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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 Nov 05, 2009
Consciousness is a Myth - 11.05.09
Thursday Nov 05, 2009
Thursday Nov 05, 2009
Since the advent of quantum physics the idea of matter has disappeared as a possible hypothesis for what the universe is made of. But Shunyamurti, the spiritual teacher of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, poses the following question: “Since there is no matter and no space and no time in any true sense, what do we mean by a universe?” But as he explains, “We tend then to fall back on the idea, ‘Well, then it’s consciousness, the whole world is consciousness.’ And it’s true that we talk a lot about consciousness in here, but I have to admit to you tonight that consciousness is also a myth.” This teaching has long been known in every true spiritual tradition. In Christian tradition, Meister Eckhart once admitted, “If you would have the Kernel, you must break the husk,” referring to the esoteric understanding that in order to achieve union with God, one must break through all conceptualizations and preconceived notions that one has about God. “And the argument usually between two sides of the philosophic coin have been the materialists and the idealists. . . . Well what if both are wrong? Which is what Advaita, Buddhism have been saying all along. . . . So it’s important that we understand that when we are having Sat Yoga what we simply mean is we’re letting go of every mythological construct that we have been pinning an identity to. . . . But these constructs do not exist within any Ultimate Reality, and so you have to keep them going with a great deal of effort. And if you stop, keeping them going, they dissolve. . . . And no terms can describe it then. The Absolute is both nothing and everything but there is nothing and—there is not even a nothing. Even nothing has to be nothinged. And so there, nothing and everything are not opposites. There’s no logical way to grasp any of this. And it’s by the act of surrendering that effort to understand this with logic that the intuitive knowing of it suddenly blasts forth.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, November 5, 2009.
Tuesday Nov 03, 2009
The Alchemical Process - 11.03.09
Tuesday Nov 03, 2009
Tuesday Nov 03, 2009
“The spiritual process, traditionally, both East and West, has been referred to as alchemy,” Shunyamurti, spiritual teacher of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reveals. “Alchemy is a metaphor referring to the refinement of the psychic substance itself. . . . During the process of meditation, that is exactly what we are doing: We are extracting pure consciousness out of consciousness that has been bound up in words, in images—particularly in self-images—in fantasies, in oscillations between past and future that never allow you to be present, in anxieties, depressive ideas; all of those kind of psychic enmeshments that create suffering. . . . And so meditation is the essential act of alchemical Self-Liberation.” And what exactly are we when we are freed from the boundaries of language and self-images? Pure awareness that is luminous. “And actually for the first time we will realize that the awareness itself is love.” Along with the freedom from thoughts we can truly love for the first time “because those false ideas, by the very fact that they have separated us from our true being, causes us to hate ourselves for having trapped ourselves, and hate the other for having projected on us that we’re something that we’re not. And we’re disappointed in ourselves. . . . And when we have let go of all of them, we realize that all we have ever been is this unlimited being—that is in fact the totality of all that is real.” “And when you’ve tasted the eternity you can come back into this apparent world of time where everybody is chaotic and stressed out because there’s no present, and you can help them deal with it and awaken them to the fact that, ‘Wait, that’s a dream you’re in, a nightmare in fact. Be free.’” So “come out of the trance of time and space and ego and matter, and awaken to the fact that all of this is God. All of this is light. All of this is Eternal Consciousness—Supreme Intelligence playing a game with itself in many forms; infinite forms, each form reflecting one aspect of the infinite beauty, and love, and creativity of the Cosmic Intelligence.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 03, 2009.
Tuesday Nov 03, 2009
Dream Within a Dream Within a Dream - 11.03.09
Tuesday Nov 03, 2009
Tuesday Nov 03, 2009
Student Question: You’ve described that we live in a dream within a dream within a dream. Could you elaborate on the dream that’s within a dream within a dream, the stages, the Shakti? “Well first you have the Cosmic Intelligence that dreams up the whole universe,” as Shunyamurti, spiritual guru of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, explains. “And then at the level of our planet. . . .You have the collective dream, which we often refer to as a paradigm.” And through time the paradigm degrades—as it has now to a materialistic, egotistic mindset—and affects everyone in the dream-field. “But then within that collective dream is the third dream of the individual. And each individual creates their own dream out of the material of both the collective dream and the Supreme, Cosmic Dream.” But despite the suffering and insanity of the planetary dream, some souls, because of their karmic trajectory, can maintain their connection to God and return spirituality to the entire planet. “And so periodically, when human consciousness has fallen to a very low level, individuals and communities arise within that to give birth to a new consciousness and a new world.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 3, 2009.