Principal of Mood – Fear – Adi Da Samraj





PRINCIPAL
MOOD

The Principal Mood,
fear


Louise and Sal
Lucania

– 1974


Sal Lucania – 1975

 

 

Listen

INTRODUCTION

The transformation in
consciousness enjoyed by one who does sadhana in the company
of Bubba free john is a graceful process. The following two
talks given by Bubba to his students and disciples together
make up a concise description of this process and the stages
of its realization.

In the first talk delivered in
late November 1974, Bubba discusses the necessary
penetration of what he calls the principal mood or the
underlying sense of fear that motivates our conventional
life of suffering.

This penetration need not involve
dramatic breakdowns and episodes of the kind described in
one of Bubba’s disciples at the beginning of this
talk.

In fact, it is just this kind of
drama that is made obsolete by the appearance of the true
guru and the enjoyment of sadhana in his company.

 

DISCIPLE OF BUBBA FREE JOHN

SAL: I wanted to talk to him
about my own sadhana because of a series of phases that I
felt I had been going through since I entered Bubba’s
house and left Bubba’s house some of which was
communicated in the “god and the goddess” fear
experience that would periodically arise and then
disappear.

I think about six or seven weeks ago
I guess before I left for New York it began again and it
didn’t stop. It brought me to a point today where I was
just immobile in bed for about ten hours examining the
stages that I had been going through and not knowing where I
was at relative to anything anymore.

I went over to speak to Bubba about
it and we got into various aspects of my sadhana including
the teaching and inquiry where I expressed to him for a year
I used this inquiry and we went through the phase where this
connectivity was generated by Bubba and then he withdrew or
relaxed that generation and I found myself left with
nothing.

The teaching no longer could be used
to sort of get me out of that sense or that feeling and I
found myself was constantly in it all the time and I thought
that my sadhana had collapsed completely so I went over
there tonight to speak to him about that not knowing where I
was relative to anything and not being able to now avoid
that sense of fear.

I think the answer communicated to
me about the stages of student sadhana and what takes place
and how ultimately because I was saying that I had a working
knowledge of the teaching by virtue of my functioning in an
ashram for a long time and none of that any longer relieved
me.

I couldn’t make use of that to
bounce me out of there anymore. I just continuously fell
into it. He proceeded to communicate to me how at some point
that must take place where you do fall into that kind of a
situation and at some point where nothing becomes available
anymore and you do just continuously fall into that
situation and it was really very helpful to me because at
least I wasn’t feeling guilty about it
anymore.

(Laughter from audience)

It didn’t matter to be happy
and all of that and here I was continuously falling apart.
So anyway I wanted to relay some of the groundwork for what
he wanted to communicate to me.

BUBBA: The things I told Sal
the other night seemed to me to have a general application
to everyone and they give you a picture in terms of stages
of what the student sadhana is as a conscious affair so that
you have some idea at what point student sadhana has
fulfilled itself or has become mature after which quite a
different sadhana appropriate for a disciple comes into
play.

When a person first becomes a
student in the ashram based on his sympathy with the
teaching, he begins a period of confrontation with the
teaching in the form of demands, in the form of ongoing
instruction, the responsibilities at a functional
level.
You must develop that
self observations of various kinds arise. Insights relative
to our own game arise. A certain amount of sophistication
relative to this teaching develops and perhaps the
individual begins to inquire in this form of waiting
relationship at random.
But
simply because all that has occurred, doesn’t mean that
you have fulfilled your life as a student.

Now you’ve put in your year as
a student, you know that and now you’re supposed to be
a disciple. The student stage of this sadhana is fulfilled
only in the case of radical understanding, only in the case
of real inquiry.
The kind of
inquiry in sadhana that I just described is a relatively
superficial one. It’s more a kind of acquaintance with
the work in some of its implications to you on a
superficial, behavioral and psychological level.

Beneath your conventional game of
life there is a principal mood and fundamentally its content
fear and during the course of your sadhana you periodically
come close to that sense, that felt dilemma, that
fear.
All of this sadhana
generated in this ashram is a process that always brings you
into more and more intimate content with that principal
mood, that fear.
So, all of this
sadhana is constantly bringing you into a crisis in which
you cease to be involved in conventional mentality and
insight and behavioral change and philosophy and all the
rest and fall into that principal mood which underlies your
conventional game.

