Finding peace, happiness and freedom

Expecting a positive experience is a completely false perspective, because there has never been a negative experience. You expect the world to change so as to find your happiness, your peace, but this is completely meaningless. For example, you act or try to act intelligently, as if you knew what to do to avoid suffering. You do not understand that the more you study or learn about what you should do, the more limited your life becomes.

All your interests are mind’s interests, and all your moments - happy and unhappy - are just like dream experiences. The more you move in that way, the closer you get to that human way of existing, and you know what "person" is like – person never stops "being a person." Therefore, I have emphasized the importance of disconnecting from your reactions, because they are always premeditated by belief. This has nothing to do with a Divine Life but rather with this suffering, conflicting model, which is “being a person.”

Jesus used to say, "Do not worry about what you are going to experience tomorrow, what you will eat, or what you will wear, or where you are going to." Why did He say that? You think that my insistence is very strong on the need to leave this story, this image, this character of husband, son, wife, mother, and you think that this is too difficult, that listening to this is too hard. However, as long as you are interested in these things, you will only remain stuck with them. This is like someone literally dreaming and too interested in what is going on in the dream. When you dream and it is not good, you are dying to get out of that situation. However, when the dream is good or pleasant, you want to continue with it.

The difficulty we face here is that for the ego what is pleasant is unpleasant, so you do not move to go beyond this "dream." Deep down, you love being a mother, father, husband, son, boyfriend. You love being “a person,” but you do not realize that to love this is always to carry fear. You think: "I can exist, live, be alive, go to work, feed my child, take my kid to school, make decisions, be loved, accepted ..." However, each of these positions has the other way round. You will do all these things, but once you cannot be able to do any of them, there will be a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. You have this strong feeling that life is about keeping fighting for. Once you cannot be able to fight anymore, you will feel depressed, alone, in loneliness, in suffering.

In fact, the problem is not about doing, but it is in the idea that "you" are present in it. You think: “I was born for a great purpose, I have a great mission, I will do great things. So, I have to struggle a lot until I achieve the complete victory.” This is the worldliness attitude, the model of being miserable.

This way, you cannot find beauty, you find struggle, only. What do people think? What do they talk about? What is life for them? Now, it is the case of the appointment of a new Minister of Health, the President's attitudes, the coronavirus, the lockdown ... For people, this is life, added to the particularity of half a dozen children, grandchildren and those who are around them. Everyone is dealing with these “stories” that are so important to them.

So, you are faced with Buddha, with Jesus Christ, and they say: "Do not occupy your mind with tomorrow, with what you will eat, what you will wear, whether you will be alive or not next weekend." Are they from another planet? Are they, in fact, from another world? Or do they just seem to be in this world, but they are not in the “dream” that you believe you are in? They do not think: "I exist! I am! I will do it! I will accomplish things tomorrow! I want to make history!" They understand that they are not here to be an accomplisher.

However, look at people around you. They are afraid, because they have decisions they have not made and desires they have not fulfilled yet. It is like this: first, the desire was about having two children and afterwards is about raising them, because they are not adults yet; then, the desire will be to see their children and, after that, to live long enough to be able to see their children's children. However, the coronavirus has come and they hear the sound of ambulances passing by... Every time they hear it, something inside is affected and they see their own death being sung by an ambulance siren. I do not know if you get what I am saying ... There are people around you getting depressed when they hear the sound of an ambulance passing by.

So, being a “person” is not gratifying. It seems to me that it is not a good thing going through these same old paths, treading the same steps, taking the same steps in the same direction. Do not hold on to these thoughts like "what should I eat?" or "what should I do?" Do not identify with them! Most people are having thoughts like this: "what will I do?" "What will I accomplish?" "where will I be?” "What will future look like for me and my loved ones?"

If Jesus were in front of you, He would say: “Leave the world alone and let things be where they are! Let each thing follow its own destiny! Let everything be as it is! Look at all as a game, of which the result is not in your hands. Give up attachment! Also, abandon the abandonment of attachment!” He would also say to you: "Go beyond this world, go beyond this idea of doing something, or of winning and losing something!"

So, leave this world alone, leave things where they are. Do not get involved! I am saying for you to not get involved internally, psychologically. This way, you are free and can know God, can live the Truth, be Happy. Do you know what happens then? Your “dream” model ends.

A person in a state of complete psychological distress throws himself/herself from the seventh floor of the building. His/her psychological disorder is so painfully acute that the person believes he/she can get rid of the world like that, thinking it will all end this way. Then, an Indian Sage comes and says: "the person is going to look for a new womb, because he/she owed a lot and still has many pending things, many wishes that he/she wanted to fulfill and was unable to."

