by Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj) pp.175-188
The Way of the Tranlation of Man into God
Top
of page -The
Truth of the Whole Bodily Being The Truth of the whole bodily being
is not to be found by appeal to the separate dispositions of
either the right hemisphere of the brain or the left
hemisphere of the brain, the right half of the body or the
left half of the body, the extroverting or the introverting
tendencies. Truth, or Reality, is not itself contained in
either the vital or the mental realms of the bodily being.
Rather, the Truth of the whole bodily being, or body-mind,
is intuited in the unified or balanced consciousness, in
which all the parts are in an harmonious equalization and
relaxed beyond their objects into the radical (rather than
extended or reductive) intuition of the Condition or prior
Intensity of all experience. Therefore, the Truth is not
specifically within, nor without. No differentiated
experience or concept, high or low, contains It or is It.
Truth is intuited whole bodily, that is, through sacrifice
or yielding of the entire body-mind to the intuition of the
Real Condition. Such Truth is not a concept, a finite
objective experience, or anything past or future. It is the
prior or absolute Intensity that is the literal or Real
Condition of all arising phenomena. To abide in the
intuition of that Condition is to abide in or as that
Condition itself. And to abide in that Condition is to be
free of the limiting and deluding and motivating force of
all conditions, high and low, while at the same time to be
humorously and compassionately and creatively related to
whatever arises moment to moment.
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of page -The
Argument of the Whole Bodily Being The argument of the right side, the
Occidental religious impulse, is directed toward the man,
the living human being, and urges him (or her) toward a
moral enlivening of his relations to others, to the world,
and to his own mysterious Source. The argument of the left side, the
Oriental religious impulse, is directed toward the
consciousness in Man that precedes all his faculties and
relations, and the argument urges toward inwardness and
ascent toward transcendence and reductive Realization of
prior undifferentiated Oneness. The right-sided view tends toward
multiplicity, dualism, exploitation of things in themselves,
and irreducible engagement in the mechanics of apparent
experience. It also promotes a mystical (mysterious)
consciousness in relation to events. The left-sided view tends toward
singleness, monism, and separation from things and relations
and the mechanics of apparent experience, at least at the
gross level of the body-mind. It promotes a spiritual
(transcendental) consciousness in relation to
events. The argument of the whole bodily
being, the impulse in Reality or Truth, is not a synthesis
of the left and right, East and West, but a radical impulse
that is free of the independent limitations of each side. It
is free of the illusions of things and relations in
themselves, as well as the inward faculties and the illusion
of independence of any form, condition, or Condition. It
stands Present in the form of the unqualified intuition of
the Condition of the whole bodily being, and thus rests in
transcendental Awareness. However, it is natively committed
to non-independence, or freedom from recoil and inwardness
relative to the Process wherein all conditions are arising.
This does not mean, however, that it is committed to
conditions in themselves. Rather, it participates or is a
Sacrifice in the Process of all arising. Thus, it abides in
Radiance or Bliss even as the world and all relations come
and go. It is moral and mystical, transcendental and
spiritual in the most perfect sense.
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of page -Awakening
from the Word The conventional culture of
contemporary Man is primarily a culture of the verbal mind
and the discrete or discursive languages of the left side of
the average or common brain model. Thus, it is a culture
that tends to be dominated by verbal and other discursively
symbolic language systems (such as the potent visualism of
television and movie theatre, which make inverted use of
visual or spatial and right-brained phenomena in order to
serve the purposes of the verbal or discursive mind). The
contemporary individual is propagandized constantly by
exclusively left-brained appeals, powerful verbal
influences, promises of ultimate egoic glamorization and
fulfillment, and the parentlike authority of analytical
"knowledge." Our experience and our understanding are
dominated and determined by these means-so much so that the
media of discursive mental culture, such as television, and
all other officially reported knowledge, are more
fundamental to us than what we experience in our living
relationships and our intuition of the ultimate Reality. The
"word" has finally become our Parent, and we are being eaten
alive. The exoteric or common order of
verbal and left-brained culture is the daily "TV world" of
verbal conventions and commonly communicated "knowledge" or
"news." But there is an esotericism or esoteric cultural
core that is tending more and more to dominate the lives of
individuals. The political and common social world of our
too-spoken lives is the exoteric level of the dominating
influence in our common culture. But the esoteric order that
is the inevitable extension of our verbal or left-brained
world is tending more and more to dominate us, whether
openly or more or less indirectly, like a secret and high
priesthood. And, like all high priesthood's, the
Super-Church of our time is in league with the State, and
ultimately seeks to control the State. The scientific, rationalist
intellectual, and technological core-culture of our social
order is the secret esoteric "Mother Church" of the
left-brained congregation of ordinary people. It is through
the growing and pervasive influence of this exclusively
left-brained esoteric or most highly developed core of our
verbal culture that the holistic, intuitive, psychic, or
right-brained communion with the conditions and the Reality
of our world is being gradually eliminated as a possibility.
