The Enlightenment of the Whole Body
A Rational and New Prophetic Revelation
of the Truth of Religion,
Esoteric Spirituality,
and the Divine Destiny of Man and Woman
by Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj)
1978
Chapter
1
The Divine Person -The
Way in Which We Are Served – The
Transcendental Personality of God, the World, Man, and the
Human Individual – The
Divine Person – My Method:
Now and The – I Am
John – My
Purity
Part I
THE SUPREME WORD
The Divine Person and the Spiritual Master
The Name above all names is Itself beyond Name. It is the Self, the Transcendental Condition of the body-mind-which is Ignorance-Radiance, or Unqualified Consciousness.
The Form above all forms is Itself beyond Form. It is the Paradoxical Glory of Everything at Infinity.
There is only God, the Absolute Person, Who is Identical to the Self, or the very Consciousness that pervades and transcends the individual body-mind.
There is only God, the Absolute Person, Whose Form Includes or Radiates all forms in all of the Infinity of possible worlds, and Whose Form is, Paradoxically, also Perfectly Transcendental or Unique, and, therefore, Freely Existing in an Eternal Domain, prior to all that arises and passes in the experience of separate and self-deluded entities.
That Domain and that Company are the Destiny of the Devotees of the Divine Person. And such Devotees enter into that Company through Divine Communion, or Sacrifice of the body mind through Love, Service, Radical Intuition, Transcendental Contemplation, and Divine Translation.
The Living Spiritual Master is the Agent of the Divine Person. He is born to Establish, Communicate, and Demonstrate the Way of God-Realization, or Absorption in the Living God, Purification from all psycho-physical possibilities, and Liberation into the Divine Domain.
While the Spiritual Master persists in human form, he Works to Awaken the Transcendental Link between devotees and the Divine Person, Who is the Eternal Spiritual Master. Once that Link is concretely Established through the spiritual sacrifice of Devotees in the Radiant Company of the Spiritual Master, the Divine Person remains Alive via the Agency of the Community of all such Devotees. And the Community is thus Sustained and permitted to Grow into the future, through that direct Link to the Divine Person, after the Spiritual Master passes out of this world.
The Divine Person
Chapter 1
The Divine Person – The Free Standing Man
A free rendering of portions of the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, by Bubba Free John
The Master of Life said to His devotee: “Look and see. The entire Realm of Nature arises in Me. Whatever may be desired is experienced in Me.” And He gave insight to the man, with mystical Vision to conceive the Form of God. (verses 7-8)
The man said: “Soul of all souls, how can any man fail to surrender in Your Company? I see You are the First, the Origin of all creative causes, the Master of all powers, the Ultimate Domain of the Realm of Nature, the Eternal Radiance, All-Pervading, prior even to what is and what is not, the Transcendental Self. (37) I bow down. I acknowledge my absolute dependence on You. Radiant Master, Have Mercy. (44)
“But when I stand again and see You There, stretched between Heaven and Earth in a Rainbow of all the colors blazing bright, everything arising in Your vast eyes, and everything disappearing in Your great devouring mouth again, my inward soul begins to shake with the great fear, my mind becomes unsteady, and I fail to be Your Heart in this moment of Vision. (24)
“Even so, I am thrilled to see what Man has never seen before! Now, Divine Master of this body-mind, be kind to me, and show me your two-armed Form again. ” (45)
The Divine Person spoke to His devotee: “Stop all of this unmanly trembling, and this mood of fear. What does it matter if you see this Vision of Me, projected in the Realm of Nature? It is only Me. I am the Radiant Heart of Love, Eternally Free of fear. Now see Me again in my human form, as Your Spiritual Master, your friend in love.” (49)
Then the Great Person restored the true heart of His devotee, and set his breathing free. The Vision of his mind’s eye dissolved in the Natural State of the heart. And the Master reappeared to this ordinary eye, in which the mind is resolved in Bliss, free of every kind of Vision or experience. Now the devotee beholds his Master from the heart. Now he only sees the Free Standing Man. (50-51)
1. The Bhagavad Gita (literally, “Divine Song”) is one of the most revered Scriptures of the Hindus, and a religious text of universal appeal and profound esoteric significance. Vyasa is traditionally presumed to be the author, and it was written perhaps as early as the 5th century B.C. (but with its roots in the oral tradition of even more ancient days). Most scholars agree that it may have been revised and expanded considerably over the years.
