by Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj) pp. 136-158
The Way of the Translation of Man into God
Love
of Life -
The
Natural Disposition of Man
- The
Heart Is the Living Center of the Regeneration and Sacrifice
of Mind and Body
- Death
and Eternal Life
- Death
Is the Way to Life
- Come
and Live This Way with Me
-
The process of
ecstatic or self-sacrificed Communion with the Radiant
All-Pervading Divine is simple in its description. It is a
matter of relaxation-release of the body-mind into the All
Pervading Life and unqualified Ignorance intuited to be the
Truth and Condition of all existence and experience. This is
a matter of the relaxation of all bodily, emotional, and
mental contraction or reactivity, and release of the whole
body into Life through intense and free feeling, or
love. Thus, Divine
Realization is a matter of the always present
feeling-surrender, to Life, of all forms of mental
contraction or reactivity, all forms of chronic thinking and
imaging and speaking. The consciousness that observes
subjective and objective phenomena cannot observe itself.
Even the thought "I" has no specific reference that is
independent of the body-mind, or the complex mental,
emotional, and physical states that all arise as objects to
the observing consciousness. Therefore, when the bodymind
surrenders into the Divine, consciousness is released from
the context of the observer and what is observed, or subject
and object. Instead, consciousness abides undifferentiated
in the Radiant Formlessness and Bliss of Life. The natural
state of consciousness is simple awareness of and as the
Radiant Fullness and Unqualified Consciousness that is
Reality. Likewise, Divine
Realization is a matter of the always present
feeling-surrender, to Life, of all forms of antifeeling, or
reactive, self-possessed, and self-divided or
self-contradictory emotion. Reactivity is the mechanism of
Narcissistic self-possession and all the illusions of
inwardness and self-survival. The natural state of emotion
is simple feeling, or love, abiding undifferentiated in the
Radiant Fullness and Bliss of the Living Divine. Just so, Divine
Realization is a matter of the always present
feeling-surrender, to Life, of all forms of reactive bodily
tension or contraction. The body must be combined with the
All-Pervading Life that lives it, or else the body becomes
possessed of the illusion that it lives by its own power,
and that it is an altogether independent and self-generated
"I.- The natural state of body is simple functional openness
and right or regenerative functional association with the
All-Pervading Radiance and Bliss of Divine Life. Therefore, the Way
of Divine Ignorance is the Way of specific structural or
psycho-physical submission of self into Life, the true Self,
which is not exclusively within or without, but which is All
Pervading. This Way of Eternal Life and Bliss necessarily
involves not merely subjective "belief" in God, but literal
sacrifice of self in God. And such sacrifice involves
literal functional relaxation release of all self-directed
bodily, emotional, and mental states. And the means of that
sacrifice is present intuition of the Radiant Divine and
surrender of the entire body-mind in love of the Divine, via
all relations, and under all conditions. Those who become
such a sacrifice Grow and Dissolve in God.
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of Page The
Natural Disposition of Man Chronic thinking is
contraction of the Radiant Life-Power of the brain-mind. The
method of intentional frustration or suppression of thought
leads toward thoughtlessness-but mere thoughtlessness is
itself a form of contraction of the Radiant Life Power of
the brain-mind. Therefore, noncontraction of the Radiant
Life-Power of the brain-mind is the only right disposition.
Such noncontraction of the Radiant Life-Power of the
brain-mind is a matter of participation in the Ecstasy that
precedes doubt-since doubt is the essential and chronic
disposition or sign that appears when there is contraction
of the Radiant Life-Power of the brain-mind. Therefore, the
natural state of the brain-mind is Faith, or relaxed and
confident abiding of brain and awareness in the Radiant
Bliss of the Universal and Divine Life-Power. Chronic tension or
stress is contraction of the Radiant Life Power of the body.
The method of intentional relaxation of bodily tension or
stress leads toward ease-but mere ease is itself a form of
contraction of the Radiant Life-Power of the body.
Therefore, noncontraction of the Radiant Life-Power of the
body is the only right disposition. Such noncontraction of
the Radiant Life-Power of the body is a matter of
participation in the Ecstasy that precedes bodily limits,
pain, fear, and particularly the fear of death-since fear,
the fear of death, and the fear of pain and of the loss of
self-consciousness are the essential and chronic signs that
appear when there is contraction of the Radiant Life-Power
of the body. Therefore, the
natural state of the bodily being is Intense Life Fullness,
or expansive bodily submission into the Radiant Bliss of the
Universal and Divine Life-Power. Chronic emotional
reactivity and self-consciousness are contraction of the
Radiant Life-Power of the heart. The method of intentional
surrender of emotional reactivity and self-consciousness
leads toward emotionless self-forgetting-but emotionless
self-forgetting is itself a form of contraction of the
Radiant Life-Power of the heart. Therefore, noncontraction
of the Radiant Life-Power of the heart is the only right
disposition. Such noncontraction of the Radiant Life-Power
of the heart is a matter of participation in the Ecstasy
that precedes the withdrawal of love-since unlove is the
essential and chronic disposition or sign that appears when
there is contraction of the Radiant Life-Power of the
heart. Therefore, the
natural state of the heart is Love, or perfect permission of
the heart in the Radiant Bliss of the Universal and Divine
Life-Power. Love, Faith, and
Fullness of Life are the right and natural disposition of
Man. And, in any moment, if all three of these concessions
do not characterize the individual in relation to the
Infinite Process of Existence, then the destiny, the
suffering, and the illusions of Narcissus confine him to
what is not Real.
