Most Sufi writers agree that there are five primary lataif, or centers of perception, and there is a general agreement about the colors associated with them and their localizations in the human body. The one at the left side of the body is usually called qalb, meaning “heart.” The color yellow is associated with it. The state of consciousness here is that of true joy and delight in which essence exists in the condition of unadulterated joy. Its activation and realization also are connected with the transformation of a certain sector of the personality, a process that is sometimes referred to as the yellow death. The latifa on the right side of the body is usually called rouh, meaning “spirit” or “soul.” The color is red, and the consciousness is of true and real strength. It is like the fire of essence and requires the transformation of the personality referred to as the red death, or the freedom from fear of people. The third latifa is located at the solar plexus and is associated with the color white, or silver. The consciousness is that of true will, which is the support for essence and its life. The white death is the transformation of the personality relevant here, which is death into God. The name of this latifa is sirr, which means “secret.” In fact, the activation of this center is seen often as the initial step or the transition from the world of the personality to the dimension of essence. The fourth latifa is at the forehead between and just above the eyebrows. It is called khafi, meaning “hidden,” and the color is a shining black. The consciousness is a state of peace and absolute stillness, related to the activity of intuition and objective understanding. It is connected to the black death, which is the state of annihilation of the sense of identity of the ego, which is the false self. The fifth latifa is at the center of the chest, called akhfa, meaning “more hidden,” and the color is emerald green. The consciousness is that of loving-kindness and compassion. The Sufis take this latifa to be the most central and most important. This is understandable for many reasons. Compassion is selflessness and is equated with selfless action. This latifa also leads to the nature of the heart, which is the essential aspect of absolute truth. Also, this center is connected to the essential aspect that is referred to in the literature as the pearl beyond price, which is the personal being. 

All of the qualities of Essence color the field of the soul in their own likeness when they touch it. In fact, the soul transforms into the very quality that touches her. So when the Black Essence touches the manifestations of the soul, it brings them back to its own nature, which is peacefulness, and the Peace of true nature is a sense of stillness in which nothing stirs. It is total stillness, which, when precisely understood, turns out to be one hundred percent annihilation. It is an intense sensitivity, but the sensitivity has become so intense that it is absolute, for absolutely nothing stirs. 

This split in which heaven and earth are two different things is not the fault of Western culture but rather, a reflection of a characteristic of the development of ego itself: its loss of contact with reality. As we develop, the environment inevitably fails to hold us completely. The spiritual element—our essential nature—is rarely fully or even partially held, while our physical nature, our minds, and our emotions receive much more holding. Because we gradually lose touch with what is not held within us, the spiritual recedes from our awareness and becomes split off. While we are by nature spirit manifesting in a body, as our ego develops, we become blind to that reality. It is analogous to becoming color-blind, seeing only part of the spectrum. We see the physical world but we do not see the fundamental or spiritual component of it. We could call this seeing and experiencing of only part of what we are and what is around us essential blindness. 

We can see how each sector of the personality relates to one of the colors of the prism. Our method—the Diamond Approach—allows us to see this connection. One sector is connected to the red, one to the green, one to the yellow, and so on. By seeing the connections you start experiencing the colors, the aspects of Essence, which are not only color, but pure light as well. If you know the colors of the prism, it’s easier. The next step is to know light with no color, which is the unknowable. That’s our approach. First you know the aspects of Essence, and then you know they are Being, they are light. But, you’re still looking at the color. You see the prism itself, and you see that understanding is the prism that’s creating all these colors. Then it is possible to see the actual beingness of the colors, of the aspects. You see compassion, for instance, as Being, and you say, “I am compassion, I am love.” But, if you just say “I am,” if you look at the “I am” quality of the aspect without looking at the compassion quality, that is the unknowable. Of course, you could say, “Oh, it’s clear, or it’s yellow or pink,” and it would be a correct perception from a certain level. However, if you go deep into the actual nature, the essence of Essence, it is pure light with no color. It is light before its differentiation into the spectrum. And what do you say about that? It’s light. What do you see? You could say it’s nothing, because you don’t see anything. For you to see something, it must have a reflection. But, the moment it has a reflection, it has a color—the color of its reflection. But what is the color of the light? In fact, you can’t say anything, but you know it has to be there. 

