Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

Excerpt: “As you all know the Sat Yoga Institute is a school. It’s not just a place to come to meditate, but to do more than that. And the process begins with the Trivium which is a braid of three different processes that have to happen simultaneously for the process to be effective. It involves Translation, which is a paradigm shift – which is the conceptual understanding of the spiritual path so you will at least be able to explain to yourself why you’re going through this ordeal – because unless you can justify this to your own ego mind, there is no reason to put up with the suffering that it entails. But when there is a clear conceptual understanding of why you’re going through this experience, and what the benefits are, then the ordeal actually becomes very joyous, and not really filled with that much suffering. The transformational dimension of the Trivium is where the suffering is located. . .” Recorded on the evening of Thusday, July 4, 2013.

Excerpt: “. . . But in the spiritual field in India they do talk about four powers that are latent within you that must be remembered in order to realize the freedom that is your true nature. And they talk about this in mythological terms. And often they refer to them as the Power of Rama, the Power of Sita, the Power of Hanuman, the Power of Mrityunjay. You all know these powers because you have them, you use them on a daily basis – but we can go over them since we have to talk about something. The Power of Hanuman. . .” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 13, 2013.

Excerpt: “. . . And so to know the Unknowable Self means to allow yourself to be – without moving, without distraction, without shifting your attention from the Self to any object or any thought, idea, image, emotion – anything that would take you away from the knower – until the very sense of being a knower dissolves in the knowing and there is only this energy that is awareness but without any source and without any object – it is the ground of the field of Being itself. And the reason that the ego mind has difficulty doing this is that it always wants to grasp onto certain attributes that it can objectify. And the awareness has no attributes, all the attributes have been projected into the world, which is a reflection of the Self, but the Self is attributeless, ‘Nirguna’. ‘Emptiness’ in the Buddhist terminology. . . .” Recoded on the evening of Thursday, June 6, 2013.

Excerpt: "... But there is a command, within the ego itself, never to silence the mind, never stop thinking, always got to produce thoughts; if you don't produce you're a failure. And so you got to be willing not to produce anything, but to be. Without putting any demands on yourself, or on anyone else, or giving in to anyone’s demands on you. Create a space of freedom to rediscover who you are without starting from any programming, whether that programming has to do with the gender of the body, or the age, or the nationality, or the religion, or the culture, or any of the other factors that determine the stream of thoughts in the mind – but prior to any thoughts, to when there was pure presence, when you were really aware of being, when the world really had this heightened presence, for you, and everything was new and astonishing. Let's return to that state. And it's very easy to do because you don't do anything, just be. And if the production wants to happen, just go back with the question ‘What is the I, what is the awareness that is watching or listening to these thoughts being produced?’ And you keep going back to that ground of thoughts that are trying to arise and realize that there is a non-arising presence to whom the thoughts are arising. And then just focus on that non-arising presence. And you will find it's already peaceful, it's already happy, it doesn't need anything, it's not angry, there is no desire, has no fear – it's quite content..." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 30, 2013.

Excerpt: “…In any case Tilopa reduced the whole meditation process to three phrases; they’re easy you can’t forget these. The first one is: no distraction. That may seem simple but it’s not. Second one: no contrivances. Third one: no meditation. What!? These are meditation instructions; no meditation, very interesting. So then the question is, are these commands? Are they descriptions of the state you reach in meditation? Are they qualities of your true Being? Of course they’re in the negative so we are in the via negativa here, he’s not describing what you are or what that state is, he’s just describing what not to do, to be. But, let’s look at it more deeply…” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 23, 2013.

Excerpt: “…And the minute we let go and really relax and forget the ego, or remember that we are not the ego, remember that we are pure potentiality, pure presence, that is inherently without mental activity – it transcends the mind, the real presence of your being, mind is only a tool that is used on limited occasions but otherwise you’re in the silence of Infinite mind, not limited linguistic-based mind. And to live in that Self, is to be free, is to be independent, finally, of all the conditionings and all of the self-limitations. And all of the illusions and the ignorance that come with identifying with a body and an ego mind…” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 9, 2013.

Excerpt: “Sat Yoga is the art of living in the state of love. Love is our natural state. But we have become denaturalized by accepting the programming and the conditioning of the ego mind. The ego mind is generally not in a state of love – which is not news to you I can see. It’s usually in a very judgmental state and mostly attacking others for being judgmental – which is the most self-righteous way of being judgmental – but also attacking oneself, feeling negative and lacking and all the games that the ego plays in order to make itself miserable that we know all too well so I won’t belabor that point, because I’m not here to keep you in that state of misery. I would like you to see that that’s not our natural state or our real state, and it was simply an indoctrination into misery because that is how you become adapted to social living and accept the miserable conditions that most people have to live in. But we don’t have to accept that. We can change our world by changing our perception of who we are and what this reality is...” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 2, 2013.

Excerpt: “This is a school of magic. Are you all interested in magic? Do you all realize that you are magical beings? Do you? But there is a difference between being a magical being and being a magician. To become a magician you must train your magical potential to be fully actualized. Western civilization can be understood as the sustained effort to repress magic. That’s its whole purpose – to repress white magic; there is plenty of black magic around. For the last 2000 years that has been the main intention of the forces that have been running this civilization, to disenchant the world. Why? Because you can’t control magicians; you can’t control sorcerers; you can’t control great shamans; you can’t control the Magi, so whenever they saw a magus, they would eliminate him. They wanted to eliminate white magic because white magic, when there are enough magicians . . . coming together to create an energy field of divine magic the world can be transformed, and they know that.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 18, 2013.

