Find out Your Natural State of Meditation!

In these meetings, we are talking about the truth of Stillness, of Silence, of your True Nature. We are talking about such a Stillness ordinarily unknown. Every speech in Satsang points to this Stillness that you are unable to achieve. You cannot find the Truth! So, the search for Enlightenment is useless since you cannot find your Natural State. This is not like finding something or someone you have lost. This Enlightenment, Stillness, Freedom is our True Identity, and It is not an object, neither is something noticeable or able to be found.

You cannot move towards Quietness, you cannot disturb Silence or find What is not lost. Any move you make will disturb This, this Silence, this Quietness, and you will be just moving away from the Truth about yourself. When you understand this first step, you will be already taking the last one. When you understand that everything you are searching for is still part of what the mind has been projecting – this means it is part of the thought, of your ideas, of the imagination – your search will show itself to be completely useless and, then, you stop doing it.

So, this peace, this freedom, this happiness you have been searching for, as well as the enlightenment or the realization of God, all of them are within the imagination created by the thought. So, it is still an object being sought, as if it were something that could be perceived, achieved or known. Here, I am telling you that This is outside the mind and, therefore, it has nothing to do with any object or representation the thought may recognize. Therefore, This is out of the known. The Truth, your Real Nature is something like this, and this is Enlightenment. For this reason, this sounds simple and, at the same time, very mysterious. It is not something you can find by searching for, and any thought is just moving you away from This.

Notice how important this understanding is, because when this is clear, you stop your practices, you stop every form of spiritual search, all this external search. The Real Identity, your Being, is not something to be found or obtained through spiritual search and practices – this is a completely mistaken attempt to approach it. It takes place by a mysterious action of "Something" greater than you. So, the real approach to the Truth is completely free from desire, intention, exercises and practices. The reality of your Being is beyond the mind, the known and what can be perceived. There is no "someone" who can discover This; there is no "someone" in this discovery, then there is no will, no desire, neither is there intention. So, I always invite you to be quiet.

You are too attached to several forms of beliefs, and that is why you live in a world full of problems created by the thought itself. The world seems to have many problems; the others seem to be very troublesome... You will always see things differently from what they really are. I call this way of seeing the world, the life, yourself and others as a "dream". This internal state of confusion reveals itself externally as if it were "other people in confusion," "the world in confusion," and "life in confusion."

I am not talking about this body-mind quietness attainable through spiritual practices. If you practice some meditation technique, you can quiet the body and the mind. Everything calms down: thought gets quiet, the body gets quiet... in other words, you enter into a state where you stop the mind and all the body activities, and then you have the sensation you are meeting the truth. This is a moment without any disturbance, achieved with the help of a mantra, a song, a breathing technique or a voice speaking slowly, in a slow way, leading you to this state that you consider the state of the "truth," of the "silence," of the perfect "quietness."

So, you remain there for half an hour, forty minutes, an hour, an hour and half, perhaps two hours, and after that, you have to get up, to go to the kitchen to prepare your food, but when you are in the kitchen washing rice or making the baby's bottle, the mind is already back. Or after these two hours you have to get up and go to the office to deal with the papers, to answer e-mails, and you perceive the thought is back, and it brings the character again with all the burden of its history. Therefore, we are not talking about this kind of body-mind quietness.

I say that to you, because people ask me: "How to keep this meditation state day by day?" The fact is that they see the state they have experienced for half an hour, an hour and half, two hours, as if it were the state of Meditation and of Nirvana contemplation, and then they see themselves out of "nirvana," out of "Samadhi;" the mind is back. The fact is that people do not like very much what I have to say to them: this is not the real Meditation, the Real State. I try to talk to them in a pleasant way, but, even so, I think that it does not work.

I want you to find out your Natural State of Meditation, not this artificial state you reach through practices, which is still part of an exercise and is not natural. This state may be of great relaxation to the nerves, to the muscles, to the blood pressure, a great relaxing to the sleep; it provides great benefits to the body and to the mind... It is a moment without stress, without worries, without family (because family is really a worry). In it, your ego is "knocked out" during thirty minutes, an hour and half, two hours, and after that, it gets up and it goes back to the "ring," with the gloves ready again, because it has already rested, it has already drank water and dried the sweat, so it is ready for more twenty two hours for the day you have ahead, including the sleeping hours – in case you have meditated for two hours.

