The Key for Liberation

Your work towards Awakening begins exactly here: stop imagining, stop projecting images inside there about how things are, how they were or how they will be. The second step is: welcome the external world in its apparitions as it is! If it is raining, this is a fact! Do not you want to get wet? Use an umbrella! The rain is out there, you need to go out... open an umbrella and go! Do not make this situation, this event, this mere incident, a personal calamity. Do not turn this in a personal drama. Do not build your story around the rain.

Ego does it all the time! If it does not do it with the rain, it does it with other things that are happening. Your husband did not take the plate from the table to the kitchen and you have already asked for him ten times… No, a hundred times! However, he never does! This is a fact! Either he has a hearing problem, or he is not willing to be in this game with you, fulfilling your desire. Do not make it a drama!

The work of Awakening needs to be perceived by you in the simplest things, where the sense of “me” is being built and sustained. Keeping yourself aware of yourself in a zealous, applied, dedicated way, without losing yourself on imaginations, on thoughts about facts, about events, you begin to perceive this intricate, malicious, captious and imaginary movement of an identity present there, making dramas, storms in a teacup!

Awakening is to remain here, now, in this “I Am,” knowing that what is happening externally or presenting internally do not have any reality outside this “I Am,” and therefore it cannot steal your attention, it cannot capture you.

What is the meaning of Awakening? It is to remain in your Being, in a complete, total and irreversible way; as a fact, not as a verbal theory, not as an Advaita philosophy, not as a belief. The only certainty is What is Real, which is beyond beliefs, opinions and conclusions.

There is only this instant! It has nothing to do with the external world. When I say “this instant,” I am not talking about what is happening, because what is happening has already happened. Do you see? Are you breathing? No! Either you breathed or you are going to breathe. Did you breathe? It is already gone! Are you going to breathe? It is not here! So, none of this is happening. Is anyone breathing? Breathing happens, but as everything else that happens, it is already gone! Is not it?

I am talking about That which is immutable. That does not happen. That did not happen… Look at your head, what a curious thing: thought happened or is going to happen; it is not immutable. Feeling happened or is going to happen; it is not immutable.

The future that mind loves to create in its imagination is not a fact, it is a belief, just a thought. It is not immutable! Reality is immutable! The only certainty is: “I am.” Remain on this! Work towards this! It does not matter if you fail many times. You have been millions of years without trying it even once and do you want to get it right already at the first time? You have a life ahead of you. This "I am" is timeless. It does not happen. It did not happen. It will not happen. Your life is a fraud! I talk about this “life” that thought projects, placing itself in time and space.

Now we have touched a fundamental aspect that is the key for this Liberation, for this Realization, for That which I have called Awakening. This key is Meditation!

Now you know what Meditation is. Was not the dish taken to the kitchen? Who cares? To whom does this injure, strike, hurt, offend, sadden, upset, depress, distress? Did not you get a Christmas present? To whom does it matter? Did they remember your birthday? Whose birthday? To whom does it matter? Who cares of feeling loved?

In your Being, You are God! What is missing for God? Does someone need to take the plate to the kitchen for God to feel good? This just happens in this illusion, in this fluctuation of the psychological time created by thought. There is not time. There is not past. There is not future. There is not present. There is not thought. There is not anybody! This is meditation!

You cannot get rid of the world outside nor can you give an order for everything to happen as you want. There is no use trying to order the rain to stop. Get the umbrella and go out with it! There is no use trying to change the other to feel fulfilled, happy, satisfied, realized… All of this is in the old foundation of the egoic mind.

Why are psychiatrist offices full of patients? Answer me. On a smaller or more expressive scale, where does your madness stand? This madness is only in the illusion there is someone there, apart from this "I am."

Awakening is to remain here and now! Discover in yourself what maintains that sense of an identity present at this moment. This is hiding Reality. It is not destroying Reality, because It is untouchable. However miserable you feel, however unhappy and troubled you feel, it does not change the fact that this "I Am" remains beyond the body and the mind.

