After ego extinction there is cosmic identity or cosmic consciousness. Now the identity, the ego is gone, but there might still be attachment. We have dissolved the roots of attachment, fear, and desire but the process of attachment itself, the actual activity of attachment can exist without a center. One can have a very subtle attachment to the cosmic identity. It doesn’t even feel like attachment. You can experience God, which is what’s called the cosmic identity, but as long as you want only that there is still some preference, some attachment. Now the identity is seen as the cosmic ocean, but there remains some identity, though it’s not personal. On the personality or essential levels there is no identity, but the cosmic identity is still there. Now there is need of another level of the void to eliminate the final attachment, and we need to do nothing but see and understand this attachment to the wonderful cosmic existence, the all-powerful, our truest nature. It is your truest nature, but the issue of attachment is not whether the object you want is good or bad, but that the movement of attachment itself creates separation and suffering. As on all the levels we have described, nothing needs to be done or can be done except to understand. True understanding will spontaneously bring in the deeper level of the void, which is complete, utter emptiness. There is no question of attachment to anything because there is literally nothing to be attached to, there is nothing. There is no image, no body image, no body, no personality, no essence, no God, no existence, no nothing.

In this case you could say that the ego has gone but the personality remains. The personality has in a sense become the cosmic personality, infinite, boundless. This final identity is the cosmic identity. If you can disidentify from your cosmic identity, then what’s identifying, what’s disidentifying? As long as you can disidentify from any experience it is not the final freedom. If you can disidentify from something then you can be attached to it. It means there is some object or way of objectifying an experience to identify with or disidentify from. As long as there is any sense of identity there is a possibility of attachment, because there is a possibility of wanting to hold on to it. At this level, the question of the cosmic identity versus the big void delineates the difference between the world’s theistic and non-theistic religions. The theistic religions believe in God. The non-theistic religions adhere to the emptiness, the cosmic nothingness. Each one says “I am higher.” It is not a matter of which is higher; in a sense, the cosmic consciousness or the universal essence, experiencing essence without an ego identity, is the other pole of non-existence, complete nothingness. The reality exists in two poles, existence and non-existence. Fullness that is love, and complete, utter emptiness or nothingness, are just the two poles of reality. Attachment to any of these is attachment. So the final attachment that must be resolved is the attachment to either existence or non-existence—God or nothing.

It’s not an issue of going back and forth, or getting anything. Love is an overflow; it is what is there, nourishing everybody. Without it, nothing would exist. But you cannot perceive this as long as you believe in the reality of boundaries and ego. This is why we say that universal love cannot coexist with the ego. What is your cosmic identity? It is universal love, the feeling that “I am love.” Even the strongest memories you hold on to are actually vague reflections of the real thing, of the real cosmic universal identity which is universal love, Christ love. In a sense, you are Christ, but not as Christ loving someone else. Christ said, “I and the Father are one.” The Father is universal love. We are all Christ, but we choose instead to believe in ourselves as separate structures. We see here that the true nature of love is not a matter of giving, it is a matter of being yourself. And this self is not you as different from another. It is everyone, it is everything. It is the actual goodness in life, the goodness that is everywhere, the nourishment. It is life, and the energy of life itself …….. Universal love is conscious and loving at the same time. It is also known as universal consciousness or cosmic consciousness. Universal love is a unification of all aspects of essence. When you experience universal love, you understand the action of love. An action is loving when it has all aspects of essence. A loving action is a gentle action when gentleness is needed, a firm action when firmness is needed, a compassionate action when compassion is needed, yielding when yielding is needed. Whatever is needed is present—and in the correct balance—depending upon the situation.

We come to realize that the totality, what we call God or the cosmic individual, is not only a oneness of space but also a oneness of time. The cosmic amoeba is all time. So we have a four-dimensional space here. This is called Einsteinian space. The cosmic individual is neither in space nor in time. You are eternal presence, in the sense that you are now, in this very moment, all times, all places. Realizing the state of God, or the cosmic existence, is realizing that eternity. There is a sense that you are seeing time passing, but time passes within the totality, within God. In the totality, it is all now, and time and space pass within you. Within that timelessness, space and time pass. Space and time do not disappear; people do not disappear, but live, grow old, and die. But all of that passes through you as the totality. Eternity is not contradictory to time but includes it. This reality is hard to conceptualize if you are in the dimension of time. Time can only be linear. In the totality, there is no difference between time and space. They are coordinates, like the length and depth of one thing. At the stage of cosmic totality, we have gone beyond space and beyond time. And still there is more to understand. We have not yet reached the deepest, most basic insights. Realizing our nature as essence and the nature of existence as cosmic oneness gives rise to an even more subtle understanding of reality. A more final stage will appear first as a deep longing and subtle suffering. A longing to disappear, to vanish, will arise. The concepts that are questioned are not a matter of whether you are an individual or oneness, whether you are human or God. The question is whether you exist or not. The fact of existence is questioned. We become uncomfortably aware of a sense of existence, even though our sense of this existence has no limitations.