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THE WAY OF DIVINE COMMUNION IS THE WAY OF LOVING SUBMISSION AND ATTENTION TO GOD

For those who are becoming available to the process of transformation in the Divine, I have established the Way of Divine Communion, which is the simple way of loving submission and attention to God. Many will respond to my Teaching, and all are welcome to approach me through the Teaching and the services of Vision Mound Ceremony, who are simply suffering the common failures of life. To all of them I simply say, come happily, with the urge to happiness, to peace, to love, and to a better realization of your born life. The Lord of all the worlds is Radiant before you. If you will simply direct yourself to the service and awareness of the Divine, the Services of God will be given to you.

It is not necessary or even possible for you to “believe” in God or know the Character of the Divine Reality. But if you can see that you do not exist by your own creature power, and if you can begin to consider the alignment of your life with the unspeakable Source or Condition that is truly responsible for and ultimately identical to your very existence, then you can do the spiritual practice of Communion with God. I urge and welcome all who can manage such sympathy to accept the simple and pleasurable disciplines I will recommend.

For those who would thus adapt themselves, I recommend a way that is easy to conceive and fulfill. Simply turn to God. Submit, surrender yourself to God. Love and receive God. The Divine is a Presence you will come to know. That Presence is only God. If you will devote or sacrifice yourself to that all-pervading Presence, God will transform your knowledge, and you will realize only God at last.

You should assist this process of Divine Communion through two natural disciplines, one which is practical, based in ordinary action, and one which is spiritual, based within the heart or boundless psyche.

The practical discipline which assists this turning or Communion is the practice of minimizing the degree and kinds of exploitation of life in your own case and bringing your life into coincidence with the special psycho-physical and relational laws of manifest existence as well as the great Law or Principle, which is sacrifice. This involves participation in a life of devotional service to God through all your actions, including practice of the living Sacrament of Universal Sacrifice; study and listening to recitations of the Teaching of the Way of Divine Ignorance and its first two stages, the Way of Divine Communion and the Way of Relational Enquiry; the study of and simple listening to traditional teachings about God and Divinely realized individuals; the maintenance of a productive work life; the keeping of a clean, orderly, healthful, and pleasurable environment for yourself and your companions; the adoption and strict maintenance (except perhaps on special occasions of celebration) of a pure, healthful, vitalizing, and intelligently conceived lacto-vegetarian diet¹, the responsible confinement of sexuality to love-desire within the relationship of heterosexual marriage (or its equivalent commitment in the case of a true homosexual relationship); and a continuous, active orientation toward human community and energetic, compassionate, and loving service to the common life. To whatever degree you find yourself reluctant to fulfill this discipline at any time, simply observe yourself, be easy, be full of enjoyment, make your actions a service to others, and continue to turn to the Divine Grace with feeling, from the heart. The more you mature, the more easily you will fulfill this discipline. The more perfectly you fulfill it, the more you will see of your turning from the Divine Condition. And the more you see of this turning away, the more responsible you will become for your turning or yielding into the all-pervading Presence.

The spiritual discipline should begin at a later stage, when the practical discipline has become stable and true, and when you feel the Divine clearly in the form of constant Presence, through direct initiation in the formal enjoyment of my Company. The spiritual discipline that should begin to accompany the practical discipline of this Way of Divine Communion is a voluntary exercise of the remembrance of God from the heart that coordinates the body, the life-force, and the mind with the breath. Thus, sit, in privacy, as a formal responsibility, twice a day. Turn attention to the Divine Presence, surrender to the all-pervading Presence, yield your life and circumstances to God, and, at random, breathe the Presence of God, with attention to the Divine as the Reality or Real Condition that is prior to or beyond the body, the mind, and the world. Breathe with your heart. With random exhalations surrender your self, your mind, your emotions, your life, your desires, your body, and all the conditions of your existence from your heart to God. Then, with random and following inhalations, with your heart and your whole being, receive, draw upon, and become full of the Presence, Power, and Consciousness that is God. Such is the spiritual practice of the Breath of God. Whatever you yield from the heart will, over time, be replaced by Divinely transformed conditions and/or by intuitions of the significance of any limitations you must bear in time and space.

