GC: Hello everyone! We're here for a videocast. Once again, Master Gualberto is willing to be here with us so that we can chat, bring your questions for Master Gualberto to answer. We also bring a little excerpt here from one of Joel’s books for Master to make some comments.
Today, I'm going to read an excerpt from the book “The Art of Meditation.” In a short passage, Joel speaks: “The Nature of God is ‘I’, this ‘I’ that dwells within us, this ‘I’ that we recognize as being individualized as our own Being.” Therefore, Master, I would like you to answer how we can recognize in ourselves that True Identity, that True Self?
MG: Understanding the Truth, the Truth of God, requires that we have a different approach than we have, in general. At first, Gilson, people want to have an encounter with God, they want to come to God, they want to get closer to God. However, this is a mistaken idea, because it starts from a completely false principle, which is the principle that we exist apart from God, that we have an existence apart from God. So, there is this search for God as if God were an element apart from ourselves. However, Truth reveals itself when you realize that the only present Truth is not “you and God,” it is the One Reality that there is only God.
This thing of recognizing the truth of the “I” is a very delicate thing, because we use this word and this pronoun referring to ourselves as if this “I,” in us, were the reality, while the reality of this “I” is not the personal, particular reality of an entity present here, which, in the idea, we formulate with this expression “I.” In the idea, this is a belief, because this “I” is not particular, individual, here, there, and in everyone. There is only one Reality and this Reality is the Divine Reality. We can call it Being, Consciousness, Truth.
This expression “I” becomes very delicate, because there is “I,” there is “you,” there is “he,” there is “we.” The truth is that God is the only present Reality. So, when Joel says “The ‘I’ is the only truth, which is the truth of God in us,” the idea is still within a principle of separation. When we say “God is a reality in us” ... “In us” who? So, there is “me and the Reality of God,” our belief, our conditioning – and it’s a conditioning within the intellect in us – that there is this sense of separation: “I and not I,” “me and the other,” “me and the world,” “me and God.” The truth, Gilson, is that there is only God.
The idea of an “I,” of a separate entity here and now, in this present moment called “time,” and in this body, this body being a personal and particular entity, and the owner of this body is this “I” – that is a belief! There is no such thing! The only Truth in all manifestations is Divine Reality. How does this Divine Reality express itself? It has many forms and assumes many names, but it is one Reality.
This issue of separation puts us in a very complicated terrain, which is the terrain of search, and search implies time. To find something, we need time. We have to get out of where we are and go somewhere else, and that’s time, and if the Divine Reality, which is God, is out there somewhere, we have to get out of here and find it. Who is this that is going to leave here? Who is this that will be found, if the only reality is the Divine Reality? And one detail: it is a Reality out of time! Out of time also means out of space!
So, here it is about Realizing the Truth present here and now, the one present Reality. Our brain... actually the intellect and mind within us, that particular mind that lives within illusory conditioning, believing to be a separate entity, living in time and space – that needs to be undone. So, the Encounter or Realization of the Truth of God, which, in truth, is the True Encounter, is this Realization. This is when that conditioning, which is cerebral, intellectual, and mental, which is giving us the illusion of an identity, disappears.
So, the real approach of this work is the result of investigation of illusion. We do not approach to discover the Truth, we verify the illusion, we become aware of the illusion, and the Truth reveals itself. Truth reveals itself when illusion is no more. So, our work is a work of becoming aware of what is here and now, passing as the Truth, passing as this Being, this Consciousness, this Reality.
Some call it “I,” Joel uses the expression there: “the I.” I prefer to call it “Being,” “Consciousness,” “Bliss,” “Truth,” because the expression “I” inside our heads is very connected to the idea of this multiplicity. Here, there is an “I” in me, there is an “I” in you, and there is an “I” in him. There is “I,” “you,” and “he.” And when we use the expression “Being,” we are talking about something that is Reality, which is Being, and that Reality is the only Reality present in everything.
Thus, this Encounter with the Truth is present when illusion is no more. This “Encounter” is a Verification of That which is already here. This is the Truth about God! There is only Him! This “I,” this “me,” this “you,” this “he” is illusion, which the intellect has separated and divided due to cultural conditioning, placing, within this “I,” God; within that “he,” God; within that “you,” God too. This is belief, this has no real basis, except within conditioning. Within conditioning, there is a basis, but that basis is not real. It is the basis of belief, it is the basis of fiction, of an idea about something that is outside the mind, outside the intellect, outside belief.
GC: Master, speaking of belief, it is quite common within self-awareness, as it is spread on the internet, mainly, in a general context, the question of limiting beliefs or strengthening beliefs. And the Master explains exactly that every belief is a limitation, it is an illusion. Can you talk a little more about it?