Excerpt: “So the realization of God begins with the understanding that what we mean by that term is the ultimate, supersensory apperception that you are capable of. It’s not simply extrasensory perception; that psychics do, they can see subtle energies and be aware of things that are happening in the external plane. It’s not simply extrasensory perception. It’s supersensory, it’s beyond the sensual realm – including the subtle level of sensuality – and it is not a perception but an apperception, which means that what is being perceived is the one doing the perceiving; there is no duality in God. And therefore you can never know God as long as you want to be a perceiver of God because God does not exist as an object. The atheists are right, but they are also very wrong because they don’t understand that in the same way you have to cultivate a taste for music like this – and many people in the world would not have said this is beautiful; if you would play some death rock they would have said ‘yeah that’s great!’ or ‘that’s wicked’ or whatever term is now the equivalent of ‘I like it.’ But you need to cultivate a taste for beauty, for goodness, and particularly for the Supreme Beauty and the Supreme Goodness that we’re talking about when we signify the word God or any ultimate reality term that is an equivalent whether Buddha-nature, Nirvana, etc. etc.” Recorded in the evening of Thursday, April 11, 2013.

Excerpt: “People think that complexity is a relatively new scientific discipline, and in the modern world it is, but it’s a very ancient concept. And the first full development of that is in the form of the net of Indra. The net of Indra is the most significant concept to come out of Vedic and Buddhistic thought and got explicated most fully on HuaYen Buddhism but it existed long before that. And that is the understanding that reality is not based on closed systems with independent or contesting territories but is a network of interconnecting subsystems within a larger hyper-complex system, in which there is harmony and unity that overlies any sense of difference. And so when we can begin to map the complexity of the ego-system, we rise to the soul level which is a hyper-complex system which is an assemblage of hyper-complex systems that extends overtime because the soul reincarnates and up to the point of understanding an entire cycle of time with all of the complexity of the permutations of time itself. And then you get to the higher level of ultra-complex systems at the level of the Atman. And this is an assemblage of hyper-complex system that includes many different universes, many different independent levels of functioning but that are all part of a harmony at the highest level. And so as we go up to higher and higher of levels of consciousness, what they are, are higher levels of complexity and at the very highest level of infinite complexity you reach absolute simplicity.” Recorded in the evening of Thursday, April 4, 2013.

Excerpt: “...And while the Buddhists are accurate in saying ‘yes you need to live in the Two Truths’; there is a conventional reality and Ultimate Reality and for purposes of dealing with conventional reality, keeping your bank account balanced and dealing with people at the phenomenal plane who are in that illusion, you need to be able to deal with it – but you can only deal with it without suffering if you are beyond it in the Ultimate Reality. So the idea of any spiritual path is not to leave the conventional reality behind, but to recognize that even this split between Ultimate Reality and conventional reality, is a convention. And that you don’t believe in it, you free yourself from any ‘naive realism,’ that accepts this world created by the illusion of the ego as real so that you will not suffer from the events in this world or from the ignorance that generalizes to having many consequences, unintended as well as intended, so that you can live in this world as a being of wisdom, a being in peace without neurotic or psychotic suffering, and without even the ordinary suffering that Freud says you cannot get beyond. Pain perhaps won’t end but suffering over whatever seems to be going ‘wrong,’ doesn’t have to be part of one’s world, one’s umwelt. That can be left behind. And that’s the only practical benefit of the spiritual quest, is that you have left that behind and you can act in the world wisely. But always knowing that the one who is acting in the world – to bring peace, order, greater happiness, etc. – is an illusion.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 21, 2013.

Excerpt: “… Because the ego mind is a knot based on the unproven premise that the ‘I’ is the body. And it builds its entire life on that false belief, that ‘I am a body’ and ‘the body is material.’ And it’s upon that premise, false though it be, that remains tenaciously the foundation of the ego, that it will not let go of, that is the cause of all our suffering. Because once there is a body in a physical universe there is fear, there is lack, there is anxiety, there is desire, there is disappointment, there is despair; the whole wheel of egoic life stems from that false belief. And it’s to undo that false belief, not just theoretically but really, which changes our entire psychology and frees us from the torments of ego consciousness. In principle it’s very easy. And it’s easier today because modern science, particularly quantum physics, supports the understanding that the world is not real; the universe is information, and information requires a knower, and the knower is consciousness. So it is no longer even scientifically sustainable to believe ‘I am a body’: ‘I am consciousness’ is the prevailing scientific understanding. “ Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 14, 2013.

Excerpt: “…So this is the problem in most people’s lives, if he’d gotten the dream saying just dig under your own kitchen he probably wouldn’t have listened to it, but it told him to go to Russia; OK, it’s enough of an ordeal maybe there’s truth to it. It’s the need to do something exotic, the need to do something outlandish and to pass through some ordeal that gives something credibility. This path is just too easy because you don’t have to do anything on this path, just be yourself, what could be easier than that? There’s no method, there’s no system, there’s no approach, there’s no drug you have to take, there’s no danger, there’s no side-effects. It’s boring, isn’t it? Just be yourself. But nobody want to be themselves, they want to be someone else. They want to go on some long exotic journey somewhere, only – always – to discover that what you were looking for was back home, was yourself. You are the Atman, you don’t have to wait for some message to come in an altered state of consciousness. You have altered your own state of consciousness by creating the ego – the ego is an altered state. It’s a state in which you’ve lost touch with your real consciousness; it’s not a higher altered state but a lower one that you chose to identify with. But all you have to recognize is that who you really are in your very natural state, if you’re not too manic depressive, is quiet presence…” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 07, 2013.

