(Music)
What I'm going to talk is basically about feeling.
Because
I was born and brought up in a well-to-do family
and studied in good schools.
I was able to develop
my thinking based on much information.
I went to expensive schools.
I felt different as
people around me thought it was natural
to live in the conditions they found themselves.
I would look around and see despair and misery
that really upset me,
but I couldn't talk about it with anybody
because it was upsetting.
I started acting like a wacko
among others.
I felt that something was wrong.
People would tell me, get an education, care for yourself, save your knowledge like an asset
that you can use in your life and get information.
I would think, why me?
Why is it that so many people don't have what I have?
Nobody would tell me.
That's how it is, it's always been like that.
Intuition would tell me that was wrong.
The world we live favors thinking
we live in a rationalist society
and that is markedly male
but feeling is markedly female.
That part of myself has always been very strong.
Even women become masculine today
in order to survive in the job marketplace.
Everything is competition.
Competition is male.
Cooperation is female.
That difference grew wider.
First I was convinced there was something wrong.
It can't be that I don't accept as normal what everybody else does
There's something odd about me.
I tried all of the conventional paths: got in the army,
worked as a bank teller in Brazil,
went on to study law. I thought about studying fine arts
but it was so scandalous in my family that I changed to law
just to quiet everybody down.
(Laughter)
Then one night I had this dream.
I couldn't stand it, I thought my life was boring, worthless.
One night I had a dream.
In it I was running over rooftops
and all of a sudden there were no more rooftops. I wasn't running after anything in particular,
or running from anything, I was simply running,
maybe because I was an athlete, I ran a lot then.
Suddently there were no more houses and I started to fall.
I looked down and saw miles down
farms, streams, I thought:
Great, brilliant, from this height there is no way I'll get crippled.
I'll hit the ground and die immediately. Excellent!
(Laughter)
Something new in life, right?
So I was falling.
Now I'll know what the other side is like,
I always wanted to know.
I already know everything there is to know in life,
I don't want any of that, so boring. Now I'm up for something new.
I was about to get smashed in the ground when I woke up.
"Goodnes, what am I doing alive?"
(Laughter)
I already know everything I am doing today and I don't want any of that.
I already know everyone I am meeting, I don't want to meet anybody.
I have to do something about it
for I'm favoring death over life.
That very day I went to my school, gave up college, got back my papers.
People wouldn't believe me.
"I'm here to get my papers."
"Are you going to transfer?"
"No, no, I just want my papers."
"You need to have been admitted to another school."
"I don't want to go to another school, I just want my papers."
The guy looked at me, angry,
"In that case you're going to have to sign a term of responsibility."
"Give it to me."
I signed it, I took my papers and brought them to my dad.
Because I had been highly pressured at home.
"We always gave you the best,
the greatest conditions, you'll take on from here."
So I took my papers to my dad.
"Look, I paid my debt with you.
You gave me the means, I got into college,
I am not finishing it not because I can't, but because I don't want to.
Life has no meaning. I'm looking for a meaning in life
by having nothing.
I want to have nothing."
That wasn't scary to me,
as in the army I had trained for war in the jungle,
survival,
I'd got hit a lot,
suffered tear gas.
I was not afraid of having nothing.
I could sleep on the floor, no problem.
During college breaks
I used to backpack,
go travel.
I liked to approach the poorest people I met
I was eager to understand their codes.
I wanted to feel equal.
When I went out with pals, we'd go to the hip clubs
and I'd see a kid be rude with people working there.
That would really upset me.
I realized that there is an embedded sense of superiority on one side
and an embedded sense of inferiority on the other.
And people have a hard time feeling equal.
I tried to get close to waiters, cooks,
I would often get into kitchens.
Everybody would treat me well
I wasn't but the nice rich kid.
There was no equality as I would see them treating each other in one way
and treating me in a different way.
I wanted equality.
So I decided to have nothing.
I want to have nothing.
I want to feel equal.
And I set out to walk, by foot, hitchhiking,
with no money, no work.
I would sweep the floor for a meal.
I would paint a fence for a meal.
I washed bathrooms for a meal.
One meal a day was enough,
I would go on.
And I thought I was welcomed in poor neighborhoods
better than in rich neighborhoods.
For example, or two:
I was in Recife
and thought, I am not asking for food in a poor neighborhood.
I'm going where food is plenty. So I went to the wealthiest neighborhood,
I saw a gate open and a party going on.
I came to the door,
"Excuse me!