You have all the energy needed for this Awakening. The key is available! However, you are wasting this energy all the time, daydreaming, thinking, imagining, identifying with the body and its satisfactions, with the external environment and its events, its episodes, as if this were more important than You! Then, this turns out to be, in fact, more important than You! When it happens, you are miserable. When others, the world, the shapes, the things, the thoughts, the feelings and the imaginations are more important than remaining in this looking, in this hearing, in this feeling, in this experiencing, in this living, without identifying with this, you are miserable.

*Presential meeting transcription originally held in Campos de Jordão city -Brazil, in Ramanashram Gualbeto, on March, 2018. - First published in Portuguese on November 5th, 2019. For more information about how to participate, please access: http://mestregualberto.com

Awakening is to go beyond the programming and the belief of being a person

Satsang is something going on inside you. You cannot read about It on the Scriptures, or even ask about It to someone who have realized this Thing. The only way is to see It directly.

Truth is something like that. It is not something describable. This is the beauty of the Truth: no one can describe It to you! This meeting is a very precious thing, because it is neither a speech that you hear nor words from the Scriptures being repeated or read.

It is not that! It is the “Experience" of the end of all experiences known by the mind. So, this is something that happens inside you.

There is no way to directly approach This through a teacher, a teaching, a speech, or book study. You have to go to This directly! That is the only way. You have to allow This to happen. That is the meaning of Meditation. You go straight to This. You go right into the experience; but, in fact, it is something that happens to you. You cannot know what This is by studying books, listening to teachers. This is a visitation of the Unknown, and the only way is allowing It to happen.

I am always talking about the Truth, but I am never really talking about It. The word is this, but the word "truth" is not the Truth. It is like the words God, meditation, enlightenment, non-duality. Each day these words become more well known. Every day a new teacher comes up, but they will not be able to provide you This, because they are just repeating words they had already read somewhere. You only have access to This through a direct way. That is the only way for This to happen.

The word "Buddha" means "awakened," and in Asia the word is widely used but always referring to a historical figure. That is how it happens in the Eastern world. In the Western world, the word is "Christ," always referring to a historical figure too. The word "Christ" means "anointed," "blessed," "blissful," which also means "awakened." So, the words "Buddha" and "Christ" mean "the One Who is Awake," but they do not refer to these historical figures who lived around two thousand and five hundred years ago and two thousand years ago, respectively.

When you become a Christ, a Buddha, Something is present, but it is not a new knowledge, not even a new experience. When Truth is present, This is present, Buddha is present, Christ is present, but not the word.

What does to Awake mean? When there is Awakening, Truth is present; there is no other way. This is something that indicates the direct presence of the Truth and what I called the “Experience," which puts an end to all experiences. You can live It now, because it is something within you as the Truth hidden in your Heart. This is quite meaningful, very significant, of great relevance.

Human being lives without consciousness of the Truth, literally asleep, so there is no Awakening. The answer is Awakening! The answer is Christ, Buddha, the Being. If you can live in this moment, if you can be here, right now ... Here is the Truth! The answer has always been here, in your Heart. You ask me and I say to you: here is the Truth!

Human beings live "sleeping," asleep: they live, they work, they move; they are born and die. There is no Truth in their lives, because there is no Life when one is "sleeping." That is why Christ said, "I am the resurrection and the life!" The Truth finds you "sleeping," "dead." When there is no Consciousness, you are "dead." Then Christ said, "I resurrect and give life to you!" In other words, "I put an end to your unconsciousness and bring you to the Truth. So, I wake you up, I take you out of sleeping, which is death." It is just like that!

You work like a robot, and a robot is not alive. It may seem it is alive, but it is not. The mind works therein like a robot. You seem to be alive, but you are not. You have no consciousness, but it seems you have, because you move, work, speak. Do you think it is difficult to program a robot for having sexual relations? If they can talk and work, why would they not be able to have sexual relations too? No problem. They can go to the bathroom too. What is the problem? Artificial intelligence is the expression of the mind in its intelligence limited by knowledge, which is not Intelligence. It is only something mechanical. Intelligence is something new, fresh, unknown. It is not mechanical, repetitive, logical. Does to hear all this sound very strange?

