Union with God (quotes)

The highest we can aim for is complete union with God…

All creatures are united to God alone in an immediate union. They depend essentially and directly upon Him. Being all alike equally impotent, they cannot be in reciprocal dependence upon one another. Nicolas Malebranche
An act of renunciation is an act of union with God. The Divine Master looks lovingly upon a person who gains a victory over self. Madeleine Sophie Barat
At that moment of realization (that union with God is always present), that’s when God let me go, let me slide through His fingers with this last compassionate, unspoken message: You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here. Elizabeth Gilbert
Dying is all about letting go and letting be, as is the awareness of God. People who have traveled far along the contemplative path are often aware that the sense of separation from God is itself pasted up out of a mass of thoughts and feelings. When the mind comes into its own stillness and enters the silent land, the sense of separation goes. Union is seen to be the fundamental reality and separateness a highly filtered mental perception. Martin Laird
God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history. Richard Rohr
God created us for love, for union. Richard Rohr
Now rejoice, all ye powers of my soul, that you are so united with God that no one may separate you from Him. I cannot fully praise nor love Him therefore must I die, and cast myself into the divine void, till I rise from non-existence to existence. Meister Eckhart
Resolve that you will now lay aside all else and concentrate upon the attainment of conscious unity with God. Wallace D. Wattles
God draws no distinction between Himself and us. God opens up the union of the very godhead (Trinity), and brings us into it. Paul Crouch
Happiness is neither within us, nor without us. It is in the union of ourselves with God. Blaise Pascal
He who worships God merely as a finite form will not attain the transcendental divine union with His infinite nature. Paramahansa Yogananda
How can we know the living God and attain to everlasting union with God? This is really the only question of life. Matthew Levering
Perfect love of God means the complete union of our will with God’s. Alphonsus Liguori
Performing his obligatory duties without any desire and attachment, offering the fruit of his actions to God, surrendering himself completely to him, fully devoted to him, and absorbed in him, he surely achieves liberation and union with the Supreme Self. Bhagavad Gita
Religion is not an end in itself. One’s union with God is the ultimate goal. Peace Pilgrim
The deepest desire of our hearts is for union for God. God created us for union with himself. This is the original purpose of our lives. Brennan Manning
The kind of love that God has for us, I think, is of an infinite longing for union, and the kind of love that God wants us to have for him, I think, is of this also endless longing. Now in eros we lose ourselves. I think erotic love transforms us, but it does so only momentarily. It has to be embedded in something much longer, a much bigger narrative called marriage or durable relationship or something like that. Kevin Hart
To be alive spiritually man must have union with God and must be conscious of it. Apart from this union his religious life will be an empty drudgery, a mere imitation of true spirituality. Alan Watts
Union with God is really possible. Thomas Keating
…leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intellectual, and all things in the world of being and non-being, that thou mayest arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as is attainable, with Him who transcends all being and all knowledge. For by the unceasing and absolute renunciation of thyself and of all things, thou mayest be borne on high, through pure and entire self-abnegation, into the superessential radiance of the divine Darkness. Dionysius the Areopagite
To become conscious of God, to become God, to be God and to be beyond God, God having an existence separate from creation, to be that, to merge with that, to lose one’s self and find one’s self endlessly again and again in that is self-realisation. Frderick Lenz

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…union between God and the soul…

