In the realm of Essence, in addition to the many essential aspects which manifest in the soul, there are also many levels or dimensions. We call these the Diamond Dimensions. Essence manifests in many dimensions. Reality becomes deeper and more refined as you penetrate further into it. At the beginning, and for some time in our process, as we experience Essence and its various aspects and dimensions, our experience remains an inner experience, meaning that it is experienced inside the body. You feel Joy in your heart, or Will in your belly, or Clarity in your head. Your experience remains within the usual framework of the body; it seems to happen to an individual person who is having a spiritual experience. At some point we reach a dimension in which our experience is not limited by the boundary of the body. We experience Essence as continuous, inside and outside. This is the dimension that’s usually called “unity.” In unity we are one. There is no separation between people and things. We are experiencing Essence or Being, not as an inner experience, but as a total experience, a universal, cosmic reality. This level also has various dimensions and refinements. The general gradation from inner to unified boundless experience is a typical pattern in those who pursue effective long-term spiritual work. 

The final dichotomy is between the Absolute and the cosmic existence. The Absolute is the final subject and the final object is the cosmic existence. But when that union happens, when that dichotomy is erased in the understanding of nondifferentiated reality, there is no subject and object, no inside and outside. So the person who is completely nonattached, who knows reality exactly, will not assert anything. If someone is completely real, that person will not say, “I exist.” He will not say, “I don’t exist.” He will not say, “I both exist and don’t exist at once.” He will not say anything like that. He will not say there is God. He will not say there is no God. He will not say there is both God and no God at the same time. Ultimately, reality is not any of these differentiations. Reality, whatever it is, is simply there. Whatever it is, it simply is. Working as we have today to understand the nature of suffering might help us work in a more informed, more balanced, more optimistic way—optimistic based not on fantasies but on our realization of reality. When we know that ultimately we are everything, what’s the point of trying to get one thing and not another? Even before we encounter the Absolute, knowing the cosmic reality begins to dissolve our attachment to asserting distinctions. You don’t care whether you are rich or poor, big or small, old or young, pretty or ugly—you are everything. Differentiation still exists in the sense that there are people, there are colors, there are objects, there are different states. But the differentiations are not ultimate or isolated or asserted. They are one reality. They are like different colors of one medium, like different threads of a single fabric. When the attachment to differentiation dissolves, it is not like you don’t see people or trees or things happening. Everything appears as usual but, because you see the connecting fabric, there is a luminosity all the time. There is a transparency. You see through things. You look at a person and you don’t only see the body; you see everything—all the essential aspects, all the energies, all the way to the mystery of the Absolute.

The second movement of truth exposes our sense of boundaries and separateness as an illusion. We come to see that the cosmic existence is the real existence of the universe and the individual, even though sometimes we are not aware of it. Oneness is there all the time and sometimes we perceive it, sometimes not. When we realize the cosmic individuality, when we realize we are everything, we have conquered space. When we remain in the cosmic individuality, we realize after a while that the nature of that cosmic reality is eternity. It feels eternal in the sense that it has nothing to do with time. Cosmic reality includes all time, which makes it feel eternal, but, more precisely, it is altogether outside of time. Eternity is outside of time and perceives it. Now arises a freedom from time. We come to realize that the totality, what we call God or the cosmic individual, is not only a oneness of space but also a oneness of time. The cosmic amoeba is all time. So we have a four-dimensional space here. This is called Einsteinian space. The cosmic individual is neither in space nor in time. You are eternal presence, in the sense that you are now, in this very moment, all times, all places. Realizing the state of God, or the cosmic existence, is realizing that eternity. There is a sense that you are seeing time passing, but time passes within the totality, within God. In the totality, it is all now, and time and space pass within you. Within that timelessness, space and time pass. Space and time do not disappear; people do not disappear, but live, grow old, and die. But all of that passes through you as the totality. Eternity is not contradictory to time but includes it. This reality is hard to conceptualize if you are in the dimension of time. Time can only be linear. In the totality, there is no difference between time and space. They are coordinates, like the length and depth of one thing. At the stage of cosmic totality, we have gone beyond space and beyond time. And still there is more to understand. We have not yet reached the deepest, most basic insights.