Number 6 (Volume 2, Number 4) 1975
THE GRACEFUL
PROCESS Bubba Free John’s verbal teaching is consistently
generated from the point of view of radical understanding,
but it stands as a paradox and a test to his devotees, like
all the other human forms of his work. Most of his talks,
though delivered as direct responses to those who sit before
him, are also consistent and whole expressions of his
Dharma, and thus publishable without introduction or
commentary. But, as Bubba said recently, the Guru will do
anything to serve the crisis of real consciousness in his
devotee, even to the point of giving him “wrong Dharma.”
What follows are excerpts from several talks which amounted
to just such an event-not “wrong Dharma,” exactly, but a
situation in which Bubba first overemphasized phenomena that
are not central to the principles of his real work, and then
several months later directly criticized his students’
obvious eagerness to become fascinated with such
experiential phenomena, and thereby to forsake the
non-dramatic, conscious process of real insight and
understanding. The first excerpts are from a talk given late last
November. A student who had been with Bubba for several
years, since even before the formal establishment of The
Dawn Horse Communion, had come to him in a desperate state.
Paralyzed by fear, he was incapable of turning to the Guru
as he had in the past, incapable of using the Teaching,
resorting to the Community, unable to enquire and so
understand what was occurring to him. In other words, his
entire life of sadhana was falling apart. Bubba spoke with
him for a long while about his condition, and then, after
convening the entire Community in the Satsang Hall and
having this student relate his story, Bubba gave the talk
from which the following representative paragraphs have been
excerpted: THE PRINCIPAL MOOD IS FEAR Beneath your conventional
game of life there is a principal mood, and fundamentally
its content is fear. During the course of your sadhana,
periodically you have come close to that felt dilemma, that
sense of fear. All the sadhana generated in this Ashram is a
process that always brings you into more and more intimate
contact with that. It creates in you a crisis in which you
cease to be involved in conventional mentality, insight,
behavioral change, philosophy and all the rest, and fall
into that principal mood which underlies your conventional
game. If you do not leave this Community or commit suicide
or whatever, you begin to stand in place and you very
obviously see that you are going to do this sadhana, period,
and you are going to pass through the crisis regardless of
your reluctance. You continue to go through the game of rising and
falling, all the phases that I have talked about. You will
always be having insights and seeing where you are at, but
all of that is superficial. During that period you always
have the Teaching to resort to, and you always have study
groups and the possibility of insight and learning again
what you are up to, seeing it all. But then there comes a
time when you begin to fall at random but more and more
certainly into that principal mood. Of course you will
always be trying to get on top of it through understanding a
little bit or enquiring. But when this crisis is intensified
so that you begin to fall into the principal mood randomly
for longer periods of time and without any defenses, you no
longer have at your disposal these alternative ways of
getting on top of it. You begin to pass through a period of
time in which you no longer have any of your former
strategies to resort to. You absolutely lie in that mood,
that fear, that dilemma, without resorts, without being able
to comprehend it, without being able to enquire, without
being able to understand the Teaching, without being able to
engage in an emotional connection with the Guru, without
finding satisfactions in your sadhana or the Ashram, without
finding hope in anything. The level on which the Teaching
exists for one who is passing through this crisis is Grace.