As God’s beloved, I live in the bliss knowing that my soul is never separated from Him, for I learn to know Her in all that I see. God dissolved my mind-my separation. I cannot describe now my intimacy with Him. Teresa of Avila
All love craves unity. As the highest peak of love in the human order is the unity of husband and wife in the flesh, so the highest unity in the Divine order is the unity of the soul and Christ in communion. Fulton J. Sheen
The individual soul should seek for an intimate union with the soul of the universe. Novalis
The soul is restored through union with God. Leanne Payne
Faith is the union of God and the soul. – John of the Cross
True religion is a union of God with the soul, a real participation of the divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul. Henry Scougal
Genius is the union of man and God in the acts of the soul. Wallace D. Wattles
Faith is the union of God and the soul. John of the Cross
Genius is the union of man and God in the acts of the soul. Great men are always greater than their deeds. They are in connection with a reserve power that is without limit. Wallace D. Wattles
Since the Atman is considered to be part of the one divine reality known as Brahman (God), the ultimate goal of Hindus is to attain self-realization so that they can unify their Atman (soul) with the underlying force of the greater universe. Patrick Zeis
Life of the soul is union with God, as life of the body is union with the soul. Gregory Palamas
While recognizing that the universe is but an illusion, and life but a puppet-show, he remembers that if God is all there is, then the individual must be a part of or phase of God— and toward the union with God he bends all his soul and life. William Walker Atkinson
God inhabits every soul, even those of the greatest sinners in the world. There is always this union between God and his creatures, for through it He preserves their being. If it were not so, these souls would instantly cease to be. St. John of the Cross
If you both agree at a conscious level that the purpose of your relationship is to create an opportunity, not an obligation—an opportunity for growth, for full Self expression, for lifting your lives to their highest potential, for healing every false thought or small idea you ever had about you, and for ultimate reunion with God through the communion of your two souls—if you take that vow instead of the vows you’ve been taking—the relationship has begun on a very good note. Neale Donald Walsch
The soul cannot live unless it is ineffably and without confusion united to God, who is truly the life eternal. Saint Simeon

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…a deep mystical union…

People will often, almost always, prefer a male God. A male image of God gives them this sense of security, safety, order, no nonsense. So that’s where their psyche is at. Probably it’s something that they’ve got to go through. Not that there isn’t a need for order in the world, but the mystical level seems to be the mature level of religion, and there the question is not order but union – divine union. And so, without some integration of the feminine, usually you never get to the mystical level. Richard Rohr
Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God. Soren Kierkegaard
Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. Evelyn Underhill
This human need for mysticism – surrender to an unknown truth, union – stands at the helm of all romantic feeling. Antonella Gambotto-Burke
The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view. Erwin Schrodinger
The goal of mysticism is communion with God. In this experience, the mystic no longer exists as a separate individual, but becomes one with the Oneness. This vision can only arise when the mystic realises that the ego-self is only an illusionary veil that masks the true divine Self: and that this Self is God, the being of all beings. God is not something ‘other,’ but is our shared essential identity. Tim Freke
The mystics are not content to have a relationship with God via priests and institutions, but look inside themselves to know God directly. When they do, God is revealed as an all-embracing love that unites the universe into one indivisible whole. In communion with God, the mystics no longer experience themselves as separate individuals but as expressions of the Oneness. God is the only reality. God is everything. God does everything. Tim Freke
A mystic is someone who aches for, continually searches for, direct contact with God; contact not mediated through the emotions or intellect, but a full melding of spirit and will, believing that this is not only possible but is the entire point of life in this world. Doug Ferguson
Loneliness is the fundamental force that urges mystics to a deeper union with God… An experience of God quenches this thirst for the absolute but at the same time, paradoxiacally, whets it, because this is an experience that can never be total; by necessity, the knowledge of God is always partial. So loneliness opens up mystics to a desire to love each other and every human being as God loves them. Jean Vanier

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…to become one being

I am converted into Him in such a way that He makes me one Being with Himself-not a similar being. By the living God, it is true that there is no distinction! Meister Eckhart
If God and man are in themselves one, and if religion is the human side of this unity then must this unity be made evident to man in religion, and become in him consciousness and reality. David Friedrich Strauss
My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless ; ‘Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved. I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one; One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call. Rumi
Souls which have come to the unitive knowledge of God are, almost nothing in themselves and all in God. Benet of Canfield

