Why is the soul running away so fast? Why is she so terrified when she sees the night approaching, when she sees the brilliance of that night, when she glimpses the countenance of the Guest? She becomes terrified because beneath her fear lies an ancient, primordial longing. She is terrified of what she truly and most deeply wants. She somehow knows, although not consciously, that there is nothing sweeter to her, nothing more desirable to her, than to completely vanish, to completely burn and never be heard of again. Her love and desire for the Beloved is identical with her love and desire for total annihilation. The Guest ultimately is her nature and self, beyond being and nonbeing, a mystery where all ceases. The truth of the situation is that the perception of separation is unnatural, and the natural condition is absolute identity. This absolute identity, perceived through the unnatural duality, appears to us as passionate love. You see, the Guest is not something you will get, not something you will attain. The Guest is something that will erase you, that will make you disappear. The Guest is something that will burn you up completely. You can’t even call it who you truly are, because it is before you were. You can’t call it the nature of the universe, because it is before the universe was and will be there after the universe goes. When everything is gone, “you” is gone, everybody else is gone, the universe is gone—when everything is night, that will be the Guest. When the night is pure, when the night is before there were stars in it, when the night is pure night, complete night, nothing but night, then the Guest has arrived. Then the Secret has no other—there is simply the primordial potential. 

How can we understand intelligence on the essential dimension, as a manifestation of Being? We first go to the Absolute, the essence of our Being. The absolute essence of Being is complete in all ways, perfect in all possibilities; it is completeness and perfection in a total way. It implicitly has in it all the essential aspects, all the perfections. These are the perfections of the Absolute, the explications of all the perfections inherent in our deepest nature, which is our absolute identity. All these perfections, all the essential aspects, are implicit in the Absolute. They are not only implicit and unmanifest but also undifferentiated. So the Absolute is completeness, perfect in all ways in an unmanifest, implicit, and undifferentiated state. In this context, “undifferentiated” means that the qualities of Being are not separate from each other. At this level of experience, we cannot separate or differentiate them even though they are all there. Not only are they not differentiated, they are not manifest. In other words, we can’t experience them in a positive sense; we can only know that they are there because there is no deficiency, no need, in the experience of the Absolute. The Absolute is complete when we experience it as qualityless. It is qualityless because although it implicitly has all the perfect qualities, they are all unmanifest. That is why we call it the Mystery. We know its perfections explicitly only when the Absolute is manifest. 

The Essential Identity functions similarly to other aspects, with the dual function of providing a capacity necessary for the life and development of the soul and connecting her to the Absolute in a specific way that reveals the nature of this connection. The essential aspect of Identity, the point of light and presence, provides the soul with a center and identity necessary for her life, which will at the same time ultimately connect her with the Absolute, as her final and absolute identity. The Essential Identity is the implicit perfection inherent in the Absolute that explicitly expresses in the individual soul that the Absolute is not only ultimate truth, but also ultimate identity. It is the Absolute as identity manifesting within the individual experience of the soul. Therefore, since full self-realization requires the realization of the Absolute as one’s ultimate identity, the realization of the Essential Identity becomes the primary and most important fulcrum towards the completion of the spiritual journey. Realization of the Essential Identity is the expression of the realization of the Absolute, as reflected in individual experience, within the world of space-time. The Essential Identity is the spark of the Absolute within the individual soul, and since the central process of spiritual development is self-realization, its realization begins the realization of the Absolute.