In the experience of nonduality, it is not as though physical reality were a dream emanating from it -- that perception would still be dualistic. When duality is seen through, physical reality is imbued with the essential dimension, and the two become one. This gives the physical more reality, more substance, more existence, more meaning, more depth, and more dimensionality. When you look at people, they seem more substantial, and even their bodies appear more physical, in a sense. Every object and person has a concreteness and a definiteness that makes each appear more defined, more present, and more complete, because your experience of them includes the depth of the true existence. When everything is perceived as the Absolute, each atom, each form, has its depth. The Absolute not only underlies everything, but penetrates all manifestation. Depending upon which dimension you are experiencing, everything you perceive acquires the depth and beauty of that dimension.]

In the third mode, Truth and identity are completely coemergent, absolutely nondual. If we express the second mode of experiencing Truth we will say: “There is only Truth,” while if we express the third way, we will say: “I am the Truth.” Both modes of experience are nondual, but we see here two kinds of nonduality. The first mode of experience of the nonduality is absolute identity, while the second is absolute coemergence.

In the deeper stages of self-realization, and especially in the experience of primordial nondual Presence, the flow of Presence is completely coemergent with action. Action flows out completely inseparable from Presence, for the body and mind are inseparable manifestations of Presence. In some sense, there is no such thing on this dimension as action, for there is only the continuity of Presence, as a discriminated and patterned flow. Some of these patterns we ordinarily call actions, some we call feelings, and some we call states, but they are all nothing but Presence, the expression of the never-ending creativity of Presence. In other words, action here is ontological creativity and the notion of Presence as the center of initiative and action breaks down on this level of experience, for the center is completely inseparable from, and in fact totally coemergent with, the totality of the self.

In reality, soul and essence are two aspects of the same thing, just as the body and protoplasm are two aspects of the same thing. For us, for our experience, which is all we have, they are nondual, they are our nonduality. Because they are nondual it is not possible to differentiate them completely. More accurately, we can differentiate them but we cannot dissociate them, we cannot make them two separate and independent realities. How we see their relationship is bound to be somewhat arbitrary, depending on how we differentiate them in thought or experience. We can see essence as a potential of the soul, as its most primordial potential; but we can also see the soul as one of the aspects of essence, as the aspect of life. We can see essence as the ground of the soul, but we can also see the soul as the wholeness whose very fabric is essence. Both possibilities arise in direct experience and in advanced stages of the inner journey the difference between the two gradually dissolves. At this point we experience an essential soul, or a dynamic essence, indicating a complete and total coemergence of essence and soul, reflecting the primordial nonduality of Reality.

This recognition of the nondual ground of experience is the realization that there is basically only presence. Presence is what exists, what is, and everything that exists is a form that presence takes. Reality is one unified field of luminosity that differentiates itself into the various perceptions that we have. Thus, True Nature and Being are really the same thing as truth, or reality. All those terms mean the same thing: presence that is in a condition of conscious full realization. In this condition, experience is not filtered through the mind; things are experienced exactly as they are. We see their nature and recognize that it is True Nature—which turns out to be the nature of everything, all the way down to the tiniest particle. This means that nothing exists but True Nature. It pervades everything so intimately, so completely, that it doesn't leave any one spot unoccupied by it.