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What is the genealogy of the Sat Yoga Approach?
Sat Yoga is a set of biopsychospiritual technologies for the transformation of human consciousness. The transformational science of Sat Yoga was originally developed some 5,000 years ago in what is now India. The knowledge spread both eastward (as Taoist alchemy, tai chi and chi kung, Ch’an Buddhism, and Zen) and westward (as the source of the Greek and later Western philosophic lineages and Middle Eastern religious traditions), and this technology became the basis of what are now the world’s religions and philosophic and spiritual traditions.
The Yogic tradition has continued unbroken in India, but has branched into many specialized forms, most of which have lost the sense of Sat Yoga’s original wholeness. We are now re-integrating the insights that have been culled from the various branches of Yogic science into a single comprehensive paradigm. The Yogas that we have synthesized include Gyana Yoga (the knowledge of our Higher Self), Raja Yoga (the science of meditation), Kundalini Yoga (the science of transforming psychic energies), Karma Yoga (the theory and practice of egoless action), Swapna Yoga (the science of dream consciousness), Ashtanga Yoga (the eightfold path that includes ethical principles, physical asanas, and pranic breathing techniques), Mahavakya Yoga (the art of awakening others through speech), and Nisarga Yoga (attaining the natural state of transfinite awareness).
Aspects of the Sat Yoga philosophy can be clearly found in Plotinus and the neo-Platonist philosophers, the Catholic teachings of Meister Eckhart, Saint Thomas Aquinas (and his modern exponent Jacques Maritain), the esoteric texts of the Kabbalists and European alchemists, and in the works of such philosophers as Hume, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel. The Yogic concept of prana (known in China as chi) was rediscovered in the West by Anton Mesmer and called animal magnetism. But his work was banned and never developed into a true science. (Over a century later, Wilhelm Reich, working from a psychoanalytic paradigm, would re-discover the same force, and call it orgone energy, but history repeated itself, and he also found himself persecuted and imprisoned for his work, which was too far ahead of its time.) A great deal of intellectual ferment was occurring at the same time on other fronts that would bring some of the core insights of Sat Yoga back into human consciousness. Nietszche, despite the many flawed aspects of his understanding, was boldly re-opening the long-overlooked questions of causality, of nothingness, and of cyclic recurrence. The French philosopher Henri Bergson also delved into Yogic waters at the beginning of the twentieth century, developing a deepened understanding of élan vital (prana), time, consciousness, matter, and evolution. Philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead at the same time contributed a deeper understanding of process, a central concept in Sat Yoga.
At the same historic moment, elements of this most ancient science of the Self (known in Sanskrit as Atman) were partially revived as a healing modality—at least in terms of re-discovering the lower mental sheath and its vasanas and sanskaras (re-dubbed the unconscious), the lower chakras (conceived as drives), kundalini (misunderstood as libido), and the importance, if not the true significance, of dreams—by Sigmund Freud (who was influenced by the philosopher Schopenhauer, who in turn was inspired by the first Western translation of the ancient Indian atmanological texts called the Upanishads). The field of psychoanalysis for many reasons remained mired in the lower levels of the psyche. But other researchers, such as Carl Jung, Rene Guenon, John Levy, Wei Wu Wei, Mircea Eliade, Henry Corbin, Joseph Campbell, Sri Aurobindo, Fritjof Schuon, and more recent theorists in the field of transpersonal psychology, such as Ken Wilber and A.H. Almaas, have, despite the limitations of their perspectives, revitalized the effort to understand the higher levels of the transformational process.
Further pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place thanks to the efforts of thinkers who have worked out the enigmas of conceptual thought in relation to human reality, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida and Mark Taylor; mathematicians such as Gottlob Frege and Georg Cantor, the latter having developed the indispensable concept of transfinite numbers; phenomenologists including Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, who opened new intellectual paths toward the ancient meditative understanding of the spectrum of consciousness; and those who have explored the relationship between language and psychic energy, in particular, the psychoanalysts Jacques Lacan, Heinz Kohut, and Wilfred Bion, and the poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The attachment theorist John Bowlby and child analysts like Melanie Klein, Francoise Dolto, and Margaret Mahler have taught us a great deal about the development of the infantile psyche. We also owe much to the synthesizing efforts of contemporary Buddhist philosophers like Kitaro Nishida, Keiji Nishitani, D.T. Suzuki, David Loy, and Masao Abe. The revived ancient Indian science of Ayurveda has been usefully expounded in a Westernized framework by such practitioners as Vasant Lad, Robert Svoboda, and David Frawley. And of course the findings in the field of modern physics, both relativity and quantum mechanics, have gone far to demonstrate the insights of Sat Yoga in the real of elemental material being. Perhaps most important, sages in the lineage of Yoga and Advaita Vedanta of recent years—including Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and Baba Hari Das—have kept the living power of enlightened presence before our eyes as an undisputable reality. But a clear and complete paradigm has until recently eluded human understanding.
