The
conventional or experiential point of view, the
disposition conceived and demonstrated in the act
of birth, is presumed to be true. This is the whole
of the matter. It is suffering and adventure,
illusion and knowledge. By virtue of this
presumption, every usual life is made necessary.
And every usual life is a frustrated search for
freedom through release.
But if
freedom is to be the case, then the conventional
presumption must be considered and penetrated in
every moment. And it is not merely a mental
presumption, but a logic of the whole body.
Therefore, consideration and presumption must take
the form of a sacrifice of the whole body. And it
must be an action before it is a
thought.
And this
is the Truth of us. Our always present Condition is
not one of existence as any defined or limited
condition whatsoever. We are not each some born
entity working our way back to Infinity. We are
already the most absolutely diffuse, formless,
mindless, centerless, and unqualified Bliss. From
this Condition, all conditions, high and low,
spring up as unnecessary and paradoxical marvels.
We are always already identical to the Divine, the
disposition at Infinity.
Once this
priorly diffuse Condition becomes the Realized
presumption of any one, then laughter follows. I am
here to restore your Humor.
Bubba Free
John
Chapter
5
IDENTIFICATION OF THE BELOVED IS THE PRINCIPLE OF
SPIRITUAL LIFE
A TALK
GIVEN BY BUBBA FREE JOHN TO A GATHERING OF DEVOTEES
AT VISION MOUND SANCTUARY, APRIL 18,
1977
What is
the root of our existence? What is the single
incident that we must comprehend? There is one
incident in which you are all completely involved
at this moment. You are completely aware of it. You
recoil from it and thereby create your whole life,
your whole adventure, all of your subjectivity and
the mood of your person. If you penetrated it, you
would be free. What is it?
It is a
present incident. It is happening at this moment
and you are reacting to it. It is your reaction to
it that binds you. What is the fundamental incident
that binds all of us - not in the past, but at this
very moment? What is happening that we are all
believing? It is more primitive even than
sensation. What is the last thing you would give
up? Before there is a thought, what do you hold on
to most dearly? Before you hear the inner sound,
before you see a single vision, before you breathe
the next breath, before you are born into this
conception, what are you tuned to? When the mind is
rested from action, when there is no thinking, when
even the breathing is still, what is going on? If
you stop thinking and acting and breathing, what is
still going on? What is the last thing to
go?
It is the
beat of the heart. When the mind stops and action
stops and breath comes to rest, the thing that
defines you is the heartbeat. When you are at rest,
still you feel the thundering in the chest. The
primal incident is not any thought nor the sense of
"me," but it is the heartbeat. The heartbeat in the
center of the body-being is the ultimate
meditation. It is the single motivator of life. It
is the principal illusion of all beings. All beings
have in common this beat, or the feeling-intensity
at the core of the being, which particularizes or
gives "birth" to consciousness. Everything that
lives, that is self-conscious, is meditating on the
beat or intensity that is the heart. The heartbeat
alone is responsible for the whole adventure and
complication of existence.
Before
there is a single action or a single desire, there
is the beating of the heart. It is not conceptual -
all concepts proceed from it. Nor do you create it.
You do not beat the heart. Yet the heartbeat alone
is responsible for your belief in your own
existence. If it ceases, you have no such belief.
It interrupts the unqualified force of prior
consciousness. When you are moving into infinity,
it presses on your consciousness, defining you.
Everything is created in rhythm with that stroke,
everything. Until you are no longer bound by the
beating of the heart, you are structured in the
egoic dream. You are interrupted in infinity by the
beating of the heart, by birth itself.
The
heartbeat is not conceptual, it is not subjective,
it is not within. It is the armature of the
body-being. You are willing to relax the anxiety of
breathing, but you are not willing to be vacant of
the heart. Everything, except the heartbeat, can
come to rest and you still survive. The heartbeat
is at the core of the breath. The breathing
surrounds it. Thinking surrounds it, though the
event itself is not thinkable. It is at the core of
everything above and below. Everything above the
heart, every thought or vision or contemplated
wonder, is an expression of that foundation
liveliness, that beating. Everything below it,
every feeling and sensation, is an expression of
it. The heartbeat is "me" and "that," left and
right, up and down, in and out. It is the whole
conception of existence. Everything is implied by
it.
Like the
clock that creates time, the heartbeat creates the
self. The heartbeat is the most primitive incident,
the center of fear. It is a metronome in an empty
room. All hearing and all perception are guided
toward it. All your inwardness, all your thinking,
and all your activity are simply a rhythmic
expression of the beat of the heart, perhaps timed
in different ways but always consonant with it. You
are breathing in rhythm with it and then thinking.
and acting, sexing and moving, energizing and
feeling all in time with it. Your great fear is
that it will cease, because when it ceases you are
no longer different from anything. As long as you
believe you are independent, a differentiated
being, you are timed with the rhythm of the
heart.
That
rhythm is pronounced on the left, but is surges
between the right and left. There is no actual
rhythm on the right, but only a constant
feeling-intensity, the root stroke of the beating
heart, a constant sense of self-definition and
self-assorbtion, contracted from infinity - but it
is at last not different from the beat itself, the
sounding of the birth moment. On the left there is
pounding, interrupting. It surges from right to
left and from left to right - from sleep to dreams
to waking, and from waking to dreams and then to
sleep.
In the
moment when you feel the heartbeat, you do not
think, you do not act, you do not breathe. You are
-now and separately, vulnerably. It is the
principal incident to which we are all attuned. We
are all suffering it, we are all subject to it, and
we are all waiting for it to cease. It arises prior
to knowledge. Our very existence pulses in Mystery,
subject to a prior design of which we are Ignorant
and to which the will at last must bow with all the
mind, emotion, and whole flesh.
The
heartbeat is completely untrue. Our condition in
Truth is previous to this stroke, previous to all
the inwardness, all the activity that is built upon
this rhythm, this interruption, this stimulation,
this distraction. When the heartbeat ceases, we are
returned to our prior disposition, but mere death
is not sufficient for liberation into the Divine.
Mere death just arrests the current of the ego,
which is the beating of the heart. Liberation is
freedom from that rhythm while alive, to be no
longer interrupted, no longer identified with left
and right, up and down, in and out, here and there,
now and then. When consciousness ceases to be
defined by the rhythms of the heart, it is
immortal. Therefore, what makes the heart beat? Why
do we fear its ending? Why do we promote the
adventure of individual existence? Why do we doubt
the Reality of the Divine, the unchanging, the
Absolute?
We presume
that if the heart ceases to beat, we cease to
exist. The heartbeat is the ego. That is the
illusion, not the thought "I am me," not the
thought "I am the body," not any thought, but the
heartbeat itself is the illusion. We witness it, we
are confined to it, we are subject to it, we are
disposed to a whole life until it ceases. Of all
things, it is completely beyond control. Even the
yogi's mastery of heartbeat and body-sense remains
bound to the very condition in feeling-conception
that the heartbeat signals - the sense of
independent consciousness and its experiential
destiny. The heartbeat is the ego, the soul, the
body, the mind. It is the most involuntary of all
appearances. It is the recoil that thunders back
from all appearance. There is no devotee who has
not suffered this incident. It is the same as his
or her own birth or life or death. Everything is
the response to this rhythmic contraction or root
feeling-intensity. Thus, everything is betrayal, a
witness for the lie.
