Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

Avatar - 07.27.10

“Sat Yoga,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica,” is the science of becoming an avatar,” a realized incarnation of the Supreme Being in the phenomenal plane. Becoming an avatar is the greatest blessing that one can bestow upon the world, the most compassionate act that one can commit. But, as the saying goes, “with great power comes great responsibility,” and, therefore, not everyone may be ready to make this transformation; this act of surrender to God. “So first of all, everyone must ask themselves the question, ‘Do I want to be an avatar? Am I ready to undertake that incredible transfiguration?’ and ‘Am I prepared to do what it takes to achieve the reality of being an avatar, not just lip service?”

Entering avatar-consciousness means giving up ego-consciousness, the false sense of autonomy and separation from the world. It’s very simple, but not easy. “And as we know, there’s a huge struggle against the externalizing tendency of the egoic mind. And this is why we have used the metaphor of the salmon swimming upstream against the outward flow of the mind, until we get to the Source. . . . And these tendencies of the mind to flow outward, to externalize, to try to grab onto experience—to possess, to dominate, to get the jouissance of the entity, of the physical body—are what must be overcome through wisdom, not through fighting, not through creating another internal struggle . . .”

Every egoic connection must be severed. Everything must be surrendered to God. “And then, the descent into the body—purely for service—the bodhisattva ideal, is clearly recognized as the only motive for living. And when there are no other conflicting motives, then the flow of generosity of spirit, emerging out of inner silence, out of complete emptiness, is one’s natural state. . . . And then there is love.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 27, 2010.

Atma-vichara - 07.22.10

“We have come together to meditate. But why? What do we wish to achieve through meditation,” asks Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. We wish to achieve liberation from the ego—and specifically from the lowest, imaginary part of the ego—for whom life is a constant oscillation between desire and suffering. All satisfaction, a mirage. “The mirages create suffering because they create false expectations and delusions. And embedded in them is fear because the ego is alienated from its true nature. And its true nature—the True Nature of your being—is of course one with all that is, and therefore there is no fear and no desire because you already are, and have, everything you need within.”

And although Sri Ramana Maharshi himself once said that meditation could not bring about liberation, he was referring to meditation on an object. Nonetheless, Sri Ramana was a strong advocate of the practice of “Atma-vichara” or self-enquiry. “Atma-vichara means to realize who you are, beyond the ego. Beyond the mind. And so you cannot use the mind for that purpose. And you cannot assume the ego is the one who is meditating; that assumption has to be deconstructed. The meditation is an experience of pure awareness. . . . And so it’s this shift that enables one to be free. To be free of what? To be free of the ego’s insecurities.”

So we don’t want to become “spiritual materialists,” and build an ego around reaching high states in meditation. “We want to dissolve the ego. . . . But the ego is always looking for things to build up its self-esteem, its sense of empowerment in the world, without realizing that this is actually working against its true empowerment that only comes from dissolving the need to have a mask, an attainment—even a style. . . . All of those things create a self-image. And then we work to support that self-image. And that self-image is the very thing that veils the Real Self from us.”

“And immediately when you answer the question ‘Who am I that is behind the mind?’ there will be a state of peace. . . . and a sense of energy that is beautiful energy, it’s divine energy. It’s love. And it is there, within you, and it wants to emerge. And when you allow that to happen, you will find that you’re free of the neediness and the aggressiveness and the defensiveness. . . . You will have realized that the Self you are needs no defenses, it needs no style—it needs no mask. . . . And this is what enables life to then blossom and flourish in a completely new octave that the ego can never reach.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 22, 2010.

Assemblage Points - 07.22.10

Student Question: It was mentioned in the study group that the ego moves through different assemblage points. Can you maybe describe more about how the ego moves through these different points?

“An assemblage point is an organizing principle around which the ego operates,” delineates Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “The first one is about security issues,” and the ego wants to cling to anything that will give it “a sense of security in the world—but it doesn’t actually . . . know how to enjoy them. . . . And then at the next level, it’s more of aggression, and anger, and revenge for having lost the nest, the womb of the mother. And then at the next one, finally there’s a relationship of reciprocity that becomes possible with others. Love finally becomes possible, but it still has this quid pro quo. . . . And so at each assemblage point, there’s more freedom, there’s more generosity, there’s more attraction to Spirit, to Love, to Light, to giving, to feeling one with nature. . . . So the great willpower that we need is to get past the lower assemblage points, and then the higher ones take us effortlessly to bliss.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 22, 2010.