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of Page
The Heart Is the
Living Center of the Regeneration and Sacrifice of Mind and
Body I f the living
heart can be intensified, then the Power or Radiance of Life
is increased in the mind and body. The "mind" is not other
than the body, but it is simply that dimension of manifest
Life that is projected upward as a coil from the heart. The
"mind" is Life in the form of the brain and nervous system,
and it is centered in the core of the brain. Just so, the
"body" is simply that dimension of manifest Life that is
projected downward as a coil from the heart. The "body" is
Life in the form of the elemental or vital physical
functions and forms, centered in the solar plexus and
abdomen. When the heart (the
center, core, and epitome of the entire bodily being) is
intensified in the Process of Communion with Life, then Life
is magnified, pervading the body-mind
universally, above and below the
heart. The heart is intensified when its primary function is
intensified. That primary function is unobstructed
feeling-intuition. The feeling being must be bodily and
mentally entered into self-sacrificial Communion with Life,
or the Truth of Ignorance and transcendental Divine
Radiance. Thus, the whole body-mind is intensified, or
enlivened, when it is given up to Life via the heart. Such
occurs when consciousness intuits its Condition to be
Ignorance, prior to all knowledge and thought, and when the
whole bodily being realizes its Condition to be Radiance, or
Eternal Life, prior to independent self and form and
experience. Therefore, the
radical or intuitive devotional principle or process enacted
in the entire Way of Divine Ignorance is the very means of
enlivenment, of the awakening of the whole body-mind to
Life. The primary functional means of this radically
regenerative process of sacrifice is love, or unobstructed
feeling-attention, generated via all functions, in all
relations, under all conditions, to the degree of
Infinity. The "body-mind," or
the whole bodily being, is regenerated, or given Life,
through esoteric processes of intuition, feeling, attention,
breathing, and circulation of Life. But the Life so acquired
in mind and body is not given merely for the sake of the
independent development or evolution of mental and physical
states, high or low. The usual man exploits the Life in his
own bodily and mental forms. He does this through worldly
and magical and religious and mystical and yogic
self-indulgence. But the true Man, awakened in the Truth of
the heart, which is transcendental or Divine
Ignorance-Radiance, understands all experience. He grows,
above and below, and becomes whole and full of Life. But he
does not hold on to any form of body or mind. Rather, he is
the continuous, every moment, radical sacrifice of every
aspect of bodily and mental experience, high and low, into
the Divine that is his Life and Source and
Destiny. It is Life that is
alive as the Play of the world and every manifest being.
Life allows itself to be modified or transformed into all
forms, bodily and mental, and to fill and sustain all forms,
and to change and dissolve all forms back to Itself.
Therefore, the Truth of our lives is our very Condition, not
the possibilities of our structural evolution, experience,
and knowledge. Only in our sacrifice into Life through
radical and transcendental feeling-intuition do we Realize
the Fullness of Bliss and Freedom that is the hidden Mystery
of existence.
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of Page Death
and Eternal Life Personal existence
is not a "thing" or an "entity." Personal existence is a
process. "I" is an activity, not an object, and not a fixed
and eternally defined subject. The process that is "I" is a
temporary and dependent aspect of a Great Universal Process.
The individual arises, changes, and passes. It is caused and
influenced by an immense and undefinable but ultimately
ordinary and unnecessary pattern of appearances and
disappearances. And the same process is duplicated as
millions and billions and infinite possible variations of
other human or human-like persons. The process, in every
case, is Man, and each individual is an example and a moment
of the same process, as fragile and dispensable as a single
minnow in a maze of duplicate fishes, produced in excess for
the sake of the species itself. And even the species is only
another edible moment in the procession of forms. The process that is
"I" is integrated as a "person" while it persists, and then
it is disintegrated in the Great Universal Process. The
subtler mechanics of the "person" continue beyond ordinary
death, associated with various forms of experience, and
producing various "lives," until there is Awakening to the
Way of Life in Truth. Only then is the Divine Destiny
Realized. Only then does the grotesque and marvelous pattern
of limitations fall away completely, in a death that is
Perfect in God-a death that reaches Eternal Life and Bliss.
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of Page Death
Is the Way to Life The real man or
woman learns to live by becoming willing and able to die.
