Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

Consciousness is a Myth - 11.05.09

Since the advent of quantum physics the idea of matter has disappeared as a possible hypothesis for what the universe is made of. But Shunyamurti, the spiritual teacher of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, poses the following question: “Since there is no matter and no space and no time in any true sense, what do we mean by a universe?” But as he explains, “We tend then to fall back on the idea, ‘Well, then it’s consciousness, the whole world is consciousness.’ And it’s true that we talk a lot about consciousness in here, but I have to admit to you tonight that consciousness is also a myth.” This teaching has long been known in every true spiritual tradition. In Christian tradition, Meister Eckhart once admitted, “If you would have the Kernel, you must break the husk,” referring to the esoteric understanding that in order to achieve union with God, one must break through all conceptualizations and preconceived notions that one has about God. “And the argument usually between two sides of the philosophic coin have been the materialists and the idealists. . . . Well what if both are wrong? Which is what Advaita, Buddhism have been saying all along. . . . So it’s important that we understand that when we are having Sat Yoga what we simply mean is we’re letting go of every mythological construct that we have been pinning an identity to. . . . But these constructs do not exist within any Ultimate Reality, and so you have to keep them going with a great deal of effort. And if you stop, keeping them going, they dissolve. . . . And no terms can describe it then. The Absolute is both nothing and everything but there is nothing and—there is not even a nothing. Even nothing has to be nothinged. And so there, nothing and everything are not opposites. There’s no logical way to grasp any of this. And it’s by the act of surrendering that effort to understand this with logic that the intuitive knowing of it suddenly blasts forth.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, November 5, 2009.

The Alchemical Process - 11.03.09

“The spiritual process, traditionally, both East and West, has been referred to as alchemy,” Shunyamurti, spiritual teacher of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reveals. “Alchemy is a metaphor referring to the refinement of the psychic substance itself. . . . During the process of meditation, that is exactly what we are doing: We are extracting pure consciousness out of consciousness that has been bound up in words, in images—particularly in self-images—in fantasies, in oscillations between past and future that never allow you to be present, in anxieties, depressive ideas; all of those kind of psychic enmeshments that create suffering. . . . And so meditation is the essential act of alchemical Self-Liberation.” And what exactly are we when we are freed from the boundaries of language and self-images? Pure awareness that is luminous. “And actually for the first time we will realize that the awareness itself is love.” Along with the freedom from thoughts we can truly love for the first time “because those false ideas, by the very fact that they have separated us from our true being, causes us to hate ourselves for having trapped ourselves, and hate the other for having projected on us that we’re something that we’re not. And we’re disappointed in ourselves. . . . And when we have let go of all of them, we realize that all we have ever been is this unlimited being—that is in fact the totality of all that is real.” “And when you’ve tasted the eternity you can come back into this apparent world of time where everybody is chaotic and stressed out because there’s no present, and you can help them deal with it and awaken them to the fact that, ‘Wait, that’s a dream you’re in, a nightmare in fact. Be free.’” So “come out of the trance of time and space and ego and matter, and awaken to the fact that all of this is God. All of this is light. All of this is Eternal Consciousness—Supreme Intelligence playing a game with itself in many forms; infinite forms, each form reflecting one aspect of the infinite beauty, and love, and creativity of the Cosmic Intelligence.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 03, 2009.

