We are basically identified with three things called upadhis which are apparent limitations of our consciousness. Sri Adi Sankaracharya’s Atma Bodha says that with the merger of these upadhis in the all-pervading consciousness called Vishnu, some specific results follow.
By merger, does it mean death of the physical being and the personality? Not at all. Vilaya is a merger of consciousness—like a river seamlessly merges into the ocean on reaching it. It is like a special merger of our thought of “my body,” “my mind,” and “my intellect,” into one reality called consciousness.
Such a state of divine merger into consciousness has been described earlier as the forms of existence, knowledge, bliss, peace, revelling in one’s own self, inner light and a state of untouched presence.
The main theme that keeps coming as a refrain is just that nothing is lost when identity to the individuality is lost. Our life will be richer and better than what it is now without the petty identities that are not just limiting, but are not the whole truth too. Identified with the body, we may believe that we have extraordinary powers, only to realise that our beliefs and thoughts hold no reality in this vast universe of five elements, names and forms.
How does this unity happen? The Acharya gives a beautiful example—how water merges with water, space merges with space and fire becomes one with fire. The stuff of consciousness in the body, mind and intellect is the same as the awareness present everywhere.
What is the result of this merger between the individual and cosmic identity? The contemplator enters into that realm of uniformity where there is nothing special anywhere. Every point in this universe has a touch of that grace and a mark of that excellence. Excellence in action, words and thought becomes the ordinary. The extraordinary is the ordinary condition of the masters who have realised this essence.
There is no one else to shout at me. I am shouting at myself. All anger vanishes toward the other person. This universe is like one big house in which you are alone. Even these words you read now are not written by someone else from far away, but you telling your own self.
The thought of oneness is repeated verse by verse, not because the author has no better idea to say. But the idea is so subtle and our capacity to retain it in our understanding is so very limited that repetition is the only way by which it can be conveyed to any benefit of remembrance.