No color can be called brilliance; brilliance is always a quality of a color. The closest experience there is to brilliant light in nature is when we look at the stars at night or glance at the bright sun. The light from these bodies is actually composed of many colors, but it is so intense that our eyes can’t discriminate the colors. With brilliant light, however, though the colors are all explicitly present, we cannot discriminate them because they are not differentiated. Thus, the aspect of Brilliancy doesn’t exist in the physical world. Neither does clear light. We never see clear light. We never see black light. Black light, clear light, and brilliant light don’t exist in nature. But they are all specific dimensions of our true nature that can manifest on their own without characterizing something else. 

What is most striking about brilliancy is that it has no color, and that is because it has all colors. Just like sunlight has no color but includes the whole spectrum of colors. Yet even this does not accurately describe the visual experience, which is more like looking at the sun directly or seeing the shine of sunlight reflecting off water. What we see is the color of brilliance—so bright and intense that it is hard to look at it. However, because it is the intense luminosity of our spiritual nature, we can look directly at it without hurting our inner eye. Here we are not talking about intelligence in terms of its effect or functioning; we are talking about how its presence looks. The essence of intelligence is pure brilliance and rather than an intensified characteristic of a given color or light (such as brilliant white), brilliance, in the essential presence of brilliancy, has become an experience in itself. That is why there is nothing like it on earth, on the physical plane. The nature of brilliancy is the pure brilliance of light, compact and dense. It is the luminosity of light in its intensity. And the presence is brilliance through and through, not just on the surface. Brilliance as a substantial medium or a field of presence. It is not transparent, for the whole field of brilliance radiates brightness. It is an amazing truth that there is such a thing, such a reality. 

The presence of an essential aspect manifests as a substance, as subtle matter, only through the direct and immediate experience of that aspect. This direct experience of each aspect has characteristics of color, texture, taste, and so on. In terms of color, Brilliancy is brilliant, which is not one of the known colors. One can say it is brilliant white, or brilliant silver white, but that is not completely accurate. The color is pure brilliance, like the shimmering reflection of the sun on the surface of an ocean or lake. What you see are pools of liquid brilliance. This is the closest thing in nature to the way Brilliancy is seen in inner vision. In our consciousness, the texture of this light is total smoothness—absolutely delicate, exquisitely fine and refined. Its flow is so smooth and easy that it moves with amazing speed. Even mercury is dull and slow compared to the flow of Brilliancy. Brilliancy usually flows in the body through the cerebrospinal fluid in the spinal column. As such, it is directly involved with the nervous system and the brain, so it affects the functioning of thought. Imagine Brilliancy flowing through your synapses; imagine feeling it in your nerves. Imagine the sensation of exquisite smoothness and purity coursing through your nervous system, lighting it up, setting it ablaze with the brilliance of intelligence. Like a lubricant or a conducting substance of complete smoothness in your nervous system, Brilliancy dissolves any resistance in the nerves with its smoothness and flow, with its incredible ease, speed, and penetrating power. 

A second way the Guidance acts with intelligence is by modulating its brilliance depending on the situation. Its various colors—black, red, green, yellow, and so on—can become clearer, more transparent, more intense, more brilliant. More intelligence is operating when they do so, and the Guidance is then using more intelligence and brilliance in its operation. Any color—in this case, we are referring to any essential aspect—can become more or less brilliant. If it grows brilliant enough, it becomes the pure presence of Brilliancy. The differentiated light goes back to its origin, which is undifferentiated brilliance. In fact, as the Guidance itself becomes more brilliant, the intense luminosity will begin to feel more prominent than any of the particular colors. In other words, as the Guidance luminates more brilliantly, the aspect of intelligence becomes dominant over other qualities. When it gets very bright, we might not even see a color, just brilliance. Then the whole Diamond Guidance is brilliant, is Brilliancy. Also, there are degrees of brilliance and color differentiation. The more that the total functioning of Brilliancy—the perfection and completeness—is necessary in inquiry, the more brilliant the Guidance becomes. By becoming more brilliant, our inquiry attains greater intelligence, to the point of becoming Brilliancy itself. Thus, through the operation of Brilliancy in the Guidance, our inquiry can become more brilliant, luminous, illuminating, penetrating, complete, comprehensive, and perfect in its functioning. 

