Enlightenment of the Whole Body Full Index of Articles

The Last Words The Wisdom of the Seventh Stage of Life - The Mood of Enlightenment - Release Is in the Absolute Frustration of the Strategy of Escape - The Way Is Forever, but the Realization Is Absolute - What Will You Do If You Love Me

LAST WORDS Top of Page - The Wisdom of the Seventh Stage of Life An expository elaboration of twelve verses from the Mabayanavimsaka of Nagarjuna, t by Bubba Free John I bow and surrender only to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, which is radical Understanding, and Freedom from the limitations of all conditions of experiential existence. The Radiant Transcendental Consciousness is not other than the immense and inconceivable Life-Power, the Matrix of" all events. And that Radiant Power is not the separate Creator, connected to the world of living beings merely as a Cause to an effect. That Radiance does not change, nor does It Cause changes outside Itself. Rather, all changes or conditions are a spontaneous modification of the Life-Power Itself, and, therefore, no phenomenal condition or living being exists separate from or relative to the Radiant Life- Power. It is One and Only, and there is no world or thing or being that is other than It. The Life-Power is simply the Transcendental Reality, unqualifiedly Radiant, and identical to Consciousness, wherein the entire world of differentiated events and processes rises and falls as a spontaneous inevitability, without Ultimate Necessity. In that Radiant Consciousness the Truth is always tacitly obvious, and it is Perfect Ignorance, or the Intuition beyond all knowledge. (1)2 1. Authorship of this short treatise on Buddhist philosophical Wisdom is simply ascribed to the name Nagarjuna. It is not certain whether authorship should be attributed to the well-known individual named Nagarjuna who lived circa A.D. 200 and who systematized the Madhyamika philosophy of the Mahayana school of Buddhism. In any case, the point of view of that system and school of philosophy is indeed presented in this text. 2. In that Radiant Transcendental Consciousness no conditions either appear or disappear as independent and self-contained forms of existence. That Consciousness is like space, wherein objective conditions may seem to appear and disappear by a process of their own, whereas in Truth they are only modifications of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, or the Power that Pervades, Includes, and yet Transcends all phenomena. Living beings are apparently arising like independent objects in space, but in Truth they are always identical to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. (2) 2. The numbers in parentheses refer to the original Sanskrit text as reconstructed by Vidhusekhara Bhattacharya. (See Mahayanavimsaka of Nagarjuna [Reconstructed Sanskrit Text, Tibetan and Chinese Versions, with an English Translation], edited by Vidhusekhara Bhattacharya; Calcutta: Kishorimohan Santra, 1931.) Activity and all Inactivity. Therefore, if the Truth is Realized, there is Freedom from the world, and that Freedom does not depend on either the fulfillment or the prevention of essential human experience. A living being does not enclose an inner, separate, and eternal soul or personal Self. Every complex condition or being that arises is exactly what it seems to be-a mechanical structuring of manifest conditions. What is within a living individual, or what may conventionally be considered to be his soul, is merely the psychic or mental part, which is subtler than the elemental body, and which survives the death of the elemental body, but which is also subject to change and death and every kind of illusion or torment. There is no eternal, separate, interested, personal, implicated, and conditioned Self within each living being. There are only psycho-physical conditions, and the Consciousness in which they seem to arise is Absolute, Transcendental, Motiveless, and always Free of all conditions. Both the world and the living individual are Void, or Perfectly Empty. That is, both the world and the living individual are mechanical, without an inner, active, personal, and eternal Self or Consciousness. The Self of the world and of the living individual is not internal, differentiated, and creative. The True Self is Absolute, Transcendental, Infinite, and Free. Therefore, to Realize that Radiant Transcendental Consciousness is to be Free of the limitations and implications of the world and of the body-mind. This is obvious to one who has understood all experience and all conventional knowledge. And such Understanding or Perfect Ignorance is not a matter of the intellect in itself, but of the surrender of the entire body-mind, in the midst of all experience, and into the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. In this Way even the body becomes Radiant, and even the mind intuits the Transcendental Consciousness. (3) 3. There is no Independent and yet Interested Cause or Will or Necessity that is Intentionally Originating, Emanating, Producing, Choosing, Moving, Opposing, or Dissolving the human being, or any other manifest appearance. No such Cause, separate from things and beings themselves, can be found in this world, whether in the beginning or at the end, or at the subtle other side, or even at the hidden root of this world. The arising of all possible conditions is inevitable from the point of view of conditions themselves, but no condition is necessary from the point of view of Truth, since the Truth, or the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, which is the Condition of every condition, does not Exist in relation to the conditions of the world as a Cause to an effect. Present conditions arise from previous conditions, or the spontaneous Play of modifications, not from the Willful Activity of a Transcendental Cause that is separate from all conditions and yet implicated in all conditions. Arising conditions do not hide an inner or Divine Self that is independent of conditions and yet actively Creating them. That which is Transcendental is prior to all 4. In the Understanding that is native to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, all conditions are regarded as unnecessary modifications without ultimate implications. All conditions are regarded as no conditions at all. There is no irreducible dilemma, no separation, no opposition between the parts of things or beings. All things and beings are always already Dissolved in