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GARBAGE AND THE GODDESS

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11. THE FIRST GREAT GURU DAY

"Well, I'm off to stardom." With that quip, and a burst of laughter, Bubba got into his Mercedes, assisted by Godfree, his chauffeur. It was Friday morning, July 5. For a few moments Bubba exchanged waves with the devotees who had come to say goodbye to him. Then Godfree turned the car down the drive and out the main gate of Persimmon. They were on their way to San Francisco, where the annual festivities of "Guru Day" -- Guru Weekend, really -- were to begin the following morning at the Ashram's center on Polk Street.

[Footnote: Guru Day is a traditional Hindu holiday (Guru Purnima), a celebration of the Guru and his Grace by all devotees, a time to acknowledge the Supreme Guru. It is traditionally observed in July, on the Thursday closest to the full moon. The Dawn Horse Communion acknowledges Bubba Free John in this way each year, usually on the closest Sunday to mid-July. Guru Day, 1974, was particularly auspicious, since it marked the fulfillment of Bubba's Teaching work in the world.]

Saturday, Bubba and his entourage got off to a slow start from the Mill Valley house where they stayed during visits to the city. They delayed their departure after being informed that the movie crew which was producing a film of Bubba's activities for use in the Ashram's public presentations was having technical difficulties. They didn't reach the Center until around eleven-thirty that morning. The street was crowded with people who had come for a colorful sidewalk art fair. Attracted by the movie cameras, they clustered around Bubba's automobile as be emerged.

The presence of a movie crew was a reminder of what Bubba had so often said in recent months: Everything that occurs is only theatre. The hubbub surrounding the filming of the event contributed additional excitement to an already charged moment. Devotees had been hearing Bubba speak for many months of this first week in July. "After July 6, my work in this world is fulfilled." From this time the Dawn Horse would always be visible. From this time, God is making real Devotees and sustaining His true spiritual Community. All were anticipating a weekend of spiritual revelation.

Everyone was waiting for Bubba in the Satsang Hall at the San Francisco Center. When he walked into the room, movie lights glaring at him and cameras whirring, the Guru Day celebration began.

Robin Smith, who had arrived in San Francisco during the previous week and had never before seen Bubba, describes what happened when he entered the room:

We all were in the Satsang Hall for a long time before Bubba got there. The energy was really high for awhile, and then most everyone began meditating and being calm. Then somebody said, "Bubba will be here in ten minutes," and everybody got all excited again, laughing and talking. I got really excited and felt like giggling. Then, just as suddenly, we all calmed down, but there was this terrific air of expectancy.

Then Bubba came in. He never said a word, but just looked around and smiled, and sat down. People were screaming all through the hall, and writhing and crying. I had never seen anything like that before, and it amazed me. I felt really happy, but then I began to feel terrified. Bubba still didn't say anything, but he just scanned the room. I imagined he was looking at me, and I got really seared. Then other people began laughing, and I started laughing too. The gopis meanwhile were screaming wildly.

Then I felt with a really heavy jolt that.1 did not belong anywhere in the whole cosmos. This jolt of energy left me helpless, unable to talk, and feeling separate from people too. It didn't seem like I was from anywhere. It was a terrifying feeling, and it lasted for hours. Sometimes I felt like laughing, sometimes crying, but most of the time, just nowhere.

After sitting in silence for about an hour, Bubba left the Satsang Hall and began the return drive to Persimmon, where the major events of the weekend were to occur.

While Bubba was in the city, Persimmon bustled with activity. Devotees cleaned the grounds, decorated the Satsang Hall with hundreds of flowers, prepared food for a wedding feast and rehearsed skits for the Guru Day entertainment. By Saturday afternoon everything was ready, and they bathed and dressed for Bubba's arrival.

The film crew and the San Francisco devotees arrived before Bubba, so that when his car pulled into Persimmon everyone was there to greet him. Then everyone convened in the Satsang Hall, where Bubba sat for several hours receiving gifts from his devotees. While the lights shined and the camera crew worked, Bubba laughed, joked, and embraced devotees as they brought him their gifts. The gifts ranged from malas (sacred necklaces), aged wines, a fig tree, and a croquet set to a Tibetan begging bowl, made of a human skull and inlaid with silver, and an ostrich egg.

That evening, while most devotees ate together at the main kitchen, Bubba had a small dinner party at his house. A sake party afterward began with a few people, but grew as the hours passed. The movie crew was on hand, and much of the evening was preserved on film and tape, including a spontaneous talk given by Bubba.

The Signs

DEVOTEE: One by one, it seems that each of the individuals living around you has started to manifest the same type of yogic or spiritual processes.

BUBBA: There was a period several weeks ago when there were characteristic signs of the disciple manifested in many people. There were lots of yogic phenomena. During that time many of the signs of the disciple were occurring in this house. Sal and Neil and a few others were here, and there was a lot of talk about it at that time. For the most part, those individuals, who became examples of the qualities of the disciple, were men. During the last month and more I have been using other individuals, mainly the gopis who are living in the house with me, to demonstrate the qualities of a devotee. This is not because only women can be devotees and only men can be disciples. Obviously, anybody, whatever their sex, can pass through the whole process. But during these recent months individuals have been used as symbols, as representations of aspects of the Teaching. The quality of a woman tends to represent, in itself, even poetically, the nature of a devotee, that perfect submission and openness. The quality of the disciple, which is more experiential, and has the quality of self-involvement, of success at sadhana, tends to be best represented in the form of a man.

