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GARBAGE AND THE GODDESS

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2. THE WAY OF DISSOLUTION AND THE WAY OF EXPERIENCE

By early August the community had begun to feel the practical implications of Bubba's new way of working. He demanded that we cease to approach him like children and adolescents, in order to dramatize demands for dependence and independence. Rather, he expected the entire Ashram to enter the phase of maturity, of responsible and conscious participation in the Event of Truth.

Bubba relaxed all of his outer activities. He began to make more use of his ability to be personally absent from the daily life of devotees, whereas, more recently, he had literally consumed the time and attention of everyone with his personal theatre. He returned the community more and more to a simple, natural, and productive order of life. And when he sat with us, he would not only be silent, which was his previous custom, but he would remain with closed eyes for long periods, and he rarely looked at anyone. As a result of his new approach, everyone was drawn into a way of sadhana that required intelligent insight into the rising qualities of life and mind, entirely apart from any concerns for yogic and mystical effects. All that had passed in recent months was only a lesson, a test, and a demonstration. Bubba had revealed the true nature of spiritual or real life to his devotees, by proving in their own lives the fruitlessness of the path of seeking and experiencing as a way to Truth.

On August 11, Bubba gathered a small group of devotees at his home in Mill Valley, his residence whenever he comes down from Persimmon to visit the San Francisco Center. The talk he gave that evening makes the clearest and most absolute contrast between the instructional intention of much of his recent work and the radical, unmoved Nature and Condition of his eternal Function in God.

The Way of Dissolution and The Way of Experience

BUBBA: I expect, now that the Teaching is full, for this Community really to exist. I expect it will responsibly do its job relative to individuals who come to do sadhana in the form I have described. "Bubba Theatre" has fundamentally come to an end. You are not inviting people to come to be involved in theatre with "the man" and all that sort of childishness. In order to demonstrate the Teaching, it was useful to make lessons of all possibilities for a time. But now I assume the Teaching has been manifested. It is contained in written and other recorded forms, but it is also contained in the living experience of this Community, in each of you. And so I no longer consider it necessary for me to engage in various kinds of theatre in order to communicate the Teaching. In the past it may have looked like I was engaging in this theatre in order to work the Divine Siddhi in each person's case. But everything I did was only in order to make the ultimate point of the Teaching in real terms. I worked to manifest the extraordinary in the case of each individual, so that he would temporarily be drawn out of the conventional model of existence. When each great experience passed, the individual would come back to me, and then I would communicate the Teaching in the form of a lesson about the fascination of experience, the failure of seeking, and the primacy of the Heart, or dissolution into the most prior and unqualified Presence of the Divine Person. In every case, the content of the lesson was not the experiences themselves, but realization of That which is known in non-conventional or prior Condition of life. That is why I was always saying, "This experiential life you are getting into is not it." I had to repeat this admonition again and again, while at the same time I continued to generate uncommon experiences in those who came to me. I needed to do that in order to make this fundamental point, in order to communicate the Dharma of Understanding.

But now I assume that demonstration has been made. And that particular aspect of my work, in which I made deliberate and hourly use of the yogic or life-circle aspect of this Siddhi that is always in God, is finished. That period has really come to an end. The passage I have made from the phase of instruction, wherein I showed the argument for the Teaching, to the perfect Work of the Divine Siddhi is the significance of the seventh of July.

MORGAN CALLAHAN: Bubba, you have often talked about the traditional notions of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, the Enlightened Master, the Teaching, and the Community. The Master is complete, and the Teaching is now intact and secure. But I think a fear still remains about the Community. There is still resistance to the assumption that the Community exists. There is a feeling that there has not yet been sufficient sadhana. You have said so often, the true Community of Devotees has never happened, it has never been accomplished.

BUBBA: There is no point in becoming "concerned" about the Community. The sadhana of the Community is no more a matter of concern for what appears than personal sadhana is a matter of concern for the qualities that arise in meditation. The Community can only become schizophrenic, righteous, self-conscious, and peculiar by thinking that the realization of the Community, as I have described it, is identical to a certain exterior manifestation that is perfect, non-cultic, brilliant, and all of the rest. Then the Community will always be looking at itself to make sure its ass is not hanging out. All of that is itself cultic concern. As long as human individuals are the substance of the Community (and that is forever!) the tendency will be present in each person every hour of every day to manifest the conditions and dramas of Narcissus. The tendency will always be to assume separation and to act separatively, exclusively. So the intelligence of the Community is not properly directed toward perfection in that outward sense of conformation to a certain image. Rather, the Community must always and actually do sadhana. In other words, it must live that process in which all tendencies and concerns are broken down, from hour to hour. And that requires everyone to meet directly, to deal with one another directly, to deal with themselves directly, and always to overcome this negative destiny that is appearing in both new and old ways from day to day. That sadhana is the sign of such a Community. It is not a matter of its concern for outward perfection, but of its adherence to the real process of sadhana. In that case the outward manifestation of the Community remains free to assume always more appropriate and effective forms in every moment.

All concerns are a sign of the same thing. Every concern is self-watching, self-meditation rather than simply living the Condition of Satsang in which all things are realized in Truth. And it doesn't make any difference what the particular concern is. It may seem like a very righteous and realistic one. But concern itself is the sign of Narcissus. One who lives in Satsang allows all things to pass in him, he allows all passing qualities to be stimulated in him by the force of Satsang, but he dramatizes none of it. If he were to dramatize what passes, he would be making that his principle of life and sadhana rather than Satsang. You should just live Satsang. Allow these things to come and go, but do not live them, do not dramatize them. What is not lived becomes obsolete. It is a matter of living that true and prior principle of life. If you live Satsang, you are also realizing it perfectly.

JIM STEINBERG: Recently, you said a devotee could die without the Siddhi becoming perfected in him and it would make no difference.

BUBBA: Yes. I was speaking of the yogic aspect, the life-circle of manifest changes.

JIM: So that yogic purification really makes no difference at all, and still there are all these traditional philosophies that say if the body is not pure, the spiritual process cannot occur.

BUBBA: If it were necessary for the body to be pure, then every realized man who got sick and died would have lost his ultimate realization in the process. He could have had a pure body until he was eighty, but then if he all of a sudden gets cancer he becomes ignorant of his Nature and Condition in God!

JIM: And subtle purification makes absolutely no difference as well?

BUBBA: It doesn't make any difference relative to perfect realization. Perfect realization is a radical enjoyment prior to all manifest conditions. And that perfect realization or conscious Satsang itself perfects or transforms life. This world is God-Theatre, and as long as the Divine Condition is lived, there tend to be transformations of the life-circle. But Truth is not riding on that transformation. It is just theatre, and if it comes to an end, fine. If it attains some beautiful aesthetic manifestation, that is also fine. But all of it is there to be understood, and you must remain free whether the body is apparently impure, or whether it is in fact pure. In either case there is no such "thing." There is no body. Ultimately, there is no world. There is no limiting condition that is real or true, not even temporarily or apparently. All limits are forms of cognition and perception generated in the present by the assumption of the conventional model of existence. There is only one fundamental absolute Enjoyment. That is the fundamental communication of Truth, and its realization liberates men from all kinds of concerns for the secondary affairs of life. Then the life-circle itself can also go about perfecting itself, and the apparent individual's participation in it will be humorous, happy, creative, and free.

