Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

The Zero-Point – 07.07.11

Excerpt: “The mind is called ‘the realm of representation,’ re-presentation. But I have often thought [that] this is a very false word in itself. It should be the re-absentation, because what language does is make you absent again from your Real Self. . . . And it is that absentation from the Self that has to be healed by returning to the Source, silence, the zero-point. . . . That’s the point of power. It’s not the vacuum of space but the vacuum of our minds when there is silence that we penetrate into the noumenal realm of our essence. . . . And when we silence the mind and enter the zero-point, that is the power point; that is the jyoti bindu, the point of light from which all that is emanates.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 7, 2011.

Control Lies in the Surrender of Control – 06.16.11

Excerpt: “In the ancient world it was the governing principle, the understanding that the more surrendered you are to God, and thus the more useful you are as an instrument of God, then the better would be your destiny because God will make use of those who are surrendered to being instruments and vehicles and mediums of the Divine Work. And those who are too busy with their own egos—either with their with their pleasures or with their neurotic suffering—and who tune out the presence of God, then will have a destiny in which God tunes out their presence as well. And all of the religious traditions are based on this understanding. So in a way, you do have control of your destiny in the sense that the deeper and more profound is your surrender to God, the more complete, the more constant, the more continual—and the more pure your sacrifice of the ego, which is the act of surrender—then the greater will be the ultimate destiny of your soul. And so it is in your control. But the control lies in the surrender of control.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 16, 2011.

The Trinity – 06.09.11

Excerpt: “We can see the Christian Trinity in many ways in both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. . . . In the Ramayana, it is Rama, God the Father, and Sita, who is the soul/the Holy Spirit, who goes into exile at some point, captured by the demonic forces. And then you have the Son, Hanuman, who is a monkey god. Very odd, why would they choose a monkey god to represent the Son? And it’s because the human being in the state of ego-consciousness is a monkey: its monkey mind is always chattering, its interests are mainly in food and sex, and it is wild and will not come under discipline. So the monkey is a wonderful metaphor. And yet this monkey, Hanuman, becomes divine. . . . It is said that God stands for G.O.D.: Generation, Operation, Destruction. . . . And we are now at a point where our current world cannot be sustained any longer because of the lack of love.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 9, 2011.

Gandhi’s Lesson – 06.06.11

Excerpt: “There is a story told about Mahatma Gandhi. . . . One day they drove him [Gandhi] out to an insane asylum. . . . He was looking at the inmates, and there was one guy who interested him and he wandered away and sat down in front of this inmate. And the inmate looked up at him and said, ‘Who are you?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m Gandhi.’ The inmate laughed, and he said, ‘You know, they all say that when they first get here. You’ll get over it.’ Gandhi was taken aback. He realized that these were very true words; they hit him in the heart. This was a Mahavakya.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 6, 2011.

Buddhism: A De-ligion – 05.31.11

(Note: the following teaching was given as an introduction to the film The Buddha)

Excerpt: “As soon as you start talking about Buddhism, you’re no longer talking about Buddhism because, technically and precisely, Buddha’s great insight is that there are no words to describe the Real. . . . So there’s no way of talking about what we’re here to talk about. One can only realize—and the act of realizing it, in an instantaneous—in fact not even instantaneous, but timeless moment of clear intuition of Ultimate Reality . . . called ‘pragya.’ . . . There isn’t a Buddhism; there are many Buddhisms. . . . Some do it as the different turnings of the wheel of the dharma. But you can also divide it into the Hinayana and the Mahayana and the Vajrayana, etc. You can also say there’s the Theravada Buddhism of Sri Lanka which is very different than the Tibetan Buddhism, different than the Ch’an, different than the Japanese Zen, which is different than the other Japanese schools like the Jodo Shinshu, the ‘Pure Land Buddhism’ of the chanting variety. Very different philosophies. Very different practices. Very different spiritual paths that all call themselves Buddhism. . . . In fact, I would say that Buddhism is the world’s first de-ligion; it’s not a religion, it’s a de-ligion. If you know the world religion, it means to re-link. Buddha said ‘there’s no link with anything. That’s all illusion. All you must do is de-link from the illusion and you’re free. But don’t think you’re linking to anybody. You don’t exist! There’s no self.’” Recorded on the evening of Tuesday, May 31, 2011.

“Be Without Grasping” – 05.19.11

Excerpt: “When we meditate,” reveals Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “we are making effort to reach our own natural state of being. It’s odd that you have to make effort to be natural, but this is how far away the human being has come from its own nature. Rather than having a nature any longer, the human being is conditioned by culture. The ego is an artificial construct that’s created and maintained by culture. . . . And we learn the rules of that culture and the intentions that we are supposed to live for, the values we are supposed to live by, and we become entrained by language. And from then on, pure consciousness, in its divine nature, gets filtered through this construct of what Lacan, the psychoanalyst, called ‘signifiers,’ language—master signifiers that determine our identity. And you become the subject of a signifier, of a certain set of words that determine the patterns of your life and the curvature of your emotional space, and that result in the repetition of various kinds of patterns, mostly traumatic, mostly that end in suffering and devastation because we have been alienated from our Nature. . . . That state of peace that will ensue upon the letting go of all the intentions of grasping will bring you into the Heart, into the peace, that will allow you to realize that you’re already enveloped by the divine presence; you're saturated by it. And you are fulfilled in your very essence by that which is—not only within you—but is your own Essence that you had not recognized in that blind effort to seek something externally to fulfill you.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 19, 2011.

Hide-and-Seek – 05.12.11

Excerpt: “How many of you are here to achieve union with God?” asks Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Well that’s good because it’s very easy to do. You’ve picked the right goal. And the reason it’s easy to accomplish is that God is your own innermost Self. . . . So God is that absence which makes everything present. And the only reason that God manifests as absence is [because] we have abandoned God into that which God has made present. And then we have taken the miracle of what has been made present for granted and forgotten that we are in fact emanations of the same God that we are sometimes searching for and sometimes glad that we have lost, and that we hope has lost track of us. And then in other times we’re very anxious that God may have lost track of us. And it is this game that the ego plays of hide-and-seek with God that creates all of the suffering and torment and longing, nostalgia, agony, and ultimately the ecstasy of existence." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 12, 2011.

The Sense of Imperfection is a Disease – 05.05.11

Excerpt: “‘The sense of imperfection is a disease and the sole source of every misery,’” reads Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “So the truth is that we are all perfect, purnam. We are not imperfect. This is the illusion, the imperfection. But the illusion of imperfection comes with the belief that we are entities. [It] comes with the belief that consciousness is a manifestation of an organism, a body. And as long as your consciousness is identified with the body, through which it’s operating, there will be, of course, a sense of imperfection. And so that’s the illusion. And that knot has to be cut.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 5, 2011.

The Only Thing “Untouchable” is the Ego – 04.14.11

Excerpt: “Sri Ramana Maharshi recognized that all of us are one Self, manifesting as many,” recalls Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And because of this realization of our oneness, of course Ramana had no interest in the [Indian] caste system. . . . The lowest caste [in the Indian caste system] were called the ‘Chandalas,’ which can translate as ‘Untouchables.’ And you should never touch an untouchable; you’d have to go through some extraordinary ritual of purification. And Ramana laughed at that and said this is only a metaphor. The only real Chandala is the ego. That’s what you must never touch. You must never enter ego-consciousness...” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 14, 2011.