The stomach wall structures the young soul, building a structure that feels like a bag with thick muscular walls whose affect is either hunger or satiation. Another form related to the stomach structure is that of the whole alimentary tract, beginning at the mouth and ending at the anus. This is a complex structure that feels like tubes and bulges connected together. Another structure is that of the mouth itself, where the soul feels like a big and hungry mouth and throat, which can only take in and swallow. We recognize we are dealing with this structure when we feel we want to relate to everything by swallowing it, whether it is food, knowledge, experience, people, and so on. We may find also anal structures, even urethral structures, but the oral ones tend to dominate because the oral stage precedes the anal. We might also find structures related to early illness, or early physical confinement, for example an impression of a cast on a limb, or impressions related to an incubator. The Inner Journey Home, pg. 212

So, surrender is a meeting of the personality and Essence. Personality does its work of seeing its identification, its resistance, and its contraction. That’s it’s part; it can’t surrender. Essence comes along and melts it. The personality can’t melt on its own, but it can be melted. It is the same with acceptance: First, you realize that you are rejecting and pushing, you see it and you don’t identify with it, then there is understanding of the rejection and cessation of the rejection. And finally, a certain essential state flows that is called “acceptance.” It feels like a blessing, a melting, a kind of vulnerability, a kind of non-defensiveness. It’s the same with understanding. When you’re understanding something, can you actually understand something fundamental about your personality without the presence of Essence? Can there be a clear awareness of what is there without the presence of Essence? In fact, the awareness itself is Essence; the clarity, the objectivity itself is Essence. As we have seen the mind itself can’t go all the way in understanding. Essence must be present to infuse it with the necessary quality. Diamond Heart Book Three, pg. 176

But what does it mean when we describe this process as one of letting go, of surrender? It means that as you feel this boundless presence, it begins to expose the truth that you are of its nature. We call that surrender, as you lose your sense of separateness. We call it melting, but all that’s melting are your ideas, your beliefs, about who you think you are. So you think you’re a physical body, and then you realize you’re soft and malleable. You’re light—you’re made out of light and love. So you might say, “Oh, the light melted me,” but as we’ve seen, it’s just a figure of speech, a notion that doesn’t really describe what is happening. All that’s happening is that you’re discovering who and what you are. As you abide in this state, the presence you feel has a sense of grace to it—grace in two meanings of the word. There is grace in the sense that everything is graceful, beautiful, and harmonious. You perceive things to be utterly beautiful, and you can feel this beauty, its sensation and texture. But there is also grace in the sense that this state feels like a blessing. It’s a blessing to know this purity and divinity and to see that the whole universe is blessed. It’s not only that the whole universe is blessed, the whole universe is nothing but blessings made out of this grace. So it’s graceful, you see, and graced at the same time. 

As the absolute, all that appears to awareness is my creativity, without my lifting a finger. I am the source of all that arises. The recognition of being devoid of ambition deepens the peace and settling of everyday consciousness. This settling becomes a feeling of contentment. The soul, the individual consciousness, begins to feel like a blobby pearl, soft and pliant, relaxed and settled. It is like being a liquid pearl, suffused with the stillness of peace, and empty of reaction or drive toward activity. Sometimes this feels like being a relaxed old man.

Beyond ambition, beyond attainment, is home.

Contentment, without content; peace, uncaused.

The peace and contentment develop into a sense of fulfillment, as the consciousness attains a nectary fluidity, with the sweetness and aroma of apricot nectar. I feel a sense of maturation, not in terms of capacity, but in the sense of ripening. The fulfilled consciousness becomes a ripening when I experience the soul not only pliant and nectary, but full and sweet, just like a very ripe apricot. The whole soul becomes a heart, a heart full of the most flavorful apricot nectar. Luminous Night’s Journey, pg. 91

The initial discovery of Essence begins a journey of discovery, a period of wonderful experiences of Essence. It feels like a honeymoon. Little by little, however, it dawns on the student, to his dismay, that there is a big problem. He becomes aware that although he experiences his essence, in some deep and disturbing sense it is still not him. He does not recognize directly and nonconflictually that it is truly him. His experiences of Essence seem to be only experiences that sometimes happen to him, the same “him” he always was. Simply experiencing Essence does not necessarily lead to confronting the shell. Many devotional practices, for example, produce essential experiences without bringing up the question of identity. The experience can be attributed to the guru, or the divine, without shaking up the normal sense of identity. Only one’s consideration of the possibility that the self is Essence will ultimately lead to the understanding of the shell. The student will recognize that it is because of the shell that he does not take himself to be the Essence. To use our terminology from Chapter 14, we can say that the student realizes that he has been experiencing Essence within the first type of essential experience, in other words, in a dual manner. He, as the self, experiences Essence, instead of experiencing himself as Essence. The more he contemplates this situation, the more he perceives that he is identifying with an empty shell. As this happens, the feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness arise quite poignantly. 

