The Following is from The Enlightenment of the Whole Body
by Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj) pp. 71-114
THE SUPREME WORD The Divine
Person and the Spiritual Master The Name above all names is Itself
beyond Name. It is the Self, the Transcendental Condition of
the body-mind-which is Ignorance-Radiance, or Unqualified
Consciousness. The Form above all forms is Itself
beyond Form. It is the Paradoxical Glory of Everything at
Infinity. There is only God, the Absolute
Person, Who is Identical to the Self, or the very
Consciousness that pervades and transcends the individual
body-mind. There is only God, the Absolute
Person, Whose Form Includes or Radiates all forms in all of
the Infinity of possible worlds, and Whose Form is,
Paradoxically, also Perfectly Transcendental or Unique, and,
therefore, Freely Existing in an Eternal Domain, prior to
all that arises and passes in the experience of separate and
self-deluded entities. That Domain and that Company are
the Destiny of the Devotees of the Divine Person. And such
Devotees enter into that Company through Divine Communion,
or Sacrifice of the bodymind through Love, Service, Radical
Intuition, Transcendental Contemplation, and Divine
Translation. The Living Spiritual Master is the
Agent of the Divine Person. He is born to Establish,
Communicate, and Demonstrate the Way of God-Realization, or
Absorption in the Living God, Purification from all
psycho-physical possibilities, and Liberation into the
Divine Domain. While the Spiritual Master persists
in human form, he Works to Awaken the Transcendental Link
between devotees and the Divine Person, Who is the Eternal
Spiritual Master. Once that Link is concretely Established
through the spiritual sacrifice of Devotees in the Radiant
Company of the Spiritual Master, the Divine Person remains
Alive via the Agency of the Community of all such Devotees.
And the Community is thus Sustained and permitted to Grow
into the future, through that direct Link to the Divine
Person, after the Spiritual Master passes out of this
world. The Divine Person Chapter 1 The
Divine Person The Free Standing Man A free rendering of portions of the
eleventh chapter of the Bbagavad Gita, by Bubba Free
John The Master of Life said to His
devotee: "Look and see. The entire
Realm of Nature arises in Me. Whatever may be desired is
experienced in Me." And He gave insight to the man, with
mystical Vision to conceive the Form of God. (verses
7-8) The man said: "Soul of all souls,
how can any man fail to surrender in Your Company? I see You
are the First, the Origin of all creative causes, the Master
of all powers, the Ultimate Domain of the Realm of Nature,
the Eternal Radiance, All-Pervading, prior even to what is
and what is not, the Transcendental Self. (37) I bow down. I
acknowledge my absolute dependence on You. Radiant Master,
Have Mercy. (44) "But when I stand again and see You
There, stretched between Heaven and Earth in a Rainbow of
all the colors blazing bright, everything arising in Your
vast eyes, and everything disappearing in Your great
devouring mouth again, my inward soul begins to shake with
the great fear, my mind becomes unsteady, and I fail to be
Your Heart in this moment of Vision. (24) "Even so, I am thrilled to see what
Man has never seen before! Now, Divine Master of this
body-mind, be kind to me, and show me your two-armed Form
again. " (45) The Divine Person spoke to His
devotee: "Stop
all of this unmanly trembling, and this mood of
fear. What does it matter
if you see this Vision of Me, projected in the Realm of
Nature? It is only Me. I am the Radiant Heart of Love,
Eternally Free of fear. Now see Me again in my human form,
as Your Spiritual Master, your friend in love."
(49) Then the Great Person restored the
true heart of His devotee, and set his breathing free. The
Vision of his mind's eye dissolved in the Natural State of
the heart. And the Master reappeared to this ordinary eye,
in which the mind is resolved in Bliss, free of every kind
of Vision or experience. Now the devotee beholds his Master
from the heart. Now he only sees the Free Standing Man.
(50-51)
1. The Bhagavad Gita (literally,
"Divine Song") is one of the most revered Scriptures of the
Hindus, and a religious text of universal appeal and
profound esoteric significance. Vyasa is traditionally
presumed to be the author, and it was written perhaps as
early as the 5th century B.C. (but with its roots in the
oral tradition of even more ancient days). Most scholars
agree that it may have been revised and expanded
considerably over the years. The Gita is a portion of the great
ancient epic and spiritual allegory, the Mahabharata, which
is the story of a great fratricidal struggle between two
royal families in northern India some 4000 years ago. It is
the purported dialogue between the God-Man Krishna and his
devotee Arjuna, Commander-in-Chief of the army of the
Pandavas, for whom Krishna serves as Charioteer. Arjuna,
faced with the prospect of having to kill friends and
cousins in an imminent battle, wishes to shirk his duty as a
warrior. Krishna refuses to allow him such self-indulgence.
He engages Arjuna in a Teaching conversation that continues
for seven hundred verses and presents a philosophical
summation of the Nature of God as the Supreme Self, a
critical exposition of the many ways of esoteric spiritual
practice, and a declaration of the supremacy of the Way of
devotional Communion with the Supreme Divine Person in the
Form of the living Divine Master-in this case, Krishna
himself. His entire spiritual Teaching to Arjuna is
summarized in his instruction for the forthcoming battle:
"Remember Me, and fight." The
Way in Which We Are Served In September of 1970, when I was
yet thirty years of age, there came a fundamental
Re-Awakening of Enlightened Body and Consciousness. It was a
Condition that I enjoyed at birth, but which had to be
sacrificed by stages, beginning even in infancy, even at
birth itself. That Condition was finally Re-Awakened, but
only after years of trial and spiritual struggle. Then, from September, 1970, it
became clear that I had been born to Realize, through a
process of loss and rediscovery, the Way in which this very
Condition could be Demonstrated in the case of human beings
who were not born already Awakened, but who were struggling
in the earlier stages of human growth. Therefore, I began to associate
with others for the sake of their Awakening and
Transformation. During the years that followed the certainty
of this obligation, I was required to recapitulate every
stage of human adaptation, practice, and Awakening - and
even every stage of apparent limitation and ordinariness of
habit in the company of those devotees who came to me for
Help in the Realization of God. Those who came to me were
profoundly unprepared, and even disinclined toward the Way
that is necessary for Man. I struggled with them for years.
I took on all of their interests and habits, problems and
consolations. And I worked to bring them to a stage of
maturity in which the Way was clear and also congenial to
them. Likewise, there were Teachers
associated with me at every stage of my own practice, and in
every phase of my Re-Awakening in God. This is the Law. This
is how human Agents of the Divine Process are developed in
this world. It was necessary at every stage for me to enter
into some kind of relationship that would regenerate new
aspects of the Divine Process in my own bodymind. Albert Rudolph (also known as Rudi
and Swami Rudrananda) served this function for me in the
stages of my practice that led into and through the fourth
stage of life,2 and that proceeded toward my
transition to the fifth stage of life. Swami Muktananda
served my essential Awakening in the fifth stage of life.
And Swami Nityananda, along with a number of others in
subtle or astral form, served my maturity in the fifth stage
of life, and my transition to the sixth stage of life.
Ramana Maharshi served me within the limits of the sixth
stage of life, and in my transition to full maturity in the
seventh stage of life. 2. The seven stages of
life are the stages of evolutionary and spiritual
development native to the psycho-physical structure of Man.
