The Magic Drive - 11.10.09

“There’s a drive that human beings have that’s probably the most important of all the drives that psychologists tend not to focus on or even recognize. It’s a very odd thing to me,” remarks Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica, “which is the magic drive.” And, as Shunyamurti reminds us, “Everyone has a drive toward magic,” and even “toward being a magician.” But in this day and age we have chosen to externalize magic into the various forms of technology that we have readily available to us. But the problem is that this society is prone toward black magic. “And so the magic that we spend most of the money on in modern culture are the magic that will create shock and awe in warfare. The magic of surveillance of whole societies. The magic that gives power over others.” And these types of “magic” give the ego the idea that it is powerful and is able to manipulate its environment in some way, shape, or form. “And we are now suffering from the effects of the success of these lower kinds of magic that have in fact succeeded in destroying the unity, the love, the harmony, the very basis of life in this natural world.” But the power of the unconscious mind can never be underestimated in its ability to cast its own magic spells. It has in fact cast a magic spell so powerful over the ego that the ego does not even realize that it is entranced. “And once it comes under that spell, then the situation becomes hopeless because the ego can no longer remove itself from the spell that it has put itself under. This is the passion for ignorance that is spoken of by the Buddhists . . . and many other theorists who have attempted to understand why it’s so difficult for people to change even when they come into therapy or they come into some spiritual path. ‘Why does it seem so difficult?’ It’s because the ego is under a magic spell. . . . This is why it’s so important in meditation to quiet the mind. In that state of silence . . . you are not reinforcing the magic spell. And as it weakens then the real magic of the inner light can break through into one’s awareness. . . . And that magic will liberate our awareness from the sense of being a separate entity from the magic that all of this is.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 10, 2009.