This insight usually appears as a perception that one is lost in one’s personal life. One has the strong impression of being imprisoned by everything in one’s life, desirable and undesirable factors alike. The student is not usually aware that the impersonal aspect is approaching; he is simply experiencing more and more that the fact of being a person is a barrier to freedom and harmony. He perceives that the totality of his person, including his personal life and history, has not changed. This makes him aware that he is lost, enmeshed in his personal life, that he is so involved in his relationships, work interests, house, family, friends, projects, activities, plans, ideas, thoughts, preferences, prejudices, everything that is the content of his life, that he is trapped by it, and hopelessly limited within it. One becomes aware of the subtle but deep tendency to take the totality of the content of the personal life to define who one is. This is particularly obvious in the case of one’s thoughts. One can think only of certain things, along certain lines, unique to one’s person. One starts to feel one’s roles, one’s personal uniqueness, as limiting and stifling. This brings about a deep yearning to be free from all of one’s personal life; one wants to be beyond it all, and senses that he actually is beyond it. One feels it is not right to identify with one’s personal life and manifestations, that no content can contain or define who he is, that it is wrong for personal details to limit his nature. At the beginning one cannot tell what it is about him that is beyond the personal life and its content. The longing not to be caught by the content of one’s personal life is felt as a desire motivated by love. There is no rejection of the personal life, just a feeling coming from an unknown place. 

Today, what is exposed by the impact of the arising consciousness is an awareness of how thoroughly I am lost in my personal life. I have the strong impression of being imprisoned by all the elements of my life, whether I like it or not. I become aware of how involved I am in my life: in my relationships, work, interests, writing, reading, books, house, family, students, ideas and thoughts, preferences and prejudices, everything that forms the content of my life. The absorption in my life situations, whether I experience it as desirable or not, is much more ubiquitous and thoroughgoing than I have imagined. This is true even with respect to the parts of my life that I feel are free and expanded, rewarding and fulfilling. Even deep experiences of realization of Being, of understanding fundamental truths and perceiving new dimensions, ensnare me. I become part of the experience, inseparable from it, and limited by it. I am seeing that because of the lack of a comparative frame of reference, involvement in my life imperceptibly becomes enmeshment.

This recognition clarifies the significance of a passing feeling that I have had in the past few days, that there is something in my experience of myself that never changes. I did not know at the time how true this feeling was, and whether it had any significance, partly because the inquiry has been focused on a different line of investigation, the trap of involvement in the content of personal life. Now I see that my concern with the limitations inherent in the involvement in the content of the personal life was a first glimpse of this thread of experience. As the nous radiates more intensely, I begin to realize that I am perceiving another facet of the situation of being trapped in the particulars of personal life. The realization dawns on me now that in spite of all the deep knowledge, understanding and realization I have attained so far, which has radically transformed my experience, there is something in me that never changes, is never affected by these realizations, something in me that never moves. I recognize the leaden heaviness as an imitation of the will to exist, along with awareness of something that does not change in relation to the involvement in personal life. The nous synthesizes these observations into the unexpected insight that it is the totality of the personality which does not change. So it is not a part of the ego-self that does not change, but the totality of this self, the familiar self. 

Thus, the main difference between the perspective of the man of the world and that of the man of spirit is that the first considers the separate personal self to be the center of life, and personal life to be its own value and end, while the latter makes a higher reality to be the center of life, and believes that the personal life must be subordinated in relationship to such a higher reality. 

A new obstacle arises at this point, a belief that constitutes a resistance against this new manifestation. This belief interferes with the sense of witnessing, without totally eliminating it. The belief is that there will be no personal life, no personal living, if there is no enmeshment in life. This exposes the belief as part of the inertia of being the separate individual of ego. Being responds to this concern by manifesting the aspect of the personal essence, the pearl beyond price, the person of Being. The experience transforms into knowing myself as a full presence, rounded as a pearl, but transparent and sweet. I feel personal, even though I am a pure presence of transparent consciousness. This transparent fullness has a subtle sweetness, making it feel slightly sticky, or gummy. There is pure presence, with clarity and spaciousness all around. The cognitive aspect of the experience is that I am a person with no qualities, only a personal presence, devoid of images or psychological boundaries. Since I can be a person without being the product of memory, I can live a personal life without getting lost in it. 

Most serious spiritual writings focus on the process of realization of true nature, the absolute or divine essence. This is the ultimate nature and source of ourselves and of everything. The thread I follow in this book sheds light on the obscure process of how the soul, the individual consciousness, becomes integrated into this absolute nature, as and after the source of all experience is realized. I want to relate my experience and understanding of the fact that individual consciousness does not merely die away or get discarded, and to describe how it becomes clarified and integrated. This integration turns out to be the process through which the absolute manifests as an individual human being who embodies this ultimate truth in a personal life in the world.  