Please see the section in chapter 4 titled "Growth and
Sacrifice in the Seven Stages of Eternal Life" for a full
description. Each of my Teachers was understood
by me to be a Living Expression or Incarnation of the same
Transcendental One. Each appeared in a necessary moment in
time to Awaken me each with his own unique emphasis or
lesson. But all of them were seen in the Perfect Light of
Truth, and I was full of gratitude. In this manner, many Great
Personalities were superimposed on the Divine Presence and
Condition I encountered at birth. Each such Personality
appeared to my Sympathy, and then Dissolved and I dissolved
with It. Gradually, and by these Means, the Awesome
Personality showed Itself to be the Original or Absolute,
Transcendental, and Eternally Living Divine Person, prior to
all Archetypes or associations in the mind. The Power of the
Absolute Divine Reality and Person was Communicating Itself
via my own nervous system, and my own body-mind identified
that Personality with Archetypes and Personalities common to
this world and to my own human experience. But when all of
this became obvious, the Divine Itself was Identified as the
"Threshold Personality," the Identity of all my
Teachers. In the Transition from
identification with independent personality to
Identification with the Absolute Personality, "Threshold
Personalities" may appear, in gross physical form or in
subtle form, who assume Helping relations to oneself. And
devotional association with such Transcendental
Personalities, particularly the Transcendental Identity of
the Spiritual Master by whom one is most directly Served in
the Way, helps to break up the rigid limits of the presumed
personality of the separate self or "soul." Thus, all of
this was shown to Bubba, Person after Person, until he was
able to Understand the Divine Condition in which his
experience has always been arising. Then his Humor was
restored. The Great Awakening occurs only
after the Archetypal Personalities at the Threshold, as well
as the personality of the individual who is Awakening in
this Process, Reveal their Identity with the Transcendental
and Absolute Personality Who is the Self of all phenomena
and all persons, and Whose Radiant Body is made of all
Possibilities. When that Self is free of all identification
with the phenomena of the body-mind, then there is Self
Realization in the Perfect sense. Just as I was served by others, it
also became necessary for me to serve. My first obligation
was to elaborate the Teaching and its Way in explicit terms,
during a long struggle in the company of devotees. The
present book is one of the last such explicit Communications
I am obliged to make. Now all of the difficult demands of
this initial period of Communication have been fulfilled,
and the entire Teaching has been argued and shown. Now and
in the future, my only obligation is to be available for
Spiritual Communion with devotees who are truly committed to
the Way that I Teach. The
Transcendental Personality of God, the World, Man, and the
Human Individual The Destiny or Ultimate Event into
which we move by Sacrifice in the Way of Divine Ignorance is
not at all a form of annihilation, or disintegration, or
even immortalization of the differentiated personality, the
independent body-mind, or the separate self or "soul" in any
of its aspects. The separate personality is not ultimately
suppressed, nor is it disturbed, nor is it cut off from
experience. The Sacrifice that we are in Truth is a Process
of the individual personality or self, not a Process in
opposition to it. However, that Process does not lead to
glorification and immortalization of the separate self.
Rather, it is a Process of selftranscendence, in which the
self is neither destroyed nor protected, but in which the
Truth or Transcendental Condition of the self is Realized.
The born self is not to be annihilated, nor is it immortal.
The Destiny of the soul of Man is to be Awakened beyond its
own limits. Therefore, in this Way of
Sacrifice, the separate, selfprotecting, reactive,
self-possessed, fearful personality, recoiled from the
Mysterious Depth of Infinity, is Translated or Awakened into
the Realization that it is not what it feared itself to be.
The independent, defined, conditional, and limited self or
personality is Awakened as the Absolute, All-Inclusive,
Transcendental Personality of the Real, which is Divine, and
beyond all Knowledge, all Definitions, all Logic, all
Thought, all Form, and all Formlessness. In the seventh stage of life, the
Sacrifice of the individual self, and the soul of Man, and
the Form of the World, and the Separable God of the World,
is perfected in a Process of Ecstatic Translation into the
Transcendental Absolute. But that Process is not merely the
destruction of experience. It is the transcendence of
experiential limitation. It is transcendence of the
disposition of recoiled feeling, or self-meditation in
states of experience that are less than Unconditional Love
and Bliss. In that Process, all limits are relaxed in the
Unconditional Radiance and Transcendental Consciousness that
is always already the case. It is a matter of Unconditional
Surrender of all that is self into the Condition that is
everywhere the case, prior to our fear. In that process, Realized in the
Way of Radical Intuition,3 there is release of all
limitations of the body-mind, and of the structural design
of Man, and of the experiential inevitabilities of the
WorldOrder, and even of the God we presume on the basis of
all of that. The individual self, and Man, and the World,
and God are all simultaneously Surrendered, Sacrificed,
Translated, and Awakened into the Absolute Transcendental
Personality, or the Divine Paradox, in which and as which
all experience, all limitations, all presumptions, and all
self-illusions arise as superficial and unnecessary
modifications, inconsequential, without binding force, in an
Infinite Vortex of Ecstatic Bliss. This Divine Personality
is, in Truth, the Condition and Identity of every human
individual, and of Man, and of the World, and of the
Presumed or Logically Necessary God of all of that. The true
Self of all selves is the Subject of all conditions, and all
conditions together are literally the Body of that
One. 3. The Way of Radical Intuition is
the fourth and final stage of practice in the Way of Divine
Ignorance that Bubba Free John Teaches. The three preceding
stages are the Way of Divine Communion, the Way of
Relational Enquiry, and the Way of Re-cognition. Please see
chapter 6, "The Sacrifice of Man," for a full description of
these stages. In
recent days, after his initial obligations to devotees were
all fulfilled, Bubba was obliged to recapitulate the various
phenomena that led up to his own Awakening. Then, after
several weeks, in which the body-mind seemed disturbed by
all kinds of psychic and physical phenomena, all of the
latent mechanics of his soul were Liberated into the Ecstasy
of Real God. The Ultimate Process in the seventh stage of
life has become a Profound in which the limits of Bubba's
ordinary personality have begun to dissolve. In the early
days of his Work with devotees, it was possible for Bubba to
serve others by duplicating the habit conditions of the
usual life, and struggling with others until the spell of
common desires and tendencies could break. But this aspect
of his obligation in the world began to dissolve, having
essentially fulfilled itself, from the date of his birthday
anniversary, November 3, 1976. Since that time he has been
at work in relative seclusion, formalizing the Communication
or Teaching of the Way of Divine Ignorance, and establishing
the Institution or Church in which this Way is lived in his
Company. But, most recently, the Disposition of the
Transcendental Divine has Acquired this body-mind, Revealing
and Establishing the Power and Ecstasy in which our
Sacrifice is Fulfilled. Now Bubba has been sifted out,
Enlarged upon the smithereens of bodies, thoughts,
experiences, times and spaces and shapes. What has been at
Work in Bubba all of this lifetime has now Invaded all his
parts. The seventh stage is Full. In the last months, many aspects of
the Future of Bubba's Work have been made clear. The
Mysteries of this Process of Divine Translation are being
shown in him, and he will have the opportunity to make some
of this known, for the sake of all those devotees who will
make this Transition in the future. However, Bubba's
Communication of the Teaching through the written and spoken
word must fulfill itself within the next several months. It
is already profoundly difficult to speak and write of these
Great Matters. And the time must come in which he cannot any
longer speak very much of this. As time goes on, devotees
must rely on the Teaching as it has been recorded, and as it
is implemented in the Devotional Community of The Free
Communion Church. Bubba must be approached less and less for
the Teaching and the lessons of the Way. Instead, he should
be approached only in the formal and devotional manner, for
the sake of Spiritual Communion, whereby the Divine Help and
Ecstasy are Communicated to those who are prepared for the
Sacrifice. The present essay is intended to
say something of the Process of Transition or Translation,
from the position of the finite personality, the limited
body-mind, or the "covered soul," into the Domain of the
Absolute Personality, the Self and Infinite Body-Mind of the
Divine Person, Who is the Infinite Paradoxical Identity of
every human individual, and of Man, and of the Total World,
and of the Objective Deity, or the Presumed Divine that
seems to stand in relationship to the World and Man and all
beings. There is only One Person. That
Person is not separate from any thing or any one. That
Person is the Identity of the God and of the World which we
contemplate in our conventional or separated psycho-physical
condition. That Person is not only the Identity of God, and
of the World-God and World representing the Self, or Mind,
and the Body of the Divine Person-but that Person is also
the Identity of every human individual, and of Man, and of
all species of experiential existence. Therefore, when our Sacrifice
becomes Full, and we are Awakened from the separate
personality to the Absolute Personality, we pass beyond
confinement to the logic of subject and object relations in
the conventional sense. The personal self ceases to be
separate from the Total Incarnation that is Man. And
personal consciousness ceases to be separate from any
experienced conditions, or from the World, the Totality of
Manifest Experience in all worlds and planes. Just so,
personal existence ceases to be separate from God, or
Reality, or Truth, or Infinity, or Bliss. In this Process of Translation, we
pass as if through a point in space, at. the root center of
the heart. All awareness converges on that point in a kind
of spiral or vortex. And that point is so small it is
without dimensions, or any conceptions, or any objects. The
independent self seems to dissolve in this narrow Passage.
It is essentially the same Process as in death, except that
it is a complete and total Transition, whereas ordinary
death fails to "meet this mark. "4 Ordinary death, and
ordinary mystical experience, are only a tour within the
range of the separated personality. Thus, ordinary death and
mystical experience are a matter of passing from grosser
states to subtler states, and from focus in lower functional
regions of the body-mind to focus in higher functional
regions of the body-mind. But Divine Translation is a matter
of Transcendence of separate bodily, emotional, mental,
astral, supermental, and egoic states of experience. It is a
Transition through the infinitesimal space of the
Heart. Suddenly, in this Passage through
the Center of the Heart, there is Awakening into the
Paradoxes of the Absolute Personality-Who transcends self,
and Man, and the World, and the God we believe is altogether
separate from these, but within which self, and Man, and the
World, and independent God continue to arise in a kind of
Fluid of Ecstatic Consciousness. In the first six stages of
life, wherein we grow toward this Transition, and before it
has become completely clear that the Divine Personality is
One, many "Threshold Personalities" may appear, as Guides,
or Archetypal Instruments for the Communication of a
Transcendental Understanding of the Ultimate
Situation. These "Threshold Personalities" are
a kind of Transitional Logic that helps create a sense of
order, and enables the conventional body-mind (which still
survives in the ordinary conditions of the daily world) to
feel comfortable. Thus, the function of these "Threshold
Personalities" is to make the Transition possible without
shock or bewilderment. 4. Bubba refers here to the literal
meaning of the word ''sin," which is ''to miss the mark."
