The relationship of the soul to the macrocosm, and specifically to its absolute essence, becomes clearly delineated by the advent of a new diamond vehicle that manifests as part of the journey of descent, the freedom vehicle. It clarifies where lies the true freedom of the soul, and how this freedom is inseparable from the life of service. Among the many elements of the infinite wisdom inherent to this vehicle, one that is paramount to the soul in terms of her life and development, is the objective and precise wisdom regarding the soul’s role in the cosmic manifestation. What is important about it for our life on earth is that it contains the objective wisdom of what an individual being is in relation to the cosmos, and what his or her function is in actuality. The freedom vehicle clearly indicates this wisdom, which reveals our presence as a direct manifestation and extension of the absolute into cosmic manifestation. It is the absolute, nonlocal, and nonextended; yet it is a form localized in the world of time and space. It is a bridge between timelessness/spacelessness and time/space. It is itself beyond time and space, but protrudes into them, bringing through its emanations the richness inherent in the absolute. 

The soul, particularly the animal aspect of the soul, is generally ignorant of the possibility of this realization. As we have discussed, because the ego-structured soul is dominated by the animal potential, which has an external orientation, it sees abundance and richness only outside itself, and only in certain locations. Divine love reveals that richness and abundance, all that the soul desires, is not only inside, but everywhere. It is a nonlocal phenomenon that reflects the nondimensionality of transcendence in manifestation. All Reality is full and overflowing with richness and wonderful fulfilling qualities. The soul does not need to seek emotional gratification anywhere in particular. Fulfillment is available everywhere, for the very substance of everything is fulfillment. Therefore, to truly and fully integrate this dimension will liberate the soul from the inner compulsion to seek; there will be no more inner emptiness, no more inner psychic hunger. The soul will be full and overflowing, and the abundance of her true nature will manifest in her as overflowing generosity. She cannot help but give, not because she wants to, but because she is authentically so rich she cannot help but overflow. Her generosity is fundamentally boundless, bounded only by her material circumstances. And she gives joyfully, with total gratitude and celebration. 

The presence of lead points to the inertia supporting a manifestation of personality. The form of lead as a pearl points to the fact that this support is for the totality of the personality, which is the sense of being an individual, a separate person. The hard facetedness of the leaden ball means this is the objective understanding of the support for the totality of the personality. Since lead indicates false existence, and existence functions as will, then the diamond lead pearl means the objective understanding of the will of the ego to exist as a total individuality, a separate person. The insight does not arise as the end result of such logical analysis. The existence and operation of the nous is a nonlocal phenomenon. The nous synthesizes beyond time; I can perceive only some of its functioning, and only when I am interested in the process of the arising of insight itself. Otherwise, I experience only the flash of insight, which is the cognitive aspect of the glittering radiance of the nous’ presence. At this point in my process the nous synthesizes all these elements, all previous insights by nous, into the over-arching new insight: the support for the totality of the personality is the will to exist as an ego. 

So the feeling of nonlocal unity is “I am everything, not because I am a medium that manifests everything, not because I and everything come from the same source, but because I actually am every other thing in a direct and intimate way.” This unity does not derive from the fact that we are all parts of the same movement or the same expression. One of the ways of experiencing nonlocal unity is as the feeling “I am you. Your heart and my heart are the same heart—and not figuratively. I feel that I am in your heart and you are in my heart because there is no spatial or ontological distance between your heart and mine.” Both spatial unity and nonlocal unity have to do with the understanding of emptiness. We can experience one unity or the other or both at the same time. So there can be a spatial unity, where everything is a manifestation of the same field and, at the same time, there is total interpenetration between each and all. That is to say, each contains all at the same time that all manifests from the same field. There is perception of distance without feeling of distance. There is perception of space without concept of space.  

For example, we talk about the true nature of reality—that each of us, that the soul, that everything has a true nature. We see that if we discover its true nature, we understand reality in a fuller way. But that, of course, raises a question: If true nature is everywhere—is nonlocal and pervasive and really constitutes everything—what do we make of all the experiences in reality when true nature is not manifest or obvious? That is one reason why I am using the concept of Total Being or reality—because for me the word “reality” includes all the usual meanings of reality that everybody knows. Reality is everything, and that is Total Being. That includes conventional experience, the realized experience, the enlightened experience, and also reality that is altogether without experience. What was reality before there was life? What was it like before life evolved on Earth? Was it dual or nondual? Human beings made up those ideas. Reality is innocent of them. So what is reality without the human-made concepts? These are the kind of questions that may arise while engaging with this logos. And we find out that it is actually possible to discover answers to these questions. The interesting thing about the aliveness of the teaching is that each step, each new stage, includes what came before it and reveals more. None of the essential experiences and realizations in terms of aspects, dimensions, and vehicles, has, as far as I know, needed to be changed as the teaching evolves. They are simply expanded and attain more meaning or bring different insights, which are more of a refinement of and opening to different ways of experiencing reality. We are the beings that can consciously know reality and can live it more fully in its totality. But we are also reality; we are expressions of reality. In a deep way, the expressions of reality are not only manifestations of reality but also reality itself. 