1. For a complete discussion of the dietary practices of devotees in the Way of Divine Communion, see Part III, A Practical Commentary on the Way of Divine Communion.” p. 169.

This spiritual practice should include random heart-felt remembrance of God through the “Name” of God. I ask that you use the Name “God,” and not any traditional mantric Name, such as Ram, Krishna, Jesus, or Om. “God” is the Name of God with which all men are familiar and to which they are naturally attached through body, breath, emotion, mind, and soul. Therefore, at random, with surrender in exhalation, inwardly or vocally, and with feeling and love in the heart, recollect and breathe the Presence via the Name “God.” Likewise, with random inhalations, feel and breathe the Divine Presence with the heart via the Name “God.” The practice of heart-felt recollection, or conscious yielding of feeling-attention.

THE WAY OF APPROACH TO GRACE

2.1

Life or manifest existence is Communion with the Divine, and need not be eliminated or heroically overcome for there to be perfect and radical God Realization. God-Communion is not identical to some inward state or some condition that is an alternative to life as it presently appears. Divine Communion is conscious and contemplative realization of the Real Condition of the present moment. Such Communion is commonly open-eyed, natural, coincident with all events that arise. And God-Realization, that dissolution of self in God for which the Way of Divine Communion is the preparation, is stable, non-dependent, conscious Intuition of the Real Condition of the present event. It is not strategically independent of a happy, easeful, pleasurable human life founded in the Law of Sacrifice through love. into the Presence, both with and without vocal or mental engagement of the Presence via the Name “God,” is the spiritual practice of the Name of God. (When this contemplation of the Divine through Breath and Name matures, body, breath, and thought may begin to be forgotten in times of contemplation or absorption of the heart, or the living, conscious being, in the Divine Reality.)

These represent the essential disciplines of the Way of Divine Communion, which is the necessary foundation for the practice of the higher stages of the Way of Divine Ignorance. The spiritual practice of the Breath of God and the Name of God, lived from the heart, will, over time, show itself to you as a process in which you are breathed and lived and loved by God. The spiritual practice and the practical disciplines should both be exercised more and more, both formally and informally, under whatever conditions arise in life. The spiritual practice itself need not be reserved only for those occasions when you sit in private, but it should be exercised at random, at any time, while awake or even while dreaming or in semi-conscious sleep. Allow the Grace of the Divine Presence to reveal the Divine Condition to you according to its own pace. Simply use the spiritual exercise and the practical disciplines as a way of Communion with God under all conditions. When your devotion is perfected, through the progressive maturity of the four stages of the Way of Divine Ignorance, you will find no self, no world, and no other God, but only God. The Divine is Present always for the sake of anyone who prepares himself, and the Divine yields to each the Grace or consideration he or she requires in God.

Life may be realized as the theatre of God Communion, but it is conceived as dilemma by the usual man, and dramatized as problem-solution, the search toward goals of release. When life is consciously realized and lived as Communion with the all pervading Divine Presence, it becomes self-purifying, self-releasing, not binding in any sense, and the conscious being gradually ceases to be bound by events. In that case, all binding tendencies fall away spontaneously, since they depend on dilemma and seeking. Such a one lives freely, happily, with ease, and also with intensity of being. He is free of all destiny, even while apparent destiny or life continues to arise in his own case. Because he is not bound to dis-ease, the Conscious Force of Reality becomes the present mover of his appearance, and he is even drawn into sublime forms, after passing from this present life, without any strategic intention of ego, mind, or desire. His destiny may not be described, since it is not other than the Real Condition, but that Destiny is not annihilation. It is even coincident with the Play of all kinds of worlds.

This is the happy assertion of Bubba Free John. Even those who respond to this Teaching are habitually bound to a karmic intention, founded in dilemma and the search for release. They tend to dramatize this search via the subjective manipulation of ego, mind, and desire. Such is the play of Narcissus, the complex avoidance of relationship. The drama of each life is unique, appearing through a cycle of strategies that ritually controls the events of life.

Therefore, the Way of Divine Communion, which Bubba Free John teaches, must become natural reflection or non-strategic self-observation and insight (awakening naturally into the Way of Relational Enquiry), which it does in those who yield their lives to the Presence that is God in the stable, unqualified sacrifice of attention, intelligence, and love. This Way is happy, most human, not world denying, not fascinating, but simple and full.

