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. 

In the beginning, you are bound to experience the journey from the perspective of Being when it is caught and bogged down. When Being is bogged down, when you are merely repeating old patterns, old views, old positions, old knowledge, your experience becomes stale. But when you can disengage yourself from these things and your soul can move freely, your Being can begin to unfold creatively. Then you move from one unexpected thing to another, and life becomes a flow of freshness. Your experience is a flow of revelation of many kinds, many colors, many qualities, and many capacities. Inquiry then becomes an expression and a reflection of the creative dynamism of Being, a dynamism that is inexhaustible as it reveals the infinite richness of possibility. This is the adventure of inquiry—a thrilling, exciting, unexpected adventure that can become your life. 

As most of our case histories have shown, and as we discussed in Chapter 11, space arises most readily when dealing with body-image. Sometimes a person comes to experience space by considering other kinds of self-representations, but for most people it is confronting the “genital hole” that causes space initially to arise. This, as we have seen, is the experience of the genital area as a dark, empty hole, with no anatomical parts. The individual feels, and sometimes envisions, a lack, an absence between the thighs. The experience can be very definite and clear, with the boundaries of the hole clearly demarcated. It almost feels like a physical experience, even though the individual is always aware that the hole is not physical. The definiteness and clarity of the perception of the genital hole never fails to astound the person; it is always unexpected. Within the boundaries of the genital hole there is the sensation of nothingness, of voidness, of no existence. If the person senses or looks deeper, the nothingness deepens and expands.  

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. As the feeling becomes stronger the intuition becomes more specific: there exists the life process, with a person or a personal consciousness involved with it, or as part of it, but there exists also and concomitantly another kind of consciousness. This constant background consciousness is always aware of what is happening in the life process without being involved in it, even though the personal consciousness is sometimes so involved in what is happening that it becomes lost in it. I intuit the existence of a consciousness that forms a constant background for the everyday personal consciousness, but is separate from and transcends it. Once in a while, as the intuition becomes strong and explicit, I become directly aware of this background consciousness, which I recognize as the source of the intuitions and intimations. 

Unfoldment involves continual change and transformation. If you try to hold on to something, even happiness or love, and keep it a certain way, it will stagnate and become sour or bitter. This is not an easy lesson to learn, but it is possible to learn it. In my own process, I had no idea what was supposed to happen. I had my assumptions, beliefs, and what I heard from people, or read. Something would develop that was good and wonderful and I would think, “This must be it.” The next thing I knew I’d be hit on the head and something else was happening. I thought that was it. This went on for years. Every time something new happened, I thought, “This must be it.” I finally got clobbered enough times to forget about trying to keep things a certain way Finally, I learned that there is no end. The end is only an attitude about an end. In terms of experience of life, there is continual surprise. Each surprise is bigger and more completely unexpected than the one before. The life of essence, the true life, has nothing to do with expectations and plans and beliefs.  

There is another kind of greed, a greed for variety, of wanting many things, more and more things, all different. “I want this, and this, and that, and that, this one too; how about that one and that one. . . .” We see this quality of greed with children most clearly and straightforwardly. But this characteristic of the personality reflects another characteristic of essence, which is the endlessness of its forms, aspects, characteristics, and dimensions. This is a deep truth of essence; essence has no end. There is no end of learning, no end of expansion. New qualities and aspects, new characteristics and different dimensions keep coming to the correctly oriented individual. The development keeps going; different dimensions, different qualities, different realms. Each one of them, in turn, goes through a development, an expansion. The process is limitless, endless, in all its sides and dimensions. Every time an individual believes he reached the end, a whole new dimension opens up. Dimensions can emerge from unexpected angles; developments can go in any direction. The endlessness of essence is what Gurdjieff is referring to in his major book, All and Everything, when he gives God the title of “his endlessness.” 

