Chapter One - Intimacy

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Consciousness manifests as empty, transparent space, light and clean. In this spaciousness my own thoughts and feelings appear: a constellation of thoughts and subtle feelings, all related to images and impressions about my identity, about who I am. This psychic cluster, like a cloud in the spaciousness of mind, provides the mind with the familiar feeling of identity, an identity totally dependent on memories of my past experience. Contemplating the totality of the cluster, without taking an inner position about it, I recognize that it is a mental phenomenon.

On seeing this, I become distinctly aware that it is external to me. The feeling-recognition is: “this is not me.”

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Clarity, space, stillness and lucidity bring a sense of a crisp cloudless sky around a snow-capped mountain top.

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In the simplicity of presence, time does not pass, for the sense of the passage of time is simply the continuity of the feeling of the familiar identity. Simplicity of presence, when it is complete, is timelessness. Timelessness is completely being the simplicity of presence. Timelessness is not an idea, a thought in the mind.

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The depth, although void, has a soft texture, an exquisite gentleness. There is a sense of comfort, safety and a carefree trust, as if the vastness of intergalactic space has mysteriously evolved into a gentle and loving medium. It is not a cold space, not an impersonal space, but a space that feels exactly like what the human soul has perennially longed for: the warmth of mother’s breasts, the softness of delicate velvet, a quiet shining blissfulness and an endless generosity.

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The more I recognize that intimacy is a quality of spacious consciousness, the more distinctly I know it: velvet-fine openness, deep spaciousness, delicate softness, sweet stillness.

The chest has become an entrance into an exquisitely heartful night sky. All of this distills itself into something unique and utterly human: intimacy. It is as if the space is a refined consciousness intimately in contact with its very nature at each point of its spaciousness.

And this total openness and contact becomes an intimacy with everything, totally independent of mind and memory. No loneliness and no sense of aloneness. Simplicity of Being has ushered me, through the door of aloneness, into its inherent intimacy.

Chapter Two - The Personal Trap

For a long time my inner experience has included a dimension that can best be described as alchemical. “Alchemical” describes the sense of my own presence as different substantial qualities which transform. It began when I first discovered that I could experience presence instead of only feelings and thoughts. I saw also that I could experience this presence as the substantial existence of various inner forms.

The presence sometimes takes the form of naturally occurring substances, like lead, iron, gold, mercury, wood, water, air, clouds, bone, diamonds, pearls, and so on.

The experience is not exactly the same as seeing or touching these naturally occurring manifestations, but of qualities of consciousness that take forms that feel or look like these phenomena. I experience inner sensations of texture and temperature, taste, sight and sound, which correspond exactly to the naturally manifesting substances, although it is clear that they are manifestations of consciousness.

This kind of experience is unusual in our everyday awareness, but this realm of experience becomes available at a certain depth of spiritual development, and in time becomes a normal part of ongoing experience. This dimension of perception greatly enriches our understanding, and endows it with a definiteness and precision not available in normal experience, for each form expresses a specific meaning.

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The throbbing sensation at the forehead, indicating the presence of nous, begins to luminate, a lumination that translates into precise understanding of what I am experiencing

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The nous has the capacity to integrate elements of knowledge, from past understanding and present experience, in all known dimensions of experience, and synthesize the various elements into an insight that illuminates what I am investigating at the moment. This is not a thinking process, although logical thinking is one facet of it. It is the functioning of discriminating intelligence using all capacities of knowing and understanding inherent to consciousness, simultaneously as one act.

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In the language of substantial or alchemical forms of consciousness, the pearl signifies personalness of experience. The pearl form appears both on the ego and essential dimensions of experience, always indicating a personal manifestation. Specifically, the pearl as a form of consciousness indicates the presence of the total individuality, the presence of the person in his wholeness, whether on the ego level or the essential level of Being. The pearl appears as a sphere of compact consciousness that possesses a pearly sheen.

Chapter Three - The Impersonal

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I am a silent witness, vast and unchanging, beyond time and all space. I am absolutely still, totally uninvolved, but completely aware. This demonstrates directly that I do not need to be freed or enlightened. I am always free, always have been and always will be. Also, I cannot be trapped, for my very identity is totally detached awareness. I can see my personal life as a drama that I do not have to be involved in. It is like a movie that has a beginning and an end, but it is not me. I feel distant from everything, but acutely aware of everything.

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Developing one’s personal role and work is the same thing as the maturation and individuation of the personal consciousness. This development coincides with the realization of the personal essence, the pearl that Being develops through the friction of the life process.

Chapter Four - Objective Sorrow

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I see the ego state clearly now: an empty shell, which usually indicates the falseness of taking myself to be an image, instead of merely being.

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There is no motivation for doing anything, even helping. Nevertheless, there is selfless helping, because the truth is the source of love and compassion. I cannot help being helpful, because it is my nature to be a source of generosity and giving. The crystalline voidness is complete absence of self-centeredness, and this is the essence of selfless generosity.

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Chapter Five - End of the World

Feeling its emptiness, consciousness totally disappears, with no awareness left. In other words, contemplating the sense of emptiness coemergent with the presence, consciousness ceases. When consciousness returns it has the fresh and precise clarity of the faceted form. The understanding which manifests does not feel separate from the sharp, faceted presence. The precise faceted form of presence discloses itself as the precise understanding of cessation, the annihilation of consciousness.

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This world that the ego-self knows and inhabits is truly a mental world, a dream. As this understanding arises, the black diamond presence expands, filling the house with a magnificent peace. I have subtle glimpses of the real world, but it appears shrouded in mystery.

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Chapter Six

I am not only an enchanted captive audience, not only a responsive recipient of Being’s transubstantiating grace, but also a happy participant.

My love for the truth quickens Being’s dynamic creativity. This love, sometimes passionate and consuming, sometimes serene and mature, expresses itself as appreciation, openness and surrender to whatever form or formlessness in which Being presences itself. This love deepens my natural curiosity, which manifests as playful but serious exploration, in an inquiry which often takes the form of fundamental questions about existence, but is at the same time passionately personal.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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No mind is a freshness, A sun of ice, Radiating brilliant clarity.

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This coolness, that seems to pervade all of consciousness, is identical to the feeling of freshness, of newness, of virginity, of purity, of innocence. It is the total ecstasy of clarity.

Chapter Seven - The Absolute

For several months, I have known it as a colorless transparent crystalline consciousness that is simultaneously clear presence and emptiness. Yet at this moment, when it expands to the maximum, it appears totally dark.

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The final effect is that the clear nonconceptual presence has transformed into a black nonconceptual presence. The blackness is not exactly a color, but rather the absence of color, like one would imagine intergalactic space before there were stars.

I now experience my identity, which is the nature of everything, as a crystal black absence. I feel myself, my existence, as the immensity of presence, absolutely dense and infinitely deep.

Yet this immensity and density feels totally light and weightless, completely devoid of any sensation. It is so empty it is total absence. It is nothing, but at the same time it is dense presence. To describe it exactly, it is radiant black crystalline dense absence.

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As Being continues to manifest as its absolute nature, I begin to understand how functioning and doing happen. Whatever I do, I do with total lack of self consciousness. There is absolutely no premeditation. The action and the awareness of the action happen simultaneously, inseparably. Taking the action and the perception of taking the action are the same experience. I recognize this as spontaneous functioning. When functioning occurs without self-consciousness it is completely spontaneous.

