GC: Hello, everyone! We are here for another videocast. Once again, Master Gualberto has kindly joined us to discuss the Natural State, this State of Spiritual Enlightenment, to help us deepen this Self-investigation of “who I am.” Gratitude, Master, for being once again here on videocast with us.
Master, today I want to read an excerpt from Joel Goldsmith’s book called “Living the Illumined Life.” In that book, Joel, in a small paragraph, says the following: “In the spiritual life, there is only one time: now. There is no past and there is no future. The past can never live again under any circumstances, except as an activity of memory.” Master, can you tell us a little about this topic?
MG: This is a subject of great relevance to all of us. The only Reality, which is the Divine Reality, which is God’s Reality, is That which is here and now. Then, the only thing that matters is the Understanding of the Divine Truth, and that Understanding is the View that there is nothing else but this Revelation at this instant.
All that we have as past, future or present are ideas about what thought constructs about this so-called “past,” “present,” about this so-called “future.” This whole construct of thought – since all thought, without exception, is something already within the known, part of the past – whatever thought is producing in the name of the past, present or future, is part of it.
So, all there is as Reality is That which is outside thought, because, within thought, all that we have is within the known. This “known” is what thought has used to tell us about something that has happened or that might happen. Thought only does that here and now, in this instant. So, it all boils down to this present moment, but outside of that idea of the very “present” that thought creates.
It may sound confusing, but it’s very simple: there is no reality called “I.” This idea of “I” is thought, which makes use of an image that it knows, that it recognizes, that is part of itself, to say that there is someone here and now. This “someone” is a collection of remembrances, recollections, memories, and thoughts.
This is the wrong idea, Gilson, that we have of someone who did something, for example: “I did something yesterday that I regret today.” This thought of regret is a thought, now, of the illusion of an identity that existed yesterday. This “yesterday,” here and now, is just a memory. There is no reality of that “yesterday” here and now and no reality of that “I” here and now.
So, this sense of an “I” that we have is a fallacy, it is an illusion, because it is something that comes from the past, due to thought. Thought has an image of someone who, according to thought itself, existed yesterday doing things. Well, if there isn't someone here and now, how can something happening here and now be remembered tomorrow, in this clock time, chronological time, as an achievement of this “someone”? What “someone?” Who is here and now? There is no such “I”!
It is an interesting subject, because it shows us the illusion of time that thought formulates as being real. I have called this time “psychological time,” which is thinking time. Thought has created that time, and it is in that time that thought has created that there is this living “I,” this living “me.” That “I” is a fallacy, it is an illusion. There is no “I,” no ego, no separate entity. This is a product of thought, but this production of thought is very active. So, in a way, this ego is very much alive, due to this conditioning, which is this movement of memory, something that is repeated from moment to moment, here, at this moment.
Thought is always looking for a survival, a continuity, a perpetuation of itself, and it does this by creating an “I.” Here, that “I” is the thinker. So, we have the illusion that we are thinking, that we are producing thoughts, which is false. It is thoughts that are creating the idea of an “I,” of a thinker producing thoughts. This is a game of thought itself to maintain its continuity, which is, in reality, the continuity of this time that it has been constructing.
So, we use the expression “past, present and future.” From a chronological point of view, this is real. “Tomorrow we have an appointment at three o'clock in the afternoon,” but it is a chronological “tomorrow.” Now, psychologically, there will be no “I” tomorrow at three o'clock in the afternoon going to an appointment, as there is not any “me” here remembering that appointment. This is just a movement of thought itself, it is a game of thought.
I don't know if that makes sense to you, but it’s something that has to be investigated. And this is so important, Gilson, that if you don't understand the movement of thought in you, the sense of an “I,” which is the ego, prevails by placing you in that time that thought has created, which is psychological time. This represents suffering, confusion, every form of distortion of reality, because this duality enters, this illusion of an “I” separate from someone, separate from life, separate from the other, separate from the source, separate from God. That “I” is a fraud, it is an illusion!
With Awakening, That which is present is the only Reality, which is God, and that psychological time disappears, because it loses all that functionality for that thought, because that thought is not there, that psychological time does not exist. This psychological time cannot be sustained without this thought. This thought is only sustained because there is the illusion of a thinker behind it. Then the thinker disappears, thought disappears and psychological time disappears. The One Reality is the Reality of now. This Reality is the Reality of God!
