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GARBAGE AND THE GODDESS

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8. THE GURU WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE

Bubba often uses particular devotees as instruments for the lessons of others. He has described the nearly "instant enlightenment" of Sal and Neil at the end of March as a lesson both for them and for the entire Ashram. He created particularly dramatic incidents in their lives in order to illustrate what was occurring less obviously in the rest of the community.

Between the end of March and the end of June, the entire community passed through three distinct phases in its life in Satsang. During the last week in March, it was enjoying the dramatic manifestation of the qualities of God-Life through the overwhelming Power of the Guru-Siddhi. Many people were having dazzling experiences of God-consciousness. When these experiences subsided, through the instrumentality of that same Power or Grace, people realized that no magical transformation had been worked upon them; that without their conscious participation, no real or permanent transformation could occur. They found that all their tendencies toward unconsciousness and seeking were still arising, and be-cause they had been given a taste of real happiness, their suffering was intensified. They realized they had to do sadhana, to assume God consciously in the midst of life and its limitations. Then, as devotees began to live on the basis of what had been shown to them, understanding began to come alive in the community. Sal's interviews and conversations with the Ashram vividly illustrate these three movements.

Revelation

When Sal and Neil talked to the community on that Saturday at the end of March, they spoke from the point of view of realization, as genuine devotees. At that time they were living consciously and continuously in the Divine. This could not be identified with any trance-like ecstasy, nor with any fixed "state of consciousness." As earlier accounts indicated, they were simply alive with spiritual Presence, and everyone in the Ashram felt in them the qualities of Bubba's own Presence and Force. The yogic and intuitive effects brought about in them were the kinds of experiences for which yogis and mystics discipline themselves for lifetimes. Bubba had suddenly produced these experiences and this intuitive awareness in a couple of hard-core ethnic types, bred on the streets of New York, and who now described their experiences of the absolute Divine with raw New York accents. Bubba has always said his purpose is to restore humor!

In interviews which began in early April, Sal spoke in detail about those events, their significance, and the changing quality of his life. He began by noting that he and Neil had primarily been used as instruments. They were used as a lesson, a sign of the Teaching. Unlike the Guru, they were not conscious, responsible agents for the manifestation of the Divine Siddhi in the world. Rather, they were proof that the Divine Siddhi is indeed active in the world, with the omnipotent Power to turn ordinary men into devotees of God.

What occurred in me was the basic and simultaneous unraveling of all three points or knots, in the navel, the heart, and the sahasrar. The bondage was broken completely. From that point on I began to reside in the chest, in the Heart on the right. There is no movement of the mind now. That "event" was like the bursting of a bag, and now all of the contents have been pouring out. My chest feels like it's exploding. This ecstasy wants to blow out. It can't be contained. And this abdominal thing -- I've lost nine pounds, but my stomach is much larger. It is full of energy.

The most significant thing about this event is that, contrary to the usual beliefs, even of traditional spirituality, the Guru literally enters and transforms. It is a kind of possession. It is God-Possession. Bubba animates this body. I feel Him all the time, not as an experience, but as Him.

Sal witnessed the relaxation of the contraction of his individual existence, the "unraveling of the knots" of conditional life. This had both physical and mental reflections. The relaxation of the vital contraction at the navel removed Sal's conscious attention from the usual play of desires. At the same time, his belly filled with force. A similar process was permanently generated in Bubba shortly after his realization in the Vedanta Temple. Bubba has said this is a yogic manifestation of the awakened God-Life.

With the breaking of the subtle contractions in and above the head, Sal was no longer involved in "the machinery of interpretation and distortion." Rather, there was a flowering of superconscious and other "higher" forms of knowledge and experience, above the usual mind, such as his vision of the Mother Shakti in flames.

The relaxation of the "causal"¹ contraction in the Heart had undone his separate self sense. He felt Bubba, the Divine, animating his body, "not as an experience, but as Him." Sal was suddenly brought to life as a devotee, completely turned to Bubba. He remained aware of bodily life, but didn't feel limited by it. The Guru had entered into him and absorbed him completely, taking over all aspects of his life.