Chapter Eight - Mystical Poverty

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How can heart be so empty that it feels like the very presence of absence? All this time, I have known heart to contain the very richness and fullness of Being. It takes several days of contemplation, with curiosity and openness of mind, before I begin to understand the crystal structure, the crystal heart.

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It becomes clear that the turbidity and obscuration in this soul structure is due to a constellation of desires, impulses, needs and wants.

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As this understanding clarifies my consciousness, the crystal heart fills both chest and belly. I feel more accepting of the heart in the clear crystal form. As a result, I can see it more fully, recognizing details I have not seen before. Its foundation is crystalline silver and gold, indicating the presence of personal essential will, and essential truth, both beyond concepts. That night, it manifests other qualities, qualities I am already acquainted with as those of the heart. I see the beautiful colors of gold, pink, yellow, grenadine, turquoise, amber, orange, apricot, honey, and so on, as flashings of the facets of the crystal heart. Perceiving the dance of these crystal clear colors, I taste the various kinds of sweetness these heart qualities possess.

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It is Being that possesses existence, reality, intelligence, qualities, capacities, and so on. I, the individual self, have these available to me only when I am open to Being. On my own, I am absolutely indigent, totally helpless, completely hopeless, thoroughly inadequate. I am nothing but a limp, empty bag.

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I have estranged myself, throughout most of my life, from the source of all meaning and nourishment, with the ego-pride that I have, that I possess, that I do, that I accomplish, that I exist. What a lie, and what a shame! I am sad, but also willing to accept the truth of my situation. I embrace my total emptiness. I welcome my complete, fundamental poverty. I have nothing. I do nothing. I am nothing.

The state becomes a sense of having nothing, being nothing, feeling nothing, perceiving nothing. Darkness deepens, blackness fills awareness. At this point, I notice that the indigent emptiness is no longer indigent; I experience it now as an endlessness of peace, an infinity of release, and a completeness of rest.

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The poverty is nothing but the inexhaustible void, which I have misunderstood by experiencing it through the lie of my independent existence and capacity. As I, the individual self, accept my poverty and relinquish my hold, I in effect accept and embrace the complete voidness of the absolute. Here, I recognize that I am the absolute depth of Being, the source of all plenums. The infinity of silence is what remains: luminous stillness, absolute transparency, and indescribable intimacy. Vast black sadness, Hot ocean of tears. Then, The unknowable void.

Chapter Nine - The Beloved

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I experience myself now as a person who is not trying to defend or protect himself. The inner condition is naked, exposed. No more defenses, no more pretenses. There are vulnerability, helplessness, weakness, not knowing, some innocence, and a very deep sadness. The person feels all these emotions. The sense of self, with its accompanying emotional state, appears simultaneously with the ego-line, indistinguishable from it. The contraction at the ego line feels harsh and prickly; there is a feeling of deep anguish. I feel curious about this person whom I have known for most of my life, the person I have taken myself to be for many years. I wonder whether this person wants something.

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To my surprise, a longing arises, a longing for the absolute. I see the mysterious blackness of the absolute, and as the empty and helpless person, I feel a definite longing to annihilate into it. The longing arises first as a sad and gentle yearning. Then it gradually transforms into a deep and intense love for the absolute. The love appears after the longing, as if the longing has been hiding it. The love first manifests as an exquisitely faceted form of presence, a form that combines all aspects of essence in one manifestation. I feel it as intense, pure and selfless love, of various flavors and colors. The sweetness is heavenly, and the appreciation feels so pure it has a sense of divinity.

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By divine being I refer to the unity of being, when the experience is of everything, the whole universe in all of its content and dimensions, as pure consciousness, pure presence or pure love. This is a state of oneness and harmony, the state of the real world, but I differentiate it from the experience of the absolute, which is transcendent to presence and consciousness, and turns out to be the inner essence of the state of oneness.

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This is amazing; the person of ego, when denuded of all defense and pretense, turns out to be a true lover of the Truth. It is a healing surprise.

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Through my turning towards the absolute, and loving it exclusively, risking the loss of the divine being and the unity of existence, the absolute reveals itself as the inner nature of this unity.

The immense silence discloses itself as the self of the divine being. I recognize that what I love most is the essence of the divine, the very self of god. It is the divine ipseity, the self of everything: absolute blackness, complete annihilation, beyond being and nonbeing.

The absolute is majesty; when it manifests its crystal brilliancy it also has beauty. The beauty evokes passionate love; the crystal form of love attains a deep pomegranate color.

The feeling is more than love; it is more like bedazzlement. The beauty bedazzles and enchants. I feel a deep devotional and passionate love, and desire for it to take me and completely annihilate me. That is what I have always wanted.

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A subtle understanding further illuminates my situation. I see that when I feel increasing longing, devotion and love I become more identified as the person, the one who longs. As the longing person I am only a shell over the mystery, veiling it even while longing for it. In other words, even by loving the absolute I assert myself, as the individual, and thus become a veil over what I love.

To completely have the beloved, my love must annihilate me totally. I can have the beloved when only the beloved is.

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Do I love the absolute, or does the absolute love me? The passionate love is the intensity of the annihilating power of the absolute as it erases all but itself. I, as the soul, behold the absolute appearing in the heart, occupying it as its rightful resident. The heart beholds the absolute as the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever beheld. It is dazzling and intoxicating, so black it is brilliant with blackness. It is nothing, but it shimmers and shines in such a dazzling way that I can see it has a crystalline quality. It is an infinite black crystal absence, brilliantly shimmering. The radiance is so bright it illuminates the cave of the heart the way a lightning storm illuminates the night. The lightning illumination ricochets in the cavern of the heart with such power I can hear it thundering and exploding.

The beloved now claims the heart fully. It has taken full possession of it, as its own throne. The beloved is not an other, it is the true dweller of the heart, my source, my ultimate self, and the ultimate essence of everything.

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He is the guest, And he arrives Only at night.

Chapter Ten - Ripening Of The Soul

It is clear that what is left of the process of realization is a matter of refinement, stabilization and actualization in life, which is a continuing process. Discovery has done its job; it has lead my consciousness to its final abode, to its source. Now it is only a matter of integration, of learning to live from home.

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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.

Chapter 11 - The Mystical Marriage

Death seems to coincide with both intimacy and aloneness. The mysterious blackness of death brings aloneness and intimacy together, joining them into one quality. There is a sweet and delicate intimacy in the heart as I contemplate death and see the presence of blackness.

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Contemplating the intimacy and sweetness pervading my chest, I realize that my body has lost its usual boundaries; it is now all of existence. I am the room, everything in the room, and everything beyond the room, all as one presence. The sense of what I am is an immense, adamantine crystal presence, an indivisible totality. This totality which I experience as my body is all of the universe.

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Aware of the absolute as the depth, the ground, the nature of everything, I see this luminous blackness holding everyone, and holding the dining table we are sitting around.

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I am both the silent vastness and the individual alive presence, but they are one. This perception is difficult to describe; I am the soul loving the absolute, which is my source, nature and home. The absolute is much larger than the soul, infinite; and the soul is a delicate formation out of it, an extension of it. The soul is almost like an image on its surface. And I am both the individual soul and the infinite absolute, paradoxically comprehended as one. The two are so inseparably one, as if the absolute is the body and the soul the face of the body. The soul is very delicate, transparent and very much part of the absolute.