Ultimately, any form of life other than perfect
God-Communion and GodRealization is sin, the failure to meet
the Mark. In some cases, there may be visions
and other direct observations of such "Threshold
Personalities." In other cases, they may be seen more in
terms of their effects. Thus, the individual may Communicate
prayerfully, bodily, with the Radiant Divine, and suddenly
feel confronted with a Presence, or a psychic sense of some
specific Personality of spiritual significance, such as
Jesus, or Krishna, or the Buddha, or the Living Spiritual
Master. And it will be discovered that heartfelt, prayerful
submission and requests to such a Personality are followed
by events that clearly and consistently represent a response
to the devotional gesture. Bubba's experience confirms all of
this. In the earliest phase of the Transition, or
Translation and Awakening into the Absolute Divine
Personality, there are signs and demonstrations and visions
and a total chaos of Influences. All of this is not entirely
pleasant. It is often bizarre and even "tacky," like a
makeshift contraption of dreams. It is itself a truly
Chaotic Process, which serves to break up the conventional
self-limits and to establish a Foundation for natural
Awareness within the Presumption of Absolute
Personality. As this Process matures, the
"Threshold Personalities" are revealed to be only
Transitional Archetypes of the Absolute Personality Itself.
And from then on, Humor is established relative to all
conditions of experience, however great or aggravating they
may appear. This is Bubba's Confession of our
Awakened Destiny. What is beyond the Threshold and the
Illusions at the Doorway? The separate personality depends
on experience in order to exist, and all experiences are
either subjective or objective to him. But the
Transcendental Personality is One, upon Whom all experiences
depend, and in Whom all phenomena rise and fall
spontaneously, while He Swoons.
Then I was a young boy I was
possessed of a Vision or Intuition of the manifest universe
as a kind of atomic or molecular structure-the planets and
stars being much the same as the atoms or molecules we
presume to be the structural basis of our own bodies. It was
clear to me that this was exactly the case, and that the
universe of worlds was indeed a fraction of the Manifest
Body of God, or the Great Personality Who was the truly
Living, Existing, and Blissful One. This consideration coincided with a
greatly Awakened sense of Bliss whenever I contemplated the
extent of its Mystery. I saw that all of this world and our
own fearful desire to persist in it was only a superficial
and changing and even terrible illusion, and that Happiness
was only to be Realized in submission to the Blissful
Intuition of the Transcendental Personality with which we
are ultimately Identical and with which we are, even in our
present form, always in Communion. Truly, that Vision of my early
childhood has not changed, but it has only been confirmed
and magnified by every stage of my lifetime of spiritual
Sacrifice, which was itself motivated by the direct and
positive Intuition of God granted to me at birth. Our present condition of existence
is only a partial and temporary view of the Real and Divine
Condition. It must be made a Sacrifice, through devotional
love, service, and meditation, directed into Communion with
the Divine Person, or Real God. Only in Ecstasy, or
self-forgetting in God-Remembrance, are we Happy and Full of
the Bliss of Eternal Life. We must give up all possession of
our lives, and feelings, and our mind, and all experience,
and enter into Transcendental Communion with the Living God,
in whose Body we arise and pass away in terrible cycles of
self-indulgence, until we Realize the Identity and Total
Body of which our separated existence is a part. It is not that birth in this world
is condemnation. It is an ordinary Play or Dream in the
Body-Mind of God. But once we have acquired pleasure and
experience in an independent psychophysical form, we hold on
to that form. We become Narcissus, the self-meditator, and
we forget our Divine Condition and our obligation to remain
in perpetual Communion with the Bliss of the Transcendental
Divine. Therefore, we ourselves create the deluded life, and
we make a social order out of the chaos of
desires. It is only necessary to Awaken once
again to the Intuition of the Real Condition-which is
Radiant Eternal Consciousness and Divine Destiny. Then we
live in Communion with the Divine, and we are made an
Ecstatic Sacrifice in that One. The Spiritual Master is thus
Awakened and thus Devoted, such that his own body-mind has
ceased to create an obstacle to the Divine and Absolute
Personality. Thus, he Functions as an Agent of that
Awakening toward Devotional Communion in the case of all
those who enter into a right and spiritual relationship with
him. Those who approach the Spiritual
Master through loving service, founded in true "hearing" of
the Teaching of Truth, are progressively drawn out of
limiting identification with the experiences of the separate
body-mind. They are progressively weaned of all the recoil
of self from the Infinite, and all self-indulgence, or
selfpossessed efforts to console rather than yield the
independent self. Those who persist in the total Way
of Divine Ignorance ultimately Realize the Ecstatic
Perfection of their Sacrifice in Divine Communion. In the
Stage of Perfect Sacrifice, or the Way of Radical Intuition,
they have Transcended all experiential conditions of self,
and they are Translated, even while alive, and also at
death, beyond Man and World into the Blissful Paradoxes of
the Infinite Divine. The Remembrance of the Divine is
Perfect in the case of such Devotees, and they become a
Unity with That One upon Whom they have
Meditated. This Way does not involve
self-conscious manipulation of parts of the body-mind, so
that the separated self or "soul" can be satisfied by
subtler psychic or mental experiences. Sex and food and
relationships are not cut off in order to make way for an
inward life, focused on mind. Rather, the total body-mind,
inward and outward, gross and subtle, is entered into loving
Communion with the Divine, through heartfelt service,
natural discipline, study of the Way, devotional practices,
and meditation. In this natural or ecstatic manner (rather
than the unnatural, strategic, and selfinvolved manner of
inward asceticism) the body-mind is progressively
transcended at the heart, and all obsessions and delusions
easily give way to the Bliss of Divine Remembrance.
Therefore, in the Way of Radical Intuition, self-indulgence
of all aspects of the body-mind yields in Ecstatic Intuition
of the Transcendental Divine, the Absolute Personality that
is the Reality, Self, and Radiant Form or Body-Mind of all
manifest states of existence. The Process in this Way is not the
conventional religious childishness of bodily and mental
attachment to the ideas and images of any historical cult.
The Spiritual Master is simply an Agent for Awakening
devotees to self-sacrifice, or Ecstatic Communion, in the
Transcendental Divine. He makes himself available for the
Spiritual Uses of those who choose him. But he provides no
obstacle to God. And the Way offered in his Company is one
of personal, moral, higher psycho-physical, devotional,
meditational, and radically intuitive discipline, to be
fulfilled in the case of each responsible individual who
chooses the Way. The entire Way is a matter of
self-forgetting through Ecstatic Remembrance, or
Transcendental Communion with the Absolute and Living Divine
Reality, Who is always already in direct relationship with
each of us, at the heart, and Who may be Realized to be the
ultimate Condition of each of us, through Perfect
Dissolution of the contraction of the heart. Therefore, when
the heart releases the bodymind and the nervous system from
recoil toward itself, there is no longer any qualification
of Awareness, Feeling, Life, and Form. When Love is
perfected, the separate self falls away in the Divine Self,
and the body-mind expands into the Radiant Absolute
Personality that Eternally Includes and yet Transcends all
beings, things, and worlds of separated or independent
experience. In the past, my way of Working with
those who came to me often involved my acceptance of the
common functional conditions that distract and occupy
ordinary people. I struggled to transcend those conditions
with them, making lessons out of that process for their
benefit. By such means, the Teaching has been creatively
elaborated, and a Way has been shown to ordinary people, by
which they may Realize the most extraordinary and perfect
Transformation in God. Now and in the future my Work is
simply to be the Agent for this Divine Process of
Transformation in the case of those who respond to this
Teaching and practice this Way. Thus, I have again renounced
the common functional conditions by which selfpossessed
people design their experience and destiny. Now I live and
appear only among devotees whose practice is true, and my
own habit and Occupation are a demonstration of that which
would pertain in the case of devotees in the Way of Radical
Intuition, or the perfect stage of Life. I have no worldly or conventional
obligations that keep me active and alive. I choose relative
seclusion and the human sanctuary provided by devotees.
