The illusion of trusting that you are a person always carries the burden of the need of people. I am going to put it better: what does a person need to be happy? The person needs friendship, gratitude, acknowledgment… The person has a million needs!
The body is just appearance and the idea of a center present in the experience of life is just imagination that does not have substance, does not carry any form of reality. It is an apparent center inside an apparent body! Thought creates the idea of a person present, and if “I” am a person, “I” need things that people need. So what do people want? It is what “I” want! In a practical way, here is the difference between being in Happiness and living in misery.
As long as this illusion you are a person is present, this search for something will sustain misery. Perception is present, but the illusion is that there is a center in it! For example, at this moment, the sensation in you is that there is a center of perception listening to this speech. Notice how magical this divine joke is! There is a sensation therein that there is a center experiencing auditory, visual, sensitive perceptions, isn´t it so? This sensation is imaginary, is from the thought itself, for this center does not exist! This sense of person is sustaining this center, which sustains the sense of person, which is looking for something. Notice how this ego-identity magic works! There is absolutely no center of experience there or here! There is not a center! There is not anyone speaking or listening. There is not an experiencer and a private experience going on! I have tried in many ways to show you this, the trick, the whole magic.
When you dream at night, the idea is that you are there with a world around you where the experiences are happening. So, the idea is that world is real and you are the central character in that whole experience. This illusory center sustains the reality of an external world present around itself. However, when you wake up, you perceive there was no center of experience! All apparitions in the dream were not happening for a present center of experience.
Now, at this moment, the idea you have is that you are a center living the experiences that are happening. When you left the dream and woke up in the morning, you perceived that you and that world were just one thing. What was the difference between you inside the dream and what was happening in the dream? After waking up, do you see any difference? Do not you realize that both the one who was living the dream and the dream itself were just one? Is there a difference between someone living the dream and the dream itself? Now that you are awake, can you separate the dreamer - that character with episodes going on around itself - from the dream itself? Can you separate that “person” you believed to be in the dream from the dream itself? For example, in the dream you were walking on a road, listening to music, and now you have woken up. When you remember the dream, do not you see that the dream and you had the same quality? Were not you, the walking and the road made of the same material? Was there an experience center there or just an experience without a center? Was not the material on the road the same material of that body, of the sound heard and of the walking? Was not everything that happened in the dream, including your own presence in it, created, imagined and produced by the mind itself? So, is it possible to separate the wind that was blowing on that road where you were walking, the walking, yourself and the sound of the music? Is it possible to say there was a center that separately perceived the experience? Now, here, awake, do you say there was a center perceiving that or do you notice there was a whole, an image, a film happening?
Devotee: Are you somehow conscious of an observer in the dream?
Marcos Gualberto: Are you conscious of an observer now, here? That is the way it happens in the dream. Now, what is this observer? Is he/she separate from this experience? Can you separate the one who listens from what is listened? Can you separate what is seen from the one who sees? If you cannot, where is this center? If you take the observed object out, where does the observer go to? If you take the music out of the one who listens, where does this one who listens go to? So, it is easier now to perceive there is not a center of experience. There is only the experience if there is an experiencer. There is no center now, here! Do you perceive there is no person now therein? There are only physical, thermal, auditory and visual sensations appearing and disappearing, right? If this was understood there, after this step by step, I may go into what I have said at the beginning: as long as the sense of person is present, there will be a need for things. Do you remember? The "person’s" things. But, what does this "person" need if it does not exist? Notice that the “person” is the imagination of a center that lives experiences. Notice that the “person” is a fiction created by thought, living a life of its own, having private experiences and needing things.
So, what is the secret of Meditation? To see that the feelings or thoughts going on now do not have a private center. Do you understand this? Thought, feeling and sensations present do not have a private center to handle them, to manage them. So if you remain without this center, which is this controller, there is no way for you to be unhappy, to be miserable. And why not? Because you are not there anymore demanding something. Is it clear? This requirement of yours is what makes you miserable, because this is what sustains this “center” always unhappy, always dissatisfied. This is what creates the sense of separation, the ego, what maintains you outside your Natural State, which is Consciousness, which is Being.
Just one sustained thought as the truth therein, is enough for this “center” to remain miserable. Just one thought is enough! The false center is in the thought that says “I,” “me,” with all feelings and emotions associated to itself. I am going to put this in a simpler way: if thought arises, it is already implied that it is for a “center,” for an “I.” If you discredit, if you do not sustain this thought, this false center cannot prevail and continue. It is not that first there was the “I” and then the thought; it is already implied that the thought carries a “me” present, an imaginary center. The thought itself already comes up due to this habit!
Why is it so easy to remain without thoughts for a Self-Realized One? Because this does not find support for a “center” anymore, sustenance for an illusory center. So what distinguishes the Natural State from the state of the ordinary man, in this relation with thought? See, thought happens for the ordinary man and for the Sage, but this One carries lightness, why? Because the imaginary center has already died of hunger! It disappeared for having no food! It was so long without eating that it died! When thought appears to the Sage, it is just an existential phenomenon, but for the ordinary man who lives always feeding this false center, this is the truth.
Thus, the Sage lives in Happiness because the Sage does not have what sustains the search, the constant search of the “person.” So, does the thought happen for Ramana, Buddha, Jesus and Gualberto? Yes. But this imaginary center around and for which experiences happen, no longer exists! This way, thoughts are just a phenomenon, an apparition without personal importance, because there is not a “person;” with no importance for a “center,” because it is no longer present as imagination.
*Face-to-face meeting transcription originally held on February 25th, 2020, in a Retreat on Itamaracá Island/PE -Brazil - First published in Portuguese on April 22nd, 2020. For more information about our meetings, please, click here.
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