---

GARBAGE AND THE GODDESS

---

GARBAGE AND THE GODDESS

5. GARBAGE AND THE GODDESS

During the first couple of weeks in April, Bubba continued to party almost every night. Remarkable spiritual experiences continued to arise for many, until the end of the first week in April. Then things seemed to become suddenly quiet within, and this was a puzzle to those who were most fascinated and consoled by the drama of recent events. Sal and Neil remained at the house, but now more and more others were invited, and the whole Ashram took on a mood of celebration independent of the cycle of spiritual" experiences.

Bubba had postponed Satsang until ten o'clock on the evening of April 15, when he gave the talk which forms the substance of this chapter. When everyone convened in the Satsang Hall, they found it was not to be the usual silent sitting. A number of people from Bubba's house came over with messages from him about the current quality of life in the Ashram. One of us was talking about humor, when Bubba unexpectedly entered the Satsang Hall.

Garbage and the Goddess

DEVOTEE: Bubba, what I don't understand is how you see the humor in everything.

BUBBA: I don't see the humor in anything whatsoever. If you look closely, there is nothing to be humorous about. There is no justification for any kind of humor at all. Humor has nothing whatever to do with what you can perceive. Humor has to do with God. There is no humor in life. In life you have comedy and tragedy. It is either funny, or it is tearful. Has anybody ever found any humor in life? Humor is free, but all there is to perceive in life is limitation. Some of the limitations are comic, and some of the limitations are sad, and there are qualities in between that are more or less like those two. But in life all you see are qualities, limitations. There is no humor in it. When you perceive the Divine in the midst of any world whatsoever, then humor becomes the quality you present to life. But you can't find it in life. You have to bring it. In the revelation of Satsang, the knowing of the humor in all things becomes possible. Apart from it, there is no humor.

DEVOTEE: I have a question. I'm not sure I can ask it. The question has something to do with surrendering, with throwing things away. My sense that my volitional throwing of anything away has very little to do with my capacity to do it.

BUBBA: It is very simple. Every time I met Rudi he would hand me a bag of garbage. I don't think I ever went to see Rudi when he didn't hand me a bag of garbage. It is true. I can't remember a time when I went to see Rudi when he didn't hand me a bag of garbage. It was always the first thing he would do. Then I would go and throw the garbage away, and I'd come back, and we'd sit together a little bit, or I'd do some work. Sooner or later he'd give me some more garbage. It is really very simple. You just throw it away.

---------------[CHECK FOLLOWING TEXT (to "new scan") AGAINST BOOK]

It makes it much simpler when it's in a paper bag. It has all those oily spots. You know what a garbage bag looks like, with all those greasy spots on the outside. It was always very easy for me. I could see from the paper bag itself that it was garbage! The first few times, I probably looked into the bag, but after awhile I would just look at the bag itself, and if it had grease spots on it: "Aha! Garbage."

After awhile, whatever Rudi gave me I would throw away. Even if it wasn't in a paper bag, I threw it away. He used to give me the sculpture and art pieces that I bought from him in a paper bag. And I threw all that away. I don't have any of it any more. The key to the matter is not how to throw the garbage away. The key to the matter is recognizing that it is garbage. It doesn't take a lot of subtlety. It takes a little observation. As soon as you see it is garbage, you know immediately that you should throw it away. There is nothing to do with garbage but throw it away! I don't know what else to do with it. So doesn't it seem like a simple matter?

You are just looking at a lot of garbage and thinking that it is the precious instrument of God. One of my jobs is to package it. I spend a lot of my time packaging your garbage, trying to get you to recognize it. You'll throw it away as soon as you see it. You can't surrender something that you don't recognize to be garbage. You intuitively hold on to it. So you've got to recognize it.

But I'll tell you right now--it is all garbage! Everything the Guru gives you is garbage, and he expects you to throw it away, but you meditate on it. All of these precious experiences, all this philosophy. (Leaning toward the microphone, in a confidential tone) Bruce, would you mind throwing that away? Bruce just had a kriya. All of these experiences are just more of that same stuff, but you've read so much bullshit spirituality and religion and all that, so you think all of these things are the Divine itself. None of them is the Divine. They are garbage.

You are being asked to sacrifice everything! Sacrifice is what you are being asked to do. In the midst of this process of Satsang everything is revealed. Everything is dredged up. Everything is shown. And you become very attached to all these shiny and extraordinary things. You are distracted by them. But they are not God. As soon as you become distracted by anything, you bind yourself to the pond again. Everything grasped and owned becomes a hedge for Narcissus. A bit of immunity. As soon as you think that you have it, you have isolated yourself again.

