What prevents Real Happiness?

What prevents Real Happiness? Our purpose in this meeting is to investigate the nature of this impediment. We are not investigating the Reality, Truth or Happiness, but the nature of this hindrance. The great impediment - perhaps the greatest hindrance of all - is the unexamined belief over the truth about oneself. You do not know who you are, but you have lots of ideas about it.

Being willing to live the Truth means being willing to abandon all beliefs, which means abandoning that personal identity (this sense of personality supports those beliefs and vice versa). Your great impediment is linked exactly to this!

The thoughts you have about yourself sustains the thoughts you have about life. Basically, this is how it happens. In fact, whoever you think you are is what sustains your world. These unconscious beliefs manifest this model and sustain it on the body and mind - this is the basis of the false identity.

How do you feel right now? What sensations appear in your body? What kinds of thoughts appear now in your mind? How are your beliefs appearing now? Everything that you are feeling, right now, is inside that model programmed by those beliefs. If you feel sorrow, this is being configured by a present thought model. If you feel joy, another model of thought is present there. If you are feeling some things in the body, some sensations, all they accompany a certain model of thought, a model of belief.

You are so identified with the thoughts that you do not even know what they trigger in this mechanism, in that body-mind. Your set of beliefs supports this model of an identity present within the body. This is completely false, but that is not how this mind-body feels, because you are mistaking yourself for this "apparatus" with this belief condition. 

You see yourself in the body and with a mind within that body. This is a representation pattern you do about yourself. The Sages call this the "dream state" or "unconsciousness state" This is not Real! From the standpoint of Reality, the present Truth, you are literally sleeping! Do you realize how important this is?

Obviously this is not easily accepted as real. What is easily accepted is this existence model, not what we are proposing here. Our invitation is for you to discover the structure, the basis, that sustains this suffering, so that you can understand this impediment. Then you become more and more aware of the Reality about yourself.

You can go beyond the belief, beyond that identity present in the body and, thus, this whole structure in this mechanism undergoes a change. Of course this does not always sound easy, because your beliefs are deeply held, anchored in that feeling, in that thought, emotion, feeling. You have been addicted to it for a long time.

I have been talking about it a lot, I have used new words and ideas to talk about What is beyond them. So, get rid of your ideas, your beliefs, your models, your conditionings. You may have read a lot of books, heard lots of speeches, watched lots of videos, but that did not work and will not work. Now, you are believing in other things, but this is still an intellectual act, it is still inside the mind and you have not yet gone beyond it. You have very specific beliefs and I am here to tell you that these beliefs are your impediment.

There are some beliefs that are basic and simple, which are no impediment to Realization. For example: you believe that the Earth is round, that the chemical formula of water is H2O and that the Law of Gravity is a fact. You are not a chemist, not a scientist, so you believe in what they say. But these beliefs are still intellectual.

So you have thousands upon thousands of beliefs that are no impediment to your Realization, to your Happiness, to the realization of the Truth about yourself. However, there are other beliefs, which we are dealing with in Satsang, that need to fall, to disappear: the belief about who you are, about a separate existence, a separate identity present at this moment - "Me, the world and God". there is no "me", there is no "world" and God is not what ones imagine.

So, this is not about not having beliefs, because some beliefs are harmless. When you drink a glass of water, you do not need to know the water formula, or have the scientific proof of this formula, you can keep on believing that the chemical formula of water is H2O. But, from the standpoint of Consciousness, the Real Nature of Being, this belief about who you are carries the greatest of all impediments and you must abandon it completely.

Most of the people live in these beliefs, which sustain other beliefs. The true Happiness, true Freedom, is something far greater than any belief; it is something beyond any idea, any description.

This Realization requires an openness, which is the vulnerability of living without those beliefs. For a flower to blossom, it must open itself up; for you to become free, you must be open to the Truth about yourself, which is the end of the illusion of the belief of this false self. Then, like a flower, when you open up yourself, you bloom.

* Originally published in Portuguese on May 17, 2018 ** Transcribed from a speech at an online meeting in the evening of February 16, 2018 - Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10pm. Download the Paltalk App and join

The communication of silence

People say that Ramana was in silence. His Upadesa, his teaching, was always through Silence. But you should not mistake Ramana's Silence for the silence of non-speech. He was in the Silence and has communicated in silence. For us, communication is speech; for the Sage, communication is communication. He was giving a message in silence, but He was not in the silence of not communicating. Even in our ordinary experience, we know that communication does not depend on speech.

