Essence is not a place or a time, an insight or a state of mind. It is the deepest part of our nature, an actual presence that is innate and inborn. Sometimes it wears a personal face and a form and manifests as an image to our mind’s eye. When it does, some call it a daimon, others an angel. Still others think of it, in its incorporeal form, as the soul. Ironically, Essence does not develop with education or with living for many years. It is beyond symbols and is, therefore, neither archetype nor angel, neither wise old man or woman nor divine child. These symbols point the way to Essence, which has been called in a number of traditions “the diamond body” to suggest the crystalline nature of this inner reality. Essence is so real, so substantial, that it exceeds all symbols, images, and language. Symbols and images can provide, perhaps, flashes of insight about Essence, but not its living embodied experience. Language fails in its attempts to describe Essence or denote its activities and capacities. Essence, we must conclude, can only be experienced. As Sufi philosopher A. H. Almaas says in his remarkable book Essence: