Namaste. To those of you who are new here, or to an Indian satsang, “Namaste” means “I greet you from the heart and recognize your real Self, which is the Holy Spirit.” Holy means pure. Pure means undefiled, uncorrupted, unconditioned. A state of innocence and a state of love. The unborn, uncreated Self; this is the core of everyone’s being.

It’s important to recognize that there is a deeper part of our Self than is most often recognized in our daily life. The purpose of a satsang is in fact to remember who we really are, because usually we have to have a lot of defense mechanisms up, to protect ourselves from inauthentic relationships, or relationships that are intrusive or simply superficial. So, often we forget who we really are, and we close our heart because the world would mistreat our heart. Here is a safe place to open your heart and realize again who you are.

When we are living from the Real Self, and resonating from the core of our Being, there is a state of peace and serenity; there is an absence of anxiety. And this enables the mind to become very clear, very open, and very wise. These are the immediate benefits of centering ourselves.

To center in the Self, we have to silence the chattering mind that lives at the surface of our being. And this is why the science of meditation has developed. Meditation means, the very word means, “medi,” the middle or the center, it means to move to the center of our Being. And the word yoga, Sat yoga, means union with the Sat, which means the core, the essence of who we are.

But when people begin the study of meditation, and the practice of meditation, they discover that in order to remain in the state of centeredness, certain changes have to occur in our psychology. And we discover through experience that we are not the masters of our own mind, but that our minds have been taken over by a false self. This is what we refer to as the ego.

It is this false self that represents what in religion is referred to as the “fallen state.” In the West, this is often referred to as the state of sin, but sin means simply “missing the mark,” not getting to the target, the essence, the core of our Being.

In the East, the term that is used is avidya, or ignorance. When we are living in the false self, we are in a state of ignorance of who we are, and therefore we do incorrect karma. Our actions in the world are not in accordance with the highest intention, and they end up creating suffering.

The essence of human culture throughout history has been to teach people how to emerge from out of the ego, like out of a chrysalis, and to metamorphose our consciousness into the Real Self just as the caterpillar becomes the butterfly. But we have lost this understanding of the nature of culture in the modern age. And all religions in the world have been about the methodology of how we achieve this inner transformation to reach the highest potential of human consciousness.

In fact, there is no argument between one religion and another. They use different words in each different religion, but those words, when they are analyzed, refer to the same inner reality, because human nature is universal. So there is no argument between religions or spiritual paths, only between those who do not truly understand those paths.

This has, unfortunately, been made more complex today by the emergence of science, which has developed in opposition to religion, which had already reached a fallen state of self-misunderstanding. So now the world is in the position of the famous story of the ten blind men who go to examine an elephant, and each one sees the elephant as very different. To one the elephant is a pillar, to another it’s a whip, to another it’s a wall, to another it’s a leaf, or a hose, etc., etc. All of them are right.

In the same way, when a scientist says, “There’s no God. We’ve looked. We have telescopes that can see far out into space. We have microscopes that can see to the most elementary particles. God does not exist. This is a myth.” The scientist is correct. And yet when the mystic says, “God is everywhere. God is all that is,” the mystic is also correct.

But they are operating at two different levels of consciousness. To the scientist, the universe is a phenomenon that can only be understood through an analysis of cause and effect. Whereas to the religious or spiritual person, the world must be understood in relation to its meaning. And to understand the world in terms of meaning is very different than understanding it in terms of cause and effect.

This difference becomes critical when it comes to the practice of medicine, because many analysts, psychoanalysts in particular, who have studied psychosomatic medicine—and this is admitted even by allopathic doctors—most illnesses actually are a result of meanings about themselves that people carry in unconscious layers of their minds or their psyches.

And so, if you treat a symptom only on the level of cause and effect, but don’t treat the underlying meaning of why the person created that symptom of ‘dis-ease’, then you won’t really produce a healing, but simply further side effects. So it has become important to recognize that the universe cannot simply be understood as an objective phenomenon, but that consciousness is embedded in the universe at the most fundamental levels.

And this is in fact what quantum physics, which studies the most elementary particles, has, to its own discomfort, discovered. And there are many attributes of reality proven to be true, and unavoidably true, by those physicists, attributes that cannot be explained according to the ordinary logic of cause and effect. And there are paradoxes embedded in reality that have caused us to have to change our understanding of the nature of reality.

At this point, this crisis, in the different ways of understanding the universe, has spread to all the sciences and all the disciplines of humanity, including history and psychology and sociology, etc. But all of this has been overshadowed by the fact that there is now a crisis of survival of the very human race on the planet Earth. We have a situation of global warming, as it’s often called, that may lead us to a planetary crisis in a very short number of years.

And we have other crises. Everyone’s aware of the global financial crisis, the implosion of the very civilization whose matrices of electric power, oil, etc., we depend on, that are no longer functioning; and the oil may be running out soon. All of the things that we have taken for granted are suddenly up in the air. If we analyze all of these crises, they come down to the same cause, and have the same meaning. Here is where the two levels link, and that is, that human consciousness is not functioning at a high enough level to be adequate to the demands of this crisis.

