AN INTERVIEW WITH LEE LOZOWICK by Hal Blacker from the magazine What Is Enlightenment? LEE LOZOWICK is the founder and spiritual teacher of the Hohm Community in Prescott, Arizona, and studied under the auspices of Sri Yogi Ramsuratkumar of Tiruvannamalai, India (b. 1918-d. 2001), Enlightenment heir of the great Indian sage Swami Ramdas (b. 1884-d. 1963). About twenty years ago Lozowick was "transformed by an experience" that occurred after waking up one morning from a night's sleep. Since 1975 he has worked with hundreds of students and disciples in the U.S. and Europe, including, for example, Mariana Caplan the author of the much acclaimed book HALFWAY UP THE MOUNTAIN: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment . He, himself, is the author of fifteen books, including The Alchemy of Love and Sex and Conscious Parenting. WIE: I understand that about twenty years ago you were transformed by an experience that occurred after you woke up one morning, literally, from a night's sleep. What was that experience like and how did it occur? LL: It's something I never talk about. To define the experience is to lead people to expect something similar, which is very misleading. So I've really made an effort not to talk about it beyond saying it was the event that catalyzed my entering into teaching work, or that catalyzed my representing divine influence in the world. The actual description of perceptual data is too specific and unique to mean anything to anyone else. What I do say about it is that I was doing very rigorous Sadhana [spiritual practice]. None of that Sadhana was itself responsible for the event that precipitated this shift in context and yet paradoxically there is an association. The person who I was in relationship with was traveling and I was living alone. So it was the first time that I had any time really to do a retreat and I took that week as a retreat week. The intensification of sadhana was not what precipitated the event and yet a strong field of practice and intention—real exclusive intention in the sense that there was nothing I wanted more than to serve God, commune with God, understand God— was very crucial. WIE: So you feel that what most prepared you for what happened to you is the cultivation of that kind of intention? LL: I don't think anything prepared me. I had no idea of the concomitant responsibilities involved. I mean I looked at other teachers and one of my motives clearly was to enjoy the kind of adulation that other teachers enjoyed. My idea of awakening was that you wake up and you're free, and then you sort of do what you want. I had been teaching Silva Mind Control, a system of dream work and self-motivational practice, for several years so I was in a position of some authority. My idea of awakening and being a spiritual teacher was you just got into a position of more authority, that's all. In Silva Mind Control I really had no responsibility. I did a training session and people went home and if they didn't practice, I didn't care. And it was a profit-making thing and I wanted to make money at it. I made up my own schedule and I would travel when I wanted. My time was my own. So I just thought that a spiritual teacher had more of all of those things and I had no idea about the absolute lack of freedom that spiritual teaching is. It's an absolute lack of freedom. You're so committed to the communication of what it is that inspires you that you can't pick and choose. You can't say, "I'll teach this weekend but I won't teach that weekend, and I'll do this and that and the other thing." WIE: What was it that you realized? LL: I suppose it could be said that I realized the nature of reality. Since that realization there's been an unfolding articulation of the nature of reality as a way of attracting others to this work and communicating its foundation, and, at least minimally, its intellectual boundaries. WIE: You said that before you woke up you didn't realize the responsibility involved in being a teacher. How did you become aware of that? LL: Before I woke up, if indeed I woke up—I know I said that in the beginning and my students continue to say that, but it's been fifteen years since I've ever claimed that personally—I thought it was all bliss. You got union with God and you were just ecstatic all the time. Exactly coincident with the event that precipitated this work came a tacit moment-to-moment knowledge of what this work entailed. So in every moment I know what I need to know. If what I need to know is that I am responsible in such and such a way, I know that. That's been constant in the last twenty years. Whatever I need to know having to do with my own responsibilities, with communication in a given space, whatever it might be, I know. So everything is tacitly obvious. There have continued to be catalysts in my life after that event such as a book I read or a lecture I hear, or even something random in nature. Everything was already tacitly understood but it wasn't all in language, and