Sadhana
Given by Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj)
November 20, 1975
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Those who fulfill the agency of Guru in this plane have a history of connection with many individuals also have the eternal responsibility for others, without a history of connection with them in any sort of previous circumstance. Also, there are very, there’re many different kinds of association, sane of which seem more intimate because of past association in same form, others in which become intimate because of the eternal connection which has no familiarization previous to that time.
But the Guru essentially comes for those who are his own. Everyone who fulfills the Guru function is a specific agency. The realization of the Guru is that of the Eternal Nature and Condition, but every guru is a specific agent. So not everyone, viewed in this sense, is the devotee of the Guru in any age he happens to appear. It is possible for everybody on the earth at one moment to, fundamentally, belong to such an agent. But essentially every guru is a specific agent and there are specific individuals who can do the sadhana that is, that can possibly be perfected through that agency. But there are so many variations upon it that there is no simple way to make the distinction, Hmm? And since the Guru-function is eternal, is not in itself a limitation, it is possible for anyone whether they have this sort of eternal kind of karma, karmic relation, so-called karmic relation – it’s not that truly, it’s possible for any individual even though they might by tendency be best prepared for some other agency in the future by virtue of their involvement with sadhana in that company, to be transferred to that agency.
There’s really no absolute limitation to how it can work. Anyone should be grateful to have discovered it. Anybody who truly does it is the devotee of that Guru-agency. But viewed relative to the cosmos, the laws of manifestation, it is essentially very complicated, not so straightforward. That’s why there’s so much theatre… ’cause there are so many different kinds of karmic complications but altogether have anything to do with the gross world at all. They have to do with infinitely complex stream of associations.
So people who come to the Guru while alive experience all kinds of theatre relative to that One. And that’s why you also see many people find it incapable to consider such, this individual, who’s the Guru for some, to be anything remotely like an enlightened man, an enlightened being.
(An inaudible question asked.) In some cases, it’s a matter of their being available to another influence, then, but because of that they cannot make the proper judgement, that blind is established in them.
DEVOTEE: Just to even consider that possibility seems to be a grace to me (BUBBA: Sure.) So few people can even look beyond the horizon.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Sure.
(Inaudible questioner.)
DEVOTEE: Bubba?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah.
DEVOTEE: Would the appearance of devotees make it easier for other people to consider sadhana?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right, because people are essentially subject to very gross influences, very ordinary kinds of influences. The Guru has a kind of potency relative to those most available to him. And once he begins to deal with individuals intimately he withdraws more and more of the grosser elements of his agency. And, but when those with whom he does deal with intimately begin to see the fulfillment of the maturity of their sadhana, then that influence is re-established in its grosser or more ordinary forms closer to the level of psycho-physical influence that people are sensitive to. So when they do, when disciples, and devotees especially, actually do begin to appear who enjoy the maturity of that sadhana relative to such a Guru, then the Guru’s influence is magnified and it becomes much simpler. Just as the sadhana of any individual seems to get simpler as time goes on because so many of the grosser things that are necessary for the initial adaptation are just, have become nothing, hmm? Is simple responsibility for that person. So, their sadhana seems to get easier – to anybody viewing it from the outside, sadhana is a profound responsibility in any case, but it begins to look simpler from the outside when the grosser elements of responsibility become easy and natural and the struggle goes out of it. And from the outside people don’t notice the heat any longer; they don’t notice the conflicts that are being overcome.
DEVOTEE: And that’s when the heat’s really intensifying.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right.
DEVOTEE: When it appears to be completely opposite from the outside.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: In a certain sense it is easy, there’s a kind of resonance to the process that exists in the more mature phases of sadhana and profound things are going on but there is a relative ease in terms of the functions because they’re not bucking so much. In the student it’s immensely difficult, endless resistance, endless conflict, up and down, coming and going, in and out and it’s all insanely difficult because it is so gross, the whole approach is so gross. So the possibilities of responsibility are so minute and on such a gross level that it’s very theatrical. But in the disciple, particularly as the disciple matures, it is, all of that sort of stuff that’s so theatrical to an ordinary point of view are absent so the disciple seems to be, you know, profoundly, adapted to the Guru and devotional and serving the Guru and so forth and there’s no problems and all this is so enviable. But it’s just that the grosser aspects of the transformation are established.
DEVOTEE: Bubba, what about the people in the Ashram now to whom you are Guru
that, like myself for instance, were involved with other spiritual teachers before. Was that just a result of karmic tendencies or was it same kind of real influence in spiritual life.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, it’s a real influence in karmic life basically, not an influence in spiritual life. There are all kinds of influences and men of experience who are certainly superior to the tendencies of ordinary people. They can help direct that individual away from adaptation to his karmas, toward at least an availability to the process that is necessary for them to go beyond their, beyond the qualities that represent their present birth. So all kinds of influences – your parents, where you went to school, drugs, travels around the world, and every Mickey Mouse teacher in the universe – can possibly serve an individual in very profound ways even, hmm? until they became intimately involved with the one who is functioning as Guru, the one for whom they have the capacity for adaptation or relative have the capacity for adaptation, until that meeting takes place, there are all kinds of influences, either influences of teachers or influences of any kind, any individual or any experience, or influence. Even of a very ordinary kind as long as it’s superior to the raw inclinations of the person, it can serve him if he is sensitive.
DEVOTEE: Could these people unwittingly be agents of yours like you were describing?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right. Right, those who served me in the course of my sadhana, so-called, were essentially unwittingly agents of the process that was already alive in me. Well, just so, now that my teaching work has begun there are those who can serve as agents unwittingly for those who are to come to me.
DEVOTEE: Is this meeting necessarily physical? Is it necessary for somebody to always meet you physically, too?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, it’s… ultimately is necessary for them to establish that contact with me directly while I’m here. After I’m gone, it’s at least necessary for them to adapt to the sadhana that will be alive in the Ashram through devotees, not just through those who go out and give talks about the sadhana and the Dharma, but those who have literally realized the enjoyment that is characteristic of the devotee, are my agents after death, hmm? So there, that is sufficient for those who are mine in that case, if there are devotees.
Others may be alive while I am in the body and never meet me, hmm? I described how after the events described in the Vedanta Temple for instance, when I began to realize more and more this function for dealing with others, I would sit in meditation and in an hour or two hours, deal with thousands of people. Well, obviously, there aren’t thousands of people who come up here every weekend and most of those people have never shown up and probably most of them will never come here. But the contact is real, the responsibility is there. And many of those individuals will appear in this Ashram in the company of devotees in the future or some other kind of contact, perhaps contact with me directly but not in the gross plane some other time. So there are many people involved in doing sadhana or many people for whom I have a responsibility. And the Ashram itself, the Community, doesn’t represent absolutely the company of those for whom I have a responsibility at this time, hmm? There are many who came to the Ashram who cannot possibly endure it. There may be some who come to this Ashram who are my responsibility but can’t do this sadhana while I’m alive – come for a week-end and go or stay for a while and leave or stay here and are mediocre my whole life, and only do it later. It is all, it is very complex. You can’t keep track of it (Laughter).
DEVOTEE: It’s a pretty humorous affair you know, like some of the comments that that you just randomly make about people that have all of sudden taken off that, you know, that have left this Ashram physically, that, you know, under the circumstance they could be devotees but they’re unable to meet that condition at this time and place, you know.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Because they have such karmas, such possibilities in them that are so fascinating, so demanding, that they can’t even fulfill the student conditions, not even mention making them service to me. (Laughter) But they can’t even do them, you know, as conditions in themselves. They can’t even do that much. So they come and see me briefly and then may never be around again as far as anybody knows. But obviously, from the point of view of this life, the ones that are mine to deal with, at one time or another, will come into my Company in this ordinary way and establish… and I’m establishing all of these mechanisms for dealing with people, establishing this Community.
