The Secret of Being Happy : 7.

But what do we see in the world which is enduring? We cannot say anything in the physical cosmos is enduring. We say the creation itself has a beginning. Once upon a time God created the world, and so on; it had a beginning, and therefore, it will have an end also. It shall be withdrawn. But there is an underlying basic being which is within all and which urges itself forward as an unavoidable and irreducible minimum of existence in us. When everything goes, one thing will not go. When everything passes away, there is something which remains.

Just imagine for a few minutes that everything is gone. The sun has gone cold, the solar system has been smashed, the earth is pounded to powder, the whole ocean is dried up into the air, and all the air is merged into space. There is nothing here, not a single living being to see anywhere. Everything is gone. What remains? Can you imagine what remains? Nothing remains except the person who thinks that everything is gone. You remain as the contemplator of the fact that everything has gone. The earth has gone, the heaven has gone, the whole cosmos has gone, but you are there to imagine that everything has gone. This idea cannot be abolished. Though the whole cosmos goes, your essence cannot go because even if you imagine that you go, there is an imaginer of that fact of your going.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued  ...