The Four Stages of This Way of Eternal Life

The first three stages of the Way of Divine Ignorance involve purification, regeneration, higher adaptation, and sacrifice of the whole and entire body-mind through transcendental Communion with the Living Divine. In the ultimate 'or perfect stage, which is named the Way of Radical Intuition, there is absolute conservation and dissolution of the whole and entire body-mind in the transcendental Divine, which is intuited and heart-felt to be the very Condition and Truth of the body-mind and the whole world of experience.

Therefore, ultimately, the devotee simply abides in that Ignorance and Radiance that is prior to body and mind and all experience. He re-cognizes and sees the dissolution of all forms, moment to moment, in Love, which is the Radiance of Eternal Life. He exists only as that Intensity. Everything resolves in that Intensity. Truly, there is not any noticing at all -no body, no mind, no experience, no effect, no dilemma, no self, no time, no form to space, no world. He is blown out in That. His Destiny cannot be located by any one.

Esoteric Practice, Initiation, and Ultimate Realization in the Way of Divine Ignorance

There are many forms of esoteric and technical practices that appear progressively in the various stages of the Way of Divine Ignorance. These practices bear certain similarities to esoteric mystical and yogic exercises that were practiced in the inner circles of cults and secret societies all over the ancient world. However, the exercises practiced by devotees in the Way of Divine Ignorance are not merely copies of random techniques gathered from ancient texts. They are a new and complete Revelation of the ancient Way, Awakened spontaneously and progressively in the Divinely Inspired meditations granted to Bubba Free John during his years of intense spiritual struggle and discipline.

Therefore, the practices of devotees in The Free Communion Church are essentially unique. They are not described in detaill in the public literature, but they are communicated to devotees directly as they mature in the Way. The sequence of these exercises is of great significance, and each devotee is instructed in the exercise only after the mystical or yogic signs that belong to each stage have already spontaneously appeared.

There are two other primary considerations that pertain to the unique practice of devotees in this Way. First of all, the practices themselves are simply forms of technical responsibility for processes that have already been set in motion through the Spiritual Power or Initiatory Influence of the Spiritual Master. The practices are not truly ways of attaining new experiential states, but they are ways of accepting responsibility for experiences that have already become part of the devotee's life.

The Process of spiritual activity is set in motion through devotional Communion with the Person and Radiant Divine Power that are Present in the Form of the Spiritual Master. This is the literal and unique circumstance and advantage of devotees in the Way of Divine Ignorance. Devotees mature in that Company, on the basis of initially and continuously "hearing" the Teaching and "seeing" the Spiritual Master in his Divine Potency.

As devotees mature, signs and evidence of both an ordinary and extraordinary kind appear-demonstrating readiness for new forms of responsibility. Therefore, at critical moments on the Way, devotees are given instructions in various kinds of esoteric or technical practice.

Likewise, just as the practices are forms of responsibility for experiential processes that are already in motion, all practices are associated with forms of the conscious process. That is, the various practices are themselves simply ways of responsibly adapting to higher aspects of psycho-physical existence in the Play of Life but the essentially spiritual responsibility in the Way of Divine Ignorance is the one of transcendence of experience, or the limiting conditions of the soul. Thus, as phenomena arise in the practice of the esoteric exercises under the Influence of the Radiant Power of the Spiritual Master, their force is penetrated and transcended by radical insight, Awakened in the devotee through "hearing."

By all of these means, devotees grow in their experience and mature in their responsibility for experience, until they becomell naturally, or natively and spontaneously, capable of living as thej Perfect Transcendental Sacrifice of the Free soul, or Awakened Self, into the Divine Self, Whose Person, or Body-Mind, Includes, Pervades, and Transcends all phenomena.

The Illusion of God and the Reality of the Presence

0bjective or independent self, world, and God are the conventional illusions. The primal incident is differentiation of the One and Present Reality, which is Infinite Consciousness, from Love, Radiance, Light, and Vibratory Life, or all the Infinite Eternity at once. But in the instant of differentiation the most primitive archetype of all knowledge appears. It appears as a simple presumption of independent existence, consciousness, and pleasure over against all kinds of relations or objects, high and low. To account for all of it, the Truth is called God-apart, the Creator-Parent. And the infinite numbers and kinds of relations and worlds between self and God are viewed as a vast stream of objective conditions that are other than self and God, even as self and God are other than one another in this scheme of presumed knowledge.

Those who are awakening in the Way of Divine Communion and maturing in the stages that follow it are shown a Revelation of the Real Condition that precedes our reactive and born presumptions. By this Revelation they are relieved of the binding implications of all experiential knowledge and logic.

The Real Condition, Realized in Ignorance through hearing and through Revelation in Communion with the Spiritual Master, is the Reality of which all presently arising conditions, subjective or objective, high or low, are only unnecessary and illusory modifications. The Reality is the Truth of the subject, the independent self, the whole body. It is also the Truth of the whole world, or all possible worlds. And it is the Truth of God. It is very or Real God. The Real is the Source of all present and possible arising and nonarising. But it is not creative, active, reactive, or other than any arising.