1. That psycho-physical dimension which is subtler than the mind and psyche, high or low. It is the root of mind and life, and the seat of the primary sense of limitation, the ego or separate self sense.

In the remainder of this first interview, Sal described apparently individual and problematic human life as a compulsive modification of consciousness, extended as contractions of the life-force as it passes through the various psycho-physical centers. He described the Guru's activity as a loosening and final dissolution of that compulsive and unconscious strategy of contraction and modification.

The sense of separate self or individual existence is created by that contraction. And only the Guru can open up these points so that sensation can leave. All you can do is make yourself available to Him. But when He enters the devotee and possesses him, the thread of energy moving through the chakras opens out and contains the body from then on. This thread expands into a sphere of subtle, ecstatic energy that extends a few feet around the actual physical body. And it is alive all the time in this way. There is no up or down, but only this continuous radiation. The sense of the small self is gone at that point, for the body is being lived otherwise.

Sal also saw the necessarily sacrificial nature of all existence. "When life is lived from the Heart, all that arises to be experienced is consumed, returned to its Source." Living thus, Sal naturally served as a vehicle for the communication of the Guru-Siddhi, so he also began to see the dynamics of its movement among other human beings. It is always active, but it can be received only by one who is available: "If someone turns to the Guru and walks up to Him, it will manifest."

Sal was not, by virtue of all this, functionally equal to Bubba. He described his condition as a paradox: "The devotee does not become the Guru, but there is no difference, no separation. I really felt and feel that Sal has died." Bubba has often said that the Guru is not a form of status, but a function, and that the true devotee enjoys the same realization enjoyed by the Guru. Similarly, the transforming Power and Presence of God may move as perfectly through the unobstructed devotee as through the Guru. But, as Sal observed, the devotee has no control over it. "Only the Guru can control it." The Guru's conscious use of the Divine Siddhi is his functional difference from his perfect devotee. The devotee does not become the Guru, and so acquire his Function, but the Guru becomes his devotee, and so acquires another living vehicle for his Manifestation.

At this time Sal described the celebration and apparent self-indulgence that were going on at Bubba's house as humorous diversions. "They take your concern off the necessary and absolute crisis that must occur. In the midst of all these enjoyments the crisis becomes easy." Bubba had created a theatre which would make Sal and Neil available to him. In order to bring the Divine into view for them, he had to break down their defenses. He offered them every ordinary pleasure and broke their contracts with conditional life. Under those circumstances, he was able to enter them and take them over, literally to live them.

Over the next week or so Sal enjoyed the continued flowering of the life of a devotee. Bubba has said that all lasting changes take place first on transcendent levels of existence and then move down into the conditional, manifest worlds. The last movement of any such event is its manifestation at the level of life, the conscious experience of the change. Sal spoke the following Thursday morning to a group in the hot baths. He talked of becoming "more and more absorbed in God all the time," and seeing that "there is no madness like the madness of real freedom in God."

Sal was enjoying complete non-attachment to his old contracts, including his marriage to Louise. He was free, happily appreciating everything without the usual self-involvement and suffering.

It's not the relationship that is broken, only the contract. Now I see Louise often, and I feel more love from her, with her, than ever before. And not just with her, but with everyone.

The freedom he now enjoyed also prompted Sal to offer another appreciation of Bubba's life in the world:

It's amazing how that man functions at all, now that I see what it is to live the Divine. Incredible! I can still function to some degree, but I'm just not in that same space any more. I told Bubba, "I'm just not in this dimension at all!" He said, "Sal, nobody IS.

Sal and Neil couldn't maintain an ordinary life during this period, because they hadn't matured enough in realization to take conscious responsibility for all levels of their being. Later they resumed administrative work in the Ashram, but for the time being, they continued simply to enjoy the intuition of the Divine in the relaxed environment of Bubba's household.

