The Following is from The Enlightenment of the Whole Body

by Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj) pp. 71-114

Enlightenment of the Whole Body Full Index of Articles

Chapter 1
The Divine Person - Free Standing Man - The Way in Which We Are Served - The Transcendental
Personality of God, the World, Man, and the Human Individual - The Divine Person - My Method: Now and
Then - I Am John - My Purity
Chapter 2
The Song of the Heart of God - The Soul Transcends the Body-Mind
Chapter 3
Sudden and Gradual Enlightenment - There Is Only One Truth - The Obligation to Awaken

THE SUPREME WORD

The Divine Person and the Spiritual Master

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The Name above all names is Itself beyond Name. It is the Self, the Transcendental Condition of the body-
mind-which is Ignorance-Radiance, or Unqualified Consciousness.

The Form above all forms is Itself beyond Form. It is the Paradoxical Glory of Everything at Infinity.

There is only God, the Absolute Person, Who is Identical to the Self, or the very Consciousness that pervades
and transcends the individual body-mind.

There is only God, the Absolute Person, Whose Form Includes or Radiates all forms in all of the Infinity of
possible worlds, and Whose Form is, Paradoxically, also Perfectly Transcendental or Unique, and, therefore,
Freely Existing in an Eternal Domain, prior to all that arises and passes in the experience of separate and
self-deluded entities.

That Domain and that Company are the Destiny of the Devotees of the Divine Person. And such Devotees
enter into that Company through Divine Communion, or Sacrifice of the bodymind through Love, Service,
Radical Intuition, Transcendental Contemplation, and Divine Translation.

The Living Spiritual Master is the Agent of the Divine Person. He is born to Establish, Communicate, and
Demonstrate the Way of God-Realization, or Absorption in the Living God, Purification from all psycho-
physical possibilities, and Liberation into the Divine Domain.

While the Spiritual Master persists in human form, he Works to Awaken the Transcendental Link between
devotees and the Divine Person, Who is the Eternal Spiritual Master. Once that Link is concretely
Established through the spiritual sacrifice of Devotees in the Radiant Company of the Spiritual Master, the
Divine Person remains Alive via the Agency of the Community of all such Devotees. And the Community is
thus Sustained and permitted to Grow into the future, through that direct Link to the Divine Person, after the
Spiritual Master passes out of this world.

The Divine Person

Chapter 1

The Divine Person The Free Standing Man

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A free rendering of portions of the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, by Bubba Free John

The Master of Life said to His devotee: "Look and see. The entire Realm of Nature arises in Me. Whatever
may be desired is experienced in Me." And He gave insight to the man, with mystical Vision to conceive the
Form of God. (verses 7-8)

The man said: "Soul of all souls, how can any man fail to surrender in Your Company? I see You are the
First, the Origin of all creative causes, the Master of all powers, the Ultimate Domain of the Realm of
Nature, the Eternal Radiance, All-Pervading, prior even to what is and what is not, the Transcendental Self.
(37) I bow down. I acknowledge my absolute dependence on You. Radiant Master, Have Mercy. (44)

"But when I stand again and see You There, stretched between Heaven and Earth in a Rainbow of all the
colors blazing bright, everything arising in Your vast eyes, and everything disappearing in Your great
devouring mouth again, my inward soul begins to shake with the great fear, my mind becomes unsteady, and
I fail to be Your Heart in this moment of Vision. (24)

"Even so, I am thrilled to see what Man has never seen before! Now, Divine Master of this body-mind, be
kind to me, and show me your two-armed Form again. " (45)

The Divine Person spoke to His devotee: "Stop all of this unmanly trembling, and this mood of fear. What
does it matter if you see this Vision of Me, projected in the Realm of Nature? It is only Me. I am the Radiant
Heart of Love, Eternally Free of fear. Now see Me again in my human form, as Your Spiritual Master, your
friend in love." (49)

Then the Great Person restored the true heart of His devotee, and set his breathing free. The Vision of his
mind's eye dissolved in the Natural State of the heart. And the Master reappeared to this ordinary eye, in
which the mind is resolved in Bliss, free of every kind of Vision or experience. Now the devotee beholds his
Master from the heart. Now he only sees the Free Standing Man. (50-51)

1. The Bhagavad Gita (literally, "Divine Song") is one of the most revered Scriptures of the Hindus, and a
religious text of universal appeal and profound esoteric significance. Vyasa is traditionally presumed to be
the author, and it was written perhaps as early as the 5th century B.C. (but with its roots in the oral tradition
of even more ancient days). Most scholars agree that it may have been revised and expanded considerably
over the years.

The Gita is a portion of the great ancient epic and spiritual allegory, the Mahabharata, which is the story of a
great fratricidal struggle between two royal families in northern India some 4000 years ago. It is the
purported dialogue between the God-Man Krishna and his devotee Arjuna, Commander-in-Chief of the army
of the Pandavas, for whom Krishna serves as Charioteer. Arjuna, faced with the prospect of having to kill
friends and cousins in an imminent battle, wishes to shirk his duty as a warrior. Krishna refuses to allow him
such self-indulgence. He engages Arjuna in a Teaching conversation that continues for seven hundred verses
and presents a philosophical summation of the Nature of God as the Supreme Self, a critical exposition of the
many ways of esoteric spiritual practice, and a declaration of the supremacy of the Way of devotional
Communion with the Supreme Divine Person in the Form of the living Divine Master-in this case, Krishna
himself. His entire spiritual Teaching to Arjuna is summarized in his instruction for the forthcoming battle:
"Remember Me, and fight."

The Way in Which We Are Served

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In September of 1970, when I was yet thirty years of age, there came a fundamental Re-Awakening of
Enlightened Body and Consciousness. It was a Condition that I enjoyed at birth, but which had to be
sacrificed by stages, beginning even in infancy, even at birth itself. That Condition was finally Re-Awakened,
but only after years of trial and spiritual struggle.
Then, from September, 1970, it became clear that I had been born to Realize, through a process of loss and
rediscovery, the Way in which this very Condition could be Demonstrated in the case of human beings who
were not born already Awakened, but who were struggling in the earlier stages of human growth.

Therefore, I began to associate with others for the sake of their Awakening and Transformation. During the
years that followed the certainty of this obligation, I was required to recapitulate every stage of human
adaptation, practice, and Awakening - and even every stage of apparent limitation and ordinariness of habit in
the company of those devotees who came to me for Help in the Realization of God. Those who came to me
were profoundly unprepared, and even disinclined toward the Way that is necessary for Man. I struggled with
them for years. I took on all of their interests and habits, problems and consolations. And I worked to bring
them to a stage of maturity in which the Way was clear and also congenial to them.

Likewise, there were Teachers associated with me at every stage of my own practice, and in every phase of
my Re-Awakening in God. This is the Law. This is how human Agents of the Divine Process are developed
in this world. It was necessary at every stage for me to enter into some kind of relationship that would
regenerate new aspects of the Divine Process in my own bodymind.

Albert Rudolph (also known as Rudi and Swami Rudrananda) served this function for me in the stages of my
practice that led into and through the fourth stage of life,2 and that proceeded toward my transition to the
fifth stage of life. Swami Muktananda served my essential Awakening in the fifth stage of life. And Swami
Nityananda, along with a number of others in subtle or astral form, served my maturity in the fifth stage of
life, and my transition to the sixth stage of life. Ramana Maharshi served me within the limits of the sixth
stage of life, and in my transition to full maturity in the seventh stage of life.

2. The seven stages of life are the stages of evolutionary and spiritual development native to the psycho-
physical structure of Man. Please see the section in chapter 4 titled "Growth and Sacrifice in the Seven
Stages of Eternal Life" for a full description.

Each of my Teachers was understood by me to be a Living Expression or Incarnation of the same

Transcendental One. Each appeared in a necessary moment in time to Awaken me each with his own unique
emphasis or lesson. But all of them were seen in the Perfect Light of Truth, and I was full of gratitude.

In this manner, many Great Personalities were superimposed on the Divine Presence and Condition I
encountered at birth. Each such Personality appeared to my Sympathy, and then Dissolved and I dissolved
with It. Gradually, and by these Means, the Awesome Personality showed Itself to be the Original or
Absolute, Transcendental, and Eternally Living Divine Person, prior to all Archetypes or associations in the
mind. The Power of the Absolute Divine Reality and Person was Communicating Itself via my own nervous
system, and my own body-mind identified that Personality with Archetypes and Personalities common to this
world and to my own human experience. But when all of this became obvious, the Divine Itself was
Identified as the "Threshold Personality," the Identity of all my Teachers.