Ego boundaries create not only a sense of separateness, but, in a fundamental way, a sense of isolation and lack of contact. This was painfully felt by Penny above. This is also a subtle perception, requiring a great deal of disidentification. As we discussed in the section on contact, the individuality of ego feels like a kind of personal contact, but only the Personal Essence can make real, direct contact. Our present discussion of boundaries makes it clear why this is so. It is not only because ego individuality is a mental structure and not a beingness, but also because its very existence is based on its boundaries. These boundaries separate it from the rest of the world much more profoundly than is usually assumed. When one experiences the quality of contact of the Personal Essence, it becomes clear how thoroughly ego is shut off within its boundaries, as if behind walls. It is painfully isolated from true human contact. It is common understanding that deep contact requires that one relax, let go of one’s boundaries, and become vulnerable. The essential contact of the Personal Essence is made possible by a complete relaxation of defensive boundaries, a total vulnerability. This immediate, real contact is possible only for a personal presence that does not have the isolating boundaries of ego. This quality of the Personal Essence is mysterious, even miraculous. 

The recognition of the need for support, specifically, the need to support our sense of self, will naturally precipitate the feeling of no support, as we saw in the cases above. If this feeling is not defended against, it will reveal an underlying emptiness characterized by a sense of deficiency of support. The emptiness may provoke many associated feelings and self-images, as we have seen, like feelings of helplessness and weakness, and images of smallness and lack of structure. This usually brings up from the unconscious deeply repressed, painful object relations and their associated emotional states of abandonment, betrayal, depression, terror, even fear of death and disintegration. These are reactions to and associations with the deficient emptiness. We must then clarify these reactions and associations in order to understand the genesis of the emptiness. This process requires awareness of, and disengagement from, judgments and superego attitudes about the deficiency. This process finally reveals what the specific feeling of deficiency is, what lack of support makes us feel. We begin to realize that what we feel is that we do not have our own support. This is possibly the first clear indication that there could be such a thing as one’s own inner support, for the sense of self—based on ego structures—cannot conceive of this possibility, just as Kohut could not. This lack of our own inner support feels like a particular kind of helplessness. It is not general ego deficiency, the ego weakness having to do with functioning and one’s sense of being an immature individual. It is helplessness about supporting our sense of who we are. When a student finally recognizes it precisely, she usually feels, “I don’t know what to do,” or “I can’t do anything.” 

The sense of goodness that we are describing is not goodness in the moral or ethical sense. It transcends moral concepts. Reality is good in the sense of how it feels and how it affects us, touching us with its blissful and ecstatic nature. This blissfulness is nothing but nonconceptual pleasure, nonconceptual goodness, nonconceptual positivity. While it is easy to see this quality in the essential aspects—the blissfulness of Peace or of Compassion, for instance—which is why we used them as examples earlier, Holy Love says that this blissful quality is inherent in everything. Of course, we can’t really know this until we experience it. When we have the experience of Holy Love, we realize that this is how reality is all the time, and that our experience of reality has been incomplete. We usually have the sense that, “Oh, it is like this all the time and I didn’t even realize it!” This is a deep insight into the nature of reality, and is different from an uplifting experience. You might, for instance, experience Essence and feel wonderful, without really seeing that it is your very nature. Essence feels like a passing state, the particular cloud floating through your consciousness at that time, especially in early experiences of it. After a while you realize that you have been experiencing Essence through subjective filters, which made it appear as an emotional state. You see that Essence is not only wonderful, but that it is you, and this insight has transformative power. The perception of Essence is a necessary step, but you need to take the next one—seeing that it is the nature of who you are—for such experiences to transform your identity. Perception without insight does not fundamentally change your sense of reality—inner or outer. 

It is important to note that when we refer to an essential aspect as personal, we are not implying that all other aspects are impersonal. Other aspects sometimes feel personal and sometimes not. The same is true of all the differentiated aspects; other aspects may include their qualities. For instance, the fact that there is an aspect of Peace does not mean that other aspects are not peaceful. All aspects of Essence have a peaceful and serene quality to them, but except for the aspect of Peace itself, peace is not their central, characteristic quality. However, the Personal Essence is different from other aspects, such as Peace and Love; it feels like a person. But the personal element in it is not restricted to it alone. Thus the Personal Essence is not the only quality that can feel personal. It is simply the aspect which is the personal element in a Platonic form, a quality of consciousness. There is as well an aspect that is specifically impersonal. When one experiences it there is no personal quality present at all. This is one of the formless dimensions of being, which is in a sense the entry into the formless realm. Its manifestation is a direct consequence of realizing the Personal Essence and understanding the personal element. The full realization of the Personal Essence brings about the longing for the impersonal. 

