The illusion of an identity present now

Consciousness is not in time. The mind is. Time is synonymous with mind, which is thoughts. Consciousness is your Natural State – in India, they call it as Liberation, Moksha, which is the self-fulfilling and resplendent state of Consciousness. It is like when you look at the sky and see the Moon amid the clouds... It is still a sunrise and the Sun is beginning to appear, to shine on the horizon. The Moon is there, amid the clouds, and the Sun begins to shine, to spread through the earth. The Sun goes up and the moon, which earlier was so bright, is now going pale... You look and wonder: "Where is the Moon?" The brightness of the Sun is so great that the Moon disappears. The Moon is there, but it is not shining anymore.

The Natural State is something like this. The mind is present, with all its natural functions: to feel, to think, to move, to reason, to deduce, to conclude, to speak... In the Natural State, the mind is present with all these functions. But, as the "Sun" is shining, the mind no longer matters. The Sun is Consciousness and the mind is the Moon. Once this Consciousness is established, once the Sun is at noonday, the Moon keeps working but without covering the sunshine. So, the mind operates in its natural functions, but it does not take the place of Consciousness. The Natural State is like this!

In the unnatural state, which is the state of the common man, the Moon is trying to take the place of the Sun, trying to do its job. So, when the "Moon" tries to do so, it mixes up its natural function, which is to reason, to conclude, to deduce, to explain, to know, to experience... It takes this and creates the illusion of an experiencer controlling those functions. The mind starts to take control of what does not belong to it.

The mind tries to take the place of Consciousness, "the Moon tries to steal the sunshine." It is not enough to just reflect the brightness of the Sun, it wants to totally steal it. It wants to be a Sun apart, and that is the sense of separateness; that is what the Scriptures call as the fall of Satan. In the Bible, in the book of Isaiah, there are some words like this: "I will ascend above the highest clouds and become like the Most High!" It is all a figurative language of this sense of identity in control, being the lord of everything. This produces the illusion of space and time for this supposed present entity.

So, the mind, which has its natural functions (thinking, feeling, deducting, concluding), creates the sense of a "me" in the "body-mind-world" experience, as a consequence of this illusion of separateness. Therein lies the ego illusion. The mind itself is not evil. Thinking, feeling, concluding, deducting, learning, remembering, forgetting, this is all very natural. However, when it is at the service of a supposed present entity, at the service of a separate "me," it complicates everything! That is where Satan comes in – Satan in Hebrew and Diabolus in Greek!

The notion of time and space arises for this "identity," not for the mind. Putting it in didactic way, we name it as the "egoic mind," but the mind itself is only the Moon in a sky, where the king is the Sun. The Moon just reflects the brightness of the Sun, without problems. Is this clear? That is why you see me, sometimes using the expression "mind" referring to that egoic mind. However, at other times I am speaking only of the mind and its natural functions, not of the egoic mind. That is, you can observe, in the speeches, that I interchange words using mind and egoic mind. Just as the body has natural functions, so does the mind. What I call mind, in this "machine" [body-mind], is this inseparable operation of body itself (it is called "mind," but, in fact, body is mind and mind is body). Here, I am referring to the non-physical functions of the "machine", more subtle, such as "feeling," "perceiving," the movement of thoughts, the reason, and so on.

Now lies the space for the atemporal. This space for the timelessness is the "Sun" in its fullness, in its glory. Once this Consciousness is established in this mechanism, in that organism, the mind assumes its natural functions. The Now, which is not the "now-time" but the timeless Now, which is Consciousness, assumes Its place. So, the past or the future becomes irrelevant, since this supposed entity is no longer present. It is possible to remember the past, as you remember a movie, but without those old sensations of the moment when it was watched.

Notice, at the moment you are watching the movie, you go through various sensations and feelings. The images and sounds cause impressions. But then, when you remember the movie, you laugh because it does not cause impact anymore. It is no longer "the movie." It is only an unimportant memory. So, the past is this unimportant memory, which is actually happening now only as part, also, of an imagination, because there is nothing, in fact, happening. Not now!

When this is already solved out, it is seen this way. However, when it is not solved, the "movie" returns – which is the past – yet with all that load of imaginary impressions, which are felt now, here. So, traumas are like this. Not only them, but also every and any egoic memory operates in the same way: it is only an imagination appearing at this moment and taking an impression of reality, because it still finds room to reverberate in this illusion of a present "identity" still carrying the past, which is only memory, imagination.

