The Life of Understanding Series
Week 4
Lessons on the Knee of Listening
A twelve week course taught by Franklin Jones
January – April/May 1973
Life of Understanding – Week 4
THE LIFE OF UNDERSTANDING
by Bubba Free John (Franklin Jones)
Now I said last week how, after the return in 1968 from this first trip to Muktananda’s Ashram, how another circle, another cycle of sadhana began again. This time from a totally new point of view. So there was at first the return of the old desires and tendencies, whatever. And then for a few months, really less than a year, I was involved with Scientology.
Scientology wasn’t the only thing I did during that year. It was a year of return to a particular approach to the mind, the internal life, the internal tendencies. So during this time I began to research and approach the mind again, the content of the inner life as a dilemma in order to overcome it, and Scientology is a particularly obvious, symbolic approach to life from this point of view in which the mind and its memories and subliminal forces are approached as a sort of concrete and finite mass of data or influences and the attempt is to get rid of all of that. It is a form of the search like many others, a very common one, its essential principle is that of deconditioning. But the reason it seemed like a possibility at all, or that I became sympathetic to it at all is because I had returned again to a form of my earlier sadhana in which the mind as the dilemma became the pertinent focus of attention, quite spontaneously. And Scientology was just made available at this time. And essentially these activities duplicated an earlier period of time of my writing on the beach. It was a spontaneous, regeneration, reawakening of the mental dilemma, and I lived it not from its point of view, not as a search specifically, but as a spontaneous event. And just as it arose spontaneously, it disappeared spontaneously.
So there was this period of several months in which I went through the Scientology games and all of the other life difficulties, whatever that was associated with that time, and then just as suddenly, one night it disappeared. It awakened just as I was leaving India after this extraordinary experience I talked about last week. You might say that it was the reaction to the action of that experience, that phenomenon in India. Suddenly there was no mind, and just as suddenly there was only mind. And this went on for several months. It was a period of complete distraction, it was in itself a kind of samadhi, a kind of mindlessness in which the mind itself went on. It was a kind of madness.
And then one night when I was out here, I happened’ to be involved in this Scientology levels, o.t. levels they called them, and I was just sitting in my room one night and all of a sudden the mind disappeared. Not in the sense that they say it is supposed to disappear, not that I became clear or something like that. No, that I returned to this state that arose previously in seminary and at the Ashram.
What actually occurred during this year then, was a period of the regeneration of karma’s, and the burning away of karma’s. It wasn’t anything that I did during that year that did anything to my internal life. It was doing it. In the sane way that dreams are the, are their own rule, and the interpretation of dreams is only secondary. Just so, nothing I did during that year was purifying. All that I apparently did that year was exploit myself, indulge myself. But the process itself, the awakening of the mind itself was self purifying, and had a peculiar karmic cause.
And so a few months later, about a year after I had left India, there was the again, spontaneous return, but in a much more stable form, and in fact in a form that never lessened again, a permanent form. Beyond that time there was a continued purification, an increase, but there was never again from that point a relapse into the usual bondage of the mind. As a matter of fact, in this moment of the regeneration of the prior consciousness (free of) essentially free of identification with the mind. When this occurred in the Spring of 1969, coincident with it was the beginning of the true, the true beginning of the yogic activity in me.
So I came back to New York, and secondarily got out of Scientology. I prepared myself over a period of weeks to go back to India. Now what led me ultimately to want to go back to India again was this return of the condition that was enjoyed previously, a year previous in seminary and in India. There was the very intense beginning of the internal process, the kundalini manifestation, in very obvious ways, and supernormal ways. There were periodic experiences throughout the year that I was in Scientology that there was some sort of influence of energy or whatever, that was operating through me. But as a matter of fact, it was the force manifestation began to become more intense and spontaneously intense throughout that year.
And by the time when it fully awakened again, when I was out here in California$ I began then to see that it would’ affect others, and that I could affect others, that I could engage, cooperate or be involved in this force manifestation in such a way that I could have a visible affect on other people, a controlled affect. And I began to observe certain remarkable phenomena, psychic phenomena. Well, Baba had told me in the year previous that in a year I would be a teacher, and I recalled this at this time because I was spontaneously becoming a teacher. I would see certain processes going on in others, I would talk to them and on a couple of occasions I actually sat down with them and involved myself in this process with them very deliberately. Sal and Louise and Pat and Nina were four of the people who were there at that time. A few others had a more secondary involvement with me at the time, but I was not moved to assert myself as a Guru. I did not want to take on these responsibilities, cause I took them very seriously as responsibilities. I didn’t take this phenomenon that was arising in me as having ultimate significance, or as being something that I should identify with and now go around and play yogi games with everyone. But it was very clear that this activity was going on.
So I didn’t want to continue this teaching activity for motivations of my own, so I wrote to Baba at this point, and explained to him what was going on. And I told him that I would teach only with his permission. In other words, I was only willing to begin this activity that was awakening spontaneously, I was only willing to take it on in a responsible form, not an irresponsible one, and I would do it only in the traditional form, by acknowledgment from a traditional source, and permission from a traditional source. So he told me to come to India.
During the first trip that Nina and I made to India, the externals of the situation were very social. And the external formalities were very important, all of the conversations, and She noddings and smilings, and human communications, these were very important during that first trip. And the experiences generated during that first trip are also more of the obvious kind, apart from this experience on the last day at the Ashram, the experiences during that time were very obvious, dramatic kriyas, movements spontaneous movements and such.