The
heartbeat continues, prior to thinking and acting,
feeling and living, vision and illumination,
immortality and mortality. Whatever occurs in your
comprehension, the beating of the heart is the
single thing that defines you in that enjoyment.
Liberation is the transcendence of that incident;
thus, it is the same as death. In conventional,
bodily death, however, we pass into
unconsciousness, of self. The only recourse while
alive is the most absolute, the most perfect,
sacrifice, passing beyond thought in mood, in
action, in feeling, in desire, into perfect
surrender or Radiance. Nothing else characterizes
the devotee.
You have
responded to this drama, this rhythm, this sound,
this signal. And so you feel yourself to be
opposite, other, individuated, single, separate,
trapped, in dilemma, obliged to make your way
strategically, to define yourself, to assume your
immunity, your salvation, your continuation, your
survival. Your whole effort is regulated by this
beat, which is beyond your comprehension. The great
fear is that if it stops, you disappear. It defines
you in otherness, in separation. When the mind
comes to rest and actions come to rest and the
breath becomes still, the heart shocks us with its
rhythm, with its striking, its pulsation, defining
the consciousness. The principal meditation is to
be free of action, of liveliness, of intention, of
thought, of vision, of comprehension, of knowledge,
of reaction, of recoil, of separation, of incident,
until you penetrate this motion that shocks us. The
only salvation is in the penetration of that
signal. Until then there is betrayal, separation,
ego, mind, person, separate destiny, action,
illusion, dreams, knowledge, fascinated meditation,
sublimity, absorption, discrimination, consolation,
good feeling, profundity, eagerness, fear, sorrow,
anger, hatefulness, me, I, within.
In the Way
I have described, there is, naturally, penetration
of the subjective root. The illusion of a subject
or ego somewhere "within" is something that must be
re-cognized, known again. Now we identify with this
illusion of an interior "I." It must be penetrated,
through insight. In the process there is an event
even more direct, one that does not involve
contemplation of subjective content, but that
occurs after the subjective content is essentially
quieted. In the final events of the Way of
Re-cognition, there is this passage out of
contemplation in the brain, the subtle
contemplation above. The thread of active attention
is followed back from the crown to the heart. That
is the passage to Jnana Samadhi.
The
samadhis associated with the crown of the being are
subtle and depend on the ego-illusion. In such
samadhis the independent self-illusion remains, the
contemplator remains, not penetrated. All subtle
realizations are soul-realizations, having to do
with the survival of the subjective being
independent of the gross form. But the ultimate
realization goes beyond the subtle illusion to
penetrate the self-root, the fundamental illusion
itself. Although the illusion of "I" passes in this
process, its passing is not the final moment. After
all, the "I"-thought arises in the brain. It is
part of the subtle mechanism. It is a thought, a
literal thought, "I," part of the lower
mind.
But the
contraction that is responsible for the "I"thought
and all other thoughts and feelings of independence
is at the heart itself. It is not subjective or
anything like an idea interior to the body. It is
the body condition itself in its most fundamental
form - it is the heartbeat. Thus, in the final
stages of the Way of Re-cognition, after the
passage beyond contemplation of subtle objects, the
mind essentially comes to rest. There is
essentially no thinking. The breath is very
restful. Then only the heartbeat stands out. The
final re-cognition occurs in contemplation of the
heartbeat, not. of any subjective
interior.
You must
give up your life, the identification with this
rhythm, this contraction, this recoil that defines
you. And how do you give it up? It is impossible.
It cannot be done by the one who would do it. No
one can transcend the rhythmic contraction of the
heart, which defines our consciousness, except by
the most perfect and absolute sacrifice. The way to
this perfect sacrifice is the practice I have
described in this Teaching, by which, as a
discipline, you move beyond the contracted
disposition. You must move beyond fear and sorrow
and anger into the disposition of love, of
radiance, previous to any form of contraction or
separation. You must presume the radiance of
happiness as a discipline in spite of all
subjective signs to, the contrary.
All the
disciplines of this Way of Divine Ignorance are
forms of radiance, of non-contraction and
nonseparation, of love, of bringing uncontracted
energy, rather than knowledge, desire, and
self-possession, into the realms of experience.
This is the principal discipline. It is service
founded on true hearing of the Teaching, free of
all concern for the continuation of inward
inspection. In this liberation you pass beyond the
great fear, beyond the beating of the heart which
defines you, in which you are born in every moment.
That passage is madness, healed and cooled only by
motiveless or loving Communion with the Spiritual
Master, which now in your knowledge you deny. Be
wary of your own knowledge, your own good feeling,
of all the things that make you feel better, or
worse. They console you behind the pulsation of
birth. The heartbeat is the ultimate vulnerability,
the great fear. It defines all things apart from
you. It defines you as nothing, apart from
everything, the everything with which you struggle,
mentally and emotionally and physically, in every
moment, to find union.
The
practice is exactly as it is described. Hear this
communication, the fundamental argument, and live
the disciplines in relations. Do not be separative,
egoic, emotional, contractive, negative, angry,
fearful, sorrowful, but be full of energy and
enthusiasm in relations. This is the demand which
always obliges the devotee and with which he is
always at odds by tendency. You should look and
feel and be and act completely happy under all
conditions. Change your way of action and the
subjective dimension itself will change naturally.
The born condition precedes all subjectivity. You
want to manipulate your subjectivity first - your
feelings, your thinking, your conceptions, and your
feeling-conceptions. You want to change them before
you will change your way of life. You want to be
free inside before you will love, before you act
differently. You must act differently first, and
not be concerned that the feeling and thinking
aspect of the being remains full of tendencies. You
must not be concerned about them. They are just the
signs of the old way of living. You must act in
love, in radiance, with energy, with life, in all
your relations, in your disposition moment to
moment, under all conditions. You will observe in
the midst of such action that the subjective
dimension is also gradually penetrated and
transformed. Its negativity, its reactivity,
becomes unnecessary and ultimately obsolete by
virtue of your different action.
You either
change your action or you do not. You must begin to
do it. There is nothing more that can be said,
nothing more convincing than that. You simply must
begin to do it. As you begin to do it, the vulgar
disposition of your internal life and your
subjective tendencies will continue. You must not
be concerned about it. Tendencies are only the
signs of your old way of living. Let them pass.
Live differently now. Love, serve with feeling. Put
your attention on this argument, be transformed by
the hearing, and act differently. The new
subjectivity will follow. Subjective, internal
changes, emotional and mental, will follow. Start
to act differently. Stop presuming the separative
position. Stop being angry and sorrowful and
fearful in your relations and bring energy into
them. Be happy in them. Be enthusiastic in them.
Bring life to all beings. Bring life to the tree.
Bring life to the doorknob and to me! And you will
see your subjective life changing, over time. It
may remain completely wretched for 25,000 births.
Do not be concerned about it. Act differently on
the basis of what you have heard. Then you will be
communicative as a devotee.
