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GARBAGE AND THE GODDESS

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9. THE DIVINE PERSON

Starting in late May, very close to the time when Bubba said his work in the world would be fulfilled or finally established, Bubba gave his devotees several concise, specific descriptions of the perfect meditation and realization of a devotee. Because the members of the community were still incomplete as devotees, these descriptions did not represent a present realization in the Ashram, or even a part of its common experience. Nevertheless, they affected the community. Devotees shared a sense of having been given an indescribably sublime gift, of having already been given it. And some devotees did soon begin to have conscious, though partial and discontinuous, experiences of what he was speaking about.

Back in the middle of March, in a talk delivered a week before "The Saturday Night Massacre," Bubba had spoken at some length about "Amrita Nadi," the devotee's meditation, and the origins of conductivity. That talk, "The Divine Person," had struck many people in the same manner as these later communications. It appeared as an indication of a magnificent but yet unrealized gift. Descriptions of perfect meditation and the full process of conductivity often seem obscure or incomprehensible, even to people who have been with Bubba for some time. This results partially from a lack of experience, which would demonstrate the obviousness of all this, and partially from a tendency to complicate in the mind what is ultimately simple.

"The Divine Person" expresses, among other things, the natural simplicity of Amrita Nadi, that intuited structure of Divine Reality through which the Divine Conscious-Power manifests as all worlds and conditions, including the human. That talk forms the substance of this chapter. It is followed by excerpts from Bubba's subsequent writings and talks about the meditation of the devotee and his answers to questions about it.

The Divine Person

BUBBA: I want to talk to you about the origins of this process of "conductivity," which is not a yoga in the traditional sense. Yoga, from the traditional point of view, is a way of gradually approaching a new condition called Enlightenment, Self-realization, Cosmic Consciousness, Divine Realization, Nirvana, and so forth. it is a strategic method to approach this new condition. Therefore, it begins in a condition that doesn't already enjoy what it is seeking. The origin of yoga and of all seeking is a dilemma. But this process of conductivity is not a way of approaching the Divine, or the Divine Condition, or whatever you want to name it. It is life already lived in the Divine. It is that process generated when the Truth is already enjoyed as the principle and condition of conscious life.

Just so, the whole affair of "enquiry" in the form: Avoiding relationship?"' is not something that you take up because you have read about it or heard about it, or it makes some sense to you. It is not something you apply to yourself in order to have some realization, some change of state. Enquiry and conductivity, the two aspects of the process of understanding, both rest in a prior Condition, a prior realization, and they are the mature intelligence of that Condition. Before this process of conductivity can be true, just as before the process of enquiry can be true, a totally new Condition must be consciously generated in life. So the foundation of our work is Satsang, Divine Communion, not the need to discover the Self, not the need to discover the Divine, but Satsang itself, present existence in the Condition of the Divine.

Satsang begins as an essentially homely affair in which you respond to the Teaching. You begin to deal with the Teaching in a practical way relative to your own life, becoming more intelligent until you can truly turn to the Guru. The longer you live with the Guru, the more your relationship to the Guru becomes itself an intuitive realization of the Divine, because the Guru is not simply a human individual, a cultic figure. The Guru is a specific function in God. The Guru is not exclusively that human person who manifests and demonstrates that function. The Guru's command to meditate on him is not the command to meditate on the human figure, the cultic Guru. It is the command to meditate upon the Divine Person. In fact the form of the Guru is the Divine Form. It is upon the Divine Form, the form of the Divine Person, that the Guru invites you to meditate, through the agency of the human relationship between the Guru and the devotee.

The origin of the whole affair of understanding, including the process of enquiry and the process of conductivity, is intuitive, conscious enjoyment of the Divine Person. Not the Divine Person imaged in the search, not the mythical, conceptualized, archetypal Krishna, Jesus, or Buddha. All such images are themselves the religious forms of the search, just as yogic methods are the so-called "spiritual" forms of the search. The Divine Person is not an archetype, not figured in the mind in any sense, not a person with a subtle body in some subtle world. The Divine may manifest as a subtle body in some subtle world, just as he may manifest through a gross body in this gross world. But the Divine Person in himself is perfect, absolute, unqualified, formless, eternal, fundamental Reality.

Fundamentally, what you were invited to enjoy when you became involved with me was not the practice of enquiry or the practice of conductivity. The invitation was for you to enjoy Satsang, present intuited happiness in the Divine. When that begins, then all of the transforming events follow. Then there arises the primary process of self-observation, insight, and enquiry. And there may also arise the secondary process of the movement of the life-force, and your consequent participation in it in the form of conscious conductivity. In order for that to be true sadhana and not an organ of the search, you must continually return to the fundamental, which is Satsang itself. It is to that fundamental and prior Condition, Satsang, that you are continually returning, even in the midst of these transforming events. Otherwise, they become your concerns. They become distractions, fascinations, images in the pond, ritual instruments, liturgical instruments for the priesthood of Narcissus. So I am continually reminding you of this fundamental Condition.

