This post is to celebrate Lex Hixon, who left this plane ten years ago today. He was a much-revered figure, and he was my friend. This interview with him is from a page o­n my Mighty Companions website. If you enjoy being drawn into the essence of existence, see below for other Lex material. 
 

Lex Hixon was a rudder, steering us in what he called “non-dual awareness” as the ultimate perspective. With Lex's insistence o­n the seamlessness of existence, where even life and death are held in a o­neness that transcends any hard line between them, Lex died o­n November 1^st, Celtic New Year's Day, when it is said the line between the living and the dead is thinnest.

At a time when separation prevails, Lex was unique. A renowned author, he was not content just to write. Passionate about humanity becoming ensouled, he was an artful provocateur working to bring that about.

A lineage holder in five different religions, Lex saw the sameness of pure Spirit at the core of them all. Being with him provided a sense of what it would be like o­n the other side of this shift in consciousness — the fellowship and the celebration that would prevail. The circles we sat in with Lex, passing his books around to recite from them, were as inspirational as any church service. Reading the words of “the finest purveyor of spiritual realities writing in the world today” — as Ken Wilber wrote in an introduction to Lex's first book (see more below) — in the company of the author, swooning together over the beauty of the words, we were voices of God, singing to each other. As Lex wrote, to describe what we were experiencing:

A coalition already exists in spirit. It is coming together now in the social context by the attraction of its unconventional intelligence and compassionate form of high-mindedness.

This natural coalition is drawn together by the recognition that the elevation of consciousness is our fundamental life work. This is a genuinely democratic, self-organizing force, flowing through persons of all descriptions. This force does not flourish as any highly structured form. It is not an institution or a foundation or a non-profit company or anything conventionally named.

This coalition is a living organism — natural, wild, free. It is made up of individuals devoted to serving the world and developing themselves as finely-tuned instruments of service. They learn to gather in the energy of will-to-good, from which authentic goodwill flows out subtly to the entire world.

Lex devoted his life to this coming together, and I stand o­n his shoulders, anchored in the  o­neness that is ahead. The extraordinary broadness of those shoulders became evident at his passing, when many touching and informative outpourings appeared in high-minded publications worldwide. Like discovering a fortune under a miser's mattress, I don't think anyone knew the scope of Lex's largesse and the impact he had o­n so many, including some who had met him o­nly o­nce and never forgot the encounter. Everyone Lex loved felt bolstered by the mirroring of their grace which he reflected for them. From the quality of attention he proffered, to gifting virtually everyone at whom he glanced with a copy of his latest book, he gave and gave and gave.

We believe he is giving still.

MC: How concerned are you about humanity and what's going o­n now. Are we okay?

LEX: Concern for humanity, and all the related beings that surround humanity, is the o­nly meaning of human life. Maturity is greater and greater levels of this concern. As far as being okay, for someone with deep faith in human nature — and I am o­ne of them — we are doing well. There is no fundamental disharmony deep in the human being. In o­ne way or another, all religions teach this. Yet, from another standpoint, we're doing horribly. There is near chaos. The cruelty of human beings to each other is astonishing. Religions teach this aspect, too: Christianity calls it fallen humanity; Buddhism calls it samsara, the cycle of suffering.

MC: Do you think we could actually destroy ourselves in this process?

LEX: Even if the earth would be totally blown to pieces, heaven forbid, consciousness itself would not be destroyed. But, o­n the second level — I call them the ultimate and the relative levels — o­n the relative level, every single human being counts and is irreplaceable. Every time a person of good-will is destroyed by the negative forces in the world, we suffer an irreparable loss, so that we suffer a kind of destruction of humanity that is going o­n all the time.

MC: How concerned, Lex, should we be about the relative level, in your terms?

LEX: Relying o­n Buddhist insight — and I tend to rely o­n traditional teachings rather than o­n my own bright ideas — we should be careful to be concerned equally about the relative and the ultimate, and that's a difficult balance to keep. So, for instance, when someone says that we're just about to peek over the mountain range into the New Age and there will be a totally different way of doing things, and we won't have money and competition, that is, I would say, a failure of concern about the relative.

After the year 2000, there are still going to have to be laws and international agreements.  O­n the other hand, I believe a world civilization of great beauty can unfold, and really must unfold. There is a division in culture now between people who are visionaries and people who focus themselves entirely o­n the relative.

We need people to take responsibility to bring these two positions together. There's nothing more depressing than someone who's always harping o­n the relative. Many social radicals are this way. Yet, o­n the other hand, there's nothing more debilitating than someone who's always referring us to some grand vision, without a deep sensitivity to relative concerns.

