We are not ready to face pain

Participant: Yesterday you told us we are not ready to face pain. What does that mean?

Mestre Gualberto: we are protected from pain since early childhood. Our parents always had an ignorant affection, having protecting us excessively. They didn't want to see us suffering. They have always protected us from physical and emotional pain. I don't know if you can understand what I mean.

If you are protected from frustration, you don't see it as natural. If you are protected from pain, you grow up with the idea you should never feel pain and therefore, you keep protecting yourself. So, you get into a psychological conditioning game. A “no” causes you a deep and painful feeling of rejection. What do you in order to avoid this feeling? This pain will not kill you, but in order to not feel it, you become a shy child, you ward off people who can hurt, offend or reject you.

So, you carry this internal movement since childhood, always trying to protect yourself from pain. The point is the more you protect yourself from pain, the more sensitive you become to it. As a result, you become a young person and later on a child-behaving adult when rejected, hurt, when no one looks at you. When no one says: "hey, how are you?", you read it suspiciously: "She or he didn't look at me, she or he doesn't like me."

If you examine it closely, the ego is a bundle, a set of bias, fears, choices, fantasies, imaginations. This is the sense of "me.” Our entire culture is shaped around this structure. You do not remain alone to observe this pain, there is always a way to escape, to not look at it. However, the ego is a false structure, a lie.

That psychological, emotional pain is not like physical, neural pain; that one is imaginary! And the more you try to escape from it, the more sensitive you become to that kind of pain. So, what about the ego? It suffers for nothing. Everything causes you pain! If someone speaks loudly to you, it causes you pain, so to protect yourself from that pain, you react to it, you reply aggressively with words or actions, all that to not feel pain, as this is forbidden.

In our culture, in the ego-identity’s culture, it is forbidden to remain with the pain and solve it alone. You have to take it out on something, you have to throw the pain back, so you don't feel it. But now you are an aggressive, violent person, full of fear and pain. The pain remains, but in a different form: as aggression, reactivity, violence. Therefore, you do not get cured of the ego, as you do not notice it. You would only have a chance to notice it if you could feel the pain alone. When you do not notice what you feel, you take it out on something unconsciously, automatically, mechanically.

Do you know what I have been telling people? Find out what Real Meditation is! I see people practicing meditation, but do you know what they do to practice meditation? They look for a quiet space, put on some soft music, breathe in a certain way, stay there for 10 minutes, half an hour, one hour. So far, so good. But when they get up, when they go home, to work or to college, their ego will be badgered there… There is the moment for Meditation! There is Meditation, and not when you are taking a deep breath - that is easy! Meditation, as a practice, is an easy thing! And what about in life, in daily life? That's the exercise! It is simple, but not easy.

To look at the pain when it arises without reacting to it: that is Meditation, to bring Consciousness to this present moment, to what is here and now. This moment is a divine call for you to know yourself, to find that child who was conditioned to not feel pain.

Participant: It seems to me there are two things: one is to feel the pain, another is to not trust the story the thought is telling about it.

Master Gualberto: Yes! Exactly! You believe the story thought creates about the pain. Pain is not the problem! Pain is like a wounded ghost who has been punched. There is no ghost! If the pain is there, ok! But, why creating a story about it? To protect yourself. Your ego reacts to easy this “inexistent pain.”

If our parents were good teachers to us, they would have taught us that: to remain alone with the pain, to not react to it like spoiled children. But they did not teach us that, they were not Realized Beings. Now, you are an adult and you found me, so we will have to fix that! A Master can provide you what society was unable to! But you need to be patient and welcome that with fully trust. That is why a living Master is important: the living Master inspires us! The Master´s Presence inspires us to trust! So, what is my job with you? To fix that!

The point here is: do not react! Be aware of that pain. Do not react to it! Is your wife nervous? No problem! Is your boyfriend stressed? Leave him alone, give him some space and look at yourself, but do not conflict! You are here to learn this, but it is “learning by unlearning.” Here, you will unlearn how to be a “person.” That’s how the Sage is born! When a person unlearns to be a "person," this one discovers the Being!

It is like undressing. You are not this outfit, just like You are not this programming that feels offended, hurt, flapped, angry at everything, afraid of everything. This is not You! So, this is unlearnable. It is like your clothes you take off. Nobody takes a bath with clothes on! In order to bathe in the waters of Wisdom, Consciousness, Truth, you need to get rid of this false “me.” Then, the Divine, your Being, shows Itself fully undressed, and It is beautiful! Your Being makes no enemies!

So, the problem is not the pain; the problem is "someone" in pain. "Someone" in pain will react. The pain itself only shows you something. If you work on it, I promise you one thing: in a short time, people will stop offending, flapping or saddening you ... It is so because none of them are flapping, bothering or saddening you, but rather your ego who is reacting to it indeed!

Notice what I said: your ego makes enemies! When you say inwardly, “I don't like him or her. What an annoying boss! What a horrible job!” This is not outside there; it's all inside you! Do you understand? The world is not your problem, but rather your ego, your mind, your interpretation, your unresolved relationship with yourself. Solve it inside there!

What I say to you here is not a concept, a belief or a theory. I am That! I live It! Do you know what that means? That is your Truth! I am not telling you to learn how to do that. I am telling you to assume That! Unlearn what you are not and stay with what You Are! Unlearn this self-image, these beliefs you have about yourself. Be undressed, take off your clothes, go to the shower, take a bath of Understanding, Intelligence, Truth, Divine Love! This is Meditation!

*Presential meeting transcription, originally held in Graz, Austria, on November 25, 2019. First published in Portuguese on September, 4, 2020. For more information about our meetings, click here.

The Heart of my Teaching

The heart of my teaching is the Vision of the Reality there are no "people" here. My approach concerns there is no "person" present. The "person" you believe to be is an imaginary "entity," only a mental concept. There are thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations, but there is no "person." These phenomena are not a "person".

This imaginary concept, this belief individualizes what happens and turns simple phenomena, such as thoughts, sensations and perceptions, into problems. However, they are not problems. They just appear or come up to further disappear within that Truth, within this Consciousness, this Presence, which is You.

So, there is no such "you." This personality is just an old set of imaginations, of thoughts, of mental representations, of concepts. Your suffering arises because you think about what happens. Your emotional pain is present in this imagination of being a particular entity within the experience to whom losses and difficult situations should not happen. All of this is imagination!

People want a practice to overcome suffering, but the “sense of person” is the suffering itself! No practice can remove this! Suffering is rejection to life, the attempt to adjust what happens to the imaginary model of the "me," to the fiction of that character; it is the illusory identity resisting to the mysterious movement of life.

Life is constantly changing, always finding a new representation. It's a living thing! What is alive is under an unknown movement, always unpredictable. You are not real as you believe you are, but you exist. The question is, are you aware of who you are? Leaving aside all that imagination about what you believe to be, who are you?

Since my childhood, I had been looking for That, I just did not know by that time. You are here to find the Truth about your Real Nature, about your True Nature. This cannot happen by reading books, reflecting, having ideas, creating theories, hypotheses, studying philosophers or theological approaches. You have to be face to face with Clarity! In darkness, this is not possible, and all the mind knows is darkness. So, you can read all the books in the world, get involved with all forms of spiritual practices, change your religion, but none of that will solve the matter.

To be face to face with Clarity is to look at Yourself, and not at what others say, at what the thought says, at what the feeling says about who you are. “I'm still not good enough,” “I am still not happy enough,” “I still do not have the peace I wish,” “I still have not found the freedom I am looking for…” These are thoughts happening inside this mind’s darkness. When you are face to face with Clarity, you are beyond temporary phenomena, beyond what the mind is able to produce.

All thoughts, perceptions, sensations and emotions appear in the mind, are part of it, and the mind is within that darkness. All of this moves within the boundaries of what is temporary, but none of that is You. Therefore, You exist, but you are not as real as you believe to be. You are Real as you are, and not as the thought, the feeling and the sensation tell you are. What we name as "mind,” which is under the darkness, is simply sensation, thought, perception and emotion within this "someone’s story.”

Therefore, the heart of my speech, what makes my approach alive, is the simple fact there is only Consciousness. To come across That is to come across this Clarity, facing Clarity. Get that! Thoughts pass, just like feelings and every form of perception, no matter how beautiful and pleasant they can be, while You, as Pure Consciousness, do not pass, do not change.

