by Bubba Free
John 1
[ text; part 1 (these divisions solely for
html posting and not in the book)]
Prologue:
This Book Is My Confession of Sexual
Wisdom
The matter of sexuality is so profoundly
structured into our infantile and adolescent adaptations that it
persists not only as our most obsessive interest as individuals but
also as our most significant and consistent social or interpersonal
problem. When I began to enter into relationships with devotees for
the sake of their spiritual Awakening, it became more and more clear
that no one who came to me was yet prepared for the
true spiritual process, which is total bodily responsibility for
Truth or Life itself. Rather, all were essentially trapped in
obsessions and problematic orientations to the vital and,
particularly, the sexual dimensions of experience. I knew it would be
necessary for all first to come to a level of interpersonal and
cultural maturity relative to the vital play of life before the
spiritual process could be fully introduced into the adaptive play of
their lives.
The method of my Teaching Work with devotees is
not common, although there are many traditional or ancient precedents
for it. It is not merely a subjective, internal, or even verbal
activity, but a matter of intense, full, and total consideration of
any specific area of experience, in living confrontation with others,
until the obvious and Lawful or Divine form and practice of it
becomes both clear and necessary.
I have compared this method to the higher yogic
technique of “samyama,” described by Patanjali 2
in his Yoga Sutras. In brief, that yogic technique of “samyama” is a
process of one-pointed but ultimately thoughtless concentration and
exhaustive contemplation of a particular object, function, person,
process, or condition, until the essence or ultimate obviousness of
that subject is clear. Only in that case does the yogi enjoy native
intimacy and understanding, or power, relative to that
subject.
I have called my own Teaching method
“consideration. ” Whenever a particular area of life, or experience,
or spiritual and bodily Enlightenment has been given to me as a
clearly necessary matter or subject of instruction for the sake of
devotees, I have entered into “consideration” with them. Such
“considerations” were never only or merely a matter of thinking and
talking. They always involved a period in which individuals were
permitted to live through the whole matter and to be tested to the
point of change. Those who entered into any “consideration” with me
were obliged to commit themselves to their own elaborate and
concentrated play of life in those particular terms, until the whole
matter was clarified and the Truth became clear in terms of the
subject.
Such “considerations” required a willingness on
the part of each individual to engage and explore many very ordinary
areas of human experience, and also to understand and adapt to each
new level of revealed responsibility as it was clarified, so that the
“consideration” would develop as concrete change and growth (rather
than as a mere “change of mind”). Only a “consideration” entered as
such a concrete discipline can proceed all the way to its true end,
which is right adaptation and freedom, or natural transcendence,
relative to its functional subject.
All of the spiritual and practical Teaching of
Bubba Free John is the product of such “considerations,” done in the
processes of his own body-mind and in communicative and instructive
play with devotees. And these “considerations” have been “samyama” in
the highest sense, involving every aspect of body and mind, high and
low, and resulting in both the highest intuition and the most
practical grasp of the Lawful and Divine necessities of human
existence.
This book is one of the products of the more than
six initial years of trial and mutual society between myself and
hundreds of aspirants to the radical spiritual Way that I Teach.
During that period, we engaged in “considerations” relative to every
area of our human possibility, from diet and sex to esoteric
meditation and bodily Transfiguration by the Radiance of God. In the
case of sex, we gave ourselves up to “consideration” of this whole
matter, this whole immensity, in such a way that every aspect of the
matter would be made clear, and every participant would be obliged to
change his “act,” and to mature and grow beyond the subhuman
tendencies of conventionally learned desire.
Promiscuity and random desire in general are
typical of our contemporary and subhuman interest in sex. And such
interest at first typified the common “wisdom” of those who came to
me. As time went on, however, their “consideration” became more and
more mature, responsibility increased, emotional insight became more
typical, and sexual intimacy became a matter of loving commitment and
choice, in relationship to the Radiant Divine Life within which all
our functions appear and operate. Thus, our “consideration” became a
meditation on the truly human, religious, higher psycho-physical, and
regenerative dimensions of this most basic, fascinating, and
agonizing motive of mankind.
This book attempts to make a full communication of
the mature results of this whole experiment and “consideration.” It
establishes responsible personal, moral or interpersonal, social, and
higher cultural principles that do not represent arbitrary or
negative views toward the subject itself. Sex is not itself in doubt
in this Teaching. It is not presumed to be “sin,” or an experience
that necessarily draws us away from God or Enlightenment. On the
contrary, it is or must be realized to be a part of the
self-sacrifice or ecstasy of Enlightened or Divine Life. No
self-conscious and self-serving asceticism is communicated in this
Teaching. Nor is there the embrace of any equally self-conscious and
self-serving program of functional, social, or yogic exploitation of
sex for some purpose that is itself an illusion. Rather, there is the
assertion of right and Lawful or mutually sacrificial participation
in full and human emotional-sexual adaptation, and the obligation to
yield to the ultimately regenerative structural purpose of the sexual
function in both men and women.
It is my intention that the material presented
here represent a unique, complete, and exhaustive “consideration” and
manual of instruction relative to the single subject of human
sexuality. There is no way to go beyond the low level of adaptation
we represent in our mere thinking, reacting, sexing, and eating
without coming to the point of responsibility in action described
here. The spiritual practice of life is not possible without prior
and real maturity in emotional-sexual life. Therefore, this book is
offered as a gift to all who suffer from the usual problems of
sexuality and who also would realize both higher structural growth
and spiritual transformation of their living.
Man is the “Two-Armed Form” of God. And
regenerative, self-released practice of the sexual embrace is a
process in which Man, in the form of individuals who are responsible
in love, is sacrificed into Communion with the All-Pervading,
Transcendental, Formless, and Infinite Divine Reality. The true and
higher human function of sexual embrace is a form of Worship, or
whole bodily surrender to the Divine. And such practice represents a
positive adjunct to the total Way of Life that is religion and
spirituality in the highest sense.
The sexual process described in this book is not
even remotely like the self-indulgent infantile eroticism that
provides the basic “problem” of most men and women. It is, rather, a
form of higher human adaptation that functions as a means of
psycho-physical regeneration and spiritual pleasure in the fullest
bodily sense.
The truly human sexual process is itself a form of
“consideration,” or “samyama” on the All-Pervading Divine Life. And
it is that form of participation in the sexual function that permits
us to transcend sex itself, and all forms of emotional and bodily
reactivity, including conventional orgasm. Sexual communion with the
Radiant Divine, via the love relationship with a human partner, is,
when joined to a total life practice of personal, moral, higher
psycho-physical, and radically intuitive disciplines, an expression
of true religion, or sacrifice of self in God. True religion is total
psycho-physical Communion and even bodily Sacrifice of self in the
Radiant Divine Reality that Pervades and Transcends the World. Only
when such Communion and Sacrifice typifies our emotional and sexual
functions as well as our thinking, our moral disposition, and our
personal habits in general, have we begun to Worship God, who is the
Radiant Power and Transcendental Truth of all beings, things, and
worlds of experience.
Sexual communion is the technical term used by
Bubba Free John to describe the process whereby the emotional-sexual
functions of the psycho-physical being are first yielded into
Communion with the Current of All-Pervading Life and then sacrificed
or transcended in perfect God-Commnion.
As a technical term, “sexual communion” would
normally be italicized, according to literary convention. However,
because Bubba uses it frequently throughout the book, often many
times on a single page, such use of italic type would be a
distraction rather than an aid to understanding. Therefore, we
address the term here, in order to call your attention to its
special, technical use, so that you may understand it within the
context of Bubba Free John’s essays on the subject.
We wish to stress that sexual communion is not to
be interpreted from any conventional point of view. Sexual communion
is not merely a traditional yogic method for seeking one’s own higher
psycho-physical awakening through exploitation of the sex fuction,
nor is it a conventional means for seeking pleasurable release of
genital tension. It is a natural practice, founded in positive
adaptation to human emotional and sexual intimacy, and it is a
sacrificial or devotional discipline, in which body, mind,
self-sense, the loved one, and the sexual experience itself are
surrendered in direct, present Communion with the All-Pervading Life
that is God.
The process of sexual commnion is both
self-transcending and sex-transcending. It develops in three stages.
The first stage is the period of transitional struggle to move beyond
conventional eroticism and degenerative orgasm and to become
established in constant, regenerative Life-Communion during sexal
play, without need of chronic orgasmic release. The second stage
involves the relaxation of the strggle to avoid genital orgasm and
the spontaneous “inversion” or conversion and transcendence of orgasm
in the whole bodily thrill of Communion with the All-Pervading
Current of Life. When this “inversion” of the orgasm stabilizes, the
truly regenerative or Life-enhancing function of sexual communion
begins.
The third stage of sexual communion involves the
transcendence of the sex function as a necessary means for whole
bodily Communion with Life. In this phase, sexual activity is
spontaneonsly economized in the midst of a profound and constant
enjoyment of spiritual Love-Communion with the Living God. As the
devotee continues to mature spiritually, he passes through periods of
motiveless celibacy, or unsought transcendence of the sex function.
In some cases Love-Communion with God becomes so Full and constant
that motiveless celibacy becomes permanent, and specific exercise of
the sex function is no longer necessary or useful, except perhaps for
the occasional purpose of producing a child. In other cases, sexual
activity continues, but it is naturally economized by the devotee’s
spontaneous, blissful bodily Communion with the Divine.
The Regenerative Principle:
Liberation and Transformation of
the
Emotional and Sexual Connection to
Life
The Song of the Heart of
God,
an epitome of the Bhagavad Gita
3
and the Way of Divine Ignorance,
freely rendered by Bubba Free John
Listen to Me and hear Me. This is My Secret, the
Supreme Word. I will tell you what will benefit you the most, because
I love you. (18:64)
2. If you will surrender to Me, if you will become
a sacrifice to Me, if you will constantly yield your attention to Me
through love and service, then you will attain Me and come to Me. I
promise you this, because I love you. (18:65)
3. Abandon the principle in all your concerns and
all your strategies. Abandon every experience that may be attained as
a result of desire and effort. Abandon your search for what may be
gotten as a result of the various kinds of strategic action. Engage
every action that is appropriate for one who loves Me, but simply
perform every kind of action as a form of direct and present
Communion with Me. Relax all of your anxiety. Be free of sorrow and
fear. When you abide in Love-Communion with Me, the natural results
of your various activities no longer have power to separate or
distract you from Me. (18:66)
4. The soul that is born into the Realm of Nature,
or the worlds of action and experience, advances from childhood to
manhood, old age, and death, while identified with the same
body-mind. Then the same soul attains another body-mind as a result.
