Self-organization also exists at all levels of evolution. On the soul level, it occurs when the Pearl is realized, at which point self-organization becomes specific and clear as the culmination of the soul’s development from the earliest stages of primitive formlessness. The fact that the universe as a whole is self-organizing means that it too is moving toward individuation and integration, toward being the universal Pearl. On the universal level, complete self-organization is sometimes referred to as God. What is perhaps most interesting is that the essential aspect that functions as the prototype for self-organization—the Pearl or Personal Essence—also happens to be the aspect that is the basis for contact, personalness, and involvement. This indicates that these two elements—self-organization and personal contact/engagement—are somehow inherently related, if not coemergent: It is as if one cannot occur without the other also occurring. Perhaps this is why some theistic religions conceive of God as personal. Since the evolutionary movement of the soul is toward greater organization, self-integration, and wholeness, the capacity provided by the Personal Essence is required for inquiry. Inquiry is an expression of that evolution, since the unfoldment of the soul is a movement toward individuation. As the potentials of the soul unfold, they become organized and integrated into our sense of who we are. 

The primary obstacle to the arising and integration of the boundlessness of true nature is the ego principle, the idea that the self is a separate and autonomous entity or person. The soul’s development leaves her deeply convinced that she is separate from other souls, and from Reality as a whole. She believes that she is an island that comes into contact with other separate islands. This sense of separateness is due to the ego structure of self-entity that provides the soul with the experience of herself as a bounded entity. (For a precise discussion of this, see The Point of Existence, chapter 9.) One of the primary achievements of ego development is the structuring of the soul according to the surface contours of the body. The soul perceives herself as a discrete entity because of the discreteness of her experience of her body and other objects. This discreteness has been shown by developmental psychology to be absent in the infant’s mind. 

In addition, even a partial experience and understanding of the soul brings us to an appreciation of the rich, beautiful potential of the soul’s development, realization, and liberation. This direct knowledge of what is possible for our soul is tremendously inspiring and orienting. Recognizing and understanding the soul is itself a large part of the inner development. We spoke in the last chapter of the separation of the soul from the world and from God or Being. Actually, as we will see, only the soul can know and understand Reality in these three facets, so awakening the soul is of the utmost necessity for actualizing our vision. The soul is the window into Reality. The soul is actually much more intimately linked to Reality than we normally perceive, as we will see further on. Even though we are always the soul, for the soul is what we are, the direct knowledge of the soul is not so accessible. It is like the water we swim in, while we are thirsty and looking for it. We not only swim in this water; our bodies are largely made of it. In terms of knowing the soul, we have been so identified with being the normal self, the self that has lost awareness of its spiritual ground, that we cannot even envision what it will be like to recognize ourselves as soul. The degeneration from soul to self, which in actual lived experience is no different in our era than in others, involves such fundamental and far-reaching alienation that to reverse it requires an extensive path of transformation. The direct experience of the soul involves penetrating or bypassing many layers of beliefs and concepts about ourselves and about reality; for most of us the full perception of soul occurs only occasionally, so rarely that most of us do not even comprehend at such times that it is our soul we are experiencing. Therefore, even in a path of inner transformation it is not possible at the beginning to directly recognize the soul. Understanding develops gradually and in stages as one progresses in one’s work. 

Since divine love inspires trust and surrender, it functions as the melting elixir in the various difficult stages of the soul’s development. The ego-structured soul is too scared and distrustful to let go of her major defining structures, which makes surrendering difficult. The distrust causes her to identify with these structures even more rigidly, for they are the building blocks of her autonomous existence and functioning. However, when divine love appears in her experience it makes the letting go of this identification and the surrender of these structures much more possible, certainly easier. The presence of divine love, with both its love and light that transcends words and promises, holds the soul and assuages her fear and terror. The most fundamental structures are those of separating boundaries and self-identity, and their underlying ego activity. The loving light of the divine dimension appears when these structures are released. It appears with the integration of the diamond dome, which brings understanding of inner seeking and its ego activity, as well as cessation of this activity at the center of the ego. It arises again with the integration of the stupa, for this is the stage of understanding and transcending ego boundaries and their sense of separateness. The loving light appears as well at the dimension of the diamond will, at which stage the dissociating representations of the ego-self and its identity are transcended. Such deepening levels of surrender finally invoke the full presence of divine love, as a boundless dimension of Being. (For discussion of some of the issues and questions relevant to these levels of surrender, see Diamond Heart, Book 2, chapters 1–10.)  