The relationship between the gopis and Krishna has a longstanding tradition in India. It has been used to represent the way of the bhaktas, the traditional devotees of the Lord. It is poetry, theatre. The way it tends to get worked out in India is that men dress up in women's clothes and put on affectations of passivity. Really, being a devotee is quite another thing from being like a woman, but it may be represented that way as a kind of symbolic or poetic communication. If I live like Krishna among gopis it is a way of showing, through the archetypes that already live in you, the nature of the relationship between the Guru and all devotees. just so, my living in intimate friendship with Sal and Neil and other men in the Ashram was a way of demonstrating the more masculine type of relationship that exists between the Guru and the disciple.

Ultimately, anyone can become any one of those things, so you see the quality of the devotee also appearing in men in the Ashram, just as you have seen the quality of the disciple appearing in both men and women. I have brought individuals into my household and associated with them intimately in order to demonstrate these great qualities through the archetypal theatre natural to you.

DEVOTEE: Do these manifestations continue in the perfect devotee?

BUBBA: The signs of the devotee are that fullness, that happiness, that love. You see in the Ashram experiential signs of the disciple: kriyas, automatic pranayam, laughing, crying, people growling and making fierce expressions with their faces, and so forth. These are signs of the yogic process, which is characteristic of the disciple. There may also be changes in body temperature, from cold to hot and vice versa, seeing visions and lights, hearing sounds. But when the perfect intensity of the devotee begins, all of these spontaneous yogic phenomena, as well as the daily "phases" of rise and fall that I have described, become absolutely quick. They attain the speed of light, and the devotee moves into an intensity in which the mind is no longer supported, in which limitation read in the body and in the psyche is no longer supported. So you also see people in the Ashram manifesting the qualities characteristic of the transformation of the devotee. These people seem to be hysterical, mad at times, screaming, not just crying and then laughing, but crying hysterically, falling into moods of love and tears that are just ecstatic. Such movements are overwhelming, and they are quite different from the signs of the yogic process.

But the perfection of the devotee is not seen in those phenomena. Those signs are only the awakening of that ecstasy, that intensity. Perhaps those signs, once they have begun, will occur frequently in that person's case, and for a long time. But what he is knowing as a devotee is that simple, perfect ecstasy, that perfect happiness in which nothing is seen but God, in which the Guru may remain in human form, but nothing is known but the Guru. It is an ecstatic blissfulness. In its perfect form even these awakening phenomena, which are a kind of phasing, have become quickened to the point of perfection, and the devotee becomes more natural, more apparently ordinary. But in his conscious life he is only knowing the Divine. The perfection of the devotee is the radical intuition of the Divine, but that radical intuition is not just, "Ali, bliss." There is so much to it, so much in the way of phenomena relative to all of the vehicles of life and consciousness and the cosmos. All of that is shown. It is just as in the case of an artist who has perfected his craft. He just goes "zip, zip, zip," and he creates his painting. All the fundamentals have been learned through a long, grinding process, but they are known. They are there to be used. just so, in the devotee there is great simplicity, apparently, but behind that realization is a vast technical transformation enacted through the Divine agency. So the devotee ultimately becomes very simple.

You see in him a steadiness, a simplicity, in which the extreme emotional and physical signs that you may see initially in the devotee are undone, quieted, not because they are being suppressed, but because they have become so perfect. These movements are even in themselves impossible or unnecessary. But they may also appear to go on for a long time, because the Guru is present in human form, and the devotee is present in human form. So the drama, the love relationship between the Guru and his devotee, is established. It continues even beyond the Guru's lifetime. Then it is maintained as the relationship between the devotee and the Guru in his unqualified Form, and these ecstasies and such phenomena may persist.

DEVOTEE: It's a kind of adoration.

BUBBA: It is absorption. The Guru is merely present, but the force of his Presence is overwhelming to the point of absorption, in which all the social stuff that appears in your face and your body and your activities simply becomes impossible. You just fall out of it, and fall into an ecstatic state under the force of the Divine Siddhi.

DEVOTEE: Bubba, you brought us the perfect thing. And now it is available to all those who are receptive?

BUBBA: At this point the work is absolutely available to all beings through the agency of this Ashram. The Teaching is full, all the signs have been shown, embodied in the world through miraculous signs and in the forms of individuals. You can all attest to everything that has happened over these last two and a half years. It has all been written and photographed and put on tapes and recorded in many ways, and there is a body of experience represented by approximately two hundred people, all of whom have different degrees and aspects of it they can acknowledge in their own cases. Now it is the work of the Ashram to maintain itself as a Community, and to communicate the availability of all of this to others.