It is not the generative Creator. It is the Truth of the presumption of the independent Creator. The "Creator God Parent" is an idea men presume in their knowing, but such a God is not Truth or Real God. Real God does not actively or independently create, sustain, or destroy any differentiated condition. Real God, the Divine Person, Who is Truth, the Condition of all conditions, is utterly and eternally free under all apparent conditions. God is Realized only when we are liberated from the tyranny of our born presumptions of self, and world, and God.

Those who enter into the Way of Divine Communion through "hearing," and who prepare themselves for the simple and direct Revelation of the Divine in the initiatory Company of the Spiritual Master, are engaged with that Process whereby the lies of born experience are undermined and transcended. In the instant of Revelation they are relieved from the illusory presumptions of independent self, world, and God. The import of this relief or liberation is demonstrated more and more as they proceed to maturity in the stages of practice. In

the Way of Divine Communion it is shown through the Revelation of the Divine as AllPervading Presence, which attracts the whole bodily being into Communion, wherein all conventional distinctions lose their binding force.

There is no radically separate Creator interior to or over against the world any more than there is an absolutely independent subject-entity behind the thought process in the case of any human individual. Individuation and action are attributes of the whole body of man and of the great visible and invisible Cosmos or Process of changes in itself. Creativity or activity, positive or negative, is a characteristic of the arising process itself, whether apparently subjective or apparently objective. It is not some radically independent Cause that is also the Divine Truth. As long as there is differentiation or knowledge, the Real may seem to be outside us as independent Creator, and the world may seem to be outside us as the independent creation, and we may also seem to be independent creatures, but all such distinctions are obviated when there is direct Revelation and Communion with the Real Condition or Truth of all appearances.

The Truth of Man, the Cosmos, and the presumed Deity is the single, prior Condition of all conditions. Therefore, it is not by strategic action relative to conditions but by persistent intuitive identification with the Real Condition that illusions and illusory, motivating presumptions become obsolete and cease to be binding, or even noticed. For this reason, the whole Way of Divine Ignorance, beginning with the Way of Divine Communion, rests on Revelation, through hearing and intuitive demonstration, wherein the Real Condition becomes obvious and the obstructed or loveless life of problematic seeking and self-possession becomes obsolete.

All differentiation is unnecessary. The process wherein present conditions arise is a Mystery that may not be observed. It is instant, uncaused, not radically other than no-event, no-thing. Since we do not know what a single thing is, the arising of things is not radically different from no-arising. Ignorance is the Truth of both arising and no-arising. We need not escape the present world or become unconscious of our conventional bodily life in order to Realize this Truth. It is always already the Truth, whatever the conditions. Therefore, we need only listen to the Teaching of Truth until the suffering of our ordinary presumptions becomes obvious, and we are free to hear and feel the Truth.

How or why there is any arising at all cannot be independently or objectively known. But if the Condition of all present arising is Realized, then there is, in Truth, no present arising-arising conditions are no longer radically different than no-arising of conditions. If the Condition of all present conditions is intuitively Realized, then presently arising conditions cease to bear the force of implication or necessity. Persistence in such Realization is Happiness. The primal gesture of differentiation is ineffective and ultimately obsolete in this Way.

The "Unknown" is not that which is as yet not known. The true Unknown is the eternally Unknowable. We are in touch with this Mystery of the Unknowable whenever we are confronted by anything new or experientially and conceptually unfamiliar to us. But we are in direct Communion with the Unknowable only when the disposition of Ignorance has been Realized to be the ultimate and eternal Condition of "I, " the independent self or whole body. "I" cannot ever know what a single thing is. "I" may come to know, experientially and conceptually, a great deal about any thing. But what any thing is is not ever grasped in any perception, experience, or conception.

Therefore, Ignorance is Truth. Ignorance is Communion with Real God. The Unknowable is Reality, the Real Condition prior to all that is known and knowable. The Revelation of the Unknowable is given directly to devotees who become a sacrifice through unobstructed feeling in the Company of the Spiritual Master. The Happiness of that Revelation is the Enjoyment of all devotees who will serve and feel to all others without the affliction of self and other that is common to those who have not Realized God in Truth and in the spiritual sense.

The Most Difficult Stage

In the Great Process of the Way of Divine Ignorance, body and mind are ecstatically released or surrendered into Life, or the Fullness of Divine Radiance. Thus, as the Process matures, the structures and functions of the body-mind first awaken and then become a sacrifice into their Source-Condition.

The most difficult stage is the one of transition from Lawless, subhuman existence to the responsible beginning of spiritual life in the Way of Divine Communion. After that, the whole affair is more creative and freely voluntary. Thus, in the earliest stages of life, where personal, moral, and religious preparation is developed, much attention still remains in reactive and self-indulgent physical, emotional, and mental patterns. But as the stages of true practice of the Way develop, there is less and less of the mechanical and self-conscious attachment to the structures of the body-mind.

As the Way of Relational Enquiry develops, the entire lower body-mind becomes Awake in the prior Fullness of the Divine. Thus, social, dietary, sexual, and other areas of habit and obsession gradually relax and are sublimed through ecstatic Communion with the Divine. As a result, by the time the devotee makes the transition to the Way of Re-cognition, there is no longer any overriding need to indulge such habits, and he can easily and naturally maintain a daily practice that is wholly regenerative, moderate, and free of the accumulating effects of enervation, toxicity, distraction, reactivity, doubt, and unlove.

