Graceful Process – Dawn Horse Magazine – 1975


The Dawn Horse

Number 6 (Volume 2, Number 4) 1975


THE GRACEFUL PROCESS

 

Bubba Free John’s verbal teaching is consistently generated from the point of view of radical understanding, but it stands as a paradox and a test to his devotees, like all the other human forms of his work. Most of his talks, though delivered as direct responses to those who sit before him, are also consistent and whole expressions of his Dharma, and thus publishable without introduction or commentary. But, as Bubba said recently, the Guru will do anything to serve the crisis of real consciousness in his devotee, even to the point of giving him “wrong Dharma.” What follows are excerpts from several talks which amounted to just such an event-not “wrong Dharma,” exactly, but a situation in which Bubba first overemphasized phenomena that are not central to the principles of his real work, and then several months later directly criticized his students’ obvious eagerness to become fascinated with such experiential phenomena, and thereby to forsake the non-dramatic, conscious process of real insight and understanding.

The first excerpts are from a talk given late last November. A student who had been with Bubba for several years, since even before the formal establishment of The Dawn Horse Communion, had come to him in a desperate state. Paralyzed by fear, he was incapable of turning to the Guru as he had in the past, incapable of using the Teaching, resorting to the Community, unable to enquire and so understand what was occurring to him. In other words, his entire life of sadhana was falling apart. Bubba spoke with him for a long while about his condition, and then, after convening the entire Community in the Satsang Hall and having this student relate his story, Bubba gave the talk from which the following representative paragraphs have been excerpted:

 

THE PRINCIPAL MOOD IS FEAR

Beneath your conventional game of life there is a principal mood, and fundamentally its content is fear. During the course of your sadhana, periodically you have come close to that felt dilemma, that sense of fear. All the sadhana generated in this Ashram is a process that always brings you into more and more intimate contact with that. It creates in you a crisis in which you cease to be involved in conventional mentality, insight, behavioral change, philosophy and all the rest, and fall into that principal mood which underlies your conventional game. If you do not leave this Community or commit suicide or whatever, you begin to stand in place and you very obviously see that you are going to do this sadhana, period, and you are going to pass through the crisis regardless of your reluctance.

You continue to go through the game of rising and falling, all the phases that I have talked about. You will always be having insights and seeing where you are at, but all of that is superficial. During that period you always have the Teaching to resort to, and you always have study groups and the possibility of insight and learning again what you are up to, seeing it all. But then there comes a time when you begin to fall at random but more and more certainly into that principal mood. Of course you will always be trying to get on top of it through understanding a little bit or enquiring. But when this crisis is intensified so that you begin to fall into the principal mood randomly for longer periods of time and without any defenses, you no longer have at your disposal these alternative ways of getting on top of it. You begin to pass through a period of time in which you no longer have any of your former strategies to resort to. You absolutely lie in that mood, that fear, that dilemma, without resorts, without being able to comprehend it, without being able to enquire, without being able to understand the Teaching, without being able to engage in an emotional connection with the Guru, without finding satisfactions in your sadhana or the Ashram, without finding hope in anything. The level on which the Teaching exists for one who is passing through this crisis is Grace. It exists as fundamental consciousness, which is the Guru, which is your own nature also.

So a phase appears in the sadhana of a student in which he passes through this principal mood, this descent into his fundamental karmic condition. During this time, understanding arises relative to that mood. It is understood, comprehended as your own activity, as a present activity. When that insight appears, it is on quite a different level than the more or less superficial, behavioral, psychological levels in which you enjoyed insight before. It is a comprehensive and intense form of insight, a fundamental insight. That is what I call understanding, not the understanding that takes place in the conventional psychophysical state, but the understanding that takes place within this principal mood. That is fundamental understanding. Where that understanding arises, when that intuitive consciousness which is beneath this principal mood appears and enforces itself against that mood of fear, then enquiry and the Teaching and everything else return and become available to you again. And during this time of genuine enquiry, that intuitive consciousness comes to the front and becomes your position. It becomes what you bring to the moment to moment affair of life. This period of time is the mature phase of student sadhana.

Bubba’s communication, it turned out, was deliberately paradoxical. Immediately it became grounds for fascination in the Community. Those who were prone to seek some kind of terrifying event dramatized their fears and anxieties, imagining that they could self-propel themselves into and through “the principal mood” and thus move into some more “advanced” form of sadhana.