In ancient times, the exoteric and esoteric influences that
dominated the daily culture were predominantly right-brained
and hallucinatory, and this exclusivity produced its own
symptoms of imbalance. But in a fully evolved human culture,
the right and the left, or the psychic-holistic and the
mental-analytical, aspects of the human potential must be
mutually integrated and balanced, and then the whole and
entire body-mind must be submitted to the All-Pervading Life
and Divinity that animates us. If human societies cannot
evolve into whole brain and whole body levels of adaptation,
then the human being and the human world will inevitably be
reduced to a mechanical and self-possessed destiny that is
mortal, loveless, and absurd. It is not that the rigorous and
intelligent use of the verbal or discursive mind is not
necessary. It is indeed culturally necessary. And both
scientific and technological advances can do much to improve
even the political and economic as well as intellectual
estate of mankind. But the exclusivity of that influence and
its pervasive philosophical disposition toward the
contracted, analytical, and independent or analyzed-self
orientation are a negative extension of the egoic or
exclusive and self-possessed disposition of the individual
in his fear. From that exclusive viewpoint, the pattern of
totality may be analyzed, but the viewpoint itself cannot be
sacrificed into the pattern, nor can the ultimate and
All-Pervading Reality or Condition of the whole and of every
part become the dominant factor in the daily life of the
individual or the society. Scientism and the left-brained
predisposition can produce an age of analytical knowledge
but not an age of faith (in the highest sense). Therefore,
we must be culturally and personally awakened to the Mind
and Intuition that is obvious only to the whole brain and
the whole body-mind, or else the Parental Word will slay the
Radiant Children of our Mystery.
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Bodily Origin of the Idea of God as the Root, Source and
Cause of the World Conventional spiritual, mystical,
yogic, and even magical and religious techniques are all of
a single design. They are each an attempt to focus the
attention of the individual on one or another phenomenon or
function of human or psycho-physical experience, and, by
raising attention to a state of concentration, and then
contemplation, to trace that phenomenon or function back
along the psycho-physical (generally neurological) lines of
its transmission or communication within the bodily being,
to its terminal or root-source in the brain. The most common subjects of such
concentration are the functions of sight, hearing, touch or
sensory awareness, thought or speech, and the vital "breath"
or Life-Current of the nervous system. Actually, any
phenomenon or function of the bodily being may be chosen,
according to the individual's inclination or state and stage
of practice. Thus, emotion, desire, functional sexual
awareness, the senses of taste and smell, progressions of
ideas archetypes, intuitive consciousness, and so forth may
be chosen. But all lead to the same event: a temporary and
exclusive sense of undifferentiated unity, and the illusion
of ultimate release from the double-bind of mortal
experience. Such is conventional "samadhi" or "equanimity,"
the goal of traditional practice. Once any phenomenon or function has
been inverted or traced to its psycho-physical root in the
brain and stabilized there, that same function or phenomenon
may, when again externalized or returned to its objects, be
used more freely by the individual, and more as a means of
communicating a conventional sense of wholeness and freedom
to others-even of projecting to them the energies or states
of awareness the successful practitioner has himself
realized. But the whole affair is quite ordinary, human, and
even mortal still. Once all of this has become clear,
the strategic inversion of attention and of functions toward
brain terminals becomes, at best, an instrument for
regaining a certain balance, but, at worst, a source of
illusions and a method of imbalance or even insanity. The
whole process ceases to be ultimately attractive or
fascinating or hopeful-no longer a viable or salvatory
means, in itself, to Realize Truth, or God, or Reality
"Itself," or a destiny more than mortal, or even a
supracosmic transportation. The inversion of attention via
the processes of our psycho-physical signs is an ancient
method of human fear. This technique of our own bodily
design is the key to the origin of our traditional ideas
about the ultimate Reality, such as: "God" is Causeless
Cause, Origin and Source, the Head or First of all causes,
Independent or Beyond the world and mankind and the
individual. Likewise, the extroversion of attention via the
design of functions is the key to the origin of our sense of
independent or separated existence, and of the world as a
pattern that exists independent of some Independent,
Unknown, but implied Source or Cause. But, truly, we do not
know any such "Truths. " We do not know what even a single
thing is, and the internal and external are equally a
Mystery, inseparable from one another, and simultaneous with
one another. When this is our certainty, the bodily being is
set free from both introversion and extroversion as
independent problem and solution oriented strategies of
ultimate release. Then we Awaken to radical intuition of the
Real Condition of the whole and entire bodily being and all
other arising phenomena, and the process of dissolution of
the illusions and consolations of independent existence
truly begins.