The ego is this: the illusion of an identity present now, here, feeling a trauma, a guilt, a remorse, a regret (what some call depression). Or it plays with the imaginative memory of a future (what some call anxiety), but it is the same process. It is always the imagination of an "identity" now, here, feeling. There is nobody here to feel it. There is only the illusion you are real inside the body and this imagination is yours, of this "someone" you believe you are.

The Natural State is the awareness of this moment, but it is a Real Awareness. It is not the vision of the present moment. It is the Awareness of this moment. In the Awareness of this moment, a past memory may appear, the imagination of a future, but this is only an event happening at this moment, as a thought, without any validation, without any truth. It does not change at all What Is.

If a memory or an imagination appears, it does not matter. The thought in this Natural State is like hay in strong fire, which disappears in the flame by simply falling over on it. The mind of the Sage works like this: when thought appears, it is already demolished by this Consciousness. So, time, past or future does not last. Consciousness is this Presence now!

* Originally published in Portuguese on April 25, 2018 ** Excerpt from a in-person meeting in Campos do Jordão – SP, Brasil city, Brazil, on September 2016. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

A boundless space of deep silence

Your world, which is your story, which is you as an entity present in the experience, whatever it is, is only mental content. I will give you an example of what this mental content is. Do you know your middle name?

Participant: Yes!

Master Gualberto: What is the middle name of that one?

Participant: I do not know!

Master Gualberto: This "I know" is content, and that content is your world, which is only real to you. This "I do not know" is real for everyone. It is the absence of content. The Sage has no content. The Sage has the "do not know." When there is this "do not know," there is this huge Space. When I asked you the middle name of him and you said "I do not know," it was possible to see that a huge Space opened. When I asked for your middle name, then you left the Indefinable Space and entered into a definable space and time. That is the ego!

Your Natural State is this Indefinable and Indescribable Space of "do not know." This is Wisdom, the absence of stories. You do not know your middle name. You begin to know it only when I ask you. So, you see this is not real, because it is something that appears with memory. After the question is made, you search for the answer in memory. Before that, you did not know what I was going to ask, so you were in that "do not know." In this "do not know" there is a deep relaxation, but in the "I know" there is tension. Want to see it? Are you a boy or a girl? A woman or a man? There is not a tension?

Participant: Yes! I had difficulty when you asked my name. I had trouble getting it. I thought: "Wow, what is this for?"

Master Gualberto: Beautiful! Exactly! You need to search it in memory, which means that you have no name. So, when I ask you whether you are woman or man... What a petty thing! You need to look up and say: "I am a woman!" But, when you are in the "do not know," you are in a boundless Space of deep Silence. A world comes up, opens up, and that Instant, that Moment, that Space, which is where this Happiness reveals itself in Being, (which is not being something, nor being someone) is lost.

The "hearing," the "feeling," the thinking appearing, they must be treated in the same way, in this Space. You cannot grab the wind. You feel and listen to it, but you are not interested in grabbing it. But when a thought comes into your head, you "hold" it and bring it to the "person." When you do that, the "person" appears and then problems arise. This is what I call as "contraction."

When the present entity arises in the experience of thought, the thinker comes up. The thinker has a story to tell – first to himself and then to the world. The thinker has to keep confirming this story all the time, otherwise the thinker ceases to be someone.

This is too painful, isn't it? For me, this is releasing – not being the thinker and not having a story to tell, neither for yourself nor for anyone. This is Enlightenment!

The expression "Enlightenment" is not a space full of light, but the absence of the illusion of space and time. This is Love. This is Happiness!

Right now, in this Unlimited and Indescribable Space, there is no lack, but as soon as a desire arises, a "flight of fancy" comes up: "Oh, I would like to travel now to ..." Your intention in being on this "flight" is to relax in your Being, but you can only relax in your Being here and now. Then, you go to the desired place and say: "Wow! What a beautiful, wonderful place!" But it takes just a few seconds of relaxation for you to say: "What am I doing here? I had to be at... "

The mind continues in this trick, placing you in time and space, in an attempt to make you feel the completeness of being What You already Are, here and now. However, this never happens, because you are always "traveling" with it. You go from one pleasure to another, and another... The mind always has to be seeking this to feel complete, which never happens. It gets excited searching for sensations. It needs that, because without it, it disappears... Then, only You remain in your Real Nature.

* Originally published in Portuguese on May 03, 2018 ** Excerpt from a in-person meeting in João Pessoa city, Brazil, on August 2016. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

Do not put a self-image in the experience

The mind is conditioned to function in this way: identifying with the body and what it does, seeing itself responsible, to receive boos or applause, praise or criticism. This has to do with the mind's conditioning.