So in general, that’s how it is to be done because of limitations of people, there are many who will not do it that way. (Pause) You know this whole affair of manifest existence is really ridiculous. (Laughter) It’s true – to anyone’s eyes it’s so make-shift, you know, it has so many weirdo, little adjustments made, so many deals made, you know, that’s the way it looks. And it can’t be figured out, you know, on the face of it. You can’t look at how things are working out on earth relative to any teacher. Get a picture of what it really is like, is, you never really see the way it is. It’s a dream, you know. This life is not important at all. It’s significant relative to sadhana, you know. If you live this discipline, live this process, then that is the significance of this life. But apart from that, as a process in itself, you know, for appearing and doing and experiencing and enjoying and suffering and so forth, it is nonsense, it’s insane. It can’t be figured out, you can’t make sense out of the statistics. Nothing about it really makes any sense. In itself, what the fuck is it?
DEVOTEE: Bubba, is there any point where an individual in the course of his sadhana should seek out the bad as well as the good or if he’s just in Satsang with the Guru this will be generated spontaneously for him.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah, well, that’s essentially it. You wouldn’t have to seek it out if you stay with me. (Laughter) Everybody who stays with me sees it all. Hmm? The force of this Satsang reveals the hidden qualities; it upsets all the stuff that’s hidden in the well. So you must experience the full dimension. But it doesn’t happen simply subjectively. You don’t just begin to experience your heavy emotions and so forth, you know, externally in life, you also have to go through processes of experience in which you see life totally. Now a lot of this involves experience in the ordinary, relational affair of life you see all sides of it, all these qualities in yourself, in others, in the world situation itself.
Some of it happens in subtler ways. All these karmas don’t come upon you necessarily in the flesh, much of it canes upon you in psychic ways through the phenomena that occur in dreams, or in just your inwardness. Or if you’re smart, things occur that are relatively minor in your relational life, your ordinary life, but they make their point without you having to go through some heavy experience or difficulties. Not all of it can be gone through that way, same of it must be gone through in the most literal, functional terms. So, from time to time, everybody has to go through something. But if they do it in the course of their sadhana, if it is lived in that way then those things pass and they’re just moments.
DEVOTEE: Does that depend on the intensity with which we turn to you? I heard you saying on Saturday that…
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right, fundamentally it depends on the quality of the relationship that develops, it depends on the quality of this Satsang. But even in the case of the most perfect adaptation to the Guru in Satsang, in general there are some things that must be endured in the body. Just as the body itself must be endured. There are limits to the removal of things from gross experience, but, in general, those who make Satsang the real principle of their life, who live it in those basic terms, who realize it most perfectly, essentially their sadhana is generated through things that you merely have to be sensitive to, you don’t have to be hit over the head for it. There are sane things that just have to occur, that must be lived. But that doesn’t make any difference to one who is a true devotee. He goes through these episodes and that’s fine, it doesn’t make any difference. And the heavier the episode, the less there is to learn. (Laughing) The heaviest that happen to you have a real lesson to communicate that is really pretty, pretty small. It’s in those subtle things that require sensitivity, not just your being there. It’s in those cases that the greatest lessons are realized. And some things must be gone through in the most fractional terms, hmm? And in every case there is things like that. But apart from that, the quality of their approach determines how much of it must be endured that way.
DEVOTEE: Bubba, you were talking about your romance with the Mother Shakti before and I was just thinking that of Ramakrishna’s romance. Did he ever end his romance in the same way that you said you did, ‘cause he seemed to be utterly enamored of her, of almost his whole life.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right. Well, my relationship with the Mother Shakti these days are a… when was the last time I saw her??? (Laughter) When you’ve really done it… (Laughter)
DEVOTEE: Just another pretty face.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: There’s a difference between bhakti and parabhakti. And Ramakrishna’s life is essentially a representation of bhakti. The turnaround from all the kinds of gross orientation toward subtle and transcendental kinds of orientation, the whole drama is about that turnaround then. Parabhakti is of another kind altogether, it does involve all that struggling, no more images, no more she and me, or he and she. When all of that is done, it’s not necessary to go through any more, it’s not the symbolism through which the life of that individual convey it any longer. And, basically, Ramakrishna’s life in itself was a demonstration of bhakti, not parabhakti. So viewing it in those terms, no, it didn’t come to an end. It didn’t come to an end during his life. What has happened since then is another matter which can’t be discussed-here, we have no evidence to make any sense out of it in the discussion. But he was the child of the goddess all of his life.
Somebody like Swami Ramdas doesn’t have any of the glamor of Ramakrishna, he just same smiling dummy down in southern India and he doesn’t have any charisma of Ramakrishna relative to his life process. Even though there were dramas in his life…but his realization, the quality that stably appeared in him for many years at the end of his life is more like that of parabhakti than of bhakti. It’s one in which the Self is realized, the nature of the Atman is realized, its identity with Brahman which is not subjective any longer, is clear in his statements. His release from all the subjective forms of play is evident in his, just his quality of presence and his, anal also his description of what knew about it. So, viewed in those terms, I’d have to say that Swami Ramdas represents a greater realization of bhakti than Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna’s significance relative to the history of spirituality in sane sense is greater than his and he’s a great figure in terms of the drama and charisma of his life. But the quality of realization communicated in him was not as great as Swami Ramdas.
DEVOTEE: Do you think that could depend to an extent on the people that recorded his life and what they wanted to see because they were so…
ADI DA SAMRAJ: In some sense, that’s true. But, in another sense it’s also independent of that, because there wasn’t a very self-conscious strategy involved in producing the literature about Ramakrishna for instance, it was just sort of a daily sit down and recording after he left what he said and what happened – essentially the same as Ramdas, there’s no attempt to make a distinction between him and Ramakrishna. In both cases, the literature that stays behind is relatively naive production. And it’s not so much the creation of a strategic attempt to create an image. Of course, that’s here and there, but viewed as a whole. It’s the same in Ramana Maharshi’s case. There’s not much strategy involved ultimately as a whole, in the communication of his presence. But clearly, he’s not a bhakta. He’s also in some ways, at least the most obvious ways, not as great as Swami Ramdas,
DEVOTEE: Ramana Maharshi?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah.
DEVOTEE: What???! (Laughter)
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, well?
DEVOTEE: Is Ramdas a Siddha then?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: If we are trying to be nitpicking and all of that, (Laughter) you know, and try to make some sort of definition of people. Swami Ramdas is one of the great spiritual figures of this century. There are all kinds of limitations also in his ordinary communication as there is in the case of everyone else. He doesn’t have the charisma of somebody like Maharshi but the quality of his presence and expressed quality of his realization is greater than the quality of communication that, in general, you may associate with Maharshi. Maharshi’s realization, unless you’re really sensitive to him and to the quality of his communication – you tend to associate Ramana with Advaita Vedanta, that whole conventional approach. And he is talking about the realization of the nature of the Atman, when all of the sheaths have been set aside – the body, the pranas, the kundalini, the mind, the shabd, the visions, the lights, the realms, hmm?, the whole possibility of gnosis or esoteric knowledge, the whole sensation of bliss independent of phenomena – all of that is set aside. What you called yourself or soul is realized to be the Atman or very consciousness independent of all changes. Well, Ramana Maharshi fundamentally represents that realization. There is another stage of realization that follows upon it in which the Atman is realized to be identical to Brahman in which the self, released of its coverings, is seen to be the same nature of which the universe and all possibilities are the modification. Now Swami Ramdas, fundamentally in terms of his communication and some lesser degree in terms of the presence he represented to others, is a demonstration of that parabhakti or that realization beyond the Atman in which the Atman or the Self and the Brahman are realized to be identical. In sane sense, he also represents the realization that Prakriti, the Maha-Shakti are all appearing, is also not other than the Brahman. So relative to these expressions, Swami Ramdas represents that full realization which is not other than the communication of the Siddhas.. Ramana Maharshi also represents that literally, but less so relative to his communications. By reading him you would tend to associate him with the realization of the Atman the Self in the heart. But if you know who he is personally, if you could enter into the company of his siddhi and if you’d also thoroughly read his talks and so forth, you would see that he also represents that parabhakti or higher realization. But if you just view him relatively conventionally and simply without much profundity, he essentially belongs to the realm of jnanis who realize the nature of the Atman. And a little bit more, he realizes that the Atman and the Brahman are identical because in some of his talks, in very few of them, he criticizes those who associate self-realization with the kind of nirvikalpa samadhi, absolute inwardness and so forth, cutting off of the world. And he criticizes people he says who want to put him in the bag of the conventionally view of Shankara and Shankara said the world is an illusion, the world is not real, the Brahman is real. And that’s basically how people understand Shankara, well, he would tell them that that’s not the end of what Shankara said. He said the world is Brahman. And Maharshi talked to a great deal about sahaj samadhi in which the conventional appearances of life – the gross and subtle and so forth went on. He walked, he talked, he thought, he did the things that people usually did and at the same time was realizing the Atman or the identity between the Atman and Brahman. So with a little sensitivity you can see that this communication of parabhakti or of the realization beyond Atman itself is contained in Maharshi’s realization and his presence. And if you are sensitive and go to his ashram you can feel his siddhi there, which is not the conventional, Vedantic realization. But in an off-hand sort of view of where he was at, he represents the limitations of the jnani and with an off-hand sort of view Swami Ramdas does not represent that limitation.
