What is the right attitude to approach the Master?

Participant: What is the right attitude to approach the Master?

Marcos Gualberto: If you are invited to the royal palace in England to see the queen, you will receive some lessons about social conventions, about how to behave in front of the queen. Any different behavior can be considered an insult, and that means, at the very least, you can be expelled from the room she is.

In this meeting with the queen, who is the authority, who has the power, who owns the kingdom, who gives and who receives the favor? It seems to me that everything comes from her! From her there comes favor, hospitality, grace. She is the queen! You will not try to explain to her how to rule her own kingdom. You are not part of the government, neither to give an opinion nor to vote on decisions to be taken. You are just a visitor.

So, what should it be like to visit the Guru, the Presence, the Consciousness in the form? Will you say this Consciousness in the form is a liar? Or are you going to discuss how the Guru does or does not do his or her job? No! You cannot come to my kingdom and discuss how I rule it, if I cast someone out of the kingdom, if I mistreat one of my subjects... You don't have the power to do that. I am the owner of the kingdom. I am the king. I rule the way I choose to rule. When you do that, you are no longer part of the kingdom. This is the arrogant way of behaving in front of the Guru.

The Guru accepts and expels whoever he or she wants! Seeing justice or injustice in this is up to those outside the kingdom. If you're part of the kingdom, you don't argue about the king's decisions.

So, what is the way to be before God, which is the Presence, Consciousness? Without mind! No opinions, no judgments, no comparisons, no conclusions... Because you are before Grace! You depend on this Grace! And you cannot forget this: you are coming to me! I am not coming to you! You are coming to me to receive this favor, this Grace, which is the release of this lie, this arrogance. So, the real way to be here is to know what it means to be before a Sage, before the Presence, before Grace!

This arrogance drives you away from yourselves! You have to come here with tears, not screams, and with an inner sadness in your heart, for seeing everything with a background of fear, frustration, disappointment, anger... It's not time to scream. It's time to cry, to regret. It's time to ask, "Master, what's going on? The fear is here, the pain is here, help me out with this!" That's the attitude you should have when you're with me! If it's true that you only have me to help you out with this mire of arrogance, prepotency, vanity, fear, then learn to look at me. Come here and say, "Master, help me out with this!" Do it here, in person, and also when you're away! You are not talking to a physical form, but to Consciousness, to God!

You don't go to the Guru to question him or her. You go to the Guru to give up being "someone" in front of his or her gracious Presence, blessing Presence, enlightened Presence. Serving the Guru is not serving another person. It is surrendering to the Truth! When there is this surrender to the Truth, the hidden Guru in the disciple's heart reveals as the disciple's own Self. This is Enlightenment! This is Realization!

Don't demand me for Realization. Deserve that! Be worthy of that Grace – even though Grace is not earned by merits. When you are "deserving" this Realization, you will receive it by Grace, not because you deserved it. This is how Enlightenment happens: it has to come to an end, then there is no "someone," only Enlightenment.

You can see on the stories of those who attained Realization through Zen: hearing absurd things from the Guru, getting nose-pulled, being thrown out of a window, being punched, being hit with a baton, sitting in front of a wall, witnessing and hearing absurd things like Koans. All this for many, many years! And apparently, it is like nothing was happening, not even a slap on the back from the master saying, "you're fine, you're evolving." No acknowledgment, no applause for deeds, for obedience. On the contrary, the "rope" gets shorter and shorter; the demands, greater, year after year. But questioning the Guru, never! Doubting the Guru, never! Thinking about desertion, don't even think about it! Year after year! Apparently, nothing is happening, and there comes a day, like a stumble – or a literal stumble on a small rock – and the ego crashes!

The disciple ceases to be a disciple, when he or she makes oneself worthy of this Grace, through surrender. This Grace comes without merits to a disciple who ceases to be a disciple, only because the inner Guru has flourished, has taken over... Because the "king" returned to the throne and recognized his royalty. By grace? Yes. By merit? Yes. By merit? No. For all those years? Yes. For all those years? No.

Don't go to the Guru asking him or her for what you cannot receive, even if the Guru has that to share with you. Go to the Guru and surrender, surrender yourself, deserve to touch the Guru's feet, enable yourself to do so. It is not possible to realize God by being someone. It is not possible to realize God while still having many dreams, being too attached to other things.

