Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

Student Question: How do I reconcile the understanding of the urge for purification without the perception that I am acting from a place of fear? “I think it is appropriate to have fear of an impure ego, of an unconscious mind that, through its impurity, could lead you to great suffering. So, not fear in the usual sense, but prudence,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And if one hasn’t worked out the unconscious issues, complexes, phantasies, desires, one’s life will be driven by those—and usually you're driven off a cliff. So, before that happens, the purification is very important. . . . I would say that the first order of business for everyone is purification of the unconscious. And this used to be what education was for. It wasn’t to learn mathematics or geography . . . it was to purify the unconscious mind so you could be a free human being.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 21, 2010.

Student Comment: The way I have always understood free will is that it is not freedom of choice but freedom from choice; freedom from having to be faced with “Should I do this? Should I do that?” Freedom from that, and just living in a way in which you're not making choices, but you’re just flowing. “You can have it at any moment,” reveals Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “The consciousness doesn’t want to give up the illusion of its freedom. And it thinks it can attain freedom, but it’s always a false freedom, by following one course of action vs. another. So the ego is obsessed with trying to improve its state of freedom, even in the very act of giving up its real freedom. . . . And in its ceaseless striving for freedom, it enslaves itself more and more and more deeply. And the only way to achieve real freedom is letting go of that whole project of striving to achieve it at the ego level.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 21, 2010.

Student Comment: If, when your body passes and dies, your Higher Self and your ego, then, together, find a new host, or a new organism, or they go their separate ways and the ego finds a separate person, and the Higher Self finds something else . . . “No, it’s not like that, because the Higher Self is not a thing, is not an entity, just as God is not—this whole world is consciousness,” reminds Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. To give an example, “think of your brain as a transceiver, like a radio: it’s receiving energy waves that it will translate then into thoughts, images, feelings, etc., and operate your body. But, if you're listening to a radio and you turn it on and there’s a man talking, you don’t believe there’s a man actually in that radio, do you? . . . So in the same way, the Real Self is not in the body; it’s not localizable.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 14, 2010.

Student Question: How does the mind create the body? “To really understand this requires a very high level of understanding of the nature of reality,” begins Shunyamurti, the research director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “There is a higher level of reality in which the whole complex of belief systems—of materialism itself—is recognized as an artifact of consciousness. You may believe you're living in an external, physical world, but that belief is happening within your consciousness. This is ‘the matrix.’ And, it’s only when you can recognize that—that the entire world is consciousness, including what you call the body—that there is a conscious power, then, to shift the image of that body, or the code, the digital code, which can shift the analog code.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 14, 2010.

Student Question: Could you talk a little bit about object constancy? “It’s a developmental stage that is talked about in the field of psychology in which, as an infant, when the mother leaves the room, the infant doesn’t lose the sense of her existence and her connection,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “So this pattern of not having an internalized object of an unconditionally loving other, which is then usually externalized as a God figure, if there isn’t that constancy, it’s kind of a supplement—which is why religion has always been of psychological importance for stabilizing the ego consciousness. But if that isn’t in there, then one will be liable to states of insecurity and anxiety and fear—phobias—that can also be created out of this. . . . And meditation is one of the best ways to cure it, because if you'll keep the mind silent, and free of mental objects, of any kind, then what becomes constant is the Self.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 14

“Despite the fact that the lights can get very bright sometimes, and the darkness can get very dark in one’s life, reality is not black or white, and that’s one of the difficulties that people have in handling reality, they want things to be clear: this or that. And it’s not that way,” maintains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. One striking example is the belief in God. On the one hand, someone who has an imaginarized belief in God as a person or entity is unlikely to drop that belief of God as Divine Object (or Subject) in favor of the realization of Emptiness. On the other hand, you have people in a very dense egoic consciousness who can’t believe in a spiritual reality of being, or a higher dimensional intelligence, or anything of the sort, at all—let alone God. “And I’ve worked with many people over the years who can’t, although they say they don’t, they actually can’t. And when you analyze more deeply what the issue is, you find out that not only can’t the person believe

Student Question: Could you please expand more on the concept of vampirism? “I think the vampire is the dominant archetype today,” argues Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And that’s because the ego, in its most negative form, becomes a vampire: it sucks the life energy out of others, but it has nothing to give. And so, life has become vampiric: whole societies are vampiric on other societies. . . . And this same process is true at every level, including the most intimate relationships, which is why they don’t last very long, you know: you suck whatever blood you can get, and the other one doesn’t have any more—you leave and find your next victim. And so relationships have become that kind of pattern. . . . And just as we have an oil shortage, we now have a blood shortage, a love shortage, so that the vampires are dying. And you know the myth of the golden spike, and they hide from the Christ symbol. They die in the face of God-consciousness. So the more that people awaken an