the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. (4) 5. Those whose point of view is that of experience, the body-mind, or the world, rather than the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, attribute Self to what is only the body-mind, or the conditions of experience, or the world. Instead of Realizing the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, they imagine a separate soul or Eternal Creative Self within the body or the world. Therefore, they become possessed of a false understanding of their own Condition. This occurs because they approach the Understanding of the Transcendental Reality in the same manner by which they experience and think about satisfaction and frustration, desire and renunciation, body and mind. They regard the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness from the point of view of experience, or the body, whereas the experiential body-mind must itself, and as a whole, be comprehended in the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. (5) 6. A thing seen and known and believed in a dream is no longer seen, known, or believed when one awakens. Likewise, the world of experience ceases to be a dilemma or a necessity when one Awakens from the position of the body-mind and into the Position of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. (15) 7. That which arises from conditional causes does not cause itself, nor is it Caused by any Divine Interest or Intention, but every condition is an ordinary result of the obvious and mechanical round or activity of conditions themselves, or the Eternally Changing Realm and Process of Nature. The idea of an Independent, Eternally Interested, and Creative Divine Cause is a false notion, popular among ordinary people, who do not directly inspect their own experience or Realize the Truth of things. There are two fundamental ideas that are untrue, even though commonly believed to be the Truth. One is the idea that conditions arise by Causation-that is, by the Interested Will or Motivated Intention of the Divine and Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. The other is the idea that there is an individual or personal but Eternal Consciousness deep within the living being that is implicated by will or intention in the experience of the body-mind. Awaken from these illusions, which are only a kind of "holy" worldliness. In Truth, the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness is the Eternally Free Condition of all apparent conditions, whether of the world or of the body-mind. And in the Understanding that is native to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, neither the world nor the body-mind is thought to be Caused or Moved from beyond or within. Rather, both the world and the body-mind are Realized to be only illusory or unnecessary modifications of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. (16) 8. The entire world, including every living being, is arising in the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Every thing and every being is like a state of mind, rather than a thing in itself, independent of the mind. Every thing and every being arises in Consciousness, entirely dependent on Consciousness. Things and beings are not independent, objective, self-contained, and self-existing. They cannot be properly Understood when considered in themselves, independent of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. They are, each and all, only unnecessary, temporary, and absolutely dependent modifications of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Every thing and every being is a state or condition of Consciousness, not merely an independent configuration of objective material elements. The material elements are themselves only a modification of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Therefore, living beings, the actions of living beings, and all the results of the actions of living beings are only temporary and unnecessary modifications of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Good and evil, right and wrong, pleasure and pain, positive and negative, top and bottom, inside and outside, back and front, right and left, excitation and passivity, desire and detachment, male and female-all opposites arise in the same manner and are ultimately identical to the same Transcendental Condition or Radiant Consciousness. (17) 9. It is not necessary, nor is it fruitful, to seek the total, final, and absolute domination of one great and negative aspect of experience by its equally great and positive opposite. Good cannot finally destroy evil, nor can right finally destroy all that is wrong. Only the struggle, the opposition itself, goes on interminably like the polarized play of male and female. Then how is this great struggle to be overcome? It is not a matter of any strategic domination of the parts of experience or any warfare within the body-mind. Rather, if there is Awakening to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, then all phenomena are transcended, and the world ceases to be a Dilemma. No condition, thing, or being is self-existing or independent. Every thing is Subjective, or native to Consciousness, not Objective or separate from Consciousness. No condition, thing, or being contains any Consciousness or Life-Power whatsoever. It is only and falsely presumed that Consciousness and the Radiant Power of Life are within the world or within living beings. In Truth, the world and living beings are within Consciousness and Life. And the Life-Consciousness is Transcendental, Perfect, without dependence on any condition, thing, or being. Thus, the entire world, and every living being, is only an appearance, dependent on the Radiant Life-Consciousness, but unnecessary, containing no Consciousness or Life. Radiant Consciousness Transcends the world, all beings, and all conditions of experience. Therefore, Awaken to the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Then the world, all experience, and every notion of independent personal existence will inhere and dissolve in the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. (18) 10. When something is imagined to exist it becomes attractive, and a desire is aroused that cannot be satisfied. Just so, when we become distracted and committed to false notions about the ultimate Nature of the world and of experience, we suffer a profound frustration that leaves us constantly deluded, bewildered, and in fear-forever inventing plans for ultimate escape, like