Self-Observation and Divine Communion: The Second Stage of Practice

The second stage of practice in the Way of Divine Ignorance is named the Way of Relational Enquiry. It is accepted as a responsibility by mature members of the esoteric order of The Free Communion Church.

Practice develops in two stages in the Way of Relational Enquiry. In the first stage, random verbal enquiry is added to the moment to moment practice of Divine Communion (as established in the Way of Divine Communion). That process of enquiry is founded in true self-observation of the habit of reactive recoil and the chronic orientation toward separate, separative, and subjectively oriented bodily attention. Thus, enquiry is made in the form "Avoiding relationship?" in the midst of the conditions of living, and in the midst of meditative Communion with the Living Divine. By such means, the individual is continuously and more and more profoundly reestablished in whole bodily Communion with the All-Pervading Divine Life.

The second stage of practice in the Way of Relational Enquiry requires maturity in all previous levels of practice, and the development of Divine Communion as an essentially wordless and thoughtless gesture of the whole bodily being. Thus, at this stage, instruction is given in the beginnings of the process of bodily conductivity of the Radiant Current of Divine Life, and the ascension of attention into the higher structural range of the body-mind.

The Psycho-Physical Principles of Observation and Concentration in the Way of Divine Ignorance

The practice of the Way of Divine Ignorance is founded in Paradox. There is no direct method for removing either behavioral tendencies or the obsessive stream of thinking. Nonetheless, these patterns must be mastered and undone, since they are the essential content of the motivated, compulsive, and illusory display of egoic suffering, or subjective differentiation.

It is simply that they cannot come to rest by attacking them directly. Such only reinforces the subjective pattern itself, by establishing a double-bind pattern in which the subjective being works against itself.

To try to stop thinking itself is the same as to try not to think a particular thought. Try not to think of a tree. It is impossible, because you must keep the thing in mind in order to try not to think it.

The same is true of the strategic attempt to control the entire thinking mind itself. Try not to think. It is impossible, because the thinking process must be kept intact in order to intend not to think. If you remember not to think, you may keep up an effort that makes the mind blank, but you will not bring an end to the intention of thought itself. You will only frustrate your own intentional and automatic thought process.

This simple functional observation is the ultimate key to actual control of obsessive subjective activity-indeed, to responsible control of all life-processes. To seek to control any living process directly only reinforces the process itself. This is felt as an irreducible double-bind, the tacit sense of dilemma. Such a state is constantly motivated and remotivated to seek its own solution, but it remains forever in the condition of the problem.

There are two laws at work in the situation of living processes that should particularly be observed in this case: (1) What is initiated (or set in motion) tends to continue in motion (or in evidence) until diverted or replaced by another initiated motion. (2) What is not used tends to become obsolete. On the basis of these two laws we have the options of two primary modes of operation in any functional situation: (1) concentration, and (2) observation.

The stream of subjective appearances or impulses is a stream of motions or tendencies to either mental-emotional or physical action. The tendency of subjective motion is constant, until the process that initiates the subjective illusion, or the illusion of independent consciousness, becomes obsolete. Therefore, what tends to arise from moment to moment is not the cessation of the stream of subjectivity, but, rather, changes in its tendency of motion. Until we are utterly or radically responsible for subjective motion (as thought and impulse), we do not cease to initiate or continue the process. Therefore, the pattern of subjective thoughts and impulses, or feeling-stresses, is itself continuous, but it is constantly changing.

Our egoic mind is a pattern of countless motions, founded in many kinds of experience or reactivity, kept in a constantly stimulated and changing condition by the presently arising events of the total living experience. Therefore, subjective motion will not tend to cease, but always tends to continue and to change. Even physical death does not bring it to an end, since physical death is superficial or external relative to the field of energy in which the subjective process is initiated. The subjective process does not come to an end as a result of any objective or circumstantial change. Rather, like the physical body, it arises as a result of a reactionresponse at the level of light, or the field of Awareness, rather than as a result of solid, elemental, or material events, which are themselves only lower vibratory versions of the light itself. The thought, desire, or feeling impulse-the present tendency or direction of subjective motion-tends to change eventually, even momentarily, but subjective motion itself tends to be continuous, throughout life, after death, and throughout the eternity of time and space.

The ordinary method for controlling subjective motion is concentration, or the prolonged maintenance of a single intention of thought. But this does not tend to bring thought or intention itself to an end. On the contrary, it reinforces it. However, it does tend to prevent changes in the motion of subjectivity for a finite period of time. It fulfills the natural law: What is set in motion tends to remain in motion unless deflected or interrupted. Profound concentration on a single subjective motion prevents other tendencies from becoming effective. By constantly reintending the intended motion over time, other subjective motions are prevented from replacing it. (Therefore, although other tendencies of motion continue to arise, they are cancelled or immediately replaced by the intended and re-intended motion or thought.)

Such is the secret of both meditation and ordinary effectiveness. However, as already suggested, this method does not bring an end to subjective motion-since it is itself a form of intended subjective motion - but it does control and direct the process toward specific ends, either in the world of objective activity or in the subtle worlds of mind and higher subjective or mystical-intuitive knowledge.