Such a one is able to confront the difficult barriers and
frustrations of this slightly evolved world and yet remain
capable of ecstasy in every moment. Therefore, the
primary initiation that leads to human maturity is the
confrontation with mortal fear. Only when the ultimate
frustration that is death has been fully considered and felt
and understood as a process can the individual live without
self-protective and self-destructive fears. Only in
intuitive freedom from the threat and fear of death is the
individual capable of constant love of Life and also
transcendence of the frustrating and self-binding effects of
daily experience. Only in freedom from mortal recoil is the
individual capable of ecstasy under all
conditions. Therefore, be
alive, but learn Life by first dealing with your death.
Become aware that you do not live, but that you are lived by
Life. Become the devotee of Life by surrendering your
illusion of independent life, which is the self, or
body-mind, in ecstatic Communion with the Real. Become
willing to die in any moment, and maintain no inward armor
against it. Die in every moment by not holding on to your
life. Give your life up to Life, and allow Life to transform
and Translate the body-mind into Itself. The Secret and the
Realization of all of this is in the Teaching and the Way
and the Company of the Spiritual Master. In that Way is the
only positive Destiny of the individual and the world
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of Page Come
and Live This Way with Me True religion, or
true life, is conscious death. It is a feeling relaxation of
the whole body-mind, not just of the flesh. It is not
suicide, but it is motiveless surrender in, of, and as every
moment of experience. It is present release of fear, self,
mind, and body, including all worlds and all relations, into
the Unknown and Unknowable wherein we are appearing. It is
not self-possession and psychic fascination, but it is love,
peace, clarity, and embrace of Truth. When this heroic
sacrifice is made with unobstructed feeling, the Great Bliss
appears, beyond birth and death, even while we are living.
Come and live this Way with me, and our God will be proved
to you beyond all doubting.
THE
PROPHETIC FIRE OF GOD'S LIFE The true Prophet
is not an oracle who merely reads the signs of human
tendency, or apparent fate. He is a God-inspired Teacher who
alerts men and women to their Divine Destiny, which
transcends the binding mechanical destinies of all common
and even uncommon
experiential life. The true Spiritual Master serves a
necessary Prophetic function, both in the world at large and
in the Church of his devotees. Each of the Great Spiritual
Masters who has appeared in history was highly critical of
his time and society. Bubba Free
John's Prophetic criticism of our times could not be more
severe, or more urgent. His reading of the "signs of the
times " transcends mere psychic knowledge; it arises out of
his native God-Conscious Understanding of the Law of
sacrifice. From the point of view of the wise, there is no
predestined fate except Sacrifice. The Sacrifice must be
made, either unconsciously and passively, as by the usual
man, who is moved through cycles of change by Nature, or
consciously, actively, and ecstatically, as by the devotee,
who moves in God, transcending the changes of Nature. If men
will hear the Truth and conform their lives to the Law, they
may also benignly influence the course of human events. That
is why Bubba Free John speaks so forcefully and urgently, to
awaken every man's power of discrimination and to serve
every man's Enlightenment in God for the benefit of all.
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of Page This
World Is a School Change and death
come into the world by Law. They are Divine, and they serve
our Realization of Truth, or God. They were not created by
any Negative Power, or the "Devil," nor are they the
products of "sin," or any deviation from the Law by Man.
Rather, they are an intrinsic part of the Realm of
Nature. However, through
chronic deviation from Truth, or the Disposition of
self-transcending Divine Communion, human beings, as well as
all other beings, great and small, suffer according to the
Law. The Law itself is simply the demand for sacrifice, or
ecstatic self-transcendence, and it is inherent in all
conditions of experience. This World is a
School, in which destinies are created by the dynamic
coincidence of the Law and the choices made by living
beings. Ultimately, the consequences of our choices lead us
to ponder and to change our ways, to coincide more and more
perfectly with the Law and with the Divine Realization of
Truth. If we will only Awaken, then the non-necessity of the
arising conditions of experience will also become clear. And
only the Divine Domain remains at last, while the Realm of
Nature, or Possibility and Change, Dissolves in the Humor of
God.
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of Page What
Are True and False Religion, Spirituality, and
Meditation? What is
popularized, hyped, and commonly believed to be religion,
spirituality, or meditation is invariably a form of
self-meditation, self-glorification, and self-survival. Such
subhuman games are sold to masses of people via an appeal to
naive and neurotic needs for certainty, hope, fascination,
superiority, a positive self-image, and egoic immunity from
fear and death. Thus, religion, spirituality, and meditation
become diluted, reduced to the worldly or self-preserving
levels of less than human interest. The typical follower is
childish, ultimately irresponsible, self-involved, amoral,
experientially undeveloped, weak and out of balance in the
dimensions of action, feeling, and thought, and irrationally
attached to the enclosures of cult and belief. Just so, in the
popular view, religion, spirituality, and meditation are
considered to be inherently different or separable things.
