GC: Hello everyone! We are here for another videocast. Once again, Master Gualberto was willing to be here with us to answer questions, to deepen this study, this experience towards Realization, this Natural State, as the Master already lives in. Master, I want to read an excerpt today, an excerpt from the last lecture Joel gave before his passing. He died on June 17, 1964, and this lecture was on the 15th, two days before. I'm going to read a small excerpt for the Master to comment on. In this excerpt, Joel says: “As long as you are trying to get to know yourself here, you will fail. As long as you are trying to know God up here, in your mind, you will fail, for God is not a goal for you, God is your ‘I'! The seeker and the Wanted are one.” Master, can you tell us a little bit about the illusion of the seeker?
MG: The idea you have about the search is what we project in any other accomplishment. We turn the search or quest for God into a project of achievement, a project of conquest, a target to be reached. And that’s why it constitutes an illusion, because when we deal with God or this Reality... This Reality that we call God, Presence, or Truth is not something attainable by us, it is not something achievable by us. And why? Because this “I” that we are, or that we believe we are, is not real. This accomplishing project, in the sense of this “I” finding, this “I” attaining, this “I” reaching “there,” in this encounter with God, is completely illusory, because this Divine Reality, which is God, Truth, the Presence, this Real Consciousness, as I have called it, is the One Reality.
The encounter with Reality I have called Realization. This is not a meeting, but a direct Verification of the Truth, of the Essential Nature of each one of us. This Essential Nature is not what we believe it to be. So, this expression “I,” this pronoun “I,” is very complicated when we use this pronoun in the sense of this Reality that we are, outside of belief, outside of the mind. In general, when we use the expression or pronoun “I,” we are designating an entity present here, in the idea that, inside the body, we exist as someone; and that “someone” in imagination we believe to be God Himself, Reality itself. This is completely false!
The Reality, which is the Reality of your Being, is not the personal or particular, something living within the body, being an entity or having a separate identity, that one day may meet God and unite with God. That’s why he said it’s not possible for you to believe that God is findable – he’s placing it in his language, I'm placing it in mine here. It is not possible for you to find Him here, within you, as knowledge to be acquired in this realization process, as something that we achieve like anything else within time. Divine Reality is the Reality that is out of time.
What I've been saying, Gilson, is that it’s not an experience, it’s not something attainable, because it’s not part of time. It is not an experience, because you cannot register it as something within your model, within what is known, within what is recognizable by that “me,” for that “I,” for that ego, for that “person.” So, the Reality of God is not in time and not reachable. It is not experienceable by this “me,” by this “I.” This is a very common belief.
People talk a lot about the importance of having a contact with God, having a connection with God, having an experience with God, and all of this is completely false. It is not possible for a person to have a contact, a realization, or an experience with That which is outside the experienceable, the attainable, or any possibility of connection, because you cannot connect what is not, which is this illusion of “I,” with That which is beyond the known, with That which is beyond time, with That which is unnamable, with That which is indescribable.
So, you cannot have contact with God, a communion with God, an experience of God. The present Reality of God is the absence of this “I.” If He is, the only Reality is that Reality. Here, this God-realization is the end of this “I.” So, expressions like “communion,” “contact,” “realization,” have to be understood, because if we put it in the intellectual sense in which we use these words, we fall into an illusion, a projection. And that has been the problem: we are projecting an achievement, projecting and idealizing a contact, projecting and idealizing a communion. But who is doing this? It is the intellect, and the intellect is part of the illusion of that “me,” the ego-identity. So, this is not correct. It is completely false.
It is necessary to discover the Truth of your Being, but it is not this “I” discovering That, it is this Reality that reveals itself, and when It reveals itself, that is the end of this “I.” Our work consists of investigating illusion. This attention on the movement of illusion puts an end to that illusion; this attention on this movement is an approach to the investigation of the false, which is this “I.” We investigate the illusory nature of the “I,” we do not investigate the Truth of God. Who is this that can investigate the Truth of God? So, what can be done here is to verify the “non-Truth,” which is the illusion of this “I.”
So, this approach is a different approach than what we do, than any other approach out there. We didn't put ourselves in a positive way to get there, we investigate illusion here and now, and this is an action of this Intelligence, of this Presence, which is not this particular egoic consciousness, it is not this particular “I”-consciousness. So, in fact, it is Reality that finds you; and when It finds you, It undoes that “I,” It ends that illusion, It takes over Its space. That is this God Realization. It is not the realization of that “I” in God. It is the end of the illusion of that “I” in the Realization that God is the only Reality, and it is that Reality that shows itself. That’s it!
GC: Master, this subject is very interesting, and in the way... in this approach that Master brings – I even want to give a comment for Master to go deeper ... How interesting it is this approach that you bring of not investigating this Divinity, this Presence of God, but to investigate this illusion of someone present. And – as I say – how the naughty ego, in the intellect, stays in this projection of finding God or living an experience with God, an experience of peace, an experience of “love.” And the ego registers that experience and registers it in a story, registers it in the mind and perpetuates itself in that experiencer. That is, there is someone there experiencing the peace of God. But who is this “I,” as the Master says? Can you talk a little more about this experiencer who is always within experience.