I see a lot of food there,
I am hungry, I have no money, can you give me some food?"
They gave me a plate with a little bit of food.
I walked out and sat on the sidewalk. I was eating,
then a police car stopped by.
They gave me food, then called the police.
So I was eating, there stopped the police car.
The officer looked at me like this,
"What are you doing there?"
"Me? I'm chewing."
(Laughter)
I showed him my fork, eating.
"Did you get your food there?"
"Yeah, they gave it to me."
"Right, they don't like to see you there,
you'd better get going."
"Oh! Alright."
I got up and walked away, still eating.
Now in the poor neighborhood, I was in a back country, I walked the back lands a lot.
It got dark and I just wanted to sleep
there was a house with a thatched roof.
The roof reached past the wall and I could sleep beneath it.
I knocked at the door.
An old, frail lady came to the door, I told her,
"I'm traveling by foot on that road
tomorrow morning I'll be on my way.
Would you mind if I were to sleep here under the thatch?"
"No way."
I couldn't believe it.
"Come on in, you're sleeping inside, on that couch."
She put me in so I could sleep.
"Have you eaten?"
It's a different treatment.
I started to feel equal.
I started to learn their language.
I researched among the beggars in Recife.
I tried to become a beggar, it took me three days.
(Laughter)
I tried to approach them, they'd kick me out.
I'd get closer, they'd reject me.
(Laughter)
Then I got really dirty, I found one...
At that time, there was just... only Carlton brand cigarettes came in boxes.
I bummed a bunch of cigarettes.
White filter, yellow filter, I put them all in the box.
At night I went by the fire pit.
There was always this fire pit under an iron bridge in Recife.
I went to the fire pit, didn't look at nobody.
Tore off the cap of the box, threw on the ground,
took a cigarette, lit it in the fire and moved away.
Some guy took the pack, looked at me, lit a cigarette.
Then another guy, boom, I'm in.
It took me three days. Three days.
So I realized that people
most people
go through a process of educational sabotage.
They have the development of their rationality blocked.
And like it always happens, when we loose one sense
all others become sharper.
So those guys developed their intuition in an outstanding fashion.
I go into favelas a lot,
I walk the slums a lot,
talk in slums, frequent parties, I'm always invited.
And when you get in the slum and you're an outsider
people don't ask who you are.
People look at you, take note of your behavior.
Feel you rather ask the questions.
They develop that side and they don't notice.
But I did notice.
When I was a homeless I felt privileged.
Funny, as a few times I met people from my
previous social life.
And when they looked at me the look on their face was of horror
"God what happened to you?"
I tried to show them that I was very well
very happy, learning a lot,
not at all bothered by it
and when they realized I was content,
they would get upset.
And then they disappeared, not wanting to ever cross ways with me again.
Why? Because rationally I was in a deplorable state.
But when they saw happiness on my face,
my enchantment with life,
their intuition would manifest.
"Wait, everything I believe is wrong!"
Not wanting to violate [their beliefs],
not willing to risk,
"I don't want to ever meet that guy again."
I had the chance to meet former colleagues from the army who are now colonels.
Three of them.
Once and never again.
One of them put it this way,
"Fuck, you look like the same kid, man."
And I said, "Gosh, you look like a different person,
I almost didn't recognize you."
Because they violate themselves constantly.
People violate their conscience to adapt to the demands of the world.
A rational world that created a male god.
I remember I was punished as I was preparing for First Communion,
because I asked if God had a dick.
(Laughter)
Heretic.
I said, "So can't I ask?"
No kid, you cannot.
How I dared.
We get a grain of reason and want to explain the entire universe from it.
We don't know even a fraction.
We're down to the electron
and think we already know the creator of it all?
We don't even know everything
But we know what [its creator] likes.
Indeed they fabricated a God who is a superman.
He is revengeful.
Sends you to hell!
Loves adulators.
One has to be praising, praising, praising, praising.
I can't believe that.
Rationally, I can be convinced of it but intuitively, never.
That is out of my reach,
it lacks humility.
We reside in the electron...
In the face of preposterous interpretations,
in my opinion, that religions give,
I created my own.
I believe that the solar system is an atom,
our galaxy is a molecule,
and we are part of something we can't even start to imagine.
Can we talk of God?
We can't!
We can feel! The fraction is within.
Our conscience is within.
We carry an infinitesimal part of the divine.
But what's that?
It is daring.
One needs to activate the feminine side, because that's the side that gets one close to reality.
Reason goes away.