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The nature of God is unity

God, Most High, is the very one who Himself affirms His unity by the tongue of whatever of His creatures He wishes. If He Himself affirms His unity by my tongue, it is He and His affair. Otherwise, brother, I have nothing to do with affirming God’s Unity. Mansur Al-Hallaj
God, when I listen to the voices of animals, the sounds of trees, the murmurings of water, the singing of birds, the whistling of the wind, or the boom of thunder, I see in them evidence of Your unity. Paulo Coelho
Look out into the universe and contemplate the glory of God. Observe the stars, millions of them, twinkling in the night sky, all with a message of unity, part of the very nature of God. Sai Baba
The great lesson is, that unity is behind all. Call it God, Love, Spirit. Allah, Jehovah – it is the same unity that animates all life from the lowest animal to the noblest man. Swami Vivekananda
The life of God – the life which the mind apprehends and enjoys as it rises to the absolute unity of all things – may be described as a play of love with itself… Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The Stoics also teach that God is unity, and that he is called Mind and Fate and Jupiter, and by many other names besides. Diogenes Laertius
Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Unity is the ultimate goal of all the ways of God. Abraham Kuyper
We try to realize the essential unity of the world with the conscious soul of man; we learn to perceive the unity held together by the one Eternal Spirit, whose power creates the earth, the sky, and the stars, and at the same time irradiates our mind. Rabindranath Tagore

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Union with God is always present

At that moment of realization (that union with God is always present), that’s when God let me go, let me slide through His fingers with this last compassionate, unspoken message: You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here. Elizabeth Gilbert

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A sense of union with God is attained through contemplation…

Drop the mind and the divine. God is not an object, it is a merger. The mind resists a merger, the mind is against surrender; the mind is very cunning and calculating. Rajneesh
Contemplation is the state of union with the divine Ground of all being. The highest prayer is the most passive. Inevitably; for the less there is of self, the more there is of God. Aldous Huxley
Mystic: A person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect. Oxford Dictionary
There is a need to go deeper, to let myself go completely, to enter into the surroundings in the real fellowship of oneness, to lift above the outer shell, out into the depth and wideness where God is the recognized centre and everything is in time with everything, and the key-note is God. Emily Carr
In our contemplative tradition, God is not a presence that is separate from us but rather the energizing Reality that makes us humanity. God is the presence of love at the heart of creation, and the presence of life at the center of human beings, in the heart of all matter in the universe. Doug Hammack

The higher we soar in contemplation, the more limited become our expressions of that which is purely intelligible; even as now, when plunging into the Darkness which is above the intellect, we pass not merely into brevity of speech, but even into absolute silence, of thoughts as well as of words … and, according to the degree of transcendence, so our speech is restrained until, the entire ascent being accomplished, we become wholly voiceless, inasmuch as we are absorbed in Him who is totally ineffable. Dionysius the Areopagite

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…through prayer…

Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God. Peace Pilgrim
Discontent is the beginning of the search for God. When love fails many times, you start looking for a new kind of lover, a new kind of love, a new quality of love. That love affair is prayer, meditation, sannyas. Rajneesh
Real prayer is union with God, a union as vital as that of the vine to the branch. Mother Teresa
Unceasing prayer is the unbroken union of the soul with God, so that life from God flows into our life; and from our life, purity and holiness flow back to God. Ellen G. White
Prayer by its nature is communion and union of man with God. Ignatius Bryanchaninov
The most generous choices, especially the persevering, are the fruit of profound and prolonged union with God in prayerful silence. Pope John Paul II
Contemplation is the state of union with the divine Ground of all being. The highest prayer is the most passive. Inevitably; for the less there is of self, the more there is of God. Aldous Huxley

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… through expanded perception and awareness…

With expanded perception comes freedom from the limitations of the body. The experience bestows a profound sense of joyous well-being, “beyond imagination of expectancy,” and undeniably clear awareness of one’s indissoluble unity with the infinite Consciousness from which all creation springs. Some of the names given to this experience are “cosmic consciousness,” “samadhi,” “oneness,” “nirvana,” “Christ consciousness,” “enlightenment,” “self-realization,” “divine ecstasy,” “rapture,” and “union.” This is the experience of God, or, just as meaningfully, the experience of our Self or soul. Joseph Selbie
All birth means separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born ever anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All. Hermann Hesse