The sense of nobility and royalty is not only an association with the richness and abundance of essential experience, the manifestation of what Zimmer referred to as Teh; it is an actual feeling of royalty and nobility, a state where one feels of royal origin. Once in a while, a student reports the experience of the Personal Essence as accompanied by a feeling of royalty or regalness. One feels not only present as a real person, but because of the purity and preciousness of this reality, one attains a sense of being noble and royal. One feels oneself to be relaxed, settled, accepting of one’s nature, and secure. One is not only carefree and absolutely secure, but lives a life of value, preciousness, fulfillment and abundance. One feels like a prince or princess, a king or queen, master of one’s life, which is one’s dominion. The inner experience of Essence, with its richness, abundance, fullness and beauty is not envisioned by the ego, except in the stories of ancient royalty. However, it is an actual reality, a living experience, when the Personal Essence is realized. The Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 101

Other dimensions manifest when we realize the perspective of human emotions. As we become established in our feelings, whole new realms open to perception. The self or soul relaxes and settles whenever it actualizes a certain dimension. That settledness and contentment invite new and more refined perception. To become established in the various dimensions of existence is to become human. If you allow your mind to be open without enshrining your experience as final, your perception of reality becomes more discerning and complete. You can appreciate and enjoy where you are while remaining open to change. You might be lying in bed with your lover after making love, feeling relaxed and good, and as you look at your lover, you might see a ring of pearls around her head. A crown of pearls and diamonds that makes her look like a queen. She might notice that she feels like a queen. And you feel a sense of majesty, as if you were a king. You realize you’re wearing purple robes and a crown with gold and silver. By being relaxed and contented in that moment, your beingness has manifested as a new dimension, a new facet of knowing who you are. You didn’t know and weren’t looking for it. If you were looking for it, you probably wouldn’t find it. As the satisfaction, the contentment, and the settledness relax the tensions in your mind and in your being, your perception becomes clearer and more intelligent. You perceive the surface of things in an entirely new way. Everything that you perceive is a surprise. The world wears a new skin. And you experience yourself in a way that you’ve never known. You see that we are of royal descent. There are stories that say that human beings are royal born. You realize that the royalty is essence itself, being itself, the nature of the soul. 

Now we can use this understanding to see what happens when one experiences Being, as in the state of the Personal Essence. The experience of the Personal Essence feels like a sense of autonomy, independence, individuation and so on. However, since one still identifies with ego, or reverts to this identification, one believes that such autonomy is more separation than one can handle. One feels that his distance from mother, emotionally, is becoming bigger, and this is felt as a threat to his sense of identity, as a pressure on his level of integration. And if the individual still has unresolved conflicts about separation, dating back to the first few years of life, then these will be activated by the pressure of the essential experience. 

All ego-selves include this structure; human beings differ only in the degree to which it dominates their overall sense of self. It is the ego structure expressing exclusive cathexis of the physical world, where the soul is caught by the illusion of the world, believing the reified world can satisfy her needs. We can say that in some sense it is the ego’s counterpart of the divine being, the boundless richness and abundance of the dimension of divine love. It is an attempt to be rich and self-sufficient, to have abundance and plenitude but from within the materialistic worldview of the ego. An apt image for it is that of Jabba the Hutt, from the Star Wars film series created by George Lucas. Jabba is a ponderous, very fat semi-humanoid creature, having the body of a slithery worm-like animal with semi-human face and upper body. He is grossly fat, insatiable in his greed, and dangerous in his treachery. He likes to collect slave girls, dancing girls, and different kinds of aliens and animals to serve him, protect him, and satisfy his sensual desires. In the actual experience of this structure one feels like a shell made of fluffy fat, but empty and greedy. One is only interested in things of the world, and things of the spirit hold no interest. But the emptiness points to the inauthenticity and unreality of such form, revealing it as a psychic structure. Recognizing this, one may then see that the world one relates to from this perspective is itself empty and devoid of any real significance or substance. 

Individuality. This is the sense of being a separate individual. In this most general layer of ego boundaries, one feels one’s boundaries as a soft and smooth surface, with a kind of dullness of sensation. This dull sensation feels like a thickness around oneself, but feels warm, comforting and familiar. One recognizes it as the familiar sense of himself. This familiar sense usually reminds one of his early life, for it reflects the basic emotional tone of his childhood home. The individuality is composed of ego identifications which have the function of giving it not only its separateness, but its sense of identity as well. There is a recognition of one’s person in it. It reflects one’s personal history, and feels very familiar. It is actually the sense of being the individual that one has been aware of for most of one’s life. It is, in a sense, an imitation of the Personal Essence; for this reason we sometimes refer to this state as the false pearl. This false pearl is actually what one is ultimately afraid of losing; it is what dissolves when one makes the transition to the formless dimensions of Being. It is a universal phenomenon; in a sense it is inherited or transmitted throughout the ages, from one generation to another in human history. It is the most universal and the deepest human conditioning. It is the condition of the overwhelming majority of humankind, ignorantly taken to be the real human element, when it is only an imitation or at best an incomplete development. 

“The Guest” implies a sense of visitation. When your heart is completely empty, you feel a visitation. When your heart is completely poor, completely devoid of everything, you receive a visitation. That is what I call the Guest. But the visitation is not that something goes into the heart. It is more that the heart becomes a window into infinity, becomes completely empty and completely open. You don’t experience love or no love. The heart is absolutely empty. When the heart is that empty, we glimpse the luminous night of the Absolute through it. Here, I say that the Guest has arrived. In the beginning it feels like a visitation, but when the Guest actually arrives in the heart, then it is everything. The Guest is how the experience begins. That is how it arises. But I also call the Guest the true owner of the heart. The Guest is the true possessor of the heart. That is why the deepest longing a human being has is for complete disappearance. 