So “The Principal Mood Is Fear” did, indeed, open the door to the conception of an essentially dramatic and negative event. Bubba had emphasized before that no transformation was possible without the capacity to endure tapas, or the intense heat generated in the confrontation of habits and tendencies by real consciousness, and people assumed that their fear represented such heat. But in the real sadhana of understanding, tapas is an entirely conscious frustration. Its intensity depends upon the degree to which karmic life in any form is confronted by the viewpoint and action of Truth, and not upon any particular karmic content, even the fundamental mood of fear. Even before giving the talk above, Bubba had said more than once that those who remained turned to him in Satsang would pass through their spiritual crises almost without noticing them.

Because his devotees leaned toward the dramatic possibilities of a spiritual solution in considering passage through the principal mood of fear, Bubba spoke again in the spring of 1975, using new terms and emphasizing this time that the movement through the principal mood was as simple as resting consciousness in the ever present intuitive enjoyment of the Divine. That enjoyment, he said, is available by Grace in Satsang, and is just as available to the student as it is to the devotee. It is only that the student must do real sadhana and make himself available to that conscious life, even though he tends not to. “The way to pass through the principal mood is to go directly to the Heart, without wasting any time … in fear.”

 

What follows is a composite taken from several talks given by Bubba Free John in May and June, 1975.

THE GRACEFUL PROCESS

I have spoken on a number of occasions about the “principal mood.” Because human beings are generally self obsessive and want as much drama associated with themselves as possible, the idea of the spiritual process being super-dramatic-heroic, in fact-is much more appealing than intuitive conscious existence. So the idea of going through an episode of absolute terror and confusion and dissociated thinking and collapse is very appealing. It sounds like something is really happening. In fact, this real process is not something that is “really happening.” It is not in itself identical to anything that may appear in your life outwardly or inwardly. It is not identical to the content of your life. The learning we all have gotten through television and school and modern psychiatry and endless paperback literature reinforces this notion that real existence is a heroic, dramatic affair. So when the real spiritual process takes place, it is supposed to be a matter of unbelievable experiences, positive and negative. This satisfies the Narcissistic demand, the Narcissistic image of existence.

When I first spoke to you about this passage through the principal mood I was interpreting an aspect of this process relative to the experience of terror. I was using it as a metaphor for an event that is not in itself dramatic. It has happened to be associated with dramatization, but passage through the principal mood is not the same thing as primal therapy or some psychiatric episode, any more than vital shock is the same thing as birth trauma. Did you ever see the way a cat will sometimes play with a mouse? The cat could just as well deal with the mouse in the yard, but it will bring the mouse into the house and knock it around a while, make it run and then slap it back, and torment it, and leap on it. It will do that again and again. You all play with this process of sadhana in that same way. You make it indirect because you want all kinds of drama to be associated with it. The drama, the content, is in fact what interests you. You want all kinds of neurotic episodes and heavy bullshit, and confusions and near insanity and breakdowns. And you want to be dealt with heavily. You want conditions and you want to have to try harder, and so forth. You love all that stuff. And the more you love it, the more time you are going to spend playing with it. So you will make it necessary for there to be episodes of all kinds.

The only way to pass through the principal mood is to go directly to the Heart and not waste any time bullshitting in fear. Of course, in practice, there will be a certain amount of theatre in everybody’s case. Perhaps in. most people’s cases there will be lots of cycles and phases and insights and so forth. But the process I am describing is instant, direct, present. It is just as much a matter of penetrating any ordinary thought as it is penetrating a moment of fear. Sheer terror coming out of the unconscious is no weightier an object than the simplest reverie or thought. The process I am talking about is not heroic. It is not an effort that succeeds. It is not a game by which you earn enquiry or discipleship or anything of that kind. It is a process in consciousness, in which you see the present event of your existence, this contraction. And you know what just precedes it. You naturally fall out of the binding limitation that you are compulsively creating into an unnameable sense of existence. That is the natural state. When that occurs, there is the intuition of the Heart. When a life becomes founded in that intuition, that intuitive consciousness comes to the front of that life and begins to work upon all the events of life most directly, until that intuition has revealed itself to be the very Reality, as it has in the case of the devotee.