This is how the mind is: mechanical, repetitive, logical, working within the known. There is no Intelligence in the mind. We say "person" is an intelligent being. A Buddha is Intelligent, but Buddha is not a "person." A Christ is Intelligent, but Christ is not a "person." If you are a "person," you cannot be Intelligent, because you work like a machine, totally programmed, you are like biological computer. In the computer, there is an electric, magnetic energy circulating, and in the human "biological computer," the blood circulates (it is a biological energy, but it is the same); and you are very attached to that instrument called body.

The mind is blind like a bat during the day. We live among "bats"! You think you need a lot of intelligence to pilot an airplane, but it is a mechanical act, purely cerebral and mechanical programming of body structure. You drive a car and you are not smart. The airplane pilot is not smart either just because he/she can fly an airplane. This is a mechanical thing. There are "bats" that drive cars, airplanes, and those who do surgeries, but they are all "blind."

No matter what capability you have for a mechanical function, or for what requires much of your brain power, this is not intelligence. A pilot of a big airline company had participated to some of our meetings several times, and he was unhappy and in treatment because his girlfriend had abandoned him. Then, inside Satsang, he was just another "bat," one more mind. Do you have any questions about this?

So, if you have not realized your Being, you are trapped within the limits of thought, identified with the mind and with this character. You are “blind." You can even fly, but like those bats, you are flying "blindly." Bats can also fly - they are a kind of rat with wings. The mind gives you a kind of "sleep," which is blindness, which is unconsciousness.

Everything you do, you do with a great apparent ability, but, in fact, you are a "somnambulist" - a "somnambulist" getting married, having children, doing a profession...

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on February 14th, 2018 - First published in Portuguese on April 22, 2018. Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 pm (Local Time: Brazil BRT), except during Retreat periods. For more information about Paltalk app and how to participate, please access: http://mestregualberto.com/agenda/encontros-online http://mestregualberto.com/agenda/encontros-online

The Show of Life

In this work, we are investigating what has always prevailed: the notion of a person living his/her life. Few people in this world could perceive the “great show” and that the person’s life is illusion. The one who knows this, is free from illusion, from this slavery, because he/she is free from ignorance about the “show.” The ignorant person takes the “show” as something real and so remains slave of the body and the mind, always seeing a good or bad world.

Here, we are saying to you that this is completely false. Life is neither good nor bad. It is just a “show.” When you identify with the “show,” because you remain ignorant about it, this notion about good and evil, good and bad, is present. All these concepts are imaginary. Actually, in this purity of the Sacred, of Consciousness, there is no duality, there is not any illusion about the “show,” because there are not concepts. In the mind, you do not have the touch of Reality. Your experience is of good or evil, of duality, of the illusion of the “show”. That is what happens in the mind, in ignorance.

Ignorance is an illusion of the mind, which does not know another thing but this illusion. It is its nature! As long as illusion remains, duality and ignorance about the “show” remain, then the mind keeps on assuming the place of Reality. That is what happens to you on this private vision of the world. It is just like when you look at a serene lake and see some image reflected on it. Over serene water, without waves, you see an image: the sky, a tree… This reflection cannot be the reality.

The world you see is not real. It is just a reflection, just like the image you see on the lake. What is Real is beyond, out of this image. What is Real is not on that water! Therefore, what is Real is not in the mind; but this is the way you see the world, you see life.

Reality is pure Consciousness, outside duality, beyond the “show.” What I am saying is that the reflection does not have any existence separate from reality. It does not separate itself from reality to have real existence. So, the world you see, perceive, feel, reflect, think, analyze, is not Real. The world you know appears within duality, within good and evil, right and wrong. So, in this constant struggle, in this “to contrast”, the “show” takes place.