You have protected yourself from the necessary mortality of this life.

The point is not surrender. Rudi always used to say, "Surrender, surrender, surrender!" But my teaching is recognition, consciousness, and consciousness intensified manifests as self-observation. When there is understanding, then surrender is the obvious course. It is very easy. Sacrifice is the principle of all the worlds, but it is possible only on the basis of real and prior consciousness.

The worlds in themselves are the manifest modification of the Goddess, Shakti, and no one throws that away. Everyone is fascinated by it. So the principle of sacrifice is not served by the Goddess, the endlessly modified Force of the worlds. The principle of sacrifice is served by the Lord, to whom the Goddess is also bound, even if she does not know and show it. The world itself is an endless distraction in which the principle of sacrifice is made impossible by experience. The Guru serves the principle of sacrifice. The Goddess does not. The Goddess with all of her experiences serves the principle of experience, of accumulation, of immunity, of manifest self-existence in limitation. So there is no surrender in the world. The demand for love and for sacrifice is anathema in the cult of this world. It can't happen. No philosophy or experience can convince you of it. But you may be served by the revelation of all this as garbage, as mediocrity. It is shown to you in Satsang. Then you are expected to throw it away.

You are expected to throw it away under the most extraordinary conditions, conditions in which you would ordinarily not even consider throwing it away. You are sitting in the precious blissfulness of the spine. Why should you throw it away? It is all so delicious. You have been an asshole all your life, and now you are a yogi! Why should you throw that away? No one wants to do that. You don't want to throw it away. You have no humor, no detachment, no separation from all this that you've accumulated through vast aeons of existence in form. You don't want to throw it away. The demand to throw it away is mad, impossible.

Everyone succumbs to the Goddess on one level or another. Some succumb in very subtle ways, but most men succumb in very ordinary ways, without even knowing the Goddess as such. They succumb to the mass of experiences, of accumulations, of consolations. Everyone is consoled. When your consolations are ripped off, you find something else to be consoled by. One thing after the next. You don't surrender it, because you don't recognize it. So the Guru's perfect function is to undermine all this, to make the world show itself. He makes the Goddess pull down her pants, and then you see her asshole. I shouldn't be saying these things.

DEVOTEE: Perhaps you're out of line.

ADI DA: I think I am getting out of line. I shouldn't say these things. "The Goddess is beautiful. Surrender and let, her show you everything." That sounds better, right? "Let the Goddess face you. She has bracelets and necklaces and her vagina is adorned. Don't let her turn to the Divine and show you her asshole. Let her face you with her breasts falling out." That's the teaching of the traditions. But the Teaching of the Guru has the Goddess always facing him. He shows you where she's at, he shows you her dependence on the Absolute, and enables you to commit the sacrifice. Then it is not difficult. When the Guru shows you the true nature or condition of the Goddess, then you become capable of sacrifice. Until that time you aren't capable of it, because you are enamored by the force of life.

At least that is the way it seems to me. What do I know? This could just be an aberration. Must be. No one agrees with me. I've never met anyone who agreed with me. I've talked to many people. I've talked to many teachers, and none of them agrees with me. They all tell me that I'm mad, that I'm undeveloped. So that must be so. If you consult the usual books they won't tell you such a thing. I've read them all myself. Rudi used to tell me to surrender, but that is not the principle. Muktananda used to say, "Yield to the Goddess," and that is not the principle. The Goddess used to say, "Yield to me," and I fucked her brains loose. I've never listened to anyone. Perhaps I should have!

What is required of you is this sacrifice, and sacrifice only becomes possible under the influence of the perfect Siddhi of God, not under the influence of any of the manifest siddhis of the Goddess. The Guru is that Siddhi's instrument in the world, because he establishes conscious connection with devotees. All of those who come to the Guru rest their attention on the Guru to various degrees. In those who first come to the Guru, the attention is minor. Hopefully it is real, but it is minor. Everything that occurs to the student that makes him become a disciple and ultimately a perfect devotee is an intensification of that attention, and, therefore, an increase in his capacity for this sacrifice.

It is real sacrifice, not a sacrifice in the traditional sense of some gloomy self-abnegation and emptying. It is the sacrifice which is itself humor and love, in which there is nothing whatsoever to be attained. There is nothing to be attained. I mean nothing. Have I said it? Nothing, damn it! There is nothing to be attained. Not one thing is to be attained. Nothing. There is not a single thing to be attained. Have I said it? There is no experience, no vision, no transformation of state.