t different catalysts that I continue to intersect with provoke articulation. WIE: What motivated you to begin teaching? LL: There was no motivation. There was absolutely no choice. There are a couple of funny stories associated with it, one being that I knew, based on this event, that I had to teach in a different form than I was teaching. So the first thing I did was offer my resignation to the Silva Mind Control organization. I gave them several months to find a replacement and got everything in order. That was the first thing I did because it was very clear I couldn't compromise the form of my teaching in any way. I didn't know when I would actually begin teaching but I knew that I had to. There was no question about it. I was walking along in New York with someone who, when the school first began, was a student and he said something I thought was really brilliant. I said, "Wow, that's deep, that's really phenomenal. Who said that?" He looked at me with surprise and said, "You did." I went, "Oh, pretty neat," and then about a month later I began teaching. I figured if I could say stuff like that, why wait? WIE: From your own experience, what is enlightenment? LL: It's an unflagging, not necessarily always willing, but an unflagging, irrevocable commitment to serve what I call the great process of divine evolution. Basically that's God, and we articulate what the process of God is in a very complex way. But enlightenment is an unflagging and irrevocable slavery to serving that which is God, the divine, in whatever way the divine deems is service. WIE: Are you saying that since awakening you know what kind of service God wants? LL: There's not an intellectual cognition of what is wanted in the moment. There is only action in response to what is wanted in the moment. Then in retrospect I can define or discuss or consider what the will of God was. But in the moment there's only an organic response. So the essence of my teaching work I call spiritual slavery. And one of the key elements of spiritual slavery is that you don't have to understand, because if you surrender to the will of God you are active, you are manifested, you are moved. And if you understand—which most of us would like to because we're curious and we're thinking creatures—that's fine. But understanding is not a requirement for functioning in an enlightened way. WIE: What role does discrimination play in the spiritual life, if any? LL: I think discrimination plays a major role, particularly for students in the sense that the more refined food one eats, the healthier the system is. And that applies on every level, including the level of what we read, what movies we see, even who we talk to. And if we're indiscriminate about the energy fields that we intersect with, then the likelihood of developing a vehicle that is strong enough and clear enough to make the breakthrough is minimal. So I think what Buddha talked about when he spoke of right livelihood, right company, right speech and so on, is important. I think discrimination is very important. I think we should be sensitive to what we put in our mouths, what we put in our minds, what we put in our physical company, and things like that, if we can help it. Sometimes we can't help it. The discrimination of a student in some sense has to be, in the beginning, just an effort of education, and as time goes on it becomes more instinctual. In my case discrimination is itself one of the gestures of spontaneity. WIE: In 1976 you went to India and ultimately met Yogi Ramsuratkumar, whom you recognized as your guru. Most people who go to India for spiritual reasons are seeking enlightenment, but you went after your awakening already had occurred. Why did you go? LL: A lot of the major movements that happen—the first trip to India, moving into a living situation with students, moving out here, that kind of thing—are not things that I have reasons for, although being minimally intelligent, I can always come up with reasons for any major move. The reasons I gave for the first trip to India were wanting to pay respect to the sources of what I felt was my cultural leaning, cultural resonance; to visit various teachers, including people that I felt a very powerful resonance with like Sri Ramana Maharshi; to visit ashrams and to offer prayers and gratitude. Those were the stated reasons for going. Of course the real reason for going was a pre-awareness instinct in relationship to beginning a different level of engagement of process with Yogi Ramsuratkumar. And it took many years for that to become apparent. Again, that's only in retrospect. At the time I went to India with students, one of the things I thought was to get it over with—to go and check out my roots and pay my respects, almost like going to a funeral to pay your last respects. You go and that's the end of it. Little did I know I would find what I found. WIE: When you first met Yogi Ramsuratkumar did you recognize him as your teacher? LL: No. It took the first