The station of the pearl beyond price is so significant because it is not a matter of a state of consciousness or a state of being; it is rather the condition of the actualization of one's realization in one's life. Being becomes personal being, a complete human being living fully the life of objective truth. 

This kind of knowing is characteristic of Being in general. The usual kind of knowing is through inference. The knowing of Being is by identity. One knows oneself because one is oneself. It is knowing by being what is known. So it is an immediate, direct, and existential knowing, in which there is no duality of subject and object. So the recognition that Personal Essence is oneself as a person is a definite, clear, profound and unassailable knowingness. There is confidence and certainty. One experiences oneself as a human being, as an ongoing-personal-beingness. One is real for one exists absolutely, irrespective of the past and of the environment. One is an ongoing sense-of-beingness that is made out of alive consciousness, consciousness that is a palpable presence and not merely the capacity to be conscious. To be is not just to know in one’s mind that one is. To be is to be Being, as existence, and as a substantial presence that is experienced as concretely as physical reality. So to be the Personal Essence is to be a substantial presence, a fullness, a compact consciousness that feels personal.

So the sense of feeling personal is a sense of feeling close to, and intimate with, oneself in a personal way. One feels very close to oneself as a person, as a being, as a human being. One feels involved with oneself, immersed in one’s unique beingness. One is intimately touching one’s own depth, one’s own substance, one’s own soul. One is touching the atoms of one’s being, in intimate contact, in an embrace where one is embracing one’s own being. He who embraces and he who is embraced are the same being, the Personal Essence. The subject is the object. The perceiver is the perceived. The intimacy is so complete that there is no duality. The personal feeling in this experience is the constituent consciousness of the Personal Essence, the intimate feeling tone of this personal being. Just as water is composed of two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen, so the Personal Essence is composed of consciousness that feels personal. So being personal does not exactly mean that one is aware of oneself as a person, and because of this one feels personal. Not exactly. The feeling of being personal is its own feeling, independent of what one takes oneself to be. This point is difficult to communicate, because on the ego level, being personal is habitually associated with being a person. 

On the ego level, we usually feel most personal when feeling deep emotions or being in emotional situations with others. This is in marked contrast to the personal element of Being. Being is not on the emotional level. Being is a much deeper and more profound level than emotions. Emotions are responses of the nervous system, very much linked with the organization of past object relations. Being personal on the Being level can mean some kind of sharing and communication, but not necessarily. One can be personal and completely alone. It is a way of being, a way of experiencing oneself and a way of living. One is personally involved in, is intimately in contact with whatever one is doing or experiencing. In fact, this expression “to be involved” used on the level of the personality of ego comes close to the quality of being personal on the Being level. To be personally involved means that we are more wholehearted about, more in contact with, more intimate with, whatever situation or activity we are in. It means we are more present in the activity. And when we are really present, we are present as the Personal Essence, for it is our personal Being. So on the level of Being, to be personal means to be the Personal Essence. Contact, communication or interaction is personal when one is personally present as the Personal Essence. One can be personal with another without saying or doing anything. It is a way of being with the other. One is actually being there, oneself. From the perspective of Being, the content of the communication is not what determines whether an interaction is personal or not. There might be emotional communication or even physical contact, but if one is not present as the Personal Essence then one is not personal. One can be interacting with a total stranger, discussing abstract ideas and still be personal. 

These characteristics of the personal essence now appear in the new integration of boundless personal Being. Therefore, in the experience of this wholeness, we realize there is a sense of individuation, which is more like a feeling and recognition of organized and coherent functioning. We experience this oneness as a sense of individuated and personal wholeness, whose actions are coherent, self-organized, and organizing. This is almost like being a person, but a person with no particular form. We arrive here at a condition of Being where there is personalness, self-organization, individuation, cohesive functioning, and will, but with no hint of anthropomorphizing. This personal Being is not a form, it does not have arms and legs, or a white beard, and does not premeditate and discriminate in its actions. Personal Cosmic Being acts in total spontaneity, for its action is the dynamic creativity of the logos. It acts with total attunement and responsiveness for it possesses infinite intelligence, the boundless intelligence of true nature that appears in the orderly flow of the logos. We find this condition of Being to be the closest, in our experience, to the concept of a personal God.

