From The Enlightenment of the Whole Body
Beezone Study Guide
The Transcendental Personality of God, the World, Man, and the Human Individual
The Way of the Heart is not a form of annihilation, or disintegration, or even immortalization of the differentiated personality, the independent body-mind, or the separate self or “soul” in any of its aspects. The separate personality is not ultimately suppressed, nor is it disturbed, nor is it cut off from experience. The Destiny of the soul of Man is to be Awakened beyond its own limits.
However, that Process does not lead to glorification and immortalization of the separate self. Rather, it is a Process of self-transcendence, in which the self is neither destroyed nor protected, but in which the Truth or Transcendental Condition of the self is Realized.
In the Way of the Heart, the separate, self-protecting, reactive, self-possessed, fearful personality, recoiled from the Mysterious Depth of Infinity, is Awakened into the Realization that it is not what it feared itself to be.
The independent, defined, conditional, and limited self or personality is Awakened as the Absolute, All-Inclusive, Transcendental Personality of the Real, which is Divine, and beyond all Knowledge, all Definitions, all Logic, all Thought, all Form, and all Formlessness.
It is the transcendence of experiential limitation of all experience. In that Process, all limits are relaxed in the Unconditional Radiance and Transcendental Consciousness that is always already the case.
Translation
In recent days, after his initial obligations to devotees were all fulfilled, Bubba was obliged to recapitulate the various phenomena that led up to his own Awakening.
“On November 1, 1976 during a conversation with devotee Master Da began to feel ill and feverish. He thought a fast would be good and said the symptoms were signs of a Yogic process or purification occurring. The next day the symptoms were beginning to develop to such a degree he went into seclusion. This purification was rather quick and in a few days was out of seclusion and talking again with devotees. He described this purification as a ‘death’ experience similar to the one in his seminary days in Philadelphia in 1967.” The Divine Emergence of the World-Teacher – pp. 163-4 (Summary)
Then, after several weeks, in which the body-mind seemed disturbed by all kinds of psychic and physical phenomena, all of the latent mechanics of his soul were Liberated into the Ecstasy of Real God.
The Ultimate Process in the seventh stage of life has become a Profound in which the limits of Bubba’s ordinary personality have begun to dissolve.
In the early days of his Work with devotees, it was possible for Bubba to serve others by duplicating the habit conditions of the usual life, and struggling with others until the spell of common desires and tendencies could break.
But this aspect of his obligation in the world began to dissolve, having essentially fulfilled itself, from the date of his birthday anniversary, November 3, 1976.
Since that time he has been at work in relative seclusion, formalizing the Communication or Teaching of the Way of Divine Ignorance, and establishing the Institution or Church in which this Way is lived in his Company.
But, most recently, the Disposition of the Transcendental Divine has Acquired this body-mind, Revealing and Establishing the Power and Ecstasy in which our Sacrifice is Fulfilled.
Now Bubba has been sifted out, Enlarged upon the smithereens of bodies, thoughts, experiences, times and spaces and shapes.
What has been at Work in Bubba all of this lifetime has now Invaded all his parts. The seventh stage is Full.
In the last months, many aspects of the Future of Bubba’s Work have been made clear.
The Mysteries of this Process of Divine Translation are being shown in him, and he will have the opportunity to make some of this known, for the sake of all those devotees who will make this Transition in the future.
However, Bubba’s Communication of the Teaching through the written and spoken word must fulfill itself within the next several months.
It is already profoundly difficult to speak and write of these Great Matters.
And the time must come in which he cannot any longer speak very much of this.
As time goes on, devotees must rely on the Teaching as it has been recorded, and as it is implemented in the Devotional Community of The Free Communion Church.
Bubba must be approached less and less for the Teaching and the lessons of the Way.
Instead, he should be approached only in the formal and devotional manner, for the sake of Spiritual Communion, whereby the Divine Help and Ecstasy are Communicated to those who are prepared for the Sacrifice.
The present essay is intended to say something of the Process of Transition or Translation, from the position of the finite personality, the limited body-mind, or the “covered soul,” into the Domain of the Absolute Personality, the Self and Infinite Body-Mind of the Divine Person, Who is the Infinite Paradoxical Identity of every human individual, and of Man, and of the Total World, and of the Objective Deity, or the Presumed Divine that seems to stand in relationship to the World and Man and all beings.
