Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

I-dentity – 09.09.10

“We are all beings of bliss. Do you experience that? Bliss is our natural state,” provides Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But once the Self, that is blissful, mis-identifies Itself with the physical organism and with the ego image, the ego complex, you could say, then It loses Its bliss. . . . So have you ever bought a new car, and soon after you drive it off of the lot it gets dented? And suddenly this new car that felt very heavenly, that made you feel wonderful because you bought the car you really wanted, and everything was perfect—the first dent takes all of that away. . . . So all of us are living with that: we go from an ‘I’ to an ‘I’-dentity; the ‘I’ gets dented. And once we have an identity, then we are filled with [a] sense of hurt cause when you're dented, you're hurt, and you don’t feel perfect; you feel defective. You feel used. And even abused. And so most of us are riding around in these vehicles, these car-bodies, creating karma, and feeling more and more abused, and more hurt—and more like we’re lost and don’t even know why we’re in the car or where we’re going, or what this whole journey is all about. And as long as we’re in the car we can’t figure it out. And as long as we’re identified with the car, we can’t get out of the car.”

“And so Sri Ramana, who is one of our inspirations in Sat Yoga, always says that the first question has to be ‘Who am I?’ and to realize that the ‘I’ is not the body and it’s not the mind and it’s not the ego and it’s not the self-image—and it’s not any of the things that you have attached yourself to in order to anchor yourself in an i-dentity. And that’s all that we have to do is to let go of that and to abide in the Self, to rest in the ‘I’ prior to the dent. . . . And so it is necessary to rest, just as you do in deep sleep, to rest in presence, without the fear of the death of your identity. And know that in that peacefulness, there is release—and it will be eternal release if you allow it—into a vast state of presence in which the fear of death will be completely dissolved. And the fear of life. And then, this world becomes a heaven.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 9, 2010.

Satyam Shivam Sundaram – 08.26.10

“One of the bhajans that was playing during our preliminary meditation was sung by Lata Mangeskar, a very famous early Bollywood singer when it was still relatively pure, and they were singing mantras. And the first mantra was ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram.’ And this translates as ‘the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.’ And the aim of meditation,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the Good, True, and Beautiful spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “is to find that in yourself which is eternally True, supremely Good, and infinitely Beautiful. And what’s important is that you have faith that you have that within you that corresponds to those attributes. Everyone does.”

However, to deal with the world, we created an ego structure. “And once we created that ego structure, it veiled the truth of our being. It veiled our radiance. And it veiled our goodness.” But the veiling was an illusion. And we have never been anything but the Satyam Shivam Sundaram. “And so all we’re doing in meditation is remembering that: that ‘I am That.’ Not the ego with its history and its shameful episodes and its failures and its losses and its depressions and anxieties—not that; that’s an artificial, false self. But the self that I am—the ‘I am that I am’ that is talked about in the Bible—that self, that ultimate Self that you are is already the radiant goodness of true being. And all we have to do is stop running away from the Self. . . . And if we will accept these three powers of Truth, and of Goodness, and of radiant Beauty, we will overcome the shadow within and the shadows without. And we can bring a world of light, a world of beauty, a world of goodness back into manifestation.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 26, 2010.

A Wholehearted Journey to Silence – 08.19.10

“I wish you all a wholehearted welcome,” offers Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And that’s important because there’s very little that happens in the world these days that is wholehearted.” The contemporary ego structure is hyper-fragmented. It can’t love. It can’t trust. It is paralyzed by “the fear of letting go of those beloved defense mechanisms” that cause us all of our suffering. And it has developed all of these defense mechanisms to deal with a very decadent, and even demonic, culture. And if we can put down all of the ego’s defense mechanisms, all of its narratives, and make a wholehearted effort to “dive into the silence,” then we will find “the salvation of our being. That’s where we put out the fire of suffering, and we are healed by the waters of life.”

“But the world doesn’t value, any longer, this opportunity to dive deeply into the inner silence. It values busyness and distraction and continual production—activity—in which we lose our soul in the outer crust of our consciousness.” Ironically, the Self is actually “closer to us than our own minds,” but it has been “obscured by the thoughts and the chaos of negative feelings—of lostness, of terror, of fear, of anguish. But that consciousness that contains all of that—no matter what it is. That consciousness that is the ground and the support and the substratum of whatever arises in our minds and our hearts—that is pure and soothing. And if we enter into that silence, we will be healed. To whatever extent we are willing to dissolve that ball of suffering in the silent space of the Self, we will be whole; we will be made whole by the very consciousness that we’ve been running away from.”

“And then we discover—we come back from that silence with a new meaning, with a new understanding—a new intelligence that grasps the world without its coating in the conditionings of the past upon which the ego-mind is based. We find a new freedom to be reborn from that silence. And we are reborn . . . [as a] free, reborn spirit that is able to—now, without those preconditions and stories that limit and prevent us from seeing the world as it truly is—now, we can really find what is our heart’s desire and live it out, fully, wholeheartedly—no longer split—because we’re no longer deceiving ourselves, hiding from ourselves—running away—but wholeheartedly jump into life fully, passionately, wisely—and achieve the ultimate potential of which we are capable.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.