Depending on the force of your
movement into this work in the earlier phases of your
sadhana, you will go through difficulties relative to the
work itself. And so there’s the usual rise and fall
coming and going reluctance and commitment and all of that
in the earlier phases.
The
reason that drama takes place is because of this crisis, its
possibility. As soon as the individual begins to feel
something of that crisis, begins to move reflectively, the
various ways into the sense of that principal mood are fear
which underlies his conventional life, so he begins to touch
on a little bit through the crisis the development of this
sadhana.

He reacts. He tries to do something
about it. One of the ways he has of reacting is to consider
the possibility of abandoning sadhana altogether to consider
the teaching to be false, Bubba free john to be crazy and
all the rest.
When he gets a
little better hold on that, he begins to then perhaps doubt
himself as a way of reacting to this felt crisis. Doubting
the teaching and the guru and then doubting yourself are the
two basis forms of that initial reaction or reluctance to
enduring this crisis, this falling into that principal
mood.

At some point though if you
don’t leave, or commit suicide, whatever (laughter from
audience), at some point you begin to stand in place and you
obviously are going to do this sadhana and that’s
it.
You’re going to pass
through the crisis regardless of your reluctance and so you
continue again to go through the game of rise and fall, all
the phases that I’ve talked about.

You all will be having insights and
seeing where you’re at and all that. So all that takes
place on this superficial level on top of this principal
mood and during that period you always had the teaching to
resort to and you always had study groups and the
possibility of insight and of learning again what
you’re up to and you’re seeing it all
(laughter).

But then there comes a time when you
begin to fall at random but more and more certainly into
that principal mood and what Sal was talking about, what he
keeps talking about this evening is his experience of
that.

Previous to this time, Sal like
anyone else was always reacting to that fundamental dilemma,
that felt mood or fear with his personal games, his
insights, his grasping of the teaching, and everything else.
He would always react to it by getting himself into shape
somehow or other getting on top of it.

My way of getting on top of it is
understanding a little bit, inquiring, etc. but when this
crisis is intensified so that you begin to fall into this
principal mood randomly for longer periods of time, and
without any defenses, you no longer have at your disposal
these alternative ways of getting on top of it.

You begin to pass through a period
of time in which you don’t have any of the things you
had before to resort to.

This period of time when you lie in
that mood, that fear, that dilemma without resorts, without
being able to comprehend it, without being able to inquire,
without being able to understand the teaching, without being
able to engage in an emotional connection with the guru,
without finding satisfactions in your sadhana, without
finding satisfaction in the ashram, without finding hope,
without any of that.

during that time it is still your
responsibility to live in this community without
dramatization. you don’t have the right because you are
going through that process to go insane and that is why the
earlier phase of this sadhana serves, because it prepares
you in sheer functional terms to live appropriately to enjoy
a disciplined functional existence while you must pass
through later on this difficult crisis.

So there is this range of all
conventional existence and with that there is this principal
mood and beneath that, and let’s talk about that in
spatial terms, you know what I mean, and with That is the
intuitive consciousness. The guru operates from two
directions then.

He’s in the same picture, the
one essentially externally through communicating the
teaching verbally and making demands, creating conditions,
creating community. He works to bring about this crisis in
which you fall into that principal mood.

he works also from the other
direction, from the direction of that intuitive
consciousness so that when you fall into that principal
mood, he works by grace to awaken that intuitive realization
and that is the level in which the teaching exists for one
who is passing through this crisis. It exists as grace. It
exists as that fundamental consciousness which is the guru
which is your own nature also.

And so a phase appears in the
sadhana of a student in which he passes through this
principal mood, this dissent into this fundamental karmic
condition. While passing through that period, understanding
arises relative to that mood.

It is understood, comprehended as
your own activity as a present activity. When that insight
appears, since it’s on quite a different level than on
all the more or less superficial, behavioral, psychological
levels in which you enjoyed insight before, it is a
comprehensive and intense form of insight.

It is fundamental insight and that
is what I call understanding, not the understanding that
takes place in the conventional psycho-physical state but
that understanding that takes place within this principal
mood. That is fundamental understanding.

 

One year
later………

Bubba Free John talks to his
community of devotees about ‘The principal
mood’.

After we left here on Saturday
night, several devotees followed me over to the house there
and started asking questions, sort of continuing the
discussion that had been going on here. There were a lot of
questions about this event of passage through the
principal mood and so forth.

