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Bubba Free John THE WAY THAT I TEACH
- Talks on the Intuition of Eternal
Life
Part I Truth is not also true, for what can be true is the opposite of what can be false, and it is, therefore, in play or tension with what is false or not true. Truth is single and absolute. Truth is paradox. It is Ignorance. No matter how much experience you may have of any object or condition or function of existence, you never know what it is. And if such Divine Ignorance is the Truth of you-rather than any primal or acquired knowledge-then the Law of life is not defense or glamorization of the known, fixed, and independent self or soul. The Law of life is the native and unqualified Radiance that is awake as us when Divine Ignorance is our presumption. Therefore, the Way of life is the sacrifice of self, or yielding of the feeling attention of the whole body-being to Infinity, in all relations, under all conditions. It is love. Bubba Free John All the ancient traditions agree that the most sublime possibility for any human being is a direct relationship to a living Spiritual Master. The Spiritual Master's Teaching moves into our lives when we are ready, to arrest us in the midst of our foolishness and to instruct us in the Way of Truth. It is not only that Bubba Free John teaches the Way of love-love is also his manner of Teaching. The Spiritual Master attracts men and women to him through their gratitude and sympathy for the Teaching. Then he teaches them how to love under all conditions of life, even death. Hearing the Truth of the Teaching, and later, when prepared, seeing and feeling the Spiritual Master's demonstration of love in the midst of all circumstances, devotees become love themselves. Thus they fulfill the Law of all existence, which is sacrifice of all that we are into the Divine. This is always the message of Bubba Free John's prophetic criticism: Become the Sacrifice. The "soul" is not within. Truth is not within. The inner, independent, separate ego or "me" is a lie. It is Narcissus,1 the self-meditator, destined only to death in confusion and fear. So be love. Be the heart in the present scheme of relations, no matter what arises. This is Bubba's most fundamental argument, in every statement and action of his life. He communicates this criticism ceaselessly to his devotees, often in direct response to their own particular forms of Narcissistic inwardness and unlove. And the only true response, for anyone who listens, is to hear. Hearing this Teaching is a function of the whole body, not merely of the subjective, conceptual mind. We must fully hear the criticism of Narcissus in relation to the tendencies of the whole body. And, as Bubba argues, we must hear again and again, in every dimension of potential adaptation and experience. Hearing is the way to sacrifice. It is release in Ignorance or Love, it is feeling-attention, radiant to Infinity. And when we have fully uncovered and become free of every limitation that is native to us by virtue of birth and previous adaptation, when we have become the Sacrifice that is God and Truth, then we are spontaneously embarked upon a new and unspeakable, Radiant Destiny. Such a Destiny is the only implication of Bubba Free John's critical Teaching. There is nothing dismal or grim about his prophecy. If we hear and respond persistently, Bubba Free John's prophetic criticism of Narcissus only signifies our release from suffering and translation, whole bodily, into the Enjoyment of the Infinite. In these introductory talks, Bubba establishes the foundations of his spiritual argument and Teaching. Some of the devotees with whom he is talking here had never spoken to him before these discussions. Others have practiced his Teaching and known him for many years. To all men and women, whoever they may be, Bubba's essential message is the same: You must realize that you are self-possessed and only suffering, and you must begin to love and never cease. Vision Mound Ceremony
He is the ancient one visible in the Greek "myth," who was the universally adored child of the gods, who rejected the loved-one and every form of love and relationship, who was finally condemned to the contemplation of his own image, until he suffered the fact of eternal separation and died in infinite solitude. I began to see that same
logic operative in all men and every living thing, even the
very life of the cells and the energies that surround every
living entity or process. It was the logic or process of
separation itself, of enclosure and immunity. It manifested
as fear and identity, memory and experience. It informed
every function of being, every event. It created every
mystery. It was the structure of every imbecile link in the
history of our suffering.
The argument of the right side of the body, the Occidental religious impulse, is directed toward the man, the living human being, and urges him (or her) toward a moral enlivening of his relations to others, to the world, and to his own mysterious Source. The argument of the left side of the body, the Oriental religious impulse, is directed toward the consciousness in man that precedes all his faculties and relations, and the argument urges toward inwardness and ascent toward transcendence and reductive Realization of prior undifferentiated Oneness. The right-sided view tends toward multiplicity, dualism, exploitation of things in themselves, and irreducible engagement in the mechanics of apparent experience. It also promotes a mystical (mysterious) consciousness in relation to events. The left-sided view tends toward singleness, monism, and separation from things and relations and the mechanics of apparent experience, at least at the gross level of the body-mind. It promotes a spiritual (transcendental) consciousness in relation to events. The argument of the whole body-being, the impulse in Reality or Truth, is not a synthesis of the left and right, East and West, but a radical impulse that is free of the independent limitations of each side. It is free of the illusions of things and relations in themselves, as well as the inward faculties, and the illusion of independence of any form, condition, or Condition. It stands Present in the form of the unqualified intuition of the Condition of the whole body-being, and thus rests in transcendental Awareness. However, it is natively committed to non-independence, or freedom from recoil and inwardness relative to the Process wherein all conditions are arising. This does not mean, however, that it is committed to conditions in themselves. Rather, it participates or is a Sacrifice in the Process of all arising. Thus, it abides in Radiance or Bliss even as the world and all relations come and go. It is moral and mystical, transcendental and spiritual in the most perfect sense. Bubba Free John
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