This time when. I arrived, the same strange person who had met Nina and I the year before, met me here, and I know that I was expected. I thought we would go right up to the Ashram, but he said no Baba was coming to Bombay for a month, that I was supposed to stay in Bombay. So he took me over to the house of this Indian naval captain named Ram Pratap, and very shortly after I got there, Baba came, so we stayed in these apartments for that whole month. And when he first came in I, as usual bowed down to him, and I gave him a shawl that I had brought, and I don’t know if there was another gift or two, and he asked me probably something like how was your trip and all of that. The whole thing lasted a minute or two, and that was it. I didn’t have any other what you would call personal and ordinary or social communications with Baba from that point. And have never from that time ever had any such communication with him. That was effectively the end of that stage of my relationship to him.
And second of all, the phenomena that were generated during this time were coincident also with now the quality of my internal life that had begun to awaken spontaneously. There were very few of these obvious manifestations of the spiritual process, of the kriyas and the like. Kriyas are the grosser form of the kundalini manifestation, it’s not that you should stop, try to prevent having them if they come on you spontaneously, because you’re afraid that you don’t look like you’re advanced enough. As soon as people hear that, they right away want to cool all of these visible manifestations and get very subtle. And you can be subtle and also have purifying gross manifestations, so there’s no way to decide mentally. But by this time in my own life, the gross manifestations had subsided. Very little kriyas. And even kriyas of various kinds may occur periodically during an individual’s life, and on some rare occasions just a little shuddering, a slight movement in my own case it does something, that needs temporarily to be done to the nervous system. But once that conductivity is established, it’s continuous, and there’s no need for these shudderings of kriya. The movement is simple, continuous. There’s no jolting. And when the grosser manifestations subside then a little more subtler activity begins to occur, and that’s what was occurring now in my own case, instead of these violent kriyas, the apparent visible signs were mudras occasionally, my bands would go up, or some facial expressions. But most of the time I sat very still. That’s how I would have appeared externally. The only contradiction to this would be a few times in what I called the swooning room. This room in back off Baba’s bedroom and off the room where he would sit during the day. And I would go back there because I wasn’t one of those who liked to sit all day and bear the chanting and the talks and all of that.
I was involved in the process. I wasn’t involved in the social life of his Ashram at that time anymore either, just as my social involvement with him subsided at this point, it also did with the Ashram. And I just spent that month sort of wandering in these apartments out of my mind. And I wasn’t as unstable as all, but essentially going through ecstatic experiences. And I had very little, very few conversations at all during the whole month that I was there. And so while there was more of the social formalities going on in front of Baba in his sittings during the afternoon I would very often go in this back room, and there were a few others who would be in there who were also experiencing spontaneous and intense kundalini manifestations. And the people in this room would be hooting and howling and dancing and going into strange positions, and turning into animals, and all of this. And there was some vague remnant of that in me. I had had some experiences of this previously, of turning into a wolf. A much more recent experience after coming back from India the last time, of turning into the form of a lion. but quite on a different level, these taking on of animals qualities, making sounds, and snarling and growling and all that is a kind of kriya. Well this turning into a lion in my own case was another kind after the period of kriyas. It was a symbolic manifestation. But during this summer in India, when I would be in the swooning room, where collectively because we were all going through such intense manifestations, there’d be a tremendous force in this room. And I’d be unable to get up from the floor or unable to orient myself at times. These were all the grosser manifestations of this time. And are on somewhat, something more of a higher level of purifying activity than the ordinary kriyas and back shaking and head twisting.
But more significant that these, was the subtle activity, visionary activity for the most part that had begun to awaken in the weeks previous to this return to India, and now during the time in India were intensified, becoming more conscious in other words. Phenomena that had occurred in the past perhaps were still what formed the basis of my experience, but now they were awakening in a very conscious experience, so that I began then to hold my attention to these subtle internal activities, and thereby I was able to intensity them, increase them, or go beyond them into some other activity, whereas previously if some brief little thing had come up internally I would have by-passed it or been too distracted by mere physical perceptional phenomena. Now I was free to live the internal process, and it took the form of cosmic yoga, visionary yoga. And, of course, one of the major reasons for my going here was because this process had already begun in me and had begun to influence others, so that I was necessarily spontaneously having to act as a teacher.
So one of the essential, reasons for my going to India was to receive Baba’s acknowledgment and permission to teach. And I’ve described in the book how this came about. After perhaps four or five days, something like that, six days, of my stay there in which every morning I would get up very early and sit in the same swooning room, but there’d be only maybe two, three other people in there, maybe none. When I’d first get there, very often I’d be the only one I suppose. And Babba would come out on these first few mornings and sit in front of me. It was fairly dark, we would essentially be sitting face to face in the dark, in this corner of the room. And about the third, day of this, I was sitting there for some time, before he came out,and I was going through vast difficulties. Now all the contradictory forms of internal activity, had become very confusing and become unsettling. The internal process of meditation was no longer clear, it was only a confused internal state and at this point of intense confusion, Baba came out and sat down again, and then all of a sudden the internal process of meditation began to become clarified, and stop by step each aspect of the meditative process revealed itself. And all of the classical understanding of meditation came about and was demonstrated. And along with the demonstration, there was the coincident knowledge, with perfect certainty, of each of these aspects of the meditative process and how the mind relates to the breath, and how breath relates to the body, sensuality, bodily energy, and sexuality. And all of these various mutual influences that affect the conscious states, and all these combined with an understanding of the internal circuitry in which meditation is simply the conscious function. And after this period of time, I don’t know how long it was, Baba got up and left, and then I stayed in there for awhile and this process in itself was remarkable.