Your place is in this space: in the space of meditation, surrender, renunciation, liberation from the world and its fantasies of paradise, happiness on earth. This is the path of Grace: surrender. It's the only way to be worthy of what you can receive without any merit. You either believe in yourself or trust Grace in the form of the Guru.

One day Christ said, "He who remains till the end will be free, he will be saved; if you truly abide in my words, you will truly be my disciples, then you will know the Truth, and the Truth will be that Freedom, and the Truth will set you free."

One day, Buddha said, in his last sermon, "be a light to yourselves." Is it possible? In the ego, no! In Consciousness, yes! And Consciousness is present when the Guru is present, when Grace is present, when Truth is present. So, the Light is there.

It is a huge mistake to see the Guru as just another person. The Guru is not just another person. The Guru is God, Consciousness. The Guru is infallible. The Guru is a solved case!

When you go to a living Master, you are going to encounter Freedom. You can't steal it from Him or Her. You're not going to understand Him or Her. You're not going to take a little piece of Him or Her and take it with you. You will not learn anything from Him or Her. There is nothing you can take from Him or Her, but The Guru is as generous as the sea to receive you into His or Her waters. You cannot steal anything from Him or Her. Either you give up on doing this with seawater and plunge into the sea, or you will fall into this illusion of trying to grab a part, which will end up returning to itself. So, when you go to a living Master, it is better to bathe in the waters of His or Her Freedom and be free with Him or Her.

You have to come to me to be One with me, not to draw conclusions about who I am, who you are, what I know or don't know, what I've learned or not, what I can or can't... This is nonsense! You have to come to me to be in that Silence, to dive into my eyes, my heart, my absence, my Presence. Plunge into that Meditation which is where I am, where I am What I Am.

Stop thinking about your personal, private life, your relationships where there are things to hide or to say in private. When you are with me, come to dive in this sea, come to forget about this "someone's" story. "Someone" who has to make a trip, to have distractions... What for? Come to this sea, travel into this ocean of Liberty! Otherwise, you will keep taking that ego to those trips with you.

Live without ego! Live without the sense of separation! Live in Supreme Happiness, in Freedom! Live without fear, without conflict, desires, anxiety about future, without worrying about the past, without personal stories! When you come, come in and immerse yourself in my art, in the art of Being, in the art of being nothing, of being nobody! Without being born and without dying! Nobody is ever born, and nobody ever dies! Nobody ever gets married. Nobody ever gets divorced! No one ever is or isn't...

This is so simple... but you make things complicated…

*Presential meeting transcription, originally held in Fortaleza city, Brazil. First published in Portuguese on February 25, 2016. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

A room without walls

As long as there is a sense of separation, the notion about a "me" inside the body with its beliefs and feelings, you will not stand before the experience as it shows itself, as it presents itself – the pure experience of this moment. This sense of separation falsifies the experience of Reality. The experience of this moment is the Reality of Happiness, of Freedom, of Peace. The thought/feeling is a veil, a curtain over This. When you get lost in this identification with thoughts and feelings, you ward yourself off from the present Reality, your Real Nature, your Being.

This present moment, which is Reality, is the moment of Love and Beauty, it is always the moment of God. This is not the moment of the "person," which is just a belief, conditioning, something you were educated to believe. That is, you believe you are a person present here, right now, but there is no "person" in this moment! Consciousness is present, so what we have right now is this Presence-Consciousness, but there is no "person." Thoughts always represent shapes in the space. Thus, the thought, which is only the imagination of shapes, gives "reality" to a personal world since the "person" needs shapes – the shape of other people, objects and all kinds of images. There is no thought without images. Thought revolves around images, shapes. When thought comes, it always approaches with images.

Remember something, right now, at this moment... For that, you need images. Thoughts are images that are in the Space, and you cannot imagine that Space. The Space is a formless void, a room without walls, and there are no rooms like that. You cannot imagine a room without walls – this is the Space. This Space is the Presence-Consciousness, without shape, without a name, without story; it is the Nature of Reality, of God, of Being; it is your True Nature, and therefore You were never born. Some "walls" were built and a "room" appeared, but the Space was already there, before these "walls." The Space inside is the same Space outside. The "walls" created an illusory separation between inside and outside and did not give reality to the Space, only creating an illusory limitation.