trip, then the second trip which was three years later, and then about a year after that I started responding to him as my teacher, and even then very lightly. It wasn't until maybe three or four years after that, in the early to mid-eighties, that I really dedicated myself to him as my teacher, of course without even knowing if he would accept me as a student or what would happen. WIE: You have said that Yogi Ramsurat-kumar was the source of the awakening which occurred to you one year previous to your meeting him. How can someone be the source of somebody else's awakening that occurred before they ever met? LL: Well, to a spiritual master there's no such thing as the past, the present or the future. To us everything happens very linearly. In 1975 this shift of context happened for me. In 1976 I met Yogi Ramsuratkumar. In 1983 I really dedicated myself to him as my teacher. But to him when Jesus was born might be fifty years in the future. And some person that to us hasn't even been born yet, to him is like a living, breathing presence. Time is completely malleable. So for a master like Yogi Ramsuratkumar the past, the present and the future are completely interchangeable, and he can shift them around at his will. I can't describe that according to a law of physics although I'm sure that's possible. But that's how it is. WIE: Has he ever acknowledged to you that this is the case in terms of your awakening? LL: Not linearly. I mean he doesn't really just sit down and talk to you like that. First of all my relationship to him is one of 200 percent receptivity, so I never ask him for anything. I never ask questions. Occasionally I'll have some curiosity, but as a principle I will not ask him for anything, except for everything. When I'm in his presence I will not make any gesture of appeal to him, none. I won't ask him any questions. So I've never asked what his perception of all this is, although he has said things to his Indian devotees which get fed back to me. I have gotten feedback but it's never been direct. And I know that if I asked him directly he would not give a direct answer, so I wouldn't anyway. WIE: Most people would say that after enlightenment you don't need a guru. But you entered into a guru/disciple relationship after your awakening, at a time when you were already taking on students of your own. Did that mean that in some way that you felt there was something lacking in your own realization? LL: No, I didn't feel there was anything lacking at all. My view of it is that I was in a guru/devotee relationship before my shift of context—or the shift of context, since it wasn't mine—and that's what actually led to the shift of context. My relationship to him is not one where I feel incomplete and he's somehow going to provide the missing pieces. All that's been done, that's over and done with. It's a love affair, that's all. WIE: What is the purpose of the guru/disciple relationship? What's the role of this love affair? LL: Well, in the real sense it's not sadhana that produces awakening. It's assimilation that produces awakening. So to assimilate something you have to be in its field, in its aura. The guru is that which is grace, living grace, and the real essence of sadhana is to assimilate that. When the disciple wakes up it's because they've assimilated the guru's grace, not because they've done sadhana. Paradoxically, one has to do sadhana to create the kind of resonance that allows the assimilation to occur. Sadhana is like preparing the field but really it is all grace. And to get grace you have to be in relationship to grace. You don't have to be in its physical presence necessarily, although there are benefits to that. You can get it anywhere as long as you hook into it. But the guru is the hook, the source of it. A lot of people say, "Well, why can't I go directly to God?" We can't go directly to God because the human vehicle, which is the guru, is basically about al we can take. Now there are examples such as Anandamayi Ma and Ramana Maharshi who ostensibly didn't have a human guru. But neither of them are alive to talk about that, and I think that they could be cornered into acknowledging the need for a human medium through which one hooks into grace. WIE: When I hear people talk in terms of devotion or grace it makes me wonder what role understanding plays. LL: Devotion doesn't necessarily have to show up in the form of bhakti [the yoga of devotion] alone. Devotion can show up in the form of jnana yoga [the yoga of wisdom]. So grace itself is not this kind of romantic, soft, fuzzy thing. One could say that Nisar-gadatta Maharaj, for instance, was a transmitter of grace and he was hardly devotional. He wouldn't stand for any devotion around him. So one shouldn't exclusively identify this idea of grace with the bhakti traditions because grace is available in many, many different traditions. Even in any bhakti school, if it's a real bhakti school and not just some sentimental approach, love is a fire. Love is a