Return

On April 9, in another interview with the editors, Sal began to describe his life in terms of crisis. He had begun to sense the quality of real sadhana that must arise in response to the Divine Grace. He said that the arising crises were utterly intense, because he was living them with his whole being. Everything that arose had to be surrendered absolutely. He knew that as soon as there was any move toward attachment to anything, his realization would fade. Sal had begun to feel old emotions and thoughts arising, especially feelings of attachment tied to his relationship to his wife, Louise. But he also said there wasn't "a shot in hell of buying it." He now felt that the initiatory movement of the Guru's entry into him was complete, and the Guru-Siddhi was continuing to move through him. Nevertheless, he did say that he was experiencing the drama of various situations in life. He was obviously at this point beginning to turn more and more toward the movements of everyday life, and to reacquire, bit by bit, the elements of individual existence.

On through the second week in April, Sal continued to radiate an ease, wisdom, and love that made him a pleasure to be around. Sometimes people would feel Shakti movements in themselves when they were with him. He was serving as a vehicle for the Divine Siddhi. Previously, Sal had been a loud, often friendly guy, but also tough, and sometimes heavy. He never seemed to care whether or not anybody liked him. During this time of Grace it wasn't that he had started to care about such things, but he no longer represented a rough immunity to intimacy with others.

On April 15, Sal and several others led a discussion in the Satsang Hall about Bubba's work with devotees and the current events at Persimmon. It was apparent that something had changed for Sal. He wasn't the strong, serene guy who had been walking around Persimmon, often followed by a little crowd of people. He'd been shaken up. He had seen a new movement in his life, particularly in relation to Louise. He had begun to understand something about it, and he knew the problem it represented wasn't peculiar to him alone, so he told the rest of the Ashram about it in stark terms.

Sal said that he had "cut everything loose" during that first week in late March, but had now begun to discover in himself "all the subtle ways that you hang on to your partner." He had spoken to Bubba about that, and Bubba had told him that he and Louise should carry on their relationship, but not as a contract.

Sexual fidelity may arise in marriage, but do not pursue fidelity through the medium of a contract. "You can only be with me" is the mind and language of a contract. But fidelity is created by a natural fullness that doesn't have any arbitrary desire or movement.

That was all "very consoling," Sal said, until a couple of days later. He had been living at Bubba's house, and Louise had been living in their cabin, and they had not talked about "what she was up to outside in the Ashram." Sal finally confronted her, and she admitted, in what seemed to Sal an offhand way, that she had been with someone else. At that point Sal went into a furious rage, so severe that "the whole left side of my body began to go dead." A day later he began to get very angry and wild at a party at Bubba's house. He left the others and went to brood by himself in the dining room. Bubba came in and sat down. They opened a bottle of liquor and began talking.

I said, "What is this thing?" He said, "You're going to kill yourself. You have to cut that loose completely. When you sacrifice it, everything returns that you have sacrificed, but it is free. If you don't, you'll die with it."

Two weeks before, Sal had been living as the Heart, enjoying the continual sacrifice of all conditions as they arose. Now, after a period in which he had felt able to give up his demand for Louise's day to day attention, he was entirely helpless to let go of the demand for her fidelity. This attachment had roots far below the conscious mind. No series of rational thoughts about why this demand itself was his suffering could loosen its hold on him. It could be penetrated only by real understanding, which is living consciousness, not abstract thought.

This development didn't negate Sal's earlier experiences of dissolution and unraveling, nor did it reveal them as unauthentic. Bubba had seized Sal and Neil and possessed them. He had initiated the spiritual process by taking over their bodies, minds, and emotions. But this had been an extraordinary effect of the Divine Siddhi. It did not represent the conscious, radical turnabout of responsible devotees, but, rather, was a demand for all of that. Bubba told both Sal and Neil: "Everything that happened to you was a Grace." This new development appeared to be a fall, but in fact it was a new movement of that same Grace. If Bubba were simply to sustain the condition of absorption in individuals, he would not thereby serve the creation of a Community of true devotees. The devotee realizes Divinity in Truth only by living Satsang in the midst of limitations, and functioning through apparent life difficulties, always turned to the prior Condition, to the Guru in God. Bubba was now presenting Sal (and Neil as well, for they both experienced this return to common concerns at the same time) with a life-level demand, a demand for sadhana, a responsible response to Grace. Now Sal had to participate consciously in his own undoing at every level of life, from the most obvious and mundane on up.

