In the process of realization of pure Being, the alternation is not between the personality and presence, but rather, between duality and unity. In duality, the student experiences herself as the totality of the ego-self, the personality, separate from the presence and resistant to it. She also experiences and understands it by being it. She experiences the movement of her ego-self directly, in all its details. She experiences it from within, in its totality, with a specific understanding of the nature of its functioning. This is in contrast to the experience of the personality in the dimension of the Essential Identity, where she experiences it from the outside, as the other who is struggling and suffering. In the dimension of pure Being, her understanding of the nature of suffering becomes more specific and complete. The result is that the personality is not necessarily transformed in the self-realization of the Essential Identity; there is only the shift of its identity. The complete realization of pure Being involves a process of purification and clarification of the personality, until there is no difference between it and the purity of Being. The final outcome is the condition of unity in which we experience the personality (the ego-self) as an inseparable manifestation of pure Being.

Several points in this report can illuminate our exploration: 1. Mark dealt not only with his personal relation to the Pure Being, but also to Cosmic Consciousness, in the same process. He had not under stood and resolved his object relation to his father before this time, although he had experienced the Cosmic Consciousness before. Here the work on both formless dimensions of Being is telescoped into one process. In the case of the student who has resolved this object relation at the level of the Cosmic Consciousness, the issue in relation to Pure Being manifests in a slightly different form. It typically appears as attachment to the formless dimension of Pure Being, with some subtle rejection, or absence of valuing, of the person. There results frustration, because rejection of anything indicates the presence of some ego identification. At some point there is the direct realization that the totality of the individual—the personality, the essence, the mind, the heart, the body—has a place and a value of its own. Then one experiences Pure Being as the source of the deep, juicy kinds of love—all the essential heart qualities plus the Loving Light, flowing towards the individual. The individual, in all its aspects, is loved and accepted, and is experienced itself as Love and Value. This leads to the emergence of the Personal Essence in union with the Pure Being. One is both the Supreme and the person, in a kind of dual unity.

This process leads to two important essential realizations: that of supreme oneness, and that of supreme Personal Essence. The latter involves the Personal Essence attaining a new state, that of nondifferentiated Being. This is not the same as the oneness of Being. One here feels oneself still personal, but in a very pure way. One is a pure person, without any roles, free from all roles. There is freshness, newness and a sense of eternity. One perceives the passage of time, but one is not touched by it. One stays the same, changeless, eternal and feels no personal passage of time. There is fullness, openness, clarity and eternity. It is a sense of freedom, where freedom is a complete openness and lightness, where action is spontaneous and unimpeded. It is freedom from object relations and the world of object relations, while retaining the full capacity for human contact and relating. It is the Personal Essence on the level of Pure Being, where the person is completely synthesized with Pure Being. It is difficult to imagine such a state, for it defies logical categories

It is our observation that most of the translated Dzogchen texts (and to a slightly lesser degree, the Mahamudra texts) on nondual presence describe it in a way that can qualify it as either pure Being or non-conceptual reality. Both these levels of manifestation of Being are characterized by awareness which is both presence and openness. Pure Being feels like a presence that is inseparable from the sense of total lightness and openness. It is both fullness and nothingness. This paradoxical quality is even sharper in the experience of nonconceptual reality, where we feel it as a presence that is at the same time an absence. The emptiness here is much more than the nothingness of pure Being. It is so empty that it is actually a total absence. The experience of the Absolute is similar to that of nonconceptual reality, with an important difference: In looking towards the depths of presence instead of towards manifestation (that is, focusing the attention on the quality of presence rather than on the forms and colors that it displays), we find clarity characterized by absence in the latter and cessation of all perception in the former. The experience of nonconceptual reality is like clear, colorless light, while the Absolute has more a sense of clear, black light. The blackness of the Absolute is not a color, however; it is the absence of perception. It is cessation. So the experience of the Absolute is even more paradoxical than that of the non-conceptual dimension.