burning, raging conflagration. It's not this weepy-eyed thing, where everybody walks around saying, "Oh my guru is so gentle and I love my guru so much." If you call up a school and the person on the phone is talking like that you have to question it. WIE: What is it then that makes it not just a sentimental feeling but actually something that is fiery? LL: It's absolutely transformational. A metaphor might be a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. The alteration of structure is so great and so profound that it can't take place without crisis. Often one element of the crisis will be what we call this tremendous fire, this heat, or tapas. WIE: What is the nature of this tapas or crisis? LL: Some of it is the standard confrontation with ego's autonomous identification with illusion as if that were reality, and having to dismantle that dictatorship. And the first thing that's required in any kind of healing is you have to first acknowledge that there's sickness. So the first order of business is getting some recognition of the illness of identification with the body as total reality. That involves an honest recognition and ownership of the neurotic aspects of behavior that ego has assumed as necessary protection for itself. That can be shame, pride, all forms of narcissism and greed and so on. We've lived 20, 30, 40, 50 years, and to admit that in all of that time everything that we've done has been informed by self- centeredness, egoism and narcissism requires tremendous, tremendous discipline, attention and a lot of just basic hard work. Theoretically we could come into this fire and see that we've been selfish and that could be revelatory. We could just go, "Oh wow, I don't want to live like that anymore," and go on from there. But realistically most people aren't willing to do that. The bottom line is, it's a matter of a kind of core willingness to give up fifty years of whatever we think we've accumulated. It's like taking this immense bank account and just giving it up. It's as if you were a Jew in Germany or in Russia at certain times in history and you had a vault full of gold, and you had a chance to hop on a boat with nothing but the shirt on your back and get out. What would you choose, life or your gold? Most people chose the gold and died for it under horrific circumstances. It's the same analogy. Someone could come to this work and get the fact of the illusion and then choose life, but most of us want to take the gold along with us. Really the gold is shit but it's just that it's familiar and i s served us well. WIE: What is it that gets a person to the point where they're willing to choose life, even though it means giving up everything that they've had and that they've known and that they've done? LL: Personally I think it's love. And whether that shows up in a tradition of bhakti or in a tradition of jnana, love is not some kind of weepy, sentimental, misty-eyed sighing kind of thing. Love is the life-essence of creation. I think if one wants that badly enough or is committed to serving that deeply enough, at some point you're willing to go on past your own assumed, illusory handicaps. WIE: I've heard you refer to yourself as a crazy wisdom teacher, a divine jester and a fool for God. LL: I like to think of myself as a subtle crazy wisdom teacher. WIE: What do you mean by that? LL: I call myself a subtle crazy wisdom teacher because generally speaking my manifestations are extremely conservative. Some of my students say, "Oh but your energy is so revolutionary." That's well and good but in the early days of the school I would do a lot more things with students, like we'd go dancing or I'd do strange things. In the last ten years I'm just comfortable living on the ashram and having the same daily schedule and eating my salad. To all external purposes a crazy wisdom teacher is someone who acts in a crazy way to provoke or to shock students into a kind of shift of context. I do that so rarely anymore that I think it's very nice of my students to continue to refer to me as a crazy wisdom teacher. In effect that's what I am, but personally I think the subtleties of that are so obscure that I'm always surprised when someone sees them. WIE: What is crazy wisdom? LL: One of the primary aspects of crazy wisdom is that crazy wisdom teachers are willing to use any behavior no matter how shocking or irreverent or disturbing, if that behavior, and only if that behavior, has a very high likelihood of provoking a shift in the student, a deepening in the student. Of course in this day and age, because of the communication industry, we hear about every idiot throughout the world whose ego takes on a crazy wisdom function and then goes about using shock techniques whenever they feel like it, with complete disregard for the timing of the matter. Everything is timing. Gurdjieff was a master of timing. He didn't just produce shock like a research scientist to see what would happen. He only produced shock when the likelihood