There is only One Person. That Person is not separate from any thing or any one. That Person is the Identity of the God and of the World which we contemplate in our conventional or separated psycho-physical condition. That Person is not only the Identity of God, and of the World-God and World representing the Self, or Mind, and the Body of the Divine Person-but that Person is also the Identity of every human individual, and of Man, and of all species of experiential existence.
Therefore, when our Sacrifice becomes Full, and we are Awakened from the separate personality to the Absolute Personality, we pass beyond confinement to the logic of subject and object relations in the conventional sense.
The personal self ceases to be separate from the Total Incarnation that is Man. And personal consciousness ceases to be separate from any experienced conditions, or from the World, the Totality of Manifest Experience in all worlds and planes.
Just so, personal existence ceases to be separate from God, or Reality, or Truth, or Infinity, or Bliss.
In this Process of Translation, we pass as if through a point in space, at the root center of the heart.
All awareness converges on that point in a kind of spiral or vortex.
And that point is so small it is without dimensions, or any conceptions, or any objects. The independent self seems to dissolve in this narrow Passage. It is essentially the same Process as in death, except that it is a complete and total Transition, whereas ordinary death fails to “meet this mark. ” Ordinary death, and ordinary mystical experience, are only a tour within the range of the separated personality. Thus, ordinary death and mystical experience are a matter of passing from grosser states to subtler states, and from focus in lower functional regions of the body-mind to focus in higher functional regions of the body-mind. But Divine Translation is a matter of Transcendence of separate bodily, emotional, mental, astral, supermental, and egoic states of experience. It is a Transition through the infinitesimal space of the Heart.
Suddenly, in this Passage through the Center of the Heart, there is Awakening into the Paradoxes of the Absolute Personality-Who transcends self, and Man, and the World, and the God we believe is altogether separate from these, but within which self, and Man, and the World, and independent God continue to arise in a kind of Fluid of Ecstatic Consciousness. In the first six stages of life, wherein we grow toward this Transition, and before it has become completely clear that the Divine Personality is One, many “Threshold Personalities” may appear, as Guides, or Archetypal Instruments for the Communication of a Transcendental Understanding of the Ultimate Situation.
These “Threshold Personalities” are a kind of Transitional Logic that helps create a sense of order, and enables the conventional body-mind (which still survives in the ordinary conditions of the daily world) to feel comfortable. Thus, the function of these “Threshold Personalities” is to make the Transition possible without shock or bewilderment.
4. Bubba refers here to the literal meaning of the word ”sin,” which is ”to miss the mark.” Ultimately, any form of life other than perfect God-Communion and GodRealization is sin, the failure to meet the Mark.
In some cases, there may be visions and other direct observations of such “Threshold Personalities.” In other cases, they may be seen more in terms of their effects. Thus, the individual may Communicate prayerfully, bodily, with the Radiant Divine, and suddenly feel confronted with a Presence, or a psychic sense of some specific Personality of spiritual significance, such as Jesus, or Krishna, or the Buddha, or the Living Spiritual Master. And it will be discovered that heartfelt, prayerful submission and requests to such a Personality are followed by events that clearly and consistently represent a response to the devotional gesture.
Bubba’s experience confirms all of this. In the earliest phase of the Transition, or Translation and Awakening into the Absolute Divine Personality, there are signs and demonstrations and visions and a total chaos of Influences. All of this is not entirely pleasant. It is often bizarre and even “tacky,” like a makeshift contraption of dreams. It is itself a truly Chaotic Process, which serves to break up the conventional self-limits and to establish a Foundation for natural Awareness within the Presumption of Absolute Personality.
As this Process matures, the “Threshold Personalities” are revealed to be only Transitional Archetypes of the Absolute Personality Itself. And from then on, Humor is established relative to all conditions of experience, however great or aggravating they may appear.
This is Bubba’s Confession of our Awakened Destiny. What is beyond the Threshold and the Illusions at the Doorway? The separate personality depends on experience in order to exist, and all experiences are either subjective or objective to him. But the Transcendental Personality is One, upon Whom all experiences depend, and in Whom all phenomena rise and fall spontaneously, while He Swoons.