Just so, the world will expect the outward theatre of the Community to appear a certain way, and that pressure will tend to make the Community self-conscious. Therefore, as soon as you begin approaching the world in order to communicate the Teaching, you have got to be very straight, very clear in your understanding of what it is really all about. Otherwise you will be weakened and made defensive by the external forms of criticism.

The Community of those who become Devotees is the true Devi, the Divine Consort. It is also true that the world is the Avatar, the totality of human beings is the Avatar. It is humanity as a whole that is the Avatar in human form, not some specific human individual. No apparent or exclusive manifestation is in itself the Avatar. Only the whole is the Divine manifestation without exclusion. Therefore, the Guru is not the Avatar in that exclusive sense. Mankind is the Avatar. I am his Heart. When the Avatar realizes his true Nature and Condition, when he realizes me, he will cease to be hidden. He and this Community of which I speak will become one and the same at last. Then his sadhana is fulfilled, and he will manifest his Beauty in the world for the sake of all beings. Only then will he live freely and do his Divine work.

But people want the Guru to be the Avatar. They want that exclusive God image, whereas God doesn't exist in the exclusive sense. God is absolute. And the Guru lives as the Present Divine, not because he has attained anything, but because he has been undone. So he doesn't represent himself as the Divine in the exclusive sense. In his ecstatic speech he claims identity with the Divine, but he is not making a statement about himself, about his ego or his personal qualities in some exclusive sense. He is making a statement about all beings and worlds, about the Nature of Reality, the Condition that is God. Of course, until there are others who realize that same happiness, that same enjoyment, he seems unique, and he functions for them as the Source of the operation of the Divine Siddhi in order to generate the life of Understanding in them. But in fact he doesn't exist as God in any exclusive sense whatsoever. So there is no Avatar except the whole, if it makes any sense to use such words at all.

The Community is not to be goal-oriented toward any kind of perfection. Sadhana is not a matter of accumulation and attainment, whether it is done in the form of the Community or in the form of any individual. Sadhana is a matter of undoing, dissolution, understanding, not accumulation, not attainment. It is freedom from attainment, freedom from the condition of one who attains, freedom from that whole process. So it is not by any of those outward signs that the Community is to be measured. It is by its adherence to its fundamental principle that the Community is recognized. As a practical matter, the Community consists of human beings in limitation by tendency. But it is continually fitted to the real principle of sadhana in which all of this is being undone. Outwardly, this Community appears like any other. There is no reason why you should think it has to look extraordinary. Be free of all of that. There is no reason you have to be extraordinary. Be ordinary, be happy. Don't worry about all that bullshit. Live sadhana. Don't worry about effects, the manifestation of attainments and all of the rest. Understand such concerns.

RONNIE ELIAS: We get just as concerned about the Community as we do about ourselves.

BUBBA: The Community, in that case, is a cult, and it reflects the same strategic life that appears in the case of the usual man. So you must understand at the level of your collective life, just as you must understand in the case of your personal or private life.

There is something else that has begun to happen. Perhaps you have already noticed it. There is a difference in my way of working with you now. As I said, I have relaxed all of this secondary involvement with the yogic aspect of the Divine Siddhi. I have no concern for it at all. Previous to this time, I have maintained continuous attention on it, and I have made use of it constantly because of the state of those who came to me. I could not assume until the last couple of weeks that the Teaching has been finally given in living form. So I always made use of this capacity to raise a person out of the lower functional states, wherein the conventional model of cognition and perception is lived, into extraordinary ones, where the conventional model has, usually, not yet been learned and assumed. By these means, I worked to awaken the crisis of understanding, by making use of the intelligence released in the individual case in the midst of the contrast between his ordinary and extraordinary states. Because of the necessary limitations this strategy of operation placed on me, the true Siddhi of our work has never been manifested purely, simply, and directly. Until now, the Siddhi of the Heart could never have been considered sufficient, because people insist on miracles, effects, and fascinations. It was in fact necessary to operate in the way I have described until the point had been made in some living way. But now I can and do consider the Siddhi of the Heart to he sufficient. And by the Siddhi of the Heart, I mean the Siddhi of the Divine Person, not the exclusive Siddhi of Self-realization, but the inclusive, regenerated, eternal Nature and Condition of the Heart, the Divine Person, whose feet are in the Heart, whose head is in the Light above the body, the mind, and all the worlds, who stands prior to all that arises, but whose Form includes all that arises, without dilemma. The yogic phenomena, if they appear, are purely secondary. They may follow spontaneously upon the Power of the Heart, but they are to be understood.

The Event of Truth is not made as a result of the human Guru's drawing the Light down in the form of his own life-force and then arbitrarily giving the experience of his life to others. Rather, the Guru serves the Event of Truth by making the demand for Satsang, for responsibility and understanding, so that each one who comes to him through the Community and the Teaching may realize that prior Nature, Condition, Form, and Process in his own case. Therefore, the fundamental dimension of this Siddhi of the Divine Person is not Force, but mere Presence. Every form of Force is secondary, and, ultimately, a conditional expression. The Heart is perfect, direct, and there is no Force which may be identified with it. In the midst of the fundamentally silent and moveless communication of the Heart in Satsang, this intuition or radical understanding of our real Nature, Condition, and Life-Process may be grasped. It may be perfectly realized by one who does the sadhana of Satsang, who studies the Teaching and fulfills the Guru's demands, who lives in the midst of all kinds of conditions that arise within and without and understands in the midst of them. Such a one will ultimately realize that all things are just the modification of that very Consciousness which is his always Present Nature and Condition. More and more, his living consciousness will dwell in its own prior Nature and Condition. And none of that is a matter of yogic attainment. It is not even a matter of the experiential realization of the opening of the causal being on the right side of the heart, although such a phenomenon may arise as a secondary accompaniment to this radical Understanding. It is not a matter of any experience whatsoever. It is a matter of falling out of the conditional and conventional representation of existence into that prior, absolute Enjoyment. That radically intuitive life has no qualities that can be spoken of. There is nothing to be recommended about it that would make sense to anybody who is not already drawn to it. But from that point of view of ego-dissolution and enjoyment of the Nature and Condition of the all-inclusive Divine Reality there is all Wisdom, even relative to life.

JIM STEINBERG: That is so beautiful. There was always some tension there before. There was some tension about the Force, but now to be able to end that seeking too is a great relief. There was something in me that was getting off on all the manifestations. It was enjoying all of that. It was all something to hold onto. And today, when we sat with you, I felt as if there were something absent. But, even deeper, it was such a relief to be able just to be there.