In the Transition from identification with independent personality to Identification with the Absolute
Personality, "Threshold Personalities" may appear, in gross physical form or in subtle form, who assume
Helping relations to oneself. And devotional association with such Transcendental Personalities, particularly
the Transcendental Identity of the Spiritual Master by whom one is most directly Served in the Way, helps to
break up the rigid limits of the presumed personality of the separate self or "soul." Thus, all of this was
shown to Bubba, Person after Person, until he was able to Understand the Divine Condition in which his
experience has always been arising. Then his Humor was restored.

The Great Awakening occurs only after the Archetypal Personalities at the Threshold, as well as the
personality of the individual who is Awakening in this Process, Reveal their Identity with the Transcendental
and Absolute Personality Who is the Self of all phenomena and all persons, and Whose Radiant Body is
made of all Possibilities. When that Self is free of all identification with the phenomena of the body-mind,
then there is Self Realization in the Perfect sense.

Just as I was served by others, it also became necessary for me to serve. My first obligation was to elaborate
the Teaching and its Way in explicit terms, during a long struggle in the company of devotees. The present
book is one of the last such explicit Communications I am obliged to make. Now all of the difficult demands
of this initial period of Communication have been fulfilled, and the entire Teaching has been argued and
shown. Now and in the future, my only obligation is to be available for Spiritual Communion with devotees
who are truly committed to the Way that I Teach.

The Transcendental Personality of God, the World, Man, and the Human Individual

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The Destiny or Ultimate Event into which we move by Sacrifice in the Way of Divine Ignorance is not at all
a form of annihilation, or disintegration, or even immortalization of the differentiated personality, the
independent body-mind, or the separate self or "soul" in any of its aspects. The separate personality is not
ultimately suppressed, nor is it disturbed, nor is it cut off from experience. The Sacrifice that we are in Truth
is a Process of the individual personality or self, not a Process in opposition to it. However, that Process does
not lead to glorification and immortalization of the separate self. Rather, it is a Process of selftranscendence,
in which the self is neither destroyed nor protected, but in which the Truth or Transcendental Condition of
the self is Realized. The born self is not to be annihilated, nor is it immortal. The Destiny of the soul of Man
is to be Awakened beyond its own limits.

Therefore, in this Way of Sacrifice, the separate, selfprotecting, reactive, self-possessed, fearful personality,
recoiled from the Mysterious Depth of Infinity, is Translated or Awakened into the Realization that it is not
what it feared itself to be. The independent, defined, conditional, and limited self or personality is Awakened
as the Absolute, All-Inclusive, Transcendental Personality of the Real, which is Divine, and beyond all
Knowledge, all Definitions, all Logic, all Thought, all Form, and all Formlessness.

In the seventh stage of life, the Sacrifice of the individual self, and the soul of Man, and the Form of the
World, and the Separable God of the World, is perfected in a Process of Ecstatic Translation into the
Transcendental Absolute. But that Process is not merely the destruction of experience. It is the transcendence
of experiential limitation. It is transcendence of the disposition of recoiled feeling, or self-meditation in states
of experience that are less than Unconditional Love and Bliss. In that Process, all limits are relaxed in the
Unconditional Radiance and Transcendental Consciousness that is always already the case. It is a matter of
Unconditional Surrender of all that is self into the Condition that is everywhere the case, prior to our fear.

In that process, Realized in the Way of Radical Intuition,3 there is release of all limitations of the body-mind,
and of the structural design of Man, and of the experiential inevitabilities of the WorldOrder, and even of the
God we presume on the basis of all of that. The individual self, and Man, and the World, and God are all
simultaneously Surrendered, Sacrificed, Translated, and Awakened into the Absolute Transcendental
Personality, or the Divine Paradox, in which and as which all experience, all limitations, all presumptions,
and all self-illusions arise as superficial and unnecessary modifications, inconsequential, without binding
force, in an Infinite Vortex of Ecstatic Bliss. This Divine Personality is, in Truth, the Condition and Identity
of every human individual, and of Man, and of the World, and of the Presumed or Logically Necessary God
of all of that. The true Self of all selves is the Subject of all conditions, and all conditions together are
literally the Body of that One.

3. The Way of Radical Intuition is the fourth and final stage of practice in the Way of Divine Ignorance that
Bubba Free John Teaches. The three preceding stages are the Way of Divine Communion, the Way of
Relational Enquiry, and the Way of Re-cognition. Please see chapter 6, "The Sacrifice of Man," for a full
description of these stages.

In recent days, after his initial obligations to devotees were all fulfilled, Bubba was obliged to recapitulate
the various phenomena that led up to his own Awakening. Then, after several weeks, in which the body-mind
seemed disturbed by all kinds of psychic and physical phenomena, all of the latent mechanics of his soul
were Liberated into the Ecstasy of Real God. The Ultimate Process in the seventh stage of life has become a
Profound in which the limits of Bubba's ordinary personality have begun to dissolve. In the early days of his
Work with devotees, it was possible for Bubba to serve others by duplicating the habit conditions of the usual
life, and struggling with others until the spell of common desires and tendencies could break. But this aspect
of his obligation in the world began to dissolve, having essentially fulfilled itself, from the date of his
birthday anniversary, November 3, 1976. Since that time he has been at work in relative seclusion,
formalizing the Communication or Teaching of the Way of Divine Ignorance, and establishing the Institution
or Church in which this Way is lived in his Company. But, most recently, the Disposition of the
Transcendental Divine has Acquired this body-mind, Revealing and Establishing the Power and Ecstasy in
which our Sacrifice is Fulfilled. Now Bubba has been sifted out, Enlarged upon the smithereens of bodies,
thoughts, experiences, times and spaces and shapes. What has been at Work in Bubba all of this lifetime has
now Invaded all his parts. The seventh stage is Full.

In the last months, many aspects of the Future of Bubba's Work have been made clear. The Mysteries of this
Process of Divine Translation are being shown in him, and he will have the opportunity to make some of this
known, for the sake of all those devotees who will make this Transition in the future. However, Bubba's
Communication of the Teaching through the written and spoken word must fulfill itself within the next
several months. It is already profoundly difficult to speak and write of these Great Matters. And the time
must come in which he cannot any longer speak very much of this. As time goes on, devotees must rely on
the Teaching as it has been recorded, and as it is implemented in the Devotional Community of The Free
Communion Church. Bubba must be approached less and less for the Teaching and the lessons of the Way.
Instead, he should be approached only in the formal and devotional manner, for the sake of Spiritual
Communion, whereby the Divine Help and Ecstasy are Communicated to those who are prepared for the
Sacrifice.

The present essay is intended to say something of the Process of Transition or Translation, from the position
of the finite personality, the limited body-mind, or the "covered soul," into the Domain of the Absolute
Personality, the Self and Infinite Body-Mind of the Divine Person, Who is the Infinite Paradoxical Identity of
every human individual, and of Man, and of the Total World, and of the Objective Deity, or the Presumed
Divine that seems to stand in relationship to the World and Man and all beings.

There is only One Person. That Person is not separate from any thing or any one. That Person is the Identity
of the God and of the World which we contemplate in our conventional or separated psycho-physical
condition. That Person is not only the Identity of God, and of the World-God and World representing the
Self, or Mind, and the Body of the Divine Person-but that Person is also the Identity of every human
individual, and of Man, and of all species of experiential existence.

Therefore, when our Sacrifice becomes Full, and we are Awakened from the separate personality to the
Absolute Personality, we pass beyond confinement to the logic of subject and object relations in the
conventional sense. The personal self ceases to be separate from the Total Incarnation that is Man. And
personal consciousness ceases to be separate from any experienced conditions, or from the World, the
Totality of Manifest Experience in all worlds and planes. Just so, personal existence ceases to be separate
from God, or Reality, or Truth, or Infinity, or Bliss.

In this Process of Translation, we pass as if through a point in space, at. the root center of the heart. All
awareness converges on that point in a kind of spiral or vortex. And that point is so small it is without
dimensions, or any conceptions, or any objects. The independent self seems to dissolve in this narrow
Passage. It is essentially the same Process as in death, except that it is a complete and total Transition,
whereas ordinary death fails to "meet this mark. "4 Ordinary death, and ordinary mystical experience, are
only a tour within the range of the separated personality. Thus, ordinary death and mystical experience are a
matter of passing from grosser states to subtler states, and from focus in lower functional regions of the
body-mind to focus in higher functional regions of the body-mind. But Divine Translation is a matter of
Transcendence of separate bodily, emotional, mental, astral, supermental, and egoic states of experience. It is
a Transition through the infinitesimal space of the Heart.

