Archive for the ‘Bubba Free John’ Category

The Humor of The Heart

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

There is a chapter in The Enlightenment of The Whole Body (1978 Bubba Free John) titled “The Mood Of Enlightenment” one of my favorite talks from all the books, I had forgotten about, it’s a truly great essay on the Humor and Perfect Freedom at the heart of 7th Stage Enlightenment. Click here to read full chapter. Short quote below.

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“But the seventh stage, the Enlightened stage, is not serious at all. In that stage we Realize our native Transcendence of everything. There is the tacit Realization that there is nothing serious whatsoever about experiential existence. It could end in this moment, casually, and that cessation in itself would not have the slightest significance. Or, it could continue for infinite eons of time, through infinite permutations and transformations of experience, and its continuing would not have any significance either. That is the Disposition in Enlightenment-Realization of the non-necessity of everything. Absolutely nothing is of serious consequence or of ultimate necessity-absolutely nothing.

The ordinary reactive personality, who is basically in despair and hysterical, can also say that life is meaningless, but such a person is very serious. The Enlightened man, however, Realizes total Freedom. He is no longer serious, but neither is he self-destructive. He has passed into Ecstasy. He has not suppressed or separated from himself-rather, all that he is has been transcended in the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Thus, he is full of humor and delight. He is not aggressively opposed to the world, nor is he clinging to it. All the tension in his heart has been re-leased. To speak of Enlightenment without that sign is nonsense. There is no Enlightenment without the release of the heart from all of its seriousness, all of its clinging to phenomena, high and low.”

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Conscious Exercise

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

Conscious exercise is a fundamental functional discipline in Adidam practice, it tends to be a discipline easy forgotten and given less attention than many others. The basic routines and philosophy written in the book, “Conscious Exercise and the Transcendental Sun” remain as written, however new forms of exercise and movement have been added as well as the discipline itself being seen as a devotional responsive practice. A new and updated version of this book, will be published in the near future- look forward to this.


“The principle of Love applied to exercise and the method of common physical action. A science of whole body wisdom, or true emotion, intended most especially for those engaged in religious or spiritual life.

Do not randomly think and daydream, but apply the mind as free attention to the whole process of the present activity.

Mind is not, in itself, thought. Thought is only one of many objects of attention. Mind is basically consciousness, conscious awareness, or free attention itself. Therefore, the basic condition of mind in any moment is thoughtless free attention, or awareness. If attention is not turned into the relations of the whole body, it will, because of our habitual adaptation to separative and self-possessed games of existence, tend to reflect or randomly turn upon subjective and self-meditative phenomena.

Thus, we always think, randomly and obsessively, and we always turn within and away, and we always daydream or meditate on our own sense of independent existence, unless we are already and presently turned into the functional pattern of present relations.

2. Do not merely “perform” actions, as if you were causing them to happen from some detached heaven within or above the body, but feel the entire process of action, with constant attention to every moment of the action.

Attention is free of thought and all other objects only when it is connected to present events through direct and fully permitted feeling. Attention has no more connection to bodily action or bodily states than it does to the shoes on the lawn, unless that connection is presumed in the present.

That presumption is feeling. We may be connected as free attention to whatever objects, functions, or states we may intend, but only if that connection is the one of feeling. Feeling is the medium of relationship. Feeling is the energy of attention. Feeling is the life-force. Feeling is our participation in the universal medium in which all objects, including the physical body, arise. Feeling is the whole body intuition of the universal Life and Radiance. Unobstructed feeling is Love.

3. Consciously, intentionally, as a matter of whole body feeling rather than thought, breathe the constant cycle of inhalation-exhalation as a process of reception and release, and allow it to be timed with the rhythm of all activity, including formal exercise.

4. Act, or else be in repose, but always intentionally.However
do not intend only or, in general, at all through thought, or the head alone, but through the spontaneous feeling-intention of the whole body. Such action or repose is always in love, pleasurable, intense, open, and true.

5. In summary, always remain active, or associated with the pattern of relations, and do this by presuming the discipline of abiding as constant free attention, through profound whole body feeling (rather than reactive or negative and partial-body emotions), in and through the living, breathing, rhythmic play of all functions.

If you will live and exercise in this manner, it will be natural for you to be aware and to feel in and as the universal theatre of life-force, or manifest light. The environment of the whole body is not solid, like a wall of concrete pressed against the psyche.

When attention is free as present and constant feeling in and through the functions of life, the psycho-physical nature, rather than the merely physical nature, of our total environment begins to become obvious. Then breath and body are realized to be a single process in a single environment, which is made not only of solid elements, but of subtle ranges, including all that may be felt, and thought, conceived, intuited, and realized in Truth.