When you identify with thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations, you are imposing a limitation on yourself – the limitation of being "someone," a separate entity, a "room." So, you say you have no freedom since you have become a prisoner of your own beliefs. Fear is self-created, so are desire and suffering, and these are the "walls" that apparently limited and imprisoned the Space. In Reality, Space is not a prisoner, but the illusory sensation is of being imprisoned. This is the sense of separation in the illusion "my space" is one and "your space" is another; "me and the world," "me and others."

Participant: Why did Space allow Itself to be imprisoned?

Master Gualberto: There is no prison for Space since, actually, It does not exist. These "walls" are beliefs, mental concepts, cultural conditionings, imaginations. Space is not a prisoner, and there are no real walls. These "walls" have "bricks," which are the thoughts, the feelings and the sensations. When you identify with thoughts, the "walls" are raised, and when you trust them, they are strengthened. When you trust feelings, the "walls" are reinforced, that is, it is pure conditioning, it is cultural. The ego is a cultural, social product, the result of education. You were educated to be miserable.

In this world, the more human beings study, the more stupid they become. It is a "breadwinner" education. You study, but the thinking remains stupid, narrow, limited. You study a lot, but the "walls" are still standing – jealousy, envy, desire, fear, concepts, prejudices. You may earn a little more money since you studied and now you can buy a luxury car. You are now rich, but a miserable one! There is the miserable poor and the miserable rich. When they die, one goes under the ground and the other goes to a mausoleum. It is a big difference, isn't it?

*Online meeting transcription originally held on May 5th, 2017. First published in Portuguese on January 22nd, 2021. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

You are God and there is only Him

It is neither present inside nor outside. What is really present is this Reality, which is not inside or outside. We can call this Reality as Grace, Consciousness, Presence, God... It is always present, outside every notion of space and time.

The reference of thought is the reference of forms. So, you have learned that God is within, and I am here questioning that. It is not inside. It is not outside. Inside and outside are always from thought's perspective and not from Reality. Reality is this Presence always present, here and now.

This Reality makes the birds sing and the flowers bloom. It makes waves crash against rocks and allows your heart to beat. It makes these clouds float in this blue space, which we call the sky, It makes them run smoother or faster...

That Presence always present, always here, always present... here. It is not inside. It is not outside.

Do you know why I invited you? To show you that you are that Presence! This has been my invitation to all who come. Some people are at the right time to receive that invitation, welcome and receive it deeply in their hearts. And others are not at that moment. But my message to the world is: You are Love, You are Happiness, You are Beauty, You are Silence, You are God!

It has been bitter, hard, difficult because you switch What You are for what you are not. You artificially replace this present Reality with this illusory movement of thought within time, which places you into the past and into the future, which creates this notion of inside and outside, making you trust this illusion of the person – of this person that is just a belief. This is an illusion.

You are the Happiness I am. I am the Happiness You are. Time and space... just imagination. Body, mind... just an idea. In and out as well.

You do not need to live in that illusion, in the illusion created, nurtured, fostered by thought. You can be free! And that Freedom can only be realized, seen, demonstrated to you as You to Yourself, here, now! That is why I invite you to abandon the ego, to abandon the sense of being someone who places oneself in an illusory relationship with the world.

An example of this is our so-called affectionate, loving relationships – all based on fear, on the desire to be someone to someone or to have someone to someone you believe you are.

Truth is not that! The Truth is this present Reality that makes the birds sing, the flowers open, each one with its uniqueness, with its scent. The Truth makes every cloud in the sky unique, every dewdrop, every flower that turns into fruit on a tree, and each of those fruits being unique. However, only one Reality is present beyond these shapes, names, colors, flavors and fragrances...

In Satsang, I am giving you a choice, which has always been denied to you. Every choice you know is the choice thought engenders, something imaginary. This means going around in circles, which, in fact, is not a choice. Living in the ego is not a choice, it is going around in circles.

All your conquests, accomplishments, all your satisfaction, pleasure and fulfillment in these relationships – which you end up turning into egoic relationships, where the ego splits in two, into observer and observed thing, into the loved one and the one who loves – always end up in a vicious circle of pain and suffering.

I am giving you a choice – the only one possible, the only real one. This choice means to stop choosing, to stop being in time as a separate entity. It means to be in everyone's heart and to have everyone's heart inside you. It means abandoning the notion of inside and outside to be everything and nothing, to be here and everywhere.

