GC: Hello everyone! We are here for another videocast. Once again, Master Gualberto has agreed to be here with us to bring the experience of what this Natural State is, this Awakened State. Gratitude, Master, for another videocast. Master, today I want to read an excerpt from Joel Goldsmith’s book called “Living by Grace.” In this excerpt, Joel says the following: “The last enemy to overcome is death, which may just be the fear of the unknown. At some point or another, we must overcome the fear of death by realizing that it is not really death.” Master, could you tell us how to get rid of fear, how to go beyond the fear of death?
MG: The question here, Gilson, is the issue of fear. It doesn't matter if it's fear of the past, if it's fear of the future, if it's fear of getting sick, if it's fear of getting old, if it's fear of death. The whole point is the issue of fear. Human beings live in fear. Fear is a shadow that accompanies us from birth to death. This is because of the nature of the mind, this particular mind that we know, which is the mind of the person, this person as we see ourselves… This mind is shaped in fear. Our condition of existence, our condition of psychological life, centered on this imaginary “I,” on this person that we believe we are, this psychological condition of present identity is a scared identity, it is an identity in fear.
So, fear needs to be investigated. We need to clearly deepen, within ourselves, this perception of the reality of this so-called “fear” present, in this model of human consciousness. This human consciousness in us is the consciousness of the “I,” of the ego, it is the consciousness of fear. And what is fear? Fear is the presence of the meaning of an identity that separates itself from what is shown here, at this moment, and that identity does not want the experience, it does not want to experience it again.
Let's understand this: every fear present in us, in fact, is the reflection of a memory, a remembrance, an image we have of something painful, difficult, complicated, that we experienced. When we go through unpleasant experiences, we record those experiences and when we come across new experiences similar to that past experience, we come into conflict with it, with that given experience, based on that past experience.
So, fear, basically, is something that comes from the past, it is something that comes from memory, it is something that comes from remembrance. We project fear! It is the mind moving at this moment, coming across a new experience that it does not want to go through, because it has already felt the pain, in the past, of experiences similar to these, which it rejects, it fights, it comes into conflict with. So, basically, fear is suffering, and this suffering is rooted and settled in the past, and therefore, Gilson, it is based on what has already been known, on what has already been experienced. So, fear is basically the known repeating itself and being rejected – the known being an unpleasant experience.
Human beings always seek pleasurable experiences. They run away from experiences of pain. These experiences of pain are what we call “fear.” They are painful experiences because we have experienced this before. Because we have experienced this before, we want to get rid of it this time. This is fear! So, remember: it is not about fear of the unknown, because you cannot be afraid of what you have no experience of. Fear has a reference, and the reference is the reference of memory. You cannot fear what you don't know. You fear, in reality, what you know, or what, in imagination, you know. It is not exactly what, in fact, is the unknown, simply because we have no reference to the unknown to be able to be afraid of it.
So, the issue of death, as it is said there, we have to review that. We have to see this very clearly. It's not unknown, let's review it here. The fear of death is the fear of moving away or no longer enjoying known pleasure. What we are afraid of is losing what we are attached to, what we know and what gives us pleasure, what gives us satisfaction and some form of fulfillment. Our fear is not of the unknown, our fear – I will repeat – is that we will no longer have the pleasure of the known: the presence of our loved ones, the presence of our home, our possessions, the presence of our lifestyle, of the quality of life that we know... We know all of this will disappear, will disappear in death, because we have seen many people die before us, and our fear is not of being faced with the unknown, but of being left without what we know.
Observe this carefully: you are not afraid of what you don't know, you are afraid of losing what you know, if that's what you know... if that's what your life consists of. So, our whole life, which is the life of the “I,” which is the life of the person, consists of the known. One fears precisely that one will no longer be or that one will no longer have it – that one will no longer be this known life, that one will no longer have this known life. Our fear is based on our attachments, our fixations, our references to a purely egoic life, a life centered on that “I,” on that person. So, this is the fear of death, and the fear of some situation has as its reference the memory of the pain that we project now to live, due to a past that was experienced.
An interesting thing about this “now to live,” another very curious aspect here, is that, Gilson, there is never fear now. Fear requires the presence of memory, the presence of remembrance, the presence of thought. We only need a second or two for the thought to project itself at this moment, to appear in this present moment and compare what is here with the reference it has. So, we are always faced with life as it happens and, at this moment, at this very moment, there is no time, that time that thought formulates, that time that thought needs, a second or two, to, before this event, be afraid.
When you are faced with a situation, for example, a car coming towards you, the body immediately jumps. It has an action, and it is an action of intelligence, of self-preservation. After the thing happened, you might even say: “Ah, I was scared!” In fact, you were in action at that given moment. There was no fear, there was just a movement of self-protection, but if you look down from a high place and you are really completely safe, but if just “looking down” shows you an internal state of fear, notice, now in one or two seconds, a projection of the mind occurred to create a psychological fear, because looking down from a height – you in a high place looking down – this, necessarily, will not produce any fear. But if thought arises, it arises and only needs a second or two to formulate a psychological fear, and in that fear there is no action, it is just fear.