Recently, somebody shared with me some concerns about aging. Aging, getting sick and dying are problems to everybody. In reality, they are the most serious problems of the existence, but of the body and mind existence. These things can flap the mind and the body, but they cannot affect What You Are. The Reality of your Essential Nature entails no aging, no disease, no death, no time nor space. These problems concern only the mind, with the idea "I am the body," with the feeling "I am here" and "I am someone.”

When a sales representative visits a client to offer some product, he or she needs to be loyal to the employer’s company. When the sales rep does not represent neither the company nor the products properly, no good deal can be closed.

In business world, these are the fundamentals. In there, the mind attempts to create a representation of What You Are in this mysterious relationship with Existence, with Life. However, the mind is a terrible representative, it does not represent the company suitably.

What I am saying is that you have been buying a fake product. You are Existence, you are Life, and the mind is trying to create a representation of what You Are by making its offer. You have believed yourself to be what you are not, you are making use of a fake product offered by an inexistent company. I have been saying "person" is a fraud, and the company represented by this person is inexistent! The products the person has to offer are just as fake as the person is! That's why you suffer.

There are seven billion people on the planet, but who is interested in knowing the Truth about Oneself in the midst of all this confusion? What is Real Peace? What is Real Love? What is Real Happiness? What is Real Freedom? What is Intelligence, Wisdom, Compassion? How can you be a legal and real representative, a blessing from Life to Life, if the mind is present trying to assume the place of Reality, trying to show itself as something it is not?

You are Life! You are Consciousness! You are God! There is no suffering in What You Are! There is no conflict, ignorance, fear nor problem in What You Are! This is present only in this false representation, in this falsification.

You were born to be Happy, and not to be "someone." In this world, you have learned you were born to be "someone." Every society and culture encourage you to follow this direction: the more acknowledged you are, the more valuable and important you are for yourself and others. The society does not care if internally you feel miserable and unhappy, if you are depressed, existentially frustrated, if you do not have inner peace. All that culture and society care about yourself concerns your production.

In the ego, you learn to envy the successful ones, those who stand out externally. The society does not care about how these people feel, how they are internally. The society wants to hear the music they have to play or sing; the dance they can perform or the picture they can paint, the sculpture piece they can exhibit ... That makes them famous, successful. They are all representatives of this false company, presenting products of the illusion, selling the false as true.

People do not ask themselves “who am I?” But everyone says, “I will win, I will be famous, rich, successful, I will have a beautiful person by my side, plus some children (at least three, four or five), I will soon be surrounded by many grandchildren and soon I will also be a great-grandfather or great-grandmother.” Perhaps death will come before all those things, perhaps not. The point is everyone dies without knowing who they are, without knowing the Truth about themselves, about God, about Love, about Happiness, without knowing what they were born for.

The Natural State has nothing to do with fame, reputation, prestige, public acknowledgment, power, money, success. The Natural State is our True Nature, effortless, full of spontaneous Joy, of Freedom! To me, “natural” implies something outside the influences of the mind’s world, something effortless, spontaneous, happy, present, full Consciousness! This is original, not a copy, an imitation, a repetition.

So, when I use the expression "Natural State," I mean something like God, not a distinguished, special particularization, a projection or a representation. You cannot sell the Natural State, you cannot be Its representative to this chaotic, disorderly and confused world. In the mind, all you can be is a mind’s representative, you can only represent a fake company with products manufactured by ideas, beliefs, imaginations. The Natural State is Intelligence!

*Online meeting transcription originally held on June 27, 2020. First published in Portuguese on January 2nd, 2018. For further information about the meetings, click here.

Nothing is hidden from this Real Consciousness

Nothing is outside this Consciousness. This separation between conscious and unconscious mind is totally arbitrary. The very own mind creates an arbitrary separation concerning itself. Mind is content, be it ten years or ten million years old, but it is a single one content. Thus, whether the mind is apparent on the surface or submerged, hidden in depth, it is the same phenomenon.

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

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

Just as the Moon cannot hide itself from the Sun, the mind and its content cannot hide from Consciousness. It is so because Consciousness is where everything appears and disappears. The content of the mind is only imaginary, connected to time, without any material, substantial reality. The mind’s content, be it from ten years or ten million years ago, is all imaginary, known by this Consciousness that, by the way, ignores it as it is not Real.

By understanding this, you can ask the proper question. The question you have is: "How can I get rid of this hidden content that shows itself as a trauma or an illness?" Trauma and disease, like the body, are only imaginary appearances within 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 are illusory.

The other thing is that nothing is hidden from this Consciousness and, if this is so, That is present now. So, what hinders it from “coming to light” and disappear? The strong identification with this illusion called "reality of the mind." When one trusts the sense of “me” is real, when this is validated, this remains unchanged. Only that hinders all this content from being volatilized at the light of Consciousness. That is the diagnosis and the treatment is Meditation; but Real Meditation! This present moment is important, since it can open up a door to this timeless moment, to 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, the egoic mind itself, to be structured and to remain hidden. So, all this egoic content is revealed in this present moment.

You bring nothing from this or other lives. When we deal with this matter of time, we are dealing with an illusory question, because there is no time. To Consciousness, everything is present now. So, the only thing needed here and now is to not identify with the experience. I call this as Meditation!

All this content can reveal itself and be volatilized, be burned and disappear, because it entails no reality at all, except this "reality" upheld by the illusion of the egoic mind, through the idea of an experiencer within the experience. This requires some Attention!

Are you getting this? The diagnosis was given and now the treatment is being handed: there is no experiencer here and now! Whatever is appearing in the mechanism (body-mind) is not to an experiencer. When that is accepted, there comes the room to allow the hidden to appear.

* Presential meeting transcription, originally held in Campos do Jordão city, Brazil, on September 16th, 2017. First published in Portuguese on May 13rd, 2018. For further information about our meetings, click here.

Non-Duality is the Realization of Reality

Everybody is always searching for something, and that is why you end up in meetings like this one. It is quite interesting because, at the same time you have strong ideas about who you are, you believe something special will provide you happiness, peace or the answer to that search.

If I ask the question “who are you?” to any person, it will be answered from the standpoint of the person’s history he or she believes to have. This person will end up describing what he or she has lived in the past or what he or she dreams to accomplish in the future. The person will also be able to find a story about the role he or she is playing in life as a father, a mother, as someone who has just started a business up, who is working hard to get some results… He or she will literally tell a story about the past or the future.

You, like anyone else, are not interested in what is present now. You are always interested in what happened already or in what is going to happen. You cannot tell me anything about yourself now. You do this based on an idea about the past or future project.

What I am saying is that every person lives a story created by memory, by imagination, that is, by thought. People say: “I am a businessman,” “I am a doctor,” “I am a lawyer,” or “I am a spiritual seeker.” Some people are interested in things of this world, others are interested in the things out of it, and I keep on asking: “Who are you?” It is not what you were or what you intend to be, but who are you now! It is not the story you can tell me about who you believe to be or who you want to be. I keep on asking: “Who are you now?”

It seems everyone is living like this, just with a belief, with an idea. I call this “image” as the image of who you believe to be. This “image” is the one in conflict, in trouble, unhappy, going through several ways of search. So, you may ask anyone on the street, anyone you meet, what they are looking for. They will say they are looking for popularity, power, love, acceptance, understanding, happiness in a relationship, in a marriage... People get married to be happy, but they find out they are not yet, so they start expecting the husband or wife to change. They are pretty sure that when the husband or wife changes, when he or she stops with "those things," they will be happy.

There is always that hope, the search for something, for what people call as “peace realization” or “happiness realization.” This idea of happiness and peace is based on some achievement, on some external accomplishment. Isn’t like that? “I have little money, but when I have more money, I will be ‘happy’," “In this marriage, things failed, but who knows about the next one…”

Do you follow this? Isn’t that simple? That search is based on the idea about who you believe to be, on the idea about how others and the world around you are, on the idea about what needs to be changed, set, adjusted or achieved.

Someone who sees him or herself as a spiritual person is looking for something else, something outside the world, maybe an altered state of consciousness, some kind of transformation or an Enlightenment experience. Everyone is looking for something but notice this search takes several forms. It seems people are looking for different things, but what they are ultimately looking for is actually to live without fear, without suffering, without conflict, that is, in Happiness, in Love, in Peace.

