being & not being

It is very difficult to talk about such things without descending into mere philosophy, and the spiritual journey is not philosophical. When something becomes philosophical, we are just playing around in the mind. We are using the mind like a children’s playground. We come up with new ideas, we try and fit some ideas together. We are trying to be clever, it’s an ego game.

We are not interested in theories. The spiritual journey is about getting to the very essence of our being and living it, not as some fancy idea, but really feeling it as our day-to-day lived reality. Of course we have to use words when we are discussing these things, and with words there is always the danger that we lose touch with the feeling. It’s very easy for us to become purely mental in our approach, but that will not get us far. In fact, it will not get us anywhere at all.

So when we are looking at being and non-being, remember this: the words are an indication of something which can be experienced directly – experienced without words, without thoughts – and that direct personal experience is what matters.

Ordinarily, we feel ourselves to exist. We are beings. ‘I am’ is the feeling, is the belief. But we also have this concept at least of not being. What is it like when we don’t exist? There was a time before I was born. At that time I didn’t exist. There will be a time after I have died. Well, that’s more challenging isn’t it? Looking to the future, we can’t even comprehend that one day we might not exist, again.

That strange reluctance to non-existence is the ego. It is the ego that clings to ‘I am’. That is the basic assertion of the ego. But if we look deeply into this being, this ‘am-ness’, ‘I am’, it is very difficult to be sure that I am. In the moment there are some sensations, there are some feelings, some perceptions, some thoughts are popping up, there’s some sort of consciousness. But from that, can we be sure that ‘I am’?

If we ask this question profoundly enough, sincerely enough: ‘Am I or am I not?’, if we can sit in the energy in that question long enough, unwavering, then something amazing can happen. The realisation can come: yes, I am, and yes, I am not. It sounds nonsense when put into words, but as a direct realisation it takes us beyond the attachment of being. It takes us through. It is a breakthrough. It is a transcendence of being and not being. No fear of death can survive after such a realisation. It is of tremendous significance, and yet in talking about it, it sounds like a mad philosophy. So don’t pay too much attention to the words, but just hear this: that it is possible to go beyond being and not being. And that, in a sense, is a key step on our spiritual journey. For then we have really transcended the attachment to this form. We have gone beyond caring whether we are alive or dead.