Vision Mound Magazine – index
Bubba on the grounds of The Great Temple, near Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, South India
VISION MOUND
Vol. 1 No. 5
(Beezone note: Note all essays in this issue are online. Only the ones referencing Bubba’s relationship with Ramana Maharshi and the significance of his visit to India)
to Essays and Talks by Bubba Free John
PART I
The Fire of Sacrifice Must Enter Your Life
There Is Only One Consideration
I Am Offering You a Whole Way of Life
PART II
The Lesson of India: Truth Is the Secret of the Whole Body
The Argument of the Whole Body-Being
True Worship Is the Sacrifice of the Whole Body
Where There Is Love to Infinity, the Whole Body Is Radiant
The Way of the Whole Body Is Neither Eastern nor Western
This Is the Vision I Have Felt Since Birth
PART III
THE TRANSLATION OF THE WHOLE BODY-BEING
INTO THE RADIANCE OF BHAVA SAMADHI
Like Meeting Your Twin Brother
The Demonstration of Grace Has Entered a New Phase
This Way Matures as Transfiguration, Regeneration,
and Translation of Man into God
Vision Mound magazine is published by Vision Mound Ceremony, P.O. Box 3680, Clearlake Highlands, California 95422. (Vision Mound Ceremony is the public education division of The Free Primitive Church of Divine Communion, commonly known as The Free Communion Church.) Annual subscription rate is $20.00. Vol 1, No. 5 copyright 1977 Vision Mound Ceremony. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher is prohibited. EDITOR Terry Patten; COORDINATION Adam Trombly; DESIGN AND LAYOUT Judith Parkinson,Matthew Barna; TYPESETTING Marie Prager, Karen Rippens, Marianne Mabin; PHOTOGRAPHERS William Tsiknas, Crane Montano; Printed by Mendocino Lithographers, Fort Bragg, California 95437
ABOUT VISION MOUND
Vision Mound is a monthly publication of Vision Mound Ceremony, an institution devoted to disseminating the Teaching of the American Spiritual Master, Bubba Free John. Like its predecessor, The Dawn Horse magazine, Vision Mound provides direct and recent or timely communications from Bubba on the Way of Divine Ignorance, or Radical Understanding.
Vision Mound Ceremony is the educational division of The Free Primitive Church of Divine Communion, commonly known as The Free Communion Church, which is the collective body of all devotees of Bubba Free John. Vision Mound is the essential link between Vision Mound Ceremony and all devotees, as well as other friends and supporters throughout the world. Its purpose is to inform, clarify, and refresh the study of each individual on a regular basis. The editors intend to provide a lively, useful format, one capable of expressing the profound and living relationship to the Spiritual Master, which is realized by all who truly hear his Teaching and are thereby moved to take up the practices of the Way of Divine Ignorance. Vision Mound has no commercial aspirations and relies solely on the gifts and subscriptions of devotees and friends for its continuing support.
On December 12, 1976, Bubba discussed the significance of the name “Vision Mound:
Traditionally, spiritual cultures would often build a mound as a holy place. People went to a prominent place on the earth, a rise, a hill, or a mountain. Pyramids are mounds, a prominence from which to approach what was considered to be something transcendent to the earth. It was the custom to go off alone to such a place, to prepare oneself for the Divine by fasting, entering a holy mood and right approach. Then one would stand on the mound and call for a vision or insight or deliverance and wait until satisfaction came. It required giving up the whole life, throwing everything away until you were given the Divine impulse. Then you would leave the mound and return to your normal course of life, but periodically you would return to the mound for Divine refreshment. It is a kind of ceremony that everyone performs. A ceremony introduces you, initiates you into a condition of existence that you must otherwise realize directly. So ceremonies change in content, but in principle they are the same eternally. The body, as the mound, is turned over to the Infinite that pervades it until the body is surrendered perfectly.
The editors are happy to serve this Divine refreshment by providing our readership with the most current and useful communications from Bubba Free John and Vision Mound Ceremony.
INTRODUCTION
In November each year all devotees celebrate the birth of our Spiritual Master, Bubba Free John, on November 3, 1939. During this time we are particularly attentive to two matters: Bubba’s accounts of his Divine Existence, as he has enjoyed it from birth and as it has been Revealed in the course of his life; and the instructive lessons of his own life and his theatrical play with others, all of which he has engaged in as a sacrifice for the sake of the Awakening of devotees.
