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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 Feb 25, 2010
Freedom from the False Self - 02.25.10
Thursday Feb 25, 2010
Thursday Feb 25, 2010
Excerpt: “Every meeting that we have is a Satsang. Sangha means a gathering; a community. And Sat refers to the ground of being, our essence, our deepest truth of who we are. And so we gather to touch into our Sat, our most deep level of being, to taste what Self-realization is about, and then to transmit it, to share it with others, and to learn to live from that place of centeredness, and strength, and authenticity, and love, and clarity, and wisdom, and the capacity for sharing, for reciprocity and mutuality in relationships so that we can be a blessing to the world. . . . if we can live in the Real, we will live in a state of oneness with all beings, and with the ability to be harmonious, to cooperate, and to offer the highest wisdom that we can download from that source that will be able to inspire us with greater creativity than the false self can manifest in an egoic life. . . .And so this is the human destiny: that we return to this highest level of our potential. And the path to do that is really very simple, but not easy. It’s not easy because it takes courage. It means looking within, and seeing what is not authentic within, and processing it out; purifying the soul; eliminating those obstacles that separate your conscious mind from the Divine Self within you.” Recorded on the Thursday, February 25, 2010.
Thursday Feb 25, 2010
The Sat Yoga Approach & the Traditional Buddhist Approach - 02.25.10
Thursday Feb 25, 2010
Thursday Feb 25, 2010
Student Question: Could you please explain—or highlight—the difference between the Sat Yoga approach and the traditional Buddhist approach?
“Well what we study here are all the spiritual traditions, and what you will find is that they are structurally identical,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Buddhism and Christianity, believe it or not, are identical at the esoteric level, the Gnostic level of Christianity in which God and the soul are one. So ultimately it is the realization that there is a state of nonduality; we are not separate beings. That is only apparent, but it is not real.” And, as Shunyamurti concludes, “it’s the same path; the path is not different.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 25, 2010.
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
Exploring the Silence - 02.18.10
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
“You know the happiest moments in peoples lives are actually when they’re sound asleep; because there’s no thoughts. And when you’re in deep sleep, there’s perfect rest, and your soul is actually touching the innermost light. And you recharge,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And what we’re doing in a state of meditation is simply being in deep sleep while we’re fully awake. That’s all we’re doing. . . . So if we’ll give our self the opportunity to simply be present, many extraordinary mysteries will unfold; mysteries about yourself; insights will come spontaneously; and there will be personality changes that will happen effortlessly as anxiety falls away naturally in the silence. . . . So, be a scientist. Allow yourself to explore without trying to achieve anything in particular, but just to discover who you are.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 18, 2010.
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
Have a Sense of Humor - 02.18.10
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
Student Question: I understand that in a path of spiritual development, such as Sat Yoga, we must be able to overcome anger, but I wonder, how one can truly achieve this when there is so much human stupidity. Today we were at the beach joining an expedition of Canadian environmentalists who are studying the effects of all the garbage that we are dumping daily into the oceans. We are constantly working with the press, but I sometimes feel so lost because I want to continue helping but I realize that even if this message reaches the people, their ignorance remains and they continue acting in the worst possible way. Corruption is also very much involved in all this, as well as a general indifference and human stupidity, which are causing the loss of not only life on earth but also in our oceans—and I ask myself: how does one avoid feeling anger?
“Have a sense of humor. You have to laugh at it, at human stupidity,” provides Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Humans are becoming more and more stupid by the day. . . . It’s destiny. It’s the end of the world. . . . Nobody’s getting smarter . . . and more corrupt. And less caring. That’s the way of entropy of the human soul. But, those who recognize that will grow.” And by bringing awareness into the issue, and raising our consciousness, we will be able to participate in the birth of a new world. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 18, 2010.
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
Liberation in Death? - 02.18.10
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
Student Question: So you can get to chakra seven in life but can you also get to it in death?
“No,” reveals Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “because the last thought you have as you die and leave the body will determine which bardo state you go into. So if that wasn’t already liberated, then you won’t be able to hold onto the Mother Light when you leave the body.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 18, 2010.
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
Dive into the Higher Chakras - 02.18.10
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
Thursday Feb 18, 2010
Student Question: Today in the study group we discussed how the more you go into the chakras, there is a loss of the sense of identity. So why, if there is a loss of identity, does the person not awaken if he/she is in any of the chakras? And the other question is that, you mentioned that a person can awaken any time, but how does that work in relation to the chakra map? If a person is in the lower three chakras, can that person awaken at any moment?
