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Bubba Free John THE WAY THAT I TEACH - Talks
on the Intuition of Eternal Life
Part II The Vision of Eternal Life Introduction An aspect of the unique function of the Spiritual Master is his (or her) capacity to instruct at every level of our existence, from the practical politics of ordinary human life to the most expanded esoteric illumination and sacrifice of the body-being. Thus, Bubba's Teaching work addresses every aspect of our humanity. There is an initial period of educational instruction, purification, and re-adaptation that precedes an individual's initiation into the specifically spiritual practices of The Free Primitive Church of Divine Communion, commonly known as The Free Communion Church (the general gathering of those practicing the Way of Divine Ignorance). Bubba Free John does not enter into formal spiritual relations with individuals until they are truly prepared in body, emotions, and mind for real spiritual awakening. In every area of our lives, the fundamental error in the past is the presumption of unlove. And the essential dimension of our preparatory work, and the key to happiness in any case, is the regeneration of the life of love. All the practical disciplines are necessary but secondary. In their initial preparation, those who come to the Church are instructed in the right and lawful practices of diet, health, sexuality and intimate relations, study of spiritual teachings, and real service to others. But what must occur in each person's case is the realization, felt with the whole being, that he (or she) must be love, that he must fulfill the Law of sacrifice regardless of past history, present circumstance, or any condition that may appear in the future. And then the individual must become committed to that principal discipline with the whole force of his life. No matter what arises to distract, console, or frustrate him, he must remain as love in God- Communion. When he is in love, convinced of the Teaching, full of energy and delight in ordinary relations, then the individual may come to the Spiritual Master for initiation into the higher or spiritual dimensions of adaptation and sacrifice. But not before that time. In the early years of his Teaching work (1972-1976), Bubba Free John was principally concerned with demonstrating the Truth of this Teaching to ordinary men and women in the midst of their own living experience. Thus, he generated a great cycle of experience, argument, and instruction for those who came to him during those years. He sat in formal meditation with people who had barely begun to adapt to the practice of love and to the lawful disciplines of ordinary life. Through secondary, yogic powers, he generated in and around them astonishing displays of miraculous, mystical, magical, psychic, and occult phenomena and experiences. He taught them natural disciplines of diet, health, exercise, and the easeful routines of a sane, moral, religious life. He also taught them how to celebrate ecstatically in one another's company and in his Presence. But the point of all this experience and revelation was not to encourage people merely to exploit their spiritual or worldly tendencies. The demonstration was given in order to prove to them the futility of mere experience in itself, so that they might become founded in the life of love, the conscious sacrifice of all experience. Bubba participated freely and with boundless energy in every kind of incident, both "worldly" and "spiritual," in order to instruct his devotees. But he was always Teaching and living only the love, the radical wisdom and radiant happiness, that is the core of his Teaching. He was always speaking and showing the same Truth in the midst of all possible experiences, high or low, earthly and sublime. This is the Way that Bubba Free John teaches. His Teaching is not only a verbal communication, but also a living engagement with real people in the midst of their actual lives, to bring them to the point of insight and commitment relative to real spiritual practice. Because it is not just language that enlightens. "Hearing" the Teaching is a process of the whole body, not just the verbal mind. The navel must hear, the heart must awaken, and the whole body must be readapted to the practice of love. In the following talks, all of which were given in 1977, Bubba stresses that moral transformation and the life of love, or the submission of feeling-attention to Infinity, is the primal principle of every stage of spiritual practice. The exclusively inward, yogic approach does not lead to Truth. Love is the eternal principle of real or spiritual life. It is also the principle of change, of transformation, of growth into the higher, psychic, and transcendent capacities of the body-being in the later stages of life and spiritual practice. These talks, then, are an introduction to the stages of evolutionary development of the whole body from birth to death. They present the cultural implications of the principles of the Way of Divine Ignorance, as applied to ordinary human life and to the spiritual transformation of the body-being. Descriptions of the later stages of life provide a brief but summary account of the esoteric spiritualization of the devotee and his or her ultimate translation into perfect, unqualified God-Realization. These talks do not, however, offer an elaborate account of either the life-level responsibilities or the spiritual practices taught by Bubba Free John. For a full account of the initial preparation in the Way of Divine Ignorance, you should see such practical source texts as Conscious Exercise and the Transcendental Sun (on exercise and the psycho-physical discipline of love in all ordinary action), The Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace (on the purifying and regenerative practice of diet and health), and Love of the Two-Armed Form (on the regenerative practice of sexuality, in ordinary life and religious and spiritual practice). And for an elaboration of the esoteric and spiritual dimensions of the Way of Divine Ignorance, you should see The Paradox of Instruction and Breath and Name. Vision Mound Ceremony
There are two ways to live. We may live as the search for survival, protecting ourselves from change and death, and glamorizing ourselves through the acquisition of relations, goods, and fixed conditions, which we must also then seek to preserve. Such a way of life is not only enacted in the plane or theatre of gross and vital desires, it is also enacted in the subtler and subjective realms, where "spiritual" objects are acquired to our "eternal" selves. But we may freely abandon and be free of that whole adventure, and live as sacrifice, through love, yielding self, in the form of our feeling and attention, into the infinite pattern of presently arising changes and the whole, open-ended field of relations. The life of sacrifice through love is not opposed to ordinary survival. Indeed, it permits the fullness of ecstatic and intelligent life. But it is free of the illusions and the dramatizations and the destiny of self-possession. Bubba Free John
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