This talk was given by Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj) at Persimmons Sanctuary in Northern California on May 24th, 1975.
‘No Remedy’ Student Course
Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj), May 24, 1975
“I’m Not Talking About Anything” is the title of the talk for session four. This talk was given at Persimmons on May 24th, 1975. You will hear Bubba responding to questions from students in the Ashram, as he describes how the Guru works to bring about the crisis of understanding in everyone who comes to him.
Student: You say, there is no search. I can’t understand the Paradox (inaudible)
Bubba (Adi Da): Paradoxes cannot be understood, paradoxes confound understanding. And that is the work of the Guru. Obviously, there is the search, everyone, seeks. Merely to respond in some way personally, to the argument that’s such seeking is not the appropriate foundation of life is not suddenly to cease to be a seeker. There must be Sadhana of no seeking. There must be a process that involves you – must involve you taotlly, it must undo you perfectly. Until there is such Sadhana how is it possible to understand anything? Everything is a paradox, then I’m not talking about anything.
All of this talking, all this, communicating all this adventure of meeting is a way to confound these processes, not to explain them so perfectly, everybody grasps – now so yes, that’s understanding, “I’ve got it”.
We gathered together to reinitiate each time, this argument, this consideration, this observation, and ultimately it amounts to the undoing, the dissolution, the obviation of all of these limitations, this whole force of dilemma and all of its manifestations in ordinary life. The truth itself is not spoken. The truth is served by these arguments, but what am I doing then? Why this Dharma?
“Just as you define yourself, subjectively as me in various ways”
It’s because of the nature of the usual, man, what is he doing? What are you doing? Each apparent individual is persuaded to be separate, to define himself. And he not only does this subjectively, he does it outwardly in the forms of action. Just as you define yourself, subjectively as me in various ways, this same process is universal to your life. So, each gesture of life is the same activity, the same separation, the same enclosure, the same meditation, the same realization, this same dilemma. Basically then the function of the Guru is to draw attention to that so that it may be seen so that the principle of the search, founded in dilemma to which the individual is bound, compulsively, dramatizing. So that he may see it and regain his humor toward it and ultimately become responsible for it.
Then in the case of Perfect Understanding, live that condition that is entirely prior to that ordinary activity. But of course, it’s paradoxical because the Satsang, the understanding the realization talked about is prior to all ordinary activities, and yet it must be served via ordinary association, ordinary contact words then. The rituals of life must be made to serve this crisis.
Questioner – inaudible
Bubba: So that Satsang is not something you have, Satsang is a condition, nothing to do with the mind, nothing to do with the mind, nothing
Nothing!
But what are we doing getting curious with all this profound stuff, what are you doing? What is it that you are doing? If the Guru is putting on a party hat, he can make you observe that that would be an appropriate communication to even the communication of a Dharma, that was absolutely wrong!
If by doing that the could draw attention to that process and confound it then it was an appropriate action. So there’s no point of argumentative seriousness about all the verbal communication of the teaching. Fundamentally it is all moving toward a simple observation and responsibility and the individual, the observation of this activity, this contraction, this avoidance of relationship and everything that the Guru does serves that observation serves a crisis in the form of that observation.
And it must be a crisis because every functional dimension in a man is participating in this same affair so that it must involve a breakdown of that process. A hole must be created in it somewhere in which he falls out of it, at least for a moment. And that’s the beginning of this insight, but you must suspect the Guru of being all kinds of devious until you begin to respond to that argument, that activity, that communication. People approach it the wrong way around. They want to check out the Guru’s credentials, but the Guru doesn’t run for president or some sort of office fundamentally serves you with an argument. So the appropriate and original gesture toward the Guru is to consider that argument to the point of self-observation, to the point where it makes its point in some real way, after that you are turning to the Guru will be founded on that demonstration. So the process of the relationship to the Guru then grows on the basis of that transformation in consciousness.
Any other questions?
Student: The mind didn’t have anything to do with Satsang and Sadhana. I was sitting here thinking it was crazy to even try and figure out your words or books. He just as it is to consider your argument [inaudible].
Bubba: Satsang is dependent on this response to the teaching. The teaching serves the undoing of the mind, so that confounding, that restoration of humor relative to your own process of life. So when the teaching has made its point, when you’ve considered the argument of the teaching, and it has made some fundamental point. To that degree, the mind is no longer an imposition an obstruction between you and the Guru to that degree, the mind has already been undone. So that response, that liberating response to the teaching, makes possible that first gesture of simple relationship to the Guru that is Satsang. In that case, the mind has not been the instrument. The mind has been put aside because the mind must be undone as a principle. Absolutely. So there’s continuous consideration of that argument.
So, Satsang exists where the mind has been confounded undone, and therefore Satsang has nothing, whatever to do with the mind itself. This body and this, this mind, this subjectivity is a modification of that fundamental consciousness that is reality. And yet that same consciousness is taking these things seriously in the usual man, that same consciousness is assuming the point of view of the body and the mind. And it has become very serious and suffers – feels that as dilemma and is motivated then through the possible adventure of life to experience distraction relief from that double bind, that suffering
And all the things of life from ordinary vital experiences to spiritual experiences, subtle experiences, and so forth. All of that Is distraction from that fundamental disease and dilemma, the Guru comes to point that out in very real terms to each individual who responds And works through his argument, through his Mere Presence through his disciplines and all the rest, the theater of his community to confound that apparent individual’s attachment to that way, to the point where he may enjoy insight into it
Thereafter inquire into it from the point of view of that free consciousness, until that consciousness of which all of these things, these bodies, these thoughts are the modification, is his conscious condition and he no longer then takes these things. Seriously. He no longer suffers the compulsive assumption that he is this body. He is this mind. He is this subjective self idea. He is liberated from all of the implications of ordinary life as they are experienced and dramatized by men, commonly, such a one is present in the world in an entirely different way than the usual man.
