Yes in the Press

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MAY 27, 1996
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Source: KKUP-91.3 FM Radio, Cupertino, California

http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Backstage/9898/Changes.html

Keys to Ascension - An interview with Jon Anderson

By Elizabeth Gips

Elizabeth: You know, because I wrote to you -- this is sort of a “thank you” interview, Jon. This is Jon Anderson and what I have wanted to do for a long time is talk to you about ... or have you talk to us ...

Jon: (giggles)

Elizabeth: ... to share the spiritual knowledge and that wonder that’s inside of you that expresses itself in your music. It’s so much optimism about the whole future of the human race. Let’s start off by asking what do you see happening to us?

Jon: Obviously I always feel that everything is getting better. I certainly believe in the idear that it’s a wonderful chaos that surrounds us. Sometimes I can actually pinpoint the problems, if you like. If you look at a table -- we’re sitting at a table now -- and you can say, well, this is the human condition, this table. And you find any very small thing--maybe a lot smaller than this--because this is a human being. And you can say this is all the anger and all the angst and all the aggravation. It’s very tiny. Because if you travel the world and you go to Barcelona today or you go to Yucatan or you go to small towns in the middle of Uruguay, and people are just getting on with life. You know? There’s no wars or angst, but there are terrible things going on in certain parts of the world, but it’s a very small part of being now. And if you then take the table as being the world -- the size of the world, the oceans, the mountains, the flowers, the trees, the insects, the energies that are on this planet -- and you go to that same small spot and that’s the human condition, that’s human beings, that’s how small the human beings are on the planet, and then you go around one step further, which is a little bit bizarre in some people’s minds, but you can say again that the table is likened to our understanding of the world and the universe. And our understanding of the world and our universe is so tiny.

Elizabeth: So it’s a tiny piece of a tiny piece of a tiny piece ...

Jon: ...of a tiny piece.

Elizabeth: Which is the bad stuff to start with.

Jon: Well that’s what we center in on through the media. We always have done; we are always into ... the good news isn’t fun or the good news isn’t saleable, so we don’t have too much good news on the news every day. So if kids are brought up to understand that the news is really what’s happening, we are all in trouble. Like Longwalker, my great friend, would say: one of the first things we do to children, we make them into consumers. We take them into the mall when they are little babies in the pram. We show them that this is what we do: we make money to buy stuff. That’s all we ever teach them; we don’t teach them about the real earth; the Earth Mother, the flowers and the interdimensional elements of the planet, the fairy kingdom, various things like this that I’ve had to, really, if you like, discover along my path. As I’ve said sometimes, when you think about being on the path to knowledge and understanding, you are already on it! Just thinking that you want to get on it; you’re already on it! That’s the whole idear. I was very, very fortunate to have a wonderful upbringing, and I spent a lot of time alone when I was young, and I spent a lot of that time up in the mountains, the hills where I was born, and nature. And I just loved it.

Elizabeth: What part of England was that?

Jon: It was just north of Manchester, sort of very similar to San Luis Obispo, but we did get snow and rain most of the time. But when I started making music, I was always aware of how wonderful music was, for one thing, and how it affected people. So when I was very, very lucky to become successful, that was really a very strange time for me, because why would I get success? Why me? So I started thinking that maybe I’ve got something to learn from all this so I started studying music; I think by the time I was 25, I started to play piano, which is very late in life to start playing piano. And learning and listening to Stravinski and Sibelius. I loved the Beatles, the Beach Boys, whoever was on the radio. I loved music totally, but I started to learn about Mozart and Delibes and Elgar, and this was a great door that had swung open for me when I was about 25, 26 and 27 years old. And then with Yes, I was very, very fortunate to be with very talented musicians, and we just couldn’t stop and stand around doing 3 or 4 minute songs trying to be pop idols or have pop success. We wanted to investigate more into the musical realm. So if you spend maybe 8 or 9 minutes doing a piece of music, what are you going to say lyrically? This is a dangerous area. You can start ... most rock and roll is about having a good time. You know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and that’s great. I was always into that idear of having fun in life and stuff. But the mystery of life was the one thing that intrigued me, so I wanted to lyrically delve into that mystery, so I started reading Herman Hesse: Journey to the East, Siddhartha. This is like another door that sort of swung open.

Elizabeth: As your path progressed this way, did people come along who were teachers, from whom you learned?

Jon: Well I was always aware of the musicians that I was working with in Yes, and they were great teachers in a way. We were teaching each other. One of the first real people that came into my life in 1971 was Vangelis. He was at that time living in Paris and I’d heard about him. He was from Greece. He made music that I’d never heard before. Very symphonic in style. Very new.

Elizabeth: Rock symphonic.

