No Remedy Compiled & edited by Bonnie Beavan
and Nina Jones in collaboration with Bubba Free John. NO REMEDY Part Two: The Complications of Sadhana THE WAY OF DIVINE COMMUNION On Love-Desire from a talk given on February 15, 1976 (1) There is a vast difference between eroticism, the
conventional obsessiveness that some couples feel for one
another, and the real process of love-desire which may serve
a non-conventional understanding of sexuality. Love-desire
is a play of every sexually-oriented couple, of every
man-woman relationship, of every kind of sexual
relationship. Love and desire are the implications of these
unions (2) Most conventional relationships are a play upon the
failure of either love or desire. Many couples are very
“horny” for one another, always wanting to make it with one
another, basically because of the failure of love. The more
love fails, the more erotic they become. They are really
very cool toward one another, but also very horny at the
same time. Then there are other couples in whom there is the
failure of desire. In them there is a kind of conventional
exploitation of the feeling of love. They are frigid,
impotent, and sexless, but always holding hands and kissing
and being very cozy with one another. Their obsession is the
result of the failure of desire (3) The true and useful form of mutual relationship that
includes sexuality is one in which both love and desire are
positively present. In that case there is not the usual
erotic motivation to exploit sex with one another. It is
undone through love. On the other hand, there is not the
similarly conventional motivation to hold hands and be
children with one another. That motivation is undone through
the force of desire (4) Where there is the full complement of love and desire
in a relationship, there is not the seedy, erotic
inclination to exploit one another all the time, nor is
there the kind of distance where there is no love. Then,
every occasion of intimacy that includes sexuality is
creative, because there is no mind, no imagery. There isnt
the sense that you can succeed at it. When you are horny,
you know you can succeed in sexual relations, because you
are basically obsessed by the exclusive principle of
desire (5) Where there is both fullness of love and fullness of
desire, you do not have the feeling that you are going to
succeed at it. You do not even have the feeling that you can
necessarily have the orgasm on the occasion of lovemaking.
Orgasm becomes a possibility as the intimacy is played out
in every particular occasion. And such an occasion is very
new, then, and something that human beings are generally not
familiar with. Human beings are generally familiar with the
exclusive forms of loving or the exclusive forms of
desiring, in which the complement is suppressed. The
exclusivity is what creates the energy around desiring or
eroticism or loving or just tacky, airy-fairy emotionalism.
Where there is the fullness of love-desire, there is no
face. There is real attention, real energy, real emotion,
real fullness, without the usual content (6) Where both elements of the living process of
love-desire are not completely present, you become involved
in a conventional orientation to one another, one of these
two kinds that I have just described. Where both elements
are present, there is a natural commitment to one another
that is not a matter of discipline and decision and “I wont
make love with anyone else, just with you” and all that sort
of stuff. None of those decisions come into play. There is a
natural orientation to one another, and therefore, there are
occasions of sexual intimacy which create their own
immediate destiny through the play of sex but which have no
guarantees beforehand (7) Where there is so much love, desire does not become
erotic. Where there is so much desire, love does not become
twinkle. Where both are active, where there is love-desire
in a relationship, there is the motive of real play, and in
that case you may begin to grasp the esoteric aspects of the
Dharma relative to sexuality. But as long as you have only
an exclusive desire relationship with your partner, or an
exclusive love relationship, you will never grasp the
Teaching relative to sexuality. You will continue to be a
random, mediocre person, compromisable by the influence of
every other human being who represents sexuality and emotion
in some form to you (8) Where there is love-desire, there is natural
commitment, natural attention, fullness of presence with one
another, not the usual hominess and obsessiveness and
twinkiness of a conventional relationship. On the other
hand, most relationships are very conventional, a play upon
the suppression of either love or desire. You must see, in
the case of your marriages, how you are consistently,
strategically involved in the suppression of one or another
element of the life union. You must ultimately become
responsible to the point where love-desire is the form of
your connection with your lover. Then you may understand
something about the higher, esoteric nature of the sexual
process, which I have described to some recently and which
most of you will have some contact with eventually (9) There is nothing more disturbing than a continuous
sexual contact in which there is no love, in which there is
just the conventional and verbal acknowledgment of loving.