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Ultimate Identity of the Brain Is the Current of the Whole
Body The verbal mind is to the brain
what the external vital organs (mouth, anus, and genitals)
and the lower vital functions are to the extended body.
Aspects of the functioning of the verbal region of the brain
correspond to the general processes of connection,
reflection or duplication, reception, assimilation,
discrimination of contents, distribution, healing,
fortification, elimination, creative generation, native
pleasure, and even regeneration. When the language activity of the
brain is reinforced to the point that it is more or less
continuous, the whole body becomes possessed by the illusion
that "I" is exclusively identical to the verbal and
differentiated consciousness. Thus, thought becomes chronic,
constant, out of control. There is fear of the loss of
thought as well as anxiety about the inadequacy of
thought-that is, the vulnerability of the self to
experience, on account of the absence or weakness of
knowledge. "I" and thought are felt to be identical. The
self is believed to be exclusively within and above, in or
at the brain. This is the chronic state of the
usual man. Observe it yourself. When you consider your foot,
doesn't it seem to be "down there" ? The verbal and brain identification
of self is merely a sign of arrested organ adaptation, like
neurotic fixation on the organs of the mouth, anus, or
genitals. It is a sign of neurotic or problematic adaptation
in the third stage of life. One must awaken as the whole
body confession of self and become a total sacrifice,
through radical intuition and love, into the All-Pervading
Divine Radiance and the Unqualified Consciousness or Divine
Ignorance that precedes all mentality, high or
low. Chronic thinking is chronic
self-definition and lower brain fixation. It is
self-possession, rooted in the thought "I." But the thought
"I," and every other thought, is only a modification of the
transcendental Current that is central to the entire
body-mind, and that is not contained by the body-mind, but
that pervades it and all other conditions of experience.
Indeed, not only the thought "I," but even the entire body,
which is the unthought "I," arises as a present modification
of that Current. The entire body-mind and all conditions in
experience, high or low, are merely unnecessary
modifications of the All-Pervading Current that is the
Divine Reality and Condition and Source and Destiny of all
beings, things, and worlds. The body-mind is always already
identical to that Current. This Realization is Liberation,
or prior Freedom, and it necessarily quickens a Process
wherein the body-mind is Translated or Dissolved into the
Absolute Radiance and Unqualified Consciousness that are the
prior and Divine Nature of the Current of the
body-mind. To think and yet to be without this
intuitive understanding is to be insane, like Narcissus. It
is to suffer self-illusion, and the inability to love, or
consistently to live as ecstatic self-release, in
relationship-the inability to be a moment to moment
sacrifice of all that may be felt as self or as a support to
self and its loveless, independent survival. To be obliged to think without
ceasing is to meditate on the thought "I," and all of its
predicates are like a hedge about the brain and the
independent self. Even the presumably Divine Attributes
found in subtle form through yogic brain-contemplation are
ultimately nothing more than predicates of the separate
self-a means of independent survival of the brainlike "soul"
rather than sacrifice of the self entirely. The usual man thinks compulsively,
and pursues verbal stimulation like an addict. Most of his
thinking is a mediocre reflection or casual duplication of
verbal forms (or "ideas") that pass around and through him
like TV and gossip. The purpose of his thinking is simply to
continue the consoling procession of self-meditative
predicates. The process of active, creative,
and intuitive consideration of experience ultimately
penetrates the cycle of thought and of brain fixation,
whether conventional or yogic. Such consideration ultimately
transcends thought and all other bodily self-limits, through
radical intuition, or surrender of self-contraction, in the
Radiant Current and Divine Ignorance of the Real. Until such intuitive transcendence
is stabilized and intensified to the point of Translation, a
profound discipline and process of personal, moral, and
higher psycho-physical purification and regenerative
adaptation must be awakened and maintained through "hearing"
and "seeing" in the Company of the Spiritual Master. Then
even thinking must be made a voluntarily generated and
directed or concentrated process, leading beyond its chronic
contents, and ultimately transcending all contents,
including the thought "I. " As long as thought is chronic, it
is merely self-meditation, and a support for loveless,
obsessive, fearful, and mechanical existence. The thoughts
that surround and glamorize the brained self are common
food, or an excretion to be released, or an orgasm like
spasm that thrills and degenerates the "inner man" and his
body. Only when intelligent consideration presses beyond the
mechanical, verbal, and repetitive affair of
self-meditation, beyond the realm of self-contraction and
the self-preserving search for solutions to conceived
dilemmas-only then does the mind become a regenerative
sacrifice, opening the brain to radical intuition of the
Current of Reality. When the whole and entire body-mind is
so sacrificed through intuitive love, or unobstructed
feeling, then the body-mind is Transfigured and Translated
into the Blissful Current that is its Source, Support,
Unqualified Self, and Destiny. Therefore, the brain self, mind, or
procession of thoughts must become ecstatic. This is the
foundation of the entire Way of Truth. The consideration of
the argument of the Spiritual Master must persist until
there is true "hearing." Such "hearing" is characterized by
thoughtless intuition of the radical Condition of Ignorance.
