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Self-analysis, Mind,
Sadhana Adi Da Samraj (Bubba Free John) - 1973 Doing sadhana should be
capable of dealing with his karmic theatre when it arises
without becoming hysterical, or full of self-doubt or doubt
of the Guru For such a one study has also become enquiry. Not only is
his life stable and full of humor, but all his study has
become enquiry. There is a tendency among those who engage
in the traditional versions of spiritual life to
anathematize the process of thinking and to consider the
natural state to be literally thoughtless. Such people
imagine that to be realized or to understand you must sit in
mindless samadhi, dry as a dead toad. This is not true. The
natural state is completely prior to thought, and therefore
not in itself exclusive of thought. It is free of thought
even while thinking occurs. It is not being suggested that you engage in some process
of emptying your mind. Or that you become an asshole and no
longer think, no longer study, no longer require the mind to
conform to the real structures of existence. You must do
such things. You will think in any case, and you will also
analyze yourself in any case. Self-analysis comes under the
heading of all those things that will arise even though you
are living the life of Satsang. It is just that the
fundamental insight, the radical realization, is one that is
prior to all thought, that is not created by thinking. There are two aspects of the thought process. One is
negative, the whole compulsive drama that is worked out at
the plane of the mind, including self-analysis and
accumulation of thoughts. This drama will occur in any case.
And principal insight will appear, freedom will be realized
in the midst of the thought process, just as freedom will be
realized even though there is also the breath process. In contrast to the negative drama of the mind, there is
the purely functional aspect of the mind. The mind is an
ordinary and useful function of human existence and, like
all the functions of your life, it must be brought to the
condition of Satsang as well as to the useful communicative,
ordinary conditions of life. This functional dimension of
the mind, the purely practical use of the mind, is quite
apart from that whole problematic life of the mind which
everyone is suffering. But in the usual man, whose functions
are rooted in dilemma, that practical, functional aspect of
the mind has become enmeshed with the problematic use of the
mind. The sadhana of the life of understanding requires that
you use the mind consciously, bring it to the functional,
real conditions of life, to study and service, in order to
lift it out of that identification with the search, with
problematic existence, with self-meditation. The man of understanding still uses the mind. He does not
sit in "nirvikalpa samadhi" all the time. He has not lifted
himself out of the world. He uses the mind. So don't yield
to the temptation to identify the perfect enjoyment of the
life of understanding with some peculiar psycho-physical
condition in which there is no thought. The life of
understanding is a condition in which there is always
already no thought. Therefore, there can be thought. It is a
condition in which there is already no body and no self, and
yet there is conventional self-existence in the world. There
is the body as a functional condition, just as there is the
mind as a function, but this condition is not limiting. And
this apparent condition of self-existence is not lived as
self-meditation. It is realized as Divine existence, in
which there is no separate self as the principle. Do not expect me to propose that you become
anti-intellectual. I expect you to bust your ass in studying
this work. But you will tend to yield to the dilettante's
view of the mind, if you are lazy and do not apply yourself
to study. You will think it is contaminating your meditation
or something. This is not true. So there is the liability of the mind, and that liability
is a matter for understanding. Nothing you do with the mind
can in itself serve that understanding, even though you will
continue to manipulate the mind because it is your tendency
to do it. But there is also the simple, practical,
functional aspect of the mind, which you must discipline by
bringing it to the ordinary forms of life and study, and by
making it useful entirely apart from the drama of
Narcissus. When one becomes free of the drama of Narcissus, he
begins to discover that the mind is quite different from
what he might have supposed previously. And so he might make
statements like those made by Bubba Free John: "There is no
thought when I am speaking. There is no thinking going on
apart from the speech." In other words, there is no longer
that problematic, dualistic contact with the mind that
assumes the separate self. The so-called mind is
fundamentally a spontaneous display of conventional
communications like, "Let's go to lunch." It does not in
itself involve self-meditation, illusion, suffering. It
involves none of that. It is an amusement. But in one who
does not understand, the mind is identical to
self-meditation like everything else he does, including
going to lunch.
and Going to Lunch!
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