Awareness of being the source and being perfectly complete discloses then the timeless truth of our essential nature in its original transcendent condition. It has all the essential qualities in it, but here they are implicit. This complete, pure presence does not lack any quality because it naturally possesses all qualities. The dimension of divine love basically reveals the qualities, makes them explicit. But before they are explicit, they are present in their fullness and completeness in pure being, for pure being is complete being. Pure being is complete being because it is transcendent being, the source of all. It is the original and primordial presence of true nature, before it manifests through the display of its qualities, qualities that it possesses totally but implicitly in its completeness. As transcendent being, it is not differentiated into qualities. Pure being is nondifferentiated presence, presence before differentiation. Pure presence is simply true nature before it differentiates into its discriminated aspects of presence. The central insight here is that pure presence is nondifferentiated presence. The implication is that it is like white light, and the aspects are like its prismatic colors. However, pure presence is not white, but colorless. It is clear light. It is clear light because it is not a reflected light and not a refracted light. It is a self-existing light, which appears directly in awareness as clear light, and is experienced as pure transparent presence.

At some point one perceives—usually suddenly—that one is the formless oneness of Being. The supreme, pure aspect of Being is now experienced in its aloneness, without the presence of ego structures and identifications. For this reason, the issue of aloneness sometimes resurfaces just before this experience of pure oneness. This state of oneness is in contrast to that of the Personal Essence, but without any contradiction. One feels that one is everything; there are no personal boundaries, and no partitions between objects. One is the supreme aspect of Being, is pure nondifferentiated presence, that is the nature of everything, that is also everything. Pure Being is experienced as both everything and beyond everything. As beyond everything it is experienced in its suchness as a pure sense of Beingness. This is referred to usually as the state of unity. As everything, it is experienced as the nature of everything, and this is usually referred to as the state of oneness.

To thoroughly understand in what sense the Personal Essence is the functional aspect of Being, we must explore the relationship of the Personal Essence to the ultimate reality. This ultimate reality is not exactly that of nondifferentiated Pure Being or oneness. It is beyond all conceptualizations. Oneness still retains a concept of oneness. Nondifferentiated Pure Being still retains the concept of Being or existence. Pure Being is none other than the ultimate reality, but is still not seen completely objectively. It is devoid of all differentiation, but it is not devoid of concepts. It is beyond all concepts except one; one is still adhering to the subtle conceptualization of existence. There is still a sense of presence, of beingness, which is very clear experientially. And we find that ego ultimately will use this sense of presence to support its existence and identity. So the next development in the process of inner realization is for Pure Being to lose the last concept, that of Presence. Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 461

The other important discovery we make at this point is the one that Anna had, which is that Being is inherently boundless. We experience this purity of presence as pervasive and infinite, and see, also, that it underlies everything. We come to see that pure Being is the essence and true nature of all manifestation, not only of the self. Further, we experience Being not only as the essence of everything, but as everything. It constitutes not only the core of everything, but the very substance and fabric of everything. It is a medium inside every object, outside it, and in between the outside and inside. It makes up the very substance of the form, not only what fills it. It is both the essence and the boundaries of all forms. So Being is the nature, essence, and substance of all physical objects, all mental objects, and all experienceable manifestations. It is the body, the feelings, the thoughts, the actions, the sounds, the sights, and the meanings. Being is everything. At this level of realization, we come also to perceive the unity of all manifestation. Since Being is an indivisible medium (not composed of parts), it follows that everything makes up a unity, a oneness. There is one existence, as opposed to two, or many. It is merely an infinite presence that possesses a pattern. This pattern is everything we perceive, including all persons and objects. So everything is connected to everything; there exist no separate and autonomous objects or persons. Another discovery is that we see this unity and oneness as our very self and identity. We experience: “I am everything. I am everyone, the bodies, thoughts and feelings of everybody, inseparable from all objects. I am the ground, essence, and source of everything.”

