Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

The Mirror Stage & Ego Formation – 08.26.10

Student Comment: During the teaching, you talked about how the ego is formed early on. So I was wondering how it forms. It has to come from somewhere.

“Humans are like monkeys; we imitate the other. And so the infant takes in the mirroring from the parents—the mother, primarily—and begins to express that back, and that creates the first structure. It’s called the ‘Mirror Stage,’” delineates Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And then more and more elements get added and built around that, and as the child is called certain things . . . negative and positive signifiers, they get attached to the identity, and the structure builds according to the clues that the child picks up from the parents as to the role they want the child to play.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 26, 2010.

A Wholehearted Journey to Silence – 08.19.10

“I wish you all a wholehearted welcome,” offers Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And that’s important because there’s very little that happens in the world these days that is wholehearted.” The contemporary ego structure is hyper-fragmented. It can’t love. It can’t trust. It is paralyzed by “the fear of letting go of those beloved defense mechanisms” that cause us all of our suffering. And it has developed all of these defense mechanisms to deal with a very decadent, and even demonic, culture. And if we can put down all of the ego’s defense mechanisms, all of its narratives, and make a wholehearted effort to “dive into the silence,” then we will find “the salvation of our being. That’s where we put out the fire of suffering, and we are healed by the waters of life.”

“But the world doesn’t value, any longer, this opportunity to dive deeply into the inner silence. It values busyness and distraction and continual production—activity—in which we lose our soul in the outer crust of our consciousness.” Ironically, the Self is actually “closer to us than our own minds,” but it has been “obscured by the thoughts and the chaos of negative feelings—of lostness, of terror, of fear, of anguish. But that consciousness that contains all of that—no matter what it is. That consciousness that is the ground and the support and the substratum of whatever arises in our minds and our hearts—that is pure and soothing. And if we enter into that silence, we will be healed. To whatever extent we are willing to dissolve that ball of suffering in the silent space of the Self, we will be whole; we will be made whole by the very consciousness that we’ve been running away from.”

“And then we discover—we come back from that silence with a new meaning, with a new understanding—a new intelligence that grasps the world without its coating in the conditionings of the past upon which the ego-mind is based. We find a new freedom to be reborn from that silence. And we are reborn . . . [as a] free, reborn spirit that is able to—now, without those preconditions and stories that limit and prevent us from seeing the world as it truly is—now, we can really find what is our heart’s desire and live it out, fully, wholeheartedly—no longer split—because we’re no longer deceiving ourselves, hiding from ourselves—running away—but wholeheartedly jump into life fully, passionately, wisely—and achieve the ultimate potential of which we are capable.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.

The Gestalt of Science and Self – 08.19.10

Student Question: Could you please expand on the gestalt diagram (see below) that was pictured in the book we’re reading in our Prema-culture class, Signs of Meaning in the Universe?

The issue “goes back to Gestalt Psychology. And the Gestaltists realized that our perception is always in the form of a foreground and a background,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “We tend to focus on the foreground, and the background drops out. . . . But whatever we choose as foreground is indeed a construct, and is culturally created—most of the objects that we perceive, we perceive because we have linguistic concepts that delineate those objects for us. And if we didn’t have such constructs embedded in language and cultural values, etc., we would see the world very differently because, in fact, everything is connected.”

“But then there is the next question of, well, ‘Who is perceiving both the foreground and the background?’ The perceiver is not on the paper; the perceiver is never an object. So there is a third level that is always beyond any understanding you have of reality, because the one who has that understanding does not appear in the reality; you are always beyond it. And so the self—when you begin to then incorporate it into your understanding of reality, whatever it is you understand of the self and add that in . . . there remains then another observer. . . . You will never be able to capture the self in any definition or construct or understanding. Because whatever you capture, that ‘you,’ is beyond.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.

The Vishnu Gate & Shiva Gate – 08.19.10

Student Question: There are two gates upon arriving at the Sat Yoga Ashram, previously known as the North Gate and the South Gate. Now they’re Shiva Gate and Vishnu Gate. Could you please describe the two entrances to the ashram?

“Vishnu and Shiva are two archetypes,” reveals Shunyamurti, the archetypal leader of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “They are part of one of the Hindu Trinities” of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—the Creator, the Sustainer, and the Destroyer. “And so, there are people whose personalities tend toward the archetype of Vishnu, which is that archetype that chooses the life in duality, the expression of the greatest joy and celebration of a life that is devoted to the service of God. . . . And when one attunes to the archetype of Shiva, one is directly dissolving that egoic separation between the self and God. And one is living in the ultimate union of the two. So by the destruction of the ego, the Godself is incarnated as the Self, not as a separate being that one loves, adores—or is angry at for failing to give one the job or the life situation that one wanted. But the principle of Shaivite consciousness is that of dissolving all of the narratives of the ego into the silence of the Absolute.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.