All the traditions serve your need to change your state, because you are suffering, because the dilemma is the condition you acknowledge in your deep unconscious life. You feel a need, and you are motivated to overcome it, to pursue changes of your state. All the traditions of life and spirituality, the entire cultic existence of man, is a goad to changes of state. But no change of state is necessary for the realization of Truth. Sacrifice in place is the condition of realization, not accumulation of new conditions of any kind, not heavens, visions, kriyas, forces. All those things are changes of state. They are an accumulation, an accumulation of garbage. They act like a hedge around the ego and protect it from its fear of obliteration. None of them is necessary.

This world, or any world, is in itself only changes of state. There is no doubt about that. They will continue. It is not necessary to zip into the soup of non-transformation What is necessary is to realize the principle of sacrifice so that change may become the principle of existence without fear. Then all things will be given to you that are necessary and appropriate, but you will stand happy and full of humor in the midst of life.

One of the traditional images of spiritual life that has come down for centuries is the ladder, the way of ascent to the place beyond, to heaven, to the Divine above the world. The ladder, along with other such archetypes, is the image of attainment, the image of the perfect change of state. It is absolutely false, and yet it is the principal archetype of spirituality and religion! The Divine is not apart and above and elsewhere, to be attained at another time in the midst of some condition or another that you may or may not imagine. That is not the Truth. The Truth is the present One, the absolute Divine that may not be attained, that may not be ascended to, that does not even descend upon you, but which is perfectly and already your present Condition.

It is realized only in the sacrificial realization of your perfect Condition, the Heart, the Very Self, the absolute intuition of Very God. That is the Truth. But the traditions of spirituality or of ordinary life do not serve that principle, the principle of the radical Presence. Rather, they all serve the principle of the change of state. Men don't have principal insight into the movement of life, and yet they act, and they become exploitable by the traditions, all of which have been created on the same basis by other men who were likewise suffering, and who felt momentary relief in some experiential state or another. The traditions have only felt the comedy that men may attain. All those ways are absolutely false.

There is absolutely no way. There is no way. There is no path. None. In order to know that with certainty you must realize that the paths are garbage. You must see it all in the paper bag. So part of the sadhana of this Satsang is the continuous revelation of the manifest garbage of your life. Until you begin to recognize it, Satsang is not working in you in Truth. It is serving the Goddess, the path of distraction, of fascination. It moves you on to changes in ignorance. Satsang serves you in Truth when with everything that arises comes also the recognition, the re-cognition, the knowing again, of changes themselves, of manifest things, forces, forms, and experiences.

This display of Power through the agency of the true Devi 1 that has been taking place in the last couple of weeks is fundamentally a test to lead you into the life of a devotee, to lead you to sacrifice, to lead you to the re-cognition of the garbage, of the limitation, of the suffering involved in all clinging. None of this is intended to be a revelation of the thing that is, as if all of this cosmic rain were the very Truth. It is not. It is just the bangles of the Goddess. If you don't recognize that and don't see her as the Devi, facing the Divine, if you face her yourself and become fascinated, become full of lust for her, then this revelation is no revelation at all. It is a form of suffering, of bondage. The Divine appears always through the agency of the Goddess, the Devi-Power, to test all beings, to transform their activity into that simple turning to God for which the Goddess herself is responsible.

DEVOTEE: It seems that responsibility in every sense that I've ever recognized it or related to it is absolutely irrelevant to what you are talking about.

ADI DA: Yes. It is not responsibility in the usual sense. Responsibility in the usual sense is a willful attitude, a humorless attitude. True responsibility, however, is natural to the devotee. It is living the Condition that has been shown. Satsang is the responsibility of the devotee, not all the petty responsibilities and mortal seriousness of the usual mediocre follower. Happiness is the responsibility. Freedom is the discipline. It is very difficult, so people tend to take on humorless disciplines instead, nasty little disciplines of limiting themselves, being ascetic, being believers, all that horseshit.

The fundamental responsibility is that mood that arises in Satsang itself, that ecstasy, that love, that relational force, that unreasonable happiness in which the complexion of consciousness is free moment to moment from the continuous cognition or meditation on the separate self. That is the only and perfect responsibility, and it carries through to all the forms of life, all the functional conditions. A continuous purification is established. The garbage is revealed and thrown away.

