Take a moment to become aware of who is reading this page. Do you feel a presence? That presence is not your mind; it’s your soul. The mind might be saying, “What am I going to have for lunch?” Or, “I wonder what time it is.” The inner dialogue happens in the presence of the soul. Thoughts come and go, feelings come and go. The molecules of the body come and go. But they come and go in this presence.

This presence, the soul, recycles itself as your memories, your moods, and even your personality, because you don’t have the same personality today that you had when you were 5 years of age, or when you were 15. It would indeed be a sorry state if you did.

Your personality is an expression of the evolving universe; it’s constantly changing, growing, evolving, transforming. Everything in your life is constantly transforming, but it’s transforming in a presence that’s always there. That presence was there when you were a newborn baby, it was there when you were a little girl or a little boy, it was there when you were an adolescent, just as it’s there right now. And it will be there tomorrow when you are very old.

Who is going through this experience? The real you—the you that we call pure consciousness, the field of intelligence, the inner self, the soul, the spirit, the infinite consciousness, the Being within you. Here, we have used all of these terms synonymously. If you get in touch with this presence, if you really become intimate with it because it’s your own inner self, then you will know experimentally, without anybody telling you, that this presence was there before you were born, and it will be there after you die.

There is an ancient saying from India about the soul: “Fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it, wind cannot dry it, weapons cannot cleave it. It’s ancient, it’s unborn, and it never dies.” The soul is the source of all reality, but the domain of the soul is beyond your everyday reality.

Experience your soul. By spending time in silence, by quieting the time bound conversation in your head and turning in to the timeless, peaceful quiet of your soul. When you experience complete silence in your body-mind, then you recognize that you are not your thoughts but the Being who is having the thoughts.
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