Excerpt: “We are here to rediscover who we are, what we have forgotten about our deep Self, to dive beneath the surface, beneath body-consciousness, and even deeper than soul-consciousness, to discover the Spirit, the Absolute Self, that always abides eternally, peacefully, blissfully within. This is our divine essence, and we have come together to discover our divine essence, and then to share our divine essence with one another, to create an energy field in which that essence is able to fill everyone with that same power of truth, of love, of joy. And so meditation is not some serious business where you have to be very sober and solemn – it might seem that from outside, but in truth we are here to rediscover that within us which is always joyous. It’s said in every religious tradition that God is love, ultimate love, ultimate bliss, the bliss of overwhelming, overflowing infinite love. Can you imagine that state? Can you imagine living in that, and realizing that that is who you are?” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 28, 2013.

Student Question: What is prayer? And what is the meaning of it, and how to pray?

Student Question: What are nightmares? Why is it that nightmares are the dreams that affect me most and that I remember the most?

Excerpt: “…You can do it through Ramana’s approach which is simply to ask – but ask wordlessly, not using thoughts – ‘Who am I?’ ‘What is the I?’ ‘What is the source of the I?’ and keep going within until you’ve cleared out the thoughts and there is pure presence. And then hold the presence, examine it, palpate it, observe it, feel the quality of pure presence; without creating a discourse about it, without creating and trying to capture it in some net of words – but abiding in the silence of Presence. And if you do that for long enough, this Presence that is pure, unalloyed by any conditioned thinking, will accumulate an energy field, it will spread, it will grow, if you cultivate the silence moment by moment without falling back into ego thoughts, it will gradually wash away the conditioned thoughts; it will extinguish them. And it will leave your entire space of consciousness clear, peaceful, calm, filled with joy, filled with that original state of freedom, without any kind of conditionings or script that you may have been living by, but now completely open in life to the spontaneity of your own heart. Not controlled by any thoughts that were planted there in the ego by your parents, or schools, or society, but free to discover and to live out the truth of your being. And that’s when life becomes very interesting…” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 21, 2013.

Excerpt: “In the old days, meaning about 20 centuries ago, when the yogis first realized that this problem existed – because it didn’t exist before then but in the early period of Kali Yuga when minds already started to vibrate with a much more unhealthy frequency and instability, much less though then now of course – they invented certain techniques. One of them is called Pranayama; breathing exercises.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 7, 2013.

Excerpt: “Tonight’s gathering is about meditation, which is the core activity of this community. The goal of meditation is a simple one – it’s to reach the state of contentment. You’d think that would be very easy, and yet contentment is probably the highest state that the human being can reach. And it’s a virtue that contains all other virtues. Because if you’re really content with what you have, and are not seeking from some state of lack, then you are beyond suffering; you’re at peace. You are liberated from most of the ills that plague human kind. How many people do you know who are in a state of contentment, real contentment? And so it’s a very odd paradox that here we are aspiring to be content. Is that possible? To want to be in a state in which there are no wants. And to understand that paradox we have to recognize that the ego mind, the ordinary state of consciousness that most people take for granted as their real self is not the real Self, but is a construct; it’s artificial. You weren’t born with your current identity – you built it; it was a work of art. Of course you did this work of art when you were about three years old, and so you might want to redo it. Because you put together – to create your identity – a little bit of your mother, a little bit of your father, a little bit of other family members, a little bit of the community, a little bit of the information overload that you were getting from TV, etc. And you created this, modified it over the first five or so years of your life and then you assumed that that’s who you were – and even when you repressed that and created a more adult-like personality, that remained underneath, a child, wanting to be an adult and feeling lack of power, lack of worthiness, lack of capacity to achieve your goals, lack of a sense of feeling lovable or deserving. And so the lacks get built into the structure of the ego mind, even if you’re not aware of it because it’s repressed to a lower level of consciousness, it’s usually there and arises either as symptoms or anxiety or inhibitions, or other pathologies of behavior of attitude of thinking and of emotion. And so to be in a state of contentment, which is our real state, we have to find out who we really are underneath this ego construct, and then, if we wish, we can modify that construct and make it reflect the contentment of our real Being.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, January 24, 2013.

Excerpt: “… When you think about it you realize that consciousness is the only, I shouldn’t say thing it’s not a thing, but it’s the only element of your reality that doesn’t change. Your mind changes, the contents of your consciousness do. You have different ideas today, hopefully than you had 20 years ago, and you’ll have different ideas in the future. So your ideas change, you can’t be defined by your ideas, and most of them aren’t real either, they’re just things you heard about and decided to believe in and usually you find out too late that it wasn’t true. So your mind isn’t real – it’s just a flux of impermanent thoughts that ultimately don’t refer to any deeper reality of a self. They’re mostly imported from other people based on their ideas of what you should think you are, to suit their needs. So if the body is not real and the mind isn’t real and neither of them have any real reference to you, and the only thing that remains unchanging is something that doesn’t even have a form at all, it’s simply awareness, then that’s the only place to explore. It’s very clear – and why all of the sages, philosophers of all of West and East have agreed that, OK, if we’re going to find anything real at all, we’re going to find it in our awareness.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, January 17, 2013.

Excerpt: “… That silence usually doesn’t become tempting until the mind is filled with such disgusting elements, or ones externalized reality is filled with such negative karma that one wants to escape into the silence. But then you are haunted by it; it is very hard to escape when you’ve got burdens of negative karma chasing you. And so that’s the only reason to follow a life that is led in integrity according to the dharma, both the horizontal and the vertical dharma. That’s the cross that we must be crucified on so that we can ascend. By living in integrity at least our conscience won’t bite us. But we must be stung by the Great WASP…” Recorded in the afternoon of Wednesday, January 16, 2013.