And devotional surrender to the Spiritual Master must be
done in every moment to the point of "seeing." Such "seeing"
is characterized by responsive and whole bodily
feeling-attention, or loving Communion with the Divine
Radiance, the Current of Life, under all
circumstances. The intuition of Ignorance,
therefore, awakens the confession of self or soul as the
whole bodily being, rather than the inward soul or the
subjective brain and nervous system. And such confession is
itself manifest as self-transcending or ecstatic Communion
with the Radiant Reality through the nonreactive force of
love, which is the Power of Life. Such a Way of Life, or
Love, intense and free, beyond thought or self-possession,
ultimately becomes Translation of the body-mind into the
Fullness of Divine Ignorance-Radiance itself.
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vs. Intelligence The reason we are so confused,
misdirected, and unspiritual is that our consciousness has
been made to adapt to the views of men who have not been
Enlightened by the Realization of God. We are a mind rather
than intelligence. We do not openly Commune with what Is,
and the One Who Is. Therefore, we must be liberated from
false adaptation and self-defense, and we must be restored
to the primal or ecstatic disposition of Divine Ignorance in
the midst of all conditions. Then we do not resort to man
and mind, but we are sensitive to conditions themselves,
prior to speech and self. The brain and nervous system can
then Commune, or Abide in unobstructed continuity, with the
Current and Process of Existence, and the Great Secret will
be revealed to consciousness.
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AND SACRIFICE IN THE SEVEN STAGES OF
ETERNAL LIFE The greatest of human cultures
have at their source a single, extraordinary individual, a
God-Man who restored to the world the Divine Law of Life and
communicated the personal and social principles for
harmonious, sacred living. Gautama, Krishna, Moses, Jesus,
Mohammed, and many other Awakened Teachers have performed
this cultural sacrifice for Man. In our own time, Bubba Free
John has performed a similar service by establishing the
unique culture of the Way of Divine Ignorance. In the six
years since beginning his formal Teaching Work, Bubba has
considered and demonstrated the Lawful form of every kind of
human action. He has accounted for every stage of human
life, from birth through death. And he has accounted for
every stage of religio-spiritual adaptation, from the
ordinary self-possessed, self-divided state of Man to the
most perfect Enlightenment or Sacrifice of Man into
God. These are the seven stages of
Eternal Life: 1. The stage of vital physical
adaptation, corresponding to the awakening of the root of
the abdominal organs at the base of the body and generally
occupying the first seven years of life. 2. The stage of emotional and
primitively sexual, or relationally polarized, adaptation,
corresponding to the awakening of the sexual center and
occupying the second seven years of life. 3. The stage of the development
of the thinking mind and the will, and of the integration of
the vital physical, emotional-sexual, and mental-intentional
functions. This stage corresponds to the awakening of the
navel and solar plexus, and it generally occupies the third
seven-year period of life. In the first three stages, the
individual is incarnating, physically, emotionally, and
mentally, as a human body-mind in the world. The Bodily
Current of Life is naturally polarized from crown to toe, or
from the subtle range of the being downward and outward into
earthly life. And attention naturally moves with the
Life-Current into the experiential and relational functions
of the centers below the heart. 4. The stage of psychic
adaptation, corresponding to the awakening of the feeling
dimension of the heart, and the subtle mechanisms in the
throat and the lower rear of the brain. The centers above
the heart are awakened via the spontaneous placing of
attention in the internal Life-Current of the body-mind, and
the repolarization of the Life-Current and attention itself
toe to crown, rather than crown to toe (which is the
polarization of the Life-Current previous to the fourth
stage of life). This fourth stage, and all the later stages,
cannot be conceived within fixed periods of time. The
duration of the higher stages of life depends entirely upon
the individual's qualities and his or her spiritual practice
of self-transcendence. 5. The stage of higher mental