Now you
are waiting for your insides to change first. They
are the last to change! Your action must change
first. Then the inner being will reflect the new
rather than the old adaptation. Having seen what
you have seen and heard what you have heard, act
differently. Kick everything else aside. Hear,
love, serve, bring life - that is the discipline.
The emotions and the mind will persist in their
aggravation, their negativity, their
self-possession, their sulking stupidity. Be
indifferent to them on the basis of this hearing,
and you will see the mind and the emotions
change.
Subjectivity
follows action. Your subjectivity having changed on
the basis of action, you will begin to be attuned
to the subtler dimension of the being. And you will
hear and see, perhaps, all kinds of incredible
things. I have seen all of it, every kind of vision
and transport. It is all a hallucination, it is all
ridiculous, it is nonsense, it is stupid and false.
There is no vision that is true. It is all bondage.
It is all something to console the separate one.
Press through all of that in the Way of
Re-cognition and you will become coincident with
the whole body-being, no longer turning into your
subjectivity. You will stand as the whole body, and
suddenly the prior Condition of the body will
become obvious. There is no independent
consciousness. There is no separate being. There is
no "me" within. There is no one to survive. There
is the most absolute, unqualified, and unspeakable
Reality, which is Bliss, Fullness, without
description, without form, without argument,
without a single symbol to win its victory over
living beings. Only the devotee is sensitive to
God. That is the whole communication that has been
served in this Company.
You must
begin to do something different. Now you are doing
the same old thing in your rhythm, being an other
within. You must do something different without,
not concerned for what happens within, for desiring
and thinking. Let it pass. Be different as the
whole body. You are always certain, in this
instant, what it is to be completely happy, to look
and feel and be and act completely happy. It is
always true of you natively. You can always return
to this native sense. You could be and look and
feel completely happy in this moment. But you do
not. Why? Because of your sympathy with this born
condition that is rhythmed to you moment to moment,
this pulsation or feeling-conception in the chest.
Pass beyond it through this whole practice and you
will realize the Divine Condition. But not
before.
The
heartbeat draws you back into the round of birth
and death. It is recoil. It does not permit you to
be released to infinity. It draws you back. It
defines you in time and space. It defines your
existence. If it ceases, you cease to exist. All
philosophy is founded on the beating of the heart;
all mysticism, all life, all desire, and every
single experiential presumption are founded on it.
The penetration of the beating of the heart is the
difference between "I," which is the body as a
whole, and the realization of the Condition of the
body. When the heartbeat ceases to define
consciousness, then there is the natural intuition
of the Condition that precedes birth. The usual man
is relieved of this constriction only at the point
of death, and so he is released from the
superficial organism. But that release is not
sufficient for illumination. It is only sufficient
for another birth. You must penetrate this rhythm
while alive, while conscious, while in the ordinary
disposition. You must penetrate the illusion of
separation, and the heartbeat is the primal
incident. The grosser incident of birth may have
occurred so many years ago, but the incident that
promotes the present illusion that is birth as the
whole body is the heartbeat. Prior to it there is
no definition of consciousness. There is no
definition of bodily existence, of egoic existence,
as a separate individual, independent of this
beating, this rhythm, this shock. You exist in your
consciousness only because of this sympathy, this
rhythm that you perceive. All of your thinking and
desiring extends from that.
How do you
realize liberation from the born condition? Not by
philosophy. You realize it through the
instrumentality of a born being who nonetheless has
penetrated the whole cycle. The Spiritual Master is
the instrument of the liberation of living beings,
not philosophy nor conception nor your own
contemplation of the heartbeat. You become disposed
to that contemplation in sympathy with the
Spiritual Master, but only because the Spiritual
Master exists prior to that contraction, that
rhythm. Through hearing this argument you are
disposed to act, not to internalize, but to act,
without concern for your subjectivity. Subjectivity
is only the sign of your old adaptation, whereas
you have become disposed on the basis of this
hearing to act differently, to love, to be radiant
in relations rather than contracting in the forms
of anger and sorrow and fear and thinking and all
of the illusions of your own subjectivity. You must
submit absolutely to the Spiritual Master. This
principle is the core of all Teaching. Once you
have heard the argument of the Spiritual Master,
then you must enter into devotional and spiritual
relations or Communion with the Spiritual Master.
The primary function of the Spiritual Master is the
spiritual service of devotees, those who have
"heard" and changed their way of action. Such
service is Divine. By that service, the Way is
quickened and fulfilled by Grace of the Beloved,
the Real beyond all birth of selves and knowledge
of souls.
A TALK
GIVEN BY BUBBA FREE JOHN TO A GATHERING OF DEVOTEES
IN HONOLULU, DECEMBER 8, 1976
There is
virtually no limit to the delusions that human
beings can presume on the basis of their
tendencies, their desiring, their motivation, their
reactions to experience. Because this is so,
individuals eventually step out of the stream of
conventional relations. In other words, they at
some point cease to act or live on the basis of the
ego-soul, the experiential self, and they establish
instead a sacred relationship by which they are
relieved of the implications of this birth. Our
meeting with one another - each of you individually
with me - is of this kind. It is not a conventional
relationship which we are here merely to dramatize
with one another, you with me or you with one
another. We are here to be lifted out of that
destiny. Therefore, your relationship with me must
be of a sacred nature. It must involve an entirely
different kind of discipline than the usual life
presumes. Your relationship to me in itself implies
a commitment to the essential Teaching or
consideration which is part of my communication
with you. Apart from this sacred process that our
relationship implies, the only thing we can
possibly realize in one another's company is
suffering and delusion, which as you see is what
the usual man realizes.
In all my
years of teaching work it has been a constant
struggle to maintain this quality in our
relationship. It is constantly my obligation to
eliminate what stands in the way, what makes your
approach to me a conventional one, what makes your
response to me conventional, egoic, ordinary. And
this is a great and very difficult task. It
requires all of our lives entirely.
Part of
the apparently conventional nature of our
connection is the threat of separation and death.
This body dies. That body dies. We can rejuvenate,
feel better, live longer, but, even so, in this
world everybody dies. That is why we do spiritual
practice, because we are conscious of the destiny
of separation. We are willing to fulfill the law of
love, but on the other hand what we love dies. That
is the paradox of this place, and that is what
makes it a hell. That is why this is one of the
realms of suffering. This world is not a heaven.
This is not a place of fulfillment. Thus, we must
yield to the true Condition. We must not become
dependent upon the conventional aspect of our
relations. We must recognize our relations. We must
identify the Condition of the loved one. You must
recognize or identify me in Truth. Our relationship
must be a spiritual one. That does not mean that we
will not see one another, or that we cannot have
occasion to carry on human relations face to face.
But the vital dependency and demand that is based
on the fear of separation is something that must be
undone through this matter of spiritual practice,
through this intuitive recognition.
You must
become established in the real Condition, or you
will never be satisfied. You will be driven to
all kinds
of preoccupations and great schemes, trying to
become victorious or immortal, for immortality's
own sake, simply because you cannot deal with the
fact of death. But death is an absolute message in
this realm. It obliges us to recognize or identify
one another in Truth, and we are not relieved of
that obligation in this place.
It is not
a matter of seeing me face to face twenty-four
hours a day. Nobody does that. You must truly live
the spiritual Condition of our relationship. You
must lead a spiritual life in the world. You must
fall into this Condition that precedes all
conditions. You must enjoy your relationship to me
in the form of meditation, the form of that
sacrifice, because no form of our conventional and
ordinary relations, our ordinary contact,
ultimately satisfies in itself. And if your
approach to me is a conventional one, you will be
making use only of the ordinary forms of our
possible relationship, and all those forms pass.
All those forms make you anxious. You must realize
a form of relationship to me in Ignorance, in which
you recognize or identify me in the form of the
very Condition of this world, your own Condition,
so that when we are face to face it is that
intuitive identification that you are involved
with, not all the kinds of worldly anxiety such as
lovers might feel for one another in the face of
death. They love one another and yet they are going
to be separated. That is the conventional nature of
relationship. The kinds of lovers that can be
separated are just the image of suffering, the
pair. Lovers must become a paradox, a single
Condition, not a cult of two.
Our relationship must become a paradox, a spiritual
matter, in which we are all given up to the
Condition that precedes all this
madness.
This world
literally is being dreamed at this moment. It has
no force except insofar as we live by reaction,
merely by experience, on the basis of what appears
or comes across to us in the dream. We tend to make
our philosophy, our way of living, out of the
dream, out of the limitation that arises here,
which we cannot account for. Our life must cease to
take that form. You cannot make philosophy out of
this world and succeed. You would just be crazy all
your life, and you would die anyway. You cannot
make your way of life out of this experience here
as it appears, this dream. No, you must recognize
it, truly identify it. You must be awake relative
to this experience. You must enjoy the release that
a person enjoys upon waking in the morning from his
or her dreams the night before. You must identify
the Truth of the dream, which is to re-cognize, to
know again, intuitively to penetrate all the
conventional forms of the dream, which in
themselves are illusory, passing. That is what
spiritual practice is all about. That is what the
spiritual process is all about: being relieved,
ultimately, of the force of this experience, this
condition, this limitation, this dream
here.
You are
liberated from that in the process of our
relationship, but only if you are related to me
truly, sacredly, spiritually, only if your
relationship to me is simply one of sacrifice, of
natural orientation, not all the reactive things
you get into on the basis of it in the conventional
way. Then the play between us serves
this
intuitive recognition, this identification of the
Condition of all conditions. But you must yield
constantly, because as soon as you become involved
in your ordinary life by reaction, you separate
yourself and become involved again in the illusion
of experience arising here.
It is a
maddening experience, this place. It is attractive
in all kinds of ways. Equal to the force of all its
attractiveness is the force of all of the
destruction of the Beloved. All the forms of the
Beloved rot in this place. They come to an end,
they are taken away. That is the truth about it,
and there is no way around it. You must confront
that. That is the way it is here. This is not
heaven. This is not the world of the Beloved, of
the loved one in any form you may recognize as the
Loved One. This is a dream play on the Beloved, in
which the Beloved appears in shapes and forms that
are fleeting, that are binding in themselves. They
attract you, and then they are withdrawn and leave
you with only the craving. Left with the craving
only, you are cycled back again and again into the
same dimension as that experiencing
reaction.
So you
must recognize, truly identify, the Beloved
appearing here in all this attraction, which means
you must enter into a spiritual process in your
living rather than the conventional attempts to
survive, to win, to live forever. If you become
truly committed to the spiritual process, in a
relatively short time you literally pass out of the
limitation in which you now conceive of this world.
But you must utterly surrender. You must give up
everything for that, for what you recognize, for
that Truth, that Condition, the Condition of
the very
current of your own being. Give yourself up to it
entirely. Allow it to create the event of the
dream. The dream is its business. You will notice
it stops playing the dream the way it seems to be
playing it now. Now you are turned on to the
Beloved as if to a whore, a fancy dancer. She has a
little bit of extra seductiveness now. I was out
here in the yard with some of you a few minutes
ago, and we played this game of looking up in the
night sky for something extraordinary. Some weird
unidentified thing has got to be flying around in
order to make us feel a little light, a little
wonder. And yet you cannot account for any of it.
The mere existence of any of it at all is
sufficient mystery. All the rest of it is fancy
dancing, a little twirler put on the end of her
pasties. The woman herself, the universe itself, is
sufficient mystery. We do not need all the extra
attractions, and yet the woman herself, the lover
himself, the universe itself as it appears here, is
fancy dancing. It is unnecessary. It bewitches you,
it beguiles you, it attracts you into a whole way
of life, and yet it is fleeting, temporary, just a
costume, a bit of business. It is not the Beloved
herself, himself, itself. You must identify the
Truth of what is attractive.
Thus, in
your relationship to me, the matter of intuitive
recognition must become the principle of our play.
You must recognize me in the form of your
Condition, the Condition of all this arising, the
real Condition of it, the Condition of conditions,
the Condition of the body, the mind, the
self-sense, the very current of the being, and be
rested in It constantly. When you do that, the
Beloved takes off her garment. Her true Form, his
true Form, the Beloved's true Form
begins to
appear. That true Form is not transitory. But you
must be adapted to the loving of the Beloved in
eternal Form, because you do not have desires
fitted to that Form at the present time. The
desires you have are all products of adaptation to
this limiting illusion of attractions. You are
turned on by bangles and flesh. All this appearance
is how you are attracted to the Beloved in this
form here. Having recognized it, though, giving
yourself up to the true Condition of this, your
very Nature, then your desiring or the movement of
the being itself becomes capable of enjoying the
Beloved in eternal Form. Only in that case are you
satisfied.
All else
is suffering. There is no doubt about it. There is
absolutely no ultimate relief in the dream. So our
play with one another cannot be based simply on
this conventional attraction. It cannot be limited,
in other words, to the natural, human dimension of
our intimacy with one another. It must be sacred.
It must be a spiritual relationship. It must be
founded in this Ignorance. You must recognize me in
Truth. You must do this practice. You must enter
into this real meditation and give up everything
for the Beloved. In that case our ordinary human
relations become pleasurable, because they are not
necessary. We are not bound by them. We are
constantly reached into the Condition of these
conditions and so can love one another, play with
one another in this dream circumstance without
becoming bound, because we constantly recognize one
another in Truth in this play. If we will
intuitively recognize one another, we can be free
of the conventional striving which is a reaction
to the
awful sense acquired while alive that separation or
dissolution of our relationships is
inevitable.
Our
immortality is not conventional, earthly,
elemental. It is a Divine matter, founded in this
recognition. It is founded in sacrifice, not in any
effort simply and exclusively to make this
elemental body live forever. No such motivation
would work. If we are fitted to this sacrifice
absolutely, maybe the body's life gets prolonged.
All kinds of things may occur, but they are not our
point of view. They are secondary to the essential
fulfillment of the Law of Sacrifice.
So we do
not only need to see one another, you and I. You
also need to live your life on the basis of this
relationship in which the true Condition is
identified, in which you recognize these conditions
and therefore rest in the true Condition. So you
need to live an ordinary life. You need peace and
quiet, a natural, human-size environment, with
ordinary intimacies, a few people to see regularly.
You need a place, an occasion, in which to meditate
in private. All these things are your obligations
if you are to fulfill the true Condition of our
meeting. Since all of these things are required, we
will certainly see one another, but we will also
all live our privacy as well, because if we are not
given up in private, our meeting has no opportunity
to grow, to represent a new adaptation. You will
simply be struggling and striving here anxiously,
never really being released from the implications
of this world.
Our
destiny is not something that we can pre-figure.
Our obligation, though, is clear. The law in this
moment is clear, the true form of our living is
clear, and sowe must fulfill it. Having fulfilled
it perfectly, you will then see transformations of
this ordinary living here that are more and more
positive, but you will also see the real spiritual
transformation, which fundamentally has no drama
whatsoever connected with it. It is simply absolute
release from the necessity of this appearance here
and all the craving that we develope on the basis
of it. In this release, the being rests in its true
Condition, in which all kinds of other conditions
appear, such as this world here. The gross form
continues to appear. Subtle forms may
appear.
And then
perhaps such changes may cease to appear, and you
rest in the Condition itself, the God-World, the
Realm that is itself the Beloved. There is no
speech to describe it. There is no vision of it.
You must
fulfill the Law, and that is all. Whatever the
perfect Destiny is beyond the cessation of changes
in these unnecessary realms, it is nothing of which
any born being has knowledge. Such is not
permitted. There is no vision, no doctrine, apart
from the Law itself. You make this sacrifice, and
then only the Truth or the Divine is your Destiny,
whatever that altogether is. So all the anxiety
built up on the basis of experience here must come
to an end, and in our relations we must become
natural, ordinarily loving. You cannot oblige any
creature you love to live forever, because he or
she simply cannot do it, and neither can you, as an
act of will. Whenever we come together and say we
love one another, we cannot promise to stay with
one another. We can promise our life to one another
and in that sense stay with one another, but we do
not have in our will the capacity to stay with one
another forever, because the body dies. This
condition disappears. So you must die while living.
You must be able to let go of this unnecessary
realm and dwell in the God-Condition while alive.
In that case you will be free of anxiety, you will
have humor in relation to things here. You will be
capable of loving in the natural fashion because
you are not obliging it all to stay here forever.
You are recognizing it intuitively, and therefore
the Condition of all these conditions is the
Beloved you find in every lover, in every arising
phenomenon, in every moment, and in the Spiritual
Master most directly.
Truth is
not some hopeful word such as "You will be immortal
on this earth, and all things will cease to die and
we will live forever." There is no such message.
That is not the Truth. Even if that were factually
true, it is not the Truth. The Truth is in this
recognition, this identification of the Beloved,
this sacrifice. Secondarily, our lives may be
prolonged, but we are still obliged to the same
sacrifice and the same humor. Only on that basis
are we to realize all the secondary effects of the
fulfillment of the Law, which may or may not be
prolonged living.
So it is
true that this anxiety about your relations is
something you discover in yourself. It is not
healed by any ordinary arrangement. It is itself
that condition in our awareness by which we are
moved to fulfill the Law, to make this sacrifice.
It is not otherwise removed, we are not otherwise
relieved of it. In your right response to me, in
this actual practice, it passes. Anything, anyone,
that you love and enjoy in this realm is only, if
you will recognize it, the Beloved, the very Real
itself. This is what you discover in all your
loving, all your enjoyments, if you are a true man,
a true woman. If you do not live by such
sacrificial recognition, all your experiencing and
enjoyments lead to attachment only. They reinforce
ritual behavior, craving for contact, craving for
experience, craving for repetitions in which we are
constantly anxious, ill at ease, suffering reactive
emotions, endlessly thinking, mulling things over
mentally as if we were trying to solve some hidden
problem, knotted up in the body, always active to
find some pleasurable condition that will last,
that will fulfill us. If you intuitively recognize
this matter arising here, you are not bound up by
reaction to that whole automatic ceremony. You are
relieved of it. And that recognition is the only
release.
Paradoxically,
even though there is all of this delight and
suffering, there is not one single thing, there is
not a single event, not a single change, not a
single modification, no birth, no death. Nothing
has happened. Nothing has ever happened. Nothing
will ever happen. There is only a single and
absolute Condition, unspeakable in its Nature,
which we may not see, hear, experience over against
ourselves, but which is our very Condition prior to
all changes, high or low. Having fallen into That,
then we have a disposition in us from which
properly to view all the changes, high or low,
should they arise. And, as it happens, this one you
seem to be when active in the waking world
continues to arise for the time
being-paradoxically, because it does not amount to
anything. Nothing is gained by a moment's living,
absolutely nothing. Nothing
changes on the basis of it. Nothing is gained by a
single meeting, by a single moment's satisfaction,
by a single contact. This living isn't anything. It
is only an illusion, a modification of the
essential Condition. If you come to rest in that
Condition, then in every moment you recognize this
and are happy, already happy. You can play in the
ordinary ways, but you never become wretched. You
are not degraded through your own craving, because
you recognize what you love, and therefore your
relations with loved ones, with this whole world,
are natural, happy.
Otherwise,
your craving for the immortality of the loved one
will become so profound that you will be forced to
kill her or him. You will murder the loved one in
your craving for the loved one's immortality. Your
anxiety over the loss, the separation, will become
so great that you will eventually begin to degrade
the relationship itself, to separate yourself
automatically. Then everything you do begins to
separate you from the loved one, even though you
are here to be loving, because you are so anxious,
so terrified, so upset. But if you will recognize
one another in Truth, if you will recognize this
world in Truth, if you will recognize me in Truth,
then you are engaged in that process that relieves
you of this illusion, and you can come to rest. You
can be happy. It is not necessary to go on with
great plans to conquer this world in one fashion or
another. Nothing is gained by it. You never conquer
the loved one. You are enamored. You are in love.
No conquering goes on at all. You only start
conquering when you become afraid, when you fear
this separation. Then you get anxious and start
craving all kinds of satisfaction.
So I
recommend that you meditate. However, you cannot
meditate. You cannot willfully go about some
program of meditation and have it be true, because
that is a way of conquering rather than of being in
love. You must realize this real meditation through
the consideration we enjoy face to face. And if you
will begin to rest in the current of the being in
my Company, then you will begin to feel my
influence. I will be of use to you in that case,
but not until then. If your approach to me remains
conventional, you are not at ease, you are not
rested in this current, and you cannot feel it.
Then there is no initiatory force in our meeting.
You will really only discover the force of my
influence when you begin to come to rest, in
meditation, in our meetings, and in life. When you
are rested in this current of your own being,
through true intuitive identification of me and of
the Condition of the current itself, then you can
feel my work.
Because I
am simply present in this Condition, I do not have
any plans. I have nothing to do with all of this
arising. I am simply standing here, and if you
recognize me truly, then this current of the being
is intensified, its revelation begins, and you will
fall out of the point of view of this dream, even
though you continue in your ordinary relations
within it. You may also, in the course of this
meditation, this living, have the opportunity to be
involved in all kinds of other dreams, to live and
perceive in other forms, other dimensions entirely.