Karmically Accurate Compassion - 07.22.10

Student Question: Do you always sit in compassion in your field—the people and places with which you associate yourself—or would you go onto another field and say, “Well I just want to experience something different?”

“Well,” answers Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “you’ll be guided as to the field you're in. And most people don’t have very much choice.” But, “as you develop, spiritually, more doors will open; you’ll be aware that there are more options, and you’ll be more drawn towards a Sangha, a community of people who are resonating at a higher level, so that you can have relationships that are more fulfilling, more enhancing.” But it doesn’t mean that you have to become a doormat. “So the actions you take may not look like they are in ahimsa, they may not always have the look that one would expect, but you will act spontaneously when you’re in touch with the source in a way that is accurate.” Recorded on Thursday, July 22, 2010.

The Road to Disidentification: From UFO to UFS - 07.15.10

“Each of us must be responsible for our own liberation. It’s not something that an other can do for you,” reminds Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. But, paradoxically, “Liberation is not an attainment. . . . The reason that it’s not an attainment, is that Liberation actually requires losing something. The problem is we’ve already attained something too much; we’ve attained a false identity. That’s what gets in the way of our bliss. . . . So it’s not that we have to get something, but we have to let go of something. And yet it’s the thing that we’re most proud of, this ego that we’ve constructed. It’s our doll. It’s our great idol that we worship. And who can let go of that, ‘What will I be if I let go of that?’”

“And it’s this anxiety of being nothing if I let go of the mask. And being vulnerable—because you could also use the metaphor of saying the ego’s like a tank, like one of these war machines: it’s full of armor to protect itself against attacks; it’s got a cannon mouth right in the middle; it’s got all kinds of little holes for machine guns; it can run on these tracks in any terrain; it’s really tough—it can put up with all kinds of nastiness and give back all that it gets. The problem is that it can’t fly. It can’t accomplish joy; you don’t go out for a joy ride in a tank. It’s only geared for war, and it forces you to see life as a war.”

“So if we want to get out of the tank and start to fly, then we have to become like a UFO. Except in this case it’s a UFS: we have to become an Unidentified Flying Subject, not an object. And we become unidentified when we stop identifying with the ego. And then we’re free and we can fly, and we don’t have any more need for defense mechanisms cause there’s nothing to defend, nothing to protect, once we are unidentified.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 15, 2010.

Means & Ends - 07.08.10

Student Comment: In the study group, we were discussing “The Seven Structures of Duality,” and I found myself thinking the phrase, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And it seemed to me that if one had a good intention, that the end would justify the means. But if one’s good intentions are leading to hell . . .

“That’s correct, that’s why there must be a transcendence of that structure, means and ends. When the ego is in stillness, there is no longer any intention,” reveals Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Ramana Maharshi was once asked a similar question from a professor of religion, a pundit, in India about Nishkama Karma, “and Ramana led him on a walk up the mountain of Arunachala. And along the way, on the trail, they found this stick that was full of thorns and branches, and Ramana just sat down very quietly, found an old leaf, and started polishing the stick. And the pundit who was with him didn’t know what was going on. He just sat and waited. And Ramana sat there for six hours polishing this stick until he got all of the little spines off of it. . . . And when it was done, he got up and started walking. And he had only taken about three steps when this Shepard boy, who lived on the mountain, ran past and was crying, and said he couldn’t capture his sheep because he lost his stick. And Ramana handed him the stick. . . . This was a major teaching for the pundit.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 8, 2010.

“Be Still and Know that I am God” - 07.08.10

“I hope all of you feel at peace in your body and in your mind. That’s the starting point for the spiritual journey,” maintains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Indeed, the first mantra, “Om Shanti,” reminds us of this starting point. “This is why Sri Ramana was very intent on repeating an expression from the Bible more than, even from the Vedas or Vedanta, it was a phrase that he was very fond of: ‘Be Still and Know that I am God.’ And, he analyzed it as follows: first you must be still; that’s the prime commandment. And in that stillness, you will realize that the ‘I,’ that you thought you were—the ‘I’ of the ego, the ‘I’ identified with the body, the ‘I’ that thinks to itself, talks to itself—that ‘I’ is not who you are. The real ‘I’ emerges in the stillness, and that ‘I’ is the Absolute.”