It exists as fundamental consciousness, which is the Guru,
which is your own nature also. So a phase appears in the sadhana of a student in which
he passes through this principal mood, this descent into his
fundamental karmic condition. During this time,
understanding arises relative to that mood. It is
understood, comprehended as your own activity, as a present
activity. When that insight appears, it is on quite a
different level than the more or less superficial,
behavioral, psychological levels in which you enjoyed
insight before. It is a comprehensive and intense form of
insight, a fundamental insight. That is what I call
understanding, not the understanding that takes place in the
conventional psychophysical state, but the understanding
that takes place within this principal mood. That is
fundamental understanding. Where that understanding arises,
when that intuitive consciousness which is beneath this
principal mood appears and enforces itself against that mood
of fear, then enquiry and the Teaching and everything else
return and become available to you again. And during this
time of genuine enquiry, that intuitive consciousness comes
to the front and becomes your position. It becomes what you
bring to the moment to moment affair of life. This period of
time is the mature phase of student sadhana. Bubba’s communication, it turned out, was deliberately
paradoxical. Immediately it became grounds for fascination
in the Community. Those who were prone to seek some kind of
terrifying event dramatized their fears and anxieties,
imagining that they could self-propel themselves into and
through “the principal mood” and thus move into some more
“advanced” form of sadhana. So “The Principal Mood Is Fear” did, indeed, open the
door to the conception of an essentially dramatic and
negative event. Bubba had emphasized before that no
transformation was possible without the capacity to endure
tapas, or the intense heat generated in the confrontation of
habits and tendencies by real consciousness, and people
assumed that their fear represented such heat. But in the
real sadhana of understanding, tapas is an entirely
conscious frustration. Its intensity depends upon the degree
to which karmic life in any form is confronted by the
viewpoint and action of Truth, and not upon any particular
karmic content, even the fundamental mood of fear. Even
before giving the talk above, Bubba had said more than once
that those who remained turned to him in Satsang would pass
through their spiritual crises almost without noticing
them. Because his devotees leaned toward the dramatic
possibilities of a spiritual solution in considering passage
through the principal mood of fear, Bubba spoke again in the
spring of 1975, using new terms and emphasizing this time
that the movement through the principal mood was as simple
as resting consciousness in the ever present intuitive
enjoyment of the Divine. That enjoyment, he said, is
available by Grace in Satsang, and is just as available to
the student as it is to the devotee. It is only that the
student must do real sadhana and make himself available to
that conscious life, even though he tends not to. “The way
to pass through the principal mood is to go directly to the
Heart, without wasting any time … in fear.” What follows is a composite taken from several talks
given by Bubba Free John in May and June, 1975. THE GRACEFUL PROCESS I have spoken on a number of occasions about the
“principal mood.” Because human beings are generally self
obsessive and want as much drama associated with themselves
as possible, the idea of the spiritual process being
super-dramatic-heroic, in fact-is much more appealing than
intuitive conscious existence. So the idea of going through
an episode of absolute terror and confusion and dissociated
thinking and collapse is very appealing. It sounds like
something is really happening. In fact, this real process is
not something that is “really happening.” It is not in
itself identical to anything that may appear in your life
outwardly or inwardly. It is not identical to the content of
your life. The learning we all have gotten through
television and school and modern psychiatry and endless
paperback literature reinforces this notion that real
existence is a heroic, dramatic affair. So when the real
spiritual process takes place, it is supposed to be a matter
of unbelievable experiences, positive and negative. This
satisfies the Narcissistic demand, the Narcissistic image of
existence. When I first spoke to you about this passage through the
principal mood I was interpreting an aspect of this process
relative to the experience of terror. I was using it as a
metaphor for an event that is not in itself dramatic. It has
happened to be associated with dramatization, but passage
through the principal mood is not the same thing as primal
therapy or some psychiatric episode, any more than vital
shock is the same thing as birth trauma. Did you ever see
the way a cat will sometimes play with a mouse? The cat
could just as well deal with the mouse in the yard, but it
will bring the mouse into the house and knock it around a
while, make it run and then slap it back, and torment it,
and leap on it. It will do that again and again. You all
play with this process of sadhana in that same way. You make
it indirect because you want all kinds of drama to be
associated with it. The drama, the content, is in fact what
interests you. You want all kinds of neurotic episodes and
heavy bullshit, and confusions and near insanity and
breakdowns. And you want to be dealt with heavily. You want
conditions and you want to have to try harder, and so forth.