2.2

The Way of Divine Ignorance, of which the Way of Divine Communion is the foundation stage, is the Way of maturing in Happiness, prior to and regardless of whatever conditions are presently arising. Its ultimate Realization involves no dilemma, no strategy, no subjective contraction, no reactive effort, and no search to prevent or change the process of arising itself. It is the radical Realization of Ignorance-Radiance, free of subjectivity, which is not identical to any condition, high or low, that is apparent or sought or attained.

The process of present arising is spontaneous, uncaused, Divine. In the true devotee it is permitted (by not being prevented) to unfold itself in the eternal Theatre of the Law. In the ordinary conditions of his or her appearance, the devotee is always, even in maturity, obliged toward fulfillment of the Law, which is sacrifice, rather than tendency, which is self-possession. But the Truth of the devotee is Happiness, or Realization of the Real Condition, whatever the present conditions. In contrast, the conventional ways of mankind represent unenlightened commitment to goals of experience via efforts toward changing conditions, preventing conditions or the process of arising itself, attaining higher conditions, and all the rest of the drama of ego and object that comes by reaction to birth in apparent limitation.

The conventional ways of mankind, or the ways by tendency of every human being, are, simply and irreducibly, forms of reactive seeking, high and low, for changes of state, changes in the conditions of experience, or changes in the ways of relating to the conditions of state or experience. The Way of Divine Ignorance, in the form of the disciplines appropriate at 2.2 each stage, is the Way of the Realization of the Real Condition, which is Truth, Happiness, or the very Divine, whatever, if ever anything, presently arises. It does not involve the strategy of passive permission to conditions arising, or passive indulgence of tendencies. Nor is it characterized by active and strategic efforts to focus attention or expectation above and beyond the present theatre of conditions arising, or to manipulate the sense and intuition of existence toward some objective or unique transcendental goal, even the goal of the cessation of the process of present arising. Its ordinary discipline is to be disposed to the Law, the obligation in relationship, and the present economy of the whole body-mind, rather than the fulfillment of random tendencies, founded in accumulation or memory and reaction to experience. Its radical discipline is present intuitive rest in the Real Condition, prior to all subjective contraction, and every preference relative to experience.

2.3

The Divine is the Condition of all conditions; That from which all conditions arise; That of which all conditions are the objectification or modification; That which permeates all conditions; That which is prior to all conditions; That which includes all relations and to 2.3 which no relations point, since it is not Other but Prior; That which is not Subject or Self, since it is Absolute but not apart; That from which no living being may be differentiated, except it may seem to be so in the case of delusion by knowledge, or experience.

We may enjoy Communion with the Divine via recollection of the Presence, by Name, by Breath, and by Service, in the Way of Divine Communion, by enquiry (in the form “Avoiding relationship?”) and maturing in the conductivity of Radiance in the Way of Relational Enquiry, by subtle feeling, audition, and sight, and by contemplation of the root of “I” in the Way of Re-cognition. We Realize the Divine by Graceful Dissolution, or Sacrifice in Sahaj Samadhi and Bhava Samadhi, in the Way of Radical Intuition.

2.4

No-contraction is the principle of the process of salvation, realization, or liberation. In the Way of Divine Communion, this process is served through Communion with the Divine Presence, and through the action of sacrifice in various forms. In the Way of Relational Enquiry, which develops on the basis of the Way of Divine Communion, this process is served by inspection, obviating insight, and enquiry into every kind or pattern of contraction, and by awakening into stable awareness and adaptation to the natural etheric or subtle structure and “conductivity” of the psychophysical being. In either case, salvation, realization, or liberation involves release from the binding or consciousness-defining power of subjective contraction, or objectification and limiting modification of each of the functions of the being (physical, emotional-sexual or etheric, mental, supermental or transcendental, and egoic) and in each of the three common states (waking, dreaming, and sleeping). When there is such release, the consciousness tacitly, intuitively, and directly realizes its always present identity with the Real Condition, or Real-God.