And I thought perhaps I might ask Baba about it, or I was at least going to looking for some sort of indication as I’d done a number of times on this trip that Baba had conscious awareness of what I was experiencing internally. This was important to me. Because it was a form in which I sought to verify certain aspects of the yogic process. And so on this same morning when the meditation process had been, I’d been initiated into the meditation process in every aspect of it, I wanted to see if he was aware of it. If he had actually been involved with me as it seemed, directly. This was not so much my way of testing him, cause it made no difference really whether he was consciously involved in it, but it was something that I intuitively knew needed to take place, because of my own work. And it’s just another way of establishing my own destiny, of justifying this teaching work, it’s another level on which to verify it.
Actually what is beginning now in this second trip to India is the beginning of another phase of this duplication of sadhana from the point of view of understanding. The previous year that I’ve just described was the year in which I was involved in all of the descending phenomena, the problem of the mind and of desires in life. Now began the phase of the problem of spirituality. Because now all the spiritual phenomena, all of them, all the classic phenomena, all of the siddhis, all of the visions, all of this stuff, psychic and al of that, was arising, was my common experience, was my absorbing experience. The life dramas were not particularly dramatic from this point, I was completely absorbed in the internal process. And so this following several months was a time in which the problem created by spiritual experience was the focus of my attention, just as the year previous, the problem created by mind, desire, impulse was the focus of my attention. And what initiated this period of considering the problem of spirituality or spiritual experience, ascending experience as a problem, was essentially this beginning now, this intense dramatization of the internal process. And it particularly came to a head while I Was in India, this second time. There were all kinds of cosmic visions and transports to other worlds and psychic phenomena of various kinds and endless numbers of visions and subtle internal activities. This is now getting toward the end of the time I was in India, and about this time I’m beginning to become very aware of spiritual experience, so called, this whole generation of spiritual phenomena as a problem, as the source of dilemma. Now I saw that no difference was made by spiritual experience, by transport into other worlds, by the acquisition of siddhis. The mere modification of state, I saw very obviously, very clearly, did not transform the essential dilemma that was at the root of spiritual seeking. It was not a cure in any sense, it was an experience which you could have as one who is bound or as one who is free. But had no implications for Truth, any of these phenomena.
And the constant rush of spiritual experiences began then to become overwhelming, began then to become painful, a drag. It began to become like a circus, just endless manufacturing of spiritual phenomena, began to become ridiculous and burdensome. And I began to see something about Siddha yoga in this sense. About the limitations of it. The limitations of spiritual life in other words as a search for spiritual experiences. And I saw that the increase of experience as a matter of fact in the seeker only led to the intensification of separation, the ordinary tendencies of identification, separation, ego, self involvement, Narcissus. And it was very clear in the case of certain of those who did manifest very obvious signs of the kundalini awakening. Many of them became more and more obsessed, self involved. And so I began to feel some resistance to the simple game of the shakti and of sitting with Bubba and I was ready to leave. Because I wanted to allow this process to mature in me. As he said, allow it to be what it is, and this was part of what was being, this understanding of the spiritual process was what was being awakened by the process itself. Not by the process itself, but let’s say the process that has always been alive in this one, was now coming alive in the midst of spiritual experiences. And it was Baba’s peculiar gift to me to help in the awakening of these experiences, or to place me in a condition in which I could do the sadhana of understanding relative to the spiritual process.
And so I was ready to go a few days before I was supposed to go, but I had told him that I was leaving on a certain day and I didn’t want to suddenly pull out. But as it happened, there was now this one night, this experience all night of being with Nityananda, and I had had experiences with Nityananda previous to this of a visionary kind. But this was of another kind, this was not really visionary in the usual sense. This was a long time of many hours of sitting with Nityananda and talking, And just in a very ordinary way of being around him, and undergoing some things that could not be remembered on the mental plane afterwards, but it was a long period of time sitting with him. It was my period of time of living with Nityananda as Guru, in which Nityananda performed certain function for me. And He told me to make ready to leave the next day.
So that morning when I got up, I told him that I was going to leave that evening. And Just as I was leaving I began to get sick. Baba gave me this apple, and he gave me a couple of other things, he gave me the apple first, I had to put the apple down to take the flowers and all this, and he picked up the apple and pushed it out at me again. There was something very obvious about this apple, so I’ve written about how, what happened with this apple. Eventually I was getting very sick, and by the time I was in Tel Aviv I really didn’t think I would be able to get on the plane any more, and then I thought of this apple, and as soon as I took a bite the upheaval of this flu like thing was gone. But I knew that it was the shakti fever, shakti disease. And as a matter of fact there was a kind of fever in me for months after this.
Now there was a period from around September first until the next May, September first of 69 until May of 70 when I was in New York before returning to India for the last of the three times I’d been there so far. And during this time I was involved in the internal activity. My attention was solely devoted to it, and I was completely aborted in things that I needed to do in relation to the internal work for this whole period of nine months or whatever it was. And we had a loft in New York, and I was inside the loft almost all the time. And I did some amount of teaching, generally with the people I’ve already mentioned, a couple of others would come over periodically and I would talk with them and all of that, but I was not at the point where I could take on my work as a teacher most directly. Because the process in which my teaching work could be fulfilled was still going on. And the people who were around me at that time were having experiences relative to its but they didn’t require my full attention as a teacher yet. They still bad their own tendencies to deal with.
