GC: Hello everyone! We are here for another videocast. Once again, Master Gualberto is here with us. Gratitude, Master, for your presence.
Master, today I'm going to read an excerpt from Joel Goldsmith's book called: “Living the Illumined Life.” In this excerpt, Master, Joel makes the following comment: “Christ is not something you will achieve. Christ is the Being that you are, something you must recognize now.” Master, how can we recognize this Divine Presence in us?
MG: Here we have, Gilson, a question that we have to see how we formulate it, because, in general, our questions are quite biased, without realizing that their tendency, exactly, to give us a wrong approach to the subject. So, we ask with the intention of knowing, but the way we ask can disorient us. For example, in this case, you ask “how to recognize?” The Truth about you is not recognizable by the mind. The element in us that recognizes is that element that knows. We deal with experiences based on the recognition we have of them, because we have already been through that given thing, and when we face the experience again, we recognize it. We recognize it because, in fact, we already know it. This knowledge is mental knowledge, it is knowledge of memory, of remembrance. The Divine Reality in you is not recognizable, because It is outside the mind, outside the intellect, outside thought, outside the memory and, therefore, outside every experience.
This is a subject that we have to approach, first, by understanding how experiences are settled. Experiences are based on knowledge that we bring, based on the past. When we go through an experience, we record those experiences, they become memories, and when we meet them again, we are just recognizing what we already know. So, all recognition, Gilson, implies the presence of prior knowledge. That's why we recognize it. When we talk about Divine Reality, this Truth of the Christ or this Real Consciousness, This is something outside the intellect, outside of thought. People use the expression “Christ” or “Being of Christ” as if it were something they could recognize. We cannot recognize That which is outside the mind. So, this Divine Truth… we use names for It: “Consciousness,” “Christ Consciousness,” “God” … In truth, we do not have access to It in word, in thought, in memory, in the known – which is memory –, in knowledge – which is past experience – and, naturally, recognition is impossible.
Here, the Realization of something outside the known is possible, but this Realization is not a recognition that the person makes. It is That which is present, exactly, when there is no “person,” this mind with this model of memory, thought, knowledge, known and possibility of recognizing. Divine Reality is present. It shows itself as it is when the “I,” the ego, is not there. So, when we ask the question “how can we recognize?” ...We cannot recognize, because when This is present, you are not present to recognize anything. Who would be recognizing if not an entity separate from experience? This entity separate from experience is still an observer and this experience is not the Truth. If it can be recognized, it is not Real, and if there is an element that can recognize it, this element is also within this pattern of separation, of duality and, therefore, still part of illusion.
The Truth about God, Consciousness, Christ, is the Truth that is present when you are not. This is the point! It is not possible to have this Reality present and the sense of the ego, of the “I,” of the experiencer, of the observer, being aware of It, recognizing It. Note that this is the way, in general, thinking works in people's heads. They wait or hope to have an experience of God, an experience with God, and when they have experiences, they attribute these experiences to experiences that are coming from God. Notice, if they are recognizing the experience, it is just a memory experience, it is just something that is still within the field of the known, the field of the mind, the field of thought; It's not real yet. In fact, no experience as an experience is Real. Truth is not an experience, Truth is the end of the experiencer and, naturally, of each and every form of experience. It is the end of that element that recognizes itself as the experiencer and the end of that which can be recognized. It is the beginning or appearance of something completely new, outside of the “I,” outside of the mind, outside of thought. All right?
GC: Master, we have a question from Simone Castro. She made the following comment and question: “I feel little glimpses of this state, then it disappears and I forget the Truth. How can I stay in it?”
MG: Okay, here's an example: “I get little glimpses of this state, then they disappear...” So, notice, what you're having are experiences – experiences that leave a record, leave a memory – and then you remember these experiences. These are very pleasant experiences that you want to see coming back again and again and again. Now, believing that these experiences are the Reality of this Natural State outside the “I,” outside the ego, that is not Real. We can have, Gilson, experiences, we can have glimpses of something, but when that disappears, only memory remains. Memory is not Reality; memory is not the thing. And when there is, afterwards, this demand that this thing come back and remain, where is this demand coming from? Naturally, from the experiencer, from the one who recorded the memory, which is the “I,” which is this “me,” which is still this egoic identity, which is the identity that separates itself. Demanding or wanting that what was experienced to return is only possible when the element that recorded the experience, which is the thinker, the experiencer, is present.