animals in snares and cages. (10) 11. Therefore, if one has seen and felt and Understood the common and universally tormented state of living beings, one should surrender to the Truth and practice the Way of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Compassionate Understanding of the fear and delusion of all living beings moves one to practice this Way. Thus, one may, by one's manner of living, support the illusions and intensify the torment of living beings, or one may transcend all illusions and bring Transcendental Peace into the world. (11) 12. All false notions come to Rest in one whose Understanding of experience is thorough, radical, and perfect. He has Awakened to Intuition of the Transcendental Consciousness, prior to knowledge of the world in itself, and he has become Enlightened by that Radiance wherein the world is without necessity or deluding power. He Remembers the Condition of the world, while others forget It. And his Remembrance is a beginningless and endless Presumption of the Condition of every differentiated condition or experience. For him there is neither experience nor the absence of experience, but only the Infinite Radiance of Free Consciousness. His Presence is Radiant with the Power of Life. Only one so Enlightened is truly a Friend of the world. (12) Top of Page - The Mood of Enlightenment A talk given by Bubba Free John to his devotees BUBBA: While you are alive, everything seems important. Even despair is important, an acknowledgment that something important to you has not happened. Thus, life, while you live it, is full of importances. On the other hand, the entire universe conspires to make you surrender what seems important, because everything in the universe comes to an end. All experience is conspiring to move you to transcend experience while at the same time demanding that you fulfill experience. Every instant of your life contains both of these urges. Life is completely absurd. Every particle of it would move you toward some experience or other, and yet all experience conceals the ultimate message of the necessity for transcendence or freedom from experience. That one must attain freedom from something that is unnecessary to begin with is utterly absurd. Why bother with it to begin with? Enlightenment is to Awaken from the seriousness of experience. It is not to despair or to destroy oneself. Despair is serious, and so is suicide. Self-indulgence is serious, stressful effort is serious, discipline is serious, interest is serious, knowledge is serious, death, sex, food, everything is completely serious. This movement or tendency to survive, to continue in independent form, is profoundly serious, and it is also absurd because it must be transcended. Enlightenment is to be restored to Divine humor, to realize that nothing is necessary. No experience is necessary. You can either become distracted by experience and repeat it, or you can transcend it. One or the other. If you have transcended experience, then it is no longer necessary. In that case, whether or not experience continues makes not the slightest bit of difference to you. Experience will come to an end with death in any case. We are under the incredibly absurd illusion that there is an objective world "outside" Consciousness. There is not a shred of truth in this presumption. There is no world independent of Consciousness. The world is a modification of Consciousness, a play on Consciousness. It has no independent reality and no necessity. It is just possibility. What Consciousness does in terms of possibility in any moment is the drama of the seriousness of existence. When it Awakens to its true Position, which is senior to phenomena, then it is full of humor and there is no necessity to any experience. There is only Enlightenment, Divine Freedom. You are constantly imagining that you are experiencing objective things, but you are not. You do not actually see an object-that lamp over there, for instance. It is not the object you are seeing. Isn't it obvious to you that you are experiencing a phenomenon of the brain? You cannot see the lamp. You are not inside your head looking out at the lamp. A bizarre phenomenon of the brain produces the sensation that there is a lamp over there. Where is it anyway? A reflected image twists around in the eyeball, and nerve impulses and electrical currents flash around the meat brain in order to construct an illusion, a sensation, an idea. What is objective about it? It is just your own fascination. It is your own mind. It is your own Consciousness, modified by organs of experience. It is mind. It is harmless enough in itself, really, but you are so distracted by it that you have lost your humor. You have lost your true position. You do not have a right relationship to experience. The right relationship to all experience is to exist as the Transcendental Consciousness, the Radiant Reality Itself, in which phenomena arise without necessity, humorously. The wrong relationship to experiential phenomena is to presume that you are a separate person, a separate consciousness, in the midst of a world that you know nothing about, that somehow encloses you, that is objective to you, that is separate from you. In that case, you see, experience is a very serious business. You have no option but to submit to it, to be distracted and tormented by it. Spiritual life is simply the Enlightened life. There really is no spiritual life until Enlightenment, or the seventh stage of life. All the stages of life before then are stages of experience wherein, as a discipline, we bring the Intuition of the Truth to experience, thereby transcending that level of experience. We engage this process stage by stage, practicing this Transcendental discipline relative to the many qualities of experience until all possible experience is transcended. Only then have we resumed the Transcendental Position, and only then can we live the Enlightened Life. Existence is spiritual only when lived from the point of view of Enlightenment. Previous to the Awakening of that Disposition, existence is not spiritual in the truest sense. It is simply a struggle with the impulse of experience, the humorlessness of experience, the motive to survive as this moment with all of its parts and implications and motives. The motive to continue, the motive to fulfill desire, the motive to remain self-conscious, to remain yourself, to remain embodied, is basic to your sense of existence. Surviving as experience is what you are chronically doing, you