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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 Jun 24, 2010
The Journey of Recognition - 06.24.10
Thursday Jun 24, 2010
Thursday Jun 24, 2010
“All the sages of every tradition of spiritual realization agree that our true nature is luminous, loveful, joyous, blissful, eternal, non-local Presence. That’s what we are,” reminds Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. But the ego has made six maneuvers in order to lose itself, and one to refind itself. “There was first a separation from this Source. And then a subtraction from the infinite down to the finite. And then a further contraction down into the individual—a kind of a tunnel vision. And then an introjection of the energies of others in that same state of contraction. And then within that, a fantasy creation—a creation of series of false views of reality. And then a projection of all of that falseness onto the world. That’s the lostness that we have entered into as a result of these six maneuvers.”
“There’s one seventh maneuver left to us, which is recognition: we can begin to recognize the plight that we have put ourselves in through these other six. And then gradually, we can recognize one by one, these which have become veils, or obstacles, to the realization of the infinite, eternal, blissful Self. . . . So the first thing we have to do is to recognize that this ego-consciousness that we start out in . . . is based on these false ideas that were originally introjected—taken in from the world—as children. . . . And we have created out of that a fundamental attitude toward reality which is based on the attitude we believe others have toward us.”
“And so we have to be willing to put that fantasy into parentheses. We have to be willing to say ‘It may not be true’—that’s what we have to first question, that reality. . . . And then by recognizing that you are consciousness, you begin to let go of all of the fixations that you believe are connected to the bodily identity. . . . And that allows us to go deeper inward. And in that going inward, we will begin to encounter the subtler energies that we don’t normally feel. . . . And we’ll begin to actually experience the inner white light that most people don’t encounter except at death. But it’s here—always. And we are that light. And we are the Source of that light.” The mind cannot reach that Source, “but through the letting go—that ultimate letting go of separation from that: the very primal subject/object duality, which was the first separation, can be healed. And in that moment, then we are one with the Source, and the journey is complete.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 24, 2010.
Thursday Jun 24, 2010
God is the Doer - 06.24.10
Thursday Jun 24, 2010
Thursday Jun 24, 2010
Student Comment: Ever since I was born, I was taught that God was there, that you had to ask God for things, that you had to say thank you, and that He was the doer, not you.
“What you were taught is the exoteric version of religion, which is a dualistic version,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the esoteric teacher of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Ultimately, yes, God is the doer, but are you not that God also, part of that Whole. It’s the mind that is in a state of separation from that, and the mind wants things from that Being rather than wanting salvation from the mind itself, and that is what the Supreme Being offers.” Surrendering to the Self, to God, is the only way to end suffering. “Surrender is the very surrender of the sense of being a separate entity from the Absolute. And in that, all confusion ends.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 24, 2010.
Thursday Jun 24, 2010
It is “The Real” that is the Question - 06.24.10
Thursday Jun 24, 2010
Thursday Jun 24, 2010
Student Comment: I read something today which said that “everything that is transient is not real.”
“Well, the definition of ‘Real’ is what is in question,” begins Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “For most of the Eastern traditions, the Real is that which is eternal, immutable, and non-changing.” For a Westerner, however, “the Real” is typically understood as the “external,” objective world of common experience. In contrast, for Indians, for example, the “external world” is understood as Mahamaya, the cosmic illusion. “So in that sense, of course, everything within this flux that we call time and space is unreal, but that doesn’t mean we don’t feel it very deeply, that it can’t traumatize us, etc. A nightmare is not real, but you can wake up in a sweat over it. . . . And so this Cosmic Dream is given [to] us in the way it is in order to help us achieve the Real, and to begin to grow to levels of wisdom and awareness that transcend even our original Nature so that there is an evolution to ever higher and higher states. So there is a growth that the unreal makes possible to achieve higher Reals.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 24, 2010.
Thursday Jun 17, 2010
Sanskaric Desires - 06.17.10
Thursday Jun 17, 2010
Thursday Jun 17, 2010
Student Question: Within the context of what he was talking about (meditating at great lengths vs. processing one’s ego), where do sanskaras fit in?