If, however, there is to be ultimate freedom and responsibility, there must also be an end to the compulsive continuation of subjective motions. To such an end, the method of concentration will not be the means. It is not itself a way of ceasing to initiate subjective motion, since it is only a way of continually intending a specific subjective motion. Even so, individuals constantly seek to overcome behavioral, mental, and egoic patterns by the method of concentration-and they are frustrated.

You cannot, as was said at the beginning of this essay, remove tendencies of behavior and of thinking, including the ego illusion, the illusion of independent consciousness itself, by direct efforts that only manipulate the egoic or subjective processes of conceiving, thinking, perceiving, feeling, desiring, and acting. Concentration is a method of effective and chosen use of the force of subjectivity and mind. It may temporarily bypass a particular tendency of thought or a complex impulse to action, but it cannot bring an end to subjective motion itself.

Therefore, any subjective motion that has been previously established in the complex subjective order will inevitably return to motivate us in the future. Even if contrary concentration is willfully maintained to the point of trance, the motive or tendency we seek to avoid will arise again in time.

Therefore, meditation, which is founded in concentration, is not sufficient for Enlightenment. It cannot achieve Enlightenment, or prior and radical Freedom in Truth. It is simply a conventional and useful method for using our born functional capacity.

How, then, does the reactive, subjective, egoic, moving, impulsive, independent experiential drive itself come to rest as a matter of ultimate responsibility? If the illusory and irresponsible motion of subjectivity is to cease, it must simply not be initiated! This way sounds simple, but what will you do about it? The conventional response or wisdom is to try to stop thinking and motivated existence (rather than simply not thinking, not presuming an independent consciousness or any independent object). But the effort to stop what is otherwise already and irresponsibly initiated is only the way of concentration. It does not radically cease to initiate the motion of subjectivity. It only tries to stop or prevent the already mysteriously initiated subjective tendencies or motions.

The true or ultimate and native means is not the direct one of concentration, which depends on the law that whatever is set in motion tends to remain in motion. Rather, the true means is the natural, free, or prior intuitive presumption of mere observation, which depends on the law that whatever is not used tends to become obsolete.

Whenever we are consciously present as simple awareness of arising motions (or internal and external objects arising to the egoic witness), we are not then principally active to initiate, continue, or bring an end to any arising tendencies. Therefore, we do not then reinforce the presently arising pattern of subjective motion, nor do we reinforce the pattern of subjective, egoic arising or motion itself.

The Way of Divine Ignorance, in each of its four fundamental stages, is founded in the process of free feeling-attention, or mere intuitive observation of the whole process of the present arising of gross, subtle, and causal objects to present awareness. The conscious process in each stage is a version of this native disposition, which is not in conflict with present tendencies, but neither is it possessed by present tendencies. It is the key attitude of every stage. True observation, which is the foundation of the various forms of the conscious process in the midst of experience, does not create, intend, support, or oppose any arising, any subjective tendency or motion, or any moment of differentiation and objectification. Observation does not intend. It is not a form of subjectivity, but of prior intuition. Concentration, which includes all forms of meditation, conductivity, and so forth (as well as the meditative or intentional aspects of the application of the various forms of the conscious process) is intentional. Concentration is the principle, the primary functional or intentional structure of egoic experience, or the motion of subjectivity, the play of consciousness and all objects (internal or external).

Paradoxically, the attitude of observation, or the intuitive rather than the intentional disposition, is not in itself a sufficient practical foundation for Realization of the whole Way of Divine Ignorance. In this Way, intuitive observation is always linked to and presently combined with various forms of responsible concentration of the whole bodily being. Thus, in every stage of practice, free feeling-attention, or mere observation, is linked with Lawful concentration, or appropriate and responsible activity of the whole bodily being. This dynamic combination of observation and concentration is the natural process wherein the whole bodily being is economized, or turned to its Lawful, sacrificial form, and also utterly or radically transcended or obviated at the same time. There is no appropriate element of irresponsibility at any stage of the process. It is always, from the beginning, a matter of radical responsibility for the whole affair of arising experience, through responsible intention, or concentration, and intuitive responsibility for attention, or mere observation.

Mere observation, or free feeling-attention, is not itself a form of subjective motion or intention. It is merely to observe arising motions. But true or intuitive observation cannot itself be intended. It can be obstructed, or made ambiguous. It can be temporarily, and even then only apparently, put to sleep, or "forgotten," under the profusion of fascinations, distractions, desires, impulses, and all the forms of knowledge, high and low. But it is itself native to us at every moment. It is mere or free attention, or natural awareness of all events, within and without. It is always already true of us and as us, but we are free to be present as such mere awareness or mere presence only when we are intuitively free of identification with all forms of subjective motion, distraction or knowledge.

We are always already free or present as mere awareness of any arising conditions (gross, subtle, causal-waking, dreaming, or sleeping), unless the pattern of subject-object conditions has distracted us to the point of irresponsible absorption in conditions themselves. Therefore, if we are so distracted, we will not tend to presume our native disposition of mere awareness of conditions, unless we are awakened to that disposition (or free attention) via true "hearing," or spontaneous intuition, in which the pattern of subjective motions is interrupted and its prior Condition revealed.