Excerpt: “We are here to practice yoga. Yoga is the ancient science of consciousness. How do you practice a science? It is through the exploration of your consciousness. And it is an applied science as well as simply a theoretical pure science and the application of this scientific method is to arrive at the purification of consciousness. The removal from consciousness of all the superimpositions that have like veils or transparencies, filters, ended up causing us to superimpose upon reality, illusions. If they are severe enough we call them delusions. The modern science of psychology derives from the ancient science of yoga, but it’s spectrum of understanding of the nature of consciousness is much smaller - it understands only a sliver of what we call ego consciousness, whereas the point of yoga is to transcend ego consciousness, because the great scientists of consciousness thousands and thousands of years ago discovered that there were levels of consciousness that far transcend anything available to the finite ego mind—and that that is our real self and our ego mind that we are so sure we are, in a body in a physical world, is actually a false state of consciousness—or at least a partial state in which only partial truths are available to us and therefore we create suffering. So if we want to live a life without suffering it is important to remove all of those filters that constitute the ego and arrive at true consciousness—and that true consciousness, because it is in alignment with that supreme power that has created all consciousness and the universe itself, then flows through our consciousness with inspirations, with wisdom, with love, with a sense of fullness and empowerment and all the things the ego mind is looking for but can never get…” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, January 10, 2013.

Excerpt: "Impermanence is the rule of the phenomenal plane – everything comes and goes, nothing is permanent. And by accepting that and not resisting and fighting it, we can be at peace, and discover the one aspect of reality that is not impermanent which is the awareness that is aware of the impermanence. And that's what we happen to be. and if we accept that – that we are simply awareness – not awareness that is identified with any impermanent thing, like a physical body, or even a mind, or a personality, or any objective identification at all, we are free of suffering. It's only when we identify with something impermanent that we start to fear that we will lose our being, our existence. But that fear is purely based on an illusion. And all of our desires are simply the compensation for that fear; you wanna hold on to something that will help you maintain the illusion of this existence which isn't real. And the despair at realizing that it is ultimately hopeless to hold on to anything at all. And finally one gives that up and the ignorance on which that is based, the illusion that one is a physical being instead of pure consciousness, then one lets go and enters into the realization of liberation which was always there." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, December 6, 2012.

Excerpt: "Sri Ramana says that the abode of bliss that we are all seeking is stillness. And he says we are all seeking it whether we know it or not. But most of us are seeking it in the wrong places. Not in stillness but in some external person, situation, drug, music phenomenon of some kind – but the abode of bliss can only be found in stillness. And many of the things that we do are done in order to reach a temporary state of stillness. We know that runners often run just to get exhausted and then their minds stop working because they have no energy to keep producing thoughts and they get 'runner’s high.' And other people do many other things – not for the reason that they might consciously think but that it will give them a moment of a glimpse of the abode of bliss. But Ramana says it is our birthright to live in the abode of bliss, always. That's our real home – but most of us have run away from home. And now we have to be the prodigal sons and daughters to find our way back." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, November 29, 2012.

Excerpt: "...Because what he taught and what is the truth is that each of us has the capacity to be the manifestation of Shiva, if we renounce our ignorance of that; if we make it Real by dissolving the veil of the ego mind that stands between our consciousness and Shiva; and through the ceaseless practice of inner silence and remeberence of the Supreme Self as 'I.' And then that Almighty Self will flow through and fill our consciousness, and move our bodies and our minds in a divine way, and create an energy field of such power, such love, such joy that the world will be transformed by that. But we must be wholeheartedly dedicated to attaining our real consciousness as the Supreme Self, and not wallow in the ego mind and it's narratives, and not identify with memory traces of the past, and not act out the symptoms and the sufferings of the ego mind and its traumas, and not continue to inflict them on our self and others..." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, November 8, 2012.

Excerpt: “The process of meditation is that of realizing our Real Self because most of the day we live behind the mask of a false self that defends us against either real or imagined attacks, or deceptions, or difficulties in life, negative projections and rejections, and all of our fears and anxieties projected out into the world. And because we are doing that our energy is dissipated, and we get exhausted, burned out. We lose our selves. And so when we come to meditate we come to re-find ourselves, to pull our energies back inward to our center, to be balanced and to regain the wholeness that we had lost during our time in the false self, until eventually we don’t ever leave the Real Self, because we understand that there is no need to do that. But we are trained early in life to wear this mask and pretend it is our Real Self and we have accepted it for so long that we no longer even realize it’s a mask and we think it is all there is and there is nothing else behind it. So there is a terror of taking it off and not knowing who we are, because our conscious mind has forgotten.” Recorded in the evening of Thursday, November 1, 2012.

Excerpt: “We come here for freedom – freedom from suffering. And we learn that all suffering is caused by our own ego and that the one job to achieve is to kill the ego. Some people object to that phrase, but it’s essential to recognize that the ego must be killed, and can only be killed because it’s not Real. What is Real cannot be killed. What is Real is eternal and immortal. But the ego – despite its unreality – is imprisoning our consciousness, in a self-sabotaging thought-form that destroys our happiness, destroys our life, destroys our capacity to be. And unless we destroy the ego, it will keep us imprisoned in hell realm life after life after life. And that means we’re not living at all.” Recorded in the afternoon of Tuesday, October 30, 2012.