The Sage says that this person needs to come back over and over again to resolve unfinished businesses. You found this story dramatic, didn't you? Do you think your own little story is not that dramatic? As long as you have debts, you will have to pay them; if you are in debt, you will have to pay it; if you are running away, you will be captured; if you don't want something, you will have it. So, your story is as dramatic as that.

If you have any form of fear, if you want to escape from something, then you will have it. That is, in some way, you are in debt. The Sages call this "reincarnating" or "being born again," and I call it the "continuation of the dream." The “dream” will go on! If nothing is resolved, everything will proceed as it is! So, get your mind off that! In other words, do not allow the present thoughts to be turned outwards, because when this is so, these conditions start to take place.

If your thoughts return to the Source and disappear into the Heart, you will find Absolute Peace, Happiness, and Freedom! So, get your thoughts out of the world! Bring all these thoughts back to its Source, which is Silence, and then there will be no more debt, “dream,” and stories. Then, the world ends.

*Excerpt from an intensive online Satsang that took place on May 16, 2020. First published in Portuguese on August 4th, 2020. For further information about our meetings, :click here.

When my Master appeared

Participant: “What magic is this, beloved Master, which makes us want to laugh at all of our problems here in your Presence?”

Marcos Gualberto: Your “problems” are not problems. They are your imagination, your resistance, your disagreement with life, a breach of contract.

When you sign a contract for services, it must be in writing, with signature and witnesses. This happens only in this world of people, because people are naturally disloyal and temperamental, and they breach contracts.

I doubt if there is any profession in which people work more than in the legal one. Judges are always full of quarrels, always mediating situations, because people breach contracts. This disloyalty is the nature of the mind. So, contracts end up becoming problems. In Existence, a breach of contract represents conflict. Right now, if you are experiencing any form of clash, it is because you are breaking a contract. If you break the contract with Existence, with Life, you experience conflict. All your suffering is based on this principle. It is a quarrel, a demand. It is a clash with Life, with Existence.

My job here is to show you that all your problems are imaginary. When the thoughts come to you, ask for whom they are coming. Find out the source of your thinking. That is how you do! “Who am I? What is the source of this ‘me’? What is the source of these thoughts? Where did I come from?” This way, you will perceive that you are in illusion and, in it, your life is full of problems, because it is full of imagination, of many thoughts, ideas, and beliefs.

Find out to whom this “me” appears, then you will find out a wonderful thing: this “me” has never existed! All your problems are in imagination. You are against Existence on permanent struggle, and this is the cause of your suffering, of your conflict, together with your thoughts and desires: “I want this, I do not want that;” “I am sure about this, I am not sure about that.”

In your Being, you are a Sage, but in the mind, you are stupid, a stupid “person.” You do not want to be happy! You want excitement! You know that eating a lot, eating wrong will harm you. You will get fat, will have diabetes. You did not inherit this disease, but you will acquire it throughout your life because your habits are harmful. So, what do you want? Excitement! You do not want to be happy! If you wanted to be happy, you would not cede to the temptation of eating harmful goodies. Therefore, in the mind, you are stupid. You know it is going to harm you and yet you still practice, you still eat, you still do. So, what do you want? Is it to be happy? No! You want excitement!

That goes for both food and relationships, of all kinds. You know they are hurting you, but you want excitement, you do not want Happiness. You know that smoking is going to kill you, but even so, the excitement of smoking is more important than not dying until the time of death comes. You know that eating wrong will kill you in the short, medium, or long term, but you want the excitement of eating wrong, and you prefer that despite the danger of illness and death. There comes a time when you get sick, go to a hospital bed, see that you can die because of that, then you will pray to God.

You come to me and say: “Here everything is different.” Of course it is, because I do not live in illusion. What attracts you to me is your perception that I do not live in that model. You are in a dream, but it has already become a nightmare, and I want to help you awake. Only when you awake, the dream ends and when it ends, Happiness is present there. Look at me, hear my voice, listen to my silence… Do you know what this is? They are signs! It is the perfume of Happiness! Why? Because I live without imagination, without breaching contracts! I am in complete agreement with Life, with Existence, and when you are at that point, nothing is missing!

It is exactly the opposite of life in the world of the mind, of this ego-identity, where you desire a lot and have nothing. Out of the ego, you desire nothing and have everything! You want the world and it is denied to you. You struggle all the time to get things from the world, but you are afraid of losing them. So, you are always desiring and being afraid, but when you awake, it changes. Look at me! I wished God, the Truth. I longed for this Love, this Peace, this Joy, this Happiness I live today. I have let the world around me happen without getting involved with it. I stopped imaging it. I stopped breaching the contract with Existence. That is the way this encounter with God and you, with your Being, with your Heart happens. It is when you no longer desire anything else from the world, no longer fear anything from the world, but you have everything you need. In fact, you have much more than you need, but none of that produces fear or conflict.