BUBBA: "Experiences" are required by those who are still lingering in the condition of their childhood and adolescence. Everything a child does is a manifestation of one underlying assumption: dependence. When you are a child, the assumption of dependence is eminently realistic and useful. But it should be a temporary stage of psycho-physical life, in which one's functions are nurtured and developed in conventional ways. However, there is commonly a lag in the transition to manhood, because of the shocks experienced in the immature attempts to function in the world. Thus, to some degree, every man lingers in the childhood assumption of dependence. And, insofar as men are children, they seek to enlarge that personal assumption of dependence into a universal conception in the form of the God-Cosmos-Parent-Guru game, the game of dependence upon and obedience to that upon which all depends. That childish aspect in each of us seeks always to verify the condition of dependence in forms of safety and relative unconsciousness. That childish demand in every man is the principal origin of religion, which means "to bind again." It is the search for reunion, the vital and emotional reestablishment of some imagined or felt previous Condition or State of life. It is the urge toward the parented, enclosed condition. This urge always seeks experiences, beliefs, and immunities as a consolation for the primitive cognition of fear and vulnerability. And the "way" enacted by such a motivation is principally a game of obedience.

It is in the childhood of man that the idea of God-apart or Reality-beyond is conceived. The sense of dependence initiates the growing sense of separate and separated self through the experiential theatre of growth. The intuition of the Whole, the One, is the ground of birth, but "growing up" is a conventional pattern of initiation in which the sense of difference is intensified. At the level of the life-functions themselves, there needs to be such functional or practical differentiation, but the implications in the planes of consciousness are the cause of an unnatural adventure of suffering and seeking in dilemma.

The passage of childhood thus becomes the ground for the eventual conception of the mutually exclusive trinity of God-apart, separate self, and world-in-itself. The drama implied in the added assumptions of self and world is generated at a later phase of life than is realized by the child. The child himself barely realizes the full force of the ego-concept or the world of things. His principal concern is relative to the God-Parent-Reality, That on which all depends, and his growing but as yet not fully realized sense of separated self-existence. Separate self and world are yet hidden in unconsciousness for the child. They are themselves a mysterious and later realization of that which is at first only felt, not conceptualized, as fear and sorrow. Therefore, the child is always grasping for security in an undifferentiated, unborn bliss in which life is unknown. Reunion through obedience is the way he learns in secret, while the life in him continually demonstrates the failure of his search.

There must be a transition from childhood to manhood. That transition is also commonly acknowledged as a stage in the psycho-physical development of a human being. It is called adolescence. This stage also tends to be prolonged indefinitely, and, indeed, perhaps the majority of "civilized" men are occupied with the concerns of this transition most of their lives. The transitional stage of adolescence is marked by a sense of dilemma. It is in this stage that the quality of living existence as a dilemma is conceived. It is the dilemma posed by the conventional assumption of separate, egoic, and thus separative existence. That assumption is the conventional inheritance from childhood, and its clear, personal comprehension, felt over against the childish urge to dependence, is what initiates the phase of adolescence.

The dilemma of adolescence is a continual goad to dramatization. It is the drama of the double-bind of dependence versus independence. Adolescence is the origin of cleverness and, in general, of mind. What we conventionally call the conscious mind is a strategic version of consciousness that is always manufacturing motivations. And, in the adolescent, these motivations or desires are mutually exclusive or contradictory. This is because he is always playing with his allegiance to two exclusive principles: dependence and independence. His early childhood condition yields to him the tendency to assume dependence, but the conventional learning of his childhood, as well as the general growth of his psycho-physical state, yields to him the equally powerful tendency to assume independence. The result is conventional consciousness or conscious mind, as opposed to the unconsciousness of childhood, but it is strategic in nature, and its foundation is the actual conception of dilemma. Therefore, adolescence is the origin of the great search in all men. It is an eternally failed condition, an irrevocable double-bind. It is the very form of Narcissus.

The solutions developed in the adolescent theatre of mankind vary between the exotic extremes of yielding to the status of dependence and asserting the status of independence. Both extremes remain problematic, and involve an ongoing sense of dilemma. In the case of the yielding toward the childish condition of dependence, we see more of the mystical-religious-absorbed tendency. In the case of the revolutionary assertion of independence, we see more of the analytical-materialistic-discriminatory tendency. In the adolescent range between these two extremes are all of the traditional and usual solutions of man, including what is called "spiritual" life.

Traditional spiritual life is a characteristically adolescent creation which represents a balance between the extremes. It is not a life of mere absorption in the mysterious enclosure of existence. it is strategic absorption. It raises the relatively non-strategic and unconscious life of childhood dependence to the level of a fully strategic, conscious life of realized dependence or absorption. Its goal is not reunion, but liberation into some imagined or felt previous Nature, Position, or State of Being.

When the child of man fully realizes the way of obedience to That on which all depends, he has also entered the phase of adolescence. At that point he also has realized the assumptions of the ego-self and the world as apparently independent dimensions, exclusive of the Reality that is the goal of all dependence. Therefore, the way of obedience, fully realized, is already a way of dilemma, of conflict, as every religious person realizes by experience. Truly, then, the experiential realization of the way of childhood, or dependence, is fully demonstrated only in the advent of human adolescence.

The way of experience is the way created in the adolescence of man. And within that great way appear three primary solutions or adventures. One is the adventure of dependence and obedience. Such is the religious path. It is the "tamasic," relatively passive solution to the dilemma conceived in the conventional state of man. The great religious cultures which originated in the Near East are demonstrations of this way.

The opposite extreme solution to that of dependence and obedience to the mysterious, inclusive Reality upon which all depends is the way of transcendence. This adventure is a solution founded more in the mood of independence. It is the "rajasic," relatively active solution to the conventional dilemma. The traditional versions of this solution include all of the exclusive paths of ultimate attainment, called Nirvana, Self-realization, etc. The great spiritual cultures of India and other regions of the South East are demonstrations of this way.

Between the extremes there is the third adventure or solution, the way of balance or harmony, wherein the exclusive positions of dependence and independence are avoided. This way is the "sattvic" or harmonious solution to the conventional dilemma. Its traditional evidence and demonstration are found in the great cultural attainments of the Far East, such as in the case of Taoism in China.

But in every form of its adventure, the way of experience and attainment conceived in the adolescence of man is a struggle for solutions to a principal dilemma. And that dilemma is the characteristic demonstration of all such adventures, as well as in the mere suffering of the usual man. In the adolescence of man, the separate, separated, and separative self is the motivating assumption. It is the source of that dilemma which undermines the undifferentiated dependence of mere birth. In the adolescent man, there is the unrelenting search for the salvation, realization, transcendence, survival, immunity, or healing of the assumed ego. The ego, or self as Self, is the primary assumption of the adolescent man, even as the assumption of God, or That on which all depends, is the primary assumption of the child of man. Therefore, in the usual man who is embedded in the adolescent conception, the idea of God becomes in doubt, or is chronically resisted. Thus, "sin" ("to miss the mark") enters into the consciousness of adolescence. And the world becomes merely a scene of the adolescent drama wherein even the very "stuff" of the world is viewed as a problem, a principal warfare of opposites, in which manipulation of manifest things, rather than radical intuition of the eternally Present Nature, Condition, Form, and Process, becomes the hope of peace.