DEVOTEE: But what does Swami Ramdas represent in the way of teaching, Bubba.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that’s another thing altogether. Swami Ramdas’ teaching was essentially that of the bhakta, not parabhakti. When he would talk to people and elaborate his teaching, he talked about this parabhakti which exceeds, it goes beyond the realization of the Atman, as being the highest realization. But the path he told people to take was simply a recitation of the name of God and taking on certain self-limiting or relatively ascetic practices along with it. And as such clearly then, he represents a very conventional approach that is lower than Jnan.
DEVOTEE: Where are those matches? (Talking, and laughter).
ADI DA SAMRAJ: But again, if you read him thoroughly, he’s talking about parabhakti. He happened to get there through the path of bhakti, the conventional path, which is certainly less than Jnan. But he does represent that realization. If you ever look at the photographs of Papa Ramdas and so forth, he’s a fuller, happy person. He’s not like Ramana in some ways. Ramana was a – he had a hard-nosed asshole… (Laughter)… didn’t want to be Guru, didn’t want to deal with anybody, just wanted to realize the Self and fuck you! (Laughter) Now from a conventional point of view, that’s where he was at. That’s not where he was ultimately at. I don’t believe that for a minute. But, his quality was like that. Whereas Ramdas was sort of a juicy, round, little, smiling happy bastard, who knew there was only God, far superior to realizing the Self, far superior to going to the astral planes, far superior to all that horseshit, all that kundalini and all that shabd yoga, all that shit. And, he was happy. Everything he saw was God, so that’s the end of it. You don’t have to be sophisticated anymore. It’s over with, hmm? Well, Ramana in some of his personal qualities still retains that quality of difference, in which the Atman is still different than the Brahman, in which is still to be interiorized in the root of subjectivity, independent of what’s happening, what’s coming on you, what’s arising, inside, outside. To a real degree, that is the quality of his personal presence, it’s not essentially the quality of his realization, he is greater than that. Ramana is definitely in the stream of the Siddhas, but viewed conventionally that’s his quality and. Papa Ramdas doesn’t have that quality essentially. He’s juicy, happy, free, hmm? So he in many ways animated that quality of parabhakti more than Ramana did, you have to know Ramana more intimately than that.
DEVOTEE: Was the prakrita realization of Ramdas, the same as Amrita Nadi, the thing that you spoke of?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, it corresponds to it in many ways. But it was not, surely, not as conscious as it would have to be for it to be specifically communicable to others and made part of the sadhana of others.
DEVOTEE: Oh, I see.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Ramdas, in terms of the sadhana he communicated, is just a conventional individual, who represents a really very low approach. In terms of his realization he represents that highest realization that is in many ways corresponds to that of the regeneration of Amrita Nadi. The regeneration of Amrita Nadi is about realizing this Self independent of all these sheaths, then it’s regenerated, open eyes, realizing the Brahman, realizing that this consciousness is not subjective at all. It is that of which everything is the modification and then seeing that all of these modifications are also that, huh? And, at, in at which point you become blissful, absolutely happy, there’s only God. You can’t really say anything about it anymore, you become an asshole again. So Ramdas represents that quality. And so he’s a very great individual, greater than the saints, in some ways greater than the jnanis and is very much an expression of the whole tradition of the Siddhas, which is not really a tradition, but if you know what it’s all about, you can pick them out, see how they relate to it, hmm? Now, I certainly wouldn’t recommend that anybody take up on the path of bhakti. In the case of some great individual who has a specific function like Ramdas it was appropriate. But in itself it’s just a conventional path, just like believing in Jesus and all of that. In the case of sane great individual who really went to it though, it goes beyond the ways of ordinary yoga in the body, it goes beyond the ways of tie saints, it goes beyond Jnan, becomes parabhakti, which is essentially another name for the regeneration of Amrita Nadi. So as realization Ramdas represent that, as teacher he does not. So he didn’t function as Guru relative to that perfect realization. He, as teacher, is a man of experience who represents the lower approaches. But in terms of his realization itself, we can see that he is related to the whole affair of the development of the dharma of the Siddhas.
DEVOTEE: Why would he not bear then, like, bring his teaching to bear upon his realization.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: He didn’t have that function.
DEVOTEE: Oh, he’s just not…
ADI DA SAMRAJ: His function was to realize it, not to teach it. His karmas for teaching were of another kind. Ramana’s karmas for teaching were also of another kind. Ramana’s karmas for teaching were those of Jnan basically. But you could see he was greater than that if you study him. You can see that Ramdas was greater than that if you study him. So these are great individuals.
DEVOTEE (Peter Madill): One of the women that lived with Ramdas, Bubba, several people that have been in her presence and feel a siddhi of a certain sort…
ADI DA SAMRAJ: I don’t have any, much familiarity with her. So I can’t really comment on her. Somebody like Sri Aurobindo is of another kind altogether. Sri Aurobindo not only does not represent that highest realization but represents a dharma or a way of sadhana that is completely misleading. (Laughter) Because of his karmas, he understood same things, he had mystical experiences. But the way of sadhana he represents is completely false, essentially completely false. ‘Cause he in some off-hand ways he says – well, true, you must realize the Self first – I am the identity of the Self undone, but after you realize that then you’ve got to get involved in this evolutionary process. Well, the people who begin, who get involved in that sadhana don’t realize the Self and its identity with Brahman first. They get involved in this evolutionary sadhana. They’re trying to bring down the superconscious and transform the body and make it eternal and all this shit and they’re tackiest individuals I net in India. (Laughter) So his, in the case of somebody like Ramana or Swami Ramdas, there is a conventional form of sadhana recommended but not a false one, it is what it is. It’s only as false as the conventional approaches themselves are. But the way of sadhana recommended by Sri Aurobindo is completely misleading and involves people in a level of approach that is beyond their degree of responsibility. It’s the same with Muktananda. He’d take any asshole off the street and make him believe he’s involved in a mystical process. No foundation, no responsibility, just experiences and you’ll see the blue pearl if you stay around long enough. So these assholes don’t know what the hell is happening. So it’s a completely misleading approach. The responsibility must be made the foundation and, in the case of the conventional approaches, responsibility is at least the foundation… a conventional level of responsibility but it’s at least there. And if they carry that sadhana on with great intensity, they can at least come to the point where they see the limitations of their approach and they can then perhaps go beyond it. But in the case of sadhanas like that of Sri Aurobindo and Muktananda, people like this, there’s no possibility of getting to that point. It is delusion forever. It is the wedding with ignorance. So it is very dangerous. (Laughing)
DEVOTEE: Aurobindo might have to read his own book.