The whole body is the body that includes not only the physical but the etheric, the emotional, the mental, the transcendental, and the conscious¬ness.

The environment of the whole body is like the whole body, since the whole body arises from and within it. The environment of the whole body is Light, or Radiance. The Condition of the whole body and its environment is Truth, or the Real. Those who live and exercise in the manner of consciousness, as described here, may also become sensitive and disposed to the whole way of life that characterizes devotees in Truth.

Excerpted from Conscious Exercise and the Transcendental Sun, by Bubba [Da] Free John, pp. 35-37.

© 2010 The Da Love-Ananda Samrajya Pty Ltd, as trustee for the Da Love-Ananda Samrajya. All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed


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Adi Da’s 1973 trip to India-reprinted article

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

 

Beezone has recently reprinted an article from a  1974 copy of The Dawn Horse Magazine. It’s a gritty, raw, unfiltered account of a fully illumined Master, doing His uncompromising Work travelling with one western devotee (still very much in the process of learning what “Guru” means)  with ancient and modern spiritual sources in India.  The account has no political correctness, and without doubt is full of “offense”, to just about everyone, it certainly makes me squirm in parts and I am sure many others will as well. However it unmistakeably reveals the incredible and uncompromising integrity of Adi Da wherein he would engage everyone and anyone in this always sacrificial and Divinely madcap, dangerous adventure. Outrageous humour blend with absolute spiritual seriousness, the audacity of it, is quite shocking particularly to the modern taste. I have spent time in India ( visiting some of th sites listed) so it has a little more reality to it, perhaps for those who have been there.

The reader who is not familiar with the vastness of Adi Da’s life and teaching, may also take note that much more “work” was done with His spiritual sources in India (including His relationship with Baba Muktananda which changed greatly) and this was covered in much later magazine articles which may get reprinted at some point, so this account may be seen as the  beginning of a much greater and more extensive story ( Leela)

On a personal note, I love this “telling it how it is”, form of Adi Da’s teaching work. It has a beautiful honesty and purity to it, totally at odds with traditional hypocrisy and pretense, and very liberating
(potentiality for all parties) that is not to say, it’s rawness and unpredictability is utterly “disturbing” which is how it meant to be.

Article Here : The Trip To India; Taxis Temples & God

 Adi Da wrote this shortly before going on the Pilgrimage

Unimaginable numbers of beings, energies, and processes outside this world generate and cooperate in spiritual work in this world. Wherever the real spiritual process is awakened at any point in time and space, it is the product of the spiritual process that exists prior to time and space and also within all the levels of time and space or manifest existence. So behind our work are all the Siddhas and all the great activities that transcend the Earth plane.

Just as there is a vast spiritual process behind this work and all true spiritual work, there are also certain individuals, Siddhas and others, who are very directly involved with our work, Muktananda is the only one alive in the body, and it is very important that I purify my connection to him for the sake of the work itself. There are others with whom my contact is in subtler dimensions–Nityananda, Ramana Maharshi, Shirdi Sai Baba, Ramakrishna. I want to return to the places most intimately associated with these people and insure my proper relationship to them for the sake of this work

Part 2   The India Tapes

Following on from the main article is a series of tape recordings made at the some of the Ashrams and places visited. There are many choice and pithy observations made here, and this material needs to be savoured and chewed over, since it brings up some obvious and apparently startling contradictions. 

This observation caught my eye and interest. It should not be taken personally, in the sense that the “characterization” is impersonal and could belong to anyone. I have met many people like this in various groups formed around teachers, just the remarkable clear perception of this “character” is worth noting (as is the fact that Adi Da was absolutely willing to work spiritually directly with him)

“I must maintain a relationship to people outwardly that is coincident with the approach that they make. This American you mentioned wants to be palsy-walsy with all the great ones. That’s his number. He likes famous and great and well-known people and all of that. He wants them to shine on him. That’s how he gets his goodie. Baba satisfies that egoic demand of his in some way. But I’m not interested in satisfying it. I’m interested in seeing it come to an end in that guy. So I would rather be offensive to him and not kiss him on the cheek, tell him he is a good friend, and make him my friend, because the next hour he would be throwing darts at my picture. That’s what he does anyway. It is better to deal with him in this way”

Fundamentally I think it is good thing that these old documents are coming into modern consciousness, nor do I believe it is just random, Adi Da’s Leela (or spiritual play and conscious work) continues, it is just as active now as it was then. These transcripts may be seen rightly as unfinished historical documents, a beginning, yet to be refined and “worked” into cohesion and “finished”. They definitely should be seen as a work in progress. For instance if you read carefully you may see something of the beginning of the ” Seven Stages of Life” teaching in its crudest form.

