Bubba Free John, 1973.
“His Life has been, as He Says, “an adventure and
unfolding in the ‘Bright” – the Radiance and Bliss and Love
of the God State that He also describes as the Divine
Shakti”
Carolyn Lee – Free Daist
Magazine
Bubba Discusses “The
Bright”
I called the most subtle region the “Bright,”
because it is only Light. All of life descends from it, and
returns to it in a continuous cycle, conducting it as force,
becoming movement and form. But even this Light is a
reflection of the Heart, unqualified existence, just as the
moon reflects the sun. This Heart, which is the source of
all light and life, and of which every thing is the
reflection, is itself without quality. But the Heart, the
Light and the Life are all included and transcended in that
which is very Truth, the Great Form.
The
Method of the Siddhas – Chapter
10
The Knee of Listening is determined to communicate about
“the Bright” again and again, in many ways, to describe what
this term means, what this condition is. So it is not meant
to be completely described in the first section of the book.
And it is always described from an experiential point of
view, from the point of view of the various phenomena
related to it. Therefore, the term “the Bright” is used in
different ways throughout the book. Sometimes it is written
with a capital “B,” sometimes it is written with a small
“b.” But it is always meant to be essentially the same term.
Sometimes it is used as an equivalent for “Amrita Nadi.”
Sometimes it is used as an equivalent for the Heart,
meaning, though, the Heart in the midst of its reflected
consciousness or light. It is most often used to refer to
the Bright of consciousness, the subtle light of
consciousness, the intuition of God-light.
Essentially the Bright is the intuition of the uncreated
light of God. Perhaps various phenomenal manifestations of
this light are associated with it, as I have described. The
God-light is the reflection of Real-God. The Bright is the
reflection of the Heart. It is all a duplication of the
ultimate structure. In the first three pages of The Knee of
Listening the Bright is described in terms of the whole
mechanism of the perception of the God-light, the reflected
light or creative conscious-force, as it appears in the
various functions of the descending and ascending mechanisms
of man.
“As a baby, I remember crawling around inquisitively
with an incredible sense of joy, light, and freedom in the
middle of my head. It was bathed in energies moving freely
down from above, up, around, and down through my body and my
heart. It was an expanding sphere of joy from the Heart. And
I was a radiant form, a source of energy, bliss, and light.
I was the power of reality, a direct enjoyment and
communication. I was the Heart who lightens the mind and all
things.”
The Knee of Listening, page 9.
Fundamentally, the condition that is being described here
is that of the Amrita Nadi, the complete realization of the
Heart, or Real-God, which includes the intuition of Real
God, the Bright or God-light, and the relation between
these.
So Amrita Nadi is the fundamental enjoyment from the
beginning. And the term “the Bright” is used to mean the
entire enjoyment of Amrita Nadi. It is also meant to refer
to the peculiar quality of the intuited light of
consciousness. But, as you see in this case, it is always
related to the Heart as its foundation. Its foundation is in
the Heart. Its center is in the midst of the Heart. That
awareness, that conscious enjoyment in space, centered in
the midst of the Heart, is the Bright. It is the entire
source of humor. It is reality. It is not separate from
anything. This is the nature of that humor.
“Very early in life, I conceived the purpose in the
Bright. It was to restore humor. Throughout my life, I have
been moved to find and communicate the fundamental source of
humor to others. It appeared in many forms, as enjoyment,
laughter, faith, knowledge, but at last it has only one
form, which is reality itself.”
The Knee of Listening, page 10
And then there is another description of the Bright,
meaning Amrita Nadi, or the full realization and intuition
of the real condition:
“On the level of my earliest recognition of it, it was
my simple state, my common state, my ordinary state. There
was nothing peculiar about it from my point of view, nothing
special about it. It was consciousness itself, prior to any
experience. But it was not distinct from my life. It was not
mysterious or awesome. There was no shadow, nothing hidden
in it. It was not motivated. It knew no beyond. It had no
sense of time, nor had it yet begun to feel any kind of
confusion or identity with existence as personality and
experience. It was an operating center, without dilemma or
unconsciousness. It knew no divisions in itself. Many
energies were communicated within it. There was joy in the
body, its light cell life, its respiration and circulation
of force and pleasure. There was a current of energy in the
heart that rose into the head through the throat. And there
was an energy below the heart that rose up into it from
below. There was a surrounding energy that was spaceless,
but which had a locus above the head. And all of these
energies were a single current of life and light in the
heart that was reflected as enjoyment in the head. That form
of consciousness was bright, silent, spaceless, full,
knowing only and entirely this thing itself, and seeing no
problem, no separation in the fact of life. “
The Knee of Listening, page 10-11
The thrust of this first chapter is to describe, in
experiential terms, without philosophical justification,
this condition, which is the very same condition that is
described throughout the book. The chapter ends, “But my
first twenty years were the gradual undermining of this
certain existence by all of the ordinary and traditional
means of life.” This is the complication, part of the
complication of birth. This is the karmic complication that
produces the adventure that follows from this point. Because
this condition, that was simply enjoyed from the beginning,
turned out by observation not to be the condition allowable
in this world. It was not the condition that people allowed
one to live. It was not the condition that people lived. It
was not the state that was acknowledged in the world. it was
not the premise of ordinary activity. So all of the ordinary
and traditional means of life gradually undermined the
simple living of this condition, and forced it to become
realized. In other words, instead of simply being lived as a
prior state, it had to be brought into life. It had to move
into life, transform the vehicles of life, and present
itself to life. So this is the thrust of the rest of the
autobiography, the work or adventure of realizing or
bringing into life this prior enjoyment.
The world, then, provides all of the various obstacles or
alternatives to this enjoyment. There are two major things
communicated in this chapter. The first is Amrita Nadi,
rooted in the Heart. The term “the Bright” is used to refer
to it as well as to the reflected light above. And the
second discovered reality as Bright was is this notion of
humor, this purpose that was in the Bright, this purpose in
the very nature of it appears in the world. The purpose of
the to restore humor, or to restore the world to this
enjoyment.
So there are two movements in my life as it is described
in these first pages. The first is this adventure of
realization, of bringing into life of this prior enjoyment.
And that is an activity I performed in relation to the
vehicles I was living. The other is the larger purpose
relative to the whole of life, to all other beings, and that
is to restore humor, or to bring this realization into the
condition of life for all other beings.