of it being effective, in terms of deepening a student's relationship to the divine, was high. It didn't always work because it is only a likelihood, but still he wasn't random about it. And the teachers who I call charlatans today are teachers who are completely irresponsible in their use of power and crazy manifestation. I would consider a crazy wisdom teacher someone who might use anything, but is never arbitrary or never follows their own personal motives. They only use dramatic and shocking manifestations under specific circumstances at exactly the right time. Like faceting a diamond, if you don't understand the structure of the stone and you just take a chisel and hit it, what you get is diamond dust. You've got to know exactly the structure of the diamond because you've got to tap it along a particular fracture point. If you tap in the middle of two fracture points then you just smash the stone instead of getting a perfectly faceted jewel. Human beings are the same way. They've got what we could call revelation lines, so to speak, or enlightenment lines. A crazy wisdom teacher is a master at faceting. A charlatan is someone who just takes the hammer and chisel and whales away and hopes that there are some beneficial results—or maybe doesn't even care, just loves the euphoria of the exercise of power and people groveling at his or her feet. WIE: The way you're describing crazy wisdom it sounds like it's a very precise science. LL: The thing is, though, the scientist is completely spontaneous and instinctual. It's not a science of mind. It's a science of function. WIE: I think a popular notion of crazy wisdom is that ultimately reality doesn't make sense, therefore one acts in ways that demonstrate that to kind of blow the conceptual mind. LL: That's one of the revelations that can deepen a student's relationship to the divine. So one might do something under a specific circumstance to produce the revelation that reality is nonlinear. But ordinarily one wouldn't function like that all the time just to prove that point. One would do that only when the student was just on the edge of the real possibility of getting that point, beyond just knowing the party line. Another important consideration is that the kind of behavior that would demonstrate the absurdity of linearity would not tend to be violent behavior or the kind of behavior that would psychologically scar someone. WIE: Many of the crazy wisdom teachers that you hear about wouldn't necessarily draw any lines like that. I know that you have been known to be outrageous, provocative and unpredictable at times, so that in a sense puts you in the crazy wisdom camp. Yet I also know that among your students you have particular protocols or norms that are required. For ex- ample, people generally have to be either celibate or monogamous. You don't allow promiscuity. LL: I wouldn't say we don't allow promiscuity, we don't recommend it. So if someone is promiscuous that doesn't necessarily mean that they're no longer a student or they get kicked out of the school. There's very little promiscuity in the school because I'm so Victorian in my attitudes. But the rules are not the kind that exclude people who bend them. WIE: Similarly, I think you recommend that people don't use alcohol, at least at the ashram. LL: Or cigarettes or caffeine. Talk about no fun. No sex, no alcohol, no caffeine, no tobacco, no drugs. That's why we're such heavy movie-goers. WIE: But when you think about people like Trungpa Rinpoche or Osho it's a very different kind of scene. So it seems that to put yourself in the crazy wisdom camp, so to speak, isn't completely appropriate. You seem different than most of the people who would be identified with that. LL: That's part of my crazy wisdom style. It's a funny thing because I hold Trungpa in absolutely the highest, highest, highest regard. To me Trungpa can do no wrong even though he did some pretty heavy shit. There are other teachers who do far less than Trungpa that I wouldn't even consider to be teachers of any stature whatsoever, that I think are completely deluded and that I would call charlatans. So who I respect and who I don't is purely an instinctual thing. It doesn't rest on linearity because you can look at certain teachers who should be considered crazy wisdom teachers because of their behavior and I think they're just crazy, period, and not teachers at all. And yet Trungpa, whose behavior was really pretty much as wild as it gets, I hold in absolutely the highest regard. WIE: There's no question, at least in many people's minds, that Trungpa had a great deal of realization. He had a tremendous effect on many people and the kind of crazy wisdom that is as precise as a diamond cutter is, of course, what his students would claim for him. Yet the results of some of his behavior, it seems, haven't been so great. Look at the scandal involving AIDS and sex that occurred around his successor, Osel Tendzin. And Osel Tendzin and other students became