' A Mystical Experience '...

“In one sense, enlightenment is realizing that there is no separate self.

We might hear that a hundred thousand times, "There is no separate self." But what happens when we take it inside and seriously consider what it could mean?

We would find it means that everything I as a separate self holds as true isn't. The taste of no separate self is totally liberating.

"No separate self" does not mean there is a spiritual experience that goes something like, "I have extended myself infinitely everywhere, and have merged with everything." That's a beautiful, wonderful experience for a separate self to have, but that's not what Oneness is.

Oneness is not merging. Merging happens between two and since there is only one, then any experience of merging is one illusion merging with another, as beautiful and wonderful as that experience may be.

Even when I experience having merged with the absolute, with the infinite, with God, it simply means that my fictitious self has merged with another fiction. Mystical experiences aren't enlightenment.”


~Adyashanti