Boundless light is not only love, but a dimension of love beyond the human, beyond the individual. It is not for anyone, and not by anyone. It is for everyone; true nature is manifesting everyone, and everything, as pure love. And one of these forms of love is the soul herself. The soul recognizes here that she is a manifestation of the love of true nature. She is love and light, a consciousness with total goodness. When she recognizes her light nature, she lights up and glows like a self-luminous bulb, but when she does not, when she is deluded by the ego structures, her light dims and only the external outlines of her form remain in awareness. These become boundaries and she feels herself as a bounded and separate entity. The dimming of the light of the soul causes the soul to experience herself as a separate entity. Only a minimum of this light remains, as her ordinary consciousness, trapped within the skin of her body. Everything now looks opaque and discrete, and appearance becomes a physical world littered with separate objects, dead objects that have lost their luminosity. When her rigid structures are made transparent through the unfolding of her process, the soul feels this as an increase in consciousness and presence. At a heightened level of intensity this presence reveals itself as luminous light that now overflows her personal boundaries; the overflow that melts these boundaries is actually the overflow of divine love and grace. Thus it reveals itself as the boundless ocean of Being and love, consciousness and light, the substance and true nature of everything. She experiences herself as a form held by this loving light, inseparable from it. She is an offspring of the divine light, one of its loving and exquisite manifestations. But her light can grow so intense that even her sense of being a form of light becomes outshone, and she recognizes herself as the light itself, in its boundlessness and infinity. She is then the true nature of everything; she is the ground. More exactly, she is everything, as one divine being, where substance and form are wedded into an inseparable Reality. She is ultimately true nature itself, in its divine boundlessness and omnipresent grace. All things are equal, equalized by the unity of appearance.

This sense of grandeur and omnipotence is understood readily when one realizes what it feels like to be the Essential Self. The experience of the Essential Self fills the consciousness with a special kind of preciousness, and with a feeling of omnipotence and omniscience. One feels completely wonderful, completely able and totally indestructible. One feels all loving, all knowing and all powerful. There is a sense of completeness and totality. When students come upon the experience of the Essential Self, these qualities are always felt, as is seen in James’ report, above, when he says:

“I became aware of a presence like a point of concentration in my head. It felt just like a point, no dimension to it, but seemed indestructible; there was no question of it being destroyed or altered by anything outside.”

The fact is that these characteristics are actually true of the Essential Self. It is an indestructible source of pure love and knowledge. It cannot be touched, cannot be hurt and cannot be marred. The late Indian teacher of self-realization, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, describes the Essential Self like this:

“When you realize yourself as less than a point in space and time, something too small to be cut and too short-lived to be killed, then, and then only, all fear goes. When you are smaller than the point of the needle, then the needle cannot pierce you—you pierce the needle! [Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, p. 464]”

At a deeper level of significance, moving to the simplicity of pure being means to her that she is leaving the world, for the world is a universe of colors and qualities, differentiations and discriminated forms. She feels she is leaving the manifest world, which means both a loss and an abandonment. So she may feel grief and wounding, and/or guilt and self-recrimination. Psychodynamically, leaving the world is equivalent to leaving her mother, for mother is the original object, the original world. Many childhood issues tend to arise in this context, especially issues of separation, rapprochement, inadequacy, and loss of merging. All these reactions, beliefs, and issues are due to the soul’s ignorance of the truth of true nature. The reactions come from what the soul associates with the experiential simplicity of pure presence. Pure presence is a dimension of true nature, and so is divine love. There can be no contradiction between them; in fact, they are simultaneously present, along with the other dimensions, structuring manifest true nature. Thus at some point in the integration of pure presence the soul begins to experience it as inseparable from and coemergent with divine love. Pure presence is revealed as simply the ground for divine love, the inner essence of its richness. More important, if the soul truly loves truth for its own sake, and has actually integrated divine love and thus come to a place of basic trust, she will not panic at the possibility of the above losses. Instead she will with trust and ease inquire into the new dimension, to discover its truth and wisdom. When she surrenders to this manifestation of Being she will realize that pure being does not lack anything. Her fears of loss are simply associations, and are not truly warranted by the experience of pure presence. Remaining with this presence, she recognizes its complete purity.