It is not really appropriate to objectify this moment of passage through the principal mood and think of it in dramatic terms. There may appear, at random, in some individuals, some moment comparable in its appearance to the experience I described in my own case in seminary. But it is not necessary for there to be any such drama. It is only necessary to pass directly into that intuition. If consciousness rests in that intuitive enjoyment, it has already passed through the principal mood. It has obviated the principal mood. That is the point of passing through it, not to have the experience of terror, but to be free of the limitation. So if you pass directly, in the ways I have described, into that intuition prior to the fear which is natural to the ego, that activity of self-definition is undone. It has no force. When we rest in that intuitive consciousness, we are happy. There is the clear and unreasonable sense of happiness, of unobstructed consciousness, of no-threat. There is no self in that intuition, and there is no fear.

The process of understanding can be a very simple affair. Its foundation is in the intuitive dimension of consciousness, in the very nature of consciousness, not in any superficial level of existence. Just as it is not necessary to have a superficial or purely mental understanding of the Teaching, it is also not necessary to have a terrified episode relative to existence or relative to the Teaching. Everything I have said about the principal mood is simply a way of communicating to you that the process of enquiry is not merely a superficial mental activity or an inner subjective consideration of yourself. It must be founded in real insight and must itself be tantamount to that intuition, that conscious enjoyment. Whenever there is that enquiry, the principal mood is obviated. The ego is obviated, and you have effectively passed through it.

DEVOTEE: Bubba, in my own case, I don’t really have episodes, but there is more of a continuous crisis.

BUBBA: The crisis I am talking about is not a breakdown, not a disturbance. It is the present dissolution of the usual affair of limited consciousness and the regeneration of the real conscious position. That is the crisis. The crisis isn’t to get disturbed and screwed up and to see the craziness of your life again. But forms of that crisis, secondary confrontations with “where you’re at,” can occur again and again and again at any stage of sadhana in different ways for every individual. The real crisis, though, is the crisis in consciousness. Enquiry is a form of this crisis. Insight is a moment of this crisis. Any form of real self-observation is a form of this crisis. Every moment of re-cognition, every moment in which you abandon the position of your cultic contracts and become associated purely and directly with others, is a form of this crisis.

DEVOTEE: Why won’t our passage through the principal mood be dramatic like yours was?

BUBBA: Well, there is one thing you can keep in mind: you are not Bubba Free John. So you do not have to duplicate what was manifested as his path of life. If you were to duplicate it altogether, you’d have to go spinning around to various teachers, take on various dharmas and practices, and so forth. You would have to do the whole thing, not just the episode of fear. The evidence of my apparent life has several functions. One of them is to serve as an image of the very argument that appears in philosophical terms. It is a way of demonstrating and disproving by demonstration the way of seeking and the various consolations that may arise. You must remember, I wasn’t doing sadhana inside this Ashram with the Dharma and the Guru established in the forms that are your opportunity. There was no such Guru and representation of the Dharma standing in front of me. It all was initiated from beyond this manifestation, and it was that eternal Guru, the Maha-Siddha, that governed the whole process of my life. As a result, it had to be a pretty full demonstration of the possibilities of spiritual life. It was also necessary for me to functionally realize the various kinds of spiritual fulfillment and practice and experience, in order to guide others eventually. If I did not know anything about it, then I would merely be offering arguments about many of the things that people want to believe and practice as spirituality. By that having taken place in real terms through the vehicles that are my apparent manifestation, this one becomes serviceable to others, becomes an instrument for that sadhana to be lived directly. So the Guru represents the direct influence that was also the source of his own transformation, and he represents a communicated teaching that cuts away all of the heretical distractions that the usual life is disposed to karmically. He is a principle and an opportunity and a process by which That which is felt as the goal of all passages is made the instant capacity of living beings.