An interesting question arises at this point: In the process of personalization of the supreme aspect of Pure Being, is it that when the personality is completely devoid of defense one realizes it is nothing but the Personal Essence with the Pure Being quality, or that the personality becomes integrated into Being resulting in the emergence of the Personal Essence in the new quality of Pure Being beyond differentiation? It is possible to see that both perspectives are accurate; in other words, there are experiences to substantiate both. There are experiences and perceptions where one realizes as the last primitive defenses dissolve that the supreme Personal Essence is nothing but the completely purified and clarified personality. One learns that the sense of separateness is completely due to the presence of subtle defenses.

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.

We go through the initiation of life to get to the real thing, not to go back to what we were before. Something in you emerges out of the universal; out of the substance of the universal, a personal arises. I have the universal in me, it is my very soul, my very substance, but I am a person. And that is the miracle. That is the mystery—that the true person includes the universal, includes the divine. The building blocks of the true person are the universal, the divine substance. God creates you fresh in every moment. There is a new birth in that —God gives birth. Without this experience, you will always feel incomplete. It is for the birth and for the growth of this person, the personal being, the personal essence, often referred to as the “Pearl beyond Price,” that everything else exists. This is the key, the entry into all the mysteries, and to all the celebrations of existence. To be oneself means to be the synthesis of all that exists as you; to be you. You are the fruit of the universe.

The fifth latifa is at the center of the chest, called akhfa, meaning “more hidden,” and the color is emerald green. The consciousness is that of loving-kindness and compassion. The Sufis take this latifa to be the most central and most important. This is understandable for many reasons. Compassion is selflessness and is equated with selfless action. This latifa also leads to the nature of the heart, which is the essential aspect of absolute truth. Also, this center is connected to the essential aspect that is referred to in the literature as the pearl beyond price, which is the personal being.

The personalization of Being is a process that goes through all the boundless dimensions of the journeys of ascent and descent. It culminates in the personalization of the wholeness of Being, with all of the boundless dimensions in coemergent nonduality with each other and all manifest forms. We arrive then at a personal Reality, boundless and unified Being with a personal quality, a Reality with which we can have a personal relationship. Yet, it is not the normal idea of relationship, for there is no separation between the individual soul and the personal Being; and the personal Being is not an entity, not a particular form, but the wholeness of Reality. One specific characteristic of the personal Being is that it includes in its coemergence the logos dimension. This dimension of creative dynamism gives our experience of personal Being the sense that it personally acts and responds. Being is what creates and sustains everything, through its logos dimension. It is what makes anything happen, what moves and transforms all manifest forms. It is the only doer. However, since it is now personalized, we experience it as personal doing. In other words, personal Being acts in a personal manner, where this action is nothing but the creative display of the logos, now integrated with the personal quality of essence. In the self-realization of personal Being, we experience ourselves as the wholeness of Reality, so we do not only feel personal but realize we are a dynamic and active cosmic presence. We can actually experience ourselves, as this cosmic dynamic presence, moving the winds and the stars. We feel that all that happens in the universe happens through our personal will and intelligence. This is not the will and intelligence of the individual soul, but of the cosmic Being, the personal boundless and infinite Being.

This is difficult to imagine without the experience of the Personal Essence. But when the Personal Essence is present, then one cannot help but exclaim: “Aha, of course, how else can it be! I have to be present, as who I am, for me to make contact.” The contact of the Personal Essence feels so direct, so immediate, so complete, so full, that when it is known it becomes impossible to call any other state of consciousness contact. One is making contact because one is personally present in the interaction. One is actually there, as one’s own substance, filling the interaction with immediacy and significance. The personal contact then is as actual, as concrete, as immediate as physical contact. In such contact one is touching the other’s Being with one’s own Being. The substance of one’s unique personal being-ness touches the substance of the other’s unique personal beingness. It is a touching of each other without the presence of ego boundaries, and without the loss of one’s unique individuation of Being. One is present, as oneself, as one’s unique individuation. One is not being anything from the past, so one is totally genuine. One is personal. One is present as an individuated Being, a unique human being. And contact is this presence being with another presence. To make contact on the Being level is to be, with another being. There is no need for words or any other kind of communication for there to be contact. But words and actions of communication do not necessarily negate it. To make contact with someone is to be personal in a real way with that person. It is that simple.