Satsang
Also known as: Sat-sang, Company of truth
Sanskrit: सत्संग, from sat ('truth' or 'being') and sanga ('company' or 'association').
Satsang is a gathering held in the company of a spiritual teacher or community for the shared exploration of truth, typically through dialogue, silence, and direct pointing to the nature of awareness. In the nondual traditions, it is less a lecture than a live inquiry into present-moment experience.
Historically, satsang referred broadly to any gathering in the presence of the wise. In contemporary nonduality, teachers such as Rupert Spira and Nisargadatta Maharaj popularized a question-and-dialogue format, where a student's specific confusion becomes the doorway to a direct, shared look at what is actually being experienced right now.
Literally association with truth or association with the wise, satsang traditionally refers to gathering in the presence of a realized teacher, though the word is now also used more broadly for any gathering, in person or online, centered on shared inquiry into the nature of awareness. Unlike a typical class with a fixed curriculum, classical satsang is often unstructured, question and answer, silence and direct pointing, responding to whatever is alive in the room rather than following a predetermined lesson plan.
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Related Terms
Nonduality
Nonduality (or non-duality) is the direct recognition that awareness and its contents, such as thoughts, sensations, and the sense of being a separate self, are not two separate things but a single, seamless reality. It is a description of direct experience, central to Advaita Vedanta and related contemplative traditions.
Self-Inquiry
Self-inquiry is a contemplative method, most closely associated with the sage Ramana Maharshi, of persistently asking 'Who am I?' to trace attention back to its source. The practice uses the question to dissolve identification with the thinking mind and reveal awareness itself.