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…through sensing God within as our deepest identity…

We should daily feel a deeper union with Life, a greater sense of that Indwelling God – the God of the seen and of the unseen – within us. Ernest Holmes
The Beloved is inside you and also inside me. You know the tree is hidden inside the seed. Kabir
The devotee who feels God as the only reality existing within him, and himself existing in God, is united with God, one with God in unconditional union. That devotee inwardly perceives: “When I eat, I am eating for Him. When I serve, my hands are His. When I speak, my voice is His. It is God who is feeling and loving through me.” Such a devotee looks after the body as the temple of God. He realizes that it is God who has incarnated in the body. Paramahansa Yogananda
Quite regularly we step away from that narrative and emphasize union with God as our deepest identity. Doug Hammack

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…through complete surrender to God and life…

And after you surrender–then what? Your entire life should be characterized by an eagerness to maintain unbroken fellowship and oneness with God. Oswald Chambers
Surrender means seeing that “I am not separate” – just SEEING that “I am not separate.” Nothing is surrendered, nothing is dropped; just a nonsense idea, a dream is no more there because you are awake. Rajneesh
The essence of all religions is One. Surrender is the main duty of everyone. Surrender means the feeling of oneness, I and God are One. Why? The reason is that the One who is present in you is present in me. Sri Sathya Sai Baba
To lose ourselves in God is simply to give up our own will to Him. When a soul can truly say Lord I have no other will than Thine it is truly lost in God and united to Him. Saint Francis de Sales
Whether we view religion from the human side or the divine—as the surrender of the soul to God, or as the life of God in the soul—in either aspect it is of its very essence that the Infinite has ceased to be a far-off vision, and has become a present reality. The very first pulsation of the spiritual life, when we rightly apprehend its significance, is the indication that the division between the Spirit and its object has vanished, that the ideal has become real, that the finite has reached its goal and become suffused with the presence and life of the Infinite. John Caird
My own observation is: lovers don’t surrender to each other, they surrender to something unknown that exists between them. They surrender to love – call it the ‘god of love’ – they both surrender to the god of love. Hence nobody’s ego is fulfilled by your surrender; both the egos disappear in love. Rajneesh

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…through surrender to the will of God…

They deceive themselves who believe that union with God consists in ecstasies or raptures, and in the enjoyment of Him. For it consists in nothing except the surrender and subjection of our will – with our thoughts, words and actions – to the will of God. Teresa of Avila
…you must not doubt the possibility of this true union with the will of God. This is the union which I have desired all my life; it is for this that I continually beseech Our Lord; it is this which is the most genuine and the safest. Saint Teresa of Avila

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…through surrender to the mystery of God…

Approaching God as mystery is like the experience of being in love. When we fall in love with someone we want to be totally intimate with that person, to know them from the inside out, to be connected as deeply and fully as we can be. We also realize, however, that no matter how much the other person shares of himself or herself with us and we with him or her, no matter how much time we spend together and how many experiences we share, there will remain a part of each of us that is mysterious, and other, to one another. This enduring mystery, however, attracts us even more and we yearn for full union, a way to be one. These dynamics that characterize the knowledge of lovers are even more the case in knowing God. The more we know, the more intimately present we are with God and God with us, the more we realize that there is a vast mystery we have not even touched. And then we find ourselves wanting to know even more of God, to draw ever closer. Flora A. Keshgegian

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…through stillness, meditation and / or yoga…