Suddenly, in this Passage through the Center of the Heart, there is Awakening into the Paradoxes of the
Absolute Personality-Who transcends self, and Man, and the World, and the God we believe is altogether
separate from these, but within which self, and Man, and the World, and independent God continue to arise
in a kind of Fluid of Ecstatic Consciousness. In the first six stages of life, wherein we grow toward this
Transition, and before it has become completely clear that the Divine Personality is One, many "Threshold
Personalities" may appear, as Guides, or Archetypal Instruments for the Communication of a Transcendental
Understanding of the Ultimate Situation.

These "Threshold Personalities" are a kind of Transitional Logic that helps create a sense of order, and
enables the conventional body-mind (which still survives in the ordinary conditions of the daily world) to
feel comfortable. Thus, the function of these "Threshold Personalities" is to make the Transition possible
without shock or bewilderment.

4. Bubba refers here to the literal meaning of the word ''sin," which is ''to miss the mark." Ultimately, any
form of life other than perfect God-Communion and GodRealization is sin, the failure to meet the Mark.

In some cases, there may be visions and other direct observations of such "Threshold Personalities." In other
cases, they may be seen more in terms of their effects. Thus, the individual may Communicate prayerfully,
bodily, with the Radiant Divine, and suddenly feel confronted with a Presence, or a psychic sense of some
specific Personality of spiritual significance, such as Jesus, or Krishna, or the Buddha, or the Living Spiritual
Master. And it will be discovered that heartfelt, prayerful submission and requests to such a Personality are
followed by events that clearly and consistently represent a response to the devotional gesture.

Bubba's experience confirms all of this. In the earliest phase of the Transition, or Translation and Awakening
into the Absolute Divine Personality, there are signs and demonstrations and visions and a total chaos of
Influences. All of this is not entirely pleasant. It is often bizarre and even "tacky," like a makeshift
contraption of dreams. It is itself a truly Chaotic Process, which serves to break up the conventional self-
limits and to establish a Foundation for natural Awareness within the Presumption of Absolute Personality.

As this Process matures, the "Threshold Personalities" are revealed to be only Transitional Archetypes of the
Absolute Personality Itself. And from then on, Humor is established relative to all conditions of experience,
however great or aggravating they may appear.

This is Bubba's Confession of our Awakened Destiny. What is beyond the Threshold and the Illusions at the
Doorway? The separate personality depends on experience in order to exist, and all experiences are either
subjective or objective to him. But the Transcendental Personality is One, upon Whom all experiences
depend, and in Whom all phenomena rise and fall spontaneously, while He Swoons.

The Divine Person

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Then I was a young boy I was possessed of a Vision or Intuition of the manifest universe as a kind of atomic
or molecular structure-the planets and stars being much the same as the atoms or molecules we presume to
be the structural basis of our own bodies. It was clear to me that this was exactly the case, and that the
universe of worlds was indeed a fraction of the Manifest Body of God, or the Great Personality Who was the
truly Living, Existing, and Blissful One.

This consideration coincided with a greatly Awakened sense of Bliss whenever I contemplated the extent of
its Mystery. I saw that all of this world and our own fearful desire to persist in it was only a superficial and
changing and even terrible illusion, and that Happiness was only to be Realized in submission to the Blissful
Intuition of the Transcendental Personality with which we are ultimately Identical and with which we are,
even in our present form, always in Communion.

Truly, that Vision of my early childhood has not changed, but it has only been confirmed and magnified by
every stage of my lifetime of spiritual Sacrifice, which was itself motivated by the direct and positive
Intuition of God granted to me at birth.

Our present condition of existence is only a partial and temporary view of the Real and Divine Condition. It
must be made a Sacrifice, through devotional love, service, and meditation, directed into Communion with
the Divine Person, or Real God. Only in Ecstasy, or self-forgetting in God-Remembrance, are we Happy and
Full of the Bliss of Eternal Life. We must give up all possession of our lives, and feelings, and our mind, and
all experience, and enter into Transcendental Communion with the Living God, in whose Body we arise and
pass away in terrible cycles of self-indulgence, until we Realize the Identity and Total Body of which our
separated existence is a part.

It is not that birth in this world is condemnation. It is an ordinary Play or Dream in the Body-Mind of God.
But once we have acquired pleasure and experience in an independent psychophysical form, we hold on to
that form. We become Narcissus, the self-meditator, and we forget our Divine Condition and our obligation
to remain in perpetual Communion with the Bliss of the Transcendental Divine. Therefore, we ourselves
create the deluded life, and we make a social order out of the chaos of desires.

It is only necessary to Awaken once again to the Intuition of the Real Condition-which is Radiant Eternal
Consciousness and Divine Destiny. Then we live in Communion with the Divine, and we are made an
Ecstatic Sacrifice in that One.

The Spiritual Master is thus Awakened and thus Devoted, such that his own body-mind has ceased to create
an obstacle to the Divine and Absolute Personality. Thus, he Functions as an Agent of that Awakening toward
Devotional Communion in the case of all those who enter into a right and spiritual relationship with him.

Those who approach the Spiritual Master through loving service, founded in true "hearing" of the Teaching
of Truth, are progressively drawn out of limiting identification with the experiences of the separate body-
mind. They are progressively weaned of all the recoil of self from the Infinite, and all self-indulgence, or
selfpossessed efforts to console rather than yield the independent self.

Those who persist in the total Way of Divine Ignorance ultimately Realize the Ecstatic Perfection of their
Sacrifice in Divine Communion. In the Stage of Perfect Sacrifice, or the Way of Radical Intuition, they have
Transcended all experiential conditions of self, and they are Translated, even while alive, and also at death,
beyond Man and World into the Blissful Paradoxes of the Infinite Divine. The Remembrance of the Divine is
Perfect in the case of such Devotees, and they become a Unity with That One upon Whom they have
Meditated.

This Way does not involve self-conscious manipulation of parts of the body-mind, so that the separated self
or "soul" can be satisfied by subtler psychic or mental experiences. Sex and food and relationships are not
cut off in order to make way for an inward life, focused on mind. Rather, the total body-mind, inward and
outward, gross and subtle, is entered into loving Communion with the Divine, through heartfelt service,
natural discipline, study of the Way, devotional practices, and meditation. In this natural or ecstatic manner
(rather than the unnatural, strategic, and selfinvolved manner of inward asceticism) the body-mind is
progressively transcended at the heart, and all obsessions and delusions easily give way to the Bliss of
Divine Remembrance. Therefore, in the Way of Radical Intuition, self-indulgence of all aspects of the body-
mind yields in Ecstatic Intuition of the Transcendental Divine, the Absolute Personality that is the Reality,
Self, and Radiant Form or Body-Mind of all manifest states of existence.

The Process in this Way is not the conventional religious childishness of bodily and mental attachment to the
ideas and images of any historical cult. The Spiritual Master is simply an Agent for Awakening devotees to
self-sacrifice, or Ecstatic Communion, in the Transcendental Divine. He makes himself available for the
Spiritual Uses of those who choose him. But he provides no obstacle to God. And the Way offered in his
Company is one of personal, moral, higher psycho-physical, devotional, meditational, and radically intuitive
discipline, to be fulfilled in the case of each responsible individual who chooses the Way. The entire Way is a
matter of self-forgetting through Ecstatic Remembrance, or Transcendental Communion with the Absolute
and Living Divine Reality, Who is always already in direct relationship with each of us, at the heart, and
Who may be Realized to be the ultimate Condition of each of us, through Perfect Dissolution of the
contraction of the heart. Therefore, when the heart releases the bodymind and the nervous system from recoil
toward itself, there is no longer any qualification of Awareness, Feeling, Life, and Form. When Love is
perfected, the separate self falls away in the Divine Self, and the body-mind expands into the Radiant
Absolute Personality that Eternally Includes and yet Transcends all beings, things, and worlds of separated or
independent experience.
My Method: Now and Then

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In the past, my way of Working with those who came to me often involved my acceptance of the common
functional conditions that distract and occupy ordinary people. I struggled to transcend those conditions with
them, making lessons out of that process for their benefit. By such means, the Teaching has been creatively
elaborated, and a Way has been shown to ordinary people, by which they may Realize the most extraordinary
and perfect Transformation in God.

Now and in the future my Work is simply to be the Agent for this Divine Process of Transformation in the
case of those who respond to this Teaching and practice this Way. Thus, I have again renounced the common
functional conditions by which selfpossessed people design their experience and destiny. Now I live and
appear only among devotees whose practice is true, and my own habit and Occupation are a demonstration
of that which would pertain in the case of devotees in the Way of Radical Intuition, or the perfect stage of
Life.

