The Journey of Descent reveals the relation between the absolute and the various dimensions of true nature. The quintessential dimension reveals it specifically as not actually a relation, but a complete integration, a perfect coemergence. All the dimensions of true nature—its absolute essence, nonconceptual awareness, pure presence, divine love, and creative logos—make up one truth, in a primordial synthesis. In the soul’s personal experience she may perceive the absolute coemergent with awareness, presence, or love, but in actuality all the dimensions make up an indivisible unity. To experience a limited coemergence indicates a transitory dominance of some dimensions due to the conditions of the particular situation. But true nature inherently and primordially possesses all the five dimensions. This means that any essential aspect inherently exists in all the five dimensions simultaneously. An aspect is always a dynamic presence continually generated by the creativity of the logos. It possesses its own inseparable awareness of its presence and phenomenological characteristics, its cognitive flavor or universal concept, its affective coloration, and it is always fundamentally coemergent with its own ontological absence. In other words, the journey of descent shows us that an essential aspect is inherently nondual with all the dimensions of true nature, a differentiation of a particular perfection of this true nature.

The most characteristic quality of the quintessential diamond is the exquisite synthesis of presence and absence, fullness and emptiness. The two are absolutely coemergent, totally coextensive. We can differentiate them from each other, but we are aware of both as one. We feel so empty and light, as if our nature is simply total absence. Yet, in the same perception, there is a sense of full presence, sharp and precise. The result is an exquisiteness beyond mind and imagination, which is a sharpness and intensity of sensation that is inseparable from a heavenly smoothness due to the absence of any sensation. The effect on us is delight, bliss, ecstasy, transport, which is at the same time lightness, freedom, liberation, which is also precision, truth, reality, and significance.

The quintessential dimension also reveals how the generation of Reality occurs. It shows that it is not a matter of emanation, but of manifestation within the field of the absolute. The world appears within the absolute, inseparable from it, undifferentiated from it, without any ontological distance. So it is not emanated the way light emanates from the sun, but more like the picture appears on the TV screen. The emanating light never leaves its source, being coemergent with it. Source and sourced are simply two facets of the same Reality. It is because of this complete inseparability of the manifest and the unmanifest that one of the main issues for this dimension is rapprochement, but now between appearance-world and true nature–absolute.

We see that the objective relation that the quintessential dimension reveals the absolute to have to manifestation is that it is coemergent with all forms and dimensions. In other words, it has no distance from any manifestation. It is actually not differentiated from anything. More precisely, the absolute has no relation to manifestation, for the possibility of relation does not arise unless there is differentiation. It is a matter of complete unity, absolute nonduality. We can also see that coemergence implies all the previous objective relations we have discussed in relation to the other dimensions of descent. Everything is its radiance, just as in the absolute dimension, except now we see that its radiance is not differentiated from its emptiness. It is the core of everything, just as in the core dimension, except now we see that the core and the surface are coemergent, and without any distance between them. It is the ground of all manifestation, just as in the ground dimension, except that now we see that the ground is undifferentiated from the manifest. It is the center and apex of the hierarchy of all dimensions of manifestation, just as in the integrated dimension, except that now we recognize that this hierarchy is not spatial; it does not even imply differentiation.

We reach the essence of integration in the journey of descent. Ultimate integration is perfect coemergence. But this means that there is no such thing as descent, for descent implies distance and differentiation. Alternately stated, the journey of descent culminates in the end of descent, but also the end of ascent. In the quintessential dimension the concepts of ascent and descent lose their meaning. They are useful for discriminating knowledge and understanding, for they are the differentiated discrimination of true nature. Yet, true nature is ultimately nondifferentiated, a primordial synthesis.

The quintessential dimension stands at the opposite pole from the absolute dimension. The latter shows the absolute to be completely transcendent to manifestation, while the quintessence shows it to be fully immanent. It is so implicit in manifestation that it has no distance from it. Whenever we look at manifestation, we see the absolute right there, underlying it, grounding it, coemergent with it, inseparable from it, even undifferentiated from it. All the dimensions of the journey of descent reveal the absolute to be immanent in manifestation, but the quintessential divulges perfect and complete immanence. The manifest world is the crystal radiance of the absolute that is perfectly coemergent with its emptiness, with no distance to separate them. Yet it leaves transcendence untouched; for even though the world is inseparable from the absolute, it cannot and does not contaminate its simplicity and emptiness. The absolute remains in its absolute purity, unmixed and undefiled, even though it is completely mixed with manifestation. This is similar to the situation of mixing dirt with water. The water appears dirty and murky, but it does not lose its nature at all; for it is always H2O, regardless of the mixing.

Like all the dimensions of descent, the quintessential dimension points to the fact that presence and emptiness always underlie manifestation. This particular dimension more significantly points to the fact that the quintessence of Reality is not simply presence and emptiness, but their coemergence. The ground dimension, for instance, has both emptiness and presence, but the two dimensions are not mixed all the way, not completely coemergent. They are distinctly differentiated from each other, a differentiation that is more clearly delineated in the integrated dimension of descent. In this latter dimension the lack of coemergence appears as a hierarchy of differentiated dimensions. The quintessential dimension reveals the more complete truth, that although the dimensions are functionally hierarchical, they are not actually or ultimately differentiated. They are totally mixed, completely coextensive.

To understand this coemergence we use an analogy. Let’s say that presence is the front of a coin and emptiness is its back. Now slice this coin into two coins. Again, the front is presence and the back is emptiness. Keep halving its thickness, each time resulting with presence at the front and emptiness at the back. Continue this process indefinitely until we arrive at thickness of zero. Now the front is presence and the back is emptiness; but now the front and the back are the same thing, for there is no more thickness. In other words, we arrive at the condition where presence and emptiness are undifferentiated. They are actually this way throughout the thickness of the original coin. This is their coemergence.

The Idea of Holy Origin, then, does not describe a particular level of Being, but rather, a relationship of appearance to Being. So your perception of Holy Origin will vary depending upon which level of Being you are experiencing. On the second and third levels of understanding the Idea, for instance, you might experience the whole universe as love and everything that appears as forms of that love. Or you might experience everything as pure presence without any qualities, seeing that everything is just differentiations of that pure presence. The deepest perception is seeing the Absolute as the Source, and everything as emanations that are indistinguishable from It. Only at the third level of understanding Holy Origin can one perceive that everything is the Absolute—this is what I call the quintessential dimension. Everything here is seen to be coemergent with the ultimate Source.

Transitional dimensions appear in various degrees of integration. We have discussed the major dimensions; the integration also appears in various combinations of these. The process is nonlinear, so the unfoldment moves back and forth for some time before integration is complete. One possibility of integration is the interpenetration of the absolute and another dimension, like that of nonconceptual presence or pure presence . . . . . . . .The integration reaches its crucial stage at the quintessential dimension, where each essential aspect arises as a faceted diamond that has both the absolute and the quality pervading the totality of it. It is totally luminous black emptiness, at the same time that it is completely the essential presence with its color and flavor. For instance, the joy aspect arises as a faceted diamond that is luminous black and bright yellow at the same time. It is completely yellow, through and through, but the yellow is transparent and pervaded by the luminous blackness of the absolute. The yellow brightness is so transparent that it reveals its underlying absolute blackness. The yellow is not only at the surface of the diamond as in the case of absolute diamonds, but pervading all of it; yet it is so transparent that it reveals the black spaciousness that interpenetrates all of its field of presence. In other words, the yellow and black are coextensive, totally coemergent.