It is clear to my understanding that the ordinary knowledge of the world, the knowledge put together by memory and thought, veils the luminosity of appearances, and makes the various forms appear opaque. This opaqueness obstructs the perception of the underlying reality of the forms, by eliminating their inherent transparency. Thus the world is solidified into something inert and dismembered. And when the opaqueness is dispersed, through understanding its sources, perception beholds shapes and colors that reveal a reality so pure, so fresh, so new and undefiled that consciousness is totally transported, as if seared from within by a cool Arctic wind. I see through everything, through the surfaces of the various forms, and behold what underlies everything, what fundamentally constitutes all. I penetrate to the center of the universe, to the real nature of existence. What I behold baffles the mind, shatters it and enchants it beyond all knowing: The universe is one infinite perfect crystal, totally transparent, and absolutely clear. A density and immensity beyond comprehension, a solidity infinitely more fundamental than physical matter. The reality of the world is a solid transparency, a compact emptiness so clear it feels like the total absence of any sensation. This sheer clarity, this solid void, is so empty of mind and concept that it feels exhiliratingly fresh, so uncorrupted that it strikes me as the very essence of innocence. It is the virgin reality, before mind arises, before thought knows, before memory is born. 

As the Essential Identity, we realize that the vague sense of identity we have always been aware of indirectly is only a reflection, a distant reminder, of this singular and unique sense of self. It is interesting that in ego psychology the sense of self—specifically the feeling of identity—is the most difficult to understand, while in essential experience, it is the most definite and singular. In no other area is it so clear that the absence of the concept of Being in most depth psychology gives rise to ambiguity and incompleteness. In essential experience the identity is definite and singular, with a sense of freedom, lightness, joy, and delight, as we saw in the report above. There is a sense of excitement, playfulness, and adventure. We feel interested in ourselves, excited about our life, wanting to live and enjoy it. We feel our preciousness and specialness and the preciousness and delight of living. Life feels like an adventure with unlimited potential and exciting possibilities. 

Because total nonconceptuality is beyond the dichotomy of conceptual and nonconceptual, we are free to conceptualize or not. This condition makes it possible to discern concepts and the absence of concepts, and considers these simply different kinds of experience. For example, one important concept that we transcend in realization or in nondual enlightenment is time. Our conventional experience always has the notion of time in it; our daily life happens within time. But as we experience presence, we realize that presence is immediate nowness; it is a now that transcends time, a now that is not simply the present moment. Yet another way of transcending time is that when we are free from the patterning effect of the passage of time, we can experience our being as timelessness. Timelessness characterizes the classic mystical experience—that of our true nature as beyond time. Or sometimes we can experience the transcendence of time as an eternal now or a sense of eternity, where eternity doesn’t mean a long or infinite time. Eternity is similar to timelessness, except it is more like all time being compacted into one time. Although there is no passage of time, it feels like all time all at once. Sometimes we say, “This feels like an eternity,” by which we mean, “I can’t wait until this is over.” But the mystical experience of eternity is more like being in the eternal now, which is beyond the happenings of time.  

Hence, aloneness is not a matter of one being separate or physically alone. It means one is existing without ego, without self-image. For if there was self-image then one would be engaged in internalized object relations, and one would not feel alone then. Krishnamurti said one time that ego cannot exist in aloneness. And we see here how true this is, for ego involves internalized object relations. That is why the experience of the Personal Essence feels like aloneness, and brings about strong reactions from ego; ego reacts because it starts seeing the end of its story. Aloneness means the death of ego, the false personality based on past mental object relations. The loss or dissolution of boundaries frequently feels like aloneness; for it is the dissolution of the last identification systems of ego. Although boundaries make one feel separate, even isolated, one still does not feel alone. These ego boundaries are based on self-images that are part of internalized object relations. As they dissolve one starts feeling alone, but this means that one is entering the state of freedom, Being without ego. Aloneness is actually inner aloneness; one is alone in one’s mind. There are no umbilical cords (internalized object relations) connecting one to the past. One is here, now. This is a state of purity. One is, and there is no self-image. This indicates that all states of Being, all aspects of Essence, bring the state of aloneness, when experienced with no self-image. The absence of self-image means the mind is empty and immaculately clear. It means the presence of the aspect of Space, which is what dissolves the self-image. 

When one is experiencing Being, as in the state of the Personal Essence, then one is not the self-image. This means one is not engaged at that time in any inner object relation. This feels like a state of aloneness. One is actually alone; one is not engaged in the interminable object relations that are the basis and origin of the self-image. This means that Being is not only the absence of relating to the object or his image, but it is complete independence from all inner past object relations. If one is identified with any part of the ego structure then there is no true aloneness yet. There might be a sense of separateness, but not aloneness. There might be a fear of aloneness, or a movement towards aloneness; and this causes the customary feelings of fear, sadness, longing and loneliness. But when one is finally alone then there is no loneliness, for there is no ego structure to feel alone. Aloneness means that Being is alone. It means one is present without any psychic structure; for psychic structure indicates the presence of internalized past object relations. It is freedom, from ego. It is pure beingness. 

