A Shift in the Superego
Preview: 0:00 / 0:00
Question:
From my parents and everyone I grew up with I used to get, “Sex is the most beautiful thing, and overeating is the most beautiful thing, and money and cars and beaches and vacations and drinking. Its the best thing. And do it!”
While the superego used to manipulate mankind in a puritanical way, in recent generations there has been a shift from “You cant do this and that. You have to save. Early to bed and early to rise,” to “No no enjoy. Spend it all. Watch pornography. There’s no limits.” To walk the spiritual path takes great courage to break away from the current ideology of the collective hedonistic lifestyle and to make a stand for what is right.
Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 18, 2009.
Related Teachings
How to Get Out of the Trap of the Ego's Core Delusion
The world is in a state of full system collapse. If we want to remain in a state of peace and navigate with accuracy and freedom, we must prepare psychospiritually. Shunyamurti presents M. C. Escher's lithograph "Drawing Hands” as best representing the logical trap of the ego's core delusion and why the capacity for Self-actualization has been lost. Shunyamurti teaches how we can reclaim our Self-sovereignty and finally be free of the internalized other.
How Can We Explain Our Collective Stupidity?
In this intellectually dazzling and spiritually transformative satsang, Shunyamurti bridges ancient nondual wisdom with modern philosophy to illuminate one of the deepest mysteries of existence: What is this world? Drawing on the insights of Jean Baudrillard, Abhinavagupta, Adi Shankaracharya, and Sri Ramana Maharshi, he reveals why reality is better understood as a simulacrum—a mirror reflection without an original—than as a material universe existing independently of consciousness.
Moving from a penetrating critique of consumer culture, desire, and the modern "Matrix," Shunyamurti then unveils the seven states of consciousness, showing why the waking ego is the least qualified to judge reality. True awakening begins when we transcend the limitations of ordinary awareness and enter the luminous stillness from which all experience arises.
This teaching is excerpted from Shunyamurti's latest seminar, "The Thrill of the Infinite: You Must Take the Leap." Access the complete teaching series here: https://www.satyoga.org/shop/products/retreat-package/the-thrill-of-the-infinite/
We Are Powerless to Stop the Loss of Power
In this timely teaching, Shunyamurti presents a sweeping analysis of humanity's current death spiral: the necrocosm, a civilization that has lost its reverence for life and all that is sacred—that is governed by death, distraction, and the negative commodification of consciousness. This shift is nowhere more evident than in the current West Asia conflict, which he describes as a "heartland war" deliberately choking the lifeblood of modern civilization by disrupting the fuel and supply systems upon which humanity depends. Yet beneath this stark and sobering diagnosis lies an inspiring and urgent message. The true crisis is not ultimately external, but internal. The ego itself is the program that convinces us we are guilty, worthless, separate from God, and destined to sabotage our own highest potential. As long as we remain identified with this false self, we waste the precious gift of human life. This teaching reveals how the ego was conditioned to perpetuate fear, shame, distraction, and self-destruction, and why only a complete return to our divine nature can free us from its grip.
The Doors
Don’t Go Through the Wrong Doors:
or, How the Daimon Becomes a Demon:
A Study of Psychotic Brilliance
Oliver Stone has made a highly impactful, provocative, and disturbing film about the life and demise of Jim Morrison and his infamous band The Doors. While screening the film, it became clear that the cinematic sinfulness of the presentation itself is a monstrously perverse enactment, putting Stone as auteur into the place of the Lacanian object cause of the desire of the Other—in this case of whoever is lured into watching the film and consuming its images.
Because of its perverse intentionality, I would be an accomplice to the flagrant immorality and envy of the perverse and psychotic jouissance depicted so graphically as well as subliminally and with plausible deniability by the film, covering its hook with the justifiable bait of perusing an approved cultural artifact, offered as protected expression under the aegis of being a work of art...
An Infinite Intelligence Is Dreaming Us All
In this Q&A, Shunyamurti speaks about the collapse of modern culture—of science, language, and meaning—and points to the only true refuge: the stillness beyond thought, where wonder, freedom, and divine intelligence remain untouched. From the nature of collective vs. individual reality, to the deeper meaning of Moses as a symbol of liberation, to the transformative power of “negative capability,” this dialogue reveals a radical truth: awakening begins when we surrender the need to know and enter the silence of pure Presence.
Beyond the Delusion of Narrative
This teaching offers a structural map of consciousness at every level of reflective subjectivity; it clarifies the path from the mental to the transmental; and it elaborates the nature of the state of grace. All is eternally present, in absolute simplicity and infinite complexity.