Above all, it must be remembered that ultimate reality transcends the rational mind. Concepts can never grasp the Absolute. Our conceptual knowledge of the noumenal order is like a ladder that, once having been climbed, must be left behind, in order to actually enter into the Supreme Real. It is the addiction to Logos, the fascination with the mind as an object, that is the final obstacle to Liberation. This tendency to remain within the symbolic order is responsible for the eventual petrifaction and loss of potency of every spiritual path.
Religions have tended to develop both esoteric and exoteric levels. The outer, exoteric, level tends to become fossilized as ritual, dogma, clerical hierarchy and closed-minded fundamentalism. But most religions manage to maintain an esoteric core that transmits at least some of the original knowledge that was its reason for being. However, it is a law of human nature that the purity and spiritual energy of cultures tend toward decay and decline. The knowledge of how to raise our species’ level of consciousness and psychological maturity has now gone into eclipse at the macro-social level. This is the root cause of the present world crises we are facing. A new renaissance of spiritual consciousness is taking place, however, at the micro-level across the planet. The revival of the lost wisdom of Sat Yoga is part of this global spiritual revolution.
How does Sat Yoga differ from other approaches to Yoga?
Because of the fragmented and fragile condition of the human ego structure today, the classical approaches to Yoga do not generally succeed. For example, the Ashtanga approach (that which most adheres to the teachings of Patanjali), the threshold conditions for beginning the serious study of Yoga require the taking of vows to live according to the ethical principles of Yoga philosophy (these are referred to as the Yamas and Niyamas). But most people are not able or willing to make such a commitment before engaging in Yogic activity. This has resulted in a gradual corruption of Yoga teaching, such that, in many schools of Yoga, our great spiritual tradition has been degraded into little more than a method of physical exercise. And once people make the mistaken assumption that Yoga is about the physical body, they tend to ignore the real inner work for which the asanas were intended to be only a preliminary preparation. Not only is the core practice of meditation downplayed, except as a way of relaxation after the asana workout, but the entire process of transforming consciousness tends to get airbrushed out. This leaves most contemporary yogic approaches prey to the egoic tendency toward body preening rather than focusing on transcendence of the ego, which is the original and most sacred purpose of Yoga. On the other hand, some approaches to Yoga only focus on meditation, and leave out the asanas and pranayamas. This way also is unbalanced, and may be self-defeating because if the bodily condition is allowed to deteriorate, then one’s mental condition will also be negatively affected. The body is our sacred vehicle, and must be treated with honor and care. This includes attention to diet and lifestyle and understanding of the messages being delivered to us via our nightly dreams, as well as through all the events in this waking dream we call existence, the cosmic play of Maya.
Our approach to wellness, inner transformation and Self-realization through Sat Yoga requires no recourse to belief systems, either theistic or atheistic, nor to dogma, rites, rituals, chanting, or obedience to a guru. We value individuation, the recognition and encouragement of differentiation, and the general de-territorializing of consciousness. We also value the self-discipline that results in renunciation of narcissism and egocentricity. A sustainable community can only be built upon the basis of inter-being, transegoic consciousness, non-aggressivity, and mutuality in all interactions. Our intention is to build such a community of beings dedicated to perpetual transformation, functioning in harmony for the purpose of the joyousness and liberation of one and all.