As the Essential Identity, we realize that the vague sense of identity we have always been aware of indirectly is only a reflection, a distant reminder, of this singular and unique sense of self. It is interesting that in ego psychology the sense of self—specifically the feeling of identity—is the most difficult to understand, while in essential experience, it is the most definite and singular. In no other area is it so clear that the absence of the concept of Being in most depth psychology gives rise to ambiguity and incompleteness. In essential experience the identity is definite and singular, with a sense of freedom, lightness, joy, and delight, as we saw in the report above. There is a sense of excitement, playfulness, and adventure. We feel interested in ourselves, excited about our life, wanting to live and enjoy it. We feel our preciousness and specialness and the preciousness and delight of living. Life feels like an adventure with unlimited potential and exciting possibilities. 

We can have more or less passionate lives with passionate involvements, but passionate love is at its strongest and most powerfully effective when it is felt on the spiritual quest. It's not the only significant factor on the quest, but it's certainly a very powerful one. Love in general is what fuels the journey, but passionate, ecstatic love is the most powerful form of fuel. It's like changing from gasoline to fusion energy!  So that's why I think it's very important for us to be able to be in touch with the pomegranate part of our heart because when it loves, through its loving, we disappear. Pomegranate love has such an intensity, such an ecstasy, that when it is felt towards the Beloved, the love itself unites you by erasing you. When I say it erases you or dissolves you, for many people that sounds terrible. But that's not how the experience is actually. Merging love also brings a dissolving of a kind, where you melt, sort of soft and smooth, just like the melting of butter. But passionate love follows a different path to unification, in the sense that, as you approach the Beloved, the Beloved penetrates you, as a light penetrating the whole soul. That light transforms the soul into the nature of the Beloved—turns it instantly, intensely, passionately into its own nature. And that transformation of the soul into the very nature of the Beloved feels like an annihilation because the nature of the Beloved is an absolute, mysterious kind of nothingness or absence. 

Love in some sense is very strong. It melts your heart despite all the defenses you’ve accumulated. That's quite a power. But it’s a different kind of strength; it’s a feminine strength—the strength of yielding, the strength of receptivity, the strength of melting, the strength of softness.  The direct experience of love is that it does not feel like strength—but it does not feel like weakness either. It just feels like an appreciation, a lovingness, a happiness. But the situation is, as we have discussed, that people associate love with weakness because of its connection to babyhood and with the traditional image of femininity. This softness is part of the phenomenology of many forms of love, but not all of them. Here we are discussing the pink love, which is a personal love or liking that is characterized by softness and tenderness. When I feel cute, I don't feel weak. In fact, the stronger I get, the cuter I am. That's how it works. Being strong doesn't mean that you can't be cute and fluffy. In fact, because you're strong, you can afford to be cute and soft and tender; that’s because you know that you can take care of yourself.  

Contraction. This is the state of ego boundaries in its purity, devoid of any other function besides that of separateness. This is the specific state of separateness. Here one clearly, definitely and distinctly feels separate. It is as if the separate individuality has been bared to its bones. It is the inner and most elementary structure of ego boundaries. It is the bare minimum of individuality, the sense of separateness itself. It is the basis of all other layers of boundary, and of the ego individuality. Experiencing this ego state gives the final understanding of what ego boundaries truly are. Here one knows that a boundary is not an objective and ontologically real phenomenon, but a reaction, a contraction. In this experience, typically the skin is a little hot, a little prickly, a little dry. One feels somewhat frustrated, but also empty. One feels like an empty shell, and the shell is nothing but a very thin layer of a frustrating kind of prickliness. This state of boundaries is nothing but the sense of surface tension itself, a slight contraction all over the skin. It is ego boundaries in the state of pure contraction, the presence of negative merging affect all around one’s body. 

Disturbances in the development of the self can occur either in the sector of either entity or identity, or, of course, in both. When the development of identity is incomplete or distorted, the identity is brittle, feeble, shaky, superficial, incomplete, distorted, and/or unrealistic. It is thus vulnerable to injury, disintegration, and loss. When the self’s vital center, the center of her psychological balance and harmony, the place in her that allows her to know herself in an immediate way, is not firmly established or stable, she will experience her feeling of identity not only as uncertain and vague, but sometimes as threatened, or even as destroyed or lost. This weakness or loss of identity may manifest as the feeling that she has no self, or as a sense of deficient emptiness. These feelings indicate the absence of a sense of center. One feels like an entity without a center, a body without insides, as seen in Masterson’s patient in Chapter 6. A person with an unstable or absent center of the self is likely to feel lost or disoriented, and may have a sense of not knowing what to do. She may feel depressed, for she not only does not deeply know herself, she has no clear or firm sense of who and what she is, and thus does not know what to do. 