All who enter this Community have available to them this same Satsang. This whole process as it has been described will be initiated in them in the appropriate order, without obstructions created on the basis of whether they happen to have or not have some special personal relationship to me. The personal theatre that I play with individuals is completely beside the point as far as the perfection of this work is concerned. Anyone who enters this Ashram can enjoy the same realization. There is no limit in terms of time and space. Now I not only have Satsang Halls, but there are devotees, and there are disciples, and they are all living manifestations of the continuous activity of this Siddhi. It will continue in them as long as they do not claim it, as long as they maintain the force of their sadhana and become perfect. It will simply live in them. just as there are Satsang Halls where people can come, wherever people happen to meet my devotees and disciples, and live this Satsang in their company, the same Siddhi is available to them. I have a portable Satsang Hall now. At first there was only this body. People had to have immediate contact with me. Then I established an Ashram, and people could sit in my Satsang Hall. Now I have a Community of living beings, and that makes me even more available. Therefore, it is very important that you become communicative, that you turn your physical face into the world and make this work available. And I will not do that. That is not my function. The Ashram must do that, and the degree to which it grows will depend on your communication in the world, not on any show business that I do. I am not interested in that.

A year ago it was shown to me that in twelve months my work would be done. The clear implication was that I might not physically survive it. Knowing all this in advance made it possible for me deliberately to measure all these stages and do everything that was appropriate. Now that year has been fulfilled. The 6th of July was the date that was shown to me, and now that is gone. So there is nothing for me to do any more. I will continue my activities, but there is nothing for me to add. All has been shown and stabilized here. Everything to be done in the future is fundamentally the responsibility of the Community.

Bubba went on to speak of many things. Now that his work was full, he wanted the community to understand fully the nature of the Gift and the responsibilities that must be assumed by all who receive it. Everyone became sensitive to the historic nature of the transition they would have to make. Previously, they had been a loosely gathered, almost traditional group of individuals. The principal involvement of each one of them had been with the theatre of the Guru, a more or less private showing of the play of Bubba Free John. Now they were being required to establish themselves as a Community for whom the show" had already taken place. By all indications, Bubba was about to withdraw much of his apparent and active participation in the daily life of the Ashram. He was assuming only a transcendent, spiritual role in the life of all his devotees, present or future. Therefore, the Ashram Community would no longer principally be the theatre of his action, wherein he would generate the appearance of the Teaching. Now he was assuming the Teaching had already and in fact been given. He was assuming that everything had in fact been shown and proven in the experience of his living Ashram of devotees. Thus, in the future, the Ashram would have to realize itself as a Community of the Dharma, a realized Community of Devotees in which the Teaching and the Guru are Present even in the form of devotees themselves.

It was a great demand, a great opportunity, and the Community would truly only adapt to it by degrees in the following weeks and months. But the outline of this new theatre of the Teaching stood out clearly to all who listened to Bubba during the night hours that passed from July 6 to July 7. In their discussions of it later, many recalled the great statements made by Bubba late in 1973, in which he proclaimed the Dharma or Teaching of the way of Understanding to be the fulfillment of the work of all the Siddhas, all the "Completed Ones" who have served the world. In this hour of transition into the era of the Community, devotees remembered the Teaching in its Fullness.

The Three Dharmas

(November, 1973)

There is a Great Process, and all of this is its manifestation. From time to time, men have appeared whose function it was to communicate the nature of this process and its various functions. Each of these individuals appeared in a particular time and place under particular conditions. In each case their function was to communicate an aspect of this Great Process and to demonstrate one of the possible ways of realizing its nature.

All of those who have appeared were and are essentially agents, instruments, servants. The process itself is beginningless, endless, eternal, absolute, perfect. And in truth the communicator of that process is also beginningless, endless, eternal, absolute, perfect, and that one is the Maha-Siddha, the Eternally Completed One, the Divine. All those who have appeared among men, as well as among all other beings and in other worlds, for the sake of the communication or clarification of this process are servants of the Divine.

Just so, these servants or agents, all of whom had a particular function at a particular time and place, can be classified according to their function and the fullness of their communication. Among them have appeared certain ones whom I have called the Great Siddhas, the great completed Spiritual Masters. These were men such as Jesus the Christ, Gautama the Buddha, and Krishna the Avatar. Men such as these have been the principal agents of the Maha-Siddha in this world. They have communicated the principal dharmas or paths and have had the greatest historical effect. Their function has been primary.

I call Jesus, Krishna, and Gautama Great Siddhas because they so uniquely and with such historical force represented the dharmas that pertain to the fundamental conditions of suffering. There have been many Siddhas, men who in one form or another lived the function of the yogi, the saint, the sage, or the prophet, but who transcended the limitations of their particular function.

[Footnote: Men have long sought to undo the three fundamental contractions or roots of suffering that underlie the usual life, and to realize certain aspects of the Divine Process that are apparently prevented by those contractions. Some have attained extraordinary success, and have taught others through the various ways of experience. Those who are primarily concerned with undoing the vital contraction at the great region of the navel in order to enjoy the bliss or fullness of unobstructed movement of the life-force are called "yogis" by Bubba. "Saints," in his terminology, seek chiefly to relax the subtle contractions at the region of the sahasrar, and they are devoted to the Divine as the transcendent Light above the world, body, and mind. "Sages" strive primarily to undo the contraction associated with the causal heart, and to realize the Self-nature, Real-God, which has its psycho-physical seat at that point. Other men have functioned as critics of the usual life from the point of view of transcendent knowledge, and Bubba calls them "prophets."]