You love all that stuff. And the more you love it, the more
time you are going to spend playing with it. So you will
make it necessary for there to be episodes of all kinds. The only way to pass through the principal mood is to go
directly to the Heart and not waste any time bullshitting in
fear. Of course, in practice, there will be a certain amount
of theatre in everybody’s case. Perhaps in. most people’s
cases there will be lots of cycles and phases and insights
and so forth. But the process I am describing is instant,
direct, present. It is just as much a matter of penetrating
any ordinary thought as it is penetrating a moment of fear.
Sheer terror coming out of the unconscious is no weightier
an object than the simplest reverie or thought. The process
I am talking about is not heroic. It is not an effort that
succeeds. It is not a game by which you earn enquiry or
discipleship or anything of that kind. It is a process in
consciousness, in which you see the present event of your
existence, this contraction. And you know what just precedes
it. You naturally fall out of the binding limitation that
you are compulsively creating into an unnameable sense of
existence. That is the natural state. When that occurs,
there is the intuition of the Heart. When a life becomes
founded in that intuition, that intuitive consciousness
comes to the front of that life and begins to work upon all
the events of life most directly, until that intuition has
revealed itself to be the very Reality, as it has in the
case of the devotee. It is not really appropriate to objectify this moment of
passage through the principal mood and think of it in
dramatic terms. There may appear, at random, in some
individuals, some moment comparable in its appearance to the
experience I described in my own case in seminary. But it is
not necessary for there to be any such drama. It is only
necessary to pass directly into that intuition. If
consciousness rests in that intuitive enjoyment, it has
already passed through the principal mood. It has obviated
the principal mood. That is the point of passing through it,
not to have the experience of terror, but to be free of the
limitation. So if you pass directly, in the ways I have
described, into that intuition prior to the fear which is
natural to the ego, that activity of self-definition is
undone. It has no force. When we rest in that intuitive
consciousness, we are happy. There is the clear and
unreasonable sense of happiness, of unobstructed
consciousness, of no-threat. There is no self in that
intuition, and there is no fear. The process of understanding can be a very simple affair.
Its foundation is in the intuitive dimension of
consciousness, in the very nature of consciousness, not in
any superficial level of existence. Just as it is not
necessary to have a superficial or purely mental
understanding of the Teaching, it is also not necessary to
have a terrified episode relative to existence or relative
to the Teaching. Everything I have said about the principal
mood is simply a way of communicating to you that the
process of enquiry is not merely a superficial mental
activity or an inner subjective consideration of yourself.
It must be founded in real insight and must itself be
tantamount to that intuition, that conscious enjoyment.
Whenever there is that enquiry, the principal mood is
obviated. The ego is obviated, and you have effectively
passed through it. DEVOTEE: Bubba, in my own case, I don’t really have
episodes, but there is more of a continuous crisis. BUBBA: The crisis I am talking about is not a breakdown,
not a disturbance. It is the present dissolution of the
usual affair of limited consciousness and the regeneration
of the real conscious position. That is the crisis. The
crisis isn’t to get disturbed and screwed up and to see the
craziness of your life again. But forms of that crisis,
secondary confrontations with “where you’re at,” can occur
again and again and again at any stage of sadhana in
different ways for every individual. The real crisis,
though, is the crisis in consciousness. Enquiry is a form of
this crisis. Insight is a moment of this crisis. Any form of
real self-observation is a form of this crisis. Every moment
of re-cognition, every moment in which you abandon the
position of your cultic contracts and become associated
purely and directly with others, is a form of this
crisis. DEVOTEE: Why won’t our passage through the principal mood
be dramatic like yours was? BUBBA: Well, there is one thing you can keep in mind: you
are not Bubba Free John. So you do not have to duplicate
what was manifested as his path of life. If you were to
duplicate it altogether, you’d have to go spinning around to
various teachers, take on various dharmas and practices, and
so forth. You would have to do the whole thing, not just the
episode of fear. The evidence of my apparent life has
several functions. One of them is to serve as an image of
the very argument that appears in philosophical terms. It is
a way of demonstrating and disproving by demonstration the
way of seeking and the various consolations that may arise.