GC: Master, at one point you “asked": “I don't know if you understand…” and then I remembered a Satsang – which are meetings, both online, weekend intensives, and face-to-face in the ashram –, in a specific meeting, including the online one, the Master was talking about this theme, investigating this, and, soon, by this Grace of the Master, by this sharing of Consciousness, an understanding came, something different happened, showing how much the “I,” this illusion of existing, is just a thought.
I remember that I was… because it is very strong, while we are in this identification, the belief is very strong: “I am someone here, flesh and blood.” And, then, the Master brings this speech, but it is something that if there is no experience – for example, like I had with the Master, in which you shared this Consciousness, that there could be an understanding –, this speech is really something outside of this world. As I opened myself to be close to the Master, I had that little glimpse of how false it is, it’s just a thought, and being just a thought, it has to be seen every moment. It is the True Meditation that the Master is also giving us, right, Master?
MG: That State of Being, free of thought – and here I mean that psychological thinking, that thinking that is the memory in which the sense of an “I” is settled. I'm not talking about functional thinking: “At three o'clock tomorrow, I have an appointment.” This memory is a memory of thought itself, but it does not have a background of psychological conditioning behind it, an egoic background, it is something practical, it is something mechanical, it is something objective, it is something functional.
There is a thought, Gilson, which is the technical thought in us, it is the functional thought. That thought is working at that time, which is clock time. “Look, at three o'clock in the afternoon, you have an appointment tomorrow”: it is the operation of a functional, technical, objective, mechanical thought. There is no ego involved in this, there is no sense of identity separate from Reality in this. But we have another quality of thinking, which is the “I” thinking, which is what I've been calling psychological thinking – it’s within that memory, which I also call psychological memory. If you upset “me” yesterday, that “me” is here today, remembering. Do you see? So, this annoyance, this nuisance, this feeling, which still arises here and now, is based on the egoic identity due to a psychological thought, an egoic conditioning.
This thinking is the dysfunctional thinking of the “I,” of this ego, of this false identity. This kind of thinking is what has created all sorts of confusion in our lives. Anxiety, anguish, depression, fear, the wife’s fear, and the husband’s fear are an image created by psychological thinking, which is this “I.” “I have an image of the husband,” “I have an image of the wife,” “this image that I have of him or her scares me.” Scared who? To that “me,” to that “I,” which is also an image that thought has created. So, our relationships with each other are based on this psychological memory, on this thought created by the “I,” on this psychological time. This quality of thinking is what needs to be discarded.
In your Natural State, there is no “I,” and this quality of thinking no longer exists. So, there can’t be an “I” creating images of people. The idea of friends, for example, and enemies, is only present within this sense of self-image. It is this “I” that has friends and that has enemies. Once you are free of this “I” – which is this egoic entity, which is this background of psychological conditioning, which is this mechanism of creating images and holding these memories and using this thought all the time – once that it has dissolved, it has disappeared, you have no more friends and you have no more enemies, because you do not exist as a separate entity to have friends and enemies.
It’s a fascinating subject, because it frees you from the idea of being offended, hurt, and having to forgive. Forgive whom, if there is no one offended? If there is not an offended, hurt “I,” which is this “I” loaded with this image, which is the memory of the past, of having been hurt, offended… if that no longer exists, there is no longer anyone to forgive, because there is no more “I” to forgive someone. This is the end of the ego, this is the end of the “I,” this is the Presence of Love!
And then we can explore the subject and see what Love is, what Truth is, what this Freedom of that Free Mind is, whose functioning is a cerebral functioning free of egoic conditioning. So, the brain works on an Intelligence completely different from that ordinary intelligence that the ego knows. I would say this is the Presence of Real Intelligence. Thus, the absence of this illusion of a psychological thought is wonderful! It is the Freedom to Be, to Be that Truth that You are, without the “I.”
GC: Master, within this topic, we have a question here from Joel Graf. He asks like this: “Master, how to think without the thinker? It’s all I need at the moment. Help me!”