Every time we discover truth, we need to put it into action. We have to change our life according to that truth. We have to change our behavior so that it takes that truth into consideration. Otherwise, we will be acting from a place that disregards what we have discovered. We can’t be couch-potato explorers. Our spacecruiser journey requires all-out commitment and dedication, and total devotion to the truth that ultimately reflects our true nature and the nature of reality. For instance, you discover that you are really not the unlikable person that you thought you were. You find that you are really pure love. How are you going to live your life now? How are you going to interact? Are you going to go through life as pure love or as that old unlovable person? If you continue to act as that unlovable person, it’s as though your discovery never happened. And that pure love is not going to move to a deeper dimension. In fact, it’s going to get blocked again. However, if you don’t forget, and you begin to do your best to integrate that insight of being pure love into your life, it will help the process of exploration to go deeper, to reveal more truth. This might mean using the implications of the insight to question the beliefs that support your old identity. Such an inquiry will challenge the inertia of your old identification as unlikable. So what does it mean to live your life as if you were pure love? That is something you will have to find out yourself, because there are no definite rules to follow. Of course, the moment you inquire into this question, you will come upon various barriers—either about love itself or about the roots of the identification with being unlovable. You may find out that you are not behaving according to the truth you know because your actions are being determined by something unconscious. Understanding these new elements might not make it possible for you to behave as pure love right now, but at least it will take you in the right direction. So you can continue working in the direction that will help you integrate that quality more in your life. In this way, insight becomes wisdom, which is insight in action.

So the unity of everything is complete radiance, complete expansion, completely itself. In its final free expression, it is pure blinding brilliance, so blinding that you are effaced. This brilliance can be experienced as a clarity and intelligence, as an exploding intelligence that shatters all darkness and ignorance. At the same time it is pure love, most delicate and soft, and in the same instant the strongest and most powerful will. It is not three different things put together, but all one, the brilliance of the aspects of essence, the source and inner nature of every living thing and of all creation. From this perspective, there can only be unity. As you look at it from outside, before you attain the cosmic consciousness, you see it as brilliance in this or that. But when the separateness is effaced, then you are it, there is nothing else. Then all of existence is just that, and that is the brilliance of “Hu.” When it is in the head you are drunk with sparkling brilliance. Completely drunk and completely awake. Your heart can only sing, can only be transported with the lightness of complete delight. The joy is in praising of Him. You realize, when the brilliance takes you to the unity which is the beginning of everything, that it was always there as you, your deepest nature from the beginning. Even if you look at yourself from the perspective of evolution, even as the amoeba, your innermost nature is “Hu.” It has not only transformed you so that you know it, it has created you so that you know it. It has created you so that you sing its praise. It is beyond experience and non- experience. The question of observer and observed is completely erased. There is only dancing; the universe as a whole, including its deepest torture, is dancing.

The aspect of Will manifests at the beginning stages of the spiritual journey, making possible the student’s true commitment, patience and perseverance. It is one of the several aspects that are central for transformation, like those of Loving Kindness, Strength, Peace, and Joy. Will emerges again in deeper stages of transformation, not only as a specific aspect, but as a whole dimension of Essence, a plane of Being where all aspects manifest as Will. This dimension, which has to do with the question of supporting spiritual transformation, manifests Essence in all its pure qualities—Love, Kindness, Clarity, Strength, Joy, Truth, Peace, Fulfillment, Contentment, and so on—but always as Will. In other words, in this dimension, we experience Love, for instance, with its sweetness and appreciativeness, but also with the characteristics of solidity, definiteness, confidence, and commitment. Love is then experienced as supportive. This kind of experience is not known in the conventional dimension of the self, and it might not make sense from that perspective, but it makes a great deal of sense from the perspective of many spiritual traditions. The support that emerges when we go through the narcissistic helplessness is a manifestation of Being which is this whole dimension of Will. We refer to this as Diamond Will for reasons we will discuss shortly. Understanding this quality will clarify many issues regarding idealization and its transferences. Recognizing that the support that resolves the idealizing transference is an essential manifestation of Being, makes it clear that there is no way to gain true support from external sources. It is an aspect of our very Being, and the most that an external source may provide is guidance towards recognizing it within ourselves.

Seeing that a necessary requirement for objectivity, which is usually considered a mental quality, is pure love of truth, which is a heart quality, we observe the organic interrelation between the various aspects of Essence. It is interesting to remember that the beginning of ego has a defensive character, and defense is nothing but hiding a certain truth of experience. So the requirement for inner realization is the converse of the most basic characteristic of the ego; defense and resistance are the enemies of truth, and love is its ally. The love for truth, which reverses the attitude of defense, leads directly to the truth of experience, the truth that was defended against. And, as we already know, it is this truth that is the nutrient for the development of the Personal Essence. This indicates that when the heart loves truth it is approaching the specific nutrition needed for the essential person. So we can say, although it is only a conceptualization, that the heart loves the Personal Essence and its development. This again shows the organic interrelation between the aspects of Essence. These perceptions can go on forever, the understanding becoming more precise and more specific, reflecting the functioning of the Diamond Consciousness.