They can even ignore what they are searching for, but it is something inside, and not outside themselves. However, the mind says That is outside, and there starts everything, there starts the confusion because of the idea of future, of time, of fulfillment through external accomplishments.

So, notice that you were conditioned and programmed. You are following your parents’ lead, who followed your grandparents’ lead, who followed your great-grandparents’ lead… Everybody lives this model, this craziness! I name it as “craziness” because it actually wards you off from your very own purpose. If your purpose is Happiness and you are working under the mind’s direction and its interests, projects, longings and dreams, always connected to what is outside, you are in a crazy movement, since you are forgetting What you are or who You are now by creating an ideal future.

You want to find Happiness tomorrow, but that "tomorrow" never comes. If you do not know the Truth about yourself now, here, and you follow this crazy movement of the mind in the pursuit of external things, you are truly keeping yourself away from the real possibility of Realizing the Divine Truth, the Truth that You are, the Truth You bring within yourself, What is innate, your own Being.

So, when you long for the next moment believing it would bring you something better or greater, you are just perpetuating the continuity of the egoic mind in its old movement of desires and fears. Some are in a so-called "spiritual search" and may think they are in a better condition than others, because they are pursuing Non-Duality, non-dual Truth. However, the expression “non-dual” itself points out That, which is already present, here and now, within this experience, this moment, right now.

So, even this search for Non-Duality is still a great illusion, as This is not a goal, an objective, something to be achieved. Non-duality is the Realization of Reality, of Life as It is, as It shows itself at this moment, here and now. It is not external or in the upcoming moment. The Divine Reality is a present thing! It is not an external achievement, but rather the Realization of What is present here and now.

Only That can pose an end to this quest, break this whole fantasy that you would be happy when someone or something changes or when something external is achieved. If Reality is present, if Truth is non-dual, if there is no separation between You and Reality, then Life is perfect as It is, everything is in the right place, nothing is missing.

Then, the question arises: “But what about this conflict, all this confusion, suffering, desire, fear and search that I feel inside?” The point is you are talking about the movement of the mind, you are not talking about You. In Yourself, there is no search, but in the mind, there are thousands! There are thousands of things to be solved yet! In Yourself, there is no problem, but the mind is full of problems! In Yourself, there is no anxiety, fear, suffering, conflict of any kind, but in the mind all this is present all the time!

The mind is bombarding you with mistaken notions, with beliefs, making you believe in things, making you believe in this division between good and evil, between truth and illusion, between sadness and joy, between peace and war. The mind is producing this conflict, this duality, and you have lived within this, this is what you have trusted in. It became your model of life. What you call as "life" concerns a story you tell about who you believe to be within that model..

*Online meeting transcription originally held on August 5th, 2020 - First published in Portuguese on September 19th, 2020. For further information about our meetings, click here.

Self-knowledge: The Recognition of the Real Self

Satsang shows us the importance of devotion and self-knowledge. Self-knowledge does not mean the knowledge of the “me,” of this false “self.” We apply this word "self-knowledge" to refer to True Knowledge, to the recognition of the Real Self, which is the Being. And this "True Knowledge" is the unknown. This is what enables us to achieve this Completeness, this Ultimate Truth about ourselves.

So, this path of self-inquiry, this journey, implies a total rejection to the illusion of the egoic mind, to all our usual mental activity, even the noblest ones. You need to abandon this illusion. The egoic mind is pure illusion. This is what you are in this meeting for.

Those who have fully realized how fruitless is this search for Happiness, for Truth, for God's Blessing and Grace within this mental world, within this world of duality, can undertake on this returning journey, can turn back to the Source through self-inquiry and devotion, and so find out the Heart is the place where the Truth is settled. You realize That within yourself, going beyond the mind, beyond the illusion of this false “me.” Then, Meditation becomes full comprehension of this devotion and surrender to the Truth; and you can slowly undertake on this return, this journey to discover yourself, to discover What You are, the Truth About Yourself. When you find out how counterproductive is this pursuit for the Truth in this dual world, you are ready for that moment.

The world of names, forms, images and appearances is part of this dream. This is the known world, the mind-thought’s world. And the egoic mind, in its dreams, moves within this world. In India, they call it as Avydia, that means ignorance: when the egoic mind assumes names and forms, separating itself from Reality as an entity, as someone present here and now. This is illusion, ignorance, Avydia. Your entire vision of the world is Avydia; the specific view of a separate entity. You are not before Reality; you are mistaking yourself for the mind, and so your entire vision is based on duality, separation.

Thought has no truth whatsoever. Thought is only imagination of names and forms, within what is known. If this illusory identity is not certain that Happiness, Peace and Freedom are not to be found outside, illusion will persist. Truth lies in what is unknown and not in what is known. All your desires are limited by what is known. You must know the need for ceasing what is known.This is the information provided to you in this meeting: to know you need to know nothing, absolutely anything!

This is the paradox of the Truth. You are full of knowledge, full of known things and therefore full of desires. If you are not fully convinced that such Happiness is not to be found in the world of objects, how will Liberation become available for you to reach it, to realize it?

This perfect Happiness, this complete Freedom, this total Love is the nature of the true Self, the nature of the Being. So, your only truthful desire is for Real Happiness. To yearn for Happiness is quite a truthful thing. Every person wishes Happiness, and there is no problem in that; this is what everyone honestly seeks, although not being aware of it. The problem lies in the search for this desire in objects, in the experience of the mind itself, in what is known.

Therefore, all desires are a yearning for the Self. However, when this quest is headed for objects, it concerns the egoic mind, and that is the problem, because it concerns duality, the illusion of separation. For this reason, it is of fundamental importance to understand the real nature of the desire. So, desire can end when the mind returns to the Source. This way, the mind leaves behind objects, dream, illusion, duality. Avydia ends and then you are back home.

The truth of the desire is the search for God, the search for the Truth, the search for the true Self. When it is headed for the objects, the egoic sense, the sense of duality, the separatist mind appears. Everyone desires and seeks Happiness. The pursuit of Happiness is born of this desire for self-encounter. Even those who claim themselves as not God believers are searching for Happiness, and therefore, for God, for Themselves, yearning for the Truth.

There is only God everywhere, God searching for Himself. When God searches for Himself, the game begins.

*Online meeting transcription originally held on November 15th, 2017 on Paltalk app - First published in Portuguese on January 2nd, 2018. For further information about the meetings, :click here.

My recommendation is the art of Meditation!

You need to go beyond the mind, and then you will be free from the illusion of duality, which maintains this conflicting separation inside yourself, this constant fight in the pursuit of something, to get rid of pain through pleasure, to get rid of evil through good, to get rid of error through non-error, to get rid of death through life.

This duality, this division, this separation is a fiction, produced by thought. The mind inside yourself is producing that. It is not the Truth about Yourself, it is the “truth” about the mind. While you mistake yourself for the mind, this will be your “truth,” although not being your Truth. You will see this as true as it is all you know.

My recommendation is the art of Meditation! Meditation begins through the disidentification from this model, breaking this bias, this psychological bias for continuity. Few people are willing This! This means absolute and unconditional Freedom, but the “person” is not interested in That. Your “sense of person” is interested in achievements, in acquiring, in achieving a new thing. So, this movement towards the upcoming moment is constantly happening – a false illusory movement, of pure psychological imagination. But if you are interested in Freedom, It needs to be real, and It is real only when unconditional. All of this needs to disappear! All this appreciation for the story of the character you believe you are needs to disappear!

An actor playing a role in a play will need to give up that character later. There, in that role, in that scenic representation, he or she is a very useful character. But the actor is not that character! After that scene, he or she needs to give up the character, otherwise it will be a serious trouble! If the actor keeps on mistaking him or herself for the character represented on stage, if he or she “takes it to home,” it will be a problem since he or she will not be able to adjust the character to the so-called “real life.” This is very simple to understand!

Actually, you still do not really understand this, although it seems to be understanding what I am pointing out here. The truth is you are also just a character and you take it with you everywhere. You mistake yourself for it when you say you are a teacher, a mother, a father, a lawyer, a businessman, a military man, a doctor. You are constantly mistaking yourself for this character and forgetting the Truth about who You are.

Then, what we call as “ego-identity” is the story of this character you believe you are. For example, these thoughts going on your head concern that character, they have nothing to do with what You are. You have no thoughts. You are pure Consciousness! You have no history to share, no memories to remember, no imaginations to create a psychological future for yourself, because you are Consciousness!

