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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 Sep 30, 2010
The Ego Has Two Types of VD – 09.30.10
Thursday Sep 30, 2010
Thursday Sep 30, 2010
“We could say that the ego is a veneereal disease,” diagnoses Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “because it’s a veneer over this vast soul consciousness which, in turn, sits upon an even vaster transfinite Atman consciousness. But this little veneer, that is in a state of dis-ease, prevents us from realizing this infinitude of our being. . . . So another metaphor for our condition in egoic consciousness would be a kind of veterinary disease. . . . Think of an elephant, elephants often in India represent the Atman. . . . So, you're an elephant, but there’s a flea in your ear. And this flea is a talking flea, and it’s talking to itself about its problems. And fleas have a lot of problems. They’re always fleeing and biting, and they're always worried that they're gonna get crushed, and they have an inferiority complex and they try to compensate for it, etc. But, anyway, the flea is talking in the ear of the elephant, and the elephant mistakenly believes that it’s its own thoughts in its mind cause it’s happening inside its head, so it must be these flea thoughts. And instead of having proper elephant thoughts, it’s having these little flea thoughts.”
“And so, you’re out of touch with reality because you're listening to these flea thoughts. But they are not your own thoughts; they are not your mind. So the problem is you can’t trust what you think is your own mind because it’s the mind of a flea. It’s not the mind of the Atman. And once you realize that, then the flea’s game is over; you knock it out, and it’s gone, and you’re liberated. It’s a very simple process. But first you’ve gotta realize that it is the thoughts of a flea, and not your own, that are disturbing you. . . . That’s all we’re doing when we’re meditating, is getting rid of the flea. And then we realize we are already divine, supreme—filled with love, filled with bliss, filled with joy and wisdom and clarity. Without those disturbing flea thoughts, our original nature emerges. And we realize that we didn’t need to be on some spiritual quest at all, we just needed to realize that we had already completed that quest. We are already the Atman that we are searching for.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 30, 2010.
Thursday Sep 23, 2010
Heaven, Hell, and Divine Discontent? – 09.23.10
Thursday Sep 23, 2010
Thursday Sep 23, 2010
Student Comment: You spoke earlier of dissatisfaction, which reminded me of something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. I listened to a talk with a prominent spiritual figure, and he spoke about heaven and hell. He said that heaven is like being doomed to eternal famility, or familiarity. He went on to say that there’s no need to create in the absence of discontent, and that heaven is an upgrade of the illusion and hell is a downgrade. I’m just curious of what you have to say about that.
“God did not create out of discontent; this world doesn’t exist because of discontent,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But once egos are put into the world, the egos have discontent because an ego is not real and therefore it feels lacking inside. And that discontent causes it to do something, or find someone, to make it feel whole and real. But nothing it does can take away that discontent.” And, in actuality, heaven is not really the goal of any religion. “What the religions teach is liberation. And that liberation is the liberation from both heaven and hell. Both of them are illusions, and, ultimately, any heaven you create will become hell. . . . But as long as one is in the ego, one is constantly going to try to find one’s heaven . . . and flee from some hellish condition that is actually an internal definition, and so you can’t run away from yourself cause you're taking yourself with you wherever you go and the hellishness will be re-created. . . . So the whole fabric of society is decomposing because of this, and, at the same time, it creates the possibility of returning to the Real Self, that is transcendent of desire.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 23, 2010.
Thursday Sep 23, 2010
The Self-Referential Ego Paradox: Drama or Dharma? – 09.23.10
Thursday Sep 23, 2010
Thursday Sep 23, 2010
Meditation is paradoxical. All meditations is, is an attempt to stop trying to do anything. “How can you create a technique for not trying to do anything?” asks Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “If you do, then the very technique defeats the effort of not making any effort.” This is akin to the problem of self-reference which “has become a very big business, actually, since Bertrand Russell and Kurt Gödel. . . . Basically it comes down to the ‘liar’s paradox,’ you know, the guy from Crete who says ‘I’m lying.’ Is he telling the truth when he’s saying he’s lying? Well, if he’s telling the truth, he isn’t lying.” And, at the same time, if he’s lying then he’s telling the truth. “Anyway, you can go around and round forever in this, and this is basically all the ego is: it’s basically a voice in your head attacking you, and then you defend yourself against that voice. It’s two voices of self-reference, but they’re both delusional.”