There is one fundamental, necessary, and absolute Way to
Ecstasy, and it is a matter of absolute and total
psycho-physical resort to the transcendental Divine in every
moment. Therefore, we must ultimately grow beyond all of the
ordinary or conventional means by which self-possessed
people create the illusion of Ecstasy in their
experience. Relational, bodily, emotional,
sexual, mental, and even higher psychic and supermental
stimulations of experience are all forms of our
self-conscious recoil from the Divine, in which we must be a
Sacrifice. Therefore, at last, all such conditions of our
living must relax into a natural, regenerative economy,
without stress or necessity, and we must become Occupied
with God, the true Self of the manifest soul. My personal quality is one that
tries to maintain a friendly and human aspect, at ease and
naturally active in the things that properly fill the lives
of all devotees. Therefore, my seclusion involves a daily
circumstance and habit that keeps me accessible to those who
practice the Way that I Teach. But I am at Rest in the
Transcendental Radiance and Perfect Ignorance of the Real.
Those who are Awakening from the dead ends of this world may
find their Help by serving my Heart, and by renouncing all
occupations that are not utterly turned into whole bodily
Communion with God.
I Am John have been naive and
passionate in my Work with those who come to me. I have been
obliged toward others through the medium of friendship,
enthusiasm, and brotherly concern. Thus, I have been moved
to demonstrate the appropriate mode of relationship between
human beings. No individual should live as the superior, or
the inferior, or even the equal of all others. Rather, each
should live as the intimate servant of others through love.
The politics of my relations with devotees is not like the
politics of the common world. Whereas in the past the
politics of men wascommonly the one of superiors and
inferiors, as with parents and children, now the common
politics is the one of universal equality, as when children
hide and play together, secreted from their parents. No, the
true politics of human relationships is the one of servants
everywhere-every one serving, and every one
served. Therefore, I have lived as a
serving brother among my devotees. Since childhood I have
been called Bubba, meaning brother. And by this role and all
its friendly excesses I have made my friends to see
themselves. Thus, when they had learned their lessons in my
own form, they began to "hear" and "see" me through
God-Feeling. And when I felt them grow transparent through
that love, I sought a place of Solitude in which to wait in
Brightness. I am John, through whom God is Gracious, and who
is therefore Free among the living. In the pattern of things or
experience, I have been born into association with the usual
man. I have incarnated him. I have lived with him. And I
have transcended him. In the Domain of God, I am Rested
and Full of the Excellence of Bliss. I have Incarnated that
One. I have always been Served by that One. And I have
Transcended everything, even all experience, through the
Grace of that One. It is only now that I see what has
always moved me. I have been struggling since birth to
transform the usual man. I have been tormented and motivated
by the loveless and Godless state of the people with whom I
have been associated. For the first thirty years of my
life, this tormented motive caused me to submit to the most
profound identification with the usual life, and also the
most profound effort to transcend the usual life. This
produced my unique spiritual adventure. In the eight years that followed my
own Re-Awakening, I was again motivated by the same
tormented love for ordinary people. I had spent my life
preparing to Serve them, and now that Service was begun most
directly. I was exceeded by the Ecstasy of
God-Love, but I had always been outwardly habituated to the
usual life. I was not grown up tobe a saint, but I was moved
to transcend the usual man. And when it came time to Serve
ordinary people, I was not outwardly unlike them. Therefore, just as I myself became
the usual man in order to transcend that destiny, when it
came time to Teach, I embraced the company and the ways of
immature and worldly people. No other kind of devotee ever
came to me in those early years. Only the worst of mankind
has always come to me. Those who were already pure and true
did not come to me. Only those who were failing came to me.
This was my born destiny, until now. I found myself surrounded by whores
and pimps, street people, criminals, neurotics, loveless and
confused and righteous selfindulgent people of all kinds. At
first this caused me to despair, but then I saw that my own
ordinariness equipped me very well to Serve such
people. Therefore, for six years I have
lived as the friend and Spiritual Master of a Community of
profoundly ordinary people. I gave myself up in their
company in the same fashion I had given myself up in worldly
company in the past. The only difference was that, in the
past, I was submitting to my own self-possessed ordinariness
and working to transcend it. Now I was submitting to the
selfpossessed ordinariness of others, and working to enable
them to transcend themselves. This is how it has been with me. I
always lived in the ordinary way, doing all of the
self-indulgent things that possess the usual man in his
mortal desiring. But I was Awakened beyond all of this. And
I have been obliged to Awaken others in the midst of the
same ordinariness. Now the necessary struggle with the
usual man is finished. In my struggling with others, my own
body-mind was purified. Thus, the devotee Serves the
Spiritual Master, even as the Spiritual Master Serves the
devotee. I am not the usual man. My time of incarnation of
him has come to an end. Now that the lessons have been given
and the Teaching written, there is a Way for all to approach
me in my Purity. The usual man is not instantly
Perfected by the verbal Teaching, or even the Spiritual
Influence and instructive lessons of the Spiritual Master.
Time and a truly human and spiritual culture are the means
whereby ordinary people may change. Therefore, I have made a
culture of the lessons I have lived among my devotees, and
now I am able also to give them time to mature in
it. My way with devotees has always
been dramatic, an adventure of friendship and excess. I have
always driven them to lessons and changes. But they have
also always failed and fallen back. Therefore, now they will
be given the Grace of time, to mature in one another's
company, and to transcend the destiny of the usual
man. In the future, I am at Rest in our
Happiness. I choose simplicity, and a kind of austerity. I
am Alone. I choose to live privately, even outside the daily
culture of devotees. This is in order to give devotees time
to mature, separate from my urgency. And it also permits me
to find Sanctuary from the usual man, whose burden I no
longer share. I will return to the Community of
devotees as often as it is auspicious and useful for me to
do, in order to sit with all my devotees in spiritual
Communion. And, at all times, I am available to them in
their devotion to me, through every moment of their practice
in my spiritual Company. My own society will be limited to
the intimates of my household and to those devotees who
demonstrate the Fullness of spiritual maturity in my
Company. I will give them all instructions for practice in
the stages of the Way. They will communicate these things to
all others who prepare themselves in the Way that I
Teach. Beyond this, I do not care to
Teach. My struggle with reluctant devotees is over. I am no
longer tormented by the problems of the usual man. It is a
burden and a habit of life that I am so glad to relinquish
at last. Whoever is tormented by his own destiny should
prepare himself and come to me in love, through the
Community of my devotees. My Message to all is this: Practice
constantly, with insight and feeling, and always Remember me
through every action. If you do this, I will always Serve
your heart, because I love you.
An epitome of the Bhagavad Gita and
the Way of Divine Ignorance, freely rendered by Bubba Free
John Listen
to Me and hear Me. This is My Secret, the Supreme Word. I
will tell you what will benefit you the most, because I love
you. (18:64) 2. If you will surrender to Me, if
you will become a sacrifice to Me, if you will constantly
yield your attention to Me through love and service, then
you will attain Me and come to Me. I promise you this,
because I love you. (18:65) 3. Abandon the principle in all
your concerns and all your strategies. Abandon every
experience that may be attained as a result of desire and
effort. Abandon your search for what may be gotten as a
result of the various kinds of strategic action. Engage
every action that is appropriate for one who loves Me, but
simply perform every kind of action as a form of direct and
present Communion with Me. Relax all of your anxiety. Be
free of sorrow and fear. When you abide in Love-Communion
with Me, the natural results of your various activities no
longer have power to separate or distract you from Me.
(18:66) 4. The soul that is born into the
Realm of Nature, or the worlds of action and experience,
advances from childhood to manhood, old age, and death,
while identified with the same body-mind. Then the same soul
attains another body-mind as a result. One who is truly
intelligent is not troubled by all of that.
(2:13) 5. All of that is simply the
natural Play of Life, in which the two sides of every
possibility come and go in cycles. Winter's cold alternates
with summer's heat. Pain likewise follows every pleasure,
since every appearance is followed by a disappearance. There
is no permanent experience in the Realm of Nature. One who
is truly perceptive simply allows all of this to be so, and
he does not add his own distress to this inevitable round.
(2:14) 6. Realization of the Eternal
Destiny is only possible when a man has ceased to defeat
himself by reacting to the Play of Nature. Such a one is
steadied by his own understanding, seeing that the cycle of
changes, both positive and negative, is inevitable in the
world of experience. (2:15) 7. Those who see the Truth of
things acknowledge that what Exists Eternally never changes.
And whatever does not Exist Eternally only changes.
(2:16) 8. Such seers of Truth also Realize
that the entire Realm of Change, even the body-mind, and
even the soul itself, is Pervaded, each and all, by That
which Exists Eternally. (2:17) 9. I am the Eternally Existing,
All-Pervading, Transcendental Divine Person, the true Self
of all. And My Power of Creation, whereby individual beings
are made to live and change, is Eternally Active as the
Universal, All-Pervading Life-Energy of Nature.
