Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

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.

“The paradox of the spiritual journey is that, in reality, all of us are already enlightened,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “We are always already liberated because there is only one Real, one Truth, one Beingness. The rest is illusion. . . . But . . . the Supreme Being, in order to enjoy all of the possibilities of experience, all the possible permutations of potentiality, has created Maya, the illusion of separateness.” We have lost the knowledge of our Divine Nature, “and it is a necessary loss of that knowledge that enables us to gain something else. And that something else includes courage and virtue—and the potential of discovering ever more within the realm of potentiality. To make this world . . . into the most beautiful flow of consciousness in action, in harmony—in the realization of unity in the diversity. To bring to the illusion the very power of Truth.” “And it’s that capacity—to bring the Light into the darkness—that makes one’s illumina

Student Question: If I understood what you were saying before, we should not be thinking about the past. We should not be paying attention to a moment that is not now. It seems so difficult because we are so used to having a story, right? “Yes. And that story limits you,” reminds Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “To whatever extent, it gives you a defined identity, and defined goals; it limits your possibilities. And then you don’t have free will. You can choose to will what you want, but you can’t change what you want to want. Freedom only comes when you can want to want something different. . . . But if you are infinite potentiality, then you’re free. And you’re not identified even with the gender of your body or the age of your body or the nationality or—any of the things that limit your possibility. Why not be totally free?” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 5, 2010.

Student Comment: I have a question on the fragments of the ego. You said it develops from people imprinting on you, so you get little bits of this and that. So they’re all ultimately unrelated pieces trying to work together. “Well, you relate them. You make up relations. You try to with whatever power of mind you have; you make up stories,” reveals Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And you take all those fragments and you make a narrative out of it; you string them all together. But the narrative is a fantasy.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 5, 2010.

Student Question: When you are sublimating the lower chakras, specifically from one to seven, what exactly are you purifying? “That’s the core of the ego,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. The ego fears “that it doesn’t really exist, that it’s just a mass of fragmented emotions,” which is reminiscent of the baby’s experience before it gains motor skills. “So chakra one contains that ultimate fear of helplessness.” And that feeling of helplessness is absolutely terrifying. “And so when you get into that core of anxiety, and surrender, even that, to the Supreme Reality, and you can witness it without fear, without anxiety—without needing a body, whether in it’s in good condition or in completely dysfunctional condition—then that surrender allows one to rise to the ultimate bliss.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 5, 2010.

Excerpt: “The silence that we share here is far more important than the words, and the connection that we make. . . . And so, this is a place to talk in a way that people rarely talk together in other contexts. . . . [And] that’s important: that we can think out-of-the-box together in new ways about what life is really about. . . . According to the neurobiologists today, none of you are in this room; you’re actually inside your brain watching a movie about this room. . . . We’re in the matrix; that’s why that movie was so popular. But is that true? . . . now, the most recent discoveries in neurobiology include the understanding of what they call ‘neuroplasticity,’ which means that the brain can repair itself. And it has the capacity to add synapses that didn’t exist before, and to begin to use certain parts of the brain for other purposes when necessary. And to achieve a greater capacity of whatever sort that is asked for by consciousness. So, it’s not the case that it’s a one-way relationship that the brain

Student Question: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the differences between being in the now, the present, during meditation vs. when you’re going about doing errands and other activities in the world. “In the field of yoga, these two different possibilities of what you can achieve in the sitting meditation and what you can achieve in the daily life meditation are referred to on the one hand as nirvikalpa samadhi, and on the other hand as sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi,” maintains Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “In sitting meditation, you can reach such a state where the ego completely dissolves, and there is a realization of, not only the oneness of all things, but of the presence of the past and the future; one enters the eternal now. . . . The greatest yogis say that that’s not enough. We want to be able to be in a state in which the mind is silent and we experience that eternal now even while we’re walking around and working and doing whatever we need to

“Sat Yoga,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica,” is the science of becoming an avatar,” a realized incarnation of the Supreme Being in the phenomenal plane. Becoming an avatar is the greatest blessing that one can bestow upon the world, the most compassionate act that one can commit. But, as the saying goes, “with great power comes great responsibility,” and, therefore, not everyone may be ready to make this transformation; this act of surrender to God. “So first of all, everyone must ask themselves the question, ‘Do I want to be an avatar? Am I ready to undertake that incredible transfiguration?’ and ‘Am I prepared to do what it takes to achieve the reality of being an avatar, not just lip service?” Entering avatar-consciousness means giving up ego-consciousness, the false sense of autonomy and separation from the world. It’s very simple, but not easy. “And as we know, there’s a huge struggle against the externalizing tendency of the egoic mind. And this is why we have

“We have come together to meditate. But why? What do we wish to achieve through meditation,” asks Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. We wish to achieve liberation from the ego—and specifically from the lowest, imaginary part of the ego—for whom life is a constant oscillation between desire and suffering. All satisfaction, a mirage. “The mirages create suffering because they create false expectations and delusions. And embedded in them is fear because the ego is alienated from its true nature. And its true nature—the True Nature of your being—is of course one with all that is, and therefore there is no fear and no desire because you already are, and have, everything you need within.” And although Sri Ramana Maharshi himself once said that meditation could not bring about liberation, he was referring to meditation on an object. Nonetheless, Sri Ramana was a strong advocate of the practice of “Atma-vichara” or self-enquiry. “Atma-vichara means to realize who you are, beyond the e