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is superconsciousness. You become open to the beyond, to the mysterious and to the miraculous. Beyond the superconscious is the collective superconscious: you start losing your I, your ego, your separateness from existence. Your dewdrop starts melting into the ocean. Collective superconsciousness... and you are almost on the threshold of the divine.
Beyond the collective superconsciousness there is only one step more, and that is cosmic superconsciousness. This cosmic superconsciousness has been called by Patanjali, samadhi, by Gautam Buddha, nirvana, by Mahavira, kaivalya. In the East there are a thousand and one words for that ultimate experience. No language is so rich as to be able to translate all those words with their different nuances, different fragrances.
In English we are utterly poor -- faraway echoes, not authentic translations. These are the words which are being used: enlightenment, self-realization, illumination, the ultimate awakening -- but these are very poor words.
And why don't they exist in thousands of languages in the world? Because the experience has not existed in those languages. For example, Eskimos have twelve words for snow. No other language has twelve words for snow, but because Eskimos live with it day and night, all the year round, their whole life, they experience snow in different ways. They know the subtle differences.
In the same way, the cosmic superconsciousness has been expressed by different awakened beings according to their own taste, according to their own choice. Mahavira calls it ultimate aloneness, kaivalya, because he enjoys the freedom of being absolutely alone. Everything else has disappeared, only aloneness and the purity of it and the utter virgin silence of it; there is no "other" to create any hell... just absolute silence.
And when there is no other, aloneness is only a word, because how can you be alone without the other? The very word `alone' loses all meaning if there is no comparison and context with the other. Mahavira is aware of it. But, he says, this word kaivalya comes closest to the experience. The experience is beyond it.
The mystic uses intellect to transcend
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