MG: The whole point is: we have to investigate the nature of this experiencer. What is the structure and what is the nature of this experiencer? This experiencer is the one who lives on experiences. Every experience, Gilson, that we go through in life is registered in us, and when we report it, we report it as an experience. The word “experience” means what you went through and recorded, and now you are just reporting, talking about. An experience is always something that once was and that is now spoken as a remembrance, as a recollection, as a memory. Every experience is like that. You can only report what has already happened, and what has already happened to you, to be reported, is only a memory. How can this be the Reality of God?
This is what fuels this experiencer. That experiencer is the “I.” It lives on experiences. In other words, it lives on remembrances, recollections, things that happened and that it reports today, it talks about today. God can no longer be an experience for this experiencer, cannot be another memory for this thinker, cannot be another idea kept in memory and shared in a spoken language. Divine Reality is outside the mind, outside the “I,” outside the experiencer, outside that thinker.
It’s very interesting. We need to investigate that structure and nature of that experiencer who is the “I,” who is the thinker. And when we approach and look closely, we see that this experiencer is only made up of experiences. There is no experience that can be reported without the experiencer reporting that experience. So, these are two things that cannot be separated. It is experience being reported by an experiencer. That experiencer and the experience are one phenomenon, and that phenomenon is called “memory,” “remembrance,” “recollection.” That is in time, in that time of the mind itself. So, whatever that experience was, however sublime, however wonderful, however extraordinary, it is now just a memory here, a recollection that this experiencer has recorded and is now reporting as something of its own. This cannot be the Divine Reality.
That which is the Divine Reality cannot be something of yours, of this “I,” this experiencer, this thinker, this memory, this remembrance. So, Gilson, it is important that we investigate the nature of the “I,” of the experiencer. And we have to find out exactly what the end of the experience is for that experiencer. When we figure out how to deal with experience, which is just memory, which is just the past coming back, without putting the experiencer in it, that experience falls apart. If that experience dissolves, because the experiencer cannot continue that experience by reporting, telling, sustaining it, the experiencer disappears along with his experience. Then, yes, we have the opportunity for that Reality, which is the Divine Reality, to reveal itself, and It reveals itself when there is no longer that experiencer.
So, our work together here is to undo the illusion of this structure and nature of the experiencer. It’s not about achieving an experience. It’s about discovering the end of the experience, becoming aware that this experiencer is an illusion, with an investigation approach of this illusion, of this thinker, when his thought appears; of that experiencer, when his experience appears; the one who is looking, seeing, being the observer, when what he is seeing appears. We have to discover the structure and nature of this thinker, this observer and this experiencer, the illusion of the “I.” Just investigating, just getting closer and looking closely, and being aware of how it stays in continuity, because, exactly, it’s not seen.
That’s why I've been talking, Gilson, about the importance of this approach of self-observation, which brings Self-Awareness, which is the recognition of this illusion. This is an approach to that Meditation, which is what I have called the True Meditation. So, there is nothing more direct than to become aware of the illusion of the false so that what is false, being seen, disappears; aware of the illusion so that what is seen here as an illusion falls apart, disappears. So, we do have this real approach to the Truth of That which is beyond name, which is beyond form, which is beyond time and all definition, which is the Divine Reality, the Reality of Being or God, whatever we want to call That.
GC: Master, it is interesting: before meeting Master, before the Master found me, I had been practicing for many years techniques and, later, with Joel – a meditation practice. And it’s funny, because there was the meditator, who eventually had an experience of great peace, tranquility, and “love.” And then, today I see the total “flight of fancy” the “I” was in that experience, very present in the experience, because I remembered that moment of peace and I could repeat that moment later too. And then, the Master brings this True Meditation approach, and, in reality, when there is True Meditation, there is no “I,” so there is no record, there is no memory: “Ah, at that moment I practiced True Meditation.” Yes, because if I were actually practicing True Meditation, that experience wouldn't be in my memory, because there would be no experiencer. Is it right, Master?
MG: Yes, exactly! You cannot have an experience when the “I” is not. The record of an experience is the sign of the presence of an experiencer. As long as the experiencer is present, it will separate itself from the experience to record the experience. Every event takes place here and now without the experiencer and without the experience. Look how interesting it is: it’s just the “experience.” Life is something that happens here and now, but we have a mechanism in us, which is the mechanism of this “I,” of this supposed thinker, of this supposed experiencer of experiences, that lives recording this. So, it records it and it becomes part of its identity. After that, it talks about what is happening here and now as an experience it had. It is very funny, because at that moment there is no one present in the experience.
So, it’s not really an experience, it’s an “experiencing.” Life, Gilson, consists here and now, in What It is. The sense of “I” is the one that preserves itself as an entity, a truth, in a time that it idealizes, which is the time of thought, memory, recollection, and remembrance. So, what does it do? It registers that moment as its moment to, later, in half an hour, in two days, in five days, thirty days, talk about this experience as if it had lived it.