Thus, meditation tends to be embraced as a merely
psychological or physiological technique, even
"scientifically" respectable, without religious
significance, and often without spiritual content. Religion
is commonly embraced without esoteric spiritual
understanding or the higher responsibilities of meditation.
And spiritual or esoteric notions are popularly accepted in
a vacuum, as an alternative to true religious and moral
responsibilities, and with a simplistic view of meditation
that is really a commitment to subjective illusions,
self-glorification, and self-survival rather than to
sacrifice of self in the Divine in every area of
experience. The popular
promotability of religious, spiritual, and meditational
ideas, cults, personalities, and practices depends on the
subhuman and childish state of the general population. The
responsive audience of such propaganda is the same subhuman
mass of "consumers" that is the target of TV and the common
media all over the world, and little more is required of
anyone than to dutifully purchase the "product." To actually
use the "product" is not demanded in any profound sense.
Just buy it, praise it, own it, believe it, and glamorize
yourself by association with it. The whole matter of
the popular communication and acceptance of religion,
spirituality, and meditation is as obnoxious and absurd as
any area of vulgarity in the world. It is all an appeal to
the sense of self-divided fear and the general absence of
intelligence that keeps people irresponsible and dependent,
locked into problems, forever searching for solutions
without becoming responsible for the problem and the need
itself. Truly, neither
religion, nor spirituality, nor meditation expresses the
human relationship to Truth unless each is directly and
rightly integrated with the others. Religion, which is
founded on personal and moral self-sacrifice, or truly human
ecstasy, must maintain direct and conscious association with
higher esoteric processes, the secrets of the spiritual
adaptation of Man. And the religio-spiritual understanding
of human sacrifice in the ultimate Reality must be
associated with practical disciplines and transcendental
means of higher or more perfect human adaptation through the
full technical range of meditative and self-sacrificial
processes. And all of this must be integrated with a right
understanding and valuation of the Spiritual Master and the
radical or perfect Destiny of the devotee, the true
practitioner. The religious,
spiritual, and meditative Way of Truth or Eternal Life is a
process of personal, moral, and higher psycho-physical
sacrifice. It is not a superficial and private remedial
technique, but a form of culture, a profound and total way
of life. The leaders of popular cults tell their fanatic
followers: "Meditate on yourself, in yourself, for yourself,
and by yourself. Come and get it. What you get-and it will
be easy-will make you happy, fearless, superior, right,
invulnerable, lovable, and immortal." But, truly, what is
thus acquired only reinforces the loveless moods of those
who are already constantly acquiring and buying for the sake
of ultimate results and satisfactions. The Way of Truth
cannot be understood by children or fools. It is of no
interest to the vulgar daily personality refined and
developed by TV and the mob of peers. It requires the most
profound intelligence, commitment, responsibility, and moral
force of persistence in practice. It requires the most
creative and easeful force of love. It requires great
freedom from the destructive force of irrational reactivity,
fear, and self-protectiveness. Therefore, the
communication of such a Way truly takes place only in the
forums and with the speed of the highest kind of human
consideration. To the degree such communication is
introduced into the media streams of popular "culture," it
must creatively struggle, through constant criticism and
depth of information, with the profusion of subhuman
propaganda. And the useful or effective communication of the
Way of Truth requires a continual mindfulness of the
ordinary tendencies, demands, and illusions of the subhuman
mood of the usual state of human beings. The message is
this: You, as you know or may experience yourself, are not
immortal, nor yet even fully human. What you tend to be, and
think, and live is exactly what must be overcome-through
insight, change of action, and the fullest working out of
the disposition of sacrifice. Your reluctance to resort to
the Divine and to the higher Agency of the Spiritual Master,
neither of which is within you or even merely outside you,
is a sign of the very dilemma from which you must be
liberated. Your moral and relational weakness or reactivity
is the dominant fault that binds you to the illusion and
torment that is yourself. Your tendency toward confinement
in inward and mental and physically self- possessed states
is not at all reinforced by the truly spiritual Way. The
entire Way of Truth is immensely difficult and creative. The
entire Way is a Sacrifice. The Way of Truth is the only
matter of ultimate significance in the life of Man. Let us
yield our very bodies and minds into the Reality and Destiny
that is both Spirit and Truth.
