I just returned from a 10–day retreat with A.H. Almaas. The retreat was held at Asilomar near Monterey, California.
The focus of the retreat was Quintessence which Almaas refers to as the Essence of the Essence. In his book, Brilliancy: The Essence of Intelligence, he refers to brilliancy as the essence of the essence.
I asked Almaas about this and he replied that this was an example of the evolution of his teaching – The Diamond Approach to Self-Realization. When he became aware of brilliancy as an essential quality, he saw that it contained all the other essential qualities within it in a unique way. He started referring to brilliancy at times as the essence of the essence to reflect this capacity of brilliancy.
Later, when he discovered the Quintessence, he started to refer to it as the essence of the essence. He no longer refers to brilliancy as the essence of the essence.
So, brilliancy can be viewed, in part, as the essence of all essential qualities, but the quintessence is fundamentally the essence of the essence.
Which probably raises the question for you – what is the quintessence?
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French quinte essence, from Medieval Latin quinta essentia, literally, fifth essence
Date: 15th century
1 : the fifth and highest element in ancient and medieval philosophy that permeates all nature and is the substance composing the celestial bodies 2 : the essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form
More on that later.
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Comments
4 responses to “Quintessence – Essence of the Essence”
Hey John.
Nice Blog concept.
How is Quintessence here, as Essence of Essence, related (if at all) to the Quintessential Dimension, that Hameed speaks about in IJH (chapter 22, I think, maybe chap 23)?
Tim – Quintessence can be seen as the ground of the ground – the interpenetration of being and non-being. For conceptual understanding, the quintessence could be understood as the underlying fundamental property of the Quintessential Dimension.
Much of the retreat focused on non-doing and freeing perception from the world of appearances.
Hi John,
Nice to see somebody blogging about his experiences of the Diamond Approach. I have been reading it with interest and pleasure.
I was there when you asked Hameed the question about the ‘essence of the essence’. And to be fair to Hameed, in the Brilliancy book he already says himself that he used to call the aspect the essence of the essence, but does not do so anymore. See page 31 “..in the past I used to call Brilliancy the essence of the essence”. Now it appeared like there was old, not accurate teaching in this book, while actually this is not so.
Thanks,
Marko
Oh, I forgot to mention in my last post that he actually also mentions the quintessential dimension itself in the Brilliancy book, at page 33.
All the best,
Marko