Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

The Act of Aspiration - 04.15.10

The Indian sage “Sri Aurobindo says that the primary act, central act, that a meditator is performing is an act of aspiration,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “You are aspiring to lift your consciousness. You’re for two things: one is the ascent of consciousness from ego mind to Sat Mind, and at the same time you are invoking the descent, the presence of the Supreme Consciousness, the Supracosmic. One’s own consciousness at an individual level must go from the protomental, the emotional, to the mental, to the supramental, and then it must meet the supracosmic. And it is in that the yogic power is ignited.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 15, 2010.

Refuse to Feed on Delusion - 04.08.10

“There was a great Zen master of the 14th century in Japan, named Bassui, who was asked about fasting and he said, ‘The only real fasting is to refuse to feed on delusion.’ Any other fasting may be helpful for the body, maybe not, but the real key is to transcend delusion,” reveals Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And, of course, this means fasting from identity itself: “The moment you believe you’re a someone who has something, some treasure, some priceless knowledge—let alone thinking you have some priceless material object or partner or money, or whatever else—any of those are delusional—but even the highest level of subtlety of sophisticated metaphysical conceptualization of reality is pure delusion.” And, your true nature “cannot be seen or known in any way in which the mind tends to conceptualize even the process of knowing. So this is sometimes referred to as a path of Gyana Yoga,” and Gyana is “translated as knowledge, but it is knowledge that is Being. You are That which you Know; you don’t know it conceptually. There is no subject/object separation in that state because both those poles of subject and object are illusions. There is no subject. Any subject is always going to be, simply, a conceptualization. That’s what the ego is, a self-image, or it could be a very sophisticated set of self concepts. So the ego can exist on a spectrum, but all of it is an illusion. . . . So there is no subject, and the object, of course, is simply form that arises within that very same consciousness that thinks it is looking at it. And so all there is, is that which Is. . . . So let’s give ourselves that gift of realizing that there is only one Sat, one Mind, and we are all That, together as a unity, not in separation. And let us not be a mind that is in a state of separation from that ultimate Reality. We are That.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 8, 2010.

Where is the Heart? - 04.08.10

“Sri Ramana was often asked, ‘Where is the Heart?’ and sometimes he’d point to the right side of the chest . . . but then he would always say, ‘I had to tell them something. They needed to know a physical location. The Heart isn’t in the body. And the world doesn’t really exist.’ And when he found a mature seeker, he would say, ‘The world is ajata,’ which means it’s unborn. It doesn’t exist. It was never created. . . . Relax all of your worries about the world, and just simply allow the love to emerge in the fullness of the glory of your being. . . . And then you will see that you are everywhere, you’re not in the body. You’re non-localized. You are the Cosmic Mind Itself, simply having taken form as the Christian metaphor: God became man so that man could realize he is God. And we are each in that position of the Christ, realizing the truth of our being.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 8, 2010.

The Virtue of Flexibility - 04.06.10

“One of the differences between ego-mind and Sat Mind, is that ego-mind tends to be rigid whereas Sat Mind is flexible,” maintains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “The tree that bends in the wind will survive whereas the rigid structure will collapse.” And because “we’re living in a time of radical uncertainty, our flexibility has to become radical.” And therefore we can no longer depend on plans stored away in the back of our minds for riches, vacations—any fantasies that we have about the future or any system that we have built our lives upon—but we must be able to adapt to anything that our environment throws at us. Our movement must not be “based on some plan that was developed in the past,” but rather “on an accurate assessment—and an intuitive knowing of what is the right way to proceed in any given moment—that serves the whole, and is no longer based on egocentricity or on trying to achieve some very fixed point, but to be able to flower around the obstacles, to flow around the rocks as water does in a stream, and to always be able to keep the ultimate compass of true north present, but know that there are many ways for the river to wind to the sea and not to be stuck in a single channel.” Recorded on the evening of Tuesday, April 6, 2010.

The Golden Braid - 03.18.10

“There is a Golden Braid that’s well known in esoteric tradition. It’s a beautiful metaphor,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And when this Golden Braid is complete, and completely braided, it makes the achievement of Liberation very, very easy. But most of us have only one or two of the strands of this three-stranded braid.” And these strands begin to develop as the ego-mind begins to mature and its care spreads beyond itself. “And so the first strand is that of Love: love for the Supreme Self.” But, that love is not enough. And so the next strand is “an intense desire to know the Real Self.” And, “the third essential strand of the braid is dispassion, detachment from the worldly pleasures. . . . And when you’re freed from those anchors, then the Love—and the desire to know—will draw you up into the innermost core of Being.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 18, 2010.