What did that actually entail for him? As Bubba wrote in The Knee of Listening, "Things do not cease to arise." The complications of life and the tendencies to live as a separate individual had begun again to reassert themselves in Sal's daily life. Less than a week before Sal had said it was "impossible to give a shit about anything any more," but Louise's admission of infidelity provoked almost violent concern in him.

Earlier, when Bubba asked Sal if he was willing to give up his marriage, and if he was willing to die, Sal described feeling a "direct hit." "I saw how that contract was very strong, and everything was in it, Mommy and Daddy, everything." Louise's infidelity was a violation of what was perhaps the single most important reference point for Sal's sense of himself. He was unable to rationalize this away or to ignore it and rest his attention with Bubba.

Sal was now faced with an offense to a primary contract. He was experiencing his presence in the world as a kind of cultic and ritual demand, a strategic "priesthood" which seeks to bind others, to restrict the flow of attention in living beings, including oneself, so that real love and happiness are stifled. He was also being offered an opportunity to experience liberation from the cult of this world. But this liberation requires that one abide always in Satsang, knowing there is only God and that no life-level events can create or destroy the condition of relationship, which is the principal, original, and unqualified condition of life. He had the responsibility, in that very moment, to assume and live from the point of view Bubba had revealed to him weeks before, in which "there is no separate one" and "the body is sustained by a yogic process," in which, in other words, the jealous, hurt, and angry one does not exist.

The "sacrifice" that Bubba was demanding is not a motivated, willful activity, although it may express itself outwardly as an apparent renunciation of some kind. Ultimately, as Sal himself had said, it is simply intense, moment to moment life in Satsang an "intuitive condition which is always sacrificing this moment." He had seen that not only did he have the tendency to bind himself to people and things, but everybody and everything around him were also tending to bind him.

So the intelligence required to cut loose is indescribable. There's nothing intellectual about this intelligence that is demanded. It's a wholesale throwing away of everything. If you enjoy the living connection with Bubba Free John, then when you throw the rest away you'll fall into the Heart. But if you're not living Satsang, and it's all getting ripped off, it's death, literal death. You'll die of a heart attack or something. At least that's the way it felt to me.

One consciously participates in the sacrificial process through a life in Satsang, not through withdrawal from apparent conditions. In fact, as Sal mentioned, cutting everything loose in a superficial way has no effect whatsoever on the subtle ways one maintains or reestablishes attachments. No motivated activity, even trying somehow to "love Bubba" or willfully turn to him, can obviate these subtle activities. That is only the search again, seeking founded in dilemma. Only Satsang avails, and Satsang cannot be attained, because it has already been established by the Guru's Grace. Consciousness must relax from its usual contraction and remain in its natural form. Then, as Bubba said, "Everything returns, in freedom and fullness."

Sal saw something very important with respect to this: "People think that if Bubba finds out their game, he's going to rip it off. That's true enough, but prior to ripping it off he just keeps giving it to you." No one is going to give up his attachments until he is sick of the attendant suffering, so the Guru does not merely strip away consolations, fascinations, and attachments. That in itself would only reinforce the craving. The Guru also gives the devotee whatever he thinks he wants, whatever he's willing to buy. This includes the unpleasant as well as the pleasant, for even apparent pleasures only serve to distract people from true happiness. They use them to keep themselves limited and miserable. So the Guru will "keep giving it to you until you're tired of getting it on." At the same time, he accelerates the natural process of the world. "Some people live a certain event all their lives, but for his devotees Bubba changes events all the time." The lesson he is always offering is not only that the last moment's circumstance is now forever gone, but also that even while it was here, in itself it did not avail. Giving attention to events, things, and people, without always knowing that which is prior to them, only leads to suffering.

Sal saw Bubba "always testing and reminding," and waiting for the one who never forgets." Now he saw all his daily dealings with Bubba as the theatre in which that demand operates, and in which such attention is perfected. "I live in that household like a visitor, and I never take it for granted." His statement indicates the kind of insecurity the Guru's demand for attention can generate in those around him, even in moments of uninhibited revelry.

In later weeks Sal would understand clearly why the Guru's demand for perfect attention does not bind but liberates. For now, he had passed from the ecstatic existence of a devotee back to his usual, karmic life. He began to see life from a point of view made honest and uncompromising by the intensity of his own, self-created suffering and the immediacy of fear and death.