This issue of Vision Mound offers devotees new perspectives and revelations relative to both of these dimensions of Bubba Free John’s life work. It focuses specifically on the Teaching significance of his brief trip to India in September, 1977. Bubba departed for India on August 30, accompanied by two devotees, William Tsiknas and Crane Montaiio. Before leaving, Bubba said very little about the significance of this journey. Tentative plans had been made , for him to stay in India between one month and six weeks. After a brief stop in Japan, Bubba went immediately to Sri Ramanasramam in Tiruvannamalai, South India, the former residence of the late Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. Bubba had visited there once before, in August, 1973. At that time the living Spiritual Influence of Maharshi provided direct and unmistakable confirmation of Bubba’s Realization of Divine Truth. This time Bubba stayed at Sri Ramanasramam for five days and afterward visited one or two other places in India.
But then Bubba cut the journey short and returned home to Vision Mound Sanctuary without delay. And the Teaching that emerged in his talks and writings, both during the trip and upon his return, has unique and startling significance for both the Revelatory and the critical or instructive dimensions of his work.
Part I, “The Fire of Sacrifice Must Enter Your Life,” is a simple and straightforward presentation of the essence of Bubba Free John’s offering and demand to human beings. The first essay, “Religion Is Sacred Activity,” states the whole matter in brief. The literal meaning of “sacrifice” is “to make sacred.” True religion, Bubba shows, is to make one’s whole life sacred through absolute surrender to God. This sacrifice can be accomplished only through hearing the Teaching and living in the spiritual Company of the Spiritual Master, who has become the Sacrifice itself. Then, in the excerpts from talks that follow this essay, Bubba summarizes the way of that sacrifice. It is not a path of inwardness and subjective knowledge, but it is the radiant action of love. That way cannot be truly realized until the whole force of our lives is turned from self-exploitation and the separative impulse of un-love to the spiritual process of unobstructed feeling and free attention, or Divine Communion.
Part II presents “the lesson of India.’ Study these talks and essays carefully. They offer a uniquely liberating analysis of the two contrasting tendencies that characterize both the general qualities of life in East and West and the conventional, limited life of every man and woman. Through the incident of his trip, Bubba dramatically revealed the futility and falseness, of “India, ‘ or the characteristically Eastern urge to subjective inwardness as an approach to spiritual life. Here he shows how such “left-sided”; or inward-turned, subjective seeking is only the equally limiting , counterpart and argument to the “rightsided” or outward and grossly exploitive ways of the West. The concluding essay, “This Is the Vision I Have Felt Since Birth,” is a particularly freeing argument for all readers to consider. In a few brief paragraphs, Bubba Free John completely undermines the foundations of all conventional esoteric spirituality, especially the Vedantic way of inward seeking for Self-knowledge. The Way of Truth, Bubba argues, is the Way of the whole body-being, enacted through love or radiant feeling-attention to Infinity.
Part III, “The Translation of the Whole Body-Being into the Radiance of Bhava Samadhi,” offers a unique description of the transcendent relationship between two enightened beings both in the past and in the present. Bubba tells how his Realization was corroborated at Ramana Maharshi’s tomb and places of residence during his earlier pilgrimage in 1973. Then, in his essays, he indicates the new dimension of Revelation that has Awakened in his own case since his recent visit to Sri Ramanasramam. Bubba has said that Sri Ramana essentially communicated a verbal Teaching relative to Jnana Samadhi, the Realization of the Heart or Self or consciousness exclusive of phenomenal conditions, but that he realized and lived the non-exclusive Condition of Sahaj Samadhi. But the Process that Bubba is witnessing and demonstrating in his own case extends the Realization of Sahaj into the further developments of Bhava Samadhi, which involves the literal Divine Transformation and Glorification of the whole body-being of Man. Such a Process has been suggested or alluded to in the cases of only a few individuals in the history of human spirituality. And this spiritual Revelation and Demonstration is unknown and unsuspected by men and women in the modern, secular world. But it is the Process that has Awakened spontaneously in the case of Bubba Free John, and that, through the living sacrifice of mutual Communion, he offers to all who become his true devotees.