MG: Belief, Gilson, is something intellectual. And if you observe, if we're honest about it, we're going to look at our intellect. It is conditioned, we have a conditioned intellect. Our intellectual conditioning makes us have the good will to believe or the unwillingness not to believe. Belief is belief! Within a culture where there is a common belief in God, we grow up hearing about God: “God, God, God...” and the vast majority starts to believe, and another part, which is a minority, says they do not believe, but, deep down, there is the possibility of believing or not believing, and this “belief” or “not believing” is merely intellectual.
In a culture where the idea of God doesn't exist, people don't grow up with that idea of God. Then there is another belief: the belief that there is no God. This is the strongest belief of the vast majority. But belief, Gilson, is absolutely a volitional act of the intellect itself, of the “willing” of the intellect. If I have a good will to believe, I believe. If I don't have it, I don't believe it. Now who’s believing? Who is not believing? The intellect!
Our intellect, Gilson, has cultural conditioning of tradition, education and learning. We function intellectually within principles of psychological conditioning, and these conditionings are of different types: political conditioning, religious conditioning, philosophical conditioning, psychological conditioning... and they are intellectual conditionings, and it is the intellect that, by the way, is part of the egoic mind. This intellect lives in this principle of conditioning, in this willingness to believe in some things and not to believe in others, but all this is the result of conditioning, of training.
Something that we have been hearing since childhood, due to propaganda, we come to believe, or we reject and do not believe, but that always continues as an act of will, of wanting, of volition of the intellect itself, and the Divine Truth has nothing to do with intellect. These beliefs, whether they are so-called “limiting” or “non-limiting,” are still part of the old ego, the old “I.” In fact, all beliefs are like that. Reality is not a belief, so there is a direct experience of Reality outside of the intellect and therefore outside of belief. And here we don't work with beliefs.
In fact, Gilson, we have to get rid of belief, because belief is belief, it is not experience, it is not direct knowledge outside the intellect. Belief is something directly linked to the intellect, to a format of ideas, thoughts, images, and willingness to accept or not.
Divine Reality has nothing to do with belief, it is a fact. However, it is a fact evidenced by the experience of the absence, precisely, of the intellect with its beliefs. When there is this Truth of Being, Consciousness, there is no egoic mind and no intellect to see It, to believe or disbelieve It. Reality is outside the mind, outside the intellect, outside logic, outside reason, it is something that transcends this very brain, this very intellect and this very mind; it is a Reality beyond all that, beyond all that, that transcends all that.
GC: Master, you used a word, which is “experiencing” It. It was very rooted in me, when Master spoke about that as an “experience,” having an experience, I understood that it was something beyond belief, but, with this closer contact with Master, I see how much this “feeling” I had was really for an experiencer, or an emotion in the body, or a sensation, which ended up masking a belief, as if it were something real.
MG: Yeah, experiencing is not that. To live That is the awareness that This is Reality, there is no “someone” left. There is a difference here, Gilson, between being aware of Reality and seeing yourself as separate, having an experience and talking about it. So, there is a difference between knowing the Truth through Truth itself and understanding the Truth or experiencing the Truth or experiencing the Truth as just an idea, a belief, a concept.
Let me put it in a much simpler way: every experience you live, you lived and can report, talk, explain, and describe. What is real, in the sense that I put it here, experiential, there is no one left as the experiencer who experienced it and, afterwards, can talk about. What you can talk about, you can only talk about because thought, which is just a memory of experience, is now present picturing something that once was. Divine Truth is not something that is experienced like that.
Divine Reality is the end of the experiencer. So, there is experiencing, but experience does not remain. This is what I have just called “experiencing the Truth.” When there is this experience of the Truth, it is the Truth in Itself, by Itself. It is not someone who had an experience, someone who felt something, someone who perceived something, someone who experienced something, because that “someone,” when he appears to report it, all he has to report is a memory; and if he is present to report a memory, that memory is part of a fiction of his own identity that believes that it was a special experience for him, that it was something he went through. If it’s something he experienced, it’s part of time, it’s part of memory, it’s part of the experiencer, it can't be real.
This Divine Truth, when It is experiential, the experiencer does not remain, that “I” does not remain, that background of memory does not remain. What you experience is part of experience, it is not separate from the experiencer, and the experiencer and what is experienced are still within the field of the mind itself. Divine Reality cannot be within the mind, cannot be within an experience, cannot be within a memory, cannot be within a story being told by an “I.”
Reality is the end of the “I,” the Reality of this Experience is the end of the one who lives, the one who experiences, the one who memorizes, and the one who can describe. This is the One Reality, the Only Reality. If It is present, the sense of “I” is undone, the experiencer is undone, and experience is no longer of the quality of something that can be held in memory to be part of the past. I don't know if this is clear, the way we are putting it here.
