The clear vision of this is Enlightenment

The word “investigation” reminds us examination, a way of getting closer to something through inquiry, through observation. Realize how import it is to observe! In Satsang, we are investigating ourselves, self-investigation. It is difficult for you to accept, at first, the illusory nature of the world or of its experiences, since they are very intimate, private, personal, and that is all you have.

So, when you come across a Self Realized Being, you cannot expect this One to say to you the things you are used to listen. Your perception of the world is not the perception of the Sage. You perceive the world as something external to you, but for the Sage it is not like this. For the Sage, the perception of the world happens spontaneously, in the Self, in this Consciousness, and you can only see this through self-inquiry. You cannot understand the illusory nature of the world without understanding the illusory nature of the “me,” of the “person.”

You are the Reality of the world! There is no world without this Reality that is You! Your True Nature is that where the world arises, where life appears. You are not a person, you are not an individual, but you have forgotten this. Only self-inquiry can arise as a light bringing this remembrance, so it can come back, be there again. It is quite paradoxical, because this has never been far away or has never been, in fact, forgotten, but that is the way it seems to have happened.

I am talking about the Reality of our Essential Nature. The world is not external. Life is not external. The world and life are a form of perception, and You are this Consciousness, this Reality, this Presence where this perception arises. Your body-mind is like an electronic mechanism – as long as the electric power is circulating, it keeps on working. But if there is no energy circulating, even though it is in perfect condition and with the key turned on, the mechanism does not work.

So, what you call “perception of the world” is just a process that takes place in this “mechanism” [body-mind]. This Energy called Consciousness, Presence, is like the electric power in the electronic mechanism. If this Energy is not there, the mechanism does not work. So, what you call “world” is just a perception of this Consciousness in this mechanism. What you call “life” is just a movement going on for this mechanism. See how this is important to be investigated! There is no reality in this particular mechanism, because it is part of every experience of the world or of life.

Reality is in this Energy, in this Presence or in this Consciousness. The only Reality is this Consciousness! For the rest, everything is a game of light and shadow, of phenomenon appearances that are quite superficial. You give too much importance to your personal story, but there is no personal story, because there is not a “person,” there is not an “individual,” there is not an “entity,” there is not “someone” in it. It is just the mechanism. I know this is very frustrating, because you will never become an evolved spiritual being; different from others, since there are no “others,” nor are there “you.” There is only this Energy, this Consciousness, this Presence, which we can call God, the unique Reality.

The unique Real Life that animates this body, this mind, is What transcends the senses, the body itself, the mind, in short, What transcends everything! This Unique Power is this Consciousness. Only this Power is present. You are not who you believe to be! Silence, Truth, Consciousness is this Power. It is this “Electricity” that makes all mechanisms work. Actually, these mechanisms are only ideas. They have no reality separate from this Power, from this Consciousness. This great Power, in a magical way, joins female and male cells together, and then this mechanism called “human body” appears. This is just a magical apparition of this unique Power.

I have been talking this to you in these meetings: the world has no greater reality than the dream you dream at night. Your waking state is no more real than your dream state, nor is it greater in meaning, in importance. They have exactly the same quality! There is nothing happening in your waking state that is more important than what happens in your dream state. It is all the same!

What I am saying is that your body is “dead.” Everything you see around you is “dead.” The only Life is this Presence, this Power. So, all your worries are completely useless! Everything that has to happen will happen! Everything that does not have to happen will not happen! Everything is already as it has to be or will be as it has to be, and nothing is out of place! All this confusion there inside your head is just a game you want to play, but it is not yours. It causes you distress because you want to win it, but it is a game that is not yours, a life that is not yours, a story that is not yours. A birth, a “living” and a death that are not yours.

The clear vision of this is Enlightenment, Self-Realization, the vision of the Sage, of the Truth! So, if you find out This in yourself, all your problems disappear, because they are only present when “you” are present. The problem lies in this idea “you” are there. So, be brave! Say it so: nothing is real! Say with me: nothing is true! There is no truth!