Do you see the photo here behind me [Master points to the picture of Ramana Maharshi]? I yearned to meet Christ, and He came in the shape of my Master to talk to me about God. When I was a child, I was told that Christ was in heaven, at the right side of God, seated on a very big throne, and if I talked to Him, I would achieve a life of happiness, without conflict, without suffering, without problems. So, I kept talking to Him, I grew up talking to Him, and when I was 24, He listened and appeared to me in the shape of my Master.

I remember that, at that time, there was an internal conflict between Jesus image I had, as I was taught at church, and my Master who talked to my heart, whose eyes touched me profoundly. However, it was a matter of internal clarity going on because since I was praying to God, it could not be the devil appearing to me. Since my childhood yearning – and I grew up in that yearning – was for stopping living in sin, doing wrong things, feeling pain and producing pain around me, it was not possible that these prayers were now being answered by the devil.

Another thing: when my Master appeared, his eyes had a sparkle and his Silence had a voice. It was a Silence but with a voice ... It was like a song, bringing something to me that nothing in this world could bring. So, it could not be from the devil. It could not come from evil. It could not come from the evil. It could only be a divine answer for me.

When He found me, I got lighter, not heavier. I got so carefree that, at first, I did not need to keep reading the Bible so much, because the “Thing” was already coming to me, inside me. When I looked at Him, the certainty was there! And do you know what certainty was that? “He loves me! He understands me! He accepts me! When I am with Him, everything is different.” As one of you now wrote here: “What magic is this on your Presence that makes us want to laugh at our problems?”

This, here, inclines your heart to Silence, to the absence of desire and fear. Here, you have no contract to breach.

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on May 16th, 2020 - First published in Portuguese on July 22nd, 2020. For further information about the meetings and how to participate, click here.

6th - Discovering Real Freedom

With respect to our Real Freedom, we have always conducted our lives in this way: lost, wandering aimlessly.

The fact is that where there is no Peace and Freedom, there is no permanent Happiness. Our brief moments of joy are circumstantial, so we are also thrown to the other side of the pendulum, to sadness. We are lost in this duality of pleasure and pain, joy and sadness. There is no Silence in our mind and heart. We are like dice in the game of circumstances, thrown from side to side, at the mercy of any probability.

The truth is that there is no acceptance of life as it is, with its challenges. So, the inadequate response we give at these moments places us in terrible suffering. And why are these responses inadequate? Because they are based on this entity called "I," what some people call "ego." This entity does not exist. It is a fiction that has its life based only on thought. It is what the Bible calls "old man" or "old creature."

We are addressing that an entirely different life is possible, above circumstances, beyond duality, that is, beyond that joy in "good" times and sadness in "bad" times.

When that "I" disappears in this Realization of God, there is no more duality and suffering ends. But for This to be discovered and realized, it is required a heart dedicated to the investigation of the Truth; and not in book’s letters or words however beautiful and wise they may seem to us, but in ourselves, in the clear perception of what we are not and, thus, in the clear Vision of who we really are.

We can be free as to no longer suffer for any situation, event or person again. This may seem so good to be true, but I want to tell you it is really very good and that is the pure Truth! Some already live that way and, although they are a small minority, they are making a big difference in this world of ignorance and suffering. Do you want to learn to live like this? This is only possible in the mirror as it reveals our face.

Life is that mirror, with all its challenges, situations, events and people with whom we relate. So, find out how to be aware! Do not ignore, do not turn away or despise this mirror, for life is a gift of God.

*This text, written by Master Marcos Gualberto, shares the Sage's view about life, was published for the first time in Portuguese on October 7th, 2010. It was the sixth original publication on the blog in Portuguese and is part of the collection related to the first years of this work, whose texts, after being kept offline, are now being translated to English and will be published in a series as a tribute to the Master. For further information, visit our website, click here.

Something out of time, of the known, which is beyond the boundary of the mind.

If you face an image before a mirror, you never doubt that it is just a reflection. You do not believe that someone is inside that mirror looking at you. It is very clear it is just a reflection, an image, and that this is not you. However, the mind there, inside, sees everything differently.

So, what are we investigating here? We are only becoming aware that an image is just a reflection. It does not represent Reality. This is not a course in which you deepen your knowledge. This work is not for growth, in this sense. This is because Being does not deepen, Consciousness does not deepen. When we talk about Consciousness and Being, we are talking about Something out of time, of the known, which is beyond the boundary of the mind.

You cannot imagine a rose or an orchid going deeper in its expression, that is, becoming more than it already is in its manifestation as a flower. There it is the flower: plain, beautiful, natural… It cannot be more beautiful, complex, or unnatural than it already is. Your Divine Nature, your Essential Nature, bears the mark of Eternity, of Timelessness, of the Unknown. You, in your Being, are already that Consciousness and are beyond time.

