1.1M
Downloads
1075
Episodes
Spiritual teachings by Shunyamurti, the founder and director of the Sat Yoga Ashram - a wisdom school, ashram, and the home of a vibrant spiritual community based in Costa Rica. Visit us at satyoga.org
Episodes
Thursday Oct 29, 2009
Rest in Peace - 10.29.09
Thursday Oct 29, 2009
Thursday Oct 29, 2009
“So there’s a reason why people are hesitant to meditate, and that they’re not interested in meditation. And that’s because,” as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us, “meditation is too much like death.” And death means many things to the ego: detachment, stillness, silence, emptiness, nothingness. And, even worse, “you say to the dead, ‘Rest in peace.’” And the one thing that the ego does not want is peace because it gets its kicks from the vicissitudes of pleasure and pain; the cheap thrills of the egoic notion of “happiness.” To rest in peace is to be free from the most powerful desires and wants. And, eventually, “we recognize that the desire is a defense against the fear—and it always leads back to the fear, or a vexation, or some kind of suffering—and is never what we really wanted, because what we really wanted was to find the place that is at peace. . . . And what we find then is that meditation is not what the ego thinks, it’s not boring, it’s not a lack of involvement, but it is actually a transcendence that enables us then to return to the world, reborn; the death is not the end.” And through this death and rebirth we enter back into the world in a state of love, with a willingness to give and help others without any hidden agendas or ulterior motives because “often at the ego level, desire masquerades as love.” But liberation allows one to be free of the desire to be appreciated, to be needed—or any of the various ways that the ego tries to express love—and allows one to show true compassion and love in every act. Recorded the evening of Thursday, October 29, 2009.
Tuesday Oct 27, 2009
Love & Wisdom - 10.27.09
Tuesday Oct 27, 2009
Tuesday Oct 27, 2009
“Love without wisdom is inadequate,” as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” But, “Equally, wisdom without love is absolutely futile, and we know so many philosophers who have a great . . . capacity to think, but they can’t love their way out of a paper bag. And thinking alone won’t get you out of the box of the ego; the two must be integrated.” Likewise, there are also two manifestations of love in action. Karma yoga is the essence of love in action, “to act without greed, possessiveness, the desire for some ulterior agenda to be fulfilled by the ego, then that will be able to unravel the ego’s knots and unwillingness to love. The second one is community because it’s not just a matter of ‘What do I do,’ but the real test is can I help form a communion of love with other human beings—cause that’s the ultimate test isn’t it? Can we live together in love?”
Without love, as modern society has proven, things fall apart. But we need wisdom to “recognize that the source of what is unloving in ourselves is the ego. So the first step of wisdom is the realization that ‘I must disidentify from the ego.’ . . . And because we have come to live in a world of representations, of symbols and language—rather than in the feeling and in the essence of our innermost being—we have lost touch with that, and we have deceived ourselves into thinking, ‘Oh I can just talk the game, I don’t have to really walk it.’ So with the wisdom to form the talk, and the love to “Walk the talk,” we can live in harmony with ourselves and with those around us. Recorded the afternoon of Tuesday, October 27, 2009.
Thursday Oct 22, 2009
The Throne of Realization - 10.22.09
Thursday Oct 22, 2009
Thursday Oct 22, 2009
As Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us, there are three basic spiritual paths that lie ahead of us: the slow path, the intermediate path, and the fast path. The slow path consists of slowing reproving our ego and making sure that it stays in check. There is the intermediate path where we ask God to get rid of our ego, and there is the fast path which consists of realizing that you already are That: “I am not the ego. I am not the body. I am not the mind. But I am the Presence, the pure awareness that is an emanation of the Mind of God.”
You are simply the Presence that is witnessing this collective dream take place, and the minute that you get off the throne, you become rooted in linguistic duality from which all suffering takes place. You go down in the mud with the ego. “Clean yourself off of all those muddy ideas. Sit on the throne. Rule in the purity of Divine Presence and the ego will come into order. You don’t have to fight with it.” “So that’s what we’re doing in meditation: sitting on that throne, which is why it’s called ‘Swaraj,’ the kingdom of the Self.” So sit “in that throne of realization of what it feels like to have gone beyond desire and beyond fear. Beyond any need. Beyond any localization within the world because in that state there’s a realization that the entire world, the entire objectification of consciousness, is within; not without.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 22, 2009.Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
On Aldous Huxley & The Doors of Perception - 10.20.09
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Student Question: What level of consciousness, or what door did Huxley open? “Well I won’t judge Aldous Huxley and how many doors he opened, let’s say, but certainly there was a heightened realization,” argues Shunyamurti, the spiritual leader of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “that we’re in a throbbing, luminous, living reality; that what we think of as dead matter is not dead at all. It’s alive in a divine way.” But, in our materialistic paradigm, and “by de-enchanting the world, by refusing to see it, we have caused that magical dimension of reality to withdraw because the world responds to us: if we treat it as dead, it’ll treat us as dead. . . . And so it’s a rejection of God to choose to have a materialist philosophy. And the whole world has been indoctrinated today into that belief.” Recorded on Tuesday, October 20, 2009.