Jon: Rock symphonic. He had an album called Aphrodite’s Child which is very famous, but the one that hit me was one called Creation Dumont. That’s a beautiful album of very, very earth organic music. So I went to Paris and knocked on his door. Yes was pretty successful, but I wanted to know who this guy was, so I just went and just banged on the door. He opened the door; he was standing there with a bow and arrow. And he was looking at me like “HEY!” and he had this great big beard and he was really big like 300 pounds of wonderful guy. He had on a caftan and there were these nymphets running around inside the house. And I just walked in and I thought, gosh, this is like heaven! And he had the target for the bow and arrow right next to the television, and he’d get the bow and arrow and he’d let go. The arrow would go all the way down this hallway and stick it into the target. But right next to the target was his father Ulysses watching TV! So I hope he never missed. There were some arrows that went right out the window. I don’t know if anyone knew what was going on out there. But there was a lot of tapes all over the floor, cassettes, you know, and he’d play me stuff that would never be released. There would be so much energy coming out of this one person, because he made all these sounds himself. He had these wonderful keyboards set up that nobody had ever tried before. Like three or four different kinds of keyboards with three or four different kinds of echo and everything. And so I went back to London and we’d just invited Rick Wakeman to join the band. So I was saying, “Why don’t you use three or four keyboards?” And he said, “Oh yeah, yeah, okay then.” So 14 keyboards later, Rick was playing all these keyboards on stage. That was in a way the start of the keyboard style, and it all emulated from Vangelis. And he was my mentor from then on.

Elizabeth: That’s incredible. I’ve been wanting so long to ask you this question: You have a line in Toltec that goes something like I got over my fear; and plunged into the inconceivable. That could take the next hour to discuss. Tell me about getting over fear. That’s a big one. And having done that, I know you can’t hardly describe the inconceivable—what are you talking about?

Jon Well it’s the leap of faith, really. I think that’s what Carlos Casteneda was saying in the book. You know Toltec is like a musical appreciation of Carlos Casteneda’s work.

Elizabeth: That’s fabulous. Do you know Casteneda?

Jon; Not yet, but one of his disciples was here a month ago, and we’re working together on a project. I think I know him. I think we all know him.

Elizabeth: In some ways, we are know each other anyway.

Jon: Yeah, he’s a part of all our lives. He’s the pilgrim that we all want to be. He’s the one that will go further than anybody, and we all want to achieve that openness to let go, because in letting go, you are at one with Mother Earth, the Divine Mother. And to leap into the inconceivable is very simple. You actually have that leap of faith, and you let go. You don’t try to pretend that you are doing something, because in reality you’re not really doing anything. You are a beautiful instrument. On every level.

Elizabeth: But that doesn’t mean sitting back and waiting for the universe to shower you.

Jon: Oh no no no . It’s a combination of balance. It’s the will to want to be able to be a part of life. Be a good energy to life. Make it work for yourself, because if you’re not happy, you can’t be happy to anybody else; if you’re not content, you can’t be content with anybody else; if you don’t dream, you can’t dream with other people. You know, all these things.

Elizabeth: I love that about your songs. I love that that you talk about the dreamer and the visionary as being a creative element. Have you found that in yourself?

Jon: I’m very lucky these days. I found some beautiful herb tea called Incredible Dream Tea. You can get it down at the store in downtown there. And it actually opens up the dream potential, amazingly so.

Elizabeth: Somebody gave me a dream catcher.

Jon: Oh, they’re good.

Elizabeth: They’re fabulous.

Jon: I’ve got three ‘round my bed.

Elizabeth: It really makes a difference.

Jon: Because life is a dream. I always believe that. That we are in this dream, this norm, this arranged reality—we agreed to be in this situation now. And whenever I’m creating, I agree to want music to come through me into this reality. I can hear it all the time, you see. And sometimes it can send you a bit crazy because it’s out there, and you try to bring it into this reality so you try to get it on tape and get it out to people who might enjoy listening to it. That’s the main idear of being an artist, a musician. It’s trying to bring out something that they can feel that maybe somebody else doesn’t quite feel at that time. So you want to bring it out for the next person who enjoys it.

Elizabeth: I call that the trickle down theory because, well I had told you that I had moments when I needed to speak with people, and I needed someone or something to lift me up so that I remember who I am as it were, and that’s been you, often. So that trickles down and trickles down. So you talked about this thing of letting go, etc. etc., and I think personally, that it’s a group of us that are learning together now.

Jon: You bet.

Elizabeth: And I think you express that in your music, and wondered somehow have you been through experiences with Yes working together or was there a point where you recognized that this isn’t just an individual thing but that there’s a large group of us doing it together?

Jon: I would think that once, I was standing on stage in front of a lot of people and realizing that they weren’t looking at me, they were looking at their vision of me,

Elizabeth: That’s true.