The principle of purification established in Divine Satsang is entirely different from the principle of purification established in the common yoga. In the uncommon or great traditional yoga, not the yoga of willful effort, with all kinds of mantras and practices, but the yoga of the Shakti, purification takes place through the movement of the life-force, and there are lots of dramatic psycho-physical events. But the purifying sadhana of the Divine Satsang is that of the Force of the Very Self, the absolute Divine, and it may produce the purifying event without any of those manifestations at all. This does not mean that you should suppress them. They may very well occur as a secondary matter, as you have all seen. But the principle of this Satsang must be understood, and that will enable the manifest purifying force of the Shakti to show itself for what it is, to show garbage to you, to be known as garbage so that it serves the principle of sacrifice in you. Then the Goddess Shakti serves you in the manner of the Devi. If you forget that, then all the purifying events in the secondary affair of yoga will become binding.

It is not to any of these events that you must be turning, not to the kundalini events or even the non-having of kundalini events. It is to Satsang, this very principle, this real attention that is Satsang or Divine Communion. It is attention to the Guru as Guru, attention to the Guru as the manifest agent of the very Divine, attention to the Guru and through the Guru to the Divine, the absolute Divine, the absolute intensity of Real-God. If you continually do that from moment to moment, whatever phenomena are peculiar to you by tendency will arise. And the purifying event may take place dramatically, in the yogic sense, or undramatically, as an intensification of real intelligence, as re-cognition without secondary yogic manifestations. In either case, there is one process, and you must begin to grasp it.

When you grasp it, your humor will be restored, and it will consist of unreasonable happiness and love, an ecstasy that transcends all the cultic influences of this life, which are immense and cannot otherwise be resisted. You cannot overcome this world, but the Divine has already overcome this world. Those who become the true devotees of the Divine in the Presence of the true Guru-Siddhi are free of the world, and they may live in the world as the Presence of the Divine, as the Presence of love, of freedom, of prior happiness, of conditionless bliss.

That happiness does not appear only as a kind of ecstatic madness, but as an ordinary, human, and enjoyable life--free of the fucking Divine vision! The Divine vision is just the asshole of the Goddess, except it is not recognized as such by seekers. They think, "Oh, it is the Lord." They couldn't care less about the Lord, because to know the Lord would require them to be obliterated The Lord in Truth requires the sacrifice of self-existence. Nobody wants such a thing. They want the Goddess, who will pamper them, and fuck them, and delight them. That is what people want.

DEVOTEE: It seems that one of the last things that arises is this really heavy fear that stops you cold and keeps you from living Satsang. Does that have to arise before I can start living that Force?

ADI DA: No. It will continue to arise, because it is fundamental to the life of Narcissus. It says in the Upanishads, "Wherever there is an 'other', fear arises." Your whole life, every moment of an ordinary life, is at its very core built on this separate self sense. Therefore, there is nothing but meditation on the sense of otherness, of separation. For the usual man, there is always fear. Whenever the hedges of ordinary life, the occupations and distractions of Narcissus, are broken down through the influence of the Power of Satsang, then you will also tend to return to your fear.

That is all right, because it is naked. It is good to know the core of your own event, and that fear will continue to arise until there is the perfect re-cognition, the knowing again of that fear itself, of what it contains, of that of which it is the manifestation. It is the manifestation of your own activity in this moment. You are frightened because you are separating yourself in this moment, and that fear will never dissolve fundamentally until you have dissolved perfectly. What you fear is that dissolution of yourself, and that is the fundamental sacrifice. Everything, all the hedges about Narcissus, the separate one, may be surrendered, but the principal sacrifice is at the center, on the altar, the ego.

DEVOTEE: Until then Narcissus is doing the sacrificing?

ADI DA: Right. He can go to some yogi who will say, "Surrender, surrender." But who is going to surrender? Narcissus is going to surrender. He loves it. All his surrendering is a game which reinforces his self-nature. In itself, that willful surrendering is his hedge. The holy man builds a fantastic hedge about himself. He possesses incredible security, because he has let go of everything but himself. His "nothing" is a vast, infinite hedge that protects his self, his separateness. No one will yield that separateness except in the face of the unconditional Divine. When the very Divine is intuited in Satsang, then the self is let loose spontaneously, and with more and more intelligence. As that sacrifice begins to occur, there is also the release from fear, until there is utter fearlessness, not because you have become like King Kong with all of your yogic siddhis, but because you have become nothing in God.

That is what you are afraid of, and with good reason. No one wants to let go of that one because that is all they have got, really. Everything else can be lost, and you can still be standing there as a particle in the midst of infinity. That is really the only thing you are holding on to. And there is nothing there! It is your own fist. There is nothing inside it, but you are hanging on anyway. It is just a concept, a modification of your own awareness. It has no fundamental existence at all. You will continue to be frightened of its dissolution until you know its nothingness until you know the Divine who is omnipresent, who is existence.

DEVOTEE: How does that occur?