But you know when you are loved by someone. When the force
of love and desire is presented to you through someone, you
are profoundly relieved of your conventional mind. And if
you truly respond to it through both love and desire in
yourself, that response is the grounds for a real
marriage (10) Most marriages, though, are just based on either
eroticism or twinkle emotionalism. They are agreements,
cults, that support the suppression of one or another of
these two elements of love and desire. If your marriage is
of that kind, and I am certain that all your marriages are
of that kind to some degree, then you must understand that
play and why you got married-in other words, what the cult
is between you. And you must ultimately come to the point
where the fullness of love-desire is the form of your play
with one another. If it cannot be, then either you will
naturally divorce one another eventually, or you will just
submit to that limitation and not fully realize yourself in
sexual terms (11) DEVOTEE: Bubba, I have noticed that when there is
real love-desire, that in itself is the fulfillment. There
is no movement towards any satisfaction because love-desire
is the total fulfillment at that moment (12) BUBBA: The sexual play is not satisfying except to
the erotic mind. Where there is love-desire, nothing changes
through the vehicle of sexual play. Where there is
love-desire between two people, the orgasm does not produce
anything significant. The exercise with one another does not
change anything. The condition of their relationship is
their enjoyment, and it is constant. The ritual of sexuality
does not change it at all. Therefore, only such people, who
are free of the conventional ritual of sexuality that
exhausts the life-force, may begin to understand higher
responsibility relative to the sexual process (13) So where there is genuine love-desire between two
people, they are very full, very happy, not always agitated
by one another, not always getting horny and exclusive. The
conventional motive to sexuality is completely eliminated
where there is love with desire. But you are all used to
desire without love. You have all seen the magazines and the
movies and been turned on. You know what desire is without
love, and it is the principle of your sexuality. That is why
you get turned on, that is why you respond to eroticisms.
And that is why you require your marriages to be erotic,
because you depend on that loveless connection through which
you may have the orgasm and return to this sense of
emptiness. But where you love one another as well as desire
one another, the connection is constant. It is always a
play (14) Where there is the natural relationship of
love-desire, there is also sex play, not only the actual,
typical sexual play that you all know about. But the life
drama between two people is all sexual play. It is all full
of energy. It all brings energy into being. Where there is
love-desire between two people, it continually awakens the
life-force in them and makes them very full. And
occasionally, at random, they engage in actual sexual
relations, but not obsessively (15) But you are all obsessed with sex. It is all
pornographic. Pornography is desire without love. It is the
specimen of movement without opening. And you are all
involved in this eroticism. You are obsessed with no-love.
The significance of it is not the obsession with desire and
sexuality itself, but the obsession with no-love that
promotes such an involvement. As long as love is not the
principle of your presence in the world, you are completely
limited to the force of desiring, not only of sexual
desiring, but of all desiring. All your life is desiring,
without love. It excludes love. It is based on no-love. It
depends on no-love. And therefore everything you are doing
reinforces no-love. But where there is love, then the
pattern of desiring in the world becomes benign and
intelligent, no longer a matter of suffering. Then at least
there is the possibility of the conscious process, the
sacrificial process, of Divine Realization (16) As long as you are simply obsessed with desire and
therefore with no-love, there is no realization, there is no
sadhana. And there is great pain in a life obsessed with
desire and its fulfillment without love. Where there is love
there is no obsession. All obsessions fall where there is
love. And there is no hominess in love. There is great
fullness, and all sexual play is fulfilled in the moment
without mind. If you are “making love” and also thinking or
imagining at the same time, there is no love. Where there is
felt love with your lover, there is no pornography. And this
is the only form in which sexuality has any value. Sexuality
without love is terrible. None of you should engage in
sexual intimacy without love-desire. Do not respond to the
exclusive motive in yourself that depends upon the
suppression of one or the other of these two. Become
sensitive to it and develop your intimate relationships to
the point where they are realized in this way. And only then
engage your intimacy with one another, not at any other
time. Never! That is the discipline of marriage. Marriage is
not the excuse to exploit your tendencies in a way that
society forgives or accepts. The private ritual is not the
thing served by marriage, certainly not in this Ashram! (17) When people love and desire one another, they cease
to be promiscuous. People are obsessively involved with
trying to control their promiscuity. They get married, but
still they want to make it with other people. They play
around, and they do not actually do it a lot of the time,
but they feel it, they want it, and they dramatize it just
short of sex. There is no real way to control promiscuity.
Promiscuity is naturally undermined where there is love and
desire. And where two people truly love and desire one
another, they do not have to make a cult with one another.
They do not have to wonder obsessively if their partner
wants other people and is fooling around. That concern has
nothing whatever to do with their relationship. It is
completely absent, and yet without willful discipline. The
only discipline is that fullness. Satsang is the discipline,
not all the things by which you are motivated to control
yourself. In terms of spiritual life this is true (18) Just so, in terms of your intimate life, it is the
force of love-desire that economizes the life process and
frees it from its conventional obsessions. If that force is
not there, then your marriage is insane. It is just a porno
movie or an intimate, little hand-holding quietude. Where
there is love-desire, there is great energy between people,
and such couples intensify one another constantly. They are
moved always to love one another and to express their love
for one another. They do not feel self-conscious about
it! (19) Such unions are very rare. Most people marry for
erotic reasons. Some people, who are not particularly
oriented to sex, marry for so-called love reasons, on the
basis of the aesthetic emotion of loving, without force. But
people who love and desire one another are involved in the
most intimate and forceful kind of play. In such people the
sexual process may be a matter of instruction at some point,
so that it realizes its higher purpose and not the
conventional one of release (20) So you must transform your marriages. If you are not
married, you must transform your sexual possibility and be
free of eroticism, impotence, and frigidity. That is the way
it seems to me! (21) DEVOTEE: If the life force is present, then you can
truly be a celibate in that sense. You do not have to be
married, because you are available to all beings (22) BUBBA: Yes, but there is no call to conventional
celibacy. Theres no genuine motive for actually cutting off
the sex process. That is bullshit. Nevertheless, all of
those who are truly sexual in their orientation are
celibates, because they are not involved in the conventional
use of sexuality. Their sexuality does not serve their
emptiness, their descended fixation in the body. They are
always returning the force of life, sacrificing it to its
Source. And their relationship to one another is
self-intensifying, in other words, spontaneously
intensifying. Their sexual relations are pure, not pure by
being modest, but pure by being very forceful, very
energetic, even very physical. They do not serve the ritual
of limitation (23) DEVOTEE: This whole culture, because of its
orientation, tends to associate the words “celibate” and
“ascetic” with being empty, but the two words truly mean
full (24) BUBBA: Right. Genuine celibacy is sexuality in
Truth. It is the realization of your human functions in
Truth. That realization does not involve separating yourself
from others and becoming literally celibate, having no sex
connection, but rather it involves fulfilling your sexual
obligation. You are obliged, not by society, but by your
body. Your body obliges you to be sexual and human.
Therefore, you must realize your sexuality. You are involved
in it in any case, whether or not you want to shut it off or
exploit it. And so everyone is obliged to realize his
functions in Truth (25) Paradoxically, there is no realization without
celibacy. However, celibacy must be understood in
non-conventional terms. So the pure celibate is also the
greatest dancer, the greatest lover, because he has realized
the play of life in Truth, and it does not surrender him to
bondage, to limitation. Only when you begin to love one
another as well as desire one another in your intimacies do
you begin to enjoy in human terms the kind of fullness that
I am describing. All your other strategies are reactions to
your obsessions. And obsessions in most cases are obsessions
with desire to the exclusion of love (26) Where there is desire there is not any real
attention, there is obsession, scattering of the mind, no
real concentration of force, no love, only all kinds of
negative emotions. So people have sex for very negative
reasons. They are beating one another with sex, killing one
another with it. It is a kind of ritual murder in which the
woman gets killed and the man kills her, or the man gets
killed and she kills him, and they get eaten, and all of
that. Most sexuality is very crude, very gross, very
obsessive, and belongs to the whole realm of the orientation
to the body idea (27) DEVOTEE: What do you mean, though, when you say that
the man should overwhelm the woman? (28) BUBBA: Where there is love-desire, then each
individual engages in the characteristic form that his or
her birth implies. And so the woman is negative or passive
in the body, and the male is positive and oriented toward
the physical. So the male penetrates the woman. Women should
not become men, aggressive in the way that men are, though
they can be very active sexually. The male overwhelms the
female, but in doing that he is overwhelmed by the female.
The woman is Shakti to her husband. The more the male
penetrates the female, the more overwhelmed he is with
force, the more undone he is in the body. Not the other way
around, which is the way it works out through the
conventional exercise (29) The usual sex act is not just the overwhelming of
the woman by the male, but the degrading of the woman, her
murder, her submission. And it is all very cool, as you must
have observed. But the true play of sexuality is full of
energy, full of force, full of movement, full of love. It
overwhelms both individuals. It is the medium of the
elimination of conflict in the life affair. Sexuality as it
is played out conventionally is an exploitation of conflict.
But the real sexual union undermines all conflict,
overwhelms both individuals, restores them both to a
contemplative state (30) But you all use your intimacies in conventional
ways, to exploit what you are obsessed with and to exclude
what you cannot enjoy. So your sexuality is dead. It is
self-meditation. It relieves nothing, except temporarily
perhaps some relief in the lower body. You are left feeling
empty when you exploit intimacy in this way. Where there is
genuine intimacy, the real force of love and desire, then
there is great energy even in sexual play. There is no sense
at all of emptiness, separation, loss, even through the
orgasm. None. You are left with the same sense that you
enjoyed before you played with one another (31) Well, if your intimacies, your marriages, are not of
this kind, then keep it in your pants until you get it
straight! Require this participation of one another, and
when it is alive, then you can play with one another, but
not otherwise. Real sexual intimacy between individuals in
the Ashram is a play with me.
An Introduction to the Life and Practices
of the Spiritual Community of Bubba Free John.
First edition: 6/75
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Tripura
Rahasya,
Chap XX,
128-133
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