Unless somebody had gone through the principal mood, who would know what that was? Unless somebody had gone through it, there would be nobody to make sense out of it, to simplify it, and to establish a process in which it can be obviated without the karma of that experience being suffered for no purpose. The episode described in seminary was not in any sense an amusing experience. It was not in any sense pleasurable or fulfilling or interesting. In itself, it was a totally destructive experience. What was realized by being totally disarmed and having to pass through it, showed wisdom relative to many things. If that wisdom and its Siddhi is given to another, then it is not necessary for that person to suffer it in that way. So the Guru’s own life makes it unnecessary for karmas to be dramatized and suffered. If a man assumes the option that the Guru represents in the midst of a karmic world, the process of sadhana itself is a graceful, fundamentally happy affair. It can be very direct, very simple.

DEVOTEE: As we’ve been sitting here, I have just been suffering. My usual assumption is that this is happening because of events that have happened today, and so I try to pinpoint what is causing me to feel upset now. But I gather from what you’ve been saying that this is already my state. It has nothing to do with what happened today.

BUBBA: Right. What happened today is, at best, an occasion for drawing your attention to this condition that you karmically assume from moment to moment, at least beneath consciousness. Today’s events just served to put you in touch with the principal mood that you are always suffering. It is not by then retracing your steps and examining the circumstances that you undo this dilemma. The whole affair of sadhana and the Guru’s argument in relationship to you is one in which he is always drawing you into the awareness of that condition. Through all circumstances, even the pleasurable ones, he is looking to awaken that awareness, that real consciousness, that crisis, whereas the world in general creates only random crises without at the same time calling upon you to comprehend them.

DEVOTEE: Is the constant activity of understanding just falling into that suffering?

BUBBA: The constant activity of understanding is consciousness itself. But in the affair of sadhana, the apparent individual is always falling into the realization of his ordinary state, his dilemma, and seeing that it has fundamentally nothing to do with circumstances.

DEVOTEE: It’s unreasonable.

BUBBA: Right. You cannot attach it to something that just happened to you this afternoon. It is always there. It is fundamental to you. That is the principal mood.

DEVOTEE: What keeps us from falling into that all the time?

BUBBA: Your karmic destiny, your karmic intention is to be distracted by experiences. You are always looking for some way to draw the field of your attention out of this real comprehension of life into isolated phenomena that are pleasurable, that are distracting, fascinating, in which you do not have to experience that fear. At random the world is always making you fall into the sense of despair and of conflict and so forth. The Guru intentionally and always looks to make you fall into it. The Teaching, the argument of the Teaching and the disciplines of the Guru are always working to produce this awareness. Because that underlying dilemma is always there. Circumstances are used to reawaken it at times, but basically you must realize that sense of dilemma independent of circumstances. The whole force of the Teaching and the Guru’s work is to make you realize that. And that is that stage of student sadhana which I call falling into the principal mood. It is one in which you realize this sense of dilemma randomly awakened in you in the course of your sadhana to be independent of circumstances and to be constant. And you carry on your ordinary functional life during that time. It is not a psychotic episode. It is just that during that time you cannot be consoled. You cannot really be distracted from it. That’s why I said that during that time even the Teaching in its ordinary verbal form is not a consolation. It does, however, serve your conscious participation in this sense of dilemma. Then there is the intuitive penetration of it as your own activity. When that intuitive penetration has occurred, enquiry1 in its real form takes place.

DEVOTEE-. Bubba, I have seen the possibility of truly doing sadhana, and the possibility of really knowing the Divine. It is totally intuitive, and there is the basis for doing that, and yet the life vehicle itself continually offers resistance. I dramatize whatever arises, or I buy it, or whatever, even though I think I know better.

BUBBA: That intuition of possibility must become the grounds for strength in sadhana, not just for a romantic involvement with the Teaching. To the degree that you have felt the real force of the Teaching and the real possibility of its intuition, you must engage yourself in the conditions of your sadhana over against the life of tendencies. The life of tendencies is still there and will continue to be there. Your assumption of the Guru’s conditions and the other conditions that are given to you in the Ashram will always have to be lived over against tendencies. It will never have the force of life that your tendencies have. Your tendencies will always seem stronger, more dramatic, more righteous, more appropriate even than the form of your sadhana. But this intuition of its possibility and the rightness of its communication must become the grounds for your strength.

