Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

Student Question: We often hear here that for thousands of years the celibacy has been undertaken in certain societies. And I’m assuming that that’s referring to the yogic tradition. I’m more familiar with Judaism and Islam, and in cultures built around those traditions—which have lasted for thousands of  years—celibacy has not been practiced, to my knowledge, or if it has then it has been in a very different form. So I get a little confused when I hear that “for thousands of years, this has been done” or “that has been done,” and, at the same time, it’s been practiced for thousands of years in a totally different way. Could you please provide a little clarity on this matter? Excerpt: “If you study the Jewish tradition, as well as the Islamic tradition, you will find that they actually do encourage celibacy, up to a certain point in one’s life. And one is really not intended to marry until one has gone through the Talmud, for example, and reached a state of having put sexuality in the correct perspective, wh

Student Question: In one of your essays, you made a distinction between the yoga of Patanjali and of Sat Yoga. You mentioned the Advaita perspective, but you also mentioned that we still need to follow the yamas and niyamas, and I couldn’t quite grasp the difference. So could you explain it a little more? Excerpt: “Patanjali’s understanding of Reality is dualistic,” begins Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Whereas the yoga of the Bhagavad Gita, which is leaning more towards the Advaita position, is about recognizing that subject and object are separate, but then—at a higher level—we want to know what is the source of both of them, and reunite the two, not keep them as separate poles of reality.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 24, 2011.

Excerpt: “Imagine a scene in a biological laboratory,” begins Shunyamurti, the lead research scientist of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “There’s a woman scientist bent over a microscope and gazing at one of those little slides. And the slide has on it a drop of water that’s filled with amoebas. And as she’s gazing in, she sees that these amoebas have a whole world of their own. . . . And at the moment that she’s looking at them, imagine that one of these amoebas somehow, uncannily, becomes aware that it’s being gazed at. And it can’t quite comprehend ‘Who’s looking at me?’ but it knows someone’s looking at it from a dimension beyond its own little world. And let’s imagine that the intensity of its desire to understand the energy it’s feeling causes its mind to actually rise up until this amoeba’s consciousness is united with that of the scientist, and for a moment, it sees itself from her perspective. . . . And at the same time, the scientist realizes that some 84,000 lifetimes ago, she was an amoeba

Student Comment: If the world is in God’s hands and we can’t control anything—and everything is perfect—then it makes sense to me that there can’t be such a thing as a mistake, or an error, or a mis—anything. Nevertheless, I can’t quite understand this fully.

Student Question: Something you said earlier reminded me of one of your teachings when you said that the reason that atheists don’t believe in God, but that’s only because they’re not capable of loving. So how can they achieve union with God if they don’t believe in a supreme being?

Student Question: I wanted to know if you could elaborate a little bit more on the difference between sanskaras and past lives because I mentioned to a student here that it might be interesting to study my past lives, but what for? What purpose would it serve in accelerating my growth? And it was mentioned that it is actually more correct to say that sanskaras reincarnate rather than saying that we have past lives.

Excerpt: “The Real is a limit concept,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “because it does not occur in reality; It is that which contains reality and makes reality possible. But it does not appear within reality. [It’s] very similar to this film, The Matrix, in which ‘reality,’ the matrix, is unreality—it is illusion—and the real is beyond it. . . . So we want to bring our consciousness from the ‘reality,’ that is in fact Maya, or illusion, to the Real. Where is the Real? Well, it is beyond, but not beyond in a spatial sense—because all the concepts that we use to understand the so-called ‘reality,’ are unreal in terms of the Absolute Real. . . . But it’s very difficult to let go of these concepts, as we know. And even more difficult to let go of the belief in entities. And Sri Ramana says that this is the ultimate key to liberation. And of course the prime entity that we have to stop believing in is the ‘me’, the ego, the false self. . . . And so we have to give up o

Student Question: As you mentioned in your teaching, we need to have a strong determination in order to reach the higher chakras. In therapy we talk a lot about materialization of things by repeating mantras, for example. Can we cause this determination to be made without discovering the causes and roots of suffering? Could you just say, “I’m determined to stay in the present,” instead?

Student Question: I was wondering, what is the nature of the ego? Does it come from human nature?

Excerpt: “Each of you is a divine jewel of radiant consciousness and eternal perfection,” reminds Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “The difficulty that gets in our way is that the ego-mind does not live in reality; it lives in its theory of reality. It lives trapped in a belief system. In fact, these days it’s even worse than that: it lives trapped in a number of different, conflicting belief systems. . . . And the information overload, and the lack of structure—the lack of social values that make any sense—make it very difficult to return to the wholeness and empowerment of the Real Self. But nonetheless the truth remains: that this divine jewel of light is what you are.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 3, 2011.

