GC: Hello everyone! We're here for another videocast, another opportunity that Master Gualberto gives us to be here to answer our questions, to comment on some excerpts from Joel’s books that we read. Gratitude, Master, once again, for your presence. For those who don't know who Master Gualberto is, I'll quickly talk about how I met him.
I've been on a spiritual quest for many years, the last few years focused on Joel Goldsmith’s studies, and, in mid-June of last year, something very strong, internal, pushed me to enter a period of stillness, of silence. I left the channel here; I left the study groups. I didn't know why, but I soon found out: because, by Grace, YouTube suggested a video from Master Gualberto’s channel, whose objective is exactly to divulge what this Real Spiritual Enlightenment is, this Awakening of Consciousness, or the Conscious Union with God, as Joel brings us.
And then Master Gualberto’s video caught my attention. I watched another, watched another, and ended up discovering that there were Satsangs, which are intensive weekend meetings, online and also in person. I signed up to take part in an online Satsang intensive to see what had caught my attention because it was something that wasn't just in words. During this intensive weekend, I was able to “understand” – in fact it was comprehension – what called my attention.
It caught my attention that Master Gualberto’s look is not just the look of a “person,” it’s not a look like Gilson looks at, like the vast majority of humanity looks at, which is a look with the mind, with judgment; it’s not that look. It’s a look of purity, it’s a look that doesn't judge, that doesn't condemn, that doesn't classify. It’s a pure look. Why does the Master have this pure look? Because after twenty-one years of intense self-inquiry, through the Grace of his Master Ramana, the “explosion of that bomb,” also called Spiritual Enlightenment or Awakening of Consciousness, happened.
And it’s been more than fifteen years since this happened, and it’s been more than ten years since Master Gualberto has shared this State, which he calls the Natural State, shared this Grace, through these Satsang meetings. And it’s a grace to be able to be here with you, Master. It’s beyond words, it’s indescribable to be in your presence and gain and receive that State of True Meditation, where there is a Stillness, where the mind paralyzes... It’s beyond words! So, I just have to say thank you.
And starting the videocast today... let me get the excerpt from the book I'm going to read from Joel. It’s from the book “ The Foundation of Mysticism.” The excerpt is as follows, Joel says: “This is the secret: I am Me. I'm not on these feet, I'm not in this body. I'm Me. I can't be wrapped around a piece of meat. I cannot be encompassed by space, because the true meaning of “I” is God. That is why it is written with a capital letter: I am the Spirit of Me, the Truth of Me, my Self, and That is not in the body. This is infinite. This is eternal.”
Master, could you make some remarks about this part of the book? The word is with you, Master.
MG: Okay. There’s something there that I'd like you to approach very carefully. The first thing here is that we have to understand that the use of words – and this is what we've been doing, we use words all the time – is something that… words are symbols of things. So, when we use expressions, we have to be careful not to confuse these expressions with the thing itself. And this is very complicated in the mind. Here, for example, we have the word “I,” Joel uses the expression “I.” After all, what “I” is he referring to?
Some people use the idea of “I” as if we actually have two “I”: a lower “I” and a “Higher I.” You can very well get, from this text by Joel, an idea that, there, he is referring to this “Higher Self.” So, if we have, by principle, by idea, two “selves” in us – an inner “self” and a “Higher Self” –, reading Joel we have the impression that he is referring to this “Higher Self,” to that “Real I” in us, which is not the body or mind, which is something beyond this world. So far so good.
The problem is when we take this expression and turn this expression into more knowledge for us, mere intellectual knowledge. So, the care with the handling of words is because we have a very strong tendency to take an expression and put this expression within an idea, a concept, an image, a belief, and therefore, this starts to make part of our memory. And when that happens, it is not real, we are no longer dealing with the Truth of the thing, but with the image of the thing. So, we have to be careful.
That’s why I prefer to make use, here with you, of a much simpler expression. Let’s start from a principle: every ideation, every belief, every thought, every image, and every concept that you have inside you is still part of the illusion of that false “I,” of that illusory “I”, even if we are talking about God, about the “Higher Self,” about the Divine Consciousness, about Christ… All this becomes an idea for us, and as an idea, it is an illusion! And we can spend a lot of our lives making verbal, intellectual assertions of these images in the belief that we are dealing with the Truth; and the truth is that we are dealing with concepts, with ideas, with beliefs.
