As we approach the transcendent light, we see less because we are accustomed to seeing white, colored, or clear light. When we do not see these, we believe we do not see and do not know; in fact, we are seeing black light and knowing the transcendent light. As we are enveloped increasingly in this beautiful and intimate darkness we see less and less of the manifestation, and more of this light, which is pure night. Hence, the increasing darkness can actually be recognized as an increase in the direct and intimate knowing of the transcendent true nature. It is because of this that there is an intensification and deepening of the sense of intimacy, love, contentment, peace, that mystics are known to experience in the divine darkness. When we completely know it, when we are totally one with it, when we are the transcendent light, we see nothing and experience nothing. It is a condition of absolute cessation of the light of knowledge and consciousness, for true nature is beyond such light. True nature is the source of light. What some call a complete lack of knowledge is, in some sense, a complete knowledge of transcendence. – The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality, ch.16
When there is transcendence of the body through disidentification from the self-representations based on it, the Cosmic Consciousness manifests. One realizes that one is not only not the body, but that one is a boundless consciousness. One becomes aware of being a presence that transcends the body in a very specific manner. One feels one is a presence that is conscious, but that is not centered in the body. In fact, one becomes conscious of the body in a total way, as if from outside. One experiences oneself not as in the body, but as containing the body within oneself. One is a boundless and infinite consciousness that contains the body. One feels “I am not the body, the body is in me.” This is a very new and unusual experience for ego; in fact, ego cannot actually experience such a state, which transcends ego and its boundaries. – The Pearl Beyond Price: Integration of Personality into Being, An Object Relations Approach, Ch. 36