Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

Buddha-Nature - 11.12.09

“All of you have the Buddha-Nature,” reveals Shunyamurti, spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Depending on circumstance and setting, you might also be told you are Shiva, or you have Krishna-consciousness, or Christ-consciousness, or you’re filled with the Ru’ach HaKodesh. “All the traditions are referring to the same Truth.” But we must recognize that EVERYONE has the Buddha-Nature—not just our friends but also our enemies. And we can do that, we will be liberated. But what does having the Buddha-Nature really mean? What the Buddha-Nature means is that “we are empty of any substantial identity. Each of us is a range of potentials. At one moment, yes, we could all be a criminal and at the next moment a saint, the next moment a Buddha. We all have that full range of potential.” But, Shunyamurti mentions, “If I see you as the Buddha, that encourages that side of the potential to emerge. If I see you as a criminal, as unlikable, unlovable, unworthy, then that’s probably what you’ll show me. So do yourself a favor and see the other as the Buddha as well as offering that as a gift to the other. Because the other is empty, just as the Self is empty. But we have the highest potential—all of us. And at any moment, each of us is capable of enlightenment and liberation.” And, along with recognizing everyone’s Buddha-Nature, we must learn to live in the present because “in the present all of us are liberated at this very moment. It’s only when we create thoughts—that are opposed to liberation—that we take it away from ourselves. But it’s here, inherently, at this moment. It’s simply a choice to live in this state and not create obstacles or masks, charades of being anything other than the Buddha. And we can free ourselves now.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, November 12, 2009.

The Magic Drive - 11.10.09

“There’s a drive that human beings have that’s probably the most important of all the drives that psychologists tend not to focus on or even recognize. It’s a very odd thing to me,” remarks Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “which is the magic drive.” And, as Shunyamurti reminds us, “Everyone has a drive toward magic,” and even “toward being a magician.” But in this day and age we have chosen to externalize magic into the various forms of technology that we have readily available to us. But the problem is that this society is prone toward black magic. “And so the magic that we spend most of the money on in modern culture are the magic that will create shock and awe in warfare. The magic of surveillance of whole societies. The magic that gives power over others.” And these types of “magic” give the ego the idea that it is powerful and is able to manipulate its environment in some way, shape, or form. “And we are now suffering from the effects of the success of these lower kinds of magic that have in fact succeeded in destroying the unity, the love, the harmony, the very basis of life in this natural world.” But the power of the unconscious mind can never be underestimated in its ability to cast its own magic spells. It has in fact cast a magic spell so powerful over the ego that the ego does not even realize that it is entranced. “And once it comes under that spell, then the situation becomes hopeless because the ego can no longer remove itself from the spell that it has put itself under. This is the passion for ignorance that is spoken of by the Buddhists . . . and many other theorists who have attempted to understand why it’s so difficult for people to change even when they come into therapy or they come into some spiritual path. ‘Why does it seem so difficult?’ It’s because the ego is under a magic spell. . . . This is why it’s so important in meditation to quiet the mind. In that state of silence . . . you are not reinforcing the magic spell. And as it weakens then the real magic of the inner light can break through into one’s awareness. . . . And that magic will liberate our awareness from the sense of being a separate entity from the magic that all of this is.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 10, 2009.

Dream Interpretation - 11.10.09

Student Comment: When you mention magic and the development of souls towards spirituality, what came to mind was the magic of dreams, which gives you messages. And I understand that the message in a dream, coming from the Atman, its goal is to help you on your way. But I do have a problem with the interpretation of the dream because it’s the ego or the conscious mind that’s trying to interpret it. Dream interpretation has always been an important pillar in spirituality, from the ancient practice of Swapna Yoga, to figures in the Abrahamic religions such as Joseph, who interpreted the dreams of the pharaoh. “But it has been lost in the modern age—or it has been re-found with the agendas of psychoanalysis, etc, that have not fully opened to the spiritual dimension, which is the source of the dream.” So now we have many different types of dream analysis, including Freudian, Jungian, Lacanian, etc, which will all give different and often accurate interpretations, but these methods cannot take the dream to its inner-most meaning. So it is imperative that we have a trusted spiritual guide with whom we can deeply explore both the unconscious mind and the spiritual message of the Atman. Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 10, 2009.