2.5

The Way of Divine Communion marks the transition from the way of Narcissus (self-possession, mind-possession or meaning-possession, body-possession, reaction-possession, and world-possession-indeed, all separation, separateness, and 2.5 worldliness, high or low, gross or subtle) to the Way of Divine Ignorance, which is radical submission to Grace.

2.6 The Way of Divine Communion is the beginning of the middle, transitional, or preparatory stage of life (between mere fulfillment of born destiny and full integration with the radical Destiny of the Divine Process). It is the stage of life in which transition is made to a truly human condition. Its Wisdom and its Divine Principle are communicated by the Spiritual Master. It is the Way of approach to Grace, to Communion with the all-pervading Presence of the Divine, which is the Real Form of the Spiritual Master, and the Agency of Divine Ignorance and true Realization. When there is maturity in the Way of Divine Communion, the individual may take up, in progressive order, the subsequent practices of the Way of Divine Ignorance, which are also realized in personal confrontation with the Teaching and the Teacher.

2.7

The Way of Divine Communion establishes the foundation of human sanity-the re-orientation to the relational condition itself, rather than the reactive condition of subjectivity, contraction, the avoidance of relationship.

2.8

Prior to entrance into the practices of the Way of Relational Enquiry, individuals adapt to that transitional way of life (the Way of Divine Communion), in response to the Teaching and call of the Spiritual Master, which transforms the destiny of the devotee from mere exploitation of tendencies, subtle or gross, to the responsible life of the heart, wherein the lower life comes under control of the heart, the central or psychic being.

2.9

Devotees who are engaged in appropriate practice by instruction in the Way of Divine Communion must demonstrate stable and great maturity in that Way before beginning formal study and practice in The Way of Relational Enquiry. Even in the beginning, the discipline of the practical life conditions must be constantly and intelligently maintained. The essential lessons about the gross life, about money, food, and sex, about self-control, and about self-exploitation must be learned long before the discipline of the Way of Relational Enquiry is begun. Indeed, they should be learned to the degree of a real level of maturity even before entrance into the Way of Divine Communion.

2.10

The Way of Divine Communion involves adaptation or yielding of the physical, emotional, and mental functions or processes of the being to the truly spiritual or psychic core of the being. Then this psychic being, the living heart, is in turn adapted or yielded to 2.10 the Divine Presence.

The adaptation of the physical, emotional, and mental functions of the being to the psychic being is the practical aspect of this Way. It takes place through voluntary physical, emotional, and mental submission to the condition of relational existence rather than self-centered exploitation of binding desires. This practical discipline is the way of service, or sacrifice of the self-principle by which the usual man operates and manipulates physical, emotional, and mental conditions. It includes study of the Teaching, the embrace of lawful disciplines relative to money, food, and sex, and heart-felt participation in the whole orientation of devotional life (including devotional meetings and practice of the Sacrament of Prasad, or Universal Sacrifice, privately as well as in community, in which the Divine is approached with total sacrifice of the being, and the Grace of the Divine Presence requested, through right action, opened to, yielded to, and depended upon).

This practical discipline is the first stage of the Way of Divine Communion. As this stage matures, and the Company of the Spiritual Master is prepared for, served, and enjoyed, the Divine Presence becomes known more and more directly, and the whole life of the devotee becomes more and more a sacrifice to the Divine, in every moment, in the form of every action. When this mature evidence appears, the individual has begun to realize the inherent fullness of life, which involves adaptation of the physical, emotional, and mental functions, processes, and conditions to the psychic being. Such a devotee is present to the Divine Presence from the heart, the psychic being, with heartfelt and conscious devotional attention to the Presence under all conditions and through all actions. In this manner, the conventions of physical, emotional, and mental life are mastered in him, not by self-will, but by the Divine Presence, on the basis of the constant yielding of the physical, emotional, and mental being to the condition of the psychic being, or devotional attention to the Presence.

Such a devotee may begin to engage the second aspect of the practice of the Way of Divine Communion, that is, the adaptation and yielding of the psychic being to the Divine Presence. This aspect of the Way of Divine Communion is its spiritual discipline. It includes the adaptation and yielding to the Divine Presence via the Breath of God and contemplation via the Name of God.