Then, you ask me: "Why cannot I remain in such a wonderful, quiet state of peace?"

The answer is: "Because it is not your Natural State, but a state created by a technique, by a meditation practice." You have to work the rest of the day and your boss will not allow you to sit cross-legged to do this practice during business hours, be it at the doctor's clinic, be it at the office, at a plant, at the barrack or somewhere else; your boss wants you to work, because there is a place to work. I am not speaking ill of your meditation practice, I am only saying that it is useless to this purpose here; it may be surely useful, but it is useless to this purpose here.

So, this Quietness we are talking about is not the quietness of the body and the mind; it is something beyond this meditation practice. It is the Quietness that comes naturally when there is attention to the illusory movement of the "me." This is the Real Meditation! I have insisted a lot on it. Therefore, when you are open to observe the movement of this false "me," you begin to discover the Real Meditation, be it at your work (at the office, at the plant, at the barrack, at the doctor's office, writing a prescription, taking care of a patient, and so on) or at the kitchen washing the rice and making the baby's bottle. It is necessary to observe the mind, what is happening inside you in this relation with the world around you, day by day, when your "me" is upset; your "person" is hurt, offended, annoyed, moment by moment...

*Online meeting transcription originally held on May 2nd, 2018. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

I want to tell you a little secret

This is a great moment! It is a great opportunity to be here, in Satsang. We are working the end of imagination. At first, it is very difficult to accept that this wrong and false identification, which has been producing this illusory identity, is an imagination. You carry this fantasy, this belief, and that is why it becomes essential to investigate it.

The way you see yourself is a huge misconception. You have no idea about how false this sense of a separate identity you carry is. You see yourself with a mind and living in a body – within a religious culture, Christian-Jewish, you believe you are a spirit living in a body. When you look at your life, you see it full of problems. The “person” is the illusion of being somebody, which, basically, means carrying problems. This is the belief: a person, a separate entity, living in the world and expecting to be saved from problems, or,, under a religious aspect, a spirit, living a human experience and working to  spiritual salvation.

I want to tell you a little secret: there are no problems and there is no “person” to experience them. There are no problems now and there will never be! There is not any “person” to have problems solved, neither is there a soul to be saved from this material world.

Each thing is happening the way it has to happen. You have only forgotten the Truth about yourself, and so the illusion you have about yourself is the same you have about the world. You cannot accept it as it is, because you do not understand yourself; if you do not understand yourself, you cannot understand the world around you.

If you are identified with the body, then there is a problem; But, if you forget all you have learned about who you believe to be, there is a rupture of this model, of this conditioning, of this belief pattern  (this is the step to be taken in this meeting: to completely forget all you have learned about yourself, about the world, about life, about God, about this so-called “spirituality”). Then, the problems also disappear together with all  this.

You are too attached to several forms of beliefs, and that is why you live in a world full of problems, which are created by the thought itself. The world seems to have many problems; others seem to be very troublesome... You will always see things from a different way than they in fact are.  I call this way of seeing the world, the life, yourself and others as “dream”. This internal state of confusion is expressed externally as “the others in confusion,” “the world in confusion,” and “life in confusion.”

Actually, what is happening is the illusion of living with problems. TThese problems basically are only the rejection to the way everything is presented to “you" (body, mind and thought experiences). The Sages call “dreaming” this state of confusion. You are dreaming, and in this dream, you are someone – someone who was born in this world and has to fight to solve problems. Then, being a “person” means dreaming.

There is no difference between the dream you have now, in the waking state, from all sort of dreams you have at night while the body is sleeping. From the point of view of Life’s experience, all of this is just a dream.

The Sage knows  this is a dream; but those who are not  Sages take this dream as reality. Everything is just an appearance, just like it happens while the body sleeps. Nevertheless, while the Self-Realized man faces the existence of the body, of the mind and of the world as a dream, those unaware of the Truth about themselves take the experience of the body, of the mind and of the world as their own reality. Therefore, what is just a dream ends up being too real, a complicated life full of problems (to those who had not realized the Self). This way, there is no Grace, there is no Beauty, there is no Freedom, there is no Happiness.