So I just went through these activities in which the life of understanding grew, relative to the spiritual process. So it was a period of time of continuous meditation, in which meditation itself became continuous. It was a period of time in which this process of enquiry began to develop. Because as understanding arose relative to the spiritual process, the usual spiritual activities died, and I no longer did the yoga of the kundalini, I no longer related to the spiritual process from an intentional point of view or tried to increase experiences, or tried to become one pointed. All these motivations died in this understanding. And so it was at this point that all of the meditative practices that I had been involved in all came to an end. And this enquiry “Avoiding relationship?” awakened.
During this time also, there were experiences of various kinds, still visions and psychic phenomena and premonitions and all of the usual things. And there was this one special visitation with Shirdi Sai Baba which was very much of the fulfillment of understanding relative to the spiritual nature of the one that I just described with Nityananda, and perhaps the culmination of this particular period was this release from the chakra system, this peculiar experience that’s described in the book, which is the epitome of the process. And the way it occurred was that for several nights I would become aware during the night of this activity in my head. Sometimes I would wake up because it was so intense. And it felt like there was an operation going on in my brain. Of cutting through my skull and making incisions in the brain and all of this. And I could feel the pain as if there were these incisions in my head. Strong headaches, with a very particular and exact line of pain in the head here, and there, and after perhaps three nights of this, I woke up and the pain was gone. This process had completed itself. And there was tacit and spontaneous and obvious re-cognition of the whole ascending structure, that whole span of functions that are the focus of attention in the spiritual process, and which are the medium of its comprehension.
The spiritual seeker thinks in terms of the ascending movement. And he witnesses it in terms of his physical body. And that whole approach to spirituality is generated through the symbol of the body or of the ascending analogy of the body. Just as in the sadhana of the descending life and in the ordinary experience of perceptive or descending life, the form of the physical body is the symbol through which we interpret reality. Just so in the life of the spiritual seeker, the kundalini system, the chakra system, that whole symbolic life of energy is the symbol through which he interprets reality. So it seems very obvious to the spiritual seeker to think in terms of God above and Light above and ascent, and phenomena of various kinds, and these seem to represent Truth itself. Just as to the ordinary man, it seems very obvious to think in terms of the body, and bodily experience, and life in the world, and personal existence and all this as being just the way it is, and this is the symbol through which he interprets what must be God and heaven and all the rest. Well this chakra system, or the structure of the ascending force is just as arbitrary a symbol through which to interpret reality as the descending. And it was the comprehension of this that occupied me during this period of time, this year or so, in which I considered the whole affair of spiritual phenomena, and understanding awakened in the midst of spiritual phenomena, even as it had awakened previously in the midst of ordinary life.
So at this point, understanding arose, or was present entirely independent of this process of ascending force, or of spiritualizing activity, and also entirely independent of the process of descending force, or of an enlivening activity. It was utterly independent of all transformations ions, of all modifications, and stood eternally, already as Truth. And it became clear to me then that the process of Truth in this sense was entirely independent from any search relative to the spiritual life, or of any need to manipulate the ascending energy, or the so called spiritual faculties. And it was also just as obvious to me that there was no need to manipulate the descending life. That neither of these was the way of Truth, and that Truth was always already the case end stood entirely independent of such activities. And I saw how. what was identified as shakti in the forms of energies, ascending and descending, was in itself formless, uncontained, absolute, perfect, prior reality, one with consciousness. So there wasn’t Shiva and Shakti, or consciousness and force, movement, there was one absolute intensity, prior to all of its functional manifestations. So from the point of view of Truth, I saw that the chakras and the spiritual process were unnecessary, just as the body is unnecessary. It may be functionally present, but it is not necessary, and not in itself the instrument of Truth. It was just a functional mechanism, equally as interesting, perhaps equally as real to the manifest life as the ordinary descending functions, but not in itself the medium of Truth. And I saw that life was not a matter of experience and evolution through spiritual means. But that it was a radical present consciousness and intensity.
So at this point, very firmly then I moved into the point of view of understanding and the sadhana of understanding, and lived the life of enquiry, and lived this radical approach to spiritual things and no longer lived from the point of view the spiritual search, or the ordinary search; lived entirely independent of all of these processes. They went on (on) their own, but my peculiar spiritual activity was not identical to them, was no longer generated in their terms. This was right around the time then shortly before our going to- India this last time. Cause now the work that I needed to do during this last year was done, but I was no more in a position to be a teacher or to have any involvement with the life around me than I wan before, even less.
This was right around the time when there was all kinds of violence in New York and bombings and threats. and all of this nonsense, and I didn’t see any way that I could possibly integrate myself in this insane world that was just down in the street. It had nothing whatever to do with me, there was nothing I could say that would make a difference, I had no function to perform. And it wasn’t even very likely that survival was terribly possible or appropriate in such a place. And I didn’t have any teaching function especially for those who were around me at that time.