So, notice how interesting it is: when there is a movement of self-protection of the body, in the face of this so-called “fear” – which is not a fear, it is a brain response to that moment, which is a dangerous moment for the body –, at that moment there is no fear, there is this action. Fear, Gilson, is a psychological matter. There is no fear now. Fear requires this movement of thought, which is remembrance, which is memory projecting itself.
So, our fears are like this. We are afraid of the future... We don't know the future! So, in truth, it is not the future that we are afraid of, what we are afraid of is that in the future we will not have this appearance, this body as it is, that we will no longer have this physical shape. We are afraid of the future because we'll be old with a cane or become ill. So, the projection is always of the past, because the future is unknown, and it is not the future that we are afraid of. We are afraid of losing this youthfulness, of seeing the wrinkles appearing on the face, of seeing the disease appearing, the suffering happening, and this suffering has memory as its reference. All of this is based on thought, it is based on this sense of “I,” which is basically the past.
So, our fear of our child, our fear of our wife, our fear of unemployment, our fear of aging, of getting sick, of dying, it is all a fear that is based on the ego, and the ego, basically, is memory, it is a condition of self-centered identity, which does not want to go through painful experiences, does not want to repeat these experiences, does not want to live them again. This is fear, and it comes from the past. The point here is that whatever you overcome once, you have to overcome again, and again, and again...
So, people spend their entire lives overcoming this so-called “fear.” In fact, they are in a game of duality. They replace that moment, which is the moment of projection of the mind, which is a moment of fear, with a projection of courage. What we call overcoming fear is projecting the opposite of fear at that given moment. So, everything you overcome, you have to keep overcoming, and overcoming, and overcoming... That's why people say: “Look, when I go to give a public talk, I still feel sick to my stomach in front of the audience.” What's happening with them is that they are always overcoming the fear of the audience, always overcoming the fear of the public. And then she says: “Look, I’ve been giving lectures for thirty years and I still feel this thing in my stomach, I still have this reaction in front of the audience.” What she has been doing for thirty years is overcoming fear, because she is in a psychological projection in front of that situation.
So, this so-called “fear,” we can only overcome it through courage, and that is not the point here. We need to discover the nature of fear. This is the end of fear, and when fear ends, it does not come back, because what is coming back only comes back from the past, and if it is coming back from the past, it is because it has not been completed, it has not finished... it has not disappeared. So, here, Gilson, it is not about overcoming fear, but about understanding the nature of the one who is in this movement of this so-called “fear,” which is the “I,” which is this set of memories and remembrances that comes from the past, which, when the new experience arises, when faced with this experience based on this past, one comes into conflict with this experience, and this sustains fear.
So, here it is about freeing ourselves from this “I,” this particular center, this experiencer, this fearful person. So, the end of the fearful one is the end of fear. The end of the experiencer, which is basically this past, is the end of fear in this moment. So, at this moment, there is no fear, because there is no projection. I don't know if this is clear to you. This requires work on yourself, deep, clear, very direct and objective: understanding the Truth about who You are. This is the end of that person as you see yourself and therefore this is the end of fear. It is not about overcoming fear, but about discovering the Truth of That which is You. You in your Being are, here and now, free from fear.
Only in the egoic mind, in this movement of ego projection, is fear present. For this to happen, you need to get closer to the Truth of Meditation, to what is this “understanding yourself,” “to know yourself,” and to get closer to the Truth this way, to what I have called True Meditation, the correct Meditation. So, this is the end of fear, and with the end of fear, everything dissolves, everything disappears, including this idea of someone losing their things in death. So, this subject of death is a very extensive subject. We can go deeper into this here on other occasions with you.
GC: Master, it's interesting: the Master brings the speech and, normally, we have this impulse to understand, and, in the intellect, we cannot understand what the Master is saying. I remembered here, Master... In a Satsang – which are these intensive weekend meetings –, the Master was giving a talk about fear too, and then an understanding came in which something became very clear, because I had an experience of fear, and then something became very clear: as it only exists, this fearful thought only exists as long as I remain in the thought. Then, in a little while, being on the ride, in this sharing of the Master's Presence, I was paying attention to the sensation – because it generates a sensation in the body, fear –, and then, staying in this attention, in the sensation, the fear was already disappearing. Later, the fearful thought would return and the fear would emerge again. And then it became very clear what the Master says: that fear is just this thought, thought, thought, because, by remaining in the experience, which was a sensation in the body that fear was generating, it was already dissolving.
MG: Fear, Gilson, requires the presence of the experiencer, the presence of this center, which is the “I,” which is the one who has kept in memory the remembrance of the pain that it rejects, that it does not want to have, that it does not want to live. So, when we are faced with situations, they are situations where the present Truth is revealing itself, but the sense of a present identity, which is the “I,” which is something from the past, when it arises in front of what is here, as an event, which is an experience – an experience that, by the way, needs to go away, and that doesn't go away as long as this sense of an “I,” which is the experiencer, is appearing to clash with it. So, what feeds the condition of this so-called “fear” is the presence of this “I,” which is the fearful one.