You listen to these words, you may even ask if they are true, but it is not about being true or false. Nothing is true or false. Thus, I ask the question and give you the answer: no word is true. It is not about true or false here, because when we deal with words, we deal with an indication; it is an arrow in the middle of the road.

It is just like when you are driving your car and when you get to a crossroads, you are happy to find an arrow indicating to the right or left. So, the words here work like that arrow at the crossroads. They are neither true nor false. They are just indications. You will have to find out if they say something to you or not. This step towards this dimension of Truth, of Wisdom, is a step towards uncertainty. This carries great beauty because you need confidence, surrender, you need what is called “faith” until you know It by yourself. In fact, this Knowledge is about entering the Unknown, which is Not- Knowing.

Is it all right? Shall we continue or stop as an introduction? In fact, all of our talks are like this. They never say anything. There is always an open chapter. This here is a soap opera that never ends. You are faced with this arrow at the crossroads that says: “Everything is an illusion.” Then, to understand the illusion, a bit more of illusion is needed.

Participant: Here the arrow says “go back.” It is neither to the right nor to the left.

Marcos Gualberto: This work is surprising! How fascinating Truth is! The closer you come, the more you realize that there is no distance, so you never know if This is near or still far.

Participant: The sensation is that it is far.

Master Gualberto: The mind says that it is far. So, I come and show you this arrow, this indication, and it says: “Everything is an illusion!” To understand this illusion, a bit more of illusion is needed. You may ask: “After all, what are you saying? What is that you have just said?” You think you can get here and have the Truth. You cannot! You can get here and have a bit more illusion, which will be placed on the table to be served. A bit more of illusion is needed for you to leave illusion. You may not really believe in it, but you should believe that I am telling the Truth. However, if something is said, it is not the Truth. If something can be expressed, it is something within time, within the known.

So, the purpose here is not to find the Truth in these words. The purpose of this meeting is the verification of the Nature of the Truth, which is the Unknown. Thus, It is not in time. It is not in words. I am sorry… That is why my emphasis is on Meditation and not on study. I could ask you to study Vedanta, the Upanishads (holy books from India), the Bible, the Greek philosophers, the Course in Miracles, or some other book, another scripture, but the Truth is not there. It is not in the word. It is not in what is said.

So, when I say here is a meeting that to see the illusion you need a bit more of illusion, I am saying that these words or this meeting with the teacher, which we call Guru or Master, is something that also occurs within this illusion. This is like an encounter in a dream, in which a person communicates many things to you. Then, you wake up and find out everything the person said was related to the dream. It was applied only for the dream. That is, the person was in the dream saying things about the dream. We are doing something like this here.

Participant: What you are saying communicates something and gives a stop in everything.

Marcos Gualberto: Your observation is interesting. It is not what is said but from where this talk, this communication comes. Here are the beauty and the importance of this space called Satsang, which is the encounter with Consciousness in the form of the teacher, the Master. This is Something out of the mind being addressed through the mind’s language. The talk is within the mind and Reality is beyond it. So, to find the Master is to accept the teaching within the "dream." This is still within illusion, but there is an encounter. That is why I said that in order to understand That which is outside illusion, a bit more of illusion is needed, so that you can apply it to yourself, investigate this matter of “knowledge” and, after that phase, go beyond this illusion.

So, words never translate anything essentially true, but they are a way for you, as an aspirant to Self-Realization, to investigate within yourself what is said and go beyond that. Are they useful? Yes, they are. Even if they are within illusion? Yes. However, they are still within illusion, I know, that is why, ultimately, they are not true. Yet, if you welcome this, if there is this trust and acceptance of this “teaching” of the Guru, of the Master, because of faith and trust, a real Work can happen. Do you understand this?

So, although we are not dealing with the Truth through words, this Self-Realization takes place, and from that moment, the teachings of the Guru, of the Master, are no longer needed. That is because now you know that none of these teachings were true, but you needed the “canoe” to cross the “lake.” After crossing the lake, you do not take the canoe on your back and leave the lake with it, because you have already crossed the lake. Do you understand this? This “lake of illusion” requires “the canoe of illusion.” Once you are on the other bank, you realize there is no lake. Therefore, there is no bank on this or that side and there is no canoe.

This is the beauty of the Presence of the Guru, of the Master. Only the Master can show you the Truth that the Master is not real, that any conclusion about this is false, for it is still based on the mind. Some live in this debate: “Is the Presence of the Guru needed or not? Is it Real or not?” I agree with them when they say it is not needed, but in my view, it is not needed only when there is no more illusion. As long as illusion is present, all special form of illusion is needed. There are “illusions” and illusions: special or specialized illusions (let us say this way) and non-specialized illusions.

