Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

Student Question:  What is the Unconscious?

Student Question:  You mentioned that often a lot of people’s unconscious urges manifest themselves in close relationships and families and what not.  It makes me think of a friend that I guess I would say is caught up in his egoic existence and around a lot of family issues and a lot of family pressure to do certain things and to be a certain way.  Now just for the background this individual was raised with Buddhist beliefs so he has some leanings that way but still is totally immersed in the egoic existence right now.  Now my question is, to what extent can a friend help someone like that out of the spiral and the problems he is in.  Are there really ways to help someone who is not ready to make that move?

Student Question:  What is the connection between the soul and awareness?

Student Question:  I was thinking about the violence that has occurred just most recently in England and we have studied the archetype of the apocalypse.  Is this a manifestation of that?  We talked about archetypes having their own energy and drawing people into it to act in a certain way. Is that what is occurring?

Student Question:  Could you give me some tips on overcoming fear while in meditation, or I guess more along the lines of reaching deeper states of meditative experience?

Excerpt: “So the good news is that we don’t have to wait until we leave the body to attain liberation, we can do it here and now….So it is important to recognize that what we mean by the self and by self inquiry, is not seeking an image or a concept of the self; not seeking an object of any kind…but leaving behind all levels of objectification and conceptualization....And what we discover when the mind has been completely stilled and emptied of thought and emptied of the continuing flow of images and the flow of memories or the flow of emotions.  When you have attained the witness state in which there is simply purified silent awareness….And so there is within each of you that core of being that is deathless and birthless and that cannot be given a form…”  Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 4, 2011.

Student Question:  During the retreat you taught about the five obstacles which the Bhagavad Gita speaks of but specifically regarding the fifth one, Ahankar.   One translation of that is self- centeredness.  What recommendations could you give to towards healing this obstacle?

Student Question:  We were just now in the study group studying the “MILAGRO” theory and I was wondering about the “MIL” and what we were studying at the retreat about how Prakriti and Purusha get together or would you say this is the stage of the MIL, or am I confused or can you talk about it?

In this one, I would reword the question a little: “Student Question:  You talked earlier about disidentifying, with I guess anything ultimately, and just going into the silence as the answer to disidentifying.  I am frequently finding myself wanting to convince the unconscious fragments instead of going into the silence.  I feel like I end up avoiding that or ignoring it.  How can I get past that?”

Student question:  During the retreat you spoke about the Merkabah.  I was wondering if you can explain a little bit more about what is the Merkabah?

Student Question:  I have been thinking a lot about not doing, not trying to silence the mind or trying to do this or that.  I can see that, or from what I think I have learned is that it will maybe seemingly get us closer to what we are trying to do but won’t get us there because it is an act of doing.  Tonight you mentioned dissolving any thoughts or any sense of understandings of the ego or language or anything.  So I was trying to figure out, I was trying to use language and figure out, if you’re not doing something, what would be the opposite of that?  Not doing implies doing in some way and then maybe being is maybe a better word but it’s just a word that I’m trying to ask for that maybe it will help me understand the concept of dissolving because even dissolving implies something?

Student Question:  I know this is not related to what we are talking of this moment, but I still have a lot of enigmas and unanswered questions.  Although I keep informed of some of these matters I still make the same question that Einstein made when he said that, “does it mean that if I am not looking at the moon, the moon is not there”?  Well that’s something that still bothers me inside of my head and I don’t have an answer for that.  And questions like who was watching at the moment of the big bang?  But there is something that happened one day here and I mentioned something related with Paleontology and evolution and I heard you very decided and very sure, affirm that the way Paleontology has presented things is not correct.  Even today if you see any analysis that they present to you at schools with the Carbon-14 dating, they can say when it was that people were living and you can see a path, although I don’t want to use the word evolution.  What are your thoughts on that?

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.