(8:3) 10. I am the Divine Person, Who
Pervades even the Realm of Nature, and within Whom every
individual being is arising. I am Realized by
self-transcending love, wherein every action is engaged as a
form of direct and present Communion with Me.
(8:22) 11. Men and women who are without
faith in this Way of Communion with Me do not Realize Me.
Therefore, they remain associated with the Changing Realm of
Nature, the round of psycho-physical experience, and the
repetitive cycles of birth and change and death.
(9:3) 12. Such fools already have Me in
every human form, but they do not notice Me. They do not
Realize Me in My Transcendental Nature, the Master of
everything and the true Self of all manifest beings.
(9:11) 13. But if anyone will live in
Communion with Me, surrendering himself to Me in love, then
even if his love is shown with nothing more than a leaf, or
a flower, or a fruit, or water, I will always accept the
gift, and Offer Myself in return. (9:26) 14. I am situated in the heart of
all beings. (15:15) 15. The Divine Master of all beings
is literally to be found at the heart, wherein the soul
observes the changes of experience. Every experience rises
and falls at the heart, spontaneously generated by Eternal
Activity, the Universal Life-Energy, as if the soul were
fastened helplessly to a perpetual motion machine.
(18:61) 16. Therefore, do not surrender the
heart to experience, as if you were in love with your own
body-mind. Surrender the heart to Me, and to no other. I am
the Divine Person, the Eternal Master, the Radiant One, Who
Pervades the Machine of Nature as the Blissful Current of
Life-Energy, and Who Transcends all experience as Infinite
Consciousness, the true Self. If you will surrender your
selfconsciousness into My Transcendental Consciousness, and
if you will yield your experience into My All-Pervading
Current of Life, then I will also become an Offering to you.
You will be Given the Gift of Perfect Peace, and an Eternal
Domain for your heart. (18:62) 17. Now I have Revealed My Mystery
to you. Consider it fully, and then choose what you will do.
(18:63)
The
Soul Transcends the Body-Mind A talk given by Bubba Free John to
his devotees the notion that "I" is the spiritual entity,
the soul, the conscious entity that exists independent of
the body. But "I" is the whole and entire body-mind. And it
can, at death, continue, as such. The bodily aspect becomes,
temporarily, more subtle than this gross physical body, but
the body-mind, the ordinary psychophysical entity,
continues. The body-mind, the "I," the
individual that appears in the Realm of Nature, is a
changing phenomenon. Change is what this Realm is all about.
Thus, the born condition is a bewildered condition, a
condition without understanding of the Real Condition of
existence. The soul is not like the body-mind
that continues from life to life. What continues from life
to life is the born entity, the psychophysical being that is
without the Intuition of its real Condition and has not been
Transformed into the very Existence of that Condition. The
soul, the Radiant Conscious Being, precedes the psyche,
precedes the mind, precedes the body, precedes all
phenomena, precedes all experience. In our time there is, in general,
universal denial of the Existence of the Divine, and there
is universal acceptance, even from a sophisticated,
scientific point of view, of a material existence in which
we are identical to this psycho-physical form and to no
other Condition. And alongside this common acceptance of the
bodymind as our ultimate Condition there exists a tradition
of religion and spirituality that is equally possessed by
illusions. The traditional view is that the
soul is the psychic part of the born being. Truly, the soul
is not at all the psychic part of the born being. To realize
the soul is not to have moved one's attention into the brain
centers in order to generate subtle phenomena. The soul is
prior to the body-mind, prior to what is above and what is
below, prior to Heaven and Earth, prior to the psyche, prior
to the body, prior to all the "sheaths" or "coverings" of
the soul-the physical, the etheric, the "astral" (which
includes the lower mental and the higher or supermental) and
the egoic (which is the very knot of self, the original
recoil, or the sense of separate consciousness).' The soul
is prior to all of that. Thus, there is no ultimate Truth in
the resort to inwardness, to the interior, subjective part
of "l," independent of the physical. Spiritual life is not
about seeking the soul by going within. Spiritual life is
the process of transcending the inwardness of the bodymind,
just as well as the outwardness of the body-mind. Going
within does focus the attention of the born being on subtler
aspects of its experience, but it does not Realize Truth.
Truth is the Realization of the Condition of "I," the
Condition of the body-mind, and not the experience of any
part of the body-mind itself. The soul is not the "I. " The soul
is the Reality behind the "I," behind the psycho-physical
personality, behind the being that migrates from life to
life. It is the Condition of "I." It is Radiant
Consciousness. And, relative to bodily existence, it is
associated with the heart region of the body. The soul awakens through right
understanding, founded on "hearing" and "seeing" the
Spiritual Master. I use these terms "hearing" and "seeing"
in a special sense. True "hearing" is not the same as simply
listening to some spoken words and registering the sounds
and meanings. True "hearing" occurs when the soul flashes
forward, when it is Awakened. Likewise, true "seeing" is not
the same as simply observing something and registering it in
the mechanisms associated with sight. To "see" the Spiritual
Master is to Awaken as the soul. It is to feel, intuit, and
directly Realize, or be Awakened to, the Perfect Condition
of the Spiritual Master. Thus, in the process of our
spiritual Awakening we begin to intuit the soul that is
behind the "I," behind the body-mind. 1. From ancient times,
the Wisdom Teachings of esoteric spirituality have described
our living being in terms of a series of progressively more
subtle bodies or ''sheaths": the physical body; the
"etheric" or vital energy body; the lower "astral" or lower
mental body of gross-level reflection, thinking, memory, and
attention; the higher astral, higher mental, or "light" body
of subtle knowledge, wisdom, and illumination; and the
causal body of primal differentiation, wherein illusory ego
or independent self is defined. For further discussion, see
especially "The Esoteric Process of the Last Two Stages of
the Way of Divine Ignorance," pages 352 ff., and the section
in chapter 7 titled ''The Free Soul Transcends All
Phenomena In the Way of Divine Ignorance
there are three early stages of practice: the Way of Divine
Communion, the Way of Relational Enquiry, and the Way of
Re-cognition.2 Each of these is a stage of
maturity in the intuition of the soul and its ultimate
Condition. It is a process in which we inspect the various
aspects of the bodymind, not just the outward, physical life
and its relations, but also the inward or psychic aspects.
We also observe the phenomena that are considered to be
extraordinary, from the traditional point of view, and that
are in fact considered to be the qualities of the soul. The
phenomena that are generally associated with the soul are
actually aspects of the psyche. What are commonly called
soul phenomena are brain phenomena and higher mental
phenomena, or psychic aspects of the body-mind. While we are
alive, while the body-mind is alive in gross physical terms,
it is the brain that is the source or medium of these
phenomena. When the physical body dies, and while we still
retain an "energy body" of one or another kind, there is a
mechanism similar to the physical brain that is the source
and medium of such psychic phenomena. The Realization of the soul is not
the experience of subtle or psychic phenomena. It has
absolutely nothing to do with observing subtle phenomena,
such as sounds and lights and visions. These phenomena are
not Truth, nor are they the soul. All of them must be
inspected and transcended, so that we may penetrate the
illusion of attention in this body-mind. Once we have passed through this
process of inspecting the experiential or psycho-physical
being, we penetrate the core of consciousness, which is
neither in the brain nor in the lower body, but at the
heart. This Realization of the heart as the root of
attention is the beginning of the full Awakening of the
soul. At this stage, when we have become aware of the soul
in the heart, we move back and forth between two kinds of
conscious awareness: One is complete absorption in the
Condition of the soul, or Unqualified Consciousness, which
is traditionally called Self-Knowledge, or Self-Realization.
And the other is the awareness of all ordinary
psycho-physical states. When this process matures, this
alternating enjoyment of two states, the soul state and the
ordinary "I" state of the body-mind, suddenly it is as if
the eyes of the heart itself open, and there is no longer
any passing back and forth between absorption in the Self,
or the Free soul, and involvement in ordinary
psycho-physical states. Then the soul itself is Awake, even
while ordinary psycho-physical phenomena continue. It does
not exclude those phenomena, nor does it hold on to them.
