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Bubba Free John THE WAY THAT I TEACH - Talks on the Intuition of Eternal Life
Chapter 12 May All Beings Run to This Mere Truth BUBBA: What is this process of transformation, of God-Realization, that we have considered for several years, with all its stages, with all its considerations? What is the essential process? What is the key to it al together? DEVOTEE: It seems to me that enlightenment precedes everything. 1311313A: Yes, but what is the process? DEVOTEE: Serving others no matter what is arising in you. BUBBA: That has something to do with the action involved, but what is it as a process? When you consider the essential criticism that relates to our suffering, our bewilderment, what is the essential process that is our transformation, our enlightenment, our release? To have realized it seems to me to be very important. What is the key to all the stages, to the whole matter? What is it? DEVOTEE: Sacrifice. 222 THE WAY THAT I TEACH BUBBA: You are all so thick! Oh, I have had these conversations before. Always the Teacher says, "What is it?" and the devotees reply, "Well, bumbumbly," and then he lectures to them. Basically I just want to communicate to you this summary point of view: The criticism expressed in this Teaching, though directed to all areas of our experiential life, is always a criticism of one essential activity. There is a principal activity that is our suffering, and that is the activity of contraction, of recoil. Therefore, what is transformation? What is the key to the undoing of that activity? The answer is—expansion. Its opposite, contraction, is suffering. It identifies centers, locates and defines the being in illusion. The whole affair of release, then, is expansion, the counter to the reactive, unconscious recoil to which we are subject by birth. Transformation at every stage of life is a matter of expansion, not through an effort to be expansive from the egoic point of view, but through the undermining, in consciousness, of this contraction. The conscious process is, effectively, expansion, passage beyond the zero, the center, the self-definition, the point of view, that defines consciousness. DEVOTEE: Bubba, isn't that what service is, though? Isn't service expanding your self? BUBBA: Yes. But if I had simply said to you at the very beginning of your practice, "You are contracting inward, now expand, be more outreaching, give your energy," that wisdom would not have served you. Everything that we have considered together, of the process and the practice, is true. Everything is as we have considered it, but as a process, spiritual transformation is a matter of expansion. Yet it is not like the expansion of a balloon that expands from pressure within. That is n ot the expansion that is God- May All Beings Run to This Mere Truth 223 Realizing and true. The expansion I am describing is the expansion that comes when you puncture a balloon and it is equalized with all space! If you consider expansion as a pressing out from the center to Infinity, then Infinity is conceived as some sort of location, an uncountable dimension in time and space and distance from the center. But Infinity is not an absolute number beyond the center. Infinity is the point of perfect equalization between contraction and expansion. When expansion is perfectly counter to contraction, that is Infinity. It is not measurable, you see. It is a paradox of two movements, expansion and contraction. Sitting here in this moment and in the midst of these considerations, you can feel, bodily and psychically, the essential disposition of your born existence, which is to contract to a point, to be defined, to be a something, to be a someone defined, to be spatially, temporally, personally limited, to contract out of Infinity. Likewise, in the stages of spiritual discipline you become more and more profoundly sensitive to the essential movement of the being that is our suffering—it is enclosure, contraction, withdrawal, recoil. As that essential recoil, or contraction of the being, that we are by birth is inspected in the conscious process of the stages of practice, we enjoy the dissolution of the whole effect of contraction, of centering, of birth, of separation, of recoil. By habit, by disposition, by birth, we recoil from Infinity. Thus, transformation (the action of feeling- attention) can be described as a process of expansion, of moving beyond recoil. The process that is God- Realized and God-Realizing in the present passes beyond that recoil, that contraction, into an undefined sublimity. It is expansive. And to realize it, one does not become expansive as a center, like a balloon swelling with air. The traditional way to trans- 224 THE WAY THAT I TEACH