Consciousness is the “actor” and the character is this false identity with friends, enemies, happy, unhappy, with desires to fulfill and fear of losing things. So, the character’s life is a drama. Sometimes a thriller, at other times a comedy or a romance (this thing we name as “love” in relationships), and all of this is so unsatisfactory, so incomplete, so conflicting because the mind is behind this project, frequently idealizing something better than what is happening now, here, in this experience, in these relationships. Therefore, drama and conflict are always present.

So, no matter how hard you try, whatever you do will still be within this drama, it will be part of it, of this project engendered by this false identity you believe to be. In fact, you cannot say who you are because you are mistaking yourself for all this drama, for this whole project of the “person,” of the character.

You have a work ahead of you. Do not worry; you have a lifetime to do it! Some people here will have another five, fifty or seventy years ahead... This is the time you have, and your job is to realize That, to verify This, to become aware of That! You were born just for That! You were not born to play and get involved in this drama. This drama is part of the character’s story, and your real purpose is to find out the Truth beyond that.

Most people die as "people." They are born as "people" and die as "people." They are born within a drama because birth is a great drama indeed; it is the first drama of all - it is not easy to be born! Everyone is born in confusion, in some sort of situation, and then life goes on in that drama. You are here to discover something beyond that birth!

The point is that the character is born within this drama, within this confusion. Your Divine Nature, your Essential Nature does not know that birth. That is a story the mind is telling you about who you are, and you start to believe it as soon as this drama begins. In the first few months, you already start to believe in all that, and some spend their entire lives only identified with this story, with this character, living this drama. Therefore, the vast majority is born, grows up, becomes an adult and then dies... but the illusion goes further!

*Online meeting transcription originally held on August 5th, 2020 - First published in Portuguese on September 26th, 2020. For further information about our meetings, click here.

There is no way to attain Self-realization if you are identified with the mind

The approach you have in this space called Satsang is meant to show you the great illusion the mind has been living. As you have always been identified with the mind, you take it as your reality, as if it were the reality of your life.

If you discover how to explore the Real Nature of Consciousness, you will find out It does not have these objective interpretations. In other words, the way of conceptualizing life around you is the way the mind knows, classifying everything around itself. In Satsang, you are approaching Wisdom, you are in an encounter with the Truth. This is the meaning of the word Satsang.

In the mind, you carry several concepts, beliefs, opinions and conclusions, and you consider them real to you. However, here lies the illusion of this false “me,” of this "person" who, for example, seems to be listening to someone at this moment - someone listening to someone. These are the objective mind’s interpretations. Mind, in its illusion, makes everything objective around itself, placing itself as the subject. So, the mind is the subject, the "me," and everything surrounding it is the "non-me." This is the concept, the belief, the illusion of separation. This Consciousness is the Nature of the Self, is your Real Nature. It does not have these objective qualities. This is a sheer mind’s creation!

So, the way you are living within the mind is totally mistaken. It is a totally illusory life! What is known as "human life," "personal life," is similar to the dream you have at night. When you wake up in the morning, you notice there was no reality in it, it was just the mind creating images, producing experiences, and all of that was inside the mind. That world in the dream was not an objective reality. That sound-images-people experiences present in your dream, all of that was as unreal as you were in such experience. Everything in your dream was built through concepts and beliefs. So, objects, people, sensations, all these experiences were only within the mind. Everything was sheer imagination.

This world of yours, which is the mind’s world, is the same dream’s world you have at night, while the Truth of your Consciousness, of your Real Nature is beyond that. The purpose of this meeting is for you to find out the Reality, the Truth about yourself. If this is clear, there is no more illusion; the mind collapses!

There is no suitable name for this Realization. Some call it Awakening. This Reality is the Reality of Silence. All the mind knows are names and forms, they are experiences produced by the mind itself, but we are pointing out "something" beyond the mind, "something" beyond this illusion of the "me." The mind cannot apprehend the Reality, cannot reach That.

Mind always lies in the field of duality, which is the field of its own experience - subject and object. Everything the mind knows is within that duality. The mind splits itself between mind and body, mind and world. However, there is no subject and object; there is no thought and thinker. Thinker is just a thought creating the illusion of an entity responsible for thinking. There is neither thinker nor thought; this is just a thought’s belief. There is no mind, body and world. There is no vigil state, no dreaming state, no deep sleep, no death and no postmortem state. All this is only mind’s creation.

Every day you have the experience of talking to other people, having thoughts, feelings and emotions, but this is not true. This is only the mind in itself, by itself, experiencing itself. Even if you have an encounter of third kind, a contact with extraterrestrials, this will also be within the mind’s experience. There is nothing outside the mind and its experience. Ego is eager for mystical, esoteric, spiritual, extraphysical experiences. This is the mind’s search for extraordinary sensations. Ego loves this kind of flight of fancy.

Truth is the end of the mind and its experience; It is when the mind collapses, falls, disappears. The mind itself is made up of concepts, appearances, names and beliefs. So, every experience is mind’s projection. Actually, the mind itself is built by these projections, which are not separate from it; these projections are the very own mind.

When your history ends, the mind, the ego, which is the illusion of that sense of a separate "me," also ends. Then, there is no mind, there is no body and there is no world. Your Natural State is Being! This is Meditation, Consciousness, Freedom!

I have just one more thing to say to you: all this movement, this dream is just a dance of the Consciousness. The problem lies not in this dance, not in the movement itself. The problem arises when you try to assume the place of Reality. Therefore, you are - and will always be - facing a paradox. You cannot reach the Truth. There is no way to realize That identified with the mind, taking the mind as real.

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on January 29, 2018 - First published in Portuguese on May 23, 2018. For further information about the meetings, click here.

Intelligence is the Blossoming of Consciousness

Satsang means being in good company, in Divine, Sacred company. That is an opportunity to deepen the Understanding of your Self. The commonplace is the internal psychological disorder, conflict, fear and suffering. However, Clarity, Intelligence, Wisdom are not like this. In these meetings, we are interested in observing That closely, in knowing That directly, in recognizing the Truth we are.

However, this kind of meeting is pointless to those not read yet to this moment. Here, evaluation, judgment or comparison of any type sound very strange, as it is not about listening to a subject from knowledge viewpoint. Knowledge only distorts what is being said.

Another important thing here is that we are not interested in words, in hearing or in knowing words, as Truth cannot be reveled through them, but rather through straightforward experience. You live That when you directly feel what is being pointed out here; it is not about verbal, analytical, philosophical, intellectual understanding. So, be a little patient and find out the meaning of listening without a knowledge background. You do not need knowledge here.

Truth cannot be nourished like a plant in the garden. Truth is not like that; It is not cultivable. In other words, there are no steps or levels to reach That; it is not Something you acquire step by step. So, this sounds completely strange in relation to everything the mind knows, even because it does not concern the mind’s knowledge.

Generally, you live in inattention, and Satsang is an invitation to Conscious, Intelligent Life, to the Freedom from all confusion the mind knows. You know all the mind knows is the experience of confusion. In the mind, life is confusion; you are in confusion, that is lack of clarity, lack of silence, lack of peace.

Thoughts produce confusion. Within yourself, images, beliefs, values, motives and reasons are leading to confusion. Seeing the world, seeing yourself and life through thought lens is pure confusion. Nevertheless, this has become the normal state in people’s lives, entangled with every kind of confusion - psychological, financial, emotional, familial, political, social, and so forth. Confusion is the way of living when there is no Intelligence. When there is no Freedom, what you call as “your life” is in disarray throughout different aspects and areas, producing more and more suffering, conflict and, of course, more disorder.

On the other hand, Intelligence is the Blossoming of Consciousness, present when you leave the disordered, confused, conflictive, fearful mind circuit. Consciousness is the Source of all manifestation! It entails a huge and extraordinary power! It is the Source of everything; it is the inexplicable and extraordinary Intelligence!

You cannot enjoy this Intelligence living confined into the mind’s limitations. Scientists say the brain has great potential, being a great part not used. I do not know what they exactly mean by that, but I know what I am saying to you here: there is a huge Intelligence potential within Consciousness, beyond the brain itself, beyond brain’s capabilities.

Awakening, Enlightenment or God’s Realization is the blooming of that Consciousness, this supreme and powerful Intelligence. You cannot learn That from your parents, from society or by following politicians, as there is no "political intelligence." Political science is not intelligent. Politics is the absence of Intelligence, since it is the mind on agreements. When there is Intelligence, there are no agreements but rather a clear Vision - "what it is" and "what it is not". It is simple like that!