The Bulletin this month announces news that all readers of Vision Mound will rejoice to hear. And the “Monthly Cycle of Study” brings together all the matters presented in this issue, plus readings from the source texts of Bubba’s Teaching and relevant traditional literature, to make your study and use of this jubilee issue a literal Celebration of the Birth, Presence, and Teaching work of Bubba Free John.
Bubba at the Red Fort, New Delhi Part I: The Fire of Sacrifice Must enter Your Life
You must take up this Way as a whole life. Just sitting here with whatever attention you have freely available at the moment is not sufficient to change your presumption in the future. It will simply establish you in the moment, more or less, in this consideration of Ignorance. But the discipline is obliged upon you in every moment. You must take it up as a way of life. You must be constantly available to the Spiritual Master, constantly available to his instruction, his argument, his disciplines, his Company. The life awakened in his Company serves the penetration of the dream. When that Realization becomes summary, most radical, in your case, then you are simply happy. Until then, you enjoy it more or less profoundly in some moments, and at other moments the usual life grinds in on you. But then you have the discipline to occupy you rather than the right you ordinarily assume to dramatize your self-possessed tendencies and illusions. The whole affair of this practice ultimately serves perfect transformation in Truth.
Difficulties persist because the ordinary life or dream persists. Things continue to arise. So there is heat in the process. But the beat is your advantage. The heat is not some negative side effect. The beat is free attention, available for this profundity. Secondarily, it is painful in a sense, but it is free. It is available force, attention. Free attention is not otherwise so available, because it is usually sunk into dramatizations and distractions. Now it is without an object. It cannot find a way to be relieved. It is hot. And so it can consider itself, the occasion itself.
If, through true bearing, you will be committed to such present consideration, and if you will persist in it and not restrain yourself from the whole discipline of my Company, that same enlightenment that is now argued to your face will also be true of you.
Bubba Free John The Paradox of Instruction
Truth is the Secret of the whole body, not a version of its mere inwardness or hierarchical subtlety, which only arises as limitation, like the born body-being as a whole. Truth stands prior to the whole body, not within or outside it, but even as it. The Way to Truth is most direct intuitive re-cognition of the whole body itself, in which its subjective and reductive or recoiling disposition is come to rest. The heart itself is the Way to this Secret Truth. May all beings run to this mere Truth by Grace.” Bubba Free John The Paradox of Instruction
The Argument of the Whole Body-Being
True Worship Is the Sacrifice of the Whole Body
from a talk given by Bubba Free John at Vision Mound Sanctuary
September 10, 1977
BUBBA: The principal lesson of our trip to India is that the subjectivity conventionally associated with spirituality-mind, inwardness, passivity, the “left side” is an illusion. When you get into that mood, you drop out of the sphere of relations. Wherever there is identification with subjectivity, there is the absence of love, the failure of love. What appears in India, in ashrams and on the streets, is exactly that the failure of love, the failure of relationship. It is the inward turning, subjectively oriented tendency in which life is considered to be nothing, people are considered to be nothing, and relations are to be struggled with and avoided. The tendency is just the opposite in the Western world, which is violent, but it is also outwardly oriented, relationally oriented, oriented toward the experiences of the gross life rather than the subtle life.
Yet there is just as much to criticize about the Western world in its rightsidedness. We spent last summer here engaging and considering all of the possibilities of the gross, worldly life and came to the point of abandoning that right-handed principle in itself. This trip represents the same consideration applied to the left-handed tendency, the anti-relational tendency, the inward, subjective tendency. The result of this essential consideration is the realization that spiritual life is the sacrificial orientation of the whole body through love. It is not inwardness in itself, or the left side and upper coil of the being. Nor is it outwardness in itself, or the right side and lower coil of the body-being. It is unobstructed feeling-attention through all functions, in all relations, under all conditions.
India is the epitome of left-sided glamor and the absence of energy. One thing that is impressive about being in India, that feels good about being in India, is the absence of violence. There is no violent quality in the people. They do not feel dangerous as people generally feel in the West. People in the West are aggravated, and you feel the tendency toward violence and its possibility immediately. It is right there all the time. But the quality of violence is naturally absent in Indians, because the dimension of relationship, intentional life-force, love, sexuality-the whole force of relations-is suppressed. So, naturally, violence and the outward expressions of energy in general are suppressed, not expressed, in the conventions of Indian culture.