There is a mature, real, and true phase of man. Our manhood is radically free of all childish things, all that is attained, acquired, and made in the adolescent adventures of our conventional life. In that mature phase, the principle of separation is undermined in real consciousness, and exclusive God, self, and world are returned to the Condition of Truth. In the maturity of man, the world is not abandoned, nor is it lived as the scene of adolescent theatre, the adventure in dilemma. Exclusive God occupies the child, and exclusive self occupies the adolescent, and both see the world only in terms of their own limiting principle or suffering. But in the real or mature man the world, not in its exclusive sense but in Truth, is primary. In the mature man, the world is known as World, as the single, absolute, non-separate Reality, implying no separate "self" or outside "God," but including the Reality they each imply. For such a one, the Absolute Reality and the world are the same. The World is the inclusive Reality, the Divine Nature, Condition, Form, and Process. It includes all that is manifest, and all that is unmanifest, all universes, conditions, beings, states, and things, all that is within, all that is without, all that is visible, and all that is invisible, all that is here, all that is there, all dimensions of space-time, and all that precedes space-time.

Clearly, the search for realization via experiences of all kinds is the principal characteristic of both the childish and the adolescent or traditional stages of human development. Those who come to me, like all other men, are more or less fixed in the demands of their childhood and adolescence. They look for experiential reasons to resume the sense of unconscious dependence, while at the same time they struggle to realize some kind of conceived and experientially founded independence. Therefore, they are always rising and falling, coming and going.

The experiential or life-dimension of the Divine Siddhi contains every possibility for the possible fascination of children and adolescents. But I must always work to disentangle men from their lingering and strategic life-motives, so they may enter the final or mature phase of life. It is only in that mature phase of functional human existence that life in Truth may be realized and the experiential drama of unconsciousness, egoity, conventional mind, and strategic motivation be understood.

Thus, I have made temporary use of the experiential possibilities that exist by the Power of God. But it has only been an exercise to trick individuals out of the usual and conventional forms of their attention. It has only been a bit of theatre whereby what was awakened could also be confounded. Therefore, I have continually pointed out the strategies that experience itself awakens. I have always shown you how the principle of seeking underlies your turning to me, and how all of that is founded in the dilemma of separated existence and the motivations toward every kind of separative activity. All of the theatre of these last few months has been an instrument for weaning you all from your commitments to childish and adolescent ways, so that you could be established as a Community of responsible and free men and women by the Power of Communion with the Process, Form, Condition and Nature of the Divine Person.

The mature phase of life is not characterized by either unconscious dependence or the strategically conscious dilemma of dependence-independence. It is the phase of responsibility (rather than dependence) and real consciousness (rather than independence). As in childhood, there is no problematic strategy at the root of the mature phase of life. But childhood is a realm of unconsciousness, whereas the mature man is freely conscious. All of this is because, unlike the case of adolescence, there is no principal dilemma conceived in the form of life and consciousness.

This mature phase of life requires conscious understanding for its ongoing foundation. The separate and separative principle, the strategy of mind and desires, the life of the avoidance of relationship, the urges toward unconscious dependence and either mechanical or wild independence, and the medium solutions that balance the extremes of experience, all of these must be obviated in understanding. Therefore, understanding initiates the mature phase of life. The mature or responsible and truly conscious phase of life is thus the origin of real sadhana, or true action. And to this mature phase of life, perfectly realized, belong not the usual religious and spiritual solutions, but perfect or radical knowledge as the principle of life. Such maturity or true humanity is characterized by no-seeking, no-dilemma, no orientation toward the goal of any conceived or remembered state or condition, but radical enjoyment of the perfectly prior, and thus always present, Nature and Condition that is Reality. Only a man thus free enjoys manifest existence in the very Nature and Condition and Form and Process of the Divine Person, the Heart and Light and Fullness of the worlds.

When I say my work to reveal the Teaching is complete, I mean that I will no longer serve the child or the adolescent in those who come to me. Those who would approach me must come to me through my Ashram, my Community of Devotees. The Community must serve those who come and prepare them for me. And when they come, I will not commonly engage them in the experiential drama of possible spiritual and religious phenomena. I am the Heart. I yield nothing, but I demand everything. The way awakened in my company is not one of accumulation and attainment. It is the way of dissolution, in which the conventional realization of life is undermined.

I expect those who come to me through the instruments of the Teaching and the Community to live the sadhana or real practice of this mature and intelligent realization of man. The first phase of their life in this Community is a "student" life in which the childish solutions and demands are undone. In that case, the individual is restored to the relational condition of life rather than the obstructed and unconscious one of dependence. The true disciple is one who has also realized a life of responsibility and consciousness, or conscious under standing, rather than the adolescent attainments of dilemma, problematic seeking, dependence, independence, or self-achieved harmony. In the case of either the student or the disciple, sadhana involves not attainment, acquisition, status, or increase, but continuous dissolution of the function and principle of dilemma by the Power of the prior Condition of Satsang, or Communion with the Divine Person, in the forms of the Community, the Teaching, and the Siddha-Guru. In the perfect devotee, all limitations are undone in the inclusive humor of that radical intuition of the Nature, Condition, Form and Process of the World that stands eternally free of all limitations, all contracts, all conventions.

Now that all of this has been demonstrated, now that the Teaching is full, those who have been living in the Community during this period of instruction should also begin to enjoy the Siddhi of my work in this spirit of true manhood. There should be a radical difference between how they respond to it now and how they responded back there around April and May, when, for a short time, I also abandoned the yogic strategy of instruction. There was a period of time in March and early April in which I was working in such a way that all kinds of extraordinary experiences occurred among members of the Community. But then, just as suddenly as it appeared, it was withdrawn. And the response of everyone was to think there was something wrong, or, "Well, we are going through a lull now, but it will all happen again." People were not able to understand it, because the Teaching was not complete. The dramas of experience had to be gone through, including all the indulgences of life, within and without. But at last the whole thing amounted to a clear demonstration of understanding as the principle of real and spiritual life. So now if I abandon such concerns again, the response of people should generally be quite different. They will discover that the absence of the experiential route is not an absence. There is a great fullness that is very profound, when a person begins to fall into it. There is, if I can use the word symbolically, a "Force" to the Heart Siddhi itself. But it is not in itself Force in the sense of movement, of pressure in the life-vehicles.

JIM: It is an omnipresent Force.