The sound of the voice, the speech, is only a form of communication, but it is not the most important. For the Sage, the greatest form of communication is Silence, but Silence does not imply absence of voice or speech... Ramana also spoke!

What we see in the mind is a speech that does not communicate and a sound that does not say anything. In our common day by day experience, we may notice that just a glance, a gesture, or a facial expression is sufficient for something to be communicated. When a facial expression of anger is directed at you, you know the other is angry. When he opens a smile, you know he is happy to see you, that you make him fell well.

You are in Satsang to receive communication, to know what is being asked from you. You come to Satsang to find out how to Realize What You Are, and the primary premise is that you are before a Buddha, or it should be like that. You are here to find out how not to suffer anymore, how to make no mistake, how not to be unhappy. So, if that is the purpose in Satsang, you need to find out what to take and what to drop, what is relevant and what is not relevant to you.

The question you have to formulate in Satsang is, "Who am I?" Then, you wait for communication, which may come by speech, by gesture, by look, by silence... If your willingness is to receive, to find out what you have to take and what you have to drop, communication will come.

This picture for me [Master points to the picture of Sri Ramana Maharshi], during all these years, was not just an inert image, a facial expression. My Guru, the Master, was saying, through this picture, what was false and what was not, what was an illusion and what was real, what I had to take and what I had to drop in order to realize Happiness. So, this image was never the same, it was always communicating this investigation.

It is no wonder at all, because life is all the time giving you signs of what are mere repetitions, habits and practices that mean absolutely nothing to you, to your Happiness, to your Realization, and  you should let go. In the same way, life is showing you what you should get, what is relevant and what is not relevant, what is important and what is not important.

In general, person cannot see these signs of life, cannot see these expressions on the "face" of life. So, this person needs a living Master, a Guru, to see on the expression of a human face what is Real and what is not real, what is worth to sustain and what is not worth. Therefore, the Guru will always be important.

The Guru does not necessarily need to have a human form, but He must have a face. If He has a face, He is the Satguru, and if you can look at his face, He is your Master. But if you cannot look at his face, you are still blind. The ability to look at his face comes from Grace's work, that mysterious power that gives you openness, intelligence and fervor... A Real Passion for That! I call It Grace, which is what gives you the possibility to approach This, so that you can see.

I was blind, but now I see! You see, the face communicates, and then you have the intelligence, the fervor and the ability to "learn." You "learn" when you unlearn! When you unlearn your model, you "learn" what is Real. At one moment, this "face" will be smiling at you, and the next moment it will say, "You are holding what you should not hold, you are sustaining a misunderstanding, a mistake, a lie. Let it go!" In fact, this "face" is not Santa Claus’s communication - "Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas to everyone!" Santa Claus is an illusion and his bag of gifts too.

What are you sustaining that basically keeps you away from Realizing Happiness? What is your real impediment?

Participant I: Myself!

Master Gualberto: What is this "myself," which is the real impediment? If this "myself" is a fiction, how can it be a real impediment? How is this "I" configured? What is it made of?

Participant II: It is made of appreciation! When I value the thoughts that appear, when I give importance to it.

Master Gualberto: When you value your thoughts, what are you basically valuing?

Participant I: The illusion of someone separate, with his owm life, who must have things the way he wants, who must have the desires achieved... It is conflict! It is to stand against life!

Master Gualberto: That is it! Knowing what you want and what you do not want, the right and the wrong, what should be and what should not be. This is the impediment!

* Originally published in Portuguese on May 21, 2018 ** Transcribed from a speech in a face-to-face meeting held in João Pessoa, on December 2017 - Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10:00 p.m (BRT – Brazil, Brasilia Time Zone). Download the Paltalk App and join

Nothing is hidden from this Real Consciousness

There is nothing outside of this Consciousness. This division created between conscious and unconscious mind is totally arbitrary. The very mind creates an arbitrary division about itself. The mind is a content, which may be of ten years or ten million years old, but it is a single content. Thus, whether the mind is apparent on the surface or submerged in depth, hidden, it is the same phenomenon.

