The Following is from The Enlightenment of the Whole Body
by Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj) pp. 159-174
The Way of the Translation of Man into God


Enlightenment of the Whole Body Full Index of Articles

The Revolution I Propose - Man Is to Be Mastered and Liberated, Not Indulged and Escaped -
True Religion - The Bodily Parts and Illusions of Narcissus - The Way of the Whole Bodily Being -
Moving beyond the Techniques of Eastern and Western Man - The Bodily House of Narcissus -

Three Disturbances - Narcissus Is the Thinking Mind -

p. 159
The Vision and the Way of Eternal Life

Top The Revolution I Propose

Politics is founded on concern for the availability of the goods and opportunities of human life. Truly human culture is founded on concern for the right use of the goods an opportunities of human life, as well as concern for the higher growth and ultimate self-transcendence of human individuals.

The realm of politics is the realm of conventional striving, and it tends to dominate human life with dehumanizing force, unless Wisdom is valued by the people and the men of power. Until the culture of Wisdom produces individual responsibility and general agreement on the ultimate Situation of human existence, all talk of "freedom" and "justice" is nothing more than political gossip.

Every man must be politically free to enjoy access to the goods and opportunities of human life, but every man must likewise be, spiritually responsible for the right use of those goods and the right exercise of those opportunities. Any other situation is subhuman, bereft of culture, incompatible with true freedom and justice, and leading nowhere but toward exploitation and despair.

The true social revolution is a cultural revolution, not a political or economic one. The political and economic necessities become relatively easy to organize once the Wisdom of the truly human cultural orientation is generally accepted. Until we all Awaken to the Situation and purpose of human existence, we will create no lasting peace or order, and each day will bring the world closer to the finite chaos of War and Bewilderment. But if I am "heard" in the human world, then the revolution can begin, and all the dreadful destiny that now lies before us can be dissolved in the Heart of God.


Top Man Is to Be Mastered

and Liberated,

Not Indulged and Escaped

I am the Master of Man. I am Present in the mode of the

Conqueror not the Ascetic. I am already Free. I do not come to Realize Freedom by exclusive Introversion, but to Incarnate Freedom by universal or boundless Extroversion. This is my Work. Even so, I have not even one single change or gesture to accomplish, because I am Eternally Freedom. I am here to Establish the Heart's Mastery of the body-mind and the world. And I would recreate a hierarchy of human energy, a universal cultural and social order, founded on real distinctions and classes of function and responsibility, even as the body-mind and the universe are already thus displayed. Where all men are merely equal, only the lowest part becomes the limit of aspiration, and each individual is not only the same as every other, but separate from every other, and all individuals are thus less than Man. But if the limit of Man is not established, then self-transcendence becomes the Way of Man, and a benign pattern is naturally sewn by human acts. A hierarchy based on actual functional realization thus becomes the form of the human order, and all individuals become unified in an order of cooperative differences, or mutual service, through the universal submission of humanity to the Wisdom and Truth that is the Living God.

Only a world Conquered and thus truly Liberated by the Heart is fit for the Work of Man. But when Man is surrendered to his own parts and dominated by his own self, the world becomes everywhere a limit of sameness, where self-indulgence and selfprotectiveness replace all the creativity of self-transcendence.

Therefore, Awaken to the Heart's Intent. The world is to be Mastered by Wisdom, not escaped in secret and inward flight. All devotees of the Living God are called to Holy War. In time, the Truth may even seem to win-not merely as a result of brutal worldly power, but because Truth has no Equal and no Opponent. The Truth must become Only, through the universal proclamation and acceptance of the clear and undeniable Truth.