My Master showed me This, this Truth. Only faith in Master allows you to see it. The most important weapon you have is faith in Master! The world is just a thought. Life is just a thought. So are your conflicts, problems, dilemmas, desires and fears. The awakening of the inner Guru, of the inner Master, of Presence, of Truth, happens when you discover what it is to live in your Self, in your True Nature, in your Being. From the view of a Realized Being, of the One who is seated in Ones Real Nature, nothing is separate from Being, from Consciousness.

It does not matter if what you have on your finger is a wedding ring or what your wife has on her ears are earrings. If these objects are made of gold, this is their nature. The shape they have at the moment does not matter, for the earrings and the wedding ring can be melted, but gold remains gold. They can take another shape, but the gold keeps on being gold. Likewise, the Nature of Reality is God. There is only this Nature! There is only this Reality!

This object you call “human life” is not important. This is the vision of a Realized Being! While the Realized Being sees gold, you see the wedding ring, the earring. While you are concerned about shapes and names, the Sage is looking at the Essential Nature of the apparitions.

What I am saying is that the mind is not the cause of the world; that shapes, names and apparitions are not the basis of the world. The basis of the world, of life is something that transcends the shapes, the world and life. Your fundamental problem is the illusion that “you” are there, controlling, doing, solving, deciding, taking care, worrying… There is no surrender, abandonment, trust in this Reality that sustains the whole existence. So, you remain in trouble, with problems. The ultimate Truth is, nothing happens or is happening, that is, nothing is true. The final Truth is that there is not an ending or beginning. You think in terms of events happening in time: 50 years ago, 100 years ago, or two hours ago, but this is just imagination. There is nothing like “the time when things happened” or “the time things will happen.”

I have just said, "What has to happen will happen and what does not have to happen will not happen." However, I am saying absolutely nothing with these phrases, because nothing, in fact, is happening, happened or will happen. There is only this Energy in movement or producing a movement, which is just a game within this so called “private perception” you believe you have. Actually, this is also only fiction, imagination. Do not think about this, remain without thinking, and this will be the total sum of Reality. Every thought is a fraud, every idea is just imagination going on, an image in motion. Then, what you call “mind” is just a factory of illusions.

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on August 21st, 2019. First published in Portuguese on January 11th, 2020.
Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 07:30 pm (Local Time: Brazil BRT), except during Retreat periods.
For more information to participate, please click here.

The indescribable Ocean of Full Happiness

How to look, hear and feel? How to think? How to deal with what presents itself? What we do in these meetings is to discover how to get out of this model, the old personal model. You are always limiting the perception of what is by making conclusions. What is, is very vast, wide, deep, but you assume a conclusion about this, about the situation, the circumstance or the appearance. So, you place yourself into a limitation, because your perspective, vision, is totally personal.

This explains unhappiness. For example, everything that is born, dies. However, who accepts death? All sentient beings, all living beings, every biological life die (I say “biological life” because, perhaps, you do not accept that everything is Life expressing itself). Everything that is alive, grows up, gets old and dies. However, Nature is very capricious and, sometimes, before getting older, a living being has an accident and dies. Not always the cycle completes itself.

Do you know what happens? Your mind is trained to not accept what is. So, you do not accept disease. You do not accept accident. You accept old age and death. I am giving you just an example of how you behave when you think, decide, make conclusions about how Life is. However, Life is not as mind concludes and desires. The mind has an image of permanence, safety, control, but Life is Real. It is not in the imaginary. Life is in the mystery, in the unknown, and it is not giving explanation to anyone, because there is no one for It.

So, if I could give you a piece of advice, it would be: let things just as they are! Do not meddle in the Divine’s business. Everything is God’s business! Life is God’s business! So, do not get attached to conclusions, do not fall in love with objects. Fall in love only with Life, with the manifestation of Life, not with the objects where Life manifests itself. Notice that there is a difference. The Sage is in Love with Life, but he is not attached to the objects where Life manifests itself.

