"This has to be understood as deeply as possible because your whole sadhana, the whole effort towards ultimate understanding, will depend on it. Unless you are ready to become non-being you will never become a real authentic being. It looks like a paradox.

"Jesus says to his disciples: Unless you lose yourself you will not gain yourself; if you cling to yourself you will be destroyed, if you don't cling you will be saved. He is saying that if you move into non-being, only then is the being saved.

"In India there exists a very old and very beautiful parable in the Upanishads:

"A great sage, Uddalaka, was asked by his son, Svetketu, 'Father, who am I? What is it that exists in me? I try and try, I meditate and meditate, but I cannot find it.'

"Svetketu was a small child but he raised a very very difficult question. Had somebody else asked the question, Uddalaka could have answered easily, but how to help a child to understand? And he was asking the greatest problem that exists.

"Uddalaka had to create a device. He said, 'You go there, yonder, where you see the nigrot tree and you bring a fruit from it.'

"The child ran; he brought a small fruit from the nigrot tree.

"The father said, 'Now you cut it. What do you see inside it?'

"The child said, 'Millions of small seeds.'

"The father said, 'Now you choose one seed and cut that seed. Now what do you see in it?'

"The child said, 'Nothingness.'

"The father said, 'Out of that nothingness arises this big tree. In the seed just at the center exists nothingness. You cut it – there is nothing, and out of that nothingness arises the being of this big tree. And the same is true with you, Svetketu.' And one of the greatest sayings ever uttered by any human being was born: Tat twam asi, Svetketu – 'That art thou, thou art that, Svetketu.'

"You are also that nothingness which exists just at the heart of the seed. Unless you find this non-being within you, you will not attain to authentic truth. Then you can move in theories, then you can philosophize, but you will not realize."