: Absolutely.  That’s beautiful, that’s natural gratitude.  So much talk these days of gratitude as a practice, and I don’t buy that.  Gratitude is natural.  If you’re having to practice it, it’s because you’re not connecting to what you’re grateful for.  If you really are grateful, then you don’t have to conjure it up.  You just are grateful.  I prefer ingratitude practices, they’re far more productive.  Like write down all the things you feel really, really angry and upset and pissed off about, that could be much more productive.

Louis: I could talk for much, much longer, but I think we’ve definitely filled up the time.  Thanks so much for your time, thanks so much for all the in-depth answers.  And you’re JimEaton.org.  Is that right?

Jim: That’s right.  One-to-ones like you said as well.  I’m easy to get in touch with if people want to explore further.