Satsang is to encounter What Is, the association with Reality, the association with Yourself.

You are God! God seeing Himself. God looking at Himself. God in love with Himself. God meeting Himself. Only here exists the one who loves and the one who is loved, God and the devotee, the Guru and the disciple. It is in this sense that the Guru is essential since the Guru is the one who shows you this.

You look at a rosebush and notice that some flowers are no longer buds, they have bloomed. Some of them are still in bud, and others are in all their Grace, in all their Glory, in all their expressions of rose. The Guru is a rose that has blossomed. The disciples are rosebuds. But they are a promise, a beautiful, gorgeous, indescribable, extraordinary promise. It's all already there! There is no separation in the rosebush! It is only one rosebush, the same Life! The touch in the rose bush is the touch of the same Grace, the same Presence! One Life, one sap, One Being!

Awakening, Enlightenment, Self-Realization, whatever you want to call This, means the blossoming of your Real, innate Nature, What You are, now, here. That is why you are coming. Others will also come.

The music of my flute delights the heart! And when you come, you acknowledge yourself, being in the rosebush, being part of this, being this, being all of this!

You were born to be what You are! Nothing more, nothing less than That! And that means being God! There is only Him! The only rosebush, the only rose, all the roses! Thorns are also part of that. Everything is part of this. The rose is not hurt with the thorns. They do not harm the rose, They never reach its petals, its perfume, its dance in the wind when it blows, its delicacy... the thorns can't hurt it at all.

The Guru arrives first, but here the first and the last are irrelevant. A flower that blooms before does not make it a separate being, a different being, a special being. The Guru is important, not because he is special, but rather because, in Him, we can see That which we are, we can smell the scent that we also have, we can see how beautiful is the dance of the rosebush when the wind is blowing, and also see that the thorns are there, but that everything is part of this rosebush.

I want that, my only interest is that you abandon the illusion of choice, the illusion of being in time, going somewhere to be happy or fulfilled there. My only interest is that you abandon the illusion of looking for this on the outside, of trying that way.

God is the only need, What cannot be replaced, What is not outside, is not in power, in wealth, in relationships, in personal achievements... Absolutely! He is there, looking at me now, behind these eyes!

That's it! And that's only this!

*In-person meeting transcription originally held in Ramanashram Gualberto, in Campos do Jordão city/SP-Brazil, on April 2016. First published in Portuguese on May 31st, 2016. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

Conscious Immortality

Consciousness does not talk. Consciousness is silent! The mind talks. Consciousness is beyond the sound and the silence. You cannot hear my voice. However, you can enjoy my Silence. In the mind you express thoughts. Consciousness is only Silence and has no expression. What differentiates an Advaita teacher from a Master is that the latter never talks, while the former talks a lot.

With a teacher you learn since he or she has something to teach. With a Master you unlearn. The Master does only one thing: He destroys all your knowledge, once it is useless. Knowledge only deals with the known. The known knowledge is only for dreaming. Through knowledge, you build a rocket and launch it into outer space. Then, the rocket leaves the earth, breaks the law of gravity, and goes into outer space. However, the rocket, the earth, the law of gravity and outer space are part of the dream. They are good for nothing else, just for that. If knowledge is not useful to realize Happiness, then it is useless. Knowledge is going to put a satellite in space, and now the GPS will work, the TV channels will broadcast the signal, but nothing the TV channels show will bring Happiness. So knowledge is useless.

There are doctors here, in this room. Through medical, scientific knowledge, you can cure your patients. They will have a healthy body and they will live longer, miserably. Sorry doctors, your knowledge is useless! It only prolongs the misery. I have just proved to you that knowledge is useless. It is just to prolong the dream.

Silence destroys the dream. Silence represents Conscious Immortality, Supreme Happiness. So, Silence is important, knowledge is not. Sorry doctors, your knowledge is rubbish. Atomic science, quantum physics, nuclear knowledge are useless. None of this can make your eyes shine with happiness.

I am not a doctor. I am just What I Am. And you are just What You Are. That is enough. You do not need to know anything in this world. Just know yourself. This is the only valid knowledge. If you know who You Are, you know you are not inside there. You know there is no one to know oneself. So, you know everything is Him, and He is revered in everything. Then you behold Him and enjoy Him everywhere, and He is your joy. So, the only knowledge that matters is knowing who You are. You were born for this.