It is not that you must strive for
that. That is
another kind of craving, another kind of effort
toward victory based on a failure of recognition, a
failure to presume this Ignorance which is native
to our birth. All the conventional yogic efforts
are kinds of craving. People will sit for hours a
day manipulating themselves with various
techniques, hoping to have this and that kind of
remarkable experience as a result. It is just an
extension of worldliness, of the same thing that is
your suffering in this gross appearance. You must
simply be relieved of all of that through the
presumption of Ignorance and the intuition of the
Condition of these conditions arising.
That
intuitive recognition or identification is simply
rest of the current of the being in its prior
Condition. It is felt in the grosser body sense at
first, and as we come to rest in it, it is enjoyed
in all kinds of ways, none of which is in itself
fulfilling as mere experience. These enjoyments are
simply the secondary reflections of our fulfillment
of the Law, our present resting in that Condition
which does not have any content, which is
unspeakable. Call it God, Brahman, the Self. It is
the only Happiness, and it is the foundation of all
happiness in the midst of conditions here or
anywhere else.
So it is
not that we must sit down and struggle to hear the
inner sounds and see the inner lights and go
somewhere with them. It is quite natural that at
some point you become absorbed in such sounds and
lights and other phenomena in the extensions of
this current, but it is rest in the prior Condition
of the current itself that is fulfillment of the
Law, that is Happiness. It relieves you of the
point of view of this world.
It is not
simply experiences of other worlds that relieve you
of the point of view of this world, though they may
arise and bring ordinary release. It is rest in the
Condition of the very current of this arising, the
Condition of these conditions, which is Happiness.
It is perfect Sacrifice, and, paradoxically, is
perfect fullness. It is a way of being mad without
being crazy.
Nothing
could be more mad than to be happy in this place,
because there is really no justification for it. It
is not reasonable to be happy. If you thoroughly
examine this world, there is reason to feel very
unhappy. Even with a little pleasurableness thrown
in, it is not enough to overcome that conviction of
darkness that you get when you really see what is
happening here. So it is not any philosophy we can
base on our experience here that makes us happy. It
is complete release from implications, the force of
this dreaming, this appearance for which we cannot
account. And you see, it is already miraculous.
Nothing fantastic has to happen. We already cannot
account for a single thing in this room here. The
mere existence of anything is beyond comprehension.
It is sufficient to boggle us. You do not know what
a single thing is. You cannot build any great
programs for victory on the basis of such
Ignorance. On the basis of that Ignorance, we are
naturally disposed to all of this arising and may
be led into the intuitive identification of the
Nature and Condition of all this arising. And that
is my occupation, to bring you to that recognition
through Ignorance, in which you may come to rest in
the current of the being and more and more
profoundly fulfill the Law through radical
intuition of the
Condition of existence. But you see that this
requires a new orientation, a turnabout from the
conventional strife in which you pursue fulfillment
here by reaction. The more you do that, the more
confounded you become.
In the old
cultures, they frowned upon anyone who knew too
much or owned too much, because these were the
signs of somebody who was really struggling and was
therefore very worldly and dangerous. Of course
they made this a blanket, black-and-white
world-view, but there is some wisdom in the
feeling. We must be relieved of the burden of
knowing and owning, of all our craving. We must
become perfectly Ignorant. We must become a
Sacrifice, not an Owner, not a Knower. The usual
knowing and owning is ordinary enough, and we can
take pleasure in ordinary things in one another's
company, but only if we are free, only if we all
make this sacrifice constantly and are clarified in
the being. So you must have the leisure, the
ordinariness, in which to consider in this moment
of arising that you do not know what a single thing
is, that you do not know what the thing is itself,
that you do not know what any of it is. If you will
enter into your relations with me on that basis,
this Ignorance, this falling into the current of
the being through identification of its Condition,
will become natural to you by Grace-freely, because
it is not a conventional gift. It is the Gift of
the being itself. It is prior to all strife, all
circumstance. It is simply that you must be
disposed to enjoy it. Become so disposed in my
Company, and it absolutely will be given to you.
That is also
the Law. It is not a matter of striving and
acquiring it, but of giving up that whole effort as
you naturally do in Ignorance, in which you simply
rest in this moment and recognize it in the form of
your own Condition, the Condition of the current of
the body-being itself. It is felt more and more
profoundly as a current. It goes through changes.
And it obliges you to go through changes outwardly
in your relations and also bodily, because the body
is transformed in its adaptation. Then the current
is felt passing from toe to crown rather than crown
to toe. It is not that it goes from the toe and
leaves the body toward the crown. It is just felt
as if there were a wire from toe to crown in which
the current or the flow is moving in that direction
rather than the opposite. Then the current between
the crown and the Heart may at last be Realized
also.
We still
stand in the world even as we rest in this current.
But then you may notice in your private meditation
that you also are released even of this experience
here from time to time. As the currents of the
gross being begin to harmonize, become naturally
reoriented, the body comes to rest, the breathing
becomes slow, simple, the heart rate goes down. We
hear the breathing and feel it, but then we become
aware in such a way that we do not hear it any
longer, we do not feel it any longer. The current
itself becomes visible and audible to us, and we
may simply forget the gross body and pass into the
subtler dreams, all the while being in the
disposition of this Ignorance, in which we truly
identify what arises rather than
automatically
becoming attached to it, rather than getting into
patterns of craving on the basis of gross or subtle
experience.
Therefore,
all of that also passes. We come to the point where
we are more and more profoundly identified with
that Condition itself, which precedes all arising,
high or low, and which does not have any reference
really, which cannot be accounted for in
conditions. It is prior to them. It is the
Condition of conditions. It is a paradox, because
it is true of you even while alive, while in the
gross plane, in the subtle planes, in any and all
of these unnecessary realms. This Condition, which
is unspeakable, remains true, it remains your very
Condition. Therefore, unnecessary worlds constantly
fall away.
We must
fulfill the Law, this Sacrifice, this Truth. The
Condition of conditions is Truth in this realm or
any realm, and it is that to which we must be
committed while alive. Any glorious eternity that
appears on the basis of it is a Gift, which we may
not seek, and find, and know, and still fulfill the
Law. But just as all of this now present has
suddenly appeared, as unnecessary and terrifying as
it is, the Perfect Domain is always presently
existing, and it is the same as no thing, no
disturbance, no craving, no separation, no birth,
no event, no moment, no future, no time, no place,
no suffering. It is also exactly the same as love,
as fullness, as delight, as very Light, as
Happiness.
A TALK
GIVEN BY BUBBA FREE JOHN TO A GATHERING OF DEVOTEES
AT VISION MOUND SANCTUARY, MAY
11, 1977
In fact
and in Truth this manifest appearance in which we
are animated to one another in the waking state is
a hallucination that occurs in consciousness. All
these trees, buildings, bodies, hairs, thoughts
arise as modification of a single and absolute
field that is Perfect Radiance. The world is a
conception, as completely unnecessary as a thought
or a dream. And it is just as silly, just as
humorous, just as arbitrary and unserious, as any
dream.