The personal essence is not a well-known manifestation of true nature, but it is a major potential of our soul. It is the only essential aspect that makes ego development understandable as a stage of the soul’s development. In fact, the individuation of the soul is the way true nature, in its transcendent ground, is able to experience its manifestations in the various ways available to life-forms. Here, true nature, transcendent to all manifestation, appears in the form of a human person who can walk, talk, and think, but is still the presence of this nature. Normal ego development is a stage toward this essential individuation, necessary for the personal development of her potential just as the grain of sand is necessary for the development of the pearl. The individuation of the soul, which happens through metabolizing ego structures and everyday experience, is not only a matter of the arising in the soul of an essential aspect. This essential aspect becomes the structuring form, the essential prototype, for the soul to develop in such a way that she can be the personal embodiment of all dimensions of true nature, all the way to its absolute depth and subtlety. (See The Pearl Beyond Price, chapters 35–39, for a more complete discussion of how the soul individuates on the boundless and transcendent dimensions of true nature.) 

In other words, what determines whether guidance will function or not is not what you want the guidance for, but what your motivation is. If you want guidance about a job because you want to make more money, that is not relevant for the guidance. If you want guidance about jobs because you want to see which one is going to enhance your soul’s development, you will probably get guidance. So the more aligned and attuned we are with our optimizing force—with the inherent evolutionary movement in our soul—the more the guidance arises. That’s why people who are externally oriented tend not to be guided in the way we are talking about here. They are being guided, but by external considerations. This principle of the relationship of motivation to guidance is also fundamental in one’s work with a teacher. A teacher functions basically as the guidance, or as the representative of the guidance. This means that the teacher is aiding the development and unfoldment of the soul, functioning in alliance with the optimizing force. If you want your teacher to help you solve a problem because you don’t like feeling bad, you will likely be frustrated with your teacher’s apparent lack of interest in your goal. However, if your desire is to understand what is creating this problem in your life and what it means for your development, your teacher’s guidance will likely feel responsive and helpful.  

The final outcome of this individual development is identical with the triadic separation that pervades Western thought. The possible implication is that Western thought has gone through a similar process of dissociation from an original unity. This means that the soul’s development is parallel to the development of Western thought. It might be more accurate to view Western thought as having recapitulated the normal development of the soul, but we prefer the view that the two developments are both manifestations of the same dynamic in Reality. We explore this question further when we discuss the development of Western thought in chapter 24. Our task now becomes clear; by learning how soul develops duality in a way that shows us how to reverse it we learn a possible path to the redemption of Western thought. The various wisdom traditions tended to see this development of duality as a going astray, as the fall of man. However, we need not take such a view of normal human development. Since this development happens to all souls it makes more sense to view it as lawful and natural. And since Western thought has developed in a way that on the one hand alienates us from the ground of Reality, but on the other has resulted in various advances for humanity—scientific, technological, cultural, artistic, and so forth—the soul’s normal development must also have its positive side, a result that would not happen otherwise. 

Each Diamond Dimension includes all of the essential aspects—the discriminated qualities of our True Nature—within it. This means that each individual aspect contributes its particular wisdom to the fundamental understanding provided by that particular Dimension or Vehicle. The Point Diamond dimension supports the soul’s development through the knowledge that the more one allows oneself to be exactly where one is without interference or manipulation, the more the True Nature of the soul reveals itself. And so each aspect of Essence offers a particular wisdom about the truth of being where one is and the way this truth reveals the depth of who and what one is. Chapter 10 in Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey gives more description of the Point Diamond Dimension. 

We can now formulate in the language of systems theory our previous discussion of the soul as an organism of consciousness. Understanding the soul as an autopoietic system illuminates various properties that are central to the soul’s development, functioning, and transformation. In short, the soul is an open dissipative dynamic system of consciousness capable of self-organization. The soul, like all living organisms, lives within a context, in this case a space-time environment with emotional, mental, spiritual, social, aesthetic, political, and cultural dimensions, among others. She is in constant exchange with her environment, and through the metabolism of this exchange she develops and matures. She constantly dissolves inner structures and builds new ones, through the interaction of her inner potentials with her contact with the environment.

As a self-organizing (autopoietic) system, the soul has the following intrinsic properties:

1. She is a dynamic continuous system, a field.
2. She is an open system in interaction with an environment, not a closed or isolated system.
3. She renews herself through the interplay of what she receives from the environment with her inner potentials, which results in output into the environment.
4. She is not a static structure, but a dynamic and evolving consciousness. In other words, it is inherent to the soul that she is both presence and process, inseparable as presence in dynamic self-renewal.
5. She is an evolving system of consciousness.
6. She evolves through the dissolving of older structures as new ones develop. In other words, her development involves constant restructuring.
7. She is self-organizing, developing through the evolution of more complex higher-order organization. This means that new structures do not simply replace old ones, but include them in a higher order of organization. This inclusion involves temporary dissolution of structures preceding the emergence of higher structures that include in their constituents the developments of the early structures.
8. She is a non-equilibrium open system, which allows her to maintain a coherent order with openness, through fluctuation or change.