The fact that the Diamond Will is a dimension of Essence means that integrating it is a much larger and more involved process than that of integrating a single essential aspect. As with other dimensions, the process of integration goes through two phases. The first phase is a matter of experiencing this whole dimension as a unit, as one manifestation. We experience it as a delineated form or structure of presence, very intricate and rich with detail. It is basically the manifestation of all essential aspects together, forming one structure. Since each aspect has a unique color and affect, the structure appears to be composed of colored lights, dancing with blissful feelings. It is a self-luminous, latticed, crystalline structure, with brilliant, dancing colors inseparable from the blissful qualities, all held within a sense of power and solidity of presence. The sense of immensity and majesty is breathtaking, reminding us of the mother spaceship in the movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Given that this breathtaking structure is the prototype, it is no wonder that in our transferences the idealized object is imbued with such perfection of power and beauty. Experiencing Diamond Will elicits and clarifies all the major issues about support, particularly those of the idealizing transference. Other issues related to this dimension also arise, giving the student the opportunity to explore them. 

The personal witness is aware of the immediate environment of the location of consciousness, while the universal witness is aware, in addition, of the totality of the universe, as if from above or from afar. This perception does not include all of the details of manifestation, but rather a general perception, as if awareness has receded backward until all that exists is in front of it. Phenomenologically, the perception is of being an endless emptiness, so vast that the whole of existence is a small manifestation within it, seen in general outline as a river of images in constant flux. The awareness is aware of itself as a witnessing of everything without being involved in anything. A dark awareness, but not exactly black. It is more dark gray, the color of the aspect of existence, but it is sheer voidness. It is not nomind space, for although it is beyond thought and mind, mind can exist within it. 

Clearly, the nature of this process and its accompanying experience can lead us to the conclusion that the absolutely transcendent truth is unknowable. When absolute transcendence is taken to mean true nature totally apart from any manifest form, this is true. However, we see this as one possible understanding of this process. While it is true that our experience is such that we feel we know less and less as we are enveloped in the divine darkness, we are actually becoming increasingly intimate with the divine light, the absolute transcendent truth. We perceive and discriminate less, but this decrease of discrimination is not an increasing ignorance. It is the increase of a different kind of knowledge, a knowledge that is in its nature beyond discrimination, beyond the recognition of qualities and attributes. It is the simplicity of the source, which is so single that its knowing is an unknowing. As we become more enveloped in the divine darkness we are actually enveloped in divine light, for the divine light is dark. It is black light, the source of all light, not colorless but pre-color. We might think that clear light is the ultimate light, as is asserted by some Buddhist schools. However, clarity is an attribute, albeit a fundamental one. It is the absence of color, but not the ontological antecedent of color. Black light is the luminous divine darkness, the source of all light, and the origin of awareness.  

On this dimension of Being we experience all manifestation as heart. The whole universe appears as the heart of Being, the love of God. All manifestation is love; its differentiation is the richness of the heart of Being. Hence, it is not only glowing and graceful, but also absolutely harmonious and peaceful. Everything appears to consciousness as plenitude and harmony, the way a full, fulfilled, and peaceful heart will feel. The harmony gives appearance an aura and feeling of beauty. Reality appears magnificent, radiant, and resplendent, full of color, abundant with light, rich with feelings. The affects are deep and full, the colors luminous and rich, the aromas heavenly and delightful, and the smooth and soft textures can only melt the body and quiet the mind. This full, rich, melting experience is just what the heart of the soul has always wanted existence to be and life to embody  

More precisely, the new perception is that when the colorless nonconceptual presence expands, manifesting as the nature and substance of all appearance, this presence moves to the surface. The clear, empty but solid presence is now exterior to me, and a deeper truth is revealed. I recognize myself now as this new, now black, presence, and I see the world becoming my surface. In other words, as all appearance manifests as my exteriority, the clear crystalline medium loses its depth and becomes only the clear surface of the newly arising blackness. 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. How can absence, which is not existence, have qualities like radiance and density? This is absolutely paradoxical, but this is my experience. 