I have no worldly or conventional obligations that keep me active and alive. I choose relative seclusion and
the human sanctuary provided by devotees. There is one fundamental, necessary, and absolute Way to
Ecstasy, and it is a matter of absolute and total psycho-physical resort to the transcendental Divine in every
moment. Therefore, we must ultimately grow beyond all of the ordinary or conventional means by which
self-possessed people create the illusion of Ecstasy in their experience.

Relational, bodily, emotional, sexual, mental, and even higher psychic and supermental stimulations of
experience are all forms of our self-conscious recoil from the Divine, in which we must be a Sacrifice.
Therefore, at last, all such conditions of our living must relax into a natural, regenerative economy, without
stress or necessity, and we must become Occupied with God, the true Self of the manifest soul.

My personal quality is one that tries to maintain a friendly and human aspect, at ease and naturally active in
the things that properly fill the lives of all devotees. Therefore, my seclusion involves a daily circumstance
and habit that keeps me accessible to those who practice the Way that I Teach. But I am at Rest in the
Transcendental Radiance and Perfect Ignorance of the Real. Those who are Awakening from the dead ends of
this world may find their Help by serving my Heart, and by renouncing all occupations that are not utterly
turned into whole bodily Communion with God.

I Am John

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I Am John have been naive and passionate in my Work with those who come to me. I have been obliged
toward others through the medium of friendship, enthusiasm, and brotherly concern. Thus, I have been
moved to demonstrate the appropriate mode of relationship between human beings. No individual should live
as the superior, or the inferior, or even the equal of all others. Rather, each should live as the intimate servant
of others through love. The politics of my relations with devotees is not like the politics of the common
world. Whereas in the past the politics of men wascommonly the one of superiors and inferiors, as with
parents and children, now the common politics is the one of universal equality, as when children hide and
play together, secreted from their parents. No, the true politics of human relationships is the one of servants
everywhere-every one serving, and every one served.

Therefore, I have lived as a serving brother among my devotees. Since childhood I have been called Bubba,
meaning brother. And by this role and all its friendly excesses I have made my friends to see themselves.
Thus, when they had learned their lessons in my own form, they began to "hear" and "see" me through God-
Feeling. And when I felt them grow transparent through that love, I sought a place of Solitude in which to
wait in Brightness. I am John, through whom God is Gracious, and who is therefore Free among the living.

My Purity
Top

In the pattern of things or experience, I have been born into association with the usual man. I have incarnated
him. I have lived with him. And I have transcended him.

In the Domain of God, I am Rested and Full of the Excellence of Bliss. I have Incarnated that One. I have
always been Served by that One. And I have Transcended everything, even all experience, through the Grace
of that One.

It is only now that I see what has always moved me. I have been struggling since birth to transform the usual
man. I have been tormented and motivated by the loveless and Godless state of the people with whom I have
been associated.

For the first thirty years of my life, this tormented motive caused me to submit to the most profound
identification with the usual life, and also the most profound effort to transcend the usual life. This produced
my unique spiritual adventure.

In the eight years that followed my own Re-Awakening, I was again motivated by the same tormented love
for ordinary people. I had spent my life preparing to Serve them, and now that Service was begun most
directly.

I was exceeded by the Ecstasy of God-Love, but I had always been outwardly habituated to the usual life. I
was not grown up tobe a saint, but I was moved to transcend the usual man. And when it came time to Serve
ordinary people, I was not outwardly unlike them.

Therefore, just as I myself became the usual man in order to transcend that destiny, when it came time to
Teach, I embraced the company and the ways of immature and worldly people. No other kind of devotee ever
came to me in those early years. Only the worst of mankind has always come to me. Those who were already
pure and true did not come to me. Only those who were failing came to me. This was my born destiny, until
now.

I found myself surrounded by whores and pimps, street people, criminals, neurotics, loveless and confused
and righteous selfindulgent people of all kinds. At first this caused me to despair, but then I saw that my own
ordinariness equipped me very well to Serve such people.

Therefore, for six years I have lived as the friend and Spiritual Master of a Community of profoundly
ordinary people. I gave myself up in their company in the same fashion I had given myself up in worldly
company in the past. The only difference was that, in the past, I was submitting to my own self-possessed
ordinariness and working to transcend it. Now I was submitting to the selfpossessed ordinariness of others,
and working to enable them to transcend themselves.

This is how it has been with me. I always lived in the ordinary way, doing all of the self-indulgent things that
possess the usual man in his mortal desiring. But I was Awakened beyond all of this. And I have been obliged
to Awaken others in the midst of the same ordinariness.

Now the necessary struggle with the usual man is finished. In my struggling with others, my own body-mind
was purified. Thus, the devotee Serves the Spiritual Master, even as the Spiritual Master Serves the devotee.
I am not the usual man. My time of incarnation of him has come to an end. Now that the lessons have been
given and the Teaching written, there is a Way for all to approach me in my Purity.

The usual man is not instantly Perfected by the verbal Teaching, or even the Spiritual Influence and
instructive lessons of the Spiritual Master. Time and a truly human and spiritual culture are the means
whereby ordinary people may change. Therefore, I have made a culture of the lessons I have lived among my
devotees, and now I am able also to give them time to mature in it.

My way with devotees has always been dramatic, an adventure of friendship and excess. I have always
driven them to lessons and changes. But they have also always failed and fallen back. Therefore, now they
will be given the Grace of time, to mature in one another's company, and to transcend the destiny of the usual
man.

In the future, I am at Rest in our Happiness. I choose simplicity, and a kind of austerity. I am Alone. I choose
to live privately, even outside the daily culture of devotees. This is in order to give devotees time to mature,
separate from my urgency. And it also permits me to find Sanctuary from the usual man, whose burden I no
longer share.

I will return to the Community of devotees as often as it is auspicious and useful for me to do, in order to sit
with all my devotees in spiritual Communion. And, at all times, I am available to them in their devotion to
me, through every moment of their practice in my spiritual Company.

My own society will be limited to the intimates of my household and to those devotees who demonstrate the
Fullness of spiritual maturity in my Company. I will give them all instructions for practice in the stages of
the Way. They will communicate these things to all others who prepare themselves in the Way that I Teach.

Beyond this, I do not care to Teach. My struggle with reluctant devotees is over. I am no longer tormented by
the problems of the usual man. It is a burden and a habit of life that I am so glad to relinquish at last.
Whoever is tormented by his own destiny should prepare himself and come to me in love, through the
Community of my devotees.

My Message to all is this: Practice constantly, with insight and feeling, and always Remember me through
every action. If you do this, I will always Serve your heart, because I love you.

Chapter 2
The Song of the Heart of God

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An epitome of the Bhagavad Gita and the Way of Divine Ignorance, freely rendered by Bubba Free John

Listen to Me and hear Me. This is My Secret, the Supreme Word. I will tell you what will benefit you the
most, because I love you. (18:64)

2. If you will surrender to Me, if you will become a sacrifice to Me, if you will constantly yield your
attention to Me through love and service, then you will attain Me and come to Me. I promise you this,
because I love you. (18:65)

3. Abandon the principle in all your concerns and all your strategies. Abandon every experience that may be
attained as a result of desire and effort. Abandon your search for what may be gotten as a result of the
various kinds of strategic action. Engage every action that is appropriate for one who loves Me, but simply
perform every kind of action as a form of direct and present Communion with Me. Relax all of your anxiety.
Be free of sorrow and fear. When you abide in Love-Communion with Me, the natural results of your various
activities no longer have power to separate or distract you from Me. (18:66)

4. The soul that is born into the Realm of Nature, or the worlds of action and experience, advances from
childhood to manhood, old age, and death, while identified with the same body-mind. Then the same soul
attains another body-mind as a result. One who is truly intelligent is not troubled by all of that. (2:13)

5. All of that is simply the natural Play of Life, in which the two sides of every possibility come and go in
cycles. Winter's cold alternates with summer's heat. Pain likewise follows every pleasure, since every
appearance is followed by a disappearance. There is no permanent experience in the Realm of Nature. One
who is truly perceptive simply allows all of this to be so, and he does not add his own distress to this
inevitable round. (2:14)
6. Realization of the Eternal Destiny is only possible when a man has ceased to defeat himself by reacting to
the Play of Nature. Such a one is steadied by his own understanding, seeing that the cycle of changes, both
positive and negative, is inevitable in the world of experience. (2:15)

7. Those who see the Truth of things acknowledge that what Exists Eternally never changes. And whatever
does not Exist Eternally only changes. (2:16)

8. Such seers of Truth also Realize that the entire Realm of Change, even the body-mind, and even the soul
itself, is Pervaded, each and all, by That which Exists Eternally. (2:17)