Excerpt: "Sat Yoga is a finishing school - probably the last of the finishing schools. Feminism killed off most of them, but here we have a co-ed finishing school… and yes we are here to finish off the ego but we are doing it not by destruction but by allowing it to attain its perfect form and then the ego blossoms into the soul and if we allow it the soul blossoms into pure spirit. We teach about different assemblage points here. Each assemblage point is really an opening up to love at a higher, broader, deeper level. But the essence of what we are is love at every level - even at the level of the ego, which we say “oh, the ego cannot love”, which is true in terms of divine love, but the ego is love because that’s all that is, is love. At the first assemblage point the problem is the ego’s circle of care and love does not go beyond its own self-image… it loves what is sees in the mirror and it loves others adoring gazes and saying yes etc. and it loves sensual pleasures and that kind of thing – what Freud called the ‘ideal ego’, and it doesn’t love beyond that. At the second assemblage point the thesis of the egos narcissistic love turns into the antithesis of a narcissistic hatred - anger, fury at the family, wanting to get away, but this antithesis is actually necessary… one needs to break away by hating the ones that would tie you into a small image of yourself that you have outgrown in order to find love at a higher level, and so it is inevitable that one passes through this and then at the third assemblage point feels remorse for all that hatred, envy and negativity and at that assemblage point one enters fully into the ethical dimension of life and then love begins to be channeled in a higher way…. An aesthetic dimension, an ethical dimension, and a religious dimension of life all open up at the third assemblage point and love begins to blossom, one becomes a productive citizen because one loves one world etc. etc… one loves beauty, one loves truth, one loves higher truth even then that which is about the physical plane, but still there are limitations. So one's circle of love may extend to one's nation but does it extend to those in other nations or does one still demonize people of other countries of other religions, other skin colors etc. etc.? The love is still not universal, it is not unconditional, and it’s only at the next assemblage point that love becomes universal and all are recognized as children of God…." Recorded in the evening of Thursday, October 25, 2012.

Excerpt: “…And within that idea of return there is a crossroads that one encounters. One leads to the bliss of the Absolute and the other leads to nihilism – that leads to an emptiness that is a barrenness. And we have two kinds of spiritual teacher in the world: one who is pointing to the bliss and the light and the power and the joy of God and the other who points to absolute nothingness. And so it’s very important that when you let go of the ego and allow it to dissolve that you recognize there is still an awareness that is witnessing that. So you are still there when your ego has dissolved. You are still there when the mind is completely silent. But when there are no more narratives, who are you that is there? That’s the question. The real inquiry that Ramana recommends of ‘Who am I?’ only begins after the disillusion of the ego when you know you are not that, you are not the traumatized person but you’re the witness. And then you can begin to ask ‘but what is this witness?’ that is still there after everything is dissolved and the mind is quiet and there is actually peace. That’s when you can find the inner blissful Supreme Self.” Recorded in the evening of Thursday, October 18, 2012.

Excerpt: “The Christians talk about transfiguring the wafer and the wine into the body and the blood of Christ. It’s the theory of transubstantiation. But what it means is that you recognize that Real One, a mere wafer, a mere cup of ordinary wine, is actually simply the symbolic representation of Real Two, the love of God, the act which is the actual body and blood of God. But in our version of transfiguration everything is transformed, all of Real One, and all of the Imaginary of the ego is transformed into Real Two and into the archetypal realization that everything that appears here; including yourself, your own body, your own mind, is simply a symbolic representation of the Real that is God.” Recorded in the afternoon of Monday, October 15, 2012.

Excerpt: “We are here to do what the song just said… which is to Swaha - it means give everything to Rama… surrender every illusion that you are separate from God so that you realize who you truly are… surrender every bit of negativity, fear… every piece of anger, hatred, depression, anxiety… throw it all into the fire… throw everything that separates you from your realization of oneness with the supreme being and by doing that and invoking the supreme presence you will be free of suffering and you will be in bliss and you will be filled with power and creativity and clarity and you will be filled with love and you will know that you are loved and you will know that you are one with the source of love and that love is what is beautiful and love is what is good… love is what is real and eternal and you are that and everything that you might have thought that you were that is different from that is an illusion… it is Maya and if you don’t hold onto any Maya and you can let it all go, you will achieve liberation, so why would anyone hold back? Why would anyone keep the illusion of some identification that is less than the beauty and the perfection of God?” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 12, 2012.

Excerpt: “What is it that we see when the third eye is open? The first thing we see, as all the ancient sages have testified to, is that this world is unreal. Do we all see that? To be unreal doesn’t mean that it doesn’t appear; it is real as an appearance, but it is not real as a world with all of the veils of the ego’s projections upon it. The projections are unreal; they are fantasies. And once those projections are put out there, superimposed upon the phenomenal plane, then that’s what we get back, are our own projections. And so the first thing that the Eye of Shiva must do is burn away the projections so we see the world as it is, as a creation of Shiva. And then we see it not as a world any longer but as a hologram, a multidimensional dream field, in which everything that appears is a symbolic manifestation of the mind of God.” Recorded in the afternoon of Monday, October 8, 2012.

Excerpt: “You know ‘SAT’ is an acronym. Did anybody know that? Do you know what ‘SAT’ stand for? Anyone know? It means: the Solid Abyss of Triumph. Triumph is the keyword; you will hear the word triumph often is the chants that Anuttara performs. In Sanskrit the word is ‘Jai’ and you hear songs that have the words ‘Jai Sita Ram’ and ‘Govinda Jaya Jaya.’ ‘Jai’ means victory or triumph, but what are we victorious over? It’s the triumph over maya, over the delusion of the ego that creates negativity, self-doubt, despair, depression, anxiety, envy, all the agonies of the ego that we all know so well they don’t need to be listed. So all of these need to be triumphed over, but how do we triumph over them? First we have to become solid…” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 20, 2012.