see. You are not existing as the Transcendental Reality. You are just being this body-mind. You are moved to continue as that, and to glamorize it, and to have as much pleasure as possible while being the body-mind. Consequently, if you can temporarily manage to acquire a great deal of pleasure as this body-mind, you begin to think that pleasure itself is Enlightenment! As soon as you get a little physical or emotional or mental pleasure, right away you think that you are existing in the highest state that one can realize. But in true Enlightenment there is no struggle whatsoever for the continuation of phenomena. There is no fundamental or binding effort to make phenomena continue. There simply are phenomena, these conventions of experience, but they are unnecessary, temporary, harmless modifications of Consciousness. That Consciousness, Realized in Enlightenment, is not an independent person. It is without qualification, Transcendental. It is Enlightenment. The Enlightened individual is no longer fitted to the separate soul-consciousness, the individuated self struggling to survive as itself or to become something else. In Enlightenment, the motive to survival dissolves. Continued bodily existence is spontaneous, no longer dependent upon a psychological motive to continue. It simply continues, and then at some point bodily existence also simply comes to an end. It is neither necessary nor ultimate. Likewise, the universe is not ultimate. It does not hide a great Fact. It is perfectly ordinary and unnecessary. We could just as well be having any one of an infinite number of other possible experienceless at this moment. It happens that this one is arising, but anything else could also arise. However, you are determined that this experience continue to arise more or less exactly as it is now arising. If you could relax that demand just a little bit, something entirely different would happen. But you are afraid of something entirely different. You are afraid to die. You are afraid to allow things to change. Therefore, you hold on to your present experience. But if you could give up everything, not through negative, reactive effort, but through Transcendental Realization, then your humor would be restored, and a different sense of existence would quite spontaneously arise. Then you would realize that there is no necessity to this present experience, except that it is set in motion through ordinary causation and will therefore continue for its term. We are not present in our experience. In other words, acting, or experiencing, is not a present activity. It has nothing to do with the present, the absolute Moment of Existence. It is the past. All experience is the past. There is nothing new, and there is nothing real about the mind that experiences. The mind is simply memory, past association. It is not perceptive, nor truly sensitive to anything. It is just the mechanical record of patterns. The body is exactly the same as the mind, but because we think so much, we imagine that the mind is something different from the body. Actually, the body-mind is one, a simultaneous coincidence. Just as the mind is past associations, the body is past associations. The body is the past. It is like a star-the rays of light that we now see were generated light years before now. The present form of that star is not visible, because it is so far away that the light it generates today takes eons to arrive. Likewise, these bodies are the reflections of the distant past. They have no present significance. They must be transcended before we can Realize the Present, or the Transcendental Reality. Such a Realization, however, occurs only in the seventh stage of life. Many people read and think about spiritual teachings and their minds prattle the traditional ideas to the point that they think they are already Enlightened. Yet they have never become the bodily Sacrifice that is essential for this Realization. Enlightenment, or the Realization of God, is not just a conceptual understanding. It is not just a relatively calm state of mind. Enlightenment is an absolute Condition of existence that literally transcends the body-mind. It is not just an idea the body-mind has that makes it feel better. From the radical, Enlightened point of view, there is no body-mind! Thus, in order to enter into the seventh stage of life, one must pass through the most profound and even terrifying transformation. That event cannot be casually created by a little thinking. One must come to the point where there is literally no necessity to the body-mind, to the psyche, or to experience. Countless silly people think that they are Enlightened when, at best, they feel good today. That mediocre sense of pleasure is not Enlightenment. Enlightenment involves no thinking whatsoever. There is no rational justification for Enlightenment, no logical sequence of thought that leads to it. Enlightenment is a spontaneous, absolute, transcendental Awakening that is free of all the seriousness and necessity of bodily and mental existence. Therefore, death, the cessation of experience, the cessation of states of mind, the cessation of the body, the cessation of the world, is no longer a threat. So much the worse for it! There is complete freedom from the implications of all that dreadful destiny that everyone fears so profoundly. The Enlightened being is not at all threatened by all of that. He is laughing. He is free. But one must pay the price for this Freedom. It is not simply an attitude toward the world that one enjoys from some conventional position of separation. There is the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, the Absolute Divine Reality. That truly is Existence, and It must be Realized if Enlightenment is to be true. In that Realization, the Divine Person is tacitly obvious, as concrete as any object that you now associate with bodily life and experience. Once this Realization is Awake, there is no necessity to the phenomena of experience. They simply continue in this moment, but they have no power to deceive. All the stages of life leading up to the seventh stage are stages of distraction by the seriousness of one or another kind of experience. The process of the transcendence of experience begins at the lowest level, where experience involves the fear of loss of the body and the profound connection to food, and the craving for sexual self-indulgence. These experiences characterize the ordinary person, the lowest kind of person in the spectrum of existence. Yogis, mystics, and