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Light in Silence - 10.20.09
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
“We are light,” as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us. We are not, however, light that comes out of light bulbs or light from the sun; we are Divine Light. Just as there are different dimensions, there are also different levels of light. “But within a human being, if you can penetrate through the shell of the ego, you will find not only the photonic light . . . but you will find the angelic light. And then within that, the Supreme Light. And once that Supreme Light is touched, and its radiance is allowed to move into this phenomenal plane, then everything is different. Everything is seen from the Light of God as the emanation of God.” “In order for that light to emerge, we must remove the outer covering. And the outer covering is made of language. The language covers over and obscures the silence in which the light is contained and emerges. The silence is the medium of the light. When we cultivate the inner silence then we create a space in which the light can shine.” And that light dissolves all questions and desires into the Supreme Self. Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20, 2009.
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Pantheism vs. Panentheism - 10.20.09
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Student Question: What is the difference between Pantheism and Panentheism? “Pantheism is the view that sees God or gods in all things,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “The Druids worshiped the gods in the trees, the dryads, or the wood nymphs. . . . Or you could see the one God—in and as nature. But Panentheism is a realization that God is actually transcendent of the natural world, but that the natural world is within the Mind of God.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20, 2009.
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Deadly Serious about Money - 10.20.09
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Student Comment: What you said just a minute ago brought up something that I was reading last night about someone saying that what we do here is joy, and we’re without seriousness. And I used to think that this seriousness and lack of joy came from money, but now I’m starting to feel that it comes from something much deeper that can be, as we’ve said before, deadly serious.
Shunyamurti, spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us that we must learn not to be serious about petty things, and only be serious when it comes to serious matters. “But those serious matters are the matters of bliss, and joy, and love, and beauty.” But in Western industrial society we’ve placed all value on money rather than the things that really matter such as nature and the environment. And “money is a total fiction, but in this capitalist system, it is the only thing that’s real. Nothing else is real. . . . And they’re having anxiety about something that is completely fictional, while not thinking at all about the fact that the entire real world of nature is collapsing because we’re not paying attention to it. It’s an astounding situation that can only be called psychosis at a species level.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20, 2009.
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Flying with Angels - 10.20.09
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Tuesday Oct 20, 2009
Student Question: What are angels a manifestation of? We are all angels, as Shunyamurti, the spiritual leader of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, tells us. And, as we align ourselves more and more with the Divine Will of God, we may be called on to assist others. Whether we aid someone in a physical body, from a higher dimension with a subtle body, or even in a dream is uncertain, but as we recognize ourselves as the Light of God, we will be called upon to help break the chains of others confusion and help them, too, realize their true nature as Light. What’s more, if we do not “purify the subtle form,” then it will “remain as a wandering spirit, an earth-bound spirit” or the typical “ghosts” that are well known in paranormal investigations. So one must truly practice the art of detachment from the physical plane—and attachment instead to God—so that one may transcend to the angelic and archangelic realms and finally to the realm of God. Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20, 2009.
Tuesday Oct 13, 2009
The Triple Act of Being - 10.13.09
Tuesday Oct 13, 2009
Tuesday Oct 13, 2009
“Sat Yoga is the process of becoming fully aware of . . . [your] radiance. And then merging into that radiance and realizing the unlimited scope of that radiance,” explains Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Sat Yoga meditation is a triple act: an unrestricted act of understanding, an unconditional act of love, and an undefinible act of Being. The understanding includes “understanding all of reality, including the Self, unrestricted by beliefs, thoughts, language, or images.” The love is a love without limits and barriers; a love that is not attached to an object or signifier. This act of Being is a giving up of the action of Becoming; it is an “absolute commitment to truthfulness and to presence and to open-heartedness that is our liberation.” “And so, Sat Yoga is a kind of meditation that one will open to only after one is done with all the games and is ready for Truth in the most naked form possible, which is formless. And when one is no longer content with justifying or rationalizing one’s being, and when one is not afraid to face the emptiness and the nothingness behind all the masks, and once we are able to face the inner truth of our True Nature—fearlessly, openly, without distraction—we are liberated.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday October 13, 2009.