Student Comment: So there are some very fragile egos today. Isn’t so logical to realize, “OK, I’m so fragile. The only way out of this is to connect with the Almighty,” because you're so lost anyway, there’s nothing else that’s gonna hold you up but that. “Well a) they’re afraid to admit consciously that they need an Almighty, [and] b) they don’t believe there is an Almighty there,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And it’s not easy for object constancy to develop in the ego today; even God as an object, as an other that you want to connect to, requires a capacity to maintain a persistence of intention. But there’s too much chaos in the mind. And so there’s a momentary desire for that, and then the other chaotic fragments take over and you're back to your next drug. . . . So, it’s a really nasty brew that makes it almost impossible to get out of—except through reaching bottom, that will sometimes help. But these days people take the death drive in such a

“We could say that the ego is a veneereal disease,” diagnoses Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “because it’s a veneer over this vast soul consciousness which, in turn, sits upon an even vaster transfinite Atman consciousness. But this little veneer, that is in a state of dis-ease, prevents us from realizing this infinitude of our being. . . . So another metaphor for our condition in egoic consciousness would be a kind of veterinary disease. . . . Think of an elephant, elephants often in India represent the Atman. . . . So, you're an elephant, but there’s a flea in your ear. And this flea is a talking flea, and it’s talking to itself about its problems. And fleas have a lot of problems. They’re always fleeing and biting, and they're always worried that they're gonna get crushed, and they have an inferiority complex and they try to compensate for it, etc. But, anyway, the flea is talking in the ear of the elephant, and the elephant mistakenly believes that it’s its own thoughts

Student Comment: You spoke earlier of dissatisfaction, which reminded me of something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. I listened to a talk with a prominent spiritual figure, and he spoke about heaven and hell. He said that heaven is like being doomed to eternal famility, or familiarity. He went on to say that there’s no need to create in the absence of discontent, and that heaven is an upgrade of the illusion and hell is a downgrade. I’m just curious of what you have to say about that. “God did not create out of discontent; this world doesn’t exist because of discontent,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But once egos are put into the world, the egos have discontent because an ego is not real and therefore it feels lacking inside. And that discontent causes it to do something, or find someone, to make it feel whole and real. But nothing it does can take away that discontent.” And, in actuality, heaven is not really the goal of any religion. “What the religions

Meditation is paradoxical. All meditations is, is an attempt to stop trying to do anything. “How can you create a technique for not trying to do anything?” asks Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “If you do, then the very technique defeats the effort of not making any effort.” This is akin to the problem of self-reference which “has become a very big business, actually, since Bertrand Russell and Kurt Gödel. . . . Basically it comes down to the ‘liar’s paradox,’ you know, the guy from Crete who says ‘I’m lying.’ Is he telling the truth when he’s saying he’s lying? Well, if he’s telling the truth, he isn’t lying.” And, at the same time, if he’s lying then he’s telling the truth. “Anyway, you can go around and round forever in this, and this is basically all the ego is: it’s basically a voice in your head attacking you, and then you defend yourself against that voice. It’s two voices of self-reference, but they’re both delusional.” “And the problem is that the ego does

Student Question: Based on the studies and the scientific books that we’re been reading lately, such as Signs of Meaning in the Universe by Jesper Hoffmeyer, what would you say the relationship is between biology and quantum physics? “Well, they’re two different aspects. They deal at different levels of scale with the same phenomenon,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the scientific and spiritual research director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. You start with a photon, which has absolute freedom, but then once you move “into the realm of molecules and of organisms, then the amount of freedom is less.” However, following Arthur Young’s “reflexive arc,” freedom is regained in man. “But then even the mind becomes determined, as the ego does, and there has to be a consciousness beyond the ego that can observe and use the ego as a basis to transcend.” So we must now make a quantum—or evolutionary—leap “to go beyond biology. We went from physics to . . . chemistry . . . and then to biology, and now we have to move

Student Question: I would like to hear more about what is meant by the divine birth in the heart. The divine birth is an archetype. One can remember the story of the birth of Christ, the Immaculate Conception, or the birth of the Buddha from his mother’s side, symbolic of the birth into divine love at the heart chakra. “It is our birthright to experience the divine birth,” reveals Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “but most of us turn down the opportunity for that because we’re so attached to the ego. It’s as if the larva, the caterpillar, refuses to become the butterfly because it’s still too attached to munching those leaves and growing fat and crawling on the earth, and it doesn’t know the joy of flying as the butterfly. . . . But the divine birth, once it happens, once we are willing to dissolve the ego shell so that the birth can happen, is, initially, a birth of love, a birth of openness to the world again, a birth of wonderment, of aliveness.” It is a birth t

Student Question: I’ve been reading that technology—if used the right way—would enable a world in which money is not necessary, and that there would be no war because money would not exist. So I was wondering if that would be like Sat Yuga. “Yes, of course. And, yes, money is a fiction that is used as a mechanism of control,” adds Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And the money system is collapsing as well because the money system requires trust. . . . And it only lasts, as any Ponzi scheme does, as long as people have confidence. And now that that’s been lost, the game is collapsing. . . . And that’s when real wealth, again, will be able to emerge into consciousness because money is fictional wealth; it’s a representation of wealth. . . . But there will be no need for money when there is true love again among human beings. And love for the earth.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 16, 2010.