The richness that is the world only appears when that world reflects its nature as Being, when it is transparent to its ground, its source, its truth. It is the bright, clear radiance of true nature that gives our life its power to delight us. How much more delighted our soul can be if she can see that radiance directly for what it is! From the deepest perspective of Being, there is no external reality of events, activities, and people; there is no physical world: All of it is a play of light and color and delicacy. This is the dance of delight, the true unfolding of Being, and the adventure of discovery that inquiry makes available to the soul. 

Fire or flame usually indicates an aspiration toward something, but this aspiration is originating from the spontaneous depths of the soul and not from the mind. Gold is the color of truth on the dimension of essential experience. Golden flame is then an aspiration toward the truth, and golden fire is a strong aspiration and movement toward truth and away from falsehood and lies. This is a wonderful orientation. It is actually the specific orientation of our work. And we see that this orientation cannot come from the mind—it has to be real; it has to originate from the essential depths of our soul. The mind does not know what the soul needs to aspire to because the mind is influenced from outside. But the essential depths of the soul can be the source of true aspiration without the mind knowing what the aspiration is toward. The flame can be of other colors, with each indicating different manifestations of Essence. The flame can be luminous black, for instance, indicating the aspiration toward peace and inner stillness; or it can be a brilliant flame, indicating the spontaneous aspiration of the soul toward the true intelligence of Being. The flame can manifest in any of the various inner centers. It can manifest in the heart, for example, indicating the aspiration of the heart and feelings. Or it can arise in the belly center—the kath, or hara—and in this way orient actions. It is the aspiration toward true action.

A second way the Guidance acts with intelligence is by modulating its brilliance depending on the situation. Its various colors—Black, Red, Blue, and so on—can become clearer, more transparent, more intense, more brilliant. More intelligence is operating when they do so, and the Guidance is then using more intelligence and brilliance in its operation. In fact, as the Guidance itself becomes more brilliant, the intense luminosity will begin to feel more prominent than any of the particular colors. In other words, as the Guidance luminates more brilliantly, the aspect of intelligence becomes dominant over other qualities. When it gets very bright, we might not even see a color, just brilliance. Then the whole Diamond Guidance is brilliant, is Brilliancy. Also, there are degrees of brilliance and color differentiation. The more inquiry needs the total functioning of Brilliancy—the perfection and completeness—the more brilliant the Guidance becomes. By becoming more brilliant, our inquiry attains greater intelligence, to the point of becoming Brilliancy itself. Any color—in this case, we are referring to any essential aspect—can become more or less brilliant. If it grows brilliant enough, it becomes the pure presence of Brilliancy. The differentiated light goes back to its origin, which is undifferentiated brilliance. In other words, through the operation of Brilliancy in the Guidance, our inquiry can become more brilliant, luminous, illuminating, penetrating, complete, comprehensive, and perfect in its functioning. 

In the nonconceptual, there is no sense of space and time. When the nonconceptual is experiencing the nonconceptual, it doesn’t have form, shape, color, location, or size. It is prior to time and space. To have shape and size and color you need the concept of space. The only thing left is quality, and the quality is simply consciousness. You almost cannot even call it quality; it’s not exactly that. It’s as if you’re aware, and you know you’re aware, but you’re not aware of anything in particular. You are simply aware of the awareness itself, conscious of the consciousness itself. You don’t know whether it’s inside or outside. There is no concept of inside or outside. There is no concept of someone being there, being aware. Consciousness is the first thing that is needed for any experience. You cannot recognize a table without the capacity to be aware of a table. You cannot have any conceptual experience, such as, “I have a body” unless you have the consciousness that allows you to be aware of a body Then in addition to the consciousness you need the concept of body before you can experience “I have a body.” Before that you might be experiencing a body but not recognizing it as a body. The nonconceptual does not have categories. It is just the bare awareness. It is purity itself. It is complete innocence.