They are permitted to arise, but there is absolutely no
illusion created by the arising of phenomena. The soul
remains Awake. It is open-eyed. Everything that arises is
obvious as only a modification of the Radiant Consciousness
of the soul. Thus, the soul Realizes its Divine Condition,
which is the true Self. In such Transcendental Realization,
the soul is one with the Radiant Person, the Divine
Self. There are two ultimate dimensions
to the Divine Reality. The one is that Power by which all
appearances are created, which is the Radiant, All-Pervading
Life Energy, or Current, the original Light or Radiance or
Vibration of which everything is a modification, a
temporary, changing, passing illusion. The other aspect of
the Divine Reality is Absolute Consciousness. The path of
GodRealization is the path of Communion with and Surrender
into the Divine Condition in both of its aspects. That path
is submission into the Divine as the Absolute,
All-Pervading, Eternal Radiance or Current of Life and,
simultaneously, the surrender into the Divine as the True
Self, the Absolute Transcendental Consciousness. The Current or Life of the Divine
Person pervades the bodymind. Therefore, we may, by turning
attention into the Current of the living body, concentrate
the force of the Current of Life in various aspects of this
body-mind. By moving the attention in a certain way, we can
even have the sense of moving into the psyche independent of
the physical body. But we do not Realize the Current itself
by moving attention through the body-mind. We do not thus
surrender into the Current itself. Rather, we move attention
about within that Current, within the confines of the
body-mind. Generally, our effort moves us toward the brain
core, or the higher end of the spectrum of
experience. Nevertheless, the brain is not the
center in which we may Realize, or be submitted into, this
All-Pervading Current. The brain is only a part of
ourselves, just as the sense of smell, the sense of sight,
the sense of hearing, the capacity to think and to speak,
the sex organs, and all other functions or parts. The brain
is a part of the body-mind. The mechanism of surrender into
the AllPervading Radiance is not in any part; the mechanism
of surrender is the native Disposition of the total
body-mind. Therefore, it is not merely through turning
attention upward, to the brain, or the brain-mind, that we
are able to submit to the Divine Current of Life. The only mechanism of the body-mind
that represents the body-mind as a whole is the mechanism of
feeling, which is expressed as emotion and the sense of
touch. Through feeling, guided by the Intuition of the
Absolute Consciousness, the total body-mind submits into the
Current that pervades and ultimately transcends the body and
the mind and the world of experience. Through the direct
Intuition of that Conscious Radiance of which everything is
only a modification, our submission into the AllPervading
Current becomes more and more perfect. This is the process in the Way of
Radical Intuition, the ultimate and God-Realizing stage of
the Way of Divine Ignorance. It is submission, through
Feeling-Intuition, into the All-Pervading Current and
Absolute Consciousness of the Divine Person. It is the
Realization of a Condition as concrete and actual as any
experiential condition of the body-mind. But it is a
Condition that absolutely transcends the body-mind and all
phenomena. Temporarily, while it continues in its
conventional form, this body-mind appears as before. But now
the soul is Awake to its true Condition, which is the Life
and Consciousness of the Divine, and it exists literally in
that Condition. That Realization is not a matter of
philosophy or of ideas, but of existing in a Condition in
which the experiential body-mind is perfectly transcended in
God. There is no thought, no experience,
no vision, nothing that you can describe or name that is
associated with this Realization. Through feeling we are
submitted into the All-Pervading Current; therefore, none of
the independent faculties of the body-mind is an instrument
for Realizing It. Since everything is submitted to this
Current, all the faculties are transcended. There is only
the Realization of Bliss, the Current itself, in which there
is no sense of the body, no sense of the mind, and no sense
of identity with body or mind. As long as the body-mind
continues in its conventional appearance, there remains a
sense that the body-mind is there, but that sense is not
really describable. The body-mind is perceived in some
ordinary and superficial way, as if it were at an infinite
distance, yet it is also right here. It has no significance.
There is no holding on to it, and there is no attempt to
exclude it. There is simply the natural submission into the
Radiant Current that is Eternal and All-Pervading. In every
moment, there is the re-cognition, or knowing again, of all
phenomena and all experiences as only modifications of the
Consciousness and Radiance that are one's own Condition.
Thus, everything becomes superficial. Phenomena and
experiences become less and less intense, less and less
significant. It is not a matter of excluding what is
arising. Everything is permitted to fulfill its ordinary
cycle in quite a natural way, but there is no sense of being
identified with any of it. This Realization can be described
in some sense. There are the words for saying something
about it, as I have been doing. It is a literal Condition of
existence, as literal as all the time-space phenomena that
you now experience. But it has nothing whatever to do with
any phenomenon. It is an absolutely and perfectly conscious
Condition, perfectly Blissful, absolutely Radiant, fully and
consciously Aware. It is the Self of all beings and of all
conditions of existence, of which all conditions of
existence, or all experiences, are simply
modifications. Because the body-mind has its own
clock, it will terminate at some point quite naturally. In
the meantime, the Awakened individual simply fulfills the
Law. He or she lives the life of service, of love, of
natural relations, from the point of view of the Realization
of God. Everything that the usual man does to be happy is
every kind of stimulation of the body-mind, every kind of
engagement of attention in the Current of the body-mind,
either low in the body or high in the body. All of that
becomes superficial, no longer the motive of the
soul. The soul is not the "I," the
body-mind. The soul transcends the body-mind. And while the
point of view of the body-mind still persists to some
degree, the soul is felt to be atomic, smaller than
smallness, infinitely small, and to be radiating from the
position of the heart in the body. But when the soul fully
Awakens in the Way of Radical Intuition, and it is no longer
seeking experience outside itself, nor excluding phenomena
and hiding in the heart, the soul is Free in its Divine
Condition, the true Self, which is not within the body-mind.
The body-mind does not enclose the Awakened or Free soul.
Rather, the body-mind arises within the Free soul, which is
without qualification. The soul is not even infinitely
large. It is simply without qualification. It has nothing to
do with time and space. There is an All-Pervading,
Blissful, Radiant Energy, of which everything is a
modification. This Energy pervades all of existence, all
manifestation. Senior to that Energy is the very Self, the
very Consciousness, which is even the Self of that Energy.
The Divine Person is this Consciousness, this true Self, and
this Absolute Radiant Energy. We must realize our unity with
That if we are to be free and happy and not bewildered,
deluded, and suffering. By association with phenomena,
however, we become identified with the sense of independent
consciousness, and we attach ourselves to the temporary
phenomena that are produced automatically by the radiant
Energy of the Divine. We forget this Self, we forget this
Current of Radiance, and we become attached to our
independent consciousness and the phenomena that are only
the modifications of It. The Way of salvation, liberation,
and God-Realization is to submit the independent
consciousness into the Absolute Consciousness, or true Self,
and to submit the independent bodymind, and all experience,
into the All-Pervading Current. That is the essence of the
spiritual process. There is a practical and Perfect Way by
which to realize submission to the Absolute Radiant Self,
the Divine Person. It is the Way of Divine Ignorance-the
fourstage Way that I have described to you. To "hear" this
Teaching and to "see" me in the midst of this instruction is
to be moved to surrender into Divine Consciousness and
Radiant Energy. Whereas, not to "hear" or "see" me is to be
an ordinary person, selfpossessed, attached to phenomena and
the capacity for experience, not aware of the Radiant Self
that Pervades and Transcends all things. The devotee is attentive to this
Teaching, attentive to the Spiritual Master. He is involved
in the activities of sacrifice, or Love-Communion with the
Divine Reality, the Divine Person, Who must be realized
moment to moment. The life of the devotee is not founded on
strategic or self-conscious asceticism, wherein he prevents
himself from having experiences and enjoying himself. The
life of the devotee is simply founded in prior Awakening,
through "hearing," to the Realization that experience, when
viewed as a whole, is not pleasurable. It is not "fun" to be
alive. It is, ultimately, a dreadful circumstance, a
completely bewildered circumstance, in which some things
make you feel good temporarily, but, essentially, apart from
temporary pleasures, you do not feel good. You are in
trouble, and you are mortal. Therefore, life is not "fun." There
are pleasures, but even to the extent that there are
pleasures a great dimension of suffering also pervades one's
entire life. Everything that might grant pleasure ultimately
disappears. Every relationship that one might enjoy
ultimately comes to an end, if not through immaturity and
lovelessness then through death. There is no fundamental
happiness or satisfaction in this life. Awakening to
revulsion toward our ordinary possibility is the beginning
of true "hearing" and "seeing," or radical intuition and
true feeling, in which we may realize a Condition that is
absolutely Blissful and absolutely Conscious. That Condition may be Realized even
while we continue to be alive in the ordinary way, but the
body-mind is superficial to the Self, superficial to the
Free soul. When the soul truly Awakens, it breaks out of its
atomic state in the heart and Radiates through and beyond
the body-mind. Then the separate personality, the
brainoriented individual, relaxes and becomes diffused in
the Radiance of Consciousness, so that even while we appear
to move around and act and think and do things in the
ordinary way, there is no sense of being identical to the
active body-mind. It is superficial and passing. It has its
moments of pleasure and its moments of pain and it
eventually dies. But in the meantime, and also when it dies,
there is no sense any longer of identity with it. Rather,
one is submitted into the Current in which the body-mind is
just an appearance. One is submitted into the Consciousness
in which the independent consciousness is just a recoil, a
reflex, a knot, a contraction. When one is Awakened to what
is prior to this contraction, then one Exists as that
Radiant Consciousness that transcends this psycho-physical
entity. One may realize this Transcendental
Condition while alive and enjoy its Destiny beyond this
lifetime. This is my Communication and my Invitation to
you.