At dinner that night, Bubba had said:

Everything is going to go. Obliteration. All the love we've formed for one another, this world and the way it is, the various qualities that we enjoy with one another, it is all going to go. Everything. Everything! Absolutely nothing is going to survive, and even that doesn't amount to anything.

Sal had realized, in a way he could no longer ignore, that he would not survive. But he could resort to Satsang, and for that reason this realization did not bring despair: "When you view your current circumstances from that most radical point of view, the humor begins to come alive." And he knew that sacrificial existence could be maintained, because "the 'miracle' of Bubba Free John is living proof of it, the living demonstration in the world that it can be done."

Sadhana

On May 2, two weeks after he had spoken in the Satsang Hall about the awakening crisis in his life, Sal participated in another interview with the editors. By this time he understood more realistically the usefulness of not suppressing the tendencies, experiences, and resistance that were arising, but living them consciously in Satsang. He said that the sensations of freedom or release, including the feeling of residing in the Heart, had fallen away, but he pointed out that the Heart is not a sensation, state, or experience. It is the sacrificial process itself. Describing his present orientation, Sal said:

It is to live that sacrifice on the life level, on all levels. In the last two weeks I've witnessed its appearance on the life level. It is necessary not only to live that inward sublimity of consciousness, but to bring it into life and to live that fire of sadhana, in which all emotions and everything else arise and are sacrificed. This requires real intelligence, and it is the real sadhana of this work.

So it had become necessary for Sal to become intelligent, and he knew that he had to be willing to live that "fire of sadhana," because he really had no choice. He saw more firmly that experiences of all kinds, including spiritual realizations, wild parties and everything in between, are neither meaningless nor significant, but simply useful in the theatre of lessons.

I have learned that Consciousness exists, and it manifests all kinds of stuff. Look at the incredible, vast range of experiences that have taken place here over the past few weeks. The scope of it all is unbelievable! But if you don't understand in the midst of all that arises, you bind yourself to this world.

He said that he considered the wildness of the parties and intense living situation at Bubba's house to be another goad to giving up sensations of security "in relation to manifest events." During the first weeks Sal had talked about the indulgence in pleasure at the parties as Bubba's way of taking each person's mind off the necessary crisis. Now he described all of that as a test, just another condition to be understood. Sal hadn't changed his mind about the parties, but they had taken on a different function in relation to his sadhana. In late March, Bubba was "making room" in Sal for the Divine. He was loosening the mechanisms of Narcissus, satiating desire, relaxing the mind and communicating his Love, which is non-separation, with such intensity that Sal disintegrated. Now, Sal was forced to do the sadhana of understanding, which involves conscious participation in the Divine event, not the passive enjoyment of Divine intervention.

About a week later, on May 8, he, had another conversation with one of the editors, the transcript of which was read aloud at dinner that night. It catalyzed insights for many at Persimmon who were aware of similar movements in their own lives.

Sal had gone to San Francisco the previous Monday, and had experienced "nothing but sheer terror" for the first hour of the drive. During the second hour, he said, "everything died, there was no movement." Since then he had been fluctuating in and out of that terror. He had called Bubba from San Francisco, and Bubba, after needling him a bit, said that he was "demanding a deeper form of surrender, even vital death." The terror was a purification of the psyche, Bubba said, and Sal should not get involved in it.

Back on April 6, Bubba induced a meditative trance in Sal, during which Sal surrendered his attachment to his body. The surrender had been real, for he indeed felt he could abandon his physical life at that point. But now Sal's attachment to life had reappeared, and that previous act of surrender, made possible by Bubba's Grace, was shown to be a glimpse of what Sal would have to do repeatedly, on his own, over the coming months. Bubba was demanding the surrender of vital attachments in daily life, not merely in subtle visions. And that surrender would have to take place during all conscious activity, not merely in a potent instant.

The primary arena or theatre in which Sal perceived the drama of his sadhana was his marriage to Louise, and he associated his fear of vital death with its purification.