Towards the second part of the spontaneously unfolding revelation of Being, my process became focused not on the experience of Being and its essential manifestations, but on the shift of identity to Being. This led to the development of self-recognition in increasingly subtler and more profound dimensions of Being, culminating in the realization of the absolute. 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. After the first few chapters, which set the stage for this process, it is this thread of experience that Luminous Night’s Journey addresses. It must be mentioned that this process occurred at the time within a larger process of unfoldment, discovery and understanding. This book focuses on only a small part of the overall process, tracing the particular thread of integrating the soul into the absolute. This subtle process occurred as a thread that lasted for a few years, but my overall process of unfolding continued beyond this subprocess, and still continues. 

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. Until now, my investigation has involved exploring various sectors of the personality, as part of the realization of particular qualities of Being. My inquiry now involves awareness of the totality of the self underlying this experience. Nous illuminates the situation by revealing that what has not changed so far is the totality of the personality. I continue to be the same person, with the same characteristics and preferences, even though there has been an amazing expansion of experience, to include many new dimensions of Being.  

In fact, the above discussion mixed two ways of perception. One is pure transformation. Nothing is created and nothing is annihilated; Being simply transforms its form. The other is that this transformation is not a change, but a new creation. Each instant a new universe is created, while the one before it is annihilated. We perceive the process of universal transformation as a continual process of creation, coupled with a continuous process of annihilation. We directly perceive creation happening, instant to instant. The experience may emphasize the creation process or its opposite, the annihilation process. In other words, we may be struck by the newness of the universe, how it is continually renewed and re-created. Life and experience is always new, full of possibilities, and open to unexpected surprises. Or we may be struck by the enormous power of Being that is always annihilating everything. We are aware of the new creation, but our focus is on the end of this creation, which is that it never stays, never remains, but is always moving toward cessation. We then recognize the folly of holding on to anything, for all forms are evanescent and transitory; this insight helps the soul to develop nonattachment.  

Inquiry is a process of nuzzling into God’s bosom, delving into the secrets of existence. Ego encrustations begin to break up when we start to see images as images, structures as structures, patterns as patterns, and projections as projections. All of these are created and held together by our belief that they are reality. The more you see them as they truly are, the less you believe in them and the more they start to break up and dissolve. This in itself brings up new challenges. We might begin to feel that reality is shifting under our feet. Unexpected things start happening. Inquiry is revealing that our experience comes in forms we did not expect to encounter. This will tend to upset our equilibrium, because even though we have seen holes in our view of reality, we still believe in the overall shape of it. It’s as if you were drilling holes in the ice at the North Pole in order to catch fish. Suddenly you realize that the layers of ice are beginning to break up underneath you. This was not part of the plan. You realize you’re probably going to fall into the ice water. 

We have many reasons for trying to keep our experience from changing. We just don’t want to lose what we like about what we are experiencing, what we have, what we know about ourselves, or what we take to be reality. When we begin to do inner work, we have a certain view of reality and who we think we are. After some investigation, inquiry, and practice, we form a different view and can learn to abide in that, but there are no guarantees that things are going to stay that way. Our reality changes in so many unexpected ways and directions that the next moment could be, and often is, different. Change is difficult for the ego. Ego wants stability, sameness. We believe that our sense of self cannot find or keep its mooring if things keep shifting. But the fact is that reality is always a shifting ground. And our consciousness, our awareness, is more like mercury—very slippery, very fluid, easily changing and flowing. So when we talk about remaining where we are, it does not mean that we remain static; it implies being at ease with the continual transformation of where we are. Our tendency is to want to stay the same and have our experience remain the same, especially when we like it. And that becomes a rigidity in our consciousness, an inflexibility that is not natural. How can we approach this situation and understand what is at work here? 

When we become objective about the Essential Identity, the point of light, when we recognize it just as it is, it appears as a diamond point. This is an amazing perception, unexpected and unimaginable in the conventional dimension of experience. We behold the Essential Identity as a faceted point of light. There is then a certainty about our identity, without this having anything to do with a conceptual or self-reflective knowledge. This objectivity, however, is not related to the color the point manifests itself in. Saraswati seems to think that only the colorless diamond point is the pure Atman. In our understanding, what makes our experience of the point objective is its diamondness, its facetedness, and sharpness. The diamond point may appear in any color, each representing a particular essential quality, each appearing for certain situations and functions; each is an objective perception of the point. One way the diamond point manifests is as the clear quality. It is then just as Saraswati describes it, a diamond point of transparent, clear light. 