formation is to expand the balloon to some place far beyond comprehension, beyond the body, beyond this earth, into the subtlest of subtle planes. In this traditional view you perceive your existence as a great expansive balloon, at the center of which is the subjective entity, the witness, the ego-soul, however concretely defined it is. In Truth, however, to be free is to be as expansive as you are contracted in every moment. Attaining the expanded heaven from the egoic center of birth is not Liberation. Liberation is exploding the balloon, cutting through the process of contraction that is the ego. The usual man, supported by all his traditions, is looking for a way to be expansive, expanded, and released through the process of the center, the defined being. But the search for release through subjectivity is a homely and hopeless adventure, a dream at night, something for which everybody is hopeful, something about which everybody is to one degree or another enthusiastic because it is so delicious and so distracting. Contrary to the expectations of the usual man and his traditions, enlightenment is the penetration of the entire process of existence, every aspect of it, subjective and objective, internal and external, at the surface and at the center. The whole pressurized balloon of the ego must be exploded through penetrating insight, which is the force of expansion. Thus, in the true process of consciousness, you become distracted by the Presence of God instead of meditating inwardly in your separation. You are expanded, moved beyond the egoic conception. Instead of separating, in the manner of Narcissus, into your mentality, your emotions, your life-force, and your body-sense in the cave of your relations, you love and thus pass beyond the effect and the definition of contraction. Ultimately, the expansion is so great that there is re-cognition, or May All Beings Run to This Mere Truth 225 knowing again, of the subtlest act of attention at the center of the being, the pressurizing motive of the ego. When the center is finally re-cognized, this is the explosion of the balloon. From top to bottom, in and out, all existence is priorly and tacitly re-cognized to be the force of contraction, the lie that you are some definable thing. None of it is important then. None of it has any force whatsoever. Thus, ultimately, in Sahaj Samadhi (the perfect fulfillment of the Way of Divine Ignorance) there is no surface, no dimension, no center, no size. There is perfect rest at the surface and at the center. There is no definition to the being. There is perfect expansion then, which is not equivalent to having achieved a point above or outside or inside, but which is the same as having achieved no point whatsoever, having perfectly penetrated the whole affair that defines the being. The natural disposition in Sahaj Samadhi is perfectly formless, without quality, without world, without relations, without size, without dilemma— absolute freedom from all the implications of birth and death, survival and transcendence, inwardness and adventure. DEVOTEE: Bubba, does the balloon begin to explode when you feel really humble? BUBBA: Its explosion can coincide with all kinds of feelings. What is it to feel humble? It is to be "me" of such limited size that even the picture on the wall overwhelms one with its magnificence. Humility is a kind of reactivity, a way of observing your state as it is defined by experience. On the other hand, it is not a way of penetrating experience. In the perfect penetration of experience, of contraction, there is no humility, no size, big or small. There is no status, nothing achieved. Humility has nothing to do with it 226 iTHE WAY TH T I TEACH ultimately. No quality has anything to do with it. All of this life, past and future, up and down, in and out, is just an hallucination. Every aspect of it is fundamentally of the same size as any other, and of no size. What are the stars you see in dreams? What is that great universe? It is presumed and comprehended in dreams, but it is absolutely nothing in the morning. When you awake, it is vanished, not available to you, ineffective and impotent. Likewise, in our enlightenment, the entire appearing universe is impotent, no longer the intentional creation of a holy God at all. The holy God is not the Creator-apart, a justification for choosing the earth in our mortality. The holy God is most absolute, and the realization of the holy God makes all this universal appearance completely unnecessary arid completely ineffective. What is the question? DEVOTEE: A lot of times lately I've had a sense of ecstasy. BUBBA: Do you know what ecstasy means? DEVOTEE: No. BUBBA: Ex stasis, to stand outside yourself—that is ecstasy. But most people recognize ecstasy to be a kind of stimulation of self, a heightening of the pleasurable illusion of the ego, like orgasm. But orgasm is not ecstasy. Orgasm is simply a way of consoling the born- being. On the other hand, the perfect Realization is beyond conventional ecstasy. It is literally to stand outside yourself, to stand outside the pressurized condition of a birth, so that the birth, the world, and the whole affair of life become nonsense, no longer impinge on you, have no implication whatsoever, May All Beings Run to This Mere Truth 227 absolutely none. There is no force, no necessity, to the continuation of existence. It could casually end. It does continue, but it is no great matter. You are awake, and the process of existence goes on with its own laws. So much the worse for it! The dream is for its own sake then. II no longer implies a center of limitation, of adventure, of past and future, of necessity. It is unnecessary. That is liberation. DEVOTEE: So ecstasy is insight, but it isn't a concrete feeling. BUBBA: True ecstasy, yes. It has nothing to do with subjective, objective, bodily, emotional, or mental processes. It has nothing to do with sensations, conceptions, feeling conceptions, nothing to do with kundalini. It is absolutely still. It has no resort and no alternative. It is