If we don’t find a way to increase our capacity, not only our intelligence at a theoretical level, but our capacity to care for the earth, for one another, our capacity to love, to create a culture based on higher principles, not on aggression or paranoia, not on narcissism or egocentricity, but a society based on unity and harmony, the oneness of love, we will not survive.

It is important for us to respond to this crisis before it is too late. And it cannot be dealt with on a political level, or social movements, it has to be a raising of consciousness that each one of us achieve, internally. The understanding of how to achieve this is in fact a heritage from the esoteric level of the world’s religions.

The psycho-technology for this inner transformation exists, but it can only be actualized if there are enough of us to give ourselves fully to the process of re-creating ourselves in the image of the Supreme Being. That means, to live from, and as, the Pure Spirit, the true center of our Being, and to recognize all other beings, all other entities, whether human, plant, or animal, as expressions of the same Supreme Principle of creative power and love.

To do that, we must understand how the false self operates. And we must disable its ability to deceive us. We must bring about an upgrade of our own software. And if we do that, we will become more coherent. We will create more life-enhancing, loving relationships; and we will become model citizens of the world, who will be able to disseminate this new consciousness merely through our presence, living it, because, as every religion teaches, “By their fruits, you shall know them.”

By living the Truth, embodying Truth, we will inspire others, and this new consciousness can be crystallized and disseminated planet-wide. And it is not simply through our behavior and our actions, but through the resonance, the vibrational frequency, which these transceivers, these brain mechanisms, which are extraordinary computers that most of us only use five or ten percent of, are able to radiate into the world.

All of these understandings were present thousands of years ago and have come down to us, in time, through the texts of yoga. And we can find much of this information in every esoteric tradition, which we study here at this institute. There is great wisdom in every tradition. And if we gather up all of that wisdom, we can synthesize a very clear map of transformation that will be consistent with everything that has been gained in human understanding, from prehistoric times to the most hyper-modern versions of psychoanalysis.

This science of yoga is a super-science, the science of sciences, in which the understandings of the unconscious mind and the superconsicous mind were very profoundly explored, and the methodologies of achieving liberation from the false self are well understood.

People are always asking, “Is this difficult? It seems very hard.” The answer is it’s not really, but it does require your desire to achieve liberation from the false self. And this is what usually causes people to run away from this kind of practice, because the ego will convince you that you’re better off with the cheap thrills that the ego provides than with the bliss that God provides.

And because the ego-mind is split, and is very good at deceiving itself, it can easily convince you, if it has hold of your mind, that it’s not worth partaking of such strange, esoteric activities as meditation. But today it’s not so easy to walk away from this, because, not only is the world in a crisis, but I’m sure that if everyone was candid and honest they would recognize that their own lives are in a crisis.

It’s very hard to find someone who is truly at peace today. It is really rare to meet someone who is liberated from neurotic tendencies, addictions, anxiety, depression, bad relationships, boring jobs, and negative attitudes that don’t serve them. All of the different pathologies that psychology has listed for us are a plague that is destroying our lives. What’s important to recognize now is that there’s only one way out of the crisis.

It all comes down to the need to transform the narcissistic ego. Unfortunately, we live in a culture of narcissism and cynicism. So the word that you get from the collective consciousness is, “Don’t bother. Live for yourself. Eat, drink, and be merry. Tomorrow you’ll die, and who cares what happens to the Earth.”

But when you realize you’re not so merry, and the beers just give you a headache the next day, and the television is boring, and all of those cheap thrills are not really so thrilling after all, then you begin to turn to the question, “What might the world really be about? What might my existence really be for? Do I have a higher purpose, a higher meaning than what I’ve considered?”

When we begin the journey inward, to ask the core question, “Who am I really? Who am I under the ego’s false identities?” then life really begins to become interesting. And that’s because the deeper you go into yourself, the more deeply you’re able to understand others. And you’re able to create far more interesting relationships.

You become much more aware of the subtle levels of reality that the gross ego blocks out, including the spiritual dimension of reality. And your connection to Nature, and your care for the world and for all of the creations of the Supreme Being, become much more dear to your heart. When you really get serious about disciplining the narcissistic ego, taming it, getting it under control, and getting it to surrender to the higher consciousness within, then your life truly becomes well ordered and powerful, and you can achieve what you have come here to do.

But everything depends on the answer to the question, “Who am I?” It is well known today, through many studies in psychology, that the ego takes on its identity from the Other: from the mother, and then the father, and then the other family members, school system, etc., and it is not authentic.

The ego wants to be popular. It wants to be desirable to others. It wants to be approved of by others. Therefore, it is very emotionally fragile, and it’s willing to betray itself in order to gain that approval of the other. But then the self-betrayal begins to eat away at one’s heart. And everyone is being eaten away from countless events of self-betrayal in their lives. Each self-betrayal requires a repression because it’s too unbearable to remember, and a diversion, a rationalization, a justification, and gradually a self-confusion.