“They are what you have to battle,” explains Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute. And the sanskaric desires, “won’t let you stop thinking about them. And the lower three chakras are the main ones that people’s minds are wrapped around. And they are aggression, paranoia, security needs, [and] sexual desires. . . . And then those get projected on particular people, and situations your in, and suddenly you’re thinking about all of that, and you're not meditating on God-consciousness; you’re using that time to focus on ‘Why is this happening to me?’ or ‘How am I gonna get this person in bed?’ or ‘How am I gonna get rid of this enemy?’ and ‘How am I gonna conquer this and that?’ All of these scenarios are much more interesting to the ego than the blissful silence. And so it takes a lot of work to be able to gain such a center that’s detached from all of that—that you can silence the mind in the midst of that, and then burn up all of these sanskaras.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 17, 2010.
Thursday Jun 17, 2010
Gaia Consciousness & Saying “No” - 06.17.10
Thursday Jun 17, 2010
Thursday Jun 17, 2010
Student Question: I have two questions which have nothing to do with one another. One of them is that sometimes I find I am in the child’s period of saying “no,” and I am going through everything that I don’t like about society and about people that surround me and about things I have done in the past—everything negative. I feel like I have identified what I don’t want to be. But I have not yet found what I want to be. Is this a normal transition? And the other question is, I know very little about the “Gaia Theory,” and I wanted to ask you if you think that nature has consciousness, and if that has anything to do with the Gaia Theory.
“Yes of course. Everything is consciousness,” reminds Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Nature is the realization of the omni-centricity of consciousness. All apparent beings are part of a Single Consciousness. That Single Consciousness is not localizable in one particular place. So you could say, Gaia has no ego, but Gaia is beyond ego, not before ego.”
And, in regards to the second question, “Yes, negativity is the basis of consciousness—and this, by the way, is the theory of Hegel. If you read Hegel it’s all about how wonderful negativity is, and we’re not negative enough. . . . . So it is important—but it’s important to be the witness of the no-saying consciousness and not identified with it so that you can raise it to the point where it goes beyond that ‘no,’ into a recognition of its ability to say ‘no’ even to its saying ‘no.’ And once that happens, then it can say yes to all possibilities.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 17, 2010.
Thursday Jun 17, 2010
The Unfettered Mind - 06.17.10
Thursday Jun 17, 2010
Thursday Jun 17, 2010
“Many people have the misunderstanding that liberated beings become very boring,” provides Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “It’s a very bad misunderstanding because the ego never wants to be boring, and so it always has an excuse: ‘I don’t wanna waste my life sitting in that cave doing nothing. I wanna be active.’ And of course nothing is further from the truth: the more liberated we are, the more creative we are. The more empowered we are in every field that moves us, and we are moved by infinite fields of possibility the more liberated we are.”
“I was reminded recently of one of the great Zen Masters in Japan, a man named Takuan Soho. . . . He was a great poet, artist, calligrapher, philosopher, master of the tea ceremony. Unfortunately he became very popular, and the Shogun called him to the court and that’s where his problems began. He got into politics as well; now this is an interest that we have to be very careful about. But in the court he became a teacher of the great samurai warriors. . . . And he was able to teach them because his mind was so still that he could help to bring a swordsman into that timeless state where he could be aware of what was happening in slow motion and be able to respond with absolute accuracy. And he developed there the concept of the ‘unfettered mind.’ . . . And so he had a number of samurai students who he was teaching the art of swordsmanship to, but through the means of meditation.”
“But this idea of the unfettered mind is a very powerful concept. And the idea is that the mind must not be detained by anything; the mind must remain forever free. It cannot be stopped. . . . And the thing that detains the mind most of all is the ego. The ego is a series of conventionalized thoughts that have an emotional charge. And as soon as we get caught and fixated on any one of those charges—any signifier, any self-image, any pattern, any emotion that’s connected to the ego—we’re lost. . . . And so one must remain in the state where one does not have an ego in order not to have anything that binds the pure awareness and the emergence of the full flowering of our creative potential.”
“So meditation is letting go of that illusion of the existence of a separate entity. And that entity is only an appearance in consciousness, as is the whole world. And if we can let go of that obsession, the entity itself dissolves because it’s only kept alive by our attention that we give to it. Let it go, and there is an unfettered mind. There’s freedom. There’s Liberation.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 17, 2010.
Thursday Jun 03, 2010
The Experiment - 06.03.10
Thursday Jun 03, 2010
Thursday Jun 03, 2010
“Many people mistakenly believe that entering a spiritual path means taking on a new belief system. This is incorrect,” argues Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Instead, what is asked of us is simply to experiment with letting go of our current belief system. And that’s much more difficult. And the reason that it’s difficult [is that] not only is it our comfort zone, but it’s assumptions that we have never questioned about reality, including many assumptions about reality that we don’t even know that we hold. And it’s only in the act of experimenting with letting go that we actually discover what our belief system had been. And that’s when we realize the absurdities and the inconsistencies of the belief system that our consciousness had been stuck in.”