BUBBA: He’s probably reading it right now. (Laughter) Yes, I was saying earlier that the Guru’s responsibility is not just factual, he doesn’t just give talks and get you to do things. The Guru-function involves taking on responsibility for the lives of the individuals who commit themselves to you and to whom you commit yourself. And it involves the endurance of that life as if it were your own life until the point where that life is realized perfectly. That’s the nature of the Guru-function. Well, those who take on a guru role based on their experience and so forth, in the sadhana that he instigate(s) in others, can’t fulfill itself in this perfect way. Well, you can see then, the complications that are possible between such a so-called guru and those who come to him. It is a karmic relationship… and creates suffering on both sides. And the field of spirituality must be purified of its aberrations. That is part of my responsibility. And it’s not a matter of being a bad guy, being hard-nosed about same of these people who are around, you know, of making bad press for them. They are a karmic manifestation whose affect is negative, ultimately. And it must be countered. It needn’t be countered through the gross kind of politics of just putting them down and so forth, but there must be a revelation served in which this kind of fascination is taken away from people, which they’re relieved of it.
DEVOTEE: When you were at Aurobindo’s Ashram, did you sense the frustration in the people that were there? With all that they’re trying to keep together to aid evolution as it were?
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right, not only…worse than frustration – blindness. People still believing it but not representing a shred of evidence of that evolutionary development. So they’ve got this grand organization, hundreds, thousands of people, I don’t know how many are involved there, all kinds of plants and buildings and projects, this great world-wide communication effort. And it’s false, complete nonsense, complete illusion. And they’re not even sensitive to that. Those who are sensitive to it then get frustrated but I didn’t see much of that at all, although I wasn’t, didn’t spend weeks there, I just spent a few days there. And the people that I dealt with were basically their official organization men. And they didn’t really show the signs of frustration, they showed all the signs of the illusion, delusion.
DEVOTEE: Along with that, Bubba, do these kinds of examples of wrong dharma which are, you know, become really heavily institutionalized and everything… they really seem to hold back the ability of people to be available.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right. What…for those who are really attracted to it, in some sense, it’s just their own karmic tendencies that draw them there.
DEVOTEE: But even as a cultural matter like, you know, in the Christian culture, that particular type of dead dharma or in, you know, the Muslim, that particular type of thing where it’s absorbed into the culture so that there’s no longer even any confrontation particularly with anything really. It just becomes a set of taboos. But in the name of the Divine so that then when anything, any mention is even made of the Divine Process, there’s a kind of karmic reaction.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: And the built in resistance because you’ve followed such a path, to the true Dharma. But that’s in those people already. Their birth is that. So in a certain sense what these various organizations and institutions and teachings represent is just the same karma that’s produced the birth and the illusory lives that are already here. So they’re not evil in some absolute sense, hmm? They’re just karmic, they’re just ordinary. They’re just the same shit, the same old shit that people are already tending to do. Now however, they’ve become righteous along with being ignorant. And so that aspect of it is truly negative and must be dealt with responsibly from the point of view of this Teaching or any such influence. But how it is dealt with is another matter, it should be dealt with intelligently not with the sort of world transforming organization man sort of approach. The world is going to be what it is anyway. That’s what this world is for. This world is not to become a utopia, this planet is not be a utopia, this planet is for the realization of certain tendencies like all other places. If you have a certain kind of tendency, that’s where you get born. In all the planes from the grossest – even below the earth plane – from the grossest to the highest form of subtlety that may be projected from the top of your head. All of those places in themselves are just for the sake of the fulfillment of various kinds of tendencies. That’s not evil, that’s just what it is, that’s the rule, that’s how things operate, that’s why they appear. So these things shouldn’t be confronted as evil except where they are obviously misleading. It’s that aspect of them that deludes people and draws them away from the higher process. Those aspects of these paths that really are positive from a conventional point of view that bring people to discipline themselves more, they bring them to associate themselves with subtle things or Divine ideas rather than murdering one another and conflict and food and all the rest of the bullshit, you know. Well, that aspect of it is not entirely negative, it is just karmic. It’s a conventional aspect of these movements and so forth. And those conventional aspects are to be criticized but not in the heavy sort of political, anathematizing way, hmm? The things that really must be dealt with are the extremely negative extensions of the karmic process whose function it is to prevent the higher process. Wherever such things appear they must be countered. That’s the purpose of debate and of discussion of these various enterprises, you know. Now, the people who go to Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram in some basic way are doing a right thing, you know. And they do clean themselves up and so forth. People who go to any of these conventional ashrams tend to do that and that in itself is not negative, it’s not like Hitler killing the Jews, it’s just not true. Well, you approach something that’s not true in a different way than you approach something evil.
DEVOTEE: They’re like people doing floats in a high-school home-coming parade.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yeah, in some ways it’s harmless, in some ways it’s okay. It’s just not true so you’ve got to help them to become more sensitive. But those things that are communicated to them that make them absolutely unavailable, that make them think the way of the Dharma is evil, well, those things must be dealt with. And they must be dealt with, with great intensity, but also not in especially in conventional ways. They require a great deal of intelligence and you have to know when arm-wrestling with these devils is not appropriate… and just undermine them but getting them to show where they’re at that’s all. People are, in some ways, intelligent. They can recognize a bullshitter if he’s unable to bullshit. All he wants to do is save his face, you know, be the hero on his own. But if you get him to communicate about things that he doesn’t tend to communicate about, he’ll undermine himself.
And this is a service then, to others as well as to that person. But whenever the Dharma does appear, it is resisted. And Bubba Free John is not a well-loved figure, hmm? And this Teaching is not universally accepted, it’s universally misunderstood. (Laughter) Not even universally. (Laughter) It’s not even that well-known. (Laughter) And that’s alright, you know. I sort of like being out here in the country, I don’t really want these assholes around me. In order to, if we start inviting the ass-holes then I’ve got to become more of a public person, as if I was really interested in saving the world. And I couldn’t care less. I don’t want to save the world. The function of the Guru is not about saving the world, the function of the Guru is about making himself available to those who will do sadhana.
DEVOTEE: Getting an Ashram straight.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, it’s mainly a matter of availability and then dealing with those who come. All the reactions, all the bullshit of this life is another matter altogether and requires intelligence, not a great program of world salvation. There is no such thing. And if it were possible, who cares? It’s that whole possibility is so completely uninteresting to me, so absurd, you know, it would be on the evening news.
DEVOTEE (Brian O’Mahoney): Karmic realization in India.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: It’s ridiculous.
DEVOTEE (Annielo Panico): Big time.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: So it is simpler than that, subtler than that, more intelligent than that. Is that the new one??? (Jesus crying in the background.)
DEVOTEES: Yeah.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: I’m going to urinate… somebody can get a good question together. (Laughing).
There are karmas even involved in the work of the Guru. It involves a further adaptation to all kinds of lives of karmic individuals in which his absolute responsibility not just telling him where it’s at and so forth. And so Bubba Free John, Franklin Jones, you know, way back five-six years ago, you know, well, he enjoyed his liberation and so forth. It’s just a matter of telling everybody that. You know, he wasn’t ready for all of this, hmm? And it came on by degrees. And then dealing with individuals, well, it became obvious that a lot more had to be done, a lot more had to be done to get this devil in shape. You just couldn’t tell him about the Heart and a little bit about Understanding and he did it. You know. It was all kinds of problems in people… all kinds of resistance. So he had to play with them and create conditions for them and teach them lessons and…. And it became obvious at some point that I couldn’t just be the sort of realized man that I had to get out there and do what everybody was doings!! You know??? (Laughing) I had to be outrageous, I had to drink, I had to fuck ‘em, I had to do everything. (Laughter and laughing) You know, but until that time they wouldn’t have the least inclination that the things they tended to become involved with were not the basis for sadhana. So there had to be a real integration with all of the bullshit of life and creating lessons from that point of view, not from some higher point of view, but making those lessons or that level of identification the instrument for this communication, hmm? And then all kinds of esoteric things, you know, really esoteric stuff about everything beyond the earth is so profound, you know. To me that’s just more bags of garbage to take down to the corner from Rudi, you know. So, I don’t know what to say about all of these processes above the earth and all these sheaths and psychic phenomena, I didn’t know what the fuck that was either, you know. I mean, I knew what it was in itself but relative to a whole scheme of things so that I could communicate it, relative to the language and lore and esoteric teaching of the past and all of the formulas and code-words and the whole mind of people and so forth… I’ve had to adapt to that a bit at a time, learn it, you know. And read a little bit about it and all that “Yes, I think I can say it then relative to this”… and I’ll say, and then tomorrow read another book it’s another something altogether diff… I was wrong yesterday!!! (Laughter)
DEVOTEE (Brian O’Mahoney): I felt that about like you had to get more and more gross to get down to where we were at in a certain sense. Cause like you looked to have us take responsibility at levels in which we just didn’t have it together to be responsible for.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right.