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of Page Sheep,
Goats, Wolves, and the Manly Few Who Are a Sacrifice in
God There has been so
much popular communication and "hype" about "true" religion,
"secret" esoteric spiritual practices, and "Great Masters"
that such things have become part of the conventional
self-imagery and "personal" mind of countless ordinary
people. Very few people demonstrate the kind of
responsibility, real intelligence, and creative power
necessary even to begin practice of a truly religious and
spiritual kind. But great numbers of childish and adolescent
individuals embrace forms of exclusive cultism and
self-glorifying belief. Just so, many people of that kind,
unable to live as a true and consistent sacrifice, imagine
themselves to be great, or worthy to dominate others. Many
even imagine themselves to be Spiritual Masters. I have seen many
people come and go from the Church in which I serve. Those
who left were commonly unable to make the gesture of
surrender, love, service, and real understanding of the
binding mechanics of self. Some simply returned to an
ordinary self-indulgent life. But a good number have
persisted in adolescent delusions of spiritual
attainment-whereas, truly, they are incapable of even the
simplest human and moral responsibilities. This is common all
over the world, wherever religious and spiritual matters
become part of the popular culture. Therefore, since ancient
times, schools and cults and techniques of all kinds have
developed around individuals of all levels of experience and
degrees of authenticity. And weak people tend to congregate
around wolves, while wolves are always on the lookout for
those who are weak enough to be exploited. The games of mutual
deception are common at every level of society. And
"suckers" are born at a far greater rate than one per
minute. All that can be said is that men and women who are
seriously interested in the Great Process of Surrender and
Sacrifice in God should study the available literature and
keep their eyes and ears open to the obvious. The Way is not
everywhere fully communicated, and true practitioners are
extremely rare. Spiritual Masters
are developed in the human plane only very occasionally, and
the function of such a one is to regenerate the Teaching and
the Way itself. Any number of practitioners at various
higher stages of human structural evolution may live at any
point in time, and such individuals are not Spiritual
Masters. They are only people on the Way. What is
significant is the Way itself, not who is possessed of what
signs of this and that experiential attainment. The true Spiritual
Master has a unique service to perform for the sake of
others. He shows the Way and clarifies the Teaching. All
others must simply yield to God in the Way that has been
Revealed, and they must practice on the basis of a full
understanding of the Revealed Teaching. Once the Spiritual
Master has done his Work, no individual has unique
significance in relation to practitioners of the Way.
Rather, all must turn to God and serve one another in
God. Therefore, apart
from the Original Creative Work of the Spiritual Master,
what is significant is the Process in Community, the Church
of Practice, the Culture of Devotees. Those who call
attention to themselves in the usual fascinating ways divert
others from God. Negatively dominant characters feed on the
energy and attention of others, which should instead be
devoted to the devotional and practical exercise of the true
spiritual process in God. Self-glorified individuals have,
in any case, nothing to show but their own poor experience.
But what truly must be found by all is the Bliss that
Awakens only when the self is surrendered entirely and
cannot be found apart from God.
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of Page The
False Viewpoint of Religious and Spiritual
Cultism I don't believe
there is stupidity, delusion, and casual ill-will manifested
anywhere more than in the domains of religion and spiritual
cultism. Those who would truly live as a sacrifice in God
must struggle every day to maintain a level of wit and good
humor in the face of ceaseless disheartening confrontations
with believers and aspirants in the various traditions.
There is a righteous kind of sheer and pious madness that
seems almost always to infect those who should be the
enlightened minds and friends of mankind. The reason for this
is that religious and spiritual persuasions do not commonly
require intelligence, freedom from illusions, or a
fundamentally moral relationship to the world. Most often,
just the opposite is true. Religious and spiritual cults and
institutions typically thrive on human neurosis, fear,
gullibility, childishness, amoral self-possession, and the
need for fascinating experiential consolations of either a
bodily or mental kind. The conventional religious and
spiritual point of view is oriented toward the primitive
egoic search for indefinite independent or personal
survival. It is the preservation and glamorization of self
that is commonly served by the conventions of institutional
and mystical grace. Wisdom barely enters into the whole
affair, and the moral disposition of honor, manly trust,
positive compassion, humor, love, and service extended to
all is casually bypassed by most of those who pervade the
world with ultimate beliefs and salvation
techniques. Those who cling to
one or another religious or spiritual way must realize that
the foundation of all such ways is the disposition of
sacrifice. Every way is, above all, a system of
self-sacrifice-not of self-preservation and of immunity to
life through internal or subjective fascinations. Religious
and spiritual activity is, above all, moral activity. It
must be expressed in a new, free, sober, and truly
compassionate disposition. Such a disposition freely anoints
the world with help and intelligent consideration. It finds
great pleasure in the intelligent and truly human
companionship of others, and welcomes wise and thoughtful
confrontation. And in the face of the persistent dullness of
the cults such a disposition often becomes fierce and aloud:
The whole Earth, the cosmos and every separate being is a
great Sacrifice! Therefore, let us consent to fulfill the
Law! Let us give ourselves up, so that each temple-each
bodily and mental person-may become a temporary and
perishable altar of self-giving into the Mystery that
pervades us!