Just see that thought "talks" from a self-image. Look at your experience clearly, simply, naturally, without thought's intervention, and you will not have imagination, there will not be any action of this image. Be simple about this. See what thought says about you and notice it is based on imagination, on the action of an image, not on the experience.

The concern about doing things and pleasing or displeasing others is related to self-image. You all have it! You can work in an office, in front of a computer, talking half a dozen words with someone there, spend most of your time dealing only with documents or accessing the internet, however, your self-image will be there.

It is not the world that causes you pain. It is your mental conditioning, your mental interpretation of the experience. So, I will say it again: see what thought says about you and see it is not true. It is a picture that, in an imaginary way, thought creates about the experience. The problem is not the experience, and others are part of the experience.

Liberation is a very beautiful thing because it is the nameless "Thing." It is not a freedom where nothing goes wrong or nothing bad happens. It is not the freedom to fail, to make mistakes either. It is not that! Freedom is the very Freedom "thing"! This is the Freedom of not caring about experiences, about being nobody! Nobody doing or being this and that.

Do not do things for people! Here is the whole thing! If you do things for people, your self-image is involved in it. That is conditioning! Culture, society, the world we were raised in has educated us to do things for people. Actually, they are teaching us that we need to do things to feel good about ourselves, but that does not always work. Most of the time, this requirement makes us neurotic and then we make mistakes. We make mistakes just because we want to get it right, and we want to get it right to please people.

It is always your self-image having that investment. This holds both for public performance and for your relationship with your husband, wife, children and grandchildren. You are stuck to the same game! Everything you are doing is to please them. Do not do things for the other person, since the ego is investing in this self-image when this happens. You will say, "so, do I do things for me?" Not either! In fact, that is what you have already been doing! You have done things to yourself, to your self-image. You always see yourself as someone in need of something. So, if you do things to yourself, you are investing in your self-image, you are doing things to gain something.

The egoic conditioning is of such a quality that you never do anything without expecting something back. You always do things to gain or to get rid of something. You always do things either for desire or fear, as that is the conditioning; and others are always involved in that, once they are the ones who can give you the reward or the punishment. The reward is applause; the punishment is the jeers, the booing. The reward is praise; the punishment is criticism.

So, stop doing things for others or yourself, which is the same thing. Do what needs to be done, but do not get your ego involved in it, for the ego will get in your way. You can be an egoless husband, an egoless mother, a singer, a dancer, a girlfriend without ego. You can be anything without ego! Without ego, you are none of that internally. With ego, you internally enthrone the father, husband, painter, actor, artist, singer, musician's attitude… and when you do that, you cultivate egoic conditioning.

Bring clarity to this habitual movement, to this habit. You have to observe how much this habit fulfills you, how much this imagination fulfills you, how fulfilled you feel when you see others applauding you, praising you, acknowledging you... Relationships between couples are hell since both are in the same game. They are some kind of vampire, in need of blood. They are seeing each other based on their self-image. So, they are kind of vampires in need of appreciation, praise, recognition, and they are constantly scaring each other, trying to frighten each other, trying to generate punishments and also subjected to punishments. It is mutual exploration! They are two vampires in a relationship.

What am I saying? Do everything you have always done, but now pay attention to everything you do. You do not have to leave the relationship, but you need to leave aside the "person" who is investing in this relationship. You need to abandon that image you have. But, for the ego it is easier to keep to the routine, the habit – actually, the word is not "habit," but "addiction" – of being someone, since this does not require any internal work, no Attention, no Presence, no Consciousness, so you keep yourself that way.

The result of anything you do is not yours when there is no self-image; but when the self-image is there, the result is for you and everything has to work out. This creates the fear that it might not pan out, that it might go wrong. See you are always in this self-interest.

Ego is the center of this action. How can you have truth in that, if the ego is the center of this action? How is a relationship between two people, like friends, or boyfriends, or husband and wife going to work out, if the ego is at the center of this relation?

Life has no ego, and ego has no life. Unhappiness without the ego is impossible. Happiness with the ego is impossible since the ego is this movement of fear and desire.

So, you will sometimes be proud of what you do, since your ego is investing in this. It is your self-image finding itself important on this. So, if you sing, if you dance, if you make the best burger in town, you feel you are the best. Or else you feel you are the best wife, the best husband, the perfect husband, so perfect that you demand your wife to do nothing wrong. Notice what a contradiction, what an absurdity: you are so perfect that you do not accept anyone doing anything wrong around you, anyone making any mistake, any sin, since you are such a holy person. Self-image!