You must remember, I wasn’t doing sadhana inside this Ashram
with the Dharma and the Guru established in the forms that
are your opportunity. There was no such Guru and
representation of the Dharma standing in front of me. It all
was initiated from beyond this manifestation, and it was
that eternal Guru, the Maha-Siddha, that governed the whole
process of my life. As a result, it had to be a pretty full
demonstration of the possibilities of spiritual life. It was
also necessary for me to functionally realize the various
kinds of spiritual fulfillment and practice and experience,
in order to guide others eventually. If I did not know
anything about it, then I would merely be offering arguments
about many of the things that people want to believe and
practice as spirituality. By that having taken place in real
terms through the vehicles that are my apparent
manifestation, this one becomes serviceable to others,
becomes an instrument for that sadhana to be lived directly.
So the Guru represents the direct influence that was also
the source of his own transformation, and he represents a
communicated teaching that cuts away all of the heretical
distractions that the usual life is disposed to karmically.
He is a principle and an opportunity and a process by which
That which is felt as the goal of all passages is made the
instant capacity of living beings. Unless somebody had gone through the principal mood, who
would know what that was? Unless somebody had gone through
it, there would be nobody to make sense out of it, to
simplify it, and to establish a process in which it can be
obviated without the karma of that experience being suffered
for no purpose. The episode described in seminary was not in
any sense an amusing experience. It was not in any sense
pleasurable or fulfilling or interesting. In itself, it was
a totally destructive experience. What was realized by being
totally disarmed and having to pass through it, showed
wisdom relative to many things. If that wisdom and its
Siddhi is given to another, then it is not necessary for
that person to suffer it in that way. So the Guru’s own life
makes it unnecessary for karmas to be dramatized and
suffered. If a man assumes the option that the Guru
represents in the midst of a karmic world, the process of
sadhana itself is a graceful, fundamentally happy affair. It
can be very direct, very simple. DEVOTEE: As we’ve been sitting here, I have just been
suffering. My usual assumption is that this is happening
because of events that have happened today, and so I try to
pinpoint what is causing me to feel upset now. But I gather
from what you’ve been saying that this is already my state.
It has nothing to do with what happened today. BUBBA: Right. What happened today is, at best, an
occasion for drawing your attention to this condition that
you karmically assume from moment to moment, at least
beneath consciousness. Today’s events just served to put you
in touch with the principal mood that you are always
suffering. It is not by then retracing your steps and
examining the circumstances that you undo this dilemma. The
whole affair of sadhana and the Guru’s argument in
relationship to you is one in which he is always drawing you
into the awareness of that condition. Through all
circumstances, even the pleasurable ones, he is looking to
awaken that awareness, that real consciousness, that crisis,
whereas the world in general creates only random crises
without at the same time calling upon you to comprehend
them. DEVOTEE: Is the constant activity of understanding just
falling into that suffering? BUBBA: The constant activity of understanding is
consciousness itself. But in the affair of sadhana, the
apparent individual is always falling into the realization
of his ordinary state, his dilemma, and seeing that it has
fundamentally nothing to do with circumstances. DEVOTEE: It’s unreasonable. BUBBA: Right. You cannot attach it to something that just
happened to you this afternoon. It is always there. It is
fundamental to you. That is the principal mood. DEVOTEE: What keeps us from falling into that all the
time? BUBBA: Your karmic destiny, your karmic intention is to
be distracted by experiences. You are always looking for
some way to draw the field of your attention out of this
real comprehension of life into isolated phenomena that are
pleasurable, that are distracting, fascinating, in which you
do not have to experience that fear. At random the world is
always making you fall into the sense of despair and of
conflict and so forth. The Guru intentionally and always
looks to make you fall into it. The Teaching, the argument
of the Teaching and the disciplines of the Guru are always
working to produce this awareness. Because that underlying
dilemma is always there. Circumstances are used to reawaken
it at times, but basically you must realize that sense of
dilemma independent of circumstances. The whole force of the
Teaching and the Guru’s work is to make you realize that.