Jon: And I would not take that ego and use it on any level. I think it happened very early. I was very lucky. Okay, I was famous for ten minutes. I was happy. I was famous; I was a big star, but it didn’t help me when I went to the bank. Do you know what I’m saying? There’s always something that will hit you in the face and you say, wait a minute, I can’t pretend to be famous. I can’t pretend to be any better than anybody else. I am just part of an incredible event, in my understanding of the world. My understanding of creation. So I enjoy knowing that everything that I’m involved in is part of a whole thing; a whole happening. Sometimes when I’m in deep mediation, I see so many people meditating all over the world at that moment in time. And that’s a great refreshing feeling to know that someone in Spain is there, someone in China is there, someone in Australia — all over the world, even little children, old people, just happy people, warm people—before they go on their daily routine, they’re sitting there in harmony with the universe, and I feel that, not all the time; it’s not like everyday is my big sort of experience. Every now and again, I’ll get that incredible oneness of being. And through music, I’m always searching for a better way of explaining how I feel. Explaining my experience. How I musically feel or lyrically feel. And most of the time, the best lyrics come when I’m not thinking.

Elizabeth: Do you do the music come first?

Jon: It’s a combination. More than likely music, and at the same time, I get myself in the situation where ... I remember working with Vangelis, the first time I ever sung with Vangelis, I was at the studio.

Elizabeth: Was that Friends of Mr. Cairo?

Jon: No, it was an album he was doing called Heaven and Hell. And there was a song ... he was playing the piano and I started singing. And he said, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute. Put the microphone there,” and he started again. And the tape was rolling, and I just sang a spontaneous song. And it said, “Once we did run/How we chased a million stars/And touched as only one can.” And the song became the only vocal song on the album, and I just sang it, and he said, “That’s wonderful, Jon, wonderful.” I said, “Well do you want me to do some harmonies?” And he said, “No, no, no. That’s just right.” And a month later, the album was being released and there was the song. So I realized that working with Vangelis was a very spontaneous moment. So if you listen to Friends of Mr. Cairo, it’s the first take, totally, no rehearsal.

Elizabeth: You don’t do it over and over.

Jon: Well you do, you record the music, and then I would sing, and some of the lyrics would pop out, and all of a sudden, I would listen back to what I’d sung, rewrite the lyrics, of course. And then just resing it one more time. Because it was that moment that was a spontaneous moment and I didn’t want to think about more than a day. And that was, to me, a great musical realization.

Elizabeth: Are you able to do a lot of music that way, just really spontaneously?

Jon: Yeah, yeah. I’m working on something at the moment that I recorded everything while I was washing up. And it was a bizarre way of thinking, but I kept singing these Irish songs, I don’t know where they came from.

Elizabeth: ‘Cuz you knew that Paddy was coming.

Jon: There you are! Of course, of course. And there I was, I was washing up and I put the tape on and I was singing a song about something or other, and I finished up with about 14 songs, and I’m just getting them organized. There’s a wonderful Irish band in town. There’s about six of them as a nucleus and about eight other violin players, so you get a real hoe-down going.

P: Fierce, Celtic kayleigh music.

Jon: Yeah, yeah. So next month I’m going to, ...I have the studio down in town there, it’s an old church, beautiful place. And I’m going to get them all in there and have two or three days of drinking Irish whiskey and playing some great music, and we’re just going to see what happens. Because happily, what I’ve learned is not to make music for business. If it’s going to be on a label and it’s going to get out there, fine, but first of all, make music for the sake of making the music. And that took me awhile to understand. And that was again the leap into the inconceivable. You’re never quite sure why I’m making music, because I’ve been told to make an album because I’ve been told my bank manager needs more money to pay the mortgage to be able to keep going because we got to go on tour to make more money because the manager thinks that’s the only way Yes will survive. And eventually you say, “Why am I making music?” And there were periods where we made music purely for the music, and sometimes we bumped into that: “Let’s try to make a hit single.” And it never happened. And it was so bizarre, because I would say to the guys, “It’s not going to happen.” Yes, but we had one hit: it was called Owner of a Lonely Heart, so the next album is going to be ten times bigger. It’s not going to happen, cuz I know Owner of a Lonely Heart was like Twist and Shout LaBomba. It’s the same song, just a different version. It was a wonderful experience, but you can’t live your life expecting to be a hit. You have to make music more for the potential growth of your consciousness.

Elizabeth: Oh, wait a minute. This is really great! So making music not simply for the audience, but for yourself and for your own growth.

Jon: Totally.

P: So you’re juggling two worlds. How to survive in the 3D world ...

Jon: All the time.

P: ... And how to be in that spiritual, that other dimension person.

Jon: All the time, because you have to decide, first and foremost, that you are lucky to be doing what you’re doing and enjoy what you’re doing and what will come will be so wonderful. And the more, as I’ve said before, the more I let go, the better the music is, because I’m not impeding it by my trying to make it or form it into something more financially better. More businesslike or more hip. People will say, “Why don’t you do something a little bit more hip?” and I say, “Well, listen—if you listen to Yes music of the 70s, it is timeless.” We just recorded some of it last month in the 90s and it doesn’t seem like ... it’s not hip; it’s not cool, but it’s still good music, and it will last a lot longer than I anticipated. Because when we did one album called Close to the Edge. It was a really good moment.