These Siddhas, while enjoying in a very real sense the same perfect, Divine realization as the Great Siddhas, either served one of the existing great dharmas or else taught a lesser dharma, a lesser path, or a path that had certain historical limitations. There have been countless yogis, saints, sages, and prophets, extraordinary men who nonetheless did not represent the function, the great function of all the Siddhas. These men not only represented lesser dharmas or historical limitations, forms of the way of experience, but they were also seekers, not perfectly founded in the absolute enjoyment of the Siddhas, who are eternally non-separate from God.

The three Great Siddhas have represented to mankind the three principal dharmas as they have been understood to this time. Jesus represented the dharma of the sacrifice of self, Krishna the dharma of the sacrifice of mind, and Gautama the dharma of the sacrifice of desire. Separated self (or ego), limited mind, and limiting desire are the three principal conditions of suffering or contraction in man. Thus, the three principal dharmas that have been known among men have been attempts to undo these forms of contraction through the deliberate or motivated sacrifice of these three: ego, mind, and desire.

The three conditions of ego, mind, and desire are the three fundamental conditions of the usual life. These are the three principles or conditions of suffering. They are the three manifestations of Narcissus, the self-enjoyer, the eternally recurring mortal. In fact men are all seeking through the various strategies of life to undo the force of these conditions and their effects. And men seek release from suffering by many means. But the common means are devoted either to the exploitation of the life functions for the sake of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, or to the exploitation of the inner life for the sake of so-called spiritual attainment.

All men strategically, whether or not with full and conscious intention, are pursuing release from these three conditions while at the same time only living them. Even the search to overcome the conditions of ego, mind, and desire is itself founded in these three. While men strategically, arbitrarily, and with various degrees of consciousness pursue release from these conditions, the spiritual instructors of mankind, the various men of experience, the various Siddhas, and the various Great Siddhas have created dharmas or paths which very consciously and methodically pursue release from these three.

Gautama was the Great Siddha of the navel. He taught and demonstrated the dharma of the sacrifice of desire. His whole teaching essentially consisted of methods for achieving the condition of nirvana, or the great quenching of the principle of desire. And the center of the principle of desire is the great region of the navel, the great life center.

Just so, Krishna was the Great Siddha of the sahasrar or the subtle epitome, the subtle region above the head. He taught and demonstrated the dharma of the sacrifice of mind, the merging of the mind in God.

Jesus was the Great Siddha of the region of the heart. just as the mind has its seat in the upper regions of the head, and desire has its seat in the great vital region of the navel, the ego or separate self and its dissolution are seated in the heart. Jesus taught and demonstrated the dharma of self-sacrifice, the dharma of the surrender of the ego in life terms, in functional and human terms. And so the dharma of the sacrifice of self is the dharma of the heart.

But the three principal dharmas are themselves forms of seeking, reactions to the fundamental dilemma which motivates the usual man. The three Great Siddhas, along with all the other Siddhas, and all the yogis, saints, sages, and prophets, and all the men of experience, including the whole range of human individuals, themselves represent a limitation, a form of seeking founded in dilemma. The principle of the search remains intact in the great work of all the Siddhas to now. And the effort of all the dharmas, including the three great traditional dharmas, has been to strategically overcome separate self, limited mind, and the force of limiting desire.

In response to every communicator of the Great Process, whether he was a Great Siddha, Siddha, transcendent yogi, saint, prophet, sage, or teacher of some kind, a cult has always grown. There is a cult around Jesus as Christ, a cult around Gautama as Buddha, a cult around Krishna as the Divine Avatar. There is a cult that develops around each Siddha that appears -- there are cults around Nityananda, Ramakrishna, Shirdi Sai Baba, Ramana Maharshi. There are cults around all the yogis, saints, prophets sages, and teachers. Every limited communication has tended to have been taken in some tradition or other to be absolute, to be perfect. The world is full of cults, great cults and lesser cults, all of which have the same fundamental structure as the limited life of Narcissus, the egoic life of obsessive mentality and peculiar desires. The world is full of cults, all of which are in conflict with all other cults because they each represent a fundamental limitation of the Great Process.

My own work is not separate from the great work of the Siddhas and Great Siddhas. But my work is a new performance of the dharma of the Maha-Siddha, and represents a new teaching from a new point of view. just as the three great dharmas are essentially efforts to overcome the limitations of separate self, limited mind, and the force of limiting desire, the way of understanding is utterly free of the whole principle of seeking. At the same time, the way of understanding effectively undermines the three principles of suffering, not by deliberately acting upon those three principles or conditions themselves, but by undermining in the process of understanding the fundamental or principal activity which is suffering, the principle of contraction or dilemma, the avoidance of relationship.

The way of understanding is founded upon insight into that dilemma and the fundamental action which creates and supports that sense of dilemma. That fundamental or self-limiting activity is the avoidance of relationship. When that binding principle is understood, then already or spontaneously the three common conditions of suffering are undone.

The separate self, limited mind, and force of limiting desire are all expressions of this principal contraction, the avoidance of relationship. So if this principal contraction is undone in the process of understanding in living relationship with the Man of Understanding, then the force of the three common principles is already undermined. In a living and natural relationship with the Man of Understanding this principal contraction is undone, entirely apart from the whole adventure of seeking in dilemma. The process involves simple, motiveless understanding of one's own activity, not the effort to suppress or transcend the ego-sense, the force of the mind, or the force of desire. When there is radical understanding, these three conditions are brought to rest, returned to the natural stream of existence.

