The Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace,
by Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj),
Published by the Dawn Horse Press, 1979, pp. 46-51.
Renouncing the Search for the Edible Diety
Part III
BUBBA: Throughout history human beings have been looking for something to sustain them. Everything from Jesus to Amanita muscaria, the sacred mushroom, is claimed to be the panacea, the sustainer, Krishna, the thing that rejuvenates, that keeps us forever alive and full. Because of our metaphysical presumption of unlove, we are always seeking for the Sustainer outside ourselves. And, all over the world and throughout human time, cults have developed around magical somethings-or-other that represent food, the connection to what sustains. All holy rituals are about food. Most often they literally involve food: sacrificing food, eating food, “this is my body, this is my blood,” killing calves, taking things from the holy place and absorbing their energies. The Sacrament of Universal Sacrifice, which all devotees in our Church engage daily, may also tend to be used in this cubic fashion, if right devotional responsibility is not presumed.
The search for the cubic sustainer, or food, the Food Deity, the Edible Master, is a futile search, but still it occupies men all over the world. The root impulse of every single culture, every society, every religion, is to find the Edible Deity, to come into mystical and even direct physical contact with what sustains us perfectly. This whole search – and its fulfillment in these imaginative cultic occasions, these meals (including the ordinary daily meal); is the product of our error, our suffering, our irresponsibility. It is true that we must be sustained. We must come into immediate Communion with what is Absolute. But this cultic ritual, this coming into contact with the Edible Deity in objective form, the great parent sustainer, is not true sustenance. It is a form of delusion, of eating in the desert. It is plunder.
The traditions of “saviors” all over the world are a religious dimension of the search for the Edible Deity. That is one way of analyzing this tendency or game in the theatre of human life. But there are cults surrounding edible things all over the world – magical edible things, important edible secrets known only to a few. At the lowest or most elemental level are foods that are just good for you, or herbs that will rejuvenate you, like ginseng, or herbs that will make you hallucinate and suddenly see something that is remarkable, something that turns you on and makes you feel happy.
But these are not the highest and most famous forms of the Edible Deity. The highest form is still basically legendary. It is called by various names, but “soma” is probably the best known. In our time many people are actively looking for it. They are trying to identify various plants and other substances from secret, far-off places all over the world as this soma, which, when taken, completely rejuvenates you and makes you an immortal. Partaking of this soma is the same as taking the “bread and wine,” you see. It is a version of the same ritual. And many people are actively looking for it, just as people are actively looking for parentlike saviors, the cultic and Edible Deities.
But if you can consider the whole argument that I have presented to you, perhaps you can also understand that the true “soma” is not something that you can eat. Of course, there are good things to eat and do. But the true “soma” is the transforming internal secretion of the whole body in its natural state. The secret is to get the whole bodily being into its natural state, in which it is naturally secreting all those substances that rejuvenate it, enliven it, keep it psychically awakened and aware in the fullest possible sense. Now we are toxic, enervated, our energy and attention are bound exclusively and strategically to certain kinds of functions; essentially the lower or gross functions of money, food, and sex. We are in conflict. Our blood is impure. Our cells are full of toxic accumulations. We are socially disturbed and in mystery about everything altogether, waiting for something sustaining to appear on TV!
Somebody is going to make the announcement on TV sometime, about the ultimate, absolute, scientific, newsworthy discovery. The Edible Deity is going to appear there sometime&emdash; today’s newscasters, if they can live so long, may get to announce it. And then millions of people will all go and join that cult.
So there are cults of the Edible Deity still appearing everywhere. People try to eat me! People come to me for that purpose, to establish a cult, to engage in a conventional and irresponsible association with me as the Edible Source at the center. But the responsible devotee living in Divine Communion, enjoying the advantage of right relationship to one who is the whole body, Enlightened, such a devotee is literally responsible in daily practice for the simple process, the Law, of his own structural being. That functional bodily being therefore continues to grow. It becomes purified and rejuvenated in the ordinary way. And from time to time the devotee may fast and rejuvenate himself. After he purifies his cells and blood, he may take herbs and other substances that intensify and restimulate the glands and the higher mechanisms of the body.
However, the true “soma” is not eaten in the form of any objective meal. The “soma” is what is released in the body when we live the Law of sacrifice. The “soma” is released in the most absolute Divine Enjoyment. It is the nectar of Amrita Nadi, the Current of Immortal Bliss – “amrit” is the ancients’ word for the “Divine Nectar” (Amrita Nadi literally means ‘the Nerve of Divine Nectar,” the Current of Immortal Bliss). In some sense it is a physiological process; the higher glands begin to secrete substances that are now suppressed because of the impure condition of the blood and the attenuated energy and attention of the being. These substances are secreted by the glands, and they rejuvenate and awaken the various psycho-physical centers.
But the “soma” of the whole body is not accumulated in cultic fashion. It is sacrificed, thrown on the fire of the heart, of Divine Ignorance. We do not know what a single thing is, not even our own bodily being. We are priests in our ultimate Realization. In the ultimate Realization of Truth, we are not simply sustained and made immortal in objective independence. We are made a perfect sacrifice. We are made immortal not by accumulating benign things from without, but by throwing the whole cycle of assimilation and elimination to Infinity. The body becomes like a ladle of butter, and we throw it into the infinite Ignorance-Radiance, which we intuit from the heart, the whole bodily being. That is how we become immortal;literally by dying while alive.
The death toward which we are naturally and ultimately disposed is not a negative process. It is not the result of unlove, and it does not occur at the end of a degrading process of toxemia and enervation. We are structurally disposed to be awakened, toe to crown, through the natural cycle of evolution or growth toward which our birth moves us. Then, having realized our birth from the point of view of the heart, or of love, we come to the point that we can throw the whole body to Infinity. And that event corresponds to our death, our true death, the true elimination of our independent, manifest, bodily, separate existence. We dissolve in space and time. The body is laid down in an apparently natural death – or perhaps it even dissolves in a flash of brightness.
Death is where we are going, you see. Death from the egoic, Narcissistic point of view is a torment, the result of sin (“missing the mark,” or unlawful action), unlove, toxemia, and enervation. It is a dreadful possibility. Thus, we all are trying to find the Edible Deity so that we can keep on living. We seek a fake immortality. But, even structurally, we are disposed to die, just as the flowers cycle toward death with ease and show no negative signs at all. We are clarified, immortalized, glorified, by our true and ultimate death.
And we return to the planes of manifest experience again and again until we can be a sacrifice in every dimension. When we become that sacrifice in any plane, then we are translated out of that dimension of experience. It becomes unnecessary to us because we have become a sacrifice there, not because we have turned away from it or wrenched ourselves out of it through conventional yogic or mystical activity, inverting attention and going up and away. Through Love, through commitment to relationship, through Radiance of feeling-attention to Infinity, through perfect Communion with That which sustains us we are translated out of all the manifest conditions that tend to limit our feeling-attention. We are translated into the Domain of unqualified Feeling-Attention itself, the Divine or Perfect Domain, which is beyond even the heavens, and which has no archetype or symbol in our present mind and psyche.
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