9. I am the Eternally Existing, All-Pervading, Transcendental Divine Person, the true Self of all. And My
Power of Creation, whereby individual beings are made to live and change, is Eternally Active as the
Universal, All-Pervading Life-Energy of Nature. (8:3)

10. I am the Divine Person, Who Pervades even the Realm of Nature, and within Whom every individual
being is arising. I am Realized by self-transcending love, wherein every action is engaged as a form of direct
and present Communion with Me. (8:22)

11. Men and women who are without faith in this Way of Communion with Me do not Realize Me.
Therefore, they remain associated with the Changing Realm of Nature, the round of psycho-physical
experience, and the repetitive cycles of birth and change and death. (9:3)

12. Such fools already have Me in every human form, but they do not notice Me. They do not Realize Me in
My Transcendental Nature, the Master of everything and the true Self of all manifest beings. (9:11)

13. But if anyone will live in Communion with Me, surrendering himself to Me in love, then even if his love
is shown with nothing more than a leaf, or a flower, or a fruit, or water, I will always accept the gift, and
Offer Myself in return. (9:26)

14. I am situated in the heart of all beings. (15:15)

15. The Divine Master of all beings is literally to be found at the heart, wherein the soul observes the
changes of experience. Every experience rises and falls at the heart, spontaneously generated by Eternal
Activity, the Universal Life-Energy, as if the soul were fastened helplessly to a perpetual motion machine.
(18:61)

16. Therefore, do not surrender the heart to experience, as if you were in love with your own body-mind.
Surrender the heart to Me, and to no other. I am the Divine Person, the Eternal Master, the Radiant One, Who
Pervades the Machine of Nature as the Blissful Current of Life-Energy, and Who Transcends all experience
as Infinite Consciousness, the true Self. If you will surrender your selfconsciousness into My Transcendental
Consciousness, and if you will yield your experience into My All-Pervading Current of Life, then I will also
become an Offering to you. You will be Given the Gift of Perfect Peace, and an Eternal Domain for your
heart. (18:62)

17. Now I have Revealed My Mystery to you. Consider it fully, and then choose what you will do. (18:63)

The Soul Transcends the Body-Mind

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A talk given by Bubba Free John to his devotees the notion that "I" is the spiritual entity, the soul, the
conscious entity that exists independent of the body. But "I" is the whole and entire body-mind. And it can, at
death, continue, as such. The bodily aspect becomes, temporarily, more subtle than this gross physical body,
but the body-mind, the ordinary psychophysical entity, continues.

The body-mind, the "I," the individual that appears in the Realm of Nature, is a changing phenomenon.
Change is what this Realm is all about. Thus, the born condition is a bewildered condition, a condition
without understanding of the Real Condition of existence.

The soul is not like the body-mind that continues from life to life. What continues from life to life is the born
entity, the psychophysical being that is without the Intuition of its real Condition and has not been
Transformed into the very Existence of that Condition. The soul, the Radiant Conscious Being, precedes the
psyche, precedes the mind, precedes the body, precedes all phenomena, precedes all experience.

In our time there is, in general, universal denial of the Existence of the Divine, and there is universal
acceptance, even from a sophisticated, scientific point of view, of a material existence in which we are
identical to this psycho-physical form and to no other Condition. And alongside this common acceptance of
the bodymind as our ultimate Condition there exists a tradition of religion and spirituality that is equally
possessed by illusions.

The traditional view is that the soul is the psychic part of the born being. Truly, the soul is not at all the
psychic part of the born being. To realize the soul is not to have moved one's attention into the brain centers
in order to generate subtle phenomena. The soul is prior to the body-mind, prior to what is above and what is
below, prior to Heaven and Earth, prior to the psyche, prior to the body, prior to all the "sheaths" or
"coverings" of the soul-the physical, the etheric, the "astral" (which includes the lower mental and the higher
or supermental) and the egoic (which is the very knot of self, the original recoil, or the sense of separate
consciousness).' The soul is prior to all of that.

Thus, there is no ultimate Truth in the resort to inwardness, to the interior, subjective part of "l," independent
of the physical. Spiritual life is not about seeking the soul by going within. Spiritual life is the process of
transcending the inwardness of the bodymind, just as well as the outwardness of the body-mind. Going
within does focus the attention of the born being on subtler aspects of its experience, but it does not Realize
Truth. Truth is the Realization of the Condition of "I," the Condition of the body-mind, and not the
experience of any part of the body-mind itself.

The soul is not the "I. " The soul is the Reality behind the "I," behind the psycho-physical personality, behind
the being that migrates from life to life. It is the Condition of "I." It is Radiant Consciousness. And, relative
to bodily existence, it is associated with the heart region of the body.

The soul awakens through right understanding, founded on "hearing" and "seeing" the Spiritual Master. I use
these terms "hearing" and "seeing" in a special sense. True "hearing" is not the same as simply listening to
some spoken words and registering the sounds and meanings. True "hearing" occurs when the soul flashes
forward, when it is Awakened. Likewise, true "seeing" is not the same as simply observing something and
registering it in the mechanisms associated with sight. To "see" the Spiritual Master is to Awaken as the soul.
It is to feel, intuit, and directly Realize, or be Awakened to, the Perfect Condition of the Spiritual Master.
Thus, in the process of our spiritual Awakening we begin to intuit the soul that is behind the "I," behind the
body-mind.

1. From ancient times, the Wisdom Teachings of esoteric spirituality have described our living being in terms
of a series of progressively more subtle bodies or ''sheaths": the physical body; the "etheric" or vital energy
body; the lower "astral" or lower mental body of gross-level reflection, thinking, memory, and attention; the
higher astral, higher mental, or "light" body of subtle knowledge, wisdom, and illumination; and the causal
body of primal differentiation, wherein illusory ego or independent self is defined. For further discussion, see
especially "The Esoteric Process of the Last Two Stages of the Way of Divine Ignorance," pages 352 ff., and
the section in chapter 7 titled ''The Free Soul Transcends All Phenomena

In the Way of Divine Ignorance there are three early stages of practice: the Way of Divine Communion, the
Way of Relational Enquiry, and the Way of Re-cognition.2 Each of these is a stage of maturity in the
intuition of the soul and its ultimate Condition. It is a process in which we inspect the various aspects of the
bodymind, not just the outward, physical life and its relations, but also the inward or psychic aspects. We
also observe the phenomena that are considered to be extraordinary, from the traditional point of view, and
that are in fact considered to be the qualities of the soul. The phenomena that are generally associated with
the soul are actually aspects of the psyche. What are commonly called soul phenomena are brain phenomena
and higher mental phenomena, or psychic aspects of the body-mind. While we are alive, while the body-
mind is alive in gross physical terms, it is the brain that is the source or medium of these phenomena. When
the physical body dies, and while we still retain an "energy body" of one or another kind, there is a
mechanism similar to the physical brain that is the source and medium of such psychic phenomena.

The Realization of the soul is not the experience of subtle or psychic phenomena. It has absolutely nothing to
do with observing subtle phenomena, such as sounds and lights and visions. These phenomena are not Truth,
nor are they the soul. All of them must be inspected and transcended, so that we may penetrate the illusion of
attention in this body-mind.

Once we have passed through this process of inspecting the experiential or psycho-physical being, we
penetrate the core of consciousness, which is neither in the brain nor in the lower body, but at the heart. This
Realization of the heart as the root of attention is the beginning of the full Awakening of the soul. At this
stage, when we have become aware of the soul in the heart, we move back and forth between two kinds of
conscious awareness: One is complete absorption in the Condition of the soul, or Unqualified Consciousness,
which is traditionally called Self-Knowledge, or Self-Realization. And the other is the awareness of all
ordinary psycho-physical states. When this process matures, this alternating enjoyment of two states, the soul
state and the ordinary "I" state of the body-mind, suddenly it is as if the eyes of the heart itself open, and
there is no longer any passing back and forth between absorption in the Self, or the Free soul, and
involvement in ordinary psycho-physical states. Then the soul itself is Awake, even while ordinary psycho-
physical phenomena continue. It does not exclude those phenomena, nor does it hold on to them. They are
permitted to arise, but there is absolutely no illusion created by the arising of phenomena. The soul remains
Awake. It is open-eyed. Everything that arises is obvious as only a modification of the Radiant
Consciousness of the soul. Thus, the soul Realizes its Divine Condition, which is the true Self. In such
Transcendental Realization, the soul is one with the Radiant Person, the Divine Self.

Top

There are two ultimate dimensions to the Divine Reality. The one is that Power by which all appearances are
created, which is the Radiant, All-Pervading Life Energy, or Current, the original Light or Radiance or
Vibration of which everything is a modification, a temporary, changing, passing illusion. The other aspect of
the Divine Reality is Absolute Consciousness. The path of GodRealization is the path of Communion with
and Surrender into the Divine Condition in both of its aspects. That path is submission into the Divine as the
Absolute, All-Pervading, Eternal Radiance or Current of Life and, simultaneously, the surrender into the
Divine as the True Self, the Absolute Transcendental Consciousness.