Excerpt: “All experience occurs within the Self and can be modified by the Self because it is actually all part of the Self, and a creation of the Self. But the Self never appears as an object, and the Self, to all intents and purposes to the scientific mind, does not exist. And this is why many have called Advaita and Buddhism forms of religious atheism. You could say that, but they are not atheism in the same sense as the materialist [who] doesn’t believe in God. The materialist is simply refusing to believe in Sunday school stories. But if the materialist had to actually consider what is the ultimate transcendental condition of experience, then that would be a different matter. So when the atheists attack God, they’re attacking a straw God, a false God. But when you ask ‘Who is doing the attacking?’ ‘Who is the source of the consciousness with that attitude?’ you can take that consciousness back to a level which cannot be understood. But it is fair to say that Advaita and Buddhism are forms of transtheism because no concept of God can ever capture the Self, not even the word Self. And that is why we often will say the Self is no self. And the metaphor is often used that what the Self is, is the space in which consciousness occurs. But even that is only a metaphor because the Self constitutes whatever space it is in which experience occurs but is not Itself that space. And therefore the Self is absolutely transcendent of all conceptualization, and the only way to reach it is by letting go of the attempt to do just that.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 13, 2012.

Excerpt: “Many people’s egos try to convince them that this knowledge is too difficult to understand, too subtle. And it’s true that the ego cannot understand this knowledge. And yet everyone has a deeper intuition and a recognition of the Truth when they hear it. But the reason why the ego can’t understand it is that it doesn’t want to, because to understand it would mean the death of the very ego that comes to understand its own unreality. But it’s clear that everyone understands because it’s there in our collective culture. This information is hidden in plain sight, like all the other secrets that society holds back from itself.” Recorded in the afternoon of Tuesday, September 11, 2012.

Excerpt: “When we meditate we are detaching from the ego mind and all of its mundane concerns, and its pointless narratives, and all of its absurd fears and anxieties about life and death that are completely irrelevant to the infinite life of the Real Self. The Real Self alone is. The ego and the forms are merely temporary appearances and they do not have a consciousness of their own. The consciousness of the ego is only borrowed from the Self. It is a dream within a dream. When we subtract our attention and our identification from the form, the ego dissolves like a bubble that pops and we realize it never was. And all of its projections on the world never were. And in the state of the Formless Self we realize that the illusion of the world was only created by the language in the mind that labels everything and creates the deception of a subject-object duality. None of that is real.” Recorded in the afternoon of Monday, September 10, 2012.

Excerpt: “It is always important to remember why we are here before we begin and sometimes we take it for granted that we know why we are here.... In some cirlces what we are doing is called mysticism, but really there is no mystery to mysticism... or maybe the only mystery is why some people think it is so hard... because all we are doing in the mystical quest is recognizing who we are – recognizing our original true nature... but what makes it seem hard is that we have aquired a conditioned nature – a false nature so that we could adapt to the sickness of society and pretend that that is normal... and then we identified with all of the family signifiers, the cultural signifiers and all of the values of the society in which we live and we lost touch with our original nature... and once we bought into what our parents told us or implied between the lines or what we overheard or suspected or imagined or fantasized, and then what we were taught in school, mostly by fellow students but a little bit by teachers and then what we gain through all the disinformation of the media, has created a false self that is completely clueless about the true nature of what is real... and not only have we forgotten but we are not allowed to know – it is prohibited – there is a censor in the unconsciouss that was put in there like one of those internet filters you put in so kids cant watch the pornographic sites, they put that into each of us so that we couldn't see or know knowledge that was forbidden or unbearbale to the ego... and so that made us into our own worst enemy because your not allowed to see all the skeltons in the family closet and you are not allowed to see even more skeltons in the social closet or in the historic closet of all of human history and you are not allowed to know the true significance of our whole experience in this earth plane because we live in a very small box... but a point comes in our growth when we out grow that box and we need to explode it like a snake outgrows its skin and needs to let it go – shed it to grow another one that fits - but we are afraid because knowbody else is doing it except a few other mad people like in a group like this.... Thursday, September 06, 2012.

Excerpt: “…Because that’s what Kali Yuga is doing to everyone now. Whatever can break down is breaking down, whether it’s our cars, or our plumbing, or our egos, or our bodies, that’s what’s happening. But don’t wait to have everything taken away from you before you realize that you are that which cannot be damaged or taken away. Be one who dwells in that undamageable, unblemished perfection of being now so that such karmic events won’t be necessary to liberate you, and won’t cause suffering and disturbance. But that no matter what happens you will flow with it in grace, and joy, and love. And you will know that you need nothing, because you are the source of all.” Recorded in the afternoon of Wednesday, September 5, 2012.

Excerpt: “Meditation is simply an opportunity to drop the illusion that you are a separate ego; to let the identification of mind and body fall away; and more importantly to let go of the identification of Self with mind. The Self is not the mind. You were not born with the mind; you were born with consciousness, awareness. Awareness that in its natural state is free: free of thoughts, free of images, free of desires, free of fear. But once the ego mind is created through the incorporation of language, with the desires, fantasies, fears imposed by the parents, family, society, larger global culture, then a knot is formed that keeps your awareness identified with mind. And the mind feeling [in] a state of lack, a state in which something is missing to make you feel contentment and wholeness and joy. And we mistakenly think we can find what we are looking for by thinking our way to it; and so we think furiously, constantly, chattering about what we want, what we don’t want, rehearsing how we’re going to deal with some future situation, hating some past situation, never in the present, and ever deepening the hole of lack. But there is no lack; the lack is only created by the illusory identification with a separate bodily entity.” Recorded in the afternoon of Tuesday, September 4, 2012.

Excerpt: “…It is as if you hear a program on the radio and you like the announcer and you put a picture of the radio up on the wall and say ‘that’s what I like.’ The voice that is coming out of that radio isn’t the radio, it’s coming from a thousand miles away. But you are identified with it as if the words coming out of your mouth belong to that body, they don’t. The problem is this: we don’t just have a radio, we have a machine that has a tape and a radio, and we have it set to the tape machine that just keeps repeating over and over again the loops of the ego and the super ego voices…” Recorded in the afternoon of Thursday, August 30, 2012.

