More exactly, creation or the flow of Being is basically replacement: one unified appearance is replaced by another unified appearance. The word creation might make you think that something new and different is being created, but from the perspective of self-revelation, Being is simply revealing itself through the innumerable manifestations of objects, beings, and events that we experience. So by seeing this flow as self-revelation, we see that there is no distinction between what is created and what is creating. Here, then, the continuity of Being is its self-revelation, through which we are able perceive it. As long as there is perception of Being, it is always perceived through the forms it manifests. When you perceive Being without any form, there is no perception. This is the divine coma, the cessation of experience. The forms through which we perceive it are the manifestations of Being itself, so it is not as though Being is manifesting us. Being is manifesting itself, and we are part of that Being.

Separation happens in very early childhood, in the first year of life or so. When babies are first born they do not experience themselves as separate. Being separate has to do with a creation of the mind. As your mind develops, and has concepts, you conceptualize an entity that is you, that is based on the perception of your body. Before that happens, there is oneness. Oneness is nothing but the experience of reality without the intervention of the mind, without concepts. Oneness is nonconceptual reality. What are concepts? Concepts are nothing but boundaries. You take something and conceptualize it, and you create boundaries around it. This is a human being, this is a tree, this is a house, this is a feeling, this is a sensation: All these are concepts. When you are not doing that, all separateness disappears. Then it is possible to see reality as it is. That’s why it is hopeless to do anything to experience oneness, because the moment you try to do anything, you are doing it according to your mind. How else can you do it? The moment you try to do anything to get to oneness, you are doing it according to your mind; then oneness is still an idea, a concept. If you are living according to your mind, you are going to perpetuate your mind, and in perpetuating your mind, you are not going to see reality completely naked. Oneness happens by complete relaxation, not by going after anything.

Perceiving the flow is simply a particular way of looking at reality. Sometimes you might feel as if you are applying your will, with great consequence. When you investigate further, you realize that the application of the will, the decision to apply the will, is not initiated by you. What initiates will is the source. The result of applying the will is identical with the application of the will. The flow of the pattern is lawful, as nature is lawful. When the temperature and pressure coincide in a particular way, clouds form. Then there is rain or snow or fog. Unfoldment too happens according to the laws of the truth. Because we don't see these laws, we adhere to the smaller perspective of cause and effect, of time and space. So we understand reality in terms of the limited laws of time and space. But truth has its own laws. Creation exists as lawful pattern.

If we look at understanding from a perspective that will tend naturally and spontaneously to go towards balance and harmony, we find that understanding needs to be motivated by love of the truth for its own sake. The experience, or the beingness, is the experience of the truth. That’s what a person needs to learn over and over again. When you are in a state of being, what you are experiencing is the truth: the truth of who you are. Your experience is not a candy, or a goody, it’s not a reward for being good or for having done your work. No; you are experiencing the fundamental truth, and that needs to be seen, understood, imbibed and absorbed; then action will come from the place of this truth. No one has said this is an easy thing to do. As you see, It is quite an endeavor. The creation of the beautiful, graceful, true, and mature human life requires work at many levels. It requires dedication, sincerity, and a commitment to that endeavor. This kind of life is possible, but only for the person who really wants it. It will not happen if the person wants something else. It’s as simple as that. It is not that you are going to be punished if you don’t pursue this life. If you don’t work for it, you don’t get it.

A certain natural development of the mind, of our cognitive and functional capacities, is necessary to enable us to live and to function. However, this development tends to establish us in a perspective which is not an accurate reflection of reality. This perspective tends to exclude some aspects of reality and emphasize others, and the perspective that allows us to function in the world tends to become the only reality that we perceive. We take a very small part to be the whole. This loss is much more momentous than can be imagined from the perspective of conventional reality. So your mind and personality develop, and you end up being the personality, the ego-self, living in the world of the mind. The personality is the creation of the mind. The representational mind is itself a mental creation. So you end up being a ghost, living in a ghost world. That ghost world is dark compared to reality—not only dark, but dank and old. It is merely a repeat of previous thoughts. We forget reality so thoroughly that we live our lives completely seeking the values of our conditioned mind, one conditioned goal after another, whether we call it goodness, love, success, or happiness. All these are creations of our minds. They do not exist; they never existed. They exist only in our minds. They are mirages. We seek them all our lives, and when we find them, we find that there is nothing there. They do not quench our thirst, because they are not really there. When you believe you have found one of these elusive conditioned goals, all you can do is attempt to perpetuate it in your mind, to solidify and support it, which means to perpetuate the dank, old world that we believe exists.

