Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

Excerpt: “There is one sentence that sums up the essence of every spiritual path and it seems very simple, and yet to live it is the most difficult thing in the world. . . . ‘I am not the doer.’  The ‘I’ does nothing.  The ‘I’ is only a witness and yet how hard it is for us to give up the illusion of doership.  Isn’t that strange?  So the question is how do we get out of this illusion that I am the doer?  In the Bhagavad-Gita it says very clearly that the first step is not to be attached to the fruit of your actions, not to be attached to the results. . . . And so perhaps one of the first stages is the realization that we can’t control reality. . . . So it requires disidentifying from both the bodily organism and the mind.  The mind may continue to think but you are not the mind. . . . And when we are realizing that we are not the body or the mind, the other benefit is that if the body and the mind have any dis-ease or if there is any pain or discomfort in the body, it doesn’t pertain to us.  You can witness

Excerpt: “The ancient yogis had a realization that Indra, the Supreme Intelligence, had a net that is the universe. And at each focal point of the net, each cross, each place where the threads met, was a jewel, a diamond. And each jewel in the net of Indra reflected every other jewel; the entire net was reflected in each gem. And the net is infinitely large, with an infinite number of these diamonds. And each of these jewels is perfect. And it reflects the perfection of all beings, all diamonds . . . all manifestations of the One Self that appears as this infinite multiplicity. But the net unifies all of us. And in the minds of each of us is the entirety of the All, the Absolute. And every other diamond that is reflected in your consciousness is a reflection of your own perfect beingness. But each diamond is slightly different than the next; they are all unique. Each shines with a slightly different color, different facets, different shape, different and unique beauty, and yet the beauty is perfect in each on

Excerpt: “Each and every one of you here is already a perfect Buddha. Do you know that? When we meditate, what we are doing is simply letting go of our forgetfulness of that minor fact. And when we begin to remember that minor fact, our life transforms forever. And we gain the courage to live from our heart instead of out of fear and a need to conform, to be approved of by others, to follow the conventional way of living to get some sense of identity and approval, because once you realize that you are the perfect Buddha, then whatever you choose to do comes out of the perfection of wisdom. . . . Why lose your bliss when, in fact, for the perfect Buddha, who is functioning through the body, nothing ever goes wrong? This is a perfect universe. And you can trust that because you’re the perfect Buddha. And your being here as a perfect Buddha is essential to the perfection of this universe. You are a necessary ingredient to make this world function. So never forget your essential importance.” Recorded on the eveni

Excerpt: “The mind is called ‘the realm of representation,’ re-presentation. But I have often thought [that] this is a very false word in itself. It should be the re-absentation, because what language does is make you absent again from your Real Self. . . . And it is that absentation from the Self that has to be healed by returning to the Source, silence, the zero-point. . . . That’s the point of power. It’s not the vacuum of space but the vacuum of our minds when there is silence that we penetrate into the noumenal realm of our essence. . . . And when we silence the mind and enter the zero-point, that is the power point; that is the jyoti bindu, the point of light from which all that is emanates.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 7, 2011.

Excerpt: “You know in India, all of the religions of India, they say that it’s not a matter of original sin, like the Western religions tend to focus on, it’s just a matter of not knowing, not realizing that you are God. You’ve forgotten. But all you have to do is remember it, and come out of the veil of ignorance, and the Truth is revealed. It’s right there! . . . You just have to drop the false belief that you are an ego. . . . We’re all one. And when we reach that center, we realize that the center that we are is not the individual. It doesn’t pertain to a single organism; it is cosmic consciousness. And then you begin to realize, “Wow, we are all one Self. We are all one field of consciousness that’s infinite. . . . So Yoga is the most ancient science of how to achieve higher states of consciousness so that you can live in that empowerment that can effect the most beautiful changes, transformations, of our phenomenal world, which is the gift of God.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 23, 2011.

Excerpt: “In the ancient world it was the governing principle, the understanding that the more surrendered you are to God, and thus the more useful you are as an instrument of God, then the better would be your destiny because God will make use of those who are surrendered to being instruments and vehicles and mediums of the Divine Work. And those who are too busy with their own egos—either with their with their pleasures or with their neurotic suffering—and who tune out the presence of God, then will have a destiny in which God tunes out their presence as well. And all of the religious traditions are based on this understanding. So in a way, you do have control of your destiny in the sense that the deeper and more profound is your surrender to God, the more complete, the more constant, the more continual—and the more pure your sacrifice of the ego, which is the act of surrender—then the greater will be the ultimate destiny of your soul. And so it is in your control. But the control lies in the surrender of c

Excerpt: “We can see the Christian Trinity in many ways in both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. . . . In the Ramayana, it is Rama, God the Father, and Sita, who is the soul/the Holy Spirit, who goes into exile at some point, captured by the demonic forces. And then you have the Son, Hanuman, who is a monkey god. Very odd, why would they choose a monkey god to represent the Son? And it’s because the human being in the state of ego-consciousness is a monkey: its monkey mind is always chattering, its interests are mainly in food and sex, and it is wild and will not come under discipline. So the monkey is a wonderful metaphor. And yet this monkey, Hanuman, becomes divine. . . . It is said that God stands for G.O.D.: Generation, Operation, Destruction. . . . And we are now at a point where our current world cannot be sustained any longer because of the lack of love.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 9, 2011.