MG: His statement is interesting. He says, “It’s all I need right now.” In fact, thought without the thinker is just thought in the natural flow in that organism, in that mechanism, without the “I.” So, it’s not what you say: “I need it right now...” The only reality at this moment is the functionality of thinking in a practical way, in an objective way, dealing with the issues of living, day by day, without that psychological element that is the “I.” This is possible when you investigate the nature... and here, to investigate is just to become aware of this movement, which is the movement of the “I,” which is the movement of this psychological thought, this background of psychological memory. We can and need to dispense with that, to simply have clear, objective, direct, functional thoughts here, in this mechanism, in this organism, in living. This is possible when the sense of an “I,” of a separate identity, which is this psychological conditioning, dissolves, disappears.
The direct work for this, which is your question, is born from an approach to the observation of the movement of the “I.” This is Self-Awareness, this is the Truth of True Meditation unfolding. Becoming aware of the mistaken movement of the “I” – which is that movement of thought that is always based on the past or past experiences to relate with this present moment –, becoming aware of that movement and letting go of that movement is letting go of the experience, it is to let go of the “I-experiencer,” to let go of the ego.
We only need to live life in this present moment, responding to whatever comes our way in this instant, with these clear eyes, freed from the sense of an ego that lives making differentiations and is always engaging with the present moment on the basis of past experience. That’s the ego!
We haven't learned that, Gilson, since we were child. Our psychological conditioning in this false identity, before this Real Awakening, is this! This is a cultural, human thing. Human beings have lived like this for millennia, within this condition, where their thinking is not free, it is conditioned thinking. All the experiences we go through, we record and put at the service of this false center that is the ego. So, we have things we like, we have things we don't like; we have people we love, we have people we hate. That loving and hating, that liking and disliking, is within that conditioned intellect, the intellect that is part of that cerebral and mental mechanism in us, programmed to move in the world like that.
So, we spent forty, fifty, seventy, eighty years in that condition, in an ego-identity, without that Freedom of simply being Consciousness and dealing with the present moment without that background of psychological conditioning, without that background of egoic memory, without that background of psychological memory.
The work consists of becoming aware of this movement and naturally going beyond it, awakening in this life to the beauty of being pure Consciousness, where only God as Reality is present, no more friends and enemies. That sounds very, very strange to us, I know. But we have to figure it out! If It has been possible for those who have Realized this State, then it is possible for all of us. And that is our proposal here. I'm sharing something with you that is real. I'm not talking about a theory, something I read in a book, which I heard someone say and learned. We don't learn this by listening to someone saying it, we discover it, we verify it, we realize This, or rather, It takes place here and that sense of “I” falls away. That’s why I always ask: Does this thing make sense?
GC: The closer I get, the more I participate in meetings with the Master, the more it makes sense! Because, especially in meetings with you, Master, where we are in that atmosphere, in that sharing of Master’s Consciousness, we “understand” a little of what this Truth without thought is, or, when thought comes, it is simply seen, it comes and goes. And it is something that is beyond words, because there is nothing to be said. It really is a Freedom to simply Be.
Master, there is another question here, from Nadir da Rocha, also about the issue of thought. She asks: “How can I not confuse myself with thought? It shows everything so real that I always get confused.”
MG: This skill is actually a habit. This ability to always be confused with thought is the ability of the “I” itself, of thought itself, which, for a long time now, has been separating itself from itself, creating the thinker. So, it’s actually a habit. That skill is the addiction to being somebody. How do we break free from an addiction? Making us aware of it. We cannot free ourselves from an addiction without becoming aware of how it happens, without accompanying it, without looking closely at what it represents. If we continue to act in a merely automatic way dealing with an addiction, that addiction will remain present.
What I have called here as a skill or a habit, or an addiction, is this present thought movement of unconsciousness. So, Gilson, there is no awareness of this unconsciousness. As long as there is no awareness of this unconsciousness, which is what happens to all of us before approaching True Meditation in a practical way… That is why there is nothing more fascinating, more important in life than the art of Meditation.
