Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

Student Question: When you’re in Maya can you realize God? And then also, is Maya created for you to get back to God? “Yes you can only see God when you're in Maya. And you can only see Maya when you're in God, this is true. Maya and God are two poles of the same ultimate reality,” reminds Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And it is given [to] us so that we can—by understanding it—get the juice out of it, the nectar, the divine nectar that is contained within every suffering, within every negative situation there is some gem of wisdom that we can extract from it and grow into greater God-consciousness. So rather than simply get negative about the negative, become a scientist seeking what is the hidden jewel, what is the hidden divine nectar that I can take out of this apparent disaster, and realize that it is a great blessing?” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 9, 2010.

“We are all beings of bliss. Do you experience that? Bliss is our natural state,” provides Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But once the Self, that is blissful, mis-identifies Itself with the physical organism and with the ego image, the ego complex, you could say, then It loses Its bliss. . . . So have you ever bought a new car, and soon after you drive it off of the lot it gets dented? And suddenly this new car that felt very heavenly, that made you feel wonderful because you bought the car you really wanted, and everything was perfect—the first dent takes all of that away. . . . So all of us are living with that: we go from an ‘I’ to an ‘I’-dentity; the ‘I’ gets dented. And once we have an identity, then we are filled with [a] sense of hurt cause when you're dented, you're hurt, and you don’t feel perfect; you feel defective. You feel used. And even abused. And so most of us are riding around in these vehicles, these car-bodies, creating karma, and feeling more and more ab

Excerpt: “As you all know, I’m sure, it goes quite against the grain of this time period to be building a monastery. . . . [and] spiritual retreats of the old type are falling away, losing their credibility, their integrity, the interest of people in leading a life devoted to contemplation of God, and a life of what has been called ‘blessed simplicity.’ And yet—because of all of that, and because of the hyperactivity of the modern world, and the disappointment that we all have come to feel about the projects of the modern age, and of science itself, as having led to a dead end, and to the destruction of our ecosystem, and to the un-sustainability of the modern way of life—there is a new interest—there’s a new wave of interest in creating spiritual communities in the world. But somehow we have to put the old wine into a new bottle that makes it attractive to the modern mind.” “So our approach here is very secular, and it’s open to anyone from any spiritual background. And we don’t focus on whatever name you h

Student Comment: When you mentioned the “Hundredth Yogi Effect,” or critical mass, I remembered all of the other spiritual traditions, such as Christianity, Buddhism, etc., which all had great expectations to transform the world as well. I agree that the problem of the world today is a spiritual problem, but I have noticed that there is a continual falling away of spiritual movements, and I wanted to know why this is. “The spiritual traditions that are now dying . . . were formed at what’s called the ‘Axial Age.’ They were what sustained humanity as the human ego became darker and denser and more materialistic,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And there has been a fall. ‘The Fall of Man’ is a true concept. And these religions were to maintain the Light in the darkness, but they all recognized that the darkness was increasing. . . . And this was understood: that we would come to such a climax, you could say, of the situation on earth in which the souls would reach t

Student Question: In school today we were learning about how to teach kids to read. And in one particular model, the first phrase that you teach the kids is that reading is thinking. I heard that and, I don’t know why, but it really rubbed me the wrong way. Is that true, that reading is thinking? “Well, it depends on what thinking is,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Reading is entering into the mind of another being, of another consciousness.” So a better question is not “Do you read?” but “Who do you read?” “Literally, reading is an act of altering your state of consciousness. That’s what it is, it’s a drug. And if you read something very powerful, it can bring you into chakra seven.” However, today, reading has fallen into “this horizontal mastery of some skill sets on the physical plane. That’s not what reading is about at all. It’s the ladder to Heaven.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 26, 2010.