The Transcendence of Subjectivity – 08.12.10

“Sri Ramana was often emphatic in saying that meditation is a non-objective process,” reminds Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But it is also important that we emphasize that neither is meditation a subjective process. . . . And the word ‘subject’ has important ramifications. . . . Subject means ‘under the control of.’ A subject of the king or the queen of England, for example, a political subject; one is subject to various influences. And the ego is, in fact, an objectified subject, or subjectified object, but it is subjected to the objective image of itself and of the world. So to escape those influences, we must transcend subjectivity as well as objectivity.”

And, as it turns out, transcending this subjectivity is the one way to truly help the world out of this “knot” that it has been stuck in, “by meditatively sacrificing the egoic identity back into the foundation—into the ocean of consciousness that is nondual—that transcends first person, second person, third person (of language); it transcends ideas of God; and it also transcends ideas of atheism. It transcends all ideas because ideas, being linguistic forms, are caught in duality. And, the only way out, is through entering into the silence of pure Presence.”

And this “enables us to live joyously again—not with fear, no longer with any phobias, or crippling inhibitions—or need for exhibitions—because there is no ego that’s caught in that trap of either being superior or inferior; having or not having; being or not being. All of those dilemmas that can never be solved through any action we can perform in the world, until we have transcended the world, and return as the avataric vehicle of the Supreme Presence.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 12, 2010.

Pulling on the Thread of Maya – 08.05.10

“The paradox of the spiritual journey is that, in reality, all of us are already enlightened,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “We are always already liberated because there is only one Real, one Truth, one Beingness. The rest is illusion. . . . But . . . the Supreme Being, in order to enjoy all of the possibilities of experience, all the possible permutations of potentiality, has created Maya, the illusion of separateness.” We have lost the knowledge of our Divine Nature, “and it is a necessary loss of that knowledge that enables us to gain something else. And that something else includes courage and virtue—and the potential of discovering ever more within the realm of potentiality. To make this world . . . into the most beautiful flow of consciousness in action, in harmony—in the realization of unity in the diversity. To bring to the illusion the very power of Truth.”

“And it’s that capacity—to bring the Light into the darkness—that makes one’s illumination even more powerful than it would have been had you not manifested within the cloud of Maya. To light that light in the midst of the darkness, brings a richness to the Real that would not otherwise be there. . . . And now is the moment when we’re against the wall of all the karmic backlash of the putting off of realization . . . [and] we must achieve Liberation for the sake—not only of this individual illusion, but for the whole planetary illusion. And once one thread of that illusion is removed, the whole thing comes apart very easily. So there is no one to be liberated; that’s the meaning of Liberation. It is not that there is an ‘I’ who is in chains and then becomes liberated. It is that there is no separate ‘I.’ There is only the substratum of pure awareness that manifests the forms that appear in the flux of the phenomenal plane. And that consciousness is one with all that is and that ever was or shall be.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 5, 2010.

Avatar - 07.27.10

“Sat Yoga,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica,” is the science of becoming an avatar,” a realized incarnation of the Supreme Being in the phenomenal plane. Becoming an avatar is the greatest blessing that one can bestow upon the world, the most compassionate act that one can commit. But, as the saying goes, “with great power comes great responsibility,” and, therefore, not everyone may be ready to make this transformation; this act of surrender to God. “So first of all, everyone must ask themselves the question, ‘Do I want to be an avatar? Am I ready to undertake that incredible transfiguration?’ and ‘Am I prepared to do what it takes to achieve the reality of being an avatar, not just lip service?”

Entering avatar-consciousness means giving up ego-consciousness, the false sense of autonomy and separation from the world. It’s very simple, but not easy. “And as we know, there’s a huge struggle against the externalizing tendency of the egoic mind. And this is why we have used the metaphor of the salmon swimming upstream against the outward flow of the mind, until we get to the Source. . . . And these tendencies of the mind to flow outward, to externalize, to try to grab onto experience—to possess, to dominate, to get the jouissance of the entity, of the physical body—are what must be overcome through wisdom, not through fighting, not through creating another internal struggle . . .”

Every egoic connection must be severed. Everything must be surrendered to God. “And then, the descent into the body—purely for service—the bodhisattva ideal, is clearly recognized as the only motive for living. And when there are no other conflicting motives, then the flow of generosity of spirit, emerging out of inner silence, out of complete emptiness, is one’s natural state. . . . And then there is love.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 27, 2010.

Atma-vichara - 07.22.10

“We have come together to meditate. But why? What do we wish to achieve through meditation,” asks Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. We wish to achieve liberation from the ego—and specifically from the lowest, imaginary part of the ego—for whom life is a constant oscillation between desire and suffering. All satisfaction, a mirage. “The mirages create suffering because they create false expectations and delusions. And embedded in them is fear because the ego is alienated from its true nature. And its true nature—the True Nature of your being—is of course one with all that is, and therefore there is no fear and no desire because you already are, and have, everything you need within.”