It seems that everything is just a matter of point of view, a matter of the way you see it. To the Sage, life is what it is, and this is just a dream, in which there are pleasure and pain, health and disease, good and bad, winning and losing. To the Sage, this movement of duality, of opposites, is only present as a dream, and since there is no more identification with the body, with the mind’s experience, there is no more the sense of separation; The Sage is free from the sense of duality, of conflict... A Sage has no suffering, since there is no  rejection to life as it is, as it presents itself.

Nevertheless, the another one is suffering, is seeking salvation, the one who is still attached to or identified with the belief "I am the body, I am living in the world, and I must be saved by God from this terrible suffering, from these innumerable problems." Because this is part of his dream, of his illusion - he is suffering because of this belief in the sense of separation, because he is attached to this sense of duality.  

From birth to death, life without this Clarity or Clarification (which some call Enlightenment) is confusion, is suffering. This "sense of person" will always be in pain, because it is sleeping, is dreaming. When you come to these meetings, you see the possibility of Awakening, of going beyond the illusion of the “sense of person” within the body experience, with a mind and living in the world as a separate entity. But, as long as the trust in the sense of separation prevails, in this illusion of duality, in this belief, in this contrast, in this division, the problem will prevail. It is never external. It is never outside!  

The conflict is always in this internal view, in this way of facing all this. Everything is a matter of perspective, of point of view, of way of seeing. It does not matter if, in your dream, you are a wise man or a fool one, whether you are a king or a beggar, whether you are a rich person or a poor person, because as long as your perspective comes from the vision of a separate entity, living a human experience, within the sense of duality, the illusion of the problem will persist, because there will be the dream.

The question is: who dreams? The One who has realized the Truth about himself has taken this question very seriously. Some of you are just approaching this fundamental question right now. Who is in this dream? Will this be a dream for someone? If it is a dream, whom is this dream for?

* Originally published in Portuguese on July 30, 2018 ** Transcribed from a talk on an online meeting at the night of June 6th, 2018 - Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10pm (except during retreat periods) - To participate download Paltalk App. Local time: Brazil BRT.

The Secret of Self-Realization

In these meetings, we show the importance of learning how to observe what is happening. In general, human being does not seem to pay any attention to this, to life as it happens. The central idea is self-importance. Life is something that is happening and that includes this character, this supposed present identity. Basically, there is no problem in life as it is, and, part of what is particularly happening to you exists only as an aspect of experience, something just to be witnessed. We do not realize the importance of this.What is happening is not about someone making that happen, it is not "your" doing – this is just one aspect of the particular experience of the character. The problem arises when the idea of someone present appears.

So, Satsang points to that Reality, which is Life as It happens, not carrying about this character you believe to be. There is no one in the "doing." The problem arises when the idea that life is happening because "someone" is making all this happen takes place – this "someone" is the "me," the character, and that does not represent the Truth.

All your personal problems are not problems with life; your personal problems are problems related to the interpretation about what life is, what life represents. So, Satsang is an essential space for the one who is willing to discover the Truth about himself. This sense of "I" tells us that we exist as a present entity in the experience of life, that life is happening to "me," to this "I."

Mind has the ability to transform everything that happens into something for itself, as if something special were happening to itself. Thus, the sense arises: "I am Carlos," "I am José," "I am Maria," or any other name. So, this "Carlos", this "José" and this "Maria" take place; they are living in the world, which only represents a self-image that the mind has built.

The mind transforms the experience happening around itself into something particular, creating the sense of the "person." Everything that is happening to "me," through "me," only represents a self-image, an imagination created by the thought. This has nothing to do with what Life represents, because Life is what it is, and It does not care about imagination. This imagination, this self-image, collides with the Reality of Life as it is.