All there has been up to now is the tradition of the dharmas that arose within the great search. So all of those who come to me are continually tending to take on these traditional paths, these traditional approaches. People are always getting upset about their desires, always getting crazy with their minds, and always suffering their limited self-existence, their egoic life. And they are always wanting to do something about it. They always urge themselves either simply to give in and exploit the tendencies that are arising or else to use some strategy or other to get free of their condition.

The way of understanding is entirely apart from that whole traditional activity. The instrument for this dharma of understanding is the same instrument that has been used throughout human time, the same instrument used by the Great Siddhas and all the Siddhas. And that is Satsang, or the relationship between the devotee and the Spiritual Master who is complete and powerful in God. The Great Siddhas such as Jesus, Gautama, and Krishna all entered into sacrificial relationship with devotees. That was the fundamental instrument for the communication of their dharmas and their spiritual influence.

So the means for this activity is the ancient means, but the process, the dharma itself, is new. It does not exploit the individual's motivation to be free of the ego, the mind, and desires. It does not yield to his willful intentions to exploit those tendencies or to believe them. It simply enforces the condition of Truth, which is Satsang itself, the relationship to the Guru in God.

There is only one Siddhi or transforming Spiritual Power active in this work, and that Siddhi is God, the Power of the Divine Person. It is not a secondary siddhi, not magic, not a mere influence. Only the Divine is active in this work. The Lord is the fundamental condition communicated in Satsang with the Man of Understanding. From the beginning, not merely at the end, Truth is the condition of this process. It is pressed on devotees with more and more intensity, always to the degree which is just a little bit beyond their preferred tolerance.

The given methods which are determined to help you overcome your desires, your mentality, or your self-obsession do not in fact affect the principle on which they rest. So naturally your desires, your mentality, and your self-obsessions continue to arise. You are always wanting to exploit them, to believe them, or to get some method or other that will help you to undo them. But I see no value in merely preventing the appearance of ego, mind, and desire, since one of the fundamental functions of the Divine Siddhi is to awaken those things for the sake of purification and transformation. Why should I give you a method to suppress them, since everything I am doing is bringing them up in you? I would have you become intelligent in relation to the conditions of your suffering, but as long as you seek you are only moved to suppress them without understanding their origin.

The Guru is that Divine Siddhi. The only thing that will allow you to remain in this Satsang, to remain in this fundamental condition that is Truth, is the life of a devotee. If you remain in the condition of a devotee in relation to the Man of Understanding as Guru, then you will be able to pass with humor through the appearance of your own qualities. And they will disappear, not because you happen to perform some activity on them, recite some mantra, do some sort of inward trick, but simply because another principle is being lived, which is Satsang.

By remaining a devotee, you will pass through the long appearance and the long reappearance of your own tendencies. But the minute you turn away, the minute you become resistive, the minute your occupation becomes one of resistance to the Guru and to the process of this Siddhi, you will be tending to hold on to the revealed products of this Siddhi. You will become addicted to the principle of your own desires, the force of your own mentality, and the intense vibration of your own separate self sense. The possibility of separation always exists in every individual. Therefore, every day the devotee is tested, and the test is whether he will choose to live simply as a devotee or to return to the principle of his desires, the principle of his limited mind, the principle of his separated or Narcissistic existence.

So this Siddhi lives you and does the meditating and performs the sadhana or spiritual practice. The Siddhi active in Satsang is the fundamental instrument of this work, and not any secondary method or technical affair given to you to perform. In this Satsang, by virtue of this Siddhi, the process of understanding begins. The force of Satsang, which yields self-observation, insight, and real meditation, arises on the basis of hearing the Guru, living as the devotee of the Guru, responsibly maintaining the conditions communicated by the Guru.

Whereas the ancient dharmas involved specific attention, strategic attention to desire, mind, and ego, the dharma of understanding does not involve such strategic attention. It involves Satsang itself, simply, without concern for the manifestation of desires that occur at any moment, the manifestation of thought, or the manifestation of separate self sense. These manifestations are continually appearing, but it is not the business of the devotee to bind himself with concerns over these manifestations. Satsang is his condition. Satsang is his meditation. Satsang is his sadhana or eternal spiritual practice.

The Man of Understanding only offers this Satsang, and he demands that those who come to him come in the form of the devotee, not in the form of the seeker. They will not be satisfied as seekers. He will never give them what seekers require. The Man of Understanding does not give methods, he does not exploit the search, he does not satisfy the seeker. Those who come as seekers will only be frustrated, and so the Man of Understanding regards only those who come in the form of the devotee. He is continually mindful of the state of his devotee, and through various means continually returns him to the principle of his sadhana, which is Satsang, rather than to those things toward which the devotee himself is always tending: his desires, his mind, and his ego.

Just so, the characteristic Siddhi of the Man of Understanding is not one that is exclusively involved with any one of the three primary centers of our psycho-physical form, any more than it is exclusively involved with the strategic attempt to undo any one of the three common principles of suffering. The Siddhi of the Man of Understanding involves the three principal centers inclusively, without making any one of them the fixed or primary focus of attention.

Yogis seek the merging of the life-force in God, because they see the dilemma of their existence in the forms of life. Thus, their activity originates in the great life-region of the navel, and proceeds upward from that point (if the goal is above the world). Some, who conceive an evolutionary goal in the world, also draw the life-energy down to the life-center. The yogis enjoy exclusive mastery over desire and life.

