Brilliancy

Brilliancy arrives at insight in one shot, at a glance, as if intuitively. It doesn’t need to go through the various correlations. It is fast and breathtaking. However, it does not see the details of interactions and relationships between the various elements of the situation. We arrive at insight, but most of the time we don’t know how we got there. There isn’t as much perception, understanding, or knowledge in the process of arriving at the insight, which often makes it difficult to communicate it to others. However, since the Diamond Guidance has Brilliancy as an aspect, it can use the capacity for direct illumination by simply seeing the gestalt without also seeing how the illumination came about. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 412)

I call the aspect of intelligence Brilliancy because it is the presence of brilliance that is not the brilliance of something. The experience of the aspect of intelligence is what you would perceive if you took the brilliance of any color and made it an independent quality, a presence on its own that is purely brilliance and is not the brilliance of anything else. This pure brilliance, existing on its own, is the very consciousness and substance of intelligence. What you observe is brilliance in itself, not something that is brilliant. So I call the quality itself Brilliancy in order to differentiate it from the characteristic of brilliance. Physical perception of the natural world reveals no thing, no color that is just brilliance. Brilliance is always a quality of something. On the essential level, however, brilliance exists independently; it exists as a pure Platonic form, as pure presence, as the actual substance of intelligence. It is like a medium, or a liquid, that is made out of brilliance. If you can imagine taking a mirror and holding it in the sun until you see the brilliance of the reflection, and then taking that brilliant reflection and liquefying it, you would have some idea of what the flow of the presence of Brilliancy looks like. It is like a liquid mirror. (Essence of Intelligence, pg 23)

Brilliancy is different from all other essential aspects in that it is a self‑existing, unified synthesis of all essential aspects. When you experience Brilliancy, you feel complete in the sense that all essential aspects are present but are not differentiated. So Brilliancy is the nondifferentiated essential aspect. We can say that it is the source out of which all essential aspects differentiate. That is why in the past I used to call Brilliancy the Essence-of-the-Essence. Its very presence has all the qualities of Essence implicit in it: Strength, Compassion, Love, Clarity, and so on. All of them are there, but completely synthesized as one presence. (Essence of Intelligence, pg 41)

The aspect of Brilliancy is the deepest differentiated nature of our consciousness. If you really let your consciousness emerge, and be purely itself, you realize that it manifests more and more of that brilliance, smoothness, delicacy, elegance, impeccability, and intelligence. And because that is the true inner nature of our consciousness, it can infuse any of the other aspects and capacities. It can make our actions more intelligent, our thinking more intelligent, our responses more intelligent, our decisions more intelligent, our timing more intelligent, our organization more intelligent, our analysis more intelligent—everything actualizes more of its capacity. Intelligence is not just something that functions on its own. It is more like a fuel additive, a quality you can add to any of the capacities to make them function more efficiently, more elegantly, more smoothly, and more easily. (Essence of Intelligence, pg Word p124)

The true essential quality of Brilliancy is a living quality to the consciousness that is aware and present. It has a sense of a luminous kind of intelligence that will affect our capacities in terms of seeing, perceiving, and also understanding and apprehending. The effect on the aesthetic sense—the elegance and the purity—is just beautiful. It makes us, our sense of presence, our life, and the environment, have a quality that is spiritual. It is actually more real than just calling it divine or spiritual. It attains an immaculate quality. Everything becomes more itself in a very pure, radiant way. (Essence of Intelligence, pg 216)

Brilliancy diamond

Brilliancy is a perfection in the sense that it is completely undefiled true nature, just like the Absolute. We experience and recognize this perfection directly, in a positive sense, not in an indirect or negative sense. Because it is qualityless, the Absolute is perfect, but without the feeling or concept of perfection being present. In Brilliancy, perfection is a discriminated specific quality of the Absolute. That is why we consider Brilliancy to be one of the aspects of Essence. The presence of Brilliancy is so fine, so delicate, so subtle, that it is like a substance of utmost refinement, utmost delicacy, utmost smoothness and fluidity. It is like a substance made out of brilliance itself... when we can recognize Brilliancy as the essence of intelligence, we can begin to understand the fundamental elements of intelligence. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 405)

By exploring the Brilliancy Diamond, we will know objectively and precisely what intelligence is and how it functions in understanding. As we have discussed, Brilliancy as an aspect is a very clear, very explicit sense of presence. Its substance is so pure, so compacted with true nature, that its presence is palpable. It is exquisitely smooth. We can feel it as a flowing, luminous presence, with a density similar to that of mercury but infinitely smoother and finer. If we see the reflection of sunlight in a mirror, and then imagine liquefying it, we get the effect of brilliance. Brilliancy is so intense that it looks almost like a continuous explosion of light. When we see this beautiful brilliance, we understand why and how Being is intelligent. It is intelligent not only when it manifests in thought but also as intrinsic and organic brilliance, which is the underlying intelligence in any sphere of action. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 408)

The Brilliancy diamond, as an aspect in the Diamond Guidance, is a wonderful smooth presence, with luminosity and preciousness inseparable from clarity, sharpness, exactness, and precision. When this diamond is present in our soul, it infuses all of our capacities with the same luminosity and precision. Our inquiry and our understanding attain these qualities of brilliance and precision, as one capacity. What does that mean? One meaning has to do with synthesis and analysis, the unified perception and the discriminating capacity. Synthesis and discrimination happen simultaneously when the Brilliancy diamond is present. They are both present in the same act. We see the specifics of the situation and their interrelationships at the same time that we see their underlying unity. It is the synthesis of Brilliancy that is directly seeing the underlying unity. Simultaneously with this awareness, we also see precisely how the unity manifests in the various elements, the various percepts and experiences. (Essence of Intelligence, pg 93)

Brilliancy, universality of

In some universal sense, if you divide essential aspects into masculine and feminine, you may make Brilliancy into a masculine quality, but that doesn’t mean it belongs only to men. On a universal level, masculine and feminine have nothing to do with men and women, have nothing to do with genitals or gender. They're just different ways of classifying qualities. In the religious traditions, essential aspects are divided into masculine and feminine in order to go along with the conventional understanding. Because most minds think that the masculine is a particular way and the feminine is another way, the traditions tend to divide qualities into masculine and feminine. But that doesn’t mean that masculine qualities are only for men and feminine ones are only for women. Love, for instance, is considered a feminine quality, but it doesn’t mean only women can experience Love. Will is a masculine quality, but that doesn’t mean only men can experience Will. So each human being, man or woman, can experience equally all the masculine and feminine qualities. From the perspective of this division, Brilliancy has a sense of being masculine. (Essence of Intelligence, pg 293