Insight Editions · No. 451
Breath and Name
The Initiation and Foundation Practices of Free Spiritual Life
Adi Da Samraj
A study edition of the 1977 aphoristic text by Bubba Free John on the Way of Divine Communion: the child, adolescent and man model of religion, presence over force, the two disciplines, the four stages of the Way of Divine Ignorance, the warnings against cultism, suffering as one's own activity, there is no god that is God, the demand for attention, the practical disciplines and the Heat, the Breath of God and the Name of God, true meditation, the Spiritual Master, and the Law fulfilled in both directions, with its claims weighed critically.
A study guide to Breath and Name by Adi Da Samraj. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
The first stage of Adi Da's Way, the Way of Divine Communion, is "the simple way of loving submission and attention to God." Its two disciplines are practical (diet, sex, sleep, service, study) and spiritual: the Breath of God (receive the Presence on inhalation, release all on exhalation) and the Name of God (heart-felt recollection, using the plain word "God"). Underneath both is sacrifice, the "Law" of all the worlds.
SCOPE
A 1977 text by Bubba Free John (Adi Da Samraj), issued by Vision Mound Ceremony and Dawn Horse Press: an opening essay revised from Garbage and the Goddess (1974), then nine chapters of numbered aphorisms (2.1, 2.2...) on Communion, the Law of Sacrifice, faith, practical disciplines, the spiritual discipline, meditation, the Spiritual Master, and the Law "fulfilled in both directions." About 39,000 words of unique text.
KEY FIGURES
Bubba Free John; the four stages of the Way of Divine Ignorance (Divine Communion, Relational Enquiry, Re-cognition, Radical Intuition); Narcissus; Gautama, Krishna and Jesus as critics of cultism.
BEST FOR
Readers who want the beginner's practice of Adi Da's 1970s Way in its own words, his child, adolescent, man model of religion, the aphorism "There is no god that is God," and his early warnings against cultism, including cultism about himself.
The Book on One Page
The book's simplest instruction comes in chapter 2: "Simply turn to God. Submit, surrender yourself to God. Love and receive God." "It is not necessary or even possible for you to 'believe' in God or know the Character of the Divine Reality. But if you can see that you do not exist by your own creature power... then you can do the spiritual practice of Communion with God."
| Chapter | Title | Payload |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | Dissolution vs experience | Child, adolescent, man; Presence over Force |
| 2 | Loving submission and attention | Two disciplines; the four stages |
| 3 | The Law of Sacrifice | "Your suffering is your own activity"; "no god that is God" |
| 4 | Faith and the cave of subjectivity | Felt devotion; the search for attention |
| 5 | Practical life disciplines | Diet, sex, sleep, study, stages |
| 5 cont. | Heat | Enduring discipline without self-concern |
| 6 | The spiritual discipline | Breath of God, Name of God |
| 7 | True meditation | Sacrifice, not inwardness |
| 8 | The Spiritual Master | Synchronistic, not mediumistic |
| 9 | The Law in both directions | Devotee and Master both sacrifice |
The book's root analysis, in chapter 3: "You are not, fundamentally, suffering what is happening or has happened or will happen to you. Your suffering is your own activity."
The Way of Dissolution vs the Way of Experience
The editors explain that this part is "Bubba Free John's own revision and expansion" of the final chapter of Garbage and the Goddess. It opens with a change: "I have relaxed all strategic and secondary involvement with both the yogic and the outer, 'theatrical' aspects of the Divine Siddhi." Earlier he drew people "into uncommon or extraordinary" states; "But now I can and do consider the Power of the Heart, the 'mere' Divine, to be sufficient."
He criticises the spiritual market of the 1970s: people are invited "to submit themselves in childish, emotional, and cultic fashion, usually by grace of 'hype'," or "to assert their adolescent independence" through "self-help, deprogramming, or certified sudden transcendentalism." Revivals are "as mindless as soap." Craving experiences "is like spending all day eating a salad, waiting for Wednesday again and again." "The fundamental dimension of this Power of the Divine Master is not Force, but mere Presence."
