Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

Realizing that “We’ve Been Doin’ This the Wrong Way” – 01.20.11

Student Question: Something that I’ve been thinking, but haven’t been able to word it, is that, on one level we have swaha, which is like throwing your ego on the flame—pretty much giving, as you mentioned, but in an absolute way. What would be the other side of that? We call it “ego.” We call it “narcissism.” We call it “schizoid.” But I don’t understand that resistance, and I want to get it because I feel that that’s the problem: the refusal to give all.

The Better Off You’re Doing, The Better Off I’m Doing – 01.20.11

Student Question: How is giving a part of being in the now?

Samadhi & The Ground of Being – 01.20.11

Student Comment: In your last essay you talk about samadhi, and I wanted to know what the difference is between samadhi and the Ground of Being.

Seven Steps to Samadhi – 01.13.11

With all the changes we are experiencing, as “reality” is getting stranger and stranger, “it’s important to understand how to meditate, how to shut off the static in the mind to reach the true signal that’s coming from that Supreme Reality that’s trying to guide us, but that we don’t generally pay attention to because we’ve been indoctrinated that It doesn’t exist, and [that] we shouldn’t pay attention to it, it’s only our imagination, and we should only pay attention to what we can establish by the scientific method, etc., etc.,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And so, we have to learn to make that shift into a higher dimension of consciousness. And the traditional yogic way of doing that—which is the earliest scientific method—true method of conscious transformation—is through an internalization, a turning around of our conscious energies. And in the meditative state, we do this in a seven stage process that will lead to samadhi.”

“So the first stage is that of pacification: if you want to meditate, you have to pacify your body. . . . enough that we can then go to the second stage, which is pranafication. The body is not basically physical, that’s the illusion. The second level, the more subtle level, is that of prana, which we could call ‘bioelectromagnetic energies,’ that are flowing through the body. And we need to become aware of the prana and get it to flow. . . . And the pranafication will then lead to the third stage, which is a pyramidization: the prana will begin to pyramid upward, the ‘kundalini shakti energy,’ which is even more subtle than the prana, will begin to rise.” This will lead to the fourth stage, which is “pinealization, the activation of the pineal gland.” The activation of the pineal gland, revealing the inner light, will lead to “pontification” in which one can “download, from the Source, information that can be turned into symbolic form, whether in language or images or mathematics or music, whatever is needed for a particular kind of communication . . .” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, January 13, 2011.

Through the Fire of the Ego to the Radiance of the Real Self – 12.16.10

Excerpt: “Each of us is the incarnation of Christ. Or of Buddha, if you prefer; or of Krishna—take your pick, it doesn’t matter, but we’ll use Christ tonight; you’re all of them. But do you realize it? Is that real for you, or is that just an intellectual idea? The process of transformation is taking this from an idea into a realization. . . . The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that history could be divided into three phases. In the ancient world, people sacrificed what was really valuable to them . . . until, finally, Christ said ‘God doesn’t want that, actually. What God wants is you to sacrifice your lower nature. Sacrifice your suffering! Sacrifice your ego itself to God.’ . . . And so in order to escape from this hell realm that we have turned time into and our lives into . . . we must rise to the higher level of the cross where the fullness of God can be re-experienced , re-grasped as our own nature. . . . To do that though, we have to recognize that the scientistic worldview that we inherited since Newton, that claims that the world is mechanistic and that life, ultimately, is on a basis of inanimate matter that can be understood and controlled technologically, etc., and the genes can be manipulated and all of that—this pseudo-mastery and hubris, the arrogance of human ego-consciousness, has to be overcome. And we have to recognize that the entire universe is alive. . . . And in the ancient world (that we think of as superstitious), they were aware that there were actants also that are non-physical. . . . And there are all kinds of entities, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, that actually share this cosmos with us, and some from other dimensions who visit that we don’t tend to see, and angels who come, that, if you are attuned properly, you will be aware of. But the modern scientific mind has poo-poo’d all of that and has caused us to live in a very barren desolate kind of world. But the world is alive with infinite richness and beauty and power and wisdom if we will be willing to tune into it. But it requires a kind of humility. . . . And when we do that, we will discover that the God that was absent and missing . . . or in exile, is right here! God is not absent at all. It’s your ego that has simply veiled the presence of the Supreme Reality from your consciousness. . . . And through this time of trial, the human species will be transformed; it’s a blessing. And a new age can only be brought to life when we have gone through the fire of dissolving the ego and live in the radiance of the Real Self.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, December 16, 2010.