This requires a free approach from the experiencer, free from the sense of “someone,” so there is Truth showing itself as It is. And when It shows itself, there is an end to the illusion of “I,” to the illusion of the mind, to the illusion of time, that time which is memory, that time which is remembrance, that time which is experience, together with that experiencer.
So, this idea of "someone” there to experience disappears. When there is True Experiencing, one is not experiencing It. This is within the principle of psychological conditioning that we bring: that we are going to have an experience, we are going to have contact, we are going to feel something, we are going to live something. “Going to”... who? The “I,” the ego. If it is real, there is no ego, there is no “I,” there is no experiencer, then that experience does not remain. That’s it basically.
GC: It’s very beautiful to see how the Master is never reporting an experience. Now, I've been following the Satsang with the Master for almost a year, and each Satsang – which are the face-to-face and online meetings – is unique, because the Master is never repeating something he said, he is never talking about a past experience. And, as soon as I started to participate in the meetings, I found it strange, because the ego loves stories, and Master’s followers, who have been there for a long time, also did not report experiences. And I, until then, loved to report experiences! I thought it was kind of strange... And it took a few months for me to comprehend it and see how the experience – I used to speak of an experience from the past – is just a little mental story, it’s just the repetition of this identity, this mind, this little story of someone who experienced it. And it is very beautiful to see the Master, because the Master is never talking about something that he lived in the past. It’s always the present moment, it’s always this experience, it’s always Life happening, and it’s beautiful, because it’s new, always new!
MG: Present Reality is everything! Present Reality is Beauty, It is Truth, It is Love, It is Peace, It is Completeness. In the ego, Gilson, experience is very important. In the ego, it is very important, because it gives meaning, it values the experiencer, who is the ego, who is this “I” itself. The “I” lives on experiences, and it leaves one experience in search of another. So, there’s this relentless thirst for new and stronger and more sensational experiences.
This craving for experience is typical of the ego. It is the ego that seeks. In its dissatisfaction, in its incompleteness, in its state of emptiness, of nullity, it is always looking for something new, something to feel alive, to feel special. So, it lives in a constant thirst for fulfillment in experiences, because that gives it satisfaction and gives it identity. So, there’s this relentless pursuit of new experiences.
When you get tired of material experiences, you go in search of so-called “spiritual experiences,” but it is always this “you,” this “ego,” because it lives in a state of absolute incompleteness, so it is always looking for new sensations, new experiences. It gets tired of routine experiences and goes in search of a more sublime, divine experience, to have an idea that it is going somewhere. And really, it’s just maintaining its continuity. It goes from vices to virtues, as I have been saying, but it is still the same old I, that when something is taken from, it suffers; when something happens to it, it is scared.
So, no matter how many divine, sublime experiences we have, these experiences are still centered within that experiencer and its own world. That’s why one can recognize these experiences. If one can recognize it, as I said a moment ago, this is something that is already coming from the past, it is just coming from a sensation, a memory, and that doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what’s here and now.
The Divine Reality, the Reality of the Joy of Being, the Joy of Love, the Joy of Peace, the Joy of Truth, is something present now. All Beauty, all Grace, all Truth, all Love, all Completeness is here and now, and this is not an experience. Therefore, we have nothing to say about It two minutes from now, or twenty from now, or two years from now. The Truth of your Being is outside of time, and that Truth of your Being is Fullness, that Nameless, Indescribable “Thing” which is Divine Truth.
GC: Master, I have a question from Bruno Nunes regarding meditation. It is the following question: “Master, what about meditation with closed eyes? Does it not need to be done?”
MG: There is a huge lack of understanding, Gilson, regarding this issue of Meditation. We don't know what Meditation is, we don't know what Silence, Truth, the Mind in Meditation is. We confuse Meditation with a practical exercise of sitting down, closing eyes, relaxing, putting on soft music or chanting a mantra. As long as we relax, that’s it! That’s what we believe meditation is. And in a way, the meditation that is taught out there is just that. This is the maximum that the ego can achieve: it is this stillness that it imposes on itself through a technique, a system, a practice. That’s not what we're talking about here.
The True Meditation has nothing to do with the posture of the body or whether the eyes are open or closed. True Meditation is the end of the illusion that you are present. And this idea of being present... You can have this idea of being present even with your eyes closed and in a meditative posture, which is what usually happens. People close their eyes and do meditation. When the time is up, meditation is over! They say to themselves: “Okay, now I can go back,” but, in fact, they never left there.
