Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

Excerpt: “Philosophy in the modern West . . . distinguished religion from science. Religion was mythical, and science dealt with facts. . . . Postmodern Western philosophy now conceives that science itself is a myth. . . . When it comes to ultimate questions, science has no answer to them; it has to presume an origin, but it doesn’t even attempt to account for it because it cannot account for anything ultimate because that would be religion. But if, in fact, there’s no difference between religion and science, and if they are both mythological constructs, then it’s important to understand what myth is. And as Joseph Campbell has explained very clearly in all of his works, myth is metaphor. But what is it that’s being metaphorized?” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 26, 2012.

Excerpt:  “We are here to realize the true self.  The implication of that is that we have not been living in our authentic self, but in some false - unreal - persona… and if we are not living in our real self then we are not living in the real world either…  and if the world is false and the self is false, then things are going to happen that are unsustainable because the false cannot survive the test of truth… and because so many on this planet are now living in the false self, we have a false world that is collapsing… you cannot live in that state of hypocrisy without karma hitting you pretty hard….  So everyone is getting lessons in karma nowadays but we are not here to worry about the political issues of the world and their karma… we are here to work out our own karma…  to make sure that we are not secretly killing elephants when we are pledged to protect them… to make sure that if we are Sat Yogis, we are living up to our vows and living a yogic life and living as what Linji - the great Zen master - the

Student Question:  What is déjà vu?

Student Question:  How can I know if my meditation practice has stagnated?

Student Question:  How can we guide children from a very early age to find their awareness?

Student Question:  Is the body a reflection of the mind?

Student Question:  Something that I have been thinking about recently is this idea of “the third.”  I know you mentioned before when we were talking about the “I of the Statement” and the “I of the Enunciation” that there is also the “Third I”; the “I of Awareness” or the “I of Shiva.”  We have also studied a module in which the father comes in as the third to break the mother and child dyad, and I am sure there are many other examples, but I was just curious about the significance of this idea of the third and what it really means.

Excerpt:  "Most religions are the worship of a yogi - they are constituted by that….  Christ was a yogi – Buddha was a great yogi – Mohammed was a yogi – Moses was a yogi… and so most of the religions today are either worshiping the yogi or worshiping the book that the yogi wrote, or was channeled through him… but religion was originally simply the act of becoming a yogi… so the religions that we have today are indirect and there is certainly benefit in worshiping a great yogi, but that is very different from attaining the state of consciousness that Christ attained or that Buddha attained….  And so merely worshiping and trying to imitate the life of a great yogi, while an important step, keeps one within the ego… it doesn't transcend the ego into direct God realization, and that is what we are here to do… to become the goal that those great yogis pointed at for us….  Christ would have considered Christianity to be heretical – he never said worship me – be one with the Father – I and the Father are one - you

Student Question:  If Jesus and Buddha were both great yogis then why did they both reach different conclusions about God?  Jesus spoke about his Father yet Buddhism denies God.

Student Question:  Do Vāsanās and Sanskaras have the same meaning?

Student Question:  Do we just have to sit in silence long enough to dissolve the discomfort that arises, or do we need to analyze it?

Student Question:  Why is it that when I have a deep or a good meditation I sometimes want to cry?   Aren’t I supposed to be experiencing bliss?

Student Question:  In meditation when I finally reach some silence it is common that I will then be immediately disrupted or thrown out of it and I don’t really understand why that happens?  I even experience the sensation of losing balance.  Do you know why that is?

Student Question:  In your talk tonight you spoke about going through this mirror of unbearable knowledge, but do you go through it or do you witness it?

Student Question:  How do we learn when on an everyday basis we are in this whirlpool of being aware and wanting to transcend the ego but then at other times being really chaotic. Sometimes that chaos manifests itself physically and then the next day you can be peaceful again so how do we learn to stay in the silence?

Student Question:  Is it possible that Gods Lila is really creating all the suffering in the world?

When you talk about missing your window of opportunity and synchronicity I don’t really understand how that fits in with gods perfect plan.  How is it that you are able to miss a window of opportunity if at the end it is only one step in the path of the perfect plan?

Student Comment:  At the beginning of your talk you said something to the affect that in reality we don’t control anything and in what I would call the ‘business world’, people get so stuck in their power struggles and beliefs and certainties.  They believe that they are going to make something happen in a certain way but often they actually make the situation much worse.  It seems common for negotiations to be full of tensions and bad feelings and lower emotions when in reality what’s really going on or how the situation can be resolved has nothing to do with the emotional and egoic eruptions that people in business most of the time knock against each other.

Student Question:  What is dharmaraj in a more formal sense?

Student Question:  I felt your teaching tonight was very appropriate.  I have been thinking a lot this week about a question which I have always had with Christianity.  Even though I know it is a very devotional religion, I have never had that kind of experience with it.  Ironically, it was this week sometime that I was listening to one of those gospel songs and all of a sudden I just broke out in tears.  The closest thing that I could put it to was this feeling of being saved by Christ or God, but it was this very strong feeling of sin having been taken away by another.  I know I have heard you speak in the past about how certain religions have niches or specializations or accentuations in certain areas more then others and I have just wanted to know where this fits in and what its value is?   I think you kind of spoke to that tonight in how it can be used as a stepping stone and not as a hindrance.