There is no division between "conscious" and "unconscious". What we call "unconscious" is the non-science of what is submerged, and "conscious" is what is on the surface, of which there is science. But when we "look" at the mind, we observe a single content, which is not hidden from this Real Consciousness.

What is hidden and what is shown is what the mind hide and show to itself. What it hides from itself, it calls "unconscious"; what it shows to itself, it calls "conscious". However, there is no such thing as "unconscious mind", "subconscious" and all that "blah-blah-blah". All these divisions are created by the mind. In fact, there is nothing in the mind that is hidden from this Real Consciousness. Consciousness is self-effulgent!

Just as the moon cannot hide from the sun, the mind and its content cannot hide from Consciousness. That is because the Consciousness is That where everything appears and disappears. The content of the mind is only imaginary, connected to time, it has no material, substantial reality. This content of the mind, whether it is of ten years or ten million years ago, it is all an imaginary content, known to this Consciousness which, by the way, ignores it, because it is not Real.

By understanding this, you can ask the appropriate question. The question you have is: "How can I get rid of this hidden content that shows itself to be a trauma or an illness?". Trauma and disease, as the body, are only imaginary appearances in time. So, the first thing to be understood is this: do not give reality to what has no reality. Trauma and disease are appearances linked to another appearance (body), and both them are illusory.

The other thing is that there is nothing hidden from this Consciousness and, if that is so, then it is present now. So, what prevents it from “coming to light” and disappearing? The strong identification with this illusion called "reality of the mind". When one trusts that the sense of “self” is real, when this is validated, this remains unchanged. Only this prevents all this content from being volatilized at the light of Consciousness. That is the diagnostic and the treatment is Meditation; but the Real Meditation! This present moment is important, because it can open a door to this timeless moment, which is Consciousness.

So what is the treatment? This detached, unintended observation, not involved with what happens now. When it happens, there is no way for the experiencer, who is the egoic mind itself, to structure and remain hidden. So, all this egoic content is revealed in this present moment.

There is nothing you carry from this or other lives. When we deal with this question of time, we are dealing with an illusory question, because there is no time. For the Consciousness, everything is present now. So, the only thing that is needed here and now is do not identify oneself with the experience. This I call Meditation!

All this content can reveal itself and be volatilized, be burned and disappear, because it has no reality, other than this "reality" that the illusion of the egoic mind itself holds, in the idea that there is an experiencer in experience. This requires a little Attention!

Are you understanding? The diagnostic was given and now the treatment is being handed, which is: here and now there is no experiencer! Whatever is appearing in the machine (body-mind) is not for an experiencer. When that is assumed, there is freedom for what is hidden to appear.

* Originally published in Portuguese on May 13, 2018 ** Transcribed from a speech in a face-to-face meeting at the Ramanashram Gualberto - C. do Jordão, on September 16th, 2017.

Love is your Real Nature

At first, you believe in God, but once this Realization is there, it is impossible to continue believing in Him. God is an unbelievable reality! One who believes in the Truth does not know the Truth. Belief is still mind’s necessity, which tries to rely on something.

God is a mystery and will always remain so. Prior to this Realization, you do not know Him, and now, in that Realization, He remains unknown. People want to know God, but they can only really know what they are not. You will not know who you are, nor will you know who God is, in that Realization. You will not know who you are because you are not an object outside to be known or recognized by a subject inside. You will not know who God is, because God will always remain a mystery.

Therefore, this Realization does not give you the knowledge of who God is or the knowledge of who you are. This realization gives you the vision of what you are not, and the mystery remains. Liberation, Happiness, Wisdom... This is the unnameable and unspeakable Mystery. Thus, the Sage is not "somebody." He is a mystery, like God. This is something greater than this "you." You can dissolve in This, but not knowing.

There are many people giving explanations about what God is and does, but that is mind’s engineering. You have to give up on the mind so that it can dissolve in This, which is the Mystery. You cannot solve this Mystery, but you can dissolve in That. So, you cannot explain This.

The human mind, the ego, is such a stupid thing that, nowadays, it is possible to go to a college “to study about God” and to get a "doctor in divinity" degree. This is completely stupid! You may become a specialist in a particular area of knowledge, but this knowledge will always be in the field of thought. However, God is something out of thought!