Therefore, you cannot learn this from politics, from your parents, relatives or society. If you love this movement of culture, society, politics, if you love to be a militant of these things, to voice your opinion, to analyze, to study agreements, that is, if you love the mind and its movement, all you have is limitation. You cannot know Reality by being stuck within illusion. You cannot discover the Divine Truth while attached to these patterns of mediocrity. In this space called Satsang - the encounter with the Truth - it is possible to find out this clear Vision of Life, when everything the mind builds (all this culture, this humanistic, social, political, religious, philosophical vision, and so on) does not matter anymore. When you find out your Real Nature, your Divine Nature, you see yourself in your Being and out of this “mind’s game,” beyond this imaginary story, this imaginary concept of being “someone” in the world living this so-called “human history.” That’s when all the confusion, disorder and suffering end.

Satsang means being vulnerable to this Blooming, to this Intelligence. This is what I have called as Meditation. Meditation is neither reflection, nor a silence imposed by some technique or method. I am not talking about a meditation technique with a starting and ending point. I am talking about the absence of the mind and all the movement it is able to do, including the movement to be silent, to be still, to slow down.

Meditation can reveal That, and there lies the “end of the game”. When I say "end of the game," I am not saying it ends, but rather that You are beyond it. Therefore, the “game” goes on, but since you are currently beyond it, You enjoy it, without mistaking yourself for it. In reality, when you see yourself in your Essential Nature, You are the “game” itself, you are not trapped in it anymore.

It is like looking at a chessboard, on which you are no longer the pawn, you are no longer the king, you are no longer a piece of that game. You are the game itself, but you are beyond it. In Satsang, when we go deeper, when we immerse ourselves into That, realizing this non-identification with the “game,” with the “me,” with this psychological sense of being “someone,” it gets clear that this “someone” is merely a fantasy, a belief, an appearance, just an image.

What is Enlightenment, then? It means knowing the “game,” going beyond it and being the game itself. In other words, it is settling in and enjoying Life as it is, without confronting, conflicting, resisting or causing any disorder. How worth is that? If you get deeply involved in It, you will discover the price, which will be insignificant given the value of That. However, you cannot know how worth is That without first approaching and looking at It closely, at what It represents.

You remain identified with these stories, with the story of the character you believe to be, with a name, in short, with this presumption of being "someone," an "entity." You see the body in the mirror and say "I," but it is only a body. When someone undergoes an accident resulting in amputated limbs, such as a finger, a hand or a part of the arm, this person will never say again that is his or her limb; let alone the injured person will say: "I am that hand," "I am that arm" or "I am that finger."

So, this idea you are inside the body is completely illusory, because You are the One who sees the body and these objects in front of you. This hand and this body are not You, just like this chair where this body is sitting. All of this is only an appearance! When you are awake, you see all this, but in deep sleep you know nothing about this body or this world.

*Online meeting transcription originally held on June 10th, 2020 - First published in Portuguese on September 10th, 2020. For further information about our meetings, click here.

What hinders Real Happiness?

What hinders Real Happiness? Our purpose in this meeting is to investigate the nature of this obstacle. We are not investigating Reality, Truth or Happiness, but rather the nature of this obstacle. The great barrier - perhaps the greatest one - is the unexamined belief in the Truth about yourself. You do not know who you are, but you have lots of ideas about it.

To be willing to live the Truth means to be willing to abandon all beliefs, which means abandoning the personal identity (the sense of person upholds the beliefs and vice versa). Your major barrier is linked exactly to this!

The thoughts you have about yourself uphold the ones you have about life. Basically, this is how it happens. What keeps your world is what you believe to be indeed. Unconscious beliefs manifest and uphold this model within the body and the mind - this is the basis of the false identity.

How do you feel at this current moment? What sensations appear in your body? What kinds of thoughts appear in your mind now? How are your beliefs appearing now? Everything you are feeling right now is conditioned by a belief-shaped model. If you feel sorrow, this is being configured by the current thought model. If you feel joy, another thought model is present there. If you are feeling something in the body, some sensation, it is linked to a certain thought model, a belief model.

You are so identified with thoughts that you do not even notice what they trigger in this body-mind mechanism. Your set of beliefs upholds this model of a present identity within the body. This is completely false, but not how your body-mind feels, as you are mistaking yourself for this "mechanism,” for this state of beliefs.

You see yourself inside the body, having a mind inside that body. This is a representation pattern you have about yourself. The Sages name this as "dream state" or "unconscious 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. This existence model is what is easily accepted, instead of what is being proposed here. Our invitation is for you to find out the structure, the basis upholding suffering, for you to understand this barrier. 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; so that a change takes place in this entire structure, in this mechanism. It is evident it does not always seem easy, since your beliefs are deeply based, anchored in that feeling, that thought, that emotion, that sensation. You are addicted to it for such a long time.

I have been talking about it quite a lot. I have been using new words and ideas to talk about What is beyond them. So, leave your ideas, your beliefs, your models, your conditioned patterns behind. You may have read a lot of books, heard several speeches, watched lots of videos, but that did not work and will not work. Now, you believe in other things, but it is still an intellectual act, still within the mind, and you have not yet excelled it. You have quite specific beliefs and I am here to show you they are your hurdles.

Some beliefs are basic and simple, posing no barriers to Realization. For example: you believe the Earth is round, water’s chemical formula is H2O and Gravity’s Law is a fact. You are not a chemist, not a scientist, so you believe in what they say, but they are still intellectual beliefs.

So, you have thousands upon thousands of beliefs not posing any sort of barrier to your Realization, to your Happiness, to the Realization of the Truth about yourself. However, some other beliefs, addressed in Satsang, need to vanish, to disappear: the belief in who you are, in a separate existence, in an existing separate identity at this present moment, "The world, God, and me." There is no "me," there is no "world" and God is not what one imagines.

So, the point here is not to be free from beliefs, as some of them are harmless. When drinking a glass of water, you do not need to know the water’s formula, nor to have the scientific proof of that; you can keep on believing H2O is water’s chemical formula. But from the standpoint of Consciousness, of the Real Nature of Being, this belief in who you are poses you the main barrier and you must abandon it completely.

The major part of the people live within these beliefs, that uphold further beliefs. True Happiness, true Freedom is far greater than any belief. It is beyond any idea, any description.

Realization requires an openness, that 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 in this false “me.” Then, like a flower, when you open yourself up, you bloom.

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on February 16, 2018 - First published in Portuguese on May 17, 2018. For further information about the meetings, click here.

Disidentify from the mind!

This meeting is another opportunity to self-enquiry. It is an invitation from Consciousness to Consciousness. It is not an invitation to the mind, as it is unable to know anything.

We have a sort of objective consciousness, and even that is not the mind knowing something. As the mind is unable to know anything, it cannot enlist itself to this investigation, being just one more object.

So, what we name as “objective consciousness” is a just a perception of this Consciousness, unlimited and undefinable. The mind, indeed, is confined into this limit of knowledge and experience. What we investigate in these meetings, in this invitation to Consciousness, is the movement of the mind.

Therefore, this invitation is from Consciousness, within Consciousness and to the Consciousness. Everything the mind apparently is able to know is knowledge within this Consciousness. The mind is just a perceiving element, and all it can do is to perceive its own limitation, which happens through this investigation of Consciousness.

We can say the mind can explore its limitation, and this is what happens in this self-enquiry: you realize how limited is this sense of “me” in the mind, how limited is this perception and knowledge. So, this is the only thing you can find out within this self-enquiry. I see this in a very simple way. I do not know if you can see how simple is for the mind to notice its own self-limitation, beliefs, images, concepts, its notion of future and past.

Every mind’s experience is about perception, however, the True Nature, that is Consciousness, is beyond the mind and its perception. This acknowledgment through self-enquiry allows the mind to disconnect from this movement of identification with the experience, from the imagination of being an “identity.”

Throughout all this mind’s perception, there is something beyond it: the Reality, which does not need to be forgotten, but this is what happens when there is no attention to mind’s movement. The ordinary person is confined to this self-forgetfulness, as he or she is identified with the mind and its perceptions. So, that ends up being the person itself, although not being, in a way that this Consciousness gets dressed up as a person. Yet this Clarity, the Awakening or the complete Vision of the Truth is always a Mystery.