Reason is objective, it is masculine.
World is extremely masculine,
no wonder woman is so oppressed.
Now feminine and masculine are not a function exclusively of being either woman or man.
They live within both woman and man.
When I found myself raising three children alone,
when I divorced the three came to live with me by their own will.
(Laughter)
Eventually I realized that they were missing the maternal side.
So I searched inside me for the feminine.
I stopped doing that...
When children argue, a father tends to say, "You stay here, you go there".
A mother tends to say, "Hold on, what's going on?"
Sit down there a while, settle your disagreement.
When she gets up the kids are already playing together.
That's feminine.
Feminine is tenderness, welcoming, hugging.
Comparing...
I did martial arts.
Compare judo and karate.
Judo takes the opponents' strength and knocks the opponent out of the way.
Karate blocks and reacts, that's masculine.
The feminine side needs to be developed and it's happening.
It is a long, slow process, but everywhere I go
I see people working,
Many people without a conscience of the work they're doing.
In slums, in poor communities, from the outside a phony thing,
there's a lot of people working.
There's much sensibility.
It's a sensibility that is not tied to academic knowledge,
nor connected to school learning.
Because those people's learning is sabotaged.
When I left the army, I went to high school.
And I had classmates who'd come from public schools.
And they didn't know the most basic things.
One day a guy brought me one of his 12th-grade public school exams,
I thought he was kidding.
Very superficial, no learning at all,
just pretending.
So I felt, had the intuition that
most people are being sabotaged
to benefit a tiny group of people
who use another part of, say, the enlightened class,
working for them by imposing values.
They control school curricula
and shove TV in one's house to create "values"
You're worth what you own.
We see the symptoms in society.
Those who are in academia know well
how a social sciences program is handled
and how an information technology program is handled.
If we look at district police,
compare the unit dealing with crimes against property
and the unit dealing with homicides,
clearly property has more value in our society than life itself.
Your life worths something if you have property,
if not, your life worths nothing.
You might as well die quietly.
Police goes after they poor guys, always.
I was in a well-to-do neighborhood in Rio talking with people from Aitigais,
who invited me to an event.
Here I am...
sandals, different from everyone else, dressed to the nines, there stopped a police car.
Black sergeant comes out,
"Good evening, may I see your papers."
Just with me, not anybody else.
"Papers, please."
I had never been approached like that.
Where I live they stick a gun and say,
"To the wall! To the wall!"
Do they want to see papers?
They don't want to see papers, they want to search you.
So when they officer approached me I froze and stared at him,
like I didn't understand, what?
"Papers."
"Oh, you want to see my papers? Wow!"
I showed him my ID.
He left me alone, didn't push me or anything.
Where I live it's a different thing.
I can't explain that with reason.
I can feel the difference.
By developing intuition
we get closer to the truth
and we start feeling other people.
I realized people have a vibration frequency.
That vibration frequency is formed by the abstract part of one's being.
It's the desires, the world's views, the goals,
the feelings, the opinions.
All that forms the vibration frequency.
I lived around criminals, crooks,
I love them, only I don't trust them.
I can enjoy a crook, but I can't trust him.
He knows that, so we get along.
I lost my train of thought, can someone remind me?
Oh yeah!
I met some crook who wanted to get cozy with a circle
of friends I had through my ideas and such
In a café.
But when he tried to get in through adulation, he was rejected.
People didn't know why they rejected him.
But when the guy came by, his vibes would turn people off.
That's the feminine.
We feel what we don't know.
I didn't get along with that guy either.
that's intuition developing.
Now when it develops we think the transition is through,
the jump is eminent.
There's no jump.
We're in transition, in a critical time,
but this critical time will take generations.
I don't believe there is real change
without everyone being engaged.
Everybody, even the people who live like barbarians on the outskirts of society.
That is after all the most needed class.
Because all we see, all we look at,
all we touch was put in place through the hands of someone poor.
The street, the bricks, the boxes, who hauls
who avails, who maintains and sustains,
through taxation, it is the poorest.
It is the most indispensable class in our society.
And yet it is the most despised, most persecuted,
most libeled, cheated, sabotaged and thrown in a state of barbarism.
On one hand that is inadmissible,
on the other it favors the development of the feminine side,
the intuitive side, the non-rational side of one's being.
And that's the side that starts to show up now.
I have the impression, I have the intuition
that it will prevail,
and when it prevails,
we will know that we are all from the same family.
That's it.
(Applause)
(Music)