We need to find out what Meditation is – I am talking about True Meditation. There is nothing more important in our lives, for our lives, than the awareness of being aware of the movement of the “I,” which is the awareness of the movement of thought. It is this movement of unconscious thought that is the “I.” That’s the ego! Becoming aware of this is breaking this habit, this addiction, this model of always being identified with this thought, being this thinker.
The Truth of your Being is not the thinker, it is not the thought, it is not the experiencer, it is not the experience, it is not the seer nor what is seen. This is all within this context of duality of the ego itself, of illusion itself, of the dream itself, which is this person’s dream, how we all see ourselves, how we all believe ourselves to be. The Reality of your Being is outside that consciousness, which is that consciousness of the “I,” which is that conscious “I”; that “I,” the thinker, aware of thought; that “I,” the experiencer, aware of the experience; this “I,” the observer, the one who observes, aware of what it is seeing. This is within the mistaken principle of separation, duality, egoic identity.
This has been our heritage; we have left the cradle already making this differentiation. That differentiation, Gilson, notice, is within that self-consciousness itself. The baby begins to become aware of itself. First, it is not so aware of itself; then it becomes aware of itself. That’s when it begins to realize, for the first time, that it is a separate entity from the crib, the pacifier, the mother, everything around it. That self-consciousness is the beginning of everything there, it is the arising of everything. Every form of egoic conditioning starts to arise from the cradle. So, from the cradle, the child begins to demonstrate this sense of separation and, naturally, this whole model of existence that we still have today.
The human being is living in that self-consciousness, which is the consciousness of an “I” that is separate from experience, separate from thought, separate from emotion, sensation and everything around him, including separate from the body. He sees himself as someone inside, but separate from the body, but he is also confused with the body, just as he is confused with thought, with emotion, with sensation... and so on.
Here, the point is to become aware of that illusion, to go beyond that consciousness, which is the “I” consciousness, which is egoic consciousness. This is Awakening, This is the end of the “I.” Now, that needs work. That’s why the invitation is: Satsang. The word “Satsang” is a Sanskrit word that means “encounter with Truth.” Right now, we are investigating this matter. We approach ourselves to question this feeling, thinking and acting of the “I” itself, this self-consciousness. That is part of Satsang.
GC: Master, as Nadir commented: it is really very fast and, as the Master said, this “getting confused with thought” is an addiction. And, in this proximity to Master, in the Satsangs, where you instigate this self-investigation, it becomes clearer how much – talking about me, right? – I was unaware of complete identification with thought.
MG: Yes, Reality is so simple, It is so natural, but It is free of story. This freedom from story, this Natural Reality, This is not interesting to the egoic mind, This is not interesting to this sense of a separate “I.” It needs to hold a story, sustain a memory, because that gives it an identity, an illusory identity, but it is the only one it can have of itself. And that game, Gilson, is the game of self-consciousness. This self-consciousness is the idea that thought formulates of an identity present in that experience now. There is no entity present in that experience, there is no “I,” only thought is constructing it to sustain itself.
So, this work is wonderful, because it is the Awakening to something entirely new, unknown, completely unknown. The Reality of God, the Divine Reality is outside the mind. It is possible to Realize This – or to see this Reality assuming this wonderful place that is Its, in this body, in this mind, in this life –, but there is no longer this “my body,” “my mind,” “my life,” “ my story.” This is what the sages in India have called Liberation or Enlightenment. It is the Awakening of your Being, the Flourishing of your Divine Nature! The sages also call this “Kundalini Awakening,” this Reality of your Being, this Energy of Presence, which is Consciousness. And now this Consciousness is no longer this consciousness of the “I,” it is no longer this self-consciousness, you see? It’s something entirely new. This is Happiness, This is Love, This is Peace, This is God Realization.
GC: I´m speechless! Master, but our time is already over. I just have to be thankful. Thanks for another videocast. And for those who are following the videocasts: leave a “like,” make a comment. This helps YouTube recognize that the content is relevant to distribute to more people. And there is also an invitation for those who are really interested in knowing themselves and letting this Natural State, in which the Master lives, reveal itself: come to the intensive meetings at the weekends, which are the Satsangs, this encounter with the Truth, and also the face-to-face meetings, which are even more intense. Master, thank you very much! Thanks for this videocast!
MG: Okay, see you soon!
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