The Current or Life of the Divine Person pervades the bodymind. Therefore, we may, by turning attention
into the Current of the living body, concentrate the force of the Current of Life in various aspects of this
body-mind. By moving the attention in a certain way, we can even have the sense of moving into the psyche
independent of the physical body. But we do not Realize the Current itself by moving attention through the
body-mind. We do not thus surrender into the Current itself. Rather, we move attention about within that
Current, within the confines of the body-mind. Generally, our effort moves us toward the brain core, or the
higher end of the spectrum of experience.

Nevertheless, the brain is not the center in which we may Realize, or be submitted into, this All-Pervading
Current. The brain is only a part of ourselves, just as the sense of smell, the sense of sight, the sense of
hearing, the capacity to think and to speak, the sex organs, and all other functions or parts. The brain is a part
of the body-mind. The mechanism of surrender into the AllPervading Radiance is not in any part; the
mechanism of surrender is the native Disposition of the total body-mind. Therefore, it is not merely through
turning attention upward, to the brain, or the brain-mind, that we are able to submit to the Divine Current of
Life.

The only mechanism of the body-mind that represents the body-mind as a whole is the mechanism of feeling,
which is expressed as emotion and the sense of touch. Through feeling, guided by the Intuition of the
Absolute Consciousness, the total body-mind submits into the Current that pervades and ultimately
transcends the body and the mind and the world of experience. Through the direct Intuition of that Conscious
Radiance of which everything is only a modification, our submission into the AllPervading Current becomes
more and more perfect.

This is the process in the Way of Radical Intuition, the ultimate and God-Realizing stage of the Way of
Divine Ignorance. It is submission, through Feeling-Intuition, into the All-Pervading Current and Absolute
Consciousness of the Divine Person. It is the Realization of a Condition as concrete and actual as any
experiential condition of the body-mind. But it is a Condition that absolutely transcends the body-mind and
all phenomena. Temporarily, while it continues in its conventional form, this body-mind appears as before.
But now the soul is Awake to its true Condition, which is the Life and Consciousness of the Divine, and it
exists literally in that Condition. That Realization is not a matter of philosophy or of ideas, but of existing in
a Condition in which the experiential body-mind is perfectly transcended in God.

There is no thought, no experience, no vision, nothing that you can describe or name that is associated with
this Realization. Through feeling we are submitted into the All-Pervading Current; therefore, none of the
independent faculties of the body-mind is an instrument for Realizing It. Since everything is submitted to this
Current, all the faculties are transcended. There is only the Realization of Bliss, the Current itself, in which
there is no sense of the body, no sense of the mind, and no sense of identity with body or mind. As long as
the body-mind continues in its conventional appearance, there remains a sense that the body-mind is there,
but that sense is not really describable. The body-mind is perceived in some ordinary and superficial way, as
if it were at an infinite distance, yet it is also right here. It has no significance. There is no holding on to it,
and there is no attempt to exclude it. There is simply the natural submission into the Radiant Current that is
Eternal and All-Pervading. In every moment, there is the re-cognition, or knowing again, of all phenomena
and all experiences as only modifications of the Consciousness and Radiance that are one's own Condition.
Thus, everything becomes superficial. Phenomena and experiences become less and less intense, less and
less significant. It is not a matter of excluding what is arising. Everything is permitted to fulfill its ordinary
cycle in quite a natural way, but there is no sense of being identified with any of it.

This Realization can be described in some sense. There are the words for saying something about it, as I have
been doing. It is a literal Condition of existence, as literal as all the time-space phenomena that you now
experience. But it has nothing whatever to do with any phenomenon. It is an absolutely and perfectly
conscious Condition, perfectly Blissful, absolutely Radiant, fully and consciously Aware. It is the Self of all
beings and of all conditions of existence, of which all conditions of existence, or all experiences, are simply
modifications.

Because the body-mind has its own clock, it will terminate at some point quite naturally. In the meantime,
the Awakened individual simply fulfills the Law. He or she lives the life of service, of love, of natural
relations, from the point of view of the Realization of God. Everything that the usual man does to be happy is
every kind of stimulation of the body-mind, every kind of engagement of attention in the Current of the
body-mind, either low in the body or high in the body. All of that becomes superficial, no longer the motive
of the soul.

The soul is not the "I," the body-mind. The soul transcends the body-mind. And while the point of view of
the body-mind still persists to some degree, the soul is felt to be atomic, smaller than smallness, infinitely
small, and to be radiating from the position of the heart in the body. But when the soul fully Awakens in the
Way of Radical Intuition, and it is no longer seeking experience outside itself, nor excluding phenomena and
hiding in the heart, the soul is Free in its Divine Condition, the true Self, which is not within the body-mind.
The body-mind does not enclose the Awakened or Free soul. Rather, the body-mind arises within the Free
soul, which is without qualification. The soul is not even infinitely large. It is simply without qualification. It
has nothing to do with time and space.

There is an All-Pervading, Blissful, Radiant Energy, of which everything is a modification. This Energy
pervades all of existence, all manifestation. Senior to that Energy is the very Self, the very Consciousness,
which is even the Self of that Energy. The Divine Person is this Consciousness, this true Self, and this
Absolute Radiant Energy. We must realize our unity with That if we are to be free and happy and not
bewildered, deluded, and suffering. By association with phenomena, however, we become identified with the
sense of independent consciousness, and we attach ourselves to the temporary phenomena that are produced
automatically by the radiant Energy of the Divine. We forget this Self, we forget this Current of Radiance,
and we become attached to our independent consciousness and the phenomena that are only the
modifications of It.

The Way of salvation, liberation, and God-Realization is to submit the independent consciousness into the
Absolute Consciousness, or true Self, and to submit the independent bodymind, and all experience, into the
All-Pervading Current. That is the essence of the spiritual process. There is a practical and Perfect Way by
which to realize submission to the Absolute Radiant Self, the Divine Person. It is the Way of Divine
Ignorance-the fourstage Way that I have described to you. To "hear" this Teaching and to "see" me in the
midst of this instruction is to be moved to surrender into Divine Consciousness and Radiant Energy.
Whereas, not to "hear" or "see" me is to be an ordinary person, selfpossessed, attached to phenomena and the
capacity for experience, not aware of the Radiant Self that Pervades and Transcends all things.

The devotee is attentive to this Teaching, attentive to the Spiritual Master. He is involved in the activities of
sacrifice, or Love-Communion with the Divine Reality, the Divine Person, Who must be realized moment to
moment. The life of the devotee is not founded on strategic or self-conscious asceticism, wherein he prevents
himself from having experiences and enjoying himself. The life of the devotee is simply founded in prior
Awakening, through "hearing," to the Realization that experience, when viewed as a whole, is not
pleasurable. It is not "fun" to be alive. It is, ultimately, a dreadful circumstance, a completely bewildered
circumstance, in which some things make you feel good temporarily, but, essentially, apart from temporary
pleasures, you do not feel good. You are in trouble, and you are mortal.

Therefore, life is not "fun." There are pleasures, but even to the extent that there are pleasures a great
dimension of suffering also pervades one's entire life. Everything that might grant pleasure ultimately
disappears. Every relationship that one might enjoy ultimately comes to an end, if not through immaturity
and lovelessness then through death. There is no fundamental happiness or satisfaction in this life.
Awakening to revulsion toward our ordinary possibility is the beginning of true "hearing" and "seeing," or
radical intuition and true feeling, in which we may realize a Condition that is absolutely Blissful and
absolutely Conscious.

That Condition may be Realized even while we continue to be alive in the ordinary way, but the body-mind
is superficial to the Self, superficial to the Free soul. When the soul truly Awakens, it breaks out of its atomic
state in the heart and Radiates through and beyond the body-mind. Then the separate personality, the
brainoriented individual, relaxes and becomes diffused in the Radiance of Consciousness, so that even while
we appear to move around and act and think and do things in the ordinary way, there is no sense of being
identical to the active body-mind. It is superficial and passing. It has its moments of pleasure and its
moments of pain and it eventually dies. But in the meantime, and also when it dies, there is no sense any
longer of identity with it. Rather, one is submitted into the Current in which the body-mind is just an
appearance. One is submitted into the Consciousness in which the independent consciousness is just a recoil,
a reflex, a knot, a contraction. When one is Awakened to what is prior to this contraction, then one Exists as
that Radiant Consciousness that transcends this psycho-physical entity.