The great bhaktas or lovers of God are always turned upward through thought, feeling, word, and deed. Practitioners of the yoga of the inner sound current listen to the sound behind the eyes and above the ears in order to be drawn up by it into the Condition of the Light. These are the ways of saints, who seek the exclusive merging of the mind in God, because they know the mind to be the root of the permutations of life. Thus, their seats of activity are in the ajna chakra, the sahasrar, and above. The saints master mind, just as yogis master desire and life.

The sages or jnanis seek the realization of Self, prior to ego, and thus also to mind and desire, because they know the ego to be the root of mind and life. Their activity originates in the heart, the seat of the limited self, of mind, and of desire, on the right side of the chest. This seat, or the potent Silence, the mere Presence of the Heart or Real-God which is intuited therein, is the root of all thoughts, as well as the life current, and the internally audible sound stream. The Self is even the Root or Source of the very Light or Mind which is above the body, the mind, and the world, and of the Life which always proceeds from it as bodies, minds, and worlds. Sages enjoy principal but exclusive mastery over the illusion of separate self, without interest in transcendent Mind or Divine World.

The three centers, the navel, the head, and the heart, are, properly, the seats of the inclusive intuition of the Divine in man. But they are realized in Truth only in the spontaneous, already selfless revelation of Satsang. Those who concentrate upon them willfully and exclusively with sophisticated techniques, as if to find God at last, are like Narcissus. They only meditate upon their own reflections in waters that lie on holy ground. But the Man of Understanding enjoys mastery of the ego, mind, and desire without exclusion. He enjoys Realization of Self, Mind, and Life, which are the World. He is Guru in the three seats of Realization, the seat of Life (the great region of the navel), the seat of Light (the ajna chakra, the sahasrar, and above), and the seat of Self (the heart, on the right). He enjoys this Realized Mastery entirely apart from all dilemma and seeking, and he awakens it also in others apart from all exploitation of seeking in dilemma.

Therefore, this sadhana is new and great, and perhaps it is difficult to grasp for those who have only the traditions to which they would resort. In fact, apart from What is newly being communicated here, only the traditions of seeking can be found. But the work and the realization of the Man of Understanding are not fixed in any one of the traditional centers or dharmas or approaches. just so, his point of view is not the point of view of the Divine qualities represented by any of the three great traditional paths and the exclusive seats of their knowing within man. His point of view is That which is prior to the three great dharmas. His point of view is the Divine itself.

The Morning of the First Day

July 6 was the last day of the year in which Bubba's Teaching work was to be fulfilled. And so he spent its final hours, appropriately, speaking to his devotees about the way of Understanding, which would be the inheritance of the great Community of Devotees. By the time Bubba finished talking, it was July 7. Clearly, the occasion called for celebration. There were music, conversation, warm sake, and laughter. At one point, well into the morning, Bubba insisted that Neil do a ridiculous dance from his New York childhood. The film crew grabbed their equipment and, very resourcefully, several table lamps, which they used as makeshift floodlights. Everyone present then insisted that Bubba himself get up and dance. He finally gave in, and danced as the cameras rolled again. Soon the living room was filled with laughing, clapping, stomping devotees.

At dawn, the film crew, enjoying the party themselves, made a few mad dashes outside with their light meters and then hustled everyone into the side yard. Favorite songs were played into the yard and across the hillside from a speaker on the porch. But as the sun rose over the ridge across the valley, everyone stood quietly around Bubba, some crying as be held them by his side.

Someone rang the big bell in front of the lounge, and other members of the Community filed into the yard to join the gathering. After awhile, Bubba turned and walked into the front yard to his hammock. Two of his gopis, Ann Wood and Sharon Senia, who were sleeping there under a shawl, moved to one end of the hammock and Bubba lay down as everyone gathered around. Devotees stood looking on while Bubba silently communicated his Presence in Satsang.

Many people felt movements of his Force. Some were weeping, some shaking or screaming. The particular moods and experiences varied greatly from person to person. Watching him lie so still, with his eyes sometimes closed, some imagined him dead and felt tremendously sad. Others were simply beside themselves with joy. Ann Wood had recently been going through a difficult period of wanting Bubba's attention "with everything in my body and soul." When Bubba came to the hammock she was even feeling anger. In an interview the following day she spoke about that morning in the hammock.

I was lying there feeling okay -- really feeling miserable, but accepting it. I kept falling asleep, and then something came over me, and I saw Bubba in a new way. I have seen that so many times, but this time there was something different about it. I saw that he was total sacrifice to us, absolutely, every second, every cell in his body is sacrificing everything for us. He is utterly God, and to make any demands on him is the most ludicrous, asinine, insane, childish thing on earth. And all night I had been agonizing over my demand for his attention.

Jim Steinberg, one of the devotees who lives in San Francisco, had an experience of an entirely different quality.

For awhile I just looked at him, and there was incredible energy up in my head, but then I realized I was just self-conscious. I didn't even want to look at him any more, so I put my head on his knee, and when I finally took my head away, I was in a totally different place. Energy was just pouring out of my hands and feet, and everyone around me was screaming, as if it was coming through me and affecting them. It was as if Bubba was using me as a channel.