What is the soul in the most general sense? First, soul is the locus of our own individual awareness. It is our own self-awareness as a localized phenomenon. This has two meanings, external and internal. To understand the first we need to recognize that pure awareness is nonlocal, nondimensional, beyond time and space, and soul is the expression and manifestation of this awareness in our time-space universe. The soul is awareness, but not simply awareness. It is awareness localized in an environment; it is our individual awareness. It is the locus of our experience of ourselves, the place where we experience ourselves, the location in Reality where we experience the self. This point is difficult to comprehend, because we ordinarily think of the site of our awareness as dictated by the location of the body, which is ordinarily the case. However, this perspective implies that the body is more fundamental than the soul, and here we are interested in exploring whether this is the case. This perspective is directly challenged by out-of-body experiences, frequently reported by individuals under anesthesia or in near-death experiences. Reports of such experiences indicate that one can be aware of the body from a different physical location; for example, these reports frequently mention looking down at the body from above. The reports of out-of-body experiences indicate that we can be aware of our environment from the perspective of a different location than the body. 

I think of the first kind of unity, which characterizes the basic mystical experience, as a perceptual or spatial unity. And I think of the other sense of unity as a feeling kind of unity, as nonspatial or nonlocal unity. We began exploring this nonlocal unity when I discussed the views of Plotinus and Dogen in terms of the relationship between the particular individual and realization. This nonlocal unity contains a new element that cannot be described simply as nondual. In nonlocal unity, there is a sense that each star contains all the stars, that each point is every other point. As we recognize this nonlocal unity, we understand that the fact that it is spacious does not mean that it is big; it doesn’t have a size. The experience of this unity is that each particular form of manifestation contains within it all other forms of manifestation, as particular forms. Each form is totally united with all other forms, not united spatially as waves of the same ocean, but united actually as one single wave. This is more the recognition that all the waves are inside each other, that all the waves are essentially the same wave, that all the points are one point.  

This essentialization can include all aspects. So the soul’s action can be intelligent, compassionate, clear, steadfast, etc., in a total and full way. And this action can be physical, expressive, or mental. She is presence of essence, but also a dynamic living presence whose morphogenic transformations express the pure perfections of true nature. In this transformation the soul has progressed from the stage of the human soul, the attainment of the second journey, to the stage of the angelic soul, or the essential soul. The second side of the development of nonduality in the journey in presence has to do with essential presence manifesting its ground of true nature. Essence here reveals itself not only as the ontological nature of the soul but as the ontological nature of all existence, all manifestation. True nature begins to reveal its omnipresence, disclosing that it is the ground and nature of everything. This appears as true nature revealing its boundless and formless dimensions that transcend the limited boundaries of the ego-self, even the individuality or personhood of the soul. The soul does not experience herself here as an individual soul, but as a boundless and nonlocal presence that transcends all spatial extensions, as eternal nowness that transcends all time, and as a mystery that transcends all determinations. She is all and everything, she is Reality. 

Investigating the nature of help can give rise to many interesting perceptions and new realizations. You might, for instance, understand that by helping the other, you are actually helping yourself. I don’t mean this in the usual sense. Some of us think, “Well, by helping the other, I am helping myself because it is a good deed that helps me evolve further.” Even though that is a self-centered way of looking at it, it is how most people think of service. But I mean something different when I say that you are helping yourself when you help another. I am not saying that you are helping yourself in terms of your personal development, but that you are helping yourself directly. It is literally yourself that you are helping when you help another. I am referring to the realization of nonlocal unity that we explored in the previous chapter. You are inside the other—you are the other totally. Both you and the other are being helped at once. This is a realization beyond the separation between here and there, between self and other. As we penetrate this level of delusion, we recognize in another way that the notion of service and helping is only an approximation of the perspective of Living Being itself.