So, what I've been saying and what I've been putting for those who approach me is that we need to investigate what we have here and now: this set of beliefs, this set of images, this set of ideas that we have, be it about God, be it about the “I” … So, this notion of “Higher Self” and “lower self” … we discarded that. This notion of God as an image, as an idea, that’s just another concept, it’s just another belief. So, we need to get rid of that too!
So, we have this tendency to stay within that idea, that concept, that image that thought creates, making statements, and far away from Reality. When, however, we discard all that, we can, yes, enter the Silence of That which is beyond these expressions, beyond these words. So, words like the “Higher Self,” “God,” “the Christ,” all of this always carries, for us, a certain meaning, both intellectual and sentimental, and also emotional. And when we cling to that, we are still trapped within the “I,” the ego, that illusory center that separates us from Reality, which is this “me.”
So, what we need, Gilson, is to investigate the illusory nature of the “I” and let the Truth of this Presence, of this Consciousness, of this Divine Truth – or whatever name we want to give to This – reveal Itself by Itself, by Itself, when we discard the illusion.
We cannot deal in a positive way with the image, with the idea, with the theoretical formulation, because we fall into this trap. In fact, our “I,” our ego, our egoic mind, will project this, so we will be trapped in an illusion.
However, to enter the Truth of God, we simply investigate the nature of this false “I” and drop all these statements, all these ideas, all these expressions. We are not psychologically occupied with it. This is a mistake, this is something that disturbs us a lot: keeping ideas, beliefs, verbal affirmations within ourselves... We need, in fact, to empty ourselves of every concept about God, all concepts about Christ, all concepts about Truth, because these concepts are just concepts, they are just images, just imaginations! That’s why it is not in a positive way that we approach This, but by investigating these beliefs and releasing them from us.
This is possible when there is contact with the mind in silence, in stillness, when it is emptied of all that theoretical, verbal, religious content that we end up learning in books, whether in the Bible, in the Bhagavad Gita, or in Joel’s books. We have to discover That which is beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond beliefs, beyond concepts, in Joel’s own words. We have to leave every concept of God, every idea of God. And the idea of this “I” in us, which is not the body, which is not the mind, which is not in the world, or any idea of this “Higher Self” in us, is still an idea.
So, it’s a delicate subject. What we have to approach is discarding this idea, this image, these beliefs. We have to get rid of all beliefs, all concepts, and then it is possible, yes, to contact the Reality of Consciousness, which is the Reality of God. But it’s not someone having this contact. It’s this Reality taking over this space, as I've been saying, this space that is Its. Then, there’s no one inside it.
All right, Gilson? Is this complicated? There can't be anyone there, there can't be anyone there. In the present Reality there is no room for someone called “I,” there is no room. And it’s only possible, Gilson, to go beyond that when, in fact, we let it go.
The problem with religious language – which is the language that we learn in this search, in this quest – is that it is very pleasant, very comforting, that carries a weight of pleasant feeling and also a feeling of comfort and security. But, for whom is this comfort? For whom is this security, if not for the “I” itself, for the illusion of that ego itself?
So, we have to tread slowly on this ground, because we can spend a lifetime trapped in a set of beliefs. And as you just put it, and you can already see: we can replace one belief with another, and then that one with a third, and then that third with a fourth. And beliefs are verbal, they are intellectual, they are mental. It is something that begins to be part of that memory collection. And everything that is part of the memory is still part of the ego, it is still something within that psychological “I” time.
All knowledge, Gilson, is part of the “I.” Reality is not knowledge, Reality is the Truth of what Is. This transcends knowledge – here I am referring to this limited knowledge of words, symbols, and images. These symbols, images, and words are within the known, and that is mental. This begins to be part of that memory, which is the memory of the “I” itself. The Reality of your Being is not in time, so that Reality of your Being is not burdened with memory.
Realize what an interesting thing: all the knowledge we have was learned. If it was learned, it was learned in time. If it was learned in time, it is not part of our Real Nature, because our Real Nature is beyond time, it is the Nature of Being, it is the Nature of God. So, if this was learned in time, it’s part of time, it can't be real!