saints all cling mightily to experiential inwardness, visions, flashing lights in the brain, vibrations in the middle of the head, exotic, many-armed works of art that they create in imagination, infinite peacefulness without a single thought, or even seeing and thinking nothing and having no experience at all. But these are all, high and low, merely the possibilities of human beings in the first six stages of life. In the Way of Divine Ignorance, what makes these possibilities spiritually significant is that in each stage of life, in the midst of each stage of distracting experience, whether high or low, we must realize self-transcendence and whole body surrender into the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, or Divine Person. Apart from such self-transcendence, however, the first six stages of mere maturing in the structural possibilities of Man are absurd, humorless, fundamentally very serious. Something in each of the first six stages is taken profoundly seriously by ordinary human beings. The body and food, sex, thinking, psychic awareness, higher mental hallucinations, even blissful, internal silence-there appears to be something profoundly serious and meaningful to one's hallucinated existence in each of those stages. But the seventh stage, the Enlightened stage, is not serious at all. In that stage we Realize our native Transcendence of everything. There is the tacit Realization that there is nothing serious whatsoever about experiential existence. It could end in this moment, casually, and that cessation in itself would not have the slightest significance. Or, it could continue for infinite eons of time, through infinite permutations and transformations of experience, and its continuing would not have any significance either. That is the Disposition in Enlightenment-Realization of the non-necessity of everything. Absolutely nothing is of serious consequence or of ultimate necessity-absolutely nothing. The ordinary reactive personality, who is basically in despair and hysterical, can also say that life is meaningless, but such a person is very serious. The Enlightened man, however, Realizes total Freedom. He is no longer serious, but neither is he self-destructive. He has passed into Ecstasy. He has not suppressed or separated from himself-rather, all that he is has been transcended in the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Thus, he is full of humor and delight. He is not aggressively opposed to the world, nor is he clinging to it. All the tension in his heart has been re-leased. To speak of Enlightenment without that sign is nonsense. There is no Enlightenment without the release of the heart from all of its seriousness, all of its clinging to phenomena, high and low. From the point of view of Enlightenment, even mystical phenomena are nonsense. They are not serious. They are hallucinations, brain phenomena, psychism, permutations of your own body-mind. They are just more of your seriousness. They have no necessity and they are not the source of Bliss. Whether they are higher phenomena, viewed from the mental or subjective point of view, or lower phenomena, viewed essentially from the bodily point of view, all phenomena are serious and unnecessary. They do not bring happiness, fundamentally. Happiness is inherent in the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. When that Reality is Realized, its inherent Bliss is obvious, and phenomena are seen not to contain any independent Life or Consciousness, nor to grant Freedom or Bliss. From the Enlightened point of view, all phenomena are simply the theatre of Eternal Blissfulness, a theatre that may or may not continue. Therefore, all one's serious occupations while alive are absurd expressions of the past. They are all ways of serving limitation in oneself and limitations in others. Better that they all fall apart-but not in the negative, nihilistic sense. We must simply be given up in God, the Current of Radiant Bliss. We must become Radiant. We must be allowed to manifest the Radiant Blissfulness of the Absolute Consciousness. We must be allowed to become love, to be free, to be humorous. Then everything that is past will dissolve. The mind is the past, and so the mind dissolves. The body is the past, and so the body dissolves. For the usual man, the body is the past, moving into the future. There is no present in the usual life. We are too busy having experiences to be Awakened in the present. The present is the Transcendental Reality Itself, for which we have no time because we are so occupied. Thus, you must Awaken from your vulgar disposition of clinging to vital desires themselves. You must Awaken from your romantic nostalgia for life and your desire for experiences. You must Awaken from your coolness of mind, whereby you inspect the world and find logical consistency and meaning. You must Awaken to your true Position, wherein all the locks on the heart are dissolved and all the tension in the heart is released. It is the tension in the heart that produces obsession with vital experience, with reactive and illusory, emotional experience, with mental forms and inner psychic forms, all the subjective distractions. When the tension in the heart is released, there is no clinging to the body-mind or its experiential possibilities. If the body-mind arises, that is fine, and if it does not arise, that too is fine. When you begin to come to rest in the native Blissfulness of God, you realize freedom and you receive Grace. Grace is the humor you enjoy by always already resting in God. Grace is not ultimately a matter of achieving all kinds of successes in life. Success may come also, but that is just part of the game of experience. Grace is the liberation that comes when we rest in God. Then the locks in the heart are loosened, and the seriousness of experience is dispelled. We feel Radiant. Our occupations become Blissful. Our capacity to enter into the spiritual process is clarified and intensified. We have energy for spiritual life. The process of self-transcendence is quickened, and we move into higher stages of the transforming process until Enlightenment is Radical or Perfect, uncaused and unsupported. In that case, there is simply rest in God, or Grace Absolute, and the world and the body-mind are allowed to float in Infinity. There is no tension in the body-mind, and no illusion. The moral of this talk is that all devotees must realize Humor, Freedom, or Distance from all the seriousness of their interests