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Like alcoholics at a twelve-step meeting, we must admit the truth: existence has become unmanageable for the human species. At every level, from individual emotional stability to couple and family relationships to global politics, life is in deadlock. The...
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A young student I am counseling just told me about a question she must answer on an application to an elite boarding school. The question is: “Who are you?” I laughed when I heard it.
I could hear Sri Ramana laughing as well. In fact, I could hear ...
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People like to believe they understand the game of life. In fact, the ego does not only like to believe it is in control of events—it has a desperate need to believe it does. So, for example, the religious person needs to believe that carrying out the d...
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One name for our current historical moment could be Quantum Yuga. The discoveries of quantum mechanics have shattered the assumptions of the Newtonian paradigm that has too long held our consciousness in collapse, in the straitjacket of naïve pseudo-real...
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All human beings worship power. Where they differ is in their conceptions of power. There are many different ways to understand the nature of power and the source of power-and most importantly, in how to reach the underlying goal of possessing real power....
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Sat Yoga is the ancient science of metabolizing our theomorphic potential. Human beings, alone of all creatures, have the power of re-designing our own psychic structure in the direction of ethical, aesthetic, cognitive, and spiritual perfection. Through ...
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As the world falls deeper every day into the infernal grip of the final days of kali yuga, ever greater spiritual efforts are required to remain serene and compassionate. Without adhering to a dedicated practice of meditation that keeps us centered in the...
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There is a common misunderstanding concerning the implications of ego death. Many people assume that once the ego dies in the process of spiritual transcendence that the individual will have no further will to live. This is incorrect. The will to live wil...
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That which the current materialist ideology considers the objective external world is apperceived by illumined sages as a collective dream-field. Space and time exist only as structural features of the matrix of the collective illusion. Once awareness bec...
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People often ask what is the best way to meditate. There are of course many techniques—from counting breaths to subvocal repetition of a mantra to staring at a candle flame—but the only true way to meditate is to die. Of course, biological death is no...
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The ego is a miasma of emotion-tinged thoughts. It is in order to be released from its chaotic swamp of anxiety, frustration, rage, and depression that most people begin to seek a spiritual path.
Seekers have traditionally been classified into one of thr...
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Sat Yoga is the art of learning to relax and enjoy. Many people do not know how to relax. They do not enjoy their lives. For the vast majority of people, life is drudgery. For a great number, it is filled with fear and anxiety. For still others, their emo...
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Many people think of themselves as spiritual. But very few seriously consider the possibility of entering into formal advanced spiritual training. In part, this is because there are few serious esoteric spiritual schools in the West. Spirituality has beco...
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A scandal haunts the world, a fact that no one dares to talk about. It is a far more profound scandal than all the political scandals that are revealed every day. The ultimate scandal concerns an incapacity we hate to admit: Humans cannot make decisions. ...
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The ego’s unconscious intentional structure has the logical form of a double bind. That means it can’t win for losing. This biocomputer program with a built-in bug (or strange loop) is responsible for the feeling that spiritual liberation is impossibl...
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The basic practice of sat yoga is very simple: Just be. This, of course, is more difficult than we like to realize. If we understand why that is, then we are halfway to liberation. So let us go over the logic of the illusory bondage from which we are inte...
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A few students have asked recently about my response to a popular new-age film called ‘The Secret’. I have not seen it, nor do I plan to. But because of the level of interest—and controversy—regarding its content, and the importance of understandi...
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The opposite of rapture is reification. If not for that strange tendency of consciousness, we would all be blissful. But the current condition of consciousness is to make things out of the Transfinite Real, and to misidentify consciousness with a thing. C...
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The repetitive refrain that spiritual teachers hear from their students is that of sulking annoyance (no doubt at God or Brahman, or the unconscious ego structure, or projected on the teacher or the path of transformation itself) regarding the slow pace o...
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Someone asked recently if our institute is teaching Advaita. That is not an easy question to answer. Because one could say yes, and be correct. And one could say no, and also be correct. Let us say that we are teaching a unique, multimodal approach to the...
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