(mystical and superconscious) adaptation, corresponding to
the awakening of the brain core and the higher functions of
the brain-mind via the fixed establishment of attention and
the internal Life-Current in the brain core ("third eye " or
"ajna chakra "). 6. The stage of transcendental
intuitive adaptation, corresponding to the Awakening of the
Free soul at the root of Consciousness in the heart, and
culminating in the State traditionally known as
"Self-Realization. " Attention, or mind, dissolves in Divine
Ignorance, or unqualified Consciousness, at the
heart. 7. The stage of the Translation
of Man into God, corresponding to the Sacrifice of the whole
and entire body-mind into Infinite Conscious Life, and
culminating in Divine Translation of the Free soul into the
Identity and Life of the Divine Person. In
"Self-Realization, " in the sixth stage, Consciousness
abides as Divine Ignorance in the root of the heart,
excluding awareness of body, mind, and world. The seventh
stage begins with the further Awakening Bubba describes as
"open eyes, " in which Consciousness is released into
perfect Identification-Communion with the Divine Person, or
Inherence in the Current of Radiance that Pervades all
bodies, minds, and worlds. The bodily Life-Current,
liberated from bondage to the mind's tendencies to
experience and knowledge in the body-mind, is released into
the All-Pervading Radiance via the upper terminal of the
brain (above the brain core) and in all directions to
Infinity. Thus, in this stage, Transcendental Ignorance and
Infinite Radiance become the single Intensity of
God-Realized Bliss, until the devotee is Translated, even
bodily, beyond all the dimensions of the Realm of Nature,
high and low, into the Divine Domain that is that Very
Bliss. Realization of the seven stages
of Eternal Life involves two processes: 1. The "vertical" structural
growth, or progressive awakening of the functions of body
and mind; and 2. The conscious sacrifice of
the whole and entire body-mind, and of all the experiential
evidence of growth, through heartfelt love, happiness, or
unobstructed feeling and free attention under all
conditions. The process of sacrifice,
founded in Consciousness, is senior to the process of
functional awakening, which is founded in the Realm of
Nature, or the bodily and mental modifications of
Consciousness. This "map" of human development
and self-transcendence not only expresses a new Vision of
God and of the ultimate spiritual potential of Man. It also
offers a new understanding of the human being. We do not
truly realize our humanity until the fourth stage of life
but, as Bubba indicates in his talks and essays, very few
men and women have ever entered stably into the fourth or
fully human stage of life. The passage into the fourth
stage of life signifies the mastery of body, emotions,
sexuality, will, and the thinking mind by the psychic,
feeling heart. It does not imply the annihilation of the
ego. The functional ego, or independent self-sense, is never
annihilated in this Way of Life. It is a necessary function
of the whole body, like a muscle or a thought. We cannot
mature without having acquired the sense of autonomous
functional existence, and we can never act without that
function. However, the autonomous
ego-sense must be illumined and transcended through the
power of love. The heart must awaken and mature in the
feeling and intuition of God, until the soul Realizes its
Transcendental Unity and Perfect Communion with the Divine
Person. Even then the functional ego persists, since the ego
is nothing more than the body-mind itself, until the entire
body-mind drops away in perfect psycho physical death, or
Divine Translation, in the seventh stage of life.
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Seven Stages of Love We cannot transcend the body-mind
via any potential experience. Transcendence is ecstasy, and,
therefore, it is a matter of liberation from experience.
Experience is simply the play of the body-mind in
itself. Truth is in the sacrifice of the
whole and entire body-mind, via gradual stages of more and
more responsible action, or action as Love-Communion with
the Living God, prior to all self-reference. Therefore, the
seven stages of life are not truly stages of the
accumulation of experience. They are degrees of a single or
ultimate sacrifice, in which what would otherwise be
accumulated is surrendered, through Love.
Enlightenment
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Enlightenment
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