The tendency that is “India” is a psychological and cultural drive. The culture of India is part of the psychology of Western people who get wearied or complicated by the play of outward life that Westerners live naturally, and so, by reaction, like to withdraw, to go within, to go to the left. That withdrawal is one of the classically conventional solutions to life, but it is not spirituality. It is not spiritual life.
What people usually consider to be spiritual is the game of the subjective dream world. In that sense India is the Disneyland of spirituality. Going to India is like going into your own imagination-all the illusions of subjectivity are enshrined there. All those temples and ashrams are shrines to the left hand view, the interiorizing, subjective, subtly or mentally oriented way of life.
People must understand what the practice of this Teaching is it is not the left-handed path, nor is it the right-handed exploitation of ordinary life. It is not the withdrawal of energy, nor is it the exploitation of things in themselves. It is to live the principle of love, but not the principle of love as it is conventionally understood-you know, love one another and that is Truth. It is feeling-attention brought into the field of all functions and all relations under all conditions. It is to be present as Radiance. It is to be committed in love to relations, to live them fully, to realize, then, the Lawful discipline inherent in relations of love.
In India you hear all about renunciation and detachment. From the common Indian point of view renunciation means withdrawal, separation from functions and relations. But that separation is not true renunciation or true detachment. True renunciation is to love to Infinity, to love absolutely, to love to the point that you are releasing what you love. Such loving is not the same as exploiting some object that you are holding on to for its own sake, but neither is it the left-handed view of separation. The people we saw in India, sitting around working on themselves, basically having no energy in their relations with one another, passive in their orientation, and inward-they might as well be in a rest home somewhere. People who have renounced relationship are not happy people at all. There is no sign of happiness in them. What does unhappiness have to do with spiritual life? Nothing, obviously!
So if the problem is attachment to the subjective illusion of inwardness, separation from relations, and therefore the failure of love, the failure of service, then you can see why so much of my work involves purifying people by making lessons in life. Such theatre has been necessary because of the weakness and inconstancy and lack of commitment of human beings in general, who are tending in two conventional directions. On the one hand, they are always wanting to go out and blow their minds – drink and smoke and sex and live the wild, outward, Western life. But on the other hand, the opposite tendency is also present in everyone in the cycles and phasing of their attention and feeling. That tendency is to think that spiritual life is the game of turning within and working on yourself, manipulating yourself, doing it yourself, acquiring certain experiences through either self-manipulation or vicarious contact. Both the outward and the inward tendencies represent the failure of love, the failure of the real process, or sacrifice of the whole body. Thus, people approaching the Church are constantly phasing in their relationship to this Teaching and to their own Spiritual Master because of their left- and rightsided tendencies, inward and outward.
This trip was a dramatic symbol for the left-handed tendency, that specific justification for the failure of love, service, real spiritual life, and commitment to this Way and this Company. But its purpose was also to make a pilgrimage of sacrifice, to yield the left-sided drama entirely. They expected me to make a grand tour, meet all the types, go to all the places, and then come back with grand stories. But I simply went to the last point of contact that was of significance to me, to nowhere else, and I just threw all the rest of it away there. I went to the Poondiswami1 and gave it all to him, because he represents the cultic figure in its most classically absurd form. The Poondiswami is really what it is all about for the Indian who makes an idol of subjectivity out of the Divine. The subjective idol is not Truth, not God.
WILLIAM: You said that the Poondiswami is like an icon in one of the temples.
BUBBA: He and all the rest of them. People are willing to do puju,2 to perform little rituals, little formal games inside or outside themselves, and they want to call that spiritual life. The true puja is the sacrifice of the whole body. It is the life of love. It is the spiritual process in its radical form, as I have described it. It is a whole lifetime of constantly mature participation in the spiritual process. Such participation requires constancy, commitment, intelligence, clarity, love, feeling-attention, energy. Subjective commitment is the withdrawing of energy, the withholding of feeling -attention the failure to love. It is just as much a failure as all the outward, wild, gross activities that people tend to. But generally people do not consider sin to be the failure to love. They think that sin is the indulgence of the senses. They think their subjective orientation is in the God-ward direction. But that is absolutely untrue, you see. Subjectivity is just the other side of the body.