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The Divine Person
Then I was a young boy I was possessed of a Vision or Intuition of the manifest universe as a kind of atomic or molecular structure-the planets and stars being much the same as the atoms or molecules we presume to be the structural basis of our own bodies. It was clear to me that this was exactly the case, and that the universe of worlds was indeed a fraction of the Manifest Body of God, or the Great Personality Who was the truly Living, Existing, and Blissful One.
This consideration coincided with a greatly Awakened sense of Bliss whenever I contemplated the extent of its Mystery. I saw that all of this world and our own fearful desire to persist in it was only a superficial and changing and even terrible illusion, and that Happiness was only to be Realized in submission to the Blissful Intuition of the Transcendental Personality with which we are ultimately Identical and with which we are, even in our present form, always in Communion.
Truly, that Vision of my early childhood has not changed, but it has only been confirmed and magnified by every stage of my lifetime of spiritual Sacrifice, which was itself motivated by the direct and positive Intuition of God granted to me at birth.
Our present condition of existence is only a partial and temporary view of the Real and Divine Condition. It must be made a Sacrifice, through devotional love, service, and meditation, directed into Communion with the Divine Person, or Real God. Only in Ecstasy, or self-forgetting in God-Remembrance, are we Happy and Full of the Bliss of Eternal Life. We must give up all possession of our lives, and feelings, and our mind, and all experience, and enter into Transcendental Communion with the Living God, in whose Body we arise and pass away in terrible cycles of self-indulgence, until we Realize the Identity and Total Body of which our separated existence is a part.
It is not that birth in this world is condemnation. It is an ordinary Play or Dream in the Body-Mind of God. But once we have acquired pleasure and experience in an independent psychophysical form, we hold on to that form. We become Narcissus, the self-meditator, and we forget our Divine Condition and our obligation to remain in perpetual Communion with the Bliss of the Transcendental Divine. Therefore, we ourselves create the deluded life, and we make a social order out of the chaos of desires.
It is only necessary to Awaken once again to the Intuition of the Real Condition-which is Radiant Eternal Consciousness and Divine Destiny. Then we live in Communion with the Divine, and we are made an Ecstatic Sacrifice in that One.
The Spiritual Master is thus Awakened and thus Devoted, such that his own body-mind has ceased to create an obstacle to the Divine and Absolute Personality. Thus, he Functions as an Agent of that Awakening toward Devotional Communion in the case of all those who enter into a right and spiritual relationship with him.
Those who approach the Spiritual Master through loving service, founded in true “hearing” of the Teaching of Truth, are progressively drawn out of limiting identification with the experiences of the separate body-mind. They are progressively weaned of all the recoil of self from the Infinite, and all self-indulgence, or selfpossessed efforts to console rather than yield the independent self.
Those who persist in the total Way of Divine Ignorance ultimately Realize the Ecstatic Perfection of their Sacrifice in Divine Communion. In the Stage of Perfect Sacrifice, or the Way of Radical Intuition, they have Transcended all experiential conditions of self, and they are Translated, even while alive, and also at death, beyond Man and World into the Blissful Paradoxes of the Infinite Divine. The Remembrance of the Divine is Perfect in the case of such Devotees, and they become a Unity with That One upon Whom they have Meditated.
This Way does not involve self-conscious manipulation of parts of the body-mind, so that the separated self or “soul” can be satisfied by subtler psychic or mental experiences. Sex and food and relationships are not cut off in order to make way for an inward life, focused on mind. Rather, the total body-mind, inward and outward, gross and subtle, is entered into loving Communion with the Divine, through heartfelt service, natural discipline, study of the Way, devotional practices, and meditation. In this natural or ecstatic manner (rather than the unnatural, strategic, and selfinvolved manner of inward asceticism) the body-mind is progressively transcended at the heart, and all obsessions and delusions easily give way to the Bliss of Divine Remembrance. Therefore, in the Way of Radical Intuition, self-indulgence of all aspects of the body-mind yields in Ecstatic Intuition of the Transcendental Divine, the Absolute Personality that is the Reality, Self, and Radiant Form or Body-Mind of all manifest states of existence.