In meditation have a complete focus on light, brightness, spiritual oneness, God, infinity, eternity. Frederick Lenz
The experience of yoga is unspeakable. It’s the experience of samadhi. It’s the experience of connectedness, of oneness, boundlessness, merging with God consciousness… even if it’s just for an instant. Beryl Bender Birch
We came from God and our ultimate destiny is to return to Him. The end and the means to the end is yoga, the timeless science of God-union. Paramahansa Yogananda
The soul, seeking God, scans the inner darkness, as though to discover another, as though awaiting something external to itself to make its presence known. But as the concentration focuses within, the mind becomes stilled, and suddenly the seeking soul awakes. No external has made its appearance; it is the soul itself, no longer soul, which knows itself to be the All, the One. Like a wave seeking the ocean, the seeker discovers that it is, itself, what it sought. When God reveals Himself, He is not seen as something thing or someone apart. The soul is lifted up to identity with God, so that there is no longer a soul, but God Himself is revealed as one’s own Self. That Self is eternal, beyond all manifestation, never affected by the ongoing going drama of worldly experience. It masquerades as every being, all the while remaining purely Consciousness ness and perfect Bliss. Swami Abhayananda
No devotee should be satisfied until he has sufficiently developed his intuition—by impartial introspection and deep meditation, as in Kriya Yoga—to experience the communion of soul and Spirit. Paramahansa Yogananda

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…through worship…

It is only by worshiping God and His presence in Nature, and then by worshiping God as unmanifested Spirit, by Spirit-and-soul union, that the devotee reaches the final state of emancipation, from which there is no fall. Paramahansa Yogananda

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…through being aware of God’s presence…

Enjoy the smell of the flower, but see God in it. I have kept the consciousness of the senses only that in using them I may always perceive and think of God. “My eyes were made to behold Thy beauty everywhere. My ears were made to hear Thine omnipresent voice.” That is yoga, union with God. Wherever he goes, he carries with him the blissful consciousness of God’s presence. Paramahansa Yogananda

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… through pureness of heart …

Only the pure in heart and poor in spirit can come to the unitive knowledge of God. My Me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me except my God Himself. St. Catherine of Genoa
Freedom from anger, from excitement, from rage, from greed, from perplexity, from hypocrisy, from hurtfulness (from injury to others); Speaking the truth, moderate eating, refraining from calumny and envy, sharing with others, avoiding accepting gifts, uprightness, forgiveness, gentleness, tranquility, temperance, amity with all living creatures, yoga, honorable conduct, benevolence and contentedness – These virtues have been agreed upon for all the ashramas; he who, according to the precepts of the sacred law, practices these, becomes united with the Universal Self. Apastamba Dharma Sūtra

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…through letting go of all attachment…

The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly. So the soul, held by the bonds of human affections, however slight they may be, cannot, while they last, make its way to God. St. John of the Cross

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… through the practice of love

Love is the reflection of God’s unity in the world of duality. It constitutes the entire significance of creation. Meher Baba
Whatever books you may read, you cannot realize the Divine merely by intellectual effort. One must put it into practice. That sense of oneness can only be promoted by the practice of love and not by any other means. Sri Sathya Sai Baba
Only in love are unity and duality not in conflict. Rabindranath Tagore
So love is the recognition of oneness in a world of duality. This is the birth of God into the world of form. Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself. Eckhart Tolle
The reduction of the universe to the compass of a single being, and the extension of a single being until it reaches God – that is love. Love is the salute of the angels to the stars. How sad is the heart when rendered sad by love! How great is the void created by the absence of the being who alone fills the world. Victor Hugo
The universe could no more be separate from God than my body could be separate from its cells. Moreover, over, the only emotion that I would associate with God is love, but it would be more accurate to say that God is love than God is loving. Allan Smith
To enable each one to love God, love all, serve all, and have respect for all, as God is immanent in all forms. My goal is that of oneness. I spread the message of oneness in life and living.This is the way to peace on earth. This is the mission of my life, and I pray that it may be fulfilled. Kirpal Singh
Thus moral theology leads us four steps deeper than law. To fulfill the moral law, we need love. To get love, we need union with God. To get union with God, we need the new birth. And to get the new birth, we need faith. Peter Kreeft

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…through consuming our illusory “I”…