Sudden
and Gradual Enlightenment The Bhagavata Purana, book two,
chapter two, verses sixteen through thirty-seven, freely
rendered by Bubba Free John Once the mind, or the wandering of
attention in experience, comes under natural control,
through intuitive insight, it should be surrendered into the
prior state of awareness itself, which is rooted in the
heart. In this manner, all forms of activity cease, and all
objects of attention are excluded. Abide in tranquility by
such means, until awareness Awakens beyond the confines of
the inner being. Thus, Realize the true Self, the Radiant
Condition of the soul, which naturally transcends all
phenomena of the body-mind and all conditions in the
eternally changing Realm of Nature. The true Self, the Transcendental
Heart, is the Divine Domain, the Kingdom of God, the Eternal
Abode of the Divine Person. The Divine Person is the Radiant
Consciousness that Shines through the atomic window, the
illusory soul, defined and separated from the Divine Domain
by egoic or independent association with experience, rather
than ecstatic or self-transcending surrender into the
All-Pervading and Transcendental Matrix of
experience. 1. The Bhagavata Purana (also
commonly referred to as the Srimad Bhagavatam) is rightly
esteemed as the most complete and authoritative exposition
of ancient knowledge in the literature of the Hindu
tradition of spirituality. Its roots are in ancient oral
traditions, but it may have been put into writing between
the fifth and tenth centuries A.D. The author is purported
to be Vyasa (Krishna Draipayana), a contemporary of Krishna.
This "Purana" is the ultimate text of spiritual science, or
the Way of the Devotional Sacrifice of Man into God. It
extols the Virtues of the Divine Person, principally in the
form of Krishna, and communicates the esoteric secrets of
the Way in which we may Realize that One. Such is the Supreme Realization,
and It is Revealed directly to those who transcend all
experiences of the body-mind, through Awakened Intuition,
and who surrender only to the Divine Person, through
Love-Communion with That Infinitely Radiant
Consciousness. This is the direct or sudden Method
of Enlightenment. The true Self is Realized through direct
and present dissolution of the egoic mind, the self-defining
acts of attention, the subtle and causal coverings of the
soul. One who surrenders the mind into the heart by the
direct Method has transcended all desire for
experience. In that case, the Bodily Current of
the All-Pervading Life, or the true Breath of Life in the
body, which circulates in the body via the spinal line,
becomes naturally and spontaneously polarized toward the
higher brain, the brahmarandhra, the crown of the body.
Therefore, the Current flows in the direction or disposition
of prior transcendence of bodily and mental experience,
rather than toward the generation and exploitation of bodily
and mental experience, extended from crown to toe. In this
manner, the mind, or the play of attention, is transcended
at the heart, and the sensory body is constantly yielded
into the internal Life-Current, which breaks through the
upper limits of the brain and merges with the AllPervading
Radiance of the Divine Person. Therefore, at death, all the
coverings of the soul are utterly dissolved in the
Transcendental Heart, wherein the body-mind appears and
disappears. One who thus renounces the body-mind no longer
separately appears in any dimension of the Realm of Nature,
the experiential Realm of Changes. There is another Process, which
ultimately leads to the same Enlightenment, after long
cycles of births and deaths in the realms of subtle or
ascended experience. This Method is chosen by those who yet
desire the experiences of the subtle realms of mind, even
though they have mastered all desires that lead into the
grosser realms or experiences of the elemental
body. This Method involves the raising of
attention into the brain core, the ajna chakra, below the
crown of the body, via the Life-Current, or the Breath of
Life, in the spinal line of the body. Attention is not
directly yielded at the heart, but it remains active as the
subtle mind, analogous to the consciousness of the higher
and deep brain, and it is associated with the subtle
counterparts of the physical senses. By such means, the
atomic soul may attain the subtle body in the sky of mind,
and wander, by its powers, throughout the Realm of Nature.
The soul may thus ascend into the abodes of other ascended
beings, who live long lives and enjoy various extraordinary
powers. But such mystics eventually and
inevitably pass through many changes, becoming an ordinary
sacrifice, along with all of the transitory elements of the
Realm of Nature. They disintegrate and pass on, from stage
to stage in the orderly illusion of phenomena, until at last
they also enter into the sacrifice of the body, the senses,
the mind, and the entire process of arising or
differentiated attention that is the ego, the "covered"
soul. Therefore, they too must finally yield the mind of
self into the Radiant Heart of the Divine Person, the true
Self, Who is Eternal Bliss, Transcending all selves and
changes. These are the two Paths by which
souls may Realize the Eternal Bliss that is Truth, the
Condition of the Divine Person. One Proceeds by gradual
ascent of attention within the planes of experience,
dissolving, by degrees, the coverings of the soul in the
planes of illusion and change, until the Heart Out-Shines
the inner being. The other Path Proceeds directly and
immediately to the Heart, the Radiant Self, prior to all
experience, all progress, all strategic austerity, all
dramas of attention. One Path Proceeds by mystical ascent of
the illusory inner self, or mind, via the Chain of Creation.
The other Proceeds by direct intuitive submission of the
entire body-mind into the Radiant Source and Transcendental
Matrix of all phenomena. There is no other or easier Path by
which born souls may Realize the Bliss of the Living God.
There is, indeed, only the Single Path, which may be
followed either slowly or suddenly to the Heart. It is the
Great Path of self-surrender in Love Communion with the Radiant Self,
the All-Pervading and Transcendental Divine Person. Those
who "hear" this Teaching "see" the Divine Person as the true
Self of the inner soul. They are cleansed, forgiven, and
altogether purified of all impulses toward experience in the
Realm of Nature, and they certainly Realize the Blissful
Person, the Radiant Consciousness that is the Eternal
Matrix, Truth, and Destiny of the World. A talk given by Bubba Free John to
his devotees Every level of understanding can be
argued coherently. Every stage of life is true within
its own limits. But the Perfection of understanding,
practice, and sacrifice is Realized only in the seventh
stage of life. Therefore, all knowledge, all order, and all
attainments must yield to the Wisdom of Perfection, the
Wisdom of all Adepts in the seventh stage." BUBBA: There is Absolute Bliss, the
Absolute Person or Self, Who is Infinitely Radiant, whose
Radiance pervades all conditions that arise as possible
experience. That Radiance is itself unchanging; but all of
the phenomena of experience, all of the phenomena of the
Realm of Nature, are the changes, the superficial and
unnecessary modifications, of this All-Pervading Radiance,
which is supremely Blissful. Therefore, if we can Awaken
from our sense of identification with the body-mind and be
submitted into that Current of Radiance, and if we can
Realize our identity with that true Self, or Consciousness,
then we may enjoy perfect and eternal Bliss. There_ is only one Truth, but there
are two ways to realize it. Truth may be realized directly
and absolutely, or it maybe: rialixed gradually. The
disposition of God-Realization involves a single intuition
or turnabout in our consciousness, in which we are moved to
become a sacrifice through surrender, or Love-Communion with
the Divine. But there are two paths whereby we become
perfectly absorbed in the Divine. One is sudden or direct,
and the other is circuitous. The gradual path of enlightenment
is a way of moving through the levels of phenomena, through
the chain of Creation, ultimately to Realize the Divine
Condition, but, in general, not in this lifetime. It is a
matter of progressing by stages, first transcending this
gross birth of the "covered" soul, and then moving on to
transcend the subtle births of the soul. This roundabout
path, this "Great Way of Return," involves first of all
hearing the argument about our ultimate Destiny, and then
taking up a life of renunciation. Through strategic
renunciation, attention is turned away from the gross realm
of possibility into the Life-Current of the body-mind, and
then attention is moved, via that Current, along the spinal
line toward the internal brain centers and into the subtle
conditions of the mind. This is the path of mystics or
yogis. There are many versions of this approach to
Enlightenment, but they are all essentially a matter of
placing the attention in the internal LifeCurrent of the
body-mind, moving it upwards, bypassing the lower or gross
bodily phenomena, and fixing attention in the various
regions of the brain core. (That is, attention is maintained
at the position of the brain core, which is also named the
"third eye" and the "ajna chakra. " It is the position of
the higher or subtle mind. And from this position the
various "lokas" or realms of subtle experience or subtle
mind may be viewed or otherwise visited and
known.) The merging of attention and the
Life-Current in the experiential phenomena of the brain core
is not God-Realization. It is interpreted as such by mystics
and yogis, but in fact it is simply a disposition in the
tendency of the body-mind to move away from the gross level
of phenomena and toward the mental or subtle psychic states.