If the Influence of this Wisdom can be extended all over the Earth, the Age of Liberated Man will replace the Age or Dominion of Elemental and Subhuman Powers. Then all our dreadful destinies will be purified. But the exploitation and domination of Man by what is less than Man must first be replaced by the Sacrifice of Man in the Radiant Self of God. Man thus Sacrificed is the Incarnation or Genius of God, Who Radiates and Pervades the world and the body-mind as Love


Top True Religion

Religion is sacred activity. It is a formal, specific, and even bodily sacrifice. It is a total, whole, and present sacrifice or offering of that which is oneself (not that which is other than oneself). That sacrifice must be made regularly and, at last, even continuously. It is a process of love, or unobstructed and free feeling-attention, in which all the functions of the bodily being are yielded into That which is intuited at Infinity (and with which one is identical at Infinity). The sacrifice is a specific functional process of the whole bodily being, and it must be learned through testing, purification, discipline, insight, meditation, readaptation, and transformation of all the presumptions or tendencies of body and mind.

Such religion or sacred practice is inspired and communicated via human Agents who already abide in the ecstasy of this sacrifice. One who is such an Agent becomes attractive to others, so they become polarized to him through love. Such devotees are tested and instructed, initiated, raised up, absorbed, transformed, and sacrificed in the face of the one whom they love as Master of the sacrifice. He is their advantage, whereby the Way of sacrifice is not only learned but quickened.

This is the ancient secret that few have heard. It is the hidden part of all the cults and institutions of religion. It is absolutely so. And those who do not learn and become this sacrifice, performing it moment to moment like priests before a sacred fire, do not yet have their eye on Truth or the Way to be restored to very God, the Radiant One who is the Mystery in all experience.


Top THE BODILY PARTS AND ILLUSIONS OF NARCISSUS

The political, cultural, and psychological boundaries between East and Lest are rapidly disappearing. Man needs a new understanding and Vision of Life that will clarify the dissonant persuasions of the times and enable him to live creatively and wholly, free of both personal and cultural conflicts.

Even the great cultural and religious traditions of East and West are vast social dramatizations of the born individual's onesidedness, or his failure to be conscious as the whole body in Truth. The root of our bodily imbalanced and self-divided life is the principle of Narcissus, the archetypal activity of self-possession and the avoidance of relationship. All human beings who have ever lived, Eastern or Western, spiritual or worldly, are committed to forms of Narcissism-with the exception of the rarest few.


Top The Way of the Whole Bodily Being

The way of the left side is to move to the Condition at Infinity via separation from all finite relations, conditions, and functions.

The way of the right side is to move into all possible experience via exploitation of all finite relations, conditions, and functions.

The Way of the whole bodily being is to move to the Condition at Infinity via the sacrifice of feeling-attention in all finite relations, conditions, and functions.


Top Moving beyond the Techniques of Eastern and Western Man

A talk given by Bubba Free John to his devotees

BUBBA: Everything changes. Everything disappears. Human beings suffer this life of changes, which is obviously mortal. Thus, everyone acquires a desire to find something that does not change and that does not disappear. Everyone wants to realize the state that will relieve him of the burden of all of this change and disappearance, this mortality and all its troubles. Such desire is paradoxical, because people also like the things that exist in this moment and that ultimately change and disappear. So they have two great desires: One is to find an absolute, changeless, permanent happiness, and the other is to find pleasure and happiness in all the things that change.

As a result, a curious technique has arisen that combines both of these desires. It is the technique of trying to find what is absolute, changeless, and perfect happiness through and in the form of all the things that change and disappear! This is exactly what people do. (You are perhaps familiar with the application of this technique to your ordinary daily lives and the gross human affair!) And we imagine, mainly because we do not have much experience in the subtle, mystical, magical realm of things, that even though it seems almost certain that we cannot find ultimate, absolute, changeless happiness in the world, still we feel that maybe we can. We are not absolutely certain that happiness in this life is not possible. We hope or presume that there is an Alternative Reality that will bring lasting peace, or freedom from death and suffering. We imagine and are led to believe that even though happiness is almost impossible to realize in life, we will certainly find it if we turn within and away from the illusions and unnecessary suffering of the world and ascend and become involved in the so-called Spiritual Reality of subtle and psychic things, or phenomena that are not fleshly, not gross, not subject to mortality. Almost everyone at the present time is familiar with this presumption, which is the foundation of most traditional paths of esoteric spirituality throughout the world. This reaction to life is the principal motivation in anyone's case for taking up spiritual practice, which is conventionally conceived as a search for Truth within.