Finally, and usually after the entry into the realm of undifferentiated Being, one comes upon an ego state of “purified” personality. This is usually a very subtle perception, and to be aware of it one needs to be in a profound state of stillness and attentiveness. One becomes aware of identifying with a kind of personal feeling, which feels very familiar and quite intimate to oneself. This is a state of experiencing one’s personal identity (an ego state) devoid of any defensiveness, which happens after the process of secondary autonomy has gone through its full course with regard to this ego structure. One feels intimate with oneself, soft and cozy. But the most important distinguishing quality of this feeling of self is the recognition that this is what one usually feels is oneself. It is the emotional tone that characterizes one’s personality. One feels, “This is me.” However, one is at the same time aware it is only a feeling, an emotional tone that goes along with some image. This is because one is also aware of the presence of undifferentiated Being, which feels like an impersonal presence without any recognizable characteristics. One is in fact going back and forth, identifying with one and then the other. The personality aspect is an identification that is completely devoid of defense; it is just a familiar sense of oneself, completely undefended and unprotected. That is why the schizoid defense of isolation, which is the most basic defense, must have been dropped before this experience. 

The realization of both the Personal Essence and the Cosmic Consciousness now make it possible to see through the projection of the representational world. The continued experience of the Personal Essence and the Cosmic Consciousness begins to expose a contraction in the psychophysical organism that has been very deeply hidden. One slowly starts realizing that this disharmonious contraction has to do with focus on, or cathexis of, physical reality in general, and not just on one’s own body. Understanding this exposes the self-concept again as an empty shell. However, now the empty shell feels like an individual who is emotionally and mentally trapped by the physical world. Sometimes one feels as if he is fat, or full of fat that covers a deep emptiness. One becomes aware that this sense of being a fat empty shell is coexistent with a state of greed and lust for food and physical comfort and pleasure. One realizes the consequences of the exclusive cathexis of physical reality, which is basically how ego sees the world. One relates to the world as if it can fill one’s emptiness, can satisfy one’s greed for all kinds of physical rewards. One is deeply, though unconsciously, aware of one’s deficient emptiness, and is seeing the world as the source of gratifications. 

As the soul comes to this understanding, her boundaries may begin to merge with the divine effulgence. She becomes part of the ocean, a big drop of the ocean. The drop is a dense liquid honey, or amber nectar, as if the ocean of light liquefies at the location of her body as a big wonderful drop of grace. She sees and feels herself surrounded by grace. Her essence feels like an inseparable part of the ocean, but denser than the rest. As this development began she was afraid of losing her experience; she sees now that the outcome is a more clear and free essential realization. She now sees the way out of the dilemma of boundaries: actual merging with the divine and losing the sense of individual experience. Essence becomes clearer, more lucid, and very graceful. The soul becomes a drop of grace, of full and substantial presence, but utterly free and fulfilled. A great deal of understanding may unveil at this juncture, especially if the diamond guidance has already been integrated and now functions on the dimension of divine love. Its graceful presence attains a soft and divine quality; its faceted diamonds become more fluid and softly glowing. The boundless love is not like someone loving something. It is more of a full and rich presence, softly and delicately textured, with a heavenly affect, sweet but wonderful, uplifting but totally pure and selfless. It bathes all forms, infusing everything with the most sublime love, and blessing appearance with the garb of divinity. 

So each one of us is experiencing Total Being in one or another of its presentations all the time. And our practice is simply to find out what it is right now, to inquire into its nature; and, as we inquire into it, the inquiry itself, which feels like an invitation, is Total Being expressing its intelligence and revealing other possibilities as part of actualizing its potential. We experience the gravitational pull of Total Being manifesting further potentialities as our love of discovery. We experience the inexhaustible indeterminacy of Total Being appearing as the featurelessness of consciousness. This is the beginning of the endless journey of freedom. 

There is a sense that all my apparent knowledge of the world, primarily ideas and stories in the mind, is peeling away, leaving something unknown underneath. There is mystery all around me. I feel a profound sense of ignorance. I wonder about life and death, about the life of the body, about everything that I have thought naively and arrogantly that I know. I realize that all life, and all objects and processes in life, are full of mystery. I do not really know anything The not knowing is not threatening. I accept it with a sense of wonder and bafflement. The center of the operation of the nous, at the forehead, feels like an open window, transparent and clear. In this openness the activity of the nous is so intense that it feels like a continuous series of explosions. The contemplation, which is bursting with insights, acts on the mind like dynamite, shattering its long-held complacency about its knowledge of the world. At such moments it seems that the perception sets aside the knowledge of the mind and apprehends things nakedly. The chair now looks like the usual chair I have known, except that this is only the external appearance, which I am now acutely aware of as merely appearance. Everything else, the walls and the doors, the floor and the carpets, the lamps and books, all seem to be appearances, surfaces of something much more fundamental, external facades of a more basic reality. I perceive the chair and everything else around me becoming transparent, as if the shapes and colors have become so luminous that they have lost all opaqueness. And through this transparency, naked reality peers through. 