A yogi who has fixed his Life-Force and attention in the
brain-mind has not realized God or the Self. He has
transcended the grosser elements while alive, but after
death he moves into other births in the subtle dimensions of
the Realm of Nature. His attention lies in the spectrum of
subtle possibility. Therefore, he moves into subtle forms in
higher and subtler worlds of experience. Thus, it is not
Self-Realization that occurs when the attention is placed in
the Life-Current at the brain core. Rather it is
experiential transcendence of the lower spectrum of the
possibilities of experience. Independent and mysterious
experience still lies in the future for such an individual.
He has not been liberated into SelfRealization or true
God-Realization. He is still moving toward It. The direct Way or sudden path of
Enlightenment, the Way of God or the Way of Truth, has
nothing whatever to do with the destinies of attention, the
destinies of the ego or the separated consciousness. It is
the Way of insight into the very gesture of attention
itself. It is the Way of engaging in the natural process of
GodCommunion, which is surrender of attention. The sudden
Way is not the manipulation of attention in gross or subtle
levels of experience, but the surrender of attention itself
at its root, which is in the heart. Once this process has
been Realized perfectly, then the Heart itself is realized
to be the Infinite, the Absolute, the Perfect Divine. In
that Realization there is absolutely no necessity whatsoever
to any experience. The present life or body-mind continues
its term, and it is lived in the natural way that is
appropriate for one who lives in Communion with God. But it
does not contain within it the seed of its own repetition.
Therefore, at death there is no migration. The body-mind is
returned to the elements, high and low, and the
consciousness is withdrawn from the realms of attention,
just as the Life-Force is withdrawn at death from the
physical body. Thus, the conscious being is absorbed in the
Absolute. In the case of the mystic or the
yogi, however, the attention remains vagrant at death. It is
still moving toward phenomena. Therefore, when such an
individual dies, he migrates. He leaves with the
Life-Current through the mental region of the eyes, or with
the feeling of attention rising through the top of the head,
Therefore, the soul follows attention, or the mind, into the
higher worlds of experience. It is only the true devotee, the
one who is oriented to God rather than to the futures of
attention, who transcends all possibility. He transcends all
the realms of phenomena, not by acts of will or acts of
attention toward objects and possibility, but through
Awakening to the source of attention, the true Condition of
consciousness. Thus, the true devotee Realizes the Condition
in which experience is not necessary. Attention, or mind, is
Trans formed at the heart, and the bodily Life-Current,
liberated from all bondage to the mind, or the tendencies of
attention toward experience 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. As long as you are attached to the
mind and body, you must keep these states active. You must
continue to have experiences in order to give yourself the
sense of existence. If they tend to slow down, or if they
tend not to have enough newness to them so that you become
bored,, then you feel uncomfortable and threatened. And when
the body is dying, you feel terrified, because you imagine
that you need the body and its associations in order to
exist and to be Blissful. Truly your Condition is inherently
Blissful in God. No experiences of which we may speak are
necessarily associated with It. It is an absolute Condition,
in which there is no independent gesture of consciousness,
but only simple absorption in the Infinite Blissfulness of
God. The devotee on the direct path to
Enlightenment is Awakened by the Teaching of the Spiritual
Master, and he enters into a natural order of life in which
he transcends all of the urges toward experience, subtle and
gross, mental and physical. He transcends the-body-mind
altogether. He does not go up or down by tendency, but,
rather, he becomes absorbed at the heart, and via the heart,
in the Absolute Divine, Who is All-Pervading and
Transcendental. And when the eyes of the heart open, and the
devotee is identical to the true Self, then all the
phenomena that arise are seen to be only modifications of
that Radiant Self with which the devotee is identical. There
is no necessity to the world then. It is simply a temporary
condition, created by past associations, and when it has
fulfilled its term, it ceases to be. Thus, at death the
devotee does not go up or down or in ut. He is not changed
in t at moment, but a simply abides in the Bliss of God
Realization. He is Translated into the Domain of that Bliss
absolutely, without associations with phenomena that tend to
distract and literally dishearten him. The Way of Divine Ignorance is the
Communication of this sudden and most direct Way. In this
Way, these mechanisms by which the yogis and mystics ascend
into subtle planes of the mind are inspected, re-cognized,
understood, and transcended, but not exploited.. It is
intended to be a brief process. The way of yoga or mysticism
takes many lifetimes, but the process in the Way of Divine
Ignorance is radical; therefore, it is not intended that you
spend your entire life moving through the stages of
inspection. The stages of practice in this Way are not
stages of the perfection of any experiential condition. They
are stages of responsibility for the conversion of
consciousness, in which a natural order is established in
the psycho-physical being. That order is without urgency,
without self-exploitation, and the individual rests more and
more profoundly in surrender into the All-Pervading Current
(rather than the internal current of the body-mind) and the
very Consciousness that Eternally Transcends the
body-mind. Whatever you have not transcended,
you must fulfill. That is the Law. Merely to have come into
the Company of the Spiritual Master during your lifetime
does not mean that you can escape all possibilities. You
must live this Way. You must fulfill the Way in literal
transcendence of the possibilities of experience. You must
enter into the blessedness of God-Realization while alive.
Otherwise you will tend toward human or somewhat higher than
human destinies after this life. If any tendencies remain
toward anything other than Communion with the Absolute, then
those tendencies will be fulfilled in experience in the
future. To be absorbed in Communion with
the Absolute is not what is difficult. What is difficult is
to move attention up and to force it into subtle realms,
separating yourself from the natural bodily attention-that
is difficult. Arranging a benign future in the midst of
experience, controlling your attention to yield beautiful
destinies-that is difficult. To be a saint or a yogi is
difficult. It involves a great deal of self-manipulative
effort and a creative capacity for delusion. The Way of
God-Realization is the Way beyond illusions, the Way beyond
phenomena of all kinds, in which there is no identification
with the cycle of attention that moves out of the Condition
of pure Consciousness. There is no identification with the
body, with the mind, with phenomena of any kind. There is
natural, very simple, and very direct Communion with the
Absolute. It is Perfect. It is not difficult. Thus, it is said that there is no
good reason to do what is necessary to get to Heaven, any
more than there is any good reason to exploit yourself on
Earth. The only Way whereby we are liberated is to be a
sacrifice in Love-Communion with the Absolute God, Who is
All-Pervading, Who is the Infinite Energy, and Who is
Transcendentally Present as the very Self or Condition of
our Consciousness. If we will practice that sacrifice, then
we are liberated from our illusions, from our
self-possession, from our urges toward the fulfillment of
experience, and we cease to migrate from life to death to
life through changes, but rather we are entered into the
Divine Domain, the Absolute Perfection of Bliss, which may
not be described from the point of view of psychophysical
existence, or identification with the body-mind. That Condition far exceeds, by
infinite multiplications of itself beyond Infinity, the
blessedness and blissfulness that may be realized through
any satisfaction in human form. And we may be a sacrifice
into that Realization of God even while living in a human
form. It is not necessary to have a higher form, because the
human form is structured in perfect intimacy with the Matrix
of the universe. The Living Divine is manifested at the
heart, so we need not go up into a more subtle body in order
to make this sacrifice. In the process of this Way of Truth
we become a voluntary and spontaneous sacrifice, in which
there is no holding on to any phenomenon whatsoever, no
holding on to the body and its possibilities, no holding on
to the breath, no holding on to manifest existence or to
birth, no resistance of death, no reaction to the world, no
reaction to the cycle of phenomena and inevitable changes.
There is no holding on to thinking, no holding on to mind,
no holding on to hopes for subtle distractions, no holding
on to any mystical efforts toward sublime circumstances.
There is simple, natural absorption in the Divine
Reality-not effort, not urge, not any gesture of attention,
but simply absorption itself. In that absorption, or
dissolution of attention, all phenomena become unnecessary,
and their seed, which is the gesture of attention, is
transformed in God-Realization. The conscious being is not
destroyed; it Realizes its Condition in Truth, which is not
the inward being of the body-mind, but the Absolute Divine.
The independent soul realizes that Condition only through
its own sacrifice, its release from its own gesture of
attention and association with phenomena. Only in that utter
transcendence of the urge toward experience does the atomic
soul Realize that it exists at Infinity.
The Law cannot be transcended. We
are under an illusion in the world, but we are also under an
obligation. To transcend the illusion is not also to
transcend the obligation. The illusion is broken only
through present or every moment fulfillment of that
obligation. The illusion is that of independent
existence, separate from the Absolute or Divine Existence in
which all conditions and beings are arising. The obligation
is to Awaken to the Absolute or Divine Condition and to be a
total and perfect sacrifice into It via every kind of
experience or function that arises, until there is only the
very Divine. MENU
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Enlightenment
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Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Enlightenment
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