alcoholic, for example. I think that one thing that happens is that students often tend to imitate their teacher and take on in many ways, perhaps unconsciously, the behaviors and attitudes of their guru. So, when you have someone like Trungpa carrying on the way he did, I think it was almost predictable that some of his students would do similar things. LL: Well, that's a danger, and there's no way around that, I think. A really good teacher will work towards discouraging that in students, but there's no way around it. Students are going to copy the teacher and in some cases, they'll bring integrity to it, and in most cases they won't. So what you see are the most cases in which there's no integrity brought to it. The fact that students copy the teacher and the teacher can't stop it is not necessarily a mark against the teacher, the way I view it. Every new student coming into my school is supposed to really get sat down and get a lecture, "Do as I say, not as I do." So, I highly discourage students from copying my behavior. WIE: Don't you hold yourself to the kinds of standards that you would like to see your students live by? LL: Absolutely not. WIE: Why is that? LL: I don't know. I'm free. That was a joke! I could give you a good justification for it but it might not be exactly the reason. The way I teach is instinctually designed to optimize the possibility of my student's duplicating my state of consciousness, and behavior has nothing to do with it. So I highly discourage students from mimicking my behavior. Some do to varying degrees anyway. The function of the teacher is designed to optimize the duplication of the state of consciousness of the teacher, not necessarily to produce a carbon copy of the teacher. WIE: But it would seem that behavior would be relevant to showing the condition you described earlier as your spontaneous slavery to the will of God. And that's the kind of behavior that you'd want to see in your students. LL: Well, no, because my function is different from my students' function. My function is to bring my students into alignment with the will of God. What their function is after that is up to the will of God. It has nothing to do with me or them. I'm not training teachers. If any one or more of my students woke up, they might become teachers, but they also might not. That's up to the will of God. It has nothing to do with my wish or their wish. I don't think that everybody who wakes up teaches. WIE: Even so, it seems like there must be some core, as indefinable or subject to many different manifestations as that may be, of how awakening functions in the world. LL: I have integrity in my work. And so, regardless of the manifestations of my activity, if people can see that I have integrity in my work, that's something that they can learn. That is a model for people. So there are, I suppose one could say, subtle aspects or internal aspects of my work that do act as a modeling mechanism, but not my activity. The integrity of my commitment to my work, the integrity of my commitment to my teacher, those kinds of things—yes. WIE: You identify yourself as a Western Baul. Could you say something about the Indian Baul tradition and what your connection to it is? LL: Well, essentially my connection to it is realizing after the fact that the spontaneous sadhana that has been generated in my school is identical to Baul sadhana. I had never heard of the Bauls until after my teaching work began. One of my quirks is that I enjoy studying and reading. In the process of my own consumption of spiritual literature, I came across some literature on the Bauls and I started saying, "This is exactly what we're doing and it's a 500-year-old tradition!" One of the primary aspects of Baul tradition is that communication of the teaching is optimally effective when it's experiential. The Bauls are known as itinerant musicians. They encode the esoteric teachings of transformation, including the teachings of their yoga, into song and choreographed dance and music. Their lyrics are cryptic representations of the teaching itself. People listen to the music and watch the dance and get into a very receptive state where the teaching is kind of organically communicated. WIE: One of the major things you do is lead a rock 'n roll band. As far as I know, you're the only spiritual teacher who is doing that. LL: I hope so. I wouldn't want it to become common. WIE: Do you see your rock band, Liars, Gods and Beggars, as a way to communicate your teachings? LL: I think that Liars, Gods and Beggars has the potential to communicate some essence of the teaching, even if subtly, on a very large scale. I would never presume to think that the real work and yoga of the teaching could possibly be communicated on a large scale under any circumstances. But I see Liars, Gods and Beggars as kind of a subtle spiritual virus that can touch a vast environment. I see its real effects as being over lifetimes. You know, if Liars, Gods and Beggars actually got popular, every