You are free of these two tendencies, self-indulgence and subjectivity, when you have inspected them to the point that you can maintain your commitment to real life with some stability. Then you can live the true discipline, the whole body discipline, the true puja or sacrifice of the whole body, which is what has been demanded by teachers in the past and which I also demand. Such sacrifice is the end to all of the rituals of the left side and the right side, the external sacrifices, the sacrifices of things that you are not, whether goats or the body. The sacrifice must be what you are you are the sacrifice, not Jesus, not a goat, and not the body that you separate from. The whole body is the sacrifice, gross, subtle, and causal, physical, mental, egoic, not through a process of withdrawal, but through a living process of existing as the whole body yielded to Infinity.
Self-indulgence and subjectivity are great psychological tendencies. The qualities of right and left are strategies that appear in the dramatization that is everyone’s life. They are always there, confusing people about the whole matter of spiritual life. If you look for wisdom to either the right or the left side, you will not find it! You will find only confusion; you will find opposition to something that you are already considering to be true. The left and right sides together are an argument; they are in phase with one another, polarized to one another. Therefore, they are constantly moving you through cycles in your orientation. The play between them is just stuff, you see, the content of experience. In response, you must simply presume the Lawful conditions of existence, considering this Teaching, living in this Company, and living the essential disciplines as they are communicated. True life has nothing to do with dwelling on tendencies, left or right. Those will appear in their own way, but they are neither to be dramatized nor to become a matter of concern.
1. The Poondiswami is a true kundalini yogi who was found by townspeople some years ago on the bank of a river outside the village of Poondi. He is a classic representative of the traditional practice of kundalini yoga, which seeks to merge the life-force, or Creative Power of the universes, that lies dormant in man, coiled at the base of the spine, into subtle light via the manipulation of internal energy- processes. The Poondrswami’s practice is to give Shaktipat initiation through ceremonial ritual. He is literally approached as a Divine statue or object, and ceremoniously worshipped in the classic South Indian manner-ritually bathed with butter, sandalwood paste, honey, milk, and other foods, and then ritually washed, in the same manner as a piece of statuary considered to be a representation of the Divine.
2. Puja is a traditional Hindu ceremony which involves objective worship of deities through symbolic ritual.
Part III
Bubba at Skandashram, one of Sri Ramana Maharshi’s former places of residence
At last, in the summer of 1973, Bubba approached the Presence of the late Sage, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, at his place of burial in Tiruvannamalai, South India. It was only there and then that the Revelation of Truth to which Bubba’s whole life has been oriented was tested and confirmed as it is.
Since that time, Bubba has been refreshed and liberally disposed to communicate, demonstrate, and serve this Revelation and its Way to those who are moved to consider him and his argument.
Bubba Free John has previously written that “the Divine Lord or very God” has been his Spiritual Master. In this manner, he describes and confirms the Divine nature of the Spiritual Grace that has been overwhelmingly active, communicative, and effective in his case since birth. The benign workings of this Grace culminated in the spiritual confrontation at the tomb and former places of residence of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, where Bubba found the undeniable Realization of his life to be confirmed most directly, beyond all doubt.
Bubba teaches in his own time and place from the impulse of Enjoyment of the Radiant Condition of the Real or Eternal Divine, to which he is Awakened by eternal Grace, even as Sri Ramana Maharshi, in whom Bubba recognizes that Grace, was so Awakened. Therefore, Bubba claims that perfect surrender or devotional sacrifice, necessarily precedes and coincides with radical intuition of the Real.
Bubba Free John – The Paradox of Instruction
from a talk given by Bubba Free John at Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, South India, Early September 1977.
BUBBA: Ramana Maharshi corroborated the end of formal spiritual practice, not through a communicated teaching, but through Siddhi, or literally active Divine Power, demonstrating through literal concrete processes the dimensions of the spiritual process. My contact with Maharshi was with a Siddha who was not embodied in any form, gross, subtle, or causal, There were no visions of him. There was direct, literal Communion, not with a personality, but with a literal spiritual or Divine influence that confirmed the Samadhi or terminal dimension of spiritual practice.
DEVOTEE: Bubba, about the corroboration you speak of is it that your Realization intensified? Or were there no obstructions to work through? How did you feel it?