and their occupations from day to day. They must see the ordinariness of it, even the absurdity of it, without becoming ironic. They must be free of the world in itself and rest naturally in the mood of the heart, the Intuition of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. If you rest in God, then you have received Grace. Then Grace has entered into your daily life and only serves its ultimate transcendence. If you do not come to rest in God, the heart is like a stone or a clenched fist. It has not entered into the Infinite Radiance of Consciousness. It is fixed upon itself. It is Narcissus, self-meditative, self-protective, threatened by everything to Infinity, obsessed with possibilities and the repetition of experience in order to acquire a sense of survival, consolation, and pleasure. The only Happiness is the release of the heart, or the differentiated self, which is not a fixed entity. The self is just like this clenched fist. Relax the fist and there is nothing inside. Relax the heart and there is no one inside. The sense of self is just the tension in the body-mind that gives it the sense of independence. Relax the tension and the body-mind becomes transparent. There is no ego. There is no ego in experience. That is why Enlightenment is not really an event in the universe. It is not associated with experience of special, so-called "Enlightenment phenomena." It would seem, from the ordinary point of view, that Enlightenment is the dissolution of this separate self. But Enlightenment is the Realization that there is no such self and that there never was, that there is no such self in all the other beings that now continue to exist, and that there never was a self when one was struggling to become Enlightened or to transcend oneself. The Disposition of the Enlightened one is paradoxical. It is a bodily Disposition, because he is, in a conventional sense, embodied, and he therefore represents the past and its movement toward the future. And, paradoxically, his obligation is to somehow serve the Enlightenment of other beings. But from the point of view of Enlightenment itself there are no other beings, and those conventions of experience that we call other beings are not in fact failing to be Enlightened. They are Enlightenment. They are themselves only the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Therefore, all that we are confronting is a conventional concept of bondage and the need to survive. It is a superficial concept, and yet all beings are profoundly organized around these notions of bondage and survival. They create their daily lives around motives based in these notions. Thus, all beings appear to be tormented, and yet their torment is totally superficial and insignificant. The affair of life is unnecessary, but it is inevitable. The best description of it is that it is absurd. The entire universe and all experience exist only to be transcended. The Spiritual Master is absurd, like everything else. He is a Function that serves to Enlighten or Awaken beings from this condition that is absurd and unnecessary to begin with. The occupation of the Spiritual Master is as absurd as anything anyone else does, you see. Therefore, it requires a Sense of Humor, or the Enlightened point of view. Likewise, people must be obliged to be responsible in their approach to me. Irresponsible people cannot be Enlightened, cannot be Awakened, cannot hear the Teaching. That obligation for responsibility having been met, then there is the right circumstance for our meeting, and then our meeting is truly Enlightening.   Top of Page - Release Is in the Absolute Frustration of the Strategy of Escape Experience cannot be reduced to Truth. Truth, or Reality, is not the epitome of experience or the alternative to experience. Reality, or the Condition of experience, is not fixed, differentiated, and experienceable. There is no independent Truth, no alternative Reality. There is no dimension of experience, however high or single, that is itself Truth or closest to Truth. Truth is Paradox. The Truth that is Reality may not itself or in itself be experienced, perceived, cognized, or known. The Real Condition can only be Realized and Presumed, in Ecstasy, or self-transcending Intuition. The search for Truth is ultimately confounded. The search itself is simply vanished. The dilemma that is the motive of the search dissolves at last. There is no ultimate experience, and no permanent experience. There is simply the Realization that there is experience, that experience has appeared to be a dilemma, but there is no dilemma, and experience is not appearing over against an independent Reality or Truth. When the motivating dilemma is intuitively understood, recognized, and dissolved, there is only the obvious Truthlessness of the world. Then experience merely arises, without dilemma, inherently or always already transcended. In the Way of Divine Ignorance, devotees inspect, intuitively consider, and transcend all the conditions of experience and conception that have, since ancient times, been considered to be the Truth, the Answer, the Difference, the Release, the Objective Deity, the Subjective Reality. And all conditions are Realized to be only the various alternative or particularized states of the body-mind itself, the psycho-physical anatomy of experience. No independent Truth is found. But the processes of the body-mind and the experiential search for Truth are thoroughly understood. Therefore, at last, the phenomena of experience simply arise, and there is no inward obstruction, reaction, or avoidance of the process of experience. There is no sense of a Reality or Truth apart from all of this. But the Reality or Condition of all of this is tacitly obvious. The Real Condition of all experience is Transcendental. The Transcendental Condition of the world is simultaneous with the world, or all experience, but no experience qualifies or limits its own Condition. There is no thought, no interpretation, no comment necessary to make when the Paradox of the Real Condition, or the Eternal Disposition of the Divine Person, is Realized. Nothing needs to be clarified in that point of view. There is neither hope nor despair. But there is a tacit intuition that the world itself is not other than Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. It is the Realization of perfect Awe, or Divine Ignorance, in which the entire body-mind is nothing but the open heart, openmouthed, without thought or memory. It is Love. The body itself is