Because Life is this mysterious movement. Life is manifested in an object, but then It leaves this object and remains in next one. So, you say that the first one has died and the second is alive. This is also just conclusion. Life is manifesting itself in another shape. However, you are living in the mind, so you are in love with objects. You call this love, but this is suffering, illusion. There is no Truth in this.

So, let it all loose! This is only possible when you are without conclusions, without ideas about right and wrong, without this “I like this,” “I do not like that.” You do not need any time for this Freedom. You have an insight… Do you know what an insight is? In Zen they call it Satori. It is when I am talking something here and you feel, you know, you perceive it and say “I know what he is talking about!” It is not an intellectual understanding, which is useless. An insight is a direct perception!

If you work fixing watches or cars, you need to understand intellectually how a watch mechanism works or the mechanics of an automobile. Intellectual understanding is important in some areas, but regarding to Consciousness only "intuition" is necessary. I use the word "intuition" very carefully, because I am not talking about what mystics and esoteric ones take for intuition. Intuition is Satori. It is this insight. It is this perception outside the mind. It is this Consciousness of Reality about what is here and now.

So, when you know what I am dealing with here, not sentimentally or intellectually, in imagination, but in Silence, in the direct Silence of this non-verbal Perception, this is Satori. Then, something within you says “ah!”, but you are outside of the mind, of conclusions, of imagination, of ideas. Therefore, the point here is always this: remain in your Being! Remain outside of the mind! Do not give room to this model of thinking that repeats itself! This way, you are always here and now, new, fresh, unique, without story. This is to be outside of report, of description. Story is description. Life does not carry story. Story is a dead thing; it is a description of an event in the past. Here, at this instant, at this present moment, there is no story. There is never story!

People talk about eternal love, but phrases like that are completely absurd. If it is Love, it is not eternal, and if it is eternal, it is not Love. We are socially educated for mediocrity. So, in the mind, you are reproducing the culture of lying, of illusion. When we miss someone, we call it as “eternal love;” and we call lack and neediness as “love”. When there is Love, there is only Love, there are not objects; and since there are no images, there is no story. So, since there is no time, it cannot be eternal or non-eternal. Love is timeless. It is not connected to objects or images and shapes. Love has nothing to do with stories and cannot be described.

We only have one “thing” here – That which is indescribable, nameless, without story! This is Meditation! So, do not do anything else! Remain in Silence! Remain disidentified from shapes, names, images, thoughts. This is Samadhi, the Natural State. Thus, birds can be heard, because no thought interrupts their singing. They are singing when there are no thoughts, images, story. When there are no objects capturing your attention while the birds are singing, they are neither outside nor inside; they just sing… Inside and outside disappear! This is Meditation! “You” are not there, and when “you” are not there, Buddha is present, Christ is present. Now, throw away the word “Buddha”, the word “Christ”, the word “God”, the expression “Pure Being”. Throw everything away! Remain there!

Now you know what I am talking about, and when you know what I am talking about, there is no longer “someone” talking, there is no longer a Master, there is no longer a disciple. That is the Truth! There is no Buddha either; and if you find him, you “cut off his head”! We have just done this. To "cut off the Buddha's head" is to be here in the Ultimate Truth, when you know there is no Master or disciple; that there is no inside or outside, wisdom or ignorance, illusion or truth. Everything is in the right place, absolutely everything in the right place! This is Happiness, which is when nothing else is expected, nothing else is sought, searched for, when there is no more desire, fear, past, future. Future comes with desire and past comes with the story. What was, is not; what is, was not; what is, will not be; what will be, is not; and here is everything!

People want a practice, but I do not recommend practices. My recommendation is: Give up! Stop! See how simple it is. You are so used to moving... And you do this not only physically, but also and mostly psychologically. So, although the body is still, you are with your family; But there is no family here! You “move” towards your child, your parents… I am saying: Stop! Remain here! Without family, without internal sound. So, you can hear the bird, you can hear this voice, which you do not know whether it is coming from outside or from inside, for the inside and the outside have disappeared. The voice does not interrupt the Silence, just like the bird singing. This is because the voice is the Silence, the bird’s singing is the Silence. You are the Silence!