Divine Reality is not for the “I,” it is not for the thinker, it is not for the experiencer. We cannot expect that What is Real to have continuity within this model, to have this permanence within this model. Reality is not in time. Notice how interesting this is… It has no permanence. When Reality takes over Its space, time ends, illusion ends, the thinker ends, the experiencer ends. So, this demand of ours to see an experience, however pleasant it may have been, maintaining continuity, is still a demand of the “I,” still of this personal sense, which is the mind.
The work consists of becoming aware of this thinker, this experiencer, this “I.” The awareness of this brings about the discarding of this element and That which is Real takes its place. When That takes over, the illusion of time ends. This is the Natural State, where That which is Truth is present, but there is no longer this movement of appearing and disappearing, there is no longer this movement of glimpses, of moments in which it is present or absent. So, it is important that we understand this. I understand your question, but as an answer to your question, some work is necessary. But this work must be done with this very clear view that it is not a state that becomes permanent, like a state that someone has experienced. This Natural State is something completely new. When It takes over Its space, which is this Real Space, there is an end to this continuity of this “I,” this mind and, therefore, this movement of time, where we are in a certain state and, in the next moment, we are no more.
Here, the work consists of becoming aware of this movement of the “I” at this moment, and the idea of a state is just a belief, it is just a concept of a state that will become permanent. We eliminate the sense of “I” through self-observation, through work of self-investigation, through Meditation. The presence of Self-awareness is fundamental, until there comes an instant, a moment in which this body-mind goes through a change and this Natural State takes over Its space. But, remember, this Natural State is not an experience, it is not glimpses, it is not these brief perceptions that appear. The mind captures and transforms it into a memory and then wants more of that same thing. OK?
GC: Master, in relation to this issue of wanting to capture the experience and then remember it, to be able to comment on it, to desire it again, I want to comment on how, in Satsang – which are these encounters that the Master provides to help us in this self-investigation, but there is this sharing of Presence, of Silence – and, especially, in the retreats, which are seven or ten-day retreats, it is funny how, after seven or ten days of this direct contact with the Master, we have no remembrance of an experience we had or something that happened. It seems like you really leave time, the known, and there comes the end of the meeting, the Satsang, the retreat, and we don't even know what happened. There is no way to summarize the meeting, for example. Can the Master talk a little about this?
MG: This is very basic, Gilson. When there is mindfulness, complete, full, total attention, within a given experience, the element that remains to register this disappears. Every time you have an experience – these glimpses are experiences – that you can register, that is not yet a contact with this Real Consciousness, with this Truth outside the mind; It's just an experience! It can be a rich, deep, wonderful experience, but it is something that happens and that leaves a record – it leaves a record because, in fact, the one who records, which is the “I,” the thinker, the experiencer, is still involved in the experience. It's an experience!
Contact in Satsang, the interesting thing about these contacts – the word Satsang means “the encounter with Being, with Truth” – is that, in these contacts, something new emerges. This “something new” is the end of this “I”-consciousness, this thinker, this experiencer. It does not enter when That is present, when this Reality is present. That's why there's no record. When contact with That which is outside the mind is real, there is no record. When people report that they have had experiences, they often say: “When my Kundalini awakened, this, this, this happened…” or “I was meditating and then, suddenly, this, this, this happened…” All this type of report occurs due to the presence of an experience. Yes, it is a wonderful, extraordinary experience, different from the ordinary, everyday mind, but it is still an experience for an experiencer. This is still within the realm of what is known, because it can be recorded.
In Satsang, something else happens, a moment of Stillness and Silence happens, where the sense of “I,” which is the experiencer, disappears. So, there is no record, because it is not an experience. Do you understand? It's not an experience. What you experience in Satsang, in these encounters, are moments where the sense of “I” disappears. If it disappears, there is no record of it. If someone asks “how was it?”, you have nothing to say, because you are outside the known, outside the experiencer, outside any description of any experience. What people have, Gilson, in general, very commonly, are glimpses. These glimpses are contacts, still, at the level of experience. They keep the record and then they talk about it, and they wish they had more of it, but it's not Real, because it's still within the known.
It is real as an experience, but it is not Real in the sense that we put it here, that we are giving to this word here. We are talking about something that is outside the mind, that is outside the known, which is the State of Being, free from the “I,” free from the mind, free from the registration model, which is just what thought, in this format of “thinker,” does: it is to register, register, and then ask for more of it. Once you have direct contact with Reality, this “you,” this “me,” this “I,” disappears. So, it is a state outside this brain pattern that works based on recollections, remembrances, memories. Every thought in us, Gilson, is a record of the past, and every memory is only a memory because it was recorded. Anything you go through and can register is still part of what thought can recognize. If it can recognize it, it is within the model of time, the model of the known, it is within the model of the “I.” OK?