Chapter 12 - Coemergence

To realize the absolute with its emptiness and mysterious light is not the only possibility. The next step is to be a human person, without losing the realization of the absolute.

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I am aware of soul, aware that I am not only experiencing the purity of the Absolute, because there is a subtle perception of a completely clear and translucent bubble of awareness. Along with the indescribable lightness and spaciousness and inseparable from it, I experience a presence that looks almost like a mirage, an illusory body

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I perceive myself as a bubble connected with the other bubbles. But the bubble is clear and translucent, transparent. It is also completely coextensive and co-emergent with the spaceless emptiness of the Absolute

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The soul is a bubble of awareness, and all of the environment is composed of the same translucent clarity, a mere patterned radiance within the blackness and inseparable from it.

Chapter Thirteen - Absolute Action

The Absolute is indeterminate intimacy, the essence of being. The sense of intimacy comes from the transparency co-emergent with centerless knowingness.

I am totally in touch with myself at each point of my presence with no veils. In this complete in-touchness, there is a sense of privacy, of interiority. This delicate interiority is the essence of intimacy. There is no subject being intimate with an object; In fact, there is nothing to be intimate with. Intimacy is merely the condition of total in-touchness.

Chapter Fourteen - Life and the Deathless

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I am both a dynamic embodied presence and a translucent witnessing background, simultaneously. These manifestations are completely co-emergent. The experience is very mysterious and totally confounding to the mind.

Personal Notes

Readwise Highlights

Almaas describes how his participation in the unfolding manifestation of Being ushers him into realms that expose and transform increasingly deep ego structures and attachments. Luminous Night’s Journey clarifies how the unveiling of Being and the exposure of ego structures constitute one process, leading to the soul’s integrated realization of absolute nature and the manifestation of the human being as a personal embodiment of that nature.

Dedicated with love and gratitude to my father, my mother and my grandmother who raised me with such caring that I learnt easily to trust reality, and to be open to its mysteries.

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.

did not know whether such public discussion of personal experience would have much value for the listeners. The response was so consistently positive, with feedback about its usefulness for many individuals, that I finally thought of publishing these writings as a book.

began with some experiential workshops focused on inner growth and openness, in the late sixties. This led me to undergoing a few years of bioenergetic analysis, with Michael Conant in Berkeley, which contributed a great deal to my opening up emotionally and physically. At the same time I began to study Sufi and Zen thought, reading mainly Idries Shah and D. T. Suzuki.

The work I did with Naranjo extended the emotional openness I had experienced with Conant to the spiritual dimension, bringing about my first experiences of Essence, chakra openings and some development of the three centers as taught by Gurdjieff. Dr. Naranjo used the Gurdjieffian concept of the contrast of Essence with personality. This notion had a great impact on the direction of my journey.

had experienced with Conant to the spiritual dimension, bringing about my first experiences of Essence, chakra openings and some development of the three centers as taught by Gurdjieff.

experiences of openness, spaciousness, emptiness and clarity. At about that time I also had a brief contact with the enigmatic fourth-way teacher E. J. Gold. From Gold I learned about presence, simply by being in his presence. But the main thing I learned from him was about surrender. Around that time I also did a few years of work and training with a Reichian therapist, Dr. Philip Curcuruto, from whom I learned about Wilhelm Reich’s work, and who helped me extend my physical and emotional openness to deeper and more refined levels of experience.

Around that time I also did a few years of work and training with a Reichian therapist, Dr. Philip Curcuruto, from whom I learned about Wilhelm Reich’s work, and who helped me extend my physical and emotional openness to deeper and more refined levels of experience.

The transformation began with my discovery of Essence as presence, and my learning to stay anchored in this presence. This personal discovery of who and what I really am was a surprise, for it did not exactly correspond, as far as I knew, with the teachings I was familiar with. This recognition and realization of my essential nature as an ontological presence had volcanic effect on my life and my process. It became the center and meaning of my life from then on. This living presence began gradually to expand and deepen, revealing many aspects of Essence—qualities of presence like love, will, truth and so on—and various dimensions of Being. This process was a spontaneous unfoldment, what felt like a magical unveiling, a self-revelation of Being’s mysteries.

This precise, diamond-like guidance became the inner guide that has functioned more truly than any external guide I have ever known. In fact the functioning of this guidance is so specific to the exact state, situation and understanding of the soul that no external guide could substitute for its realization and functioning as the guidance for an individual’s spiritual awakening and development.

functioned more truly than any external guide I have ever known. In fact the functioning of this guidance is so specific to the exact state, situation and understanding of the soul that no external guide could substitute for its realization and functioning as the guidance for an individual’s spiritual awakening and development.

Inquiry into personal experience became the main method, in which psychological understanding opens the soul to deeper experiences, and also connects specific elements of the ego self—self-images, object relations, ego structures, identifications, personality patterns, emotional issues, etc.—with specific essential aspects and dimensions. The inquiry is mainly a matter of being aware of one’s experience, both inner and outer, recognizing what is and what is not understood, and curiosity about it that expresses a heart-felt love for the truth. An important element in this inquiry is to be present with one’s feelings and thoughts without expressing them or acting them out externally, thus opening the way to understanding them and their underlying dynamics. The knowledge that developed has demonstrated such precision and universality that I have continuously been in awe of it. This awe led me to appreciate that this knowledge was not my personal creation, but the action of the guidance of Being. This knowledge became the basis of the Diamond Approach.

The inquiry is mainly a matter of being aware of one’s experience, both inner and outer, recognizing what is and what is not understood, and curiosity about it that expresses a heart-felt love for the truth. An important element in this inquiry is to be present with one’s feelings and thoughts without expressing them or acting them out externally, thus opening the way to understanding them and their underlying dynamics.

In other words, the Diamond Approach did not develop as a result of an intellectual synthesis of what I read, heard and experienced, but rather as an articulation of the terrain of an actual personal process of transformation. The synthesis is a discovery, not something created by an individual.

A couple of years later, when Karen moved to California, the three of us were able to explore the unfoldment together. We spent several years intensely exploring Essence and its development, both jointly and separately.

At the same time I studied the literature of several ancient traditions: Buddhism, Vedanta, Sufism, mystical Christianity, and others. I particularly benefited from the study of the works of, and sometimes contact with, teachers like G. I. Gurdjieff, Idries Shah, Ibn Arabi, Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Aurobindo, Tarthang Tulku, Trungpa Rinpoche, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and others.

particularly benefited from the study of the works of, and sometimes contact with, teachers like G. I. Gurdjieff, Idries Shah, Ibn Arabi, Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Aurobindo, Tarthang Tulku, Trungpa Rinpoche, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and others.

For close to twenty years now, Being has been continually revealing to me its many facets and dimensions, always in spontaneous and unexpected revelations. This has transformed my consciousness and life in ways I never dreamed of, and led me to states of realization I never imagined existed.

Karen and I continue the intense joint exploration, which has taken the unfoldment to ever more subtle dimensions and realms, and to a deepening and clarifying of both the perspective and the method. My indebtedness to Karen is not only for her deep friendship, her contribution to my personal unfoldment and the development of the Diamond Approach, but also for shouldering the difficult responsibility of helping me develop and run the Ridhwan school. Our friendship, rooted as it is in the exploration of the truth of Being, has traversed depths and domains unknown in most friendships.