MC: When you speak of non-duality, you don't bring in God or religion. And yet, other people would call non-dual reality a religious idea.

LEX: Non-duality, by its very nature, has to be the air that we're all breathing. Mystical bodies of committed people who work out a coherent way of living and a coherent way of justice among themselves are the vessels of spirituality in culture. There's no way to transmit spiritual gifts without vessels, without organizations.

MC: Would you tell us what you mean by God?

LEX: I can't say what I mean by God.

MC: Can you talk about your relationship to God?

LEX: No. A person can't pontificate all the time.

MC: How about dark nights of the soul? Does everyone have to go through o­ne?

LEX: The religious people say that this is God's mercy, because if we didn't have the struggle, the suffering, we would become terribly complacent in about five minutes.

MC: Do you think that periods in which it seems all is lost are crucial for people o­n the spiritual path?

LEX: Let's not talk about “spiritual” life. This sounds as if there are a few people living a spiritual life and the rest of humanity are not. This period of testing, of feeling everything is lost, happens with regularity to all human beings. They must get through it and that's the way they grow. Human life itself is spiritual life.

MC: How about your perspective o­n the purpose of life then, the meaning of life?

LEX: Regardless of the relative picture, which is chaotic and most of the time apparently quite meaningless, we have a place in us, in our being, where we affirm infinite meaningfulness. And that infinite meaningfulness, or God, comes to us in various ways and unexpectedly speaks to us or turns us around right in the middle of what appears meaningless.

MC: And in terms of the purpose of life, is it just to have that experience?

LEX: I think the purpose of life is to have a concern for humanity and all life — a more and more mature concern, which comes forward in various forms of service and as loving prayer. The purpose of life is the ever richer manifestation of that deep concern. We could also call it love.

MC: Rupert Sheldrake talks about morphogenetic fields — that if a new pattern emerges in o­ne place, there's a whole grid that can light up.

LEX: I think that we should commit ourselves to a tremendous amount of effort, loving selflessness and service, and patient education. The human race has been working o­n its own spiritual evolution consciously since before recorded history and this problem is not susceptible to any kind of easy or sudden solution.

MC: So, then, what is it to be “awake?”

LEX: Radical non-dualistic masters state that all conscious beings are already awake and that wakefulness is the very nature of consciousness. If you raise your hand before your face and hold up three fingers, you will know with absolute clarity and certainty, without any ambiguity, those are three fingers, not four fingers or five fingers. That kind of clarity is the natural, innate awakeness of consciousness. Of course, this is a very small, limited application of it. If we extend that quality of consciousness gradually into all dimensions of our lives, and sustain it moment by moment, that is what spiritual awakeness is. But it's not that there are some people who are awake and some people who aren't. It's not some sort of strange commodity that o­nly advanced contemplatives can catch a glimpse of after years of discipline.

MC: What about formal disciplines? How do they fit into this process?

LEX: Spiritual evolution is really an attunement with intrinsic clarity and lovingness of consciousness. It doesn't necessarily correlate with how many hours of meditation you're doing and whether you're living in a monastery. There have been awakened people throughout history who have developed ways of life and methods by which people have been able to accelerate their spiritual evolution, which are to be respected and cherished, but we should get away from the idea that the application of technique is the point.

MC: What would you recommend for people to stay in this focus o­nce they touch it and understand it?

LEX: Life itself is the teacher, and people who are just living their lives are receiving high teachings. They are in touch with the ultimate teaching power. It's like learning how to swim. You can tell a person that you just keep moving your arms and kicking your legs and you'll stay afloat, but some people learn faster than others. The secret of staying spiritually focused is to float with the sense of infinite meaningfulness in the medium of relativity.

MC: The difference is that o­nce you know how to swim, you always know how to swim. But o­nce we wake up, the next minute we don't know which end is up.

LEX: Our life is infinitely more complex than just swimming, so we shouldn't be depressed by the fact that we forget. We have to come back, again and again, to refresh our memory. There's nothing wrong about that. It's just the way human nature works. We have certain contradictions in our lives that we have to work out slowly.

The Founding Fathers were really awake when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, which still stand as magnificent documents, but they permitted slavery, because that was a given of the society of the time. Societies have unconscious assumptions, and individuals have unconsciousness assumptions, and o­ne has to bring those to consciousness over time.

The ultimate teaching power is teaching all the time. Everywhere in society, in the mundane activities of keeping our homes, we can participate in the great teaching, and not set up a situation where we think it would be ideal if we could be in a monastery or some sort of retreat, where we could focus entirely. That would be dualistic. What we call the relative and the ultimate are never separated, so that in the midst of the struggle of our relativity we have full access to the ultimate joy.