Non-specialized illusions are the illusions of the worldly life. The specialized illusion is that of the inclination of the devotee’s heart towards the encounter with the Divine. It is still an illusion, but an illusion that only the Divine Grace can reveal it as such. Before that, any conclusion is mere intellectual speculation and, therefore, egoic. Then, in this sense, I agree with the ones who say that the Guru is needed, as Ramana used to say. “The Guru will always be needed,” Ramana said.

Here you need to stand before the revelation of the Sage, of Consciousness, of Presence, of What is out of the psychological time, out of the psychological mind, of this ego-identity. The Guru is this Consciousness expressing Itself in a visible, audible way, within this “dream” of the world, in which you believe to live as a person. It all ends when illusion ends. When you get to the other bank, you find out that there is no lake, no bank, no canoe, no teaching, no Guru! Everything was just a dream and it has ended!

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on May 11th, 2020 - First published in Portuguese on July 6th, 202018. For further information about our meetings, click here.

5th - God as the “I Am”

For many years of my life, I followed the common pattern of seeking God. I was raised in an environment, like most people, being trained to talk about God as if I knew Him. However, you do not know God through words, concepts, and beliefs that are nothing more than verbal statements.

We are ready to defend any mental image as reality, putting it in the place of the thing itself: the idea of the husband instead of the husband himself; of the wife instead of the wife herself; of the children instead of the children… We do the same with the idea or the image of God, taking it as God Himself. Then, they teach us to believe, to accept mental images instead of the thing itself.

This way, we are limited to believe, to believe again, and then to believe once more, and so forth: doctrines, beliefs, philosophies, concepts… Our heads are full of images about everything, and we know nothing truly firsthand. For this reason, we are living a superficial, narrow, confusing, and profoundly contradictory life.

Although we have all the theories and words about how to live a life in peace, in love, in freedom, and in happiness, in fact, we do not experience this. The years go by and, with them, our physical, mental, and emotional capability, but we keep affirming things that we do not really live, we do not know. We say one thing, we think another and we do another. Pure contradiction! That is, we are theorists, verbal creatures full of theoretical answers for everything, and even so, we are confused.

The question is, can we get entirely rid of all this conditioned pattern of living? Can we get rid of all the theories, beliefs, and concepts to enter in a Direct Vision of God? This way of speaking leads us to a dangerous area, the area of belief, in which we can step in again and accept the “me” able to see a God separated from him/her, and so afterward we may carry this image and talk about Him to everybody.

However, all those who have had this Real Encounter speak like Moses before the Pharaoh, “I Am has sent me to you.” A Direct Experience with God destroys all theories, beliefs, and naturally all images. They are all part of memory and therefore of thought, of what can be described by the thought, and so they are limited. All descriptions are limited because all thoughts are like this.

Moses has said that the one who sees God dies. Therefore, when the “I” disappears, God appears as “I Am,” as Silence, Love, Bliss, Self-Realization, and Peace.

*This text, written by Master Marcos Gualberto, shares the Sage's view about life, was published for the first time in Portuguese on October 5th, 2010. It was the fifth original publication on the blog in Portuguese and is part of the collection related to the first years of this work, whose texts, after being kept offline, are now being translated to English and will be published in a series as a tribute to the Master. For further information, visit our website, clique aqui.

Realization is your True Nature!

As long as you are waiting for something beyond what is present, you are in illusion. This is the only thing discovered in this kind of meeting. Accepting that is a huge blessing. You are expecting something in life, because you want to find more than you already have. You want to be happier than you already are, have more peace than you already have. This “more” is just a concept, an imagination about what you should find, about what you believe you have not found. You have an imagination of happiness and peace as something that is yet to happen.

However, what the Sage acknowledges is that there is nothing to be found, conquered or realized in the future. Therefore, as long as you keep looking, expecting, waiting for something, you will never know Happiness, Peace, Truth. This is the only thing the Sage knows – that there is nothing beyond what Life is, as It is here and now. Life is found as a revelation present at this moment. There is no future for This. Life does not offer you suffering, conflict, or confusion. All of this happens due this disorder, this imagination, this fantasy of the mind. It is a fantasy to believe that the Universe is against you, just like believing the Universe can cooperate with you at some point. Life is not for or against you. This is a fiction, a thing from imagination. What is hidden behind phrases such as “the Universe cooperates in your favor” is only fear, imagination.

So, the whole idea of positivism is a very childish thing. Seeking self-help is quite typical of the mind, on its ingenuity, fantasy, and imagination. The nature of the mind is always duality, and, if something is on your side, it can also be against you. It is a coin with two sides, and that is called “egoic mind.” There will never be good without evil, justice without injustice, pleasure without pain. You should not expect anything from Life! All this movement of hope is a movement of the mind and then based on fear. You should not expect anything from the world, from Life, and not even for something that would be permanent, such as love, peace, and happiness. Success and failure are ideas of mind, as it is the common process of it, in its imagination. Real Happiness is not something that comes from the mind but from your own Being, as your own True Nature.