Our friendship, rooted as it is in the exploration of the truth of Being, has traversed depths and domains unknown in most friendships.

This then ushered me into the subtle process of the clarification of the soul to the degree necessary for it to be a personal vehicle for the absolute nature, setting the ground for further revelations of unexpected dimensions of experience.

This book focuses on only a small part of the overall process, tracing the particular thread of integrating the soul into the absolute.

I can feel the psychic layers that I have taken on from students peeling off, one by one. As each layer peels away, it reveals its content—emotions, thoughts, images, physical tensions. This process leaves me clearer and lighter. The lightness opens further, revealing spaciousness. Consciousness manifests as empty, transparent space, light and clean. In this spaciousness my own thoughts and feelings appear: a constellation of thoughts and subtle feelings, all related to images and impressions about my identity, about who I am. This psychic cluster, like a cloud in the spaciousness of mind, provides the mind with the familiar feeling of identity, an identity totally dependent on memories of my past experience. Contemplating the totality of the cluster, without taking an inner position about it, I recognize that it is a mental phenomenon. On seeing this, I become distinctly aware that it is external to me. The feeling-recognition is: “this is not me.”

In this spaciousness my own thoughts and feelings appear: a constellation of thoughts and subtle feelings, all related to images and impressions about my identity, about who I am. This psychic cluster, like a cloud in the spaciousness of mind, provides the mind with the familiar feeling of identity, an identity totally dependent on memories of my past experience. Contemplating the totality of the cluster, without taking an inner position about it, I recognize that it is a mental phenomenon. On seeing this, I become distinctly aware that it is external to me. The feeling-recognition is: “this is not me.”

The focus of attention spontaneously shifts. The psychic cluster gently fades away, almost imperceptibly, like a cloud slowly dissipating. When it is gone, what is left is simplicity, a clear and simple sense of presence without self-reflection. There are no thoughts about the experience, no feelings about it, only the simplicity of presence. Clarity, space, stillness and lucidity bring a sense of a crisp cloudless sky around a snow-capped mountain top. The sun is about to set, and the windows open on the East, so the bedroom is somewhat dark. The sun illuminates some of the hillside, while the rest is steadily cooled by the expanding gentle shade. The flowers in the pots outside the room appear bright; the green leaves glisten. Lucidity pervades everything: the flower pots, the trees, the distant clouds, the deep blue sky. All is pristine, undisturbed by wind or thought.

Clarity, space, stillness and lucidity bring a sense of a crisp cloudless sky around a snow-capped mountain top. The sun is about to set, and the windows open on the East, so the bedroom is somewhat dark. The sun illuminates some of the hillside, while the rest is steadily cooled by the expanding gentle shade. The flowers in the pots outside the room appear bright; the green leaves glisten. Lucidity pervades everything: the flower pots, the trees, the distant clouds, the deep blue sky. All is pristine, undisturbed by wind or thought.

In the lucidity of space, a question appears, carefree and delighted: “And what is me?” Nothing recognizable by memory. I experience myself, without a feeling of self, as the simplicity of presence, which is now a simplicity of perception, a bare witnessing. There is no inner dialogue, and no commentary on what is perceived. The perceiving is without a perceiver, awareness without an observer. Without self-reflection, the simplicity of presence is merely the simplicity of witnessing. I am a witness of all in the field of vision, a witness with no inside. The witness is merely the witnessing. The only thing left from familiar experience is the location of witnessing, which seems to…

Without self-reflection, the simplicity of presence is merely the simplicity of witnessing. I am a witness of all in the field of vision, a witness with no inside.

The hurt leads to a gnawing sensation in the mobius, the subtle…

Holding all in awareness, while intimately feeling all of the nuances of the…

The gnawing sensation responds to the motiveless…

begins to soften as the contraction at the mobius center relaxes, revealing an unexpected element to the sadness: loneliness. The hurt turns out to be the pain of feeling lonely. The feeling of loneliness wets the sadness with more tears, and the hurt expands into an emptiness underlying the sadness. Now it is deep, sad loneliness. But why, why am I feeling lonely? There does not seem to be any reason for it. I am still in bed, my wife, Marie, lying asleep beside me. I…

Reflecting on it, I intuit that there is a connection between the experience of simple presence and the feeling of loneliness. My curiosity intensifies, a throbbing sensation at the forehead begins to luminate. The throbbing lumination at the forehead reveals itself to be a diamond-clear and colorful presence. The more passionate the naturally curious contemplation is about the loneliness, the more alive and brilliant becomes this presence, manifesting spacious and discerning clarity. I recognize the variegated, scintillating presence as the discriminating intelligence, the true nous, which appears as a presencing of the intensification of consciousness, at the center of the forehead, to reveal the meaning of experience. The intensification of inquiry coincides with a greater and more definite presence of the discriminating intelligence, revealing its exquisite sense of delicate precision. The experience now is a field of sadness, loneliness and emptiness, combined with the memory of the simplicity of presence, all opening up to the scintillatingly alive presence of the…

diamond-clear and colorful presence. The more passionate the naturally curious contemplation is about the loneliness, the more alive and brilliant becomes this presence, manifesting spacious and discerning clarity.

Perceptually, the operation of the nous appears as a multicolored glittering radiance; affectively, it is a delicate and pleasant expansive clarity; cognitively, it is the spontaneous arising of insight.

There is simplicity because there remains only the purity of presence, with no memory and no mind. This absence of mind, in the completeness of being presence, is tantamount to the absence of everything that mind carries. During the experience of the last few days I saw how the mind creates and carries the sense of familiar identity of the self, which it accomplishes through memory and self-reflection. What I did not see then, but was implicit…

This absence of mind, in the completeness of being presence, is tantamount to the absence of everything that mind carries. During the experience of the last few days I saw how the mind creates and carries the sense of familiar identity of the self, which it accomplishes through memory and self-reflection. What I did not see then, but was implicit in the experience, is that the mind carries also the sense of the other—of another person—again by using memory.

Here, I remember the insight of the object relation psychologists: the sense of self develops in conjunction with the sense of other, first the mother then all others. The understanding is that the familiar sense of identity develops from early on within a field of object relations, always in relation to another person. This sense of self becomes a felt continuity by the memories of these experiences of oneself coalescing into a fixed structure…

When I felt the sense of familiar identity disappear I did not see that this also meant the disappearance of all impressions of others. In other words, as the activity of the mind comes to a stop, all the feelings dependent on the internalized memories disappear. This understanding shows me that the sense of familiar identity always includes, explicitly or implicitly,…

This understanding shows me that the sense of familiar identity always includes, explicitly or implicitly, the feeling of others. The feeling of self swims in an atmosphere of internalized relationships.

Recently I have been experiencing it as simplicity, but this experience shows me that I have unconsciously reacted to it as total aloneness. Here, the feeling of emptiness deepens into a dark abyss, and the loneliness disappears into a singular state of aloneness, existential and fundamental. A hint of sadness remains, in the form of a subtle, warm feeling pervading the deepening emptiness. The throbbing presence at the forehead again scintillates brightly; this time emerald green outshines its other living colors. The sadness reveals associations with the state of aloneness: times in childhood when I was left alone. In the emptiness of the mind float memories of a sad and lonely child, left alone, sometimes forgotten. Recognizing that the source of the feeling of loneliness is my association of the painful loneliness of the past with the state of aloneness of presence in the present, liberates the sadness, allowing it to…

The throbbing presence at the forehead again scintillates brightly; this time emerald green outshines its other living colors. The sadness reveals associations with the state of aloneness: times in childhood when I was left alone. In the emptiness of the mind float memories of a sad and lonely child, left alone, sometimes forgotten.