Such "hearing" occurs in the case of those who are drawn into the Company of the Spiritual Master; when attention is moved to concentrate in the Spiritual Master's demonstration and argument, there is spontaneous awakening to true "hearing" and the disposition of mere attention or intuitive observation. Devotees of the Spiritual Master are those who have thus "heard" the Teaching, and who are naturally committed to the forms of concentrationthe Lawful or sacrificial disciplines, the forms of love or heart-radiance, including the various developments of the conscious process and of meditation-which are revealed as obviously true when attention is liberated from the subjective stream of knowledge, or experience.

Simple awareness of arising conditions is not willful, cool, detached, and self-involved. It is not looking-watching, whereby neither the egoic, subjective witness nor the witnessed objects ever change or become obsolete. Such detachment is itself attachment, if only to the fixed position of the presumed and independent self-and, therefore, it only reinforces the ego illusion and its desires or conditions. Simple awareness is not true "observation" when it is intended. When it is intended, it is at best a form of concentration, or meditation. Mere observation is not a condition in itself. It does not turn toward or in on itself. It is tacitly disposed to whatever arises, if anything arises, subjective or objective. It is not a method that can be taken up in order to control or watch arising events. It is not a strategy. It is not itself identified with any problem. It is simply our natural, present disposition when we are "hearing," that is, when we are simply at rest in the intuitive presumption of Ignorance, rather than any subjective form, any experience, any condition, any kind of knowledge.

The true form of observation, or mere awareness, is native to the devotee in moments of ''hearing'' the Teaching, or in Revelations of the Divine Reality or Presence (rather than willful presumptions of the Divine Reality or Presence). True observation is present in random (not strategic) self-observation, and in true moments of the conscious process, as in Remembrance of the ''Name of God" (or the Revealed Presence), enquiry, re-cognition, and radical intuition. It is not observation or simple awareness if it is a willful strategy, without the foundation of mere or intuitive observation or awareness. Observation is not self-watching-which concentrates upon events intentionally, notices them, and identifies with the act and the data of the noticing. Observation is true only in the effortless, native moment, in which Divine Ignorance is the obvious Condition of self and all conditions. True observation does not merely confront or perceive a condition-rather, it is priorly free of that condition, and, therefore, intuitively recognizes it, feels it without obstruction, and dissolves (through nonreinforcement) its limiting and binding force. True observation is identical to Divine Ignorance, and, therefore, it acquires no knowledge by association with conditions, but abides as no mind, no experience, formless, pristine, and void. Thus, from observation, or free attention, which is identical to Divine Ignorance, springs the force of love, or unobstructed feeling, which is identical to Divine Radiance. Simple awareness, or nonstrategic and intuitive observation, and love, or native concentration, are the practical expressions of the Divine Reality, or Ignorance-Radiance.

As the devotee persists in simple observation over time, changes and new responsibilities appear in the realm of subjective motion, concentration, action, and meditation. The forms of the conscious process, founded in intuitive observation (observation founded in the intuitive presumption of Divine Ignorance and in the Revelation of the Divine Condition), and randomly extended as either intentional or tacit understanding, do not reinforce the presently arising motion or intention, and, therefore, the present tendency is weakened. Over time, accumulated tendencies become obsolete in this manner. It is simply that in every moment of the conscious process, or mere observation, extended as intuitive understanding, they are not in fact intended. Thus, as irresponsible or automatic tendencies become weaker, new intentions (forms of Lawful, sacrificial, or more appropriate and responsible concentration) may be established. Thus, new levels of sacrificial responsibility constantly appear as the devotee matures in the stages.

As long as we live, the forms of responsible or Lawful concentration cannot and should not themselves be avoided-but they certainly become simpler and fewer. The process of mere or intuitive observation does not take place in a vacuum. There is not any tolerable or absolute cave in which to observe and not act, as long as tendencies (the persistence of subjective intentions) exist. Therefore, throughout the various stages, there appear new levels of free concentration, responsible sacrificial intention, or love, in the extending of the forms of the conscious process and of conductivity, both in meditation and in ordinary action, corresponding to freer levels of subjective simplicity.

From the very beginning of this practice, there must be free commitment (based on "hearing") to a discipline of nondramatization of grosser reactive tendencies, that is, a tacit agreement to merely observe, as free attention, and without concern, the subjective tendencies that previously controlled your behavior. And this is combined with a coincident agreement to intentionally concentrate the whole bodily being as feeling in forms of Lawful (sacrificial, or appropriate and serving) activity, or love. These two aspects of the primary discipline are combined in various ways at every stage of the Way in a process of growing responsibility or freedom relative to the primal intention or cognition of differentiated consciousness.

The two primary tools-observation and concentration - are the structural principles of the whole process of the Way of Divine Ignorance. They are the instruments of responsibility or recognition of the seemingly irresponsible activities or appearances of thought and motivation, self and body, the whole display of independent conditions that arises as experience. However, this dynamic process that characterizes the Way is itself necessarily founded upon radical intuitive insight into the incident of differentiated or egoic experience. That intutition is the presumption of Ignorance itself, granted through "hearing." It coincides with the tacit re-cognition that all subjective motion, the whole play of subject and object, is an unnecessary recoil, an unnecessary but primal action from which all conventional actions emanate as reactions by force of implication. The intuition of the prior Condition of all actions, reactions, and conditions is awake in the moment of the presumption of Ignorance. That presumption, including the tacit re-cognition of the non-necessity of all independent or differentiating and subjective motion, is the necessary foundation of the whole Way. It is Realized through listening, or profound attention to the Realized argument and mere Presence of the Spiritual Master, to the point of "hearing," or feelingcommitment to the disciplines of the Way.