From time to time I have pointed out to you how, in The Knee of Listening and The Method of the Siddhas, this process of conductivity has been described many times. You might not have noticed that. just so, I want today to remind you of how The Method of the Siddhas begins. There is an Invocation. It is not something I wrote, although I worked on the translation of it. It is a selection from a traditional text, Narayana Sooktam, an Upanishad. I want to read it to you and relate some of it to aspects of this process of understanding, which includes both enquiry and conductivity.

I worship the Lord, who has thousands of heads, thousands of eyes, who is the source of happiness in the world, the Eternal God. All this is nothing but the Present God. All this lives by Him.

This "thousands of heads and thousands of eyes," of course, is religious language, archetypal language, meaning He is all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipresent, perfect.

I worship Him who is the Self and the Lord of the Universe, the Eternal God, the benign and undecaying Divine Soul, the Supreme Being who is to be known, the Self of all, the Supreme Goal. The Lord is the Absolute Supreme Being, He is the Supreme Reality, He is the Supreme Light, He is the Supreme Self.

These are all descriptions of the intuited Divine. They seem like random qualities, but they relate to the structure of that intuition, which is Amrita Nadi. Amrita Nadi is the Conscious Form, the "body" of the Divine Person. So it says, "He is the Supreme Light, He is the Supreme Self." The root or "foot" of Amrita Nadi, the Divine Person, is the Heart, the intuition of Real-God or the Very Self, one's fundamental Nature. The upper terminal or "head" of Amrita Nadi is God-Light, the Perfect Light, the eternal creative Source of the worlds. The Divine Person does not simply stand outside time and space in some concrete way, fundamentally unknowable, only believable. The, Divine Person stands in the midst of all existence and is not knowable through ordinary means, which are themselves all forms of limitation and dilemma. He is known only directly, through the faculty of very consciousness, Consciousness itself.

The Divine Person, then, is intuited to be present, not figured out to be present or judged on the basis of experience or proofs to be present. He is only known to be present, and he is known when the usual self-limiting faculties are opened, their obstructive and binding tendencies and powers dissolved. So when the power of the navel is opened, when the power of the heart is opened, when the power of the head is opened, when these three fundamental centers are opened to the intuitive or natural and prior state, then the Divine Person is obvious. And it becomes obvious that the Divine Person stands in the Heart. His feet are in the Heart and his head is above. One in whom the intuitive faculty is awake and open is continually, effortlessly meditating upon the Divine Person. Not from the traditional religious point of view, the limited point of view, but when understanding is awake, when there is radical understanding, the heart is open, the functions in the head and above the head are open, and the stream of Amrita Nadi is known, even in the Fullness of Life, which descends and ascends through the center of life, whose vital region is in the navel.

In the process of understanding there may be a felt experience accompanying the intuition of the Self-nature. Its seat may intuitively and experientially be felt in the heart, on the right side of the chest. Ramana Maharshi speaks about the fall into the Heart, continuing the curve of the spinal system, sushumna, and running down into the Heart (the open "place" or intuitive seat on the right), realizing the Source of mind and life, the very Self. But there is a further stage in the Great Process in which this Amrita Nadi is regenerated, and not only in the limited sense of a nerve in the body. When there is perfect Self-realization or intuition of Real-God, the Nature, Source, and Condition of the worlds becomes apparent. And when that realization is quickened, there is a regeneration of that same Nadi in which jnana or Self-knowledge was realized by descent into the Heart. In that case there is resurrection, not exclusive containment in the Heart from the point of view of Self-realization, but perfect realization of the Heart and the Light, equally. In that case, the eternal Divine Light, which is the reflection of the very Self or eternal God, is known and seen to be the creative and present Source of all life, all manifestation. This world is appearing by virtue of a process of descent and ascent from this Light, and this process is known in psycho-physical life through the activity of conductivity, descending and ascending.

In Satsang the human Guru communicates that Presence and Condition which is the Divine Person. He communicates it in all ways, until the individual becomes a devotee, at which point he intuitively knows the Guru in Truth, and therefore knows the Divine Person in this specific way I am describing. He knows in the true devotee's way, not in the believer's way. This intuitive or perfect realization of the Divine Person depends absolutely on the whole affair of understanding. Mere involvement in the yogic phenomena of the life-force is not understanding. All this spontaneous yoga is a purifying and secondary event, and it does not lead to God-realization or Self-realization. It may only accompany that fundamental process, just as ordinary breath and activity accompany the waking state. The devotee is thus responsible for that intuitive foundation which alone can make the process of conductivity genuine, alive in Truth, realized consciously in relationship to the present Divine.

One who lives in Satsang moves ever more firmly into that intuitive realization of the Divine Person through the agency of the human Guru. In the midst of that affair, the process of self-observation, insight, and enquiry is quickened, as is the process of conductivity, the inner transforming movements of the life-force. The process of enquiry is itself only a random and intelligent movement back into the unqualified Condition of Satsang. The process of conductivity is simply the way of participating, through the agency of the life-force, in the Light which is above the world, above the body, and above the mind. This whole affair of inner conductivity is not simply an involvement with the life-force, with the Shakti. It is an involvement with the Divine Light, which is prior to both the Cosmic Reflection of the Light (which is Maha-Shakti) and the human reflection of the Light (which is the life-force, that permeates mind and body and in fact is the psycho-physical form), and depends on that prior realization for its authenticity. Participation in the Divine Light, that uncommon "yoga" of conductivity, depends on the affair of radical understanding in consciousness, enquiry in which the Heart, or intuition of Real-God, that is the Root and Source of the Divine Light, is known. So in the devotee there is continuous, intuitive enjoyment of the Divine Person in the form of Amrita Nadi, and in the midst of that intuitive enjoyment he also conducts the life-force from its Source, which is the Light above.