GC: Master, we have another question here, from Maria do Socorro. She asked several questions in the same comment. I will read them and then the Master will respond. She makes the comment like this: “Wow! So, is the anxious one present in anxiety? Is the fearful one present in fear? Is the angry one present in anger? Is this the so-called ‘consciousness’? Be aware that one is present in everything?”
MG: No, she completely misunderstood that. It's not that. Gilson, there is some confusion regarding her comment. It is not the anxious one present in anxiety or the fearful one present in fear. It's not about being present. Fear is the fearful one, anxiety is the anxious one! It's not about being present, there's no such thing as being present. It is the presence of the anxious one in anxiety, both being one reality. So, to put it very directly, there is only anxiety because of the anxious one, there is only the anxious one because of anxiety. It's not that one is present in the other thing; there is only one phenomenon present, and that phenomenon is present because the illusion of separation, of duality is present.
When fear is present, the element in fear is the fearful person oneself, but the fearful person is fear. When there is this separation, the illusion of “someone” is created to get rid of fear. Then, there is a separation between the experience that is here and this element that separates itself as being the experiencer of the experience. This separation is completely false, because what is present, when fear is present, is fear. It's just fear! The idea of getting rid of fear is already the illusion of an observer wanting to do something with fear. This movement is the movement, yes, of egoic consciousness, of “I”-consciousness. There is no Reality in this other than the reality of the sense of duality, of separation and, therefore, this is where ignorance and, naturally, suffering are present.
When we have, for example, a thought, it is a present thought. When we want to do something with our thoughts, it is because there is an intention, there is a will, there is a “like,” a “dislike” of the thought. When this occurs, we have an illusory separation, which is the separation of duality. This is how we are living our lives: in the illusion that we are thinking, in the illusion that we are feeling, in the illusion that we are afraid, we are angry, we are sad, we are thinking... In fact, the only thing present is anger, it is sadness, it is thought, and, naturally, this illusion that there is someone who can do something to get rid of it when it is unpleasant, or to appropriate it, identify with it, when it is pleasant.
The result is the condition of this egoic consciousness, which is the consciousness of the “I.” This egoic consciousness, which is the person's consciousness, is an illusion. Only when this ends do we have something outside of the known, which is present, which is not part of this model of consciousness, which is not part of this condition of duality, of separation. So, we need to have an approach to clearly understand this. In general, we have difficulty, because the idea is the idea of someone present separate from what they think, what they feel and every experience that happens, due to this model of egoic consciousness that we bring in this conditioning, which is common to everyone. OK?
GC: Master, we have another question here, from Vivian Melo. She makes the following comment, asking: “Is it the Self the absence of the ‘I’, the me, the ego?”
MG: Note the question: it is a theoretical question. We also want a theoretical answer. We have to investigate this in an experiential way. Otherwise, we have a theoretical answer to a theoretical question. It is a question that is actually seeking what, exactly? A verbal confirmation. This verbal confirmation is a theoretical confirmation. When Reality is present, there is That which is Real. In the intellect, we want an answer to this, but the intellect does not reach it. So, I would say that work is necessary for this Understanding, in an experiential way, of That which, in fact, remains when illusion ends, when there is no longer this illusion.
This is important, Gilson: not to get attached to words, because we have this very strong inclination to hold onto words intellectually, and the intellect in us lives trapped in this learning model. It captures, acquires knowledge, information, and then repeats it, as if it were a Real Understanding. However, it is only an intellectual understanding, and this intellectual understanding does not prove to be Real. We are full of formulas, ideas, concepts, beliefs, based on this principle of understanding a subject intellectually and talking about it, or thinking about it. When we speak or think, since we are dealing with thought, we are only at the level of the intellect. There is no Truth in it, there is no Reality in it. OK?
GC: Master, our time is up. Thank you for this chat. And for those of you watching the video, here's an invitation. If you have this yearning, this thirst for Truth, you are invited to participate in the intensive weekend meetings, which are the Satsangs. There are online meetings, in addition to in-person meetings and also retreats. In the first comment, pinned, there will be the WhatsApp link for more information about these meetings. And also, go ahead, leave a “like” on the video, leave a comment with questions, so that we can bring them to the next videocasts.
Master, gratitude!
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