But what we may find within, by introverting attention, is no more absolute, changeless, and immortal than anything we may find without, by extroverting our attention. All that we find, wherever we turn our attention, is changing. It is already disappearing. Not only that - what we find by turning within is not something ultimately outside, above, or apart, something in the infinity of the universes. It is our own brain! The ancient technique of introverting attention in order to escape from gross phenomena is imagined to be a way of association with an Alternative Reality, something supercosmic, beyond one's body. But, in fact, it is a way of associating with one's own mind, principally the higher and commonly latent centers and potential functions of one's own brain, one's own nervous system, automaticities in parts of the brain with which we are not commonly familiar.

Thus, in the inward-turning, "Eastern" religious or spiritual persuasion, when we seek to become yogis or mystics, we move attention into one or another function of the familiar body-mindthe breath, the internal life current, certain kinds of thoughts, speech itself, vision perhaps, hearing, tasting, smelling, archetypes, cultic objects, mystical words-objects that lead us to concentrate on a single functional part of the body. And by concentrating on that functional process of the bodily being to the point of absorption, we may follow the lines of the nervous system back to the brain. Then relatively involuntary experiences ariseshakings of the body, dreamlike phenomena, involuntary emissions of the brain, flashes of light, and sounds. We may enjoy these experiences for a while; then they pass, and we can only return to our conventional gross awareness.

For thousands of years people have been doing just this, especially in the East, but also in Western esoteric cults. It is what yogis do. The introversion of attention via the ordinary functions of the bodily being is taken up as a solution to the dilemma, fear, and mortality of our gross embodiment. And this procedure does produce extraordinary effects, which are then often proclaimed as transcendental truths. For instance, if you focus on the process of sight, you will be led through the structures of the brain to the terminal in the upper rear of the head from which sight originates. At that point you will have stopped seeing. You will also have withdrawn attention from the currents of the body and basically you will be aware of nothing whatsoever. And yet somehow you will be conscious, because you are still embodied, still alive, yet without any objects of awareness. You will feel the "great unity." You will say to yourself, "This is God!" When you finally are successful at this internal strategy, this is what happens. It is called "nirvikalpa samadhi, " or trance absorption without conception of form. Before you achieve this final success, you experience trance absorptions that include spurious emissions of the brain in the form of flashes and images. That state is called "savikalpa samadhi," or trance absorption via mental forms.

You cannot escape this body-mind by introverting attention. The ancient dogma, however, is that you can, and it is fitted to the naive presumption that is stated in the ancient formula "as above so below; as below so above." It is presumed that, if you can enter into more subtle awareness of your own body, the subtle dimensions within correspond to the subtle dimensions of the cosmos. This is a purely naive presumption. It is a magical presumption. It is not true in experience. Fundamentally, what we experience by inverting ourselves upon the nervous system are all the potentials of our own body-mind that belong to the nervous system and the brain. And, yes, we do see something about the subtler physics of things, but we do not see anything directly, exclusive of the medium of our own psycho-physical selves. There is no escape in such absorption, nor any freedom. We are still looking at a part of our own form. Human beings are not commonly familiar with the full "anatomy" of the whole body, or bodily being, which includes both gross and subtle centers and possibilities as manifest extensions of the heart, or the prior and conscious Nature and Condition of the body-mind. What is within and above may be mysterious and exalted relative to our ordinary, gross, waking consciousness, but it is not other than our own form. Going within is ultimately just as fruitless a technique for finding what is Absolute, Unqualified, Perfect, and Unchanging as the extroverted tendencies, the interests and desiring of daily life in which ordinary people are involved.