This is just like looking at the mirror and saying: “I am there!” Now, this “I am” has an entirely different meaning than what the mind knows, it is absolutely unknown, a great mystery. This Self-recognition is named as Awakening or Enlightenment, which is the Comprehension that experience and action are not yours, that thought, body and world are no longer yours, nor what You really are. We remain in What we are when mind, body and world are not important anymore. In your Natural State of Being, which is Meditation, you just allow yourself to think, feel, perceive and experience, moment by moment, without the illusion “you” are there, leading, moving, changing and making that happen. All this is just happening.

When no work on yourself is going on, you mistake yourself for this present thinking, feeling and perceiving, that you name as “me” - here lies your identification with an imagination.

You imagine a room, people in this room, situations and things happening, and all this is being perceived, seen, analyzed and understood by a “witness.” Mind says you are this “witness,” but this is a trick, it is utterly mind’s perception, as no witness is there. There is only this biological and functional movement of the brain, of the body and of the senses within this experience. It is so fascinating!

Consciousness does not play any role here, within this illusion. Its role lies in being the basis for everything, but there is no “person,” no “witness” in there. It is just the basis of this impersonal phenomenon.

Everything appearing is just impersonal phenomena from this Consciousness, in this Consciousness, to this Consciousness. So, even the experience you call as “fear” is not happening to the “person”, but to a psychologically conditioned pattern.

Your Essential Nature does not experience fear, but the mind does. Since you mistake yourself for the mind, through this imagination, “you” are in fear.

There are smart, no smart, healthy, sick, happy, unhappy, tall, short, fat and thin people, but this is just an impersonal Consciousness phenomenon, as these people, these forms are no separate identities. All kind of people are inside a room, but no “person” is there, as everything is just a phenomenon within Consciousness.

Consciousness is What we are. To assume your True Nature is to enjoy Love, Peace, Happiness, without mistaking yourself for the body, the mind and the world anymore. This is the goal! So, we allow everything to be as it is. When you allow everything to be what it is, You are What you are! When you mistake yourself for the mind, when you resist and don’t allow everything to be as it is, things to be as they are, you are identified with the illusion of a false “me,” and then you are miserable, unhappy.

You, in your Being, cannot be unhappy! Out of your Being, you will always be miserable, there will always be this resistance against the present Truth - present here and now – against this impersonal Truth, in which there is no “you” to control, voice, judge, compare, evaluate, accept or reject.

However, the mind is persistent, the ego is very persistent. This distinguishes the Sage from the fool, the Self-realized one from those who have not assumed the Truth about themselves: the fool one believes to exist and to be in control; the Sage knows he or she is not there, there is nothing to control. So, one is Happy and settled in his or her Being, and the other is tense, miserable, settled in his or her mind.

So, mind is this set of concepts and beliefs arising and assuming a false place. Look at this closely and disidentify from the mind! Thanks for the meeting! Namaste!

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on March 23rd, 2020 – First published in Portuguese on July, 17th, 2020. For more information about our meetings, click here.

Meditation is devotion to the Truth

I see it is quite important you pay attention to what we have been addressing in these meetings. If I tell you that, in your Real Nature, you are What undeniably maintains the feeling, the thinking, the acting, then you have a basis for self-investigation. You are that undeniable Presence! So, this is the perfect basis, and you start the investigation from that. You are always that undeniable, complete, perfect and radiant Presence. No matter the model of thinking, feeling, perceiving or acting, this can only be present in that Presence You are, always!

This is never obscured nor hidden by time, circumstances or mental states. All of you have experienced, at least once in a lifetime, anxiety, sadness, worry or some kind of fear, conflict or desire, and yet none of this can obscure or hide your Essential Nature. To begin from that basis is a great start. You are not a "person," this limited "person" you believe to be.

The beauty of this Investigation, which is Meditation, lies on recognizing this existing Presence, this Consciousness free from all effort, from the burden of this existing contradiction in thinking, in making decisions, in feeling, in having internal desires, emotions and feelings. So, the beauty of these meetings is to find out it is possible to recognize Yourself. Here, recognizing yourself means realizing What is present here and now, and not recognizing "someone" there. Therefore, never start from this mistaken principle you can know Who You Are through some knowledge.

Knowledge is a model of belief, of information, and What You Are is not limited to a model. Similarly to Reality, “What It Is” is not within a model. You cannot know anything about Yourself, but you do can find out what You are not. You are not this “person,” this limitation, this feeling, this thought, you are not this perception or this model of action. So, this is the real basis of this Discovery, of this Revelation. That’s when all suffering, confusion and anxiety disappear, as well as that model of having to strive to win, that fear of losing or this expectation for more pain and more conflict, that causes you fear, always fear, fear, fear... All that effort disappears in this simple and straightforward Recognition of your Essential Nature.

Therefore, This is not about knowing, but rather about comprehending Life as Something present here and now, not separate from What You are. So, to Understand Yourself is to Understand Life, but it does not mean knowing anything about Life nor anything about Who You are. Your True Nature is Freedom, Love, Peace and Happiness, what the mind does not know. Happiness, peace and love known by the mind are states that come and go, present or absent, circumstantial experiences. Everything you know is circumstantial, part of the known, of the mind. What You really are cannot be known, as it is not part of the mind, of the time, it is not circumstantial. Here lies the huge difference between Awakening and its mere knowledge.

So, your straightforward Understanding of the Truth is always immediate, here and now. You always have that Understanding when the mind is not there judging, comparing, evaluating, moved by these states or striving to get rid of or to gain something. Notice how simple and interesting this is. When "you" are not there, You are present! When your subjective and known world is not present (this world kept by mental states, by striving, doing, acting, thinking), You are there, and when You are there, there is Freedom!

This Freedom does not nullify thinking, feeling, perceiving nor acting. Freedom does not include yourself, but rather Your Self! Freedom means You as the Real One, and not “you” as a “person,” a fraud, a lie, an illusion. You are Peace, and that is the sign. Ask me what is the sign when You, in your Essential Nature, are present. The sign of when You are present is the absence of time, knowledge, comparison, judgment, mental evaluations, desire or fear. So, That is Meditation, Consciousness, the Awakening of your Natural State of Being!

That is why I have been often pointing out this to you: you will not find any answer, any spiritual experience that could provide you an answer to What is external to the mind. No matter how spiritual you become, you will always be stuck in time, space and circumstances; you will always have to improve or to learn a bit further; you will always have to gain or to get rid of something, to conquer or to give up on something. So, forget all that! Forget spirituality or spiritualization.

Your State of Sanity is the Real State of Holiness, free from time, free from the mind. The Saints live in a mind-free state! They are not spiritual people, since there is absolutely no “person” in the state of Holiness, of Real Sanity! When there is Sanity, there is no "person," there is no "someone." Saint is God, the Truth, the Consciousness, and That is beyond time. So, the answer is not found in the mind, we cannot find That within the mind’s world. "You" cannot find That, there is no way to find That.

Therefore, to become spiritual, to dedicate your life to esoteric and mystical practices, to rituals and ceremonies is worthless. All of this may even be of some use, such as making you to be a bit more psychologically focused on some purpose, but even that purpose will have to be abandoned at some point. All of that will have to be abandoned, as it is still part of time, part of the known, of the knowledge. So, it is always a frustration circle. You have always believed you can reach That through some technical practice, or that spiritual practice would provide you this Freedom, or that some technical practice or ritualistic, esoteric exercise would provide you That, but this is not true, it is not like that.

Your real exercise is to bring Consciousness to this moment and disconnect yourself from the psychological time, from this time created by the mind through beliefs, conclusions, deductions, comparisons, judgments, evaluations and imaginations. Notice how I have been talking to you about this matter of imagination and how huge is that burden you have inside since spend your day imagining and naturally cultivating fear.

Is there anything you need to know? That is how your brain works, as since childhood you were conditioned to “learn.” You believe everything can be learned. This is a brain conditioning - you assume that everything “you” are today was learned. However, what "you" are is not What, in fact, You are, exactly because you have learned about it. What you have learned did not provide you Freedom, did not provide you What You Are. Everything you know in life came from that. You have learned all this once; you have even learned to "be someone."