The essay's core is a three-stage model. "Everything a child does is a manifestation of one underlying assumption: dependence." Adults who linger in it enlarge it into "the God-Cosmos-Parent game." The adolescent's assumption is "the separate, separated, and separative self," so "the idea of God becomes in doubt" and "'sin' ('to miss the mark') enters." "There is a mature, real, and true phase of man," in which "the principle of separation is undermined." "Exclusive God occupies the child, and exclusive self occupies the adolescent."
| Stage | Assumption | Religion |
|---|---|---|
| Child | Dependence | God as Parent; obedience |
| Adolescent | Independent self | Doubt, struggle, heroism, seeking |
| Man | Neither | Separation undermined; world not abandoned |
The child-adolescent-man model is a sharp tool and anticipates James Fowler's stages of faith (1981) and Ken Wilber's later pre-rational, rational and trans-rational scheme. The note that he has "relaxed" the "theatrical" use of power refers to the Garbage and the Goddess period of 1973 to 1974, whose intense group experiences former members later described critically.
Loving Submission and Attention to God
"For those who are becoming available to the process of transformation in the Divine, I have established the Way of Divine Communion." "Come happily, with the urge to happiness, to peace, to love." "The Divine is a Presence you will come to know." The practice has two disciplines: "one which is practical, based in ordinary action, and one which is spiritual, based within the heart."
The practical discipline: "minimizing the degree and kinds of exploitation of life," service, study of the Teaching and of traditional teachings, "a productive work life," a clean environment, "a pure, healthful... lacto-vegetarian diet," "the responsible confinement of sexuality to love-desire within the relationship of heterosexual marriage (or its equivalent commitment in the case of a true homosexual relationship)," and "loving service to the common life." If reluctant, "simply observe yourself, be easy, be full of enjoyment."
The spiritual discipline comes later: "sit, in privacy... twice a day." "Breathe with your heart. With random exhalations surrender your self... from your heart to God." With inhalations, "feel and breathe the Divine Presence." He asks for "the Name 'God,' and not any traditional mantric Name, such as Ram, Krishna, Je[sus]." Then the four stages: Divine Communion ("by Name, by Breath, and by Service"), Relational Enquiry ("'Avoiding relationship?'"), Re-cognition, and Radical Intuition ("Sahaj Samadhi and Bhava Samadhi"). "No-contraction is the principle of the process."
| Stage | Practice | Key sign |
|---|---|---|
| Divine Communion | Name, Breath, Service | Divine as Presence |
| Relational Enquiry | "Avoiding relationship?" | Conductivity |
| Re-cognition | Contemplating the root of "I" | Subtle feeling, sight, sound |
| Radical Intuition | Dissolution | Sahaj and Bhava Samadhi |
"You need not believe in God, only see you do not create yourself" is an unusually open door for a devotional path, close to Schleiermacher's "feeling of absolute dependence." The rule confining sex to marriage or its homosexual equivalent is notable for 1977 in its inclusion of gay couples, but it sits uneasily beside the sexual experiments of the same community in the same years.
Against Cultism
The later aphorisms of chapter 2 turn on religion itself. "The spiritual way does not begin until all hopeful cultism has been undone in us." "Spirituality, not cultism, is the human process always served by the Teachers of mankind, such as Gautama, Krishna, and Jesus." They "are invariably active as prophetic critics of the cultism of their times, even though they themselves tend to be made the centers of cultic belief."
He turns the warning on himself: "Those whom I serve most directly... should likewise be responsible for the immature tendency to make a cult of me, confining me to my appearance." "I have not turned around to serve such foolishness in you." "Be free of consolations and imaginary destinies. Become responsible for the way you would have lived if I had never confronted you." The relationship between devotee and Master is "Divine Communion. It is mutual sacrifice or service."
"No cult or religion, historically great or small, is true as Truth, but the overcoming of the childishness of cultism is the beginning of that process in an individual whereby spirituality is awakened."