Seeing the role of true nature in illuminating the dire situation we find ourselves in impacts our heart and our soul, and it transforms our relationship to true nature and everything that expresses it. The more we recognize and encounter true nature, the more the heart is touched. True nature touches the heart in a way that nothing else does. When we realize how exquisite true nature is, we become stunned. How can it be? How can there be such a thing? How can there be such an energy, such a power, that is compassionate and strong at the same time, that is precise and loving at the same time, that is the nature of everything and creating everything at the same time? We experience an immense sense of awe and wonder. We can’t help but love true nature for what it is because of its magnificence, its beauty, its liberating power, its loving generosity, its loving light. It is like a luminosity whose action is pure love and pure goodness. The more it touches us, the more we feel real and satisfied, and the more meaningful our life becomes. Our sense of awe is not only full of wonder, appreciation, and love but is also imbued with a deep respect for the truth and power of true nature. This respect can develop naturally into a profound reverence for true nature; in this way it becomes a factor useful for essential activation. This reverence—a mix of love, joy, delight, respect, and awe—is both a feature and an expression of that activation. It is a natural response to the fullness of our encounters with true nature and to the completeness of our realizations of true nature. We can’t help it; it simply happens.

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.

Many people think that autonomy means, “I have my own ideas, my own perceptions,” but that definition is superficial; it is not what essential autonomy really is. Everyone has his or her own ideas and perceptions, but to have one’s own passion, one’s own involvement, one’s own interest, one’s own excitement about the truth and the process of investigation—that is autonomy of inquiry. This autonomy is what invites the guidance of Being. It is okay to be dependent for a while on a school, situation, teaching, or teacher. But our process is not going to get very far if we are not able to self-activate at some point. How much can our teacher work with us? At most, a couple of hours a week. What are we going to do the rest of the week? If we have our own excitement, then we can have a twenty-four-hour process of unfoldment. So we need to rely on our own pure love, excitement, and passionate involvement in discovering the truth. Our process will not deepen or continue to unfold without this love of the truth, this desire to discover the truth in ourselves. At some point, we ourselves must want to find out about reality because it is personally important to us.

The Diamond Approach looks at these formless realms as part of the human potential, in fact as the acme of human consciousness. But we see the idealization of these realms to the exclusion of the personal realm and of the other aspects and dimensions of Essence as a limited, even prejudiced, view. Our approach does not value or judge one realm above another; we simply observe that these formless realms become spontaneously available in the process of actualizing the human potential, thus expanding what is normally thought to be the nature of this potential. In time, these dimensions dominate the consciousness, influencing one’s experience and determining one’s view of reality. There is no need to make them an object of seeking. When the student merely lives his or her life fully, metabolizing his or her experience totally, motivated and guided by the pure love for truth, the formless dimensions manifest. The point of transition to these dimensions arrives when the Personal Essence is finally integrated and understood. No particular guidance or practice need be added. The beingness of the Personal Essence is in its very nature a bridge to these dimensions.

That’s the paradox to which Jesus was referring. If you become poor in spirit, you will be in the kingdom of heaven. If you are completely poor, you get nothing absolutely, which ontologically is the same thing as having everything. The switch point concerns the sense of an existing self, the feeling that there is a me who has or who doesn’t have. The transition is that the sense of self goes. Before that goes, you have things or you don’t have things. That central sense of self who is going to have this, who is going to be enlightened, who is going to experience God, who is going to get rich, who is going to have pleasure, is what ultimately goes. Everything else will be left. God will be left, pleasure will be left, fun will be left, everything will be there without you. Then everything will be experienced purely. Pleasure will be pure pleasure because you are not there to contaminate it. As a separate self that possesses things, you are an impurity. Without that self, when there is love, there is pure love. It is not you who says, “I love you.” Sometimes when you feel love you can actually sense a little, dark, murky cloud sitting somewhere and looking at this ocean of love. When you feel, “I’m loving and I’m going to save the world,” the world needs to be saved from you. As long as there is a you that wants to save the world, the world needs to be saved from you. You are just making trouble for people by pretending to save them when in fact you are asserting your own deficiencies. You haven’t got anything to save anybody with anyway. And if you’re fortunate, you will be saved someday by that love itself. It comes and melts you, and shows you it is not you who is going to save anyone. You can be saved, but only by everything being taken away from you. One thing after another will go, until you become completely poor; then you will be gone. The riches are your support; when you are completely poor, you have no supports, and then you just dissolve. You are gone. A wave of death comes and purity pervades.