Elizabeth: How long ago?

Jon: Twenty-three years ago. And it was a great moment to make that music and it was based on the Siddhartha, you always come back down to the river, like the river it meets, all the rivers come to the same ocean. That was the basic idear. And so we made a really beautiful album. People would come over and say, “This album will be still spoke about and played in ten years,” and I’d say, “Nah, not possible,” thinking and hoping that it would last a couple of years because we spent a lot of time making the album. But then here we are, 23 years later, rerecording parts.

Elizabeth: What year was that?

Jon: 1972.

Elizabeth: ‘72! That’s when I went on the air, and I think that’s when I first heard you, was Close to the Edge.

Jon: It was a great moment for me from any musical standpoint. First of all, the music was twenty minutes long. It had structure for the first time. We were creating structure, which I’d learned from listening to Stravinski and Sibelius. The structure was important.

Elizabeth: That’s what you said. You mentioned some of the romantic, Debussy...

Jon: Debussy, Delibes .. yeah

Elizabeth: Delibes, so those are the romantic visionary musicians of the turn of the last century, right?

Jon: I believe in the next five, ten years, I’ll be making music because of listening to them. For the last ten, twenty years, I’ve been making music because of Stravinsky, Mozart, and Sibelius. But now I’m more into the romanticism of music. So I’m working on a love poem, and I’m working on a dance piece for the local dance company, we’re going to call Earth Mother Earth. That’ll all be about the goddess energy. And then we are doing the Celtic energy, which is very unknown. Not many people know what Celtic really is, what it really means. It’s just a word that we associate with Ireland, but all European people are Celtic. All European people. They started migrating 25 thousand years ago from Asia Minor and all of the Russians, Italians, Spanish, Austrian, all the way Nordic ... and then Ireland was the last bastion of the elders of the Celtic race. That was the last place where they finished.

Elizabeth: Like California, you can’t go any further.

Jon: Exactly. And that is the power spot. Very powerful place; that’s why it’s been downtrodden for hundreds of years. And it was all to do with a stone, a beautiful Stone of Scone, and the Stone of Scone was the most powerful of the jewels, power stones, that have been kept throughout the ages, and that stone was stolen from the elders and put into the Crown of England, and that’s why we have this amazing thousand years of the English Empire. It became the British Empire, but it was basically through the crown of England. And in 1913, the royal jewels were stolen for two days and that stone was replaced. It’s a true story.

Elizabeth: I didn’t know this!

Jon: And that’s why we had the fall of the British Empire, and it is no longer any use, and the Celtic elders have got the stone, and they will come back into their rightful position in the next ten years time. That’s why there’s going to be a new Ireland—Ire—is going to become Ireland again, because you can’t have an annex, Northern Ireland being controlled by the English government that doesn’t really care for the Irish. They don’t know why they don’t care. That’s not a big problem. They don’t know why they don’t understand the Irish people. It’s simply because they’ve forgotten all about the fairy kingdom. Now people will say, “Jon, you’ve lost it!” And I say, “Thank God I’ve lost it too!”

Elizabeth: I just read in the Book of Celtic Wisdom that the sidhe, which is where the fairies and spirits are, is exactly this world that we’re in, but they can access us but we don’t know how to access them.

Jon: No, they’re in a faster dimension than ours. It’s right parallel, and it’s actually where laser comes from, the laser phosphorus energy. I was very fortunate ...

Elizabeth: You mean those little bitty silver things that you sometimes see in your eyes?

Jon: Oh yeah. I saw a diva, I call it a diva, a fairy, on my 40th birthday. They came to meet me, because I’d been reading, up until six months then, I’d been reading this beautiful book called A True Fairy Tale, and it’s written by a lady in North London called Daphne Charters. And it was a true story. And is a true story. Anyway, I’d been reading this beautiful little book about how the fairy kingdom works and how we don’t really see things. We look at a tree, but we don’t see it for what it really is. That’s the whole essence of knowing, (a) there’s a fairy kingdom, (b) if you want to make contact, they’ll come. And they’ll meet you half way. As you said, we cannot get into their world, but they can come to our world anytime that they want. But they do, but it’s part of their wonderful nature. They love, and still love human beings, and they’re always trying to help us. They are always living in very difficult times through living in hard concrete environments they don’t particularly like, but they do it out of a beautiful knowledge of all that is. And if you read the book, if you can by a chance get a copy, it will explain how it works. And that night of my birthday, I was laying there in bed and I just saw this beautiful spark in the room. I was on an island called Tieamann near Singapore, and I was in this hotel. And then this little blue spark was flying around. And I’m thinking, well, that’s not a firefly because it’s not going on and off, and I was seeing it, and it stopped, and it saw me and I saw it. It got bigger and bigger and became these two beautiful wings, big hands. It wasn’t a Walt Disney fairy, sorry. It was just this glorious vision of phosphorus energy, and it came and floated right over my head and told me things that I can’t explain now because I still can’t remember exactly how it ...

