“That art Thou!” say the Upanishads, and the Vedantists add:
“Not a part, not a mode of That, but identically That, that absolute Spirit of the World.”
“As pure water poured into pure water remains the same, thus, O Gautama, is the Self of a thinker who knows. Water in water, fire in fire, ether in ether, no one can distinguish them; likewise a man whose mind has entered into the Self.”
“ ‘Every man,’ says the Sufi Gulshan-Râz, ‘whose heart is no longer shaken by any doubt, knows with certainty that there is no being save only One. … In his divine majesty the me , the we , the thou , are not found, for in the One there can be no distinction. Every being who is annulled and entirely separated from himself, hears resound outside of him this voice and this echo: I am God : he has an eternal way of existing, and is no longer subject to death.’ ”
In the vision of God, says Plotinus, “what sees is not our reason, but something prior and superior to our reason. … He who thus sees does not properly see, does not distinguish or imagine two things. He changes, he ceases to be himself, preserves nothing of himself. Absorbed in God, he makes but one with him, like a centre of a circle coinciding with another centre.”