In our exploration, we will discuss the need for the person in more down-to-earth terms, by understanding the characteristics of the Personal Essence. We can understand this need, at least partially, when we remember that the Personal Essence is related to functioning. It is the aspect of Being responsible for actual functioning in the world of space-time. Pure Being, in its state of eternal unity and nondifferentiation, cannot function in the physical world; it does not even make sense to speak about functioning in relation to this aspect. It is completely separate from, and transcendent to, functioning. Functioning presupposes differentiation and discrimination. The Personal Essence is the integration that is the outcome of the synthesis of the differentiated aspects of Being; it is the functional aspect of Being. To thoroughly understand in what sense the Personal Essence is the functional aspect of Being, we must explore the relationship of the Personal Essence to the ultimate reality. This ultimate reality is not exactly that of nondifferentiated Pure Being or oneness. It is beyond all conceptualizations. Oneness still retains a concept of oneness. Nondifferentiated Pure Being still retains the concept of Being or existence. Pure Being is none other than the ultimate reality, but is still not seen completely objectively. It is devoid of all differentiation, but it is not devoid of concepts. It is beyond all concepts except one; one is still adhering to the subtle conceptualization of existence. There is still a sense of presence, of beingness, which is very clear experientially. And we find that ego ultimately will use this sense of presence to support its existence and identity. So the next development in the process of inner realization is for Pure Being to lose the last concept, that of Presence.

It is not that there is a formless or boundless dimension that pervades everything or is the essence or everything, since seeing it this way creates a dichotomy that does not exist. It is not as though there is me and there is my essential nature. The formless dimensions bring in another kind of perception, which is of Being as a formless, boundless, real existence, a substantial presence that is not contained by any boundary. When you experience pure, translucent, self-existing boundless presence, you see that it is not only the fundamental nature of Essence itself, but also of everything that exists. It exists in everything, and everything exists in it. We see here that the universe is ultimately pure Being, and that this pure Being not only supports us, infuses us, and is our nature, but more fundamentally, that it constitutes us. It is completely inseparable from what we are. So it not only pervades and fills the universe, but it is the universe. This understanding that there is no universe separate from this pure boundless self-existing Beingness is a more complete level of the truth. The perception that Being constitutes the totality of everything is what is generally called a mystical experience. Before this, you may have spiritual experiences, but when you experience the oneness and the unity of existence, you are on the level of the mystical. In the dimension of Living Daylight, you experience that everything is made out of love. When you look around you, everything might appear, for example, to be made out of a pink and sweet diamond-like taffy substance, and be pervaded with a wonder, a beauty, and a sweetness.

This is an important point about the nature of Being. One knows Being by being it, because Being is self-aware. It is self-aware because it is pure consciousness. This consciousness is not an activity, it is a presence. Since Being is pure consciousness capable of direct awareness of itself, it does not require thinking and deduction for it to know itself. This is what most distinguishes it from the personality of ego, which knows itself through reference to the past. One reason it is not easy to have a clear experience of Being is that the habit of ego is to know itself through reference to other perceptions, as in Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” But Being’s perception of itself is immediate and direct. The experience is more like “I exist,” felt with immediate, definite certainty. It is the feeling “I am.” “I am because I am.” The experience of Being is like being a certain medium or substance in which each point or atom is exquisitely and clearly aware of itself as pure sensation or consciousness. There is pure sensation, exquisite aliveness.

The manifestation of Pure Being is the experience of awakening. One merely wakes up and realizes one’s pure nature. It is as if one is usually dreaming, but is taking the dream to be reality. Then he wakes up and spontaneously realizes the true state of affairs . . . . . .  There is no sense of discontinuity of experience in awakening. It is not that something that was not there is now manifest. It is more like becoming cognizant of the presence of something that has always been there, and known to be there, but ignored. It is the only aspect of Being that is never lost, and when one experiences it, one realizes it was never lost, and cannot be lost. One merely wakes up to the fact that “Oh, that’s it.” There is no beginning of experience and no end of experiencing here. It is waking up to the fact that this is one’s nature, it always has been, and one has always known that, but did not pay it notice. As Pure Being, one realizes:

Nothing can exist without me, not just because I am the very nature of everything; for I am everything. There is no separation here between appearance and Essence of nature. I am both and beyond. I am the nature of thought. The moment the mind turns towards me it disappears. It becomes me, and there is then only me, Pure Being, as I have always been. Mind disappears as mind and appears as Being. There is no Essence and personality, no Being and ego, for me; for I am both. I am the nature and being of both. Only in me, Pure Being, does the differentiation between personality and Essence dissolve. I am unknowable, in the sense that there is no differentiated quality to be discerned. I am merely being, without reflecting on Being.