This initiates a cataclysmic transformation that finally results in the repeated experience of the cessation of ego activity. When this happens, it is experienced as an annihilation of the identity that one has been familiar with since one was conscious of existing. The experience itself is the absence of all inner activity, psychic or mental. Annihilation is then experienced as nothing but the presence of an aspect of Essence. The self is extinct, and Essence is present as Annihilation. It is a state of complete and total peace, of no stirring of ego. This is a difficult experience to imagine without having the taste of it, because it does not make sense to the mind to experience a presence that feels like annihilation. This is due to the limited range of experience of ego and its concepts. When one recognizes Essence the range of what one can experience expands in amazing and unexpected directions. One experiences one’s source now as peace, instead of the feverishness of ego activity. There is no sense of self, and no feeling of need for self. This state is not necessarily permanent, nor always present, but does become available to experience. In other words, one learns that one can live without a sense of identity. If disidentification from ego-inadequacy opens the way to expansion and supports the development of the Personal Essence, then the annihilation of identity does even more. 

There are deeper aspects of intuition: for example, when we somehow know something, sometimes with a feeling of certainty, but don't know how we got the knowledge; we cannot explain to ourselves how we know. Sometimes we know something totally new, but we don't know where it came from, so we say we have an intuition. An intuition sometimes feels like a direct apprehension of a certain truth, but we can't explain how this apprehension occurred. So intuition is usually considered a mysterious process. Like insight, intuition can be about anything—the mind, other people's personalities, relationships, and even our true nature, our essence. However, intuition itself is not essence. It can help us to know essence, but it is a process or a capacity, not an ontological existence. 

As I have said, Holy Origin can be experienced in many ways. The conventional way is feeling in touch with oneself. The sense that I’m connected with myself—I feel myself, I’m intimately in touch with myself, I know I am here—is one way of seeing Holy Origin. What changes is our experience of what that self is; as we have seen, what we know ourselves as becomes progressively deeper. At the beginning, you might be in touch with your body, then you are in touch with your emotions, then you are in touch with your essence, then you are in touch with the Essential Self, then you are in touch with the boundless dimensions; until at some point, you realize that to be in touch with yourself, you have to be in touch with the Absolute because you have recognized yourself as that. As your sense of identity goes deeper, when your sense of yourself is located at levels above what you have realized yourself to be, you feel disconnected. Once you have recognized yourself as Essence, for instance, being in touch with your emotions feels like you are not completely in touch with yourself. At the beginning, however, if you are someone who has been out of touch with your emotions, feeling them feels like a big revelation and that you are really in touch with yourself. This is the beginning of experiencing Holy Origin. For most people, being in touch with themselves feels like a radical departure from their ordinary experience, and a profound sense of connection with something deeper. While this is how Holy Origin manifests on the surface, the deeper you go, the more expanded your sense of that connection becomes. 

However, this practice of surrendering to and abiding in the true manifestation of the logos does not feel to the soul like an attempt to cooperate with the logos in order for the latter to take her to the condition of an ultimate state of enlightenment. This would simply be a manipulation, not a genuine surrender. It feels more like being real and authentic, or like a respect and appreciation for the truth that happens to be one’s experience of oneself. It specifically feels like being oneself, for oneself is whatever the logos manifests it to be. We simply feel authentic, while the form of authenticity can be any form or dimension of the presence of true nature. 

Mahler’s observational studies demonstrated that during the practicing period, the child behaves as if she is all-powerful, all-knowing, and completely wonderful. She has much less fear of separation, a greater sense of autonomy and adventure, and a kind of blindness about her limitations, both physical and mental. Mahler describes the child’s inflated sense of ability and fearless adventure as the attitude of relating to the world as if it is “the junior toddler’s oyster.” (Mahler, 1975, p. 271) She falls and stumbles, but she picks herself up, full of enthusiasm and confidence. She makes great strides in maturation and development. Adults can see that her sense of confidence and ability is unrealistic, for she is still quite limited physically and mentally, and is still very much in need of the parent’s care and protection. For this reason, Mahler concludes that children are delusional and grandiose about their abilities in this phase. We can, however, understand this sense of grandeur and omnipotence differently when we realize what it feels like to be the Essential Identity. The Essential Identity fills the consciousness with a special kind of preciousness and with a sense of omnipotence and omniscience. We feel that we are completely wonderful, completely able, and totally indestructible. We feel all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. There is a sense of completeness and totality. When students come upon the experience of the Essential Identity, these qualities are always present. 

This sense of grandeur and omnipotence is understood readily when one realizes what it feels like to be the Essential Self. The experience of the Essential Self fills the consciousness with a special kind of preciousness, and with a feeling of omnipotence and omniscience. One feels completely wonderful, completely able and totally indestructible. One feels all loving, all knowing and all powerful. There is a sense of completeness and totality. When students come upon the experience of the Essential Self, these qualities are always felt. 