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. 

Think of life and its evolution—does it have an end? Is there some place it is going to get to? Does a human being have an end beyond which there is no more change? A place where there will be no more evolution of different forms, different ways, different capacities? None of the theories of evolution posit a stopping point. In other words, reality is not teleological. It doesn’t have an end toward which it is working. Reality is spontaneously alive and naturally intelligent, and it is always revealing unexpected possibilities. Why would the realization of reality be any different? What does that mean for you right at this moment? You might see that reading these words and receiving this teaching are a form of practice. Practicing is not only when you are meditating, or chanting, or doing spiritual exercises; it can be all the time. As you are receiving the transmission, feeling its impact and exploring it, you are practicing. What else do you think you are doing? This is reality realizing itself as you reading. So as I am expressing this to you, reality is practicing. As you are receiving what I say, reality is practicing. We are interacting, and this interaction is reality practicing and revealing some of its possibilities. Is it you who is doing it, or is it me? You might think, “Oh, it’s the transmission and I’m just sitting and receiving it,” which is true. But you could also say that your taking in of what I am teaching is developing the potential for reality, and that too is true. Yet another way of saying it is that reality is manifesting some of its possibilities through me and you and everyone who reads these words. So you might see that the spiritual journey is not a matter of going someplace—it is a matter of opening up to the possibilities of exactly where you are right now. 

This initiates a cataclysmic transformation that finally results in the repeated experience of the cessation of ego activity. When this happens it is experienced as an annihilation of the identity that one has been familiar with since one was conscious of existing. The experience itself is the absence of all inner activity, psychic or mental. Annihilation is then experienced as nothing but the presence of an aspect of Essence. The self is extinct, and Essence is present as Annihilation. It is a state of complete and total peace, of no stirring of ego. This is a difficult experience to imagine without having the taste of it, because it does not make sense to the mind to experience a presence that feels like annihilation. This is due to the limited range of experience of ego and its concepts. When one recognizes Essence the range of what one can experience expands in amazing and unexpected directions. One experiences one’s source now as peace, instead of the feverishness of ego activity. There is no sense of self, and no feeling of need for self. This state is not necessarily permanent, nor always present, but does become available to experience. In other words, one learns that one can live without a sense of identity. If disidentification from ego-inadequacy opens the way to expansion and supports the development of the Personal Essence, then the annihilation of identity does even more. The ego sense of identity has a restrictive influence on expansion, because it is a specific, and, to a great degree, fixed sense of self. We have already discussed how this limits the process of personalizing essential aspects, when an aspect is contrary to this sense of self. Now this unchanging sense of self becomes restrictive because it cannot allow the presence of qualities that seem to it contradictory, not only to its sense of self, but to each other. This latter limitation prevents one from experiencing one’s personal presence as having many qualities at the same time. 

I remember recent social situations, where I was more myself and not hiding it, and I recognize that in those situations I had been feeling a sense of badness. Realizing this, I see also that the feeling of badness somehow leads to a sense of phoniness. 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. Seeing this reveals an obscure identification from early childhood, in which my parents and school teachers inculcated in me that being good is a matter of being what they wanted 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.