One who is truly intelligent is not troubled by all of that.
(2:13)
5. All of that is simply the natural Play of Life,
in which the two sides of every possibility come and go in cycles.
Winter’s cold alternates with summer’s heat. Pain likewise follows
every pleasure, since every appearance is followed by a
disappearance. There is no permanent experience in the Realm of
Nature. One who is truly perceptive simply allows all of this to be
so, and he does not add his own distress to this inevitable round.
(2:14)
6. Realization of the Eternal Destiny is only
possible when a man has ceased to defeat himself by reacting to the
Play of Nature. Such a one is steadied by his own understanding,
seeing that the cycle of changes, both positive and negative, is
inevitable in the world of experience. (2:15)
7. Those who see the Truth of things acknowledge
that what Exists Eternally never changes. And whatever does not Exist
Eternally only changes. (2:16)
8. Such seers of Truth also Realize that the
entire Realm of Change, even the body-mind, and even the soul itself,
is Pervaded, each and all, by That which Exists Eternally.
(2:17)
9. I am the Eternally Existing, All-Pervading,
Transcendental Divine Person, the true Self of all. And My Power of
Creation, whereby individual beings are made to live and change, is
Eternally Active as the Universal, All-Pervading Life-Energy of
Nature. (8:3)
10. I am the Divine Person, Who Pervades even the
Realm of Nature, and within Whom every individual being is arising. I
am Realized by self-transcending love, wherein every action is
engaged as a form of direct and present Communion with Me.
(8:22)
11. Men and women who are without faith in this
Way of Communion with Me do not Realize Me. Therefore, they remain
associated with the Changing Realm of Nature, the round of
psycho-physical experience, and the repetitive cycles of birth and
change and death. (9:3)
12. Such fools already have Me in every human
form, but they do not notice Me. They do not Realize Me in My
Transcendental Nature, the Master of everything and the true Self of
all manifest beings. (9:11)
13. But if anyone will live in Communion with Me,
surrendering himself to Me in love, then even if his love is shown
with nothing more than a leaf, or a flower, or a fruit, or water, I
will always accept the gift, and Offer Myself in return.
(9:26)
14. I am situated in the heart of all beings.
(15:15)
15. The Divine Master of all beings is literally
to be found at the heart, wherein the soul observes the changes of
experience. Every experience rises and falls at the heart,
spontaneously generated by Eternal Activity, the Universal
Life-Energy, as if the soul were fastened helplessly to a perpetual
motion machine. (18:61)
16. Therefore, do not surrender the heart to
experience, as if you were in love with your own body-mind. Surrender
the heart to Me, and to no other. I am the Divine Person, the Eternal
Master, the Radiant One, Who Pervades the Machine of Nature as the
Blissful Current of Life-Energy, and Who Transcends all experience as
Infinite Consciousness, the true Self. If you will surrender your
self-consciousness into My Transcendental Consciousness, and if you
will yield your experience into My All-Pervading Current of Life,
then I will also become an Offering to you. You will be Given the
Gift of Perfect Peace, and an Eternal Domain for your heart.
(18:62)
17. Now I have Revealed My Mystery to you.
Consider it fully, and then choose what you will do.
(18:63)
I Am the Body Is Love
The confession “I am the body” is love.
Free feeling-attention or love, is the spontaneous response that is
the sign of “hearing” the Teaching of Truth. It is love, the awakened
response of the whole bodily being, that reintegrates all the latent
and apparent functions and makes them a single sacrifice or
Realization.
Lovers must also be devotees, or persons engaged
in life as spiritual sacrifice. Devotees in the Way of Divine
Ignorance are awakened from the ancient illusions and divisions and
distinctions. They are awakened from the internal dualism of the
bodily being, which is expressed as a conflict between left and
right, inner and outer, up and down—and also projected as
conflicts in the world, between man and woman, cult and cult, Heaven
and Earth, State and State, and between all beings or conditions that
may be separately identified and known. Such devotees are free of the
ancient distinction between “Spirit” and “flesh,” “God” and “Man.”
They are relieved of the psychology of exclusive inwardness and the
dualisms of “soul” or “mind” versus the “body” and the “world.” True
and awakened devotees no longer believe that the body and the world
are “material,” but that they are each and at once a total spectrum
of manifestation, spread between visibility and invisibility,
swooning and changing in the Infinite Light of Life. Thus, true
devotees of God, who is Truth, are confessed whole bodily to one
another, to the whole world, and to the All-Pervading Radiance of
Divine Life.
“I” is the whole body—whatever that is
altogether. And “I” do not know what the whole body or any other
condition is, no matter how much “I” know about it. “I” is not
an independent point of view toward or relative to the body and all
experience. “I” am the whole body and all experience. This is
the confession of lovers who are also devotees.
This does not mean that we presume the body-“I” is
our limit, our Condtion. No, for in radical intuition of the identity
of “I” (which is simply the name or self-reference of the whole
bodily being and not any independent inward part) there is the
simultaneous Realization that not only the inward mentalization or
feeling of “I”, but the whole and entire bodily being, the true
identity of “I”, is all only a modification of the Transcendental
Current and Radiance that is the Support and Consciousness of the
body-“I” and all other conditions that are arising as experience or
knowledge.
Therefore, our confession is the sign of
Liberation in Truth. “I” is the whole and entire bodily being. And “I
am the body” is not the confession of mortality, self-possession,
“fleshy” self-indulgence, and fear. “I am the body” is love. It is
Divine Communion, or surrender to Life. This confession is the sign
of true devotees, who are presently happy and free, rather than
eternally troubled and seekng release by every means. This confession
is the mind of those who transcend themselves through love, rather
than defeat themselves through both self-indulgent and ascetic
strategies.
The Bodily Confession of the
Human Self,
or the Conversion of Sexuality to the Law of the
Heart
I is the whole and entire bodily being. But “I,”
even as the confession and harmony of the whole bodily being, is not
the Truth. The Truth of “I”, or the whole bodily being, and of the
world and all relations, is the prior or Real and Divine Condition of
all conditions. That Condition is Realized through functional,
esoteric, and total psycho-physical sacrifice, or love. Thus, true
bodily and sexual existence and confession is Communion with the Real
Condion at Infinity, which is All-Pervading Life-Radiance and
Transcendental Ignorance, or Unqualified Consciousness.
Sexual communion is, thus, at first a process of
transcending the dualism, dilemma, and conflict of mind versus body.
This is done through whole body confession: ” ‘I’ is the body.” Once
this free disposition is stabilized in understanding and action, the
necessary process is the one of transcending the whole body, the
psycho-physical being, the body-mind, or defined existence itself.
The confession ” ‘I’ is the body” is love, or sacrifice of the
independent self-body into the Infinite. Such is the Law.
This is the foundation Principle of the specific
and higher human process of sexual communion, which is the primary
subject of this book, and it is also the foundation Principle of the
whole of life, which is the general subject of this book. Sex is not
properly an end in itself, but a unifying, ecstatic process that
ultimately transcends itself in the Divine. First, subjectivity is
sacrificed to (confessed as) the whole bodily being, and then the
whole bodily being is sacrificed, through Divine Communion, or
ecstatic love, into the Infinite, Prior, and Real
Condition.
Therefore, there are two stages or aspects
contained in every moment of sexual relationship and every occasion
of sexual communion. And these two dimensions of the true sexual
process simply duplicate the two ultimate dimensions of the true and
radical spiritual process as a whole.
The first dimension is that of confession,
incarnation, or communication of the total and bodily identity of our
human individuality. That confession or gesture of incarnation is
expressed in the realization that “I” is not within and independent
of the whole body (physical, vital, sexual, emotional, mental,
etheric, psychic, astral, supramental, and egoic), but indeed is
identical to the whole and entire body. “I” must be realized to be
identical to incarnation and relationship rather than independent
subjectivity and chronic separativeness and inwardness. This true
“confession” is made not by the mere conceptual mind but by the whole
body (or bodily being), in the form of bodily self-sacrifice, which
is relational love, or free and unobstructed feeling-attention,
communicated to Infinity (or to the Infinite degree) via all
functions, in all relations, under all conditions. This transformed
activity is what is meant by “hearing” (rather than merely listening
to and conceiving) the Teaching of the Spiritual Master.
This whole bodily and active confession is the
beginning of human moral and spiritual transformation. But it is not
an end in itself. The manifest bodily being is not itself Truth or
true Destiny. Not even the so-called “higher” parts of Man are Truth
or eternally true. Truth is our Condition, and that Condition is our
true and ultimate Destiny—the Destiny, therefore, of the whole
bodily being. “I” is not within and apart. “I” is the whole bodily
being itself, as whatever total form it appears in any moment. But
Destiny or Truth is not the psycho-physical and experiential body
itself, or the world itself, high or low. Rather, the Destiny of the
whole bodily being is to be a sacrifice into its Condition or
Truth.
Therefore, the second dimension of sexual
communion and the radical spiritual process in general is the
Realization of the sacrifice of “I” (as the whole bodily
being) into the prior or Divine Condition of all arising
conditions.
In practice, the first dimension of the process is
realized through the full exercise of free, unobstructed,
non-reactive feeling-attention, or loving and total or whole bodily
service to one’s lover—not only on the occasions of sexual
embrace, but during every moment of the relationship itself. The
second dimension of the process is realized in the practical
conversion of genital energy and orgasm into a fully diffused whole
body ecstasy, radiant and relaxed as love, or unqualified Feeling, to
Infinity.
Because there are two great and essentially
simultaneous dimensions to this “consideration” and process of sexual
communion, the whole affair of instruction and practice must be
engaged in two stages, in order that adaptation be realized in a
fully integrated and conscious manner. Therefore, the material in
this book will be presented in two parts. The first pertains
especially to the matters of vital-physical and emotional-sexual
adaptation, the structure and process of self-possession, and
transcendence of the ambivalent disposition, characterized
alternately by motives of dependence and independence, in its warfare
with the true responsibility of love, or free feeling-attention. The
second part of this sequence of study and practice pertains to the
specific process of whole bodily conservation and conversion of the
big-energetic and chemical superfluity stimulated through sexual
polarization and genital sexual intercourse.
