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Bubba Free John, 1973.
Bubba Discusses "The Bright" The Knee of Listening is determined to communicate about "the Bright" again and again, in many ways, to describe what this term means, what this condition is. So it is not meant to be completely described in the first section of the book. And it is always described from an experiential point of view, from the point of view of the various phenomena related to it. Therefore, the term "the Bright" is used in different ways throughout the book. Sometimes it is written with a capital "B," sometimes it is written with a small "b." But it is always meant to be essentially the same term. Sometimes it is used as an equivalent for "Amrita Nadi." Sometimes it is used as an equivalent for the Heart, meaning, though, the Heart in the midst of its reflected consciousness or light. It is most often used to refer to the Bright of consciousness, the subtle light of consciousness, the intuition of God-light. Essentially the Bright is the intuition of the uncreated light of God. Perhaps various phenomenal manifestations of this light are associated with it, as I have described. The God-light is the reflection of Real-God. The Bright is the reflection of the Heart. It is all a duplication of the ultimate structure. In the first three pages of The Knee of Listening the Bright is described in terms of the whole mechanism of the perception of the God-light, the reflected light or creative conscious-force, as it appears in the various functions of the descending and ascending mechanisms of man. "As a baby, I remember crawling around inquisitively
with an incredible sense of joy, light, and freedom in the
middle of my head. It was bathed in energies moving freely
down from above, up, around, and down through my body and my
heart. It was an expanding sphere of joy from the Heart. And
I was a radiant form, a source of energy, bliss, and light.
I was the power of reality, a direct enjoyment and
communication. I was the Heart who lightens the mind and all
things." Fundamentally, the condition that is being described here is that of the Amrita Nadi, the complete realization of the Heart, or Real-God, which includes the intuition of Real God, the Bright or God-light, and the relation between these. So Amrita Nadi is the fundamental enjoyment from the beginning. And the term "the Bright" is used to mean the entire enjoyment of Amrita Nadi. It is also meant to refer to the peculiar quality of the intuited light of consciousness. But, as you see in this case, it is always related to the Heart as its foundation. Its foundation is in the Heart. Its center is in the midst of the Heart. That awareness, that conscious enjoyment in space, centered in the midst of the Heart, is the Bright. It is the entire source of humor. It is reality. It is not separate from anything. This is the nature of that humor. "Very early in life, I conceived the purpose in the
Bright. It was to restore humor. Throughout my life, I have
been moved to find and communicate the fundamental source of
humor to others. It appeared in many forms, as enjoyment,
laughter, faith, knowledge, but at last it has only one
form, which is reality itself." And then there is another description of the Bright, meaning Amrita Nadi, or the full realization and intuition of the real condition: "On the level of my earliest recognition of it, it was
my simple state, my common state, my ordinary state. There
was nothing peculiar about it from my point of view, nothing
special about it. It was consciousness itself, prior to any
experience. But it was not distinct from my life. It was not
mysterious or awesome. There was no shadow, nothing hidden
in it. It was not motivated. It knew no beyond. It had no
sense of time, nor had it yet begun to feel any kind of
confusion or identity with existence as personality and
experience. It was an operating center, without dilemma or
unconsciousness. It knew no divisions in itself. Many
energies were communicated within it. There was joy in the
body, its light cell life, its respiration and circulation
of force and pleasure. There was a current of energy in the
heart that rose into the head through the throat. And there
was an energy below the heart that rose up into it from
below. There was a surrounding energy that was spaceless,
but which had a locus above the head. And all of these
energies were a single current of life and light in the
heart that was reflected as enjoyment in the head. That form
of consciousness was bright, silent, spaceless, full,
knowing only and entirely this thing itself, and seeing no
problem, no separation in the fact of life. " The thrust of this first chapter is to describe, in experiential terms, without philosophical justification, this condition, which is the very same condition that is described throughout the book. The chapter ends, "But my first twenty years were the gradual undermining of this certain existence by all of the ordinary and traditional means of life." This is the complication, part of the complication of birth. This is the karmic complication that produces the adventure that follows from this point. Because this condition, that was simply enjoyed from the beginning, turned out by observation not to be the condition allowable in this world. It was not the condition that people allowed one to live. It was not the condition that people lived. It was not the state that was acknowledged in the world. it was not the premise of ordinary activity. So all of the ordinary and traditional means of life gradually undermined the simple living of this condition, and forced it to become realized. In other words, instead of simply being lived as a prior state, it had to be brought into life. It had to move into life, transform the vehicles of life, and present itself to life. So this is the thrust of the rest of the autobiography, the work or adventure of realizing or bringing into life this prior enjoyment. The world, then, provides all of the various obstacles or alternatives to this enjoyment. There are two major things communicated in this chapter. The first is Amrita Nadi, rooted in the Heart. The term "the Bright" is used to refer to it as well as to the reflected light above. And the second discovered reality as Bright was is this notion of humor, this purpose that was in the Bright, this purpose in the very nature of it appears in the world. The purpose of the to restore humor, or to restore the world to this enjoyment. So there are two movements in my life as it is described in these first pages. The first is this adventure of realization, of bringing into life of this prior enjoyment. And that is an activity I performed in relation to the vehicles I was living. The other is the larger purpose relative to the whole of life, to all other beings, and that is to restore humor, or to bring this realization into the condition of life for all other beings. |
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