Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

Becoming a Chud Master - 07.01.10

“The journey to spiritual liberation is a rocky journey for everyone,” reminds Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Along the journey, one recognizes one’s own suffering. And the cause of one’s suffering is linked to an inability to love, and a fear based on the mis-perception of separation from the world, also known as the ego. “But the odd thing is we cherish this very ego that is the cause of our suffering, and we won’t let it die; we think it protects us. Ego death is the goal of every spiritual tradition,” and we are reminded of the Bible which says, “unless a kernel of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” So it is with ego death.

“And yet, how many of us will let that ego die. And we don’t let it die because we are afraid of loneliness. One of the words for ego death in the Ashtanga Yoga tradition, begun by Patanjali, is Kaivalya. . . . And for Patanjali, what this meant was a separation of Purusha from Prakriti, and then Purusha lives in complete solitude; Kaivalya means solitude. You’re all alone. And indeed we are all alone, and we don’t want to face that we’re all alone. And we would rather have a bad object out there, that we can be angry at and think ‘Well, if only it wasn’t for them I’d be OK and loved and alright,’ rather than realizing we are absolutely alone in a world that is our own projection.”

“The irony is that once we allow ourselves to enter into the solitude, we find [that] it’s not a solitude that is an isolation from the world; it’s not a loneliness. It is a unity with all that is. You are alone because there is no other; we are all One. . . . But we must let the mind die in order to know that, and the fear of that keeps the negative thought cycle going on and on. . . . But when we allow that all to settle, we find that the Divine Self is right there, it has been right there all along. . . . It’s on the surface, but we just don’t connect with it out of fear of losing this ego cycle that we think keeps us alive and actually keeps us from truly living.”

“There’s a great tradition in the Tibetan Buddhist lineage called ‘Chud.’. . . What it means is that you cut the self-cherishing of the ego. You cut all your connection to wanting to have this ego which will then give you all your suffering. . . . Then, once they have cut the connection to needing the ego to survive, they will find that under that fear is great joy. . . . So we all have to become Chud Masters here, and cut away the cherishing of the ego which creates the suffering and that cuts us off from the love that we all have within. And we want it to come out and manifest, and to be a gift to all others in the world. And that’s the only thing that will fulfill us.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 1, 2010.

The Journey of Recognition - 06.24.10

“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.

The Unfettered Mind - 06.17.10

“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.

The Experiment - 06.03.10

“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.

Surrender to the Self - 05.20.10

“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.

Noetic Science - 05.13.10

“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.

Bhakti & Gyana Yoga - 05.06.10

“At the exoteric level there is an apparent difference between Bhakti Yoga and Gyana Yoga,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Bhakti Yoga can be thought of as devotional worship to God or to a symbol of God. “But in Gyana Yoga, it is still worship, but it is worship with the third eye. It is worship with the clear mind that understands the truth of the nature of reality.” And to truly perform Bhakti Yoga, we must create a circuit, a positive charge that attracts a negative charge. The mind must become negative—it must empty itself out of all thoughts—so that it can be attracted to the “All-Positive pull” of God. And “through this energy circuit, you will be able to download the Divine Love. And when the body-mind is filled with love, then you need nothing more. All of the desire for the lower jouissance—the lower pleasure that brings suffering—will dissolve easily because once you are fulfilled, desire becomes superfluous . . . because all you have—and all you are—has been fulfilled by the Presence of God, which is everything, and the Source of all that is Good.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 6, 2010.

Purification of the Heart - 04.27.10

“Those who are on a true path of purification and spiritual truthfulness, and a complete striving to reach union with God, are very rare and very special. But your specialness consists in realizing that you’re not special,” reveals Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And indeed one of the main obstacles on the spiritual path is not allowing one’s ego to reappropriate one’s spirituality. “You cannot be special as a separate ego because your ego is illusory.” And all spiritual communities are based on the understanding that all members “are part of a single Being.”  And thus a spiritual community cannot exist without each member withdrawing his/her projections and searching within for the source of one’s anger, hatred, or envy of another. “But it is an ongoing day-to-day need to nourish each other with love. And that has to be the primal vow of a disciple. If one is not willing to do that, then no matter what other yamas and niyamas one is willing to do—including fasting and living the most ascetic life—it won’t matter because one’s closed heart will prevent one from reaching God because God is pure love.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 27, 2010.

Ready for Vairagya - 04.22.10

“Real meditation begins when one is sick of the doing. One is sick of one’s own ego. One is sick of one’s own mind. That’s when it starts,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “It’s only when you’re sick” of all the games you play with yourself, “and you realize that the world is a mirage, that you get serious about meditation. Until then you’re just dabbling at it, playing at it, and you won’t get very far with it because meditation is the most serious thing that one can do. And it means giving up one’s own sense of being a separate individual. . . . And so, the only way to reach that Ultimate State—which is what we are—is through letting go of all that we appear to be, of all that the mind projects, of language itself, of imagery—of everything that is an object in consciousness—until we reach a state of purity of awareness. And in that Presence—when the mind lets go of even believing that what it is present to is occurring in the brain or is occurring in any localized area, in any phenomenal world—one breaks through the final frame in which we have tried to put reality. And then we enter into the infinite.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 22, 2010.