So I thought perhaps it would be best to just abandon my life in the United States, perhaps permanently. I made no plans to come back, sold everything that we had and went back to India. Now when I went back to India this third time, again my relationship with Baba had been changed. Now, Baba’s personal function, not his function in a personal way, but Baba himself, his function, in my own case, whether through personal or impersonal means had essentially fulfilled itself. There was nothing more to do. And it seemed clear to me that he understood that. Although it wasn’t particular obvious from his attitude or the attitude of those around him. But it seemed clear that he understood that my work with him in this sense was done. Although I had no need to create a break of any kind. I desired for it to go on, and for us to enjoy this relationship, and for me to be there, and enjoy his company, acknowledge him as Guru and go on. But that wasn’t the way it was to be, there was already in the second trip, the social thing was gone, but now not only was the social thing gone but there was a kind of negativity that replaced it, whereas in the second trip to India there was just, the social thing was gone, but the spiritual thing was going on, and there was no problem created by the absence of the social involvement.
But now, going back to India this third time, there was a sort of negative feeling about me generated when I was around Baba, in a sort of sense like, why and what am I doing here sort of feeling. And Baba never even looked at me, nodded at me, nothing, there was no acknowledgment whatsoever, even when I first came in, to bring flowers end all of that. Didn’t even look at me sitting there. He talked to Pat and Nina briefly, and didn’t say anything to me, and be never said anything to me, the whole time we were there. But this began to seem to me appropriate. This again, I looked at all of these phenomena that were awakened in this adventure of mine as part of the adventure as part of the thing that was being shown, not as absence of anything, but as actual evidence of the process itself.
So I just went on and worked in the Ashram in the daily way that we were expected to work, and there was no special energy or shakti or force in the Ashram for me or in any of the places there where I would meditate. It was very much the same as when I was sitting back at home, but that was all right. Cause I’d assumed that there was no separation between me and this activity now, so why should I feel anything special.
But I began to become sensitive to some other things going on. First of all I became sensitive to the force manifestation (of) at Nityananda’s samadhi site because there was an activity coming through Nityananda at that time, and still one personally through Nityananda, as I’ve described in the book at this time, going down there and having visionary experiences with Nityananda, in which Nityananda turned me from the human Guru, even the human Guru in his subtle form to the Shakti. And that brings us to this other experience, the beginning of the Christian experiences, the Virgin Mary in the garden, and all these Christian vision, and revelations, which were part also of the karmic purification on a very subtle level for me. And they were part of the last activities that needed to take place before my teaching work began, free of the traditional baggage, and my traditional karmic involvement with teaching.
But what was particularly unique about this time was that the Shakti became a personal manifestation. Up until this time, the Shakti was a force. That was how I experienced the shakti. There was the Guru, that was the individual, that was the personal form, but the force was impersonal, the force was just this force that operated in various ways. Now the Shakti came as a person. The Shakti came as the Virgin Mary, and then appeared as the traditional image of the Shakti in India, then appeared just as a cosmic feminine deity without any special traditional symbols. And that was the significance of Nityananda at this time. I would go down to his burial place every day and sit there for meditation and on this last day, after this long couple of weeks of intense Christian experiences and visions, be told me now the Shakti was my teacher. Just as Baba had told me the year before to let the process go on, to let the shakti teach. Now the personal form of the Shakti was to be my Guru, in a very visual visible and literal sense. And not any human guru, not even the Subtle Guru, Nityananda, and not the human Guru, Muktananda. Now the personal form of the Shakti was to be Guru.
And when I opened my eyes, flowers were given to me and I had seen this picture, which was a symbol This picture of Nityananda was a symbol then of the Guru, which I knew that I was now to give as a sacrifice. In other words, I was to surrender my relationship to the Guru, to the personal Guru, and I was to take these flowers and bring them to the Shakti as a sign of my acknowledgment of her as my Guru. Then I went down to the temple below where the Shakti image is, that’s on the wall there, we have in the Ashram, it’s next to Muktananda’s Ashram, and I walked around it three times and bowed and did all the traditional ceremonial things end gave these flowers as a sign of this sacrifice. Then I told Pat and Nina that we were going to go and we told the Ashram people that we were leaving the next day, and of course this made everybody very, and they were upset, Baba was obviously angry the next day, he hadn’t looked at me anyway, and now he wasn’t looking at me again, sure enough. And we went out and got on the bus.
And then we wend all through Europe, beginning with Jerusalem. And there were all kinds of experiences there, strange experiences, endless Christian experiences. All kinds of visions and phenomena: I wrote a diary on it that was in the first version of The Knee of Listening,, probably someday we’ll print that, but it was just this progress of visions and experiences of a Christian kind, going way back yo the ancient times, into the mysteries of Christianity Until finally it was all gone. What I intended to be our last stop, which was yo Fatima, where there was this mass vision in 1917 I believe, 18, and by then it was all gone. There was no longer my ancient karmic involvement with the Christian form of teaching, or perception of the spiritual process. So it was a purifying event in my own case, and it was purifying me into ray ancient involvement, not just my present religious mental involvement. But there was an ancient involvement with the Christian, the religious Christian teaching.