FITHIAN JONES: It doesn't move. I think in The Method of the Siddhas you call it a non-moving Force. It is from the Heart.

BUBBA: Yes. And the reason we can still in some sense call it a Force is that the Siddhi of the Heart, or the mere Presence of the Divine Person, is just as literal an "activity" as that which is felt in the initiatory movements of the life-force. It is a process, a literal process. It is not just quietness or an absence of activity. But it requires a different kind of sensitivity than is required from the mystical or yogic point of view. It requires a sensitivity enjoyed only by a person who has lived the Teaching of Understanding and dealt directly with the Guru's conditions and demands. Only such a person can grasp that influence, that transcendent Power.

But the usual man wants experiential manifestations. When he goes to the Guru he looks for the signs of kundalini, of mystical things, of life-force movement and pressure. If he doesn't find such signs in himself or others who are present, he thinks this Guru doesn't have "it." He considers the Guru to be only a philosopher, or a charlatan. It is because of that tendency in people that I have considered it useful for two and one half years to generate this yogic dimension of the Siddhi. But now that the Teaching is full, I intend to drop all of that. I have dropped it, and, in the future, I will expect the Community to replace me in filling in the gaps between each individual's ability to deal with the true Teaching of Understanding and his commitment to the preferences for experience. I expect the Community in general, through the process of real sadhana, to become sensitive to this real Siddhi of the Heart, of the Divine Person, and allow it to be sufficient.

This Siddhi is not experiential in nature. It is not in itself identical to manifest phenomena that may be recognized. It is only served by that critical life of understanding, and it is not realized via experiential phenomena of any kind. Not of any kind. Phenomena of the moving life-circle may arise, because the manifest nature of individuals is a structure made of that life-circle. Therefore, certain kinds of apparent or yogic purification may be generated in individuals at times. There is life, so obviously there will also be life-force manifestations. But concern for all of that is the same old thing. All of that is the personal cult. Fundamentally, no such changes have ultimate significance. They may make some minor changes here and there, but it has been clearly demonstrated throughout the two and one half years of the Ashram's formal existence, that the internal or "spiritual" theatre does not lead either to God-realization in Truth or even to an improved human intelligence.

There have been many people who came to me and very quickly became involved in the experiential dimensions stimulated by the yogic aspect of the Siddhi. They had all kinds of experiences. But it didn't change them one iota. They were just as stupid, just as committed to their asshole destiny in the midst of kriyas, blisses and visions as they were before they ever heard of kundalini. They failed to understand just as completely, and they were very quick to leave as soon as some fascination in their personal life or somewhere in the world presented itself.

So it is not my responsibility routinely to generate such phenomena in individual cases, and it is not useful to do it. It has been proven again and again. When I say I consider the Teaching to be full and complete it is because I think I have shown in enough cases how the way of experience and attainment is not the point. It has been demonstrated how the fulfillment of experiential life in individuals does not amount in any sense whatsoever to illumination. It is just more stuff, more content. It does nothing, absolutely nothing. Kundalini does nothing, absolutely nothing. And there are certainly many people in the Ashram who can vouch for that. It can be interesting. It can be very fascinating, like turning on to drugs And, basically, the reason so many Westerners started' getting interested in all this kundalini stuff, was the need to find a stable and natural fulfillment of the drug search. But the drug search is just an expression or extension of the childish and adolescent search for the consolations of immaturity via experience.

FITHIAN: It's a natural high.

BUBBA: Right. And people manage to get very interested in that. But it's basically a version of the usual enthusiasm, the same drive that makes crime and politics. There is nothing illuminated about it. And the arising of such phenomena does not produce the enlightened man, the wise man. It does nothing of that kind. It is just the life-force doing things in functional terms that are extraordinary.

JIM: Shirdi Sai Baba is supposed to have said, "I give people what they want in the hope that they will begin to want what I want to give them." It seems that now we want what you want to give us, only just now. It is just beginning to get to that point. When I first came to you' there was a great relief, because I could give up so much that I needed to hold onto before. And this is like a new start again, this new stage, because I can give up even all that I have received. It seemed that, when you were giving us this yogic Force, for some reason we could buy it. And it appeared justifiable to do that. But now we can start all over again.

CRAIG LESSER: It also seems that understanding is easier now, because the Siddhi of the Heart is manifesting more. It is stronger. So understanding is easier, because, over against the Heart, what arises seems much more obvious. I have noticed in the last couple of weeks, and a lot of people have told me the same has been true of them, that enquiry and understanding seem to take on a much more fluid and spontaneous quality. Whenever anything arose before, we tried to do something with it. But now it seems obvious that it is all just contents rising. So the whole process has become simpler.

BUBBA: And that is one of the main values of this Community. It represents in living terms, since you have passed through all this stuff yourselves, that real argument in the world against the whole search for experience, even spiritual experience. Because of your own certainty, you represent an argument for the sufficiency of the perfect, absolute Divine Siddhi, that is not itself experiential or yogic in nature. It is not even mystical in nature. But it is perfect nonetheless, and more than sufficient. It is real, absolute. Those who engage in such sadhana do not require the experiential dimension to be communicated in yogic or mystical-visionary ways.

CRAIG: The social theatre also isn't required as much. In other words, your social contact with people is not required as intensely as it was in the last six months.

BUBBA: In the radical way of the Heart, of the Divine Person,. there is no need for that kind of theatrical involvement with people. The life-circle dimension, the yogic dimension, is of the same nature as all the rest of life. That is why all during this time I have had parties and dramatized all the common possibilities of life. Every aspect of life, whether ordinary or extraordinary, was lived very dramatically during this time, because no part of life is to be distinguished from the rest of life. just because you are being "spiritual" doesn't mean you are not also alive. So I put all of it together in one intense time of life. I maintained a lot of direct contact with everybody. I worked this extraordinary spiritual process of the life-circle in them, and then made the point of understanding relative to it. But the manifestation of the Heart Siddhi itself does not require any kind of life-theatre, within or without, for its manifestation. It takes place, fundamentally, without media, in moveless silence. And the sadhana relative to it is a conscious one, prior to all strategies. It is an affair of radical intelligence, of dissolution of the principle of all dilemma, which is the conventional assumption of independent existence. Such sadhana is, therefore, not accumulative or goal-directed. It is an activity prior to the drama of solutions. It is not a matter of attention to the life-force in any yogic or mystical way, but of living this intelligence of understanding. It certainly involves contact with the Guru, but non-theatrical contact. It is contact with true Siddhi, Satsang, the Condition of Divine Communion in which one is not mystically absorbed but consciously awakened.