Your True Nature is beyond the world, then the person and his/her world are not real. The mind has been turning itself to the “reflection,” to the “show,” to the appearance, to duality, and this is its nature: sustaining the “reflection.” Thereby, you cannot remember what is Real, because everything that is known in the mind is still part of this “show,” this duality. That is the reason for the forgetfulness of your True Being. You remember yourself as the mind remembers itself, and it does it with images. You remember yourself as being the body, with a sense of an “I” present… You see yourself as a person. So, you are lost!

When you forget your Essential Nature, you are lost in the imagination, in the “reflection,” in the appearance, in illusion. You have forgotten yourself. You do not know who you are. You are lost. You do not understand that this “reflection” is not separate from the Being and it is just an apparition. While this remains, there is no possibility of Happiness. Illusion is the sustenance of lie, and in it, there is no God. Without God, there is no Truth, and then there is no Happiness.

When you use the expression “I am here,” this sustains duality, the sense of separation, for if “I am here,” the “world is on the other side.” If “I am here,”, then “it is there” – here lies the separation. You do this in a very mechanic, unconscious and automatic way. That is how duality happens.

When you think of yourself as a person, you are treating you as an object, as one more object appearing in the world. This way, you are one and the world is another. Everything that is outside of what you are cannot be what you are. Then you see yourself as one and the world as another, you are one and everything else is another thing – there it is duality! It is in this separation where all confusion and all unconsciousness about the “show” happen. In it, the wheel spins, the wheel of suffering, disappointment, frustration, fear, desire, all this confusion of “being born” and “dying”. There is no Truth. There is no Freedom. There is no Wisdom. There is no Happiness.

Therefore, this suffering of separation, of duality, is present because you accept this concept of “me.” The “I” sustains the illusion of the world as a separate object and you never relax in your Being. You are always in the movement of the mind, which is all this confusion: contradiction, conflict, dilemma, endless problems… This is your illusory life. The illusory life of the person in a world of duality. A life based on the notion “I am here and the world is out there.”

Now you know where the sense of separation comes from and that it is what sustains this “me,” what you believe to be. This is duality! While duality is present, fear will be present.

Self-investigation, Meditation and surrender: this is the direct and unique way to go beyond this illusion, beyond the sense of duality, of separation, beyond illusion “I am here and the world is out there.” That is why to appreciate Satsang is the only smart thing. To go beyond the story, the world, this forgetfulness, is the only thing that matters. There is only Satsang for you! Everything else is just one more thing, while you are another.

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on August 26th, 2019 - First published in Portuguese on October 23rd, 20198. Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 pm (Local Time: Brazil BRT), except during Retreat periods. For more information about Paltalk app and how to participate, please access: http://mestregualberto.com/agenda/encontros-online.

You have to discover in yourself all this!

For this Awakening, you have to investigate some issues, and it is fundamental that each one of you take this very seriously.

There are questions you will have to get the answers, and a theoretical answer is not enough. If you take a book of psychology and search for the answer to the question, "What is the ego?", you will find it there. If you go to a philosopher or a psychologist and ask, "What is life?," or "What is the role of the ego in your life?", certainly they will have an answer to give you. They are educated, schooled people who have studied hard.

You all know a lot, but you do not know how to get rid of this "thing" that makes you resist Life as It presents itself. That makes you resist being Conscious, Present. This is exactly what the ego does: it creates a resistance to this moment, to the mysterious movement of Life. So, it makes you as an entity separated from the present moment. A psychologist, a philosopher, or a therapist, they cannot help you on this matter.

Knowledge will “adjust” you, but it will not give you Freedom. All that the ego seeks is to adjust itself, so its movement is of adjustment in resistance. In this way, there are not enough answers or the final solution to these questions, "What is ego and what is its role in your life?", "How does it work?", "How does it produce this resistance?". This is where Satsang comes forth. This deep investigation of the Reality, of the Truth, of the Nature, of Being.