If you have certain knowledge and you are hit hard on the head and some specific area of the brain, which carries that memory, is hit, that knowledge disappears! It can only disappear because it was never real. It’s part of time, it’s part of the knowledge and part of that brain memory. This cannot be the Truth! So, the word “God,” “love,” or “superior being,” or whatever we have learned in philosophy, psychology, politics, religion, all that is part of time, it is not Reality.
Reality does not appear and disappear. Reality is not what comes and goes. Reality transcends all that thought can formulate, sustain, can create, can imagine, or reproduce. So, the experience of Reality is the Consciousness of God being assumed there. That’s the end of that psychological time, that’s the end of that condition, which is the condition of the mind, with all that weight of memory that I've been calling conditioning.
So, there is not only political, philosophical, psychological conditioning, but we also have religious conditioning, according to the culture where we were born, and none of that can be the Truth. The Indian has a conditioning, the Chinese has another conditioning, the Japanese has another conditioning, and the Brazilian has another conditioning. And these are religious conditionings! However, the Truth of Being, which is the Truth of God, is one and the same! It doesn't matter if you were born in China, Japan, India... And this is outside this matter of culture, outside this matter of theoretical, verbal, theological religiosity. Truth is Consciousness. If we use the expression “Christ,” “God,” we have to tread carefully there.
GC: Master, but the ego clings to these ideas, to these beliefs, and keeps repeating: “There is only God,” for example, as I repeated. And it only goes from one belief to another, as the Master commented here, and I didn’t leave the mind, I didn’t leave the conflict, I didn’t leave that egoic identity. And that’s a big problem, because there’s no reality in it, is there?
MG: It could be even worse, Gilson. The ego uses this to separate, to conflict. If I am against the one who practices Hinduism, because I am a Christian, the one who practices Hinduism can be against the Christian, the Christian can be against the Buddhist... So, these religious concepts, of verbal theology, only separate us, they only place us on a terrain of separateness, conflict, and fight. Religions have been fighting each other for millennia, and all because of verbal theological ideology, because of beliefs! This is the result of illusion, ignorance, psychological conditioning, within religious dogmatic principles. We have to go beyond that, we have to realize the Truth of That which we are, which is outside of all this confusion. Got it? You can go on, let’s go!
GC: But the point, Master, is that what is sold in the world, since creation, is always this growth: growing with learning. And go to school, and go to college, and always learn more and more. In other words, putting more and more concepts into our mind. And that, including, in the spiritual bias. We fill ourselves with concepts and are always wanting to learn more, learn more, learn more, instead of emptying ourselves of everything we think we know. So, it’s a really big challenge.
MG: Gilson, there is a real way of learning, and that real way of learning we don't receive in childhood. We can work on this in other videos. There is a real way to learn, but it is not learning doctrines, learning beliefs, it is not learning what separates and divides us as human beings from one another. We need to learn the Truth of illusion, exactly, of that “I” that is separate from the other by ideologies, beliefs, concepts, and prejudices. We need a new way of learning. And here, learning necessarily starts by unlearning all kinds of things that we acquire within that culture.
The world has taught us to be as we are. And how are we today? Greedy, quarrelsome, envious, possessive, jealous, avid for power, in short… in conflict with each other, basically with ourselves and the world around us. So, we have to unlearn that, we have to discover the Truth about who we are, and that’s a real way to learn.
And it is a learning that is not learned in books, that is not learned with concepts, with new beliefs.
This we learn through self-observation, looking at ourselves, discovering in ourselves all that psychological conditioning that is already a cultural inheritance, which is already an inheritance from our ancestors. And we need to discard this so that there is a new mind, a new heart, really a deeply religious life, without those aspects of theory, concepts, beliefs, dogmatism that separates us, that divides us, that still enslaves us within fear.
All these kinds of illusions have to go. We need to discover the Truth of our Being, and that is the beautiful art of learning. Learning about who we are is discovering who the other is, discovering where God is, discovering the beauty of life.
We didn't receive that in childhood, what we were taught were other things. We were told: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, “What do you want to be?” We were shown a way, which was the way they took. But look at the path they took and the result they got. Is this what is real for you, for your children, for your grandchildren? Is this real? Are we happy despite all that we have achieved within this culture, where we were taught to live within this competition, this envy, this search for acquisitions and material achievements of all kinds, in an attempt to be happy?