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of Page The
Word That Awakens the Man he human individual
is a complex of tendencies or limitations, which, in any
moment, are to one or another degree effective. Therefore,
in every moment, the self-transcending Process of Divine
Communion must be profoundly effective, or else human
limitations become the controlling forces in human
relationships. The total complex
of human and individual tendencies may be considered to
represent three general or fundamental liabilities. These
are chronic self-possession, incomplete experience, and
imperfect understanding of experience. Each individual is,
in his attention, most profoundly self-aware. But that
awareness is itself complicated by reason of the fact that
such self-awareness is a reactive tendency, a habit based on
recoil from the Divine Condition and all relationships, or
conditions of experience. Chronic
self-awareness is, thus, chronic self-possession. It is not
also true self-observation, or insight into the
self-complex. It is more a mood than a state of
consciousness. It is a gesture of self protection. It is
rooted in fear, sorrow, anger, guilt, shame, doubt, and the
like. Chronic self-awareness is not a matter of being
oneself. Rather, it is a matter of the avoidance of
relationships, and the avoidance of ecstasy, surrender, ,
and love. It is the avoidance of all vulnerability to
experience. Chronic
self-awareness is the subjective mood, the enclosure of
inwardness, in which fascination with experience persists,
but in which experience itself is constantly felt to be a
threat to one's very existence. Therefore, the
self-possessed individual struggles with experience.
Experience is a threat, and, therefore, it is never
completely engaged. All experiences are but partially felt
and known. And the total range of possible experiences is
not engaged. Only those experiences that are more or less
compatible with the acquired and chronic mood of self are
sought or even permitted. The remainder of what is possible
is excluded, not inspected, always resisted. And whenever
uncommon experience does occur, because of uncontrollable
circumstance, the self feels violated, or fascinated, and
quickly moves toward recovery of its self-possessed
equilibrium. Therefore, the
usual man tends to be limited in the extent of his
experience of his own ultimate possibilities, and even what
he does experience is only partially met. The usual man
cannot "experience." He is self-possessed, and retarded in
the relational connection. Thus, because he is not generally
capable of ecstasy, or abandonment of the self-reflex in the
midst of experience, he does not enter into experience to
the degree of completeness. For these reasons,
the usual man is bereft of summary and perfect insight into
the process and the conditions of experience, or human
existence. He is asleep in himself, unliberated, incapable
of ecstasy. He is surrendered to fear and every other form
of reactive emotion. He is cautious in the face of
everything-utterly unlike one who is in love. He is
threatened, about to lose and die. He is always protecting
himself with feelingless thinking, thoughtless or
unconsidered emotionalism, and every kind of self-indulgent
bodily activity. He is always stimulating himself in
part-now with food, now sex, now with concerned thinking,
now mystical and psychic fascination. Thus, in every moment,
he seeks to remain distracted from the totality of
experience and the threat concealed in all
experience. Such an individual
is bereft of true and summary and perfect experience as well
as true, summary, and perfect understanding of experience.
And the fundamental reason for this is his lack of capacity
for ecstasy, or self-transcending participation in the Play
of the World. The human realm is
populated by such pleasureless, unconscious, and obsessed
individuals. The daily world, when viewed from a free
position, looks like a great wilderness of tiny acres, each
the camp of a single person, who surrounds his small pond
with a hedge of immunities, and remains bent upon the water,
observing all things reflected there, but seeing nothing
directly. The unliberated human world is the wilderness of
Narcissus, where he is multiplied as many times as there are
human individuals, just as Krishna was multiplied to provide
a separate lover for each of his many wives. The Spiritual
Master is indeed a voice that rises in this wilderness, to
Awaken every neighbor from the illusion of his acre of land,
his ordinary pond, his body-mind. It is a necessary voice,
the voice that sounds whenever the Truth of human experience
is Revealed to one who is Awake. Therefore, such a one
speaks, even with urgency and anger. It is the prophetic
voice, the awful shout, expressed with all the gestures of
frustrated Divinity. Very few respond to
this Word, this Teaching, this Offering of Good Company. And
the reasons are those which have just been described. But if
anyone will "hear" and "see," then the Divine Principle of
Ecstasy is at Work. And those who surrender into the Company
of the true Spiritual Master are turned out of self-limits,
restored to the pattern of relations, entered into a pattern
of feeling experience, established in a pattern of growth
(or increase of experience toward completeness), and
Awakened to that Understanding wherein all experience is
relieved of the Binding Power. Such devotees
Realize the Ecstasy of Divine Ignorance, in which the
naturally arising experiences of every moment are felt to be
present expressions, or unnecessary and Playful
modifications, of the Infinite Radiance of God. Those who
are thus Free do not chronically seek an alternative
experience to the one in the moment, nor do they seek an
exclusive or experienceless Reality. They abide in the
"Vision of God" that true Understanding "sees" in every
moment. And, at last, the entire world falls away from such
devotees, quite naturally, Revealing the Eternal Person that
is hidden in the reflecting pond of human attention.