For this Real Awakening, you have to figure it all out in yourself. You live stuck in a movement of imagination, thoughts, which is the world of the mind. There is no problem with the world of the mind, as long as you know it is an illusory world. When you mistake this world for Reality, you are in a sleep state, which is confusion, suffering, which is the stupid life of the experiencer, this false “me.” I will repeat that to you: there is nothing wrong in the world of the mind, the problem arises when you believe in this world as being real.

Filmmakers make great use of the world of the mind. When you watch a movie, you are watching the production of imagination. The movie creator knows it is all imaginary. The movie creator is in the world of the mind creating entertainment. For that, you need imagination, and there is no problem with it.

However, if the actors of the movie, after leave the studio, forget that their role was supposed to exist only in the film, something that had to appear very real, and so they take home the characters they played, they will have problems. If the director, producer, and all of the staff forget who they really are, that all is just a fantasy, a “fairytale,” they will have serious problems. That is exactly what happens to you, when you mistake the world of the mind, the imaginary world of thought, for your Truth, the Truth about you. This is happening every day to everyone.

When someone is born, everybody gets happy. When someone dies, everybody cries. When your soccer team scores, you get very happy. When it conceded a goal, you stay on the verge of suicide due to so much sadness and pain. So, notice this: basically, there is nothing wrong with what is going on in your life, but that is something of the world of the mind, the imaginary world. It is like a movie that God is producing, where He is the author, the director, the producer, the actor, the supporting actor, the villain, the good guy ... This all is the so-called "your life," but it is not "your life." It is the production of God, the Divine cinema.

You are taking this very seriously. You are mistaking yourself for the character that the Existence, Life, in its mysterious way, is making it happen. You forgot who you are. I have just said what basically “to be Awaken” means. In this Divine movie, one is the villain and the other is the good guy, one is the saint and the other the sinner, one is the rich and the other is the poor. It is not interesting? There is nothing wrong with the world of the mind, because the world of the mind is the world of God - God has decided to play movies. I do not know what you guys have against the movies.

Whenever you be angry, you got to realize that there is no problem in that. Anger is only possible because God needs an angry actor in his movie, at that moment, otherwise it would not be possible. Look what I am saying: you want all the positive things and no negative ones, but this is something stupid because it is not possible. There is no possibility of choosing anything! Anger is also part of the movie, so the next time you feel it, stay present, do not take it personally, let the story fall and watch what happens with the anger.

You are not a good actor, because you are getting entangled with the experience. The experience of anger is very beautiful, the illusion of "someone" in it is the problem. So, you assume characteristics of a separate identity that is not seeing the game. Do not try to get rid of anger, do not try to get rid of envy, jealousy, fear, desire, because when you do it, you are like an actor who is not doing the right thing. When you do that, you are in resistance. You want to change what It is, and that is basically the false "I," the ego, that "me."

You do not accept Life as It is. You do not embrace Life as It presents, and when you resist, you are not Present, you are not Conscious. When you resist, you are identified with the experience, and here it is the personal sense. When feeling joy, do not create story, and then there will be no resistance. Do you know what happens when there is no story in joy? It does not turn into euphory. When there is no story in losses, it does not turn into fear. When there is no story in anger, this same Presence expresses itself with an energy of great Intelligence, without violence, without conflict.

Some saw Ramana in anger. There is in the gospel, Jesus expressing what we would call "anger." You become, first, aware of what is presenting now, here, at this moment, and simultaneously pay attention to what emerges as story, inside your head, about what is happening. This present moment reveals the totality of Consciousness. When you do this, you are working out the end of self-identity.

When You are Present, you are Conscious, but when you are lost in the world of the mind, you are asleep. Each moment is very rich of opportunities for you to Awake, because it always challenges you to be alert, aware, disidentified.

* Transcribed from a talk at an online meeting in the evening of July 13, 2018 - Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10PM (except in retreat periods) - For information on the Paltalk app and instructions on how to participate access the link: http://mestregualberto.com/agenda/encontros-online