It is “The Real” that is the Question - 06.24.10

Student Comment: I read something today which said that “everything that is transient is not real.”

“Well, the definition of ‘Real’ is what is in question,” begins Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “For most of the Eastern traditions, the Real is that which is eternal, immutable, and non-changing.” For a Westerner, however, “the Real” is typically understood as the “external,” objective world of common experience. In contrast, for Indians, for example, the “external world” is understood as Mahamaya, the cosmic illusion. “So in that sense, of course, everything within this flux that we call time and space is unreal, but that doesn’t mean we don’t feel it very deeply, that it can’t traumatize us, etc. A nightmare is not real, but you can wake up in a sweat over it. . . . And so this Cosmic Dream is given [to] us in the way it is in order to help us achieve the Real, and to begin to grow to levels of wisdom and awareness that transcend even our original Nature so that there is an evolution to ever higher and higher states. So there is a growth that the unreal makes possible to achieve higher Reals.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 24, 2010.