Therefore, the Way of Divine Ignorance is awakened as free attention (or "hearing") through mere attention (or "listening"), and it is generated as a process or play of observation and concentration, or free feeling-attention and responsible or Lawful, sacrificial, appropriate action, until there is the spontaneous cessation of differentiating intention, or subject-object illusions, in Divine Translation. Divine Translation is not absorptive meditation, but Translation from the stream of independent subjectivity into the Prior Bliss-Fullness of the Divine Condition, the Infinity of Ignorance-Radiance, which knows no center, no independent self, no parts, no other, and no limits.

In the Way of Divine Communion, mere observation, awakened through "hearing," is extended as the conscious process of random recollection, both tacit and intentional, of the Revealed Presence. Such recollection, founded as it is in prior intuitive Ignorance rather than subjective willfulness or egoic strategies in dilemma, is pure intuitive observation rather than a conventional form of self-possessed concentration.

In the Way of Relational Enquiry, the conscious process of mature recollection (the "Name of God") has become a profound intuitive disposition that yields the whole and entire bodily being into and through a cycle of true self-observation (rather than selfwatching). This matures as that degree of intuitive insight wherein the conscious process of enquiry (in the form "Avoiding relationship?") may be generated at random, as a tacit and intentional responsibility. When there is maturity in enquiry, wherein the reactive reflex of self-possession is continually released, then the whole bodily being may also be concentrated in the initial phase of conductivity (which follows naturally and spontaneously on the process of the "Breath of God").

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Ascent, Awakening, and Translation: The Last Two Stages of Practice

The third stage of practice in the Way of Divine Ignorance is named the Way of Re-cognition. Practice develops in three stages in the Way of Re-cognition. Each stage is founded in whole bodily Communion with the Radiant Current of Divine Life. And growth from stage to stage is generated through the continuous process of re-cognition, which is a form of nonverbal enquiry into the reactive contraction or self-binding recoil of the psycho-physical structures of the bodily self.

In the first stage of this practice, attention in the Life Current is repolarized to the brain, through a special exercise of the breath in Communion with the Radiant Divine via the Bodily Current of Life. In the second stage of this practice, contemplation of the Radiant Divine is made via the structural complex of the brain core. In the third stage of this practice, the brain-mind, indeed, the entire body-mind itself, is transcended in contemplation of the Divine via the heart, prior to breath and heartbeat.

This is done until there is spontaneous regeneration of the total structural mechanism of the body-mind-but without bondage to the illusion of a separated personal consciousness. At that point, the fourth stage of practice in the Way of Divine Ignorance begins. It is named the Way of Radical Intuition. And in this final and perfect stage of the total Way, the Bodily Current of Life is free of all obstruction in the body-mind, and so It invades every part, from the heart, simultaneously to the crown and to all extensions or parts of the body. There are no forms of concentration, inwardness, or subjective orientation toward subtle or visionary experiences at this stage. The whole and entire body-mind is tacitly re-cognized (or known again) in every moment, and Realized to be only an unnecessary modification of the Radiant Consciousness that is the Divine Self. Therefore, as this Disposition matures, the body-mind is literally Transfigured, Transformed, and Translated into the Radiant Divine.

Once the heart breaks open in the Divine Identity, the brain cracks open in the All-Pervading Radiance, and the body dissolves in Life, never to be known again.

The Free or "uncovered" soul itself is the seat or "Disposition " of practice in the Way of Divine Ignorance-not the independent ego- "I, " not the higher mind or psychic being, not the lower mind of thought and will, not the vital breath or etheric energy, and not the physical body. All of these are the "coverings" of the soul, the "sheaths " of the three "bodies " or dimensions of the manifest being, gross, subtle and causal. They are used by the soul, disciplined by the soul, and transcended by the soul, but they are not independently conscious principles of intelligence and action. Bubba Free John's presentation of the nature of the bodies or "coverings " in relation to the soul is based upon direct observation of his own psycho physical and conscious processes.

Many traditional sources confuse the conscious principle or soul with one or another of its bodies or "coverings. " But traditional authorities do exist to support Bubba's considerations. One of these is Swami Yogeshwaranand Saraswati, a saintly yogin with a unique capacity for internal visualization of the physical and superphysical anatomy of the body-mind:

"That which is termed `I' or `Me' is, in fact, made up of the aggregate of two Tattwas (principles) Jada or inert matter, and Chetan or consciousness. Consciousness abides in and is hidden in the matter. The abode of the conscious Atman (soul) is this body made up of material elements, and is likened to a castle. There are three parts of this castle: the physical body, the astral body and the causal body.