Bubba Free JohnThe anti-cult passages are among the most quoted in his early work, and they are good advice. Readers should weigh them against what followed: the same teacher later took titles such as Avatar and "the One Who has Completed," and his community became the subject of exactly the cultism criticism he describes. The passages work best as a test to apply to any teacher, his included.
The Law of Sacrifice: The Form of All the Worlds
"What is it that you mean... when you say or feel you are suffering, unhappy, not at ease? You are pointing to your own action." Suffering "is the compulsive and presently not-conscious avoidance of relationship." "Liberation or salvation involves, principally, not a change in your conditions but a transformation of your relationship to... forms of action."
The chapter holds the book's famous paradoxes: "There is no god that is God. There is no God, no Objective Creator or Source, that is God. There is no God to be known over against the world or the self. There is only God." "God is not other, or Other." "God is not identical to any location. God is not apart from any location." "God is the world. God is prior to the world. God is only." "When all childish considerations of God as Parent and all adolescent considerations of God as Principle are understood... then God is realized by the mature man."
It then rejects the "case" model of practice. "The effective principle of the Way of Divine Communion is not that you are a 'case' to be transformed by some means, but that you do not know what a single thing is." Aphorism 3.11 reappears as the epigraph to his exercise manual: "Truth or God is not a Condition to be realized by willful esoteric or super-scientific efforts." "Few are willing to endure such a process. Therefore, illusory and consoling ways have been created by compassionate, clever, and deluded men."
| Claim | Contrast |
|---|---|
| Suffering is your action | Not your circumstances |
| Liberation changes relationship | Not conditions |
| No god that is God | No Creator over against the world |
| Only God | Not other, not located |
| Not a case | Not self-improvement |
"Suffering is your own activity" restates the Buddha's second noble truth (craving as the cause) and the Stoic point that we suffer from judgements, not events. It is powerful for chronic self-made misery. Applied to injustice, poverty or abuse it can sound like blaming the victim, and the text does not draw that line. The "no god that is God" passage is fine apophatic theology, close to Meister Eckhart's "God beyond God."
Faith and Release from the Cave of Subjectivity
"The Way of Divine Communion depends on devotional sacrifice." Its acts "are extensions of the heart. They must be felt, not conceptualized. The mind has only a secondary role to play." The heart is "the emotional or feeling core of the being," realised as "felt-intuition, rather than mere 'emotions'." The discipline continues "even through the process of death, and beyond."
He warns about false detachment: the individual "may appear profoundly detached, spiritual... But this is an illusion that both he and any observer of his appearance may share. Beware of such an illusion in yourself." "There is no inwardness in God, and nothing is external to God." "Attention alone is not sufficient"; it must be followed by "yielding of the whole being, with feeling."
The chapter's sharpest psychology is on attention. "Devotional sacrifice is the sacrifice or yielding of attention rather than the demanding of attention." "The principle or key motivation behind all the negative dramatizations enacted by human beings in the relational play of life is the demand or search for attention." That demand comes from "the dilemma or inherent tension" of feeling separate.
| Mode | Attention | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Demanding attention | From others | Negative dramatization |
| Mental devotion | Thought only | Insufficient |
| False detachment | Cool witnessing | Illusion |
| Felt sacrifice | Yielded, whole being | Communion |
"The demand for attention drives negative dramatization" is a clear and testable idea, close to Alfred Adler's view of misbehaviour as a bid for attention and Rudolf Dreikurs's classroom work. The warning against spiritual detachment that is really dissociation anticipates John Welwood's later term "spiritual bypassing" (1984).
The Practical Life Disciplines
"In every moment, you are obliged first to handle things with your neighbor, that is, to establish stable, ordinary conditions in this body-mind and its relations. Only then are you prepared to go to the holy place." "The abandonment of egoic contracts and cultic theatre leads to pure and true relational conditions, not isolation." The discipline "eliminates not intimacy, pleasure of life, and creativity, but self-indulgence."