“And this is what the act of meditation really is: it is a surrender. It is an act of bhakti, of devotion, in which we sacrifice the luxury of chattering to ourselves and justifying our little ‘I’s existence, and we surrender to the great ‘I’ that is God. And in that stillness, all those other little ‘I’s, those fragments of consciousness, dissolve, they integrate back into the One Self until finally there is nothing left but the One Self. And all the illusory identifications fall away; they have no more purpose.”

“And so in the act of meditation through the silence, which is the sacrifice itself, the flame of consciousness melts away the illusions of Maya, and we are liberated. And the more that we stay in the silence—the stillness—the more the power of God emerges, opens our heart to love, and frees us from the thought patterns and the behavior patterns that had enslaved us to fear, to desire, to hatred, to suffering of all kinds. . . . And so if we meditate in that state—not wanting to get anything for the little ‘I’, but to give the power of the little ‘I’ to the Great Self—then Liberation is achieved.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 8, 2010.

The Entity Known as “Language” - 07.08.10

Student Comment: I’ve heard you say before that “language has colonized our minds,” which really helps me clear my head during meditation. I would like to know, however, if language really is a non-corporeal entity, or if I am simply literalizing the metaphor.

“It’s an entity in the sense that it is used by the collective consciousness so that language becomes the carrier of particular messages of any given society,” begins Shunyamurti, the spiritual and linguistic master of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And those signifiers then take on a life of their own and create patterns of belief about the nature of one’s self, what should be one’s goals, what should be one’s desires and fears. And to the extent that one is entrained into that social link, then one has lost one’s free will into the will created by language—which, once it is internalized, you imagine is your own thought, whereas it is actually a thought placed there. . . . And so it is only by silencing the mind, and cleaning it out . . . that one can discover who one is before the ego was implanted through the naming and the emplacement of fantasy structures . . .” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 8, 2010.

Becoming a Chud Master - 07.01.10

“The journey to spiritual liberation is a rocky journey for everyone,” reminds Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Along the journey, one recognizes one’s own suffering. And the cause of one’s suffering is linked to an inability to love, and a fear based on the mis-perception of separation from the world, also known as the ego. “But the odd thing is we cherish this very ego that is the cause of our suffering, and we won’t let it die; we think it protects us. Ego death is the goal of every spiritual tradition,” and we are reminded of the Bible which says, “unless a kernel of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” So it is with ego death.

“And yet, how many of us will let that ego die. And we don’t let it die because we are afraid of loneliness. One of the words for ego death in the Ashtanga Yoga tradition, begun by Patanjali, is Kaivalya. . . . And for Patanjali, what this meant was a separation of Purusha from Prakriti, and then Purusha lives in complete solitude; Kaivalya means solitude. You’re all alone. And indeed we are all alone, and we don’t want to face that we’re all alone. And we would rather have a bad object out there, that we can be angry at and think ‘Well, if only it wasn’t for them I’d be OK and loved and alright,’ rather than realizing we are absolutely alone in a world that is our own projection.”

“The irony is that once we allow ourselves to enter into the solitude, we find [that] it’s not a solitude that is an isolation from the world; it’s not a loneliness. It is a unity with all that is. You are alone because there is no other; we are all One. . . . But we must let the mind die in order to know that, and the fear of that keeps the negative thought cycle going on and on. . . . But when we allow that all to settle, we find that the Divine Self is right there, it has been right there all along. . . . It’s on the surface, but we just don’t connect with it out of fear of losing this ego cycle that we think keeps us alive and actually keeps us from truly living.”

“There’s a great tradition in the Tibetan Buddhist lineage called ‘Chud.’. . . What it means is that you cut the self-cherishing of the ego. You cut all your connection to wanting to have this ego which will then give you all your suffering. . . . Then, once they have cut the connection to needing the ego to survive, they will find that under that fear is great joy. . . . So we all have to become Chud Masters here, and cut away the cherishing of the ego which creates the suffering and that cuts us off from the love that we all have within. And we want it to come out and manifest, and to be a gift to all others in the world. And that’s the only thing that will fulfill us.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 1, 2010.