So, you see, the illusion that you are here and now present in this experience is a fallacy. This experience is an “experiencing” without the experiencer – it becomes an experience when the sense of “I” registers it. Look, this may seem, for you who are listening here for the first time, something very strange and very crazy, but I am saying exactly that: every moment is unique and, in it, there is no one present, it is just a Reality happening in a unique way, in a direct “experience.” When the recording takes place, the sense of “I,” which is this illusory sense of someone present recording… that’s when the ego appears within the experience. It turns this experiencing into an experience; it records it and then speaks of it as something of its, that it lived. That thought has to be a remembrance, a recollection of something that this “I,” this thinker, this experiencer lived through.
Every thought in you is just a remembrance, it’s just a memory, it’s just a recollection. No thought deals with this instant, with this present moment. In this present moment, there is no space for thought. This thought that appears here and now, in the present moment, says nothing about this present moment. It is not an apparition dealing with something happening here and now. It is an apparition reporting things that have already happened or things that it, which is thought, projects to happen in the future. So, Gilson, the ego, that sense of “I,” which is the thinker, which is the experiencer, is present only producing a future based on thought, which comes from the past, or reproducing the past based on all the remembrances it already brings. This is the illusion of the “I,” this is the experiencer’s illusion, this is the illusion of an “I,” of ego, of an entity present in that experience.
I'll say it again: there’s nothing here like an experience, it’s just an “experiencing.” This will indeed become an experience when, afterwards, thought brings it back, the next moment, twenty minutes from now, two hours from now, two days from now, as a memory. This is the sense of the “I,” of the ego, that is: an illusion created by thought that lives within time, always in that time, dealing with the past, which is remembrance, memory; or with the future, which is imagination or dream, appearing in this present moment as an intruder... because there is no space for it here, because it has no reality. The only Reality is still the Reality of Absolute Consciousness, of That which is beyond the “I,” beyond the mind. This may sound very strange and crazy to you, but we have several videos here on the channel explaining that to you. Slowly and little by little, you will have perceptions of what we are saying and you will realize that this is not nonsense or crazy. Crazy is the condition in which, in the ego, we position ourselves, in that illusory time that thought creates, giving us the idea that we are present in life as entities separate from this instant, this present moment, this “experiencing.”
GC: Master, it’s interesting, in meetings with you, in intensive weekend satsangs or retreats, that this field, let’s say, this energy field of Consciousness of the Master... we end up entering it. And we enter it and we empty ourselves, then thought disappears and there is stillness. How graceful it is to be with the Master in meetings, because, in a little while, when the mind or thought appears and wants, in some way, to capture that experience... but it’s an emptiness, it’s really beyond time.
MG: It is the Nature of Being, it is the Nature of Real Consciousness, it is the Nature of Truth about You; not what you seem to be, what you show to be, what you believe you are, this image you have of yourself, this idea you have of yourself, others, the world, and God.
The Reality of That which You are, is not in time. We believe, Gilson, we were born, are living and walking towards death. This is a process of appearance of this body, this mind, in this world. We are dealing with a dream! But we don't see it as a dream, we see it as our own real life. But there is no real life for each of us. What we regard as life is an apparition of that dream, that Divine dream, that Mystery, which is the Divine Truth. Everything is happening or showing up, or seeming to happen, like this!
That’s why the work consists of Awakening. Awakening is becoming aware that the One Reality is the Reality beyond this “body, mind, and world” phenomenon. Thinker, thought, experience, experiencer... All of this is within this singularity, this apparition, this body-mind. And the problem consists of the illusion of “someone” to whom this is happening, which is this entity that separates itself to see, hear, feel, and live what is happening, which is this illusion of the “I.”
What we are producing, in this illusion of a present entity, of someone present in this dream, all we have been doing is creating confusion for this “me,” for this “I,” for this ego, for this illusion. Awakening is discovering that there is no such thing as “I.” So, Life flows without the sense of a present identity. And without that present sense of identity, It flows with Beauty, a Uniqueness, with a Harmony, Bliss, an indescribable Freedom, because that is the Nature of Being! In India they say that your Being, your Real Nature, is Being-Consciousness-Bliss.
Being-Consciousness-Happiness: that is the nature of each one of us. In reality, it is the Nature of that Being which is the only Reality of God. This “each one of us” is a fraud, it is an idea, it is just a sort of expression, it is just a statement without any importance within that real context, which is this Truth that goes beyond this so-called “my life,” “your life,” “his life,” and “her life.”
GC: Master, as always, I have to say: these words by Master are very revolutionary, because, really, only someone who is no longer “someone” can have this vision, the life that Master has, in that complete Freedom, because it is a Freedom where no one is there to be free. So, it is this flow, as the Master said, this Being, Happiness, Joy, Peace, and Love. So, it’s a Grace to be able to be close to you, Master.
Thank you for your presence. Our time has come to an end. For those who are watching the video, leave the “like,” tap the “thumb up,” make a comment, whether it’s a question or any comment. This helps YouTube recognize that the content is relevant. And anyone who feels something deeper when looking into Master’s eyes is invited to come to the weekend intensive online meetings, or also, and with even greater impact, are the face-to-face meetings at the ashram in Gravatá city, in Pernambuco [Brazil]; both meetings and retreats. So, Master, gratitude for this videocast.
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