Thus there cannot be freedom from this ego structure as long as one is attached and completely lost in his personal life, and as long as one continues to view himself as an extension of his unique personal history. For complete freedom from this ego individuality, which is the same as completely establishing the Personal Essence, one must be free from the supports of this ego structure, the personal life and personal history. Only when these supports are exposed and then transcended does the true support for the Personal Essence arise, through the action of the Impersonal aspect. In other words, just as the Personal Essence exposes the individuality of ego, the Impersonal aspect exposes the support of such individuality. One could say that the full realization and understanding of the Personal Essence shifts the sense of being a person from ego to Being. This then exposes the deep supports for the individual ego structure, which is seen as inseparable from the personal life and history. This latter perception is possible only from the Impersonal aspect. It is interesting to notice that this transition happens only through the combined influence of the full realization of the true Personal Essence and the transcendent awareness of the Impersonal aspect. 

The concern that I started with involved the belief that there would be no personal life if there were no enmeshment in it. I believed I would not exist as a person if I were not enmeshed in the particulars of my life. Being revealed, through its messenger, the nous, that my personal existence is an essential manifestation of Being, independent of mind and situations, and hence stands on its own, independent of mental reactions. In other words, I can live a personal life by merely being, for my personal existence is a part of Being. There is no real threat to my personal existence. Before this point, I had not experienced existence of Being, itself, as a personal presence. The response of Being to my concern is exquisitely precise, beyond all expectations.

I feel that this is not right. There is a sense that I am beyond all of this. I feel, with some kind of inexplicable certainty, that any content of experience cannot contain or define me. Even fundamental functions I perform in my life, like being a father or a teacher, are just roles I have adopted, and they must not and cannot define or contain me. I am quite beyond all of it. I deeply feel a longing not to be caught by the content of my personal life. This feeling comes from an unknown place, where the concern is not with a particular emotion or state, but with the totality of the personal life. I do not feel any value judgment regarding my personal life, whether it is good or not, whether it is happy and fulfilled or not, whether it is desirable or not. There is only the longing to go beyond it, because of the felt certainty that I am in fact beyond it. This longing is for the truth to manifest, the truth which I am beginning to glimpse. At this point, I cannot discern clearly what I am that is beyond my personal life and its content. Yet there is some kind of emptiness or awareness, with the feeling that I am something beyond all of what I have experienced in the totality of my life, and that I have adopted roles only in order to do certain things. 

The unfoldment of all the levels and manifestations is really what is beautiful. It is the expression of beauty, grace, differentiation—all the colors and varied forms. That is life. Without that, there is no life, you just go to the beyond, the unknowable, and you don’t need to be a human being. You’re just being without knowing. So, understanding is linked with human life. Life is itself a process of unfoldment; it is the living of the unfoldment. Life is not the final repose in the unknowable identity. That’s not life, that’s beyond life. You could be dead, and there would be no difference. Because the unknowable doesn’t change, and you know that it is you, you know you cannot die. When you know absolutely that it is you that does not change, does not die, then there is freedom. There is release from fear. You experience the multiplicity of creation in life—all the beauty of it. Then the life, which is the personal life, becomes fulfilled. And understanding is the same thing as living that life. When you understand what it’s all about, what this life is about, why we are here—when you understand who you are and why you’re here—you understand the meaning, in a sense, of everything. Everything is then meaningful, everything has an innate, deep sense to it that is absolute and central. So it’s not a life of strife, but rather of unfoldment, and unfoldment is inherently fulfilling. 

People who are oriented toward the impersonal, universal spiritual life have a certain misunderstanding. It’s true that to forget about your personal life, to forget about yourself and become a monk or nun, can lead to liberation and enlightenment. But is that why we have a life? Are we supposed to abandon our life on earth to go somewhere else? The majority of humanity rejects this path, and continues to seek happiness and fulfillment here, in this life. So even though it’s not possible to have a fulfilled life the way most people try to get it, there is something very deep and true in that striving for personal fulfillment. In that yearning there is a seed of understanding that all of this life, including the universal and divine, is for us. Why are we here if the abundance is not our lot in a personal life, if we are not going to enjoy it? The way the ego goes about it doesn’t work, but the original impulse is not false. This is a mystery that is rarely understood. 

We asked in a previous chapter, why do all people, if they are astray as the man of spirit asserts, follow the same path of illusion: that of adopting an individuality and pursuing a personal life? A possible answer comes from the understanding of the nature of the Personal Essence. The man of the world, in pursuing a personal life, is trying to reach his true human individuation. His values and aspirations reflect a truth, the truth of the possibility of being a real person, an essential person with a fulfilled personal life. The truth of the Personal Essence resides at his human core; it is the unconscious archetype of what he can be. He is not completely astray, but rather dimly senses his potential as a human being and goes about trying to realize it. However, he falls short of the reality, because there is inadequate guidance, knowledge or modeling in his formative years. His development in this direction is greatly influenced by the development of the people who take care of him as a child, and who educate him later. He ends up developing into an image, a reflection of the reality of what he can be. The man of the world values and pursues personhood for it is his human potential, his real individuation. It is this personal quality that he values and identifies with, which makes him often not listen to the impersonality of the man of spirit. He believes in the personal life not merely because he is trapped in the illusions of his ego, but also because it evokes his true human nature and potential. To abandon the sense of being personal would feel like the loss of the Personal Essence. The Personal Essence is his valued and cherished human core. It is his unique human form in this universe. He might not be aware of it consciously, but he cannot help being drawn towards it. 

