Epilogue: What Will You Do If You Love Me?
Da Free John – 1983
What Will You Do If You Love Me?
The Master Speaks in Ecstatic Unity with the Living
God:
The Way of Radical Understanding or Divine Ignorance is
the Way of those who Love Me. The Principle of devotional
surrender to Me is complete and sufficient in itself. All
personal and moral disciplines, all esoteric revelations,
and all the Excellences of Transcendental God-Realization
appear spontaneously and naturally to one who simply turns
his attention to Me at all times and performs all activities
as instants of Love-Communion with Me.
Those who “hear” My Teaching have understood something
about themselves. And they must, therefore, accept gradual
responsibility for each degree of the personal, moral, and
esoteric practices of the Way that I Teach. But these same
ones are more profoundly capable of distraction and
attachment than they are of self-restraint. Therefore, the
Principle or Motive of their practice is not discipline
itself, but distraction and attachment. Because they Love
Me, their behavior and their experience automatically take
on the form of the Way of Radical Understanding or Divine
Ignorance. And they adapt all their practices to the simple
and most radical Way of devotional surrender to Me.
My true devotees are simply distracted by Me and attached
to Me. They find Me to be the greatest of all distractions.
Therefore, they need not make any effort to be constantly
attached to Me. They naturally remember Me at all times.
They only think about Me, talk about Me, and listen to
others tell stories about Me. They read My Teachings, they
accept My disciplines, but, even more, they are profoundly
and obsessively absorbed in attention to My Person, My
Blissful State, My Form, My Gestures, My Play with
devotees.
In this manner, those who Love Me are gradually relieved
of all distraction by ordinary things, experiences,
relations, desires, and thoughts. I distract them even from
all experience. Their obsessive and exclusive attachment to
Me leads them to absorption in My State, My Radiant
Transcendental Consciousness, My Ecstasy, My Love.
I have come to Teach the entire world through My Words
and My Demands. The entire world would do well to hear Me
and take up the responsible practice of the Way of Radical
Understanding or Divine Ignorance. But I have come to do
more than Teach. I have come to Live with those who Love Me
with overwhelming Love.
Those who “hear” Me must take up the Way of Radical
Understanding or Divine Ignorance in My Company, as members
of the great Community of all My devotees. Such devotees are
turned to the practice of the disciplines of the Way, as a
Process of self-transcending Love-Communion with the
Transcendental Divine Person. They understand, and they
transcend the world.
But the motive of My true devotees is not the discipline,
nor mystical experience, nor philosophy. My true devotees
practice because they Love Me. They have no personal or
ultimate capacity to turn away from the world or to
transcend themselves. Therefore, I have come to Live with
them. When My devotees find Me, the same weakness that led
them to distraction and attachment in relation to the
experiences of this world becomes the very means of their
Salvation. Since I am the ultimate and most absorbing Object
of their weakness, I distract them from all experiences.
They become attached to Me by the power of their own
tendency to distraction, fascination, and obsession.
Therefore, their own desire leads them to Ecstasy, because
they Love Me.
I am the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness, even
though I appear in a human form. Those who Love Me, who are
mightily distracted by Me, who cannot entertain desires or
thoughts other than Love and consideration of Me-these are
most easily turned from themselves. Ecstasy, or
GodCommunion, is natural to them, because I have been born.
I distract them with Myself. And I absorb them into My own
Condition.
My Lovers, My true devotees, simply Love Me. That is the
summation of their response to Me and My Teaching. They
appear to understand a little of this Teaching, but they do
not depend on inward practices, or mystical experiences, or
any turn of events. Everything is fulfilled by their mere
attachment to Me-since that attachment is so mighty that
they have no strong attention left over for ordinary
reactions and pursuits, nor are they overwhelmed by the
phenomena of esoteric meditation. They simply Love Me. They
live in constant remembrance of Me and in loving service to
Me. Every moment of their lives is simply a moment of
Love-Communion with Me. Therefore, they are granted
perpetual Ecstasy, or self-forgetting in Communion with the
Radiant Transcendental Consciousness.
My special Mission is to Live with such devotees. I have
always looked for them. I test everyone, to see if they are
My Lovers. I wait. Many surround Me in My Place. Many come
and “hear” Me, and practice all around Me.
