The soul discovers that to truly move toward the inner essential truth and to live the life of essence means abandoning her normal identity and its various external and internal supports. The soul’s experience actually shifts to another experiential universe, where she will need to find different supports for her new identity and its life. Abandoning her old supports brings up deep fears and terrors, while discovering and implementing the new supports is usually counter to her habitual stances. Allowing the fear that arises from this and other issues connected with the citadel, particularly issues related to ego deficiency and the need to accommodate the desires and needs of other people, the soul can enter into a clear black space devoid of defensive functioning. The soul’s allowing this space brings the possibility of the emergence of the true support for the path, the citadel. As the citadel vehicle begins to manifest within the immediate field of the soul we become aware of its immensity, its forbidding power and deep immovability. Its upper part is diamond solid gold, and its base is diamond platinum. The sense is of solidity and immensity, power and invulnerability. It can fill the whole body, or become as immense as a mountain. Gold is the substance of essential truth; diamond gold is the objective wisdom of essential truth. Platinum is the aspect of universal will, the will of true nature toward optimization and realization, so its diamond is objective wisdom of this support. Thus the central body of the citadel is objective universal support for objective truth, and its teaching is the recognition how to live one’s life in a way that harmonizes with true nature’s universal will, which is inseparable from objective truth. The citadel is an immense presence, dense and immovable. 

Although the debate goes on about which factors or combination of factors lead to change, what we are concerned with here is the understanding that, whatever factors lead to it, change in self-image is necessary for change. Our concern is with how the self-image changes, with what affects the boundaries of the self-image at moments of transformation. What is the process of change, the dissolution of self-boundaries? Understanding clearly this step in change can greatly contribute to understanding the factors that lead to it. We have already shown that the self-boundaries which form self-image are boundaries that bound space. They structuralize space. We have seen that the dissolution of boundaries leads to the freeing of space, and can be seen as the same phenomenon as the emergence of space. Space always manifests in one’s consciousness as the self-boundaries disintegrate. We can say either that space melts away boundaries or that dissolution of boundaries allows space to manifest. It is one phenomenon. The dissolution of boundaries cannot be separated from the emergence of space. So here we see the role of space in inner change: There is no lasting change without a change in self-image, there is no change in self-image without a dissolution of self-boundaries, and there is no dissolution of boundaries without the action of space. 

Recognizing the spontaneous happening of reality, we see the pulsing creativity that instantly manifests the entire world that we see from moment to moment. The world emerges, appears, disappears, emerges newly, appears, disappears—all instantly, all constantly. We can see this in our own experience. Our experience is always a creative emergence of various forms of feelings, thoughts, and sensations constantly changing. In the complete view, our experience, the outer world—everything, including our body—is constantly generated, created, and formed. Only when we see this dynamic creativity do we understand movement and action and change. Each form, including us, is created newly and differently each instant; these slight differences, when seen through the continuum of time, appear as movement—just as the still frames of a movie projected quickly, one after the other, give the sense of movement and change when actually it’s instant-to-instant creation. So even in the still, silent quietness, even in the total, relaxed ease, the all-creating monarch is always creating the totality of all the universes, creating them in an instant and destroying them in an instant. The all-creating Quintessence does not need seven days. In an instant the whole universe is there completely, everywhere distinct. Just as in an instant you can create an entire world in your mind, the Quintessence creates you and that entire world in its mind; and it creates far more than that too. The Quintessence creates all that we experience. 

We have also explored how it is possible to go farther, seeing that just before the process of absorption begins, the remaining general but subtle defensive posture of an identification system can dissolve. This indicates that for absorption to occur the process of secondary autonomy must be complete and not only relative. Absorption occurs only when personality completely surrenders its defenses. When personality (any identification system of ego) ceases all resistance, it is readily absorbed, and a transformation occurs that ends in the emergence of the Personal Essence. So the transition from ego to Being hinges on the abandonment of defense. This mirrors the age-old spiritual understanding that surrender leads to enlightenment and realization. We have observed that abandonment of defense can happen at any age, not only in adulthood. This means that the experience of the Personal Essence can occur in childhood, which we earlier reported having observed. It also explains why some individuals begin to have memories of it after they recognize it in adulthood. 

We can also experience universal transformation as a process of manifestation. In this perception we are aware of the purity of true nature, a homogeneous unity beyond any form or color. We perceive the forms of the universe manifesting out of this timeless ground, as if they are first hidden and unmanifest but then come out into manifestation. We then view the appearance of Being as the manifest reality, with the pure ground of Being as the unmanifest. This perception is clearest when we perceive the transformation process from the perspective of the absolute dimension, the subject of the next chapter. There are many grades of subtlety to this perception, which we will discuss in the next chapter. We experience the absolute as the unmanifest, the source of all manifestation, and perceive everything manifesting out of it. In fact, we witness the whole dimension of dynamic presence as manifesting within the vast mystery of the absolute, which is concomitant to the continual manifesting of the totality of the universe. More accurately, we experience the dimension of dynamic presence as the manifesting manifestation. Its emergence is the emergence of all creation, with all of its dimensions and forms.  