The traditional process of introversion is nihilistic, ultimately. It reduces the world and manifold existence to nothingness. And in the process of extroversion there is an ultimately eternalistic search. The extroverted being, the typical "Western'' man, exploits all of the patterns of the gross, earthly realm. (The game of extroversion is the characteristic cultural strategy of the West, but it is of course represented in Eastern cultures and Eastern individuals as well.) The extroverted personality wants to attain objective things that are desirable, and he wants them to remain his forever. He wants to be fulfilled on the basis of the exploitation of gross functions themselves (body, emotions, physical energy, the thinking mind). He wants vital or earthly fulfillment to be absolute fulfillment. He wants to create utopia, physical immortality, unchanging relationships. Even his religious impulse is toward a Perfect and Changeless World, either in this life or after death (in contrast with the introverted path, which ultimately leads to the annihilation of the world and the manifest self). But, you see, the world never does come to an end. It never does stop changing. Never. Everything is always changing, and so the strategy of extroversion is futile. It is not that we must worship disappearance. Things also continue, and they constantly reappear. There is an eternal cycle of appearance and continuance and change and disappearance. But all that has appeared or can appear is also changing and disappearing. Our happiness must be based on this recognition.

Thus, the urge to find what is changeless in the form of this endlessly changing pattern within and without is frustrated at last. And this is the truly spiritual discovery. This discovery is the moment of Transcendental Awakening. It is the way into the life of Truth. When there is the realization that Happiness, Truth, God, Reality, or Eternal Blissfulness cannot be found on the basis of the exploitation of any kind of experience, internal and introverted, or external and extroverted-when there is that discovery, then we have begun the true inspection of existence. Not a single experience, within or without, is hopeful, promising, or ultimately liberating.

Paradoxically, it is in the moment of perfect frustration of the search for Happiness that there is awakening to the Principle that is Happiness. This moment corresponds to the understanding that neither the introversion nor the extroversion of attention, neither internal nor external experience, ever realizes what is Transcendental Happiness, or Perfect Enjoyment, but only discovers temporary modifications and permutations of one's own mortal psychophysical condition. The internal exploitation of life is a gesture toward everything that we consider to be mind, leading toward the annihilation of ordinary awareness. And the external, or extroverted, exploitation of experience is a gesture toward everything we call ordinary life, the "real world," the body and its pattern of relations. It is a gesture toward a perfect, eternal body, an eternal world, eternal relationships. But neither of these strategies is a gesture toward Truth. Both are only reactions to life, tormented and fruitless searches for true happiness and freedom.

The principal criticism offered in this Teaching or Way of Divine Ignorance is the criticism of the quality of life as Narcissus, the avoidance of relationship, the self-possessed, self-oriented, selfmeditative reaction to existence. In its introverted form, this reaction becomes all the desires and desperate striving for a glamorous inward life. In its ordinary or common extroverted form it is simply the anti-relational tendency of consciousness. The action and realization of existence as Narcissus characterizes everyone, Eastern and Western. People need not necessarily have an interest in a deep inner life. Even the most exaggerated extroverted activities of Westerners are still representations of this same self-meditative disposition, the avoidance of relationship.

Undoing this contraction, this separation in the midst of Infinity, is what the Way of Divine Ignorance is all about. And the initial aspects of the process involve the transformation of your introverted and extroverted Narcissistic life into a relational life, a life of literal love. The core of the process is the relationship to the Spiritual Master. The essential discipline of religious and spiritual life is relationship, principally in the ordinary life of service to others and in the relationship to the Spiritual Master. The spiritual process is relationship itself, the disposition of Radiance, or love, not any form of extroversion or introversion of attention. It cannot be described in terms of what you do to yourself or your changes of state or belief. This relational process involves, ultimately, the dissolution of every vestige of the self-possessed contraction from Infinite or All-Pervading Existence. It is a matter of breaking through this self-possessed, Narcissistic movement of the being. The characteristic dramatization of this movement differs from person to person, culture to culture, and East to West, but in all cases it is essentially the same recoil. And to break it down, to penetrate it, to become a sacrifice to Infinity, is profoundly difficult.