In some moments of your life, you have “scratched” Happiness, had a small taste of the indescribable Ocean of full Happiness. You could not cut It deep; it was just a little scratch. At these moments “you” disappeared, you were not there. Then the mind came back and said, “What was that?” There were not measures for that joy, fullness, freedom… So, you were looking for adjectives. I am saying that you have only “scratched” Happiness, and you only got this when you were not present.

Samadhi means being immersed in this Ocean of Bliss and Happiness, and not about just a brief “scratch.” Samadhi is to disappear! It is like the drop that falls in the ocean and you can no longer distinguish what is ocean and what is drop. This is the meaning of Existence – Samadhi, Supreme Beatitude, Supreme Bliss! This is present when you are not present, when your eyes are God’s eyes. Do you know how God sees? It is the way you see when “you” are not present. You find that look when, at a glance, you look at a baby. In the time of our watch, it lasts about two seconds. Two seconds in which you are not imprisoned, because "you" are not present. At that moment, you are not a prisoner of time. You are in timeless Love and there is no mediocrity, no limitation. In your Being, there is no limitation! You are God all the time!

So, surrender! Surrender! God is the unique Reality in your Being! This is God! The heart beats, the bird sings and you hear the sound. Do not worry about your life, because there is no “your life.” “Your life” is the Life of God! There is only God everywhere, in everything! This understanding is Samadhi. My understanding about Life is that You are God. I only see God! Do not struggle with your thoughts, with your emotions, feelings, perceptions. Do not fight! Just live in this disidentification. It is so simple! Why do you turn this into something so difficult? Why do you live in your attachments? Your Love is God! I decided only to live in this Love. My Guru showed me this Love.

What is your real need? If your heart is full of God, there is no need, because there is no fear, desire, conflict and attachment. Do you understand this? If you want to be free, be it! Right here and now! This is an Ocean of Happiness! This beautiful Ocean is open for you! My Guru showed me what Real Meditation is. Meditation is the key! Please, listen carefully: Real Meditation is the key! The master key! All doors are open with this key! It will open the door of Wisdom, the door of Intelligence, the door of Love, the door of Silence, the door of Happiness. One single key is enough and then You are in Heaven. I am not referring to heaven in opposition to hell. I am talking about Heaven without opposition – the Kingdom of God, and This is within You. So all you need to say is: “My Beloved God, my life is yours!”

* Face-to-face meeting transcription originally held in Ramanashram Gualberto in Campos do Jordão city-SP-Brazil, on March, 2018. - First published in Portuguese on January 8th, 2020. For more information about how to participate, click here.

There is nothing and nobody outside

In general, human beings live a very superficial life, with an internal need, which is the yearning for Peace. This is an internal “gate,” but it seems hidden for the great majority, because their interests are too superficial. Our education, our upbringing, since childhood, is turned to exteriority, to a “breadwinner” life: to study, to graduate, to work, to raise a family… and the children follow the same format. People die and their children follow the same model.

This internal need for Peace, for Consciousness is hidden by the superficiality of the social conditioning, of the cultural model in which we were educated and inserted. So, you do not know the possibility of going beyond this superficiality. You get married five times to find love! If you can live longer, you get married twice or three times more! In this superficiality, the promise is that you are going to find something on the outside, but you never do! This promised “thing” is love, peace, happiness, always on the outside.

The matter is, Who are you? You do not ask this to yourself, because you already take for granted who you are. You believe you are what the society, the world and the culture say you are. So, you can only reach where the society, the culture say you can. Actually, it says that you have to go somewhere, and thus you try to go to the place it indicates. However, the more you walk, the more you get yourself far from your Self. That is because when you do not know yourself, when your knowledge about yourself is only based on what the thought says, you remain oblivious, alienated from the Truth – the Truth of Who, in fact, You are.