So all of this was dissolved, so that even in Jerusalem there were very strange experiences. We stayed in this nunnery that was built on one of the steps one of the stages of the cross. ‘It was built on the ground where they played the game scapegoat around Jesus. And the stones were down there where they scratched it into the stone. This was a gene that the soldiers played. And they played it with Jesus. And in the same building where we were was the place where he had the interview with Pilot, Pontious Pilot. And so during the night when we were there, I was lying in bed, and these tremendous forces were at work in me, and my head felt like it was breaking, felt like the bones were all muddy and bursting. And I wondered in this ecstatic state throughout this nunnery, and I think I was in my underwear, I might have even been nude, I don’t even remember. And if anybody would have found me, I probably would have been arrested. And I remember wandering throughout this nunnery into these strange dismal places underground, in this nunnery end underneath, you know on these steps wandering around down below where Jesus had been scarged, and hearing all these voices and echoing. Then I walked up into this chapel which has got the steps and this archway where’ this interview took place between Jesus and Pilot and there was all these strange phenomenon, ghosts’ and all kinds of madness. I myself was completely absorbed in this event that had taken place a long time agog and throughout our stay in. Jerusalem I sort of walked these stages of the cross every day and walked through all these ancient places, and went and duplicated the whole mystical and spiritual mystery of that time.
And one of the things that was particularly remarkable that I observed in this place was how different it was from the holy places in India. The holy places in India are always full. Like Nityananda’s samadhi. You go to one of these holy places and you feel the force, the energy, the bliss producing force. That’s the sense on general around the holy places in India. But it was entirely the opposite in Jerusalem. Here the characteristic experience was of the emptiness, the absence of force. And the symbol of the places of the ascended master Jesus ascended from here, Mohammed ascended from here. It’s the place where the deity and the symbols of spiritual life and Gurus and such people, prophets have ascended. The physical image. of the place, the force that is manifest in this place in Jerusalem is one in which the spiritual energy is entirely apart from the physical plane. Whereas in India the experiences of the spiritual force merged into this physical plane.
So anyway, these experiences went on and on and I was reading Christian books and becoming all kinds of Christians, becoming priests and mystics and holy men, I became all kinds of things. It was very strange. And by the time we got to Fatima it was all over. I was standing in this enormous place outside of the shrines in Fatima where thousands of people could stand, and it literally looked like a parking lot to me. There was nothing there, no feeling about it, no movements no Christianity, nothing, it was all gone.
And the thing that was external to me as Christ, as the Virgin, as all of these imageries and subtle reflections of the spiritual process now were no longer separate., The principles that were contained in the symbols of spiritual life were now realized in my own form.
So when I, we came back to the United States. I had never conceived of living in Los Angeles before. And I had no plans, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I (thought perhaps) Guess perhaps I was thinking at this point of perhaps writing, and I did begin to write The Knee of Listening within a few months. But there wasn’t anybody out here I was teaching especially. And apparently, accidentally or circumstantially I went over to the Vedanta Temple one day to look in their bookstore I suppose, and I noticed that they had this temple next door so I walked in there and sat down. And as soon as I sat down in there, the characteristic presence of the Mother Shakti manifested. Because during this whole period of time, of going to Christian holy places and all of that with the Virgin, the Virgin had disappeared ultimately, there was no Virgin. And there was really no personal manifestation of the Shakti anymore at this point. There was the force, but not this personal manifestation. But when I entered the Vedanta Temple on this first day, the personal manifestation, the personal presence of the Mother Shakti in her infinite form manifested, which is quite a different thing than the other Shakti appearing as a visual image. But it. was a cosmic presence, an obviously identifiable presence. And the reason it could be identified as it was was because my own nature had also begun to take on the form of this cosmic presence.
So there was a period of weeks when I would go back and forth to the Vedanta Temple as I have described in the book. I would ask the Shakti to come with me, and then she would be with me, there were all these games being played. Then I thought well I shouldn’t ask the Shakti to just be with me, and now she’s gone from this temple, or she’s just exclusively with me,I didn’t want any of that. So then she’d appear in the temple again, and I’d see light in the temple. All kinds of odd changes were going on, and it was simply the. transformation of the lower life into (to) cosmic life. It was a turnabout from the personal ego into the cosmic ego. And it was also a period of time in which the tantric sadhana was fulfilled in me.
So if you read the experiences in the Vedanta Temple carefully, you will see that they are a description of tantric sadhana, of the union of, what is symbolically the union of the male and the female yogis, their sexual union. And this is magnified in their conscious states into a higher form of union. In this case there was no physical symbolic form of it. I wasn’t there with a physical woman, but I was dealing with the Shakti as a woman, as a yogini, but as the cosmic yogini. And I was participating with her as a cosmic manifestation, myself. And so there was this play of energy, this play of cosmic tantra that went on for several weeks, and it culminated in this union. And it was the tantric bliss, perfection of the tantric sadhana, in which the (ultimate) duality of the cosmic manifestation is ultimately seen to be one, and experienced as one. And once this tantric union occurred, the whole aspect of cosmic yoga itself was fulfilled, and an entirely new process appeared afterwards, so that when I returned to the Vedanta Temple after this experience of the tantric union, there was no longer the person of the Shakti, there was no longer any yogic process, no dualities, no activity, there was only the prior Reality, intuitively realized, perfectly realized from that moment. So in fact (this) this instant in the Vedanta Temple after the tantric phase of the internal activity on a cosmic scale, not on a personal scale any longer.
It was at this point that in a certain real sense we could say that the adventure of my sadhana came to an end. But it wasn’t like a sudden mental realization or whatever, it was perfect realization, it transcended the mind and the life. And so its implications relative to the mind and the life had to be grasped over time. It wasn’t suddenly I got up and understood from the minds point of view exactly what had occurred, the mind dissolved, everything was resolved into the prior principle. So the process of living what was now the real condition took days, weeks, months to be recognized and implemented at the level of life and mind.