Top
of Page This
Teaching Is the Prophetic Fire of God's Life, Not the Signal
of a New Age of Peace These are the worst
of times. The Truth and its Way are in conceivable to the
usual man, and all the media of daily life propagandize for
a vulgar, subhuman world. Even the "peace" men seek is only
a kind of uninspired political ordering of the lower man,
and it is not founded on the spiritual transcendence of
experience. It is not merely that the Truth has not been
communicated. Even when it is communicated, it is not
accepted. The Truth is unacceptable in this time and
place. These are the most
sinister times. Every thing and every one is suspect. And
what men suspect above all is God. The Truth is not merely
unspoken. The Truth is suspect. The Truth itself is in
doubt, even when the Truth is obvious, and identical to God.
Doubt, fear, unlove, and sophisticated denials of God are
the official disposition of mankind. We are all such
children, so afraid, so obsessed with ourselves. Our common
strategies are such a bizarre circuit of repetitive
revolutions, phasing within the motion of ourselves, as if
constructing a sinister plot in which to murder the God of
Life. We would permanently betray our own Help for the sake
of petty advantage in a household argument. Even those who
come to me work their way around and between the forces of
the Argument of God, casually avoiding the commission of
surrender and unconsoled love. And law and custom seem
constantly to conspire to make even the act of breathing
into a social complication. Every man and woman is
threatened by death in every moment, because we threaten one
another, each in the animal of his choice. Like sordid links
in an unconscious food-chain, the ancient Nature throbs us
still. The news is not
good. The years that lie ahead in our common history will
likely be among the most painful and suppressive in our
experience. All because we are not yet Man. Therefore, let
the Teaching of Truth be communicated into the future. Let
those who are free to abandon the ordinary theatre of things
prepare themselves, practice, and come to me from time to
time. But this is no time to expect the great Transformation
of mankind. It will not come until mankind has learned the
Sacrifice of Man. The Realization of
Truth restores the heart to love and even humor, without
irony. But love must also weep. I see the signs of great
world conflict still ahead of us. It is not inevitable, but
it is likely, unless Enlightened people grow in numbers and
accept responsibility for the daily world. Childish
revolutionaries and parentlike Machines of State continue to
conspire to enforce order by means of chaos. Since there are
as yet no nations made of responsible men, there are no
nations of free men. Therefore, freedom will only arise
after a long time of terrible and wonderful
struggling. In the future, less
childish men will always try to create a more benign
politics. But Earth is a school, not a place of perfection.
Even into the future, it is likely only a few in every
generation will respond to the Divine Teaching. Perhaps it
will always be so-or at least for decades, or millions of
years. Therefore, let
those who hear me cherish the Truth and its Way. Let them
find sanctuary, a hidden place or room, or let them practice
the body in God without attracting the angular notice of the
world. Let them find a way to preserve the Teaching and the
Way of Life, even through the coming and ungraceful Age. Let
them yield to the Life, and go to God, free of all that is
yet to come.
Top
of Page The
Urgency of the Teaching A talk given by
Bubba Free John to his devotees BUBBA: If you want
to learn about Truth when Truth has become corrupted, then
go to an Adept. Go to one who has Realized the Truth. Go to
one who has already fulfilled the process completely. If you
live in a moment in time when there is no Enlightened
Tradition, when all the cults are corrupt, you can be
certain that somewhere on Earth an Adept is alive. Such a
person appears under exactly those conditions, when Truth is
no longer visible in the cults, and when religions have
become so corrupted by history and fetishism that they are
about to become extinct. The religious
traditions in our time are about to be smothered by a
mechanistic, political, and scientific world view, only
because the cults are in doubt. They have held on to their
fetishes so tenaciously that they have lost their
association with the Living God. They do not even know the
Living God anymore. People who belong to churches,
religions, and spiritual societies have no unqualified
connection with the Living Reality. There is no true
devotion in them, and, therefore, no Realization. Their
association with God is only words and hopefulness.
Therefore, they do not represent a living force in the
world. They have nothing to offer that is Alive. Only the
Adepts, who are God-Realized, through whom the living Power
of God manifests, can make a difference in human time. Such
individuals are the instruments for the acculturation of
humanity. Periodically, such
individuals must appear, and they must be influential. There
is a notion that Adepts should be hiding in caves in the
wilderness. This is not true. If the Adepts do not speak,
the only voice that will be heard is that of ordinary people
who are not God-Realized. The Adepts are the Sources of
spiritual life. Such individuals must therefore enter into
the stream of society, to purify the culture and reestablish
the process of God-Realization. If they do not speak and
become influential, there is no hope at all for
humanity. We exist in a
moment in time when the cults are universally corrupted.
Thus, it is a time for Adepts and true devotees to reappear
if there is to be any hope for the future of human beings.