There is a yearning within each one for something greater than this ordinary life. We are here facing something that cannot be forced over others. I talk about this tremendous yearning for self-discovery, and this is something that comes by inquiry, by investigation – when you leave the traditional thinking and turn to the inquiry about yourself, to ask what this is, who you are. It does not happen because the other tells you to ask what you are, it is something that arises within you. You must be like the scientist: curious. However, your laboratory is not external but internal. You must inquiry exactly like a scientist about your life, and here the laboratory is your own life.

Then, it is possible to Awaken to the Truth about your Self. When Truth is present, there is not confusion anymore, there is a complete surrender to this Perception, and this is fundamental. This is something that depends on how you understand the matter about how suffering is something absurd in your life, about how stupid it is to live in suffering. That is why this Awakening is not for the majority, for they are still sleeping about this. They have no interest. It is a kind of conformed state and everyone is unanimous in accepting this model.

When I was a child, the most important thing for me were those moments in which I could be suspicious that there was something that did not fit in. It was at that moment that I felt there was a lack of totality, of completeness. That was my life in the midst of prayers for God to reveal Himself, because I was taught, as a child, that God was real, that He was the answer to any human affliction and confusion. Then there was this pursuit. When I was 24, something happened: there was the appearance of the Presence of my Master, my Guru. This produced dynamism for me to explore more deeply what was wrong, what was missing here.

You need to have a certain maturity, and when this is present, you are attracted to the Truth, by the Truth, to this encounter you need to have with Yourself, with That which you bring therein. That is why no one can and does not even need to teach you something about This, because it is already there. It is like a child leaving the womb, he/she already goes out looking for his/her most vital life experience: the mother's breast to suckle. No one needs to teach it to the child. Within the person, there is a yearning for the Truth, and when he/she is in this maturity, this yearning grows so great that he/she cannot bear to live without this Reality anymore. It is when the baby searches for the mother's breast to be able to feed.

This is the yearning you have inside for the Truth. Call this Truth, God, Presence, Consciousness, give any name for This, because it has no name at all. It is “something” beyond this mediocre life of yours. Some pay attention to this sooner, others later, but you will have to pay attention to this at some point, because you cannot live far from "your mother's breast." You have no way of “nourishing yourself,” “feeding yourself,” that is, you cannot keep on having a life without This.

There is no possibility for Freedom, Peace, Love and Happiness if there is not Life, and there is not Life without the Truth. This “teaching” is without teaching, because it is not teachable. It is a “teaching” pointing to What cannot be taught. It is a matter of Awakening! Then, you become more and more aware, more and more conscious, and you go beyond the egoic mind, the sense of a separate “me,” beyond these “dream” matters: social, economic, philosophical, spiritual and political matters. You are beyond this, beyond the illusion that you were born as a Brazilian, American or German one, beyond this notion of being a person with a genetic and cultural inheritance. You Awake, and then you are a Sage. This is your Nature, the Nature of God, of Truth, of Consciousness, of Reality.

Is not this? If this is not so, you remain attached to these justice and injustice matters in the field of ethics, moral, politics, religion, in the field of culture. I am talking about the Realization of Happiness, of the Realization of your Essential and Divine Nature, of That which others, before you, have realized one day and have also talked about this “gate.” It is not a closed door. It is an open door! It is just as if it were hidden from the great masse, from the majority, because the majority has no interest in investigating this, has no maturity to this yet.

These old patterns are the models you inherit from society, from the world around you, in which all, absolutely all, are attached to this duality between right and wrong, fair and unfair… So, you have matters about who should win the world cup, who should be the next president, who should solve the issues in this or that area. You remain attached to this as if it were your reality, but it is just the “dream” that thought builds about the world around you, which, in fact, is not even around you. It is just inside your head. However, no one has ever informed you anything about this, even because you were not interested in hearing any of this. Now, you are turning to ask yourself “who am I?” which is something new, a new moment. So, you become more and more present to know who You are – my Master showed me This.

You need to discover that suffering is an idea based on thoughts, on this belief of this false “me.” You are too much attached to this supposed identity you believe to be, and here is what sustains all this illusion of your life, all the problems you have had and will have in life (you had because you were “sleeping” and you will have only if you do not “awake”).

