Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

“What is the difficulty in awakening?” poses Shunyamurti, the spiritual teacher of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “The problem is this: The ego is a PDF file. PDF meaning, Projections, Decisions, and Fixations. And it developed in that order. There was a pure consciousness—without identification—and your parents projected on it. . . . And then you took on a decision to accept those projections, or modify them somewhat, or do something with them—but you made a decision based on those projections. And then that decision got repressed into the unconscious and became a fixation.”

Then, reveals Shunyamurti, “Once it became repressed you could no longer change it because your thinking capacity would begin with those projections and decisions as the basis of your thought. And so the ego—whoever you believe yourself to be—is the product of that logic—and that ego cannot change itself.” And liberation, or awakening, though the ultimate cure cannot be achieved because the ego bases itself on an inferiority complex: “I’m unworthy, therefore I exist. This is the new Cartesian signifier.”

“So unless your desire comes out of love of life—that comes out of the realization that you are a being of light, an emanation of God—not an unworthy ego that’s got to prove itself and improve itself and go through all these processes of  self-flagellation. Only if it comes out of that inner most Source that is unlimited—and that is not personal, it’s not individual. It is the Self that flows through you. . . . And our faith in realizing that ‘That is what I am, not what anyone told me. Not whatever is on that PDF file, but what is at the source of pure consciousness. Then I am liberated.’” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 08, 2009.

Student Comment: I always get this sense that there’s this core Ahankar, “I.” And what the “I” wants is “a better life, nicer things, less problems.” But it doesn’t want to dissolve itself. That’s what’s so radical. In the end, when push comes to shove, it’s like, “I wanna forget these certain things that my mom did, but I mean I love my mom. I’m not going to let go of my mom in that she’s a mom, and she gave birth to me.” Those kind of ultimate ego boundaries are to me what’s so difficult.

“The Buddha, to become Buddha, had to leave his family,” recalls Shunyamurti, the spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “He left his role as the prince who would have become the king. He left the dharma. He left all of that to become Buddha so that he could then come back and offer them a path to enlightenment.” And although we don’t literally have to leave our family or karmic responsibilities, “There’s an internal identification that does have to be let go of so that our Godself can then be present for them.”

“In classical India, there were four goals of life: Artha, Kama, Dharma, and Moksha.” Artha meaning monetary wealth, Kama meaning sensual pleasures, Dharma meaning ethical and social responsibility, and Moksha meaning the desire for liberation. “But when Buddha came he said ‘That’s nonsense. Forget Artha, Kama, and Dharma. Go directly for Moksha. ‘It doesn’t make sense wasting your life in those early kinds of desires because they’ll ensnare you.’” So, if you have the opportunity, go for the Moksha. Go for the Supreme Liberation. Recorded the afternoon of Tuesday, December 8, 2009.

“Sri Ramana Maharshi has said that the Real Self is the state in which the word ‘I’ does not arise; not even implicitly as a concept. This might seem like a paradox,” argues Shunyamurti, the spiritual founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “How can it be a self if there’s no I? But when the I arises, the Real is split open,” into subject/object, I/you (i.e. duality). And this journey into binary opposition is sustained by the use of language. Language may have its benefits when it comes to communication—and thus sciences, logic, etc—but it can not exist in the Real. “So the Real cannot actually be graphed by science or logic or any system of thought. So every system of thought comes to a point where it no longer serves us. . . . What the yogis have discovered is . . . no system of understanding can grasp Reality. The only way to grasp the Real is to realize that you are the Real.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, December 3, 2009.

Student Question: Is it possible for a true leader to emerge within today’s world? I feel like we have to come to a place like this—where we exclude the world out there—in order to cut through our own Maya and the Maya of others, and the society at large.

“We don’t exclude the world. We invite the world, and we want to become a model of a functioning community that can act in ways that are true and authentic,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “All historians who have studied this subject recognize that civilizations have life spans. They’re born, they have a Golden Age, they expand on the basis of the wisdom of the founding fathers and mothers, etc . . . and it becomes more and more corrupted as they gain more profit. The ego appropriates everything. Pretty soon they become like those they originally rebelled against, and their freedom now turns into a self-enslavement and an enslavement of others. They become so corrupt that they cannot survive, and they gradually die.”

“Today we’re at the point of the death of a global civilization. And the system is too corrupted and sick to allow a leader, like the kind that you hypothetically mentioned, to survive. . . . And so we are at a time now in which the fall cannot be prevented . . .but now we’re at a point that—because it is global and planet-wide—and because it is not only political, but it is also ecological . . . it has to be resolved in a far more radical way than could be done in any ordinary, conventional mindset. And this requires a quantum leap in our understanding of the nature of reality as being very than our ego minds have presented it to us as. And that requires a transcendence of the ego and a downloading of Cosmic Intelligence. And nothing short of that is going to help.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

Student Question: We were reading an essay yesterday about the spiritual path and this point one reaches when one has the knowing and understanding that every action has immeasurable consequences. Can you elaborate on these immeasurable consequences?

