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THE WAY THAT I TEACH Talks on the Intuition of Eternal Life The Dawn Horse Press Middletown, California Copyright © 1978
Vision Mound Ceremony. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First edition-February, 1978 - Printed in the United States of America International Standard Book Number - cloth 0-913922-38-2 paper 0-913922 -34-X Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-94503 Produced by Vision Mound Ceremony in cooperation with The Dawn Horse Press - Vision Mound Ceremony A number of the talks
appearing in The Way That I Teach have been adapted from
articles published in Vision Mound magazine, the monthly
journal of the Teaching of Bubba Free John.
In between deaths, the usual man hardly sees anything, just as, when he dreams at night, he flashes through the dream and hardly remembers anything in the morning. Almost none of you remember your last life. Very few of you are certain that there was a last life. And all of you, whatever you may think in your reveries, are bereft of the certainty that you will survive this life. Even if you think that you may have lived before, you are not certain that you will survive the struggling, shaking, nervous mortality of this life. And you are fast approaching the moment of death. In the meantime, you know the things you can do to feel pleasure, to be distracted from the vision of mortality. But you do not enjoy certainty that you will survive. You are still thinking that this whole cosmos with millions of universes is a machine of death, and that you are dying, that everyone is dying, and that everyone who has ever lived has died and come to an end. You do not enjoy the Vision that transcends the experiential cycle of life and death. You do not have that Vision, that Intuition of Eternal Life. You suffer all the impositions of experience in the ordinary fashion, possessed of mortality. But in your Nature and your love you are always already identical to that Vision of Eternal Life. Therefore, you may respond to me and to this Teaching, and you may become listeners. But you are not certain yet, until you hear me and become a living sacrifice through love rather than a fixed self struggling to survive. You may play with that certainty from day to day, but until you yield all conditions in love you are not certain that you are Immortal, that Bliss is Truth, that Happiness is the Condition of the universe, and that God, or the Real Process of the worlds, is at Play as us eternally in the paradox of endless changes. When people think of spiritual matters, they tend to think of the influence of the Orient. But because in the last hundred years the world has become more and more intercommunicative, we are witnessing a synthesis of world cultures in which the great divisions of East and West are breaking down. And, coincident with this development, new awakenings to spiritual influence are appearing in both East and West. My work here represents both of these cultural events. The Teaching I am here to demonstrate is not an Eastern philosophy, nor is it a Westerner's recounting of his experience in the East. It is a reunion of the great divisions of culture. Bubba Free John
The Way That I Teach is a general introduction to the spiritual Teaching work of the Western-born Spiritual Master, Bubba Free John. Bubba was born Franklin Albert Jones on November 3, 1939, in Jamaica, New York. Even from birth he has enjoyed perfect Enlightenment, and he has devoted his entire life to conscious service, or sacrifice, for the sake of the Divine transformation of others. However, to prepare himself for his future Teaching work, and to pass through living "lessons" that would later become instructive for devotees, Bubba submitted his early years to the conventional search for experience and knowledge, both earthly and transcendent. Thus, Bubba's life has been a paradox from the beginning. He completed an education at conventional Western universities (Columbia University, Stanford University, and three Christian seminaries) while engaged in an intense experiential investigation of all the phenomena of life and consciousness. He lived as a disciple for a number of years under traditional spiritual teachers, both Eastern and Western. During this time he perfected esoteric yogic disciplines and passed through the sublime processes of energy and consciousness described in the classic spiritual traditions. But the humor and unqualified wisdom he had enjoyed from birth always drew him beyond all such conventional and traditional approaches to life and Truth. Finally, in September, 1970, he spontaneously and permanently resumed the life of perfect Awakening, or God-Realization. Shortly thereafter, Bubba wrote an autobiography and statement of his understanding, The Knee of Listening. And he began to communicate to early devotees the principles, practices, and critical lessons of his Teaching, the Way of Divine Ignorance, or Radical Understanding. He brought this initial and revelatory period of his work to a close in late 1976. Since that time, Bubba has been preparing summary source texts of his Teaching (The Paradox of Instruction, Breath and Name, Conscious Exercise and the Transcendental Sun, and others soon to be published) and formalizing the institutional activities of his Church, The Free Primitive Church of Divine Communion (commonly known as The Free Communion Church). Bubba was born in the West, and he Awakened here and lives here. He is a fully illumined Spiritual Master, graced with the power to