ADI DA: Very simply. Turn to me and it is very simple. Everything else you do will be difficult. If you turn to me I will destroy you [ the ego] .

DEVOTEE: If I turn to you in the moment of that fear, will you destroy me?

ADI DA: I am always doing that. You are turning to me now in that moment of fear. There is a great deal to be undone. All these mediocre meetings, all these momentary sightings, all these sittings, all these hours of study, all these times of living in the Ashram, all these days, all this is the contact with me that serves that dissolution. It is undoing it, but not by magic. It only takes place where there is consciousness in the devotee. Only through the process of re-cognition in the devotee does it occur, not by taking it out of him by magic, without his participation, like a thorn in his side, but in the midst of his participation. It absolutely requires the functions of awareness.

You don't turn properly to me in your fear by rushing over to my house terrified and throwing yourself down by my couch. More than likely I'd just offer you a beer or tell you to cook dinner for me. It is by the ongoing life of Satsang that it is done, by always resorting to me, not only when you are most frightened, but also when you are most mediocre. The times when it is most difficult to turn are the better times to turn to me, because those are the times when you are dealing with the most. When you are really mediocre and oppressed, when even your turning is impossible, those are the times to turn, to do the sadhana of this prior happiness. Narcissus isn't undone by dramatic efforts at surrendering externally, but by real intelligence, real turning to the Guru. It is in the midst of life and tendencies that it is all undone.

It is very simple. It can be done in this very moment without any drama. Just see it. What are you doing? What are you always doing? What are you doing now? Grasp it. See this sensation of the separate self, see yourself pressing your fingers into your palm and feeling that sensation and meditating on it. This is what you are always doing. Know it again, and see what is prior to that grasping. Fall into it. Fall into Satsang and grasp onto nothing after that. Throw everything away but That, and continually know That. Continually enquire in that real sense.

In other words, I am demanding that you continually see this contraction or self-meditation as your own activity and fall into the state that preceded all this clenching and grasping. That is Self-realization, that is God-knowledge, and it is free. It is independent of all experiences, all changes of state, all present states. It is utterly free. When you fall into it with absolute intensity you are absolutely free, free of all the worlds, of all conditions, of all transformations. Then, paradoxically, not only are you free of them all, but you become capable of them all. You become capable of life in the usual sense, and it becomes theatre. It becomes a humorous display of qualities, positive and negative.

Then life becomes a drama that is not leading to the Divine. It is leading nowhere. Life is not leading anywhere. The earth has not been created in order ultimately to evolve into the Divine state. The earth is just what it is. It may become more glamorous, or it may just fall apart. It could become more glamorous, but that wouldn't make it Divine. This world is just a limitation like all of the endless infinities of billions of other worlds All of them are just limitations. Apart from all of that, and also absolutely coincident with it, is the Divine, and those who know the Divine in whatever world they appear are free, and that world becomes Divine theatre for them. They don't always look to go to some other world. They live in God and play out the present event. Such is the habit of wise men. Wise men are all fools, useless people, madmen, because they don't look for another place. They can throw this one away. And they are always throwing it away by living it with humor, the humor of the prior or Divine Condition.

DEVOTEE: It seems that your attitude toward intelligence is that it is the conscious participation in our own murder.

ADI DA: Yes, you may say so. But such images are themselves the kind of delicious symbolism that Narcissus creates. He wants to be killed and all that shit. It is just more drama. There is no one being killed. You can watch that separate one being murdered. You can make him a sacrificial lamb. That won't make you free. No one is being murdered. There is only the turning about of the principle of consciousness into its true Nature and Condition. The thing that is being murdered is unreal to begin with. It is unreal anyway, so why become involved in the murder? If it seems like murder to you, it is only because you are holding on to the body, the psycho-physical body, holding on to all of these things instead of realizing they are garbage. You are not allowing the sacrifice really to take place.

It is not to annihilation that you are invited. It is to the fullness of God that is happy and free. There is no murder involved in such an event. Only Narcissus can be murdered, because everything that is required of him is something he is unwilling to yield. So he suffers everything. It is all being ripped off.

DEVOTEE: Could this go unnoticed?

ADI DA: Absolutely. I was talking earlier this evening about the event in the Vedanta Temple, which I have described in The Knee of Listening. Nothing happened at that time. There was nothing left over. There wasn't some little particle of me that said, "Ah, yes. It is all over now, and I have realized the Self." No one knew that anything had happened to me. I had just gone down to the bookstore that afternoon, and I came home again. We had dinner and watched television. Nothing had happened.