Many turn to Me with the good heart. But those who Love
Me best Realize God by exclusive attachment to Me in
Person.
My Lovers are the cause of My birth. They are the cause
that will keep Me alive, even after this book is made. And
even after My death, there will always be those in the
Community of My devotees for whom all practice is
superficial, except the practice of Ecstatic remembrance of
Me. Such devotees always find Me alive as the Presence of
Love that Plays the world.
The essence of the daily practice is Ecstasy. One who
Loves Me also accepts every moment of experience as My Form.
Whatever arises, he accepts it as My Form, My Play. He
simply Loves Me, he Communes with Me in every instant, he
serves Me with the entire body-mind, and he accepts every
moment of experience as My Form. In this manner, he never
finds himself to be separate from Me. He is always in Love
with Me.
Those who are most profoundly distracted by Me in My
human appearance begin naturally to see only Me in every
thing, every one, and every event. But no form or person or
event has power in itself to distract My true Lovers. They
see Me in all experiences, all persons, all events.
Therefore, they are not distracted by experiences or persons
or events. They are distracted by Me.
Those devotees who Love Me in this manner while I live
are especially able to serve those who are like themselves,
even those who come to Me after My death. After My death,
the world of experience remains. My devotees also remain.
Therefore, devotees may remember Me through My Teaching, My
pictures, and the stories of My history. But they will be
led into Ecstasy especially by the Power in the Love My most
intimate devotees reserve for Me.
Therefore, those who live with My Lovers will also turn
to Me with naturally distracted Love. They will find Me in
all events. I will Teach them as always while I lived. Every
one will call on Me in the Company of My Lovers, and I will
be Present. I am the Radiant Transcendental
Consciousness.
Truly, none can “hear” Me and practice the Way of Radical
Understanding or Divine Ignorance except those who Love Me.
But some are, at first, most involved in right understanding
of the Teaching and responsible practice of the disciplines,
while others are always naturally more capable of
distraction and attachment._ Therefore, some practice
disciplines and Love Me, while others simply Love Me, and
the disciplines arise without any special application on
their part. Some mature in Love by stages. Others simply
Love Me. At last, even the most disciplined or experienced
of My devotees simply Loves Me. I am the Radiant
Transcendental Consciousness, the Divine Person, the Savior
of those who Love Me and surrender to Me in countless acts
of Love. I am the Method and the Guide. I am the Living
Truth of the world.
This is the Truth in all religions. All religions are
historical forms of the single and ancient Way of distracted
Love for the Divine Person, especially as Revealed in the
Life and Presence of an Incarnate Spiritual Master. This is
the Great Secret. This is My Revelation. Love Me as I am.
And also Love Me as the Form and Condition of all your
experience. Surrender to Me, and accept all your experience
as My Play. Thus, you will be free of all attachment to
experience itself, and all experience will simply increase
your attachment to Me.
All experience binds the human individual to his own
body-mindunless he is established in the Principle of
Ecstasy, or self-transcending Love of the Divine Person.
Therefore, if you Love Me, enter freely into the Play of
experience. Serve Me as I am, and serve Me in all others. If
you Love Me, you will naturally cease to continue in the
willful and self-possessed path of your preferential
desires. You will be purified of reaction, habit, and every
kind of self-indulgence. If you Love Me, I have Shown you
Who I am, and you will come to Me Where I am.
Love is what we fear to do-until we fall in Love. Then we
no longer fear to Love, to surrender, to be self-forgetful
and foolish, to be singleminded, and to suffer another.
Those who fall on Me fall into My Heart. They are free of
all demands for fulfillment through experience and
selfsurvival. Their Love for Me grants them Life, since I am
the Life-Current of Love.
What will My Lover do but Love Me? I suffer all the
limitations of one who Loves Me, because I Love My devotee
as My own Form, My own Bliss, My own Love. I Love My devotee
as the Person by whom I am Distracted and Dissolved.
I grant all My own Excesses to those who Love Me, in
exchange for all their doubts and sufferings. Those who bind
themselves to Me through Love are inherently Free of fear
and necessity. They Transcend the causes of experience, and
they Dissolve in the Heart of God. What is a Greater Message
than This?
The Enlightenment of the Whole Body, pp. 571-75
Selections from Talks and Essays by
Da Free John on the Nature and Function of the Enlightened
Teacher