I cannot help you here to find God, the Truth about who You are... I cannot and this is not necessary. What I can do is to help you figure out what you are not. You are not what goes on inside your head, that is, you are not this set of ideas, of thoughts, of feelings and of beliefs, you are not this set of sensations, of experiences. So, I can show you how to see What It Is, Life as It Is, without that set of beliefs that are therein you. If you can see Life as It Is, you will be free from the illusion of being "someone." This is the mystery of God, of the Truth about who You are.

This is my work, in which nothing can and need to be done. All I can show you is the Truth of what is present when "you" are not, and that is the Truth of God. So, for the first time, you can see Life as It Is, and then the Mystery called God, the "I Am," is revealed.

Philosophers try to explain this, while the Sages only point That out. The Sage knows that this "Thing" cannot be explained, that it is not necessary to give explanations about It. All that the Sage knows is that He does not need to know, but just to Live. Life is just That! Life does not need to be explained at all, neither does God, the Truth. I cannot explain this, absolutely!

The sky is very wide. You cannot believe that you are seeing the sky just by looking from your window, because through it, you can only reach a part of the sky. The sky is much wider than it is seen from your window. I can help you to enter into the beauty of Reality, of Divine Truth, but only if you accept to leave your "window," to leave your "home," to take a leap to the outside and to stop looking at the sky through “your window.”

What I can do is to show you Life as It Is. I can do this from the moment you abandon the illusion, your beliefs. The Truth cannot be explained, It is your True Nature, the Nature of God, the inexplicable Mystery; Truth IS in action, not in words. Realization is the action of this Divine manifestation, it is not this “blah blah blah” that is out there, which is only thoughts, new beliefs.

Do not worry about trying to understand It; You cannot. More than two thousand years ago, Christian theology is trying to understand Christ, just as Buddhist theology is trying to understand Buddha, and scholars are trying to understand the Upanishads, the scriptures of the Vedas, the words of the Sages... That is, it is not only you who is seeking Truth. In fact, the Truth is also looking for you. It is not only you who are seeking God, He is also looking for you. You are like that prodigal son from the parable of Jesus, who departed from the Father's house.

The image of Krishna is with a flute, Buddha’s is set down in silence and the image of Jesus is with open arms, with his two hands nailed to the wood, but it is the image of the Father waiting for his son. Buddha is waiting in silence, Krishna is playing the flute and Jesus Christ is with open arms. It is not only you who are seeking God, He is also looking for you... This is God in search of Himself, meeting Himself! It is God meeting Himself! Mystery remains a mystery, but illusion, suffering and fear end, as well as all of your vanity, arrogance, presumption, pride, desire, affliction, confusion, and disorder.

Love is your Real Nature, the Nature of Truth, of Being, of God. Whatever I am saying signals the Truth, but it is not the Truth, because It cannot be said or explained. My talks work like a hammer in a hand, knocking on a door: either the door opens or something is broken due the power of the hammering. This "door" has to open or this "thing" needs to be broken. Something has to be broken, to undone; "Your home" has to be exploded, just like "your window." The sky is much bigger than you! From here, I can see that you have been missing That for a long time. I have to help you to break away this habit of staying at this "home," behind this "door" that never opens.

People live fighting; you were not born to fight, but to celebrate. But, look at you! You have gotten involved in every possible trouble, filled yourself with duties and obligations, and have to justify this to the world around you, to people who are struggling just like you. 

This is the model you follow. So, sooner the obligations come and to be "someone" becomes very heavy. You grow up and then you have to marry, to have children, to support the family, to have a house or to pay a rent, and, consequently, you have to work to pay for it all. All this is so difficult! Then, your children have children, who also have to be "supported", and everything goes on. Moreover, look at the world around you! Everyone has to buy beautiful clothes at the mall, or you have to buy and to drive a nice car, but it takes money to do all of that and to be just like everyone else.

You have to fulfill many duties, many obligations and social roles... You have to show to the family that you are successful, have children, just like everyone else, or to justify why you did not have children yet, or because you only had one and not anyone else, or because you have not married yet... All these things, duties, obligations and inventions are so stupid, mediocre!

What is missing in your life is the Mystery of God, is the Truth, is the Happiness of your Being. You live all this, which is what everyone expects you to live, and also believe that this is what you have to live, but you remain unhappy, stupid, full of fears, of desires, of attachments, of conflicts and of worries. You pay such a high price to be what everyone expects you to be, to be all that you want to be, but once you "become" all this, you figure out that you are still not what you want to be, that nothing has been solved, that you are still unhappy and continue to have problems.