God has stolen my [illusory] “I” from me and has broght me near to my [real] “I” … The colors have returned ot the pure primoridal white. The voyage has reached its end and everything other than Him has ceased to exist. All attribution, every aspect and all relation being abolished, the original state is re-established. Abd el-Kader
When I stood in my first cause, I ‘then had no ‘God,’ and then I was my own cause. I wanted nothing, I longed for nothing, for I was empty Being and the only truth in which I rejoiced was in the knowledge of my Self. Then it was my Self I wanted and nothing else. What I wanted I was, and what I was I wanted and so I stood empty of God and every thing. Meister Eckhart
You should know (God) without image, unmediated and without likeness. But if I am to know God without mediation in such a way, then “I” must become “he”, and “he” must become “I”. More precisely I say: God must become me and I must become God, so entirely one that “he” and this “I” become one “is” and act in this “isness” as one, for this “he” and this “I”, that is God and the soul, are very fruitful. Meister Eckhart

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…and through a deep sensing of our inherent oneness with God

We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, drastic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality. To know God, you only need to renounce one thing – your sense of division from God. Elizabeth Gilbert
There is no need to invent an ego that is separate from the divine if our basic human nature is trusted. If we trust ourselves, we know how to avoid interfering with nature and how to live in harmony. When we know God as an unseen, loving, and accepting power at the heart of everything, allowing us to make our own choices, then God is a trusted part of our nature. Wayne Dyer
Each soul in entering the material experience does so for those purposes of advancement towards that awareness of being fully conscious of the oneness with the Creative Forces. Edgar Cayce
The belief that a personal life exists apart from God creates experience disconnected from God. This is painful and frustrating. Our spiritual work is to break down the illusion that we have a life here and that a life of God is somewhere else. Michael Beckwith
To be united to God in unity of person was not fitting to human flesh, according to its natural endowments, since it was above his dignity; nevertheless, it was fitting that God, by reason of his infinite goodness, should unite it to himself for human salvation. Thomas Aquinas
…to live in the conscious realisation of the fact that God lives in us, is indeed the life of our life, and that in ourselves we have no independent life, and hence no power, is the one great fact of all true religion, even as it is the one great fact of human life. Religion, therefore, at its purest, and life at its truest, are essentially and necessarily one and the same. Ralph Waldo Trine
He who has realized oneness with God possesses all knowledge contained in Him. Knowing the Lord as Beginning and End of all beings and worlds, a true Brahmin has knowledge of the hereafter and of the workings of nature on this plane of existence. Paramahansa Yogananda
Self-realization is the knowing—in body, mind, and soul—that we are one with the omnipresence of God; that we do not have to pray that it come to us, that we are not merely near it at all times, but that God’s omnipresence is our omnipresence; that we are just as much a part of Him now as we ever will be. All we have to do is improve our knowing. Paramahansa Yogananda
To rise above the duality of creation and perceive the unity of the Creator was conceived of as man’s highest goal. Those who cling to the cosmic illusion must accept its essential law of polarity: flow and ebb, rise and fall, day and night, pleasure and pain, good and evil, birth and death. This cyclic pattern assumes a certain anguishing monotony, after man has gone through a few thousand human births; he begins to cast a hopeful eye beyond the compulsions of maya. Paramahansa Yogananda
The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God. William James
When you fully remember who you are, you become one with God. An invisible grace permeates every aspect of your life. Deepak Chopra
If even only for a moment you can throw yourself into That in which there are no separate beings, then you will hear what God says. Just stop all your thinking and willing, and you will hear the unspeakable words of God. Jacob Boehme
To be at one with God is to be at peace. The child simplicity is the greatest agency in bringing this full and complete realization, the child simplicity that recognizes its true relations with the Father’s life. There are people I know who have come into such a conscious realization of their oneness with this Infinite Life, this Spirit of Infinite Peace, that their lives are fairly bubbling over with joy. Ralph Waldo Trine

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Union with God brings the deepest peace and joy

