Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

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When I'm Not Here

Coombsville Appellation, Napa Valley, California, USA

July 5, 2026


"All that's here for me is you."
... 
"All I see is you.".
...  Dido, Thank You
"As I was going up the stair I met a man who wasn't there.
 He wasn't there again today. I wish that man would go away."
 ... William Hughes Mearns, Antigonish, circa 1899
This essay, When I'm Not Here, is the companion piece to No "I / Me" Is Involved.

I am indebted to Vik Maraj and to Aaron Bartlett who inspired this conversation.


This conversation explores / re-visits the experience of not being here. Wait ... what?  Just a minute, Laurence. Did you say "the experience of 'not being here'"?  How is it even possible? to not be here??  Presumably I must be alive to have this conversation, yes? If I'm alive, can "I'm not here" ever be true?

Whenever / if ever I say "I'm not here", it's false at best, and a lie at worst. If I'm alive, I can't ever not  be here. So "I'm not here", at least in the physical  sense, is an impossibility. Follow me on this: in the physical sense, if "I'm not here" were  true, then who would be the one saying "I'm not here"? And now having just asserted that "I'm not here" can never be true, consider this: it could be true in a transformative  sense. Better said, it could be true if "There is experiencing  ...". While "I'm not here" is impossible in the physical sense so I can't experience it physically, "I'm not here" is possible in the transformative sense: "There is experiencing ... even if I'm not here.". So what's it like / what does it mean to experience "I'm not here" in a transformative sense? Really.

It's quite likely that you've already experienced "I'm not here" in the transformative sense - indeed many times over, even if you didn't distinguish it as such at the time. Let's develop this with "I'm here" - physically or transformatively. "I'm here" implies that there's something here ie a some-one ie an "I / me"  (if you will), a something inside  us which registers and speaks from and for "I am here" which we commonly and repeatedly mistake for who we really are.

<aside>

The notion that who we really are is located inside  us (ie inside our bodies) is naïve, an illusion, a cherished illusion, but an illusion nonetheless.

That said, deploying "inside" in this context, is good enough for jazz.

<un-aside>

For the moment at least, let's just set aside that in the physical sense, "I'm not here" is impossible, and that an "I / me" inside me is a concept without any grounding in reality. That begs the question: what is the possibility of "I'm not here" having validity in the transformative sense? What would that be like? What would be some examples of experiencing "I'm not here" in a transformative sense? They're actually quite ordinary, quite human  actually. What would be some examples of having the experience of "I'm not here" in the transformative sense even if  "I'm not here" in the physical sense, isn't ever possible?

I'm a father of three children. So I've been present for and participated in the birth process three times. The process is arduous and inexorably unrelenting. The experience is vivid, intense, unforgiving, and totally absorbing. Now watch: in experiencing the birth process, I am not here. There is no "I / me" in the birth process. How could there be? There's simply no room for it. When people asked me later what it was like, I told them "I don't know what it was like. I don't know what it was like for 'I / me' because 'I / me' simply wasn't there. All that was there was the birth process. 'I / me' wasn't in the delivery room.".

That was my first experience of experiencing something so overwhelming and so absorbing, that I had no experience of being there physically. "I / me" simply wasn't in the picture at all. "I / me" simply wasn't there at all ... yet there was experiencing. If I could have spoken, I would have said something like "'I'm not here' ... and yet there is experiencing - not physically, but transformatively.". And that  is actually a lot  closer to the truth than it may sound.

Another occasion when "I'm not here" and yet there is experiencing, is when we're in the throes of great passion. Then there's also no sense of "I / me" in the picture at all. I'm not here ... yet there is experiencing. And remember as we work through this, you can't get this intellectually (you can't find it there).

If I say "I'm not here" (remember, "I'm not here" is never true physically) and I mean it traditionally  ie with "I / me" inside, no experience is possible when I'm not here. Whenever I say "I'm not here" and there is experiencing, I'm referring to what Werner calls "being out-here"  with no "I / me" in the picture.


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