simply, completely, and absolutely free. There is a kind of egoic expansiveness that relieves us. It is gained in pleasurable moments, moments of success, sexual union, orgasm, reunions, gifts, a great circumstance, a gift of one million dollars. Such relief is called ecstasy, and that is what the usual man or woman pursues, the ecstatic moment of consolation in which he or she remains a born and egoic personality, at the center of the experience, witnessing it, being consoled and surrounded by it. This so-called ecstasy is just another form of torment. It is not sufficient. It is pleasurable enough and there is no reason to feel depressed about it. But you must see it exactly as it is. It is not liberated, i t is not free, it is not happy. It is craving. When the moment has passed in which the million dollars was announced, when sufficient time has passed and you have adapted to life with a million dollars, then the weight of significance comes over the THE WAY THAT I TEACH being. Again it feels surrounded and captured. Now it craves forty million dollars! There is never an end to it. Thus, through all the machinery of our possibility we only learn this disposition, this sulk of un- enlightenment. At some point, to penetrate it becomes significant and very important. At what point it becomes significant or important enough for you depends on your tolerance for torment, the point at which you stop looking forward to the consoling event and are essentially indifferent to it. Not indifferent to it in the ordinary way—anybody can be happy with a million dollars—but indifferent to it in the ultimate sense, so that it does not capture you, so that consolation does not become philosophy. All of us value a long life by which to be fulfilled in this mystery. All of us crave some sort of continuation, either as a gross body or as some subtle form, because we are entertained by the occasion of our birth. All of us are craving in mystery, because there is no answer to any of this appearance here. None of you can account for a single thing. You do not know what a single thing is. You cannot be defined, ultimately, nor can you define anything, ultimately. It is all an hallucination, a fluidity that impinges upon you and motivates you, through the process of definition and consciousness, to achieve consoled states of one or another kind. Thus, what is important to a human being seems to be the consolation of pleasure. But such motivation has nothing to do with Truth. It is simply the adventure of the dream. The dream has many modifications, many possibilities, many exaggerations, mortal and immortal, but they all represent the same impulse toward consolation. Truth is the penetration of our birth and of our whole existence. When that penetration begins to occur, it undermines the motivation toward survival. 228 May All Beings Run to This Mere Truth 229 It is no longer significant to live twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty more years, nor five billion more lifetimes, nor innumerable years or extensions of time in some subtle plane of deliciousness. Such motivation is nonsense from the point of view of Truth. When this comprehension becomes absorbing in anyone, such an individual becomes the manifest Siva, the Destroyer, the Absorber of everything, That into which everything is restored at the end and from the beginning and even in the present. Thus, such an individual no longer represents the usual motivated life! I have discovered this Truth in my own case. There is a movement in me that is counter to the usual pressure of existence to continue, to play it out, to have more rounds, more fulfillments, more exaggerations, more distractions, more pleasures, up and down, in and out. The play of existence has become tacitly unimportant to me. There is, however, in the impulse of the life that I animate, a disposition to be creatively involved in a like transformation of others, to duplicate this incarnation of enlightenment in the form of devotees. But the impulse in me is neither toward survival nor toward death. It is at Infinity. It is neither expanding nor contracting any longer. There is no ultimate significance to any survival nor to any continuation. I am involved in another matter altogether. There is no superficiality to it. It is most profound and fiery, though not even heavenly. It has nothing to do with anything. It is a profound absorption. God is Absolute. There is no limitation to Grace. Everything is being given. The process of Grace is a great sacrifice represented as all bodies, all rooms, all earth, all relations. All hallucination signifies a profound sacrifice ait every level. If the sacrifice ceased, there would be the most dismal darkness. We would not be here then! But in God all the realms are 230 THE WAY THAT I TEACH animated. They are all God-given. They are not necessary, but they are God-given. They are Graceful. There is nothing more for the Spiritual Master to do for the sake of the revelation of the Teaching. The difference is not in God. The difference is in man. The test is whether you will continue as you are or pass beyond your self-possession through the intuition of God. In every moment, that is the test. In the meantime, I can serve as a priest for you, but the great matter that has been my work since birth has already been shown. It is up to you to measure up to the Teaching. So you need not