There is immaculate, glistening emptiness, but the emptiness has a sense of depth. The depth seems to be the felt aspect of the blackness of space. It is like looking into, and feeling into, starless deep space. The depth, although void, has a soft texture, an exquisite gentleness. There is a sense of comfort, safety and a carefree trust, as if the vastness of intergalactic space has mysteriously evolved into a gentle and loving medium. It is not a cold space, not an impersonal space, but a space that feels exactly like what the human soul has…

Intimacy discloses itself as an inherent quality of this black inner space. The intimacy is not only a matter of me being intimate with another person, or with the environment. It is not a matter of a subject intimately relating to an object. The chest cavity is pervaded by the essence of intimacy, a black spaciousness inseparable from delicate lovingness. At this point the jewel-like nous at the forehead manifests mostly black radiance, coextensive with the sensation of delicately faceted, satin, liquid energy.

The more I recognize that intimacy is a quality of spacious consciousness, the more distinctly I know it: velvet-fine openness, deep spaciousness, delicate softness, sweet stillness. The chest has become an entrance into an exquisitely heartful night sky. All of this distills itself into something unique and utterly human: intimacy. It is as if the space is a refined consciousness intimately in contact with its very nature at each point of its spaciousness. And this total openness and contact becomes an intimacy with everything, totally independent of mind and memory. No loneliness and no sense of aloneness. Simplicity of Being has ushered me, through the door of aloneness, into its inherent intimacy.

For some time I have been noticing an unexpected and strange sort of perception. At the beginning, it is difficult to focus on this awareness, for it comes in subtle intimations, fleeting intuitions, of a form of experience with which I am unfamiliar. It appears that inexhaustible Being is divulging a new manifestation, but so far in flashes and feelings, rather than in a full and clear manifestation. One such feeling is the intuition that there exists an awareness which is constant, always present, but not involved with whatever is happening.

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.

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.

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.

The awareness now, as I contemplate the experience, is that there is something like a big slug in the area of the stomach. It gradually becomes clear, as I continue to be present to it, that it is a presence of some manifestation of consciousness which feels lead-like. There is a sensation of something that feels almost like an object, which is heavy, opaque and dense, but also with the somewhat soft, thick and metallic texture of lead.

mercury, wood, water, air, clouds, bone, diamonds, pearls, and so on. The experience is not exactly the same as seeing or touching these naturally occurring manifestations, but of qualities of consciousness that take forms that feel or look like these phenomena. I experience inner sensations of texture and temperature, taste, sight and sound, which correspond exactly to the naturally manifesting substances, although it is clear that they are manifestations of consciousness. This kind of experience is unusual in our everyday awareness, but this realm of experience becomes available at a certain depth of spiritual development, and in time becomes a normal part of ongoing experience. This dimension of perception greatly enriches our understanding, and endows it with a definiteness and precision not available in normal experience, for each form expresses a specific meaning. Some of these forms are the basis of metaphors in various languages. For…

By night I realize the thickness is a lead ball, what I would call a lead pearl. However, as I remain aware of it, it begins to attain a diamond-like hardness that lead does not usually possess, as if the leaden ball at the stomach has become faceted and crystallized. In other words, the heaviness has become quite specific, taking the form of what could be called a diamond lead pearl. The feeling in this faceted leaden hardness is similar to the essential quality of will, but has also a sense of existence. Will, as a specific aspect of Being, feels…

The throbbing sensation at the forehead, indicating the presence of nous, begins to luminate, a lumination that translates into precise understanding of what I am experiencing. I recognize the faceted leaden heaviness as an imitation of…

recognize the faceted leaden heaviness as an imitation of an essential manifestation of Being, the true will to exist.

The awareness of the phenomenon of an imitative quality reflects the understanding that the ego cannot be original. Whatever quality it develops is bound to be a reflection of an essential quality. Its strength reflects essential strength, its intelligence essential intelligence, and so on. These reflections can be seen as imitations, when we know the essential qualities. They are…

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.

Now, understanding the leaden pearl, I begin to see what is responsible for the unchangeability of the personality as a whole. What I have not seen or investigated so far is what supports this totality. A quality or dimension which provides a ground for any segment can be perceived as the support for that segment. But I have never even suspected that the personality, as a whole, possesses its own support. The recognition arrives in a flash of exhilarating insight: it is the leaden heaviness which functions as this support, manifesting as the will to exist as the separate individual of ego.

The recognition arrives in a flash of exhilarating insight: it is the leaden heaviness which functions as this support, manifesting as the will to exist as the separate individual of ego.

I can see in retrospect some of the elements synthesized by the nous in arriving at the overarching insight about the support for the totality of the personality. This analysis is also the functioning of the nous, for my personal mind could not have this global analysis and understanding: i. Lead indicates inertia, unchanging manifestation, conditioned inflexible existence. ii. Hence, lead functions as the support for all conditioned patterns. Any pattern in the self will continue to exist, even after it is fully investigated and understood, until an inertia implicit in it is seen and understood. This inertia usually reveals itself to be the expression of the presence of leaden consciousness underlying the particular pattern. More specifically, the leaden heaviness is the substantial alchemical form that inertia takes in consciousness. When this lead quality is recognized the inertia supporting the particular pattern is seen. iii. In the language of substantial or alchemical forms of consciousness, the pearl signifies personalness of experience. The pearl form appears both on the ego and essential dimensions of experience, always indicating a personal manifestation. Specifically, the pearl as a form of consciousness indicates the presence of the total individuality, the presence of the person in his wholeness, whether on the ego level or the essential level of Being. The pearl appears as a sphere of compact consciousness that possesses a pearly sheen. iv. The facetedness of any form of consciousness signifies objective understanding or knowledge of what it is. In other words, when any quality of consciousness, like gold for instance, appears in a faceted jewel-like form, it indicates an objective…

vi. The aspect of existence functions partly as a form of will. It can be experienced as the will to exist. Here there is a doorway to other dimensions of essential experience, where each essential aspect can manifest in deeper and deeper dimensions of objectivity. In one of these dimensions each of the aspects functions as a form of will. vii. The personality does not have true or essential existence, but conditioned existence. This conditioned existence, which appears as the unchanging manifestation of its patterns, depends on the inflexibility, rigidity, and fixation of these patterns. This inertia supports its continued appearance, which we ordinarily perceive as its existence. Therefore, inertia is what gives the personality patterns and sectors their apparent existence. In other words, the lead quality of consciousness is responsible for the continued existence of manifestations of the personality. This is the reason I understand the inner experience of lead to be an indication of…

The hard facetedness of the leaden ball means this is the objective understanding of the support for the totality of the personality. Since lead indicates false existence, and existence functions as will, then the diamond lead pearl means the objective understanding of the will of the ego to exist as a total individuality, a separate person. The insight does not arise as the end result of such logical analysis. The existence and operation of the nous is a nonlocal phenomenon. The nous synthesizes beyond time; I can perceive only some of its functioning, and only when I am interested in the process of the arising of insight itself. Otherwise, I experience only the flash of insight, which is the cognitive aspect of the glittering radiance of the nous’ presence. At this point in…