The truth
of this moment is that everything arising is
literally a hallucination. The entire arising
incident of the present moment is completely
unnecessary. The pattern we identify as our lives
is a complex logic of repetitions. Repetition is
self, and mind, and body, including all relations
and environments. Repetition is consolation, or
distraction from fear. The pattern we know as life
persists by reinforcement, by desire for
repetitions, by being used. The incident of any
experience appears, and you presume it to be both
independent and necessary, and thus you enforce its
repetition. If the presumption of necessity and
independence ceases, then what reinforces the
appearance and makes its repetition necessary is
absent. Then the present configuration, the
appearance of the so called
world, which is totally arbitrary and unnecessary
in the midst of infinity, is weakened. The present
configuration becomes obsolete, it rises and falls,
and something else replaces it.
There is
no need for this present configuration to appear.
There is no reason for it to persist. There is no
need to overcome it or to enjoy a victory as it. It
is completely arbitrary, just as arbitrary as any
dream you might have had recently. The dream came
to an end -it became obsolete because you realized
it was not necessary. You woke up.
You must
be awake. Your awakening is what the communication
of this Teaching is all about. The Teaching is a
penetrating criticism, a goad to awakening to the
non-necessity of things. The communication of
Truth, the Argument and Influence of the Spiritual
Master, works to undermine the droning trance in
which you exist in the waking state and in all
other states of experience.
You
ordinarily maintain the presumption of being this
fleshy entity without the slightest ambiguity. That
presumption just seems necessary. You do not feel
that there is any way around it. You do not even
regard the body to be something arising in
consciousness. You consider consciousness to be
somehow inside the body, in the brain, or in some
condition less than the flesh itself, somehow
created by senior unconscious atoms, its destiny
determined by the fleshy thing that you know well.
Thus, you presume that when you are dead, you are
dead. But the necessity of the body is not true.
This body is, presently, a hallucination in the
field of brightness. When you can "see" that the
body and
the mind and the sense of separate identity itself
all arise in the field of brightness as a mere
modification, then you will have a great deal of
humor relative to this affair of waking life. Then
the great adventure of trying to attain a victory
or to find the great goal for which all beings are
born will come to an end. You will be free, but not
until then. Until then, you are bound to discover,
through all the means of release, some sort of
extraordinary occasion that will console you as an
entity.
The
conventional spiritual teachings serve your search
for consolation and reinforce the dilemma of
existence. "Oh, Master, I'm suffering. What do I
have to do to be saved? How do I get to heaven? How
do I see God? How do I get to feel better?" And the
master says, "Do this, do that, it is up here, it
is in here, it is over there, it is to come, it is
never realized." And so, on the basis of your
trouble, you are further motivated to feel good.
Whereas the entire search, the entire drama of
getting to Truth, is a lie. It is not true in this
very moment that you are an entity. Your Condition
is not that of an entity. The entity is only a
convention of appearance. It is not Truth. That
configuration is what is appearing, it is what is
arising, but it is not the Truth in the
moment.
In the
present, and always in the past, and always in the
future, the Condition of existence that is true and
Truth is not defined and separate, but diffuse,
without center or bounds. That is the Condition in
this very moment. In that Condition, paradoxically,
there arise all the conventions of limitation, out
of which, in your ordinary impulse, you try to make
your philosophy. You presume, on the basis of the
conventions of experiencing, what the universe must
be like, what you are like, what your true
Condition must be. But your Condition precedes all
of experience. Your Condition is Wisdom, the force
of Existence, which eternally precedes all this
arising, and within which or as a modification of
which this arising occurs. Only by realizing that
Condition are you properly related to all these
limitations that rise and fall, waking, dreaming,
and sleeping, gross or subtle, in this world or any
other world.
True
awakening is penetration, in the present moment, of
the presumption of the necessity and independence
of your apparent or experienced condition. This
penetration is not the same as the glamourous path
of going within, of achieving a victorious
subjectivity. That is the solution founded in the
presumption of independence, of necessarily
separate existence. Such a solution is a serious
matter then. If you are separate, you must find
some way to feel better while separate - to feel
holy, to see lights, to feel blissful in some part
- because life appears to be necessary and
humorless, a dilemma to be undone. The whole
universe, then, becomes a problem and an always
contradicted adventure, a game that you can win or
lose, a very treacherous and fundamentally unhappy
affair.
If you
will observe all the human beings you casually
meet, you will see that basically they are
tormented by their existence. They are presuming
their independence presently, and, therefore, they
suffer all the effects of the drama, the play, the
conjunction of
apparent entities and processes. This life is
treacherous, humorless, bearing down on them,
drawing them into a destiny upon which they can
have no ultimate effect. They can perhaps produce
modest little effects, but they cannot ultimately
be relieved of the dilemma that impinges on
them.
This
dilemma, however, is only their presumption, and it
is false. The force of their birth implies their
independence, and they meditate on that separation
constantly. Thus, they look for their release in
the context of presumed separation. Instead of
being released, however, they are burdened,
impinged upon by endless effects. Furthermore, the
thing they most identify with, that born, vital
body-being, is disintegrating over time, getting
worse and worse, and eventually dying. No wonder
people get more and more solemn as the years go on!
Yet the life you take so seriously is just a dream,
a hallucination that persists without freedom
because you do not enjoy the presumption that makes
it unnecessary.
What you
know of dreams should illumine your position in the
waking state. You are in exactly the same position
in the waking state as in the dream state. You know
very well, from the point of view of the waking
state, that in dreaming you create the environment
as well as the sense of being an independent
entity. Clearly the dream is your own
consciousness. It is your dream. Who else made the
dream but you? It arises in your own consciousness.
If, in the dream, you are running to leap into the
water and suddenly it turns into a pit of fire, you
created it. Your own psychic nature made the fire,
so that you fell into fire instead of swimming over
the lake. This is clear when you wake up, though it
is not clear in the dream itself, because in the
dream you identify exclusively with the knowing
entity, the ego presumption, the separate one in
the adventure. When you wake, you realize that you
created all of it, that it was your own
consciousness, and that now, in the waking state,
it has no necessity. Now it is completely
arbitrary, a hallucination.
Consider
how serious you are in the waking state. You are
trying to make philosophy here, but you are doing
exactly what people do in dreams. You are assuming
that you are the "knower-I," the separate entity
caught. in this adventure here, in which things are
constantly happening to you and taking you by
surprise. Sometimes good things are happening,
sometimes bad things. Sometimes you win, sometimes
you lose. You have assumed this hallucination as
your Condition. You are trying to make philosophy.
You listen to spiritual teachings, you take up
practices, you believe this and that. You may feel
that you have grasped it now. Now you may feel
consoled. But you must wake up! You must stop
continuing in the mere presumption or tacit belief
in this hallucination. You must enjoy the same
release into the Truth of your present condition
that you enjoy when you wake up from a dream.
Nothing else is happiness. Nothing less or other
than that is liberation. Not a single thought,
conception, or experience, high or low, is anything
but a permutation of the dream. Only the awakening
itself, in which there is nothing happening, is
liberation from the motivated distress of all
things happening.