To be at one with God is to be at peace. The child simplicity is the greatest agency in bringing this full and complete realization, the child simplicity that recognizes its true relations with the Father’s life. There are people I know who have come into such a conscious realization of their oneness with this Infinite Life, this Spirit of Infinite Peace, that their lives are fairly bubbling over with joy. Ralph Waldo Trine
In the same way, no one can hinder this man, for he intends and seeks and takes delight in nothing but God, for God has become one with the man in all his intention. And so, just as no multiplicity can disturb God, nothing can disturb or fragment this man, for he is one in that One where all multiplicity is one and is one multiplicity. Meister Eckhart
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. Nicholas Black Elk

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Union with God is what heaven is

Union with God is really possible. Unity with God I presume, is what is meant by Heaven, but that too is available in this life for the humble of heart. Thomas Keating
In this view heaven is not a place, it is a state of reunion with God from whom our consciousness has temporarily and deliberately separated itself to make physical existence and all its richness possible. The purpose of life is to let God make his own potential real. And of course this cannot be limited to human experience. God in this view seeks the experience of all living things on this planet and wherever else life might exist and whatever else it might be like. Bernard Haisch

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Union with God brings true knowledge of God

True knowledge of this God can only happen by union with him in the mystical experience, not by rational analysis or intellectual reasoning. That direct knowledge transcends intellectual knowledge. Bernard Haisch

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Union with God lifts suffering

God created this dream universe for entertaining Himself and us. The only objection I have to God’s lila is this: “Lord, why did You permit suffering to be a part of the play?” Pain is so ugly and torturing. Existence then is no longer entertainment, but a tragedy. That is where the intercession of the saints comes in. They remind us that God is all-powerful, and if we unite ourselves with Him, we will no longer be hurt in this playhouse of His. It is we who inflict pain on ourselves if we transgress the divine laws on which He rests the whole universe. Our salvation is to unite with Him. Unless we attune ourselves to God and know thereby that this world is but a cosmic entertainment, we are bound to suffer. It seems that suffering is a necessary discipline to remind us to seek union with God. Then, like Him, we will be entertained by this fantastic play. Paramahansa Yogananda

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To reach union with God does not mean we can’t also commune with God

“God and I are one,” say those who stress unity between humans and the Divine. Others think, “Blasphemy! God transcends anything human.” Persons with each view could applaud—even if they do not use the same terminology—the fact that there are varieties of religious infinities. Mystics could state their infinite potential and be of God, but not God. While at the same time, those, such as theologian Karl Barth, who hold to the radical difference and distance between humans and God, could be satisfied that humans and God are radically of different orders. The centuries-old debate over union or communion with the Deity could be answered by saying yes to both. Carolyn Jane Bohler
Being one with God and being in love with God are paralogically different ways of experiencing the same awakened state. Tim Freke
The liberated soul is at liberty to choose either the state of blissful absorption in Nirguna Brahman or the state of rapturous communion with the Saguna Brahman. Chaudhuri
Visistadvaita is mistaken in emphasizing the Saguna aspect of Brahman at the cost of the Nirguna aspect. Brahman is at once Nirguna and Saguna. And the liberated soul is at liberty to choose either the state of blissful absorption in Nirguna Brahman or the state of rapturous communion with the Saguna Brahman. Chaudhuri
The centuries-old debate over union or communion with the Deity could be answered by saying yes to both. Carolyn Jane Bohler
Any personalized communion with God or worship of a conceptualized aspect or attribute of Divinity maintains the duality of worshiper and Worshiped, the ecstatic relationship sometimes preferred by saints. But the even higher state referred to by Jesus, beyond dualistic devotion, is Oneness with the Object of worship, and specifically, the ultimate union: oneness of the soul with Spirit. God as Spirit, the Absolute, beyond form, qualities, manifestations, cannot be perceived, but only experienced by the supreme realization of Spirit and soul union. This ecstasy, a supernal Bliss that no human tongue can tell or rational thought conceive, is described simply by India’s rishis: “He who knows, he knows; naught else knows. Paramahansa Yogananda
Using multiple metaphors for God makes room for us to experience both union and communion with God. Anthony Lambert
Prayer by its nature is communion and union of man with God. Ignatius Bryanchaninov

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