The Mahabharata - 12.12.09

“The greatest epic in all history is the Mahabharata. This is the great epic of world history,” explains Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. The Mahabharata is about a time when every human is a god—thus the immensity of Hindu deities. These gods represent the entire population of the previous Sat Yuga (the golden age spoken of in every religion). And every religion prophesizes that this kingdom did exist, and that it will return. Recorded on the afternoon of Saturday, December 12, 2009.

Paradise is for Evil People – 12.09.10

“In the spiritual traditions of the East—and in fact universally, in the esoteric traditions, which includes Sat Yoga—a spiritual teacher is not one who makes any claim to goodness, or special closeness to God,” remarks Shunyamurti, the spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But it is only a matter of having become bored with one’s ego narratives,” whether those be of righteous indignation, victimhood and depression, superiority/inferiority, etc. “When one throws those away and lives in silence—a silence that is a surrender to the Real, to what is True, behind all of those narratives . . . then one is approaching Liberation.”

“St. Augustine, who is of course a very orthodox-approved Catholic saint, made a very interesting comment in one of his books. He says, ‘Whenever you touch God, you’re touching the devil.’ And in one of the books of Shinran . . . he said that the Pure Land, which is paradise, Garden of Eden, the Golden Age, is for evil people. . . . Why is that? . . . Because the narrative that one tells oneself is almost always to put oneself in the position of the ‘good guy’ with the white hat, who’s been exploited and taken advantage of and misunderstood, etc., etc. And it’s that narrative that has to get very boring, and has to be recognized as a fabrication that has no validity.”

“And so in this act of meditation we’re letting go of the narratives. We’re letting go of the walls we’ve put up around our heart and the attacks and the defenses and the rationalizations for why it’s impossible to be free and to live life responsibly, facing reality on its own terms without trying to have it one’s own way. And it’s that that frees one to let go of the anger and the anxiety and the depression and all of that. Nothing else will do it; there’s no other medicine, really. But letting go of the whole narrative. And we don’t like to do that because, of course, yes, we’d like to get rid of the vexation, but we want to keep the jouissance. We like the anger and the justification. And we like the feeling like we’re the good guys and all of that. Nonduality means you give up this sense of good vs. evil, negative vs. positive, me vs. the other. There is no ‘me.’ There is no other. But it’s only when the mind is quiet that we can recognize that, and be free.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, December 9, 2010.

Knowing the Father Through the Son – 12.09.10

Student Question: I’m still contemplating this koan that I have been given, that “God does not know the ego.” I think some light is starting come through on this topic, but I wanted to check it with you. I think that I’m looking at this from a dualistic standpoint, but this must be a nondual understanding. Is that right?

“Yes,” answers Shunyamurti, the spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “That’s why in Christianity it is said that you cannot get to the Father except through the Son.” However, this does not mean that Christ is the only teacher through which one can reach God, but through any spiritual teacher “who can be an intermediary and know the ego from the place of Emptiness. . . . So it is a relationship with a being who is not in the place of ego and so there’s not a reflection back of one ego to another, and therefore a power struggle—cause there’s always paranoia when two egos meet: ‘Who’s gonna be on top?’ . . . And it’s only when at least one party to the dyad isn’t playing that game that the game itself falls, and then you can be known as you truly are, but don’t know yourself to be yet, that same Emptiness.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, December 9, 2010.

Science: The Collective “Impossible Witness” – 12.09.10

Student Question: What is this “Impossible Witness” that you talk about?

“It is simply the agent of the ‘master narrative’ that holds the ego’s reality in place, without which, you’d feel a major disorientation,” explains Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Any kind of an ideological statement that can’t be backed up with true scientific reason—not scientism, but scientific reason—is an impossible witness. Today science itself promotes an impossible witness and has become a religion: it thinks it knows what happened before the big bang. It doesn’t, of course. . . . But those things are just purely speculation to maintain an orientation in reality because otherwise reality becomes a trip: we realize we have no control over it and no sense at all of what is going on, or what reality really is.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday December 9, 2010.