Do not do anything to someone – here, that "someone" is you – just do it. Do not embrace the fulfillment the ego seeks. You may even receive it, but with the reward, you also receive the punishment, and that reward does not represent Real Happiness.

In the ego, you are in a prison that has no door. Interestingly, you have never been in this prison, but you cannot get out of it. Paradoxically, you are not in the prison, but the prison is there, internally – it is a prison.

Be simple about that and see what thought says about you and see that this is not true: it is based on imagination. Live with the implications of this, assuming the truth of what comes. Did it work? Okay, so what? Did it go wrong? Okay, so what? Did the audience like it? Okay, so what? Did the audience did not like it? Okay, so what? Is anyone buying my product? Okay, so what? Doesn't the majority of people want to know about my product? Okay, so what? Did I have support, help, and a lot of cooperation? Okay, so what? Nobody supported it, everything went wrong, didn't it work? Okay, so what?

Assume the implications of what is going on, but do not put yourself as someone in this experience. Otherwise, you will have to go back to the first part of the speech, to the reward and the punishment. You will come back to find that it is not worth living in the ego. Do you see how I paint the picture with my words, but who needs to see the picture is you, with your experience? It is always you with your own experience.

*Online meeting transcription originally held on November 21st, 2020. First published in Portuguese on February 26th, 2021. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

There is clarity only when there is no suffering

Satsang represents the end of confusion, of this psychological internal confusion, which causes suffering. What we call as ignorance is this confusion. It is not the ignorance of the lack of specific knowledge, but rather in the sense of the lack of the direct Understanding of the Truth about Yourself.

In this world, today more than ever, everyone has access to knowledge, but knowledge is no guarantee of Happiness. The knowledge acquired cannot be Real. Everything you acquire, you can lose. You may have a great deal of knowledge that you have acquired over the years, but if you receive a severe blow on the head, a certain part of the brain will be damaged and that knowledge will no longer be available there.

When we talk about Real Knowledge, we are talking about Understanding the Truth, and this is not acquirable knowledge. Therefore, it is not knowledge you can lose. Thus, this association represents something very important for your life – the possibility of an end to confusion and ignorance.

If you are a scientist, you are in no better condition than a manual worker, a bricklayer's assistant, or a peasant. This ignorance, which is this confusion, is common to everyone. It does not matter if you are postgraduate or if you have a Ph.D. Once there is suffering, it indicates that ignorance is present. Do you get that?

This means that what you take for knowledge, preparation for life is completely useless from the viewpoint of Real Happiness, since all this preparation does not eliminate confusion.

Real Knowledge is Real Intelligence, and This is neither acquired nor lost. Even if the brain of whoever lives in this Intelligence suffers some damage, this Truth, this Understanding will remain present.

I do not know if I am emphasizing enough for you the importance of such association, the value of being in Satsang, since here we are dealing with that Divine Realization, that Realization of the Truth, the Awakening of That.

This Knowledge depends on how deeply you understand the issue of the relationship between this person you believe to be and the world you believe you are living in. In other words, This depends a lot on the understanding of suffering, since this person's entire relationship with the world is confused and upheld, much of the time, by representations of pain and suffering. There is no Joy. There is no Peace. There is no Freedom. Thus, it is essential to understand this issue of suffering, not as a concept, an idea, but rather through a straightforward way.

Today, I am talking to you about the end of confusion. Whatever you do from that state of confusion will not give you Freedom. It will only reinforce even more that state. There is no Freedom from confusion! So, you need to surrender, to abandon the suffering, and that means seeing this direct relationship between the person you believe to be and the world in which you believe you are living.

This direct perception of suffering is its end since there is no more confusion and you no longer put yourself into action. Notice we are pointing out to you something very rare in this world: to take no attitude, no action, to assume no posture, no behavior until there is clarity, until you can see the confusion in which this false identity, which is "you," is getting involved in "your" imaginary world.

If suffering cannot be seen, there will be no clarity. Without clarity, the confusion remains, and in the confusion, you take attitudes and do things for which, of course, you will answer for. So, you have to understand what surrender is, what renunciation of that suffering is. If you renounce that suffering, you renounce that illusion – the illusion of "me." There is clarity only when there is no suffering, and if you are suffering, then all theories are useless. Real surrender means abandoning all imaginations, all ideas, abandoning all of them. So, the energy that was once available for imagination, ideas, upholding the false identity's suffering, is now available for Freedom and detachment. Ego knows nothing about renunciation! Ego is always upholding beliefs, absolute certainties. Ego is arrogant.