Awaken-but he does not live and work from the ascetic point of view of a traditional Eastern "swami," nor is he a conventional man of religion and action. Just so, the Way of Divine Ignorance is neither an "inward" Eastern religion nor an "outward," materialistic, or life-oriented Western philosophy. It is an original communication of Truth, inherently free of all arbitrary cultural limitations and uninspected influences, and thus it is accessible to all modern men and women. This Way represents a radical synthesis or reconciliation of the psycho-physical and spiritual tensions of man and the great cultural contradictions of East and West. It emanates from a Realized impulse that serves the renewal of true culture, even of the great tradition of esoteric spirituality and the Divine transformation of life. The Way That I Teach introduces the essential principles of Bubba's verbal communication, and it indicates something of the scope and genius of Bubba's considerations of the many aspects of the human and Divine culture of man. It also reveals something of the way that he teaches-the manner of his spiritual work with the individuals who come to him for instruction in the life of Truth. Bubba emphasizes that it is not just language that enlightens. His instruction is not offered in a vacuum, and the Way itself cannot truly be conceived or summarized as an abstract, verbal philosophy. This is a living Teaching. The talks in this book, most of them recorded in late 1977, are all moments in an ongoing dialogue, confrontation, and spiritual tussle between this living Master and his devotees, who are all ordinary men and women engaged in the great enterprise of adapting to a spiritual way of life. So the Teaching that Bubba Free John offers is a living practice. In these discussions, he is confronting his devotees-and all listeners-with the principles and practice of Truth, and he is requiring them to hear his argument and incarnate the Teaching through their own discipline, just as he himself does at all times. Thus, the Teaching of Bubba Free John is not a thing in itself. It cannot really be comprehended independent of real hearing and adaptation through the process of one's living, particularly in intimate cultural relations with others who practice likewise. There is a verbal communication for those first approaching, first listening, and that is what is offered in this book. But that communication cannot really be called the Teaching. This Way is only true when it is alive in the form of real human beings, devotees. People often want a book or other verbal communication in itself to enlighten them-and Bubba Free John's communication certainly does awaken the intuition of the ultimate Truth, the eternal Divine Life. But that intuitive sympathy is not equivalent to God-Realization, or even to true hearing of this Teaching. The practice itself is the Teaching; it is the Way that Bubba Free John teaches. And it is only true in and as those who incarnate it in their own lives. Hearing is a process of the whole body, not just of the verbal mind. Just so, the Way of Divine Ignorance itself is not at all a subjective, inward, "Eastern" affair. People usually think that spiritual practice is essentially subjective belief, inward meditation, and private, ascetic involvement with interiorized rituals of body, energy, and mind. If they consider the life of love, it is at most a part of the mere preparation for their inward and "transcendent" meditations. Love, in the traditional or conventional spiritual way, is a secondary matter at best. But in Bubba's considerations with devotees such as those published here-we come to an understanding of what the true principle of real life is. We realize that the moral transformation of our whole lives, the life of love or free feeling-attention to Infinity, is the primal principle of all life and action. And when we become involved in such a Way of life, we see how all the functions of life and our society are affected. The Law of love or sacrifice applies to all functions specifically. Every aspect of the body-being must be purified of the effects of egoic or feelingless habits. Every aspect must be readapted to the continuous and sublime enjoyment of God or Truth. So the Way does involve specific disciplines, including responsibilities for such things as diet, exercise, and sexuality, and later, when the individual is prepared, forms of meditation and transformation of the body being. But these disciplines do not produce experiences for their own sake. The principle of this Teaching is not experience of any kind, high or low. It is this very matter of love. Love is the principle of the entire Way of Divine Ignorance throughout each of its four stages. The other disciplines are necessary because this Way is a process that includes the totality of experience. But love is the focus. It is the life of Truth, of present God-Communion. For those who are interested in
taking up the whole Way of life that Bubba Free John offers,
there is a full cycle of source texts that communicate all
the essential matters of Bubba's argument and practical
recommendations to devotees.1 For those who are
not, yet who have an interest in spiritual or conscious
life, this and Bubba's other books remain profoundly
valuable. One of the great services of Bubba Free John's
life and work is his penetrating insight into the illusions
of all ordinary or conventional life-not only of the
specific activities of the usual worldly or spiritual man,
but also of the great cultural illusions of East and West.