Rest in Peace - 10.29.09

“So there’s a reason why people are hesitant to meditate, and that they’re not interested in meditation. And that’s because,” as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us, “meditation is too much like death.” And death means many things to the ego: detachment, stillness, silence, emptiness, nothingness. And, even worse, “you say to the dead, ‘Rest in peace.’” And the one thing that the ego does not want is peace because it gets its kicks from the vicissitudes of pleasure and pain; the cheap thrills of the egoic notion of “happiness.” To rest in peace is to be free from the most powerful desires and wants. And, eventually, “we recognize that the desire is a defense against the fear—and it always leads back to the fear, or a vexation, or some kind of suffering—and is never what we really wanted, because what we really wanted was to find the place that is at peace. . . . And what we find then is that meditation is not what the ego thinks, it’s not boring, it’s not a lack of involvement, but it is actually a transcendence that enables us then to return to the world, reborn; the death is not the end.” And through this death and rebirth we enter back into the world in a state of love, with a willingness to give and help others without any hidden agendas or ulterior motives because “often at the ego level, desire masquerades as love.” But liberation allows one to be free of the desire to be appreciated, to be needed—or any of the various ways that the ego tries to express love—and allows one to show true compassion and love in every act. Recorded the evening of Thursday, October 29, 2009.

Love & Wisdom - 10.27.09

“Love without wisdom is inadequate,” as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” But, “Equally, wisdom without love is absolutely futile, and we know so many philosophers who have a great . . . capacity to think, but they can’t love their way out of a paper bag. And thinking alone won’t get you out of the box of the ego; the two must be integrated.” Likewise, there are also two manifestations of love in action. Karma yoga is the essence of love in action, “to act without greed, possessiveness, the desire for some ulterior agenda to be fulfilled by the ego, then that will be able to unravel the ego’s knots and unwillingness to love. The second one is community because it’s not just a matter of ‘What do I do,’ but the real test is can I help form a communion of love with other human beings—cause that’s the ultimate test isn’t it? Can we live together in love?”

Without love, as modern society has proven, things fall apart. But we need wisdom to “recognize that the source of what is unloving in ourselves is the ego. So the first step of wisdom is the realization that ‘I must disidentify from the ego.’ . . . And because we have come to live in a world of representations, of symbols and language—rather than in the feeling and in the essence of our innermost being—we have lost touch with that, and we have deceived ourselves into thinking, ‘Oh I can just talk the game, I don’t have to really walk it.’ So with the wisdom to form the talk, and the love to “Walk the talk,” we can live in harmony with ourselves and with those around us. Recorded the afternoon of Tuesday, October 27, 2009.

The Throne of Realization - 10.22.09

As Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us, there are three basic spiritual paths that lie ahead of us: the slow path, the intermediate path, and the fast path. The slow path consists of slowing reproving our ego and making sure that it stays in check. There is the intermediate path where we ask God to get rid of our ego, and there is the fast path    which consists of realizing that you already are That: “I am not the ego. I am not the body. I am not the mind. But I am the Presence, the pure awareness that is an emanation of the Mind of God.”

You are simply the Presence that is witnessing this collective dream take place, and the minute that you get off the throne, you become rooted in linguistic duality from which all suffering takes place. You go down in the mud with the ego. “Clean yourself off of all those muddy ideas. Sit on the throne. Rule in the purity of Divine Presence and the ego will come into order. You don’t have to fight with it.” “So that’s what we’re doing in meditation: sitting on that throne, which is why it’s called ‘Swaraj,’ the kingdom of the Self.” So sit “in that throne of realization of what it feels like to have gone beyond desire and beyond fear. Beyond any need. Beyond any localization within the world because in that state there’s a realization that the entire world, the entire objectification of consciousness, is within; not without.”  Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 22, 2009.

Light in Silence - 10.20.09

“We are light,” as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us. We are not, however, light that comes out of light bulbs or light from the sun; we are Divine Light. Just as there are different dimensions, there are also different levels of light. “But within a human being, if you can penetrate through the shell of the ego, you will find not only the photonic light . . . but you will find the angelic light. And then within that, the Supreme Light. And once that Supreme Light is touched, and its radiance is allowed to move into this phenomenal plane, then everything is different. Everything is seen from the Light of God as the emanation of God.” “In order for that light to emerge, we must remove the outer covering. And the outer covering is made of language. The language covers over and obscures the silence in which the light is contained and emerges. The silence is the medium of the light. When we cultivate the inner silence then we create a space in which the light can shine.” And that light dissolves all questions and desires into the Supreme Self. Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20, 2009.