Shortly after this time, I began to write The Knee of Listening. There are some notes here that Sal had taken in our last discussion that probably I should read. It says, “He recognized the Shakti as omnipresent.” in other words, the Shakti became obvious as the very condition, the all embracing perfect presence in Reality, beyond any personal manifestation. The Person of the Shakti became infinite and my own presence in relation to the Shakti became limitless, void, absolute. “The experience of union transformed the lower.” In other words, this perfect union, tantric union on the highest level transformed everything below it, all the manifest functions were transformed by this fulfillment of sadhana. And also the personal and individual existence was transformed to a cosmic existence, a form of spiritual dimension.
There was a, particularly during this period of going back and forth to the Vedanta Temple, a lifting out of the point of view of consciousness from anything like personal sadhana, or witnessing of the effects of sadhana in the body, and in the person to a cosmic dimension.
But on this last day after the cosmic union, the tantric union, even this was transcended and perfected in the prior realization of the Heart, of the Self nature. And when, in this experience the winter before in New York, when the sahastra was severed, there was a realization that, it was not a matter of being in some encapsulated, descended, separated condition, and looking up through stages like on a ladder until you could grasp the Divine Light. It was instantly, priorly realized. The Light was instantly perfectly realized, prior to any sense of ascent or the need to ascend prior of any sense of obstruction, limitation.
So the Light was realized without obstruction, without prior conditions, as always already the case at that time. Now at this tine, the source of that Light, the source of which the Light itself is the reflection was perfectly enjoyed. And the immediately preceding incident that made the way for this falling into the Heart was the cosmic union, the tantric union.
But just so, this was not an exclusive realization. It began to reveal itself in quite another way as time went on. There was not a falling into the Heart exclusively in which there was no longer the generation of the conscious Light and the participation in the manifest and cosmic process. But there was a spontaneous regeneration of Amrita Nadi, or the relationship between the Heart and the Light, or real God and the Divine Light. So the dilemma was absolutely dissolved from this point, and all the forms that the dilemma takes.
Two peculiarly interesting and important phenomena arose. The one was the tacit awareness as the Heart and from the Heart on the right, this opening of the causal being. And another was this dropping of the belly that I mentioned. Now I’ve talked frequently of the center on the right, but I haven’t spoken a great deal about the dropping of the belly because as I said, I didn’t want to get into this whole affair of putting attention on the internal process until an appropriate time. But without getting into the whole affair that is behind all of that, It was as if a connecting thread that goes from the navel to the depths of the lower body were snipped, that contraction or vital shock. You feel something like a thread that holds the navel in and gives you that little cramp. It was just cut, and I began to feel full in the abdomen all the time, and walked around feeling that fullness with the belly pressed out, that you may feel sitting in meditation at times. At times this was stronger than in others, and particularly for a period of time, at this particular time, particularly for a few days, perhaps weeks following there was this sensation constantly. Then the pressure there became rhythmic, periodic, occurred when it was appropriate, but there was the continuous sense of fullness there, of a centering there. And that is a sign of the internal spiritual process. There is perfect conductivity when there is no longer vital obstruction, no longer this vital shock as a principle.
A very long section, it goes up from page 134 to about page 145, in which I describe the various phenomena that I witnessed, in myself, the implications, how I understood them now, what the point of view was, what the stable sense was of the phenomena of life. And I began to describe somehow the sense of my relationship to these phenomena, and what this generally amounts to is a description of Amrita Nadi, or the description of conscious life from the point of view of the full realization of Amrita Nadi, not the exclusive descent into or dissolution in the Heart, nor the exclusive ecstasies of involvement in the manifest light or subtle drama, nor of exclusive distraction in the descended processes of ordinary experience and perception. It was not exclusive in any sense, but a perfect ease relative to all of these phenomena.
The form of enquiry that had developed in my understanding seemed to go on continually in the Heart, “Avoiding relationship?” And as the enquiry penetrated every experience and every apparent dilemma, I would feel the bliss and energy of consciousness rise out of the Heart and enter the sahastra. Whereas this Amrita Nadi this intuitive structure, which duplicates the perfect structure or the Divine Reality was the form of consciousness, not exclusive containment in the Heart. Not exclusive distraction in the bright, or the light of the sahastra, nor exclusive involvement in the life manifestation, but continuous intuitive relationship to the entire process. Bliss and energy of consciousness rise out of the Heart and enter he sahastra, the highest point in consciousness, and stabilize there as a continuous current to the Heart.
I saw that this form, the form of Reality, the structure of consciousness was Reality itself. It was the structure of all things, the foundation, nature and identity of all things. It was the point of everything, it was blissful and free. That form of consciousness and energy was exactly what I had known as the bright. So this was simply the radical realization in the body, in the life and in every other level of that condition that existed from the very beginning, which is described in the first page of this book even.
As I continued in this way I remained stably as that form. There was no longer any adventure, no longer any transforming sadhana. And all things revealed themselves in Truth. The bright was that ultimate form of Reality, the Heart of all existence, the foundation of Truth and the yet unrealized goal of all seekers. So Amrita Nadi then became the medium of the intuitive form of comprehension and the stable state. And thus even while living in the ordinary way, anticipating the ordinary experiences, doing the same things, indulging myself, and seeing the effects of that, disciplining myself, seeing the effects of that, there was from this time then, a transformation of all of my activities, and the writing of the book began, teaching began. Various Siddhis of various kinds relative to teaching began to arise. Transformations and refinements of the external life began to arise. Moral transformation of my life began to arise. A spontaneous transformation that was appropriate to the stable condition began to arise quite spontaneously over these last few years, coincident (with my) with the awakening function of teaching.
