Franklin Jones: The Knee of Listening

The Early Life and Radical Spiritual Teachings of Franklin Jones

The Dawn Horse Press, 1972 (second printing, 1973)

Foreword by Alan Watts

From the rear cover and the inside of rear cover:

The Knee of Listening contains Franklin’s essential wisdom regarding the ordinary dilemma and search which nearly all human beings are living. He teaches that seeking by any means, even traditional spiritual, philosophic, religious and yogic means, is an inappropriate and fruitless approach to Truth. Truth is not realized as a result of any action. Truth is always already the case. He says: “All seeking is unnecessary. Only understand your own search. Bodies and worlds are only full. All power is at the Heart. Joyous Light surrounds your head. Truth is consciousness itself. The one who was to come is always already here.”

Hidden in The Knee of Listening, like a symbol in a childbook illustration, is an image of That which I have come to show and teach to those who will resort to me.

Franklin Jones

Franklin Jones, known to his devotees as Bubba Free John, is one of those rare beings who descend into the material and human planes of existence already conscious of spiritual illumination, and with the destiny of rapid evolution for the sake of the spiritual service of mankind. In his own words, he is a “man of understanding”. He has described his own human spiritual adventure in The Knee of Listening. He has said that his early life was a manifestation of the lesson he has come to teach mankind about the fruitlessness of seeking in any form. He says that the years of trial were a means of transforming the psycho-physical functions he is animating, so they could be an instrument for the conscious communication of Truth: “The man of understanding is the Truth of mankind. He is not merely the evolutionary goal and fulfillment of man. He is already Truth, prior to man. He is Truth alive, drawing men into the prior Truth and real functions that are their nature in Reality.”

“It is obvious, from all sorts of subtle details, that he knows what IT’s all about…a rare being.”

“What he says, and says very well, is something that I have been trying to express for thirty-five years, but which most people seem quite reluctant to understand. He has simply realized that he himself as he is…is a perfect and authentic manifestation of eternal energy of the universe, and thus is no longer disposed to be in conflict with himself.”

Alan Watts [not from the his foreword]

Dear Franklin,

Chiti Shakti, the Kundalini, which brings about Siddha Yoga, is activated in you. The Inner Self which is the secret of Vedanta, the basis of religion, the realization of which is the ultimate object of human life, is awakened in you.

Swami Muktananda

A great teacher with a dynamic ability to awaken in his listeners something of the Divine Reality in which he is grounded, with which he is identified and which in fact he is. He is a man of both the East and the West; perhaps in him they merge and are organized as the One that he is.

Israel Regardie

JOB’s Comment:

Jones’s first and still best known book.

The Significance of Franklin Jones