*Online meeting transcription originally held on January 8th, 2021. First published in Portuguese on February 20th, 2021. For further information about our meetings, please click here.

Being is the only Reality

How does this association develop? How does it happen? The only way for this to happen is through acceptance. We are dealing with the Unknown. What is said here needs to be verified through Self-Inquiry, but until this point is reached, it is essential to accept the teaching, the speech, the direction, what is proposed here.

The Aspirant to Self-Realization needs to trust, and acceptance is the first step. Trust makes Self-Inquiry possible, and this is essential since we are dealing with the Unknown. You need to verify this for yourself, but you have no certainty yet. The speech itself is not about Reality. Everything the speech talks about is still part of illusion.

What I am saying is that you must trust, although this proposal put into words is not dealing directly with Reality. Actually, we are dealing with illusion. This phase of going through this teaching that does not deal with Reality is necessary. This teaching points out Reality, but it does not deal directly with Reality. Notice this subject is delicate... You need to accept, trust and, thus, Self-Inquiry and the direct verification become possible.

Here, we are not dealing with words. We are pointing out something outside them. The speech is necessary, pointing out is necessary, and acceptance can bring the confidence that opens the door to Self-Inquiry. So, the necessary qualification is to receive with acceptance what is proposed. This viewpoint needs to deeply reach everyone. This vision cannot stay on the surface. It needs to go deeper.

In the ego, in this identification with the sense of "me," your life is too superficial, there is no depth. It is a very poor life. There is no internal wealth. You can only stay on the periphery, which is apart, outside of Reality. That sense of authorship, of someone in control, is the sense of the ego, it is superficiality.

People are moving towards their destiny, which is a shallow, conflicted life in suffering and fear. This is the alienation of your Being, of your Divine Nature. One of the ego's characteristics is this "moving" into fear. This makes the world have the interpretation the mind creates. The world, in itself, has no meaning, but the mind can give it a meaning, can give an interpretation to life.

So, one of the ego's characteristics, of the egoic mind, is the belief in its world. The multiplicity of apparent experiences emerges from this "sense of me," and from that this world arises, with the destiny shaped by this "moving" within fear, conflict, suffering, confusion. Getting rid of all this means being free from the ego, free from the world. It is to see the world as it is, life as it is, meaningless since you will not project things anymore, you will not be present anymore to project an idea, a belief, a set of plans about life or the world.

Life has to make sense to the mind. The mind has to find meaning, and when it does, it finds the "moving," and goes back to the destiny's "moving field."

Our work here is to find out the beauty of this. In India, they call it as "Maya's power" which makes this world appear. Maya's power is the ignorance illusion. There is no ignorance and there is no knowledge. Reality transcends knowledge and ignorance, but Maya's power has created that illusion – the illusion of ignorance.

So, what we may call as "Maya" is the illusion, and what we may call as "ignorance" is Maya. All of them take place in the mind. The mind is the setting for all of this, which is an apparent creation. Only Self-Inquiry, Meditation, Surrender can remove this illusion, the illusion of Maya, the illusion of ignorance, and, of course, the illusion of existing as a separate entity.

The mind superimposes its world on Reality, making appear that things are out of place or wrong, that everything is out of order. The mind has this notion of order, of control, of right and wrong, and it superimposes this on the present Reality, on Life as It is.

Being is the only Reality. It is the Source of everything that appears, where everything presents itself. This world is not separate from Being, so everything is in place, everything is in order.

It is not possible for the mind to understand That, since it is connected to time and space, in this thought process, within the illusion, Maya, this illusion of ignorance. That is why you cannot capture This with the intellect. All the mind wants is to have this one more knowledge. The mind already knows everything, but knowledge and ignorance are not Reality tests, since ignorance and knowledge are within illusion. This is all time's creation, a fantasy.

So, what do we do together in Satsang? We look at all this! You need to abandon this false structure through Self-Inquiry, through Surrender, through Meditation. The greatest miracle of all is to know that you are not present there as you believe you are. The body is breathing, the sound is being heard, but this is only Life happening! This apparent individual sitting there, with all his stories, is thought's imagination about who you are!

*Online meeting transcription originally held on May 29th, 2020. First published in Portuguese on September 29th, 2020. For further information about our meetings, please click here.