Here is the secret of Self-Realization, the Realization of Truth about yourself: to discover the importance of witnessing life as it is and do not mess with it, do not take anything personally. To put it into words is very easy, but this really requires a real work, since actually you are too addicted to maintaining that self-image, to being personal. When you do this, you reinforce the self-importance, the importance of this false me. The key is to observe, to be attentive to the movement of this self-image in its desires, in its choices, in its longings, fears, and so on.

When life is witnessed, when that which happens is only what happens and no biased and personal belief is more important than the Reality of what it is, the egoic mind "vanishes," loses its evidence, its power. Then, something entirely new begins to happen.

Human being has been acting very mechanically. From the psychological point of view, he lives mechanically, repeating his usual thoughts, desires and fears. He does this because he consider himself very important, more important than life itself. He consider that what happens to him is not interesting, but what he wants, yes. For him, what he desires is more important than life as it is happening, right now, at this moment. This is a very interesting aspect of the process of the egoic mind. It is repetitive, is automatic, is mechanical, and all this has been sustained by the imagination, by this self-image in its self-importance.

This illusory sensation of being in control, of wanting to control, of wanting to determine what happens, controlling circumstances, happenings, events, having an answer for everything, and this curiosity of the human being to unravel the mysteries of life, all these are longings for egoic self-fulfillment.

Human being invests millions in the investigation of the external world, of what is outside, in the search of finding something that may fulfill himself and provide happiness. A satellite is sent to space with the intention of having, here, a better internet. Thus, people can communicate in a faster way, knowledge can become faster (knowledge that, in fact, is only ignorance and does not contribute at all to real human happiness). We only end up knowing faster the confusion that the human mind is creating on the other side of the planet, all the problems that the human mind, without peace, is producing in another continent.

All this is part of this mechanical, unconscious and automatic thing of the movement of the imagination, of that false "me" in pursuit of what, in fact, has no importance for human's real happiness. Happiness is not outside; the "outside" only represents the dream that thought has created, imagined and sustained. Reality is beyond thought. And, therefore, Happiness, Peace, Intelligence, Love, Goodness, and Truth are beyond the mind.

What I am saying is that the circumstances of a more comfortable world do not represent Real Happiness, because the inner "hunger" for true Happiness will continue to call for "food," asking for satiety. It does not matter that you can enjoy the best material comfort that technology and science can offer you, if you do not know who You Are, for you will remain unhappy.

We invest a lot in nothing. All you need is Happiness, but Happiness is not circumstantial. Happiness is the Realization of Your Divine Nature, of Your Real Nature. Therefore, no external and circumstantial comfort can give You That.

Human being has been searching for happiness for a long time in the wrong way. That is why he travels outside; he literally goes to outer space in search of that. But, it doesn't work, because everything remains the same way.

Your "real journey" is out of this false "me," beyond this self-image, beyond the illusion of this self-identity. This is only possible by going inwards and not outwards. It is not about exploring the external, but investigating what is near, inside. This is not about what is distant and external, but what is closer and internal.

So, we have become proactive, we have become productive, and highly scientifically, technologically evolved, and yet we remain unhappy, restless, disturbed, stupid, mediocre, needy, living in solitude, with desires and fears. You can add to the list depression, anxiety and the various forms of madness that everyone, without exception, experiences – including our most renowned men of science and technology. Yes, they suffer too!

This speech is not an attack. We are merely observing that all these trainings and education based on the desire to gain more control through knowledge have not worked out. This does not represent, at all, the real movement toward Happiness, toward Peace in the world. Peace in the world begins with Peace within you. You are the Peace of the world when you no longer disturbs it.

Human happiness is the happiness of non-mind, of silent heart, of present Love, while "human life" is this constant search for pleasure, blended with pain, even amidst all kinds of highly sophisticated paraphernalia.

What I am saying is that life is not anything you can control. You do not have to care about what is outside; you have to find out who you are, or who you are not. You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not this self-image, this person that has to live 150 years supported by medicines. Just Realize Your Real Nature and leave that dream. That can happen when you are thirty, forty, fifty or seventy years old, it does not matter ... That is the only purpose.

Look at people! They believe that they are alive and want to continue in this so-called "life," even with drugs, disturbing everyone around them and causing a lot of trouble to everyone. This is attachment to this illusion of ego-identity, to this false image.