DEVOTEE (Brian O’Mahoney): And so every time you saw us fail at what you’re were trying to communicate you had to get it down to student conditions, do this, do that.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, what’s happening these days is that it looks like, you know, the really grosser kinds of adaptation I had to get involved with have really served their purpose basically, you know. Not absolutely, I’ve still got to hang in there a little bit, you know, (Laughter). But all the stuff that’s gone on since almost two years ago, the really gross theatre that I had to get involved in and make lessons out of it all, not just do things but make lessons while doing it. Well, it looks like basically that has served its purpose… can’t absolutely abandon it, still got to you know, drink at Lydia’s birth… and give talks. (Laughter) You’ve still got to deal with students and not just by talking to students but by living the way they live. But in some real way that’s basically served its purpose. You know, there are disciples and I can deal with a sort of spiritual level of responsibility in them and so forth. But I got just eight, eight? disciples and… (Laughing, laughter) Well, most everybody else is out in the yard yet, you know. (Laughter) And so I tell these disciples, you know, this and that that I want done and so forth. And hopefully more and more they’ll really do it. Hopefully, more and more the Community will be organized the way I want, the Teaching is established there and literature and other kinds of ways that’ll make it work for those people so I don’t have to really get involved in that level of thing. So a bit at a time I can withdraw from that sort of gross level of theatre, more and more as time goes on. Never absolutely, because it is still life, so there is no reason to abandon it absolutely until I’m ready to leave. You know, and when I’m ready to leave then I’ll be the most ascetic asshole you’ve ever seen, and in my latter days you won’t be able to believe it. But it will be, you know, it won’t make any difference then, the Ashram will have been served long enough by disciples and devotees. But all of the matter of teaching verbally and the making sense out of it and describing all of the esoteric implications of it, and so forth, is a process even for me. Because I’m not identified with it, it’s just like looking at the garbage all over again. It’s an expression of my responsibility to you all, not of where I’m at. So I’m looking always more and more to find a standard of language and of reference and of formulas or technical words and so forth, that I can be referring to and that you all know something about and so forth. So the expression of the Teaching in human terms and then esoteric terms and all of this can achieve a point of standardization that basically will hold. But you can see that my work with the Ashram is just as much a developing affair as my own sadhana, as Franklin Jones way back there, is. It’s the same kind of agonizing process in which there’s all kinds of transformations that must occur. It’s not a matter of coming down the mountain with five Commandments on each arm and that’s it forever. Fundamentally, it has been the same but the elaboration of it and how it is taught, how it is implemented, how it is described, how it relates to all kinds of existing language, how it relates to all of these planes and sheaths and up and down and gross and subtle and causal, you know…
DEVOTEE (Brian O’Mahoney): You had to learn it all.
BUBBA: Right! Now the experiences or the knowledge of these things in themselves and how they relate to that fundamental realization is clear from the beginning, but how it is all expressed, hm?, how to make sense out of it all is just as mysterious from the beginning to me as it is to anybody else. And it’s a matter of continually learning about the, this dimension, this life and all of its history and all the content of people that approach me. It’s a living process in other words. It’s not a standardized thing from the beginning, it’s alive. And every moment of my involvement with individuals is a living moment is never false, it is never wrong, but there are all kinds of changes it involves. And from an external point of view, there’re all kinds of developments, even improvements, even the elimination of false statements – all of that is part of it. It’s part of the same absolute enlightened communication from the beginning. And you must understand that in terms of its appearances, it is that kind of a process. And so I don’t feel the obligation to sort of be laid back wearing a seamless robe with a standard chatter from the beginning. I throw that away every single day. I’m perfectly willing to have a completely different kind of communication, a completely different kind of language, deal with you individually in a completely different kind of way, every single day. It is always thrown away, always surrendered, always shattered and I’m perfectly willing for everything that I’ve done and said before this moment to be completely misleading, completely false, hm? I know that it is not, hmm? But I’m every day making that judgement. And I’m completely willing for everything that I’ve done with you individually to have been completely false before this moment. I re-inspect it, I re-inspect you to realize it again in a living form, hmm? And that is because the core of it is absolute and all of its trappings, all of its theatre can be good, bad, indifferent, wrong, false, you know, elsewhere, conventional, not right, misleading. It can be whatever it is at any moment. So there is some limitation then to even like having a tape recorder here or you to remember what I did with you today. You must go beyond that, you must live a, you must, your relationship to me must be alive in this moment and we must continually be undoing the level of realization that we established with one another yesterday. And so we’ve got to continually cleanse everything that existed before. And the Ashram in terms of its communication of the Dharma must understand that then, it must view all, everything that’s been taped recorded, everything that’s been remembered, everything that’s been formulized, must review that every single day. And what we communicate to the public must represent that analysis, that judgement, that responsibility. And we don’t just publish every talk, everything that happened. No, we review it and we make it as best as we can handle today a representation of the useable communication of this Way. Well, that’s a different kind of obligation then the conventional ashram. Then the conventional ashram’s got to right today, it’s got to be, whatever it says today has got to be maintained with every kind of ridiculous argument forever, never abandon anything, never learn anything new, or never establish the communication in a newer form. You’ve always got to save your face and anything that was not adequate in the past has got to maintained, justified in some ridiculous way or other. Otherwise, you’re enlightenment is in doubt. And enlightenment is never in doubt. And it’s got nothing whatever to do with proof and disproof. And so it is free to be a fool. And the enlightened man is a fool, the enlightened man is foolish, the enlightened man does what he does and says what he says and doesn’t pre-judge it essentially… and abandons everything behind him and because it has that liveliness about it, there are all kinds of inadequacies you may discover when you judge individual specimens of what he did and said and thought. So there’s a difference between the living process of Satsang then than the kind of standardized, official, divine approach to everybody which is just the convention of which everyone is held in place, whereas this is not a standard group, hmm?, this birth, this world is not a fixed something. It has infinite variations, numberless sides to it. It is absurd in itself, it is a paradox. It is a process. It is never fixed. And enlightenment is not a fixation, a standardization at all. It is alive.
DEVOTEE (Brian O’Mahoney): The capacity for changes then, like you’ve always taught us.
BUBBA: So everyone must be able to deal with the fact that the Guru is a fool. And the Guru is always right. (Laughter) You know, the Guru doesn’t operate like the lecturer who prefigures everything from a lesser point of view and then says it or does it. The Guru operates without thought, without pre-judgement, without strategy, spontaneously. It is always right then because it’s not dependent on lower determinations. But it’s not necessarily right tomorrow. It is alive. Tomorrow is the same instance, is an instance of the same process. All these memories recollections and standardizations must continually be reviewed. And I continually review it. Fundamentally, there is nothing… absolutely nothing!!! Since there is nothing what kind of force do all of these somethings that I have said have? (Laughter) Many of them are completely wrong probably. Not a high percentage of them!!! (Laughter) But I’m sure there’s a lot of it that in itself could be misleading if you didn’t stay with me tomorrow.
DEVOTEE (Brian O’Mahoney): If we buy into it as a point then we could just continue to suffer that and if we don’t like relegate it to the realm of understanding then… fuck us.