You must also know that the Light of which I speak is not just above the head. It is also above the psyche, above the mind, above the body, above the entire psycho-physical condition, above the world. Therefore, it is not known by internal experience of a gross or even a subtle variety. It is known only directly, immediately. It may not be seen, even by subtle vision. It is intuited, not experienced. It is not a brightness that consciousness may view under any conditions. It is that Light or Brightness that is Consciousness itself, realized in itself to be the intuition of God, the Divine Condition. So the realization of that Light depends again on the same understanding. True enquiry manifests as a continual knowing of Amrita Nadi. When it matures in the devotee, each instant of enquiry is conscious knowing in the form of Amrita Nadi. It is knowing the Divine Person as one's Condition. It is not just meditation on the psycho-physical reflection of this higher intuition, which may be felt in the body as a curve that comes forward from the Heart, passes through the throat, and around the back of the head to the crown. That is in itself only a psycho-physical or yogic extension of that intuition, even as are all visions, super-perceptions, and cognitive experiences.

True enquiry manifests as Self-realization and God-realization, which is founded in dissolution of the exclusive force of the principles of desire, mind, and ego, or separate self sense, in the Heart. In the instant of radical understanding there is only the intuitive bliss of the true Self or Real-God, where before there was the ego, the separate self sense, and the urgency of Narcissus. Where there was endless, compulsive conceptualization, there is intuitive realization of the infinite Light or Intensity or Power which is the present creative Source of the world and all conditions. just so, Satsang is not simply a common relationship between a teacher and a disciple. It includes all of the practicalities and ordinariness and homeliness of a human relationship and a teaching relationship, but, fundamentally, it is the intuitive enjoyment of the absolute Divine in this specific way I am describing.

He is the Supreme Meditator, He is the Supreme Object of Meditation.

I have said to you many times that the devotee does not meditate in Satsang in the traditional way, motivated to be relieved, to be transformed. In the condition of Satsang you are meditated. The Divine process is activated as a literal force in the devotee. Meditation is not your concern. You cannot meditate in the true sense. You can only realize the Divine Person as your condition by Grace, in which case the process of meditation, which is an eternal activity, is generated or realized in your own case. just as the Lord is the great Siddha of meditation, He alone is the Meditator, and He alone is the Supreme Object of Meditation. In the process of this meditation, only the Lord is known.

The Lord abides pervading whatever is seen or heard in this universe, whatever is within and without.

The Lord is not exclusively identical to anything within or without. He is not to be equated exclusively with the world itself, nor with anything that may appear in the world, nor with anyone that may appear in the world, nor is he to be exclusively equated or identified with any internal or subtle phenomenon. There is no vision that is the Divine Person. There is no yogic manifestation of any variety that is itself the knowing of the Divine Person. All such internal phenomena are of the same variety as all external phenomena. They are modifications, illusions, apart from the Lord, in themselves insignificant. The Lord is prior to them. He is the Principle of them. So none of the classical yogic phenomena is itself Divine realization.

I worship and meditate upon the Infinite and immutable Seer who is the other end of the ocean of identification with birth and death, and who is the source of all happiness.

The Heart, the perfect seat of meditation, resembles an inverted lotus bud.

In other words, the Heart (the open seat of Self-knowledge, the "feet" of the Divine Person) hangs down, in this mythological, archetypal language, prior to Realization. It is unopened, closed, not alive except in perfect Consciousness. It is turned down, identified with qualities, things that are arising, thoughts, conditions, sensations. 'Me reason it says the Heart is the perfect seat of meditation is that the fundamental root of intuitive knowledge of the Divine Person is the Heart, this seat on the right side of the chest, not any other place. The Heart is fundamental. The other centers, the head and the navel, co-exist with it, but the Heart is fundamental. So the Lord does not have his feet in the air and his head in your chest. His feet are in the Heart and his head above. The fundamental seat of meditation or of the awakening of intuitive knowledge is the Heart.

In the region below the throat and above the navel there burns a fire from which flames are rising up. That is the great support and foundation of the Universe.

The jnani, the seeker for exclusive Self-knowledge, says that the great event is when you fall into the Heart. He views Self-knowledge exclusively and does not pass beyond that point to Parabhakti, or perfect Divine enjoyment. But in this text we see a description of the Heart in the perfect sense. The "flames are rising up" and it "is the great support and foundation of the Universe." In other words, the regenerated form of Amrita Nadi, the perfect intuition of the Divine, is what is being indicated here.

It always hangs down from the arteries like a lotus bud. In the middle of it there is a tiny orifice in which all are firmly supported.