Facing that, you shout and say, "Could you stop for me to get off? I want to get out of here!" That is what the Sage does: He gets out. He will not go ahead, He gets off. He says, "I want to get out of all these ‘bonds,’ to get out of this prison. I have to get out of this, of the stories. I want to get out of this world. Stay there with your lovely world; I want to get out of it and to get out of that prison." That is why, in India, they call Moksha, a word that means Liberation, because it is liberation, indeed!

This Liberation, which is not a concept, is a reality in the life of the Sage, of the One who realized the Truth about himself. Liberation implies the end of work, of knowledge, of experience, of desires, of fear. Suddenly, the sky becomes clear, open, there is no more home, there is no more window, there is not anything else, because everything has been broken. Then, you find out that there is nothing broken... and no more sky! There is nothing else!

  * Originally published in Portuguese on May 9, 2018 ** Transcribed from a talk at an online meeting the evening of February 2, 2018 - To participate download the Paltalk App. Meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10pm.

A boundless space of deep silence

Your world, which is your story, which is you as a present entity in the experience, whatever it is, it is only the mental content. I will give you an example of what this mental content is. Do you know your middle name?

Participant: Yes!

Master: What is the middle name of that one?

Participant: I do not know!

This "know" is content, and that content is your world, which is only real to you. This "I do not know" is real for everyone; it is the absence of content. The Sage has no content, he has the "do not know". When there is this "do not know", there is this huge Space. When I asked you the middle name of him and you said "I do not know", it was possible to see that a huge Space opened. When I asked for your middle name, then you left the Indefinable Space and entered into a definable space and time. That is the ego!

Your Natural State is this Indefinable and indescribable Space of “do not know”. This is Wisdom, it is the absence of the story. You do not know your middle name; you become to know only when I ask you. So you see that this is not real, because it is something that appears with memory. After the question is made, you search for the answer in memory. Before that, you did not know what I was going to ask, so you were in that "do not know". In this "do not know" there is a deep relaxation, but in the "know" there is tension. Want to see? Are you a boy or a girl? A woman or a man? There is not a tension?

Participant: Yes! I felt difficulty when you asked my name. I had trouble getting it. I thought: "Wow, what is this for?".

Master: Beautiful! Exactly! You need to search in memory, which means that you have no name. So when I ask you whether you are woman or man... What a petty thing! You need to look up and say: "I am a woman!" But, when you are in the "do not know", you are in a boundless Space, of deep Silence. It is a world that extends, that opens, and that Instant, that Moment, that Space, which is where this Happiness reveals itself in Being, (which is not being something, nor being someone) is lost.

The "hear", the "feel", the thought appearing, they must be treated in the same way, in this Space. You do not grab the wind - you feel and listen, but you are not interested in grabbing it. But when a thought comes into your head, you "catch" it and bring it to the "person". When you do that, the "person" appears and then the problems arise. This is what I call "contraction".

When the present entity arises in the experience of the thought, the thinker comes up. The thinker has a story to tell - first to himself and then to the world. He has to keep confirming this story all the time, otherwise he ceases to be someone.

This is very painful, is it? For me, this is liberating - not being the thinker and not having a story to tell, neither for yourself, nor for anyone. This is Enlightenment!

The expression "Enlightenment" is not a space full of light, but the absence of the illusion of space and time. This is Love, This is Happiness!

Right now, in this Unlimited and Indescribable Space, there is no shortage, but as soon the desire arises, a "trip" comes up: "Oh, I would like to be now at ...". Your intention in being on this "trip" is to relax in your Being, but you can only relax in your Being here and now. Then, you get to the desired place and say: "Wow! What a beautiful, wonderful place!". But it takes just a few seconds of relaxation for you to say: "What am I doing here? I had to be at... ".

The mind continues in this trick, taking you to time and space, in an attempt to make you feel the completeness of being What You already Are, here and now. However, this never happens, because you are always "traveling" with it. You go from one pleasure to another, and another... The mind has always to be seeking this to feel complete, which never happens. It gets excited to seeking for sensations. It needs that, because without it, it disappears... So, only You remain in your Real Nature.

* Originally published in Portuguese on May 03, 2018 ** Excerpt from a face-to-face meeting in João Pessoa in August 2016