Q: When you say ‘a little bit like after you die’ do you refer to the liberation of the body, the fading of the self, the pure beingness? Can you talk about that a little bit?

John: It takes a lot to be a being while in the body. It takes a lot less to move as a being while you’re in your body. It takes very little – almost nothing – to be touched by your being in your self, while you’re in your body. In moving as a being, being taken by your beingness which brings you right into your being, and moving as a being, streaming as a being, enables you to be aspects of your being within various levels of your being.

Being a being is quite different from moving as a being. In being a being, you are, as awareness, the whole of your being. In whichever way you move, it’s inclusive of all of your being. On a self and a person level, it’s the difference between awareness as a baby, newly born, in its body. It can move its body but it is not yet being its body. It doesn’t have the whole awareness of what its body even is. The difference between a baby and an adult: an adult being aware of all of its body, its function, different ways of being in it. In being a being you are the whole of it that has a self, that has a person, and is functional as that in life. It’s most rare and difficult to come to.

After you’ve died, you are everything that’s real. You’re moving in all of it. You are being a whole being, knowing and aware of all that you were in your life. You are in intimate, direct knowledge with your entire relationship that you had with what you knew in your life. It’s an all knowing of what you were, how you moved toward what you knew into what you knew, as what you knew or away from what you knew, or were separate from what you knew; how much of your being came into your self because of the little touches. everywhere. of your being in your self; where you were lost in your self, where you were taken by something other than your heart, other than what you knew, other than your being, that was illusory. Everything is all known and clear. And when you meet someone, you have instantly the same intimate, full knowledge of everything in the other. Everything is known – intimately known.

Your evolution as awareness, aside from your personality, your self, your being, your evolution as awareness, on its own, has form – unseen form. The form of that is your soul. Your soul is the highest form of you, perfectly representing your evolution as awareness. There is no other form of yours that’s more valuable, that is more intrinsic to you than your soul. Your soul tells all of where you are in the scope of awareness, in the spectrum of awareness in its development. It’s the most difficult form in the unseen to identify and to see. It’s the most difficult form to know because it is evenly distributed in everything that’s yours. It is there as much present in your illusory forms of your self. It’s as present in a false relationship with the self as it is present in your being. Everywhere you are aware – truly or falsely – there, also is your soul. It’s most difficult to know and to see, to identify while you’re in your body because there isn’t the contrast. It’s equally everywhere in all of you and everything that’s yours, of your form. There is so much form and your soul is, in a sense, hidden in all of it. After you’ve died, your soul is more visible than any other unseen form of yours. It’s your soul that has the prominence. It is what is upfront, known, by you and everyone you meet and you commune with.

How you evolve as awareness isn’t dependent on the development of your mind or any of your self. The wellbeing of your soul and its development don’t hinge on any other development of yours. You can grow up crippled in your self, in your mind, in your emotions, because of upbringing, circumstances – everything that’s done to your self. Any lack of development in the crippling of your self doesn’t touch your soul. What you are being, as awareness, in the midst of that self, in its crippling, in its damage, in its development, in whatever care or lack of care it has, what’s critical to your soul is what you are being, as awareness, in your self: opening and softening or closing and hardening.

There’s no influence of any kind, physical or nonphysical, there is no influence that makes you open and soften or makes you close and harden. The power and the direction of that is all yours: not you as your form, but you without it – you, awareness. Whatever it is you’re being in your body, in your self, in your circumstances, in your difficulty, in your pressure, in the fire, is what affects, directly, your soul. What develops your soul is you, awareness, in response to knowledge: you, awareness, being what you know; you being oneness in the midst of your self, your personality, your life, your circumstances, subject to its development or its crippling. What you are being in all of that, your relationship to knowledge, you being oneness unconditionally in everything is what moves your soul, develops your soul.

The value of everything that you’re in of your forms and your life, the value in all of it is that your soul is there, developing, growing, or not. The real value of your forms is determined by what you are being in them, not your experience of them.

Your development as awareness, the development of your soul, your evolution as awareness after you’ve died, moves very slowly. Its ongoing development is steady and so little, because everything is perfect. Your environment is as perfect as you are. There isn’t the contrast, there isn’t the pressure, there isn’t the difficulty. You’re not subject to a variety of polarized influences. Your capacity to evolve as awareness, your capacity for soul development is extremely high while you’re in your body, while you are in such an environment as this world and your self, where almost everything that’s taking place isn’t real, is so imperfect and incomplete, and if you are being in that what you really are, the contrast between you and your self is so extreme; that your self is so not like you. When you are being what you really are in it, you experience the difference.

Your own self is your first environment – yours – that isn’t like you. It isn’t like your being. And this world, a greater environment outside of your self, reinforces the signals in your DNA, enlivening what your ancestors were, drawing upon what they were being that was directly connected to the environment of this world that was illusory. All of this reverberates through your self, and you experience it. This world and your self is an external influence on you. None of it can make you be anything. That power is yours. You are able to take your self and this world into your heart by taking it seriously. These forms of illusion that are very actual, that have actual form, you’re able to take into your heart instead of only taking into your heart what you really are, aside from all of the external influences. You’re able to be one, awareness one with knowledge and its movement: love.

This is what you really are. It’s you, all one, being in your self, being in all of your self, being in this world as it is, not to change it: oneness, relaxed, in whatever environment that it’s in, moving its imperfect forms in an imperfect world, full of everything that isn’t like what you really are.

Your only resource in all of that difficulty, in all such pressure, is the deep in you. When you’re being what you really are, the more difficulty there is in your self – the more pressure on your self – the more you naturally draw from deeply within, which brings the much more of you right into the surface, all into your self, and present right there in the circumstances that you’re in; greater and greater depths of what you really are, present in its quietude, in your person: your only real presence.

What might take 10,000 years in the development of your soul after you’ve died, that same development, a soul development while you’re in your body but being oneness in it, unconditionally, at any personal expense, could take place in perhaps a year. Your purpose for being here in a body is for your soul. It isn’t for your self. It isn’t for your personality. It isn’t for your body. It isn’t for your quality and experience of your self and of life. All of that will pass as soon as you die, but what stays is what you were being in your heart in all of it: opening and softening or closing and hardening.

What really matters is not what you’ve done with your life, what you’ve done with the powers of your self, what you’ve done with your self and your personality in all of its development. What really matters is what you’ve done with your heart in the midst of all of that; what you’ve done with your heart and what’s deeper. The continuity of that is untouched by death. Death takes all that’s not real and illusory. It takes all of yours that wasn’t integrated by you, a being. It doesn’t matter how much or how little we truly know. The only thing that matters is if we are being that or not. That’s what determines the meaning of your life.

Enlightenment means that you are awakened to levels of knowledge that pertain to your being and what you are as consciousness. Having such an awakening, if you are being almost all of it in your life, means less than for you to be all of the little bit that you’ve been awakened to, but being it unconditionally, at any personal expense, in all of your self and all of your life. Your soul develops more than someone enlightened and living only almost all of it. A heart full of what you know, a heart full of its movement ­– love; a heart without your self in it, a being-filled heart present, by you, in all of your self, is everything. Purity of heart is worth more than all enlightenment. It’s of greater value than all knowledge, all being, because it’s oneness, knowledge and being, lived.