The body, the earth, the stars, the galaxies melted into a big unity—and I was a part of this unity. Unlimited and timeless my consciousness hovered in a pulsating eternity. —Frédéric Lionel, French philosopher11 One becomes wholly Mind, the One Mind of God, in which exists all-knowledge, all-power, and all-presence. —Walter Russell, sculptor, musician, author, philosopher, and mystic12 That light is the very essence, the heart and soul, the all- consuming consummation of ecstatic ecstasy. It is a million suns of compressed love dissolving everything unto itself, annihilating thought and cell, vaporizing humanness and history, into the one great brilliance of all that is and all that ever was and all that ever will be. You know it’s God. No one has to tell you. You know. —P.M.H. Atwater, near-death experiencer13 The experience is often and movingly described by the saints and sages of all religions. The following are but a few among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of descriptions: Oh, wonder of wonders, when I think of the union the soul has with God! He makes the enraptured soul to flee out of herself, for she is no more satisfied with anything that can be named. The spring of Divine Love flows out of the soul and draws her out of herself into the unnamed Being, into her first source, which is God alone. —Meister Eckhart, German theologian, philosopher, and mystic14 This new experience bestows new enlightenment which places the experiencer on a new plane of existence. There is an indescribable feeling of elation and indescribable joy and Bliss. He experiences a sense of universality, a Consciousness of Eternal Life. It is not a mere conviction. He actually feels it. —Swami Sivananda15 In the orison [spiritual communion] of union, the soul is fully awake as regards God, but wholly asleep as regards things of this world and in respect of herself. —St. Teresa of Avila16 To the enlightened man whose consciousness embraces the universe, to him the universe becomes his “body,” while the physical body becomes a manifestation of the Universal Mind, his inner vision an expression of the highest reality, and his speech an expression of eternal truth. —Anagarika Govinda, German-born Tibetan Lama17 Whilst the mind is separated from itself, and whilst it is borne away into the secret place of the divine mystery and is surrounded on all sides by the fire of divine love, it is inwardly penetrated and inflamed by this fire, and utterly puts off itself and puts on a divine love: and being conformed to that Beauty which it has beheld, it passes utterly into that other glory. —Richard of St. Victor18 The higher our mind is raised to the contemplation of spiritual things the more it is abstracted from sensible things. But the final term to which contemplation can possibly arrive is the divine substance. Therefore the mind that sees the divine substance must be totally divorced from the bodily senses, either by death or by some rapture. —St. Thomas Aquinas19 Soul and mind instantly lost their physical bondage, and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every pore. The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense awareness I knew that never before had I been fully alive. —Paramhansa Yogananda, yoga master20