Now one of the things (that was) that seemed important to me was to discover precedence for this whole process that had been enacted in me, and this fundamental enjoyment that was now alive in me. I thought it would be good to find a such precedence for very much the same reason that I previously decided that I would not teach for motivations of my own, but sought a traditional acknowledgment and traditional permission as the beginning of my teaching work. Just so I thought it would be useful to have a traditional justification or a traditional reflection to which I could point to corroborate my own testimony, and to align myself with the traditional literature in some way, because of what people would be coming to me with. So I began to look through the various things, and the various literature, and none of them in themselves represented it.
But then in the case of Maharshi, I found a duplication of many of the fundamentals at any rate of my experience, the process that had come on in me. Just as it went on spontaneously in him, it essentially went on spontaneously in me. Except in my own case it was different function to be served in my own case. I have a different function than Maharshi had. And I exist in a different time and place. There were different reasons for certain of the phenomena in my own case than there were in his. But in terms of the fundamentals, there was a real alignment between the two. First of all the fact that it was a spontaneous event, the whole adventure, all these 30 some odd years was a spontaneous activity in my own case. Just as in his case, (was) particularly his very brief thing was very spontaneous, his brief transformation. But just as in his brief transformation there was this death dramatization, in my own case there was also. And Just as he was aware of this center on the right, I was also, and just as who was aware of the Heart, or the Self Reality, real God as being the fundamental force of realization, I was also he spoke of Amrita Nadi , and he spoke very much in terms of all of the things with which I intensely associate myself and my teaching. There were of course some differences, because of the difference in his function, and the difference in his communication. And one of the fundamental ones is that he speaks of Amrita Nadi essentially as a path of descent, of movement down from the yogis region, subtle region of the sahastra into the Self. And he sees that as the ultimate Coal of sadhana. In my own case there was also this movement downward through Amrita Nadi into the Heart. But there was also the spontaneous regeneration of Amrita Nadi. And Maharshi does not speak of this. Generally he speaks only of the Heart in more or less exclusive terms. Though in some conversations you find him trying to speak in some way of the other side of it. Of how this same Self that is realized in this exclusive way is also the foundation of our present life, the present manifestation. But he didn’t really coordinate himself with that form of teaching that was not his function. Doesn’t mean his realization was limited in any sense, it is his function.
God manifests as the Guru for specific purposes, to form a specific function. And each Guru, true Guru is a manifestation of the Divine function appearing in a particular way and a particular time and place. And God is not Exclusively identified with that function, so that he can only be recognized in the form forever, or that particular Guru is the only Guru who ever lived, or the best who ever lived and all that sort of nonsense. The Divine is continually operating, and the Guru is a peculiar form of his operation.
It’s just that in Maharshi’s case there was a unique function, but also many forms of his communication that were precisely usable by me, so that I continue to use certain of these terms that I found there, rather than to use arbitrary terms of my own. I use, I have at least up to now been using technical terms, like Amrita Nadi and the Heart, such, and I use Maharshi’s teachings as a reference, to corroborate or to help explain certain of my own ideas. You must understand, when studying the work of Maharshi as with anyone else, you must understand the limiting point of view that is also present in his teaching, because of his particular function and the particular time and place in which he was operating. And you can’t separate the teaching from the teacher. And so his words taken of themselves and tried to apply to yourself as a method of seeking whatever is completely false. You wouldn’t have done that during his lifetime. During his lifetime you would have lived his teaching under the conditions of Satsang with him. But the work of all the Guru’s is assimilated in the Guru’s that follow them, and fulfilled in them, and the next thing that needs to be (to be) added is added in that next Guru. So it’s appropriate then to examine Ramana’s particular teaching relative to its limitations as a form of sadhana, the Heart as an exclusive, essentially spoken of in terms of an exclusive realization.
But I speak from the point of Amrita Nadi, the already realized intuition and presence of the Divine nature founded in the Heart and in the Divine Light. And it is the prior instrument and foundation of the spiritual parth, not its goal, and it is not exclusive in any sense. It is absolutley capataible with any conditional state. And it is the creative form and prior freedom that is ours within any condition that arises.
At the very end then of this biographical section I began to speak of enquiry and of understanding as the essential path, as the radical path of spiritual life, not any of these other motivated and exclusive forms.
The rest of the book is an attempt then to describe this process of understanding itself, this radical process. But there is an admonition at the very end of the autobiography relative then to the parth of understanding that’s now about to be described. On page 160, “The way itself depends on true hearing, which involves true listening or attention. And true hearing must lead to self observation, understadning and real enquiry.”
In other words, enquiry is not something you take up because you’re motivated to get free. It’s not, this enquiry that’s about to be desscribed and that has been mentioned periodically in the biography itself, it’s not a method or a technique that you take up. It depends on true hearing, which involves true listening or attention. In other words Satsang, listening to the Guru, living the conditions of the Guru. And before such Satsang becomes enquiry, becomes truly usable as enquiry, it must lead to self observation, understanding or insight, and then become real enquiry. And at this point we’re getting into a description of this process of meditation itself, which I will describe later, I’ve already described in previous talks.