It is not my words that are making "this thing" work. This thing called Satsang happens by itself. There is no one there. You do not come back because of the words. There are many writers, philosophers, many scientists... and they are impressive, admirable people. There are many wonderful people in the world. Isn't it? You have to learn to have fun with all this; you cannot take it too seriously. They are playing important people. Let them believe they are impressing you. But do not be impressed. They do not know Conscious Immortality. After death, they all become ghosts. And you know how ghost's life is, some ghosts are friendly and some are not.

And what changes? Nothing changes! If you do not live your Real Nature here and now, anything internally is still the mind, in a time created by the mind. Reality is here and now. Everything else is mind's creations: spiritual places, heaven, hell, "lower zone" ... If you are identified with the mind, you are in time, you will go to one of these places, it is unavoidable. But if the mind has disappeared, if it has immersed in the Source, the material and immaterial universe disappeared.

That is beautiful, isn't it!? The end of the dream!

Is there anything that distresses you more than that? To desire what is not here and now? To want something to be different than it is? See the peace of the Sage: He wants nothing. The Sage is just having fun, laughing at all this madness.

Do you get that?

God pours Himself out abundantly. Life is Grace, Joy, God, there is only God! His game seems very cruel for you, some are being born, and others are dying... Yesterday, I saw a bird eating an insect. The insect was flying and the bird was faster than it. It is a game. There is nothing wrong with your life. You have no personal life because there is no person. There is only the game. So, whoever has come and has already gone, it is all right, do not demand anything that has already gone, and do not demand anything that has not come yet. Everything will come, and everything will go away. But it is a game. Do not make it personal. Then, you learn to live as a Sage, without attachment, without desire, without fear.

When people ask me, "How can you live like this?" I ask them the same question back: "How can you live like this?" That is the same question. The Sage is asking the same question as the fool. How to explain this? It is a mystery.

Your certainty about everything is huge. Abandon this. Abandon what you believe you know. You know nothing!

There is an expression used out there in a pejorative way. The expression is: "in blissful ignorance." Have you heard the expression? But it is a wonderful expression, since it accurately pictures the Natural State. It is of complete ignorance and of an unbelievable sacredness. Your Natural State is of an in-blissful ignorance. It is quite paradoxical. The one who shares the Real Knowledge, knows nothing!

Isn't it paradoxical?

*In-person meeting transcription originally held at Ramanashram Gualberto in Campos do Jordão city-Brazil, on December 3rd, 2017. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

Self-Realization: The end of the sense of separateness

Realization, Enlightenment or Awakening are words generally used as synonymous with this State free from the egoic mind. This is a State simply free from the egoic mind. It has nothing to do with the body's presence or absence.

Realization, Awakening, Enlightenment is not necessarily the end of the dream of this mind-body appearance, but rather the end of the illusion of the sense of separateness. What ends is not the body; the only thing that ends is the sense of separateness. The body is well in its place. The mind, in the sense of memory, cognition, intellect, is also fine in its place. The only thing that ends is the sense of separateness. This sense of separateness is what represents all misery, all suffering, this whole illusion of ignorance. There is no ignorance, as well as there is no suffering! Suffering, as well as ignorance, is within this illusion of separateness. More than that: it is pure fantasy! The body and the mind are only appearances.

The Divine reality, the reality of God is this reality of non-separateness, of non-duality. Duality here implies the idea, the belief, the imagination of "me" present in the experience "body-mind-world." So, the illusion of an identity called "me," "I," in this experience "body-mind-world" is duality. Thus, there is the "I" inside the body, the world outside the body, and the body as part of the world – this is duality. And above that "me" and the world, there was God. This way, this separateness, this sense of separation, is the illusion of duality. It is basically that. What ends is only this. Nothing else changes! You do not become a special being, wonderful, with miraculous powers. None of this!

The body is not the problem, it is just an appearance – the same way at night you have the world's appearance in the dream and a body to live that. And this body is not you either, for as soon as you wake up in the morning, you find out it was only an imagination – both your body and your world in the dream. And the dream experience for you is quite real! If you are bathing in a river, in the dream, the water is quite cold; if you are walking beneath the sun, it is quite hot. If you are thirsty in the dream, the water in the dream quenches your thirst. So, you have a body, a world and an experience in this specific world of dream. This experience is of a dreamer, and this dreamer is only the illusion of an identity present in the dream.