I felt a lot of pain in my head. It was just totally being smashed to smithereens. If I thought of it in terms of pain, I couldn't tolerate it, but if I thought of it in terms of Bubba, then the pain went away. I felt like I was going to faint several times too, but all I had to do was turn to Bubba. I also learned for the first time what he means about "breathing the Light," about this random conductivity which he has spoken of lots of times. I saw that the only way I could stand the intensity was to breathe it down to my navel. Otherwise it would get totally caught up in the sahasrar, but when I breathed it down and circulated it through the whole body, it wasn't getting stuck anywhere.

After that was all over, I got up and I was in a totally different place. I hugged Connie Grisso at that point, and there was an incredible transmission of energy, and when we stopped, time had absolutely stopped. It was really one of the roost eerie situations I had ever been in. It was like a blueprint: I could look everywhere but nothing was moving, everything was totally stopped. it lasted for only about ten seconds. And then I walked along with Bonnie Beavan, one of Bubba's gopis, and I said to her, "You have got to teach me how to act," because I was just in another world.

Bonnie and Jim, along with most of the rest of the community, then followed Bubba on a long walk around the grounds of Persimmon. He had risen from the hammock, put on a shawl and cap, and was walking along, smiling radiantly, surrounded by his devotees.

Bubba walked to the stables and the garden, then across the creek to an area called Lithia Springs, where he was filmed with his gopis, then down past the swimming pool, and back to the lounge and Satsang Hall. He sat with everyone in Satsang for about an hour, then retired to his house to rest. During the following hours, Jim Steinberg, like others, was still feeling extraordinary effects from the morning's experience.

I didn't know what to do. I couldn't understand anything that was going on with anybody. I didn't know how to walk any more. I wasn't speaking. I couldn't talk any more. I didn't know what to do at all. So I just hugged Bonnie and let her show me. She would say, "Now you've got to walk, we've got to start walking again." I just couldn't stop thinking of Bubba, and every time I would think of him, I would just start vibrating all over. I realized this was nothing that I did. It was totally something that Bubba did, totally as Grace.

For about two hours right afterwards everything was a total, absolute mirage, everything was laughable, every person in the world was very beautiful. I couldn't get involved with anything except the Divine. At the same time, everything became terrifying, because it was so new, it was so unusual. I mean, I remember the first bite of food I took. I thought, "I have teeth." Everything was like that. It was as if I had taken a thousand micrograms of acid. That is the only experience in my past that was comparable, but this was much more solid.

No other events were scheduled that day until the wedding of John and Sandy Wojcik at three-thirty that afternoon. In the early afternoon the movie crew filmed Bubba walking through the woods above Persimmon. He didn't return to his house until well after the wedding was to have begun, and even then he was in no hurry to get to the ceremony. Ann Wood, who was among those who spent the late afternoon at home with Bubba, describes the reasons for Bubba's apparent leisure.

We were sitting around drinking Irish coffees, and Satsang was obviously intense. He was getting the rain ready for the wedding, so we were a little late.

By the time Bubba arrived at the scene of the wedding the sky had thoroughly clouded over, an event almost unheard-of for this part of the country in mid-summer, and a few drops of rain had already begun to fall. Because of the threat of more rain, people were moving chairs into the roofed, open-air pavilion. But when Bubba arrived he insisted that the ceremony take place as planned, outside, on a grassy knoll overlooking the valley. So everyone, including the relatives of the wedding couple, followed Bubba down the hillside and took their places as the light rain continued.

Nina Jones usually performs the wedding ceremonies while Bubba looks on silently. But that afternoon, dressed in a white satin kaftan and a white knitted cap, Bubba took the text of the wedding and performed the ceremony himself, something he had never done before. He delivered his lines with aplomb and theatrical flourish, feeling free to digress from the text whenever he felt it appropriate. An impromptu band punctuated his speech at dramatic moments with drum rolls and razzes from kazoos.

While the ceremony was still in progress, Neil and other devotees began to feel spiritual Force moving through them again. Neil was shaking with kriyas, and Sal felt impelled to run down the hillside to join him. At the end of the ceremony, all the people began making their way up the hillside to the patio where the feast would be served. As Bubba was leaving, he came up to Sal and Neil and hugged them both for several minutes. Ann Wood and others began screaming again and going into mudras, while Sal cried against Bubba's chest and Neil continued to shake.

After a few moments, they all walked up the hill to the patio and took their seats at the main table. Bubba began making jokes and laughing with everyone, and a number of other devotees left their own tables to gather around and listen. Bubba said that none of his devotees should go inside out of the rain. It was a "blessing" he had prepared especially for the occasion. He asked Neil to come sit directly across the table in front of him. He put his hand on Neil's head and held it there tightly. Neil started to quiver, and suddenly Bonnie Beavan and others were crying, screaming, and making mudras, and many other devotees were almost fainting from the power moving through them. After a while Bubba pressed Sal against his chest with his other hand. A few moments later he turned and directed his palm toward Terry Patten, who was sitting just to Sal's right. As he did that people began to scream and writhe about in even greater frenzy. The whole event lasted for at least a half hour, and by the time Bubba rose to return to his house, the light drizzle had become a pelting, drenching rain.

