No Thought

No thought or figure or any perception arising in the mind is, in itself, God. No thing, no body, no moment or place, in itself, is God. Rather, every moment, place, thing, body, or state of mind inheres in God. Whatever arises should be recognized in God, not idolized as God. Then all conditions become Reminders that draw us into the ecstatic presumption of the Mysterious Presence of the Living One.

-- Da Free John

Prapatti

When Bhakti becomes intensified, it leads to whole-hearted surrender to God. This final stage is called Prapatti.

-- M. Narasimhachary

The Beginning of Spiritual Life

When I began to take up my teaching work, I clearly understood that I was going to have to bury myself in the world in order to awaken devotees. If there were to be devotees ultimately, I would have to pass through the lower, ordinary life with them, and make lessons in that play with them, make lessons out of all the possibilities of conventional fulfillment. That conventional fulfillment includes everything from typical life pleasures to conventional, so-called spiritual and psychic enjoyment. So all of my work has been a process of engaging in play with people on the basis of conventional possibility, living it, exploiting it, allowing it to show itself altogether as experience, as consequence, in order ultimately that you might enjoy that revulsion to the destiny of this birth that would enable you to take up the spiritual process truly.

There is no spiritual culture here, practically no culture whatsoever. Look at the street you came up out of tonight. That is where you all come from, and that is where I teach. Not in order to recommend all of that bullshit, all of that terror and disease and delusion and stupidity and obsession and craving and torment, but to live with people in such a way that they might enjoy a revulsion to all possibility in itself, all fulfillment, high or low, that is latent in the tendencies of this birth. And so, at various stages in my play with individuals, you have seen me live and work in every possible way. At one or another time, everything from the most exotic psychic and conventional experience to the most ordinary fulfillment of social life was, in one or another way, represented, communicated, lived among you, and never at all for the sake of those things in themselves.

You have not understood me if that is what you thought I was up to. These experiences are not the point, they are not Truth. Every way of life that you pursue on the basis of experience, high or low, making experience the principle of your future, is ordinary destiny, the usual life leading to death. It is not spiritual in any sense whatsoever, whether its content is psychic and more subtle or very gross. The lessons of your life with me should be very clear to you in your own body-mind. And yet I do not think they are very clear to all of you, because I see so many of you intending to persist, righteously persisting, in a way of life that has nothing whatever to do with spirituality.

Everything is passing, all this flesh, all this mind. There is no freedom from rebirth and illusion unless while alive you are literally existing in another dimension. Literally! Such an existence is not a matter of philosophy, of feeling good, of all the conventional horseshit that people put together. You may return to this human kind of birth after your next death, if you are lucky, but you will return to it without any recollection, without any more capacity than you now enjoy, driven as you are now, confused, obsessed, without the least distance in you from this arising here, bound to it, craving on the basis of it, having no capacity whatsoever to be distinguished from this body-mind. This will be true of you unless while alive you literally begin to exist in another condition, in another "place." Then, at death, and also while alive, you may go there and not come back here.

But, you see, in Truth it is not a matter of just being able to go to some dimension or other. There are countless dimensions above and below this! The Truth of the matter is to come to rest in God, not in this ego-soul, the separate one that is your destiny until the heart is broken. Other worlds have no significance whatsoever. They are equally tormenting after you have been there a few moments! There is a great struggle in every being that comes into contact with the Divine demand, because the Divine does not fulfill this life. The Divine Power draws you out of this life, draws attention out of it, reduces the mind to nothing, frees you of the illusion of being identical to this body, not just philosophically, but literally. The Law is sacrifice. If you do not fulfill it, you will become a sacrifice in any case, grudgingly, unconsciously. You will be eaten.

Until the Divine Power, Grace, and Demand is accepted, you will not fulfill the Law. You will not become a sacrifice of the whole body mind. Until this heart comes to rest, there is only contraction, this separate and separative consciousness, whose mind is separative, obsessive, bewildered, pursuing fulfillment on the basis of what is apparently possible in the midst of this puny limitation we wake up to each day. To take up a Divine life, a spiritual life, you must yield that principle of separation, but not just philosophically and not through conventional willfulness. Your yielding must be a real process, and it must represent real adaptation in you.

-- Bubba Free John

The Maharshi and His Message

It seems to me that the presence of men like the Maharshi ensures the continuity down history of a divine message from regions not easily accessible to us all. It seems to me, further, that one must accept the fact that such a Sage comes to reveal something to us, not to argue anything with us. At any rate, his teachings make a strong appeal to me, for his personal attitude and practical method, when understood, are quite scientific in their way. He brings in no supernatural power and demands no blind religious faith. The sublime spirituality of the Maharshi’s atmosphere and the rational self-questioning of his philosophy find but a faint echo in yonder temple. Even the word “God” is rarely on his lips. He avoids the dark and debatable waters of wizardry, in which so many promising voyages have ended in shipwreck. He simply puts forward a way of self-analysis, which can be practised irrespective of any ancient or modern theories and beliefs which one may hold, a way that will finally lead man to true self-understanding.

-- Paul Brunton, on Ramana Maharshi

Desire and Anger

Desire and anger are objects of the mind, but the mind is not yours, nor ever has been. You are choiceless awareness itself, unchanging - so live happily.

-- Ashtavakra, the Crippled Boy

Compassion

Therefore, if one has seen and felt and Understood the common and universally tormented state of living beings, one should surrender to the Truth and practice the Way of the Radiant Transcendental Consciousness. Compassionate Understanding of the fear and delusion of all living beings moves one to practice this Way. Thus, one may, by one's manner of living, support the illusions and intensify the torment of living beings, or one may transcend all illusions and bring Transcendental Peace into the world.

-- Santosha Da

The Practice

Happiness is the responsibility.

Freedom is the discipline.

-- Bubba Free John