Being Has No Experience of Not Being

Discard anything not essential to you, anything that appears and disappears – thoughts, feelings, etc. Go experientially to what remains consistently present throughout all changing experience. Simply being, naked being. Just as we do not become our naked body when we get undressed, our body is simply revealed, so we do not become naked being through this exploration, our essential self is simply revealed. Each of you can say with absolute certainty, ‘I am’, because you are aware of being. But what is aware, something not yourself? If so, you would not know that you are. Now ask your essential being: Have you ever experienced non-being, the disappearance of your self? Being has no experience of not being, it is eternal. This is not some extraordinary, enlightened experience; it is everyone’s experience of their self all the time. Only, the waking state is like a deep forgetting of who you really are, eternal being, God’s being.

Discard anything not essential to you, anything that appears and disappears – thoughts, feelings, etc. Go experientially to what remains consistently present throughout all changing experience. Simply being, naked being. Just as we do not become our naked body when we get undressed, our body is simply revealed, so we do not become naked being through this exploration, our essential self is simply revealed. Each of you can say with absolute certainty, ‘I am’, because you are aware of being. But what is aware, something not yourself? If so, you would not know that you are. Now ask your essential being: Have you ever experienced non-being, the disappearance of your self? Being has no experience of not being, it is eternal. This is not some extraordinary, enlightened experience; it is everyone’s experience of their self all the time. Only, the waking state is like a deep forgetting of who you really are, eternal being, God’s being.