God Is the Transcendental
Consciousness and Radiant Life That Pervades the Body, the Mind, and
the World
The entire world, and every living individual, is
pervaded by a Transcendental Consciousness and Radiant Energy that is
the single Identity and Ultimate Source, Sustainer, Mover,
Transformer, and Destiny of every thing and every one. That is God,
the Divine, the Real, the All-Pervading, Transcendental, Bliss-Full
Ignorance-Radiance.
The individual body-mind is a temporary and
dependent extension, reflection, and modification of the Very and
Living Divine. The individual does not in any way create or sustain
itself, or determine its ultimate Destiny. The individual is wholly
and always presently dependent on the Divine, which is alive as all
beings. Only cooperative, conscious, and self-released participation
in the Divine by the individual body-mind permits the Divine to
Sustain and Determine a benign or ultimately positive and
transforming individual life-cycle, and to draw the individual into
the Destiny that is Divine. But if the individual recoils from the
Divine Life and Identity, then the life-cycle degenerates, and
reactive experiential destinies bind the individual to illusions,
until he is Awakened from self to God.
The Divine as All-Pervading Radiance spontaneously
individuates as the bodily form, and pervades that form as Life,
whereas the Divine as Transcendent Ignorance eternally transcends all
forms as Unqualified Consciousness. The Life-Radiance is expressed,
or spontaneously modified, not only as the bodily form, but also as
its states of feeling and mentality. The range of experiential
states—bodily, vital, emotional, and mental, as well as
unconscious, subconscious, conscious, and superconscious—is
broad and complex, ordinary and extraordinary. But no experiential
state, however high in the structural scheme of our born
possibilities, is itself the Realization of the prior Divine
Condition or Absolute Truth of the body-mind. And unless that
Condition and Truth is Realized in the present moment of
experiencing, experience itself, no matter how extraordinary, is
self-binding, deluding, degenerative, and an instrument of separation
from the Bliss of God.
Individual existence in a world is a riddle and a
torment, unless it may be established in right Relationship to the
Radiant Reality that is its Life, or Energy, and in right Identity
with the Transcendental Ignorance, or Unqualified Consciousness, that
is its very Self. And the Way in which we may live in such right
Relationship and Identity with the Divine Reality, free of fear and
illusion, is in conversion, or the “turnabout” of every aspect of the
body-mind, from self-possession to Ecstatic God-Communion.
All the religious and spiritual “Ways” that have
been communicated among men are historical gestures toward the
self-sacrificial or Ecstatic Communion of the individual with the One
and Ultimate Divine Reality. The Way of Divine Ignorance is simply a
most radical, summary, and completely considered form of this
necessary obligation of Man.
Communion with the Radiant and Transcendental
Divine is ecstatic sacrifice of the whole and entire body-mind into
the Radiant Energy that pervades it and the Unqualified Consciousness
with which it is Identical. And the process of such Communion assumes
a particular character in the case of the human individual, because
the structure that must yield into the Divine is constructed or
fabricated according to a specific complex design.
Clearly, the common characteristics of human
individuals are bodily, vital, emotional, and mental. Therefore, the
most rudimentary form of Divine Communion is the intuitive turning of
all bodily, vital, emotional, and mental functions, conditions,
experiences, and relations into forms of functional surrender to the
Radiant Divine Life. Such is the whole bodily religious obligation
presumed in the Way of Divine Ignorance by members of The Free
Communion Church. In that process, the Living Power of God is
permitted to pervade, enliven, sustain, transform, and Awaken the
entire bodily being. And the primary instrument of that process is
the whole bodily disposition of ecstatic or self-releasing sacrifice
into the Divine. That disposition is the one of total, profound, and
free feeling-attention, or relaxation of the entire body-mind into
the All-Pervading Life through love. The means of this sacrifice
includes devotional practices, forms of personal functional
discipline of a wholly regenerative kind, and a continuous moral
orientation to others through heartfelt service and clear-minded
intelligence.
As the individual matures in Communion with the
Living and Transcendental Divine, the unique and specific design of
his own structural condition becomes more and more apparent.
Therefore, the process of Sacrifice in God begins to take on more of
the “esoteric” form of a highly sophisticated yogic exercise. And
growth in this Way begins to include higher psycho-physical awakening
to the structural design by which the individual body-mind mediates
the Radiant Energy and Unqualified Consciousness of the
Divine.
———
Human energy must be radiated, through free
feeling attention (in love, or service), in all relations under all
conditions, to Infinity. Otherwise, that energy will accumulate or
define itself in our finite shape and demand eliminative release.
Therefore, both our energy and our responsibility will increase over
time. Ultimately, we are obliged to serve all beings with the total
life of feeling-attention and to the degree of Infinity.
The Taboo against the Superior
Man
Dracula and Frankenstein: The Ancient Superior
Man as Scapegoat for the Modern Inferior Man
The roots of human inversion and failure are in
the childhood of Man, and in the solutions to the problems of life
that the subhuman or growing individual creates in the conceived
world of his childhood. The child is dependent and vulnerable,
surrounded by great natural forces and parental human forces. He is
weak, unadapted, without functional facility and power, and without
conceptual and intuitional understanding of his experience or his
ultimate situation. Thus, to the degree that he makes solutions to
the dilemmas he finds in the failures of what he depends on to
protect and fulfill him, the child inverts within himself and resorts
exclusively or negatively to himself. The unrelieved fears of
childhood dependency and vulnerability leave the childhood vision of
the world intact. Thus, unless higher adaptation is made possible
through the help of mature others and through initiation into higher
human wisdom, the individual remains more or less childish throughout
his entire life.
This is generally the case, and, therefore, most
people remain possessed by an inverted or self-possessed,
subjectively oriented disposition, in which functional and bodily
relations with the human and natural dimensions of the world are at
best complicated. The truly human obligation is for relational
adaptation. But the childish solution, created wherever fear
dominates the force of adaptation, is toward inversion and the
pleasures that may be realized within or on one’s person, both
subjectively and bodily.
The childish view of the world is the vision of
vulnerable dependency. It is not the heroic or enlightened vision of
the mature individual. Just so, the childish or subhuman vision of
life is also represented in various forms of inverted belief or
“knowledge” passed on from generation to generation. Such persuasions
include the ideas of “Evil,” the “Devil,” and the “Divine” taboos
against the human attainment of higher wisdom and of ecstasy (or
self-release) through relational sexual love.
Higher human cultural initiation and adaptation
are the means whereby individuals and societies may move beyond the
inverted visions and solutions of childhood and into the higher
functional responsibilities of truly human maturity. Such cultural
influences are a human necessity, although, for the most part, modern
societies tend to be bereft of and even antagonistic toward such
influences. Industrial civilizations acquire greater and greater
mechanical facility in relation to the physical universe, and,
therefore, must likewise give evidence of mature responsibility for
the personal and universal display of natural forces. But these same
societies also continue to carry the childish and timid and also the
adolescent and casually rebellious visions and solutions to life.
Therefore, industrial societies tend to develop individuals who are
sophisticated in their general familiarity and exploitation of the
natural world, but who are inherently indisposed toward
responsibility for natural forces (either in themselves or in
the world).
This spell of childish and subhuman persuasions
must be broken if there is to be a future, and necessarily mature,
humanity. This means that individuals must be instructed, initiated,
and obliged to adapt to the higher human wisdom and its ways. They
must be awakened from the childhood visions of fearful dependency,
and the adolescent ways of egocentric exploitation of independent and
private experience. My Work in the world is, at base, an initiatory
influence of this kind.
The superior or mature human being must become the
goal of our adaptation and, thus, of all the educational influences
we promote. True, tested, human and spiritual wisdom must be
represented by the religious, spiritual, and even secular
institutions of our common culture. Therefore, we must purify
ourselves, our fellows, and our institutions, so that we are free of
the vision of childishness. We must oblige one another to a new and
higher level of adaptation or evolution.
“Count Dracula” 4
and “Doctor Frankenstein” 5
are modern literary examples of how the childish vision of life may
be superimposed on the possibilities of true and mature humanity.
Each of these archetypal characters is made to appear evil,
necessarily doomed by his primal “sin. ” Thus, each must die or fail
in order to satisfy the childish vision of the way the world
works.
“Doctor Frankenstein” is simply our human
obligation to accept responsibility for our individual lives, the
life process, the Life-Force, the bodily structures, and the natural
domain. But he and his “monster” are made to suffer and fail, like
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, as if the presumption of such
responsibility were an offense rather than a natural and sacred
obligation.
Just so, “Count Dracula” is simply our human
obligation to accept responsibility for the sexual process and the
higher, truly human, or ecstatic and regenerative purpose of both
sexuality and the living mechanisms of personal life. But he is made
to appear as the incarnarion of Evil, the Devil, the Anti-Christ, so
that he must be suppressed and destroyed.
The problem is that “Doctor Frankenstein” and
“Count Dracula” are each even today, in the person of each human
individual suppressed, mutilated, and made a scapegoat through the
lies of childish, irresponsible, and subhuman views of life. The
literary characters and stories themselves belong only to the realm
of amusing and terrifying fairy tales. But the significance of these
tales is in the neurosis of modern human societies, which still
support and to a degree depend upon the subhuman masses, controlled
by antisexual taboos and manipulated by fears of responsibility for
great matters in general. But if the human race is not permitted to
rise up in the scale of evolution, the masses and their parental
controllers will eventually destroy one another.
The priestly influences of official subhuman
society are found in a hierarchy, beginning with the super-parental
influences of conventional religion, official science, and the
unresponsive political powers of the State. These high priests are
then served locally by communcations media and educational
institutions, on down to our personal Mom and Dad. Such agents are
parental and negative influences to the degree they do not
responsibly communicate, permit, and even oblige the general
population toward responsible free adaptation to higher and mature
human levels of functional life. Where people are not obliged toward
incarnation of the superior man, then “everyman” makes a chaos of
absurdity out of the human world.
Thus, “Count Dracula” and “Doctor Frankenstein,”
along with the “Devil,” and “God,” and “Jesus,” and all the other
realities that have been fictionalized and degraded by the
irresponsible and childish visions of mankind, must be liberated in
our minds and from our minds. The Wisdom of the transcendentally
Awakened Agents of the Real must somehow be made effective as the
common Principle of human societies.