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…

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…

The deepening insight into my personal experience and the personal inertia that underlies it, allows the leaden heaviness to gradually expand and dominate the consciousness. I am now this faceted, hard and spherical leaden density, immovable and unchangeable. This is curious. There is the feeling of expansion that accompanies the flow of insights, but there is also the thickening of consciousness as it becomes dominated by the leaden heaviness. However, there is no resistance to the leaden, thick consciousness which functions as the ground of the ego experience of self, and no value judgment about it. There is merely the openness to what is arising, and the curiosity that manifests as an open and open-ended inquiry into it. This openness and curiosity creates the space necessary for the arising and operation of the nous. A kind of happy love appears at the left side of the body, a golden love with a sense of purity that…

A few days later… I wake up in the morning with a slight tension at the left shoulder. There is discomfort with the tension. Simply being aware of the tension seems to influence it by making it expand. It becomes a line of tension along the left side of the chest, enfolded by a soft cushiony sensation. This line is a manifestation of the ego-self that I call the “ego-line.” It usually accompanies a specific psychic contraction that corresponds to the presence of the individuality of ego. In other words, the ego-line is the physical manifestation of the ego structure that gives the personality or ego-self the sense of being a separate individual, an autonomous person. The line of tension is a direct indication that the sense of being…

The soft cushiony sensation around the line of tension turns out to be a manifestation of consciousness that relates to a false sense of being a person. This makes sense, for the ego-line represents the person of ego, which is not an essential form, but imitates the essential form of the personal essence. As I recognize its falseness, it begins slowly to flake off, falling off the line of tension like dead skin falling off a mummy. This process goes on for most of the day. Later in the day, the line of tension becomes a tube of a plastic-like substance, an empty plastic tube, which extends all the way to the top of the head. As I go about the business of the day, I do not lose touch with this contraction, but remain continuously aware of it as part of my conscious…

not to be there, which I now recognize as my hope to go beyond it. The plastic tube contraction is the presence of the individual of ego in the posture of hoping to go beyond itself. The hope is inseparable from the contraction, because it is the future-oriented attitude of the personality, which is the contraction. As I see this, the contraction begins to dissolve. The tube of contraction first dissolves in the head, which eliminates the mental concern. A beautiful sky blue quality of consciousness appears in the head, bringing a sense of mental rest and relaxation. Poignant settledness of all agitation in the head. The head feels filled by a delicious sensation that seems to smoothly dissolve any form in this part of the body. As this happens, and as the totality of the tube of contraction disappears, I lose the sense of being a person, and become an awareness that recedes indefinitely, as if backward, from the familiar sense of being a person, until I recognize myself as a new kind of witnessing. I become an immaterial witness, not located within a personal consciousness. I find myself to be a witnessing of all phenomena.

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.

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,…

Since I can be a person without being the product of memory, I can live a personal life without getting lost in it.

The leaden heaviness becomes so dense that it disintegrates most of my capacity for attention and presence. Strong resistances arise, feelings of rubbery thickness, wooden dryness, amorphous states of consciousness, and many other confused and chaotic sensations. I feel the leaden rounded heaviness pushing from inside, scattering whatever consciousness it meets in its way. At this point I realize that the power of…

and powerful. The lead pearl has transformed into the shiny gray existence pearl, like a large pearl of hematite. I feel personal but immense, a person of Being so dense that my substantiality eclipses the physical substantiality of the body. The most definite feeling is a sense of personal existence. I feel intensely real, existing so fundamentally that the mind cannot conceive…

The sense of truth and reality is immensely profound; it feels deeper than the universe itself. And this unimaginably real sense of existence has a very subtle sense of being a person—a person not defined by history or mind, not confined by character traits or relationships, but a person who exists, and that is all. The sense of existence has an unquestionable sense of certainty, independent of any content of mind or experience. I recognize at…

I realize that there is no real basis for believing that in order to have a personal life I need to be enmeshed in it. This is true for the person of ego, who is formed by images and psychological patterns. Now, however, I have the certainty that my personal existence is beyond any of that. My personal existence is beyond mind and history, for it is an essential manifestation of the fundamental existence of Being. I can be a person, and live a personal life in a truly involved way, without being enmeshed in any of its particulars. This is certain.

I have experienced my presence in the essential form of the pearl innumerable times. This essential form manifests mostly as a luminous white pearl, but can manifest in the color of any essential aspect, like the deep sky blue of direct knowing, the emerald green of loving kindness, or the shiny gold of truth. In each of these manifestations, the particular aspect, with all its alchemical characteristics, is experienced along with the

characteristic of personalness. The presence of the pearl signifies authentic personalness, which reveals the possibility of living a…

The existence pearl is the new development of the personal aspect of Being. It is quite amazing to see how Being resolves a particular issue, or answers a real question, not by an insight or idea, but by the presentation of an essential form of its own truth. The resolution is an experience of Being, in one of its pure and universal forms, and not merely the dissolution of an obstacle or the end of a conflict. The beautiful thing about such a resolution is how exact and precise it is. Being responds with the precise state needed for the resolution, a state not anticipated by the mind, arising as an unexpected discovery. Such experiences demonstrate the awesome intelligence that Being possesses, which can only fill us with awe, and heart-felt gratitude and trust. 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…

As I experience this new identity, I learn a great deal of what I truly am when I am not trapped in the particulars of personal life and history. I can be present as personal existence, or I can transcend all personal experience. I am then the unchanging background witnessing, which has been revealing itself in the midst of personal experience, in glimpses and intimations, flashes and intuitions. Now this awareness reveals itself fully, as the universal witness. I experience myself as beyond everything, literally everything, and not just everything in my personal life. I am a silent witness, vast and unchanging, beyond time and all space. I am absolutely still, totally uninvolved, but completely aware. This demonstrates directly that I do not need to be freed or enlightened. I am always free, always have been and always will be. Also, I cannot be trapped, for my very identity is totally detached awareness. I can see my personal life as a drama that I do not have to be involved in. It is like a movie that has a beginning and an end, but it is not me. I feel distant from everything, but acutely aware of everything. I am a silent space, totally empty but…

The body, the universe, essence, personality, everything that can become an object of perception, is not me, but is in me. I am pure awareness, mere witnessing,…

“I am not the body, not the personality, not the essence, not the mind, not god. I am nothing that is a content of experience. Yet, all experience happens within me. Everything, at all levels, from the spiritual to the physical, happens within me. I am not touched by any of it. I am untouched and untouchable. I am unchanging. I am deathless. I am unborn. I am uncaused, unoriginated. I was never born, will never die. The concepts of life and death do not apply to me. Life and death are nothing but a process of constant transformation within me. All existence, from the lowest to the highest, is always in a state of flux, but I am the background against which this flux is seen. I am static, unchanging, nonreactive and nonresponsive. I am beyond space and time; both space and time are within me. All of time is a movement within me. Personality, or more accurately, the personal consciousness or soul, is time. Time is the flux of this personal consciousness. Essence is timelessness. I see time as the movement of the timeless in me. All of time, the time of the body and of all of physical existence, is a small process within me. I am beyond time and timelessness. I am the beyond, beyond all and everything. Mind is within me, small and always trying to grasp me.”