So, your jealousy, envy, spite, your fears and desires, all that came from this knowledge you have acquired. As part of that, you have a name, an age, a history, a culture... All that are learned things, that is, you have learned to “be someone.” When you learn to “be someone,” you forget the Truth about What You Are, the Truth of What It Is, here and now, this Reality, this Consciousness. So, is there anything to learn? No! Now, it is about unlearning, the only thing you need. Only then, you will return to your Essential Nature, to Home.

Meditation is your Natural State, while imagination is artificial, it is a thought’s movement built by the thought itself. Meditation is Truth, whereas this imagination or this thought’s construction has no real basis. The fact is that Meditation makes you not only aware of the illusion of imagination, but also aware of the illusion of time, of thought, of the experiencer, of the thinker. So, not only imagination but also thought and experience are discarded. That is why I have been saying that Meditation is the key to all this.

However, Meditation is not learnable either. You recognize Yourself as Consciousness, as Meditation, and that is the end of imagination. Therefore, you cannot learn that. In fact, if you know meditation, you will have to unlearn this, as this meditation does not work. This meditation is not What You Are, but something you have learned, you have been taught, you have discovered. If you have discovered it, it means it was hidden; and the Truth is not something like that.

Wisdom, Happiness, Meditation, God is not like that, something hidden. It is rather a matter of forgetfulness than something hidden, although the expression “forgetfulness” is also inappropriate - “forgotten meditation,” “forgotten consciousness,” “forgotten God.” The ‘Thing’ is there, but It is not being assumed; It is not hidden. I repeat: the whole Thing is here and now. It is not hidden, but it is not being assumed; So is Meditation, God, Truth, Happiness, Realization.

Meditation is devotion to the Truth. If there is no devotion to the Truth, there is no way for Meditation to flourish or to be verified here and now. So, notice it: it is not a matter of a hidden thing, but rather a lack of attention that makes That appear to be forgotten, and That can only be recognized when there is surrender, devotion. I see devotion as surrender and surrender as welcoming the Truth. That’s when Meditation can no longer remain “forgotten.” If there is no devotion, there is no surrender, and so there is no Meditation. However, it is impossible for Meditation to remain “forgotten” if devotion is present here and now. Devotion is this surrender to the Truth!

If you say, "I don't know where the Truth is," I fully agree with you! Truth cannot be known, as It is present through devotion, and not through conclusion, deduction, logical speculation, that is, intellectual understanding.

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on March 16, 2020. - First published in Portuguese on August 21, 2020. For further information about our meetings, click here.

The Heart is Consciousness, Presence, Reality!

This is a moment of Surrender, of Self-investigation, of Meditation, of the encounter with the Divine Truth, with the Truth we bring within ourselves. All your longing is for Freedom. It does not matter how, but everybody looks for Freedom, for Happiness.

Life, in this false identity, is dramatic, boring and conflicting. When human beings begin to recognize this, they begin to realize how stupid it is to live in the mind, then they turn to the search for themselves, and at that moment, by an action of Grace, they are led to a new direction. This search for the end of a dramatic, confusing, disoriented, and conflicting life is the real search, the great goal.

This whole process begins when you realize how stupid it is to keep on living in the old mind’s model, with all the drama thought produces. When you begin to realize that, you are called to understand, to awake. In mankind’s history, this has been named as “Liberation,” “The Kingdom of Heaven,” “Nirvana,” “Union with God.” It is, in fact, the recognition of your Divine Nature, of your Essential Nature, something that reveals itself in the Silence, in the Silence of Meditation, when a complete emptying of the sense of “me” happens. When the sense of “me” disappears, all drama and all confusion also vanish.

Usually, people do not realize what goes on with themselves. They simply live the drama of the sense of separation, without being aware of the inherent burden, since they have been living this way for such a long time – so this is already normal to them. People do not realize what is their real condition and how miserable it is to live that way because they are often distracted by external fulfillments.

These external fulfillments distract them from their own misery, from their condition, from their drama, and so people keep “living” their lives - a dull, conflicted and boring life, with little pleasant and fulfilling moments, purely egoic, and with a huge amount of anxious, conflicting, fearful and suffering moments, in several forms, but they are already used to experience.

So, people do not become aware of this condition, of this sense of separation, of the burden of living this way. In fact, people even enjoy this miserable life condition, as it is all they know. A complete unconsciousness! People cannot see this condition because the mind is constantly busy, fulfilling new desires, constantly searching, without resting, for more egoic personal accomplishments to fulfill this sense of personality, this sense of separation.

So, what we see is that this constant desire, in its several forms of manifestation, is based on the very own sense of separation trying to heal the sense of separation. What I am saying is that life within desire is always based on the conflict of the sense of separation. Separation has already happened (this is the condition of the ordinary person), so the desire appears in attempt to heal that consequent sense of inadequacy, of conflict. However, this cannot be successful. Desire is part of the conflict; therefore it cannot heal the conflict. Desire is part of suffering. It is not apart suffering as an antidote, as a healing, as a medicine. In reality, it is the poison itself, circulating as such.

Therefore, there is no ultimate success through desire. Even the so-called “spiritual accomplishments” are just new desires being fulfilled, that is completely useless. What people experience in some therapeutic or spiritual work is only a temporary sensation of freeing up themselves from a certain kind of pain, of conflict, of suffering. But deep down, there is no way to radically free themselves from this drama, from this dilemma, because the sense of separation, the sense of “me” is still present. The ego is the disease! A disease without treatment. The problem with the search is that it will always entice for further searches, be it for material or spiritual objects, for gross or subtle things, and behind all that still lies this false “me,” this false entity.

You are not a divine “piece,” a “piece” of God inside the body. There is no such entity there inside the body. This apparent entity is not real. There is only this Presence, this Consciousness. That apparent entity is within Consciousness as an imaginary appearance produced by the mind.

All that exists is Consciousness! That is the straightforward and practical Understanding of the Truth. The Liberation from illusion is the end of the drama, the end of the conflict, the end of suffering, the end of this image of an entity within Consciousness.

The ordinary person is unconscious about all of this. All his/her relationship is based on the imagination of being “someone,” and that is fear. Yet, the one who is in one’s Essential Nature, living the Truth about oneself, carries a Radical Understanding. He/She is living in the Heart… the Heart is the Consciousness, the Presence, the Reality!

You need to let everything go away so you can be What you are! That is what I just called as “Radical Understanding.” In It, your life is pure Intelligence! Then, this Power flows without hurdles, without roadblock, because there are no desires, there is no fear.

I am not here to entertain you. I am not a speaker, an orator, a teacher. I am here only to investigate with you how confusing it is to live within all that drama or how dramatic it is to live within all this confusion.

*Online meeting transcription originally held on June 5th, 2020 - First published in Portuguese on September 8th, 2020. For further information about our meetings, click here.

The Space of your Essential Nature

Satsang is an opportunity for the one who has already found out that Peace cannot be found externally, that this constant search for objective experiences cannot produce real results. It is not possible to find Peace, Freedom and Happiness in external experiences.

You cannot feel completely Free, Self-Realized, in full Happiness, you cannot live this Divine Presence because this inner mind’s movement prevents you from that. Thoughts and feelings inside you are producing internal states of conflict. To get rid of this conflict, you search for external objective experiences. In fact, by doing so, any experience you have will be just an experience within this belief, still within the mind and reflecting a state of the mind itself. That will only confirm you remain as a separate entity, “you” are within the experience as a separate entity.

So, this is an unsolved matter: to feel yourself separate (a separate entity) is surely not peaceful, not happy, not Liberating. It is imprisoning, something inside a prison, as it hides your Divine Nature, the real Peace, Freedom and Happiness.

This way, every experience you have will always be within the mind itself, and never beyond it. Therefore, this search format does not solve the sense of separation. This Real Presence You are in your Being is the very own Freedom, Happiness, Peace. I can illustrate it as a space where you see some things. They are there within that space, but the space itself cannot be seen, but only the things within it. The objects can be seen within a given space, but the space cannot be seen. In fact, when the space is occupied, it cannot be seen at all, because it is as if the space were absent and only the objects were present. This illustration is quite interesting, since the objects can only be present because there is a space preceding them.

Therefore, your whole experience may be just the experience of objects and not of the space. Your whole human experience, the whole history of this character there, who has a name, a body, a set of experiences, all of this is just part of these objects within this Space. There is no history, no body, there are no situations, conflicts, dramas, no experience in the Space itself. The Space is always free and remains unknown, it is something you cannot recognize. The Space can recognize you, but you cannot recognize It. It recognizes this body, this name and this history, but none of this can recognize this Space, because It precedes all of this.