And that is that stage of student sadhana which I call
falling into the principal mood. It is one in which you
realize this sense of dilemma randomly awakened in you in
the course of your sadhana to be independent of
circumstances and to be constant. And you carry on your
ordinary functional life during that time. It is not a
psychotic episode. It is just that during that time you
cannot be consoled. You cannot really be distracted from it.
That’s why I said that during that time even the Teaching in
its ordinary verbal form is not a consolation. It does,
however, serve your conscious participation in this sense of
dilemma. Then there is the intuitive penetration of it as
your own activity. When that intuitive penetration has
occurred, enquiry1 in its real form takes
place. DEVOTEE-. Bubba, I have seen the possibility of truly
doing sadhana, and the possibility of really knowing the
Divine. It is totally intuitive, and there is the basis for
doing that, and yet the life vehicle itself continually
offers resistance. I dramatize whatever arises, or I buy it,
or whatever, even though I think I know better. BUBBA: That intuition of possibility must become the
grounds for strength in sadhana, not just for a romantic
involvement with the Teaching. To the degree that you have
felt the real force of the Teaching and the real possibility
of its intuition, you must engage yourself in the conditions
of your sadhana over against the life of tendencies. The
life of tendencies is still there and will continue to be
there. Your assumption of the Guru’s conditions and the
other conditions that are given to you in the Ashram will
always have to be lived over against tendencies. It will
never have the force of life that your tendencies have. Your
tendencies will always seem stronger, more dramatic, more
righteous, more appropriate even than the form of your
sadhana. But this intuition of its possibility and the
rightness of its communication must become the grounds for
your strength. You are talking about sympathy with the Teaching. And
sympathy with the Teaching is bullshit unless you stop
getting involved in emotional regret about where you’re at
and simply live over against it from the point of view of
sadhana. Then your sympathy with the Teaching is more than
romance. Then it is real sympathy. Until you do that it is
just a matter of liking Bubba Free John and liking the
Teaching and having a little bit of dislike for what you
usually would do and so forth. It must become a real
involvement with the principle of sadhana and with the
conditions that are appropriate for you. People will not by
tendency become responsible for it. They want to hang out
and be irresponsible, have experiences of being relieved,
and it is only for that reason that enquiry isn’t easily and
quickly established in people. It is irresponsibility, not
the fact that they haven’t seen it all yet. The level of
responsibility required for enquiry is not all that great.
It does not take years and years to develop it. At the beginnings, a person. simply enters the Ashram
through sympathy with the Teaching. He comes into this
Satsang and takes on these conditions. Just doing that
begins to produce observable effects, resistance and so
forth that can be seen. In a matter of weeks or months the
individual should begin to observe specific forms of
dramatization in his own case. That is what’s brought to his
attention and made his responsibility in study groups. At a
little later stage he begins to become sensitive to the
fundamental game that he exercises ritually and
repetitively, and the essential outline of that should
become clear. Then, beyond that, there is more and more of
this simple, total sense of this avoidance, this
contraction. It is at that time that enquiry becomes a
responsibility. It must be taken on as a responsibility
Consciously, not waited for. Its foundation is established
at that point, so it must be taken on as a responsibility in
the random moments of life and also in formal meditation.
