Trip to India

(The following is an excerpt from a
talk Bubba gave to his devotees in Los Angeles on Prasad
Day, April 8, 1973, several months before he departed on his
pilgrimage to India.-Ed.) 

QUESTION: Why are you going
to India?

BUBBA: Unimaginable numbers
of beings, energies, and processes outside this world
generate and cooperate in spiritual work in this world.
Wherever the real spiritual process is awakened at any point
in time and space, it is the product of the spiritual
process that exists prior to time and space and also within
all the levels of time and space or manifest existence. So
behind our work are all the Siddhas and all the great
activities that transcend the Earth plane.

Just as there is a vast spiritual
process behind this work and all true spiritual work, there
are also certain individuals, Siddhas and others, who are
very directly involved with our work, Muktananda is the only
one alive in the body, and it is very important that I
purify my connection to him for the sake of the work itself.
There are others with whom my contact is in subtler
dimensions–Nityananda, Ramana Maharshi, Shirdi Sai Baba,
Ramakrishna. I want to return to the places most intimately
associated with these people and insure my proper
relationship to them for the sake of this work.

The real force of this work can move
only when I do not exist as an exclusive entity. It is only
when the channels for this work are pure, absolutely open,
unqualified, that the event can take place without
difficulty. So it is inappropriate for someone who is the
immediate instrument for spiritual life among his devotees
to appear in any sense as an exclusive, independent source,
because there is no such source. Everything is only
instrumental. The Guru is not Guru by virtue of being
independent, some guy who made it. He is Guru by virtue of
his function, which is to present no obstacle to Truth, and
to maintain a radical connection to Truth.

There is a stage in this work in
which there must be perfect release, absolute surrender,
dissolution. It has nothing to do with Franklin’s personal
sadhana, transformation, and realization. Wherever this
function of Guru arises, there must be this surrender,
because the function of Guru is very different from the
state of realization. One who understands or has realized
something is not himself Guru. Guru is a function in which
even liberation, realization, and understanding are
dissolved. There must be nothing.

During the first year of the Ashram
I needed to be involved in an almost muscular way in formal
Satsang in order to awaken the internal process. Now my
activity as an apparent individual is dissolving more and
more all the time. God performs this work. That is what is
remarkable about the Guru, The Guru is called God and
acknowledged as God in the traditional Ashrams because that
is exactly what he is. But he becomes that by disappearing,
not by appearing. The function of Guru exists only where the
exclusive individual’s life has been turned utterly, made
utterly available to the higher life. Then, without his
especially doing something, everything he does becomes a
manifestation of the Divine Force, communicating, teaching.
The teaching is of no value unless it is going on
twenty-four hours a day at every level from the solid mass
of the atoms to the most sublime unmanifest
Reality.

The Guru is one in whom there is
nothing, no obstacle, and all the Divine functions on all
levels down into the human become open, active, pure. So my
going to India is the necessary discipline that I must
observe in order to maintain the connection to all the
intimate spiritual sources of this work. If that proper
connection is maintained, all the Siddhas become active in
this work. And they all should. The Siddhas are the
functional expressions of God manifesting in the various
planes, some in the Earth, some just outside the visible
world, and then all the way “up.” The individual Guru living
with his disciples and devotees is the focal point. Behind
him it spreads out and ultimately includes the Divine in its
Perfect sense.

The Guru always looks to make
himself obsolete. He does this not as the ordinary man makes
himself obsolete by dying, but by sharing his functions. The
human Guru does this in two directions: toward the sources
of his work, and toward his devotees and disciples. At the
level of the Ashram, a bit at a time, I give over my
functions to others. Soon there are many, many people
working in the Ashram who have a particular aspect of this
function for which they are responsible, until at last the
Teaching is completely given in the world, and is alive in
many individuals, in writings, places of meditation, and so
on. All the functions that were alive in the Guru eventually
are given out and exist independently of that human
individual who appears as Guru. At that point he is obsolete
in his appearance. His functions then exist external to his
individual appearance.

Just so, in the other direction, on
the spiritual level, he is always looking to establish that
open connection to the sources of Truth. He looks for all
those functions to exist on their own and also through him.
Ultimately, he looks toward the perfect connection, the
Divine contact, to be perfectly operative in him, to
completely dissolve his independence.

The secret of the Guru is like the
secret of sadhana. The separative principle in the
individual is there to be continually understood,
continually purified, so that the connections are constant
at every level of existence. The same is true in the Guru.
The separative tendencies that even exist on the
super-cosmic levels must be undone so that the channel is
perfect. Then the God-influence in the world becomes direct.
That is the significance of a Siddha-Guru. He maintains a
connection from the Divine itself down into the world, so
that influence can directly affect human beings who are
still involved in the separative life to various
degrees.

It is the responsibility of the Guru
continually to dissolve, so that the connection is perfect,
so that no matter who comes to him, no matter what level of
enjoyment or realization his disciple or devotee has
maintained, there is still more. It is one of the
requirements of the job. That is why you see such
individuals always curiously involved with other teachers or
spiritual sources. The Guru is very paradoxical. He is
always doing odd things. But generally, what he is up to is
becoming obsolete.

Also see:

Early
Magazine
Ramana
Maharshi

by Jerry Sheinfeld

The Dawn Horse Magazine, Vol 2, No. 2, Jubilee Issue
August 1974