“The awakening is the shift to the higher chakra,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “It is possible, but it requires the desire to do so. That’s what’s missing.” It is not difficult to reach liberation “cause it’s our natural state. The truth is we’re already there, but it’s covered over by these other veils.” And to answer the other question, Shunyamurti explains that a chakra is not an ego state; there is no identity in the chakra, but there is an “assemblage point” in between two chakras where we structure our lives. We gravitate towards the chakras because “most people don’t like having a sense of ego because there are burdens . . . so people want to get out of the egoic state. Now, they could go to chakra seven, just as easily as they go to chakra one, two, or three, but in this culture we’ve been trained, ‘have a glass of beer,’ instead of meditate and reach bliss. Or have a sexual encounter in which you lose yourself temporarily, or have become berserk, become enraged, that’s always enjoyable to most people. . . . The problem is that all of the lower three chakras have negative consequences, and when you do come back into the assemblage point you think, ‘Oh my God what did I just do?’ and then you’ve created more negative karma that you have to work out.” And, as Shunyamurti reminds us, “You can choose any of them. It’s not as if one is really more difficult than the other, it’s only a matter of where you want to dive in.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 18, 2010.
Thursday Feb 11, 2010
Freedom from Suffering - 02.11.10
Thursday Feb 11, 2010
Thursday Feb 11, 2010
There are no techniques for meditation because all we’re doing in meditation is simply being, and there is nothing simpler than that. “And what the ancient yogis, and sages of all spiritual traditions have taught, is that the essence of our being is bliss,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “There is a phrase called Sat Chit Ananda. That’s the closest we can describe our essential Being. Ultimately it’s indescribable—it’s beyond any concepts—but the closest we can come is that, and this is true in all the different religions, it’s the equivalent of the Trinity in Christianity: our Being, our awareness, intelligence, and the joy, the unlimited bliss of love. Love in its true sense: of the unity, the oneness of all things, all beings, the cosmos, the mind of God. All of it is One, and we are That, that’s why it’s blissful, because we are not separated from That.” And instead of accessing that bliss, we chatter; we choose to suffer.
And the reason that we choose to suffer is because “it justifies and it gives a sense of reality to that which is unreal. The ego is only a fictional structure. It’s a story—not even a story that we invented but one that was given to us by parents, teachers, society. We took it from all kinds of places and we put it together and we said ‘OK this is who I am. This is my story and my signature is this particular way that I suffer, this particular pattern, and I’m proud of it, and it gives me a sense that I really exist.’ And that’s why we hold onto it because it maintains that illusion.” So to rid ourselves of that suffering, we must disidentify “with the organism or from any localizable entity. We want to return to that state. It doesn’t mean we’re going to lose the capacity to play our role, but we will be able then to realize we are not that role and then modify the role in ways that it no longer suits us, we can change it.” And this is the purpose of meditation. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 11, 2010.
Thursday Feb 04, 2010
Letting Go of Language - 02.04.10
Thursday Feb 04, 2010
Thursday Feb 04, 2010
“We are beings of consciousness,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And yet we have forgotten what consciousness is in our pure form because our minds have been colonized by language.” And as Shunyamurti further elucidates, language is not a neutral means of communication because it comes attached to culture and other temporal, ethical, etc., limitations. “And, because we are embedded in language, we are alienated from the source of our True Being. And then once we are occupied by language—like a city is occupied by a foreign army—then that occupation force takes over and achieves its agenda using our mind and our organism.” And likewise the acquisition of language brings a kind of power to manipulate others as well as our environment. “And it turns out that when our minds are freed from the stream of consciousness we actually reach an ocean of consciousness more powerful than that stream. Our intelligence actually grows. And then we can come back from that silence with an ability to use language now rather than be used by it. . . . And so it is a great exploration that is possible once we weigh anchor and let go of language as our base. And then we are free to explore levels of reality that we could never know as long as we are hooked into the phenomenal plane and its linguistic manipulation." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 4, 2010.
Thursday Feb 04, 2010
The Role of the Father - 02.04.10
Thursday Feb 04, 2010
Thursday Feb 04, 2010
Student Question: A question came up in the study group tonight about illegitimate authority. And my question is, didn’t it used to be the father’s role to represent God rather than having to seek an elder or shaman, or did they work in community differently? How exactly did it work?
Well, as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, admits, “the father—as a symbolic function—has been lost,” which reflects the degradation of society as a whole. “But in the ancient tradition, the father was considered the first guru. The father would take you away from the mother and introduce into the men’s group.” He “would then take the son to the second guru that would be the shaman, who would then take the son on a higher journey. . . . So for males, that was the way. And the father was the link to the higher levels of knowledge.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 4, 2010.