And so, we ourselves create the barrier to reaching our heart. And this is why the spiritual journey is difficult and requires a tremendous amount of courage. Because as Carl Jung said, “In order to reach the inner light, we have to go through the Shadow.”

Of course, Jung was only echoing what was said much more eloquently by Saint John of the Cross, and Santa Teresa de Avila, and all of the great saints of not only the Christian tradition but the Eastern traditions. We must go through the dark night of the soul. If we are willing to do that, and we reach the Light, then we can be healed. And once we are healed, then we are able to manifest the Real Self. Because the Real Self is already present, but hidden behind the clouds of ignorance, it’s not like we have to create it. We just have to simply allow our Self to emerge from hiding.

Once we do that, we will find that all the virtues that we didn’t think we had, or that our narcissistic ego didn’t want us to employ, are already there. And there’s an urge, a longing, within us to live a divine life. We will at that point realize that consciousness exists as a ladder, much as that metaphor has been used in the Bible—Jacob’s ladder, the ladder to Heaven.

This ladder is a ladder of different levels of consciousness. And we find that the deeper within we go, the higher we climb that ladder, until we reach our ultimate level of pure consciousness which is a unity with all that is and with the supreme intelligence that has created the cosmos.

Our spiritual school of Sat Yoga, and our community, exists in order to support everyone’s moving up that ladder, and to keep each other from falling. And yes, people will fall; that’s a natural part of the process. But knowing that there’s someone there to catch you, and not to judge you, and say, “See. You are a sinner. You deserved it,” which the rest of the world will tell you, is a very useful support system.

So what we are doing here is creating an energy field in which all of us can feel, in a very palpable way, the higher energy of love. We are learning also to use all our special talents to serve others in opening their hearts and feeling safe to explore within, to discover who they really are.

This kind of a communal project brings out the best in people. People are willing to volunteer to do terribly difficult things, like translate a talk, and they’re not getting paid for it [editor’s note: this teaching was being translated].

That generosity is greatly appreciated. And there are other beautiful souls who play divine music on this side of the room who are offering that as a wonderful generosity and an offering of love and are not being paid for it. Why are they doing all this? And we’re offering this school without charging tuition so that everyone can come here, regardless of whatever financial condition you’re in. Because we want to create a community based on love, not on personal profit, not on prestige, and not for egoic reasons, so that we can create the possibility of a culture that is strong enough and united enough and wise enough to survive the crisis that is about to hit the world.

And hopefully we will inspire others to do the same in different parts of the world, and we can unite with other communities that have started and are functioning on the same principle in other parts of the world. We hope to share, mutually, the wisdom that we are learning from this new adventure in creating community; because this is a great human adventure.

We face the greatest challenge that our species has ever faced and we want to meet it with absolutely open hearts and open minds and to face the consequences of our own human misbehavior on the collective level and heal that, starting from within, and developing outward a new relationship to one another and to our sacred planet.

The basic skill that is required in doing this is the capacity to silence your mind. This is the first stage of meditation. Once we silence the mind, we find out “Who am I?” We learn to recognize the Self that lies deeper than the mind. What we learn when we begin to meditate is that “I” the Self, am not the physical body, because the physical body is only a vehicle that I am operating.

And I am not the mind. The mind is operating without my will. It’s producing thoughts I don’t even want to be there; it’s operating autonomously. I am not the mind but the witness to the mind. And beyond the mind, there’s a capacity of intelligence—pure intelligence—that does not require the use of language in order to intuit the Real.

For this higher part of our consciousness, that we refer to as the buddhi, from which we get the name Buddha, “one who has awakened,” this part of the consciousness is connected to the Spirit. And once we awaken the buddhi, then we have the power to use that higher intelligence to silence the mind, because the buddhi outranks the manas, or the chattering, monkey mind.

And the buddhi is in turn aware of the highest, the Supreme Principle, whether we call that God, or Allah, or we use the term “Emptiness,” or Nirvana, or our Buddha-nature, or Atman, or Brahman. There are many, many, many terms for this Supreme Principle. But the buddhi is aware beyond words, and can turn inward and surrender to that Principle, and then the Eternal Light, the luminous energy of our True Self, flows through us and fills us with the bliss of Divine Grace.

The Buddhists call this Ultimate Reality, “Emptiness,” for a reason. It’s because it’s empty of concepts and images, but the Emptiness, the space of pure awareness, is filled with light and with love. But the ego, you see, is terrified of emptiness because it already feels empty in a bad way; it feels a sense of lack.

And so, the false self is terrified of falling into that inner abyss. So it fills the space of consciousness with words constantly, so that it never has to feel alone. And it’s only when we are going into that internal solitude, and are willing to face the emptiness, the aloneness of our Being, that we can discover the Source of that Being. It is when we have united with the Source of our Being that—literally—we are saved. That is what the religious term “Salvation” refers to. When we achieve that, there is no longer a fear of death, or of suffering, or any other kind of existential anxiety. Okay, I’ve talked enough about this Ultimate State. Why don’t we experience it?