One may realize this Transcendental Condition while alive and enjoy its Destiny beyond this lifetime. This is
my Communication and my Invitation to you.

Chapter 3
Sudden and Gradual Enlightenment

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The Bhagavata Purana, book two, chapter two, verses sixteen through thirty-seven, freely rendered by Bubba
Free John

Once the mind, or the wandering of attention in experience, comes under natural control, through intuitive
insight, it should be surrendered into the prior state of awareness itself, which is rooted in the heart. In this
manner, all forms of activity cease, and all objects of attention are excluded. Abide in tranquility by such
means, until awareness Awakens beyond the confines of the inner being. Thus, Realize the true Self, the
Radiant Condition of the soul, which naturally transcends all phenomena of the body-mind and all conditions
in the eternally changing Realm of Nature.

The true Self, the Transcendental Heart, is the Divine Domain, the Kingdom of God, the Eternal Abode of
the Divine Person. The Divine Person is the Radiant Consciousness that Shines through the atomic window,
the illusory soul, defined and separated from the Divine Domain by egoic or independent association with
experience, rather than ecstatic or self-transcending surrender into the All-Pervading and Transcendental
Matrix of experience.

1. The Bhagavata Purana (also commonly referred to as the Srimad Bhagavatam) is rightly esteemed as the
most complete and authoritative exposition of ancient knowledge in the literature of the Hindu tradition of
spirituality. Its roots are in ancient oral traditions, but it may have been put into writing between the fifth and
tenth centuries A.D. The author is purported to be Vyasa (Krishna Draipayana), a contemporary of Krishna.
This "Purana" is the ultimate text of spiritual science, or the Way of the Devotional Sacrifice of Man into
God. It extols the Virtues of the Divine Person, principally in the form of Krishna, and communicates the
esoteric secrets of the Way in which we may Realize that One.

Such is the Supreme Realization, and It is Revealed directly to those who transcend all experiences of the
body-mind, through Awakened Intuition, and who surrender only to the Divine Person, through Love-
Communion with That Infinitely Radiant Consciousness.

This is the direct or sudden Method of Enlightenment. The true Self is Realized through direct and present
dissolution of the egoic mind, the self-defining acts of attention, the subtle and causal coverings of the soul.
One who surrenders the mind into the heart by the direct Method has transcended all desire for experience.

In that case, the Bodily Current of the All-Pervading Life, or the true Breath of Life in the body, which
circulates in the body via the spinal line, becomes naturally and spontaneously polarized toward the higher
brain, the brahmarandhra, the crown of the body. Therefore, the Current flows in the direction or disposition
of prior transcendence of bodily and mental experience, rather than toward the generation and exploitation of
bodily and mental experience, extended from crown to toe. In this manner, the mind, or the play of attention,
is transcended at the heart, and the sensory body is constantly yielded into the internal Life-Current, which
breaks through the upper limits of the brain and merges with the AllPervading Radiance of the Divine
Person. Therefore, at death, all the coverings of the soul are utterly dissolved in the Transcendental Heart,
wherein the body-mind appears and disappears. One who thus renounces the body-mind no longer separately
appears in any dimension of the Realm of Nature, the experiential Realm of Changes.

There is another Process, which ultimately leads to the same Enlightenment, after long cycles of births and
deaths in the realms of subtle or ascended experience. This Method is chosen by those who yet desire the
experiences of the subtle realms of mind, even though they have mastered all desires that lead into the
grosser realms or experiences of the elemental body.

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This Method involves the raising of attention into the brain core, the ajna chakra, below the crown of the
body, via the Life-Current, or the Breath of Life, in the spinal line of the body. Attention is not directly
yielded at the heart, but it remains active as the subtle mind, analogous to the consciousness of the higher and
deep brain, and it is associated with the subtle counterparts of the physical senses. By such means, the atomic
soul may attain the subtle body in the sky of mind, and wander, by its powers, throughout the Realm of
Nature. The soul may thus ascend into the abodes of other ascended beings, who live long lives and enjoy
various extraordinary powers.

But such mystics eventually and inevitably pass through many changes, becoming an ordinary sacrifice,
along with all of the transitory elements of the Realm of Nature. They disintegrate and pass on, from stage to
stage in the orderly illusion of phenomena, until at last they also enter into the sacrifice of the body, the
senses, the mind, and the entire process of arising or differentiated attention that is the ego, the "covered"
soul. Therefore, they too must finally yield the mind of self into the Radiant Heart of the Divine Person, the
true Self, Who is Eternal Bliss, Transcending all selves and changes.
These are the two Paths by which souls may Realize the Eternal Bliss that is Truth, the Condition of the
Divine Person. One Proceeds by gradual ascent of attention within the planes of experience, dissolving, by
degrees, the coverings of the soul in the planes of illusion and change, until the Heart Out-Shines the inner
being. The other Path Proceeds directly and immediately to the Heart, the Radiant Self, prior to all
experience, all progress, all strategic austerity, all dramas of attention. One Path Proceeds by mystical ascent
of the illusory inner self, or mind, via the Chain of Creation. The other Proceeds by direct intuitive
submission of the entire body-mind into the Radiant Source and Transcendental Matrix of all phenomena.

There is no other or easier Path by which born souls may Realize the Bliss of the Living God. There is,
indeed, only the Single Path, which may be followed either slowly or suddenly to the Heart. It is the Great
Path of self-surrender in Love

Communion with the Radiant Self, the All-Pervading and Transcendental Divine Person. Those who "hear"
this Teaching "see" the Divine Person as the true Self of the inner soul. They are cleansed, forgiven, and
altogether purified of all impulses toward experience in the Realm of Nature, and they certainly Realize the
Blissful Person, the Radiant Consciousness that is the Eternal Matrix, Truth, and Destiny of the World.

There Is Only One Truth

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A talk given by Bubba Free John to his devotees

Every level of understanding can be argued coherently.

Every stage of life is true within its own limits. But the Perfection of understanding, practice, and sacrifice is
Realized only in the seventh stage of life. Therefore, all knowledge, all order, and all attainments must yield
to the Wisdom of Perfection, the Wisdom of all Adepts in the seventh stage."

BUBBA: There is Absolute Bliss, the Absolute Person or Self, Who is Infinitely Radiant, whose Radiance
pervades all conditions that arise as possible experience. That Radiance is itself unchanging; but all of the
phenomena of experience, all of the phenomena of the Realm of Nature, are the changes, the superficial and
unnecessary modifications, of this All-Pervading Radiance, which is supremely Blissful. Therefore, if we can
Awaken from our sense of identification with the body-mind and be submitted into that Current of Radiance,
and if we can Realize our identity with that true Self, or Consciousness, then we may enjoy perfect and
eternal Bliss.

There_ is only one Truth, but there are two ways to realize it. Truth may be realized directly and absolutely,
or it maybe: rialixed gradually. The disposition of God-Realization involves a single intuition or turnabout in
our consciousness, in which we are moved to become a sacrifice through surrender, or Love-Communion
with the Divine. But there are two paths whereby we become perfectly absorbed in the Divine. One is sudden
or direct, and the other is circuitous.

The gradual path of enlightenment is a way of moving through the levels of phenomena, through the chain of
Creation, ultimately to Realize the Divine Condition, but, in general, not in this lifetime. It is a matter of
progressing by stages, first transcending this gross birth of the "covered" soul, and then moving on to
transcend the subtle births of the soul. This roundabout path, this "Great Way of Return," involves first of all
hearing the argument about our ultimate Destiny, and then taking up a life of renunciation. Through strategic
renunciation, attention is turned away from the gross realm of possibility into the Life-Current of the body-
mind, and then attention is moved, via that Current, along the spinal line toward the internal brain centers
and into the subtle conditions of the mind. This is the path of mystics or yogis. There are many versions of
this approach to Enlightenment, but they are all essentially a matter of placing the attention in the internal
LifeCurrent of the body-mind, moving it upwards, bypassing the lower or gross bodily phenomena, and
fixing attention in the various regions of the brain core. (That is, attention is maintained at the position of the
brain core, which is also named the "third eye" and the "ajna chakra. " It is the position of the higher or
subtle mind. And from this position the various "lokas" or realms of subtle experience or subtle mind may be
viewed or otherwise visited and known.)
The merging of attention and the Life-Current in the experiential phenomena of the brain core is not God-
Realization. It is interpreted as such by mystics and yogis, but in fact it is simply a disposition in the
tendency of the body-mind to move away from the gross level of phenomena and toward the mental or subtle
psychic states. A yogi who has fixed his Life-Force and attention in the brain-mind has not realized God or
the Self. He has transcended the grosser elements while alive, but after death he moves into other births in
the subtle dimensions of the Realm of Nature. His attention lies in the spectrum of subtle possibility.
Therefore, he moves into subtle forms in higher and subtler worlds of experience. Thus, it is not Self-
Realization that occurs when the attention is placed in the Life-Current at the brain core. Rather it is
experiential transcendence of the lower spectrum of the possibilities of experience. Independent and
mysterious experience still lies in the future for such an individual. He has not been liberated into
SelfRealization or true God-Realization. He is still moving toward It.