--------------------------[NEW SCAN STARTS HERE]

DEVOTEE: It was no big deal.

BUBBA: No. All big deals are shy of it. The absolute thing is unmentionable. But it involves a profound intuitive realization that becomes apparent when things begin to arise again in a very different way. The implications of the Vedanta Temple event began to clarify themselves as time passed, but in itself that event wasn't even an event. It was simply the falling out of all conditional realizations, all conditional meditation. It was the falling out of the separate self life and strategy of Narcissus. So there was nothing left to cognize. It was all very simple.

DEVOTEE: No ecstasy? No relief?

BUBBA: No. No blisses. No kundalini. No energy ecstasies. No life-force transcendence. There was no limited witnesser, no enjoyer. There was nothing to enjoy. Everything had been released into its ordinariness. There was no sublimity, no extraordinary thing. As time went on everything that continued to arise, ordinary and extraordinary, showed itself over against the perfect Self. That perfect Self knew without limitation the things of this world which were formerly known in the conventional way. A new Siddhi of existence began to manifest. In itself that perfect transformation is not even an event. It is unmentionable. It is prior to all conditions, prior to life, prior to realizations.

DEVOTEE: I remember the feeling I had when my child was born that this was the closest thing to God that I could imagine, this child, and that she had just come from God. That was my feeling, and I was peaceful and happy with that closeness with her in the first days after she was born. Then I began to feel my own contraction. My own fear was kind of messing up the relationship, and I began to become concerned for this child I believed was from God. What I wonder is, how can we know God? How can we go back? How can we go far enough back?

BUBBA: You cannot.

DEVOTEE: What?

BUBBA: You cannot. He is not back. Motherhood is the instrument through which the Goddess gets you. You love it. You were busy thinking that little shitter was from God, when you yourself were something you could not see as from God. You missed the Divine in everything except for that one other person, who was just another dingbat like yourself, for whom you were the physical instrument. Motherhood is just a binding archetype for you, and it still binds you. It is an illusion. Giving birth is no more Divine than taking a crap. It is just another process, like breathing and working. It is just another event. If you were so sensitive to see the Divine in a child, why weren't you sensitive enough to see the Divine everywhere else? Well, you were not, and you did not truly see the Divine in your child. It just locked you into that sentimental image, and that is what truly has you. In it you perceive not God, but your separateness.

DEVOTEE: How exactly can you get out of that game?

BUBBA: I think I have been talking about it this evening.

DEVOTEE (the same): Bubba, before you, what was there to do?

BUBBA: God has had agents from time to time. The Divine Process has never been absent from this world. Perhaps for you, before "me" there was no involvement with That. But it is not by going back or going to something that there is realization of God. That is all garbage. Motherhood is garbage. Children is garbage. It is all garbage. It is all distraction. It all feeds the limited self-nature and its cult of strategic games. It all binds you to that principal drama, and it should be understood as such. It is not that all human beings are literally garbage and should all be sent to the gas chamber, but your whole participation in existence, the whole drama of existence that you ordinarily cognize and demonstrate from hour to hour, is garbage. It is your own limitation, the theatre of your suffering. It must be understood, rather than holding on to some piece here or there as if that in itself were the Divine.

The Divine is unmanifest, the Divine does not appear as a piece. The Divine is absolute, entire, all-pervasive, perfect, not to be found in some place, some thing, some archetype, some moment, some experience, some state. When you truly despair of all of those things and know them to be garbage, then the release occurs. Then the sacrifice becomes possible, and you fall into the Divine, who is Present, not above the world, not to be found, not elsewhere, not grasped, but fallen into, always already existing, of which all things are the manifestation. Not the Divine who is Himself manifest in some thing, but of whom all things are the manifestation in the sense that they are all His modification. When you see through them, when you recognize them, then you know Him. When you hold on to some thing as Him, it becomes illusory. It is only the necklace of the Goddess, but it doesn't show itself to consciousness as such. It only binds, only holds you, and by those means it reinforces your meditation on the separate self, which is Narcissus.

That is what the archetype of Narcissus at the pond is all about. It is meditation on separate self existence. It is not some guy who is enamored of a homosexual self-image. It is every person's continuous activity, self-meditation, meditation on existence as a limited self event. For such a one, even the great events, even the events that seem to be happiest and freshest, such as giving birth, lead to sorrow, because they serve that self-meditation. Therefore, such an experience, like any other, requires understanding, the understanding that arises in Satsang, in the Presence and Condition of the Divine. Only in such a Presence is there release, because that Presence is the perfect Self, the Very Nature that you are, and it releases you from the meditation on the separate self, which is an illusion, a sensation, a form of cognition, not of actual existence. The separate self is cognized, not lived. It is cognized first, then appears to be lived in the dramatization of life. That cognition of separate self existence must be undone. There must instead be the perfect intuition of the Very Self or Real-God. Then life is lived as God, with humor.

