Bubba Free John: Breath and Name

The Initiation and Foundation Practices of Free Spiritual Life

The Dawn Horse Press, 1977

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All the ancient traditions agree that the most sublime possibility for any human being is a direct relationship to a living Spiritual Master.

Bubba Free John is such a Master, a Western-born man of God-Realization. His original Teaching, the Way of Divine Ignorance, or Radical Understanding, revives and fulfills the great spiritual expression initiated by Jesus, Gautama, and Krishna in ancient times. The Way itself is uniquely accessible to modern men and women. To all who truly hear his liberating argument and prepare themselves as he recommends, Bubba Free John offers himself in relationship as Divine Master, the transforming function of God.

Breath and Name communicates the Way of Divine Communion, the first stage of practice in the Way of Divine Ignorance. This Way is a path of preparation of body, emotions, and mind for higher or more radical spiritual practice. But as indicated in the introduction and Part I, even this level of practice is priorly enlightened, intelligent, and free of childish and adolescent habits and illusions.

Part II is the heart of the book. Here Bubba presents the dynamic principles of devotion, sacrifice, and dependence on Grace. He shows how the practice of ordinary life-discipline as intentional service to the Spiritual Master and all living beings leads naturally into simple but profound enjoyment of specific spiritual disciplines which he has called the Breath of God and the Name of God. The foundation of the whole Way of spiritual awakening is heart-felt Communion with God as all-pervading Presence, which is Gracefully and spontaneously initiated in the Company of the Spiritual Master.

Even by reading these essays, you may come to enjoy a more intelligent and illumined approach to ordinary life. But the Way itself remains to be realized in practice. Part III of Breath and Name is an instructive commentary on the practical and spiritual disciplines. And the book closes with an invitation to all readers to take up this Way themselves, and make the transition from the usual, deluded, mortal destiny to the purifying fire of life in God.