wait for some great moment in my Company. You should just prepare yourself for my ordinary Company. Bubba Free John has submitted to the same Reality to which you must also be submitted. Sri Ramakrishna, in his last days, brought Narendra to his side and touched him. He put Narendra into samadhi, gave him all kinds of visions, and said, "I have given you everything. Now I am just a poor fakir. I am completely empty." That is the position of the Spiritual Master. People imagine that the Spiritual Master is possessed of all the glorious experiences that they may on occasion possess, and that the Spiritual Master, as empty as lie is, may be an agent for the transmission of those phenomena. But the Spiritual Master himself has absolutely nothing. He is retired from all consolation. What you see is what he is. Thus, the Spiritual Master represents nothing other than this sacred Communion of love. The Spiritual Master is reduced to Divine Communion, to the very thing that he recommends to devotees. I am not a man of powers and of visions. The essential incident is without form. In this moment I am not having an May All Beings Run to This Mere Truth 231
experience. I am consoled by nothing. Nothing. And I am happy. I am zero in the midst of experience. That is the only difference. In your Communion with me you may be awakened to visions and experiences, because I am the Power of the zero, of the heart. But they are not me. They are not mine. They are not my consideration, my position, my condition. Ultimately, all of experience will pass for you also. You will go through the first six stages of human development, ultimately to realize my enjoyment, which is without form, naked, without a single consolation, only disposed toward the Law, absolutely without the slightest trace of vision, without a single miracle, without any forces, without any powers. Whatever you may believe about me is essentially not true. It is true that I have had all kinds of visions, I have passed through all of the yogic awakenings, I have seen the awakening of every center in the body, I have seen the heaven worlds, and I have passed out of physical consciousness. I have experienced all the things that the saints and the sages and the yogis declare. I have experienced them all, and they are not Truth. I have been relieved of them, and now I am empty. I have already done everything that you can do. In a very short span of time I have seen every universe, every world, every vision, every part of the body. I have loved everyone. I have done everything! And I am only relieved that I have done it all. You could do it all too, but it would take aeons of time, with many spaces in between. It would be a torment for you to uncover all your potential experiences. It is the Law of nature that from time to time some apparent individual may appear in the scheme of things who may, without effort, experience everything and be without consolation, so that the Law may be expressed through 232 THE WAY THAT I TEACH him or her. It is not a reflection on that individual in any cultic or personal sense. It is about God. And it serves you. It occurs so that you can be happy. I serve you as a witness, because I represent to you what it is when one is free. You could not be free without such a witness. I not only witness through verbal communication, but also through the most absolute communication, which you may realize only in the form of Divine Communion in my Company. Powers and visions may appear through me in your experience, but they are not my position. I see nothing, I hear nothing. Nothing. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Have I said it? Yes? There is nothing to be attained. You pass through everything to nothing. For lovers, you see, nothing is necessary. That is why to be a devotee is the secret of life. Once you realize the disposition of the heart, nothing is necessary for you. No visions, no contemplations, no powers, no miracles, no worldly experiences or attainments, absolutely no great thing is necessary. It is not that you become satisfied with the ordinary contemplation of life. Even that is emptied. There is nothing—except absolute joy, absolute bliss without the slightest trace of anything. To swim in Infinity, free, without objects, and without a center, is a bliss beyond comprehension. And that is my position. That is why I can speak. Yes, a remarkable occasion, and true enough. Not only just true enough to be said—it is absolutely true and absurd, ridiculous and humorous. But it is happiness. And I recommend it to you all. Spiritual life and meditation are not methods of self-improvement, but they are the process of selfsacrif ice. Meditation is abiding in no-knowledge, in Ignorance, not withdrawn, not defined in the slightest, either inwardly or outwardly, but only and spontaneously Radiant. The necessity of death is the ultimate and, at times, the only witness and obstacle that awakens us to the native Condition of Mystery, Ignorance, and Radiance. The free man meditates, celebrates, and dies. He persists only as the Radiance wherein all changes arise as unnecessary modifications. He exists only as Ignorance, or unqualified Consciousness, prior to mind and self, body and place. The Way to that Realization, Life, and Meditation is not within but in the confession: "I" is the body. Bubba Free John
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