The experience of the Absolute is similar to that of nonconceptual reality, with an important difference: In looking towards the depths of presence instead of towards manifestation (that is, focusing the attention on the quality of presence rather than on the forms and colors that it displays), we find clarity characterized by absence in the latter and cessation of all perception in the former. The experience of nonconceptual reality is like clear, colorless light, while the Absolute has more a sense of clear, black light. The blackness of the Absolute is not a color, however; it is the absence of perception. It is cessation. So the experience of the Absolute is even more paradoxical than that of the non-conceptual dimension. 

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 personal life from the view of Being. 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.

As the boundless dimensions emerge, they take the soul nearer to the transcendent state of true nature, with each succeeding dimension a little nearer to the primordial simplicity, each one a little simpler, with fewer qualities and features. Divine love is manifest true nature with the quality of love, true nature as heart. Love is a differentiated, recognizable quality, a discriminated quality of Being. The next dimension to emerge is simpler; it arises through the transcendence of the quality of love. We have already seen that love is the source of affective qualities. This gives us a hint of what the next dimension will be like. We refer to it as pure being, or pure presence. Divine love, like all qualities of essence, is being or presence; and all these qualities are definitely pure and undefiled. Here, however, purity is not simply the absence of defilement; it is the absence of differentiated qualities. Pure presence is presence with no qualities, with no discernible color, affect, or taste. It is simply being, with nothing added. It is the simplicity of presence, before presence manifests its qualities and aspects. In a sense, it is like divine love with the love removed, and only the sense of presence or light remaining. But when there are no qualities, the light is not white light. It becomes clear, transparent, colorless light, like clear water or empty space. 

One significant insight we may have here is that pure being is the ground for all essential aspects, for all qualities of Being. The qualities are simply the differentiation of the implicit perfections of true nature into explicit qualities of presence. True nature prismatically differentiates its presence into these qualities. In other words, these aspects are true nature itself, but true nature that has manifested itself in an explicit perfection that it timelessly possesses in potential, implicitly. It is the pure presence of true nature, with an added quality, a color and flavor. The added quality, which has timelessly been implicitly present, pervades the transparent purity of Being. Through her opening up to the dimension of pure presence, the soul realizes the deeper ground of her essence, nondifferentiated presence. By being undifferentiated it is not only simpler but more fundamental, more basic, forming the ground and background of all manifestation. It is the ground not only of essential qualities and forms, but of all forms, all manifest differentiation. In other words, manifestation turns out to be nothing but a differentiation of pure presence. Pure presence, a homogeneous manifold field, structures this manifold by differentiating it into the various forms of manifestation. Manifestation is not something that comes out of true nature; rather it is true nature that spontaneously structures itself into the myriad forms constituting manifestation. Thus it is said that manifestation is coemergent with true nature, a state referred to traditionally as nondual reality.  

We do not simply need to be seen; we need to be seen with admiration, kindness, appreciation, love, precision, clarity, joy, excitement, and so on. These needs are totally met when we start seeing ourselves with these qualities, reflecting the presence of these essential qualities in the mirroring awareness. The clear medium then appears with the beautiful yellow of Joy, reflecting seeing ourselves happily; or with the soft pink of Love, reflecting seeing ourselves with sweetness and love; or with the emerald green of Loving Kindness, reflecting seeing ourselves with kindness and sensitivity; or with the deep amber of Value, as we see ourselves with appreciation and esteem; or with the brilliant ruby red of Strength, reflecting seeing ourselves with excitement and aliveness; or with the rich apricot color of Fulfillment, reflecting being fulfilled by seeing ourselves; and so on. The crystalline medium of the presence continues to be clear, transparent, and sharply-faceted, at the center of which is the brilliant point of existence, pervaded by the varying colors reflecting the various qualities of Essence. Only the realization of this dimension of Being will completely resolve the need for mirroring. This dimension also clarifies why we need to be seen with appreciation, sensitivity, love, and so on, for we need to realize this richness of our Being. It is our potential and our human inheritance, and it is our unconsciously-felt right, which we usually experience as entitlement. Our potential beckons to us, and at the beginning this beckoning appears as our need and our sense of entitlement. 