The spiritual discipline is essentially a private, hidden, or meditative discipline, even when engaged in the company of others. The spiritual discipline via the Breath and Name is an extension or realized performance of the Sacrament of Prasad, or Universal Sacrifice. In this discipline, all conditions are yielded to the Presence, and the Presence is depended upon for all change. The discipline of heart-felt contemplation of the Divine Presence matures as utter sacrifice of the being into the Divine as all-pervading Presence, or absorption of the being in meditation upon that Presence. Such a one becomes more and more free of the implications of life circumstances and sees the Divine in and as all conditions and beings. As a result, the true morality that only Divine Communion produces begins to appear in the devotee in the form of strength, intelligence, compassion, and loving service to all beings. Such a one is ready to begin the mature study and practice of the Way of Relational Enquiry.

2.11

The Way of Divine Communion, and the whole Way of Divine Ignorance, cannot be appreciated or truly considered from the point of view of a believer’s mind, a mind that responds chiefly to hopeful and archetypal signals, images, ideas of God or Savior or Heaven, ritual artifices, and all the subjective and objective trappings that console, distract, and relieve the consciousness of the usual religious person. A religious intelligence is able to consider the things of religion. But the motive and viewpoint of a mind or living being that conceives of itself in terms of religious cultism must be thoroughly undone before the true spiritual way may begin. The argument must first be heard. Fulfillment through either the lower or the higher acquisition of experience must cease to represent the true Destiny. The man, the mind, the ego, the soul must cease to be the irreducible motive. All that arises also passes. Only in such mature consideration do we come to rest in Communion with the Real Divine, the Unqualified Radiance that is our Condition in Truth.

2.12

Religion and spirituality represent two essentially independent descriptions of life. The religious way is generally a social or conventional cultural occupation, oriented toward deriving benefits in life of a psychological or bodily and material kind, by ritually (whether outwardly or inwardly, or both), symbolically, and naively (without sophisticated preknowledge) duplicating the secondary processes of esoteric spirituality. The various forms of the religious way (liturgical, theological, mystical, and philosophical) are created in the childhood and adolescent conditions or phases of man. The true spiritual way belongs to the maturity of man, when the various cultic obligations of the religious way have been undone in a process of radical insight into the ordinary destiny of our birth.

Religious people tend to be very critical of other cults than their own, and, likewise, of the various descriptions of the true spiritual way. They presume, at best, that spirituality should be simply another name for aspects of religious awareness, but, truly, the spiritual way does not begin until all hopeful cultism has been undone in us. Thus, the religious criticism of spiritual life outside the cults is simply a species of the religious habit of criticizing other cults or cultic ways than one’s own. But the religious individual has no capacity inherent in his or her point of view by which to understand the true spiritual or non-cultic way.

Where religion is not freely and profoundly considered, and where the childishness of cultism is not overcome, spirituality does not flourish. And spirituality, not cultism, is the human process always served by the Teachers of mankind, such as Gautama, Krishna, and Jesus. Indeed, such figures are invariably active as prophetic critics of the cultism of their times, even though they themselves tend to be made the centers of cultic belief and ritual by those who follow them. No cult or religion, historically great or small, is true as Truth, but the overcoming of the childishness of cultism is the beginning of that process in an individual whereby spirituality is awakened.

Therefore, let those who would no longer live as children or adolescents serve this overcoming in themselves and among all people by the public, social, and intimate practice of spiritual sacrifice, as love, compassion, justice, discipline, and service. Let every man or woman who would be free and live in freedom reserve every vestige or sign of consoling cultic persuasion for the private confession and the trial of spirit in Truth.

Those whom I serve most directly in the spiritual way should likewise be responsible for the immature tendency to make a cult of me, confining me to my appearance, high or low, so that the Presence is not revealed. I have not turned around to serve such foolishness in you. Truly practice the Way. Be free of consolations and imaginary destinies. Become responsible for the way you would have lived if I had never confronted you, and so live the true Way purely, with manly intelligence and uncommon gracefulness.

2.13

The effective and unique form of relationship between the devotee and the Spiritual Master is the spiritual one. It is Divine Communion. It is mutual sacrifice or service. The devotee does all, in the response of gratitude for the Teaching, as service to the Divine, and to the Spiritual Master, who reveals and serves the relationship between the Divine and the born individual, and who awakens living beings to the Truth, the Heart, which is God or Presence, Self, and World.