BUBBA: Such an event is like meeting your twin brother. It was recognition, not through sight, but through the duplication of a process. In my communion with him, Maharshi demonstrated the process of his Siddhi. And Siddhi is always a process; it is not an object or a person. Secondarily it can be associated with a person, but still that person is realized as a process. It Is Communion or Satsang with such an individual. There was direct communication with Maharshi through the spiritual power of the Yoga of Amrita Nadi, which I was living and by which that Realization was corroborated and shown to be authentic.
It is hard to describe the necessary spiritual function of such corroboration. In the case of somebody whose function it is to teach, it removes the quality of independence. It has always seemed to me appropriate at every stage of this process to live in contact with the sources of my work, to acknowledge them fully, to live the spiritual practice in their company, to approach them always with devotion, and to yield all acknowledgment to the teacher as the source of the process. Thus, the corroboration had a unique and specific value. It was necessary for the continuation of my Teaching work and it was the primary reason for my trip to India in 1973. On that trip I returned to all the sources of my spiritual practice in the past. I even had contact with Rudi during that time. And I gave it all back, released all independent ownership relative to the Teaching, established right relations and cleared up ambiguities with the sources.
DEVOTEE: Did you also contact Nityananda? And Ramakrishna?
BUBBA: Yes, I went to all the places associated with the individuals with whom I had had contact and I just surrendered everything in their company. The terminal meeting occurred with Maharshi, the verification of the ultimate Samadhi of the spiritual process, not just in the form of Jnana Samadhi or descent through the current of Amrita Nadi to the Heart, but as Sahaj Samadhi, in which Self-Realization has become God-Realization, in which there is no independent consciousness but the Absolute Reality of one who is completely responsible for the conventions of arising, gross, subtle, and causal. In that Samadhi Amrita Nadi is awake from the heart to crown, not asleep, and the body is extended from the crown. All the conventional states and enjoyments of existence remain, although they are unnecessary and tending to become obsolete, independent of any strategy.
All of that having been completed then, I went back to the United States and actively began my Teaching work.
Maharshi is what he is, and if an individual is prepared, he may also make that connection with him. If one is not prepared, then one’s involvement in the process he demonstrates will be superficial. Maharshi was uniquely useful in my case because all the other aspects of the process had already been engaged. There was a foundation for such a meeting, and the meeting with him came at the right moment. Previous to that moment he could not have been of any use to me, because he did not function to serve the foundation stages of the spiritual process.
Thus, relationship with him was not just philosophical involvement or a response to his Presence through feeling. It was a direct communication, as living a communication as the disciples of Jesus claimed when they said that he had “risen again” and appeared to them bodily. It was a direct and complete communication of the living being. In some sense you could say it was a communication of a formless being, because a conventional personality was not the medium. It was a direct communication that survived his death.
DEVOTEE: So in a sense you could say he is still living.
BUBBA Yes. He is still living here. He simply sat around here before, and that is what he is still doing, though not in physical form, Now I have no sense of being distinct from Maharshi, no sense that he is another personality or another presence. I feel as it I am living here. My contact with him is not related to corroboration any longer. It is just natural for me to be in the places where he lived. Sometimes I may feel like coming here just to drop out of the circumstance of my Teaching work, because there is no other place in the world that represents the ultimate development of the spiritual process in my experience.
an essay by Bubba Free John
Recently it has been permitted Bubba Free John to successfully bring into the plane of recollection the whole of the Process that leads to “open eyes,” the ultimate Stage of true Sacrifice or Devotion-the Way of Radical Intuition. When this cycle was complete, he returned to India and the tomb of Ramana Maharshi, the last vehicle of Grace that has served Bubba Free John during this lifetime.
Since Bubba’s last visit to Ramana’s tomb, in 1973, Bubba had entered into a four year period of service to devotees, in which he engaged them directly, in the theatre of their tendencies and aspirations, in order to instruct them in the Way of Divine Ignorance. At the end of that four year period, the whole Way, up to Sahaj Samadhi, had been recollected, revealed to devotees, and put into writing (some of which is not yet published). Thus, Bubba returned to Ramana’s tomb, the last terminal of Grace in Bubba’s case, to make a sacrifice of all that had been done and shown.