*Online meeting transcription originally held on May 16th, 2018. First published in Portuguese on Portuguese on July 4, 2018. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

The freedom to live without choices

The mind has no perspective about What is unnamable, unthinkable, unspeakable, indescribable. We are talking about something that is outside of this known dimension, of mind’s dimension. In Satsang, we are always dealing about what can be investigated and, therefore, about what is still part of the process of the mind, but that is the possible way to have a direct perception of What is beyond it.

In this new dimension, there is no limitation, which is something so common in the mind, because there is not anyone. Therefore, it is not about "someone" understanding it; however, the investigation of the limitation is something that becomes crucial to perceive What is beyond this "someone," this supposed entity present. In this way, we can see What lies beyond the mind, beyond what can be described, beyond the known. The investigation prepares the way for the leap that happens beyond the investigation itself.You are here to go beyond the beliefs. While you believe you are someone, you remain within the dimension of the known and, therefore, without knowing this new dimension. The Realization is the Awakening of this new dimension, of this indescribable, unknown Reality.

The mind lives within the limits of the known, of the restrictions of its beliefs. The way to see the world, the situations and life, through the mind, is always within these restraints. Everything that the mind seeks – and it is always in search of – is within these limitations. This is the movement of the personality, the movement of the ego-identity. Thus, there is a constant struggle, because the mind is always in search of safety.

When you are free from the "person," from this personal sense, there is no more fighting. It is when there is a deep understanding that this "person," this personality is just a hallucination. So, you are free from the burden of memory, from the search for safety, from the fear of making mistakes and, therefore, free from this thing so heavy that is the choice.

In the ego, you live within this concept of choice, due to the fear of being wrong, of not being successful. In fact, you have been conditioned, by culture, to seek safety, to accomplish things, to get success, and all this is based on choices.

In these meetings, we investigate the patterns of this ego-identity, this false identity that you believe to be; the fear, the suffering that this represents and the prison that is present in it. And why? Because you are not who you think you are. You are attached to choices.

There is a great and extraordinary Happiness in life free from choices. In this Self-Realization, in the Realization of the Truth of your Real Nature, in this "living" without choices, there is a great and extraordinary Intelligence. Your Natural State offers a great Freedom, a great and indescribable Creativity. Your Natural State is wise! In this Creativity, in this non-choice, in this Intelligence, there is the complete freedom from fear.

God is this Reality, is this Mystery. We can call This as Consciousness, too. Consciousness is What is present when there is no more the hallucination of the ego-identity. The mind cannot achieve this perspective, because It is unthinkable, is out of imagination, outside of the thought. So, all that old fear, the seek for safey, and all this search for results and external fulfillment disappear. This is the maturity of the Intelligence, the maturity of the Natural State, of the Realized Being, the One who "came back home." Just like in the parable of the prodigal son, the one who returned to the House of his Father. Something quite paradoxical, because this Consciousness never stopped being What It Is. So, the period that the prodigal son had been away was something very real in his imagination, but it was never, in fact, real — from the point of view of the Ultimate Reality. The "return of the prodigal son” takes place in this question: "Who am I?"

When you practice this self-inquiry and explore that deeply inside you, there comes a point of maturity, when the mind says: "I do not know!" Only then, in that "I do not know!", a space arises for the instantaneous and extraordinary perception of the Truth about yourself. Only then, That, which is timeless, unnamable and unspeakable, reveals itself. At this point, "the prodigal son returns to the House of his Father," but in reality, he never left there. He had a huge egoic and hallucinated flight of fancy. Ego is pure hallucination!

When there are surrender, self-investigation and this full commitment, the abandonment naturally happens and the illusion of separation dissolves. I have called it the "collapse of illusion," which is the Awakening of Intelligence.  

In this self-inquiry, in this exploration, the mind can immerse in the Source and disappear, because there is this abandonment, this surrender. So, this vicious circle of delusion of the egoic mind is broken.

You have gone through many directions, but all of them are within that circle of egoic hallucination. You, in this circle, have never found, nor will ever find the Happiness, Peace, Freedom, because This is not part of the egoic mind, is not within the hallucination.