The view I am presenting here is that this journey has no end. The moment we see that the journey has no end, everything changes. The whole idea of progression, of the journey of ascent and descent, appears differently. That sense of progression is one way in which we can understand reality, but reality doesn’t have to be understood only in that way. It is precisely because the teaching has proceeded in a gradual and progressive way that we can now see reality in novel and unexpected ways. What I’ve noticed in my experience is that it is always the case that when we are working with the manifestation of true nature, learning about something means transcending it. In other words, learning about reality—realizing it and understanding it in a particular, awakened way—always means going beyond that reality. We learn about states and dimensions of being because that is one possibility, but we don’t need to stick with that one possibility. Reality has a lot more up its sleeve! That is how we learn in the Diamond Approach. It’s a hard way, in the sense that we get established in particular dimensions or conditions and then reality naturally moves us elsewhere. For example, as we teach the boundless dimensions of reality, we become established and realized in the boundlessness and nonduality of reality for some time; and we focus a great deal on how to integrate and stabilize that particular condition. But then, as that happens, there is always a relaxation and, without our expecting it, the realization moves to a different dimension, to a different mode of experience. In this way, we learn about all kinds of realizations.  

Also, even though the Absolute is the ultimate natural condition, human beings will want to experience everything that is possible as consciousness unfolds from the Absolute. As our consciousness becomes clarified, all kinds of things will be revealed, such as perceptions of essence, of dimensions of reality, and perceptions of the so-called ordinary world, which are new and unfamiliar to our ordinary mind. Our lack of understanding may be experienced as a kind of opaqueness or obscuration. As an unfamiliar and unexpected state of consciousness arises, you might experience a subtle contraction against it because your mind resists the new experience. The resistance to a new manifestation may get connected to something in your past that reminds you of this new experience. You may see a personal issue about it. Although the personal issue might not be what’s most relevant, it still needs to be worked out and made transparent. Furthermore, there is not a single definitive way of experiencing the Absolute. The experience and realization of the Absolute reveals many unexpected mysteries of reality. We will be amazed at how many subtle concepts we have, many of which we take to be ultimate fixtures of reality. These become transparent, transforming the realization of the Absolute to further and deeper realizations. 

This beauty and clarity can be conceptualized in many ways—as fulfillment, as heightened awareness, as depth, as expansion, or as more reality, more fullness, more objectivity. However you experience it, the optimizing current is further revealing the mystery of Being. As long as there is consciousness, the current is always there. Without optimization, it flows only on the surface of reality—moving in one or several directions, or circling back on itself. Even though there might be changes, the current stays on the same plane, repeating the same fundamental outlines of experience—as the surface itself is infinite. This is life when it is lived solely on the ego level. But the current can also flow deeper, which means that it begins to manifest the underlying potential of Being, revealing new and unexpected planes of experience. The current then becomes creative—not only in the sense of being generative, always producing, but in the artistic sense: Something new arises, something original manifests; an enhancement happens, an optimization. So when we discuss unfoldment, we add another element to the idea of the current of experience. We now have a current that is creative, unfolding, that is revealing new aspects, new possibilities, that is manifesting more elements of the inherent potential of Being. The potential that has always been possible is now becoming actual. When unfoldment is occurring, the current is more luminous, more radiant, more alive, revealing newer possibilities. The more the current that is our life reveals new possibilities, and the more it becomes creative and unfolds in an optimizing way, the closer we get to our true nature, the pure essence of our Being. 

The Impersonal aspect usually begins to appear in flashes of perception of a new reality. One becomes aware of a strange kind of awareness or perception, which is in some way constant, always there, but is not involved in whatever is happening. One becomes conscious of an awareness which is in complete contrast to one’s ordinary personal awareness, which is always involved in the particulars of one’s experience. At this point an awareness arises of the totality of the life process, sometimes in unexpected flashes, and one sees the complete involvement of the personal consciousness in this life process. The awareness is perceived as separate from the personal consciousness, as if there is a background of constant, unchanging awareness that is always aware of what is happening, even though the personal consciousness is sometimes so involved in events that it is lost in them. For the first time ever, then, there is an awareness that is aware of the personal consciousness itself. This is a peculiar experience; one feels sometimes as if there is someone looking from behind him, encompassing him. This is the beginning of experiencing the Impersonal aspect, but still from the perspective of being a person. One sees for the first time the fact of one’s personal consciousness and the extent of its involvement in the particulars of one’s personal life.