And enquiry continues then, along with all the other
continued appearances of random insights and so forth, to
the point where the verbalization of enquiry is itself
comprehended through the same consciousness that uses
enquiry. Enquiry itself is comprehended as being of the same
Nature as this avoidance, this contraction. Then
recognition2 begins to develop, perhaps along
with random enquiry. It is a way of simply recognizing what
arises as contraction and passing into what just precedes
it, which is simply an intuitive conscious condition that is
not nameable, but which, if stably enjoyed, shows everything
and is acknowledged to be happiness. It is known intuitively
to be one’s real Condition and one’s natural state. Then at some point there is penetration even of
recognition, which is an activity in consciousness that
restores the condition of this intuitive happiness. When
even that is seen to be of the same nature, to also be this
contraction, then it relaxes, and there is passage into a
nondependent form of this same intuition. At first it tends
to be exclusive, it tends to be concentrated perhaps in the
region of the heart on the right, or just the sense of
consciousness without phenomena. But even that is penetrated
by the same intuitive force of consciousness that is now
very much alive in the case of the individual. When that is
seen, then there is this condition of “open eyes” that I
describe. That is radical intuition3, in which
there is no excluding of anything any longer. All that is
just relaxed. And all forms of activity within consciousness
that before served to restore this moment of insight are all
relaxed, and things just appear as before without any
attempts being made to exclude them, to penetrate them, or
to go beyond them. Everything simply appears obviously as
modifications of one’s Nature. So that the only thing that
is identified from moment to moment is that same Nature.
That same Condition, is the only realization, the only
knowledge, the only experience in any moment, and everything
that arises becomes nothing more than that same
Consciousness. 1. Enquiry is an intentional activity by
which consciousness reestablishes itself in unqualified
relationship. Student sadhana embraces enquiry in the form
of a mental verbalization, “Avoiding
relationship?” 2. Re-cognition: that aspect of disciple
sadhana in which the mind and all experience are known again
as contraction of the force of Consciousness. It arises
spontaneously under the Guru’s guidance as an extension of
the process of enquiry, and it obviates all sense of
dilemma. 3. Radical intuition is the enjoyment of
a devotee’s sadhana, and the natural extension of enquiry
and re-cognition. It is perfect Understanding, non-dual
Consciousness, abidance in the prior Condition of the Divine
or Only God, even as all the conventions of life arise in
common terms. DEVOTEE: Bubba, it seems that the relationship with you
takes a more and more meaningful form. When Task, “Avoiding
relationship? ” it is connected with the enjoyment of the
relationship to the human Guru. BUBBA: Yes. The relationship to the Guru, the recognition
of the Guru is a reflection of the level of responsibility
in the individual. So if the affair of his conscious sadhana
is developed to the point of enquiry, naturally his
conscious, literal awareness of the nature of the Guru and
the quality of his relationship to the Guru is intensified.
In the beginnings, the form of sadhana is largely a response
to the verbal Teaching and the conditions of sadhana. But
the connection to the Guru is established in Satsang and
there should at least be that random intuition, that felt
happiness, that natural enjoyment. In the beginnings of an
individual’s sadhana, even that cannot be viewed
responsibly. It is viewed more or less childishly. It tends
to be seen mainly as an experience that people try to have
again and again. But later on, when the conscious affair in
the individual has become his stable responsibility, he
becomes turned to the Guru. Instead of waiting for these
effects and desiring them, he finds himself naturally turned
with attention to the Guru, with felt, intuitive attention.
That attention is stabilized, then, at the point of
responsibility and enquiry. It becomes more and more stable,
so that in the case of the disciple the general, arbitrary
psychological wavering relative to the Guru that
characterizes a student is essentially under control. It is
normalized, minimized, the force of it is obviated through
the conscious responsibility of that individual. So he’ is
naturally, stably turned to the Guru, with felt attention.
He consistently knows the Guru, sees the Guru as Siddha. It
is just a natural extension of his maturity. The Guru enters into the affair of human life in order to
communicate the way of this process, to establish conditions
that serve it, and also to generate it. So the Guru’s
appearance is a significant event. It makes spiritual life a
graceful possibility, rather than a heroic affair for those
who have the karma and intensity to struggle through the
great circle of the cosmos. And the fundamental condition
for this real process is Satsang itself. That is the
realization, that is the communication, that is the Samadhi.
