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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 May 27, 2010
A Spill of Maya, Karma, and the Unconscious Mind - 05.27.10
Thursday May 27, 2010
Thursday May 27, 2010
Excerpt: “I would like to dedicate this Satsang to all the incredible life forms who are now being affected, harmed, and destroyed by the catastrophic ecological disaster taking place in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a disaster the effects of which are inconceivable and immeasurable. And we won’t even have close to a clue for months to come, but it will affect, ultimately, everyone on this planet. There is a single ocean. A single ecosystem. And it’s being massively destroyed at this moment. And it is a symptom of the pathological nature of the human ego in its present form, and a proof of how urgent it is that we transform and transcend the ego at a collective level to ensure that these things will not happen again. . . . And the irony is that here at the moment when human beings feel so all-powerful in their arrogance, never have humans been more powerless. Never have we seen a sight of a ‘superpower’ so impotent to protect its own beaches. Never have we seen a whole world of human organizations—from corporations to national governments to international united nations, governments, all of them—helpless because of a destructive event that took place as a result not only of negligence, corruption, and other human failings, but as part of the inevitable structure of the current situation that we have created through the ego’s own blindness to its own reality. And we must heal that: we have an obligation to heal that before we damage our planet any further. . . . And so we can look at this macrocosmic level and see that this is a symptom of what is going on at every level of life. And that’s the problem: we tend to focus on the most macro insults to our environment . . . and not see that this is the result of millions upon millions of micro events that happen every day in people’s lives at the most intimate levels of connection with one another—and even internally within one’s own mind. . . . The capacity of the Atman, or this naked Presence that is the intelligence behind the cosmos, will arrange things in whatever way is necessary to support the growth of the manifestation of that Cosmic Consciousness to appear here in the phenomenal world itself. And that’s the function of a human being.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 27, 2010.
Thursday May 27, 2010
From Feeling to Silence - 05.27.10
Thursday May 27, 2010
Thursday May 27, 2010
Student Question: When we first started meditating, you were telling us to allow our emotions to be calm and our mind to be still, and my mind wasn’t quite still, and I realized I was feeling a lot. Is there also room in meditation for having those feelings and having those things, and it still being healing?
“Absolutely,” confirms Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “One only reaches silence at the end of a great deal of preparation. This is the state of a very perfected mastery over the ego-mind. . . . The mind isn’t gonna give up and let go until it has been truly mastered by one’s surrendering of all ego identity—including all fear and all desire. And that’s why the . . . disciplines of spiritual practice have been so seriously recommended of followers—or those who seek to reach these higher levels—because you have to retrain your mind to follow a higher center of value. . . . And so if there’s a cognitive sense of liberation from” the entrapments of the mind, “then what will follow is an actual transcendental experience of that: of not being who you thought you were on this plane. And that will raise the vibrational frequency very easily. And the mind will become silent. And it will become silent because something far more fascinating starts to appear—which is Divine Energy. And then all those mundane thoughts become: ‘Well wait a minute. Forget that, this is so much more interesting.’ That’s when things begin to get interesting in the whole spiritual quest.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 27, 2010.
Thursday May 27, 2010
Acting Realistically in a Supernatural World - 05.27.10
Thursday May 27, 2010
Thursday May 27, 2010
Student Comment: Our role is to act in this world in a way that is in unison with the All, with Nature, with one another, with community. However, as a bus driver, I’m spewing diesel into the air; as a politician, I have to choose between TLC or non-TLC; and as a parent, I have to stay home or go out and party. To function in this world as it’s presented to us is not always a matter of just being One.
“This is a situation which requires a high level of discernment and subtlety, and an ability to work within the systems that are not geared to support an incorruptible integrity but, in fact, to challenge and undermine that at every point. And so it requires a tremendous amount of courage and strength and understanding of which battles to choose, and a knowledge that we have more freedom to move and navigate our way through this world than we pretend we have so that it is possible to find a job that actually is right livelihood, and to be part of movements or communities or activities that do support the growth of healthful nature,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. However, we have to keep in mind that we do have to work in an imperfect world and thus we will undoubtedly make imperfect decisions. “So if we try to be purists of a kind that is unrealistic and unable to live in this world, then, we fail. And so we must indeed be realists but, at the same time, we have to recognize that there is a dimension most people would think is completely nonrealistic that is a supernatural reality that can have effects that are miraculous upon this plane if we are willing to put our wholehearted energies—and synergize with others who actually have that same capacity to visualize the miraculous to change events even in the here and now, both in a microcosmic and macrocosmic level.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 27, 2010.
Thursday May 20, 2010
God is Beyond Desire - 05.20.10
Thursday May 20, 2010
Thursday May 20, 2010
Student Question: In the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, he says that God has no desire, no will. What did he mean by that?
“Just that: God is beyond desire,” echoes Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But, a dream of this cosmos forms in God’s Mind, in the most pristine state where there doesn’t need to be desire because everything is already fulfilled.” And because God’s beauty is infinite, the characters in His dream will “eventually, because they have free will, choose to desire certain things and to create preferences and gradually move out of the state of unity into that of duality. And then slowly, slowly over generations, suffering, ego appears in the world. And then, when it has reached its most degraded form, then the Light has to return and cleanse everything and bring it back to the starting point of the highest purity for the next cycle of time.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 20, 2010.
Thursday May 20, 2010
Romantic Love: The Door to Suffering - 05.20.10
Thursday May 20, 2010
Thursday May 20, 2010
Student Question: Some people say that “love is the door to suffering.” So what happens to the ego when you are in love?
“If you mean the romantic illusion that people mistakenly give the term ‘love’ to, then, of course, that’s a door to suffering, because it is always based on a projection and a fantasy,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And eventually the parties involved realize this, but “can’t let it go because of the fear of the emptiness and the lack that is what caused” them to get together in the first place. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 20, 2010.
Thursday May 20, 2010
The Ego is a Result of Karmic Patterns - 05.20.10
Thursday May 20, 2010
Thursday May 20, 2010
Student Question: Would it be true to say that Karma is a pattern that’s produced by the ego?
“It’s the result of the Karmic patterns,” reveals Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And if we can see and understand the destiny—in time—of those patterns, we will let them go immediately. The problem is we don’t see the effects that the particular patterns are going to have on our life. . . . And when we are able to understand the inevitability of the Karmic consequences of particular, polluted patterns, we will purify them. And that’s why the purification of the soul is so essential. Not only on an individual level, but on the whole level of the projections we have on other beings in the world—because any negative projection we have on anyone or any corporate entity, any kind of entity, those projections create Karmic consequences. So we want to liberate all beings—that’s the act of being a bodhisattva, by being in that state of compassionate love for the highest resolution of Karma.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 20, 2010.
Thursday May 20, 2010
Suppression vs. Repression - 05.20.10
Thursday May 20, 2010
Thursday May 20, 2010
Student Question: When I find myself in a “dark night of the soul,” I find that there can be a range of positions, emotions, etc., such as martyrdom or masochism, and one can really act out and cry, or, the other extreme, repeat to oneself that one is light and that there is no reason or no entity behind the suffering. But, having in mind the risk of suppression of emotions, where does one draw the line?
“Suppression is not a risk. Repression is a risk,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And “the repression has already happened. Suppression is an important tool: you see, you can’t surrender a mind that you don’t control. So first we have to control our mind; we have to be able to contain the egoic feelings. And they are based on fantasies, unrealities: you’re not a victim. None of that is true. You’re suffering is an illusion. And so of course we want to suppress that. Why should we suffer? Why should we allow those negative feelings that are based on unrealities emerge and poison our lives or those of others?” But, at the same time, we must work constantly on getting to the feelings that are repressed, in order to be truly free of them. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 20, 2010.
Thursday May 20, 2010
Surrender to the Self - 05.20.10
Thursday May 20, 2010
Thursday May 20, 2010
“Recently, an online student asked . . . ‘What is really meant by surrender to God?’ And to answer that question we have to really see the three elements of it: what do we mean by surrender; what do we mean by God; and what exactly are we surrendering to God?” argues Shunyamurti, the spiritual master of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And that’s what meditation really is: surrender to God. It is letting go of one’s sense of alienation. It is an offering of oneself. It is freeing oneself of any sense of separation.
“And so then the question is, ‘What do we mean by God?’ because in Advaita philosophy God is not an Other. And so, we are surrendering to the Self—to the Self that, in principle, we already are.” However, we have lost contact with the Self because of “the defense mechanisms that we created—that we call ‘ego’—that have been used to alienate ourselves from other individuals, from other people. And those same defense mechanisms, of necessity, alienate us from the Self and from the Supreme Self that is within our individual self.”
“And so the surrender requires an internal letting go of one’s defenses against a power and a feeling of love—a current of energy in fact—that is overwhelming to the ego. It’s letting go of our evasion of the presence, the intelligence, and the power of the Self. That will overwhelm the ego and dissolve it in the flow of that Divine Love.”
So we must have a burning desire for union with God, and, at the same time, let go of all of the lesser desires that have distracted us from the constant remembrance of the Supreme Self. And this means a letting go of the mind itself. “And this requires what is called Shradha, or faith: there has to be a sufficient amount of faith that in the letting go of the ego you will find something infinitely greater, more valuable than that which you are letting go of.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 20, 2010.
Thursday May 13, 2010
Noetic Science - 05.13.10
Thursday May 13, 2010
Thursday May 13, 2010
“Sat Yoga is Noetic Science,” reveals Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Noetic Science is the science of knowing. Sat Yoga is the most ancient science of knowing. . . . But it is the science of knowing the knower. The science of self-awareness. Self-consciousness. That which particularizes the human being and makes us different from other beings on this planet: that capacity for awareness becoming aware of itself.” But in order to get to that state, “we must be willing to let go of everything we think we know; everything we’ve been taught—including everything we’ve been taught here. Let it all go. Know absolutely nothing. And it’s in that—the tabula rasa, when you erase the whole blackboard—that only the knower remains. . . . This is freedom: swatantria. This is the ultimate goal of yoga: to be free of all of the straightjackets that your mind has put you in. All the pigeonholes. All the preconceived thoughts and the regurgitated ideas that come from other people, all the invalid things you learned in all the schools that you suffered through. All of those things that you depended upon to give you a sense of existence and worthiness and reality. Go beyond all of that and find the Absolute Source. . . . And when one wishes that level of freedom, then one realizes the ultimate paradox: that there is really nothing you need to be free from. There is no one who even needs to be liberated. That even that was part of the matrix. And then there is great joy and great bliss.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 13, 2010.