journalist would ferret out the spiritual thing, and I think that a lot of people listening to the music would presume they were doing some sort of Baul sadhana. But that would be ridiculous because vast quantities of people just aren't drawn to the kind of practice that produces the effects designed by this kind of work. WIE: What do you think is generally happening in the spiritual scene today? LL: Well, I think there's a false premise in many people's minds, which is that as we approach the millennium and the satya-yuga, the age of truth and light and goodness and beauty, that more and more people are going to enter into serious spiritual practice. And I don't think that's so. I think there are no more serious practitioners now than there ever were. Maybe number-wise, because of the population, but not percentage-wise. It feels like the spiritual scene is in another great expansion, like in the sixties. We had a couple of decades where it went out of fashion and even now gurus are very out of fashion. But there are all these movie stars who are Buddhists, and movies that have ostensibly spiritual ideas in them are becoming very commonplace. Ten years ago, every movie had Hare Krishnas and it was almost like the joke of the movie. Now there are actually big name, major studio movies in which people are seriously discussing and mentioning the name of a ibetan lama. There's a tremendous resurrection of spiritual interest but I think that that has to do with people's fear of death. I don't think that most of the people flocking to the Dalai Lama and wonderful people like that are ever going to become serious practitioners. I think it's just a kind of fear of the apocalypse or something. WIE: What is it that makes someone a really serious practitioner? LL: Being willing to sacrifice anything and everything that is required for the realization of the divine. WIE: You've been teaching now for about twenty years. Has your teaching changed since the early days? LL: Well, I think my style has changed dramatically, but the essence, the shift of context was the recognition of reality, and that can never change. Reality doesn't change. It is what it is. Although the forms of reality may change, the essence of reality can never change. In the beginning, I was sort of mimicking Da Free John. I was criticizing every other teacher, like I was the only teacher on the face of the planet who was real. That's such a ridiculous posture. As time has gone on, I've become much more willing to just relax and acknowledge other people's strengths. I still have a bottom line because I think there are a lot of false teachers out there who I'm more than willing to criticize, but at the same time I think my style has become much more grounded and less cosmic, more here and now. But the essence of the communication can't change. It can never be any different. WIE: After twenty years of teaching, are you happy with the results? LL: I'm relatively happy with the results, but I can't be entirely happy with the results because the results are relative. So, I suppose what would make me really objectively happy is if my function were duplicated in one or more students. So far, that hasn't happened. I've had students who have even spent months in awakened states at one time, but somehow have taken on qualities that are not yet completely 100 percent finished. I'm happy with the results in terms of a comparison with any other community, and in terms of the embodiment of the teaching in my students and their ability to transmit it, but it's a relative happiness. There is so much work to be done. And you know, even if an individual student's work is complete, then there's always more people needing what this is. So I think that happiness or satisfaction is not an issue. I'm as busy as I can be, there's no lack of work. That's all that is necessary, really. WIE: What do you see as the ultimate achievement that you'd like to see in this community? LL: I'd like to see everybody in a happy working relationship. You know, loving one another, completely free of violence and competitiveness. That would be enough. WIE: Sounds great. LL: Yeah, it does sound great. Or not in relationship, but by choice. So in a relationship by choice or not in a relationship by choice, but living a life that is com- pletely nurturing and free of violence and manipulation. One of the primary things that has changed in twenty years is the way I use language. In the beginning, everything was "wake up, wake up, wake up!" And now, it's like the gracefulness required to wake up is such that it's almost like that happens in the process of our lives together. We don't need to focus on that except as a kind of obvious reason to be together. We wouldn't be together if that weren't the reason for being together, so we don't have to dwell on it. What we dwell on is being kind to one another in general and developing intimacy that's free of promiscuity and flirtation and gaminess and so on. That's plenty.