You are talking about sympathy with the Teaching. And sympathy with the Teaching is bullshit unless you stop getting involved in emotional regret about where you’re at and simply live over against it from the point of view of sadhana. Then your sympathy with the Teaching is more than romance. Then it is real sympathy. Until you do that it is just a matter of liking Bubba Free John and liking the Teaching and having a little bit of dislike for what you usually would do and so forth. It must become a real involvement with the principle of sadhana and with the conditions that are appropriate for you. People will not by tendency become responsible for it. They want to hang out and be irresponsible, have experiences of being relieved, and it is only for that reason that enquiry isn’t easily and quickly established in people. It is irresponsibility, not the

fact that they haven’t seen it all yet. The level of responsibility required for enquiry is not all that great. It does not take years and years to develop it.

At the beginnings, a person. simply enters the Ashram through sympathy with the Teaching. He comes into this Satsang and takes on these conditions. Just doing that begins to produce observable effects, resistance and so forth that can be seen. In a matter of weeks or months the individual should begin to observe specific forms of dramatization in his own case. That is what’s brought to his attention and made his responsibility in study groups. At a little later stage he begins to become sensitive to the fundamental game that he exercises ritually and repetitively, and the essential outline of that should become clear. Then, beyond that, there is more and more of this simple, total sense of this avoidance, this contraction. It is at that time that enquiry becomes a responsibility. It must be taken on as a responsibility Consciously, not waited for. Its foundation is established at that point, so it must be taken on as a responsibility in the random moments of life and also in formal meditation. And enquiry continues then, along with all the other continued appearances of random insights and so forth, to the point where the verbalization of enquiry is itself comprehended through the same consciousness that uses enquiry. Enquiry itself is comprehended as being of the same Nature as this avoidance, this contraction. Then recognition2 begins to develop, perhaps along with random enquiry. It is a way of simply recognizing what arises as contraction and passing into what just precedes it, which is simply an intuitive conscious condition that is not nameable, but which, if stably enjoyed, shows everything and is acknowledged to be happiness. It is known intuitively to be one’s real Condition and one’s natural state.

Then at some point there is penetration even of recognition, which is an activity in consciousness that restores the condition of this intuitive happiness. When even that is seen to be of the same nature, to also be this contraction, then it relaxes, and there is passage into a nondependent form of this same intuition. At first it tends to be exclusive, it tends to be concentrated perhaps in the region of the heart on the right, or just the sense of consciousness without phenomena. But even that is penetrated by the same intuitive force of consciousness that is now very much alive in the case of the individual. When that is seen, then there is this condition of “open eyes” that I describe. That is radical intuition3, in which there is no excluding of anything any longer. All that is just relaxed. And all forms of activity within consciousness that before served to restore this moment of insight are all relaxed, and things just appear as before without any attempts being made to exclude them, to penetrate them, or to go beyond them. Everything simply appears obviously as modifications of one’s Nature. So that the only thing that is identified from moment to moment is that same Nature. That same Condition, is the only realization, the only knowledge, the only experience in any moment, and everything that arises becomes nothing more than that same Consciousness.

 

1. Enquiry is an intentional activity by which consciousness reestablishes itself in unqualified relationship. Student sadhana embraces enquiry in the form of a mental verbalization, “Avoiding relationship?”

2. Re-cognition: that aspect of disciple sadhana in which the mind and all experience are known again as contraction of the force of Consciousness. It arises spontaneously under the Guru’s guidance as an extension of the process of enquiry, and it obviates all sense of dilemma.

3. Radical intuition is the enjoyment of a devotee’s sadhana, and the natural extension of enquiry and re-cognition. It is perfect Understanding, non-dual Consciousness, abidance in the prior Condition of the Divine or Only God, even as all the conventions of life arise in common terms.

 

DEVOTEE: Bubba, it seems that the relationship with you takes a more and more meaningful form. When Task, “Avoiding relationship? ” it is connected with the enjoyment of the relationship to the human Guru.