I was seeing in myself certain emotions with respect to Louise while I was living in Bubba's house and she was living out in one of the cabins. You know, these feelings of loss and need and so on. But Louise has been staying with me in Bubba's house since Friday night, and I have seen these same feelings in myself. So what is going on externally really has nothing to do with what is actually happening. What I saw was this vital demand for attention. The cult is a one-to-one relationship wherein the vital-force in one person makes a demand on another to fixate on that vital life in him and live from that point of view. That is suffering, that fixated life. But even prior to that is the actual and universal demand for attention.

Sal had been considering his association with Louise, and he had begun to see its dynamics. What is called love in the usual cultic life is nothing, he realized, but "the demand for the fixation of another's attention on one's individual embodied personality." The life communicated through that attention seems to secure the survival or immunity over time of the one who constantly contemplates himself and seems to animate that flesh-and-blood person. But such security is non-existent. It is an illusion. Ultimately, the embodied one will die. Sal saw that Bubba was breaking down the mechanisms of self-attention and the demands for others' attention. He was turning devotees to himself, the Guru in God, who dwells as the eternally transcendent Nature of all apparent selves. With such loosening and turning, real love could flow freely.

Such love involves "absolute sacrifice" of the self-sensation, but it is not some sort of abstract or merely subtle activity. On the contrary, real love takes the form of an immensely vital, warm, simple, intimate, and free sharing of conscious energy or real "food" among human beings.

Sal observed another element in his relationship to Louise:

When I feel that I have Louise's attention, I don't return it to her. I feel free to go out and seduce someone else. When I feel that attention loosening, then I try to regain it by paying attention to her until I have it again.

Such games of attention illustrate well the nature of all Narcissistic activity. They obviously perpetuate nothing but suffering and seeking. Such activity has nothing to do with fulfillment, but only the search for it. It has nothing to do with love, but only self-obsession at every moment. Arid Sal was probably right when he said that he felt his own case was an "archetype" of everyone in the community.

Related to his understanding of "what is actually happening" was an essential insight Sal brought from his terrified drive to San Francisco.

It felt like everything had died, not that everything had come to an end, but that it, the world, had never occurred. Nothing has occurred, only the sensation of things. The sensation of things happening is what we call ourselves.

Sal saw the fixation on that sensation and the demand for its reinforcement as the individual's very feeling of separate existence. All this implies that the world and events have no real or independent existence. Egoic activity creates and continuously depends on the apparent existence of a universe of solid and independent objects and persons. When the sensation and activity of the ego are sacrificed, there is real love, and what had appeared to be a multitude of separate things becomes known as the unqualified Divine Reality.

Sal continued:

A human being thinks he has a strategy, but he is a strategy. That's all he amounts to. You are a vital demand that gets worked out through the psychology and manipulation of life.

So people are only this strategy for survival, and that's why they can't become enlightened by themselves. The Guru must enter and transform them. The Guru must relax that unconscious demand.

All those experiences in March were genuine. I literally saw the Mother Shakti in those flames. There was that absolute dissolution of mind, and so on. All that absolutely did occur, it was not symbolic. But the identification with those experiences, that was bullshit. Bubba has said many times that the real event takes place prior to experiences. It seems to me that Bubba unravels us in the most fundamental core of our existence, beyond the conscious mind. He then creates conditions in life to serve that crisis, to bring that realization into life. He has said that you can subliminally or inwardly realize anything you want, but it means nothing if it cannot be brought into the functional mechanisms of life.

Sal's entire life since late March can be seen as the playing out of the "remnants" of Sal as a strategy. As Sal stressed, it is not that those earlier experiences had been illusory or merely symbolic. He insisted they were authentic, and he explained them in the context of the primary movement we have observed in his life during this period. Bubba cut Sal's "knots" or major contractions at the roots and allowed him a prolonged glimpse of true freedom. Then he allowed Sal to return, apparently, to his separate state, under conditions that served the crisis of literal transformation and brought that realization more and more fully into life.

Now Sal again began to feel a relaxation of the tension in his gut and a release of his corresponding, unconscious insistence on others' attention. He saw that this does not destroy relationships in life, but allows them to be lived naturally, without compulsion, as expressions of that prior freedom. He mentioned, for instance, feeling "fidelity to Louise, but actually it was to Bubba, just relationship without this self-satisfying demand." And he saw again that with such relaxation, a new experience of life becomes possible.

