So the function of the soul in life is not simply to maximize our pleasure, but to realize our more objective function as an organ of truth, as an organ of realization, as an organ of a much larger being, of a much bigger, universal reality. We come to realize that our happiness, our joy, our fulfillment arise from actually serving the truth. We serve the truth by being as pure an expression of it as possible. God or the truth doesn’t need you to do things for it, to walk around talking about it or buying it things, but actually to express it, to bring the truth to life. We serve the truth by manifesting it, because what the truth wants is to move from an unmanifest form to a manifest form. That’s why the Sufis say that God needs man in order to express Himself in the world. God manifests in the world through the purified ones. So our job is to be a servant. And to serve is to express. And to express is to be a clear and unimpeded medium for the truth. For that to happen, we need to be purified of our coarser elements. If we approach experience as if it were a lollipop, the objective function of the soul is not fulfilled. The more our soul is aware of the deeper realms and the more correct its attitude toward those realms, the more we express the truth. The deeper realm, the realm of objective reality, is ultimately the home of the soul—its origin, source, and nature. The absolute reality is the nature and origin not only of the soul but of everything. What better master to serve than the innermost nature of you and of everything! So being a servant is an exalted position. 

As we engage the investigation of Total Being, we might become concerned that our sense of being a person, of being a human being or an individual with heart, will disappear or be annulled. Although boundlessness or formlessness means going beyond personal boundaries, in our work on the nondual dimensions we see that the sense of being a person, of being an individual, can continue even though we are intimately connected to this formlessness. The individual consciousness with its personal metabolism and maturation is necessary for Total Being to experience itself consciously. It is   in this sense that we explored the human individual as the organ of realization. We do not lose the sense of being a person; we simply gain many other ways of experiencing reality. Just as total nonconceptuality, in going beyond the conceptual polarities, does not dispose of concepts, neither does Total Being, in going beyond the sense of the individual, discard individual consciousness. Both possibilities are allowed. They don’t contradict each other or cancel each other out. It’s an entirely different kind of mathematics. A + (-A) not only = 0, but also A + (-A) = A + (-A). Both are true.  

This points to the importance of the manifestation of the particular. Reality is not only a nondual truth in its oneness and indivisibility. That is important, but the fact that there is individual consciousness is also important. More than that, it is necessary. If there were no individual consciousness, this nondual truth would be manifesting the universe, but it would be an insentient and unconscious universe, not aware of its mystery and transparency. Many teachings, of course, recognize this truth. It’s obvious, unless you abide in the nondual condition for a long time. If that is the only condition you experience, you might tend to forget the value of individual consciousness because the nondual condition doesn’t readily reveal the importance of the individual. Even though the enlightened view is that there is no individual self who can be responsible for enlightenment or take actions that lead to enlightenment, the individual is nonetheless necessary for the dynamic of realization. From the perspective of totality, the individual soul is not only the organ of perception but also the organ of realization. There would be no awareness or experience of realization without the individual consciousness. Many teachings have recognized the significance of individual consciousness. One of the most obvious examples is the Sufi tradition. Ibn Arabi, a major figure considered the Grand Sheikh of the Sufis, wrote, “God needs the individual soul just as much as the individual soul needs God.” For many people in the thirteenth century, and maybe even now, that is blasphemy; God doesn’t need anything. But the Sufis understand the soul as the organ of perception and action in the world. That is why they think the complete human being has one foot in the nondual and one foot in the dual, straddling both worlds—“in the world but not of it.”

In the fourth turning, we recognize the unique role of the individual as an organ of realization. True nature cannot dispose of the individual. It needs you as an individual in order to reveal itself, to illuminate itself, and to awaken to what it is; and it does this by expressing itself. The way true nature expresses itself is through practice. And as practice becomes total practice, then practice is realization and its expression is awakening. Total practice is the self-expression of true nature explicitly recognizing itself as it expresses itself.   True nature is not only the nature of everything but also expresses itself as everything. It is inherently self-expressive. And true nature expresses itself in many different ways, which we know when we experience true nature as a specific particular—as love or clarity or strength or joy or stillness or awareness or emptiness. As our practice becomes total practice, we can see that it is already the expression of realization because the capacities we are using are the capacities of realization. All that we experience—the qualities and capacities, the attitude and orientation, the awakening and insight—are expressions of true nature.