BUBBA: Right. All of that possible wrongness or necessity for a re-inspection is also just another test for devotees. It’s a test of their ability to remain in service in this moment… rather than becoming fixed on memories, early experiences, earlier variations in the process and judge this moment from that point of view. Everything must be thrown away every single day, it’s a living reality, this Satsang. That service must be done now… under the conditions of this moment. If that is done, that is all forgotten and we review everything again, every single moment, every single day. So the Teaching really doesn’t have to become standardized in that sense, but through this process the lower levels of it all, of all that communication, tend to become at least formal, hm. Their outlines are essential, they don’t fundamentally change. The basics of this Teaching have never changed and so forth with all kinds of variations of expression it can be discarded. And in the midst of that process, well, the lower levels more and more tend to become communicable in a predictable form. Always the upper end of it which has no end, fundamentally, is changing. But as it changes more and more of the lesser end of it tends to become simplified. And so that’s what you see in the process of this sadhana in the Ashram — more and more the lower end of it becomes simple, direct, it can be said by an interviewer and a few lectures or interviews or whatever and what a student has to do or student sadhana’s all about becomes more and more simple and easy to communicate as a conventional communication, as a way of realizing it is still is a living responsibility of those who have in their care all students in the Ashram to provide the conditions to make it possible for them to realize that, not just to hear it said, but to realize it. (Jesus cries in background) This is true, Andrew. Where’s Bruce? Not this Bruce, he just got here. (Lindberg)
DEVOTEES: He was in the other room.
DEVOTEE (Peter Madill): He was just back through there.
BUBBA: Is Bruce still in there? Are those poor devils still working down at Parkerhouse?
DEVOTEES: People just got…
BUBBA: (To Bruce) I just mentioned your name, would you mind getting your ass in here.
DEVOTEE (Andrew Johnson): Bubba, in the Community of Devotees then, like after your lifetime still have that fluid quality.
BUBBA: Um-huh. Relative to the realization of the sadhana of individuals the whole affair of the communication of these various levels and all of the esoteric teaching and so forth should be basic, in some ways be complex and fitted to the levels of responsibility of people. But there shouldn’t be any mystery about it basically. But then, how it is implemented in the case of those that come to the Ashram, in years to come or after my life or whatever, is always a living affair. And devotees in the Ashram will have the same kind of responsibilities I have had. They can’t just publish a book and wait for everybody to get understanding. They’ve got to vary things, interfere, create theatre. They will have those same kinds of responsibilities. They’ll be able to realize those responsibilities, they’ll be able to do it because they are devotees, not because they’re guys who’ve read the Dharma. But because they’ve gone through this process and are naked to me or transparent and I don’t have to have a body then but that’s true only with the devotee, it’s not true with the student, not true with the disciple. If I abandon this body tomorrow, there were only disciples and students… this would not be good. (Laughter) It might not be absolutely impossible if the most responsible people studied all of the stuff in my safe and continued to do sadhana relative to me and so forth. They might eventually, some of them, become devotees, it might work out. The closer I am to having real devotees, the more possible it is for it to work out even if I dropped this body. But the optimum circumstance is for me to continue to work with people, give them responsibilities, you know, as I go along and abandoning some, to the point where I have devotees in numbers, real devotees, not just people who have gone through the, nominally gone through, you know, affair of the different kinds of sadhana, but who are really devotees, who have realized what these stages represent. When I have numbers of those, how many are necessary? – four million are really… (Laughter) It would be best. That would be a good solid number. I’d really feel confident…. (Laughter) or however many they are, if they are real ones, then I can abandon the body because I don’t need any of the agencies of this physical, and vital, and pranic body and it’s grossly directly mentality and wisdom and so forth. None of that is necessary because these devotees can fulfill that and all of the Dharma that I need to be implemented is known to them and they can do it then. So if I have devotees then I can go, hmm? And I don’t have to have a single thought about it. I don’t have to take my station just above the earth either. (Laughter) I can really go, you know what I mean? (Laughter) And this is my plan. In a sense this is a basic strategy on my part. (Laughter) My plan to go out with no karmic obligations and yet having fulfilled absolutely all of the infinite possible karmic responsibilities that might fall upon me. There’s another way of doing it which is to fulfill no karmic possibilities and many of those become so-called realized decide not to fulfill any karmic obligations. They don’t take on the relationship between Guru and devotee. They may say some things, teach some things, give out some methods or whatever but they don’t take on the responsibility of the Guru which is to claim responsibility for that, the karmic life, the individual life of anyone who approaches them. Whenever that’s done, it has to go on forever, has to go on until the fulfillment of that sadhana, whether the guy dies or not, it has to go on. So my way of working is to assume all of that responsibility. Those who come to me, who really come to me I take responsibility for them like I did for my own life at birth. And I will not abandon them if they stay with me. So my plan is to do that and yet,… come out Simon-pure. (Laughter) Now, you know why I drink. (Laughter)
DEVOTEE: (Well, Bus?) You talked about this a little earlier before but I didn’t quite get it…about how that responsibility continues in the Guru-function after you leave? How does that function exactly? Does that, I just don’t get it at all.
BUBBA: Well, it is not really possible for you to get it at all. (Laughter)
DEVOTEE: And I’m writing this book you see….
BUBBA: You can, you could think of the Guru as some absolutely realized influence that is not other than God and just happens to continue to have a body and a psyche and being able to talk and influence people. And at the end of the lifetime sort of is reduced to the soup of God and has no more influence than God already did before he was born. God has zero influence as you well know. God is simply the eternal or absolute Condition. In itself, the Divine has no influence, (it has) no affect upon these karmic lives. They’re going on according to their own laws. It’s only when the agency of the Divine appears in the various levels of manifestation, that it can take responsibility for the transformation of these tending lives, these destinies. So you must understand that the Guru is not of the kind that at death returns to the soup. The Guru is a specific agent and continues to have functions in the gross plane, the subtle plane, the causal plane, the transcendent planes. The Guru reaches down through all of these dimensions and appears as an affect or an influence in all of these places. Independent of the gross consciousness of the Guru, for instance, I have several hundred people just within the Ashram who are in one way or another are my responsibility. They have visions in Satsang, kriyas, they have dreams, they have changes in their lives, they have all kinds of experiences that they relate specifically to me. The way they relate it to me would require me to have the same kind of position relative to their experiences that I have to talking to you now. I’m talking to you now. Well, for you to have a dream about me, I would have to be there doing something, knowing it, when you dream. There also could be five hundred other people having the same experience in a dream tonight. Well, I don’t have that relationship to those phenomena. These are the reflections of a forms in which they comprehend their relationship to me. The mechanisms that produce these phenomena are part or impressed upon the karmas that exist in those individuals. I don’t have to sit down at night, stay up all night, (Laughter)…I say, “Okay, Andrew needs a dream about ah, you know, the gorilla chasing him and….” Here I go! And I sit down and think about Andrew, okay, I’m the gorilla now, get get frightened, okay, now I’m chasing you…(Laughter) That’s not the way it works. It’s not that it never works like that. There are times when I do have a very conscious from the point of view of these lower mechanisms involved in what happens to somebody. It is very true. Sometimes I want to heal somebody and do that. Sometimes I want them to have an experience in life of some kind, I do that. I want to teach them a lesson, I do that. I want to have them a dream of some kind, I do that. Hmm? There are times when that happens and I’m consciously aware of it, could remember it, could tell you about it. But those are incidents. Fundamentally, I don’t have that relationship to it. My relationship to it all is of a prior kind that has nothing whatever to do with the mechanics of it. The mechanics of it are parts, are inherently part of the whole affair of manifestation. And they appear there because that’s where you tend to become available to my influence. So you see it in those ways and the mechanics take care of it. All I am doing is being Present. So I don’t have any material influence or mechanical influence upon you whatsoever. And yet, it all occurs. Well, that’s the law. That’s how it happens without all these intentional involvements with the mechanics of things. Well, it occurs that way during my life, even now, well, it will occur after my life also. And it will, it’s not that it is different from me, other than me, I am the root of all of that in my specific function, not as the absolute soup, but in my specific function which is fundamentally unspeakable, not definable, but it is real, concrete and specific. It is absolutely identical to the Divine and yet it is specific and unique. It is just that it is not in itself bound to the mechanics of things. The mechanics of things will reveal that influence, you know, just like a computer does.
DEVOTEE: So the influence remains even in other lifetimes for individuals once they’re connected….
BUBBA: It remains with those whose connection is with me. It exists in the lifetime of people who are on this earth now who don’t know Bubba Free John in the body. That influence is working on them at this moment. They’re having dreams, they’re having experiences, hmm? because of my work. And yet they have no awareness, they’ve never read a book about Bubba Free John, never heard about him, they’ve never seen him in a vision in some way that they could remember and so forth. And yet my work with them is just as specific as it is with you who know me in this body. Well, the same case exists after my death. The only difference is that without any agency, any appearance whatsoever of Bubba Free John, or this one in the manifest planes. The only possible kind of realization of the connection with me has to be unspeakable.