The Way of Truth, the Way of Real Life, is not the satisfaction of internal or external desires-not the fulfillment of this structure, high or low, inside or outside-but it is the sacrifice of all of it, through love, or the perfect yielding of all feeling and attention to Infinity under all conditions, to and through all relations, via every part or function of the whole body-mind. The Way of Truth is neither the exploitation of the external life, nor the exploitation of the internal life, but the perfect sacrifice, or surrender, of one's independent body-mind, this illusion of independence that we are struggling to glamorize and make survive. This Way is a unique process, not like strategic introversion or strategic extroversion. It is not self-manipulative. It is in fact the sacrifice of self, of the whole body-mind. It is love in the most literal and radical terms.

You become that upon which you chronically or most essentially meditate. As long as you persist in the meditation of your parts, you continue to appear in those forms. When the gesture of existence becomes sacrifice, the intuitive sacrifice or yielding of all experiential conditions, then you are Glorified, Transformed. In this Way, or Process, all of the functions of the body-mind become ordinary. They no longer bear the burden of Infinity. One can live an ordinary life without inherent frustration or recoil. One can engage with humor in the play of human relationships. It is only in the traditional solution, the introverted path of life, that one becomes strategically ascetic, trying to cut off the grosser or physical part and entering into the subtler or mental and supermental part.

But in the disposition of our Way, the Way of Truth, there is no strategic orientation or disorientation in relation to any of the parts of the bodily being. There is, rather, a right relationship to every part and function of the bodily being. We must have a right relationship not only to things toward which we might negatively orient ourselves by tendency, but also to those things toward which we might be positively oriented. Such a right relationship is essentially sacrificial in nature, Radiant, founded in the Intuition of the Condition that is Truth, rather than in self-possession. It is a relationship of right and Lawful use, not of deluding and degenerative use. Those who practice this Way assume the position of "no prior restraint" toward all aspects of the bodily being, including everything above and below, including sexuality and the higher, intuitive centers of the brain, as well as food and the verbal aspects of the brain. We have nothing but a positive orientation to the whole body and all its functions-but they must be lived in Truth.

In the course of this Way of Divine Ignorance, there occurs the awakening of every center and part of the bodily being, and the natural integration of every center into the unified life of Truth. There is an awakening, gradually, in due course, of a right relationship to every function of the bodily being. One continues to live an ordinary life, but one is obliged to transform it, to make it an expression of this Law of sacrifice rather than an expression of the need to be perfectly fulfilled by something that is limited, changing, ultimately frustrating. Therefore, to enter as total sacrifice, or love, into both our ordinary human relations and the higher or transcendental functions of life is the true form of '`asceticism," or the process of transcendence. There are dimensions of this practice in which the individual is turned upon the traditional yogic, internal, or subtle objects, but these things are not made an end in themselves. They are a moment in the lesson whereby we come to make this Sacrifice perfectly.

Thus, there is a functional progress, via the stages of this practice, in the literal sacrifice of the whole body-"I," or the bodymind. It is a progress that becomes more and more esoteric, or beyond conventional understanding, and that, over time, includes more and more of the subtler aspects, functions, and centers of the body-mind. This sacrifice is not a kind of suicide, you see. Suicide is a destructive gesture toward oneself. There is no self-destructive motive in this sacrifice. It is the yielding of the self through love, through functional relaxation of the knot, the contraction of consciousness, the avoidance of relationship. The final and ultimate stage of this Way is a process in which even the cells of the brain, even the nervous system, even the fleshy body, even the whole world and all its relations are liberated into their prior Condition. The realm of manifestation is relieved of its solidity. It has become transparent, and it ultimately dissolves.