Then, human being's experience is also the same thing. In the egoic mind, you see yourself as a human being. You see rocks, animals, plants, rivers, oceans, forests, deserts, Sun, Moon, stars, and so on. You see all of this as a human being, as something separate from you. And this is also only in imagination. It is only the magical movement of the mind. This is the sense of separateness, and all this ends in Awakening, in the Realization. It seems very little, but I do not know if we can measure the volume of this "thing," if we can measure this. The end of duality, which is the end of this separateness, is the end of the world, of all this "your world."

Participant: What about the extraordinary experiences they tell us?

Master Gualberto: The Sages do not talk about these extraordinary experiences. There is no extraordinary experience in the Awakening. Awakening is the end of all experiences. While there is an experiencer, there will be experiences, and the more subtle and spiritual the experiencer is, the more subtle and spiritual will be their experiences.

Participant: And what about the Satoris, Samadhis?

Master Gualberto: Satori is a Zen word, and if you observe, you will discover within Zen that satori is the end of the experience, not really an experience. Samadhi is also the end of the experience, it is not an experience. Satori and Samadhi refer to your Natural State. In your Natural State, God is not spiritual. I refer to that Divine Reality that is you in your Real Nature. You are God in your Real Nature, and this is not spiritual; this is quite natural. It is not ordinary in the sense that we use this word, it is not common, but it is quite natural.

The state free from the egoic mind, free from the separatist mind, the mind that divides, compares, evaluates, the mind that judges, prejudges, desires, fears its end. The mind that may have a glimpse of That, "insights" of That. We can call it as Satori or Samadhi. But if this does not establish in the body, in this body-mind mechanism, it will also be just one more experience the mind will recall, will remember. This is not real in the mind, and then what does it do? The mind reports it as an experience. It can only tell it as an experience, but this is not the Awakening. In the Awakening there is no experiencer anymore. Without the experiencer, there is no experience, and then there is no "someone" left to tell something.

When Peace, Freedom, Happiness, Love, the Divine, Consciousness, God is present, there is no experiencer. That is the end of this "you" you know.

Today, we are talking directly from the Ashram, in this space here in Campos do Jordão city (Brazil). We have about thirty participants with us here in Ramanashram hall, and we have you here in this virtual Paltalk room. We are more than ten here, so we are in about forty people. This seems to be so, but it is not true either. This is the magic of this Divine world, this world of Grace, this world of God.

The appearances are appearances in What never appears, in What never takes shape, is never separated into boys and girls, men and women, plants, animals, sky, stars, moon, virtual and not virtual rooms.

This work does not require specialized technical understanding. It is not like studying Chemistry, Physics or Medicine. You do not need specialized knowledge. Actually, the unusual side of this work is that here it is essential to unlearn everything you have learned. Here, it is rather a deconstruction of everything that has been built over the years, throughout history, in every culture, in every civilization, of all spirituality, in short, all of that. Here, the Awakening, which is the flourishing of Wisdom, the blossoming of Happiness, which is the acknowledgment of God's Supreme Truth, is only the acknowledgment of your Real Nature. It has nothing to do with specialization, degree, capability, not at all. Here you unlearn! When you unlearn everything, the Sage blooms!

The Sage is in the opposite direction. Everyone is going in one direction and the Sage is coming back. For a long time, all of you have been trained to walk in one direction. When Satsang comes (Satsang means "to encounter what is," an Indian word for "association with the Truth") we receive an internal call for the acknowledgement of this Reality we are, and that means "going back." All our conditioning is about walking in one direction, and now the invitation is to go back. We have to make the way back. All this was only for us to ward ourselves off from home, and now we have to go back... go back home. We ward ourselves off from home with our projects, our dreams, our desires, our pursuits, our achievements, our accumulations... The idea was to "be someone," and now we are coming back home. We are disappearing. We are abandoning this venture, this endeavor. We are seeing the mistake of striving to be while we forget to be. Every effort to "be" wards you off from Being. Every pursuit of happiness is the very impediment to the acknowledgement of this Happiness that should not be sought. Searching for Self-realization wards you off from the acknowledgement that everything is in its place and already ready. There is nothing to be accomplished, much less by "someone." So, you end up going the opposite way. You are now going back home, back to your Real Nature, which is Consciousness, Presence, God, Truth. If you do not like one of those words, you can cut out one of them. We will not need any of them anyway.