Thus it is possible to experience egoless beingness, to be, as a substantial presence that is not a mental construct, and still live a human, personal life, in which love, work, knowledge, creativity and accomplishment make sense, a human sense. This true existence, this presence, this being beyond time that makes sense of human and personal life, is the Personal Essence. It is the reality of which ego is only a reflection. It is the truly integrated and developed human being. This is the beautiful presence that the traditional literature of work schools calls the “pearl beyond price.” The experience of universal impersonality of ultimate reality occurs when the separate individuality is transcended, when the separate individuality is seen not to be our true self. But this is the result of transcending the personality in its totality. Something different happens when we investigate the personality’s manifestations in more detail, exploring the hidden essential truth within it. The ego is a reflection of this true element of Being, the Personal Essence, and exploring the characteristics of the reflection can lead us to the reality being reflected. By isolating and understanding the elements of the false, we can begin to approach the elements of the real.

The perspective of most spiritual teachings is that ego is a falsehood, and hence it must die for there to be truth. We will show that this is true, but that it is not the whole truth. We will show that the ego, with its sense of self and personality, has a truth hidden within its nature, a truth that is not necessarily visible from the transcendent and impersonal state. We will show that ego is a reflection of a truth, an attempt to imitate an absolute and eternal reality. In fact, we will explore how ego is nothing but a failed or aborted attempt at a real development. We will show that ego is a reflection, an imperfect one indeed, but still a reflection of true reality, the reality of the true human being. We will see that by understanding ego, rather than transcending it, we can understand and actualize the reality of what it is to be a human being. Only through this understanding and realization can we see what human life is. We will see that this truth that ego tries to emulate is what most people are seeking in their personal life, and that realizing this truth of what it is to be a human being is the aim of humanity. Humanity is in a sense astray, but there is a pattern to this way of existence which, when understood, reveals the true nature of the human being. Only this understanding will heal the schism and resolve the contradiction. The true human being, what we will call the Personal Essence, is the resolution of the contradiction. It is the integration of both points of view. 

This clarifies many previous experiences, like the heaviness that appears near the stomach when I feel that someone is blunting my personal expression. I recognize now that at such times the lead pearl surfaces close to consciousness, because I must experience such thwarting of personal expression as a threat to my personal existence. Insight expands now to synthesize the understanding of being trapped in my personal life, and the recognition of the presence of inertia responsible for the unchangeability of the totality of the personality. This lead pearl is the determination/will of the personal existence of the ego, which has been unconscious till now, although implicit in all ego manifestations. As long as I am under the sway of this will of inertia, I will be enmeshed in my personal life whenever I am involved with any experience. In other words, the personal life continues to be the life of the totality of the personality, the life of the separate person of ego. This unconscious identification will always subsume new experiences and insights into its own personal life, turning them into possessions of the person of ego. My sense of myself has been trapped in my personal life because I have always had, unrecognized, the will to exist as the familiar individual. 

Understanding that ego is a reflection, or an imitation, of a true reality makes it possible to connect to this reality. One need not go the usual spiritual route of abandoning one’s personal life and the values of that life, but rather one must look deeply into those values and explore the true reality that they are approximating. Most people are not willing to abandon their personal life for a spiritual quest, not merely because of attachment to ego, but because they sense a truth in the values and aspirations of personal life. For such people, the overwhelming majority of humankind, understanding the reality underneath ego is a more accessible means of spiritual development than the traditional methods striving after impersonal reality. This is not only because in this method they do not have to abandon their personal lives and aspirations, but also because this path reveals the deeper values and truths of those aspirations and strivings toward actualization. 

The perception deepens into the understanding that not only am I enmeshed, some important aspect of me is actually lost in this involvement in my life. Understanding bequeaths its offspring: the action of Being in the direction of optimizing its presentations, here activating Being in its tendency to maximize personal experience. As usual, understanding opens consciousness to deeper and more expanded levels of Being. Experientially, understanding manifests at this point as the intensification of the glittering throbbing at the center of the forehead, while the action of Being manifests as the unfoldment of conscious experience into new presentations. This arises now as a feeling, unbidden, of wanting to be free from all this personal life. I am aware of intuiting myself to be beyond all personal life, and of wanting this truth to come to some experiential fruition. Although I am aware of wanting something beyond this experience, I do not reject the perception of the experience of the personal life; thus the experience shifts from awareness of wanting more to a clearer perception of what is actually here in my experience. I can feel the totality of this life, my life: its present, past and future. It feels distinct and separate from who I am. The throbbing at the forehead develops into a sense of expanded clarity: I realize that there is usually the tendency to use all this content of the experience of my life to define me. This content limits not only what I experience, but also, and most importantly, the experience of who and what I am. This is particularly obvious in the case of thoughts, for I see that I can think only along certain lines. Although I might have many new thoughts and ideas, the general mental atmosphere remains the same. I see that the mind flows in predetermined grooves, where change is only a matter of the widening or narrowing of these grooves.