"The physical or gross body is the main gate for approaching the soul; we have to enter by this main gate. This physical body is made up of five material elements and is born of past actions. It has two parts-the grosser part is Annamaya Kosha (Food Sheath) and the other is Pranamaya Kosha (Vital Air Sheath). Together, they offer gross services to Jivatman, Lord of this castle. But this physical body does not have its own strength to serve the soul. This strength or energy comes from another body that abides in the physical body. This is Sukshma Sharira (subtle or astral body). This astral body is devoid of nerves, veins, arteries or flesh and bones: it is made up of extremely subtle vapour-like element; it is even devoid of limbs but pervades the whole physical body.

It is the conductor of the physical body; in other words, all actions of the physical body take place by the energy and the prompting of the astral body alone. But in this prompting two types of energyknowledge and action-are blended. By the blending of these two forms of energy there arises a force known as life. It is because of this life that the physical body remains alive and performs all its functions.

"The astral body also has two parts: Manomaya Kosha (Mind Sheath), the action predominating part, and Vijnanamaya Kosha (Intellect Sheath), the knowledge predominating part. It is a wonder that this life force too does not animate the astral body, and there is yet another body that pervades the astral body and gives life to it. This is Karana Sharira, the causal body (also known as Linga Sharira or Avyakta Sharira). "This causal body is much subtler than the astral body. Although it gives energy to the astral body, its own vitality has a different abode-Anandamaya Kosha (Bliss Sheath). This is like a mass of light, yet it is inert; it too does not have its own faculty to generate life-force. ''Thus these three parts of the castle of the soul are completely inert as compared to the conscious Jivatman. We see this clearly in our day-to-day life. When a living and moving body suddenly becomes actionless and lifeless, we say in common parlance that the Jivatman, the individual soul, has gone out of this body. It directly proves that it is by the association of this conscious Jivatman that the aggregate of the five sheaths appears to be conscious. " (Swami Yogeshwaranand Saraswati, Science of Soul , 2nd ed. [Rishikesh, India: Yoga Niketan Trust, 1972], pp. 12-13)

The Esoteric Process of the Last Two Stages of the Way of Divine Ignorance

In the Way of Re-cognition, the devotee is awakened to awareness of and discrimination between the various functional dimensions of the body-mind. These dimensions appear in the form of a hierarchy, beginning with the causal region in the heart (or the soul in its primal coverings or essential tendencies), extending to the subtle region in the brain, and then proceeding or emanating to the gross region of the living body below the brows.

In the course of practice in the Way of Re-cognition, the three dimensions of the single body-mind are inspected in reverse order-from gross to subtle to causal-in the manner of the traditional "great way of return." But in the course of that total inspection there is no embrace of the inward realms as Truth or "Alternative Reality." The tour of inspection only makes possible the ultimate Sacrifice of the whole body-mind in the Way of Radical Intuition.

The gross dimension of the whole body-mind, or bodily being, consists of two parts in dynamic association: the elemental and the etheric. The etheric or vital life aspect, generally associated with the nervous system as a whole, is senior to and subtler than the grosser and elemental aspect, which is generally associated with all the skeletal, muscular, and fleshy parts of the body. The etheric aspect of the bodily being is sometimes referred to as part of the astral or subtle dimension of the whole body-mind, but the subtle astral dimension is more properly to be considered relative to the brain division of the bodily being. Therefore, the etheric part is to be understood as one half of the dynamic pair of which the gross dimension of the whole body is composed.

Also, the traditional description of the structure of Man generally speaks of that structure in terms of independent and separable parts. Thus, there is the "gross body," the "subtle body" (or the "astral body"), and the "causal body." And even the major separate parts of each division are named and considered as separable bodies. Thus, there is the "etheric body," the "mental body," and the "supramental body." The term "body" is also often replaced by the term "sheath," implying a hierarchy of separable layers. But all of this ultimately serves the subjectivist and left-sided point of view, which would turn attention exclusively to either the subtle or the causal dimensions of the bodily being, and thus avoid awareness of the grosser and mortal life. This conventional method bypasses both awareness of the mortal plane of the grosser bodily life and the moral obligation to enter into the Divine Reality through sacrifice of the whole body-mind. Therefore, in the Way of Divine Ignorance, this traditional approach or method is both criticized and abandoned, and the descriptions of the bodily being are made to serve an integral or holistic understanding of the human structure.

To go on with the description of progress in the Way of Re-cognition, the subtle, astral, or total mental dimension of the bodily being is inspected after the inspection of the gross dimension. And this dimension is also composed of a dynamic pair, represented by lower mental brain functions and higher mental, or intuitional and superconscious, brain functions.

The Spiritual Master awakens the devotee to the central Current of the bodily being even in the Way of Divine Communion (although the awakening is not to the Current in itself but to the Radiance or Presence that pervades the body-mind and the whole world). Then, as the stages progress, the Spiritual Master awakens the devotee further, to the bodily identification of the Current, and to the various aspects or extensions of the Current in the form of the bodily being itself.

Thus, in the first phase of the Way of Re-cognition, the devotee is awakened to the gross dimensional pair of the ethericelemental division of the bodily being. Also, as at every stage of the total Way of Divine Ignorance, the Spiritual Master not only awakens the devotee to new levels of structural awareness, through both verbal instruction and higher psycho-physical or superphysical influences, but he gives the awakened devotee technical responsibility for all future or ongoing association with those levels. Thus, the devotee is not only initiated into awareness and discrimination of the entire gross dimension of his experience, but he is obliged to be yogically responsible for that inspection in the future and to re-cognize, release, or be the sacrifice of that whole dimension of experience.