Recently, I read a story about Shirdi Sai Baba to all of you. In it he describes a relationship he had with his Guru, in which after serving his Guru and fulfilling his outward demands, and without expecting anything, he merely sat in his Guru's presence while his Guru meditated. He does not say his Guru meditated while looking at him or while trying to do yogic things to him. His Guru just meditated on his own. Through that example I wanted to describe to you something of the quality of our actual work, apart from this whole yogic drama that people expect. Thus, in the future, you may not often see me sitting down open-eyed, looking at each one and dealing with the yogic dimension of the life-circle in which each one lives. Most often you will probably see me just sitting there, with eyes closed most of the time. And it will not be because I am falling asleep or going into some trance. I could just as well sit with you with my eyes open. But the closed eyes will be a sign that it is not through the theatre of either external or mediumistic contact that this Siddhi is communicated and made operative. It is Present in silence, it is without qualification, it is not manifested through media. It is not manifested through psycho-physical vehicles, it is not manifested through psycho-physical processes. And it may not be received by any such means. It is immediate, direct. It requires no manifest media whatsoever. And it depends entirely on the conscious process, not on the experiential one.

I assume that the Teaching has now been given in such a form that the Community can understand what it is I am doing here. Now I expect each individual to deal with the absence of this yogic and mystical stimulation, and not to get completely unwound because he doesn't see it arising. Each one must begin to deal with his reactions and truly do conscious sadhana.

One who has become a devotee in Truth can also be responsible for random attention to the life-process of conductivity, but that in itself is not meditation. It doesn't produce realization of Truth, but in fact depends on it. It is a purely practical matter. For the sake of those cases where the spontaneous phenomenon of conductivity arises, I have described the manner of approach which is appropriate. But the conscious process is senior to the life process.

[Footnote: Bubba is referring to the general Teaching, found in The Knee of Listening and The Method of the Siddhas, in which the individual is instructed to understand what arises, even if it is apparently extraordinary, rather than assume it as a goal or principle of sadhana. He has also written technical material relative to conscious conductivity of the life-force from the prior Light, but this material is only made available to devotees in the Community who have fulfilled the sadhana of the fundamental Teaching.]

FITHIAN: Bubba, I have also noticed there seems to be a transference of our attention. For a long time you have had your attention on us. It was typical for everybody to sit around and wait for the eye contact, in order to get zapped by it. But now I actually enjoy being able simply to have darshan, simply to look upon you, to look upon the Guru without any sense of being the object of attention. Now you are the object of attention and we are contemplating you.

BUBBA: The first phase of the Guru's work is an active one, in which he puts his attention on individuals. He does this in order to generate the Teaching, for if the Teaching is communicated, individuals will be able to live in true Satsang with the Guru as Siddhi. In the beginning, people demand to be made visible. The Guru's attention on them makes them appear visible to themselves. He does this so they will see the basic strategy of visibility and begin to understand. When they become capable of meditating on the Guru as Siddhi in God, he no longer needs to be active in that sense. Then he is merely Present as the Principle and Object of his devotee's meditation or life. And there is a perfect stage of that meditation and life, in which there is no subject or object.

There is a counterpart to all of this in sexuality. If you are "seen" during the play of sexuality, the energy is depressed. To see, to visualize, to see imagery within yourself or to see another person as a desirable or erotic object stimulates sexual energy or activity, but it doesn't fulfill it, since motion cannot become no-motion or sublimity, nor can it vanish the separate and separative principle which is its source. It doesn't amount to true union, but it stimulates energy, whereas to be seen suppresses the energy in self-consciousness. The true union, even in the play of sexuality, takes place when there is neither seeing nor being seen. When that whole subject-object theatre is gone, there is no intervention of the ego, nor of the mind, nor of the force of separative desires.

When an individual first approaches the Guru, his initial impulse is to be seen. He wants marvelous things to be done to him, he wants experiences, consolations, beliefs, and fixed ideas. Basically, all that just retards the process. But that is the nature of the student. He looks for contact with the "man," for helpful attention from the Community, and he wants answers to replace his mind of doubts and problems. But the strategy of all of that is to become visible. And he is not aware of the fact that the urge to be visible, to be seen, to have attention put on him, is actually the very thing that always retards the process of conscious and spiritual life in his case. When he begins to understand to the point where he relaxes that demand, meditation on the Guru becomes possible. Then he has become available to the Guru, and the Guru becomes the Supreme Object of his life. In that case, even his experiential life develops in appropriate ways. That is the level of the disciple.

In the perfect devotee, the demand to be visible, to enjoy realized self-meditation, is also undone. But he even transcends discipleship. In the devotee, the strategy of attention to the Guru is dissolved in the radical obviation of the separate self sense. In that case there is perfect sacrifice of attention, or attention as sacrifice, in which the me" who is attentive is obviated in understanding. So in the true devotee there is no longer that subject-object theatre of experiential realization. But there is intuitive enjoyment of the God-Condition in the Form of the Guru and as his own Self-Nature. Then the Divine is his very Condition. In that case there is perfect union or non-separation between the devotee and the Guru.

I have said that I have begun to relax my secondary functions in the Ashram. I have relaxed the principle of my initiatory activity, in which I was required to put attention on people, and to generate the yogic and mystical aspects of the Siddhi. I no longer consider all of that to be my responsibility. And even the second aspect of that work, which is to live in the midst of the yielded attention of disciples, is being modified. I have decreased the amount of personal theatre that I generate or allow individuals to depend upon. I still live in the Ashram, I come and sit in Satsang, I talk, I see people. A certain dimension of the theatre of being present as an object for disciples must be maintained, at least for now. But, fundamentally, my work is now of that third or perfect kind. I am waiting for devotees. And when they come I live with them in Truth. In that case, there is no action, and there is not even any representation of myself as object.

To be object, the object of meditation for the disciple, there must be some secondary presence established that can be felt. There must be an aura, a pressure, some kind of force-manifestation. But, fundamentally, I have yielded that intention, and this body is the only manifestation I maintain as a regular source of that objective influence. But it is sufficient for the disciple. There is no longer any other action in this one to create that aura of yogic influence at the life-level, high or low. That Siddhi has been completely yielded into the Heart-Nature, the Condition of the Divine Person, prior to the body, the mind, and the worlds. So even though I am present and seem to be an object for disciples, even though I carry on a certain level of life-theatre, basically I am simply Present in that Condition prior to action. And that will naturally change the quality of experience that people have in the Community.

CRAIG: It seems that when I have been around you during the last few weeks, the experience has been that you just seem transparent. And when I am around you there is a reflection of that transparency back to myself. Then my own content becomes less and less real, more and more consciousness. There is a blending and a merging in which everything becomes fluid. In fact I don't feel that pressure now.

BUBBA: Under the literal pressure of the yogic aspect of the Siddhi there is always something to be attained. There must always be some transformation, some movement, some experience, whatever. And at the times when it is all happening, when there is the most intensity, the most energy to that process, it seems very beautiful, absolute, and true. But most of the time, you are only struggling with it. It is a kind of enforced attention that, ultimately, is only another form of suffering. But in the midst of the life of understanding there is no such demand. In the Presence of the Divine Person there is nothing to be attained, there is no state to be attained.