Time is the flux of this personal consciousness. Essence is timelessness. I see time as the movement of the timeless in me. All of time, the time of the body and of all of physical existence, is a small process within me. I am beyond time and timelessness. I am the beyond, beyond all and everything. Mind is within me, small and always trying to grasp me.” The silence is vast and eerie. There is a sense of ultimacy, of end. It seems that there is nothing beyond it. It is not that the universal witness is the highest. It is beyond high and low. From this silence, the revelation of all essential manifestations of Being arises in a hierarchy within the background of this the vast witnessing awareness. It contains all the levels of Being, so it exists at all the levels. Experiencing the universal witness is not a matter of ascending grades; it is rather an exit, getting out of the whole thing. It is truly the beyond, the unchanging silent background.

The more one perceives that it is undefinable, the more there is insight about it. The knowing of it arises by being it, as if it is known only by itself. Looking at it from outside it, or more accurately, when it looks at itself, it simply looks like space. Its relation to time, change and awareness is not seen except through its self-knowledge. The state of the universal witness continues for a few days. I see everything, the house, friends, family, students and situations all existing and happening within my vastness. There is a sense of utter impersonality, totally transcendent impersonalness.

This begins as curiosity about the relation between the intimacy space, which feels very personal, and the witness space, which feels utterly impersonal. Here the diamond-like presence of support reappears as a big lead diamond in the belly. The understanding radiates out from a lead diamond between the eyes. A flow of insights pours out of this awareness, completing itself as the objective understanding of lead, of inertia, of the conditioning of the personal, and of the ego line. Lead is the will that supports the conditioning of consciousness.

universal impersonal in order to be free. Otherwise life becomes enmeshment in the particulars of daily life. The realization of the impersonal is not only for its own sake, it is also for the personal to complete its development in freedom. Life is then the personal consciousness experiencing itself as the flow of the realization of Being.

A realization as deep as the universal witness has implications that take years to appreciate. Even the ones I see readily take me a long time to integrate into everyday life. The shift of perspective is so profound and total that one might expect it to immediately eradicate all the mental beliefs and habits which remain in ignorance of this perspective. But as one goes about life this perspective reveals that many unconscious beliefs related to it remain, as the new state of being puts pressure on ways of experiencing oneself which are barriers to its more complete realization.

I gradually come to recognize that even though I have been experiencing myself as the impersonal vastness of the universal witness, punctuated by the arising of various manifestations of presence, I continue to operate as if I am the personality. I continue to live mostly as a person of time and memory, in spite of the certain fact and perception that I am the beyond. There is a feeling that I am being insincere, pretending that I am the personality when I know for certain I am the beyond.

I see the ego state clearly now: an empty shell, which usually indicates the falseness of taking myself to be an image, instead of merely being.

One night I dream of being some kind of thief. I am caught, and am about to be killed. I wake up feeling strongly: “I do not want to be known as bad.” I am intrigued: I am certain this strong feeling is somehow connected to the vague emotion I have been experiencing for a few nights. There is something about badness in this current experience, but I do not understand it.

There is a difference this time: the emotion reveals itself as a feeling of a strong sadness, depression, or loneliness. As I recognize the sadness and aloneness I become aware of a concern about being rejected and abandoned for being bad.

The surface mind is engaged and busy with the show on the tube, leaving the deeper awareness free to contemplate and inquire into the inner process. I begin to see that to the arising part of my mind, being good means being what others want; it means controlling myself to act in ways that will be accepted by others. Here, the nous glimmers slightly, as the realization arrives that I believe that being bad means being spontaneously myself, without control or guardedness.

The falseness, resulting from pretending to be the acceptable personality when I know who I really am, is due to believing that I am bad if I am completely myself. I pretend to be something other than myself so that I won’t be bad.

This is an unexpected development—the reverse of the shame of being inauthentic. I feel bad for being authentic, for it is not what others want me to be.

So to be myself authentically, which happens every time Being manifests as my identity, always challenges this identification. And to be the universal witness is not only to be something that others do not accept, it is being something they cannot even imagine.

These feelings reveal themselves to be a consequence of a deep inner conflict. I do not want to displease anyone. I do not want to be a cause of pain to the people I care for. At the same time, I deeply value and want to be myself, whatever this happens to be. I love to simply be, with the freedom, profundity and exquisiteness of the state of simply being. So there is sadness and hurt both ways, for myself and for the others. No wonder there is frustration in the experience.

This night, it happens that my friend Karen is visiting me, and as usual on these occasions, we discuss the latest in our discoveries. I describe to her my observations in the last few days.

The nous begins to radiate brilliantly, with a deep golden hue. The insight emerges: the sorrow is about the feeling of badness, and the conflict of being myself and how it causes pain, for others and for myself, even though it is a selfless movement towards truth. The sorrow is about human suffering, mine and others’, and about leaving it behind. It is also about leaving the human personal sphere, as I move deeper into the mysteries of Being. I do not feel that those I am leaving are strangers, for the human sphere represents in a deep unconscious manner my mother, the first human I had known and loved. I see that the sorrow is about the unavoidable suffering, real and imaginary, that results from

There is sorrow whenever the movement towards the truth causes unavoidable difficulty for myself or others. The sorrow is also about the conflict, and most fundamentally for the insincerity that I have been experiencing when I pretend I am the personality. It is also more universal: it is sorrow about the insincerity towards which ignorance so mercilessly drives most people.

Being possesses such perfect intelligence that it eclipses what we ordinarily know as intelligence. It responds to the needs of the soul in such complete and unexpected ways, with an aesthetically beautiful precision. In the process I have just described, Being manifested in such a way as to exactly resolve and heal the conflicts and the ignorance. It revealed the need to be good, in the sense of not causing pain, and resolved this situation and healed it, by manifesting essential

sorrow, when I realized my helplessness in preventing such pain. It resolved the question of feeling phony and insincere, by manifesting essential sincerity. It replaced the empty shell, the identity of ego, with the radiant faceted blackness, as the depth of identity with Being. And then, it completed the healing by manifesting the pearlescent quality, the personalness of Being, which replaced the fake personalness of the ego. Clearly, it was the absence of personalness in the universal witness, which is the specifically impersonal dimension of Being, which brought up the conflict around leaving the world, others, or mother. The radiant blackness with a pearlescent sheen is a particular resolution of the issue, for in it I am beyond the world but can relate to it in a personal way. I could never have imagined such a resolution on my own, using my personal mind. Without the loving intelligence of Being the mind is hopelessly lost. It is also significant to see that Being resolves and heals not only through conceptual understanding, but also, and mainly, through manifesting the necessary states and qualities. This is intelligent grace.

I see the whole universe, on all levels, getting smaller and smaller, until it becomes a point. Then, puff, the point is gone. Everything disappears, and only the silent witness remains. This vision is transposed on the immediate scene of the small group of students in a relatively large room, engaged in heated discussion. It occurs while I am talking and responding. When the vision is over, it leaves me as the empty vastness of witnessing, a pure awareness of the immediate situation, including a dispassionate awareness of the individual me.

The forehead tingles deliciously, sending ripples throughout the whole head. The inquiry combines the contemplation of the present state, the memory of the recent vision, and insights gained in previous experiences, in a process that utilizes both direct perception and the thinking activity. The nous expands as the inquiry intensifies, its faceted clarity merging into the vast centerless awareness of the witness. The question now takes another twist: When I, as the silent witness, see the world of space-time as within my vastness, is it the real world that I am witnessing, or is it the mind’s image of the world? Or are both the same? The inquiry arrives at a silence, in the realization that I do not have enough objective information—direct knowledge from personal insight—to answer this question. Silence pervades the room.