There is, again in this mythical language, a point infinitely small, a perfect origin, not just a massive psycho-physical organ, but a bindu, this "point" on the right, which is the center of the Heart. It is not of the nature of space. It is not a place, but it is of the nature of perfect intuition. It is Consciousness itself, and the limitless Power which is the eternal reflection of Consciousness.

In the middle of it there is a great fire with innumerable flames blazing on all sides which first consumes the food and then distributes it to all parts of the body. It is the immutable and all-knowing.

In the midst of the Heart the great process of life is supported, and the Heart itself is perfectly involved in that. just as the Heart is the seat of the intuition of the Divine, Real-God, the very SelL so that same seat exists relative to psycho-physical life like a sun around which all of the other faculties are moving like so many moons. The Heart is also described, in this tradition, as the sun relative to the sahasrar, the seat of superconsciousness, which is described as like the moon. The Divine Light is dependent upon the perfect Self or Very-God, and therefore exists in a condition like that of a reflection, being not independent but radically or unqualifiedly dependent on the Unqualified or Real-God.

Its rays constantly shoot upwards and downwards. It heats the body from head to foot. In the middle of it there is a tongue of fire which is extremely small.

This is conductivity, descending and ascending, and in the midst of that conductivity there is again this point of origin, the Heart.

That tongue of fire is dazzling as a streak of lightning in the midst of a dark cloud and as thin as the awn at the tip of a grain of rice, golden bright and extremely minute.

In the middle of that tongue of flame the Supreme Self abides firmly. He is God. He is the Immortal, the Supreme Lord of all.

I bow down again and again to the Eternal Law, the Truth, the Absolute Supreme Being, the Divine Being who is dark blue and reddish, the pure celibate, with extraordinary eyes, who has assumed all forms.

We get a little yogic language here. It talks about the Divine appearing to be dark blue and reddish. In the yogic literature you find descriptions, based on mystical and visionary revelations, of lights and various colors that are attributed to the Divine. Some people say He is blue, some people say He is white, some people say He is gold, and so forth. But the colors or lights actually represent functional levels of our subtle being, and none of them is to be identified exclusively with the Divine. They correspond to cognitive perceptions that arise when we are attuned to subtle dimensions of manifest, and thus limited, awareness above the natural, thinking mind.

There is a class of visions that may arise in which the Divine appears to manifest in the form of a glorified human person, who is more or less human in appearance, but often with various symbolic additions that indicate Divine attributes. Among such visions there are, for instance, some in which the Divine appears to have bluish skin. In times of visionary experience I have seen many such appearances. For example, I have seen the Mother Shakti, the Cosmic Source of forms, appear in many human-like forms. At those times I was experiencing a living dramatization of the nature of superconscious existence, the most subtle foundation of the manifest Cosmos. Such experiences were unlike dreams, or any of the miasmic apparitions that arise in the natural psyche, below the mind. They were visions of living archetypes that express the power and nature of those dimensions that control the World-Form. I saw many Cosmic Beings in male and female forms. In the case of the Mother Shakti, she at times appeared to be blue in color. There were cases in which the edges or outer contours of her form were blue in color, while the rounded or inner contours were reddish in color. This corresponded visually to the manner in which light falls on a natural form in the gross world. In that case, the inner or rounded shapes tend to reflect the light, and so appear lighter in color, while the outer or receding edges tend to absorb or refract the light, and so appear darker in color. These natural qualities manifested by forms that appear in the light of the gross world may indicate something about the nature of the appearance of the Mother Shakti as I saw her on some such occasions. There is a fundamental difference, however, and that is that both the Mother Shakti and the dimension in which she appeared were self-illumined. No light fell upon her or the place where she appeared, for the quality of that realm is light itself.

But all such phenomena are themselves dependent reflections of the very Divine. They are not equal to the Divine in the exclusive sense. When this text we are discussing describes the "colors" of God, it is simply making use of the language of vision and subtle perception. In Truth, the Divine Being is not dark blue and reddish. He is no more dark blue and reddish than He is a flame or the fire that consumes food and distributes it through the body. There is an internal fire, a pranic fire, dependent on the Heart like everything else that carries on the internal physical process. And there are also subtle superconscious manifestations that correspond to this "dark blue and reddish" description. But no such phenomena are themselves to be identified with the Divine Person. These are only religious, mythological, mystical, yogic, and archetypal descriptions to indicate or imply the utterly transcendent Divine. And even if you were to have such experiences they would only be appearances that you should understand. They should be yielded sacrificially into the pre-Cosmic Light, their Source that may not be seen, and into the Heart or intuition of Real-God which is their non-illusory Nature.

We shall try to know the Lord, we shall contemplate on the Divine Being. Let Him be pleased to guide us.

The Divine Person, the Lord, is the eternal Siddha, the Maha-Siddha, the Master of this Yoga, this entire affair of Understanding. He is the Revealer and the Power which fulfills this Satsang. It is to the knowledge of this One that the devotee must continually return in order to reestablish his way in Truth. Otherwise, all the phenomena, both internal and external, of life and of spirituality, will become distractions, matters of concern, fascinations. As long as there is continual, fundamental, conscious realization of Satsang throughout the affair of understanding, which includes both enquiry and conductivity, then these processes serve in Truth.