Essential to the practice of Sat Yoga is the dimension known as Karma Yoga, which means egoless action for the benefit of all beings. Achieving the inner realization of our True Nature so that we can act egolessly, joyously, and wisely is the central intent of Sat Yoga. Sustaining the health, flexibility, strength, and balance of the physical organism, maintaining and increasing the flow of prana, are all important in our approach to leading the most fulfilling life possible, but they are not primary. As it is written, “first attain the Kingdom of Heaven, then all else shall be added unto you.” Inner peace and enlightenment can be achieved and sustained even if the physical body is not healthy. God consciousness is our birthright in this and every moment, regardless of physical condition. It is the miraculous capacity of our divine nature that once activated within us, healing of the physical can often follow, though conventional medicine cannot grasp how it happens.
What is 7-Body Wellness?
The Sat Yoga Approach to Healing and Self-Realization has formulated a unique, wholistic system of maintaining and recovering health and wellbeing, as part of the greater process of attaining inner illumination and liberation from the veils of the ego. The “7-Body Wellness” program involves the recognition that we do not have just one body, the physical organism, as modern medicine asserts, but rather, we each have seven bodies. These seven must all be harmoniously aligned for the full power of health and healing to manifest.
Beyond yet within the material organism and its physiological and chemical processes lies the pranic body, the field of bioelectrical forces. This body has been the subject of much of what is now referred to as complementary medicine, such as accupuncture, qigong, and other traditional Eastern medical approaches. Prana, or chi, can be considered the life energy that animates the body. If this energy is blocked, deficient, or chaotic, the results will show up as symptoms in the physical organism.
The third body is the mental/emotional body. Most of the levels of the human mind lie below the threshold of consciousness. If there are pathological thought patterns, or traumatized affect, repressed in the unconscious, these can be the source of psychosomatic illness, and will disturb both of the previously mentioned bodies.
Beyond the mental body lies the archetypal wisdom body. If the mental sheath is cut off from the archetypal sheath, then that will show up as a lack of depth, clarity, and capacity to comprehend, as well as an intellectual listlessness and sense of futility.
Beyond that one finds the light body. If the mental and physical bodies are not able to receive and absorb the blissful luminescence of this higher body, the development of the capacity to love will be stunted and aggressivity and envy will dominate the personality.
In addition, we have a karmic body, which represents the psychic energies carried over from past lifetimes, which will constitute a pressure toward the manifestation of old patterns of thought and experience that generally have no place in the logic of one’s current existence. Unless the rogue forces from the past can be re-channeled and placed under the command structure of the current identity-consciousness, they also can cause havoc in one’s life.
Finally, we are all part of the one great body that is the universe. If we can realize our unity with the whole, and overcome the error of egocentricity, then the unlimited power of healing that sustains the universe itself becomes available to flow through us unimpeded.
What is different about our approach to asanas and pranayamas?
Originally, Yogis developed asanas and pranayamas as preliminary practices of dynamic meditation-in-movement and through heightened awareness of breath and pranic flow, leading to the deeper meditative processes in which “body and mind completely fall away” (to use the felicitous phrase of the great Zen teacher Dogen), producing states of higher consciousness that eventually blossom into the ultimate realization of oneness with the Absolute, referred to as the state of nirvikalpa samadhi.
Over time, however, asanas and pranayamas—and even, for some, asanas alone—became for some practitioners an end in itself, de-emphasizing the more advanced concentration and meditation processes, and leaving out entirely the ethical and devotional elements of Sat Yoga. They began to call this new approach centered on the physical practices Hatha Yoga. More recently, this Hatha Yoga approach has become increasingly hard-edged, and new styles have emerged that make the practice more like an aerobic workout and less a meditative practice.
Our approach defers the practice of asana and pranayama until after the consciousness has stabilized at the viveka point, beyond the control of the lower egoic agencies. This keeps the practice free of distortion into an egoic diversion from deeper inner work.
Asanas and pranayamas are ways of working with energy. Sat Yoga distinguishes nine different kinds of energy at play in interwoven lattices that create an intricate feedback mechanism. The energies that we gradually sensitize ourselves to include: the spectrum of physicochemical energies (including gravity, subatomic and quantum mechanics), pranic flows, psychic energies, kundalini shakti, chakra vortexes, archetypal energy, the energy field of Atman, karmic energy, and the subtlest yet most powerful energy of Brahman, the Absolute. The interactions between these forces are responsible for the complexity of human existence and the difficulty in attaining a sense of inner unity and stillness.