In the traditions of older societies there is
commonly a convention or taboo that requires women to avoid the
general company of men, and the intimate company of their husbands,
during the monthly menstrual flow. The foundation of this requirement
is the observation that, during the time of her periodic flow (and
even during a number of days preceding it), the woman is out of
balance in her energy and chemistry, as well as her emotions, her
general physical state, and in her relationship to sexuality. It was
felt that, in the case of most ordinary people, the force of the male
could not equal or balance the female’s force at that time and, since
that was so, he must avoid the woman during certain of her critical
days, or else he would be in danger of losing his own vital strength
through association with her.
This notion was based on profound sensitivity to
the process of sexual association during the woman’s periodic flow.
It was observed that the natural sympathy and effort of desire on the
part of the male always moved to establish an equal or balancing
intensity relative to the female. But this effort needed to go beyond
equality during the menstrual time, and thus proved to be enervating
to the male, creating an imbalance in his own case.
The regulation of contact between the sexes
established by this principle was not at all antisexual, but a purely
practical expression of sexual wisdom. It was intended to preserve
harmony and pleasure between the sexes. However, in more recent,
complex societies, encompassed by “civilized” demands on the
individual, certain antisexual taboos and conventions have been made
to proliferate in our lives and obstruct our sensitivity to natural
bodily processes. At the present time, particularly in industrial
Western societies, the prohibition against social and sexual contact
between the sexes during the woman’s flow is barely perceived. But
the general antisexual taboo is pervasive in its force.
In the progress of Western societies that led to
the present state of affairs, men and women have moved from sexual
sensitivity, and a valuation of both the relations and the relative
independence of the sexes, to sexual insensitivity, or the general
inability to inspect and be responsible for and engage the sexual
process with free delight. Ths loss or suppression of sexual
sensitivity has also been accompanied by a general devaluation of
sexual relations (which came to be regarded more or less as “sin,” or
at best as a vulgar personal indulgence) as well as a devaluation of
the relatively independent character and way of life that pertains to
each sex. As a result, we have produced a society where the norm is
casual relations (both social and sexual) between the sexes, an
almost total absence of understanding of the higher or uniquely human
function of sex, a persistent sense of the wrongness or vulgarity of
sex in principle, an equally persistent obsession with personal or
self-oriented sexual exploitation (“unseen” by the parentlike
enforcers of sexual taboos), and a general tendency toward reversal
of sexual roles (in either heterosexual or homosexual relations) as
well as an androgynous equalization of the sexes in general (without
the realization of higher and bodily evolution and Enlightenment,
which is the necessary pre-Condition for the transcendence of sexual
polarization and playful differentiation in the human
world).
Clearly, we must realize a responsible level of
awareness of human sexuality, free of the antisexual bias. However,
we must likewise awaken to an understanding of the higher and often
esoteric functions of the sexual mechanism (or the generalized bodily
mechanism touched upon by our sexual practice). Such responsibilities
do not characterize childish people or subhuman societies, but
practical wisdom of this kind has been exhibited by superior men and
women and by higher human cultures since ancient times.
The present book is an effort to help this full
transition in our personal understanding of human sexuality. In the
process, we must awaken from our gothic fears of sexuality, and our
religious disinclination toward bodily existence.
The “Devil” is nothing more than the Divine
Reality in its Function as the Destroyer and ultimate Destiny of the
sacrifice of all beings and worlds. He is “Siva,” the image of the
Divine Person carrying a trident. 6
The free religious or spiritually awakened individual is not only
himself restored to God, but his higher understanding restores
aspects of God or the Godhead to Itself. When “sin” is forgiven, or
when self is purified of its separative motivations, what was
previously the “Devil’s work” (by virtue of egoic, fearful, and
self-possessed fascination) becomes a matter of ordinary
responsibility and sacrifice.
In modern literature, one of the most potent
Satanic images is that of Count Dracula, in the novel by Bram Stoker.
But the pervasive evil of this character and his deeds is itself only
an expression of an inverted sense of the sexual function in Man.
And, curiously, the story itself represents a cultural memory of the
whole taboo against the association between the sexes during the
menstrual flow of the female.
In earlier times and places, men generally avoided
social and sexual contact with women during the days of the menses.
However, those who were mature and representative of the higher human
type were often initiated by the elders into methods for transforming
various “negative” sexual indications into positive and regenerative
means. Such methods are reflected in the descriptions of sexual
communion in this book. Among such methods or approaches was one
regarding contact with a woman during her monthly flow. The man who
was truly prepared could embrace a woman during the time of menses
and not only avoid enervating imbalance but actually benefit from the
increased available force of the female (or the feminine, relatively
passive, or “negative” and “left-sided” 7
pole in the polarized play of sex).
Male individuals trained in the greater arts and
sacrificial responsibilities of sex knew not only how to compensate
for and benefit by social and sexual relations during the menses of
women and wife, but also how to use the force of the female in
general, for regenerative purposes in the male body. And initiated
females likewise knew how to use the force of the male for
regenerative purposes in the female body. This yoga was common to
certain classes in China, India, and elsewhere in more ancient times.
In general, it was most often men who were trained in these methods,
but there were frequent cases of women who were also trained in the
positive regenerative sexual association with men. Whether ideal sex
relations were considered to be polygamous or monogamous, the
regenerative or Life-conservative practices related to sexuality were
common throughout the ancient world.
In modern times, the positive, regenerative,
higher, and esoteric approach to sexual relations and the sexual
mechanism has become obstructed by dualistic and childishly inverted
views of human life. The war of “flesh” and “spirit” has brought the
world of mankind close to oblivion, and the last quarter of the
twentieth century is perhaps going to be the ultimate test of our
capacity to liberate ourselves from this profound lie and
disturbance. The self-divided man is one in whom the
psycho-physiological mechanisms of the left and right sides of brain
and body are opposed to one another rather than polarized toward one
another. Such a one originates Gods and Devils, Worlds and Heavens
and Hells from his Own body-mind, and he lives his sexual character,
male or female, as a principle of conflict with others and of
independent satisfaction of self.
Thus, Count Dracula, the “Devil,” is the product
of our antisexual, inverted, self-divided psychology. In him, the
ancient superior man is made to wear the guise of Evil, and our
conventional psyche rejects him and all that he represents to us,
both consciously and unconsciously. But if we understand ourselves
and cease to be self-divided, antisexual, alternately at war with the
body and with “Heaven,” then we may also see the superior and even
Divine qualities of Man underneath the superimposed vulgarities of
Dracula.
Dracula—apart from the disgusting and
negative disguise given him by the modern mind—is simply an
ancient type of the superior man. He is a man who is free to embrace
a woman during her time of menstrual imbalance, or greater force. He
appears in the form of a bat—a blackened or evil inversion of a
bird, a dove, the mind or “soul” of Man. He embraces his lover with
passionate intent, as a life and death matter—and mysteriously,
suddenly, like the Holy Spirit descending on the future mother of an
Incarnation of Truth. But he is made to kill, rather than to give and
to receive Life in the positive sense. He seeks the vulnerable place
of life and blood, at the throat, in the manner of an animal. But,
truly, this is only an inverted acknowledgment of the yogic
passageway between the trunk and the brain, and the necessity for the
sexual force and the higher blood chemistry to rise to the brain and
to the entire body of the regenerated individual. The white canine
teeth, the eye teeth of Dracula, penetrate the vulnerable throat of
his lover, again in animal fashion, but symbolizing in an inverted
way the act of sexual intercourse. The pervasive presence of blood,
the association of penetration or sexual intercourse with blood, is a
sign of the ancient yogic practice of coupling during the menses.
Dracula’s own bloody mouth with white phallic teeth exposed,
duplicates the image of the sexual scene, while also symbolizing his
own harmonization of opposites within himself, thus giving him the
power of regeneration or relative immortality. And Dracula is given
life every time he enters into embrace so that he even becomes
perfectly regenerated, or immortal, as long as he continues his habit
of sexual love. All the rest of the story is a pseudo-Christian
accretion that mainly serves the whole notion of anti-sex and
anti-Life.
Modern man, in the conventional guise of
“Everyman,” fears the idea of taking responsibility for his own life,
and the Process of Life itself, as it is altogether and everywhere
displayed. Thus, another Gothic tale, by Mary Shelley, about the
Frankenstein monster, manages to express the same psychology that
inverts the ancient superior man into the “Monster,” Dracula. Doctor
Frankenstein, in the ancient manner, takes bold responsibility for
life, and, by acquiring the lightning power, or Life-Force, of a
storm, enlivens a corpse. But Doctor Frankenstein is made monstrous,
along with his “Monster,” by the inverted, antisexual and childish,
subhuman mind of modern Man.
Truly, we must awaken to the ancient
responsibility for sex and all the ordinary powers of Life in our own
bodies. We must do this fearlessly, and return to the culture of a
superior humanity, organized via a moral and esoteric order of
physical and superphysical sacrifices of the individual. We must
again accept our responsibility for life and death, and fearlessly
embrace the bodily process of our existence, so that we may live
humanly, and so that we may Realize the true Destiny of Man, which
only comes through literal sacrifice and Translation of the whole and
entire and individual body-mind into the All-Pervading and
Transcendental Divine Radiance wherein we all appear.
In the Old Testament it is suggested that Man
exercise dominion over beasts and growing things. This is an
acknowledgment that Man, in the form of every human individual, is
not only functionally or structurally more and greater than anything
else in the natural or elemental world, but that his happiness and
even his survival depend on his acceptance of responsibiliry for
everything in himself that is common to the rest of the natural
world.
Thus, it is not merely that he is naturally
superior to cattle, snakes, vegetables, and the elements, and,
therefore, should force all such things into degraded submission to
his own aggressive and stupid will to eat and use and do everything,
and wait for understanding to come in the future, while the Cosmic
Parent meanwhile keeps everything in order. Rather, the superiority
of Man is in his responsibility to acknowledge that he is not merely
a natural or vital creature, like the rest of the natural world. Man
is structurally more and greater than the vital processes, and,
therefore, he must understand, and accept responsibility for a right
and Lawful relationship to what is merely vital, in himself as well
as in the world.
If the individual does not accept active
responsibility for his vital-physical and emotional-sexual functions,
then he is reduced to these. And if he is not responsible for these
functions in his own case, he will inevitably deal irresponsibly and
destructively with all vital creatures and the natural domain
itself.