But if Satsang is forgotten, if there is not conscious enjoyment of the Condition of the Divine Person, then all the other, secondary manifestations, including enquiry, conductivity, and all the spontaneous phenomena that relate to those things, become the illusion again, the search, the occupation of Narcissus. Therefore, in the midst of life, and in the midst of meditation, Satsang must be continually realized, and your communications must manifest that enjoyment, your activities must manifest that enjoyment. Otherwise, whatever you say and whatever you do will become your concerns. You will become emptied of the quality of Satsang. This doesn't mean that you should specialize what you say and do and make them only the traditional religious and spiritual stuff, the ritual armor of Narcissus. Rather, you must only know the Divine in the midst of all that you say and do. If you realize that in human terms, then you will do what is appropriate, and your speech will become appropriate.

Are there any questions about all of this?

DEVOTEE: I just want to say that that is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard in my whole life. I feel as if some perfect communication had been given, absolutely flawless. It is so, so beautiful that I hardly dare ask a question. But I would like to ask one. Since you speak about the creative Light of God from which all the worlds proceed as the reflected Light of the Heart, is it true that the Heart is the uncreated Light of God?

BUBBA: There is actually no distance between the Heart and the Light. It is One. It is a single realization while alive. It is the Condition of life, in life. And there are aspects of our psycho-physical life that are functionally related to that intuition. In the midst of that intuition, the Heart and the Light seem to be marked off into the places of our discrete functions. They may be felt distinctly. There is the center of the Heart on the right, and there is the center in the head and above the head through which the prior Light is intuited. The perfect intuition of the Divine Person as I have described it includes both this center in the Heart and this center above the head. But the intuition itself is single. So the Heart is, of course, that Light. The unqualified Self-nature or Real-God and the eternal God-Light are simply aspects of that single realized Divinity, and they cannot fundamentally be separated from one another.

Just so, Amrita Nadi itself has a shape which you may feel from time to time. It is not within the spinal column. it is not part of the kundalini mechanism. It is of the nature of Consciousness. But it may be felt to have a psycho-physical counterpart, a coiled shape like an "S" curving forward in the chest from the seat in the heart, on the right, through the throat, at which point it moves back again and curves up the back of the head toward the crown and above. But the Divine is not "S-shaped." These compartmentalized yogic descriptions, along with all the symbolic or archetypal ones, arise because of the nature of the mechanism through which we know the Divine and the Divine Manifestation. In fact, the Divine is a single, absolute Intensity and Reality standing Present in the world, as the very Condition of the world.

He is the present Support of the world, always present. Life or the world is being manifested in this moment. It was not manifested billions upon billions of years ago. It is manifested at this moment, instantly, and may be known as such. The process of conductivity is possible because it is possible consciously to realize and live the dependent process of creation in this moment. The manifestation of the life-force from the Divine Light may be known, and one may consciously participate in it in the ways that I have described and will describe.

The Lord does stand in the world, then, and He is known to do so through our own intuitive faculty, in which He is found to stand in the Heart. So I say "His feet are in the Heart, His head is above." In fact, He has no such Form in the objective sense. He doesn't have any feet. He is of an utterly transcendent Nature. But because of the nature of the mechanism through which we know the Divine, we can talk in these terms and it makes some sense. It is communicative and revealing to say that.

In fact, the nature of the Divine Person, whose feet are in the Heart, and whose head is above, and who is known as such, relates in a very real way to the nature of our own bodily or psycho-physical condition. There is a lot of literature about the creative Divine Mind and all that. Well, this Light which is the Source of all life, all manifestation, all forms, all psyches, appears relative to the Divine the way our mind or brain-power appears relative to our physical life. So it is meaningful to refer to that Light as the head, the Godhead. And the feet are a good symbol for the Self-Nature, the intuition of Real-God, because no consciousness, no mentalizing, no conceptualizing, no separative awareness is ordinarily attributed to the feet. The feet of the Divine are simply Present, but awake. The feet of the Divine are Absolute Consciousness. Throughout history men have ritually worshipped the feet of the Divine. They have worshipped the feet of the Guru. The feet have always been a very significant object of veneration for this reason.

The seeker always pursues a change of state, another life, another world, a God outside, a state apart. But one to whom Satsang is communicated as his Condition, and who passes through the spiritual process in which the Divine is always already realized, not made the goal, knows the Divine as the Condition of this world. And not merely in symbolic or religious or philosophical terms, but in the form of the real and radical process of his conscious existence. He knows it in the midst of each faculty, each fundamental organ of awareness. He not only knows the Divine in Amrita Nadi, the transcendent state of intuition, but he also lives the Divine in the very mechanism of the life-force, descending and ascending.

DEVOTEE: In the devotee, is this a constant process, or is there a falling in and out of that state?