As one enters into direct sacrificial relationship with the
Guru, that intuition is established and the conditions that
serve that intuition are established. If Satsang, that
relationship, becomes the principle of your sadhana, it can
indeed be a graceful process. Only if, through lack of
insight, you remain bound to your own theatre, your own
possibility, your own separate and heroic spirituality, only
if that remains the principle of your spiritual life,_ are
you going to have to go through a prolonged period of
phasing up and down, and struggling, and looking great when
you get to be announced as the disciple, and so forth. There
will be no such occasions, because this process is simple
and natural. It is Satsang. The affair of this sadhana is graceful. You consider the
Guru’s argument and then you meet the Guru. On the basis of
your response to the Teaching, having seen it make points in
your own case, you enter into that relationship naturally,
voluntarily. The more you live that relationship, the more
it communicates itself. On the basis of that relationship,
you accept the discipline of the life-conditions and of the
Community, of service and study and this theatre of our life
together. But the process itself is very natural, it is that
response. Having that argument make its points to the point
of essential and spontaneous surrender to the Guru, which in
that case becomes Satsang, this natural intuition, this
happiness, then continued consideration of that argument
under the conditions given, which serve to reflect your own
drama to you to the point of insight, all of this goes on to
the point of enquiry, recognition and radical intuition. All of this rests upon that single principle, that living
condition of Satsang. Everything that is associated with it
is very concrete and demands responsibility of you,
intelligence, real life. There is nothing vague about it.
There is nothing confusing about the Dharma. You must simply
continue to return to its fundamentals. Any of you who take
on this sadhana as a process of grace in this way I have
described can see it. But if you remain bound to some
possible heroic self-transcendence and overcoming, filled
with endless experiences and complications, then it will
take a great long time and it will not essentially be a
process of grace, except perhaps at random moments.
Basically, then, it is not to that graceful possibility of
Satsang that you have committed yourself, but rather to the
possibility of your own transformation. If your commitment
is to the possibility of your own transformation, then you
have not essentially made Satsang the principle of your
spiritual life. To that degree, it takes a long time and
your spiritual life is very dramatic. But those who grasp it
most simply, most fundamentally, as a graceful affair,
natural and practical in its implications, are not basically
very dramatic. They are not terribly interesting to others
either, because they can’t account for their spiritual life
in laudable and fascinating terms. All of that has been
undone for them. On any given day it is possible for any one of you to
pass beyond the principal mood and to enjoy the perfect
Condition of absolute, unqualified understanding. It can
happen at any moment. And there is no trick to it. It is
simply a matter of Satsang. The matter of understanding is
always instant. It is not a path that goes on and on,
getting better and better all the time. It is realized in
moments, moment to moment. If one does that, then one’s
apparent life is magnified in terms of responsibility and so
forth. But the essential event, the essential process is in
this moment, and then in this moment, and it is initiated at
the very beginning. It is always going on in one’s sadhana.
It is not something towards which one’s sadhana is moving.
It is the foundation principle of one’s sadhana. And it is
continually re-initiated, re-awakened. If it is not, then
you are engaging this possibility as a traditional or
conventional path. You are engaging it as a form of the
search. You are engaging it from the point of view of the
dilemma, not Satsang. You are engaging it as a solution, a
preoccupation, a series of fascinations, of
self-satisfactions. Everyone who truly does this sadhana
fundamentally enjoys that intuitive happiness. And someone
who happens to become responsible for the process in the
manner I’ve described for disciples will not be an object of
fascination to anyone. Such an individual does not enjoy
anything that is not enjoyed by everyone else in the Ashram.
It is the same-that intuition, that happiness, that Satsang.