When I talk about seeing the reality of what is, I don’t mean that you are suddenly going to see all kinds of strange things in front of you. The physical reality is part of what’s there: it’s just not the only thing that’s there. When you see the totality, physical reality will appear differently, as if you are seeing it in a different light. It will have more color, more harmony, and more refinement. You will see more the sense of beauty, the sense of grace in physical reality. But that sense of beauty arises through seeing the porousness and the consciousness that constitute the physical world. This basic, fundamental, pure consciousness and existence is independent of the various forms. It is specifically what I call nonconceptual. So a table is a table, but at the nonconceptual level it is not a table. The concept exists, but it does not exist on its own. The concept is simply a surface phenomenon of something more fundamental. 

As I am fully present in the contemplation of this universal sorrow, I notice that something changes in the state. The conscious presence now attains a different quality, still golden brown, but more golden and more transparent. It feels more like an austere love, sweet but not soft. As I become aware of the subtle taste of this transparent bronze manifestation of Being, which flows like a nonsticky honey, I become filled by a sober sense of sincerity. The sorrow and the sincerity turn out to be phenomenologically very similar. The sincerity has a lightness, sweetness and luminosity that distinguishes it from the sorrow. The sincerity intensifies the sorrow, and the sorrow becomes a denser fluid and more dark brown in color as the feeling deepens. As the feeling intensifies it almost becomes black. The state of sorrow seems sometimes to intensify so much that it devastates the mind, disintegrating it. It becomes difficult to focus attention on the feeling in the presence. 

It is the essence of life to change and unfold, evolving into new forms and functions. The life of the soul is inseparable from her dynamism and changeability. The pure knowledge of the soul manifests as the various forms of knowledge, giving pure life her inner content. This morphogenic property of the living soul indicates another basic property: malleability. The soul transforms by molding herself into the various forms of experience. She can move from experiencing herself as an adult man with arms and legs, to a chubby baby, to an empty sense of being a formless self, to a sense of being a bubbling fountain, to being a torrential rain of tears, to being an empty vast space, and so on. All these phenomena are the same soul changing her form to be one thing or another. Malleability is the property of the soul necessary for her to change from one form to another. This is what some ancient thinkers were referring to when they called the soul a chameleon. The soul actually is more plastic than a chameleon. Her plasticity and malleability are closer to the changelings in science fiction novels. She can change not only her color, but the totality of her manifestation, across all the dimensions of the inner Riemannian manifold.

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. 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. 

This clarifies a particular aspect of our understanding regarding the realization of Essential Identity. The realization of any essential aspect beyond mind and concepts means the objective understanding of this aspect of Essence. To be objective about it means to see it from its own perspective, independent from mind. This objectivity always reveals the aspect in a diamond-like form, giving the experience clarity, precision, and sharpness. 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. 

The facedness 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 understanding of what this form, gold, is. Existence is an essential aspect of Being. Being reveals itself to be the true existence of any manifestation. However, when Being reveals itself as the experience of true existence it manifests in a specific form, an immense presence of unusual density, solidity and reality. This form of presence has the shiny gray color of the metal molybdenum, but the mass and density of hematite. 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. 

In the realization of pure presence, the soul understands presence in its most pure and simple state. She finds it to be so simple that she cannot say anything else other than that it is presence, or beingness. Presence here is without qualities, devoid of recognizable characteristics such as love, compassion, truth, joy, and so on. It is presence, and that is all, no more and no less. Since her true nature here is simply presence, it is devoid of opaqueness. From this perspective it becomes clear that the manifestation of a quality or color adds something to true nature; it adds a slight opaqueness. Even when there is color the medium of presence can be transparent, but with color it is not as transparent as when it is colorless. When there is color, or quality, one sees the color, or feels the quality, in addition to simply being aware of presence. Hence one’s awareness is slightly divided between the sense of presence and the color or quality. It is not exactly a division, for in essential realization the presence and the quality are inseparable, but the mind can still discern two things, on two ontological levels. They are coemergent and coextensive, but the presence and its quality or color can be discriminated. 

