This is Sat Yoga—which means the state of union with Sat. Sat is our original nature, our true nature, before we began to play the role of a fictional character in a world that is the projection of our own imagination that we mistake for reality.
That fictional character is a-sat. And so we have vi-yoga, with a-sat—we disconnect from the false mind, the false identity, and we return to the Real. And there’s basically one reason for doing that—the fictional character you are playing is not making you happy—and everyone wants happiness, don’t you? How many of you don’t want happiness? Is there anyone?
But happiness cannot be found within the frame of reference of a fictional character, because how can you be happy if you’re not real? If you’re not authentic? How can you be happy if you don’t know who you are, because you’ve forgotten?
A-sat is also referred to as avidya. It means ignorance, lack of knowledge, vidya, the ability to see with the Eye of God. When that Eye is closed, you are in ignorance of your true Self, and of the true nature of reality; you’re asleep. And so if you’re in the ego-mind, you are asleep at the wheel, but on a very fast highway. It’s worse than driving a Tesla. The ego will burn just as quickly, and will go out of control just as easily, but the karmic effects transcend even one lifetime of suffering, if you don’t awaken. So happiness requires being authentic, being Real.
We speak in Sat Yoga of three Reals, that are in between, cushioned, by layers of the imaginary and the symbolic—but the three Reals are the key. When you identify with the false character, which is imaginary, you do it because you need to defend against the Real of the body. Being in a physical body is not really all that much fun—it feels a lot of pain, and it feels a lot of neediness, it isn’t a very long time before the body wants food, when it needs to drink water, and when it requires other comforts, and even the help of professionals to deal with kinds of pains that you cannot release yourself of.
So the identification with Real One, we call it, because it’s the first one that in a certain sense awakens you to the fact that you have entered a field of trauma—that’s what the world is—it’s a field that is filled with traumatizing experiences. At least the world at the end of Kali Yuga—wasn’t always this way, but even if you’re born into a family with a lot of money, you’re not going to find happiness, or freedom from the bodily condition. That’s why people take drugs and do whatever they need to do to escape—escape from the bodily condition. Escape into skydiving, or mountain climbing, or just running, because you need to not have your anxiety—you have to discharge all your energy, and become even unable to think—that’s called runner’s high—but everyone’s running away from the low, the depressive state, the paranoid state, terrorized state of the ego, that is usually suppressed, but is always threatening to irrupt.
And when it irrupts fully, the conscious fictional character cannot withstand it. It melts down, it collapses, it loses its ability to function as that character. So it’s very fragile. How many of you have experienced the fragility of your fictional character?
So we’re here to get out of that state of fragility, into a state of strength, empowerment, which also requires knowledge, wisdom, the capacity to think, the capacity to understand, the capacity to feel.
That’s Real One, the Real of trauma. Real Two is the real of the soul, but the soul at the end of Kali Yuga is depleted and exhausted. It’s not much better off than the ego, which is why it’s trapped in the ego. It yearns for God, but it is too attached to its worldly commitments to free itself, too attached to its investment in the desire for love of a sensory, material, dualistic kind, that soothes the pains of the body, but only very temporarily, if that.
So, the only freedom is Real Three, which is that level of your being that never identified with the fictional character, and never identified with any of the fictional characters that your soul created for you to experience the dream field—but that part that is always remaining in the blissful light. That’s the good news, because that’s your Real Self, and you’ve never lost it. You’ve only forgotten about it, but you cannot lose it.
So we’re all already the Realized Self, even though the fictional character will be the last to get the memo—the Self is already in bliss—whether your fictional character is miserable or not is really irrelevant, as long as you know it’s a fictional character. And of course, once you know it’s a fictional character, you rewrite it so it’s no longer miserable, but first you have to leave the plane of the character to that of the Playwright.
If you are in the dream, you cannot also realize the Dreamer—you have to transcend the illusion.
And how do you do that?
Well, originally the three Reals were one Real, and when they first split into three, they split only us three aspects of the Real, like Sat Chit Ananda. And we could say that what we now call Real Three, but is the original Real we now think of as the Diamond Mind, or the Buddha Nature, the absolute blissful Light, right—that’s the Supreme Self. But then there is also the Sacred Heart, the Self that is the soul, that is filled with God’s light and love and emanates it out. This is Christ-Consciousness, or Krishna-Consciousness, or the consciousness of the Goddess.
This is the Sacred Heart from which we can mercifully create a ritual of euthanasia, to free ourselves from a fictional character that no longer needs to create suffering for you—but your heart has to have enough love to use the power of love to go through ego death. It can’t be done if you hate your ego, because that hatred is the ego, so ego death is not some execution of some horrible being—no—it is the opening of divine love.