What there is here and now is an experience. It is physical, it appears in the body, it is an impression. We call it “fear” when we place the experiencer, which is the “I,” based on the past, who has already gone through experiences that we previously also called “fear.” This experience here, pure, without the experiencer, does not need to be called “fear.” It is called “fear” because there is a sense of an “I” that comes from the past and confronts it. In this recognition, there is an identification. So, there is the sense of a separation, which is this “I,” to say: “I don’t want this anymore.” This is the presence of that energy that thought calls “fear.” When this is present, fear is present.
But if you bring, right now, to this experience, the awareness of observing the presence of this energy, the presence of the experience, without naming it, without putting an identity to reject it, observe what happens. You will discover that without this experiencer, without this “I,” without this desire to free yourself, to do something, to try to end the experience… because it all comes from this experiencer, which is the “I”: This is the one who tries to free itself, it is the one who judges what happens, it is the one who compares what happens, it is the one who tries to end it, and all this based on this past. When we do this, we are again reaffirming the existence of an egoic identity within the experience, and herein lies fear. So, this continues!
The real way to deal with experience is without the experiencer. This is an approach to Self-awareness; this is an approach to the Truth about Meditation. It is approaching this moment and looking at all this psychological movement that arises in the face of experience, and just becoming aware of this movement, without accepting, without rejecting, without saying “yes,” without saying “no.” In this way, Gilson, you eliminate the thinking element, the experiencer element, the “I” element, which is the fearful element, which is the one that clashes, which is the one that wants to fight against what is here.
What is valid here to deal with this so-called “fear” – because now we have just said it to you: this only goes by the name “fear” when there is this background of memory – this also applies to intrusive thoughts, any emotional disorder, any suffering appearing at this moment. This originates from this unobserved, ununderstood psychological movement. This is present in the “I,” in the ego.
There is no suffering in Life, there is only suffering in the mind, and here “mind” is this movement of the “I,” the “ego.” I refer to this egoic mind. Why is there no suffering in Life? Because Life is as It is! It is when this element, which is the “I,” the ego, which comes from the past and is faced with Life as It is, and wants to fight against It, rejecting or trying to get rid of it, or choosing what suits it at that moment, that’s when conflict arises, problem arises, suffering arises.
The invitation in this work, Gilson, is to discover the Truth of Who We Are. This is present when the sense of ego is not. Discovering the Truth of Who We Are requires that we now understand what we appear to be or what we demonstrate to be, or what we project ourselves to be. Becoming aware of this requires this Attention, an Attention free of choice, judgment, comparison, liking or disliking, of what is shown here. This approach is the approach of the annulment of the ego, of the annulment of this false center. This is a legitimate approach to correct Meditation, to the Truth of Self-awareness.
So, everything that people today do in the name of self-awareness, or in the name of meditation, outside of this Real Understanding of this duality, is just something that can calm them down, give them something, add psychological states to them. Everything will still be within the known, that is, it is not the end to this sense of an “I,” of an ego, of a separate identity. The Truth of the end of fear, or the Truth of the end of suffering, requires something new, the presence of something totally unknown to the ego.
So, the Truth of the Unknown is the Beauty of That Which is Nameless, Indescribable. This is where this State Free from the ego resides, it is exactly at the end of this so-called “known,” which is this movement of the “I.” This requires work, this requires deepening, this requires a very true approach to that Natural State within us, which is the Presence of the Divine, which is the Presence of God, which is the Presence of the Nameless, of That which cannot be captured by this movement of thought and, therefore, yes, it is something outside the known, it is the Presence of Being – we can give different names to this Reality that is beyond all names. This is the end of fear. It's fascinating to investigate all this!
GC: It's interesting, the Master commented on the so-called “self-awareness” ... What is sold is that we have to put, if there is fear, we put courage. So, there is a fear, but not… “I can,” “I do.” And, in reality, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, right?
MG: Gilson, on one side of the coin, another side is always hidden. We can't see both sides simultaneously, but the other side is also there. So, what we know as “the end of fear” is the other side of fear. That which is having a form, has another form hidden behind it. So, this duality is something present in these psychological aspects of the ego. We replace fear with courage, pleasure with pain, joy with sadness, so-called “good” with evil. These are all aspects of the ego itself.
So, egoic identity carries this duality. For example: what we call love has the opposite. On the opposite, what there still is, is just a single coin, which is hate. The end of the ego is the end of duality, it is the end of this so-called “love,” it is the end of this so-called “fear,” this so-called “pleasure,” it is the end of this whole “I” centered position, what life is like in the ego, a life within the known. Life within the known is a life within duality and therefore a life settled in that coin, and we need to discover something beyond duality and therefore beyond that coin. That’s it!
GC: Master, gratitude! Our time has come to an end. Thank you for this videocast. For those who are watching the video, leave a “like,” comments with questions for us to bring to the next videocasts, and whoever feels what is beyond what Master Gualberto is saying, is invited to come to Satsang, to be able to embark on this “sharing of Presence,” to be able to deepen this investigation of what fear is, of everything that Master shared with us in this videocast. Gratitude, Master! See you soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment