Personal

So the sense of feeling personal is a sense of feeling close to, and intimate with, oneself in a personal way. One feels very close to oneself as a person, as a being, as a human being. One feels involved with oneself, immersed in one's unique beingness. One is intimately touching one's own depth, one's own substance, one's own soul. One is touching the atoms of one's being, in intimate contact, in an embrace where one is embracing one's own being. He who embraces and he who is embraced are the same being, the Personal Essence. The subject is the object. The perceiver is the perceived. The intimacy is so complete that there is no duality. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 76)

The sense or perception of being a person, here, is not a feeling about oneself, nor a thought or idea about oneself. It is not an inference from looking at one's body or one's behavior. It is not a reference from past perceptions, taken as a continuity in time. It is not an image in the mind. It is not a conclusion, mental or emotional, that results from an image in one's mind. It is not a feeling, thought or concept about oneself that results from memory or from interaction with the environment. The experience of the Personal Essence is independent from memories. This is because the Personal Essence, with its sense of being a person, is neither an image nor a feeling dependent on an image. It is independent from the mind and its structures, and hence it is independent from the memories of one's personal history. It is direct perceptual recognition of a state of Being, in the here and now. It is direct and immediate knowing of one's true personhood, that is inseparable from being the person. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 91)

Personal Element

The personal element is a specific and absolute aspect of Essence. Like other aspects of Essence, it is a Platonic form. When one experiences the personal aspect one is certain that one feels a personal consciousness, or a personal state of Being. Just as love, will or joy are readily recognized when they are experienced in the pure form of the essential aspect, so is the personal aspect readily recognized. There is always recognition of one's true nature when it is experienced. As Socrates said, one does not learn from anybody or from experience about the Platonic forms. One remembers them from one's own deeper resources. One merely remembers oneself. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 77)