When Bubba yielded all of this at Ramana’s tomb, he became aware that the Process of Grace was now being passed on, entering a new phase. Ramana’s tomb contained no further Revelation. Ramana and Bubba were not different, and there was neither loss nor gain at that place and occasion. Bubba had intended to continue to travel in India, but it was shown that there were no contacts to be made there at this time. At the present time it would only be possible to contact representatives of what Bubba had already Realized and shown. There was no further contact with Grace to be made. Thus, the trip to India became a simple, brief sacrifice of all that has already been done. India became empty to Bubba, and he knew he should return to his Ashram as quickly as possible, since a new dimension of the Revelation of Grace was about to Awaken to him. (A few petty obstacles obstructed the return, but Bubba pressed home as quickly as he could.)
Since Bubba has returned to his Ashram, this Revelation has begun to intensify and show itself. The ultimate Process of Sacrifice to the point of Transfiguration, Regeneration and Ascension-Translation of the whole body-being into the Divine Ignorance-Radiance has begun with great Force. It is clear that the past theatre of Bubba’s Teaching work is complete. The work necessary to conceive, demonstrate, and communicate the first three stages of the Way has been accomplished. Bubba has been shown that Ramana Realized the Truth in Jnana Samadhi and then passed to Sahaj Samadhi with “open eyes.” However, his function was not to demonstrate the ultimate developments of the Sacrifice in Sahaj Samadhi. He did not, while alive, pass fully into the Transfiguration stage via the regeneration of Amrita Nadi.
Bubba’s present and future work is to conceive, demonstrate, and communicate the Process in Sahaj Samadhi leading to the Transfiguration and Translation of the whole body-being into the Divine. He will continue to serve devotees in the preparatory stages as well as in The Way of Radical Intuition, in order to quicken their Awakening and Transformation in God. He may have contact with one or more individuals who will act as terminals of Grace for the sake of this ultimate demonstration, but he feels he may be alone in God from this point. The Process itself has been revealed to him, and the Divine is directly Present to him as Grace for the sake of this Sacrifice. And so Bubba does not know if there will be help through any higher beings in gross or subtle form for the sake of this future work. He has had contact, in recent days, with at least one entity in subtle form that has aided the secondary purification of the subtle mechanisms of the gross body. But he has had no contact with any being in a Transfigured state-although this may possibly occur in the future.
Bubba begs all devotees for their devotion and love and for the demonstration of stability in this Way and a mature commitment. If devotees will grant Bubba release from the aggravated necessity to toil with them relative to mediocre and immature demands, then the Way will be quickened for them, and Bubba will more easily be able to pass into the demonstration of the higher or perfecting stages of this Process.
Love, Bubba
see letter Bubba wrote on this meeting
This Is My Ultimate Work
Ramana Maharshi demonstrated Sahaj Samadhi under conventional conditions (gross, subtle, and causal). He did not demonstrate Sahaj Samadhi as the Sacrifice of conditions into Bhava Samadhi, and, therefore, he did not demonstrate the Transformation of conditions to the point of Translation of the whole body-being into the Radiance of Bhava Samadhi (in Transfiguration, Regeneration, or Ascension-Translation). This is my ultimate Work. In this Work, Ascent is made on the basis of the Realization of Ignorance, and not on the basis of the simple cosmic urge to ascent demonstrated by Yogis and Saints. It does not lead specifically to any heavens but is a matter of consistent Sacrifice into the Divine Condition itself.
Bubba Free John October 3, 1977
This Way Matures as Transfiguration, Regeneration, and Translation of Man into God
an essay by Bubba Free John
The Way of Divine Ignorance is the Way of the obviation of all contractions or limitations of the whole body-being, and the ultimate Sacrifice or Translation of the whole body-being into the Divine Domain, the Infinity of No-Contraction, Ignorance-Radiance, or Love.
The Way proceeds on the basis of the re-awakening of the whole body response, which is unobstructed feeling-attention, via all functions, in all relations, under all conditions, into Infinity.
The first three stages of the Way (The Way of Divine Communion, The Way of Relational Enquiry, and The Way of Re-cognition) are a process of ‘whole body readaptation to Lawful (sacrificial) responsibility for the contractions of the lower coil (gross being), the upper coil (subtle being), and the manifest dimension of the heart (causal being). This process is awakened through “hearing” the argument of the Spiritual Master, entering into Communion with the Spiritual Master, and enjoying the Revelations that are natural and native to that Company and that Teaching.