“One of the bhajans that was playing during our preliminary meditation was sung by Lata Mangeskar, a very famous early Bollywood singer when it was still relatively pure, and they were singing mantras. And the first mantra was ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram.’ And this translates as ‘the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.’ And the aim of meditation,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the Good, True, and Beautiful spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “is to find that in yourself which is eternally True, supremely Good, and infinitely Beautiful. And what’s important is that you have faith that you have that within you that corresponds to those attributes. Everyone does.” However, to deal with the world, we created an ego structure. “And once we created that ego structure, it veiled the truth of our being. It veiled our radiance. And it veiled our goodness.” But the veiling was an illusion. And we have never been anything but the Satyam Shivam Sundaram. “And so all we’re doing in meditation is remembering t

Student Comment: During the teaching, you talked about how the ego is formed early on. So I was wondering how it forms. It has to come from somewhere. “Humans are like monkeys; we imitate the other. And so the infant takes in the mirroring from the parents—the mother, primarily—and begins to express that back, and that creates the first structure. It’s called the ‘Mirror Stage,’” delineates Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And then more and more elements get added and built around that, and as the child is called certain things . . . negative and positive signifiers, they get attached to the identity, and the structure builds according to the clues that the child picks up from the parents as to the role they want the child to play.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 26, 2010.

“I wish you all a wholehearted welcome,” offers Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And that’s important because there’s very little that happens in the world these days that is wholehearted.” The contemporary ego structure is hyper-fragmented. It can’t love. It can’t trust. It is paralyzed by “the fear of letting go of those beloved defense mechanisms” that cause us all of our suffering. And it has developed all of these defense mechanisms to deal with a very decadent, and even demonic, culture. And if we can put down all of the ego’s defense mechanisms, all of its narratives, and make a wholehearted effort to “dive into the silence,” then we will find “the salvation of our being. That’s where we put out the fire of suffering, and we are healed by the waters of life.” “But the world doesn’t value, any longer, this opportunity to dive deeply into the inner silence. It values busyness and distraction and continual production—activity—in which we lose our soul in the o

Student Question: Could you please expand on the gestalt diagram (see below) that was pictured in the book we’re reading in our Prema-culture class, Signs of Meaning in the Universe? The issue “goes back to Gestalt Psychology. And the Gestaltists realized that our perception is always in the form of a foreground and a background,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “We tend to focus on the foreground, and the background drops out. . . . But whatever we choose as foreground is indeed a construct, and is culturally created—most of the objects that we perceive, we perceive because we have linguistic concepts that delineate those objects for us. And if we didn’t have such constructs embedded in language and cultural values, etc., we would see the world very differently because, in fact, everything is connected.” “But then there is the next question of, well, ‘Who is perceiving both the foreground and the background?’ The perceiver is not on the paper; the perceiver is nev

Student Question: There are two gates upon arriving at the Sat Yoga Ashram, previously known as the North Gate and the South Gate. Now they’re Shiva Gate and Vishnu Gate. Could you please describe the two entrances to the ashram? “Vishnu and Shiva are two archetypes,” reveals Shunyamurti, the archetypal leader of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “They are part of one of the Hindu Trinities” of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—the Creator, the Sustainer, and the Destroyer. “And so, there are people whose personalities tend toward the archetype of Vishnu, which is that archetype that chooses the life in duality, the expression of the greatest joy and celebration of a life that is devoted to the service of God. . . . And when one attunes to the archetype of Shiva, one is directly dissolving that egoic separation between the self and God. And one is living in the ultimate union of the two. So by the destruction of the ego, the Godself is incarnated as the Self, not as a separate being that one loves, adores—or is

Student Comment: The “pressure chamber” that you’ve always talked about all of the sudden came to my mind. Is this something that can last throughout one’s entire spiritual journey, like the “dark night of the soul?” There is this constant feeling that—because there is so much to learn and so much to discipline—one never leaves the pressure chamber until the end: Chakra Seven or death. “Well, remember: if you put carbon under enough pressure it becomes a diamond. So that’s how the soul is transformed,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “The more pressure that you’re under, the quicker the transformation will happen. And it can’t be done without pressure. And that’s why the whole world is now under tremendous pressure—and why there are no solutions of any ordinary kind: it’s forcing us to recognize that there is a non-ordinary reality that we must enter if we’re going to solve the problems that the world has.” “And every spiritual tradition has always rec

Student Question: What is a koan? “A koan is a voluntary way of putting your mind under pressure,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But life itself is a koan. And it’s because people can’t solve the riddle of their own life that they enter into a spiritual path. And we sit down and meditate and think about it. And, in the effort to solve that riddle, we will break through into our own liberation. But, no one can escape the fact that they are in an incoherent level of life when they’re in the ego, and they find themselves doing things they don’t really want to do, and they haven’t a clue why they’re doing it. . . . And so that riddle—if you become focused on it enough—will cause you to reach such a level of perplexity and frustration, that you’ll focus on solving it, and there will be a breakthrough to higher consciousness.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.