Student Question: When we saw the film on Ramana Maharshi, he talked about tapas, which is profound perception, and I wanted to ask you what exactly is profound perception? And he also talked about the mind turning inward. Can you explain that? Tapas is “making the mind very subtle so that you perceive that source from which thoughts arise,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And Ramana was very clear that all thoughts begin with the ‘I’ thought, and they’re related to the ‘I.’ And that ‘I’ always wants something, or is reacting to something. And once you get into that reaction, then all of the associations and conditionings, that have attached to the ‘I’ since childhood, glom onto it and create predetermined circuits of thought. But if you’ll go back to the source of the ‘I,’ prior to the linguistic expression of the ‘I,’ but the certainty of being Sat—it is that certainty, rather than language or representation of the ‘I,’ but the sense that is indubitable of bein

Student Question: Our relationship with technology has been novel in the past few centuries, but particularly in the last decades. And a friend of mine who was having knee surgery commented to me the other day how glad he was that he lives in the 21st century. Another person I encountered was captivated by her technology and what it can do. Does technology play a positive role because it seems that technology is also at the forefront of destroying the world? “Well it’s the use of technology at the service of the ego rather than at the service of the Divine Self that is the problem,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And so it is actually the lack of the highest possible technology, because we have externalized everything, because we think of ourselves as machines that have created a technology in our own image, in the image of the ego, that involves internal combustion engines, because we’re all combusting, exploding inside from our own ego conflicts—all of this is

“Yoga is about subtlety,” reveals Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “In the olden days, in the ancient culture, subtlety was a central concept. And in those days, if you had a map of all of Asia and Europe, and even other parts of the world, you would recognize that there was a single culture, a culture of yoga, that was the same whether you were in ancient Greece, or you were in Persia, or you were in China, or you were in India. And whether you went with a Taoist yogi, or a Buddhist yogi, or a Greek yogi, the concepts were the same.” And the essence of that teaching is “just be still. Silence the chattering mind so you can pay attention to the more subtle levels of the mind.” “The great yogi Empedocles, about 2500 years ago in Greece, was very famous for saying ‘even silence is a veil over the silence’ because the real silence only begins when there is no sense of a self trying to be silent; that already creates a shell around the real nucleus of the nucleus. As t

Student Question: Why is competition so prevalent in this society? “Because the ego’s an imitation: you become who you are by imitating others,” argues Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But deep down, you know you’re just an imitation, and an imitation is a phony. And so you hate the one you’ve imitated. Now, the only reason you imitated them was because you loved them, and desired them, and thought they were great. But once you have become their imitation, then you wanna kill them so they no longer exist to take away your sense that you're the real one, because whenever they appear, they’re a threat, now, to you. . . . So, the ego is always terrified that it’s an impostor. And, therefore, it has to be unique, and it has to be superior to the other or it can collapse easily into non-entityhood.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 16, 2010.

Student Comment: In my darkest moments, I was faced with the fact that I hated the other’s aliveness. I feel like it’s one of the things that, if there’s going to be love and compassion for the other, has to be overcome. I don’t know if it’s just the terror of seeing how dead one is inside that makes it so threatening when somebody else is alive, and maybe this isn’t as universal as I think, and that’s why I’m asking. “Well, it’s one way that it shows up. I think every ego envies, at an unconscious level, and hates people who it believes are happy. And especially if it’s a kind of happiness that is closed to them,” explains Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And it’s universal “that you pick a shadow figure to dehumanize because you believe that they are enjoying something you can’t enjoy. . . . So it’s universal in terms of the envy, but the way it shows up is different. But every ego is in a state of competitiveness with every other ego. And that competitiveness creates a ne

Student Question: The agencies of evil and greed operate around the world openly and freely because there is no retribution. Such arrogance. Is there retribution to be paid, or do they get away with murder? “No. There is ultimate justice in the universe,” assures Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “The law of karma reaches everywhere, but it’s not immediate. And in part, the reason why it cannot be immediate in this time period is that everyone participates in that evil to some extent, and therefore everyone deserves to suffer. And so the evil is the payment for evil. No one wants to live in an evil world, but no one’s willing to become good. And so it is the collective karma of the populations of the world that put up with evil in the society and the government—in whatever structures have been created that are accessories both before and after the fact. And it is our awakening from this internalized evil that is necessary if we’re going to change the world and bring