The conditions of life and meditation that are obliged upon the devotee are his or her form of service to me. I look for this service, this loving sacrifice. Only then does the devotee touch my heart. Such a one is given everything freely, happily, and in the proper time. But those who are resistive, full of concern, self-involved, expecting consolations from me in place of their life of service-such childish individuals are only tested again and again, disciplined again and again, until the Teaching makes its point and they begin to serve me in the Mood of Divine Ignorance.

2.14

The waking world is not a “place,” an “earth,” but a realm, an indefinite dimension, just as the condition or region into which you enter in dreams is a dimensionless realm. It is not fixed, like a moon or any object, but it is fluid. It is operative as a play of possibility, rather than fixed mechanical destiny. And its conditions in every moment arise not merely according to physical laws, but psycho-physical laws. The universes in which earth appears are a physical system, (psycho-spacial and psychotemporal), not a mere physical or material one. The same world or realm, in other of its aspects, is seen in dreams and sleeping too. This view is ancient and must be tested. It is native to man and makes him wonder, fear, seek, and hide.

Every man represents only a limited realization of the psycho-physical scheme of appearances. The more psychic or conscious he becomes, the more he sees the world as a Psychic or Conscious Process. It is not only the man who is a psycho-physical process. His world is also. Free life begins only when we begin to operate from this profound premise. This thesis is itself the most significant consideration of man. To enter into the Truth of our condition we must enter into psychic, heart-felt relationship with the world. Then we see not only the body of the world, but its mind also, its subjective or subtle places, and its degrees of self.

But when even this soulful knowing shows itself to be suffering, then Enjoyment is awake, prior to the birth of worlds, and beings, and you that contemplates the Mystery. The waking world is a psycho-physical realm. Everything appears, then, as in dreams, in 2.14 correspondence with the tendencies, high and low, which are the individual. When this becomes clear, one ceases to identify with preferences, judgments, perceptions, reactions, experiences, forms of knowing, or the pursuit of strategies, high or low, since it is all illusory, changing, and held in place by these very actions. When you awaken, you are no longer concerned about the dream world, since it is all phantoms, created in a moment by tendencies that are the real creators of every circumstance of dreams. Just so, when this waking world is seen truly, it becomes clear that the phantoms of its appearance are endless, appearing out of a formless depth, and that true responsibility is relative to the forces of one’s own apparent psycho-physical activity, which creates the theatre and calls up all that is good or bad. The realm itself is not to be valued or rejected in terms of any of its content. The realm cannot even be defined. Where do you dream? Where is a place? Rather, one’s own action, one’s very self must be seen as contraction. There must be awakening, through Ignorance, to that Condition which is prior to the Play. Such is the only real responsibility. The rest is the destiny of complication. When the true Condition is realized, the reality of all distractions, of self, of action, of world, of God apart, is undone. There is no necessity to the dream, but there is apparent persistence of the dream. See it truly and abide in the Presence and Radiance that is Real. That Communion is truly awake, even as the dream conventions remain, since it notices nothing, but abides as itself, whatever arises.

We appear in this waking world by the very same process by which we appear in dreams. And the solid waking world is, when seen in Truth, no more real, necessary, fixed, significant, or true than any random dream place. When this begins to become even a little obvious, a process of awakening has begun, similar to waking in the morning from your dreams. When you begin to suspect your life a little, then you begin to become distracted by another and formless dimension, much as the sleeper begins to sense his bed cloth, his solid body, and his room. At that point, one may become sensitive to the Spiritual Master, the Presence of the Condition of things, one who is already awake, the paradoxical man. He is, in person, that dimension which is Truth. He calls you constantly and roughens your feet. He intensifies the sunlight in your room. He does not awaken you to another place or dream, as if your mother shakes you awake to play in rooms protected or threatened by your father. Rather, he serves an awakening in which there is no realm, no implication, and no adventure. He does not awaken you to another place. He awakens you in place, so that even while the dream of living survives, the destiny or even noticing of all effects escapes you.

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