The rules are specific. Study The Paradox of Instruction, Conscious Exercise and the Transcendental Sun, The Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace, The Knee of Listening, and "daily study of Breath and Name." "Devotees should economize sleep. Seven hours of sleep at night is generally sufficient"; longer "permits indulgence in dream activity." Experiment "from six to eight hours." "The daily diet should be moderate, entirely wholesome, and lacto-vegetarian." Sex should be "moderated by the full feeling of love-desire."
Aphorism 5.6 lists the progressive practices by stage. In the first stage, devotees with "a basically purified and harmonious bodily condition" "may, if they choose, modify the strict, daily 'sattwic' or pure diet with occasional... use of the traditional dietary accessories in ordinary, human celebrations." In later Relational Enquiry and Re-cognition, "each devotee must presume the absolute discipline of strict observance." In Radical Intuition, "the devotee may manage diet and all other life-processes according to his or her own native choosing."
| Area | Rule |
|---|---|
| Diet | Lacto-vegetarian; no meat, fish, eggs, tobacco, alcohol, refined food |
| Celebration | Occasional "accessories" allowed in early stage |
| Sleep | About 7 hours; test 6 to 8 |
| Sex | Committed relationship, moderated by love-desire |
| Study | Daily, named texts |
| Day | Balance work, recreation, intimacy, solitude |
"Handle things with your neighbour first" echoes Jesus's "first be reconciled to thy brother" (Matthew 5:24) and is good order. The seven-hour sleep guideline is close to current adult recommendations (7 to 9 hours), though the reason given, avoiding dreams, has no basis in sleep science, where dreaming sleep supports memory and mood. The permission for celebratory alcohol connects to the "celebrations" for which the community became known.
Heat
The aphorism titled Heat gives the book's most humane practical teaching. "There is no end to what may be revealed about oneself in negative terms. However, to become concerned and chronically depressed through self-criticism and analytical self-watching is simply another form of self-possession." "The true practice is neither to indulge or dramatize un-Lawful tendencies, nor to become bound up in self-concerns."
"If this is done, you will observe that the heat of discipline becomes a purifying and transforming current of life." Old signs "are gradually transformed, becoming less and less gross, less and less frequent." "Transformation... may not be attained by direct, willful, strategic, concerned effort." "Endure the heat. Do not indulge un-Lawful tendencies, but also do not become concerned by any tendencies you feel to persist." Whatever arises "requires neither analysis nor complaint."
- Restrain: do not dramatize unlawful impulses.
- Do not analyse: self-watching is self-possession.
- Persist: service, study, ordinary restraint.
- Endure: the heat purifies, then illuminates.
- Let change be secondary: it comes indirectly.
This is a near-exact statement of what Acceptance and Commitment Therapy teaches: neither act on urges nor fight them, let them be, and keep acting on values. It also matches the Christian desert tradition on acedia and scrupulosity. It may be the single most transferable passage in the book.
The Spiritual Discipline: Breath and Name
"Life in Divine Communion is realized as a Condition in which one is lived, in which one is not an independent entity but an expression of a Great Process." Approach the Master "not as a common seeker," but "on the basis of the Teaching, when it has made its point in you." Otherwise "my only response will continue to be the enforcement of rudimentary instruction and disciplines."
The Breath of God "is a cycle: (1) receive (with inhalation, or at random) the Divine Presence... (2) release (with exhalation, or at random) all forms of circumstance, body, mind, and self." The Presence "may at times be felt to be 'breathed' independent of the action of breath," "an intuitive... version of yogic 'kumbak'." The Name of God "is that aspect... that directly involves the mind," whose "root-seat is in the heart, not in the head." "The Name of God is not truly or ultimately a word-object, a magical combination of sound-syllables. It is a 'meaning'."
