MORGAN: It seems like there's two
different kinds of attention. You know, there's a kind of
attention from the heart, which is for me is a sort of a
general name for just being present from the core of your
being. And there's also a different kind of a presence where
you're attentive, where you are aware of things. BUBBA: MENTAL, you mean. MORGAN: Right, but it's not just
the mental, it's not just the mental mind where you are
conceiving things, but you, it's almost like a witness to
everything. BUBBA: Yes, well, to begin talking
about, to break up the various functions of consciousness is
not, has really nothing to do with this foundation, sort of
primitive approach, through the heart. It doesn't have any
parts, any distinguishing qualities. It is felt Presence. It
is engaging in relationship from the heart without all the
thinking and motivation and analyzing, and so forth. It's a
very simple realization. Natural. Obviously the witness is
in the heart, but to begin to discuss the qualities of
consciousness in that kind of a way really has nothing to do
with this particular kind of responsibility It sounds like
it's something complicated then, whereas I tins the simplest
gesture of consciousness in relationship. It is to feel into
relationship, it is to be completely present in
relationship. It must be from the heart, because as soon as
it's from any other parts, above and below the heart, it
begins to have qualities. It begins to have images. As soon
as your approach is through the mind, consciously through
the mind, it begins to have all kinds of conceptual
character. And as soon as your approach is through the body,
it has all kinds of animated functional identity. Whereas
I'm talking about the simplest gesture, the most natural
consciousness in relationship. And it is a felt gesture. It
is a feeling consciousness, not an abstracting
one. As that approach to the Divine, to
all of life, matures, then the function of the witness
begins to reveal itself, and it has significance of various
capacity in the conscious being may be rehearsed and
exploited and examined and understood and all the rest of
it. But there is, you shouldn't consider this particular
responsibility in the Way of Divine Communion to be
complicated in any sense at all. It is the simplest gesture
of the being. Before any analysis, before any
sophistication. There is nothing sophisticated about
Communion with God. Nothing. It is a faceless existence.
Without all kinds of self-referential complications. As soon
as you get into all of that analysis, this is where you are,
in on yourself. To witness is also to abstract your position
relative to what you observe. And that fundamentally doesn't
have anything to do with the process of Communion. The
process of Communion is commitment to what is observed,
commitment to the process in relationship. It is absorptive
communion with the Reality known in relationship. So the
stand-back sort of quality of the witness would have to be
an activity that works against the process of Communion.
It's an attempt to draw the perimeter, to establish that
immunity of Narcissus. only when that whole affair of
separateness has been comprehended, understood, undone as a
dramatized life in the Way of Understanding can this
particular function of the witness itself be comprehended
and used. Before then, however, it is in itself a kind of
dramatization, and that very dramatization is what is being
undone in the process of Divine Communion. The ordinary
egoic witnessing is not a spiritual function. The Self as
witness, Real Consciousness as witness, has significance in
the spiritual process. But the so-called witnessing function
of the ego, the separate one, is a mental, abstracting,
separate activity. It's part of the born tendency, which is
undone through Communion or commitment to relationship,
rather than abstraction and separation. Fundamentally there's nothing very
complicated to be said about Communion from the heart. It is
what you are always doing, and you will observe in the
process of this sacrifice the ritual around it by which you
make it ineffective. But you will discover the simple
character of your presence, your relatedness, as your
sadhana matures. And you will also see how all the little
ritualistic operations of your life work against that
simplicity. And so as the process of Divine Communion
matures, that simplicity becomes more and more intense, more
and more direct. It ceases to be complicated by all of the
secondary born-desiring kind of tendencies that make the
natural Communion of the being ineffective, complicated,
mysterious. The root operation of this Way of
Divine Communion is the heart. It is a felt Communion. The
God-Name is felt from the heart, not recited in the head.
The use of the God-Name is a way of bringing the mind into
the heart, just as the way of service is a way of bringing
the body into the heart. The heart is the focus, the root of
motion, in this Way of Communion. Action must become
Communion, thought must become Communion. So the God-Name is
not a way of exploiting the mind, but a way of bringing it
to its root, making it function, making the mind function at
its root. The root of thought is not in the head but in the
heart. Thoughts don't arise in the head. They hit the head
from below, they're shot against the reflecting medium of
the so-called mind. But truly the mind is the heart, the
mind is in the psychic being, the mind is in the horizontal
plane of the being. So the discipline of the God-Name is not
a mental repetition, recitation, concentration upon a
word-object in the head. It's a way of participating
mentally in a psychic process. It is to feel the Name, to
feel the meaning of the Name, to feel the Divine, from the
heart. It is simply a way of containing the mind in the
heart, not a way of exercising the mind in its conventional
place in the head. All the disciplines of the Way of Divine
Communion are ways of bringing the functions of the being
into the heart, making them processes of the psychic being.
And then the psychic being, the heart, the whole being, is
made a sacrifice to the Divine Presence in every moment. In
other words, turned into Communion. There's no way you can do that
without completely disappearing. But that disappearance that
comes via the process of Communion is not perfect. But there
is samadhi of Communion, which is the mature evidence of the
Way of Divine Communion. The higher process that is truly
dissolution beyond conventional absorption comes only in the
affair of the Way of Understanding, a higher practice. But
if the body becomes feeling of the Divine Presence and the
mind becomes feeling of the Divine Presence and the whole
being becomes feeling of the Divine Presence, and all of
that is yielded, thrown away in God, what could possibly be
left behind to be pointing at itself? Hm? So the maturity of
the Way of Divine Communion is profound. Even so it is
preparation for the radical process. Any other questions? PETER: Bubba, are you saying now
that with each individual in whom the Way of Divine
Communion becomes mature, as you've just described it, this
intelligence that enables the Way of Understanding to flower
will arise in each individual? BUBBA: Mm (yes). The only thing
that prevents that intelligence is commitment of the being
to distraction. It's not a matter of relative school
intelligence, school ...level intelligence. It's a matter of
functional intelligence, living intelligence, availability
to that process of inspection and responsibility, by which
the limiting force of existence may be undone. So it is in
this process of Divine Communion, this Way of Divine
Communion, that those kinds of liabilities are undone in the
individual. People will still arrive at the renunciate level
of the Communion with the varying levels of schoolboy,
schoolgirl intelligence. Some will be able to speak plainly
and write intelligently, and others will not be able to do
that so well. That will still be the case. It won't make
geniuses out of them, in that abstract-mind sense. But in
the living intelligence sense, all should arrive at that
beginning of the Way of Understanding completely fit for
it. So the Way of Divine Communion is
the way of preparing people for that. It doesn't necessarily
mean that everybody who lives this Way of Divine Communion
will enter the renunciate order of this Ashram this
lifetime. Most of them will, of course, but for some that
Way of Divine Communion can be a lifelong affair. And
considering that God is sufficient, dependence on God should
be viewed as sufficient. It is just that in the general
case, sadhana must develop in its higher form. Grace
produces that possibility, that obligation. When you have
the capacity for it, you have the obligation to realize the
Divine through that capacity.
June 13, 1976
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"The
perfect among the sages is identical with Me. There is
absolutely no difference between us"
Tripura
Rahasya,
Chap
XX, 128-133
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