Consciousness is a Myth - 11.05.09

Since the advent of quantum physics the idea of matter has disappeared as a possible hypothesis for what the universe is made of. But Shunyamurti, the spiritual teacher of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, poses the following question: “Since there is no matter and no space and no time in any true sense, what do we mean by a universe?” But as he explains, “We tend then to fall back on the idea, ‘Well, then it’s consciousness, the whole world is consciousness.’ And it’s true that we talk a lot about consciousness in here, but I have to admit to you tonight that consciousness is also a myth.” This teaching has long been known in every true spiritual tradition. In Christian tradition, Meister Eckhart once admitted, “If you would have the Kernel, you must break the husk,” referring to the esoteric understanding that in order to achieve union with God, one must break through all conceptualizations and preconceived notions that one has about God. “And the argument usually between two sides of the philosophic coin have been the materialists and the idealists. . . . Well what if both are wrong? Which is what Advaita, Buddhism have been saying all along. . . . So it’s important that we understand that when we are having Sat Yoga what we simply mean is we’re letting go of every mythological construct that we have been pinning an identity to. . . . But these constructs do not exist within any Ultimate Reality, and so you have to keep them going with a great deal of effort. And if you stop, keeping them going, they dissolve. . . . And no terms can describe it then. The Absolute is both nothing and everything but there is nothing and—there is not even a nothing. Even nothing has to be nothinged. And so there, nothing and everything are not opposites. There’s no logical way to grasp any of this. And it’s by the act of surrendering that effort to understand this with logic that the intuitive knowing of it suddenly blasts forth.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, November 5, 2009.

The Alchemical Process - 11.03.09

“The spiritual process, traditionally, both East and West, has been referred to as alchemy,” Shunyamurti, spiritual teacher of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reveals. “Alchemy is a metaphor referring to the refinement of the psychic substance itself. . . . During the process of meditation, that is exactly what we are doing: We are extracting pure consciousness out of consciousness that has been bound up in words, in images—particularly in self-images—in fantasies, in oscillations between past and future that never allow you to be present, in anxieties, depressive ideas; all of those kind of psychic enmeshments that create suffering. . . . And so meditation is the essential act of alchemical Self-Liberation.” And what exactly are we when we are freed from the boundaries of language and self-images? Pure awareness that is luminous. “And actually for the first time we will realize that the awareness itself is love.” Along with the freedom from thoughts we can truly love for the first time “because those false ideas, by the very fact that they have separated us from our true being, causes us to hate ourselves for having trapped ourselves, and hate the other for having projected on us that we’re something that we’re not. And we’re disappointed in ourselves. . . . And when we have let go of all of them, we realize that all we have ever been is this unlimited being—that is in fact the totality of all that is real.” “And when you’ve tasted the eternity you can come back into this apparent world of time where everybody is chaotic and stressed out because there’s no present, and you can help them deal with it and awaken them to the fact that, ‘Wait, that’s a dream you’re in, a nightmare in fact. Be free.’” So “come out of the trance of time and space and ego and matter, and awaken to the fact that all of this is God. All of this is light. All of this is Eternal Consciousness—Supreme Intelligence playing a game with itself in many forms; infinite forms, each form reflecting one aspect of the infinite beauty, and love, and creativity of the Cosmic Intelligence.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 03, 2009.

Dream Within a Dream Within a Dream - 11.03.09

Student Question: You’ve described that we live in a dream within a dream within a dream. Could you elaborate on the dream that’s within a dream within a dream, the stages, the Shakti? “Well first you have the Cosmic Intelligence that dreams up the whole universe,” as Shunyamurti, spiritual guru of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, explains. “And then at the level of our planet. . . .You have the collective dream, which we often refer to as a paradigm.” And through time the paradigm degrades—as it has now to a materialistic, egotistic mindset—and affects everyone in the dream-field. “But then within that collective dream is the third dream of the individual. And each individual creates their own dream out of the material of both the collective dream and the Supreme, Cosmic Dream.” But despite the suffering and insanity of the planetary dream, some souls, because of their karmic trajectory, can maintain their connection to God and return spirituality to the entire planet. “And so periodically, when human consciousness has fallen to a very low level, individuals and communities arise within that to give birth to a new consciousness and a new world.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 3, 2009.