Elizabeth: But it’s in there.

Jon: Oh yeah, it’s still there. We used to co-create with the fairy kingdom, many thousands of years ago; oh, three thousand years ago. And they are ready to help and co-create with us once more.

Elizabeth: What do we have to do?

Jon: Well, they sent us the laser beam. They said, “Hey! You can have it back.” Because we used to have it , as you know, in Lemoria and Atlantis, in those days. And they’ve given it back, and look what we’re using it for. We’re using it for all sorts of magical things. Healing, so many laser ... you know we make our music, laser disks, little laser beams. And visual television, the laser screen is coming. Laser sound reproduction is coming, no more speakers. But that’s the future. That’s the fourth dimension which we are slowly moving into.

Elizabeth: What’s the fourth dimension?

Jon: Well it’s the higher knowledge. What is it? It’s higher knowledge than the third. Well, when you think about it, we’re working with computer knowledge. Now computer, like anything, is information. It’s an amazing adventure within itself, the computer.

P: I wanted to ask you about kayleigh, the Celtic music.

Elizabeth: I wanted to finish about computers. It’s a very important thing.

Jon: I have a very simple explanation about computers. Computers are basically us. Everything that’s here in this house, in this room, comes from under the ground. Everything! We! So we are all, in a sense, part of the consciousness. So the computer really is our consciousness brought to life into this little pictorial world. And we bring it here and it is actually is way ahead of us. We are just learning it. It is actually letting us learn it. It is showing us the way.

Elizabeth: So do you see the future then, and through computers, partly pulling us towards it? Or am I putting words into your mouth?

Jon: What it’s doing is explaining who and what we are. The Divine Moment, will become, I believe ... I have a great belief in UFO experience, and the next two years, I believe, something’s going to happen so wonderfully powerful that will make us realize who and what we are and why we’re on this planet. Because it will help us to be more happy, more content, more agreeable, more in love with life, more in love with death, the next extension of life, which was taken out of the Bible as we all know. Not many people are willing to say ... it will be nice when the president says, “Yes, we have figured it out now. In the third century, Constantine the First took out all of the information on reincarnation out of the Bible just to keep us unorganized!” And one of the funniest things I’ve always wondered is why we don’t have thirteen month cycles. It was explained to me. Thirteen 28-day cycles cuz I remember ...

Elizabeth: I think it had to do with the goddess and fear of her. And the priests ...

Jon: Yeah, of course, they want to keep us unbalanced.

Elizabeth: They wanted to keep us on a lunar cycle.

Jon: So I remember what it is: it goes October, November, December, Remember, January, February, March, April ... so the thirteenth month is Remember, and it is a spider sign, that’s an old Celtic knowledge. That’s an Irish story. And so I have this great feeling that the fourth dimension, being more aware of our artistic potential, our healing potential, our knowledge of chakra energy again; our understanding that there were four great masters: Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha. Out of all the four, we are all, in a way, trying to emulate and that’s the sense of being in balance, because when you have a human feeling and a spiritual feeling, if it’s 50-50, you’re in balance with the planet. Unfortunately, these days, we’re 95 human beings and 5 percent spiritual, and we have to grow back the spiritualness.

Elizabeth: I think there’s a large growing number of us that are changing that equation.

Jon: Very fast.

Elizabeth: I was really interested to get back to your ... and we will get back to your ... but in discussing this, in that line of yours about dropping fear and touching into or plunging into the inconceivable, impressed me as that is exactly what the human race needs to do.

Jon: Hmmmm

Elizabeth: That’s the evolutionary step, I think, towards kindness and compassion and ...

Jon: Yeah.

Elizabeth: ... changing everything. Have you seen the crop circles? Did they speak to you?

Jon: Yeah!

Elizabeth: Oh, you’ve got pictures over there on the wall.

Jon: A girl friend of mine who is working on a book about the crop circles for the last four years, and it’s amazing every time I see them, I know it’s more to do with the earth diva kingdom; it’s the fairy kingdom letting us know information. It’s just that we haven’t been able to decipher it yet. And then somebody will someday and say, “Wow, this is going to be happening.” This is something that we must prepare ourselves for even to teach our children more. It’s like the frustration that I’ve always felt about the lack of real education about the mysteries of the world. Okay, well you can be told that you got to go out and get a job and earn money and put money in the bank and put your money away and keep the insurance companies going and make sure you put some money away. You know, what kind of teaching is this? You know, it’s like materialism. It’s like, so much materialistic thought! That’s why I’m always happy when a young child will come over and say, an 8 year old, 10 year old will come over and say, “I really love them songs, Jon,” and I think, God bless you. At least they’re getting it, you know. Because I’m not trying to be, what would you say, intellectual. I’m not intellectual . I try to carry the music in a sort of a poetic balance, so I’m not really scrambling for words or scrambling for musical notes. What I want to do is just make music that’s really inspirational for me and for other people. And if it can touch a 10-year old guy who is just sort of getting into music, then I’m really proud of that moment because it’s very exciting. Gosh, he’s 10; where will he be 40 years from now, where I am now? I’m 52. It’s like saying, wow, where will he be in 40 years if he’s getting what I’m getting?

