Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

Chastity – 02.10.11

Excerpt: “There’s an old joke, I’m sure everyone knows it. . . . It was a joke about an academic scholar in the Vatican who was trying to understand the roots of apostolic celibacy, and he went to the original writings that were then copied by the scribes, and he found that one scribe made a mistake, he dropped out an ‘r,’ it was supposed to be celebrate!” recounts Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And so the celebration was, originally, a coming together of those who were celibate, in solitude, in their inner solitude. . . . And only those who have realized the solitude of Self, and are no longer co-dependent on others, and don’t have voices in their minds that are attacking them, or causing them to have distorted self-images, etc., are truly free to celebrate, because everyone else is suffering and in agony. . . . But in any case, this was the original meaning of it, and the first celebration was of that Liberation from the ego that is co-dependent on others, both externally and internally. And so when we meditate, it is in order to silence all those voices in the mind, and to dwell in the solitude of Pure Consciousness. And that solitude is blissful. And it’s cause for celebration.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 10, 2011.

Innocence – 02.10.11

Student Question: How can one return to innocence?

The Meaning of the Guru – 02.09.11

Student Question: In the book that we have been discussing, Ashram Dharma, the author mentions the importance of the guru for maintaining the energy field of the ashram. In ashrams in which the guru has passed on, or if the guru has several ashrams, how does his energy permeate the ashram, or does it?

Excerpt: “The true guru is within. And each of us must take responsibility for manifesting the guru. The guru is not an external person. The external person, who is often referred to as the guru, is simply the one who has the job to remind you that the guru is within,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “It’s like the conductor of an orchestra: the conductor doesn’t make any music, but just points to the others who make all the music. So there’s nothing special about the guru, except to hold that space of Emptiness . . .” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 9, 2011.

Duty, Dharma, and Karma – 02.03.11

Student Question: Could you speak a little bit about duty? We are given, by the culture, definitions of what a good mother or a good daughter, etc., is. But then we have karma, in which we are karmically indebted to the families that we are born into. How do we ascertain what our true duties are to our family and to God?

A Relationship Through the Supreme Being – 02.03.11

Excerpt: Each of us, at one level, is a separate individual cut off from each other by our own thoughts, in a bubble of our own concerns, phantasies, desires, drives, fears, anxieties, etc. . . . And yet at another level—a more important level—we are all one,” reminds Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And the only friend, ally, that will not abandon us in this moment is the Supreme Being. And through that alignment, we can create, on this horizontal plane, relationships that we can also trust because we can see and meet and recognize other beings who are also in that state of unconditional love and integrity. . . . So that’s what we’re doing when we’re meditating. And by meditating together, we’re offering each other the gift of that divine energy.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 3, 2011.

Spiritual Parenting – 01.27.11

Student Comment: I was wondering if you could explain a little bit—especially to those who are coming for the first time and are about to become parents or have small children—how the community could help in their spiritual evolution.

Bliss is Here and Now – 01.27.11

Excerpt: “So a Satsang is an opportunity to experience bliss together,” reminds Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Bliss is our natural state. It’s the state that we would be in 24/7 if we didn’t obscure it with a cloud of ego noise: chatter, worry, anxieties—all of these that are built on illusions. . . . The problem is today we have imbibed, as an indoctrination, this belief in materialism, that we are just bodies, and all there is, is matter and motion, and there’s no higher power and no wisdom. It’s all chance, random—that whole Darwinian ideology. And we’ve been taken in by it, so that we no longer tend to make the effort to find out for ourselves if there is, actually, a transcendent reality. But if you’re willing to make the effort, you will find that you can penetrate through the box that we call this phenomenal plane, and that there is infinite vastness beyond what we think of as reality. . . . And that’s why yogis recommend leading a simple lifestyle. Don’t create unnecessary complications in your life. Don’t create unnecessary stresses. Life will be stressful anyway, but you can keep it more manageable if you have lost the ego’s need to be seen by as many people as possible, loved by as many people as possible, adored, approved of. And many people have an addictive need to get the approval of as many people as possible. Why? Because they don’t have a sense of self-esteem that’s internal because they don’t know who they are. And if they go even a moment without someone saying, ‘Yes, you’re good,’ people can decompensate; they can collapse. They need to then call somebody on a cell phone who will tell them that they really are good people. . . . And so are we willing to transcend the personal level of the petty world of constant activity for the stillness of the eternal present, as—not an individual separate from others—but the very energy that unites and underlies and permeates all that is? . . . And what’s present is a great laughter of realizing that all along you knew that this is what you are. You didn’t discover this along the way. You always knew it and were hiding it from yourself and now you’re allowing yourself to know that this is what you are, and this is why you are here.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, January 27, 2011.

Growing Beyond the Family Consciousness – 01.20.11

Student Comment: It’s become clearer to me tonight, as you’ve been speaking, of the importance of joining a spiritual community, and that it’s the hardest challenge for one to undertake in terms of giving. I was raised in a culture that was still very family-based, a family that will do everything for you. But in a spiritual family, one must break the box of merely biological connection and family values in order to transcend to the next level of maturity and growth in which all are accepted as family.

Orgone Energy – 01.20.11

Excerpt: “Consciousness is energy—but a very different kind of energy than the kind that physicists tend to talk about,” explains Shunyamurti, research scientist at the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And that’s what we’re doing when we’re meditating: we’re accumulating this most positive, or sattvic, level of the orgone energy, and through that we are producing a transformation of our consciousness, we are creating a power of healing—and many other potential powers that the yogis also studied, which are called siddhis. . . . And so if we focus on meditation as a scientific experiment, and give all of our attention to it—because the energy is accumulated through the payment of attention—and we turn our attention inward and don’t allow any distractions, and don’t allow any lowering of the wavelength through aggressive or negative or depressed or anxious thoughts, but thoughts that are of the highest kind, and then transcending thought altogether into silence—but a silence that is a silence of devotion, of love, of reverence of the sacredness of all that is—that level of silence produces itself a kind of energy field. And then by staying in that energy, and not interrupting the flow of it, it’s as if we open the spigot from the zero-point—from the noumenal level beyond this cosmos.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, January 20, 2011.