If you remember when I first spoke
about that late last year, Sal had come over to my house and
was talking to me about experiences he was having at the
time about fear and the like.
I
came over and sat with everyone and decided while talking
with Sal, that I could speak to everyone here about it. I
have spoken since that time on a number of occasions about
that process and because of the general quality of the human
being which is self-obsessive and wants as much drama
associated with itself as possible, the idea of the
spiritual process being super dramatic, heroic in fact, is
much more appealing than intuitive conscious
resistance.
So the idea of going
through an episode of absolute terror and confusion and
disassociated thinking and collapse and so forth is very
appealing and sounds like something is really happening and
the fact that this real process is not something that is
really happening.
It is not in
itself identical to the passage that may appear when
you’re alive outwardly or inwardly. It is not identical
to the content that may appear in your life, the kind of
learning we all have gotten through television and school
and not in psychiatry and endless paperback literature
reinforces this notion that real existence is an heroic
dramatic affair and when the real spiritual process takes
place, it’s a matter of unbelievable experiences
positive and negative.
This
satisfies the narcissistic demand and narcissistic image of
existence. When I spoke to you on that first occasion after
speaking with Sal, I was interpreting an aspect of this
process relative to his kind of experience as easily as a
kind of metaphor for an event that is not in itself
dramatic.
It just happens to be
associated with dramatization, a dramatization that Sal
himself was experiencing at the time. It was already
assembled then.

Passage through the physical mood is
not the same thing as primal therapy or some psychiatric
episode anymore than vital shock is the same thing as birth
trauma.
It is simply the real
process of understanding is absolute and perfect in its
nature. It’s not the equivalent of mentalizations and
of philosophies of mere subjectivity and so forth.

that is a very direct affair. You can
take as long as you like and the reason you’ll do that
is because you love drama.

Do you see where a cat will catch a
mouse sometimes? Frequently I had a cat bring a mouse into
the house. The cat could just as well deal with the mouse in
the yard. The cat would bring the mouse into the house
instead of knock it around for awhile, make it run, slap it
back, and torment it, leap on it, again and again. You all
play with this whole process in that same way. You make it
indirect because you want all kinds of drama to be
associated with it. It’s in fact, the drama, the
content that interests you. You want all kinds of neurotic
episodes, heavy bullshit, infusions of near insanity and
breakdowns (laughter).
You want
to be dealt with heavily. You want conditions and you want
to really have to try it harder and so forth. You love all
that stuff and the more you love it, the more time
you’re going to spend playing with it. And so you will
make it necessary for there to be episodes of all
kinds.

The other way to pass through the
principal mood is to go directly through the heart and not
waste any time bullshitting in fear. Of course in practice
there will be a certain amount of theatre in
everybody’s case. Perhaps in most people’s cases
there will be lots of cycles and phases and insights and so
forth. the process I am describing is instant, direct,
present and is just as much a matter of penetration of a
moment of fear as it is a penetration of any ordinary
thought.
Sheer terror coming out
of the unconscious is no weight here, an object, then the
simplest reverie or thought.

The process I am talking about is
not heroic. It’s not an effort that succeeds. It’s
not a game by which you earn an inquiry or discipleship or
anything of that kind.
It is a
process in consciousness in which you see the present event
of your existence is this contraction and know what just
proceeds it and every moment in which that occurs there is a
natural falling out of the binding limitation that you are
compulsively creating into an unnamable sense of existence.
That is the natural state. It is the intuition of the heart
whenever it occurs. It is simply that when a life becomes
founded in that intuition, that intuitive consciousness
comes to the front of that life and begins to work upon all
the events of life most directly.
That
intuition is not simply unnamable and describable but has
revealed itself to be the very reality which is as in the
case of the devoted, so it is not really appropriate to
objectify this moment of passage through the principal mood
and think of it in those kinds of dramatic terms.

There may at random be some individuals
in some sort of moment like that, something comparable in
its appearance to the experience I described in my own case
in seminary. But it is not necessary for there to be any
such drama. It is only necessary to pass directly into that
intuition.

If consciousness rests in that
intuitive enjoyment, it has already passed through the
principal mood. It has obviated the principal mood.

That’s the point of passing
through it, not to have the experience of terror, but to be
free of the limitation.
If you
pass directly in front of insight inquiry and so forth and
into that intuition, that mood of fear which is natural to
the ego to that activity of self-definition is undone. It
has no force.
We rest in that
intuitive consciousness. We are happy. There is the clear
and uncaused and reasonable sense of happiness of
unobstructed consciousness, no threat, and there is no self
in that intuition. There is no fear.
In
the next moment when we yield again to conditions perhaps
but the fundamental instrument whereby the mood of fear in
all of its forms is overcome is that direct passage, that
intuition, a nominal mental repetition on the formula of
avoiding relationship is not the equivalent of that
intuition.