Elizabeth: Oh, they’re so far advanced over of us. I’m not jealous. Of course, I’m another generation yet removed. I was almost your age before I recognized the wonder of it all, having been raised exactly as you’re saying people are raised. So I was very, very fortunate. However, it seems to me that just looking, there’s an evolutionary growth that’s obvious from generation to generation.

Jon: They’ll walk happily into the fourth dimension. You know, these kids wake up and they don’t know what it was like not to have television. They wake up every day not knowing was it’s like to not have been on the moon. That was an amazing ... it was a giant step for mankind. Like for us, it was ... WHOA ... we went to the moon! How did we do that? In a big tin can. It was a big tin can full of fire. And it was all done with computers. The computers were as big as this room, and the computer that was as big as this room 30 years ago is now as big as this table.

Elizabeth: My son’s first computer was as big as this table.

Jon: Yeah, bizarre.

Elizabeth: I want to get back to Paddy because otherwise I’ll feel, oops, I left something out.

P: Well, there’s something in me that the world is wild, and it seems to me that we need to put that back into people to touch their roots.

Jon: I agree.

P: That wildness, in a sense of celebration, in a sense of dance, in a sense of tribal coming together.

Jon: Yeah, I agree. I’m doing that this summer. I’M GOING FOR IT!

P: In the kayleigh music and it just stirs me. I’m New York Irish, but it stirs me, and I just want to get up and dance, I just want to get up and move, and I want to hoot and holler, and I think that’s a part of being spiritual.

Jon: Totally! It’s one of the points that I was trying to figure out last week. I was trying to decipher now, where am I going by doing this Irish music, or Celtic music, I would say. I don’t want to ... why should I sing songs about the old days, because you know, I’ve heard songs about the old days, and they’re very painful, jolly, and just free-wheeling and sort of innocent. There they are! What I want to be able to do ... maybe I should write songs about something that’s already happened in the future that we are going to find out about. That’s me working on the lyrical content, thinking, my gosh, if I could write about something that hasn’t happened, that is going to happen, and it still keeps that intact, this celebrationary feel, then I will have conquered something inside of me. ‘Cuz I’ll know there is a great future to come on that level, because one of the things that I do say at most concerts that I do, we are all tribal people. And you know this came from me playing in Mexico City. About four years ago, I went to Mexico City, and I went with my friends from Uruguay and a couple of friends from Mexico and Venezuela. I’d done an album called Deseo. And so I went down to Mexico City to play. And basically, I said that what I would like is for some real indigenous people to come to the show and dance on stage in the middle of the show. Everywhere I went, in Costa Rica, Venezuela, everywhere I went all over South America, the local Native American culture would come and dance, just for five minutes. So there I was in the middle of the show, the audience was very, very good; they were having a good time. There were about 2000 people, and these beautiful people came on stage and did a Snake Dance. And they were all dressed in these amazing beaded work from Central Mexico. And there was a grandmother, a little pregnant lady, a hoop child, a man, a blind guy playing a flute, doing the Snake Dance. So I walked off stage, preparing some music and they come on, and I walked off stage and have a drink of water, relax five minutes while they do the dance. I hear this booing. God! I think, gosh, well what the heck is going on? Why are these people shouting and booing? So I walk right on to stage and I start dancing with these people. I had my robes on, I’ll show you. And these, about a dozen young men, guys, (mimics) “Hey, Anderson, play some Yes music!” You know, shouting at me! I said, “Hold on a minute!” And I just stopped everything, and I said, “Look, you are ashamed of these people? You are ashamed of yourself! Because you are tribal people!” And it was the first time it had just struck me that we are ashamed of ourselves. We are.

Elizabeth: Yes, it’s true. We don’t think we’re good enough. For what, to be God, or whatever it is.

Jon: Well, we look at Native Americans sometimes and we just want to pass on the other side. We want to stay away from these ... and I see it all the time.

Elizabeth: African Americans, particularly.

Jon: We are all tribal people, but that’s when it struck me. One thing that hit me that night, I said, “Look everybody! I was Chinese once; I was Negro once; I was American Indian once; I was aborigine. I’ve been everybody. We have all been tribal people. We are all tribal.” And I believe that’s our fear. So the following day, the headline was: ‘Booing Jon Anderson on Stage!’ They didn’t talk about my music or how it went, or how beautiful the show was, and it nearly canceled the tour because it got into the press. What’s that thing ... Reuters ... or

Elizabeth: Reuters?

