Not only does our field of consciousness manifest forms by morphing itself; it also perceives these manifestations. These forms are perceived not through the operation of looking at them from a distance, but by immediate awareness. Our soul is aware of her inner content by being inside all of the manifesting forms. Her conscious field completely pervades all forms completely and thoroughly, since it constitutes the totality of each form. And, being pure consciousness, the soul knows these forms directly and in the present moment. This is what we call noesis. The content of experience is composed purely of forms of consciousness, forms of the very fabric that is the soul. So in becoming aware of the content, the soul actually is simply continuing to be aware of her field, but now this awareness includes not only the presence of the field, but the structure—the patterns, designs, morphogenic variations—this field is assuming.

Many meditative and spiritual traditions emphasize the movement from experience dominated by conditioned conceptual thought to experience characterized more by pure awareness or content-independent awareness. In this chapter we will discuss a form of knowing that characterizes all our experience all the time but is often not emphasized in the work of realization. We will discuss the mode of the soul’s experience called noesis. We discussed in Diamond Heart, Book 4, the notion of noetic forms, concepts appearing in awareness that are forms of the manifestation of Reality. Noesis, as we are using it here, is the soul’s capacity to be aware of itself not only as pure awareness, and not only as the content of experience, but to be aware directly of forms arising in the field of consciousness. This capacity for discriminating awareness that is not governed by the alienation of the subject-object view, and that does not separate discriminated content from the field of presence/consciousness in which it is arising, turns out to be a powerful tool for the soul’s realization of its own nature and the nature of Reality.

Most of the knowledge specific to the Diamond Approach originates directly from the diamond vehicles, and their dimension of essential diamonds, with their associated universal wisdom. This is the most direct and concrete reason we call our work the Diamond Approach. And it is the main reason why we recognize this approach as a path of wisdom, for it is the teaching of these essential vehicles of wisdom. It must be clear to the reader by now that the Diamond Approach is not the intentional synthesis of a person, the author or somebody else. The scope and depth of knowledge is simply beyond the personal mind of the author, not to mention that it is not knowledge in the ordinary sense. It is gnostic knowledge, noesis, direct unveiling of Reality. It cannot be arrived at through an intellectual process or synthesis, for the mind simply cannot go to such realms of wisdom. It must also be by now clear, by the same token, that the Diamond Approach does not come from a previous wisdom tradition and was not learned from another teacher. It is true that the author received it from a source, but the source is true nature itself, that has communicated this teaching by manifesting its diamond vehicles of wisdom.