We are about to be swallowed up in anti-cultism,
anti-Godism, anti-religion, anti-spirituality. The impetus
or force behind this movement against the true culture of
Man, which is a God Realizing culture, is largely the
reaction to cultism. The cults, which should be a means for
establishing people in a right relationship to the living
God, have become frozen in their idolatry, fixed in their
association with their historical peculiarities and
limitations, and they do not represent a window to the
Living God anymore. They represent a piece of mind frozen in
the form of words and imagery and histories of all
kinds. Intelligent people
cannot find God in such a mass of idiocy, so quite naturally
they look for satisfaction elsewhere. Thus, people are
preoccupied with all kinds of political and scientific
idealism, as if politics and scientific and technological
progress were the Way of Truth. They are absolutely not the
Way of Truth. They never have been the Way of Truth. They
are no more the Way of Truth than sex or any other
satisfaction or fulfillment of function. None of that is the
Way of Truth at all. It is the ordinary impulse of the ego,
glamorizing itself by great enterprises. If this trend
toward political and scientific obsession is to be broken,
some light must be brought to the whole affair of spiritual
and religious understanding. The cults must be purified.
They must give up their primacy. Their legitimacy must come
into doubt. Then the Teaching of Adepts, the Sources of
Truth, will again become available, and the Living Reality
will again become obvious, obliging human beings to a
different way of life than the ego proposes. If not, the world
will be overwhelmed. It is almost inevitable now that it
will be overwhelmed in any case. The world, even the Realm
of Nature as a whole, is founded in a righteous Principle.
Therefore, the world will be purified, without a doubt. The
Force of the Divine pervades everything, and, therefore, It
also purifies everything in one way or another. If human
beings, while they have the benign capacity to enter into
God-Communion, will not do so, but instead create a corrupt
culture, a subhuman order, then the purification will not
occur within the ordinary and benign course of natural
processes. It is then no longer a matter of some Adept's
saying a holy word or speaking the Truth whereupon everybody
changes his approach to life. It would-be- good if as many
as possible could hear the Teaching and respond to it. But
if the Teaching alone is not sufficient, then great
upheavals necessarily occur. That is how the righteous Law
works. It is not just that we pay our dues for past
activity. A righteous Principle is positively at work,
constantly to purify and reestablish order. Thus, there are
periods of great negative upheaval in the world, including
natural disasters, wars, and conflicts of all kinds. On the
one hand, the world pays its dues during these periods, for
failing to live by the Law. On the other hand, these times
of upheaval are the evidence of a continuous process of
purification. They are themselves a demonstration of the
Law. At the end of these periods, the Law is reestablished
in righteousness. It is very likely
that we are entering into such a time of upheaval, because
of the extent of the failure of human culture. There is
simply no light abroad in the world today. There is nothing
but corruption, nothing but the failure to accept the Way of
God. There is absolutely no sign of the Way of Truth, except
in rare instances of individuals and small groups of people.
The Truth is essentially hidden and secondary. There is a
long history of corruption in every area of human life, and
the entire social structure of the world is devoted to
subhuman ends and forms of self indulgence. There are no
signs of an imminent Golden Age in the disposition or
condition of humanity at large. Rather, the signs are of the
necessity for a great purification, a great reestablishment
of order, a righteous readjustment of the whole world.
Top
of Page My
Work Is Necessary, but It Must Also Fail Truth does not win.
Fundamentally, the entire affair of the communication of
Truth to mankind has been a failure, and it will always be a
failure. It is a fruitless enterprise-if we consider its
results in terms of the true and perfect Awakening of great
numbers of people and the Divine Transformation of human
society as a whole. However, since a few in every generation
are prepared to respond to the Teaching of Truth, the
communication of Truth must be continued in the
world. A few in every
generation become a Sacrifice in God, while mankind in
general ignores, denies, and otherwise betrays the Teaching,
the Way, and the Agents of God. This is so, not only because
of the subhuman evolutionary stage of mankind at
this time, but because
the embodied soul is naturally motivated toward its own
experiential fulfillment, not the transcendence of itself.
Therefore, only a random few in any generation Awaken, while
all others are oblivious in their bewildered
intoxication. The times are bad,
but they are not extraordinarily so. The times are merely
bad, as the common world of desire must always be. But Truth
is prior to desire and the world. Therefore, in My lifetime,
a few may Awaken in My Company. This Teaching and the
Community of My Devotees may even survive for countless
generations as a Witness to the Truth that Awakens and
Enlightens the soul of Man. These Good Events may come to
pass, or they may not. There is a Way in God, but there is
no Way to win.
Enlightenment
of the Whole Body Full Index of Articles
The
Prophetic Fire of God's Life
This
World Is a School
- What
Are True and False Religion, Spirituality, and
Mediation?
- Sheep,
Goats, Wolves, and the Manly Few Who Are a Sacrifice in
God -
The
False Viewpoint of Religious and Spiritual
Cultism -
The
World That Awakens the Man
- This
Teaching Is the Prophetic Fire of God's Life, Not the Signal
of a New Age of Peace
- The
Urgency of the Teaching
- My
Work Is Necessary, but It Must Also Fail
Top
of Page Love
of Life
Enlightenment
of the Whole Body Full Index of Articles