When we talk about Freedom, Happiness, Peace, Divine Realization, we mean Space. This Space has neither birth nor death; it is not subject to agitation. If you have a room, you can change the furniture, but the space will not change. That is exactly what happens to you. Your inner states are changing but this Space does not change. It cannot be touched by activities, that is, activities and agitation can happen, but the Space will remain intact, absolute, without changes. The Divine within Yourself is something like that. The Presence of God’s Reality, of this unknown “Thing” without name, shape, body, history, is something like that. This Divine Presence allows everything to happen! It may seem strange to hear this, but there is no problem with agitation. What I mean is that when you are disturbed, disoriented, scared, fearful, unhappy, none of this touches this Space!

Everything you have learned in your life from those around you, within this society, within this culture, through relationships with “people” in this world where you were apparently born - or that you believe you were born in - was to live in agitation, to be restless. Conflict, fear and suffering are this restlessness. The story of this “person,” of this character there, who has a name, is this restlessness – a restlessness within the Space, and not a restlessness of the Space. Basically, the sense of ego, the sense of separation is restlessness, and this is the ordinary, the “normal” way of knowing the experience. However, this Presence remains the same and allows everything to appear within Itself, without choices, without preferences.

The mind can be restless, the body can be restless, the world seems to be restless, but these are all objects within this Space. So, there is absolute no need for you to search for a peaceful, happy or loving experience, since this search is the very own separation from this already full and complete Space. This Space is Peace, Love, Freedom, Happiness in Itself! Thus, there is no need for this movement. In fact, it is not only unnecessary but it also further reinforces the illusion that it is possible to find something by moving yourself, but all you can find through this movement is more restlessness.

In other words, in the state of conflict, your movement is towards conflict. In the state of fear, your movement is towards fear. Being confused, you can only act in a confusing way, you cannot act otherwise, so your action will be confusing. If you are restless, your action will come from this restlessness. So, you do not need this search, because it is completely unnecessary and counterproductive.

Another point here is that you do not need any special knowledge to become aware of your Essential Nature, of this Space that remains free from this restlessness. It is enough to know You are That and to assume this Knowledge. The more you remain aware of Yourself, being disidentified from this restlessness movement the mind produces, the more the Truth of your Essential Nature reveals Itself, which is Peace, Happiness, Love, Freedom.

In general, people are not interested in this. They will keep their external searches, remaining restless and appreciating objects, unaware of the Presence of the Space. So, the ordinary intelligence - or what people consider intelligent in this world - is exactly this movement towards external accomplishments, through this search for a richer, more profound, more meaningful experience. Then, you end up following the steps of those who achieved “success,” of the “well-succeeded people,” but remember that “people”, even the “well-succeeded ones”, are still “people.” “Person” is synonym for illusion, the illusion of the sense of a separate existence, of an entity living a separate life; it is the unawareness of the Space.

You need to ask yourself how deep there is something inside you really burning for This, for this Self-Realization. What I am telling you is that the deeper you go, the more you are aware of Yourself, of this Presence, of this Reality, which is this Space. The more It becomes clear, the more this quality of Silence, of Peace, of Freedom, of Real Intelligence is revealed. Here, I use the word “intelligence” differently than the ordinary understanding for the major part of the people. Intelligence here means to be aware of the Reality of non-separation. So, the deeper you go into your Being, into your Natural State (that is this Space, that I have also called as Consciousness), the more these attributes or qualities of your Essential Nature are revealed. That’s when you are, in fact, touched by the Grace, by the Divine, by this Presence, by this Consciousness, living in Love.

Now, it is up to you apply yourself to that, to get yourself involved, to work on it. That is the purpose of our work here: to show you the importance of a profound involvement with the Divine Truth You bring within, that You are, that is within yourself, sleeping, but It is there.

When you watch a movie, you see things like tragedy, shocking, difficult, hard and complicated scenes … If you saw that happening to you, you would be completely off your feet, desperate, but while watching a movie, you consider it a film. However, is this so different from what you currently call as “your life,” at this moment? Are the things happening to you truly real? That is just a movie over there and it has nothing to do with you, but the things that seem to happen to you do not seem to be a movie; they seem very real, quite scary. So, it is time to find out this Space – the Space of your Essential Nature.

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on June 15th, 2020 - First published in Portuguese on August 31st, 2020. For further information about our meetings, click here.

Are past and future a real experience?

We have a great opportunity tonight, at one more meeting, one more moment in this investigation, in this immersion, for this plunge into the Source, into the heart of all things. This core of everything is beyond the thought, which is quite interesting. Thought creates the illusion of past, of future and of this present moment as being the real now; and life within the mind revolves around present, past and future. Life within the mind revolves around the thought, which creates the illusion of a separate life, of a separate existence. Without the thought, there is nothing similar to past, present or future. Without the thought there is nothing similar to a separate life. The beauty of Self-realization lies in verifying that.

Notice that past and future are only thoughts. We do not truly experience the past or the future within them, as they are not real experiences. We only experience the present thought, because neither past nor future are real experiences; they are simply thoughts. Notice how interesting this matter of thought is. In Satsang, you are going beyond thought, beyond this illusion.

Are past and future true experiences? Are they real experiences? What do you have now, at this moment, when you talk about past or future? All you have present is simply the thought. See how interesting this is, how thought has fascinated, hypnotized us, and how it has made us believe in a separate existence, the existence of "someone…" The beauty of Self-realization is the end of time, of the illusion of time! Do you see that? You stop giving importance to thoughts.

So, time is an imagined thing... Life is an imagined thing... Person is an imagined thing. This moment is this Presence, the only Reality, and It is beyond thought. All that exists is this ever present now, out of time. Eternity is out of time. Time is just a thought, like a veil trying to cover Reality. This eternity is just another name for Consciousness, Presence, the Self, our Real Divine Nature.

Participant: Master, when I "notice" a thought, it disappears; so, it seems to be unreal. But after a while, I find myself again wandering on unnecessary thoughts.

Master Gualberto: It is exactly that. The nature of the egoic mind is to produce thoughts and then to wander on these thoughts. This is the mind’s life, life within time. The egoic mind is in the past, in the present or in the future; all it does in the present moment is to project itself to the future or to the past, imagining what apparently happened or what may happen, which are only thoughts - and all thoughts are unnecessary. Life does not need the thought. Life happens within Eternity, that is not the eternity of an infinite time period, but rather the Eternity of the absence of time, of the non-need for time, outside of the time.

Other names for Eternity are Presence, Consciousness, Being... pure Being, our Real Nature. Time overlapping this Eternity is just a thought. There is no time within which we move in action... there is no movement within Consciousness - the Self does not move. Is that clear?

Therefore, it is not about words, but rather the Awareness of this Presence, this Presence as Consciousness. It is this Real Now. It is not the simple present moment, which is also only an imagination within time that will become past. We are talking about something out of time illusion. This present moment is time. The past moment is time. The future moment is time…and everything is appearing and disappearing, arising by overlapping this timeless Reality, this Eternity, this Presence, this Consciousness.

Notice that there is no person on it, there is no personal life there. Personal life is the story, which is time, thought, imagination. Here it gets clear that all this is an illusion, just a belief, an idea; "a person" present in this room is only an idea. There are no people in this room, and it is fascinating to comprehend this... To access this is what I call "to comprehend," because you cannot reach this intellectually, but only understand it. I want to use here the term "to comprehend," which means going beyond the intellect and therefore, beyond the understanding. You cannot understand this, as understanding means getting some piece of verbal and intellectual knowledge about this Thing, which is useless, and you find that everywhere, on books, on Facebook… everywhere.

There is plenty knowledge available about this, easy to understand, but no comprehension remains in this “understanding.” Comprehension means not understanding, but rather realization, and I invite you to comprehend This. I do not invite you to understand It intellectually or verbally, nor to know and even to be able to explain It, because this is useless - it is just more knowledge. Regarding this "matter" here, which is not a subject or a matter of discussion for you to learn, every knowledge is garbage, useless. You need to plunge into your Being, see That directly!

Let’s stop here. Good night everyone. Namaste!

*Online meeting transcription originally held on June 29th, 2016 on Paltalk app - First published in Portuguese on July 18th, 2016. For further information about the meetings, click here.