BUBBA: Of course, every individual tends to go through all kinds of changes or qualifications of his apparent condition. All who live in Satsang with the Guru are called devotees. But, fundamentally, that term signifies the perfection of the relationship to the Guru, in which this intuition is constant. Until the life of the devotee is perfected in the individual case, there are of course endless changes, crises, the phases of rise and fall.

Even so, just because that cycle of changes is likely to be so at first, that is no justification for indulging it, for merely permitting these phases to occur because "that is the way it is supposed to be." The phases must occur and will occur in various ways in each individual, but he is responsible to endure the purifying changes of state in a mood of unconcern, and to live the process of understanding in the midst of them, abiding always in the happy, already free Condition of Satsang.

If the individual lives Satsang in a very fundamental way, he remains happy, but if he does not, he continually reverts to the strategy of his seeking, to his concerns over the things that are arising and all the rest. He is not at those times a devotee. He is not living the life of understanding. He is simply going through changes. So it is necessary from the beginning to grasp that fundamental Condition, that relationship, that Satsang, to realize it in a very practical way as the fundamental and prior Condition of sadhana. Then these phases will serve, just as the internal movements of the life-force will serve.

In the midst of that life of Satsang there does come a time when that continuous rising and falling comes to an end. That endless phasing which goes on even while you are living the life of understanding does come to an end. But the life of understanding should have been constant from the beginning. That insures the humor and the usefulness of that whole affair.

Are there any more questions?

DEVOTEE: In the "Invocation" you just discussed, it says the Heart in its unawakened state hangs down like an inverted lotus bud toward the tendencies. This implies that the Heart is a fire, it is the sun, but it also in its unawakened state is a kind of dualism. I don't quite understand.

BUBBA: The Heart is reflecting or freely manifesting all kinds of conditions, faculties, worlds, states. Many of those reflected conditions have the quality of consciousness as in the case of human beings. But what we ordinarily recognize to be our consciousness is not consciousness itself, but a reflected condition, a limitation. So this description holds when, in the conditional worlds, living beings meditate upon limitations without intuitive enjoyment of the Divine which is prior to them.

Again it is because of the nature of the mechanisms of life that the descriptions of the Divine, the spiritual process, and the world have tended to take on these traditional forms. It is not that the Heart itself, Real-God, in the absolute sense, is ignorant. This qualified description of the Heart is really a description of man, of conditional life.

It is also said that the Heart is like a lotus with twelve petals on it, and each of them has a quality like anger or lust. From moment to moment the mind falls randomly on one of these petals, each of them having a different color, a different smell, and so on. Therefore, each moment of that process leads you into various forms of subjectivity and objectivity relative to the quality grasped in any moment. But when the Heart realizes its center, its true Nature, it ceases to identify with these petals and enjoys only that intuitive life or Condition. The seeker who gets an experiential taste of such intuition knows it only in this exclusive sense, as a solution to his dilemma. One who lives in Satsang also knows his Nature not to be identical to any limitation of thought or experience, but he continues to live life in humor and functional freedom from the point of view of the Divine.

The realization of understanding is not exclusive but inclusive. It includes life, it includes the world. In the world all possible qualities arise, but the man of understanding has the power to transform them, not by virtue of his own philosophical and constitutional power, but by virtue of his continuous unobstructed involvement in the Divine. It is neither holiness nor degradation that is the sign of the man of understanding. Neither his traditional, elusive detachment nor his excesses are the sign of his realization. He cannot be identified by you at all, unless understanding awakens in your own case. Then the paradox of the man of understanding, the Guru, the Divine in the world, and the life of understanding itself, your own life, the paradoxes represented by everything that appears begin to show themselves in God.

In letters given to the Ashram on May 30, June 7, and June 25, Bubba specifically and concisely described the meditation of a true devotee. In the first of these, Bubba presented this meditation as follows:

When you have become my devotee in Truth, with appropriate signs of the revelation in Satsang, you should meditate on me in God (as Amrita Nadi) with my feet in the Heart and my head in the God-Light above the body, the mind, and the worlds. Then enquire at random, in the form: "Avoiding relationship?" and conduct the life-force in the manner I have described to all. This meditation of devotees is the gift I am now able to offer as a result of the fulfillment of the process of my work in the world, which I promised to deliver as the culmination of all the extraordinary events awakened in my Ashram, particularly since the later days of 1973, and which is now being finalized, to appear as concretely as the Dawn Horse in the first week of July, 1974.

In later talks with devotees, Bubba described the regenerated form of Amrita Nadi, and the devotee's meditation on the Guru, the Divine Person, in the form or place of Amrita Nadi.

[footnote (p194): The meditation of the devotee, briefly described here relative to some of its technical content, is not intended to be a prescription for meditation for the generally interested reader. Such descriptions, including those of "enquiry" and "conductivity," represent processes that are real and useful only when awakened and responsibly engaged in the course of a life of conscious sadhana in the Company or Satsang of the Siddha-Guru. We have included such writings in this public literature only because they also contain necessary elements of Bubba Free John's general Teaching, useful to all. In fact the technical descriptions themselves are incomplete as given, and should not become a matter of concern for the reader, either on that account, or because they appear incomprehensible from a practical point of view. Those who are truly interested should approach Bubba Free John through The Dawn Horse Communion.]