Jon: No, what’s that ... Associated Press. It got on their system, so all over South America: ‘Jon Anderson booed off stage in Mexico.’ So I had to ring every promoter and say, no, no, no, no ... the story was wrong. They were booing themselves. They didn’t like the Snake Dancers. These people who came, the beautiful children, the grandmothers that came and just danced on stage for no money. They just came for the experience. Well we gave them a donation, but it wasn’t a gig. So in a way, it made me feel so strong to know that I am only as good as those people. I’m only as good as we all are. I can’t say, “Well I’m above you because you have no belief. I’m more spiritual than you.” No! That does not equate. We are all spiritual in our own understanding of spiritualness, so I let go of the fear of thinking that I’m not good enough. The fear of thinking that I’m not worthy. The fear of thinking that I don’t deserve. We deserve everything. We are good enough for everything.

P: It’s called love.

Jon: Yes, that’s everybody.

Elizabeth: Change We Must.

Jon: Yeah, and it’s got a lot to do with ego. How you let your ego dominate your moments.

Elizabeth: I think of ego as a tool and that we need enough objectivity to understand where we are going.

Jon: Yeah, it is. That’s true.

Elizabeth: It’s still being useful as a tool.

Jon: Perfect.

Elizabeth: Would you talk to us a little about your history with meditation?

Jon: I was very lucky at the time of ... in fact I was just writing the actual story that I was in Los Angeles at the end of 1986. And I’ve been trying to meditate for ten, fifteen years. You know, like you do, you just sit there and you think something’s going to happen

Elizabeth: Yeah, right ... you’re waiting for the grand experience!

Jon: And sort of go ~~dong~~ and sort of bang you on the head. And then you go, there, was that it? Did I have it? I think I did. Did I spin ‘round? Did I float? No! You’re just slowly learning to calm down. You’re slowly learning to be silent, and that’s the hardest thing. The mind is always chatter chatter chatter: What are you wearing? When are you going to have something to eat ? Are you going to have something to eat after you finish meditating? How do you feel? Wasn’t it great yesterday? And so on and so on and so on, until your mind is boggled by verbal energy. Talking talking, who the heck’s this talking voice? And then you say, it’s this voice that’s talking to this voice. And so your ego is really having a great time here. And of course, for years, I would daily try to sit down and be quiet. And I actually learned one thing prior to the moment of release. I was learning to breath slowly.

Elizabeth: Well you must have a lot of breath work anyway, being a singer.

Jon: That’s one of the things that I started to try to develop is to how to slow the breathing process down. And then the problem became listening to the breathing or listening to the heart beat. And then saying, is this meditation? I don’t know. It’s very confusing. But at least I was learning the trick of slowing down and being able to sit quietly just for 15 minutes a day, half an hour a day, if possible. And then I was in Los Angeles and I was really, I believe—I know this is a strange thing to say—but I believe that I had a sort of reaction with the ancient people. I sang the song for them. I was with Vangelis. He did a concert in Los Angeles, and I sang the song, the Italian Song; I said I want to dedicate this to all the ancient people who used to live here way before we did. And I sang this song. And that evening somebody approached me who wanted to know why I’d sung the song, and the story started to unfold. I met this person, and then another person and we clicked and they sort of took me on a sort of strange little journey of information. And then I met a girl who was at the concert. Her name was/is Linda Livingston, I presume (ar ar), and Linda said, “You must meet this lady called Divine Mother” ... and I said. ..

Elizabeth: Amachi!

Jon: Divine Mother .... and I said, I don’t know, because I’ve met one or two gurus on my travels and they are very sweet. But I didn’t like ... one of the things I was very concerned about was why would a guru need followers, disciplines to sit there and make sure that everything was right for him, sort of thing. And okay, I sensed that the gurus in a way were enjoying, that they, the disciples were praising him, rather than praising the god within, so I was very reticent to meet any guru or a Divine Mother. I said it nice, of course. But I said, no no, a dozen times, I said no, no. But she kept on at me; she said, “Please, please meet this lady.” So I said, (whining)... “Okayyyyy ... Where are you meeting her?” So we went just near the airport and this little house, this sort of Japanese people, Hawaiian people—it was their house. I just walked in. I took my shoes off, as you do, and I walked into this room and there was this little old lady sitting there. She reminded me of my mother, really, but boy she was so powerful. I don’t know. I just sat there, and I was just smiling. And she said, the first thing she said to me, she said, “You know that God is free!” And I said, “Yeah, that’s what I keep saying.” And she said, “Never bring anything for me. God is free.” And then she went into the thing that she would talk about. And I was totally at ease. And I just sort of said yeah, well, why not. She said, “Do you meditate?” And I said, “For 15 years I’ve been trying. I can’t quiet the mind so well.” She said, “Well, you look very ripe, like a fruit off the tree,” and I said, “Yeah, I feel like that.” I felt like a little child talking to this lady. And she said, “Now, close your eyes, and we will meditate.” And I thought, “Yeah, let’s do it.” And BOOM did I have a good experience! I just went into this, you would say, like a ... sort of egg .. shaped feeling, that surrounded me. I could hear everything—cars going by, and birds singing and people talking, and the phone rang—but I was in this sort of space. And I just learned. I was always sort of afraid to say, Aum. Yeah, well, they all do that—what do I want to say that for. But in a way I was saying it without speaking it, I was saying it inside. And slowly but surely I was calmed. My ego mind stopped talking because she was empowered to be able to stop it. She had an amazing, still has an amazing power. Of course, coming out was a beautiful experience because I’d stopped breathing. I wasn’t breathing, because I know when I came out, I went (gasps for breath) ... caught my breath because I’d stopped being what I thought was, what you have to be, which is to keep breathing like a human being. You can actually slow the breath down to virtually nothing. And that’s when you’re in that moment of peace when the radiant energy can come and basically cover you, and you have contact through the third eye. Because I’ve been reading about the awakening of the third eye for 20 years. There’s a book by Vera Stanley Alder, beautiful writer, The Finding of the Third Eye and what the third eye really means. And its this sort of beautiful, like a radio antennae, something that happens. So from then on, it became harder and harder to get back to that place because she’d gone back to Hawaii and I’d be trying every day, and I’d get it, and then I wouldn’t get it, and I’d be thinking about it and...