DEVOTEE: Once you have fallen into this prior state and are no longer contracted in the manner of Narcissus, is this something you can lose?

BUBBA: Why should you want to fall out of it? Why are you concerned? No, you cannot fall out of it.

DEVOTEE: Do you consciously have to continue to live that?

BUBBA: Yes, because it is consciousness. It is not something consciousness does or knows. It is consciousness. So when it is truly realized there is no danger, no falling from it, because it is not held in place by anything, It is not dependent on anything. So when it is truly realized, not just known in an experiential sense or known philosophically, but truly known, when that principal sacrifice has taken place, there is no falling back. It is not possible. The tendency does not exist in God. The tendency exists in the conventional theatre of manifest beings. So when you have fallen into the God-Condition, the tendency is not there to fall into the usual condition of a self-limiting manifest being.

On the other hand, you don't fall into the soup. You continue to live as a human being, if that is your present condition, or a lizard, or whatever you are. You happen to be a human being, so you will continue to live that in the usual sense, because realization of the God-Nature is not anathema to human existence or worldly existence. It is, in fact, the very principle of it. The Very Self or Real-God is the principle of the world, so to realize it is not to leave the world. It is to live the world in Truth, without fear and without any danger of relapse. When there is no longer any such danger, then you are humorous, then you are like the Guru, who sees humor in everything. You can afford to have such humor then. But if you have to hold it in place, you can't afford to be humorous. Every now and then you might get drunk or exalted, but you would have to keep it together. The Guru doesn't have to keep it together, and neither does the devotee, because he has fallen into that principle that is free of all strategies.

DEVOTEE: What are the signs that we are living Satsang?

BUBBA: Jesus supposedly said to all these guys who could see everything, who could read the weather and the natural cycles and the frog wars or whatever, who could do all kinds of divination, "You can do all this metaphysical reading of everything, but you can't see the signs of the times. You can't comprehend what you are actually up to, what drama human beings are truly involved in." Well, I see the signs of the times. I see very well what you are up to. But the signs are simply the signs of your complication. Merely to be a little happy, a little easy, a little more intense, is not sufficient for me, although it is pleasant enough. From the usual point of view, the Ashram is generally improving and intensifying as a whole. But it is time for fire. Things have been going on long enough. It is time to really do it. Then I will be happy with you. Then I will be glad that you are smiling. When you become communicative, when you become a real instrument, when you cease to be involved in your own sadhana and have become happy to live with each other and make Satsang available -- those are the signs of the devotee. The signs of the student and the disciple are his endless involvement with his own transformation, and that is basically what I see here. I see involvement with changes.

None of that involvement is necessary. There will continue to be changes and experiences, and I have said enough about the importance of all that. The signs of the devotee are still uncommon. Because of that the Ashram is continually dependent on my personal influence. I have to get everybody back into line all the time. I must create all these spiritual dramas for everybody to witness, in order to keep their enthusiasm up so I can hold on to them long enough for the real work to begin in them. Otherwise they will be going on to the next affair. So a little change is not very interesting to me. But I'm a bastard. Anybody else would be satisfied with you.

Some of you have seen lately the difference between the two great aspects of this Siddhi alive in this Satsang. The one is the purifying influence of the Force manifestation which you saw a lot of in the last several weeks. You have seen it many times in the Ashram, but a recent example was these weeks that just preceded last week. But then, during the last week or so, things have become quieter, and you may have become sensitive to the other and more fundamental aspect of that Siddhi, and that is the Siddhi of the Heart-manifestation, in which the purifying intensity is of another kind and functions quite differently.

It doesn't appear in the form of the typical kundalini manifestations. It doesn't appear in the form of movement. It is a moveless intensity that grasps consciousness and draws it into itself. It manifests as absolute peacefulness and fullness, and purifies immediately, directly, without all the secondary, dramatic purifications necessarily arising. And even if they arise, they are at least shown against that fundamental and prior forcefulness that is the Heart, the very Self, the intuition of Real-God.

A good deal of what has been going on lately has been a theatrical demonstration of the difference between those two aspects of this Siddhi, so that people will become sensitive to the true and perfect form of the Siddhi. That aspect of the Siddhi which is the Power of the Heart is not attractive or fascinating, because it is not experiential, and it doesn't exploit the search. It is boring to the usual man. He must pass through fascinations and experiential dramas of a kind, and, quite beside himself, fall into the Heart-Siddhi. When he begins to feel it and know it, then it becomes sufficient for him, and the other becomes secondary. He sees his relationship to the movement of the kundalini and the powers awakened above the mind, and he understands.