We learn from this that each experience, each manifestation, each form in the world is what it is and is being self-created in the moment. All of reality is self-creative. In the second turning of the teaching, we see that creative dynamism is one of the dimensions of true nature creating all of reality from the absolute. The dynamism of this dimension reveals the possibilities of the absolute as all appearances, all qualities, all forms, and all dimensions. But we realize in the fourth turning that even the absolute itself is being created. The whole thing, the whole picture, all of reality, is self-creative. There is not something apart from self-creation that is doing the creating. Everything is always creating itself.

This idea of spontaneous creation refers to a certain truth, which can become a perceptual truth—that everything we see is being revealed in the moment. It is not existing continuously, which is the usual way we think of it; it is being instantaneously revealed through an unending process of creativity and unfoldment. We usually don’t perceive the instantaneous act of creation, the immediate appearing of manifestation; rather, we see it through our limited concept of time and space, as if creation happened long ago and a lot of time has passed since then. But if we see that the whole of reality as it appears before us is actually emerging all the time, we can recognize that what is creating it is love. This movement of creation—the very substance that is unfolding and creating all the forms—is the substance of love. It is the very tenderness, the very softness, the very sweetness of love. Love is revealing the totality of everything as the ultimate truth. And the ultimate truth is revealing everything in order to perceive itself in its totality.

We have seen how the world of experience is continually generated by the logos, as an unfolding pattern of forms and phenomena. One way of experiencing this is to see that the manifest world is not a continuation from the past, but an arising in the moment. It simply manifests, as a new creation, a movement from nonmanifestation to manifestation. Such understanding can begin the inquiry into what nonmanifestation means. When we recognize the unfoldment of the logos as the appearing out of nonmanifestation, where does the appearing appear from, or in? What is the unmanifest, if there is such a thing? Can we step out of the manifest world and witness the process of manifestation?

In this dimension (dynamic presence)… we perceive how experience happens, which turns out to be the same as the generation of manifestation. More precisely, we do not perceive a difference between the perceiver, the perceived, and the act of perception. All of these are generated together as the specifics of the unfolding unified field of presence. We recognize ourselves as the generating dynamic presence, but also as the generated forms and experiences. In the same act true nature generates forms and perceives them. It is the creator, the created, and process of creation. Creation is simply generation, continuous unfolding of forms and experiences. One way this appears to us in the inner journey is the recognition that there is no such thing as individual action. When we realize that there is ultimately no separate and autonomous soul we see that there is no such thing as independent action, personal choice, or volition.

So in some sense you could say that our life and our action are a matter of perceiving ourselves into reality. We perceive ourselves into existence. The perceiving generates and creates the being. No separation exists between perceiving and creating. As you perceive your hand, your hand is being created. Perception and creation are identical. If you think that you move your hand and that your hand is bigger now than it was when you were two years old, those thoughts are what is being generated. So you’re not wrong and you’re not right. You’re simply being generated. No one is ever right or wrong. No one is ever good or bad. The only thing that ever happens is instantaneous manifestation. And it is actually not even a happening, for happening implies time, while it has no time in it.

We experience ourselves as a vastness, an immensity, an expanse so deep it is absolutely dark. Though dark and still, inscrutable and silent, it is the source of all luminosity and light. And within this immeasurable immensity, we witness the process of creation. We see a dynamic presence, the divine logos, flowing out of the absolute, revealing its potentialities as the manifest reality, disclosing its mysteries as the multidimensional manifold of existence and experience. Yet, because of the infinity of the absolute we see this manifold as a surface phenomenon, as if the absolute is so pure and pristine that it glitters and shines, its brilliance forming a surface, colorful and luminous. This colorful and luminous surface of radiance is continually scintillating with colors and forms, shapes and patterns. We witness an unfolding surface of clear and variegated light, whose pattern is the totality of creation. The absolute is prior to light, but also its source and ultimate nature and mystery. The light is the unfolding logos, whose pattern is the totality of existence, a dynamic unified manifold. The scintillating light is one unified surface, with no parts and no partitions, a field of radiance full of intelligence and truth, reality and significance.