“And the problem is that the ego doesn’t exist, except as the self-reference of one voice referring to another—both of which are in the same mind. And without the two voices attacking one another, of course, there is no mind, because the existence of the mind, as an illusion, is created by the fact that there are voices. And so if there were a modern-day Descartes, he would probably start out with: ‘I attack myself, therefore I am.’ . . . And, you’re either caught up in the drama, or you escape into the dharma. Those are the two options: dharma and drama. If your dharma is mellow, you won’t be in a melodrama. But to have a mellow dharma means you have to accept the fact that there’s nothing to gain. Not from anything: not from meditation, not from any other thing you would do to improve yourself. You can’t be improved on. Which in a way is a good thing isn’t it? You're already the Buddha-nature. You're already enlightened. You already have God inside of you. You are already That. This is what all the traditions teach. But ‘no no no. I’ve got to create a cloud in front of this realization and then try to blow away the cloud.’”
“But, the extraordinary thing is that when you have finally let go of this game of chasing your own tail, that’s when the bliss actually emerges from within. And that’s why this simple act of not doing anything, which drops all of these veils of illusion away, allows you to enter into the Source of your being, the Sat, which is already magical and miraculous and astonishing, without having to do anything, without having to become anything, without having to be anybody—by letting go of that desire to try to be somebody and do something and achieve something—that’s when you discover the reality, the Supreme Reality, of what you are.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 23, 2010.
Thursday Sep 23, 2010
Quantum Physics, Evolution, and Consciousness – 09.23.10
Thursday Sep 23, 2010
Thursday Sep 23, 2010
Student Question: Based on the studies and the scientific books that we’re been reading lately, such as Signs of Meaning in the Universe by Jesper Hoffmeyer, what would you say the relationship is between biology and quantum physics?
“Well, they’re two different aspects. They deal at different levels of scale with the same phenomenon,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the scientific and spiritual research director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. You start with a photon, which has absolute freedom, but then once you move “into the realm of molecules and of organisms, then the amount of freedom is less.” However, following Arthur Young’s “reflexive arc,” freedom is regained in man. “But then even the mind becomes determined, as the ego does, and there has to be a consciousness beyond the ego that can observe and use the ego as a basis to transcend.” So we must now make a quantum—or evolutionary—leap “to go beyond biology. We went from physics to . . . chemistry . . . and then to biology, and now we have to move from biology to Spirit.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 23, 2010.
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
The Divine Birth – 09.16.10
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
Student Question: I would like to hear more about what is meant by the divine birth in the heart.
The divine birth is an archetype. One can remember the story of the birth of Christ, the Immaculate Conception, or the birth of the Buddha from his mother’s side, symbolic of the birth into divine love at the heart chakra. “It is our birthright to experience the divine birth,” reveals Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “but most of us turn down the opportunity for that because we’re so attached to the ego. It’s as if the larva, the caterpillar, refuses to become the butterfly because it’s still too attached to munching those leaves and growing fat and crawling on the earth, and it doesn’t know the joy of flying as the butterfly. . . . But the divine birth, once it happens, once we are willing to dissolve the ego shell so that the birth can happen, is, initially, a birth of love, a birth of openness to the world again, a birth of wonderment, of aliveness.” It is a birth that brings the light into a world of darkness that can be shared with all. “Because the birth is not an individual birth; it’s not the birth of another level of ego. It is the birth of God, the infinite, the Universal Self, that moves through a particular organism but is not identified with it. And so it is the birth, again, of the realization that we are all one, and we are all co-creating this dream together and that we have all arranged to arrive at this moment.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 16, 2010.
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
With True Love There is No Need for Money – 09.16.10
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
Student Question: I’ve been reading that technology—if used the right way—would enable a world in which money is not necessary, and that there would be no war because money would not exist. So I was wondering if that would be like Sat Yuga.