Our science, technology, politics, and social
experience bear this out. Mankind is, at this stage, generally still
in the subhuman levels of adaptation, wherein responsibility for the
vital functions and the vital domain is largely absent, because men
and women have not aufficiently differentiated themselves from a
sense of exclusive identity with the vital and elemental dimensions
of themselves and the world. It is not that we must, as religious and
spiritual cultists generally suggest, identify exclusively with what
is not at all vital and elemental. Such would lead us into
subjectivist illusions. However, we must realize that we are
structurally more and greater than what is merely vital and
elemental, even while we also realize that what is vital and
elemental is apart of us, and the very part for which we must assume
immediate and intelligent responsibility.
In our subhuman and childish condition, more or
less exclusively identified with vital and physical experience, we
tend to fear and avoid responsibility for the lower aspects of
experience and of the world itself. Hence, we “play” with everything,
but we cannot fully control our effects. We slaughter, exploit,
poison, and spoil. We achieve power over great natural forces in the
environment, but we cannot be the loving master of sex, or
population, or industrial wastes, or international politics.
Therefore, we are a destructive influence in the natural world, where
beasts and elements consistently demonstrate an instinctual economy
and harmony that puts our human vulgarities to shame.
The old orders of religion are the cults of this
same childish irresponsibility. They support fear, dependence, and
subhuman levels of adaptation and awareness. They do not do this
altogether intentionally, but they do so effectively, by making
consolation, mythical belief, child-parent imagery, and personal
survival the core of the religious way, rather than self-sacrifice,
radical spiritual intelligence, and higher adaptation.
Thus, higher or superior Man is present in this
world only in the case of the rare individual, rather than in the
form of the human world as a whole. And such an uncommon individual
is regarded suspiciously by all. The responsibilities and the Vision
he presumes make him appear like a “mad scientist” or an “evil” man
of mysterious powers, in league with the “Devil.” All of this because
the usual man refuses to be responsible for all that he must master
if he is to be truly human and pass on to his Divine
Destiny.
——–
Sexual taboos and the generalized sense
that antisexual views and habits are humanly and even cosmically
obligatory and correct are passed on from generation to generation by
many means. The most influential means are those of the withholding
of bodily and sexual communications. We only show and tell our
children what we ourselves are not afraid to be and know. The rest is
hidden behind the withholding of bodily and emotional intimacy as
well as the absence of positive verbal communication about the whole
affair of incarnate human experience, including sexuality.
The entire social and cultural game of antisexual,
“spirit against flesh” education is so monstrous, so opposed to
incarnate happiness and human responsibility, as well as the ultimate
transcendental sacrifice of the individual body-mind though moral and
spiritual processes, that it must be considered the primary social
and even philosophical issue of our time.
We must all awaken from our loveless
one-sidedness. The deluded religious and spiritual cultists are
perpetually at war with the bodily life, choosing the brain-mind as
if it were the Infinite. And the equally deluded anti-religionists,
salt-of-the-earth political fanatics, and worldly humanistic social
mechanics or scientific technocrats are perpetually at war with the
higher, psychic, and spiritual dimensions of human
experience.
Children of parents of the “spirit” are deprived
of the energy of their incarnation, fastened to inward nonsense and
the vision of a self-divided mortality that has no pleasure except
away from here. And children of parents of the “flesh” are deprived
of the powers of higher adaptation, fastened to cycles of endless
work and reproduction, and the vision of utopian solutions that only
serve those who happen to be alive when the great Future State
comes.
We must awaken and adapt to the conditions of the
whole and entire body-mind, and to the Way of truly human existence,
which is made through personal, moral, and higher mental or spiritual
sacrifice, or love. Then we will not only live in Truth, but we will
withhold nothing from our children, who must always be permitted a
complete bodily understanding that corresponds to their level of
functional awareness, and who must be included in a culture of truly
human adaptation, in which not exploitation but gradual
responsibility is the key to human growth.
We Have Not Sinned in Eden, but We Have Been
Born
The play of sex is simply a special version of the
play of whole body feeling-attention that should characterize all
human activity. There is no justification for assigning any unique
negative evaluation to the sexual potential of the bodily being any
more than to breathing, digestion, or any other potential. Indeed, if
we do conceive of sexuality in problematic terms, via attitudes of
guilt, self-consciousness, and the like, a suppressive contraction
appears in that function and affects not only our sexuality but the
whole form and state of the body, emotion, and mind. There must be a
characteristically positive and pleasurable attitude relative to all
the functional possibilities of the whole body. And we must be
naturally and stably capable of unobstructed whole body
feeling-attention via the rhythmic relational play of all our
functions.
Therefore, the sexual function is right,
pleasurable, and free in principle—and it must, on that account,
have a right or appropriate and Lawful use. That is the use described
in this book. It is sexual communion, founded in a full, present, and
ongoing relational response rather than any subjective,
self-possessed, reactive mental or emotional obsessiveness. It is
sexual relationship, founded in the sacrifice of
subjectivity.
The Right Religious,
Spiritual, and Human
Discipline of the Sexual Function
The advocates of the various spiritual traditions
commonly recommend that the sex impulse be controlled. Indeed, they
most often warn that if the sex impulse is not controlled, there is
no way to progress by any or all of one’s other spiritual or life
practices. But what is “control” of the sex impulse? Is it merely to
do without sexual intercourse? If it is, then the dead, the impotent,
and the naturally uninterested would be the first if not the only
ones to realize the Truth and the One Life.
The strategy of celibacy is only factual
nonperformance of genital sexual acts. Even if there is also
restraint of hidden thoughts and feelings of sexual desire as well as
casual speech about sexual matters, the “control” of the sex impulse
thus established is merely nonperformance. Nonperformance of the
sexual act is not in itself control of the sex impulse in the sense
that makes the difference in a life of religious and spiritual
discipline. Rather, true control means nothing more nor less than
responsibility for the sexual function, and, therefore, right,
regenerative, and self-transcending participation in sexual activity
rather than self-possessed and degenerative exploitation of the urge
of the genitals.
The call to “control,” or responsibility for the
sexual function, is a call to Man—so that he may turn from “sin”
(or missing the mark through misdirected intention of motion) to
“righteousness” (or right intention of the functional motion of
living existence). Therefore, we must learn and practice right or
Lawful (sacrificial) application of the whole body to all its
functional obligations and possibilities. The Law of human life is
conscious sacrifice, or love, as a discipline of the whole bodily
being or the totality of our functions, in all relations, under all
conditions. We are not obliged to sacrifice what is not one with us.
We are obliged to be sacrifice. And the sacrifice of the whole body
(elemental physical, etheric or living emotional, mental,
supermental, and egoic) is not realized by killing any or all of its
parts, but by coordination of all the parts and functions into the
single radiance and release that is love in all relations, under all
conditions. And love is unobstructed feeling-attention. It is human
relational intensity—free of the recoil of self-possession or
self-meditation, reactive or negative emotions, and absorption in the
subjective stream of thoughts and images.
Our Lawful obligation in Truth is to be love as
the whole body—to be unobstructed feeling-attention, or radiant
happiness, in all our relations, via all our functions, under all
conditions, from birth to death and beyond.
The Way whereby this Lawful obligation becomes
realizable by ordinarily adapted human beings has been described as
the Way of Divine Ignorance in The Enlightenment of the Whole Body,
The Paradox of Instruction, and other books. The present book is
intended to describe the manner of right use or participation in the
play of sexuality.
Many advocates speak of this matter in prudish and
problematic terms. They see all sin and violence inside their
underwear. Such people are in a dilemma relative to this bodily
appearance whereby we are communicated to one another. They are
striving to go elsewhere by identifying with the subjective part and
denying or separating from the living and elemental aspect of the
whole body. Such an inclination is a form of conflict, in which the
natural polar opposites at play in all worlds and bodies are felt to
be antagonists—light versus darkness, “God” versus “Devil,” male
versus female.
In Truth, we are not the mind to a greater degree
than we are the flesh. “I” is the whole body, high and low, within
and without. There is no separable inwardness. The whole body is
obliged to be a sacrifice to Infinity—to be Radiance without a
center.
Therefore, the true Way is not founded on the
conflicts created by the inwardness of experience or knowledge.
Rather, it is founded on the freedom of absolute, unqualified, prior,
and present Ignorance. No matter what arises as experience and
presumption founded on experience, “I” do not know what even a single
thing is. Existence is not inspected, nor is it ultimately defined.
We have no option within. We are obliged to exist as Mystery and to
be and act free of all inwardness, all subjectivity, the whole egoic
illusion or recoil into meditation on the notion of independent,
defined existence or consciousness, its finite destiny, and its
numberless desires or hopes. The argument of the Teaching of Truth is
communicated to us in our problematic self-possession. And that
Teaching obliges us to fulfill the Law—to be free of self and
subjectivity, and to be love, free of qualification by any reaction,
and expressed through all functions. The whole body must be a perfect
sacrifice to Infinity, or else we only forever create an illusory
destiny, in mental and physical realms, until Awakening
comes.
The advocates of the avoidance of sexuality
imagine the sexual functon to be unique relative to the rest of the
body. They think it especially “evil” in comparison to other
functions. But it is only a particular functional version of the same
life process that is elsewhere particularized as breathing, walking,
eating, sleeping, feeling, and so forth. If there is a necessity to
avoid the sex function, then all the other functions, including the
inwardness of higher mind and psyche, must likewise be abandoned. All
functions are expressions of the same life. Therefore, if this logic
holds, all functions must be abandoned as the same evil. And such,
indeed, is the extreme ascetic view at the root of conventional
spiritual advocacy.
But this view is obviously false. When its logic
is followed to the end, it demands an absurd profession. In Truth,
the whole body stands in Light. It is not in any part condemned or
evil. It is simply that it is obliged by a single Law, which is love,
or self-transcendence, in presumption and in practice.
Under the Law, no functional dimension of the
whole body is false or evil in principle. Therefore, guilt is only a
superficial and childish reaction, founded in the primal fear at the
root of our birth. We have not sinned in Eden, but we have been born.