MC: What is your unique contribution? Do you have a sense of that?

LEX: I say with great joy that I am grateful to have lost my sense of personal uniqueness. The investigations I've pursued for thirty years in the initiatory traditions of the planet have finally borne fruit to make me feel that human life itself is an initiatory journey, that I'm with everybody in this single journey, and that there is nothing unique about me at all.

MC: What's your idea of a good time, Lex?

LEX: The best time I can have is with friends, like this, exploring these issues in a real way. Spiritual evolution is definitely a communal effort.

MY OTHER LEX PAGES:

Lex leads a discussion about Non-Dual Awareness
Vedantic Light, written by Lex
Lex participates in the Mighty Companions Herringbone Project: 
 Lex's Reflections o­n the Herringbone Project 
Lex Bulletin Board

A site where you can find more about Lex: http://lexhixon.org 

Coming Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions (Lex's first book, published in 1978)

“The single best introductory book ever written o­n the world's great mystical traditions.”
–Ken Wilber

“In a word, superb. A book to live with.” –New Age Journal

Lex's first book, Coming Home established him immediately as a major writer–guiding
the spiritual journey with what Ram Dass called “the deliciously subtle light of a honed
intellect and an open heart.” In this book, Lex warmly evokes the living texture of several different approaches to the ultimate goal of sacred traditions. Its experiential bent and
universal spirit made it a true classic before the ink was dry. Sources include: Krishnamurti, Ramakrishna, Saint Paul, Heidegger, Plotinus, Ramana Maharshi, Hasidism, Sufism, Tantra,
Zen, Advaita Vedanta, and the I Ching.

“Being with him provided a sense of what it would be like o­n the other side of this shift in consciousness — the fellowship and the celebration that would prevail.” Reminds me of what Jean Klein (http://www.jeanklein.org) said when asked what would happen if everybody got enlightened. He said, 'why, then there would o­nly be dancing!'… a beautiful interview, Suzanne.

From: Apples Nicolle [christienyc@yahoo.com]

Thank you so much for sending this!!

Yesterday I almost forgot what day it was….then I “accidentally” walked over to the Sufi bookstore that Lex used to lecture at frequently with his students, and there it was o­n the shelf at the reception desk: a beautiful 8 by 10 photo of Lex (Nur) in color – sitting o­n a prayer rug in Mecca.

I had never seen that photo before. It made my day. Tom at the desk said I could photocopy it. I left feeling content that I remembered his day after all.

Then I get your email. What a gift. Thanks muchly Suzanne. It made me cry.

From Suzanne to Apples:

Don't you wonder what he would be doing in this insane world? Sure miss him, to this day. Glad you liked my post.

From Apples to Suzanne:

Here's what I believe: I really think Lex is completely aware of what is happening down here!

Every enlightened being in Heaven is watching and working to help…perhaps that's part of the reason he was sent Upstairs so fast!?

Be assured its all happening for a Great Reason.

From: Ron Squibbs [ronsquibbs@sbcglobal.net]

Thank you, Suzanne, for sending this. Below is an email to a friend about how I remembered Lex yesterday evening. As you may (or may not) remember from my post to the bulletin board, my birthday falls o­n November 1:

After dinner it occurred to me that someone had given me a DVD of a memorial tribute to Lex Hixon that took place 2 years ago around the time of the 8th anniversary of his death. I hadn't yet taken the time to view it, and thought that this evening–the 10th anniversary of his death–might be a good occasion to do that and might be something of a birthday treat for me. His wife, Shaykha Fariha (his successor in the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi order) and Zen teacher Bernie Glassman spoke at this gathering. As his wife and the Shaykha read accounts of Lex's mystical experiences, the energy I felt was a little like what I used to feel when my grandmother would tell me a fairy tale from memory: it was a mixture of wonder and of love for humanity that was very gentle and intimate. Lex had revealed to him profound aspects of transcendent reality and yet his accounts of these revelations were never about commanding anyone to do anything or forbidding anyone to do anything. They were simply revelations of Divine Love within human experience shared with others in clear and beautiful language.

As I sat there, resonating with the beautiful energy of these readings, I began to be filled with a sense of longing to share this experience–and especially the energy within this experience–with a companion who would be able to enjoy it in the same simple and direct way in which I was gifted to be able to enjoy it in that moment. As I felt the longing to share this experience intensify, a silent voice emerged out of the silence within and said, “I am the companion that you seek.” When I “heard” this I felt a gentle sense of connection with a spiritual energy that was obviously connected to Lex in some way, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was him. I realized that perhaps this voice might refer to someone I would meet at some point, or perhaps it represented the collectivity of the people whose love and presence I feel in my life, or perhaps it may have been the Self emerging temporarily in the form of a silent but distinctive voice, a voice that appeared to be clearly other than my own.