The energy becomes capable of moving through higher mechanisms, and you realize these "higher" states of consciousness. It's not that you are there to realize them, but the energy moves through those mechanisms now, and all that becomes apparent. Sexuality and vitality become a part of a relationship, not its foundation.

Having tasted the tapas, or spiritual discipline involved in making oneself available to the Guru's transforming Presence and Force, Sal knew the necessity of great love for the Guru":

Without that intense relationship, without Satsang, no realization is possible. No one would have the capacity to endure that transformation without love for the Guru, and of course, the infinite love of the Guru for his devotees.

As for the conditions of his present sadhana, Sal said in this interview that he felt his living situation with respect to Louise should not be changed "until it is completely straight." But later that very afternoon he and Neil both talked with Bubba about how much attention they had been paying to their marriage relationships. Bubba told them he had already made the decision that it was time for them to move out of his house and return to daily life with their wives and the regular company of all his devotees. This, he said, would enable them to see exactly what all that had happened to them was intended to show. Also, after many weeks of partying, the whole Ashram was about to resume its normal routine, and Bubba himself required solitude during the coming weeks. By the weekend of July 6, his work in the world would be fulfilled.

The Summation

Sal and Neil returned to their wives and responsibilities, and their sadhana continues in Bubba's Ashram even today. Looking back on their adventure, Sal, in later weeks, described the Wisdom that was its permanent Gift.

I found that a lot of ways in which I thought I was turning into God were really just ways of turning on. In other words, I have doubts about myself, good doubts. Because the certainties are much more dangerous than the uncertainties.

The heat of that sadhana has got to be going on all the time. That sort of fire in the gut. I notice a lot of people get this groovy meditative feeling when they talk about Satsang. But Satsang is a fire, it is an absolutely raging fire, and when Bubba is talking about the intensification of Satsang, he is talking about moving closer to that fire all the time. It doesn't have connotations of some blissful feeling for me any longer. It may feel good at times, but when I think about the intensification of Satsang now, I think about obliteration.

Bubba is the only one in the world who loves. When you give your attention to Bubba, it returns. He isn't performing that principle of sacrifice. He is that principle. Love is just the exchange of life-energy, attention, through the principle of sacrifice. Bubba may seem to be involved in this obvious drama of giving attention or not giving it, but there is no real withholding. He is returning it all the time.

What I felt twelve weeks ago is beginning to return, but with fullness. There is no experiential drama, but my attention has matured. Now I understand what his demand for absolute attention is. If Bubba were living as an ordinary person, just binding people to himself, there would be no freedom involved at all. He makes the demand for your attention because he is the sacrificial process. The moment you give him your attention, he sacrifices it and you become free. He performs the sacrifice for you. The student or the awakening disciple can't sacrifice. He is still Narcissus. Bubba becomes the Heart for his devotees, and by turning their attention and lives to him, they enjoy the sacrificial process, until they themselves find it and fall into it. Then everything falls apart.

I feel my body coming into a harmony I enjoyed twelve weeks ago. The first experiences I had when I was living in Bubba's house are beginning to return again. I feel centered again, and sometimes, to the degree that there is understanding, I feel the Siddhi returning. As I have begun to live out the life-level sadhana of not dramatizing my egoic demand for vital attention, the phenomena that Bubba created in me during March have begun to return. I feel lighter, easier, and I see the same thing in everybody else in this community. The Dawn Horse is appearing now. The principle of sacrifice is appearing.

I still have plenty of sadhana to do, but now I am willing to do it without resentment. In all the lessons I've learned in all the time I've been with Bubba, the one thing that has been shown to me is how much he loves me. People who read this book are going to think all kinds of weird things about Bubba. They may think he is cruel and crazy and all that, but the people in this Ashram aren't masochists. To realize the Guru's love for you is to realize love itself. What people usually call love is only a string of emotions. But real love sets you free.

The secret of Bubba Free John is that he loves you. That is the freeing principle. The Guru loves his devotee completely. The whole process simply involves getting the devotee to love the Guru just as completely.