Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

“You know the happiest moments in peoples lives are actually when they’re sound asleep; because there’s no thoughts. And when you’re in deep sleep, there’s perfect rest, and your soul is actually touching the innermost light. And you recharge,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And what we’re doing in a state of meditation is simply being in deep sleep while we’re fully awake. That’s all we’re doing. . . . So if we’ll give our self the opportunity to simply be present, many extraordinary mysteries will unfold; mysteries about yourself; insights will come spontaneously; and there will be personality changes that will happen effortlessly as anxiety falls away naturally in the silence. . . . So, be a scientist. Allow yourself to explore without trying to achieve anything in particular, but just to discover who you are.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 18, 2010.

Student Question: I understand that in a path of spiritual development, such as Sat Yoga, we must be able to overcome anger, but I wonder, how one can truly achieve this when there is so much human stupidity. Today we were at the beach joining an expedition of Canadian environmentalists who are studying the effects of all the garbage that we are dumping daily into the oceans. We are constantly working with the press, but I sometimes feel so lost because I want to continue helping but I realize that even if this message reaches the people, their ignorance remains and they continue acting in the worst possible way. Corruption is also very much involved in all this, as well as a general indifference and human stupidity, which are causing the loss of not only life on earth but also in our oceans—and I ask myself: how does one avoid feeling anger?

“Have a sense of humor. You have to laugh at it, at human stupidity,” provides Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Humans are becoming more and more stupid by the day. . . . It’s destiny. It’s the end of the world. . . . Nobody’s getting smarter . . . and more corrupt. And less caring. That’s the way of entropy of the human soul. But, those who recognize that will grow.” And by bringing awareness into the issue, and raising our consciousness, we will be able to participate in the birth of a new world. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 18, 2010.

Student Question: So you can get to chakra seven in life but can you also get to it in death?

“No,” reveals Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “because the last thought you have as you die and leave the body will determine which bardo state you go into. So if that wasn’t already liberated, then you won’t be able to hold onto the Mother Light when you leave the body.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 18, 2010.

Student Question: Today in the study group we discussed how the more you go into the chakras, there is a loss of the sense of identity. So why, if there is a loss of identity, does the person not awaken if he/she is in any of the chakras? And the other question is that, you mentioned that a person can awaken any time, but how does that work in relation to the chakra map? If a person is in the lower three chakras, can that person awaken at any moment?

“The awakening is the shift to the higher chakra,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “It is possible, but it requires the desire to do so. That’s what’s missing.” It is not difficult to reach liberation “cause it’s our natural state. The truth is we’re already there, but it’s covered over by these other veils.” And to answer the other question, Shunyamurti explains that a chakra is not an ego state; there is no identity in the chakra, but there is an “assemblage point” in between two chakras where we structure our lives. We gravitate towards the chakras because “most people don’t like having a sense of ego because there are burdens . . . so people want to get out of the egoic state. Now, they could go to chakra seven, just as easily as they go to chakra one, two, or three, but in this culture we’ve been trained, ‘have a glass of beer,’ instead of meditate and reach bliss. Or have a sexual encounter in which you lose yourself temporarily, or have become berserk, become enraged, that’s always enjoyable to most people. . . . The problem is that all of the lower three chakras have negative consequences, and when you do come back into the assemblage point you think, ‘Oh my God what did I just do?’ and then you’ve created more negative karma that you have to work out.” And, as Shunyamurti reminds us, “You can choose any of them. It’s not as if one is really more difficult than the other, it’s only a matter of where you want to dive in.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 18, 2010.

There are no techniques for meditation because all we’re doing in meditation is simply being, and there is nothing simpler than that. “And what the ancient yogis, and sages of all spiritual traditions have taught, is that the essence of our being is bliss,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “There is a phrase called Sat Chit Ananda. That’s the closest we can describe our essential Being. Ultimately it’s indescribable—it’s beyond any concepts—but the closest we can come is that, and this is true in all the different religions, it’s the equivalent of the Trinity in Christianity: our Being, our awareness, intelligence, and the joy, the unlimited bliss of love. Love in its true sense: of the unity, the oneness of all things, all beings, the cosmos, the mind of God. All of it is One, and we are That, that’s why it’s blissful, because we are not separated from That.” And instead of accessing that bliss, we chatter; we choose to suffer.

