Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa (The Bhagavad Gita)

 

"The Self is one, the same in every creature. This is not some peculiar tenet of the Hindu scriptures; it is the testimony of everyone who has undergone these experiments in the depths of consciousness and followed them through to the end. Here is Ruysbroeck, a great mystic of medieval Europe; every word is most carefully chosen: The image of God is found essentially and personally in all mankind. Each possesses it whole, entire and undivided, and all together not more than one alone.

 In this way we are all one, intimately united in our eternal image, which is the image of God and the source in us of all our life. Maya In the unitive experience, every trace of separateness disappears; life is a seamless whole. But the body cannot remain in this state for long.

 After a while, awareness of mind and body returns, and then the conventional world of multiplicity rushes in again with such vigor and vividness that the memory of unity, though stamped with reality, seems as distant as a dream.

 The unitive state has to be entered over and over until a person is established in it. But once established, even in the midst of ordinary life, one sees the One underlying the many, the Eternal beneath the ephemeral."