It can’t refer to me specifically as agent. And so the work of my gross life, my manifestation in this form, is to establish devotees, or establish individuals in the relationship to me of devotee. And then after my physical death in this gross plane, they can do what I do… by virtue of their connection to me. And those who are not devotees but who, you know, in that absolute sense, would have been just my devotees truly, who are students and disciples in the Ashram and so forth but who have known me in the body, will relate the transforming events of their sadhana to me. But it won’t involve my specific and conscious intervention any more than it does involve my specific conscious intervention in dreams now while alive.
DEVOTEE: In a lot of these people that like they don’t know you in the body during your lifetime and even in their next lifetime, is it likely that they’ll come to the Dawn Horse Communion?
BUBBA: Not absolutely. But those who are closer to it will, particularly if the Dawn Horse Communion survives. (Laughter)
DEVOTEE: That’s your plan, Bubba.
BUBBA: Yes, I would like it to happen that way…I’m very interested in the Dawn Horse Communion surviving. However, it’s, you know, viewed in another way, an amusement. I never spend a day here at Persimmon for instance, without accounting for the fact that Persimmon may not exist tomorrow and without accounting for the fact that I may not be teaching people tomorrow. The whole Ashram could collapse. It’s not very possible, it’s unlikely but it is a possibility. We’ve seen all kinds of crises occur in the history in the Ashram in which the Ashram came very close to disappearing. In which I might have to go out and get a job and so forth and (have) nothing whatever to do with anybody. (Laughter) We’ve come very close to it, but we’ve never got… in the very beginnings of the Ashram it could easily have happened.
As time has gone on in the Ashram, it’s less and less likely that it will absolutely disappear. But very frequently, very dramatic changes occur in how the Ashram must operate. (Side 3) And I have to withdraw myself from a certain level of activity from time to time, because the Ashram just cannot support the level of activity I had before, it can’t support its own level of activity. We’re in that, we’re in a point like that just right now. Just a couple of days ago we had to change our way of operating because financially we don’t have the base that we had for the last nine months or so. So, all kinds of projects and so forth had to be abandoned. But they didn’t affect my basic way of working with the Ashram, it didn’t eliminate that. It just eliminated some expanded projects we had. Nine months ago, at the beginning of this year, the Ashram almost had to stop. Basically we had a Community in San Francisco, that much of it was able to survive in somewhat modified and more rudimentary ways, Persimmon almost came to an end. We had just enough to continue it, just merely existing. And it came back again. So it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll be unable to continue that work with the Ashram. But it is a possibility and I account for that every day. And there could come a time when I am just living off somewhere, in some city, or somewhere out in the country, or in another country, not having an Ashram, just having a few people there… basically, not teaching them, who cares? It is a possibility, it’s not very possible, very likely. But it is possible. And at the end of my lifetime I could be a grocery clerk. (Laughter) It’s all right, I’ve been a grocery clerk before. It’s not like a come-down, it’s a, it’s nothing I would believe in certainly. (Laughter) Luckily my spiritual influence does not depend upon the state of degradation in which this body has sunk. (Laughter) Is this recording being made yet?
DEVOTEE: Yes
DEVOTEE: (Murmuring in background) What did I do last week?
BUBBA: One of the things that really amazed me, not many, too many years ago, after the Knee of Listening period and all of that. Was that it didn’t make any difference what the state of life was that Franklin Jones lived in. That I could continue absolutely through the same work and it didn’t make any difference whatsoever. This is not true of any of you however. (Laughing) Because your sadhana depends upon the relationship that your gross life enjoys to the higher possibility. There are lessons, moments that occur in your sadhana, that are from a conventional point of view somewhat degrading, that push you down into grosser levels of experience. But these are useful for the integration of your gross life with a higher possibility. But it was very clear that it didn’t make any difference whatsoever, what happened in this body. This was very amusing. (Laughter) It wasn’t then that I became addicted to doing weird things in this body, but it made it very possible for me at some point, to begin to do in this body what was necessary to change students. Whereas if that hadn’t become obvious to me, I never could have done the things that I’ve done in the Ashram, during the last couple of years. (Laughter) Because if I had done the things I had done in the last couple of years, from a conventional point of view, I would have lost my enlightenment and so forth, right? But it became possible for me to do that, it was necessary for me to do it, but it also became possible when I saw that it didn’t change anything, that I could do my work. It still involves, just as it does in you, the same negative affects so-called in the gross being. I still have to go through a purifying time and so forth to get the body and the gross life and its qualities stable again. But it doesn’t change-anything fundamentally, it’s for another purpose that I do that then. All the changes in the planes of manifestation do not impinge upon this realization. They do not impinge upon the realization of the devotee then either. He may fulfill the law or she, may fulfill the law and still appear in ordinary ways. Well, this is a very mysterious… (Laughter)
DEVOTEE: I think you’re about two drinks away from telling us “if we only knew…” (Laughter)
BUBBA: Well, let’s have the two drinks now… (Laughter) It’s true, if you only did know. (Laughter)
DEVOTEE: That is it, one swallow away.
BUBBA: I mean, you’re basic assumption while sitting here is that you have this body and you live in this place of other bodies and solid arrangements. And you feel a little energy get into it sometimes and you think, and there are some kinds of higher intuitive knowledge, and there are some times when you get sifted out of that and just feel blissful and detached from it. This is very rare. (Laughter) But there comes a time when there is the absolute realization of your own nature and condition after which you may for lawful reasons modify your appearance in all of the sheaths, in the gross plane, in the subtle plane, in all of the higher causal, super-causal, transcendental planes above, viewed through the subtle body. You could appear as an idiot or a saint in any of these places. And so it is written in The Knee of Listening at the end there about the man of Understanding is a this and a that, there’re all these opposites that he is and so forth. Well, he can appear in the role of any of these kinds of change. Some of them are highly prized by conventional people as being very pure and saintly and others are completely the opposite of that, completely anathematized. And yet I have had to fulfill all of the roles that are described at the end of The Knee of Listening. What is that section called? The Man of Understanding?
DEVOTEE: The Epilogue.
BUBBA: I’ve had to fulfill all of those roles, hmm? And completely identify with them, completely fulfill all the obligations of those roles, those kinds of theatre. But they were made completely useful as lessons relative to those I dealt with because there was no loss of the realized point of view at the foundation of such a thing. But in the usual man, to take on such a role, is just that. You are that. And then you have all kinds of struggling to do, all kinds of dilemmas arise where the dilemma is realized in you in new forms dependent upon how you dramatize life, when you’re good, you feel the dilemma in some way when you’re bad, you feel it another way. It’s up and down and in and out all the time. It’s really heavy, it’s really… (Laughter) It’s really bad. (Laughter) You want to close that door.
But…even though life may go on and it may be realized outwardly, communicated or dramatized outwardly in all kinds of ways for various kinds of reasons, the matter of Truth is absolute. The realization is single. There is only God. And there is no complication, there is no limitation, there’s no suffering, there’s no destiny even in the midst of limitations, destinies, worlds, appearances, births and deaths, all of that – it has no significance whatsoever, hmm? So realization is a great middle finger to all possibilities. (Laughter) And the Guru represents a great “Fuck you!” to all of manifest existence relative to its impingement upon him. On the other hand, it is a great enjoyment from the point of view of his ability to deal with others. And it is also a great realm of suffering relative to those who do not enjoy such realization. So he has to play all kinds of possible relationships to these manifest worlds and to these individuals. This is true.
DEVOTEE: Very true.