Excerpt: "There is a very ancient metaphor in yoga that we talk about a lot and we include it in seminar one about the bucket of water that’s put out underneath the full moon and how the bucket represents the body and the water in the bucket represents the mind… and there seems to be a moon in the bucket as well, but is there really? That’s the illusion… the moon we could say represents the Self, but the moon in the bucket is not the Real Self – we could say it is the ego self… and usually the bucket is being disturbed and the water is vibrating and so you don’t even get a clear image of the moon… you get different splinters of the moon-like light but it doesn’t make sense – it is an ever changing puzzle because our minds are going too fast to get an even image that is clear of the Self… but then if we do get that clear image then we are under the illusion that we somehow have to get out of this bucket – I have got to attain liberation, but there is no such thing as liberation because the moon isn’t in the bucket to begin with… the light is projected into the bucket… the moon is always free… the moon is the soul and it doesn’t need to be liberated… so all of this struggling that we do falsely identified as a bucket that is trying to find the inner moon is all based on an illusion – there is no inner moon… and each bucket doesn’t have a different moon in it… and so there aren’t many different selves, there is only one… but then when you finally realize, huh… I was never in there to begin with, I was always the moon, even then you realize the moon only has the reflected light of the sun… even the soul is only carrying the reflected light of the Spirit… the Supreme Being… and in the middle of the night that Supreme Being isn’t even visible… the moon knows it but on earth it is not known… and it is that that we are… that which from the perspective of the ego mind that thinks it’s the bucket can’t even be seen or imagined because it is a completely non-objective reality… it is the consciousness by which you are aware of your being but that consciousness does not exist within the mind… the mind exists within that… and that light is always there day or night… and so rather than struggling to attain liberation or to gradually transcend the ego mind or to work out all of its problems and distortions and try to still the water, just realize that you are not in the bucket to begin with and let it go…." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 30, 2012.

Excerpt: “A Sat Yogi is one who knows oneself to be Ajata. Ajata is the unborn, the uncreated, the eternal, the all powerful Self. Do you know yourself to be Ajata? Do you know yourself to be all powerful? Every power is given you, but have you claimed it? You have been given the power of healing; you have been given the power of love; you have been given the power of truth; you have been given the power to conquer maya; the power to remain beyond suffering; the power to remain ever at peace; the power to remain in bliss; the power to be fearless; the power of silence; the power to stay awake in meditation. Have you claimed your powers? Or are you still a beggar before God? Or are you still attached to the false power of weakness, because you prefer to get pity than to claim the power and majesty of the Supreme One? Do you prefer to remain a child rather than to grow up to your full potential as the deathless Self?” Recorded in the afternoon of Monday, August 27, 2012.

Excerpt: “Tat Tuam Asi: Thou Art That – very ancient mahavakya, I am That. That which is the ‘I’ of the individual is actually the Supreme Presence. Duality is an illusion. There is one Self, and each of us is That. Can we feel the truth of that mahavakya? Do we resonate with it? Do we surrender to that truth? Do we realize the bliss that comes with that realization? There is really nothing more to know or to study. Because in that state, when the individualized has returned to That, to the Supreme One, to the realization that you were always That, and eternally shall be, then the journey of karma on this wheel of reincarnation, of multiplicity, is complete. Tat Tuam Asi is the sound of our graduation ceremony, the angels will be singing that as we arise to the Supreme Light. And in that realization, all suffering falls away, all fear, all the narcissistic wounds carried by the ego, can finally be enjoyed from God’s strange sense of humor. And that Divine Supreme Perspective heals all in this world, in all worlds. And there is no one left to need to do anything, because all that happens occurs within the dream of God, in absolute perfection.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 23, 2012.

“We come here to discover what is real. And the deeper we inquire within, the more we realize that everything is impermanent in this world of experience; it’s fleeting, it changes – it has no true identity. Even people we meet have no true identity: at one moment they’re friendly, another moment they’re angry, one moment they’re here, another they’re gone, different personalities appear and disappear, moods, attitudes, understandings, none of it is permanent; it’s just a fleeting appearance. So all of you, all of us as appearances, as egos, as bodily beings, are completely unreal. And yet our lives revolve around this non-existent concern with an unreal being, an unreal being in an unreal world. Because the world is in constant change, nothing in this world is dependable: not the climate, not the ground under our feet, not the air, not the solar vibrations where you see the sun, not the water supply. There is no guarantee that our existence will continue even for one more minute, or even that this planet will continue to exist, none. So what is real? What do you build your life on? What do you depend on? Who are you?” Recorded in the afternoon of Thursday, August 23, 2012.

Excerpt: “There is really no point speaking about the Absolute… we can talk a lot about the ego and the unconscious and it’s structure and dynamics, but when it comes to the Absolute concepts are futile… one always ends up with paradox, inconsistency, contradiction, inadequacy and usually it leads to a distorted understanding on the part of those who are listening… and so many of the great teachers have simply sat in silence without saying anything, or they have taught in parables using metaphors and archetypal images… but nothing can be said about the absolute because the absolute is not a thing – not an object… but even to say that is incorrect… in the Vedas it is called Nirguna Brahman… the Absolute that is beyond even the question of whether personal or impersonal and has no qualities, no gunas, no attributes… but the egoic mind cannot grasp that which has no attributes… and in fact the Absolute cannot be grasped because there is no one to grasp it… what really has to be realized is that the ego mind that is attempting to understand is itself the illusion that must be transcended… for we are the Absolute and have never been anything else… but to explain that to a mind that is identified with its body, with its gender, with its family, its nation and religion and language etc etc etc is almost impossible… and so the approach of most spiritual paths have been to gradually strip away these identifications until consciousness receives a glimpse of naked awareness in which concepts do not arise… no narrative drags one away from the source of one's being into some imaginary discourse about what is… and in that moment of naked presence then the entire mystery of that which is revealed becomes impeccably and infinitely clear but what also becomes clear is that it cannot be transmitted in language to anyone else. This is why the Buddha almost gave up before he began his teaching… you know he sat there – he attained Buddhahood – and then as he got up he realized this cannot be taught and then he sat looking at where he was sitting becoming enlightened for about seven days trying to figure out, “What do I do with this”? It’s impossible to communicate that which transcends this entire dimension of illusion and yet it is what we are now….” Recorded in the evening of Thursday, August 16, 2012.