There is no sense of discontinuity of experience in awakening. It is not that something that was not there is now manifest. It is more like becoming cognizant of the presence of something that has always been there, and known to be there, but ignored. It is the only aspect of Being that is never lost, and when one experiences it, one realizes it was never lost, and cannot be lost. One merely wakes up to the fact that “Oh, that’s it.” There is no beginning of experience and no end of experiencing here. It is waking up to the fact that this is one’s nature, it always has been, and one has always known that, but did not pay it notice. As Pure Being, one realizes: Nothing can exist without me, not just because I am the very nature of everything; for I am everything. There is no separation here between appearance and Essence of nature. I am both and beyond. I am the nature of thought. The moment the mind turns towards me it disappears. It becomes me, and there is then only me, Pure Being, as I have always been. Mind disappears as mind and appears as Being. There is no Essence and personality, no Being and ego, for me; for I am both. I am the nature and being of both. Only in me, Pure Being, does the differentiation between personality and Essence dissolve. I am unknowable, in the sense that there is no differentiated quality to be discerned. I am merely being, without reflecting on Being.

Pure being is true nature inseparable from its basic knowingness, which is itself a cognitive dimension. More precisely, pure nondifferentiated presence is true nature in its transcendence appearing clothed and embodied with its own inherent knowingness. This inherent knowingness is initially simply the knowingness of its presence, but here it differentiates into the explicit knowingness of the inherent perfections of this presence. Each aspect arises in this dimension as presence, but presence inseparable from a differentiated knowing. Each differentiated knowing is a differentiated concept, as if the original concept has differentiated into many subconcepts. In this dimension of pure basic knowledge, knowing and concept are the same; cognition is simply the presence of a basic concept clothing presence. This concept is nothing but the expression of a cognitive dimension that structures the manifold of true nature, in parallel to the other dimensions, those of color, texture, affect, and so on. It is the differentiation of the cognitive dimension, while the simple knowingness of Being is the nondifferentiated cognitive dimension.

The relationship between the Essential Person and Pure Being is between the unique personal individuation and the ultimate ground. Jesus Christ put it in the form of the relation between the son and his father. When one is the Personal Essence then one is a person supported by, and is an expression and extension of, Pure Being. When one is Pure Being then only nondifferentiated pure Being is. In the world of differentiation Being exists as the essential person. There is no human life, nor any life at all, when there is no differentiation. As Being, one is beyond life and death, form and formlessness. This resolution and understanding of the relationship between the Personal Essence and Being opens the door to the process of the latter’s personalization. This is a very subtle, and usually difficult, process. It deals with extremely subtle perceptual and cognitive considerations. However, the main barriers are mainly issues relating to ego structure. The deepest and most subtle defenses of ego are resolved here. These are the borderline defense of splitting, and the schizoid defenses of isolation and withdrawal.

So, in oneness there is differentiation: You are discriminating things; you can perceive colors, and the colors are different from one another. They constitute one thing, like one fabric. Here we see that differentiation does not mean separation. We see one shirt with different colors in it. We are aware of one body with different elements. We see one house that has many parts. You can discern things, but also perceive that they are not separate. In oneness, there is time-space. With pure Being, there’s still no time-space, but there is existence. For there to be differentiation, as in oneness, there must be space. In this dimension, concepts exist. What we mean here by “concepts” is recognizable differentiations. There are recognizable differentiations in phenomena, which from a certain perspective appear as concepts or ideas, but which we call here “noetic forms.” They are the forms in which manifestation is differentiated. These concepts or noetic forms are not mental phenomena in the sense that thought is mental. We associate concepts with mental images. But a mental concept of something is not the same as a form actually existing. Here, we are talking about forms which exist. In this sense, a house is a concept. A house is not the same thing as the hill it sits on, right? So they can be differentiated and discriminated. However, the house and the hill are not separate; they are elements of one reality. So the hill is a concept, and the house is a concept. Differentiation and discrimination happen through concepts. In the realm of concepts, you can recognize differences in what exists in reality.