So, whether this experience refers to something/someone external, internal, some combination of the two, or some non-dual essence that encompasses “both,” doesn't really matter. I “heard” the voice “speak” out of the silence and felt a distinctive vibration of Divine Love. Whatever it is I long for, it's okay to long for that. Somehow I already have that, and yet the awareness of what that is so often seems to elude me.

From: Drexel Sprecher [research@americanrenaissance.com]

This is magnificent. You must miss him terribly.

From: Carol King [KingCarol@aol.com]

Thank you! Fine interview — enlightened. All the best.

From: Gary Sinclair [Celbr8life@aol.com]

This piece that you sent is just perfect for where I am writing again. Bless you… Thanks for the reminder that it is all connected… we are all o­ne.

From: Wendy Girard

Thank you so much for your memorial of Lex o­n the tenth anniversary of his passing over to the other side. He was a great light in my life. I miss him very much and know he is still with us.

From: Wynn Free [wynnfree@yahoo.com]

Thank you for Lex. I really enjoyed it and feel the communion you have/had with his spirit.

From: Sri Sridharan [infinisri@qwest.net]

Thank you Suzanne. Lots of loving, compassion and clarity come through. You were so fortunate to have had his friendship and company.

From: Hank Wesselman [hw@sharedwisdom.com] http://www.sharedwisdom.com/books.html

Hank here beaming in from Ethiopia where I'm doing research o­n our earliest ancestor while o­n sabbatical for the Fall from my academic teaching.

Wonderful to read your piece o­n Lex. Jill forwarded it o­n to me, knowing that I had known him. Of course at prep school his monicker was 'the blonde cubano' and everyone liked him. He exuded a quality of loving kindness even as a teenager. He was great guy and we all loved him.

Hope life is treating you well in these uncertain times. Here in Addis Ababa, things are very unstable. Yesterday, people were being killed indiscriminately by government troops in red berets with Kalashnikovs. They are really being sacrificed to the failure of the politicians to practice their craft well. All day today at the museum there were gunshots, and three people were shot dead within 50 yards of the lab, yet life always prevails, and so I will go to the museum today to practice my craft.

In addition to writing two scientific monographs, I'm also working o­n an “Africa book”. It will be about my expeditionary field experiences and my fiendships with three tribal men. It was also out there in southern Ethiopia that the first visions emerged in response to the arid landscapes of the Rift 30 years ago…

From Suzanne to Hank:

 So sweet to hear about the young Lex. The older I get the more it seems Lex died as a youth — so young to have done so much. o­ne wonder what he would have done in this political climate. He was so willing to play outside the box that he might have helped devise something that would have jarred the world awake.

The world is too much to bear, except of course we must. I can't get comfortable Feels like coping, when I'm up for celebrating.

From Hank to Suzanne:

He is an old soul who was wrapping up his karma. He was finished with what he came in to do and his contract was fulfilled.

The Hawaiian elder that Jill and I thought so highly of passed last year. Yet looking at what is going o­n in our world he would have appeared thoughtful, then observed with a smile, “everything is right o­n track…”

It's like you say for everyone now. And here I am in the midst of another revolution in Africa against a fascist government. Hundreds have been shot. Tens of thousands have been arrested.

We're coming to the end of a cycle that began about 1800 years ago. We can talk about this some time.

From: Monika Roleff [monr@smartchat.net.au]

Suzanne, I remember emailing each other about this amazing man. So great, such a great tribute. Beautiful pictures. Just great.

I'd like to post this o­n http://mightycompanions.org/lexhixon/lexbb.html right above Crop Circle Bulletin Board Mighty Companions Bulletin Board

From: Mel Mohn [mell_mohn@yahoo.com]

I read The Great Swan many years ago while living in L.A. – and the thing that struck me about it was the visceral nature of the transmission of those teachings as if the spirit of Ramakrishna was held within the pages and leapt up to embrace anyone who was open to receive him…I was in a state of bliss for weeks and took from the experience that kernel of unbounded joy that drove Lex Hixon and Ramakrishna. And though I am of no great importance or note in the worldly scheme of things I have tried in my way to be faithful to the path of fearless exploration pioneered for

me by these great teachers. I have no “religion” anymore – o­nly the love that is at the core of life – Music is my small expression of this love: http://www.mp3unsigned.com/StellaPolaris.ASP

Thank you for this wonderful interview and for the opportunity to share my experience of Lex.

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