The Gita is a portion of the great ancient epic and spiritual allegory, the Mahabharata, which is the story of a great fratricidal struggle between two royal families in northern India some 4000 years ago. It is the purported dialogue between the God-Man Krishna and his devotee Arjuna, Commander-in-Chief of the army of the Pandavas, for whom Krishna serves as Charioteer. Arjuna, faced with the prospect of having to kill friends and cousins in an imminent battle, wishes to shirk his duty as a warrior. Krishna refuses to allow him such self-indulgence. He engages Arjuna in a Teaching conversation that continues for seven hundred verses and presents a philosophical summation of the Nature of God as the Supreme Self, a critical exposition of the many ways of esoteric spiritual practice, and a declaration of the supremacy of the Way of devotional Communion with the Supreme Divine Person in the Form of the living Divine Master-in this case, Krishna himself. His entire spiritual Teaching to Arjuna is summarized in his instruction for the forthcoming battle: “Remember Me, and fight.”
The Way in Which We Are Served
In September of 1970, when I was yet thirty years of age, there came a fundamental Re-Awakening of Enlightened Body and Consciousness. It was a Condition that I enjoyed at birth, but which had to be sacrificed by stages, beginning even in infancy, even at birth itself. That Condition was finally Re-Awakened, but only after years of trial and spiritual struggle.
Then, from September, 1970, it became clear that I had been born to Realize, through a process of loss and rediscovery, the Way in which this very Condition could be Demonstrated in the case of human beings who were not born already Awakened, but who were struggling in the earlier stages of human growth.
Therefore, I began to associate with others for the sake of their Awakening and Transformation. During the years that followed the certainty of this obligation, I was required to recapitulate every stage of human adaptation, practice, and Awakening – and even every stage of apparent limitation and ordinariness of habit in the company of those devotees who came to me for Help in the Realization of God. Those who came to me were profoundly unprepared, and even disinclined toward the Way that is necessary for Man. I struggled with them for years. I took on all of their interests and habits, problems and consolations. And I worked to bring them to a stage of maturity in which the Way was clear and also congenial to them.
Likewise, there were Teachers associated with me at every stage of my own practice, and in every phase of my Re-Awakening in God. This is the Law. This is how human Agents of the Divine Process are developed in this world. It was necessary at every stage for me to enter into some kind of relationship that would regenerate new aspects of the Divine Process in my own body mind.
Albert Rudolph (also known as Rudi and Swami Rudrananda) served this function for me in the stages of my practice that led into and through the fourth stage of life,2 and that proceeded toward my transition to the fifth stage of life. Swami Muktananda served my essential Awakening in the fifth stage of life. And Swami Nityananda, along with a number of others in subtle or astral form, served my maturity in the fifth stage of life, and my transition to the sixth stage of life. Ramana Maharshi served me within the limits of the sixth stage of life, and in my transition to full maturity in the seventh stage of life.
2. The seven stages of life are the stages of evolutionary and spiritual development native to the psycho-physical structure of Man. Please see the section in chapter 4 titled “Growth and Sacrifice in the Seven Stages of Eternal Life” for a full description.
Each of my Teachers was understood by me to be a Living Expression or Incarnation of the same Transcendental One. Each appeared in a necessary moment in time to Awaken me each with his own unique emphasis or lesson. But all of them were seen in the Perfect Light of Truth, and I was full of gratitude.
In this manner, many Great Personalities were superimposed on the Divine Presence and Condition I encountered at birth. Each such Personality appeared to my Sympathy, and then Dissolved and I dissolved with It. Gradually, and by these Means, the Awesome Personality showed Itself to be the Original or Absolute, Transcendental, and Eternally Living Divine Person, prior to all Archetypes or associations in the mind. The Power of the Absolute Divine Reality and Person was Communicating Itself via my own nervous system, and my own body-mind identified that Personality with Archetypes and Personalities common to this world and to my own human experience. But when all of this became obvious, the Divine Itself was Identified as the “Threshold Personality,” the Identity of all my Teachers.