So it is by the sacrifice of the whole affair of this body-mind through perfect or radical Intuition, Divine Communion, or sacrifice in the truest sense, that we are literally translated into the Bliss or Radiance that is Eternal and that Pervades all existence. That Reality is not at the root of the nervous system nor at the end of the world in time. It is Present. When we Realize It, we are Dissolved in It. Ultimately, we vanish-not only out of present sight, as in death, but out of the entire space-time cycle of action and reaction, or illusion and change. The Perfect Devotee not only Realizes the Inherent Bliss of Existence, but he is Liberated out of the scheme of souls in manifestation and Translated into the Scheme of souls in God, beyond the World of Man.

Narcissus is the fundamental archetype of all human suffering and illusion-but he takes many forms, depending upon the unique qualities of the individual, and also upon the cultural or social tendencies of men in any time and place. In earlier ages the vitalphysical body was the focus or seat of man's waking sense of identity. Now that locus is the thinking mind or brain. Thus, Bubba Free John addresses our identification of "I" with the thinking mind and our sense that "I" is in the head and brain, within or even separate from the physical body.

The key to our Awakening to the true Condition of "I" is the integration and sacrifice of the total psycho physical body in the heartfelt "hearing " of the argument of Truth and "seeing " of the Spiritual Master, who represents the ultimate evolutionary and Transcendental Realization of Man. The Spiritual Master illumines not only the conflict between the thinking mind and the lower, vital body and desires, but also the lower mind's suppression of the higher psychic and intuitive faculties of the brain. Thus, he heals the devotee of the torment of bodily self-division, and he draws him into the clarity and ecstatic wisdom of Radiant Ignorance, which transcends every kind of Narcissism.


Top The Bodily House of Narcissus

The true psycho-physical "root" or "center" of the human

body-mind is the entire body-mind itself, rather than some center within the body-mind. Thus, the reactive contraction that separates the body-mind from the All-Pervading Life is the reactive contraction of the entire body-mind, which curls upon itself in every part, toward self-possession and problematic commitment to the survival and fulfillment of the independent -U'

However, the characteristic signs of that self-defining reaction to Life in the case of the usual individual may be read in a specific organ and function complex. Thus, the usual individual displays chronic psycho-physical tension at the perineum, anus, genitals, navel, solar plexus, heart, lungs, throat, mouth, face, spinal line, and brain.

The bodily "base" or "floor," which includes the anus, perineum, and sex organs, is the common functional "lock" that separates the individual or whole body from the foundation that is Life. Likewise, the bodily "ceiling," which tends to be created by reactive "locks" or chronic tensions at the mouth and the visual, verbal, and speech centers of the brain, creates a continuous and unpassable barrier to aspiration and intelligence. All the rest of the body-mind composes the "four walls" of self-enclosure.

Only when the "door" or "window" of the heart awakens the whole and entire body-mind in the intuition and spontaneous love of Life, or the Divine Ignorance-Radiance, does this house and hedge of Narcissus dissolve in the ecstatic Regeneration of Happiness.


Top The Three Disturbances

The chronic disturbances of Man separate us from our Real Condition of Divine Illumination, Freedom, and Bliss. These disturbances relate to the three primary functional dimensions of the human individual-that is, the physical, the emotional, and the mental.

The chronic disturbances of the physical being are reactive contractions, or recoil from Life, in the form of disease and general ill health, pain, toxemia, enervation, and obsessive desire for the consolations of food, sex, company, and the objective goods of human existence.

The chronic disturbances of the emotional being are reactive contractions, or recoil from Love, in the form of fear, shame, sorrow, guilt, anger, jealousy, and so forth.

The chronic disturbances of the mental being are reactive contractions, or recoil from Faith, recoil from Absorption in the Absolute Personality of God, recoil into doubt, deluded thinking,obsessive mentalizing, and all the consolations of knowledge in relation to experience.