Inside the Temple - 03.04.10

“You are all sacred beings,” says Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Shunyamurti further elucidates, “There are profane beings and there are sacred beings. The word ‘profane,’ comes from pro fana—before the temple; it’s those who stand outside the temple. And then those who enter the temple, become sacred beings.” And only by entering the “holiest of holies,” the most sacred temple, the realm of the Real Self, may we complete our inward journey. “We are in the temple because we know that the only way out of the suffering of the profane world is to enter into the sacred dimension of our being.”

“And so at the first level, yes, the body is our temple. And then there is another level where we realize the mind is our temple, the personality, the ego. But we have to go deeper within, beyond those levels, and let the personal levels of our being drop away in order to get to the transpersonal nucleus, the core, the Self of our Self. And to reach that Supreme Self requires the most intense purity and intensity of desire.” This is meditation. “And if we have that desire to find out the ultimate truth of who we are, and to achieve union with the Supreme Self that is within us, that is our essence, then that will be given.”

“And so until there has been a disconnect from the profane identity, and a complete reunion with the sacred identity—that is ultimately in union already with the Supreme Being because you are That. Until you are ready to live in the truth of That realization, then there will continue to be suffering and vacillation, and oscillation, and a lack of peace. But the moment that that desire is wholehearted, literally the doors of the temple will open. . . . So let us meditate with the intention that now is the eternal moment for the moth to dive into the Supreme Flame and melt into the infinite, eternal Self.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 4, 2010.

Exploring the Silence - 02.18.10

“You know the happiest moments in peoples lives are actually when they’re sound asleep; because there’s no thoughts. And when you’re in deep sleep, there’s perfect rest, and your soul is actually touching the innermost light. And you recharge,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And what we’re doing in a state of meditation is simply being in deep sleep while we’re fully awake. That’s all we’re doing. . . . So if we’ll give our self the opportunity to simply be present, many extraordinary mysteries will unfold; mysteries about yourself; insights will come spontaneously; and there will be personality changes that will happen effortlessly as anxiety falls away naturally in the silence. . . . So, be a scientist. Allow yourself to explore without trying to achieve anything in particular, but just to discover who you are.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 18, 2010.

Freedom from Suffering - 02.11.10

There are no techniques for meditation because all we’re doing in meditation is simply being, and there is nothing simpler than that. “And what the ancient yogis, and sages of all spiritual traditions have taught, is that the essence of our being is bliss,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “There is a phrase called Sat Chit Ananda. That’s the closest we can describe our essential Being. Ultimately it’s indescribable—it’s beyond any concepts—but the closest we can come is that, and this is true in all the different religions, it’s the equivalent of the Trinity in Christianity: our Being, our awareness, intelligence, and the joy, the unlimited bliss of love. Love in its true sense: of the unity, the oneness of all things, all beings, the cosmos, the mind of God. All of it is One, and we are That, that’s why it’s blissful, because we are not separated from That.” And instead of accessing that bliss, we chatter; we choose to suffer.

And the reason that we choose to suffer is because “it justifies and it gives a sense of reality to that which is unreal. The ego is only a fictional structure. It’s a story—not even a story that we invented but one that was given to us by parents, teachers, society. We took it from all kinds of places and we put it together and we said ‘OK this is who I am. This is my story and my signature is this particular way that I suffer, this particular pattern, and I’m proud of it, and it gives me a sense that I really exist.’ And that’s why we hold onto it because it maintains that illusion.” So to rid ourselves of that suffering, we must disidentify “with the organism or from any localizable entity. We want to return to that state. It doesn’t mean we’re going to lose the capacity to play our role, but we will be able then to realize we are not that role and then modify the role in ways that it no longer suits us, we can change it.” And this is the purpose of meditation. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 11, 2010.

Letting Go of Language - 02.04.10

“We are beings of consciousness,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And yet we have forgotten what consciousness is in our pure form because our minds have been colonized by language.” And as Shunyamurti further elucidates, language is not a neutral means of communication because it comes attached to culture and other temporal, ethical, etc., limitations. “And, because we are embedded in language, we are alienated from the source of our True Being. And then once we are occupied by language—like a city is occupied by a foreign army—then that occupation force takes over and achieves its agenda using our mind and our organism.” And likewise the acquisition of language brings a kind of power to manipulate others as well as our environment. “And it turns out that when our minds are freed from the stream of consciousness we actually reach an ocean of consciousness more powerful than that stream. Our intelligence actually grows. And then we can come back from that silence with an ability to use language now rather than be used by it. . . . And so it is a great exploration that is possible once we weigh anchor and let go of language as our base. And then we are free to explore levels of reality that we could never know as long as we are hooked into the phenomenal plane and its linguistic manipulation." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 4, 2010.