The Lexicon
Oneness and the absolute
Absolute
The Absolute is reality as it is in itself - unconditioned, dependent on nothing, related to nothing outside it because there is nothing outside it. Where the relative world is a play of opposites, near and far, before and after, the Absolute is what stands free of all such conditions: changeless, whole, and complete. It is the ground that does not rest on any further ground.
Carried by 7 teachers · across 5 traditions · 5 quotes
The traditions approach it by negation, stripping away every limiting attribute until only the unsayable remains - the brilliant darkness of the mystics, the Brahman that no description can touch. To realize the Absolute is to find the still point that all change presupposes, the silent reality in which every relative thing arises, persists, and passes, while it itself neither comes nor goes.
In their words
Lead us up beyond unknowing and light, up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic scripture, where the mysteries of God's Word lie simple, absolute and unchangeable in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
A firm conviction of the mind to the effect that Brahman is real and the universe unreal, is designated as discrimination (Viveka) between the Real and the unreal.Adi Shankara
The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things.Plotinus
You are not the body, you are not the mind — you are the awareness in which both appear.Nisargadatta Maharaj
Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being.Baruch Spinoza