True Meditation is the absence of meditator, it is the absence of the one who is present, and when that is present, which is True Meditation, it has nothing to do with technique, with posture, with practice, it has nothing to do with eyes open or closed. Becoming aware of the movement of thought here and now, without getting confused with it, as well as feeling, emotion, sensation, and perception, does not require any physical posture. You're driving the car, you're going to work, you're talking to somebody, you're making use of words, like right here and now, making gestures, and at the same time, there’s this whole awareness of this whole movement of words happening, gestures happening, a thought arising, a feeling arising... whatever is here in this instant arising. When you pay Attention to yourself and whatever is happening right now, internally and externally, without resisting that experience, without judging it, without comparing it, without fighting it, in that moment, in that State of Attention about all that movement, which is the movement of the body, the mind, and anything around you, in that Attention, in that moment of Attention, that is Real Meditation.
But in this Real Meditation, when there is this Attention, there is no such element, which is the “I” element, because it is no longer here to judge, compare, reject, accept, condemn what is arising or appearing in that instant. So, True Meditation, as we put it, is being aware of what is here and now, without that element, which is the element in us, which is the sensor, which is the judge, which is the comparer, the one that judges, which is the one that condemns, which is the one that rejects. This goes for thoughts or whatever is going on internally within you or externally.
So, it’s not about body position or intellectual inactivity, it’s about awareness of this moment without that element, which is the element “I,” ego, that comes from that background of conditioning to reject, to judge, to criticize, to condemn, to try to do something, to cling to that experience, because it likes it, or to push it away, reject it, because it doesn’t like that. When we do that, naturally there is no Meditation, there is a sense of an egoic identity in that egocentric movement, and that is the common state of people. So, we need to find out the art of pure Being Consciousness without that element, which is the “I” element within this instant, within this moment, creating all the confusion that this background of conditioning brings.
So, we have to find out what Meditation is. Here on the channel, we talk about what Meditation is, we have discussed with you what Meditation is and, more than that, Meditation is something that happens to us. Satsang is an excellent space, where True Meditation reveals itself, and when It reveals itself, there is no “you,” there is no “you.”
GC: And it’s a Grace, Master, because in Satsang we get, receive from Master, the True Meditation, which is that indescribable “something,” because it’s a zero, it’s a nothing, it’s a freedom... there’s no experience to go to. The ego may even want to go there and record it, take it and say “it’s mine,” but there’s no way. It is something that is this Mystery of Life.
MG: Gilson, people are always fighting with Meditation, because they hear someone say to them: “You have to meditate, you need to meditate, you need to set aside a moment for meditation,” and people, sometimes they try to force themselves to meditate, even out of guilt, because they believe they have to become spiritual. They heard a teacher say to them “look, you have to meditate!” And the person sits down and fights, fighting against one thought, against another, and they believe that this is Meditation. Because when you force yourself, when you force yourself into Meditation, what is happening? That sense of “I” is fighting with itself, and Meditation has nothing to do with it!
Meditation is something very natural and it flows in a very natural way when you discover that what is present in you here and now is not this element that comes from this psychological time, which is the “I.” This element that comes from psychological time, which is the “I,” which is this whole story of an identity that wants to resist, that wants to fight, that wants to fight with what is present at this moment, that is completely illusory.
When you investigate the nature of that “I,” the very investigation, the very observation of the nature of that “I,” brings you, in a very natural way, that State of Meditation. And when you say “ah, we got this Meditation from the Master,” people don't understand. This State of Consciousness present here and now is the Natural State of all of us.
So, when you are in Satsang, you are facing a Realized Being who lives in that State of Consciousness. This facilitates your Natural State of Consciousness – which is the same State of any Realized being – to emerge, to flourish. This is Meditation. And notice, there’s no effort on your part. It just happens, because there is no “you.” You are placed in a position within Satsang where you begin to inquire, to observe, to investigate yourself, and there is this Presence, this Energy of Consciousness, which is the Presence of Grace itself, which creates this facilitation. And you can be in any position: standing, sitting, eyes open, eyes closed, in any way, because this has nothing to do with the body, nor with the mind and the state of mind. It transcends this body and any other state of mind.
The beauty of Meditation is that you are beyond the body, the mind and, curiously, the world. Your eyes can be open and you lose complete notion of time and space, because you are in your Natural State of Pure Consciousness, when there is no sense of this “me,” this “I.” This is Meditation!
GC: Gratitude, gratitude, our time has come to an end. Gratitude for this meeting, this videocast. For those who are watching: leave a “like,” make a comment, and whoever feels something more, when looking into Master’s eyes, here is the invitation: come to Satsang, to “receive” – because it is not a “receiving,” as the Master just said, it is [for] this Natural State, which is the Only Reality, to be, to come true. So, it’s pure Grace, it’s a unique opportunity, one in a million, to be able to be with a Realized Being. I'm speechless! Master, gratitude for this meeting.
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