Our ultimate fault is not any act within the world, but the primal
act or presumption of independent, separate, and separative
consciousness—the attitude and strategy of Narcissus. Our
ultimate healing and happiness is not in outward or cosmic
forgiveness for outward or cosmic actions. No amount of granted
forgiveness or personal effort can work perfect purification or
release from the effects of our actions and presumptions. We must be
perfectly released, and thus priorly and radically free of the
principle that underlies our actions, which is the egoic presumption,
the independent “I,” and the fear of vulnerability and death. If we
are not free of the illusion of confinement to a separate and mutable
existence, then we will miss the mark and be obsessed in our dilemmas
forever.
The Wisdom of the Way of Divine Ignorance is the
Awakening from separation, metaphysical independence, dilemma, doubt,
guilt, anger, sorrow, fear, and the strategies of fear. It is the
Awakening from the illusions of subjectivity, of knowledge, of
separate experience, unique consciousness, and the powers of the
independent self. It is not annihilation or persuasion toward the
sleep of salt-of-the-earth collectivism. It is Bliss. It is love and
transcendental Awareness. It is an entire life of whole body
sacrifice, radiant as love to Infinity, wherein the born being is
translated from this dream of parts and persons into the Divine
Domain beyond all knowing.
What then is “control of the sex impulse”? It is
whole body responsibility, as love, in relationship to a true lover
(one to whom one is intimately committed in time and space) and in
Communion with the Radiant Life of God. It is the same as love under
any functional conditions. Love is “conscious exercise”
8
of the body-mind, in all relations and under all conditions. And such
love is the Lawful establishment of the whole body in a right,
living, regenerative, or radiant functional order.
The right play of genital sexuality is
occasional—however frequent. That is, it is not continuous, as
is the breath or heartbeat. Nor is it casual, as is the stream of
thoughts. But the occasional incident of genital sexual play is an
incident within what is otherwise a continuous rhythmic cycle or
display of experience. Such is the relationship or polarized play of
feeling-attention between lovers. The relationship is continuous. But
the incident of genital play is an occasion, appearing at random,
founded in the rhythms of the vital evidence of
love-desire.
Thus, lovers occasionally move to genital
embraces. And this is an unexplainable pleasure or ecstasy. It is not
an end in itself, nor does it ever have an end. It is merely evidence
the shown Life—of their continuous polarization or pleasurable
and playful opposition to one another. Love is expressed via
functional incidents of all kinds. Sex is no more evil than the
polarizations or rhythms of Life itself. Sexual play is right, good,
human, and a Divine inspiration.
Then why is there so much controversy relative to
the genital theatre of man? Above all, it is because of fear and the
presumed knowledge that each of us is an irreducibly separate,
finite, or vulnerable consciousness, self, person, or soul. But, in
Truth, such separation is only a conventional appearance in this
dream of Life. It is neither a true nor a necessary point of view, as
devotees in the Way of Divine Ignorance realize through hearing,
initiation, and Direct Revelation. But when men in general suppose
independence, vulnerability, and fear, they recoil upon themselves.
They suppress and mutilate the flow of feeling-attention, or love.
They accumulate habits of self-indulgence and consolation based on
separation, vulnerability, and suppressed love. And they organize
their collective existence in ways that seek to control, manipulate,
suppress, and otherwse make our separate and individual actions
predictable wthin a formal scheme that permits very little variation,
ecstasy, or original insight.
Therefore, religious ecstatics and innocent lovers
are a threat to the political order of our fears. We are usually busy
protecting ourselves from one another, whereas ecstatics cross the
barriers of all worldly knowledge. They commune with unity where the
worldly-wise find parts and sequences and endings in a humorless void
of fleshes and atomic slime.
When men renounce fear and childishness and accept
the Law of love and egoless Communion with the Real, then they begin
to make truly human lives and human culture for their generations. It
is for the sake of such humanity that this book is written. It is
about the human realization or right use of the process of love in
the play of sexual polarization.
Not all madmen are enjoying the Divine Intuition.
Nor are all who lie down together enjoying the ecstasy of selfless
Communion with the Real Condition of all conditions via intimacy with
their lovers. The difference is in the foundation: Is it fear and
self-consciousness, or is it intuition of the Real Condition of self,
subjectivity, body, world, and others? Where there is the foundation,
through hearing the argument of Truth, then all our functions come
under the obligation of the Law, and our span of manifest existence
becomes a discipline of functional sacrifice. Thus, lovers become the
servants and advocates of one another. And they cease to embrace one
another in the conventional manner. Rather, they become a “yoga” of
one another, a mutual sacrifice, wherein all subjectivity is yielded
as free feeling-attention to one another, and the whole body of each
and both is yielded as a sacrifice or Radiation of feeling to
Infinity.
Thus, control, responsibility, or right use
relative to the sexual function is a conservative process of
Life-Energy, in which the bodily (or more solid part) and the mental
(or more subtle part) are both yielded via unobstructed feeling into
the Infinite plane of Life, Light, Bliss, or Consciousness. This
means that conventional obsessions, loveless meetings, private
indulgences, and even the orgasm itself, must be naturally
disciplined, replaced, transformed, and transcended, through feeling,
via a regenerative or Life-conserving and Life-conducting process,
rather than a degenerative or Life-discharging process.
The purpose of this book is to describe the
spiritual import and technical details of the Life-conserving,
regenerative, even rejuvenating process of sexual communion. It is
intended primarily for married or intimate devotees (heterosexual or
homosexual) in the Way of Divine Ignorance, who enjoy mature
responsibility for the life of whole body service, and who stably
maintain right practices of work, daily association, diet, and so
forth. However, the book may be studied with profit by anyone. It
should nevertheless be mentioned that, apart from a whole life of
practical devotional discipline and primary insight, the technical
process of sexual conservation described in this book is only a
limited or conventional functional observance. Anyone may apply this
discipline with some benefit to their human maturity, but only true
devotees may fulfill it in Truth and as a spiritual
discipline.
Marriage and the Positive
Sexual Destiny of Man
There is a presumption in the usual mind that
bodily pleasure is, in some deep and fundamental sense, wrong. And,
for this reason, sexuality is problematic. The reasons for the
anti-pleasure presumption and the problematic attitude toward
sexuality are cultural, philosophical, and broadly social. They all
belong to the subhuman, even anti-human, levels of persuasion, and
they are largely due to popular misinterpretations of the ancient
Holy Wisdom.
The ancient and most Holy Wisdom is neither
subhuman nor anti-human. The subhuman persuasions of Man are all his
motives toward self-indulgent physical excesses, including all forms
of libertinism and casual or worldly indulgence of the gross bodily
aspect of the individual. The anti-human persuasions of Man are all
his motives toward inversion, subjectivism, asceticism, and
otherworldliness. These two kinds of persuasion combine in the
popular mind and culture to produce emotional self-division, physical
self-doubt, chronic but disturbed self-indulgence, and addiction to
romantic illusions, bizarre entertainments, fanciful or “popular”
religions, and all the absurdities of conventional politics, crime,
and anarchy.
But the truly human persuasions of Man constitute
a whole bodily disposition, a total and single psycho-physical
disposition, in which Man is naturally and positively aligned to the
Divine Person, the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness that is the
Real Condition of all experience.
Therefore, from the whole bodily point of view,
the right orientation of Man is not self-indulgent and
self-possessed, but self-transcending and ecstatic. However, that
orientation, or Way of Life, is neither anti-human and ascetic (or
body-renouncing) nor subhuman and bodily self-indulgent (or
psychically and psychologically destructive and irresponsible).
Rather, the Way of Life for Man involves physical, emotional, mental,
psychic, higher mental, and spiritual responsibility, freedom, and
ecstasy.
Man is not to be negated, but he is to be
transcended—not only ultimately but in every moment. But if the
individual lives in a responsible and self-transcending manner, he is
also made whole and free, and his psycho-physical existence is
Transformed and Translated in the Radiant Energy of Divine
Ecstasy.
Thus, a right understanding of our conditions of
existence and experience draws us into a truly human and spiritual
orientation to the Transcendental Divine. And, in turn, the Living
Divine Reality releases us from self-doubt, self-division,
self-indulgence, self-glorification, and self-negation.
From that Liberated and truly human point of view,
bodily pleasure, or any other natural form of human psycho-physical
enjoyment, is not wrong in principle. Nor, as an extension of such
self-doubt, is sexuality inherently problematic. But sexuality can be
problematic in fact—if irresponsible, self-possessed, or
self-negating tendencies are allowed to interfere with the right
emotional-sexual process of Divine Communion.
The clearest sign that sexuality has become a
problem for human individuals is the evidence that sexual pleasure
has been divorced from the generalized, relational, and inherent
pleasure of the bodymind in God-Communion and has become an
obsessive, temporary, and localized pleasure, associated with the
genital region of the individual. And this evidence is, indeed,
commonly displayed in the sexual experience of most people
today.
Truly human sexual activity is not self-divided,
or in doubt of bodily pleasure, nor is it self-indulgent and
obsessive. Rather, it is positively self-transcending, or ecstatic.
It is a form of direct psycho-physical participation in the
relational condition of human existence and in the Transcendental
Life or Bliss, which is Itself the only inherent pleasure of the
body-mind.
Therefore, right human sexual activity is a
process of full emotional and bodily sexual surrender, feeling, and
pleasure. It is personal submission to Life via the bodily
love-relationship to one’s lover.
So much of conventional sexual energy is wasted in
anxiety, guilt, loveless self-indulgence, and the avoidance of the
truly emotional and whole bodily profundity of pleasure. We must
understand all of this and transcend our self-limitations and our
cultural limitations. We must Realize the Truth and the Real
Character of God.
The conventional, self-indulgent, and
self-doubting rituals of sex are implemented by many kinds of mental,
emotional, gross physical, and mechanical devices that reinforce the
genitally localized and superficial nature of sexual experience. We
tend to busy ourselves defending the superficial sexual experience of
genital stimulation and discharge. And we tend to be childishly
disposed toward sexual experience that is self-indulgent, erotic,
promiscuous or casual, and without consequences or effects beyond the
moment of genital pleasure. To be sexually “mature” tends simply to
mean that one has become “cool” relative to erotic stimulations, but
true sexual maturity is a matter of awakening to the true profundity
of sexual experience, so that what is superficial is transcended in
the Divine commitment of the whole body-mind.