Excerpt: “The ego is a psychic sack filled with mind parasites. It has only a negative value. It’s a place in consciousness based on the falseness of an illusionary identity that gives a space for negative entities to hold on to and suck your life energy away. These mind parasites will destroy your life if they are not eliminated. The only way to eliminate these negative entities, that will drive you to insanity, destroy your health, and destroy your destiny, is through the surrender of the mind to God for the purification of the consciousness and the elimination of the ego. That is why this sacred act of meditation is so important. It is literally a matter of life or death, and not just this life but all of your future lives that depend on the sanskaras that are created now at the end of Kali Yuga. So we need to take meditation with the utmost seriousness. It is our one opportunity to link with God and feel the current of divine energy, and allow that current to come in with such power that it annihilates these negative thought-forms and purifies the mind and the heart forever.” Recorded in the afternoon of Tuesday, August 14, 2012.

Excerpt: “Our natural state is pure awareness and absolute purity of mind and heart, and thus a state of love-filled joy. But we are only in that state if we are in the Real Self. And the problem for human consciousness is that a false self has intervened to disconnect our consciousness from the Real Self. And so we must learn to recognize the Real Self. And it’s easy to do because the Real Self differs from the false self in one essential way; the Real Self is non-arising. Any self that arises as an object, as a sense of being a body in the world, as having emotions, intentions, agendas, and relations in duality with others, is the false self. The Real Self is non-arising, and from the perspective from the false self, then, the Real Self does not exist because it doesn’t arise, it’s unborn, it’s unmanifest. But what the Real Self knows is that it’s that which arises that does not really exist; it’s not real because it’s fleeting, it’s impermanent, it’s in constant change, and it’s constantly fragmented, different emotions, different attitudes, different thoughts, contradictory, conflicting, feeling, and cognition states; whereas the Real Self that’s non-arising is eternal, unchanging, immutable – untouched by the chaos of the false self.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 9, 2012.

Excerpt: “The two most important concepts in meditation are ‘Shiva’ and ‘Shakti.’ We need to understand the very deep inner significance of these two profound concepts that function as the energy source for our reality because when we are meditating, what we are doing is literally charging our battery. The soul is a battery; it’s a living battery. And that battery gets discharged over time. And the more that we function in the lower chakras, the faster the battery discharges and goes dead. And so every time we have an outburst of anger, or sexual lust, or insecurity, anxiety, paranoia, all of those lower chakra emotional fixations, the battery of our life energy goes dead. And if it can’t be recharged we will literally go dead. And our physical body then starts to have to compensate for the lack of spiritual energy and the organs become weaker, they become drained. And eventually we just have a meltdown, we can’t think, we can’t organize our self to act and function in the world, our emotions become out of order, they get bipolar, they get fragmented, they fall into a meltdown. This is now happening around the world because nearly everyone’s battery has gone dead.” Recorded in the afternoon of Thursday, July 26, 2012.

Excerpt: ”How many of you believe that you really exist? Is anyone here still under that illusion? Admit it if there is. Anyone? No one will admit it, that’s good, it’s a start. It’s better to not admit it. Because we don’t really [exist]; it’s an illusion. Anything time-bound is not real. And all existence is simply an appearance followed by disappearance. Is the appearance any more real than the disappearance? No, but neither is real. You know a lot of times we talk about Jivanmukti as the goal of yoga, which means to be liberated in life; liberated from the ego with its illusory existence that is only an illusion. But actually Ramana says no, Jivanmukti is not the end; there is a stage higher than Jivanmukti. Does anyone know what it is? Sri Ramana calls it Videhamukti. And this means liberation even from believing you ever were an ego that has achieved liberation. There is not even the subtle sense of being one who has gone beyond the illusion – because you were never in the illusion to begin with. That’s why the final stage is just laughter.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 19, 2012.

Excerpt: “…Those of us who have been here for some time have no doubt come to understand and been motivated by the fact that what we are doing is discovering who we are. Most of us have recognized that we have these experiences that are in a flux, almost like in a circle; our body and our minds are going through these changes, constant changes. And yet there’s a witness, there’s a center to all of these experiences, and what we call ‘imperiences,’ those which don’t happen in what seems to be an external world but happen in an internal world: dreams, visions, memories, thoughts; where do they actually happen? And to whom do they happen? And we usually focus our whole life on what is happening out there: ‘what a pretty flower,’ ‘what a strange person,’ ‘what extraordinary power of thunder and lightning and rain,’ and all these other things. And we have judgments about our experiences, and sometimes we have judgments about our own thoughts. But how often do we ask: ‘Who is it who is having the judgment?’ ‘To whom does this thought occur?’ ‘Who is witnessing even the judgment about the judgment?’ ‘Who is the ultimate perceiver?’…” Recorded in the afternoon of Wednesday, July 18, 2012.