And the Heart, the very Nature and Unqualified Presence that is the Divine Person, is the most absolute form of attraction. The usual man can't conceive of how that is so. He conceives of attraction as an "influence" generated through the manifest or material action of something or other. But the Heart is not an influence in any conventional sense, because it is not manifest in any conditional way. It is not Present in the form of energies or anything of the kind. So it is hard to imagine that it is the greatest force of attraction and even of absorption. But it is. And simply to live without strategic demands and expectations in the Company of the Guru, in the Company of the Divine Person, releases one of all of these conventional dramas, all limiting forces, all contracts, all forms of fixed and enforced attention. But the true enjoyment of that Company is not the secondary one of feeling the quality of release, of feeling relieved. These are only side effects. The fundamental enjoyment is that absolute Nature and prior Condition in which there is no longer any compulsion, any movement, any conventional birthing, surviving, dying, and all the rest. It is not just the negative realization that a burden has been taken away. It is positive or absolute enjoyment as the unqualified Self-Nature in its Divine Condition as the prior Light of all manifestation.

Also, as time goes on in that formless happiness, that unreasonable meditation, you also realize that you are still alive. And you can still say "me" in the conventional sense without becoming confused by or in it. Therefore, the Heart-realization, the enjoyment of the Condition of the Divine Person, becomes grounds for wisdom. Then there is the enjoyment of principal insight into the nature of life and how it works, how to live, how to create. All of that comes quite naturally, without its being a great burden, a grave responsibility that involves conflict, dilemma, and striving. The enjoyment of spontaneous insight into the nature of, all that arises is what I mean by the regenerated life of the Heart. The life of Amrita Nadi, or perfect intuition of the Divine Person, is one in which there is no loss of the Heart-realization while life is lived with intensity. And so the enjoyment of the Divine Person becomes the foundation of manifest life. And while dwelling in that absolute enjoyment there is continual penetration of the precise nature of all of this. The world begins to become obvious, directly obvious, without all the secondary psychisms and bullshit that fascinate the twinkie enthusiast.

CRAIG: Bubba, there is a point that often happens when I am about to go to sleep. It is not a witness point of view, but it is just being conscious of consciousness. It is a very strange dimension, where there is just the sense of not being identified with anything. There is still a focal point, but it is just consciousness of, I don't know how to describe it. It happens a lot. I will lie down, and it will just come over me. I will just be aware that I am aware, that there is just pure awareness.

BUBBA: When you say there is still a "focal point," what you are pointing to is the sensation of ego, of separate self, and that continues to be the form of consciousness even though, as in the case of such experiences, there is some intuitive blossom of the true Condition of that consciousness. The intuitive sense creeps through in those twilight passages between states of consciousness, but it is not the same as radical realization of the Heart. In the actual case of the realization of the Heart, there no longer is that leftover sensation of the ego. That point of view is absolutely gone. It is hard to imagine somebody existing or continuing to exist and communicate in conventional terms without that limiting sensation. But it is literally absent when there is the radical enjoyment of the Heart and the Condition of the Divine Person. There is no longer any point back to which the self-reference may be made. The self-reference is generated, but it is known only to be a convention, an artifice out front, not back, deep or within.

But this dissolution of self can't be done deliberately. it would involve too much fear. It would be terrifying beyond tolerance. The devotee does not willfully release the sense or assumption of separated, separate, and separative self. It is undone by the Power or Siddhi of the Heart itself. That is the work of Satsang. It is a seduction in which that principle of self is made unnecessary in each case without passage through the great fear. But to do it yourself, to do deliberate sacrificial sadhana in order to get rid of the ego is just a lot of nonsense. Every individual would have to cop out at some point. Nobody would go beyond the point where there is nothing left but this sensation of the "me," without any content, without any theatre surrounding it, just that. Only Grace ban take you out. It cannot be done deliberately. It depends on conscious enjoyment of the literal Presence of the Siddhi of the Heart, the Grace of the Divine Person. The Grace of Reality itself absorbs ego-consciousness and makes it identical to Absolute Consciousness. And it is all done in a very natural, easy transition. You couldn't do it yourself. You would refuse to do it as soon as you realized what was actually required.

BONNIE GODDARD: Christian people always say of Jesus, "He died for us, He died on the cross for us." The Siddha goes through the death for the sake of his devotees who then don't have to do the same. In fact, they can't do the same, but are instead absorbed through his path.

BUBBA: Yes. The Presence of the Divine makes possible a completely different kind of sadhana from that created by the usual man. The willful, self-obsessed person prefers the adventure of his search and attainment, his childish and adolescent wisdom. But that usual man will always miss the point. He cannot make the sacrifice. The ego cannot be sacrificed by the one who abandons it. It may only be absorbed, taken, assumed by the Divine Reality. So Satsang is the only Condition in which it can actually take place.

One who performs the true Guru-function of the Siddhas may at some point appear to go through some terrifying death experience, whose significance is ego death, because he is the irreducible instrument for bringing that Satsang into the world as a Grace. But it is not necessary for his devotees to go through that. If people in the Ashram seem at times to be going through a lot of this death concern, a lot of terror in the midst of sadhana, it is not because the Siddhi of the Heart is doing that. Such dramas are simply a manifestation of their resistance, their lingering commitment to the ego life and the adventure of their private search. They are still entertaining the possibility of that adventure in which they have experiences and overcome the world. The process in Satsang itself is very gentle. It is even enjoyable. The "event" is unnoticed.

Satsang is fundamentally a very simple, happy matter, in which concerns for attainments of any kind, including the concern for getting rid of the ego and its game, are unnecessary and inappropriate. If you persist in such concerns, of course you will suffer, like any other person concerned in the world. If you study the Teaching, you will continually confront the demand that you understand this search of yours. If you understand, you will always return to Satsang as a simplicity. Such Satsang is natural, easy, functional dwelling in the Guru's Company, and that becomes absorption of self. I do not mean absorption in the yogic sense, in which the life-force is absorbed and the mind only brought to a state of quiet rather than radical knowledge of its Nature and Condition. But through the instants of this life of understanding, this critical and radical process of intelligence awakened into the Presence of the Divine Person, there is absorption into the Condition of Consciousness itself. In such sadhana the Siddhi of the Heart operates from "within," or from a transcendent direction, and the life of understanding, this intelligence in the midst of limiting conditions, operates at the other or "outer" side of it. These two come together to produce a very natural absorption into the condition of Consciousness itself, rather than absorption of ego-consciousness in an experiential state that is distracting but not in itself identical to radical Understanding. Such Satsang involves ego death without the suffering of somebody's dying. The transition from self to Self is not noticed. It is a sublime transition in which there is no theatre at all.