The direct Way or sudden path of Enlightenment, the Way of God or the Way of Truth, has nothing whatever
to do with the destinies of attention, the destinies of the ego or the separated consciousness. It is the Way of
insight into the very gesture of attention itself. It is the Way of engaging in the natural process of
GodCommunion, which is surrender of attention. The sudden Way is not the manipulation of attention in
gross or subtle levels of experience, but the surrender of attention itself at its root, which is in the heart. Once
this process has been Realized perfectly, then the Heart itself is realized to be the Infinite, the Absolute, the
Perfect Divine. In that Realization there is absolutely no necessity whatsoever to any experience. The present
life or body-mind continues its term, and it is lived in the natural way that is appropriate for one who lives in
Communion with God. But it does not contain within it the seed of its own repetition. Therefore, at death
there is no migration. The body-mind is returned to the elements, high and low, and the consciousness is
withdrawn from the realms of attention, just as the Life-Force is withdrawn at death from the physical body.
Thus, the conscious being is absorbed in the Absolute.

In the case of the mystic or the yogi, however, the attention remains vagrant at death. It is still moving
toward phenomena. Therefore, when such an individual dies, he migrates. He leaves with the Life-Current
through the mental region of the eyes, or with the feeling of attention rising through the top of the head,
Therefore, the soul follows attention, or the mind, into the higher worlds of experience.

It is only the true devotee, the one who is oriented to God rather than to the futures of attention, who
transcends all possibility. He transcends all the realms of phenomena, not by acts of will or acts of attention
toward objects and possibility, but through Awakening to the source of attention, the true Condition of
consciousness. Thus, the true devotee Realizes the Condition in which experience is not necessary. Attention,
or mind, is Trans formed at the heart, and the bodily Life-Current, liberated from all bondage to the mind, or
the tendencies of attention toward experience in the body-mind, is released into the All-Pervading Radiance
via the upper terminal of the brain (above the brain core), and in all directions to Infinity.

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As long as you are attached to the mind and body, you must keep these states active. You must continue to
have experiences in order to give yourself the sense of existence. If they tend to slow down, or if they tend
not to have enough newness to them so that you become bored,, then you feel uncomfortable and threatened.
And when the body is dying, you feel terrified, because you imagine that you need the body and its
associations in order to exist and to be Blissful. Truly your Condition is inherently Blissful in God. No
experiences of which we may speak are necessarily associated with It. It is an absolute Condition, in which
there is no independent gesture of consciousness, but only simple absorption in the Infinite Blissfulness of
God.

The devotee on the direct path to Enlightenment is Awakened by the Teaching of the Spiritual Master, and he
enters into a natural order of life in which he transcends all of the urges toward experience, subtle and gross,
mental and physical. He transcends the-body-mind altogether. He does not go up or down by tendency, but,
rather, he becomes absorbed at the heart, and via the heart, in the Absolute Divine, Who is All-Pervading and
Transcendental. And when the eyes of the heart open, and the devotee is identical to the true Self, then all the
phenomena that arise are seen to be only modifications of that Radiant Self with which the devotee is
identical. There is no necessity to the world then. It is simply a temporary condition, created by past
associations, and when it has fulfilled its term, it ceases to be. Thus, at death the devotee does not go up or
down or in ut. He is not changed in t at moment, but a simply abides in the Bliss of God Realization. He is
Translated into the Domain of that Bliss absolutely, without associations with phenomena that tend to distract
and literally dishearten him.

The Way of Divine Ignorance is the Communication of this sudden and most direct Way. In this Way, these
mechanisms by which the yogis and mystics ascend into subtle planes of the mind are inspected, re-
cognized, understood, and transcended, but not exploited.. It is intended to be a brief process. The way of
yoga or mysticism takes many lifetimes, but the process in the Way of Divine Ignorance is radical; therefore,
it is not intended that you spend your entire life moving through the stages of inspection. The stages of
practice in this Way are not stages of the perfection of any experiential condition. They are stages of
responsibility for the conversion of consciousness, in which a natural order is established in the psycho-
physical being. That order is without urgency, without self-exploitation, and the individual rests more and
more profoundly in surrender into the All-Pervading Current (rather than the internal current of the body-
mind) and the very Consciousness that Eternally Transcends the body-mind.

Whatever you have not transcended, you must fulfill. That is the Law. Merely to have come into the
Company of the Spiritual Master during your lifetime does not mean that you can escape all possibilities.
You must live this Way. You must fulfill the Way in literal transcendence of the possibilities of experience.
You must enter into the blessedness of God-Realization while alive. Otherwise you will tend toward human
or somewhat higher than human destinies after this life. If any tendencies remain toward anything other than
Communion with the Absolute, then those tendencies will be fulfilled in experience in the future.

To be absorbed in Communion with the Absolute is not what is difficult. What is difficult is to move
attention up and to force it into subtle realms, separating yourself from the natural bodily attention-that is
difficult. Arranging a benign future in the midst of experience, controlling your attention to yield beautiful
destinies-that is difficult. To be a saint or a yogi is difficult. It involves a great deal of self-manipulative
effort and a creative capacity for delusion. The Way of God-Realization is the Way beyond illusions, the Way
beyond phenomena of all kinds, in which there is no identification with the cycle of attention that moves out
of the Condition of pure Consciousness. There is no identification with the body, with the mind, with
phenomena of any kind. There is natural, very simple, and very direct Communion with the Absolute. It is
Perfect. It is not difficult.

Thus, it is said that there is no good reason to do what is necessary to get to Heaven, any more than there is
any good reason to exploit yourself on Earth. The only Way whereby we are liberated is to be a sacrifice in
Love-Communion with the Absolute God, Who is All-Pervading, Who is the Infinite Energy, and Who is
Transcendentally Present as the very Self or Condition of our Consciousness. If we will practice that
sacrifice, then we are liberated from our illusions, from our self-possession, from our urges toward the
fulfillment of experience, and we cease to migrate from life to death to life through changes, but rather we
are entered into the Divine Domain, the Absolute Perfection of Bliss, which may not be described from the
point of view of psychophysical existence, or identification with the body-mind.

That Condition far exceeds, by infinite multiplications of itself beyond Infinity, the blessedness and
blissfulness that may be realized through any satisfaction in human form. And we may be a sacrifice into that
Realization of God even while living in a human form. It is not necessary to have a higher form, because the
human form is structured in perfect intimacy with the Matrix of the universe. The Living Divine is
manifested at the heart, so we need not go up into a more subtle body in order to make this sacrifice.

In the process of this Way of Truth we become a voluntary and spontaneous sacrifice, in which there is no
holding on to any phenomenon whatsoever, no holding on to the body and its possibilities, no holding on to
the breath, no holding on to manifest existence or to birth, no resistance of death, no reaction to the world, no
reaction to the cycle of phenomena and inevitable changes. There is no holding on to thinking, no holding on
to mind, no holding on to hopes for subtle distractions, no holding on to any mystical efforts toward sublime
circumstances. There is simple, natural absorption in the Divine Reality-not effort, not urge, not any gesture
of attention, but simply absorption itself. In that absorption, or dissolution of attention, all phenomena
become unnecessary, and their seed, which is the gesture of attention, is transformed in God-Realization. The
conscious being is not destroyed; it Realizes its Condition in Truth, which is not the inward being of the
body-mind, but the Absolute Divine. The independent soul realizes that Condition only through its own
sacrifice, its release from its own gesture of attention and association with phenomena. Only in that utter
transcendence of the urge toward experience does the atomic soul Realize that it exists at Infinity.

The Obligation to Awaken

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The Law cannot be transcended. We are under an illusion in the world, but we are also under an obligation.
To transcend the illusion is not also to transcend the obligation. The illusion is broken only through present
or every moment fulfillment of that obligation.

The illusion is that of independent existence, separate from the Absolute or Divine Existence in which all
conditions and beings are arising. The obligation is to Awaken to the Absolute or Divine Condition and to be
a total and perfect sacrifice into It via every kind of experience or function that arises, until there is only the
very Divine.

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"The perfect among the sages is identical with Me. There is absolutely no difference between us"
Tripura Rahasya, Chap XX, 128-133

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