The first or gross dimensional phase of the devotee's technical responsibility also includes special versions of traditional yogic application, including kundalini yoga, kriya yoga, higher aspects of hatha yoga, and so forth. Just so, in the second or subtle and astral dimensional phase, the applications include special versions of nada yoga (or shabd yoga), the yogic meditation on internal or subtle bodily sounds and lights, which corresponds to the upper limits of kriya yoga and hatha yoga.⁸

In the third or terminal phase of the Way of Re-cognition, the causal Root of the systematic bodily structure is realized or located in the region of the heart (felt to be on the right rather than in the middle or on the left). The technical yogic aspects of the devotee's responsibility include observation and re-cognition of respiration and heartbeat, but the essential awakening is through re-cognition of the gesture of attention, or the subtle tension of self-consciousness in the heart. This is made possible through surrender to the Transcendental Influence or Presence of the Spiritual Master.

At last the "eyes of the Free soul" open from the inward tour of this Way of Re-cognition, and the limiting power of all subjective and objective aspects of the bodily being-gross, subtle, and causal-are thereafter ineffective in the case of the responsible devotee. Such individuals move on to the Way of Radical Intuition, wherein the whole body-mind becomes a Sacrifice into its prior Condition or Truth through the technical responsibilities and ultimate Grace met at that stage. Such devotees are literally Translated into the Divine or Absolute Reality, through dissolution of the whole body-mind into the epitome of the Current of the bodily being. That epitome is the regenerated Spiral Current of the heart, or the Whole Bodily Radiance of the Heart, which is Awakened only after complete fulfillment of the technical yoga and the conscious process of the Way of Re-cognition. It is a matter of dissolution of the body-mind (which is polarized along the spine, toe to crown) into the unobstructed Current that lies between the heart (felt to begin on the right side) and the upper terminal of the crown. And that Current is released of obstruction, or automatic tendencies to take on causal, subtle, and gross forms, only when the unqualified Root of the whole body-mind is stably intuited at the heart. Otherwise, the body-mind cannot become a true Sacrifice into the All-Pervading and prior Reality, but will instead meditate upon itself independently, reflecting on idols of inwardness and self-preserving consolations, high and low. In the worldwide literature of spiritual wisdom, the terms gross, subtle (or astral), and causal are used in many ways, each often unique to a particular system that is intended to account for the various kinds of higher experience. Thus, both subtle and causal are at times said to beside above, in the brain regions, and a fourth, transcendental, or supracausal dimension is often described as standing above and beyond these. But, truly, and for the sake of right understanding, we must refer to everything experienced via the subtle or brain mechanisms (without reference to the gross dimension) as subtle or astral in nature-althoughthere are many potential levels to such experience. The center of the true causal as well as the Root dimension of the bodily being is in the heart, not in the brain. And the true transcendental dimension is not at all a matter of experience in or via this independent body-mind. It is not a matter of any of the meditative or psychic states of mystical and mental fascination or suspension that may be experienced by manipulation of the gross, subtle, or causal mechanisms of the body-mind. Rather, it is a matter of moral and spiritual Sacrifice as and of the whole and entire bodily being into the unqualified Reality beyond all knowledge.

Therefore, the true transcendental or "fourth state" (turiya), or the Realized Condition (turiyatita),⁹ beyond even the fourth state, is not within the sphere of the independent experience of the body-mind at any level of its extension, high or low. It is Realized only in Sacrifice of the whole and entire body-mind, not by any experience or knowledge of or by the body-mind. Therefore, in the Way of Radical Intuition we become a Conscious Sacrifice, Translated into Ecstasy in the Real through the moral and spiritual Principle and Process of Death.

8. In this paragraph and in later passages, the traditional names for various systems of esoteric practice are given. The details of these yogas are not described here, but the reader may be informed by considering the literature mentioned in Holy Books, a descriptive bibliography of philosophical and practical literature containing the essence of the higher Wisdom of mankind, selected by Bubba Free John (forthcoming from The Dawn Horse Press). The specific practices of devotees in the Way of Divine Ignorance have correspondences with the traditional methods, but they also represent a special and unique application, founded in the specific point of view of this Revelation.

9. Turiya, literally the "fourth,'' or the "fourth state," the "natural" state, is the Consciousness, or Divine Ignorance, that transcends all phenomena in the three common states of waking, dreaming, or sleeping. Self-Realization and Whole Body Enlightenment.

Self-Realization and God-Realization

In the mature phase of the Way of Re-cognition, the bodymind becomes Identified with its own prior Condition, which is the Unqualified Self-Nature.

In the Way of Radical Intuition, the Self emerges, prior to the limits of the body-mind, and becomes Absorbed in the AllPervading, All-Inclusive, Shown as Everything, and Transcendental Form of God, the Absolute Personality. Such Self-Awakened Absorption in the Ecstasy of Divine Contemplation is the Means of Translation into the Divine Domain. are modes of the Realization of such Transcendence. Turiyatita is the Perfect State, or the Divine Domain of Consciousness, prior to both the arising of phenomena and the non-arising of phenomena, in which there is only the Eternal Bliss of the Radiant Self of God.

End of Chapter 6