Excerpt: “There is a story told about Mahatma Gandhi. . . . One day they drove him [Gandhi] out to an insane asylum. . . . He was looking at the inmates, and there was one guy who interested him and he wandered away and sat down in front of this inmate. And the inmate looked up at him and said, ‘Who are you?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m Gandhi.’ The inmate laughed, and he said, ‘You know, they all say that when they first get here. You’ll get over it.’ Gandhi was taken aback. He realized that these were very true words; they hit him in the heart. This was a Mahavakya.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 6, 2011.

(Note: the following teaching was given as an introduction to the film The Buddha) Excerpt: “As soon as you start talking about Buddhism, you’re no longer talking about Buddhism because, technically and precisely, Buddha’s great insight is that there are no words to describe the Real. . . . So there’s no way of talking about what we’re here to talk about. One can only realize—and the act of realizing it, in an instantaneous—in fact not even instantaneous, but timeless moment of clear intuition of Ultimate Reality . . . called ‘pragya.’ . . . There isn’t a Buddhism; there are many Buddhisms. . . . Some do it as the different turnings of the wheel of the dharma. But you can also divide it into the Hinayana and the Mahayana and the Vajrayana, etc. You can also say there’s the Theravada Buddhism of Sri Lanka which is very different than the Tibetan Buddhism, different than the Ch’an, different than the Japanese Zen, which is different than the other Japanese schools like the Jodo Shinshu, the ‘Pure Land Buddhism

Excerpt: “When we meditate,” reveals Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “we are making effort to reach our own natural state of being. It’s odd that you have to make effort to be natural, but this is how far away the human being has come from its own nature. Rather than having a nature any longer, the human being is conditioned by culture. The ego is an artificial construct that’s created and maintained by culture. . . . And we learn the rules of that culture and the intentions that we are supposed to live for, the values we are supposed to live by, and we become entrained by language. And from then on, pure consciousness, in its divine nature, gets filtered through this construct of what Lacan, the psychoanalyst, called ‘signifiers,’ language—master signifiers that determine our identity. And you become the subject of a signifier, of a certain set of words that determine the patterns of your life and the curvature of your emotional space, and that result in the repetition of va

Student Question: Can you say something about attention deficit in regards to meditation?

Student Question: Can you speak about the fear of speaking in public and that connected to the process of mahavakya?

Student Question: When you give up a prop, the anxiety is immediate. You can’t wait even a minute to deal with it. So what do you do to remedy that?

Excerpt: “How many of you are here to achieve union with God?” asks Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Well that’s good because it’s very easy to do. You’ve picked the right goal. And the reason it’s easy to accomplish is that God is your own innermost Self. . . . So God is that absence which makes everything present. And the only reason that God manifests as absence is [because] we have abandoned God into that which God has made present. And then we have taken the miracle of what has been made present for granted and forgotten that we are in fact emanations of the same God that we are sometimes searching for and sometimes glad that we have lost, and that we hope has lost track of us. And then in other times we’re very anxious that God may have lost track of us. And it is this game that the ego plays of hide-and-seek with God that creates all of the suffering and torment and longing, nostalgia, agony, and ultimately the ecstasy of existence." Recorded on the evening of Thursday

Student Question: I’m really fascinated in the topic of 2012, but I don’t know a lot about it. I wanted to know if you could just give me a general sense of what’s going to happen.

Student Comment: I always feel I’m forgetting things, and I’ve noticed this with my friends too. For example, one friend always tells me that she wants to remember the very sweet things that her boyfriend tells her but can’t. One would think that you should be able to remember important things, but I find I’m always forgetting things and then I have anxiety because I can’t remember.

Excerpt: “‘The sense of imperfection is a disease and the sole source of every misery,’” reads Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “So the truth is that we are all perfect, purnam. We are not imperfect. This is the illusion, the imperfection. But the illusion of imperfection comes with the belief that we are entities. [It] comes with the belief that consciousness is a manifestation of an organism, a body. And as long as your consciousness is identified with the body, through which it’s operating, there will be, of course, a sense of imperfection. And so that’s the illusion. And that knot has to be cut.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 5, 2011.

Student Question: Earlier you established some connection between Jesus and his connection to Yoga. Could you go a little more into detail?

Excerpt: “The traditional yogic texts say that a yogic life is built on four pillars, and attending Satsang is one of those. The other three are: simplicity, leading a simple life without excess, without ostentation, without wastage. . . . truthfulness, a yogi is dedicated to being truthful—and more than just truthful in a factual sense, but leading an authentic life. . . . the third one is seva, or service, to lead a life that’s not based on getting as much as you can for yourself, but of giving as much as you can to the world. . . . Now, a Satsang, for those of you who haven’t been to one, the word “Sat” you’ll notice appears a lot in our discourse here, Sat refers to the Supreme Beingness, the truth of what we are when we take away all of the falseness and the mediated and artificial aspects of our self, when we get down to what is natural and eternal in ourselves. And yoga means “yoke,” union. . . . You know we tend to think that that it’s only people out there who sabotage our happiness, but it’s actuall

Student Question: Can you define “ego” in your own words?