And the reason that we choose to suffer is because “it justifies and it gives a sense of reality to that which is unreal. The ego is only a fictional structure. It’s a story—not even a story that we invented but one that was given to us by parents, teachers, society. We took it from all kinds of places and we put it together and we said ‘OK this is who I am. This is my story and my signature is this particular way that I suffer, this particular pattern, and I’m proud of it, and it gives me a sense that I really exist.’ And that’s why we hold onto it because it maintains that illusion.” So to rid ourselves of that suffering, we must disidentify “with the organism or from any localizable entity. We want to return to that state. It doesn’t mean we’re going to lose the capacity to play our role, but we will be able then to realize we are not that role and then modify the role in ways that it no longer suits us, we can change it.” And this is the purpose of meditation. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 11, 2010.

“We are beings of consciousness,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And yet we have forgotten what consciousness is in our pure form because our minds have been colonized by language.” And as Shunyamurti further elucidates, language is not a neutral means of communication because it comes attached to culture and other temporal, ethical, etc., limitations. “And, because we are embedded in language, we are alienated from the source of our True Being. And then once we are occupied by language—like a city is occupied by a foreign army—then that occupation force takes over and achieves its agenda using our mind and our organism.” And likewise the acquisition of language brings a kind of power to manipulate others as well as our environment. “And it turns out that when our minds are freed from the stream of consciousness we actually reach an ocean of consciousness more powerful than that stream. Our intelligence actually grows. And then we can come back from that silence with an ability to use language now rather than be used by it. . . . And so it is a great exploration that is possible once we weigh anchor and let go of language as our base. And then we are free to explore levels of reality that we could never know as long as we are hooked into the phenomenal plane and its linguistic manipulation." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 4, 2010.

Student Question: A question came up in the study group tonight about illegitimate authority. And my question is, didn’t it used to be the father’s role to represent God rather than having to seek an elder or shaman, or did they work in community differently? How exactly did it work?

Well, as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, admits, “the father—as a symbolic function—has been lost,” which reflects the degradation of society as a whole. “But in the ancient tradition, the father was considered the first guru. The father would take you away from the mother and introduce into the men’s group.” He “would then take the son to the second guru that would be the shaman, who would then take the son on a higher journey. . . . So for males, that was the way. And the father was the link to the higher levels of knowledge.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 4, 2010.

Coming together in a Satsang, or spiritual gathering, “creates a womb of love in which to bathe, in which to let go of the stresses that we have to deal with ‘out there’ in that world of non-love, of competition and anger and brutality,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And the more we create a close-knit community of love, the more this becomes a refuge. And that’s what is important to the soul of each of us; we need a refuge. Everyone needs a place to be able to come and know that they’re accepted without judgment. Where they can sit and let go of everything.”

“And so we have to find the way to achieve the inner refuge. And that means we have to let go of the mind itself because the mind is where the problems lie. And we are attached to the mind because we identify with the body. As long as consciousness is identified with the physical organism, then the mind, with all of its defense mechanisms that are intended to protect that organism against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, will have to remain rigid and always on alert—and always thinking, manipulating, strategizing—to defend itself. But when we can let go of the mind—first at the ego level and then even at the soul level—then we can finally be at peace in our spirit, our Atman. That’s the only true refuge." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, January 21, 2010.

Excerpt: “Human nature is a variable; it’s not a constant. It changes through the ages,” argues Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And right now we’re in a time when the human ego structure is morphing at an accelerated rate into a very distorted and negative, nihilistic, and fragmented form.” And, as a result, the collective sphere is also getting more and more chaotic and unpredictable. “And so anyone who is sane feels mad in this world because the collective normality is madness; madness of a particularly paranoid kind.” And along with the paranoia, come other egocentric mind states such as desire, “the fantasy of wishful thinking that ‘Oh, if I’m only with that person then everything is gonna be fine. That person will rescue me from my despair’ or whatever. Or ‘That money,’ or ‘That car,’ or that whatever. And the projection of desire—as well as of fear—begins to operate, as well as the false duty of the karma that exists at the disillusionment point that, ‘OK, if I only get a good job and get my parents to approve of my life or society to approve of me, then I’ll be fine, and I’ll be stabilized.’ But of course none of that works either because it’s not coming from the True Self, it’s coming from a desire to please the other. . . . So we have to be constantly alert to when the ego-mind is fooling you and taking you off center. And that requires then a practice of meditation that is very intense, very constant, so that the chatter of the mind is overcome, and the silent presence of the Divine Light and Love is what is the operative power that is emanating through you. And it’s only through a surrender to God—internally—and then activating that externally through behaviors that link one in the highest way to service, communal action, harmonious, loving, compassionate, beingness in the world that will keep our souls pure, and therefore to function according to an inner compass that is accurately calibrated to true north of God-consciousness.” Recorded on the evening of Monday, January 11, 2010.