The soul grows as she unfolds, actualizing her emerging potential. The soul does not stay the same. She is not primordially complete and mature, and hence she can have phases and stages of development. She can be primitive or advanced, simply organized or highly integrated, immature or adult and seasoned. She can be infantile, young, or ancient. She can be arrested in her development, underdeveloped, undeveloped, quite developed, or complete. All these are characteristics that apply to the soul, but not to Essence. For the presence of pure consciousness, these qualities do not make sense

Pure knowledge is potential knowledge; experiencing it we understand how soul is the potential for all knowledge. This points to a property even more inclusive for the soul, potential itself. We can see the soul’s potential as knowledge, but not necessarily. It is always knowledge, but we can view it differently, from different angles, emphasizing different qualities. Therefore, another way of experiencing the soul is not as potential knowledge, but as simply potential. Again, this is an unusual and unexpected kind of experience. We do not ordinarily think that we can experience potential directly; we do not envision that potential is a category of direct experience, that it is a quality that can be experienced similarly to love or clarity. We normally think of potential as a concept that we know indirectly, implicitly, by recognizing there is more to us, that we have more possibilities than we have actualized and realized. We think of potential as a concept referring to the totality of our particular potentials. We may even intuitively sense the possibilities lying dormant in us, waiting to be awakened and actualized. However, when we finally experience potentiality directly and fully, we understand our soul, and our potential, in a completely new way, an unexpected and wonderful way. We learn something fundamental about soul, something we cannot see by knowing of our potential inferentially or intuitively. The experience here is of the conscious presence characterized by potentiality. The presence is the presence of potential. Just as potential knowledge is the presence of pure knowledge, potential is the presence of pure potential, as a category on its own, as a fundamental quality that we experience here explicitly and directly.

Essential substance is so beautiful and magnificent that no imagination can conceive of its beauty, and no poetry can convey its magnificence. The way it moves us and teaches us is beyond the wildest dreams and imaginations of humanity. Its potentialities are staggering, its creativity is boundless, its depth is endless, and its intelligence is limitless. It is a wonder—a wonder beyond all miracles. It is our true nature, our most intimate identity. This wonder is not just for stories or poetry. It is not just to dream about or long for. It is not just to give us flashes of its magnificence, or fleeting tastes of its significance. It is actually our human essence. It is who we are: our very beingness. We are to be this essence, to exist and live as essence. It is our potential to be our essence, not just in occasional experiences but always and permanently. It is our essence that can and should be what lives, and what should be the center of our life. It can and should be inseparable from us. The work of inner development is not aimed only at having an experience of essence. It is aimed at the complete realization of essence and the permanent existence of us as essence. It is aimed at the eradication of our separation from essence. To be free is simply to be. And to be is simply to live as essence. In fact, when we are not consciously essence, we are not existing. The life of the personality is nonexistence, a wasted and useless life. There is life only when there is existence, and existence is essence.

The more that we appreciate Total Being, the more we can recognize reality as infinite potential. There is infinite potential to be anything or not to be anything—to be a self, to be no self, to be dual, to be nondual, and also to be other things that are neither dual nor nondual. The understanding of Total Being liberates us from having to define ourselves in any particular way. And it liberates us from having to define reality in any particular way. But that doesn’t lead to chaos. Rather, it heralds freedom. Total Being indicates that reality is not encompassed by any one particular way of being or experiencing or perceiving. In this way, it reflects the view of totality, which allows many views and many perspectives at once. Each realization is real, each awakening is real, and each has its view. All these views are encompassed by the view of totality, which expresses Total Being. Of course, practicing from the perspective of Total Being will challenge your ideas of what realization is and what enlightenment is. This perspective will challenge whatever you are taking yourself to be at any moment. When I use that expression, “whatever you are taking yourself to be,” I don’t necessarily mean some particular self; I mean whatever the being is at that moment, whatever the consciousness recognizes itself to be at that moment, whether it recognizes itself as an individual or not. Because as Total Being, you are an individual and you are not; you are human and you are not; you are form and formlessness, and you are neither of those. Understanding that you are Total Being opens freedom totally, in all of its degrees.

The soul is not only an expression of coemergent Being, for everything is an expression; she is a special kind of expression. She has the potential to consciously experience herself as an expression of Being and to consciously experience and know Being in its totality; hence she is the only individual manifest form we know that has such potential. Also, she has the potential to become an individual replica of the personal Being, as an integrated totality, an individuated soul, a real person. Furthermore, this development is always unique. No two souls develop identically, though they begin with fundamentally the same potential. Because of this each soul possesses a unique function in the totality of Reality, with a specific contribution, and an original combination of qualities

As the soul unfolds her potential she changes not by disposing of the old forms, but by integrating them into a more complex organization, in which more elements and levels are integrated into a functional whole. As forms emerge and develop they subsume the previous ones, creating a more complex organism. This process happens in all the sectors and manifestations of the soul. Mental development is a clear example of the appearance of increasingly complex forms. At first we are capable of perception, then recognition, then we can use images and symbols, then concepts, then complex thought. This again points to a basic property of the soul, a property implicit in its unfolding dynamism that we can understand and experience explicitly: the property of growth.

Psychodynamic understanding has, then, an extraordinary power and potential far beyond its therapeutic uses. The existing body of knowledge in the field of psychology, and especially in psychoanalysis, can be very effectively used for essential development. And the nature of psychodynamic understanding allows us to work directly with the present experience of the student without following any particular progression or gradation. We can simply understand what is there in the moment, and this will lead us naturally to a particular aspect of essence: space, the personal aspect, the universal aspect, or any of several others. Using understanding in this way, we can avoid the awkwardness and inefficiency of many traditional techniques, such as giving all students the same meditations, the same physical exercises, or the same advice on the value of surrender regardless of the specific situation or state of the student. Psychodynamic understanding deals exactly with whatever situation the student presents, with what is actually of vital interest to him and his life. And from this real situation, understanding will lead him to the particular aspect of essence that is actually relevant to him at the time. As he continues the process of self-understanding, now with awareness of his own essence, the other aspects will appear and develop. This will happen naturally and spontaneously if the person looks at the truth in his experience. The essence is gradually freed from the grip of the unconscious and assumes its rightful place as the conscious center of one’s life.

Our observation corresponds with this Sufi knowledge, that the soul potential includes all possible forms of manifestation, whether organic or not, regardless of size and shape. So the soul can experience herself, as happens frequently on the spiritual journey, as a star, a planet, a galaxy, a universe, a rock or mountain, rain or clouds, an ocean or a river, a jewel or a crystal, a metallic or an organic form, and so on. The experience is not physical, but feels similar to the physical. It is an inner experience, and the forms are forms of consciousness, but they are the closest a human being can experientially know these manifestations.

Perhaps it is obvious that humanity is still at the beginning of actualizing its potential. We can see that we are not that far into the process of maturation. As part of our human potential, we can be completely transparent, like air; a feeling or inner experience can arise in a completely free way, totally unimpeded, unrestricted, undistorted. The spontaneity, transparency, and fullness of our experience can be present whatever experience we have—whatever emotion, whatever thought, whatever perception—for when we are in a completely natural condition, experiences arise as manifestations of our radiance, of our true light. However, we often have difficulty experiencing much of what arises in our experience as clearly as we might and seeing things for what they are—even things we feel very deeply about. This has had profound consequences for human beings throughout our history, and has caused much suffering and pain.