Related : Leela :The Cave at Arunachala (from Adi Da’s brief 1977 India Trip)

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Terms in Adidam: “Sadhana Murti”

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

I met my first “Sadhana Murti”, literal meaning-the image of spiritual practice-on retreat at Naitauba Hermitage Sanctuary in 2006,  I will call him Ralph and on first meeting, he totally offended me, I mean everything offended me about him, I could never love this man even as a fellow devotee. I just wanted to get as far away from Ralph as possible. Ralph was everything I did not want to be, yet we were like the same poles of a magnet.

As it happened Ralph was to be my constant service companion 24/7, for several weeks. I described my predicament to another devotee and he laughed out loud  ” Friend” he said ”you have met your-sadhana murti-be grateful and use the opportunity” (the first time I had heard that term used)

It bothered me that I was so mean spirited to Ralph, clearly I was no saint in this circumstance, just a rather loveless character and that above all else was clear to me, over time my relationship with Ralph softened slightly but it could never become  a friendship.

Sadhana Murti described this relationship so well I wondered where the term came from, recently it came to light that the famed  Indian Poet Bhakta Tukaram used it to describe his shrewish wife who he prized mightily for testing him so -Adi Da (then Bubba Free John) and a devotee visited Tukaram’s tomb in 1973.

Tukaram with his Beloved-Sadhana Murti

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One for those who enjoy the Esoteric possibility

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

There are a whole series of YouTube Videos similar to this here

Part 2

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Adi Da Samraj-All of his life or only the last years?

Friday, August 21st, 2009

With the forthcoming The Aletheon people will have the opportunity to review Adi Da’s final work which is relatively unknown compared to earlier writing. On this point a friend asked me this question, he has been a longtime student of Adi Da but never a formal devotee. It’s an ongoing discussion and perhaps will be much thrashed out over time with increasing clarity. I think it is an interesting consideration and perhaps on the mind of many

Q : (B.M) With the passing of Adi Da, would not his whole life as Avatar, Realizer, Guru, Teacher become the source of study by Adidam now, rather than the last years wherein the Master is sort of polarized or frozen in time as that exclusive form and teaching emphasis. I realize that this may be seen as a sort of heresy in Adidam, if it does not have the capacity to inspect its own dogmatism

A:(my answer) Adi Da is unique in the manner that He clearly wanted this period, even closer than this, perhaps the last 2 years of His life to be his legacy to All. His Enlightened Leela only came to Real Fullness or Completion- post 2000 after the Ruchira Dham Event. He made the point that only after this Event, His Teaching & The Reality Way of Adidam fully came into being.

Q: Yes I understand this, but surely if you inspect the life of anyone after they have left the body, their whole life, not just how they were at the end of their life becomes the Event, in other words Franklin Jones, Bubba Free John, Da Free John, Da Kalki, Da Avabhasa, Adi Da etc all represent distinct periods of wisdom study, all unique all with a specific emphasis, if you only emphasize the last few years, the greatness of each period is lost. I can go to YouTube and enjoy ( for instance) The humorous play of the Adept as Da Free John as a distinct and marvellous period of instruction and Leela and read books from the era with great joy.

A : No one in Adidam would deny you any of this and many may do the same thing, there is obviously no taboo against reading and listening and watching and enjoying any of the great media available from the past, however the ego being what it is, we may not see the earlier work as one in transition and a compromise, or submission to the approach of devotees and what they represented, at that time and place. In other words all of it can be an enjoyment and a study, but from what I can understand of Bhagavan Adi Da’s final instruction and that given to His Renunciate devotee’s whom He definitely personally instructed was that He clearly wanted His word and emphasis to be as it was at the end of His physical Incarnation. Again this was without a doubt Adi Da’s Blessing Intention, so Adidam is correct in trying to manifest the Masters Instruction. Others will naturally take whatever position they will on His lifetime, but Adidam will always represent what the Master Himself conveyed as His Demand.

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The Mysterious Nature of Guru’s Grace

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Adi Da
Stories of devotee’s bringing the Master into life, communicating Him directly to others seem more prevalent in the 1970’s to early 1980’s, I can’t account for this, it is fundamentally mysterious, as are many things connected with the Adept’s Work, I don’t think it is either possible or necessary to try an explain this If you do want to speculate about it, here is my own addition, the 60-70’s were a completely energetically and psychically different time–weird stuff happened a lot more often

Some examples:

A man was standing in the Darshan line waiting to see UG Krishnamurti, a man in front of him turned and either spoke to him or others and said (paraphrasing) “If you want to see God, go to the Ashram Bookstore in L.A (at the time Adi Da was using this facility) He is there”. The man listening later became a devotee.

I met a devotee on Naitauba in November 2008, he had been so since 1974, both formal and informal, in that year he met a man named Bill C., who told him that Franklin Jones, a man in California was the “Living Siddha Master, without a shadow of doubt, the Real Thing”. Merely on the say so, of Bill, he went to California and became a devotee.