You believe in all of this because of cultural conditioning. Everything you have received from culture comes from the mind. Culture is mind, and mind is duality, the dual experience of imagination. It is in the mind that exists this structure of good and evil, of true and false, of pleasure and pain, of the so-called “happiness” and unhappiness. There is no Truth in the mind! There is no Wisdom in the mind! Mind carries a lot of knowledge, but all knowledge of it is pure conditioning, within this limitation of experience, this duality – positive and negative, right and wrong, good and evil. That’s why I have always been giving this recommendation to those who come to Satsang: go beyond culture, the world, the mind, knowledge, imagination, beliefs, ideas, principles, known values, because, in this way, the True Happiness, that is Peace, Intelligence, Freedom, is possible.

This Real Happiness, which is Peace, Freedom and Intelligence, is not a cultural thing. You cannot receive This from culture, because it is out of it. You have to be outside of the mind, of what is cultural, to know Happiness, Freedom, Love, Intelligence, and to become Aware of the Truth of God, of the Divine Truth. Why? Because This is beyond the mind and so beyond the common experience of duality, beyond this vision of opposites. I have been talking to you about the Nature of the Truth, and I have done it in an indirect way, because we cannot approach This directly, since it is out of imagination. So, the way I use to talk to you about the Nature of Truth is by discarding the illusion, the confusion, the limitation of the mind.

For that reason, I have been talking about Meditation, Self-Investigation, and Real Surrender. Meditation is the access to this Truth outside time, the known, imagination, mind. Satsang is a unique space, because here we manage to investigate the Truth by discarding illusion (that which is the movement of the known), perceiving Life as It is (That which is beyond this movement). This non-dual Truth, Consciousness, Wisdom is Happiness, and This is Meditation. I want to invite you to go beyond mind, and this “to go” is not a movement to get somewhere. It is an encounter, here and now, with what You are, because You are beyond the mind.

Satsang is this great moment in which you have this great and extraordinary opportunity to discover the mind and its movement, which is pure limitation, conflict and fear. Our meetings have this approximation through a deep discernment. Only in this way, you can stop living on the mistake, within this self-deception created by the mind. This requires a real work in yourself, a deep self-investigation about the nature of the very own mind, about its movements therein, in this mechanism, organism. For this, it is fundamental a clarity of purpose, a passion for the Truth, a focused intention, a unidirectional focus, a deep interest.

Realization is your True Nature! When This establishes as your Natural State of Being, because It is You, there is no more suffering, conflict, illusion. So, I recommend that you be very focused, honest and sincere in this direction. The second recommendation is that you be very sincere, focused and determined in this direction; the third is that you be very focused, determined and sincere within this purpose. I still have the fourth and last recommendation: keep yourself in this direction, sincere and very focused within this objective, within this purpose.

It is necessary to abandon this illusion of choice, this illusion of self-identity, of personality. The contact with my Master showed me that. I was 24 years old when He found me, and then it started to become clear, here, the importance of this sincerity, this focus, this determined direction. Start to observe your reactions, what goes on inside, all thoughts, sensations, emotions, perceptions, for this is something intimate. No one can do it for you. There is no one better than you to do this, because it is all about you! Only you really know what goes on therein, and this is good news. Nobody can prevent you from discovering your madness, imaginations, fantasies, beliefs, dilemmas, conflicts, fears, and desires. This is your life. It is not somebody else’s life, and you must discover the Truth about Yourself and not the “truth” about the other. This means going beyond illusion, the sense of “me,” of duality. Does it make any sense or not?

What I am saying is that You are the one who takes on this Freedom there, there is not anyone else in your place. This Realization is the result of a real work that happens in you, with you, through you, in this surrender, in this surrender to this Power, which is the Power of Grace, the Divine Power, the Power of Consciousness. Do not entrust the mind to do this, because your ego has no honesty, sincerity, focus, nor real interest in This. This internal movement of cultural psychological conditioning, of beliefs, ideologies and concepts are not interested in being demolished, destroyed, in disappearing. This will always continue to insist on keeping the same way.

Participant: What is the ego for?

Mestre Gualberto: To create confusion. It only serves to imagine itself as a real entity within time and space, solving, doing, getting things done. Now, what is basically the ego? It is only this set of beliefs, conditioning, programming, ideas, that mind makes about itself within this mechanism, in this organism there. In other words, there is no real entity called “ego.” The ego just believes that it exists. It is the imagination of an entity. If you visit a madhouse, you will see people there believing they are famous characters of history. You will meet “Adolph Hitler,” “Mussolini,” “Pedro Álvares Cabral,”, “Napoleon,” “Princess Isabel,” etc. So, this imagination is a cheat, and this cheater is not real.