This false identification with body and mind is your problem. When you have this understanding, this becomes a real and new direction to your Life, because now, your Life is Real. It is not the life given by society anymore, by culture, by the world, by priests, politicians, by ideologies and beliefs, all of them based on the concept of duality (what is and what is not; right and wrong; true and false; good and bad). You are not a concept or a belief, you are something greater than that. You are God! You are this Presence, this Reality!

This is the realization when you get in through this “gate” that, until then, seemed to not exist or to be hidden. That is why Jesus Christ said one day, “I Am the gate.” He was talking about this “gate”! He was referring to Christ that is your internal Reality. When He said, “I Am,” He was talking about this “I Am” that You are, about this same Reality, because there is only one Reality in the whole manifestation, which is this “I Am”… “I Am the Gate.” So, I found out ... I knew Myself happening at that moment, not as a concept, but as a Being without a location.

Do you understand this? The realization of the Truth about This that You are, is the understanding of the non-location, the nonexistence of time and space. You are the own Reality of Christ, of God, of Truth. It is not only the Reality of Jiddu Krishnamurti, Eckhart Tolle, Ramana Maharshi, Buda and Jesus of Nazareth. It is your Reality! It is You! This is not a belief, a name, a shape, nor a story. When Truth is present, this self-image dissolves, the history of self-importance collapses and everything is welcomed in this unique Reality You are, in this Consciousness, which is God. So, there is no more the partiality to people, because there are not “people” anymore. There is not fear of people anymore, because there is not a “person” anywhere and anymore! There is not frustration anymore, disappointment, nor enchantment with the external anymore. So, nobody is going to give you more Love than what You Are here and now. Nobody is going to give you more Peace than This that is already here and now, because none of This comes nor will come from the outside. There is nothing out there!

Who told you there is something outside? There is nothing out there! Then, Happiness will not come because you are going to change your car for a 2019 model. You do not need a car, a bigger house or a new apartment, or a new girlfriend, a new marriage, or more children… You do not need “more”! My Master showed me this. So, everything, absolutely everything, was perceived in a new way. A complete change is present in this realization of the Truth about What You Are.

*Online meeting transcription, originally held on June 1st, 2018 - First published in Portuguese on January 1st, 2020. Online meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 pm (Local Time: Brazil BRT), except during Retreat periods. For more information about Paltalk app and how to participate, click here:

You need to be willing to This

When you answer this invitation called “Satsang,” you need to be willing to this or, otherwise, nothing is going to happen. What I have noticed is that few ones can venture. Few are really ready. There is very little willingness to this. I am talking about detachment, breaking... It is essential to accept the possibility of the breaking, the possibility of something new arising. So this is a very challenging invitation. You need to have this disposition, and if you have it, you may be one in a million.

What am I talking about? I am saying that you have the Unknown ahead you, but you have the past behind. If this break does not happen, the past becomes your present and continuity is maintained. This is like walking in circle. No matter how much you walk, you will be still inside it.

It seems that the vast majority has not understood this yet. People hear about Realization, a State free from time, free from the experiencer, free from a “me” with its conflicts, dilemma, problems, but they are not willing to go beyond the circle, beyond the past. Realization, Self-Knowledge, Enlightenment (or any other term you use), will not make any sense for your life as long as you remain within this model.

I used the word “breaking”... You need to break with your past, what has gone needs to be broken, so that there is no continuity. This is the true meaning of Realization of God, of Enlightenment: the break with the old, with what is behind you, with what has gone, with the history. You need to be willing to this. You need to venture, to embrace this challenge of breaking with this old “me,” with this way of thinking, feeling and acting totally based on beliefs, choices and desires.

Until today, your action has been based on fear, and this has occurred because you do not break with the past, you do not accept to go beyond this false “me,” beyond all content of this false “me.” So, you do not reach the Unknown. I have just said, “There is the past behind and the Unknown ahead.” Notice that I did not use the word “future,” but the word “Unknown.” What is ahead is only the Unknown. Your whole past has become your present that, on the other hand, has become your future. However, in fact, your future keeps on being your past, because it is still only continuity. Enlightenment is the breaking with this.