The ultimate event of this several week unfolding is the one that is taking place now. Even so, most of you didn't know that it was even happening, because it has been very quiet, and you thought the drama of revelation had come to an end. If you had rested a little bit and stayed with me another hour, you would have seen That instead of going to sleep in your mediocrity. But the opportunity to see it is still present.

I prefer that Heart to the kundalini and all powers. It is much more effective and beautiful and free, but it also manifests the kundalini processes wherever they are required, because the life-force also moves when the Heart is known. The life-force is part of this world, and this world is all about changes. Whenever there is release, purification, there tends to be the reestablishment and intensification of this movement of the life-force. Even in those who live the Satsang of the Heart, there continue to be experiences, descending and ascending, of the life-force. They need to be understood. They need to be known in Truth in the midst of this Satsang. I have said from the beginning that this is the Satsang of the Heart, not the Satsang of the kundalini, of the Shakti, of the Goddess.

DEVOTEE: I have noticed, Bubba, that this intensity is the Guru alive, and when He sees that garbage, there is no surrender involved. It is already at that point of recognition, it is already surrendered.

BUBBA: The realization of the Heart in this life does everything that the kundalini can take hundreds of years to do, because the kundalini operates principally on a psycho-physical level. The Shakti is the source of the kundalini manifestation. The phenomena we call the kundalini arise only when the Shakti has been transformed into the manifestation of the life-force. It is felt in psycho-physical ways, internal ways. All the things called the kundalini are life-force manifestations, and they are no greater than that. They produce psycho-physical phenomena, not Divine Realization but meditation on the psycho-physical instrument. Some of those modifications are of a gross variety, such as kriyas, and some of them are of a subtler variety, such as visions and lights. But none of those things is in itself the realization of the true Nature and condition of the Shakti, the Goddess. They are just the adornments of the Goddess.

The Goddess is ultimately one with the God-Light and therefore bound to the Heart. Her true Form is that of the Devi, who shows only her dependence and nothingness, who shows all her revelations and forms to be garbage, who acknowledges the Heart as Truth. Through the mere agency of the kundalini process neither the God-Light nor the Very Heart is necessarily realized. There is just occupation with self-modification, with the glamor, the hedges, the shrubbery around the pond of Narcissus. It does not lead to the dissolution of the ego. The merging of the life-force in the brain centers does not produce dissolution of the ego. All it produces is distraction from the cognition of the ego. It is a temporary state, and it cannot be maintained once the psycho-physical vehicle is dropped. When the psycho-physical vehicle is dropped, you fall back again into the court of the Goddess, with unconsciousness.

Only when the Heart is realized perfectly is the Goddess Shakti known and her display understood. In fact, when the Heart is truly known, then there is instant, immediate purification. There is, instantly, no bondage to limitations of any kind, to any mind-form, to any form of desire or action, including the cognition of separate self which is the root of all strategies. What I call the dilemma, the sense of dilemma, the feeling of dilemma, is simply the sensation that surrounds the cognition of the ego. The separate self sense is the dilemma, and it is undone only in the intuition of Real-God, only in Satsang. I am talking about Satsang in the perfect sense, not only the nominal sitting with the human Guru, but the perfect knowing, the perfect living of that Condition.

The true way is not grasping onto the bangles of the Goddess and letting her lift you up into her crotch through the spine until you realize God. The true way is to realize God in Truth. Then you know the Goddess as the Devi, and you also know the world, which is her modification, in Truth. It is God first, not God as the goal. God first. Satsang, in other words, as the principle of life. Then the world is known in Truth. Then all the psycho-physical manifestations are known in Truth. Then all the dramas of life, all the contracts of life, which are forms of conflict and dilemma, are known in Truth. It is not by doing something to them first that you realize God, but by actually realizing God first. In that realization there is perfect purification.

Via the way of the search, through the instruments of the Goddess, there is only piecemeal purification. It is an essentially humorless affair, because ego is not dissolved as the principle of such sadhana, but ego-dissolution is only pursued as its goal. In Satsang there is instant dissolution of the ego. Wherever there is true Satsang, there is no ego, and there is also purifying or secondary and psycho-physical work established on the basis of that intuition. Satsang becomes perfect, in other words, when the attention in Satsang is perfected to the point of the life of a devotee. Then there is also perfect purification, without movement, without support.