The chapter closes with a warning about magic. "The relations between body and breath and emotion and mind and experience and environments are inherently magical." But "the way of knowledge, the craving and mediumistic disposition of magic or psychism... must be undone in us, or we remain focused in dreaming and cannot awaken." "The usual mysticism (invocation of and absorption in the higher by what is lower)" belongs to "the conventional, egoic, problem-solving... life."
| Discipline | Faculty | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Breath of God | Body, life-force | Inhale receive, exhale release |
| Name of God | Mind | Heart-felt recollection, word "God" |
| Service | Action | Whole life as sacrifice |
| Kumbhaka | Spontaneous | Breath stops or goes unnoticed |
Using the plain word "God" rather than a Sanskrit mantra is a modest, culturally neutral choice, close to the advice in The Cloud of Unknowing to use a one-syllable word like "God" or "love." Breath-linked recollection is a well-tested contemplative method. The rule that the Master's "spiritual connection" begins only when the devotee approaches rightly makes the teacher the gatekeeper of grace.
True Meditation Is Sacrifice, or Relationship
"Real meditation is in the form of sacrifice, of relationship, not of inwardness or concentration on the ego-based satisfactions of the subjective order." "No realization realizes this One. Only the obviation of all realization is Realization at last." Meditation in the first stage is "present recollection or re-attention to the Divine Presence via the Name of God and the Breath of God," "only gradually awakened."
Practical details: a place "set aside for this in your home," at "the beginning and end of each day," meeting other devotees "once or twice a week." "This is not to be made a self-conscious effort. It is not a kind of 'working on yourself.' It is simply a matter of the random and natural return of attention, with love, to the Presence." "Do not merely and passively receive me, but duplicate me through sacrifice." "If we only receive it and depend on it, as a Parent, outside ourselves, we are always empty."
The short text Meditation in My Company: "Consider what you know. You do not even know what a single thing is. Then rest-abide in that Ignorance." "Be the heart. Radiate the whole body." "Conventional meditation is inwardness, or remedy by subjectivity." "'I am not the body' is not the point of view of practice." No one should begin Relational Enquiry "who does not regularly and truly sit in meditation one half hour to one hour, twice a day."
| Conventional | True (in this book) |
|---|---|
| Inwardness | Relationship |
| Concentration | Return of attention with love |
| Passive receiving | Duplicating the Master |
| "I am not the body" | Whole-body radiance |
| Working on yourself | Natural return |
The instruction to return attention without self-conscious effort is standard good meditation advice (compare Thich Nhat Hanh or Thomas Keating's Centering Prayer). The critique of "I am not the body" sets him apart from classical Advaita and suits his later whole-body teaching. "Duplicate me" asks the devotee to model their inner state on the teacher's, which raises the stakes of the teacher's own conduct.
The Spiritual Master
"The true Spiritual Master is one who originates spontaneous and true Teaching in the company of others," through "a literal Power in Silence." "The process of the relationship between me and my devotees is not mediumistic but synchronistic." "There must be natural love, or coincidence, and duplication, rather than an exclusively passive and separated attitude." "Come live with me, be aligned with me in your feeling."
He anticipates his death: "My psycho-physical form is mortal... this mortal one will come to rest some day." "It is impossible to enjoy that form of Communion twenty-four hours of every day." He sets limits: "I do not presume a personal, daily, psychic responsibility or interest in any individual devotee, except where the devotee has been tested by me for a long time." "Do not imagine I am made magically active in your case through deluded emotional attachments... fetishistic preoccupation with my words or pictures."
The chapter ends with a large claim: "I have no past lives and no future lives in any dimension. This is my only birth, and it is only apparent." "This vehicle or karmic being may continue or be taken up by others after this apparent life is terminated. But I am not expressed in that destiny." "I am not a one, a being, nor a One, a Being."
| Master is | Master is not |
|---|---|
| Synchronistic | Mediumistic |
| Power in Silence | Mere silence |
| Mortal in form | Available 24 hours |
| Responsive to the tested | A magic fetish |
| "Only birth, only apparent" | A reincarnating being |
The refusal to be a fetish ("pictures," "words") and the frank statement of his mortality are healthy. "Come live with me" and "duplicate me" set up the residential, high-commitment community that followed. The claim of no past or future lives is a theological assertion, unverifiable either way.