Surrender yourself to the Divine Truth, to the Reality of God, and this will reveal the Truth about Yourself. The heart of God will be revealed! There is something about you, therein, that can show what You really are. Surrender to That! Surrender to your Being, to your True Nature, to Your Real Guru!

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on January 20th, 2020 – First published in Portuguese on June, 11st, 2020. For more information about our meetings, click here.

3rd - Our mind, an illusion!

I have heard about a little child visiting the grandparents. The little child was only four years old. Night had come and the grandmother took the child to the guest bedroom. It was time to go to bed. She laid the child on the bed to sleep, kissed the child on the cheek, turned off the light and was about to leave the room when suddenly the child started crying and screaming:

- I want to go home, grandma! I am scared. I am scared of the dark!

The grandmother was really curious and, looking at her little grandson, shesaid:

- But my grandson... I know very well that you   sleep in the dark in your house. After all, what is the problem? Why are you scared here?

The boy looked at her and said:

- Yes, it is true, but that is a darkness that I know, while this is totally strange to me.

It is exactly like this that we behave in life: “This is my darkness. It can be too frightening, it can create many torments, but even so, it is mine! I have something to hold on to!”

We have not been looking enough at ourselves to find out this dark room of illusion we have hold as something known, this false security we have found in the known and repetitive pattern of the life we live, full of conflicts, contradictions, and various forms of suffering. We get attached to it, after all, that is the model.

It is true that we are used to seeking some kind of pain relief through further emotional, intellectual and physical achievements, but we find nothing that can truly and permanently free us from this illusion - the illusion of the small and darkroom known by our minds. That is nothing more than a bundle of memories that tortures, frightens and scares us.

That is our psychological conditioning, our limited ability to deal with life and its challenges. However, there is no need for us to live like this, trapped into permanent suffering, within this dark cell of our minds, in this dark room of our illusions. Through self-inquiry, we all can find out who we really are and the Love, the Peace, the Freedom we already have.

However, we must awake from this ordinary sleep that leads us to a search for freedom and happiness that never ends, which are never found, because mind is not the place for our rest but, yes, our Heart. It is there our True Mind, which is Christ’s Mind, God’s Mind.

*This text, written by Master Marcos Gualberto, shares the Sage's view about life, was published for the first time in Portuguese on October 3, 2010. It was the third original publication on the blog in Portuguese and is part of the collection related to the first years of this work, whose texts, after being kept offline, are now being translated to English and will be published in a series as a tribute to the Master. For further information, visit our website, click here.

You are this Absolute Conciousness

We have this beautiful opportunity to be together in this meeting, in this Presence, in this Vision, in this Necessary Foundation, where all things take place, both the absence and the presence of Conscience, both the waking up and the sleeping and dreaming. The Foundation of every experience is your True Nature, which is the Divine Nature of all manifestation.

We are here before this unique, real and necessary Foundation, which some call Consciousness, where Freedom resides. In the mind, there is the prison of a false identity, of an illusory character - a prisoner of a prison, which is also imaginary. However, there is the Foundation of everything, and in It resides that Freedom. Your Real Nature is Consciousness! That is the Foundation!

You are not this appearance, for example, a 5.4-feet-tall one, a 5.7-feet-tall one, 5.96 feet, 4.92 feet, etc. You are the One to whom appearances appear, and it is fascinating to look at this closely! Once seeing this, you can let go of all those labels that you make of yourself as a "good or a bad person," a "traumatized person," an "unhappy or an intelligent person," among others. So, seeing that, you can let go of all these labels, which are ideas, images, beliefs, concepts. The mind is full of concepts! You are That where it all appears! This term "Consciousness" is a beautiful indicator of your Natural State. However, as we have addressing in our meetings, you should not confuse Consciousness with being conscious.

Sometimes you can be conscious, sometimes you cannot, so you should not mistake this state for Consciousness. Sometimes you mistake being conscious for being identified with images that thought produces, and that is being in a subtle form of "dream," in a daydream, which means being very far from Consciousness. When you are daydreaming, you are in this fluctuation of the imagination, in a subtle "dream state," in which the body is awake, but the mind is producing this "dream." These are all states of the mind, which we call "states of consciousness," but the real Consciousness knows no state.

This Consciousness is sometimes called as "I." So, when we use the expression "I Am," we may be referring to that Presence. However, when you make that statement, you may be confusing it with a state of mind. It is also like this when you say: "I am sleeping," "I am dreaming," "I am imagining," "I am feeling this." So, this reality of Consciousness, which is the real "I Am," and the ego, which is the sense of "person," are not the same.