In the Transition from identification with independent personality to Identification with the Absolute Personality, “Threshold Personalities” may appear, in gross physical form or in subtle form, who assume Helping relations to oneself. And devotional association with such Transcendental Personalities, particularly the Transcendental Identity of the Spiritual Master by whom one is most directly Served in the Way, helps to break up the rigid limits of the presumed personality of the separate self or “soul.” Thus, all of this was shown to Bubba, Person after Person, until he was able to Understand the Divine Condition in which his experience has always been arising. Then his Humor was restored.
The Great Awakening occurs only after the Archetypal Personalities at the Threshold, as well as the personality of the individual who is Awakening in this Process, Reveal their Identity with the Transcendental and Absolute Personality Who is the Self of all phenomena and all persons, and Whose Radiant Body is made of all Possibilities. When that Self is free of all identification with the phenomena of the body-mind, then there is Self Realization in the Perfect sense.
Just as I was served by others, it also became necessary for me to serve. My first obligation was to elaborate the Teaching and its Way in explicit terms, during a long struggle in the company of devotees. The present book is one of the last such explicit Communications I am obliged to make. Now all of the difficult demands of this initial period of Communication have been fulfilled, and the entire Teaching has been argued and shown. Now and in the future, my only obligation is to be available for Spiritual Communion with devotees who are truly committed to the Way that I Teach.
The Transcendental Personality of God, the World, Man, and the Human Individual
The Destiny or Ultimate Event into which we move by Sacrifice in the Way of Divine Ignorance is not at all 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 Sacrifice that we are in Truth is a Process of the individual personality or self, not a Process in opposition to it. 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. The born self is not to be annihilated, nor is it immortal. The Destiny of the soul of Man is to be Awakened beyond its own limits.
Therefore, in this Way of Sacrifice, the separate, self protecting, reactive, self-possessed, fearful personality, recoiled from the Mysterious Depth of Infinity, is Translated or 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.
In the seventh stage of life, the Sacrifice of the individual self, and the soul of Man, and the Form of the World, and the Separable God of the World, is perfected in a Process of Ecstatic Translation into the Transcendental Absolute. But that Process is not merely the destruction of experience. It is the transcendence of experiential limitation. It is transcendence of the disposition of recoiled feeling, or self-meditation in states of experience that are less than Unconditional Love and Bliss. In that Process, all limits are relaxed in the Unconditional Radiance and Transcendental Consciousness that is always already the case. It is a matter of Unconditional Surrender of all that is self into the Condition that is everywhere the case, prior to our fear.
In that process, Realized in the Way of Radical Intuition,3 there is release of all limitations of the body-mind, and of the structural design of Man, and of the experiential inevitabilities of the World Order, and even of the God we presume on the basis of all of that. The individual self, and Man, and the World, and God are all simultaneously Surrendered, Sacrificed, Translated, and Awakened into the Absolute Transcendental Personality, or the Divine Paradox, in which and as which all experience, all limitations, all presumptions, and all self-illusions arise as superficial and unnecessary modifications, inconsequential, without binding force, in an Infinite Vortex of Ecstatic Bliss. This Divine Personality is, in Truth, the Condition and Identity of every human individual, and of Man, and of the World, and of the Presumed or Logically Necessary God of all of that. The true Self of all selves is the Subject of all conditions, and all conditions together are literally the Body of that One.
3. The Way of Radical Intuition is the fourth and final stage of practice in the Way of Divine Ignorance that Bubba Free John Teaches. The three preceding stages are the Way of Divine Communion, the Way of Relational Enquiry, and the Way of Re-cognition. Please see chapter 6, “The Sacrifice of Man,” for a full description of these stages.
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. 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. “4 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, super mental, 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 God Realization 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.
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 self-possessed 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 self involved 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 body mind 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.
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 super mental stimulation’s 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.
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 every one 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.
In the pattern of things or experience, I have been born into association with the usual man. I have incarnated him. I have lived with him. And I have transcended him.