* Originally published in Portuguese on June 26, 2018 ** Transcribed from a speech in an online meeting on the evening of May 11th, 2018 -Meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on 10:00 pm. Download Paltalk app on your smartphone or on your computer to participate.

Your Impersonal Reality

In Satsang, you are working on this issue of your Impersonal Reality. This is your Divine Reality. Your entire history revolves around a pattern of conditioning, and that is your imprisonment. The thought revolves inside your head around an imaginary character, who you believe you are. It is this imaginary character that is attached to these elements of its own imagination, which are the external achievements, educational background, family, relationships ... You have been mistaking yourself for the imprisonment of this “me” that you believe you are. That is your dilemma, your drama, your problem, your fear, and you are protecting them. Notice what I am saying, the gravity of this thing: you are protecting this imaginary character you believe you are.

The interesting thing is that everyone expects you to remain that way, because that will not endanger his or her imagination about him or herself; it will not create any discomfort. In other words, you live the illusion, and illusion gets “comfortable” with you. So, the other accepts you in this game of acceptance and rejection. You are a fraud, because "you" are not Yourself. In the mind, your behavior always fits this model. So, you are always ceding, selling yourself out.

Why do you do that? Because you do not want to be alone; you do not want to take a trail, when everybody is on a road. You do not want to take a trail, because there is almost no one in it, and if there are some, they are so far apart from each other that it is like they would not even exist. They do not give to you any internal, psychological support, any recognition, no "slap on the back," or any congratulations. We are speaking, here, about this Natural and Impersonal State of Being.

How is this impersonal Natural State of Being possible, if there are so many people on this road, all interacting on the same level, speaking the same language, communicating in the same way? Envy, desire and jealousy are commonplace, as well as the protection of this self-image, and everyone is speaking the same language, living in the same way. Therefore, how could you get out of the road and take a trail to be alone? In the ego, you are very afraid that things do not come to you, and since everything only comes to fulfill you, being fulfilled means, exactly, being “at home” on a road common to all.

Even so, you come to Satsang, trying to figure out the real path to Happiness, to Peace, to Wisdom, to Freedom ... One day, Christ said that this track, in His language, was a narrow path, like going through a narrow gate. You left the common road and get the trail. My job here is just to say, "Stay there!" The pressure on the outside is very large, so I enter this space, in that room, and I say, "Stay there!"

Who here feels that is loved? Does your husband love you? Does your wife love you? Do you feel you are loved because he or she is taking care of you? Do you feel you are loved when someone wants to know with whom and for how long you have talked on the phone, or with whom you have been, and why it took so long to get home?

Participant I: Ah! Deep down, I think we like it. We feel important, appreciated...

Master Gualberto: That you are loved...

Participant I: Yes. I could say yes... special!

Participant II: Deep down, it brings a certain pleasure, because we normally say like this: "Ah! He misses me!"

Participant III: There are people who say that if a person is not jealous, it means that he or she does not like us. We think that this is love. We have this preconceived idea that this kind of stuff comes with love. But deep down, we are not interested in Love; we are interested in being importante some how.

Master Gualberto: How is it to feel you are loved by an image that represents possession, control, domain, desire, neediness, fear of losing, anguish? How do you feel being loved by "someone" who represents all this? How is it? Is it good?

So, this road is an ordinary road, everyone is very comfortable in it, and this is acknowledged as something very natural. So, your freedom to say "no" to it, whether by speaking, by silence or by attitudes, will be interpreted as lack of love, insensitivity, indifference – that is one side. The other side is that you also feel fulfilled, as it has been said. You have pleasure in that, because that is also within you, isn’t it? If the other does the same thing, you will feel the same ("Who were you with?"; "Who were you talking to?"). Inside you, there is a very strong need to know what the other is thinking, feeling, if he is missing "you." Do you see the whole game? You do not understand, do you? You have been addicted to this model for a long time...

*Originally published in Portuguese on July 2, 2018. Transcribed from a speech in a face-to-face meeting in Cabedelo/PB, Intermares Beach, Brazil. For more information, please access: http://mestregualberto.com.