The Triple Act of Being - 10.13.09

“Sat Yoga is the process of becoming fully aware of . . . [your] radiance. And then merging into that radiance and realizing the unlimited scope of that radiance,” explains Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Sat Yoga meditation is a triple act: an unrestricted act of understanding, an unconditional act of love, and an undefinible act of Being. The understanding includes “understanding all of reality, including the Self, unrestricted by beliefs, thoughts, language, or images.” The love is a love without limits and barriers; a love that is not attached to an object or signifier. This act of Being is a giving up of the action of Becoming; it is an “absolute commitment to truthfulness and to presence and to open-heartedness that is our liberation.” “And so, Sat Yoga is a kind of meditation that one will open to only after one is done with all the games and is ready for Truth in the most naked form possible, which is formless. And when one is no longer content with justifying or rationalizing one’s being, and when one is not afraid to face the emptiness and the nothingness behind all the masks, and once we are able to face the inner truth of our True Nature—fearlessly, openly, without distraction—we are liberated.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday October 13, 2009.

The Purpose of Sat Yoga - 10.06.09

“The purpose of Sat Yoga is union with Sat . . . the Supreme Being,” explains Shunyamurti, the director and founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And this Supreme Being, whether understood personally or impersonally, “is constituted by an infinite intelligence and infinite love. And because of this infinite intelligence in the service of infinite love, our universe exists.” And only the power of love “will free us from the curse of our egoic narcissism—the egocentricity that takes itself to be a god . . .”

So the process of Sat Yoga is an “uncovering that which the ego itself does not want your consciousness to know. . . . And therefore the early stages of the struggle to achieve Self-liberation take the form of a battle with a part of the self that wants to stay in denial, it wants to stay in hatred, it wants to stay in anger, it wants to stay even in despair and meaninglessness rather than to uncover the truth of its being.” But one must persevere and refuse to identify with the ego if one wishes to progress upon the spiritual path, ultimately, to Self-realization.

But the perseverance must also contain a will to learn because phenomenal reality has become so complex, a yogi today must have a wide array of knowledge including quantum physics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, biosemiotics, and communication and information theory. “All of these are essential today to a yogi to understand because they give us a cognitive grasp of the structure and the dynamics of the functioning of this phenomenal plane we call Maya.” And because the human ego has become so complex today, a yogi must become a psychoanalyst. “We must have a grasp of how the unconscious mind works so we can discern that mind in action in others as well as in ourselves and read between the lines and grasp what is an accurate response in every situation.”

And as we grasp that understanding our karma will become more correct and we can redirect the flow of our energy from the lower chakras of unconsciousness, lust, and hatred to that of love, wisdom, and Truth. “And with that wisdom, if we dedicate ourselves to transformation and to union with God so that we are servants of the highest power and love, our lives will truly be fulfilling.” Recorded on the afternoon of October 6, 2009.

Sat Yoga - 10.01.09

“Each of us is like a mirror that’s looking for itself in the mirror. This is the paradox. The mirror itself can never find itself as an object in the mirror,” explains Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And all of the exoteric, or popular paths, start out with the basic misunderstanding that you are a person who needs to be saved, rather than simply consciousness itself. But, somehow, “consciousness becomes congealed, reified, around certain objects in the mirror that it likes very much. And then it becomes, through that process of identification, trapped in the mirror of its own projections. And so the act of meditation is to come out of the illusion that we’re in the mirror and to realize that we are the mirror.” And through this realization we can transcend the subject-object dualities and realize the silence, the emptiness, the pure awareness that we are. “But the emptiness is not an emptiness that is other than fullness; the emptiness itself is the all. It is the point of the meeting of nothing and everything.” And it is at this point that one realizes that everything is simply light and awareness, and when one combines these two, “then what had been limited in time and space is realized as eternal and infinite. This is the liberation” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 1, 2009.