Excerpt: “The Supreme Reality that we are all seeking is absolutely simple. And all we really need is to abide in that simplicity, which is our true nature,” teaches Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Everyone’s looking for a good investment, a safe investment. And so my suggestion to you all is that you invest in God. It’s the only sure investment. And what is most sure is that the more you invest, the greater are the returns on your investment. So in the ordinary capitalist world, they say get a basket of investments so you hedge your bets. But, actually, because investing in the Supreme Being is a sure thing, it doesn’t pay to hedge your bets; it pays to invest—fully—in the Godself. But what kind of investment are we talking about? It’s not about money. It’s investing your love, your attention, your energy, your time—your focus on realizing the presence of God within you. . . . And so there are many many levels of consciousness through which we can rise if we are

Student Question: The wisdom that you offer helps to clarify any confusion I have regarding philosophy. But when I hear you mentioning Lacan or Freud, I encounter a lot of difficulty trying to match this wisdom to the concepts that they use. To me that’s complicated. Nevertheless, I see that there’s an intention to create bridges which give some validity to that knowledge, in Western psychology or philosophy.

Excerpt: “Meditation is simply abiding in the Self,” teaches Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Abiding in Brahman means bramacharya, that is the original state of purity. It’s the same as the kaivalya state that we have talked about before where the Purusha has extracted Itself from Prakriti. There’s no more interest in matter, in sensuality; desire falls away naturally. You’re repressing it, or suppressing it, it’s just not there because you are already all that is, what is there to desire? What is there to fear? . . . It is that level of consciousness in which one graduates from this phenomenal plane, this school in which we learn what is right and wrong, what creates suffering and what creates joy and bliss. And the ultimate bliss comes simply from abiding as the formless, eternal Presence.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 17, 2011.

Student Question: Tonight in the study group we were studying chakra two, and that chakra two energies must come into consciousness and not be repressed. So how are these energies brought into consciousness? Does one have to engage in a sexual act in order to bring these energies into consciousness?

Excerpt: “There’s an old joke, I’m sure everyone knows it. . . . It was a joke about an academic scholar in the Vatican who was trying to understand the roots of apostolic celibacy, and he went to the original writings that were then copied by the scribes, and he found that one scribe made a mistake, he dropped out an ‘r,’ it was supposed to be celebrate!” recounts Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And so the celebration was, originally, a coming together of those who were celibate, in solitude, in their inner solitude. . . . And only those who have realized the solitude of Self, and are no longer co-dependent on others, and don’t have voices in their minds that are attacking them, or causing them to have distorted self-images, etc., are truly free to celebrate, because everyone else is suffering and in agony. . . . But in any case, this was the original meaning of it, and the first celebration was of that Liberation from the ego that is co-dependent on others, both

Student Question: How can one return to innocence?

Student Question: In the book that we have been discussing, Ashram Dharma, the author mentions the importance of the guru for maintaining the energy field of the ashram. In ashrams in which the guru has passed on, or if the guru has several ashrams, how does his energy permeate the ashram, or does it? Excerpt: “The true guru is within. And each of us must take responsibility for manifesting the guru. The guru is not an external person. The external person, who is often referred to as the guru, is simply the one who has the job to remind you that the guru is within,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “It’s like the conductor of an orchestra: the conductor doesn’t make any music, but just points to the others who make all the music. So there’s nothing special about the guru, except to hold that space of Emptiness . . .” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 9, 2011.

Student Question: Could you speak a little bit about duty? We are given, by the culture, definitions of what a good mother or a good daughter, etc., is. But then we have karma, in which we are karmically indebted to the families that we are born into. How do we ascertain what our true duties are to our family and to God?

Excerpt: Each of us, at one level, is a separate individual cut off from each other by our own thoughts, in a bubble of our own concerns, phantasies, desires, drives, fears, anxieties, etc. . . . And yet at another level—a more important level—we are all one,” reminds Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And the only friend, ally, that will not abandon us in this moment is the Supreme Being. And through that alignment, we can create, on this horizontal plane, relationships that we can also trust because we can see and meet and recognize other beings who are also in that state of unconditional love and integrity. . . . So that’s what we’re doing when we’re meditating. And by meditating together, we’re offering each other the gift of that divine energy.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 3, 2011.

Student Comment: I was wondering if you could explain a little bit—especially to those who are coming for the first time and are about to become parents or have small children—how the community could help in their spiritual evolution.