Ego is this notion of being a person, an entity based on the personal identification with the body and the mind, or with a personality and its several labels (“good or bad person,” “unhappy or happy person"). However, this "I Am" - your Real, Natural Condition - precedes this imagination of being "someone.”

Deep inside, you know that you can witness what goes on in your head without necessarily identifying with it. Therefore, this identification is not a necessary condition. It is just a habit, an  addiction resulting  from the repetitive practice of identifying with mental stories, with thoughts. You can disidentify from an image, but the ego is very subtle and clings on to another image, that is, it only swaps one image for another. There is no need to live under this condition of identification with the mind's creations - this is unnecessary. You can find out how to push aside this identification with a false identity. The objective of these meetings is to work on this.

Your Natural Condition is of Love, Peace, Freedom and Supreme Intelligence. This means not mistaking yourself for mental states, for images that thought produces, for an identity that thought creates based on those images. However, for that, you need to be aware of these mental states, these movements of the mind, the movement of these images. For thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty years, you have been trapped within this movement, and now is the time to start not to trust anymore in what thought produces, to doubt what you feel, think and speak, because all of this is produced by a reaction of the thought. The movement of the mind, of thinking is basically unconsciousness. You need to take a step back. Once captured by this movement, it is not that it is difficult to observe the thought, it is impossible! All the mind knows is its own movement, which is unconsciousness. That is why the base, the foundation of this Liberation is simple. However, to welcome this Liberation, a work of surrender, of Meditation is necessary.

The Reality of this Consciousness, of this Presence is absolute, unconditioned, indefinable, indescribable. However, this world of experiences, these mental states on your daily life are well known by the mind, able to deal with that easily and habitually. Therefore, this absolute, unconditioned and indefinable Reality is unattainable, unachievable for the mind since it is uncommon to daily experiences. Notice that the real difficulty is the impossibility for the mind to reach What is outside.

So, it is you yourself who need to take this “step back.” I want to remind you that you are this Absolute Consciousness. However, despite that, this movement of the mind needs to be verified. Getting tangled up with this movement is what I have called “being identified” - identified with thoughts, sensations, feelings, images, beliefs and everything else, which is part of this well-known environment of the mind. Therefore, you need to find out how to live in your Natural State, without this identification with what the thought produces. This work must happen now, here. How many thoughts, feelings or experiences could you have without that Presence, that Real Consciousness, which You are?

Consciousness is the basis, is the Foundation of these thoughts, feelings and experiences. So, go to that Foundation, turn yourself to It, to that Base. Awake! To awake is to get out of this condition of identification with everything the mind produces. So, to experience any of these things Consciousness is required, because It is the Foundation, the Base.

This is a simple, basic point, but it is often forgotten. You forget that You Are Consciousness and you mistake yourself for what the thought is producing, for the stories it is producing about who you are, about what the other is, about what the world is. Nevertheless, the other, the mind and the world are only apparitions. However, when you identify with the body, you become afraid of being "killed" by Coronavirus, because the mind produces stories about death. In fact, it will only touch you if you are destined to go through it, but the mind does not deal with reality but, yes, with fiction, imagination. So, it produces what it knows how to produce well: imaginations, mainly imaginations of pain, suffering, losses, conflicts, since it is specialized in that, in being miserable. So, this simple point is always neglected, forgotten. The simple point is this: You are Something prior to the body, the mind, the world, the thoughts, feelings, experiences and objects!

When you were fifteen years old, you were surrounded by objects different than those currently in your living room or bedroom, or wherever you are, and you had a completely different body from the one you have presently. So, "your world" when fifteen compared to present are completely different, but you have always remained as Consciousness witnessing everything. This Consciousness witnessed the world when you were fifteen just as it is currently witnessing the world.

Psychologically, it is all the same thing. The fifteen-year-old person has different thoughts and psychological experiences than a thirty-five-year-old adult or a middle-aged person in his or her fifties or sixties. Thus, the configuration of a psychological world entirely based on thoughts is quite different. So, both your external and your internal, psychological world change, but you always remain as a witness, as Consciousness. This is the only factor ever present at every experience.

World, mind, body, everything changes, and ignoring this reality of being Pure Consciousness is your whole problem. When you ignore this real place of the Truth about Yourself, you mistake yourself for a story produced by the thought about this thirty-five, forty or fifty-years-old body.  You are What You Are, and This is not the body, nor the mind, nor is it in the world. This was not born and will not die. It has no son or grandson. It was not yesterday and it will not be tomorrow. It is not today. Your external world now is one, when you were fifteen it was another. The models of thoughts and beliefs were one in the past and today they are different. All that are illusions, fleeting appearances, without any substance - they have no Truth.

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on May 1st, 2020. First published in Portuguese on July 1st, 2020. For further information, :click here.