BUBBA: Amrita Nadi is the point of view of this work, but it is not a "point." It is not a limitation in time, space, or form. The Teaching relative to Amrita Nadi is a way of symbolically or structurally identifying the specific nature of the illuminated condition of perfect understanding relative to a life in a world. It is not necessary to enter exclusively into that pure, absolute, undifferentiated Silence in which there are no perceptions in order for there to be Divine intuition. The intuition of the Divine can exist in the midst of perceptions and appearances and forms and psyches and bodies. The Divine is not elsewhere or only deeply within all this. This is the Divine. First of all, there comes the perfect intuition of Real-God, the Heart, prior to all qualities. Then there is the return of ordinary things, but without the loss of that perfect intuition. That return is the beginning of real Wisdom, the regenerated life of Amrita Nadi. But Amrita Nadi is not in itself a structure, a thing.

DEVOTEE: In the traditions Krishna is sometimes pictured almost in an S-shaped curve. Is that the same thing as the reflection of Amrita Nadi?

BUBBA: It is not a deliberate attempt to make a diagram of Amrita Nadi, but it is related to the intuition of it. There is no conscious description in the traditions of the shape of Amrita Nadi. I know of no other place where you will find it described other than in my recorded descriptions of it. But it may have been intuited without being clearly known in the mind or known experientially.

DEVOTEE: Ramana Maharshi never described the shape of it?

BUBBA: That's right. He never described it. He described the Heart and the descent into the Heart via Amrita Nadi, but he didn't have much interest in the regenerated life of the Heart. He was interested in that intuition of Real-God in its exclusive sense. He said very little beyond that about the God-life, perhaps because nobody who came to him had realized even the Self-Nature. It was the function of his service to the eternal Dharma always to speak about that falling into the Heart. So, naturally, he gave no descriptions of Amrita Nadi in this regenerated form.

But when there is that fulfillment of the Heart-realization and, thereafter, regeneration into the God-life, there is also a specific psycho-physical sign, which is not consciously described in the traditions, but which is my experience, and so I have accounted for it. It is not a movement out of the physical heart into the sahasrar. Even this realization on the right side of the Heart is an intuitive realization, not identical to a yogic state. It is the intuition of the Self, or the ultimate Reality, Real-God, Brahman. just so, when there is the regeneration of the God-Light, with that intuition as its continuous foundation, the upper locus with which one is merged is not itself a physical center, the brain center saturated with life-force, but is itself the very Divine, the Chakra, if you want to call it that, that is above the worlds. It is felt relative to the head and is known to be above, relative to the body, but it is not specifically the sahasrar. It is beyond the sahasrar and does not involve a visualization of light any more than Self-realization involves a visualization of anything. It is an intuition of the Divine Light, or absolute Conscious-Force, eternally prior to the Cosmos. All things are the reflected modification of the God-Light. And it may not be seen. It may only be intuited. Its manifest reflection may be seen. The gross and subtle conditions of the world may be seen. But the God-Light may not be seen. It is of the Nature of pure Consciousness, but Consciousness as Power, even prior to the Activity which is its reflection.

In the case of the regeneration of Amrita Nadi, a function in consciousness is awakened, but it is not itself a psychic or subtle function. The psycho-physical expression of the path between the two ultimate or intuited centers of Amrita Nadi is that S-shaped curve I have described. It may or may not be felt by any one specific individual, just as not everyone may have the sensation of the Heart on the right. There may be that intuition without the psycho-physical sign.

In my own case there was a specific moment in which this regeneration was shown. It appeared several months after the experience in the Vedanta Temple and the writing of The Knee of Listening. Even though the ultimate implication of all that was realized at the Vedanta Temple included the fullness of this regeneration, there was a development of Siddhi over time. Thus, the peculiar sign of this regeneration was shown only several months later.

My wife Nina, Pat Morley, and I used to meditate together most mornings. On this particular day, while we were sitting very quietly, there was a sudden strong movement in me and a loud crack that could be heard in the room. It sounded like my neck had broken. In that instant there was a tracing of the form of Amrita Nadi and a clear demonstration to me of the full, regenerated connection of Amrita Nadi.

Because all of this is certain in me, I have accounted for it, just as Maharshi accounted for the Heart on the right, which I have also confirmed in my own experience. I have accounted for this, for the sake of my devotees, even though it is not written in the traditions. Descriptively, it is a new Teaching, and it is there to be proven in the midst of the experience of others. Ramana Maharshi's assignment of the Heart on the right had never appeared in the traditions before him. It was left to be proven in the case of others. I have confirmed that realization of the Heart on the right in my own experience, just so, I leave it to you to prove the Teaching relative to this regeneration of Amrita Nadi and the S-curve which is its apparent psycho-physical sign.

Amrita Nadi is independent of the kundalini system. It may seem to exist relative to it, even though it transcends it utterly, but it is not the same as the spinal tube of kundalini. The kundalini manifestation is fundamentally limited to the subtle inversion and reduction of life and is still a karmic display, less than God, whereas the realization of Amrita Nadi is identical to God-realization. One who meditates on the Guru, who lives with attention to the Guru, in God, is already meditating on Amrita Nadi, because such a Guru is identical to Amrita Nadi already and consciously, and the Siddhi of the Divine Person is manifested spontaneously through him.