Rest in Peace - 10.29.09

“So there’s a reason why people are hesitant to meditate, and that they’re not interested in meditation. And that’s because,” as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us, “meditation is too much like death.” And death means many things to the ego: detachment, stillness, silence, emptiness, nothingness. And, even worse, “you say to the dead, ‘Rest in peace.’” And the one thing that the ego does not want is peace because it gets its kicks from the vicissitudes of pleasure and pain; the cheap thrills of the egoic notion of “happiness.” To rest in peace is to be free from the most powerful desires and wants. And, eventually, “we recognize that the desire is a defense against the fear—and it always leads back to the fear, or a vexation, or some kind of suffering—and is never what we really wanted, because what we really wanted was to find the place that is at peace. . . . And what we find then is that meditation is not what the ego thinks, it’s not boring, it’s not a lack of involvement, but it is actually a transcendence that enables us then to return to the world, reborn; the death is not the end.” And through this death and rebirth we enter back into the world in a state of love, with a willingness to give and help others without any hidden agendas or ulterior motives because “often at the ego level, desire masquerades as love.” But liberation allows one to be free of the desire to be appreciated, to be needed—or any of the various ways that the ego tries to express love—and allows one to show true compassion and love in every act. Recorded the evening of Thursday, October 29, 2009.

Love & Wisdom - 10.27.09

“Love without wisdom is inadequate,” as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” But, “Equally, wisdom without love is absolutely futile, and we know so many philosophers who have a great . . . capacity to think, but they can’t love their way out of a paper bag. And thinking alone won’t get you out of the box of the ego; the two must be integrated.” Likewise, there are also two manifestations of love in action. Karma yoga is the essence of love in action, “to act without greed, possessiveness, the desire for some ulterior agenda to be fulfilled by the ego, then that will be able to unravel the ego’s knots and unwillingness to love. The second one is community because it’s not just a matter of ‘What do I do,’ but the real test is can I help form a communion of love with other human beings—cause that’s the ultimate test isn’t it? Can we live together in love?”

Without love, as modern society has proven, things fall apart. But we need wisdom to “recognize that the source of what is unloving in ourselves is the ego. So the first step of wisdom is the realization that ‘I must disidentify from the ego.’ . . . And because we have come to live in a world of representations, of symbols and language—rather than in the feeling and in the essence of our innermost being—we have lost touch with that, and we have deceived ourselves into thinking, ‘Oh I can just talk the game, I don’t have to really walk it.’ So with the wisdom to form the talk, and the love to “Walk the talk,” we can live in harmony with ourselves and with those around us. Recorded the afternoon of Tuesday, October 27, 2009.

The Throne of Realization - 10.22.09

As Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us, there are three basic spiritual paths that lie ahead of us: the slow path, the intermediate path, and the fast path. The slow path consists of slowing reproving our ego and making sure that it stays in check. There is the intermediate path where we ask God to get rid of our ego, and there is the fast path    which consists of realizing that you already are That: “I am not the ego. I am not the body. I am not the mind. But I am the Presence, the pure awareness that is an emanation of the Mind of God.”

You are simply the Presence that is witnessing this collective dream take place, and the minute that you get off the throne, you become rooted in linguistic duality from which all suffering takes place. You go down in the mud with the ego. “Clean yourself off of all those muddy ideas. Sit on the throne. Rule in the purity of Divine Presence and the ego will come into order. You don’t have to fight with it.” “So that’s what we’re doing in meditation: sitting on that throne, which is why it’s called ‘Swaraj,’ the kingdom of the Self.” So sit “in that throne of realization of what it feels like to have gone beyond desire and beyond fear. Beyond any need. Beyond any localization within the world because in that state there’s a realization that the entire world, the entire objectification of consciousness, is within; not without.”  Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 22, 2009.