If you are here, you were born to Realize This. What are you doing? Where are you going to? Look at you... You do not get out of the circle! Everything is happening again. It is always the same thing happening, because you have not accepted the Truth. You are not willing to embrace It. You are not willing to Be Born. You believe you were already born, but you do not carry a new Birth. You carry an old past. It means that you were not Born! That is why Christ said one day that you need to be born again. This is not only the message of Christ, it is the message of the Sage, of the Jnani, of the one who is free from time.

When you venture into the Unknown, a real and new Birth takes place. When you are Born, you die, your past is detached, broken. This is the Birth of Truth! It is not the person being born. It is the New arising, the plunge into the Unknown. This is the Realization of God, Real Enlightenment! However, if you continue to keep the past with the cover of something new, this is just a forgery; knowledge is this forgery! I talk about the spiritual knowledge, Advaita, about the mystical experience, the experience from the practice of meditation. After some time, you become an expert on it. Someone capable of “putting away” the mind, feelings, emotions, sensations, perceptions and of diving into yourself. However, this “yourself” still reflects something from the past. It is still there, in a subtle way, almost invisible to ordinary eyes, but it is there.

What I mean by that is that you do not need mystical experiences. You do not need meditation practices or specialized knowledge about Enlightenment. You do not need to know anything about this! All of this, in fact, is something quite dangerous, for it is the possibility of covering the old. If you are a Sage, you do not need knowledge, you do not need mystical experiences, you do not need to be an expert on meditation. You are a Sage! The Sage is the one who was born again! The Sage was brave enough to break with the past and to plunge into the Unknown.

So, the Unknown is like the ocean before you. You may stand still here on the sand beach and do not venture. You may stay over this rock, seeing this whole ocean in front of you and keep yourself safe. This rock is your past. This sand beach is your history. It is the continuity of this false “me.” Then, when you come to Satsang, I say to you, “It is time to accept that it is possible to die.” First, I said that you need to be Born again and now I am saying that you need “to die,” because you can only Be Born if you “die.”

To accept the Truth is to abandon the illusion. The illusion is all your life, your history, what you know about yourself. That is why my emphasis is always in this matter of Real Meditation, which does not come from a practice. It is not a result of a mystical experience nor something that can be learned. Meditation is the Awakening! It is the flowering of something that is here and now, within you. So, when I talk about the Unknown ahead you, this “ahead you,” in fact, is within you; But do not do as some who believe that by closing their eyes they can go inside. Absolutely! To go inside is not to close the eyes but to accept the break of the known, of the past, of this “me.” I am saying this “me” is false and is settled in a totally false basis. Desire is part of this structure. Fear is part of this structure. Knowledge is part of this structure.

So, when I invite you to look inside, I am saying, in other words, “Jump into this ocean! Abandon the sand beach! Leave the sand beach, get off that rock and walk towards the ocean!” I have been talking about it for a while, but what I have noticed is that people are not willing to do it. It seems it was too much for them. They want to pinch Happiness a little. They want to taste it in just a touch. So they soon walk away, because they realize the danger. There cannot be Happiness, Love, Peace as long as "you" are there, on the top of that rock, on the sand, looking at the ocean: this is not the place.

*Face-to-face meeting transcription originally held in Campos do Jordão city–SP- Brazil, on April 1st, 2018. - First published in Portuguese on January 16th, 2020. Please access our agenda and join us: http://mestregualberto.com

Meditation: the complete emptying

Meditation is the complete emptying of all burden, of all this huge content of things the person needs to have to “be someone,” of the accumulation of everything you have already read, heard, studied and lived, of everything is in the memory of this mechanism, in the own brain cells, which makes you say “I am so-and-so,” “I am Carlos,” “I am José,” “I am Maria,”“I am Pedro,” “I am Marcos.” Something you never detach from. Meditation is the sweeping of all this, the emptying of all this content! It reaches that "me" and goes beyond it.