“Yes, of course. And, yes, money is a fiction that is used as a mechanism of control,” adds Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And the money system is collapsing as well because the money system requires trust. . . . And it only lasts, as any Ponzi scheme does, as long as people have confidence. And now that that’s been lost, the game is collapsing. . . . And that’s when real wealth, again, will be able to emerge into consciousness because money is fictional wealth; it’s a representation of wealth. . . . But there will be no need for money when there is true love again among human beings. And love for the earth.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 16, 2010.
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
Tapas – 09.16.10
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
Student Question: When we saw the film on Ramana Maharshi, he talked about tapas, which is profound perception, and I wanted to ask you what exactly is profound perception? And he also talked about the mind turning inward. Can you explain that?
Tapas is “making the mind very subtle so that you perceive that source from which thoughts arise,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And Ramana was very clear that all thoughts begin with the ‘I’ thought, and they’re related to the ‘I.’ And that ‘I’ always wants something, or is reacting to something. And once you get into that reaction, then all of the associations and conditionings, that have attached to the ‘I’ since childhood, glom onto it and create predetermined circuits of thought. But if you’ll go back to the source of the ‘I,’ prior to the linguistic expression of the ‘I,’ but the certainty of being Sat—it is that certainty, rather than language or representation of the ‘I,’ but the sense that is indubitable of beingness—and stay there, that’s Tapas.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 16, 2010.
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
Technology & Consciousness – 09.16.10
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
Student Question: Our relationship with technology has been novel in the past few centuries, but particularly in the last decades. And a friend of mine who was having knee surgery commented to me the other day how glad he was that he lives in the 21st century. Another person I encountered was captivated by her technology and what it can do. Does technology play a positive role because it seems that technology is also at the forefront of destroying the world?
“Well it’s the use of technology at the service of the ego rather than at the service of the Divine Self that is the problem,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And so it is actually the lack of the highest possible technology, because we have externalized everything, because we think of ourselves as machines that have created a technology in our own image, in the image of the ego, that involves internal combustion engines, because we’re all combusting, exploding inside from our own ego conflicts—all of this is mirrored in the external world. . . . So in every way now we have seen that we have passed our peak, and this culture is dying because we haven’t reached a high enough level of psycho-technology to transcend the ego.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 16, 2010.
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
The Subtlety of Stillness & Silence – 09.16.10
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
Thursday Sep 16, 2010
“Yoga is about subtlety,” reveals Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “In the olden days, in the ancient culture, subtlety was a central concept. And in those days, if you had a map of all of Asia and Europe, and even other parts of the world, you would recognize that there was a single culture, a culture of yoga, that was the same whether you were in ancient Greece, or you were in Persia, or you were in China, or you were in India. And whether you went with a Taoist yogi, or a Buddhist yogi, or a Greek yogi, the concepts were the same.” And the essence of that teaching is “just be still. Silence the chattering mind so you can pay attention to the more subtle levels of the mind.”
“The great yogi Empedocles, about 2500 years ago in Greece, was very famous for saying ‘even silence is a veil over the silence’ because the real silence only begins when there is no sense of a self trying to be silent; that already creates a shell around the real nucleus of the nucleus. As the great Muslim yogi Ibn Arabi used to say, ‘the self of the self, as we go deeper and deeper within, through the ego, deeper into the soul and into the Spirit, we reach levels of silence that are not only free of concepts, but they're free of duality, they’re free of the very structures that have been opposed on reality.’ As Immanuel Kant discovered in his philosophical meditations, ‘space and time are simply structures of consciousness.’ Go deeper than those structures, and you enter the realm of eternity.”
“So it is in this level of the deepest silence that we become liberated from the chain of consciousness that locks one idea after another after another, and through those associations predetermines where we will get to. If we want freedom from those predetermined cycles of thought, then we must reach a level of consciousness that is prior to any identification with thought; any identification—or even use—of language. And it is in that state that we will receive inspiration,” which will come, not in language, but in light and in an intuitive knowing. “But a knowing that is realized as our being. There will no longer be an ‘I’ who knows something about that. There will be a realization of the unity of subject and object, of seer and seen. And that unity is the expression of love.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 16, 2010.