The Law Must Be Fulfilled in Both Directions
"In the Way of Divine Communion, the transition is made from self-possession, the contracting life of Narcissus, to the constant, moment to moment condition of submission to Grace." "Its initial stages are not meditative." First, "be very clear in the twofold argument": "the criticism of the usual life in the form of Narcissus and the consideration of Divine Ignorance." Then "he takes on conditions of life," then initiation.
"The approach must fulfill the Law of sacrifice in both directions." The devotee must submit and release "the possessed and worldly point of view"; the Master sacrifices in turn. "If the devotee approaches me only in worldly terms, argumentative and self-defending, I cannot have this function for him... it works only to offend, or else seems to support, his illusions." "People talk in all kinds of religious ways about the Divine Presence, but it is commonly from an egoic, separative point of view."
The book ends on the Master's function: "The Grace-function of the Divine appears in the human form of the true Spiritual Master from time to time," "to be a sacrifice for all who devote themselves to him (or to her, should the Master be in the form of a woman)." "He accepts whatever is yielded to him and... replaces it in the life of his devotees with his own Condition, Form, and Nature." "I tell you this so that you will know clearly how I comprehend my own work."
| Direction | Who | Sacrifice |
|---|---|---|
| Upward | Devotee | Submission, service, discipline |
| Downward | Master | Accepts what is yielded, gives his Condition |
| Failure | Argumentative approach | Offence or illusion |
| Order | Argument, conditions, initiation | Meditation comes later |
"Both directions" is a fair statement of the reciprocal guru bond found in Hindu and Tibetan traditions, and including a possible woman Master was uncommon for the time. The idea that an argumentative approach means the Master's function "does not work" can shield the teacher from criticism; scholars of guru movements note this as a recurring pattern.
Master Takeaways
Breath and Name is the most accessible statement of Adi Da's 1970s beginner's path: a plain practice of breath and recollection, ordinary disciplines, and a clear analysis of suffering as one's own activity, framed by strong warnings against cultism and by an equally strong claim to be the Master who transmits grace.
- You need not believe in God; see that you do not create yourself.
- Turn, surrender, love and receive.
- Two disciplines: practical and spiritual.
- Child, adolescent, man: dependence, independence, maturity.
- Presence is senior to Force.
- Undo cultism, including cultism about the teacher.
- Your suffering is your own activity.
- Change your relationship to action, not your circumstances.
- There is no god that is God; there is only God.
- You are not a case to be fixed.
- Feel devotion; do not just think it.
- The demand for attention drives negative drama.
- Beware of false detachment.
- Handle things with your neighbour first.
- Seven hours of sleep, a moderate diet, a balanced day.
- Endure the heat: neither indulge nor analyse.
- Breathe the Presence: receive in, release out.
- Use the plain word "God."
- Meditation is return of attention with love, not work on yourself.
- Do not fetishise the teacher's words or pictures.
- Meditation comes after argument and discipline.
- Grace runs in both directions.
- Apply his own anti-cult test to him and to any teacher.
Frameworks and mental models
| Name | What it says | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Child-adolescent-man | Three stances toward God and self | Assessing religious maturity |
| Suffering as activity | Pain is self-contraction | Chronic self-made misery |
| Not a case | Do not treat yourself as a project | Self-improvement fatigue |
| Demand for attention | Root of negative drama | Conflict in groups |
| Heat rule | Neither indulge nor analyse | Persistent urges |
| Breath of God | Inhale receive, exhale release | Daily practice |
| Name of God | One word as a meaning | Wandering mind |
| Neighbour first | Order before sacred occasion | Starting practice |
| Anti-cult test | Teachers criticise cultism | Evaluating any teacher |
Breath and Name is valuable for its plain practice, its analysis of suffering and attention, the Heat passage, and its anti-cult principles, which remain a useful test for any spiritual group. Its aphoristic style is dense and repetitive, its rules on diet, sleep and sex mix sound advice with unproven rationales, and its account of the Master (grace gated by right approach, "duplicate me," "come live with me") sets up the dynamics that later drew criticism of his community. Read it as a beginner's manual and as evidence of his early self-understanding, testing both against what the later history showed.