Elizabeth: And wishing for it. Oh got to do this! Got to do this!

Jon: Oh yeah! About two months later, I was on tour, and I was in Boston. I was so ... hard work touring, traveling and then trying to find that peace. So I rang Divine Mother up, and I said, “Divine Mother...” (he mimics her) “Oh, Jon, how are you.” I said, “Fine, how are you?” She said, “You can’t relax?” And I said, “Yeah, how did you know?” And she said, “Oh it’s okay. Put the phone down. I’ll come through.” So I put the phone down and went into meditation, and BOOM there she comes again. So it’s timeless! I knew it that time.

Elizabeth: It’s spaceless.

Jon: Yeah, I was very, very lucky to meet with Divine Mother a number of times after that. I went to Hawaii sometimes, and then ... she was going through the many deaths that these higher people go through. And she’d been in the hospital with cancer and come out with no cancer, and the nurse was sitting there crying “How does she do it? She’s not supposed to be alive!” It was a beautiful experience. And then my mother passed on—this is three years ago Easter time, my mother passed on; in fact, it’s more—and I was on tour with Kitaro, and a month later, after my mother passed on, Divine Mother passed on; and I was on tour with Kitaro and I was backstage in my tent. I always have a tent so I can relax instead of a dressing room. I don’t like dressing rooms. And I was sitting there in meditation and Divine Mother comes through. And I said, “Oh, wonderful to see you Divine Mother.” And I said, “Oh, by the way, have you seen my mother because she’s there?” “Don’t be silly! She’s here!” And they were both there! And they were both laughing at me: “Oh Jon! You are funny!” They were saying. And they came to every concert. This sounds incredibly crazy, but it’s the truth. It’s something that I know is true, and I don’t have to quantify it to anybody, but I know it was an amazing feeling for that moment in my life, this life, to have a clear sort of connection with all that is, you know? And I always feel very eternally grateful for that moment, and every day I go through the beautiful ceremony in the morning and the night to reinforce that. And I still have times when I don’t connect, and there are times when I definitely do. This morning I was up in the flowers for some reason. I was flying with flowers this morning. It was beautiful. So the Divine Mother passed on all her knowledge to another lady in Hawaii who comes over to Los Angeles, and we visit. She comes to San Francisco now as well.

Elizabeth: What’s her name?

Jon: Her name—I don’t know her last name—her name is Audrey. But I can find you ... The people that invited us to San Francisco are so sweet. They remind me actually of you two guys, and they went to see Divine Mother and said they would like to open up a little open house. It’s not like joining a club or anything. One of the things when I met Divine Mother, they wrote this prayer for me. They wrote it down, and I could never remember it. For the life of me, I would try and remember it every time I was meditating. So eventually I decided to write a song, and I’ll sing the song now for you.

Thou art mother

Thou art father

Thou art friend and companion

Thou art knowledge and wealth

Thou art all and all

Lead us from the unreal to the real

Lead us from ignorance to light

Lead us from death to immortality

And manifest through and through and through

and through

Thou art mother

Thou art father

Thou art friend and companion

Thou art knowledge and wealth

Thou art all in all

Protect us with your sweet benign presence

We offer our meditation, body, mind, and soul

Past, present, and future

For thou art all and all and all

For thou art all and all

Jon: So I had to remember it; I had to write a song so I could remember it.

Elizabeth: Oh thank you very much. It’s beautiful.

Jon: Thank you. Thank you.

Elizabeth: And so are you. And so are all of us.

Jon: I agree, I agree, I agree.

Elizabeth: And so is everyone listening. Thanks a lot.

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