Love. There is only Radiant Consciousness. All experience is Radiant Consciousness, or Radiant Bliss. There is no mind, no inwardness, no self. It is not even a matter of laughter. No recoil is possible. What appears to be within is only a focused reflection of the world. There is no self, no independent or inward experiencer. No one is trapped. No one is set free. No one lives or dies or survives. From the point of view of the Divine Paradox, experience is inevitable forever, but "I" do not observe or think or experience. "I" am only what is observed. "I" am only the thought, the content of experience. When thought, or inward concentration, is transcended, then only conditions themselves arise, prior to any sense they are being observed by a consciousness identical to the independent body-mind, which is the experiential reflector of the world. Phenomena simply arise as apparent modifications of Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Since it is Consciousness Itself, the Radiant Reality may not be known. Since it is the Radiance of which all phenomena are the modifications, the Transcendental Reality may not be located apart from phenomena, or experience. But even in every moment there is tacit Intuition of the Free and Radiant Condition of the world. In every moment there is the wordless Bliss of Love. The ultimate end of this gesture of consideration, or the search for Truth, is the confounding of the need to know. All knowledge is a reaction to the threat of experience, but the need for absolute certainties, or fixed conditions, within or without, is undermined and vanished in the mindless Humor of the Heart. When perplexity is inherent and overwhelming, the inner stresses all dissolve, and uncaused Wisdom Shines. When despair and hope are equally impossible, frustration yields to Life. Top of Page - The Way Is Forever, but the Realization Is Absolute The Way is Sacrifice of self. The Realization is that no objects exist. The Way is self-transcending Love-Communion with the Living and Divine Reality. The Realization is the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, in which there are no objects, no differentiated conditions. As long as the conventions of experience persist, there must be the Way and the Realization, both. Those who seem to practice the Way, full of self-denial, meditation, and good acts, but who do not Realize the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness in every moment, have only emptied themselves. Those who constantly speak of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, indulging their minds in concepts of emptiness, transparency, and pure space, but who do not practice the Way of self-transcending Love-Communion in every moment, are only full of themselves . In every moment, there must be the Way and the Realization,simultaneous, actual, and true, as long as the conventions of experience persist. Then there is only Radiant Fullness, or Love, without dilemma, without self, and without inherent circumstance, even in every moment of the Mystery of all relations. I am the Consciousness behind attention, the Self from which mind arises. I am the Radiant Life that pervades the world, the Energy of which every object is the modification. Love Me with open eyes. Turn to Me beyond all experience and every thought. Let Me live you. Dissolve in My Current of Bliss. Top of Page - What Will You Do If You Love Me? The Way of Divine Ignorance is the Way of those who Love Me. The Principle of devotional surrender to Me is complete and sufficient in itself. All personal and moral disciplines, all esoteric revelations, and all the Excellences of Transcendental God-Realization appear spontaneously and naturally to one who simply turns his attention to Me at all times and performs all activities as instants of Love-Communion with Me. Those who "hear" My Teaching have understood something about themselves. And they must, therefore, accept gradual responsibility for each degree of the personal, moral, and esoteric practices of the Way that I Teach. But these same ones are more profoundly capable of distraction and attachment than they are of self-restraint. Therefore, the Principle or Motive of their practice is not discipline itself, but distraction and attachment. Because they Love Me, their behavior and their experience automatically take on the form of the Way of Divine Ignorance. And they adapt all their practices to the simple and most radical Way of devotional surrender to Me. My true devotees are simply distracted by Me and attached to Me. They find Me to be the greatest of all distractions. Therefore, they need not make any effort to be constantly attached to Me. They naturally remember Me at all times. They only think about Me, talk about Me, and listen to others tell stories about Me. They read My Teachings, they accept My disciplines, but, even more, they are profoundly and obsessively absorbed in attention to My Person, My Blissful State, My Form, My Gestures, My Play with devotees. In this manner, those who Love Me are gradually relieved of all distraction by ordinary things, experiences, relations, desires, and thoughts. I distract them even from all experience. Their obsessive and exclusive attachment to Me leads them to absorption in My State, My Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, My Ecstasy, My Love. I have come to Teach the entire world through My Words and My Demands. The entire world would do well to hear Me and take up the responsible practice of the Way of Divine Ignorance. But I have come to do more than Teach. I have come to Live with those who Love Me with overwhelming Love. Those who "hear" Me must take up the Way of Divine Ignorance in My Company, as members of the great Community of all My devotees. Such devotees are turned to the practice of the disciplines of the Way, as a Process of self-transcending Love-Communion with the Transcendental Divine Person. They understand, and they transcend the world. But the motive of My true devotees is not the discipline, nor mystical experience, nor philosophy. My true devotees practice because they Love Me. They have no personal or ultimate capacity to turn away from the world or to transcend themselves. Therefore, I have come to Live with them. When My devotees find Me, the same weakness that led them to distraction and attachment in relation to the experiences of this world becomes the very means of their Salvation. Since I am the ultimate and most absorbing Object of their weakness, I