"Ego death" is just the relaxation of the condition of fixation, and enjoyment of that Condition which is always already the case. You are not an ego now, and, truly, you cannot become the Self of God. You are already that Self-Nature. The Divine Person is always already your Condition. It is only that there is a dramatization. There is a repetitive, compulsive modification on which you are always meditating, and by which you are always being motivated in limitation. And you think all of that is what you are. Therefore, you resist any encroachment upon it. You avoid anything that threatens it. And the condition of relationship is the principal threat conceived in that dilemma, for it is the source and archetype of all lost immunity. One who suffers such life-theatre and does the sadhana that is traditionally done to get rid of it would naturally go through terrifying experiences at times because, while enduring the threat to that, he is also assuming it. He is always putting out front the thing from which he is trying to get free. That is the dilemma, and that is the traditional double-bind. It is assumed that because you are temporarily living as the ego, you have got to do all kinds of things to destroy the ego. But that is not the position of one in the Satsang of the Heart, who lives in Communion with the Divine Person by Grace. Such a one is not led to fix upon any propositions relative to his present condition of life. He is expected simply to view all that arises, to understand the ego as a condition and as a strategy of action rather than assume it as a principle. As a result, he becomes more and more absorbed in that which understanding itself is. He becomes thus absorbed, rather than in any of the states that are witnessed by consciousness, or in any of the modifications that are witnessed and understood. Such is the Power, the Consciousness, the unreasonable Happiness that is enjoyed in the case of understanding in the Company of the Divine Person. The Siddhi of the Guru intensifies that understanding to the point of perfect dissolution in God. And there is no sudden terrifying event. It must take place while alive.

Know this. My use of the yogic aspect of the Divine Siddhi was a way of turning to seekers in order to make the lesson of understanding.' It was a way of serving students, those who are moved to become visible and be seen. But now I only wait. The fundamental characteristic of the Maha-Siddhi, the Siddhi or Power of Grace of the Divine Person, is mere Presence. I have yielded to this economy of the Divine. Therefore, in the future, only those who have relaxed the demand for attention, whereby the search for visibility is served , only those who have already turned to me will know me as Siddha and Siddhi. I will make no effort to turn men to me by experiential means. But I will rely entirely on their maturity in understanding.

I am free to take on my fundamental work in this way only because this Community of Devotees exists. The Community now exists in the necessary and rudimentary form of a group of individuals who have seen and understood the demonstrated failure of the way of experience in their own case. Now this Community must represent the argument of the Teaching in the world. Now all of you must serve me by preparing those who respond to the Teaching. And you will do this by implementing the functional demand for true sadhana, the sadhana or real life of understanding, in which the search in dilemma is not exploited but understood. It is you who must prepare disciples and devotees for me in this manner.

[Footnote: Bubba is referring to that specific and complex process which is described in The Knee of Listening and The Method of the Siddhas.]

When those who enter this Community have relaxed the demand for attention and the search for visibility, when they have understood the strategic drama of their own actions, when enquiry in the form "Avoiding relationship?" is alive in them and Narcissus is constantly returned to his original Condition on the basis of that real intelligence, and when they have turned to me as Teacher because of the Teaching, and Master, because of the Demand, then I will consider them disciples. Only such men know they are my own. Only such men can live in Satsang with me and know it. Only such men can enjoy life with me as Divine Communion. Only such men can know the Guru as Spiritual Master in Truth.

My disciples embrace the discipline of the Teaching most fully. And they know that I am the principal discipline. They find the Siddhi of the Divine Person Alive in my Company. For them, I am always Present and Active as the perfect communication of the Nature, Condition, Form, Source, and Process that is the World. The disciple lives a life of Revelation. But it is not in itself a life of experiential revelation. Experiences, high and low, may arise, but he is responsible only to understand in the midst of them. The Revelation in Truth given to the disciple is the awakened or realized intuitive Knowledge of the Divine Person.

When the disciple enjoys radical intuition of that very Nature, Condition, Form, Source, and Process that includes him and is his own, he meditates on the Guru as the Divine Person. Such a one is my devotee in Truth. My disciple is turned to me, but my devotee knows me in Truth. My devotee is always already merged in me, not merely by means of transcendental absorption in the functions of the life-force, but by virtue of understanding, the conscious process of radical intuition. To enjoy radical intuition is to know the Divine Person to be identical to the World. This intuitive comprehension alone is Knowledge, and one who thus knows the World is Master of the life-force. Thus, only my devotee in Truth can accept responsibility for life as the manifest Siddhi of the Divine Person.

Therefore, I do not invite individuals to come and live with me in order that they may receive or take something from me. I am the instrument of the Divine Demand. I am not here to fill every man, but to make a demand upon each one that he assume the prior Fullness and live in It. This assumption is possible only in the case of understanding. Therefore, I invite men to understand, and, only on that basis, to live in actual Divine Communion, and to do so in real sacrificial form, free of all demands, free of the search for consolation, attainment, dependence, independence, or any solution. That sacrifice is the Law. Thus, I invite individuals to come and live with me, in order that they may yield or give themselves, and all actions and things , even the world and all experiences or attainments, high or low, to me. Their yielding is not cash, not part of a deal. Divine Grace does not come as a result, for the Grace is always already given. Their true sacrifice is a response to Grace, a consciousness of Grace. Their sacrifice is continuous, and it is always done with the sense of prior fullness or fulfillment, because it is founded in understanding rather than the search in dilemma.

The Teaching and the Community are themselves the communication of Satsang, Divine Communion. What is apparently given or experienced in the midst of a life that responds to them is also a Grace, but it may not be earned, taken, or held. Therefore, what arises is never the point, but it is always only a paradox and a test, a form of the always prior Demand, which is itself the Divine Person, the Maha-Siddha, the Siddha-Guru. A sacrificial life, founded in humor, love, and understanding, is the sadhana made possible when Divine Communion is thus given as Grace, not promised as a reward or a future gift. And no other apparent reward or gift adds one iota to that Gift.

One who accepts the Guru's invitation is already eternally fulfilled. He asks for nothing but to live in that Divine Communion and yield all in the midst of it. And that Divine Communion is also yielded to him, in the forms of the Community, the Teaching, and the Demand or Presence which is the eternally Present Guru, the Divine Person. One who lives such Divine Communion as the Condition of life is a servant, a devotee, empty of demands and attainments. Such is forever the nature of his life of understanding.

The true devotee is constantly involved in perfect psycho-physical love of the Divine Person. This is the fulfillment of the sadhana or real life of understanding. All his thoughts are the attention of mind to the Divine Person. He need not consider only holy or cultic thoughts to be love of Him. All his speech is eloquent about the Divine Person. He need not consider only holy or cultic speech to be love of Him. All his actions are devotion to Him. He need not consider only holy or cultic actions to be love of Him. Then all that is received is received from Him, and by Him, in love. All that is yielded is yielded to Him, and by Him, in love.

Such a devotee is my own, and understanding, not the search by any means, is the Great Process wherein he is found in me. Therefore, I am devoted to this understanding in you. I will do nothing but serve this understanding in you. And by this same service you will gather all my own to me.

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