BUBBA: Yes. The relationship to the Guru, the recognition of the Guru is a reflection of the level of responsibility in the individual. So if the affair of his conscious sadhana is developed to the point of enquiry, naturally his conscious, literal awareness of the nature of the Guru and the quality of his relationship to the Guru is intensified. In the beginnings, the form of sadhana is largely a response to the verbal Teaching and the conditions of sadhana. But the connection to the Guru is established in Satsang and there should at least be that random intuition, that felt happiness, that natural enjoyment. In the beginnings of an individual’s sadhana, even that cannot be viewed responsibly. It is viewed more or less childishly. It tends to be seen mainly as an experience that people try to have again and again. But later on, when the conscious affair in the individual has become his stable responsibility, he becomes turned to the Guru. Instead of waiting for these effects and desiring them, he finds himself naturally turned with attention to the Guru, with felt, intuitive attention. That attention is stabilized, then, at the point of responsibility and enquiry. It becomes more and more stable, so that in the case of the disciple the general, arbitrary psychological wavering relative to the Guru that characterizes a student is essentially under control. It is normalized, minimized, the force of it is obviated through the conscious responsibility of that individual. So he’ is naturally, stably turned to the Guru, with felt attention. He consistently knows the Guru, sees the Guru as Siddha. It is just a natural extension of his maturity.

The Guru enters into the affair of human life in order to communicate the way of this process, to establish conditions that serve it, and also to generate it. So the Guru’s appearance is a significant event. It makes spiritual life a graceful possibility, rather than a heroic affair for those who have the karma and intensity to struggle through the great circle of the cosmos. And the fundamental condition for this real process is Satsang itself. That is the realization, that is the communication, that is the Samadhi. As one enters into direct sacrificial relationship with the Guru, that intuition is established and the conditions that serve that intuition are established. If Satsang, that relationship, becomes the principle of your sadhana, it can indeed be a graceful process. Only if, through lack of insight, you remain bound to your own theatre, your own possibility, your own separate and heroic spirituality, only if that remains the principle of your spiritual life,_ are you going to have to go through a prolonged period of phasing up and down, and struggling, and looking great when you get to be announced as the disciple, and so forth. There will be no such occasions, because this process is simple and natural. It is Satsang.

The affair of this sadhana is graceful. You consider the Guru’s argument and then you meet the Guru. On the basis of your response to the Teaching, having seen it make points in your own case, you enter into that relationship naturally, voluntarily. The more you live that relationship, the more it communicates itself. On the basis of that relationship, you accept the discipline of the life-conditions and of the Community, of service and study and this theatre of our life together. But the process itself is very natural, it is that response. Having that argument make its points to the point of essential and spontaneous surrender to the Guru, which in that case becomes Satsang, this natural intuition, this happiness, then continued consideration of that argument under the conditions given, which serve to reflect your own drama to you to the point of insight, all of this goes on to the point of enquiry, recognition and radical intuition.

All of this rests upon that single principle, that living condition of Satsang. Everything that is associated with it is very concrete and demands responsibility of you, intelligence, real life. There is nothing vague about it. There is nothing confusing about the Dharma. You must simply continue to return to its fundamentals. Any of you who take on this sadhana as a process of grace in this way I have described can see it. But if you remain bound to some possible heroic self-transcendence and overcoming, filled with endless experiences and complications, then it will take a great long time and it will not essentially be a process of grace, except perhaps at random moments. Basically, then, it is not to that graceful possibility of Satsang that you have committed yourself, but rather to the possibility of your own transformation. If your commitment is to the possibility of your own transformation, then you have not essentially made Satsang the principle of your spiritual life. To that degree, it takes a long time and your spiritual life is very dramatic. But those who grasp it most simply, most fundamentally, as a graceful affair, natural and practical in its implications, are not basically very dramatic. They are not terribly interesting to others either, because they can’t account for their spiritual life in laudable and fascinating terms. All of that has been undone for them.

On any given day it is possible for any one of you to pass beyond the principal mood and to enjoy the perfect Condition of absolute, unqualified understanding. It can happen at any moment. And there is no trick to it. It is simply a matter of Satsang. The matter of understanding is always instant. It is not a path that goes on and on, getting better and better all the time. It is realized in moments, moment to moment. If one does that, then one’s apparent life is magnified in terms of responsibility and so forth. But the essential event, the essential process is in this moment, and then in this moment, and it is initiated at the very beginning. It is always going on in one’s sadhana. It is not something towards which one’s sadhana is moving. It is the foundation principle of one’s sadhana. And it is continually re-initiated, re-awakened. If it is not, then you are engaging this possibility as a traditional or conventional path. You are engaging it as a form of the search. You are engaging it from the point of view of the dilemma, not Satsang. You are engaging it as a solution, a preoccupation, a series of fascinations, of self-satisfactions. Everyone who truly does this sadhana fundamentally enjoys that intuitive happiness. And someone who happens to become responsible for the process in the manner I’ve described for disciples will not be an object of fascination to anyone. Such an individual does not enjoy anything that is not enjoyed by everyone else in the Ashram. It is the same-that intuition, that happiness, that Satsang. It is simply implemented, magnified in different ways in his functional life. But it is the same happiness. And if you always move directly to that Condition, that happiness, prior to your games, your separativeness, your fulfillments and so forth, then you have already passed through everything that needs to be passed through. You will never gain anything again by experience. So if it has become complicated, return to the basics-Satsang, Grace.

