the nature of everything

The moment you go from ego to non-ego you experience not only that you are one with all human beings but that you are one with everything. You realize that the consciousness that is realized, that has been compacted with boundaries, has no boundaries. It is everywhere. Consciousness is the basic substance and nature of everything. The truth you realize then is that who you are is not the product of your childhood, is not your body, is not a sense of limited individuality. You are something that is everything, and you are seeing now the nature of everything, not only on the essential level, but on the level of being itself, on a nondifferentiated level, a non-separated level. This does not mean though that you are no longer an individual. You will not lose individuality in the way you might imagine; the individuality will simply be one face of who you are. It’s like the example of the hand. In the beginning you think you are the finger, moving around, doing things. When your knowledge goes beyond the individual, beyond the ego, you find out you are the hand. You don't lose the fingers by being the hand. The fingers are still there, the individuality is still there operating; however, it is a part of something larger. And you are that something larger. At the same time, you are also the individual. Your attention is sometimes the finger and other times the totality of the hand. Then you live as what is called a cosmic individual. 

(A.H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book V)

("Earthrise" by Eric Nez, David Heskin & Aloria Weaver)