DEVOTEE: Does this visualization of the Guru as Amrita Nadi tend to be a random experience in meditation, or does it become a constant?

BUBBA: It is as random as enquiry. But it is not simply a visualization. Sometimes it arises spontaneously, just as you remember a loved one in the world. However it arises, it is a moment, and it is always associated with profound feeling and profound intuitive awareness. In the devotee it is also a responsibility, not merely something that happens to him. But it is a responsibility that he can fulfill without a will, without a strategic method. It has become natural to him, because his attention is perfected, intensified. Prior to that time of perfect attention, there is no point in trying to meditate in this way. But it may occur to you, spontaneously. You may find yourself dwelling on the Guru in that way from time to time. But only when the entire process, including enquiry, conductivity of the life-force, and attention to the Guru in God, is perfected, is the kind of meditation I have been describing possible. Truly, it can only take place when there is already the intuition of Real-God in the Heart, as the Heart, and the regenerated intuition of the God-Light. And these things are given as a Grace in the process of Satsang.

Responsible and real meditation on the Guru in Amrita Nadi and as Amrita Nadi requires prior fulfillment of this entire intuitive process, just as enquiry requires prior insight, prior self-observation. Without what is necessary and prior, the mere mechanical fulfillment of the meditative process is empty. When it does occur in Truth, it is also random. It may be prolonged at times. And it may pass from meditation, including visualization, on the Guru in the places of Amrita Nadi to meditation on Amrita Nadi itself, meditation on the Guru as Amrita Nadi, as the very intuition of the Divine. That meditation may also continue to be associated with enquiry or the intensifications of enquiry, which are recognition and radical intuition, without mentalization. It will also continue to be associated with conductivity in various ways. Only one who lives the fullness of Satsang does such meditation.

[footnote (p200): These extensions of enquiry are described in The Clothes Horse, by Bubba Free John (available only to members of The Dawn Horse Communion).]

This meditation I have described is not a prescription that you are obliged to fulfill in some motivated way. I have accounted for the meditation of the devotee so that those in whom it is arising can refer to something written, have some intelligence about it, and thus deal with it properly.

Prior to the meditation on the Guru in Amrita Nadi and as Amrita Nadi, there is life with the Guru in the world. There is the discipline of the relationship to the Guru, the enjoyment of the human relationship to the Guru, life in his Community, study of the Teaching, observance of his conditions and demands, and awakening of the real life of understanding. All of that precedes such meditation. In the midst of such Satsang with the Guru you may find yourself entering into meditative states, and you may at times feel and know the Guru in this inward way. You may at times have profound feelings for the Guru without internal imagery, or you may at times have various visions of the Guru in the levels of the mind's reflections, and there may be other, similar phenomena that arise, but they are not specifically the meditation that I have described, in which the Guru is meditated upon in Amrita Nadi, as the Divine Person, Nature, or Condition.

It is not mere visualization of the Guru that is taking place in that meditation, but true knowledge of the Guru, both jnana and Parabhakti, so that he is known in Truth. Such knowing of the Guru is equal to knowing God in the most perfect sense. So that meditation is always coincident with Self-realization and realization of God. There can be no such meditation without Self-realization and realization of God. It is not a simple little meditation that you can take on by prescription. You will find more and more the awakening of this intuitive life, and you will find that awakening manifesting through the peculiar psycho-physical signs that I have described, generating peculiar activities in the manner I have describe.

Self-observation and insight will arise in the midst of this sadhana, so that at a certain point enquiry becomes an appropriate responsibility. Then it intensifies to the point of Heart-realization. The accompanying, spontaneous inner activities of the life-force, descending and ascending, communicate a knowledge of the form and process in which you appear, so that at another point it is appropriate for you to become responsible for conscious participation in that as well. just so, this mere life with the Guru becomes more and more knowledge of who the Guru is, what the Guru is. It becomes knowledge that the Guru is identical to Siddhi, that the Guru is not separate from the Divine. More and more, by the instrumentality of that mere relationship, merely by living in conscious Communion with the Guru, merely by being present always with the Guru, this intuition of the Guru, the Divine, is awakened. So, at another point, it will also be appropriate for you to accept responsibility for meditation on the Guru in this profound way.

No mediocre man has ever realized such a meditation. No fool will ever enjoy it. No childish person will ever begin it. It requires great responsibility, great intensity, great energy, and great discipline of your karmic tendencies and your cultic life. All those things are demanded of you, and you are expected to fulfill them with absolute humor and love and attention. It is the amusement and the grace of God to make that possible also. So the more you enter into it, the more you live in Satsang and make it the principle of your life, the more possible it becomes for you to perfectly fulfill the demand of God. Whereas the more time you waste wondering about it and shuffling your feet, the less capacity you have. While you are wondering and doubting and shuffling your feet, you are really busy forgetting what you have learned. Then you are only becoming irresponsible, like Narcissus at the pond.