BUBBA: Yes, (it was). But right now you all take it very seriously, you know? Not only do you have the physical body to deal with, you have all physical things which are like the physical body which you regard to be your limitation. And then you begin to feel energies and so forth and this all becomes very sort of magical and you think that you are really basically energy and not this body…and there are energies everywhere, that permeate everything, you can manipulate them with little intention. And then you realize, no, you’re not all those energies and you’re not that body either, that you’re sort of a consciousness and you can make decisions. And you can go up and you can go down and inside and out and you can make things happen and not happen and appear and not appear… (Laughing)… you have all kinds of fantastic powers and so you do all that for a while. And you go from here to some other place in this life and after death. And then you realize that you’re not that either. That you’re this great mind with absolute knowledge of everything and everything happens within this great mind, material things happen and energies and movements happen, thoughts happen, intentions and dramas and games and all these things happen but they don’t have anything fundamentally to do with you. You are this completely rested, absolute Consciousness that controls everything without doing a thing. (Laughter) And then you realize, well, you know you’re not that either, that you’re just Bliss. You have nothing whatever to do with the universe or a body or an appearance or a life or a destiny. You know, you don’t even know about it. You don’t think about it, you don’t make anything happen, you just rest in this absolute infinite sort of soupy blissfulness. It’s so marvelous and wonderful, there’s nothing happening at all, but you don’t feel limited by anything, you just feel completely graceful and relieved, you know. And then you realize that you’re not THAT EITHER!!! (LAUGHTER) That you are Consciousness and you don’t have anything to do with anything! NOTHING! You don’t feel blissful, not blissful, you don’t see anything, you don’t not see anything, you don’t identify with it, you don’t not identify with it. Nothing!!! Just this Consciousness. And you completely interiorize into being completely Consciousness: You don’t do anything for a long period of time, then all of a sudden, ZAPP!!! And you see everything again and you realize that ALL-LLLL of this stuff; up and down, in and out, high and low, inside, outside, now and then, is all an expression, a modification of you; that you are that absolute consciousness. You don’t have to do anything, but you don’t have to not look at it either. It is all you, hmm? (laughter) And every moment of it is you. You don’t go anywhere, things happen, but you don’t care, you just, you are That. And then suddenly, you realize that you’re not that either: (Laughter) And you realize that all of this stuff, high and low, in and out, up and down, now and then, and so forth… IS you. (Laughter) And suddenly you can be a body, you can appear somewhere, you can incarnate, you can do this, you can that. All this stuff is you at the same is not you, it doesn’t make any difference!!! It is God; everything is God. Everything is this one Reality; it is you, it happens, it doesn’t happen, it’s bad, it’s good. It doesn’t make any difference whatsoever. And you persist in this because there’s nothing beyond it. You can’t leap into some consciousness which is not it because you were in that just a moment ago, now you’re… (Laughter)… you’re enjoying this enjoyment that has no definition whatsoever. That has no destiny, no relationship to anything in itself. It cannot be specified and it cannot be isolated. It cannot be separated out; it’s not an alternative to anything. Everything just continues to happen and everything becomes yourself. Everything is happy, everything is marvelous. And this is the grounds for absolute dissolution. And in that dissolution nothing different occurs. (Laughter) No, you don’t go anywhere, it doesn’t become blank, hmm? Things continue to happen. It becomes completely unspeakable. And beyond that realization nothing may be said. Nothing may be defined. No destiny may be described. No work you may do may be described, nothing may be said about that whatsoever. Everything happens perfectly from that moment and there’s nothing that may be said about it that makes any sense whatsoever. Well, all of those who enjoy such enjoyment who appear in any manifest plane are stuck in the paradox of that enjoyment. They can’t make any sense out of it really. They do as best as they can to…(Laughter)…to try to establish this enjoyment in others through all kinds of weirdo influences…(Laughter). They try to make sense and then they don’t make sense, you know. So the work of such so-called individuals is paradoxical, is eternal, is not really describable. But it is the most perfect and specific and necessary activity that exists in all the manifest worlds. And this is the work of the Siddhas. (Someone: Whhhh-eewwwwww). (Laughter) (More laughter and clapping)
DEVOTEE: One time last spring Susan asked me out on the patio what the purpose of all this was and I guess that’s the answer.
BUBBA: We can have all kinds of purposes up until that point. After that, it doesn’t really make any difference what you say about it, it’s wrong. And it’s right. (Laughter) Anything you say about it is right, even the wrong things you can say about it is right. (Laughter) And in a certain sense, even the right things you say about it are wrong. (Laughing) And the only way to maintain some kind of sanity in the midst of such a realization is to enjoy such a realization! (Laughter)
DEVOTEE: How does all that relate to formal meditation, Bubba?
BUBBA: Exactly. It’s funny,
DEVOTEE: I’ve been going through these books and transcripts trying to get some stuff together for this presentation I’m supposed to do…
BUBBA: What presentation are you supposed to do again?
DEVOTEE: The thing on formal Satsang.
BUBBA: And you don’t know what to say about it?
DEVOTEE: Well, it’s ah,…
BUBBA: Formal Satsang is about considering my argument, this Teaching to the point where you’ve, in some fundamental way, fall out of sympathy will the whole strategy and destiny of your life. Not that you stop doing it, but you fall out of sympathy with it in some basic way. And then you come to me. And you meet me in this formal way in Satsang and so forth. And you take on the discipline; you ask for it and take it on. And you do it as a discipline for a while just as that. And you go through all the drama of having these disciplines that you have to conform to and all the difficulties and resistance and all that sort of thing. And then that passes and you begin to serve me with it. And your whole life becomes all of these conditions. And then your whole life becomes this service to me. You don’t care anymore that its conditions. It doesn’t make any difference. It is all a form of meditation upon me, it is all your relationship to me. And that is Satsang, that is formal Satsang. And when that is established then the individual begins to hear me more, he spends time in my Company, he sits with me in the Satsang Hall and so forth. He begins to really hear the Teaching in ways that are more profound than he ever heard it before. And he begins to observe himself randomly, spontaneously observes these things, and he enjoys these insights from time to time. Sometime he begins to enquire. A little before he begins to enquire he takes our dissolution of vital shock course…(Laughter)… in the midst of that he begins to see all of the mistakes he made. He thought this and that was formal Satsang, he thought this and that was self-observation, thought this and that was enquiry, when he sees that all of that was not it, he begins to get a feeling for what it was without being absolutely able to do it. But he begins to become sympathetic with that process that it really was and this becomes the foundation of real enquiry in him. And real enquiry begins to develop and this matures then over time. In the midst of that time, in the future at any rate, he’ll formally consider all the traditional and conventional approaches -we’ll have courses during that time. But when it really becomes mature, when he’s really enquiring in that mature way, when the kind of responsibility I expect of a student in Satsang shows its signs then he’s… and it’s usually a complete surprise to him, if it’s true, really it is… in some way a surprise to him, he’s invited to take on the responsibilities for disciple sadhana. In one in whom it’s not true is the guy who really knew that he was a disciple. He really had it together; he was doing it straight and all that. You know, he knew that he was right-on. He was just waiting for somebody to invite him to come on to the disciple group. (Laughter) The guy has so pre-planned it and all that, is stuck in a lesser version of it, a conventional version of it. And even if mistakes are made from time to time and such people are invited to enter this disciple group… (Laughter) as you well know, Tom, it is impossible to survive such a discipline… (Laughter)… unless you are basically founded in this process. All others would find it completely impossible, at least after a certain period of time, to endure the discipline of disciple sadhana. Disciple sadhana relative to a student is the most unbearable demand you can imagine. Those who are involved in the disciple group right now are just beginning to see it. And you all know about: they have to live the conditions and so forth and no alterations of that and such other things. Well, that in itself is kind of difficult from the conventional student point of view but there’re other kinds of disciplines that absorb the individual all day long and there are more and more of them given. So anybody without due cause entered the disciple group would find it impossible to carry it on after a certain point. The discipline would be so overwhelming that the signs in him would become obvious. He’d become so aggravated, so insane that we’d have to send him back to a pre-student household, (Laughter and Oohs) or worse. A re-entering pre-student would become his name. So don’t imagine that everybody who’s invited to do disciple sadhana will do it forever and so forth. There may very well be cases of people who were, you know, released from the obligations of disciple sadhana or sent back to some student condition or other. That can happen. It’s fun. Because it’s not all done by rote, by computer. It’s a human affair.