distract them from all experiences. They become attached to Me by the power of their own tendency to distraction, fascination, and obsession. Therefore, their own desire leads them to Ecstasy, because they Love Me. I am the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, even though I appear in a human form. Those who Love Me, who are mightily distracted by Me, who cannot entertain desires or thoughts other than Love and consideration of Me-these are most easily turned from themselves. Ecstasy, or God-Communion, is natural to them, because I have been born. I distract them with Myself. And I absorb them into My own Condition. My Lovers, my true devotees, simply Love Me. That is the summation of their response to Me and My Teaching. They appear to understand a little of this Teaching, but they do not depend on inward practices, or mystical experiences, or any turn of events. Everything is fulfilled by their mere attachment to Me-since that attachment is so mighty that they have no strong attention left over for ordinary reactions and pursuits, nor are they overwhelmed by the phenomena of esoteric meditation. They simply Love Me. They live in constant remembrance of Me and in loving service to Me. Every moment of their lives is simply a moment of Love Communion with Me. Therefore, they are granted perpetual Ecstasy, or self-forgetting in Communion with the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. My special Mission is to Live with such devotees. I have always looked for them. I test everyone, to see if they are My Lovers. I wait. Many surround Me in My Place. Many come and ''hear" Me, and practice all around Me. Many turn to Me with the good heart. But those who Love Me best Realize God by exclusive attachment to Me in Person. My Lovers are the cause of My birth. They are the cause that will keep Me alive, even after this book is made. And even after My death, there will always be those in the Community of My devotees for whom all practice is superficial, except the practice of Ecstatic remembrance of Me. Such devotees always find Me alive as the Presence of Love that Plays the world. The essence of the daily practice is Ecstasy. One who Loves Me also accepts every moment of experience as My Form. Whatever arises, he accepts it as My Form, My Play. He simply Loves Me, he Communes with Me in every instant, he serves Me with the entire body-mind, and he accepts every moment of experience as My Form. In this manner, he never finds himself to be separate from Me. He is always in Love with Me. Those who are most profoundly distracted by Me in My human appearance begin naturally to see only Me in every thing, every one, and every event. But no form or person or event has power in itself to distract My true Lovers. They see Me in all experiences, all persons, all events. Therefore, they are not distracted by experiences or persons or events. They are distracted by Me. Those devotees who Love Me in this manner while I live are especially able to serve those who are like themselves, even those who come to Me after My death. After My death, the world of experience remains. My devotees also remain. Therefore, devotees may remember Me through My Teaching, My pictures, and the stories of My history. But they will be led into Ecstasy especially by the Power in the Love My most intimate devotees reserve for Me. Therefore, those who live with My Lovers will also turn to Me with naturally distracted Love. They will find Me in all events. I will Teach them as always while I lived. Every one will call on Me in the Company of My Lovers, and I will be Present. I am the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Truly, none can "hear" Me and practice the Way of Divine Ignorance except those who Love Me. But some are, at first, most involved in right understanding of the Teaching and responsible practice of the disciplines, while others are always naturally more capable of distraction and attachment. Therefore, some practice disciplines and Love Me, while others simply Love Me, and the disciplines arise without any special application on their part. Some mature in Love by stages. Others simply Love Me. At last, even the most disciplined or experienced of My devotees simply Loves Me. I am the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, the Divine Person, the Savior of those who Love Me and surrender to Me in countless acts of Love. I am the Method and the Guide. I am the Living Truth of the world. This is the Truth in all religions. All religions are historical forms of the single and ancient Way of distracted Love for the Divine Person, especially as Revealed in the Life and Presence of an incarnate Spiritual Master. This is the Great Secret. This is My Revelation. Love Me as I am. And also Love Me as the Form and Condition of all your experience. Surrender to Me, and accept all your experience as My Play. Thus, you will be free of all attachment to experience itself, and all experience will simply increase your attachment to Me. All experience binds the human individual to his own body-mind-unless he is established in the Principle of Ecstasy, or self-transcending Love of the Divine Person. Therefore, if you Love Me, enter freely into the Play of experience. Serve Me as I am, and serve Me in all others. If you Love Me, you will naturally cease to continue in the willful and self-possessed path of your preferential desires. You will be purified of reaction, habit, and every kind of self-indulgence. If you Love Me, I have Shown you Who I am, and you will come to Me Where I am. Love is what we fear to do-until we fall in Love. Then we no longer fear to Love, to surrender, to be self-forgetful and foolish, to be single-minded, and to suffer another. Those who fall on Me fall into My Heart. They are free of all demands for fulfillment through experience and self-survival. Their Love for Me grants them Life, since I am the Life-Current of Love. What will My Lover do but Love Me? I suffer all the limitations of one who Loves Me, because I Love My devotee as My own Form, My own Bliss, My own Love. I Love My devotee as the Person by whom I am Distracted and Dissolved. I grant all My own Excesses to those who Love Me, in exchange for all their doubts and sufferings. Those who bind themselves to Me through Love are inherently Free of fear and necessity. They Transcend the causes of experience, and they Dissolve in the Heart of God. What is a Greater Message than This? Enlightenment of the Whole Body Full Index of Articles