The casual commitment to self, superficial or
genitally localized pleasure, and freedom from profundity and
consequence in sexual activity is reinforced by the improper use or
subhuman exploitation of birth control devices, erotic
entertainments, abortion, divorce, casual relations between the
sexes, and so forth. We may put birth control devices and methods to
right and responsible use within marriage. Erotica may occasionally
have some instructive right use. Abortion may have its occasional
right medical application. Divorce may, in cases where one or both
partners are committed to worldly rather than spiritual demands, be
occasionally appropriate. And, apart from the right formalities of
the general relations between the sexes, there is an appropriate and
passionate playfulness between married individuals, and there should
also be a right, feeling, and often humorous quality in the relations
between friends and intimates of both sexes.
However, the conventional disposition toward
sexuality is self-divided and uses all mechanical and social devices,
as well as all aspects of the psycho-physical being, to reinforce a
superficial indulgence of genital pleasure, rather than a profound
participation in relational, whole bodily, emotional-sexual communion
with the Living Reality. Thus, birth control devices, erotic
entertainments, casual relations between the sexes, abortion,
divorce, promiscuity, fetishism, masturbation, emotional
defensiveness (or absence of feeling-surrender), orgasm, and so forth
are all commonly used as strategies of self-defense against the true
and ecstatic profundity of human sexuality.
The process of sexual communion is the truly human
emotional-sexual process. It is a matter of the transcendence of
sexual superficiality and self-possession. It is a matter of profound
emotional and bodily Communion with the Living Reality. The localized
genital orgasm cycle of stimulation-release is transformed (not
suppressed) through prior release of mental, emotional, and physical
tensions, so that the orgasm becomes a whole bodily thrill, more or
less continuous throughout the period of sexual play, and
occasionally heightened within the period of sexual play.
The process of sexual communion is profound
emotional-sexual, whole bodily, or total psycho-physical and
relational submission, in the human sexual relationship, and to the
Living and Radiant Transcendental Reality. It is a process that is
the privileged enjoyment of committed or married lovers, who are
mature in their understanding of the Condition and Process of
Man.
And marriage is the seal of that profundity, for
it is a positive social act, rather than a merely private act.
Marriage is the outward or social confession of responsibility and
intimacy. It is the proper forum for sexual communion, because sexual
activity has not only a personal but also a social role. The prior
act of marriage transforms every subsequent act of sexual
intercourse. The truly married couple, as exemplified by devotees in
The Free Communion Church, not only choose sexual intimacy (which can
be a superficial indulgence of personal bodily pleasures), but (1)
they choose to confine their sexual intimacy within marriage, (2)
they choose sexual intimacy in the form of sexual communion, (3) they
choose the responsibilities of householders, or socially adapted
human beings (rather than self-possessed sociopaths or secluded
ascetics), (4) they acknowledge the higher or regenerative
emotional-sexual and spiritual purpose of their relationship, and (5)
they acknowledge the reproductive or generative function and
responsibility of heterosexual marriage.
Heterosexual marriage is the generally or commonly
appropriate form of human sexual commitment. (Homosexual marriage is
also a true possibility, but only in cases where heterosexual
marriage is naturally or biologically and emotionally inauspicious.
Homosexual marriage is not appropriate when determined merely by
negative emotional or neurotic and psychologically sociopathic
tendencies. )
Unmarried young people may, for the time being, be
somewhat frivolous and variable in their emotional-sexual
commitments, if they do not indulge in sexual intercourse. If they do
begin to engage in sexual intercourse outside the marriage
commitment, then they begin to become vulgar. But once true marriage
is presumed, then neither husband nor wife should any longer be
frivolous or vulgar. Marriage is the condition wherein right sexual
intimacy can appear. And right sexual intimacy is profound. The right
role of true lovers is not frivolous, or self-defensive. It is
self-surrendering, bodily and emotionally. And it is even bodily
profound. The pleasure of sexual play is raised up from its
problematic and vulgar localization or isolation in the genitals, and
it is radiated to the entire body-mind and all of its relations. Just
so, that bodily profundity or profound sexual role of married lovers
is also founded in the acknowledged obligation of timely
reproduction, or the birth and upbringing of human individuals of the
highest human type.
Moving beyond Subhuman
Sexuality
a talk given by Bubba Free John to his
devotees
BUBBA: Be aware that without having become truly
responsible for the conventional reactive disposition of the
body-mind you should not entertain the consideration of the esoteric
matters of human sexuality. You may like the idea of applying
esoteric principles to your sexuality, but it is complete nonsense.
You are not responsible, not truly human. You will simply be using
these techniques as a way of reinforcing the self-possessed motives
of your ordinary and unillumined life. The esoteric sexual practices
respected since ancient times are given to introduce the body-mind
into the process wherein it is transformed through Communion with the
Absolute.
All true religion and spirituality are about this
Communion. They are not about ideas and subjectivism, but about
adapting the body-mind literally to the All-Pervading Current and
Consciousness that is the Divine. And religious and spiritual life is
about practice. It is about what you do. It is about changing your
action and adapting in a new way. These ecstatic and evolutionary
adaptations do not involve the brain centers only. They involve
bringing one’s bodily life, one’s vital life, one’s sexuality into
confrontation with the Absolute. Standing off at the level of the
brain and watching one’s genitals rise and fall is subhuman. Animals
and other lower beings rise and fall with the genitals. We must
realize truly human existence by bringing the whole and entire
body-mind into Communion with the All-Pervading Life.
The Spiritual Master is not only an instrument for
the Teaching about this Process, but he is also an Instrument of the
Life Itself. His Function is to communicate the absolute Force, the
consummate Radiance, of the Real to those who are prepared. Thus, he
is an Instrument of the Divine physics of evolution and ultimate
Transcendence. He communicates the Force of Life in order to quicken
the process of transformation in those who are prepared and who
approach him properly, so that ultimately they may realize their
lawful Destiny, which is sacrifice or ecstasy in God rather than any
self-preserving, self-possessed destiny that they might manufacture
in their fear.
A person is not considered fit to enter into
spiritual relations with the Spiritual Master for the sake of
regeneration in God until he or she has become responsible, through
insight, for the reactive, self-possessed, self-divided patterns of
ordinary living. To the conventional mind, you see, it seems an
immense transition, tantamount to Enlightenment, to have realized
such responsibility. But it is not. It is only the ordinary
obligation to become human. The propagandizing that appears in our
common society seeks the continuation of subhuman ways. Thus,
anything that is more than subhuman is considered extraordinary, and
only a few great men, who are considered accidents of Nature, are
permitted the Realization of Absolute Life.
Only a few can become stars in our society. But
the purpose of the Spiritual Master and all truly spiritual
communications throughout human history has not been to glamorize the
unique state of a few individuals, but to communicate the truly human
process that anyone may enjoy. The Spiritual Master is also the Agent
of the Divine Power, and he Communicates that Power in his
sacrificial relationship with those who will also sacrifice
themselves, so that other individuals than the Spiritual Master
himself may enjoy the Process and Illumination of Divine
Life.
All of the forms of personal and moral and
religious preparation must be realized before the individual is
prepared to make use of the Spiritual Master in this truly spiritual
sense. Making use of the Spiritual Master is not simply to feel a
little glow in the body or listen to inspiring talks in his Company.
It is to become responsible for the submssion of specific
psycho-physical functions, specific structures of the body-mind, to
the All-Pervading Life, so that the All-Pervading or Divine Life can
transform the whole and entire body-mind. The Infinite degree of that
Realization is the moment of Transfiguration, or Divine Translation,
in which the independent body-mind is itself no longer
necessary.
The body-mind is self-transcending when it enters
into sacrificial Communion with the Divine. Just as sexuality is
ultimately transcended within the context of the body-mind, the
body-mind itself is transcended in God-Realization. It is Translated.
It Dissolves. It ceases to be necessary. The body-mind is
Transfigured, Awakened into the Divine Existence. One’s human life
may persist for a time, just as sexuality may persist for a time.
Even after sexuality becomes unnecessary for the sake of higher human
realization, it may continue as an ecstatic expression of Divine
Communion, until there is perfect self-transcendence in God. Just so,
after Transfiguration in God, the devotee may continue to exist in
the manifest plane. He or she may continue the transformation of the
body-mind, and then show the signs of the Divine Force in the body
itself, signs of Super-Regeneration, ultimately perhaps even to
dissolve in Bodily Translation, leaving no physical or mental
remnants to be contacted within or without by anyone. Once the
realization of Transfiguration has occurred, the body-mind is
obsolete, and death will occur whenever it will. 9
That is the Divine Realization in its highest
form, and it makes the repetition of any expression of the body-mind
obsolete, unnecessary. This Realization is what is meant, therefore,
by bringing the cycle of birth and death to an end. The cycle of
incarnation is literally brought to an end by making the body-mind
obsolete through Translation into God. It is not by suppressing
tendencies that you cease to be born or cease to be bound to
repetitive cycles of self-possessed experience. It is by sacrifice
into the Living Divine that these patterns come to an end.
The process of truly human sexuality is a form of
responsibility that is part of the cycle of Divine Transformation and
Translation. It is also the key to the beginning of human evolution.
Now creatures of the world are essentially subhuman, and Man is new.
The Force of Life is locked in his animal orientation, his horizontal
orientation, his generative sexuality, and his unconsciousness.
Having stood up, he must now Awaken the Force of Life from its
entrapment, or the reactive, vital contraction of the bodily being
itself, which is preventing the whole bodily communication of Life in
him.
This Awakening is what spiritual life is about. It
is not the warfare of spirit against flesh conceived in the
self-divided view of Man. We are evolving, and in order to evolve we
must unlock the genitals. We must unlock the vital center from its
unconsciousness and its devotion to merely vital experience. Until we
do that, we are aberrated and half-made. We are neither Man nor
animal. We are self-divided. On the one hand, we want to fly beyond
the body into the realms of the mind, and on the other hand, we want
to become completely immersed in continuous sexual and personal
bodily stimulation. This unique conflict is the sign that we are in
transition from the animal dimension to the human dimension. In order
to evolve into the truly human dimension, we must unlock, or bring to
consciousness, the energies in our vital centers. We must become
responsible for all the forms of recoil, reactivity, self-division,
and contraction upon our separated selves, to which we awaken in our
infantilism, when we feel vulnerable, separate, like Narcissus,
devoted to self-protection rather than ecstasy.