Sadhana is life in Satsang. It is not just an external condition, it is a condition of consciousness. It is intuitive happiness, free of what is arising. Free of the implications of what is arising, free of the demand for dramatization. When one abides in that natural intuitive state, then one’s action is transformed, one’s mind is transformed. All the conventions of one’s appearance are informed by that principal Condition and Nature. Ultimately it is realized to be the Reality of which all things are the modification, including the apparently external, visible world and all of the internal or transcendent, invisible worlds. But before and after one’s discovery of how magnificent all that is, there is that natural enjoyment of Satsang. That intuitive happiness is sufficient, and That is it, after all. So it is fundamentally simple, and need not be a prolonged drama. It is required of you in this moment, in every moment, in every occasion of our meeting, in every hour of your sadhana.

DEVOTEE: Is there ever a moment when, as students, we’re not avoiding relationship?

BUBBA: Wherever there is consciousness, wherever there is Satsang, wherever there is real insight, in that moment there is no limitation. In the case of any student who is really doing sadhana, there are at least random occasions in which the game of Narcissus is undone. But the point is not “Are you avoiding relationship?” The point is, there is only God. So in any moment when you are enjoying some form of that intuition of the Divine, of your essential Condition, of your fundamental happiness, then of course there is release from all of that. This requires great attention and real discipline and responsibility and energy. But if no one knew it at all, they would not be able to do this sadhana. The foundation of this sadhana is not the absence of the intuition of the Divine. The foundation of this sadhana is Satsang, the intuition of your real Condition, the intuition of the Divine Nature of this moment. So, truly, a student in this Ashram at least randomly enjoys the dissolution of his ordinary condition.

DEVOTEE: I always tend to get very suspicious of myself.

BUBBA: Well, you have every right to be suspicious of yourself. I’m suspicious of you! But merely being suspicious-what is that? To be depressed, to be self- conscious-it’s just self involvement, self-watching. But in any moment when you see it, it becomes a very simple matter. And you consciously fall into that Condition that is there just before you created all your troubles, before you began, in this moment, considering the fractions of everything and making yourself, a something, and God a something else, and the world another something. Before you started imagining a program for your ultimate victory or defeat, by desiring and creating circumstances for yourself, just before all of that happens in this moment, just before you believe all of that, you are happy. And it is better to be happy. That happiness is your Condition. All the rest of it is an hallucination by which you program your life. So the matter of understanding is simple. It is not complicated, it is not a complicated involvement with all of this stuff that obsesses you. Wherever that is seen, consciousness assumes its own natural, intuitive Condition. That is Satsang, that is understanding. That is what all of this is all about.

In the devotee it is perfect. It is obvious in the devotee that there is happiness. That is his Nature, his Condition, his Destiny. Then everything that appears is. Samadhi. The reason the devotee is called a devotee is because of the Bhava, or Divine pleasure, that is stabilized in his case. He is not in every moment figuring it out, seeing the error and stepping beyond it through processes in consciousness. Whatever he sees is That. So he is only happy. He can’t help but be happy. He can’t sidestep it. He can’t have an experience that is unhappy, fundamentally. It is all the same Condition. He can’t find anything that is not that Condition, so he no longer participates in the reaction of ignorance. And all of his parts open. His heart opens. All sorrow leaves his being. His mind stops endlessly manufacturing his false vision, and it becomes radiance only. The world and his body and all forms become not a struggle toward some attainment, some immortality, some mortality, but fullness, blissfulness only. And all of that without benefit of a single vision. Well, all of that is also the enjoyment of the student. Satsang is that Samadhi.