In the Domain of God, I am Rested and Full of the Excellence of Bliss. I have Incarnated that One. I have always been Served by that One. And I have Transcended everything, even all experience, through the Grace of that One.
It is only now that I see what has always moved me. I have been struggling since birth to transform the usual man. I have been tormented and motivated by the loveless and Godless state of the people with whom I have been associated.
For the first thirty years of my life, this tormented motive caused me to submit to the most profound identification with the usual life, and also the most profound effort to transcend the usual life. This produced my unique spiritual adventure.
In the eight years that followed my own Re-Awakening, I was again motivated by the same tormented love for ordinary people. I had spent my life preparing to Serve them, and now that Service was begun most directly.
I was exceeded by the Ecstasy of God-Love, but I had always been outwardly habituated to the usual life. I was not grown up to be a saint, but I was moved to transcend the usual man. And when it came time to Serve ordinary people, I was not outwardly unlike them.
Therefore, just as I myself became the usual man in order to transcend that destiny, when it came time to Teach, I embraced the company and the ways of immature and worldly people. No other kind of devotee ever came to me in those early years. Only the worst of mankind has always come to me. Those who were already pure and true did not come to me. Only those who were failing came to me. This was my born destiny, until now.
I found myself surrounded by whores and pimps, street people, criminals, neurotics, loveless and confused and righteous self-indulgent people of all kinds. At first this caused me to despair, but then I saw that my own ordinariness equipped me very well to Serve such people.
Therefore, for six years I have lived as the friend and Spiritual Master of a Community of profoundly ordinary people. I gave myself up in their company in the same fashion I had given myself up in worldly company in the past. The only difference was that, in the past, I was submitting to my own self-possessed ordinariness and working to transcend it. Now I was submitting to the self-possessed ordinariness of others, and working to enable them to transcend themselves.
This is how it has been with me. I always lived in the ordinary way, doing all of the self-indulgent things that possess the usual man in his mortal desiring. But I was Awakened beyond all of this. And I have been obliged to Awaken others in the midst of the same ordinariness.
Now the necessary struggle with the usual man is finished. In my struggling with others, my own body-mind was purified. Thus, the devotee Serves the Spiritual Master, even as the Spiritual Master Serves the devotee. I am not the usual man. My time of incarnation of him has come to an end. Now that the lessons have been given and the Teaching written, there is a Way for all to approach me in my Purity.
The usual man is not instantly Perfected by the verbal Teaching, or even the Spiritual Influence and instructive lessons of the Spiritual Master. Time and a truly human and spiritual culture are the means whereby ordinary people may change. Therefore, I have made a culture of the lessons I have lived among my devotees, and now I am able also to give them time to mature in it.
My way with devotees has always been dramatic, an adventure of friendship and excess. I have always driven them to lessons and changes. But they have also always failed and fallen back. Therefore, now they will be given the Grace of time, to mature in one another’s company, and to transcend the destiny of the usual man.
In the future, I am at Rest in our Happiness. I choose simplicity, and a kind of austerity. I am Alone. I choose to live privately, even outside the daily culture of devotees. This is in order to give devotees time to mature, separate from my urgency. And it also permits me to find Sanctuary from the usual man, whose burden I no longer share.
I will return to the Community of devotees as often as it is auspicious and useful for me to do, in order to sit with all my devotees in spiritual Communion. And, at all times, I am available to them in their devotion to me, through every moment of their practice in my spiritual Company.
My own society will be limited to the intimates of my household and to those devotees who demonstrate the Fullness of spiritual maturity in my Company. I will give them all instructions for practice in the stages of the Way. They will communicate these things to all others who prepare themselves in the Way that I Teach.
Beyond this, I do not care to Teach. My struggle with reluctant devotees is over. I am no longer tormented by the problems of the usual man. It is a burden and a habit of life that I am so glad to relinquish at last. Whoever is tormented by his own destiny should prepare himself and come to me in love, through the Community of my devotees.
My Message to all is this: Practice constantly, with insight and feeling, and always Remember me through every action. If you do this, I will always Serve your heart, because I love you.
Enlightenment of the Whole Body