The nature of that condition is not really in itself though, describable in any terms that make ultimate sense. And the only terms that really make ultimate sense are that Realization, the terms that would make ultimate sense would be that Realization itself and your own case. There is no way to describe it in such a way that you might also know it.
So all language then is essentially conventional and all languages used by the Guru to serve that undoing that crisis, that possible insight you can see then that that realization is of an entirely different kind than attainments within the great sphere of modification or change it’s of an entirely different order than an experience within the manifest realms, higher, low it’s entirely different thing from a psychic realization, a vision, any attainable state, all of these states become the conditions for dramatizing the same suffering. It doesn’t matter if an absolute or radical turnabout from the usual assumption in theater of existence. And when there is that turnabout, there is absolute happiness. It is an eternal Samadhi, a bodiless mindless Samadhi in which nobody and no mind, and no thing is prevented in which all things high and low may continue or not. But whether there is a continuation of apparent bodily or subjective life or not, There is this continuous eternal samadhi, the present enjoyment dependent on nothing at all of a condition without mind or body – butterly released from every possible limitation, every possible threat, every possible transformation. While at the same time, all the machinery causal subtle and gross of all the worlds may continue. It is certainly a paradoxical condition then and obviously could not be comprehended in the ordinary mechanisms. It must be Realized, and it is Realized only on the basis of Sadhana founded in the real response to the Guru in his teaching, we spend all our days surviving, protecting this bodily form and this subjective psychic experience of being alive. It is continually threatened. It is always possible for it to die.
Imagine then existence without that, nobody and no psyche to die. Imagine existence – Absolutely. Unthreatened what unbelievable happiness, or ecstasy then and such is the nature of understanding in its perfect sense. And all the Guru is doing is being happy and since he is happy, he talks to his friends, engages himself with them in ways that might serve that happiness. It’s really a very ordinary occupation.
It requires great humor because all of one’s friends are suffering.
Student: Why does appears to take so long to understand
Bubba: Because it’s taking you so long to understand You’re watching how long it’s taking you to understand, instead of understanding,
If you understood in this moment, if you dealt with this conscious process in this moment, this moment would be a moment of understanding, instead of wondering about not understanding, that’s just the way of reading yourself. That’s just the way of watching yourself. And it’s the way of not being engaged in this moment, in that process. In fact, it doesn’t take long to understand understanding is in this moment and now it’s in this moment, but we, you know, we have moments of understanding and the rest time we just read ourselves, we watch ourselves manipulate ourselves instead of engaging that conscious process in each moment. So, whenever you are just watching yourself, you feel obstructed separate. You feel that sense of dilemma, But when you have understood in this moment, then there isn’t that a suffering there isn’t that sense of dilemma. There is purely that intuition, that happiness Sadhana is to reinitiate that conscious event – moment to moment.
Student: It was just such reluctance. I knew myself. I said really sense, a great deal of reluctance from your systems to do Sadhana. And the more, I sense that lately, I feel that separation from you familiar one, but then that makes it even worse than I tend to be. Just starting to even more, rather than moving toward you [inaudible],
Bubba: You shouldn’t do that. Nobody resists doing Sadhana. People resist the conditions of various kinds. Sadhana is consciousness. It’s conscious enjoyment. It is a happy affair, Sadhana itself. But when you stop being involved in the conscious process in any moment, awareness drifts toward the conditions of life and obligations and states of experience and so forth. And you become complicated, you become identified with your lowest functional forms And they are not moving. They’re fundamentally solid. What you must do is consider this argument again, you can establish in this conscious process and then all the ordinary disciplines that are Sadhana,, that are secondary to it become amusing, interesting, not oppressive at all. You begin to move, you begin to break up a little bit then
All this self-watching condition, watching change, watching all this meditating on stuff is oppressive. It is blinding. It is unhappy. And so the usual man in the midst of ordinary adventure ultimately then becomes possibly sympathetic to the Guru and his teaching because he has practiced his illusion. He has practiced this contraction, this avoidance of relationship. You’ve seen all of its possibilities and he not so sympathetic with it any longer. He is not so interested in defending it, but you see that this way of living is not happy.
Why isn’t it happy? What are you doing? You’re dramatizing this contraction. This contraction hurts. The whole body is a clenched fist. It’s a definition in space. It’s this contraction. The mind is this contract. And every thought is this contraction the sense of yourself as this contraction? Well, this is not amusing.
And it’s also not the way it is, because if you observe it, if you are brought to observe it, you see that it is your own activity. You could also be happy instead of being happy. You’re separating yourself aggressively. You’re preoccupied. You’re seeking, your suffering this dilemma, but that is what you’re doing. That’s that’s your own activity. And you could just as easily not do that. And when you don’t do that, you are happy
And living in that happiness, without this contraction on any kind of a level, you begin to Intuit the nature of that condition. And it becomes your condition prior to all that appears and ultimately everything becomes suddenly obvious and you are awake and then you are only happy and you’re not happy for any reasons whatsoever. You’re not happy because of a bodily state, because of a psychological state of psychic state of subtle state, a hope, a belief and experience, your not happy for any of those reasons you are happy. And all of these possibilities are just that they are ways of from that point of view, dreaming while being fully conscious, that that’s what you’re doing. And then you, you begin to play life and it becomes miraculous.