“What’s interesting, is that the more you study the experimental results that the different sages and saints and mystics of the different spiritual traditions have discovered—whether they are Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, alchemist, Egyptian hermitists, whatever—it turns out that they discover the same thing: that there is a congruency among those who have made the experiment, carried it through to the end, and what they describe as Ultimate Reality. Now that doesn’t mean that we should believe them. But it does mean that there’s a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that if you will carry out this experiment you will also have a similar result. And the result has been uniformly auspicious, benevolent. [It] has been a transformation of one’s consciousness and character structure to one of benevolence, one of joy, one of love, one of positivity. One of freedom from fear and from anxiety with a greater clarity and wisdom and empowerment. And it has everything going for it; there are no drawbacks to reaching this state of consciousness if indeed it is true.”
“And so the intensity of your desire to discover what you are, ultimately, and the willingness to let go of what you had thought that you were, are the two factors that will determine how quickly the journey is completed. And the more that one is humble, in being willing to admit that ‘I don’t know what reality is,’ and that ‘my present belief system isn’t working beyond a certain point,’ and ‘I am open to learning something new that is so radically different that I can’t conceive of it.’ If one is willing to take that risk into the unknown, then the powers of higher consciousness will draw you magnetically into the source of your Being very easily. . . . So that’s what we’re doing when we’re meditating: we’re discovering ‘Who am I when I silence the mind, when I stop diverting, when I let go of all of my paradigms of reality, all of my beliefs—including the belief that I am in a physical body in a material world’—including that one, letting go of everything and returning to the very silent center of awareness, then Liberation is a natural and effortless achievement.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 3, 2010.
Thursday Jun 03, 2010
The Mind’s “I” - 06.03.10
Thursday Jun 03, 2010
Thursday Jun 03, 2010
Student Comment: It seems like when we close our eyes and start to meditate, we’re focusing on what we call the mind’s “I.” I was wondering, when you have the other consciousness, I’m sure it’s a different sort of feel, and that you’re not experiencing the mind’s “I.” It would have to be different because my mind’s “I” feels like it’s internal.
“Once the ‘I’ is projected into the mind, then it’s refracted into a structure of consciousness that produces arisings of different gestalts, and there’s a subtle shift from moment to moment of one gestalt to another,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But as you retract the consciousness out of the structure of mind, into the pure awareness, then you can see those structures for what they are, and the gap between them. And they no longer create a coherent narrative. And you can begin to feel the global incoherence of what you had taken to be reality: that your reality is an unreality, and there are many inconsistencies, and it’s simply a tissue of concepts. And the gaps between it become more clear than the conceptual forces that push it to create images and feeling states, etc. And then once you have let go of all of that, then there is a nondual perception that’s completely different—that is noumenal, it’s no longer within a phenomenal plane. The world is recognized simply as a projection of the same God consciousness. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 3, 2010.
Thursday Jun 03, 2010
Drive, Desire, and Bliss - 06.03.10
Thursday Jun 03, 2010
Thursday Jun 03, 2010
Student Question: I have a question about the concept of drives. It seems that there is fear and desire and the drive comes from that. But the question that came up when I was meditating was, how do we distinguish what is a drive? It seems like drives create suffering, and that whatever we’re driven to do, we have an attachment to and that’s why there’s suffering.
“The drive comes out of the illusion that one is a separate entity,” reminds Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Once there is the illusion of an ego, that ego—because it is lost, and it doesn’t know who it is, and it is filled with a terror of its own lack—it is driven to try to fill that lack.” And thus all drives start from the need for security, and all drives build, and are variations, on the security drive. “But the drive is a relatively primitive stage, so beyond the drive is desire per se. When you truly desire something in a conscious way, you are not driven to get it; you know that you can live without it. You want it, but you don’t need it. . . . And then beyond desire, when you get to real love for example, Divine Love, that’s much more subtle. And now you’re not being driven any longer; it’s an opening; it’s a giving. . . . And ultimately—at the highest level of subtlety—even that subject/object differentiation is no longer made. There’s a realization of the Godself in everyone in everything in every moment, and there is no longer any being to be driven.” It’s not a taking at any longer.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 3, 2010.