The Sat Yoga Approach returns asanas and pranayamas to their proper place in the larger context of total biopsychospiritual development. It is true that asanas have wonderful positive effects on our bodily health, strength, balance, and flexibility. But first and foremost, we employ the practice of asanas for what the Russian self-development teacher G.I. Gurdjieff called “self-remembering.” It must be emphasized that the concept of self-remembering involves self-forgetting. When the ego-self is forgotten, the Real Self emerges, and we enter a flow state.
The asanas and pranayamas provide opportunities for slowing down, centering, becoming more profoundly aware of our organic existence, our various energetic lattices, and more present in our essential nature as luminous and loveful awareness. So our practice of asanas is slower than other styles, softer, more internalized. It is much more like the practice of chi kung, which originally developed out of the ancient Sat Yoga approach to asanas, once it was brought from ancient India to China. We combine the softer movements gradually with those that require greater tension and flexibility—always keeping the focus on the dance of presence and inner joy that is our aim to resurrect. Pranayamas act to silence the mental chatter and increase the flow of prana through the organs, enhancing the sense of wellbeing, of fullness and inner security, and thus enable the mind to let go of its tendency to worry, to seek, to grasp, and to fear. As the vibrational disharmony known as anxiety dissipates, our natural state of peace, clarity, and desireless, fearless love re-emerges.
What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Love, in its true sense, is the realization of nonduality. It is the state of oneness, not just with one or two other limited beings, but with infinite Being. Being, the essence of all that which is, becomes recognized as much more profound than material forces in blind motion, the current dominant scientistic attitude. Rather, one realizes that Nature manifests Intelligence far beyond our own human consciousness. When one begins to meditate deeply on this Supreme Intelligence, one discovers that it lies within as well as outside one’s physical and mental dimensions. The more profoundly one focuses on the Source of mind, energy, and matter, the more one realizes the Love that blossoms in one’s heart when the state of oneness with the Source is attained. The incomparable love that is God-consciousness is the key to all healing and liberation. When love and wisdom, light and pure awareness are united in the heart, the essence of our Being emerges as timeless bliss.
What is Ayurvedic Psychoanalysis?
Taste preferences and their appended appetitive drives and inhibitions act as primal signifiers that quilt together the mental body with the pranic subtle energy field and the symptomatic expressions of the physical organism. The doshas refer to the balance (or imbalance) between those drives, inhibitions, and infantile complexes repressed and fixated in the unconscious strata of the mind. The Lacanian theory of how the unconscious is structured like a language fits well with the ayurvedic theory of the doshas, once we recognize the significance of the hedonic charges related to taste and how they function (in conjunction with smell, gaze, voice, kinesthesis, and maternal presence/absence) as primitive existential signifiers.
One approach (if not Freud’s royal road, it is in some cases a more direct bypass of egoic defense mechanisms) to collapsing the understructure of pathological symptoms, therefore, lies through the deliberate shifting of taste signifiers as part of a larger context of treatment that involves all seven bodies. This revolutionary approach to ayurveda parts with the traditional typing (“which dosha are you?”) that limits conventional ayurveda from attaining an adequate conceptual grasp of human complexity. We recognize, for example, that the physical organism can display one set of dosha characteristics, while the mental body reveals a very different profile.
By treating the two levels concurrently, but independently, a far more potent treatment plan can be followed. Dream analysis reveals the dosha-lock in the subconscious sector that must be released in order to have access to the underlying site map of the physical constitution. The constitution is not genetic, but composed of mental formations including decisions made in antecedent embodiments as well as in the immediate intrauterine and intercorporal phases of the samskaric trajectory. Guided visualization, perinatal and past life regression, as well as yogic and nutritive interventions may all be combined in this methodology.
Who is the main teacher at the Sat Yoga Institute?
The founder and research director of the Sat Yoga Institute writes under the spiritual name Shunyamurti (Robert Shubow, Ph.D.). His interest in Yoga began at a young age, and he underwent many years of strict yogic discipline and training in India and elsewhere. He also received shamanic training and certification in clinical hypnotherapy. He earned a bachelors degree in philosophy, a law degree, a doctorate in psychology, and did extensive post-doctoral work in psychoanalysis and Jungian analysis. He maintained a flourishing private healing practice in California for over twenty years before coming to Costa Rica to found the Sat Yoga Institute. He has also taught and led seminars in many parts of the world.
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