Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

Student Question: Some people say that “love is the door to suffering.” So what happens to the ego when you are in love?

“If you mean the romantic illusion that people mistakenly give the term ‘love’ to, then, of course, that’s a door to suffering, because it is always based on a projection and a fantasy,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And eventually the parties involved realize this, but “can’t let it go because of the fear of the emptiness and the lack that is what caused” them to get together in the first place. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 20, 2010.

Student Question: Would it be true to say that Karma is a pattern that’s produced by the ego?

“It’s the result of the Karmic patterns,” reveals Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And if we can see and understand the destiny—in time—of those patterns, we will let them go immediately. The problem is we don’t see the effects that the particular patterns are going to have on our life. . . . And when we are able to understand the inevitability of the Karmic consequences of particular, polluted patterns, we will purify them. And that’s why the purification of the soul is so essential. Not only on an individual level, but on the whole level of the projections we have on other beings in the world—because any negative projection we have on anyone or any corporate entity, any kind of entity, those projections create Karmic consequences. So we want to liberate all beings—that’s the act of being a bodhisattva, by being in that state of compassionate love for the highest resolution of Karma.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 20, 2010.

Student Question: When I find myself in a “dark night of the soul,” I find that there can be a range of positions, emotions, etc., such as martyrdom or masochism, and one can really act out and cry, or, the other extreme, repeat to oneself that one is light and that there is no reason or no entity behind the suffering. But, having in mind the risk of suppression of emotions, where does one draw the line?

“Suppression is not a risk. Repression is a risk,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And “the repression has already happened. Suppression is an important tool: you see, you can’t surrender a mind that you don’t control. So first we have to control our mind; we have to be able to contain the egoic feelings. And they are based on fantasies, unrealities: you’re not a victim. None of that is true. You’re suffering is an illusion. And so of course we want to suppress that. Why should we suffer? Why should we allow those negative feelings that are based on unrealities emerge and poison our lives or those of others?” But, at the same time, we must work constantly on getting to the feelings that are repressed, in order to be truly free of them. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 20, 2010.

“Recently, an online student asked . . . ‘What is really meant by surrender to God?’ And to answer that question we have to really see the three elements of it: what do we mean by surrender; what do we mean by God; and what exactly are we surrendering to God?” argues Shunyamurti, the spiritual master of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And that’s what meditation really is: surrender to God. It is letting go of one’s sense of alienation. It is an offering of oneself. It is freeing oneself of any sense of separation.

“And so then the question is, ‘What do we mean by God?’ because in Advaita philosophy God is not an Other. And so, we are surrendering to the Self—to the Self that, in principle, we already are.” However, we have lost contact with the Self because of “the defense mechanisms that we created—that we call ‘ego’—that have been used to alienate ourselves from other individuals, from other people. And those same defense mechanisms, of necessity, alienate us from the Self and from the Supreme Self that is within our individual self.”

“And so the surrender requires an internal letting go of one’s defenses against a power and a feeling of love—a current of energy in fact—that is overwhelming to the ego. It’s letting go of our evasion of the presence, the intelligence, and the power of the Self. That will overwhelm the ego and dissolve it in the flow of that Divine Love.”

So we must have a burning desire for union with God, and, at the same time, let go of all of the lesser desires that have distracted us from the constant remembrance of the Supreme Self. And this means a letting go of the mind itself. “And this requires what is called Shradha, or faith: there has to be a sufficient amount of faith that in the letting go of the ego you will find something infinitely greater, more valuable than that which you are letting go of.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 20, 2010.

“Sat Yoga is Noetic Science,” reveals Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Noetic Science is the science of knowing. Sat Yoga is the most ancient science of knowing. . . . But it is the science of knowing the knower. The science of self-awareness. Self-consciousness. That which particularizes the human being and makes us different from other beings on this planet: that capacity for awareness becoming aware of itself.” But in order to get to that state, “we must be willing to let go of everything we think we know; everything we’ve been taught—including everything we’ve been taught here. Let it all go. Know absolutely nothing. And it’s in that—the tabula rasa, when you erase the whole blackboard—that only the knower remains. . . . This is freedom: swatantria. This is the ultimate goal of yoga: to be free of all of the straightjackets that your mind has put you in. All the pigeonholes. All the preconceived thoughts and the regurgitated ideas that come from other people, all the invalid things you learned in all the schools that you suffered through. All of those things that you depended upon to give you a sense of existence and worthiness and reality. Go beyond all of that and find the Absolute Source. . . . And when one wishes that level of freedom, then one realizes the ultimate paradox: that there is really nothing you need to be free from. There is no one who even needs to be liberated. That even that was part of the matrix. And then there is great joy and great bliss.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 13, 2010.

Student Question: In my experience, I’ve seen that one can interpret a situation in many different ways, and sometimes it seems that I can interpret a situation in an infinite number of ways. Is that freedom, or is that still part of the ego?

“No, freedom is when you don’t bother interpreting it anymore,” remarks Shunyamurti the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “All discourses are false. All interpretations are wrong because every concept, if you look at it deep enough, it flows into the other. Good and evil are the same. Every philosopher who has reached Ultimate Reality recognizes that: form is emptiness. Good is bad even. . . . All of these distinctions we make are part of duality. And so any discourse that you create is always leaving out a shadow that is its opposite that is actually embedded in it; it is its own essence.” “So the truth is that there is no . . . Truth?” “There is no Truth—but don’t take that as a truth!” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 13, 2010.

Student Question: Does the Creation not have duality inherent in it?

“Yes that’s right,” argues Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, but “that duality is a unity. The nothingness and the fullness, the form and the emptiness (as the Buddhists say), Samsara and Nirvana—they are the same; they are not a duality. It only seems like a duality from within the ego. And that’s why the ego cannot function very well in the duality, because it does not see it clearly, and it has this paranoid perspective on it. Once you transcend it, you will live in the world without suffering.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 13, 2010.

Student Question: Is the ego the one that creates duality?

“Well the ego is a creation in duality,” reminds Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And it is structured as a multiplicity; it’s even more than a duality.” The average person must create a number of different masks and sub-personalities to deal with the larger society. So, paradoxically, one has to establish a strong and stable ego before one is able to transcend it. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 13, 2010.

Student Question: Some people say that when you are meditating, and you go out-of-body, that there are good entities—or bad entities—that can possess you. Is that true?

“No, not if you’re meditating the way we do. We’re not saying to leave the body; we’re saying to simply leave the superficial mind that is chattering,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. The real danger is more the demons that are in your unconscious mind rather than any external entities. “But anxieties may come up that have been held down, but if you remain the observer of it, and actually offer it to the source of your Being, you will dissolve it. So it’s more an opportunity than a danger.” So if you can remain the in the position of the detached observer, then you will be much safer than you would in a fragmented, or normal, state of consciousness. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 13, 2010.