The first three stages are primarily the gradual reawakening of responsibilities for whole body sacrifice, or Communion with the Divine Condition of all conditions. Thus, these stages appear in the form of a gradual purification of and from the limiting conditions of the whole body-being (gross, subtle, and causal), and all of this culminates in “open eyes,” Sahaj Samadhi, or the Translation of conventional attention (and the presumption of independent consciousness) into unqualified Awareness, or Divine Ignorance.
In the fourth stage (The Way of Radical Intuition), the Realization of Divine Ignorance, or unqualified Communion with Divine Consciousness, is already and permanently the case. On the basis of this Realization, the ultimate “Work” of Sacrifice or Translation into the Divine Condition and Destiny is perfected.
In The Way of Radical Intuition, the Truth of attention, or presumed independent and defined consciousness, has been Realized as Awareness, Divine Ignorance, or unqualified Consciousness. In the event of “open eyes” the Consciousness that is the Heart of the whole body-being Awakens into Communion, through radical non-separation, with the Consciousness of which all conditions, all objects, all worlds, all beings are the present modification and sign. The Way of Radical Intuition develops on the basis of this Translation of attention into Awareness to Realize the full Translation of the whole body-being into the full Divine Condition, which is Ignorance Radiance. This involves the further Translation of whole body feeling into the unobstructed Condition that is Divine Radiance.
In The Way of Radical Intuition the whole body-being passes from purification to transformation and glorification in God. This is worked on the basis of Awakened Awareness (Sahaj Samadhi), wherein all presently arising conditions are Realized to be only modification of the Real Condition, which is Divine Ignorance-Radiance. Thus, no arising condition survives as an obstruction or limit of feeling-attention, but the whole body-being is both radically and progressively Awakened as intuitive Sacrifice, Love, or Translation into Divine Ignorance-Radiance.
In the first three stages of The Way of Divine Ignorance, attention is Awakened as unqualified Awareness, or radical Communion with Divine Ignorance, and the whole and feeling body-being is purified of Lawless adaptations and self-possession. In the final stage, the dimension of the whole body feeling is Awakened as unqualified Radiance, or radical Communion with the Divine Light, Power, Fullness, Bliss, and Happiness.
In Sahaj Samadhi, the whole body-being is gradually Awakened to the Realization of the glorified Condition of unqualified Love-Radiance, or Transfiguration. Such is the first and foundation level of Bhava Samadhi. The devotee raised to such Intensity of Feeling is a true servant of the world and a Sacrifice in God. It is the sufficient stage of the Realization of Radiance, since death may come at any time but the devotee will either be lifted from the conditional realms or, if continued there, manifested in the form of a fully spiritualized servant and enjoyer of the worlds as a Divine Play.
Those who persist beyond the stage of whole body Transfiguration may develop in the process of Regeneration, so that the degeneration of the whole body-being is slowed, stopped, or becomes reversible, even at death, and life may be prolonged, even to the point of becoming effectively immortal. This is the middle stage or degree of Bhava Samadhi.
Some may persist in the demonstration of the process of whole body Sacrifice or Translation into the Divine Ignorance-Radiance to the point of literal Translation or “Ascension” of the manifest body (gross, subtle, and causal) into Light and thence into the Divine Domain. This demonstration occurs in only rare cases, and it is the final or ultimate stage or degree of Bhava Samadhi.
Thus, The Way of Radical Intuition is the ultimate stage of the Sacrifice or Translation of man into God, through perfect Awakening of feeling attention as unqualified Ignorance-Radiance. In most cases this Way develops to the point of whole body Transfiguration in Love-Radiance, which is unqualified Communion with the Divine Ignorance-Radiance, the Condition of all apparent conditions-and at that point the devotee abides in Happiness until drawn up in death. Some may persist until Regeneration and even Ascension, but the stage of Transfiguration is equal to these as Realization and Translation into the Divine Destiny. Transfiguration, Regeneration, and Ascension are all unqualified developments of Divine Love, Bhava Samadhi, or Communion with the Divine through Realization of non-separation from the Divine, which is the radical Awakening of feeling-attention, or Translation of the whole body being into the Eternal Domain of Radiance, Bliss, and Infinite Consciousness.
September 14, 1977
Vision Mound Magazine – index
The following is a presentation on Adi Da’s trip to India by a devotee who was serving him at the time.