Meditation is not a ten-day practice or a two-hour daily practice in the morning and at night. Real Meditation finds this space of investigation of the illusory nature of this “I am so-and-so.” It has to find this space completely free from this “I am so-and-so,” “I am a soccer fan,” “I am politics fan,” “I am…” So, self-investigation is present when the space is entirely free. Self-investigation is not to follow a speech like this one and believe that you are investigating this, for this is only one more speech.

After listening to many speeches like that, reading many books about the subject, you can even make a pretty speech, if you are a good orator. You can know this technically, in a perfect way, managing this with an extraordinary precision, but listening to speeches about this is not self-investigation.

Self-investigation is observation. The observation of the movement of “I am so-and-so;” and that is not for ten days or for a weekend, or for two hours in the morning and at night. It is present every moment! It is the way you listen to the sound around you, whatever it is. It can be the song of birds in the nature (something that mind loves) or the scream of a sexist, mandatory, oppressor husband, screaming in the woman's ear, or a woman screaming in the husband's ear. Meditation is to hear this and not fleeing! Knowing how to hear this, being before what is unpleasant without internalizing it, without mistaking yourself for “someone” present in this experience, feeling hurt, sorrowed, sad, angry and afraid. This is Meditation! While listening, seeing, sitting down, and walking, at lunch time, going to the bathroom, moment to moment… This is to bring attention to That which is prior even to the feeling “I am.”

Thus, it is possible the Realization of the Ultimate Reality, of this Truth that does not have name, shape, color, taste, smell, which was never born and, therefore, does not know the day of birth or birthday party. You cannot keep attaching yourself to “this side.” Do you know what I am talking about? At the side where all you know is apparition.

There will be the interruption of this on a day called “day of death,” but there is no reason to be afraid. Of course, there is no way to know the Unknown. Meditation is the Unknown, and you will not know It. Meditation is the Presence without shape, without a name, without color, without flavor. When Meditation is present, there is not the known, there is not this “I am so-and-so”, “I am José.”

You must be willing to abandon the story of the character: husband, son, mother, father, and it means a complete break with the known. I repeat: it is not to know what the Unknown is, for you will never know what It is! You will never know the Unknown! This Realization is the absence of this one who realizes. Real Knowing is the absence of the “knower.” Real Experience is the absence of the “experiencer.” Life is the Unknown. The expression so well known in India “Jnana,” we translate it as “Knowledge,” which is this pure Knowing without the “knower.” So, Meditation is to come close to this “I.” Now, if you bring it closer to your living, to your day-to-day life, you say, “I am Carlos;” Cut this “Carlos”, cut this name with its story, then there is “I am.” Cut the feeling of “am” now, here, and then the "I" remains. What is this "I"? This "I" disappears ... Here you are! That is it!

Either you are with this or you are stuck to your problems. Here each one has a drama. Ask the neighbor next door that he/she is going to say that he/she has. In some level, he/she has. Either you remain stuck to this drama or you work on it. Ego is going to be resented. It is going to say, “You are not being careful, you are not giving due attention to this.” That is because the ego wants to fix things. You have to perceive this in you. I know, because I experienced this in the past, I saw this too. There was a time when there were also dramas here, which were the same as these ones you have today. You believe the dramas are yours and keep trying to fix them, but that cannot be fixed, because this is karmic, it is destiny, it is already traced. The only thing you can and need to do is to disidentify from this thing. Do you understand? That is it! What is the difference from Osho, Ramana or Krishnamurti to you? None! They just stopped caring about the story around them. They cared about for so long that one day they realized they had no way of being stuck in it, because it was ridiculous! In a few minutes speech, I am summarizing it for you here, directly. That is exactly what I meant all the time with these so cute words, and they are useless too. The only right thing you are doing now is to be here, and there is nothing else you can do but listen to this.

*Presential meeting transcription, originally held in Ramanashram Gualberto in Campos de Jordão city-SP-Brazil; on March, 2019. - First published in Portuguese on December 12th, 2019. For more information about how to participate, please access: :http://mestregualberto.com/agenda/agenda-satsang