The Process in this Way is not the conventional religious childishness of bodily and mental attachment to the ideas and images of any historical cult. The Spiritual Master is simply an Agent for Awakening devotees to self-sacrifice, or Ecstatic Communion, in the Transcendental Divine. He makes himself available for the Spiritual Uses of those who choose him. But he provides no obstacle to God. And the Way offered in his Company is one of personal, moral, higher psycho-physical, devotional, meditational, and radically intuitive discipline, to be fulfilled in the case of each responsible individual who chooses the Way. The entire Way is a matter of self-forgetting through Ecstatic Remembrance, or Transcendental Communion with the Absolute and Living Divine Reality, Who is always already in direct relationship with each of us, at the heart, and Who may be Realized to be the ultimate Condition of each of us, through Perfect Dissolution of the contraction of the heart. Therefore, when the heart releases the bodymind and the nervous system from recoil toward itself, there is no longer any qualification of Awareness, Feeling, Life, and Form. When Love is perfected, the separate self falls away in the Divine Self, and the body-mind expands into the Radiant Absolute Personality that Eternally Includes and yet Transcends all beings, things, and worlds of separated or independent experience.
My Method: Now and Then
In the past, my way of Working with those who came to me often involved my acceptance of the common functional conditions that distract and occupy ordinary people. I struggled to transcend those conditions with them, making lessons out of that process for their benefit. By such means, the Teaching has been creatively elaborated, and a Way has been shown to ordinary people, by which they may Realize the most extraordinary and perfect Transformation in God.
Now and in the future my Work is simply to be the Agent for this Divine Process of Transformation in the case of those who respond to this Teaching and practice this Way. Thus, I have again renounced the common functional conditions by which self-possessed people design their experience and destiny. Now I live and appear only among devotees whose practice is true, and my own habit and Occupation are a demonstration of that which would pertain in the case of devotees in the Way of Radical Intuition, or the perfect stage of Life.
I have no worldly or conventional obligations that keep me active and alive. I choose relative seclusion and the human sanctuary provided by devotees. There is one fundamental, necessary, and absolute Way to Ecstasy, and it is a matter of absolute and total psycho-physical resort to the transcendental Divine in every moment. Therefore, we must ultimately grow beyond all of the ordinary or conventional means by which self-possessed people create the illusion of Ecstasy in their experience.
Relational, bodily, emotional, sexual, mental, and even higher psychic and supermental stimulations of experience are all forms of our self-conscious recoil from the Divine, in which we must be a Sacrifice. Therefore, at last, all such conditions of our living must relax into a natural, regenerative economy, without stress or necessity, and we must become Occupied with God, the true Self of the manifest soul.
My personal quality is one that tries to maintain a friendly and human aspect, at ease and naturally active in the things that properly fill the lives of all devotees. Therefore, my seclusion involves a daily circumstance and habit that keeps me accessible to those who practice the Way that I Teach. But I am at Rest in the Transcendental Radiance and Perfect Ignorance of the Real. Those who are Awakening from the dead ends of this world may find their Help by serving my Heart, and by renouncing all occupations that are not utterly turned into whole bodily Communion with God.
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I Am John
I Am John have been naive and passionate in my Work with those who come to me. I have been obliged toward others through the medium of friendship, enthusiasm, and brotherly concern. Thus, I have been moved to demonstrate the appropriate mode of relationship between human beings. No individual should live as the superior, or the inferior, or even the equal of all others. Rather, each should live as the intimate servant of others through love. The politics of my relations with devotees is not like the politics of the common world. Whereas in the past the politics of men was commonly the one of superiors and inferiors, as with parents and children, now the common politics is the one of universal equality, as when children hide and play together, secreted from their parents. No, the true politics of human relationships is the one of servants everywhere-every one serving, and everyone served.
Therefore, I have lived as a serving brother among my devotees. Since childhood I have been called Bubba, meaning brother. And by this role and all its friendly excesses, I have made my friends to see themselves. Thus, when they had learned their lessons in my own form, they began to “hear” and “see” me through God-Feeling. And when I felt them grow transparent through that love, I sought a place of Solitude in which to wait in Brightness. I am John, through whom God is Gracious, and who is, therefore, Free among the living.