The essential aspects are not sought after, but are allowed to emerge on their own. One merely lives fully, in close contact with one’s personal experience, but is continually and deeply curious about, and open to, reality. One’s life is governed by the love of truth, and understanding is experienced as inseparable and indistinguishable from the unfoldment of one’s potential. The emergence of Essence in its aspects can be seen as due to interest in understanding oneself and one’s reality. But Essence can equally be seen as emerging on its own, in response to life situations, and thus influencing one’s consciousness, as it approaches from the depths. As each aspect of Essence pushes towards consciousness it naturally confronts the identification systems that were developed to bury it and to emulate it. It exposes this segment of the personality, making it feel ego alien (contrary to one’s sense of who one is), and bringing about an objective understanding of that part of the personality. This understanding is the truth that is absorbed, which leads to the conscious emergence of the particular aspect.

Our soul can inquire because it can question, and by questioning it opens up its basic knowledge for Being to disclose its mysteries. This disclosure of the mysteries of Being is the optimization of this basic knowledge. We are then embodying a dynamic openness that expresses a dynamic knowingness. Inquiry includes other elements such as knowledge, observation, awareness, concentration, reflection, intelligence, and so on. Yet questioning stands as the central initiating process that acts on all these others, integrating and directing them toward a specific object of investigation. Therefore, to learn to inquire, we first need to learn about questions and questioning. We need to liberate our questioning mind and to expand the dynamic openness at the center of our questions. Inquiry then becomes the manifestation of unknowingness in our experience and the moving toward illuminating this unknowingness. This illumination of unknowingness becomes the emergence, the arising, of new dimensions of experience, the unfoldment of our soul. To learn to inquire means to learn to question your experience in a way that will cause it to unfold.  

Ontological nothingness is phenomenologically openness, whose psychological effect is total openness to everything. The soul integrates here the openness of Being necessary for the free emergence of all potential, which is her psychological freedom. Her openness now is the openness of true nature, primordial and without limitations, making it easier for her to know her true unlimited nature. At this point it is easy for the soul to recognize that the fullness nothingness, with its openness and transparency, is familiar to her. A little inquiry may reveal to her that it is nothing but her ordinary awareness, the awareness that she has always had, without which there is no perception or experience. She has always known it, for her conscious experience is inseparable from it. Yet she has not recognized it before, partly because she has always exclusively looked at the content of her experience, the objects of her awareness. She has never simply looked at her awareness itself; she has always deeply thought of it as a function, and not an ontological reality on its own. Now she recognizes that this awareness has always been the ground of her perception and experience. She recognizes her awareness for what it is, a presence that is also nothing. She recognizes its fundamental status and its timeless characteristics, and how it is her own true presence and ultimate nature. 

The next level deeper is the perception that everything, including oneself, originates in Being and returns to Being, that Being is the ground in which and from which everything manifests. This is the experience of seeing that there is a Source from which you come and to which you return, and that all of reality comes from and returns to this same Source. It is like perceiving that the waves arise out of the ocean and return back into it. This is how reality is, whether you perceive it or not. When you are not perceiving this truth, you are asleep. When we say that the Holy Ideas are views of objective reality, we mean that this reality is not dependent upon your mind or your experience of it. It is how reality is, independent of your perceptions of it. So even though you might not perceive it this way does not mean that it isn’t this way, any more than the objective truth that your heart is pumping blood through your body is in any way dependent upon your perception of that fact. At this level, the perception is that reality is in a constant process of creation and dissolution, arising out of, and returning back to, the Source. We perceive the unfoldment of manifestation as an emergence, a fountain of forms rising out of that Source. While Being is seen here as the ground in which and from which everything manifests, there is not yet the sense of coemergence. There is the appearance and there is the Source of it, so there is a slight sense of separateness. The Logos, the boundless dimension of manifestation, is seen here to arise out of Being rather than being it.

So we see that the void is the emptiness resulting from the dissolution of the personality needed for the emergence of essence. In other words, the basic ground of our experience is empty space, the void. This space is usually filled by the personality and its identifications so that there is no room for essence. So there is a need for a clearing process, which will ultimately result in the emergence of empty space. Then essence can emerge, and it will be the fullness of our being. It will take its place, as the source, the life, and the fulfillment.  

This emergence of essence is what is usually referred to in Work literature as a “rebirth.” The essence is born again, having been buried for years. The birth is a completion of a cycle, preceding the beginning of another cycle. The whole process repeats itself; understanding a new constellation or sector of the personality leads to its specific deficient hole (emptiness) and ends with the emergence of the corresponding essential aspect. There is awakening, death, and rebirth for each aspect of the essence—awakening to a certain sector of the personality, the death of this sector in the experience of emptiness, and then the rebirth as the emerging of the aspect of essence. This cycle is repeated as many times as there are holes in the personality. As we see, there is no one death and no one rebirth, unless we take the first emergence of essence as the unitary experience. The personality dies gradually, one sector at a time. We see here the meaning of the cycle of death and rebirth. This sequence of awakening, death, and rebirth is the usual one known from ancient times, but here it is seen with diamond clarity.