The soul is continuously and spontaneously changing its phenomenology, its topography, its shape, its texture, its color, its feel, its luminosity, its depth, its clarity, its viscosity, its momentum, its force, its power, its level of consciousness, its perceptivity, and so on. The inner multidimensional Riemannian manifold is in a constant state of organic self-organization, not through one form passing and being replaced by another, but through morphing, by one form dissolving, melting boundaries, and this dissolution merging continuously into the emerging boundaries of a newly arising form. Dimensions interpenetrate each other, transform into each other, overlap with each other, coalesce and separate, all in a nonlinear, non-discontinuous manner. 

Now, things become more colorful. The different appearances—manifestations, differentiations—are all beautiful. Ultimate reality does not have a color. You cannot say it is beautiful, and you cannot say it is ugly. You cannot say anything about it because there is no differentiation. But appearance is full of colors and all kinds of amazing things. These different appearances are what we see; they are the content of life. When you see the appearances from the perspective of fundamental reality you know that you were never born, that the appearance merely changed—the ocean has another wave of a different color. You know then that each person will never die, not because we as individual entities are eternal or immortal, but because we are not something that can die. 

When we realize this truth of Reality, all the world begins to shimmer and glow with the light of knowledge. Everything appears not only as an indivisible unity but also luminous and resplendent with the transparent light of knowledge. We see the usual phenomenal forms, but they appear as forms of light, lucent and iridescent and full of color and meaning. The world is meaningful, but not reducible to any specific meaning. It is simply all meaning, all knowledge, true and direct knowledge. There is brilliance, radiance, clarity, lightness, fullness, and presence. The universe is a multidimensional manifold where all dimensions intersect the dimension of knowledge at all their points. Hence, knowledge pervades the whole manifold, making it into a magical self-luminous holographic world of exquisite meaningful deep knowledge. The colors, textures, and flavors of physical objects express the essential qualities themselves, this way the phenomenal world expresses the perfections of Being. The darkness of the night expresses the depth, stillness, and mystery of the black peace essence; the redness of blood and fire reflects the vitality and vigorous energy of the red strength essence; the yellow of the sun and of flowers embodies the lightness and delight of the yellow joy essence, and so on.

From this transcendent perspective, the White, or Will, represents the creative force of Being. The Red, or Strength, represents the aesthetic beauty of this creativity as reflected in the richness and color of its inherent discrimination. The Yellow, or Joy, represents the playfulness and celebration of this beautiful creation. The celebration, the beauty, and the creativity exist whether humans need them or not, whether there is suffering or not. So what does the Green represent? What is the quality of Green, independent of our human needs, that provides the specific capacities we have been discussing in this chapter? We can approach this question by recognizing that with the Green arising in your experience, you become present and open to the situation in a gentle and sensitive way. You directly feel the content of the soul’s experience. You do not mentally deduce what’s happening—you know it intimately by feeling it through vulnerable and sensitive openness. Green imbues Being’s openness with a transparent vulnerability. This vulnerable awareness points to the quality that the Green Essence represents for our Being—a sensitivity of consciousness. 

The primordial presence, on the other hand, is nondual in all respects. The sense of wholeness means all dimensions of the self—the conventional and the essential—constitute one indivisible whole. We experience everything as presence, including thoughts and feelings. We are a presence coemergent with the body; the body feels like a part of this presence. This is also true of images, feelings, and activities. At this level even the ego structures, with their images and object relations, are seen to be part of this presence. We are aware of these structures of internalized images, but they appear as less luminous patterns within the overall presence. There is one presence, whole, continuous and homogeneous, clear and transparent. Within this pure presence appear many colorful and exquisite forms, but they are manifestations of and within the same presence. These forms are the various essential aspects, the natural manifestations of the flow of Being. But there also appear a different kind of forms, patterns of light, texture, and color. These forms have various degrees of vividness and luminosity, some transparent and vivid, some dull and thick. These are the thoughts and feelings, and also the body and its sensations. Generally speaking, continuing to be present in this condition tends to clarify and purify the areas of dullness and thickness. The process of clarification occurs naturally and spontaneously, but is aided greatly by inquiry and understanding, because there are always areas of the self that remain obscure and unconscious.