Once someone told me he liked my speech a lot, but he was not comfortable when I used the word "God." Then I was quite generous with him – in every meeting then I just used the word "God." Instead of using the word "Consciousness," "Presence," "Being," I said, "God," "God," "God," "God." Either you abandon me or you abandon yourself and all your prejudices.

In this work, you all need to go beyond the entire egoic mind configuration. This has a reach, an extent and complexity you have no idea. You only begin to have a slight notion of this in Satsang. A slight one, since you have to go slowly, in homeopathic doses. The egoic mind carries so much burden, so much conditioning... thousands of years of conditioning! Maybe you are only three decades old. There are some in this room, in the Ashram, and also here on the virtual Paltalk room, who are maybe three, four, five, six or seven decades old. That is nothing! Seven decades are nothing! Eight decades are nothing! We are talking about millions of years. Since when you were an amoeba, a unicellular being, you were already learning, discovering the outside, starting your journey to the outside, physiologically and psychologically.

Do not underestimate the plants, not even the stones. They all have mind and consciousness. You cannot forget that when we talk about consciousness. We are not talking about cognitive ability, judgment, comparison. This is only within this intellect of this so-called human being, and some animal species. When we talk about consciousness, we are talking about experiences, the power to experience and "separate oneself." When this is very advanced, as in humans, this consciousness experiences itself in this illusion of "being the agent," the author of the actions. Therein emerges the sense of "me," an experiencer in the experience, in a quite "clear," "precise," "responsible" way. But that is for another Satsang. For now, it is enough for us to stay here, in this moment, aware of all this movement, without identifying with it, without giving it this uniqueness sense of an experiencer, an observer, a present author in it. We call it Meditation.

Meditation is this freedom of Being. The experience is just the experience without "someone" inside it. Thought is just a thought without "someone" responsible for it. A feeling is just a feeling without "someone" responsible for it. The same is true for emotion.

I feel very comfortable in these speeches since I do not feel responsible for your ability to understand them, because I do not understand anything either. Here, the foremost thing is to listen.

If we could frame Wisdom within the reasonable understanding of our intellect, Wisdom would not be what it is. The intellect would not be what it is. But as you can have only one thing and not another, you cannot keep both.

This channel here on Paltalk, is an opportunity for us to have a first contact. The thing "for real" happens in the in-person meeting. I know it is very comfortable now to be sitting on the sofa at home, listening to this speech, taking a juice or a glass of soda, but you must get out of that comfort zone and come to Satsang, being in Satsang in person.

We are constantly talking about the same Presence, the same Reality. This is a great opportunity, an opportunity to be together in this Silence.

The "I" is a tremendous illusion, a great illusion, the only illusion, as it was said just now here.

Participant: Master, if the "I" is an illusion, what, or who seeks self-realization, self-transcendence?

Master Gualberto: It is a good question you need to do for yourself, "Who am I?" If you go deep into the investigation of this element that seeks this self-realization or transcendence, you will find out this element does not exist. So, we are facing a paradox. That is the beauty of the Truth! This Consciousness present, always present, does not care about this illusion of separateness. This Consciousness does not recognize it as real thing. This illusion of separateness, this supposed separate entity does not exist. So, how can it look for this truth of its own end? Therefore, there is no answer to the question "Who am I?", but there is an end to this question – the end of the illusion of "someone" to ask this question, the end of the questioner. The one who asks the question is not real, so one cannot find an answer. And the one who asks the question has no one to ask the question to, and then there is no answer to be found.

Actually, this self-inquiring is not self-inquiring. It is just an investigation without an investigator, with nothing to investigate. Now it's much easier! (laughs)

In fact, the world or the experience "me, in the world," is only apparent. That is the key! We are not dealing with reality, since we do not exist. The reality is the one dealing with all this... a great cosmic joke... a great joke! Awakening reveals this! All this is a great joke, a great Divine game!

Let us stop here. See you on our next meeting. Namaste!

*Online meeting transcription originally held on May 6th, 2016. First published in Portuguese on May 17th, 2016. For further information about our meetings, please click here.