Bubba's whole body Realization of Truth spontaneously
enables him to reveal characteristic limitations to which we
are both individually and culturally insensitive. This
critical capacity is a function of the Siddhi,2
or Great Power, of Truth. It is part of the spiritual work
of all Divine Teachers, who come to instruct and enlighten
devotees and to purify human culture of all the false ways
of conventional mortal life.
2. The spontaneous and
Perfect Consciousness, Presence, and Power of the very
Divine, which is communicated to living beings through the
unobstructed agency of the Spiritual Master, or one whose
Enlightenment is perfect.
This is a book of great humor, of great freedom, of celebration and enjoyment of the Infinite God. It is a book of love and feeling of the highest order. It is not an exhaustive or systematic presentation of the Way that Bubba Free John teaches, but a sketch of it in Bubba's own words, in living response to his devotees. Each of the talks has its own distinct feeling and tone. Altogether, The Way That I Teach is a radiantly happy expression of the life of Truth, a book of laughter and full enjoyment. At the same time it represents the most profound, solemn, and awesome occasion a human being can contemplate and enter: the living relationship to the Divinely Awakened Master, the agent of eternal life in God. Bubba Free John says: The whole matter of Divine life cannot be summarized. It is not something that can be presented in a weekend to an interested group. Because of today's fast communication, because there are more and more books about spirituality and more and more people traveling and talking about spiritual matters, it is easy to imagine that some great spiritual event is occurring. But people are just considering spiritual ideas. Most people who are involved with so called spirituality are involved in superficial ways, as they would be with conventional church beliefs. People have many cultural suppositions about spiritual life and spiritual teachers, based on what they have read and heard. The teacher is supposed to look and act a certain way because what is spiritual is generally associated with what is ascetic. The Way of Divine Ignorance does not represent an exclusively ascetic point of view. But clearly it is a discipline, ascetic in the highest spiritual sense. Nothing in itself is presumed to be the Real. No experience in itself is the Truth, no inner experience or outer experience, no object, no state in itself exclusively is the Truth. Thus, all experience and all movements of attention in the being are transcended in intuition of the Real Condition. In that sense all the disciplines in this Way are ascetic. They are a kind of heat. They transform, they transcend. Yet the world of arising manifestation is not avoided. Therefore, when you become involved in this work you live an ordinary life. You work in the world and are creatively active in the world, if that is your interest. Ordinary worldly activity is not prohibited in principle. In the fullness of our practice the whole body is brought into consciousness; all of its orientations and all of its experiences are inspected and become a matter of responsibility. All the superficial patterns that we represent individually, psychologically, culturally, and socially are inspected and made a matter of responsibility. We are turned to lawful practice rather than reactive patterns by tendency. Thus, this is a different practice altogether from what is traditionally represented in East or West. Whenever a spiritual awakening appears, unique in time and space, and begins to become communicative in the world to others, it synthesizes oppositions, differences, the qualities that are creating disharmony in individual lives and separating people from one another. Its origin is a realization of real or Divine life in that time and place, realized and communicated through an individual in the company of others and for their sake. It has cultural significance, and thus cultural synthesis also occurs. But such a Communication is fundamentally a radical approach to all things harmonious or inharmonious. It is prior even to any synthesis. It is a real process. It is a serious and profound matter in the highest sense. It always has been. Middletown, California Vision Mound Ceremony January 10, 1978 
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