The Pressure Chamber – 08.19.10

Student Comment: The “pressure chamber” that you’ve always talked about all of the sudden came to my mind. Is this something that can last throughout one’s entire spiritual journey, like the “dark night of the soul?” There is this constant feeling that—because there is so much to learn and so much to discipline—one never leaves the pressure chamber until the end: Chakra Seven or death.

“Well, remember: if you put carbon under enough pressure it becomes a diamond. So that’s how the soul is transformed,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “The more pressure that you’re under, the quicker the transformation will happen. And it can’t be done without pressure. And that’s why the whole world is now under tremendous pressure—and why there are no solutions of any ordinary kind: it’s forcing us to recognize that there is a non-ordinary reality that we must enter if we’re going to solve the problems that the world has.”

“And every spiritual tradition has always recognized that you have to create a pressure chamber for those who are on the path. Discipleship is a pressure chamber. . . . There is a self-discipline that is required. You know even if you join AA, or any of these twelve-step groups, they’ll tell you, “Come every day!”—not just once a week—every day to a meeting, to put yourself under the pressure of hearing information that your ego doesn’t want to hear so that you can overcome the addictive processes of the lower chakra behavior patterns and cut their power to enact themselves. . . . And so it is that forcible creation of creativity itself, within the mind, and the brain, that will enable you to burst through into a higher level of consciousness.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.

Life Itseslf is a Koan – 08.19.10

Student Question: What is a koan?

“A koan is a voluntary way of putting your mind under pressure,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But life itself is a koan. And it’s because people can’t solve the riddle of their own life that they enter into a spiritual path. And we sit down and meditate and think about it. And, in the effort to solve that riddle, we will break through into our own liberation. But, no one can escape the fact that they are in an incoherent level of life when they’re in the ego, and they find themselves doing things they don’t really want to do, and they haven’t a clue why they’re doing it. . . . And so that riddle—if you become focused on it enough—will cause you to reach such a level of perplexity and frustration, that you’ll focus on solving it, and there will be a breakthrough to higher consciousness.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.

Free Will vs. Predetermination: the Ego and the Self – 08.19.10

Student Question: Could you say a little bit more about the levels of freedom and predetermination that you just mentioned?

“At every moment, you have the freedom to will whatever you wish; you can make choices. But do you have the freedom to choose what you wish to choose,” asks Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “It’s a higher logical level. Do you have the freedom to choose who you think you are, that is making those choices?” The ego’s will is a set of predetermined biological and cultural programs. “And yet, at any moment, you are free to transcend the ego, to disidentify from it through an act of radical detachment. And through that act you can free yourself. . . . But you could say that even that act of freeing yourself was determined by the trajectory of your own soul that chose a certain egoic structure that had enough ‘free will’ in it—enough give of the fixations of that determination—that enabled it to escape through a crack in the egoic logic.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.

Discerning the Real from the False – 08.19.10

Student Comment: I would like to learn more about discernment.

“It is the key to escaping from the ego’s event horizon and the illusions that the ego throws up in front of us and cause us to believe that we’re happy when we’re really not, and to believe that somebody else is the cause of problems when we have problems, and to believe that things are irreparable and there’s no way out, and falling into depression or anxiety, etc.,” discerns Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “So, Viveka [discernment] is the capacity to discern when your ego is deceiving you from a situation of truth. . . . And at the state of Viveka, or discernment, you realize that it’s not real: your mind is creating illusions—hallucinations, demons—that are imaginary, that are disturbing you. And once you can discern that, you can dissolve those negative forces.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.

Sickness, Suffering, and Karma – 08.12.10

Student Question: I have a question about the use of medication with illnesses. There are many philosophies that say that one should not take medication when one is sick because the sickness is a process of natural/karmic purification. But I am very confused as to which is the correct option. Could you please provide some clarity on the topic?

“No, I think that if one can heal one’s sickness, one’s 'dis-ease,' it’s useful and important to do that as an act of love,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the doctor of the soul at the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But, it’s important to do it without evading what is the meaning of that illness; it is expressing something. And if you only take pills, as in the allopathic method of treatment in which there is no meaning to the disease, then that ultimate disturbance, which is of the soul, will come back in another way; the karma will find a way to hit you. . . . So, it doesn’t mean that we have to continue the suffering, but it does mean that we have an obligation to authentically discover what is the root of that illness.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 12, 2010.