It is simply implemented, magnified in different ways in his
functional life. But it is the same happiness. And if you
always move directly to that Condition, that happiness,
prior to your games, your separativeness, your fulfillments
and so forth, then you have already passed through
everything that needs to be passed through. You will never
gain anything again by experience. So if it has become
complicated, return to the basics-Satsang, Grace. Sadhana is life in Satsang. It is not just an external
condition, it is a condition of consciousness. It is
intuitive happiness, free of what is arising. Free of the
implications of what is arising, free of the demand for
dramatization. When one abides in that natural intuitive
state, then one’s action is transformed, one’s mind is
transformed. All the conventions of one’s appearance are
informed by that principal Condition and Nature. Ultimately
it is realized to be the Reality of which all things are the
modification, including the apparently external, visible
world and all of the internal or transcendent, invisible
worlds. But before and after one’s discovery of how
magnificent all that is, there is that natural enjoyment of
Satsang. That intuitive happiness is sufficient, and That is
it, after all. So it is fundamentally simple, and need not
be a prolonged drama. It is required of you in this moment,
in every moment, in every occasion of our meeting, in every
hour of your sadhana. DEVOTEE: Is there ever a moment when, as students, we’re
not avoiding relationship? BUBBA: Wherever there is consciousness, wherever there is
Satsang, wherever there is real insight, in that moment
there is no limitation. In the case of any student who is
really doing sadhana, there are at least random occasions in
which the game of Narcissus is undone. But the point is not
“Are you avoiding relationship?” The point is, there is only
God. So in any moment when you are enjoying some form of
that intuition of the Divine, of your essential Condition,
of your fundamental happiness, then of course there is
release from all of that. This requires great attention and
real discipline and responsibility and energy. But if no one
knew it at all, they would not be able to do this sadhana.
The foundation of this sadhana is not the absence of the
intuition of the Divine. The foundation of this sadhana is
Satsang, the intuition of your real Condition, the intuition
of the Divine Nature of this moment. So, truly, a student in
this Ashram at least randomly enjoys the dissolution of his
ordinary condition. DEVOTEE: I always tend to get very suspicious of
myself. BUBBA: Well, you have every right to be suspicious of
yourself. I’m suspicious of you! But merely being
suspicious-what is that? To be depressed, to be self-
conscious-it’s just self involvement, self-watching. But in
any moment when you see it, it becomes a very simple matter.
And you consciously fall into that Condition that is there
just before you created all your troubles, before you began,
in this moment, considering the fractions of everything and
making yourself, a something, and God a something else, and
the world another something. Before you started imagining a
program for your ultimate victory or defeat, by desiring and
creating circumstances for yourself, just before all of that
happens in this moment, just before you believe all of that,
you are happy. And it is better to be happy. That happiness
is your Condition. All the rest of it is an hallucination by
which you program your life. So the matter of understanding
is simple. It is not complicated, it is not a complicated
involvement with all of this stuff that obsesses you.
Wherever that is seen, consciousness assumes its own
natural, intuitive Condition. That is Satsang, that is
understanding. That is what all of this is all about. In the devotee it is perfect. It is obvious in the
devotee that there is happiness. That is his Nature, his
Condition, his Destiny. Then everything that appears is.
Samadhi. The reason the devotee is called a devotee is
because of the Bhava, or Divine pleasure, that is stabilized
in his case. He is not in every moment figuring it out,
seeing the error and stepping beyond it through processes in
consciousness. Whatever he sees is That. So he is only
happy. He can’t help but be happy. He can’t sidestep it. He
can’t have an experience that is unhappy, fundamentally. It
is all the same Condition. He can’t find anything that is
not that Condition, so he no longer participates in the
reaction of ignorance. And all of his parts open. His heart
opens. All sorrow leaves his being. His mind stops endlessly
manufacturing his false vision, and it becomes radiance
only. The world and his body and all forms become not a
struggle toward some attainment, some immortality, some
mortality, but fullness, blissfulness only. And all of that
without benefit of a single vision. Well, all of that is
also the enjoyment of the student. Satsang is that
Samadhi.