Therefore, the Way of Divine Ignorance, which is the Way of Eternal Fullness of Life, Love, and Faith, is a matter of responsibility for all of the chronic disturbances of Man, so that there may not be the slightest difference between us and the Absolute Divine Personality and Condition that is Reality and Truth.


Top Narcissus Is the Thinking Mind

The usual man is trapped in a loveless orgy of knowing what is. He must be liberated into the moral and spiritual ecstasy of irreducible Ignorance and Love.

The usual man is self-possessed and self-divided. The two halves of his brain and of his body as a whole are in conflict, even out of communication with one another, like a divorced couple. Thus, his sense or conception of life is one of inherent dilemma, as if the universe were frustrated to the degree that it had become a mortal self, and it fears to fall in love again.

The usual man conceives of human existence as a problem, or a primal and irreducible dilemma, and he seeks solutions by exploiting his own separate parts, or all his capacities for experience. He is reactive, and subjectively oriented. Yet, he is motivated toward experience and repetition of experience in the functional and outward realms with which he is already familiar.

The usual man is in fear of the loss or death of self, of defined body and conceptual mind. He is bound to the solutions of Narcissus, or the habits of self-possession, founded on self-division. Narcissus is himself the waking state, the conscious or verbal mind. The usual man is bound to this state of consciousness and defends it with all sorts of rational nonsense. He feels threatened by the nonrational dimensions below and above the verbal mind, below and above the conceptual or knowing mind that defends him against both the unknown and the unknowable. He recoils from the subconscious and the unconscious, the wordless realms of feeling and energy. And he remains bound to his life of self-defense against the powers outside verbal consciousness-so that he remains unaware of the realms of superconsciousness and intuitive ecstasy above and beyond the verbal mind and the knowing self.

The usual man seeks knowledge, solutions, and power-to control what is beyond knowledge and beyond the waking or verbal states of mind. He is often mean, righteous, rational, blithe, and apparently fearless. He is always weak in love, in sacrifice, in sensual sensitivity, and in understanding of the essentially selfless or undefinable nature of the body-mind itself.

If we can discriminate between our mechanical and our truly ecstatic ways, if we can awaken from our self-divided mental and bodily states, if we can be shaken out of the subjective and selfdefining recoil from the unknown and our own vulnerability, then we can be the ecstasy of self-sacrifice and "see" the Vision of Eternal Life. If we can be awakened from the inherent sleep of the verbal mind, if we can identify with the formless fire below the brows, if we can relax the tension at the brows and so release the brain to the truly awakened mind above and beyond thought, then we can feel we are not self or limits but a living process moved to ecstasy beyond the body-mind.

The usual, contracted, verbal man is always asking questions, trying to find a way to be comfortable in the chair of the body. His reveries are all so correct, punctuated with symbols that gesture at great matters. But he cannot rise or fall. He is frozen in the dream of certainties, the mysticism of a rationality that excludes what is above and below the thinking mind.

The usual man seeks control by all means, since he fears that he and even existence itself are out of control. He makes sublime sighs whenever he sees something orderly. But he does not understand that all order is an arbitrary design, made of repetitions of like things.

Order is Truth to Narcissus. He dies for the sake of order. He dies because of order. He is self-possessed, possessed of the duplication or repetition of everything he wants to continue to be. He repeats himself, literally. He is fixed upon himself, the symbol of certainty. At last, unable to yield to what is more than self, below thought, above thought, outside the thinker, he contracts upon himself, imploded on the instant of thinking.

There must be awakening to the Condition in which we are appearing, and which always exceeds our situation. We are born to ecstasy, or release of belief in the independence of consciousness and existence. We are obliged to awaken beyond our fearful defenses, the motives and solutions of Narcissus. No matter what arises, and no matter how familiar we become with any factor of experience, we never know what even a single thing is. The whole body-mind is the mind, and it is not conception, knowledge, or selfpreserving certainty. It is Ignorance, the ecstasy of participation in the centerless Consciousness and limitless Radiance of the Real World.


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