Throughout the scene on the patio, Ann Wood had been standing directly behind Bubba's chair, with her hands directed toward various people. She had been near him earlier at the wedding, and she described the whole experience later in an interview.

All the time at the wedding the Force was manifesting through me to the couple that was getting married. Then we went to the patio, and that thing that was filmed started happening. I was standing behind Bubba, and the Force was really coming through me and my legs were trembling and everything in my body was alive, just absolutely alive. And I was thinking, "Boy, I'm really an asshole, Bubba, such an asshole." Nothing had changed. I was still the same old creep.

My hands were being directed towards particular people, but I wasn't looking at them. My hands were just moving, and I don't know who they were directed at except in a few cases. I started to notice that the Force must be coming through my eyes too, because sometimes my hands would be pointing off to the side, and I would look at someone, and they would freak out. Also, it's like things come out of people through me, so I would have sorrow in my face, or maybe a smile, or some whimsical look, or pain, or a sneer.

Terry Patten, the devotee to whom Bubba had pointed his hand, later recounted aspects of the event in an interview.

Bubba is telling jokes about how no one is eating the salad, and he calls Neil over, and he puts his hand on Neil's head, and man, the Shakti! -- screams, yells, everyone in ecstasy. Neil is having kriyas, Bubba is smiling, and it is like that last week in March all over again. Everything is flying through the air with tremendous intensity. So he does this with Neil for awhile longer, and he does it with Sal, and I am kind of still with this sense almost of dismay: "Well, final death is upon us. Too bad it is raining."

But then Bubba turned and did this thing to me, and I was suddenly having incredible mindforms over it, loving him, then loving the experience, and so on. But there was one other thing: the realization that this wasn't me, that we are not isolated individuals. When Bubba dealt with me I felt an impulse to pretend that it was just Sal, Neil, and me. But then I realized that it was this Community. I realized then that I was a vehicle, whether or not Force moved out through my hands to everybody around us. If Bubba was dealing with me, it was because I was a vehicle for his treatment of the entire Community. The thought arose that I was simply a locus of attention in this larger process, and it really felt like that for a moment.

While Bubba and others enjoyed Irish coffee at his house, the rain continued to pour.:' Many devotees were busy putting on costumes and makeup for the skits, which were to have been the late afternoon entertainment. They had originally been scheduled to start at five-thirty that afternoon on the open patio. They didn't get underway until much later, after lighting and curtains were hastily arranged in the unused kitchen of the old hotel.

[Footnote: The rain continued into the night, and the sky didn't clear for two days. Listening to weather reports, devotees later discovered that the rain had fallen exclusively on a relatively small area of northern California, all within an approximately twenty-five mile radius of Persimmon, and that more rain had fallen during this storm than in any other July for at least 125 years, when officials in Sacramento first began to keep records.]

When the skits ended, Bubba returned to his house for the evening with a few devotees. Ann Wood wrote of the rest of the evening.

Bubba invited a few people over and then he went downstairs for the night. We started having Satsang, and the Force was manifesting through me. It was really strong. My hands and my feet were both manifesting the Force, and everyone in, the room was freaking out. It was coming through my eyes too. I remember looking at one girl and not having any control. I didn't want to do this to anybody. It was just a complete intuition of what to do. I was looking at her and sensing fear in her and looking away, and then looking back when it was time to look back.

When this had occurred before, in recent weeks, I had felt I could control myself. I had felt that I remained completely as myself, even though I took on these facial expressions and had the Force moving me. But at one point that night I felt utterly possessed, my body was possessed, and my hands started to move, and I couldn't control them. I had no control at all. My face started taking on expressions, and I don't know what my face looked like, but it was as if every expression my face took on was Bubba's. I thought if someone was looking at me, they would think I was Bubba.

Then I bowed my head and went into a meditative state, and all of a sudden I wasn't my body. I was something above my head. That was me. I could come back to my body, and I am not saying that I left it, I don't know what it was. But I was above my head, and I was constant motion, I was moving, I was sacrificing, descending into the body, I was completely free, I was prior to my ego. I could let myself come down into my body, and I could go back up.

I knew exactly how to deal with everyone. It was really incredible. I am not a bossy type of person, so I felt a little bit self-conscious, but people would run out of the room screaming, and I could barely talk, but I would say, "Go get Bonnie," or "Go get Janis and bring her in here right now." And someone would go get them. I knew exactly where everyone should be and what they were going through, and I knew when it was time for someone to go to bed, and I knew that I bad to stay up and be the last one to go to bed. It was like I had to take care of everyone. It was very strange.

Ann was not the only one to realize the awakening of Bubba's Spiritual Power in her, and through her to others. Neil had the same experience, and there were others awakened in the same way. But all who witnessed this awakening in themselves began to see it also against the totality of their experience of Bubba's Teaching during these last few months. It was impossible to endure this theatre of awakened spiritual Power without remembering the cycle of rise and fall, of fascination and concern, that always accompanied this aspect of Bubba's influence in the past. It was Bubba Theatre, Devi Theatre, in which the Guru, the true Self or Real-God, was the point, and not any Possession of self. This Knowledge was hidden in the drama of this first great Guru Day. It was a kind of secret Teaching with which all would become more and more perfectly impressed as the weeks passed, What was shown was another instance of Bubba's humor. What was not shown, but truly given, was the beginning of Bubba's Community of Devotees.