Thus, the evolution from animal to Man does not
depend on cutting off the animal part. It depends on awakening the
lower bodily functions to Life, rather than allowing them to continue
as a form of reactive separation from Life. Until we awaken,
sexuality is going to be obsessive and a problem. We will alternately
deal with it either positively or negatively, and always in the
conventional ways that characterize Man previous to his Divine
Enlightenment. But when we awaken to the Truth of our sexual problem
and our subhumanity, then we can enter directly into Communion with
the All-Pervading Life through the mechanisms of the body-mind. Only
in that process of Life-Communion do we realize the human stage of
our structural potential. Only then can we begin again to evolve,
because the Life-Force has become magnified in the body-mind. Then we
can go on to grow through the structural responsibilities of this Way
of Divine Ignorance, until everything Dissolves in Radiant
Bliss.
The Transcendental Diet of Man
10
The bodily being of Man is constantly sustained by
the Eternal, All-Pervading Force of Life. In our infantile recoil,
reaction, and psycho-physical contraction toward self, we separate
from the Eternal Reality and become self-possessed. Thus, we begin to
starve and suffer. The body-mind becomes a field of tensions, devoted
to the search for consoling experiences that release tensions
pleasurably. Such experiences include pleasures of eating and sex,
willful control of life circumstances, the acquisition of mental
knowledge, and the mental contemplation of abstractions. Such
pleasures preoccupy and degenerate the usual man, until he is
restored to Life.
The All-Pervading Divine Life Itself lives as the
individual body-mind and sustains it. If only the body-mind will open
into the Current of Radiant Life, with full feeling and without
thought, it will be liberated from the self-possessed games of
tension and release of tension. Then there is only Fullness of Life.
Such psycho-physical opening into the Current of Life is “faith” in
the highest sense. It is bodily confession of dependence on Life,
prior both to fear and belief. It is bodily cooperation with the
Real, prior to all subjectivity and problem-centered
efforts.
Our Food is Life itself, which we may
breathe—but only when breathing is combined with unobstructed
Feeling of the All-Pervading Force of Life. We must feed on Life,
through feeling breaths, relaxing the entire body, including the
brain, into that Current of Force. We must receive that Life through
inhalation to the vital organs of the lower body. And then we must
release that Force, through exhalation, to the entire body, and via
the entire body to Infinity.
This is our native “diet. ” We are always eating
and sustained by Life, through every truly and openly feeling breath.
But if we contract in our feeling, we also contract bodily and
mentally. Thus, we become self-possessed, suffering reactive
emotions, bodily tensions, and chronic mentalizing. Through the
“conscious exercise” of the wholly feeling breath, we are fed and
sustained and healed and transformed by the Radiant Divine Life. This
is the secret of Life and of the transcendence of all experience.
This is the true and highest “regenerative diet.” And all other
dietary disciplines are simply extensions of the feeling breath of
Life.
The right and regenerative solid and liquid diet
of Man is one that is most perfectly aligned to the reception-release
11
cycle of the feeling breath. Whatever we eat must be taken with the
feeling action of receiving Life. Therefore, only that food should be
chosen which is pure and vital and not toxifying. The usable or
Life-granting elements of the diet must be such that they can be
easily and quickly assimilated. And, the unusable or waste elements
of the diet must be such that they can be easily and quickly
eliminated. (The high natural carbohydrate, low animal protein,
wholly regenerative vegetarian diet is the best general dietary plan
for human beings.)
Only a benign, pure, vital, and complete diet can
serve the body’s Communion with Life. Even the solid and liquid diet
must be a feeling cycle of reception-release in the All-Pervading
Current of Life. But our true and right and ultimate Diet is in
moment to moment, unobstructed whole bodily Feeling-Communion with
the All-Pervading Force of Life—enacted via the breath
cycle.
1. When Love
of the Two-Armed Form was written and
published in 1978, Adi Da Samraj went by the name Bubba Free John. It
was also reprinted in 1985, with his name at the time; Da Free John,
on the cover (the text itself still refers to Bubba). While the basic
dharma has not changed since then, Sri Adi Da has continued to work
extensively on the “sexuality consideration”. While this text (out of
print) remains extremely valuable, the consideration has evolved and
this should be taken into account and supplemented with the rest of
the evolving consideration.
2. Patanjali (1st century A.D.) is
the reported systematizer of the eightfold yoga system of Hindu
philosophy. The principal text accredited to him is the Yoga
Sutras.
3. The Bhagavad Gita (literally,
“Divine Song”) is one of the most revered Scriptures of the Hindus,
and a religious text of universal appeal and profound esoteric
significance. Vyasa is traditionally presumed to be the author, and
it was written perhaps as early as the 5th century B.C. (but with its
roots in the oral tradition of even more ancient days). Most scholars
agree that it may have been revised and expanded considerably over
the years.
The Gita is a portion of the great ancient epic
and spiritual allegory, the Mahabharata, which is the story of a
great fratricidal struggle between two royal families in northern
India some 4,000 years ago. It is the purported dialogue between the
God-Man Krishna and his devotee Arjuna, Commander-in-Chief of the
army of the Pandavas, for whom Krishna serves as
Charioteer.
Arjuna, faced with the prospect of having to kill
friends and cousins in an imminent battle, wishes to shirk his duty
as a warrior. Krishna refuses to allow him such self-indulgence. He
engages Arjuna in a Teaching conversation that continues for seven
hundred verses and presents a philosophical summation of the Nature
of God as the Supreme Self, a critical exposition of the many ways of
esoteric spiritual practice, and a declaration of the supremacy of
the Way of devotional Communion with the Supreme Divine Person in the
Form of the living Divine Master—in this case, Krishna himself.
His entire spiritual Teaching to Arjuna is summarized in his
instruction for the forthcoming battle: “Remember Me, and
fight.”
4. Count Dracula is the central
figure in the nineteenth century novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.
Possessed of supernatural powers, Dracula derived his strength from
the blood of beautiful women, which he obtained by biting them on the
neck. In the popular lore that has developed around him, Dracula is
depicted as a powerful but hideous figure who often takes the shape
of a bat, which, like Dracula himself, avoids the sunlight and is
active only at night.
5. Doctor Frankenstein, from the
nineteenth century novel by Mary Shelley, is an eccentric scientist
who harnesses the electrical energy in Nature in order to bring to
life a “monster” of a man whom he assembled from human cadavers. Like
Dracula, Doctor Frankenstein and his monster are popular archetypes
of fascinating but threatening heroes—the hidden and
conventionally unacceptable self-images of Man.
6. In the Hindu Trinity, Siva is
the Destroyer aspect of the One Divine Person. (Brahma is the Creator
aspect and Vishnu, the Sustainer.) The trident is associated with
Siva, as it is also with Satan. (There is also a higher or perfect
interpretation of Siva, as the Radiant Existing One, the Absolute
Divine, Who Includes and yet Transcends the Trinity of Divine
Functions.)
7. The “left side” of the bodily
being expresses and corresponds to the inward-turning upward-moving,
passive, receptive, emotional-psychic, quality or force of bodily
life. It is in opposition or play with the “right side,” which
expresses and corresponds to the verbally or analytically motivated,
outward-turning, downward-moving or life-oriented, active
penetrative, vital-physical, expansive quality or force.
The left side is controlled by the right
hemisphere of the brain, the locus of the psychic, spatial,
nonverbal, holistic-intuitive mental functions (whereas the left
hemisphere which controls the right side of the body, is the locus of
the intellectual, linear, verbal, analytical-deductive mental
functions).
Bubba Free John criticizes both the objectively
oriented ways of Western religion, philosophy, and culture and the
subjectively oriented ways of Eastern religion, philosophy and
culture as imbalanced expressions of the whole body of
Man.
8. Conscious exercise is the
natural coordination of body (form) and feeling-breath (energy)
through free and steady attention (mind). Thus, it is the science of
the responsibility to be love, or unobstructed feeling-attention as
the whole body. The principles and practices of conscious exercise
are given in Conscious
Exercise and the Transcendental Sun, by
Bubba Free John.
9. In this paragraph, Bubba refers
to the three kinds of supernormal signs or psychophysical evidence of
Divine Translation, the ultimate stage of God-Realization:
Transfiguration, or pervasion of the body-mind by Light;
Super-Regeneration, or the appearance of prolonged longevity, psychic
or healing powers, mental genius, etc.; and Bodily Translation, or
literal Disappearance of the body-mind in Light.
10. If or diet, or the process of
taking food, is consciously lived in Divine Communion, then the
functions of emotion and sexuality begin spontaneously to harmonize
and stabilize; they come under natural, easeful control. But the food
process only secondarily involves eating solid and liquid elements.
Our principal food is Love, or the All-Pervading Bio-Energy of
Life.
Therefore, before engaging the emotional and
sexual disciplines presented in Love of the Two-Armed Form, devotees
must be firmly established in the Divinely Lawful practice of
“conscions exercise” of feeling, breath, attention, and action in
Communion with Life, as described in Conscious
Exercise and the Transcendental Sun.
Likewise, they must be proficient in the regenerative and Life-giving
practice of diet and true health as presented in The
Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace.
11. In Conscious
Exercise and the Transcendental Sun, Bubba
explains “reception-release” in terms of expansion and contraction,
the two principal movements of the body and all phenomena in the
cosmos. And he shows how this process operates in terms of breath and
feeling:
In the simplest terms, the living body is
an expression of two tendencies, uses, or currents of life. And,
again in the simplest or most basic terms, these tendencies are
the two motions of contraction and expansion, or reception and
release. There is a negative or exclusive and unbalanced
expression of each of these tendencies. When reactivity, or
reaction to experience, becomes stronger than the force of Life
and unobstructed or free feeling-attention that we commonly bring
to experience, then reception and contraction disable us. We
become self-possessed, confined to subjectivity, negatively
emotional, vitally weak, and self-defeating in action. Then
expansion or release is confined to patterns of mere
self-indulgence, so that we are constantly emptied until
death.But there is a positive or true functional
development of each of these motions, when they are in balance,
and when attention and bodily form and action are controlled by
full central communion or feeling into the universal environment
of the Life-Force. In that case, even each breath becomes a
balanced cycle of reception-release, conrraction-expansion, in the
constant field of fully felt intensity or Life.It has already been considered how the
inhalation of breath, or Life, is associated with reception,
infilling, and natural conductivity or movement toward the whole
body Likewise, the exhalation is associated with release of the
wastes, the accumulated contents or old circumstances and
adaptations of life (not the release or emptying of Life itself ),
and natural expansion, which is conductivity or movement from the
whole body outward.