as beings, there corresponds on the part of man a comportment that no longer adverts to beings but suddenly thinks Being. To think Being requires in each instance a leap, a leap into the groundless from the habitual ground upon which for us beings always rest. It is as the groundless that the free comes to light. and that is how we name it. provided we think nothing more of a being than its "it is."
This genuine thinking occurs "by leaps," for it ignores the bridges and railings and ladders of explanation, which always only derives beings from beings, since it remains on the "soil" of "facts." This ground is full of cracks. It never bears. For every being to which we adhere to the exclusion of all else bears only as a consequence of an oblivion of Being, wherein nevertheless the being is present. Being, however, is not a ground but is the groundless. It is called such because it is primordially detached from a "soil" and "ground" and does not require them. Being, the "it is" of a being, is never autochthonous in beings, as if Being could be extracted from beings and then stood upon them as on its ground. It is only beings in relation to beings that are autochthonous. Being, the never autochthonous, is the groundless. This seems to be a lack, though only if calculated in terms of beings, and it appears as an abyss in which we founder without support in our relentless pursuit of beings. In fact we surely fall into the abyss, we find no ground, as long as we know and seek a ground only in the form of a being and hence never carry out the leap into Being or leave the familiar landscape of the oblivion of Being. This leap requires no digressions or formalities. For everywhere and always and in the closest proximity to the most inconspicuous beings there already dwells the openness of the possibility of explicitly thinking the "it is" of beings as the free, in the clearing of which beings appear as unconcealed. The open, to which every being is liberated as if to its freedom, is Being itself. Everything unconcealed is as such secured in the open of Being, i.e., in the groundless.
The groundless, originally freed from every ground and its cracks, is what secures primordially, though to be sure it does not secure in the sense of a sanctuary man might hunt out somewhere within beings and arrange for himself. The security of the open does not provide a place of refuge through which man could acquit himself of his essence. The open itself secures the essential abode of man, provided man and only he is that being to whom Being illuminates itself. Being, as the open, secures in itself every kind of unconcealedness of beings. Hence, in securing, the secure open also conceals the primordial decision by which Being bestows on man unconcealedness, i.e., the truth of beings as a whole. The character of this bestowal hides and secures the way historical man belongs within the bestowal of Being, i.e., the way this order entitles him to acknowledge Being and to be the only being