Student Question: Could you say a little bit more about the levels of freedom and predetermination that you just mentioned? “At every moment, you have the freedom to will whatever you wish; you can make choices. But do you have the freedom to choose what you wish to choose,” asks Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “It’s a higher logical level. Do you have the freedom to choose who you think you are, that is making those choices?” The ego’s will is a set of predetermined biological and cultural programs. “And yet, at any moment, you are free to transcend the ego, to disidentify from it through an act of radical detachment. And through that act you can free yourself. . . . But you could say that even that act of freeing yourself was determined by the trajectory of your own soul that chose a certain egoic structure that had enough ‘free will’ in it—enough give of the fixations of that determination—that enabled it to escape through a crack in the egoic logic.” Recorded on the even

Student Comment: I would like to learn more about discernment. “It is the key to escaping from the ego’s event horizon and the illusions that the ego throws up in front of us and cause us to believe that we’re happy when we’re really not, and to believe that somebody else is the cause of problems when we have problems, and to believe that things are irreparable and there’s no way out, and falling into depression or anxiety, etc.,” discerns Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “So, Viveka [discernment] is the capacity to discern when your ego is deceiving you from a situation of truth. . . . And at the state of Viveka, or discernment, you realize that it’s not real: your mind is creating illusions—hallucinations, demons—that are imaginary, that are disturbing you. And once you can discern that, you can dissolve those negative forces.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 19, 2010.

Student Question: I have a question about the use of medication with illnesses. There are many philosophies that say that one should not take medication when one is sick because the sickness is a process of natural/karmic purification. But I am very confused as to which is the correct option. Could you please provide some clarity on the topic? “No, I think that if one can heal one’s sickness, one’s 'dis-ease,' it’s useful and important to do that as an act of love,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the doctor of the soul at the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But, it’s important to do it without evading what is the meaning of that illness; it is expressing something. And if you only take pills, as in the allopathic method of treatment in which there is no meaning to the disease, then that ultimate disturbance, which is of the soul, will come back in another way; the karma will find a way to hit you. . . . So, it doesn’t mean that we have to continue the suffering, but it does mean that we have an obligation to auth

Student Question: I’ve never quite understood the meaning of the crucifixion. Could you please explain it a little bit? “Crucifixion has many levels to it,” begins Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “It is a crucifixion of duality, but there are many dualities: subject object duality; good and bad duality; desire and fear duality. And we are trapped in the mirage created by that duality. And because we want the illusion of the enjoyments that we think will come from the possession of other people, money, any kind of egoic power, that keeps us trapped—our attachments, our addictions—which all come from a self-image of being an entity. [As] soon as there is an entity, that entity is pinned to the world in which it appears. . . . And the spiritual journey of discipleship is the medicine that gets you off the cross because now, those disciplines pin you to the vertical; they force you to be vertical rather than horizontal. It is a higher ethic; a higher dharma. And it’s

“Sri Ramana was often emphatic in saying that meditation is a non-objective process,” reminds Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But it is also important that we emphasize that neither is meditation a subjective process. . . . And the word ‘subject’ has important ramifications. . . . Subject means ‘under the control of.’ A subject of the king or the queen of England, for example, a political subject; one is subject to various influences. And the ego is, in fact, an objectified subject, or subjectified object, but it is subjected to the objective image of itself and of the world. So to escape those influences, we must transcend subjectivity as well as objectivity.” And, as it turns out, transcending this subjectivity is the one way to truly help the world out of this “knot” that it has been stuck in, “by meditatively sacrificing the egoic identity back into the foundation—into the ocean of consciousness that is nondual—that transcends first person, second person, thi

Student Comment: Before you said that memories are all illusion. So what if somebody has this very difficult situation in their life, maybe when they were children or whatever. What about . . . “How do you know it’s true? How do you know they’re not making up that memory, and it’s just happening now?” asks Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “No matter what you think you remember, you’re memories deceive you. . . . So, what is it that really traumatizes us? It’s a thought that occurs now, in this moment. It has nothing to do with the past. The past never happened. We’re making it all up. Now is all there is.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 8, 2010.