We have to look at That which we are, discover the Truth of this present Love, this present Peace, this Intelligence, which is the Presence of God in us, which is Kindness, which is Compassion, which is Freedom, for a Happy, Free Life! Including, free from everything that can separate and divide us ideologically, conceptually, dogmatically, religiously, politically, philosophically, and psychologically.
We have to go beyond this “I,” because this “I” is the center of this whole mess, and we have to discover how to learn to unlearn to live like this. That’s it.
GC: Master, but this idea of learning, of acquiring is very strong in the ego. It is very attached to this idea of filling itself intellectually with new concepts, with new ideas, including within this spiritual bias. And this “unlearning” is nothing for it, it is to remain in nothingness! So, it’s always on that quest. I see this intense desire to learn, to want more. What could the Master say about this?
MG: Gilson, there are some levels of search for fulfillment and satisfaction of this “I,” of this ego. One of them is in the acquisition of objects. Notice that this “I” moves like this. This is just for us to observe in ourselves. It wants to have things; it wants to feel fulfilled in things. Another thing: it wants to fulfill itself in relationships with people too. And another level of search to fulfill this “me,” this “I,” this ego, is in ideas. So, there is a huge hunger and thirst to obtain things, to conquer people, to have people always around this “me,” this “I,” and acquire knowledge.
So, the ego wants to fulfill itself in these three ways. I am quoting three, there are others as well. It wants power, it wants a name, it wants fame… It wants countless things, but none of that can truly fulfill it. It lives in a state of emptiness and dissatisfaction. It never investigated that, it never realized that this emptiness, dissatisfaction... nothing can fill that emptiness. This emptiness, this pain of this emptiness is created by this sense of egocentrism, separateness, self-centeredness of this “me,” this “I.” So, it is restless.
The ego, the “I,” is restless and it is dissatisfied, it is unhappy. So, fulfillment in material things, fulfillment in human relationships and fulfillment in filling yourself with beliefs, with ideas... If it doesn't cling to political ideologies, it clings to religious ideologies, or philosophical ideologies, or psychological ideologies. But this is the dissatisfaction of the ego, within this pain of separation, because this is what is hurting. The ego is unhappy because it is occupying a place that is not its own in this mechanism, in this body-mind. And it is unhappy... Simply, it is unhappy, and there is nothing that can make it happy: no money, no power, no relationship, nothing!
That sense of “I” has to disappear, because as long as it is there, suffering is there. The good news, Gilson, is that you were born, we were born to realize What we are, or as I've said: to find out that we weren't born. What has appeared in this scenario is the sense of an illusion, the result of our parents’ desires and also of this psychological condition of a false “I” present here. This is what appeared in this scenario, and what we call a “human person” or “human being” is living a dream.
This dream does have some moments of joy, pleasure, satisfaction, and fulfillment, but everything is temporary, because the basis of this “I” is suffering, it is confusion. Look at your body and you will see that it is full of problems from birth to grave. And look at the situation we are involved in: we have to fight, we have to win, we have to study, we have to eat our bread in the sweat of our brows, as the Bible says. It’s because it’s hard to live within that sense of separateness and illusion, that egoic state. And we need to wake up from this dream, we have to go beyond this illusion.
So, this is the proposal here: to show you that it is possible to realize This in this life. This is what my Master – here is his picture – showed me: the Truth of a life free of the “I,” free of the ego and, therefore, free of suffering. A life lived intelligently, a life in Peace, a life where Love is present. That is the real meaning of a profoundly religious life. There is no external religiosity, there is no quotation from holy books. We leave all that behind. You live the scriptures, not quote the scriptures. I have already said this to some who approach. The beauty of this Natural State, Gilson, is that you are living Christ and his gospel. You are not trying to live Christ and trying to live the gospel, you are living Christ! You are the expression of Consciousness, you are the expression of Christ, you are the expression of God.
GC: Master, it’s pure Grace, pure Grace! But our time has come, Master, our time has passed. So, I just have to say thank you. Thanks for this meeting! And here is the invitation – for those who felt something beyond what is in the words, what Master says, felt something beyond, looking into his eyes – to participate in intensive weekend meetings, online or in person. And there is also an invitation to watch the complete playlist of these meetings, these videocasts, and please, leave a “like,” make a comment… This helps YouTube to recognize that the channel is relevant and distribute it to more people.
So, thank you very much, Master! Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude to all.
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