In the mid-late 70’s I went into a bookstore and found this incredible stack of books right down the back of the store in Melbourne, Australia (which was a conventional bookstore) It was truly mind blowing, they seemed to have tangible almost glowing, energetic quality, as if I had suddenly been thrust into another realm, the titles included : “Garbage And The Goddess” and “No Remedy” by someone called Bubba Free John, and some other books about Ramana Maharshi The humorous thing was I had previously read “The Knee of Listening” and did not know the author was the same, I bought a copy of “Garbage and Goddess” Talking to the sales assistant he seemed to be perplexed by the mysterious books as well, almost whispering about them. Later I learned that a very close devotee of Bubba Free John, had come to Town and distributed the books directly to that store.

adi da Garbage And The Goddess I recently spoke to a lady H. who told me of seeing a friend called Terry (circa 1981-2) who had been practicing as a Tibetan Buddhist Monk, on his return to the West, he spoke of an amazing being called Da Free John and a book called “Garbage And The Goddess”, these 2 impresssions stayed in her mind.

Some time later in a 2nd hand bookshop, she saw GG and bought it, H. was a very poor english reader, being a native of Poland and expected to struggle with reading it, on the contrary the book came alive to her, she understood it completely, she told me of her profound experience merely by reading this book and feeling her connection to Adi Da via the photos’s inside, which stays with her to the present (2009)

There are dozens of true accounts recorded and unrecorded, just like these, another good example has recently been added to adidaupclose.org here, apart from being very well written it also clearly demonstrates the necessary influence of Adi Da’s devotees in making the Way available to others.

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What is Truly Great?

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

What seems missing from modern life or any life is that which is Great, Wonderful, Ecstatic. Even these possibilities are denied to exist at all by modern cultural attitudes. If you did find what is Truly Great you would want to Incarnate it, correct? (the word ‘incarnate’ as used here & as used by Adi Da means to bring down into life, make manifest) so this has been the work of  devotees and continues to be.

The truth is we have despaired of  Spiritual Greatness, and with good reason, our faith in such ideas has been shown over and over to be misplaced, so the only solution is first find what is Truly Great and  then Incarnate it down into life. Let it first Brighten the mind, then Irradiate the emotion, Invigorate our life force and change the world– since the world is plastic, psycho-physical , capable of change by superior force


What is Truly Great is the Divine Adept, The True Master, The Great One, The Heaven Born, The Siddha. He (or She) can always be remembered, enjoyed, incarnated, brought into the life vehicle. Without that incarnation into the life vehicle He remains “unknown” to the world, only available potentially. The Master’s devotees bring Him into the world, into the life vehicle they make the Way “real” and available to others.

Contemplation of what is Truly Great, is the meditative practice of Adidam, the devotee having discovered that very thing in the form of his or her Guru–the intuition of the Glorious Divine Nature–then merely and naturally and with great enthusiasm just enjoys that contemplation. That contemplation sometimes feels like a process of expansion and purification and even a sense of The Guru descending into his or her life vehicle. This intuition of Guru as the Divine Being and Nature, rather than a man or “other” is natural and imperative to practice, what Adi Da calls Recognition Response, nothing to do with worshipping the form of a man or separate other.

Listen to this early talk “Meditation on The Guru”

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Like a magic object given to you in a devotional afternoon

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

There is almost enough space now to look back at the Event of the Life of Adi Da Samraj, His life certainly was a magic object given to devotees, lovers and friends and any one in fact who could or will appreciate it, intuit something about it or let it Brighten their own lifetime even for a short time or an intuitive moment by the mere contemplation or recollection of the Leela (Divine sport or play) in some form or other.

Intuitively taking His whole lifetime into account, rather than only the end time, because it seems to me the God-man in death reacquires, purifies and aligns all his forms in His Mahasamadhi (this could be utter nonsense, so use your own intuition about this) I feel that the true legacy that is given for all who may respond to this lifetime could be called in a feeling sense “A Universally Available All Liberating Brightness” again that’s just my interpretation, others should see for themselves

But when that preparation is sufficient — and this is not knowable to devotees — it is then that this appearance is vanished, like a magic object given to you in a devotional afternoon. The disappearance of the God-man is therefore sudden — whenever it occurs it is sudden. Its significance is that the aura of his or her communication moves through his or her lovers, only through them. And the entire process depends entirely, then, without a center, on the process of the community, on the process of the gathering of devotees, who no longer have a center in the case of the death of the God-man, but who have a burden of Light, who suffer or enjoy a speed in them that they could not recollect or engage while that one lived.

From The Death and the Birth of The God-man 1976- Adi Da Samraj

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