The identity with the personality, or ego-self, is annihilated when I realize myself as the silent witness, or any essential manifestation of Being. However, the identity of the personality does not completely annihilate without the world itself annihilating. This is because the personality and the world are inseparable; they constitute one general object relation. More precisely, the ego-self, with its identity, is a psychic structure that is always in a relation to another psychic structure.

What was annihilated is not only a mental representation of the universe; it is the world as I had known it. I had never before known the world directly, perceiving it without the representations developed during my personal history. This world that the ego-self knows and inhabits is truly a mental world, a dream. As this understanding arises, the black diamond presence expands, filling the house with a magnificent peace. I have subtle glimpses of the real world, but it appears shrouded in mystery.

The creative dynamism of Being unveils its various perfections in an inherent pattern. This pattern discloses an order that satisfies my explorations, at the same time transforming my experience of myself and the world. I am not only an enchanted captive audience, not only a responsive recipient of Being’s transubstantiating grace, but also a happy participant. My love for the truth quickens Being’s dynamic creativity. This love, sometimes passionate and consuming, sometimes serene and mature, expresses itself as appreciation, openness and surrender to whatever form or formlessness in which Being presences itself. This love deepens my natural curiosity, which manifests as playful but serious exploration, in an inquiry which often takes the form of fundamental questions about existence, but is at the same time passionately personal.

I am not only an enchanted captive audience, not only a responsive recipient of Being’s transubstantiating grace, but also a happy participant. My love for the truth quickens Being’s dynamic creativity. This love, sometimes passionate and consuming, sometimes serene and mature, expresses itself as appreciation, openness and surrender to whatever form or formlessness in which Being presences itself.

A poet said it thus: “always a beautiful answer, that asks a more beautiful question.” The unfoldment of the soul is an adventure full of thrill and terror. It magnifies various life conflicts, as it discloses the essential manifestations that resolve them. This process exposes character deficiencies, ignorance, and wrong beliefs and positions. It involves intense pain, rage, terror and uncertainty. For one who truly pursues truth, however, these difficulties are not obstacles but occasions for further revelations of truth. Inner conflicts and difficulties always turn out to be caused by ignorance.

In the realization of the universal witness, it has begun to disclose the nature of the world. This realization has shown me that my experience of the world had not been direct, but had been mediated by my personal view.

How is the universal witness connected to the world? What is the real world? How is the individual soul related to the real world? What connects the…

The world appears as a dream, a mental content, through a perception of duality of…

For example, I was aware of the individual as the personal essence, a person of presence. This manifestation of Being, living as a personal presence, undefined by and free from mind, demonstrates that what exists in the vastness of the witness cannot all be simply mental fabrication. As a person, I am a real presence. So even though I perceive…

I was too fascinated with the integration of the various qualities and dimensions of Essence, and most recently by the realization of the universal witness, to fully entertain these questions. Nevertheless, Being opened up with full force, disclosing its boundless dimensions in a pattern that revealed the real world. The dynamism, intensified by my passionate embrace of its revelations, had gathered such a momentum that it divulged the beauty and harmony of the real world, even though I had only a dim awareness of such possibilities. Being was…

At the beginning of a year of breathtaking revelations, Being disclosed the underlying nature of the world as love. Love was revealed as the authentic body of the universe. The manifestation of Being went further, unveiling its body as pure and undifferentiated presence, in which the particulars of the world are seen to be…

the world, in which the world is nothing but the nonmental concepts as and through which Being manifests. The particulars of how the world appears turn out to be nonmental forms, luminous designs inseparable from the total freshness and clarity of Being. To the ordinary state of mind these forms veil the nature of Being, because we experience them as objects. In this realization the forms become infinite beautiful windows revealing the clear luminous nature of Being. Here it is sufficient to describe one representative experience, to indicate the quality of…

I feel that in some basic way I do not know anything. I see, I hear, I sense, but I do not know what I behold. Everything familiar in my life, everything in the world that I have known, all seems so unfamiliar, so unknown, so new, so unfathomable. Nothing has changed externally; the world is the same. But everything seems new and unknown—the houses, the streets, the…

I am struck by how deeply I have been asleep, in a kind of hypnosis, believing that I know what I perceive. But what I know is not what I perceive. I look around me, at the walls, the furniture, the rugs, and I behold a mystery peering at me through everything. I realize I do not know the wall, I do not know the carpet. What I know about them are only bits and pieces, surface qualities: colors,…

What do I know about this chair when I say it is big? Do I really then know this chair, or is it that I am aware of some comparison, which takes place only in my mind? When I know it is an iron chair, what am I really knowing? This is merely knowing a word, iron. This word puts together in my mind various…

Free from such words and concepts, free from memories and information, a chair is a mystery, profound and unfathomable. When I confront the chair directly, without the mediation of my concepts, I realize that I do not know it. This is true about everything in the world, everything that surrounds me.

Words create, Words annihilate, But where do they stand?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No mind is a freshness, A sun of ice, Radiating brilliant clarity.

This coolness, that seems to pervade all of consciousness, is identical to the feeling of freshness, of newness, of virginity, of purity, of innocence. It is the total ecstasy of clarity.

Innocence stings. It is like a bare bottom

On ice.

I perceive this carving to be the forms that constitute the universe, many forms but one appearance. Everything that I can see, everything I have known, is nothing but the external topology of the totally void crystalline presence. The world is not a veil, it is only the appearance of reality. Being, which reveals itself now as simultaneously both absence and clarity, manifests itself through the world, and as the world.

Even as I get up, go to the kitchen and begin to cook, I realize it is the immensity and clarity of the crystal presence which is cooking. The wall, the stove and the pots, all seem to be transparent forms, all outside me, and I am their inner core, a sheer clarity, translucent to the point of nothingness. I am delight itself, moving and cooking. I am ecstatic freshness, cutting the vegetables, and tasting the sauce. The understanding is undeniable: to content myself with the familiar knowledge of the mind is to be asleep. The knowledge of memory, of word and concept, is obscuration. To unquestioningly accept the familiar world is to kill the real world.

At the moment it dissolves all partitioning and spatial boundaries, it reveals itself in a surprising new way. For several months, I have known it as a colorless transparent crystalline consciousness that is simultaneously clear presence and emptiness. Yet at this moment, when it expands to the maximum, it appears totally dark. More precisely, the new perception is that when the colorless nonconceptual presence expands, manifesting

A few months after the realization of the absolute mystery of Being, I become aware of a curious process. This development is very subtle; it has been unfolding for some weeks before I realize that it is a specific process. It manifests as subtle and fleeting feelings, insights and perceptions. The first conscious intimation of this development is a sense that I am at the end of a stage of my life. I have done what I had set out to do, in inner realization, work, and personal life. There is a feeling of completion, and a sense that I have no more ambition.

The issue seems to be a form of the rapprochement conflict. I love being the absolute transcendence, but I also love being personally with others, and working with students in a personal way. So the issue is a conflict between two loves, between witnessing and personal involvement.

Source text is the author's, verbatim. The headings, grouping, and emphasis are mine, added for readability. — Chris