We have seen that the pattern of unfoldment that is the Holy Plan is not a predetermined plan, but rather, that the universe unfolds according to inherent natural laws. This absence of premeditation indicates that the universe is intelligent. Its intelligence keeps it from being completely predictable and mechanical; if this were not so, we could discover all of its laws and plot its movement, as science attempts to do. But we cannot do this because Being is intelligence, and thus is responsive, and this responsiveness is completely spontaneous. You can understand this quality of intelligence when you see Being as an organism that is manifesting and expanding. This manifestation and expansion of life has a pattern, a lawfulness, a harmony, that expresses the intelligence of Being. In fact, when you feel the Beingness, it feels like it is teeming with intelligence, and its movements this way or that have a spontaneous intelligence. 

Thus, to permanently realize this aspect one must deal with the deepest structures of the internalized mother’s image. This is a very deep and subtle process, which ultimately exposes the deepest object relations, such as the sense of being a hungry mouth relating to the world as a breast. The deficiency relating to the loss of this aspect always feels like a big hunger, or an empty stomach. A student writes of this experience: “I went into the emptiness, which felt like a huge hungry stomach.” The hunger can manifest as the need to be fed by the world, or for success, recognition, money, food, love and so on. This hunger underlies many cases of drug addiction and compulsive smoking. One such case is of a married woman, Jacqueline, satisfied in her marriage and holding a professional position. She has had an alcohol problem that is by this time very much under control. She asks in one group meeting about her need for success, and its relation to her previous alcoholism. Discussion finally leads to a longing for a sweet nurturing love, a nourishing fullness, a longing that was accompanied by a sense of emptiness in her mouth and throat. By staying with the emptiness and hunger she starts feeling a flow of sweetness down her throat that makes her feel gratified. 

If you are really the Brilliancy, you are in some sense not even the body; so there is no movement based on the usual instinctual promptings. Usually, you want this or you want that, you like this or you like that, but all of that is a movement outside you. That is the psyche and the body doing their thing. As the completeness, you are totally contented, unmoving. The contentment of completeness has a blissful quality that feels like a deliciousness. The deliciousness is so complete, the delicate kind of pleasure is so contented, that the mind doesn’t even think about whether it is contented or not. The mind—the psyche—even forgets the memory of discontentment. We are looking at the quality of Brilliancy when it is felt at the heart level. Brilliancy in the heart is felt as this kind of contentment, completeness, exquisite deliciousness. It is like taking vanilla ice cream and making it totally satisfying—something like that [Laughter] but not exactly. It is a deliciousness, a blissfulness that is very specific in its affect, in its feeling. Completeness is not the usual affect of pleasure, not the usual kind of fulfillment or satisfaction. It is not that you feel the absence of incompleteness; it is not only that incompleteness is not there. Rather, there is the definite presence of completeness with an ecstatic affect. This is Brilliancy felt in the heart; the heart is completely filled with it. 

Most experience merging love as an arising in their consciousness, usually centered in the heart but sometimes flowing to different parts of the body or even filling it. The experience of melting feels like the body’s boundaries dissolve and there is no sense of separateness from the other. This is why we use the word merging, for it is the merging of the two: self and other. As in infancy, the merging does not completely eliminate our sense of being who we are. But the connection is so complete and overwhelming that the boundaries between the two become porous and melt. In addition to melting sweetness, the affect is also an unusual and fulfilling kind of pleasure—rich, very distinct, and ecstatic. It feels as though our soul is being nourished by a divine, or heavenly, kind of pleasure. The pleasure and ecstasy of this love is further enhanced by a visual glimpse of its presence. What we see is a beautiful, pure, transparent golden fluid. Hence the name merging gold. It is golden in a way that is different from gold metal, gold light, or gold color. This fluid is like honey, but it is not as dense or sticky as honey. It flows more easily and effortlessly, having less viscosity. There is a brightness and inherent luminosity to this golden fluid as if sunlight is passing through it, warm, sweet, and radiant. It is such a beauty to behold and such an ecstatic pleasure to sense or feel this kind of love.

At any moment a tremendous amount of information is presenting itself in our experience—things that we see, hear, sense, feel. We are aware of these perceived things as the ground of our experience, as basic knowledge, and we give labels to those parts that we want to think about or communicate. However, if we have the global awareness that comes through the development of mindfulness, it is possible to recognize that the true ground of our experience is actually a medium of awareness, rather than a collection of perceived objects. This medium of awareness that we call the soul has things bubbling in it. The bubbles are not separate from the medium, and the medium itself is self-aware. The bubbles are different colors and shapes: This bubble feels like sadness and that bubble feels like pain, this bubble feels like the idea of a bird and that bubble feels like the thought of a person, and this bubble is an image of our home. All these bubbles are arising in the same medium. When our experience is freer from ordinary knowledge—from the patterning influence of all the positions, beliefs, and ideas implicit in it—then we can discern basic knowledge more purely. We become aware of what our experience actually is because we know it directly, without the filter of ordinary knowledge. In fact, we can now see that there is nothing but knowledge. We can say there is nothing but experience, but that implies that meaning or interpretation must be added in order to have knowledge or to understand experience more deeply. To say that there is nothing but knowledge means that nothing needs to be added to experience to get knowledge, that each part of our experience is the arising of knowing and is an opening into deeper knowledge.