And although Sri Ramana Maharshi himself once said that meditation could not bring about liberation, he was referring to meditation on an object. Nonetheless, Sri Ramana was a strong advocate of the practice of “Atma-vichara” or self-enquiry. “Atma-vichara means to realize who you are, beyond the ego. Beyond the mind. And so you cannot use the mind for that purpose. And you cannot assume the ego is the one who is meditating; that assumption has to be deconstructed. The meditation is an experience of pure awareness. . . . And so it’s this shift that enables one to be free. To be free of what? To be free of the ego’s insecurities.”

So we don’t want to become “spiritual materialists,” and build an ego around reaching high states in meditation. “We want to dissolve the ego. . . . But the ego is always looking for things to build up its self-esteem, its sense of empowerment in the world, without realizing that this is actually working against its true empowerment that only comes from dissolving the need to have a mask, an attainment—even a style. . . . All of those things create a self-image. And then we work to support that self-image. And that self-image is the very thing that veils the Real Self from us.”

“And immediately when you answer the question ‘Who am I that is behind the mind?’ there will be a state of peace. . . . and a sense of energy that is beautiful energy, it’s divine energy. It’s love. And it is there, within you, and it wants to emerge. And when you allow that to happen, you will find that you’re free of the neediness and the aggressiveness and the defensiveness. . . . You will have realized that the Self you are needs no defenses, it needs no style—it needs no mask. . . . And this is what enables life to then blossom and flourish in a completely new octave that the ego can never reach.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 22, 2010.

The Road to Disidentification: From UFO to UFS - 07.15.10

“Each of us must be responsible for our own liberation. It’s not something that an other can do for you,” reminds Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. But, paradoxically, “Liberation is not an attainment. . . . The reason that it’s not an attainment, is that Liberation actually requires losing something. The problem is we’ve already attained something too much; we’ve attained a false identity. That’s what gets in the way of our bliss. . . . So it’s not that we have to get something, but we have to let go of something. And yet it’s the thing that we’re most proud of, this ego that we’ve constructed. It’s our doll. It’s our great idol that we worship. And who can let go of that, ‘What will I be if I let go of that?’”

“And it’s this anxiety of being nothing if I let go of the mask. And being vulnerable—because you could also use the metaphor of saying the ego’s like a tank, like one of these war machines: it’s full of armor to protect itself against attacks; it’s got a cannon mouth right in the middle; it’s got all kinds of little holes for machine guns; it can run on these tracks in any terrain; it’s really tough—it can put up with all kinds of nastiness and give back all that it gets. The problem is that it can’t fly. It can’t accomplish joy; you don’t go out for a joy ride in a tank. It’s only geared for war, and it forces you to see life as a war.”

“So if we want to get out of the tank and start to fly, then we have to become like a UFO. Except in this case it’s a UFS: we have to become an Unidentified Flying Subject, not an object. And we become unidentified when we stop identifying with the ego. And then we’re free and we can fly, and we don’t have any more need for defense mechanisms cause there’s nothing to defend, nothing to protect, once we are unidentified.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 15, 2010.

“Be Still and Know that I am God” - 07.08.10

“I hope all of you feel at peace in your body and in your mind. That’s the starting point for the spiritual journey,” maintains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Indeed, the first mantra, “Om Shanti,” reminds us of this starting point. “This is why Sri Ramana was very intent on repeating an expression from the Bible more than, even from the Vedas or Vedanta, it was a phrase that he was very fond of: ‘Be Still and Know that I am God.’ And, he analyzed it as follows: first you must be still; that’s the prime commandment. And in that stillness, you will realize that the ‘I,’ that you thought you were—the ‘I’ of the ego, the ‘I’ identified with the body, the ‘I’ that thinks to itself, talks to itself—that ‘I’ is not who you are. The real ‘I’ emerges in the stillness, and that ‘I’ is the Absolute.”

“And this is what the act of meditation really is: it is a surrender. It is an act of bhakti, of devotion, in which we sacrifice the luxury of chattering to ourselves and justifying our little ‘I’s existence, and we surrender to the great ‘I’ that is God. And in that stillness, all those other little ‘I’s, those fragments of consciousness, dissolve, they integrate back into the One Self until finally there is nothing left but the One Self. And all the illusory identifications fall away; they have no more purpose.”

“And so in the act of meditation through the silence, which is the sacrifice itself, the flame of consciousness melts away the illusions of Maya, and we are liberated. And the more that we stay in the silence—the stillness—the more the power of God emerges, opens our heart to love, and frees us from the thought patterns and the behavior patterns that had enslaved us to fear, to desire, to hatred, to suffering of all kinds. . . . And so if we meditate in that state—not wanting to get anything for the little ‘I’, but to give the power of the little ‘I’ to the Great Self—then Liberation is achieved.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 8, 2010.