In that
awakening, no matter what arises, in any moment,
you do not suffer the apparent logic or
implications of appearances, but remain established
in your real Condition, which is the unqualified
field of Radiant Consciousness, without center and
without bounds. From the Radiance of that
Consciousness all things arise as vibratory
modifications, including the most solid things that
you consider to be objective to you as the
knower-I. If you realize the true Condition of the
knower-I, you also realize the true Condition of
all manifestation. It is hallucination, the
conjunction of wave patterns, appearing very
elusive to vision at times, and then at another
moment defining their lines into rigid
objects.
Yet there
are no independent objects. There are no truly
solid things. This world is a phenomenon of light.
If you have studied contemporary physics, you have
at least heard and thought this, but you have not
yet realized its full implications. This world, and
every sense of subjective or objective
independence, is a phenomenon of light, a
hallucination. It is always an event in the very
Condition that is consciousness, the unqualified
field of which everything that arises is the
present modification. If you presume the condition
or effect of any modification, rather than That in
which the modification arises, then that effect
becomes necessary, and the presumption that it is
your Condition reinforces a complex adventure in
which you are this implied knower-I, separate from
events. But if you break through that presumption
and if you are presently existing as the prior,
diffuse, or absolute Condition, then the arising
phenomena have a paradoxical significance. They are
unnecessary, they are humorous, they are fluid,
they are not binding. The whole adventure they
imply, negative or positive, is unnecessary,
untrue. Everything that arises, subjective or
objective, is a portion of the dream. It has
nothing in itself to do with God or Truth. Truth is
realized only in the right presumption in the
present, regardless of what arises. It is the tacit
certainty that this is a completely unnecessary
hallucination, a modification of light.
You must
begin to stand in your real position, the true
Condition in this moment, before all the belief
systems, all the implications of the solid, present
dream, enforce themselves as your presumption. You
do not know what a single thing is. Not a single
thing! Not even the subjective part that is saying
to itself, "I do not know what the wall is, I do
not know what a single thing is." You do not know
what the thoughts are, you do not know what the
feelings are, you do not know what this "I" is!
There is not any such "I" that you conceive of and
know and present and see. You are busy all the time
pointing to it, presuming it, but if you actually
look at what you are pointing to, you will see that
you do not know what it as. "I" is the whole body
in fact, but there is no knowledge of what the body
is entirely and independently and absolutely. You
do not know what anything is. Therefore, you do not
know what all things are. The whole of
manifestation altogether is not a something of
which you are a knower. You are Ignorance. You are
a most undefined or diffuse Condition, unable to
radically differentiate yourself from a single
thing, because as long as any single thing arises,
you exist in the vulnerable position of having no
knowledge of what it is.
As it
happens, there is a whole complex of things
arising-all these environments and all the
subjective effects are arising in this moment - yet
you are not any self-contained entity, not a
specific or defined knower in the midst of them.
You are that Condition in which it is not known
what anything is. You are already without form,
without a foundation, without anything solid to
rest on. You do not rest up against anything. You
are not deeply behind or within anything. You are
completely vulnerable and an absolute Mystery. You
live in Mystery. When you have considered that fact
to the point of hearing, to the point that this
Mystery becomes tolerable and you are not grasping
so mightily onto egoic consolations, but are able
to move into relations with some ease-having heard
me to that degree, then you can meet me in the
spiritual sense. Then you begin to become sensitive
to my Company, and then meeting me becomes a
spiritual occasion that draws you more and more
profoundly into this Realization of the present
Condition.
That is
what there is to realize in my Company. It is this
profound initiation into our Condition in this
moment. Until in your sympathy with me you begin to
realize it most directly, all I can do is witness
to you that I (and, therefore, you and all beings)
am not identical to the condition of being a
separate entity. I am not an entity; I am not
inside a body. To call myself this body is just as
arbitrary as to say I am the morning star or the
vision within or a light you may see by turning
upward. These are all arbitrary identifications,
completely unnecessary, completely humorous,
completely without the slightest bit of seriousness
from my point of view.
Ultimately,
it becomes clear that the tree in the yard is a
hallucination, that it is a matter of mind, just as
any thought that you project inwardly. It is
exactly the same. You will not at last have to go
through a mental process to believe this. It will
just appear to be obviously that way. And when it
is obvious, it is not disorienting. That is Sahaj
Samadhi. People who act crazy, trapped in the
sphere of their separate self and energy, and who
say they are in Sahaj Samadhi or God-Consciousness
are not liberated in Truth. They are in the
terrified ego position, trying to feel better
through glamourizations of philosophy. If some have
turned themselves up from the grosser conditions,
then they may represent degrees of mystical
holiness, but they yet persist in the same illusion
that heats the flesh of others in the dream. The
presumption of our real Condition is neither a
thought nor an act. It is not itself a state of
experience, gross or subtle. It is a kind of
transparency. The present appearance is simply a
process arising in a Condition that is without
center, form, relations, or bounds. That Condition
is transparent, obvious, and the only presumption
that is Truth or Happiness. Until it is obvious,
you must listen, you must hear, you must engage the
argument, you must presume the disciplines. The
practice of the Way of Divine Ignorance is leading
toward this Realization absolutely.
Consider
the argument and live the discipline. There will be
a fire in that discipline equal to the
degree of
frustration of your habitual presumptions and
distractions. Allow that fire to enter into this
consideration, and it will be the undoing of this
ordinary presumption of independence and necessity
that seems so perfectly natural and logical to you
in this hallucination, this dream, this birth. You
will begin to penetrate that presumption. Its
undoing, rather than "me" apart, will become your
position. You will penetrate it, and its logic will
no longer bind you.
You must
take up this Way as a whole life. Just sitting here
with whatever attention you have freely available
at the moment is not sufficient to change your
presumption in the future. It will simply establish
you in the moment, more or less, in this
consideration of Ignorance. But the discipline is
obliged upon you in every moment. You must take it
up as a way of life. You must be constantly
available to the Spiritual Master, constantly
available to his instruction, his argument, his
disciplines, his Company. The life awakened in his
Company serves the penetration of the dream. When
that Realization becomes summary, most radical, in
your case, then you are simply happy. Until then,
you enjoy it more or less profoundly in some
moments, and at other moments the usual life grinds
in on you. But then you have the discipline to
occupy you rather than the right you ordinarily
assume to dramatize your self-possessed tendencies
and illusions. The whole affair of this practice
ultimately serves perfect transformation in
Truth.
Difficulties
persist because the ordinary life or
dream
persists. Things continue to arise. So there is
heat in the process. But the heat is your
advantage. The heat is not some negative side
effect. The heat is free attention, available for
this profundity. Secondarily, it is painful in a
sense, but it is free. It is available force,
attention. Free attention is not otherwise so
available, because it is usually sunk into
dramatizations and distractions. Now it is without
an object. It cannot find a way to be relieved. It
is hot. And so it can consider itself, the occasion
itself.
If,
through true hearing, you will be committed to such
present consideration, and if you will persist in
it and not restrain yourself from the whole
discipline of my Company, that same enlightenment
that is now argued to your face will also be true
of you.
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