There must be real insight. The
force of consciousness must have moved out of its seclusion.
There must real inquiry activated from the very nature of
the individual.
So in order for
there to be a real inquiry, the force of fear which is
hidden in the unconscious and unconscious life must be
passed through. It must be obviated but it is not obviated
specifically by a kind of psychiatric passage through the
subconscious and unconscious life.
It
is rather obviated by a direct passage into your real nature
and condition and that direct passage is fundamentally a
simplicity and a graceful process.

The guru enters into the affair of
human life in order to communicate the way of that process
in conditions that serve it and also to generate it, so the
entrance of the guru into the affair of human life is a
significant event. It makes the possibility of spiritual
life a graceful possibility, not an heroic affair for those
who have the calmer intensity to struggle through the great
circle of the cosmos. So the fundamental condition of this
real process is Satsang itself.
That
is the realization. That is the communication. That is the
samadhi. When one enters into direct sacrificial
relationship with the guru, that intuition is established
and the conditions that serve that intuition are established
and in Satsang then, it’s that the relationship then
becomes the principle of your sadhana, but it can indeed be
a graceful process.
It’s
only if you remain bound through lack of insight to your own
theatre, your own possibility, your own separate and heroic
spirituality, if only that remains the principle of your
spiritual life, that you’re going to have to go through
a prolonged period of up and down and phasing and
struggling, coming and going.
I’m
looking great on those occasions when you get to be
announced as the disciple and so forth. There will be no
such occasions because it is simply a natural process, the
description of disciple sadhana and so forth. It’s just
that.
It’s a description to
account for elements that all of you will in one form or
another realize in this sadhana. It’s not a way of
establishing a kind of cultic organizational game in which
you get acknowledged for this and that and you attain this
and that and so forth.
It’s
simply a way of making sense out of the process and that at
appropriate stages, other things may be added so that at
certain stages you may see the signs that will make it
possible for you to adopt to more responsibility.

So the sadhana is very simple and is
graceful. You consider the guru’s argument and then you
go on and meet the guru. On the basis of your response to
the teachings, having seen and make points in your own case,
you enter into that relationship naturally, voluntarily and
the more you live that relationship, the more it
communicates itself.
And on the
basis of that relationship, you accept the discipline and
conditions and of the community of service and study and the
theatre of our life together. But the process itself is very
natural.
It is that response,
having that argument make its points, to the point of
essential and spontaneous surrender to the guru which in
that case becomes Satsang, becomes samadhi, not true samadhi
essentially but there’s natural intuition. There’s
happiness.

Then, continued consideration of
that argument under the conditions given which serve to
reflect your own drama to you to the point of insight and
all this goes on to the point of inquiry, just increased
responsibility with the level of consciousness.

Inquiry is real when it is found at an
insight, not when it is thrown around in the mind on the
basis of reading essentially, essentially mentalized
comprehension.
But when it is
found in that insight, it is comprehensive that sees the
fundamental activity of this contraction and therefore knows
what is just prior to it.
On the
basis of that insight inquiry is real. Wherever there is
real inquiry there is already passage through the principle
loop. There is obviation of it. Inquiry finds the apparent
individual continually established in his real condition. An
inquiry then continues and a scene outwardly can be
effective relative to the life of the actual individual
until it essentially inquires of itself and then simply
another level of this very same conscious process is
established but doesn’t accept what’s randomly
involved with this internal verbal inquiry.

So all of this rests upon that
single principle, that living condition of Satsang and
everything that is associated with it is very concrete and
demands responsibility of you, intelligence, real
life.
There’s nothing vague
about it. There’s nothing confusing about the dharma.
You must simply continue to return to its fundamentals and
any of you who take on this sadhana as a process of grace in
this way I have described, can see it quickened and
suddenly.
But if you remain
attached to the possible theatre of narcissus and some
heroic self-transcendence and overcoming, filled with
endless experiences and complications, then it will take a
great long time and will not essentially be a process of
grace but perhaps random moments.
Basically
it’s not that too graceful and possibility of Satsang
of which you have committed yourself but rather to the
possibility of your own transformation.