“The world is one whole,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Everyone is interconnected. And this entanglement “even transcends what we think of the universe.” So anything that happens in any galaxy, in any culture—even in the unconscious mind—“will have an effect on the whole. . . . We are all connected.” And the more we are dedicated to the spiritual path, the more powerful are the effects we can have on the world. “And we have that ability to set the whole world on fire again with spiritual love and bliss if we’re willing to do it all the way, not just halfway.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

There is a paradoxical statement in the Vedas that says, “God shall be worshiped by none but God,” reveals Shunyamurti, the spiritual leader of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “You’re not allowed, and you cannot worship God unless you realize you are God. That is what real worship of God means, that you realize the Godhood, otherwise it’s not true worship.” And when we realize that we are gods and goddesses, “And we realize what that means is not, ‘Oh the ego is a god over others.’ No, but one has surrendered the ego to the true God-consciousness. Then we are free to see each other in a state of unconditional love.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

“Today we are here to give thanks to the Source of our Being,” says Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. We give thanks to the harvest. “We give thanks for the fact that nature . . . provides for us the food whereby we can continue our lives.” And we must also give thanks for the community—whose cooperation allows the harvest to take place. So today we give thanks to the community, nature, and the Source from which all thanks spring. And despite the narcissism of the ego—and our false identification with it—we must give thanks “for the fact that our nature has been created by God in such a way that we have the capacity to achieve liberation.” Which is really the greatest blessing of all. “So why not accept the offer our divine nature makes to us . . . and achieve liberation, and then offer that to others. And then we’ll have a world of thankfulness.” Recorded on the afternoon of Thursday, November 26, 2009.

“The odd thing,” as Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, observes, “is that people want more than anything to be seen, and yet they’re terrified of being seen because they’re afraid of what will be seen. And there’s so much we want to hide, and yet we have hidden from ourselves that which is best in us.” As Shunyamurti reminds us, our true nature is Satchitananda: Being, Awareness, and Bliss. “But we have somehow generally cut ourselves off from that.” And in exchange, we have accepted a false self-image given to us by the unconscious minds of our parents and later by society as a whole.

But “each human organism is simply a portal for the one Cosmic Mind to flow through. And so each of us is That. We are the source of all power, all beauty, all love—everything that we’re looking for in the outer world, we actually are that. And because the world—being a dream—has the structure of a mirage, you can’t find it out there because what you will always find out there will be the shadow again that you took in as an identity that then gets projected onto the other.” And this shadow, this idea of something “out there” that will complete us comes from a sense of lack. “Lack gets installed with the ego. It’s part of the ego. The ego has the structure of a doughnut; there’s always a hole in the middle. And it’s always looking to fill that. . . . And the only way out of that, again, is to be free of the vulnerability of the ego that is protected by the shells of defense mechanisms, and be willing to stand naked in Reality, beyond the ego identity. Beyond the known. Beyond any certainties that our mind can provide. And be fully present to the Real.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 24, 2009.

“There’s a field called transpersonal psychology that’s popular these days. But,” reveals Shunyamurti, the spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute, “it’s kind of a misnomer because psychology deals with the personal. When you really get transpersonal, you are also transpsychological. . . . There is that which is trans or metapsychological within us—that’s what we call the spiritual.” And the first mistake that many people make on the spiritual path is identifying with the personal rather than the transpersonal. The personal/psychological realm is a labyrinth but “you can transcend that whole dimension of your being if you’re willing to disidentify from the person.”

Shunyamurti explains that it’s similar to watching “a movie that you really like, and you identify with the character. When you’re watching that movie, you're not in your seat in the theater anymore, you're in the screen. You’ve identified with the character. And you're going through what the character is going through, and you're feeling all the anxiety, you know, ‘Will the villain defeat the hero?’ or whatever is going on. And yet, the moment the film becomes boring, you're back in your seat, and you’re saying, “Wow that’s a lousy film,” and you're out of it. All you gotta do is realize your ego’s a lousy film.” It’s as simple as that. “And the moment you realize, ‘I don’t need to do that anymore. I’m free. I’m done.’ Then you're out.” “That’s what all the spiritual paths are about. It all comes down to that. You can read a million books, but it all boils down to that very simple thing: You are that, just stop believing in anything else—and silence the mind that continues the labyrinth and this merry-go-round of suffering that you're on—and the moment you do that you’re free. So that’s all we’re doing in meditation, is liberating ourselves from an illusion that was never real in the first place.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, November 19, 2009.