We see that inquiry can penetrate deeper than the cognitive realm. It can do this when the inner guidance appears on the nonconceptual dimension, as the crystal vehicle of guidance. Crystal guidance not only reveals the presence of reifications, but goes further, pointing to concepts themselves and how they become barriers to pure awareness. By challenging the various concepts and conceptual positions it moves consciousness beyond them, to nonconceptual presence. Crystal guidance functions in another, unexpected way. Beyond the exposing of concepts and dichotomies, its crystalline structure illuminates barriers that developed before the arising of conceptual knowledge. These are the structures of the soul that were established very early in life, before the cognitive capacity developed enough for the establishment of representational structures.

Experientially, the notions of good and bad are connected mostly to pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering, gain and loss, expansion and contraction, and so on. In the unutterable bliss of nonconceptuality, these dichotomies disappear. An important part of this process for the soul is the development of nonattachment. The understanding that arises with the help of the crystal vehicles is that attachment depends on the dichotomy of good and bad. These vehicles teach the soul that nonattachment is nothing but the effect of the nonconceptual presence on the consciousness of the soul. They teach her this wisdom by challenging this dichotomy, which she has adhered to as long as she can remember, and showing her how it is not a fundamental truth, not a timeless truth of Reality.

Just as the essential aspects arise in the dimension of pure presence as faceted gems, in the nonconceptual dimension essence manifests in a similar way. The absence of knowingness makes consciousness more objective and less emotionally reactive, and the qualities tend to appear as crystals rather than gems. The diamond vehicles become crystal vehicles, which are simply the diamond vehicles on the nonconceptual dimension of Being. The crystals and crystal vehicles become the emissaries of the wisdom of nonconceptuality, of reality beyond mind. The diamond guidance, for example, appears in the crystal nonconceptual form and guides the soul’s consciousness to the integration of nonconceptual presence. This is a subtle manifestation, not easy to understand. What does it mean that we learn the wisdom of nonconceptual truth? What is wisdom on the nonconceptual level? The crystal aspects and vehicles function partly by challenging various barriers and obstacles to pure awareness, which are mostly conceptual positions taken to be ultimate truths. These positions appear on the conceptual level, but the guidance demonstrates how they become obstacles to the realization of the nonconceptual. As these barriers are understood, the crystals arise as the aspects and vehicles needed for the resolution, but appear as manifestations of nonconceptual presence. In other words, basic knowledge unfolds in such a way that takes consciousness beyond it.