Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

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.

On Aldous Huxley & The Doors of Perception - 10.20.09

Student Question: What level of consciousness, or what door did Huxley open? “Well I won’t judge Aldous Huxley and how many doors he opened, let’s say, but certainly there was a heightened realization,” argues Shunyamurti, the spiritual leader of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “that we’re in a throbbing, luminous, living reality; that what we think of as dead matter is not dead at all. It’s alive in a divine way.” But, in our materialistic paradigm, and “by de-enchanting the world, by refusing to see it, we have caused that magical dimension of reality to withdraw because the world responds to us: if we treat it as dead, it’ll treat us as dead. . . . And so it’s a rejection of God to choose to have a materialist philosophy. And the whole world has been indoctrinated today into that belief.” Recorded on Tuesday, October 20, 2009.

Light in Silence - 10.20.09

“We are light,” as Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us. We are not, however, light that comes out of light bulbs or light from the sun; we are Divine Light. Just as there are different dimensions, there are also different levels of light. “But within a human being, if you can penetrate through the shell of the ego, you will find not only the photonic light . . . but you will find the angelic light. And then within that, the Supreme Light. And once that Supreme Light is touched, and its radiance is allowed to move into this phenomenal plane, then everything is different. Everything is seen from the Light of God as the emanation of God.” “In order for that light to emerge, we must remove the outer covering. And the outer covering is made of language. The language covers over and obscures the silence in which the light is contained and emerges. The silence is the medium of the light. When we cultivate the inner silence then we create a space in which the light can shine.” And that light dissolves all questions and desires into the Supreme Self. Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20, 2009.

Pantheism vs. Panentheism - 10.20.09

Student Question: What is the difference between Pantheism and Panentheism? “Pantheism is the view that sees God or gods in all things,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “The Druids worshiped the gods in the trees, the dryads, or the wood nymphs. . . . Or you could see the one God—in and as nature. But Panentheism is a realization that God is actually transcendent of the natural world, but that the natural world is within the Mind of God.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20, 2009.

Deadly Serious about Money - 10.20.09

Student Comment: What you said just a minute ago brought up something that I was reading last night about someone saying that what we do here is joy, and we’re without seriousness. And I used to think that this seriousness and lack of joy came from money, but now I’m starting to feel that it comes from something much deeper that can be, as we’ve said before, deadly serious.

Shunyamurti, spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, reminds us that we must learn not to be serious about petty things, and only be serious when it comes to serious matters. “But those serious matters are the matters of bliss, and joy, and love, and beauty.” But in Western industrial society we’ve placed all value on money rather than the things that really matter such as nature and the environment. And “money is a total fiction, but in this capitalist system, it is the only thing that’s real. Nothing else is real. . . . And they’re having anxiety about something that is completely fictional, while not thinking at all about the fact that the entire real world of nature is collapsing because we’re not paying attention to it. It’s an astounding situation that can only be called psychosis at a species level.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20, 2009.

Flying with Angels - 10.20.09

Student Question: What are angels a manifestation of? We are all angels, as Shunyamurti, the spiritual leader of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, tells us. And, as we align ourselves more and more with the Divine Will of God, we may be called on to assist others. Whether we aid someone in a physical body, from a higher dimension with a subtle body, or even in a dream is uncertain, but as we recognize ourselves as the Light of God, we will be called upon to help break the chains of others confusion and help them, too, realize their true nature as Light. What’s more, if we do not “purify the subtle form,” then it will “remain as a wandering spirit, an earth-bound spirit” or the typical “ghosts” that are well known in paranormal investigations. So one must truly practice the art of detachment from the physical plane—and attachment instead to God—so that one may transcend to the angelic and archangelic realms and finally to the realm of God. Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20, 2009.

The Triple Act of Being - 10.13.09

“Sat Yoga is the process of becoming fully aware of . . . [your] radiance. And then merging into that radiance and realizing the unlimited scope of that radiance,” explains Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Sat Yoga meditation is a triple act: an unrestricted act of understanding, an unconditional act of love, and an undefinible act of Being. The understanding includes “understanding all of reality, including the Self, unrestricted by beliefs, thoughts, language, or images.” The love is a love without limits and barriers; a love that is not attached to an object or signifier. This act of Being is a giving up of the action of Becoming; it is an “absolute commitment to truthfulness and to presence and to open-heartedness that is our liberation.” “And so, Sat Yoga is a kind of meditation that one will open to only after one is done with all the games and is ready for Truth in the most naked form possible, which is formless. And when one is no longer content with justifying or rationalizing one’s being, and when one is not afraid to face the emptiness and the nothingness behind all the masks, and once we are able to face the inner truth of our True Nature—fearlessly, openly, without distraction—we are liberated.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday October 13, 2009.

Confronting Chatter - 10.08.09

Student Question: Usually when I meditate I just let it be what is, but this time I intentionally tried to silence the words, and I spent the whole time working very persistently to make that happen, but the chatter persisted. So what is the technique when you're confronted with all this chatter?

The Purpose of Sat Yoga - 10.06.09

“The purpose of Sat Yoga is union with Sat . . . the Supreme Being,” explains Shunyamurti, the director and founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And this Supreme Being, whether understood personally or impersonally, “is constituted by an infinite intelligence and infinite love. And because of this infinite intelligence in the service of infinite love, our universe exists.” And only the power of love “will free us from the curse of our egoic narcissism—the egocentricity that takes itself to be a god . . .”

So the process of Sat Yoga is an “uncovering that which the ego itself does not want your consciousness to know. . . . And therefore the early stages of the struggle to achieve Self-liberation take the form of a battle with a part of the self that wants to stay in denial, it wants to stay in hatred, it wants to stay in anger, it wants to stay even in despair and meaninglessness rather than to uncover the truth of its being.” But one must persevere and refuse to identify with the ego if one wishes to progress upon the spiritual path, ultimately, to Self-realization.

But the perseverance must also contain a will to learn because phenomenal reality has become so complex, a yogi today must have a wide array of knowledge including quantum physics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, biosemiotics, and communication and information theory. “All of these are essential today to a yogi to understand because they give us a cognitive grasp of the structure and the dynamics of the functioning of this phenomenal plane we call Maya.” And because the human ego has become so complex today, a yogi must become a psychoanalyst. “We must have a grasp of how the unconscious mind works so we can discern that mind in action in others as well as in ourselves and read between the lines and grasp what is an accurate response in every situation.”

And as we grasp that understanding our karma will become more correct and we can redirect the flow of our energy from the lower chakras of unconsciousness, lust, and hatred to that of love, wisdom, and Truth. “And with that wisdom, if we dedicate ourselves to transformation and to union with God so that we are servants of the highest power and love, our lives will truly be fulfilling.” Recorded on the afternoon of October 6, 2009.