Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

Excerpt: “Imagine a scene in a biological laboratory,” begins Shunyamurti, the lead research scientist of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “There’s a woman scientist bent over a microscope and gazing at one of those little slides. And the slide has on it a drop of water that’s filled with amoebas. And as she’s gazing in, she sees that these amoebas have a whole world of their own. . . . And at the moment that she’s looking at them, imagine that one of these amoebas somehow, uncannily, becomes aware that it’s being gazed at. And it can’t quite comprehend ‘Who’s looking at me?’ but it knows someone’s looking at it from a dimension beyond its own little world. And let’s imagine that the intensity of its desire to understand the energy it’s feeling causes its mind to actually rise up until this amoeba’s consciousness is united with that of the scientist, and for a moment, it sees itself from her perspective. . . . And at the same time, the scientist realizes that some 84,000 lifetimes ago, she was an amoeba just like that one. And someone gazed at her, and it created this desire that then led to the evolution of her soul through all these different forms until she had become this scientist—now gazing at her own origins. . . . But at that same moment, the scientist realized, ‘But what if I am still being gazed at by a consciousness beyond where I am to the same extent as I am beyond that of the amoeba?’ And her mind suddenly turned within, and, with great intensity of desire, was pulled upward to that higher dimension and realized the Witness consciousness that had been gazing upon her with love. And that consciousness had at one point been a human who had evolved to God consciousness, and there was another union at an even higher level." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 24, 2011.

Student Comment: If the world is in God’s hands and we can’t control anything—and everything is perfect—then it makes sense to me that there can’t be such a thing as a mistake, or an error, or a mis—anything. Nevertheless, I can’t quite understand this fully.

Student Question: Something you said earlier reminded me of one of your teachings when you said that the reason that atheists don’t believe in God, but that’s only because they’re not capable of loving. So how can they achieve union with God if they don’t believe in a supreme being?

Student Question: I wanted to know if you could elaborate a little bit more on the difference between sanskaras and past lives because I mentioned to a student here that it might be interesting to study my past lives, but what for? What purpose would it serve in accelerating my growth? And it was mentioned that it is actually more correct to say that sanskaras reincarnate rather than saying that we have past lives.

Excerpt: “The Real is a limit concept,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “because it does not occur in reality; It is that which contains reality and makes reality possible. But it does not appear within reality. [It’s] very similar to this film, The Matrix, in which ‘reality,’ the matrix, is unreality—it is illusion—and the real is beyond it. . . . So we want to bring our consciousness from the ‘reality,’ that is in fact Maya, or illusion, to the Real. Where is the Real? Well, it is beyond, but not beyond in a spatial sense—because all the concepts that we use to understand the so-called ‘reality,’ are unreal in terms of the Absolute Real. . . . But it’s very difficult to let go of these concepts, as we know. And even more difficult to let go of the belief in entities. And Sri Ramana says that this is the ultimate key to liberation. And of course the prime entity that we have to stop believing in is the ‘me’, the ego, the false self. . . . And so we have to give up our addiction to conceptualization, to constant thinking. It’s the thinking in the mind that supports the illusion of the ego; you feel real as long as you're able to justify your existence by talking to yourself. . . . So that’s what we’re doing in meditation, is we’re cutting that addiction to dispersing our energies out into the world, justifying our existence with our minds, seeking images and emotions that support the egoic fantasies, and entering into the silence—that is a death; it is the death of the ego—but the opening to eternal life, in the Real.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, march 17, 2011.

Student Question: As you mentioned in your teaching, we need to have a strong determination in order to reach the higher chakras. In therapy we talk a lot about materialization of things by repeating mantras, for example. Can we cause this determination to be made without discovering the causes and roots of suffering? Could you just say, “I’m determined to stay in the present,” instead?

Student Question: I was wondering, what is the nature of the ego? Does it come from human nature?

Excerpt: “Each of you is a divine jewel of radiant consciousness and eternal perfection,” reminds Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “The difficulty that gets in our way is that the ego-mind does not live in reality; it lives in its theory of reality. It lives trapped in a belief system. In fact, these days it’s even worse than that: it lives trapped in a number of different, conflicting belief systems. . . . And the information overload, and the lack of structure—the lack of social values that make any sense—make it very difficult to return to the wholeness and empowerment of the Real Self. But nonetheless the truth remains: that this divine jewel of light is what you are.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 3, 2011.

Excerpt: “The Supreme Reality that we are all seeking is absolutely simple. And all we really need is to abide in that simplicity, which is our true nature,” teaches Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Everyone’s looking for a good investment, a safe investment. And so my suggestion to you all is that you invest in God. It’s the only sure investment. And what is most sure is that the more you invest, the greater are the returns on your investment. So in the ordinary capitalist world, they say get a basket of investments so you hedge your bets. But, actually, because investing in the Supreme Being is a sure thing, it doesn’t pay to hedge your bets; it pays to invest—fully—in the Godself. But what kind of investment are we talking about? It’s not about money. It’s investing your love, your attention, your energy, your time—your focus on realizing the presence of God within you. . . . And so there are many many levels of consciousness through which we can rise if we are willing to let go of the lower. And this is a principle of spiritual progress: if you want to rise, you must let go of what you’re holding onto at the lower level. And this is what people are unwilling to do. They want a guarantee first that they’ll get the higher before they let go of the lower rung, and so they never get there; they get paralyzed. And this is where faith comes in. The faith of taking the risk of jumping into the abyss, the unknowable, the mystery of not knowing who you are. That’s what being fully alive means. That’s the thrill of existence, is the not knowing, when you push the envelope—and even push yourself out of the envelope—to discover the formless, infinite Self.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 24, 2011.