"Before enlightenment" and "after enlightenment" are different. Before enlightenment you only know about self-nature. After enlightenment, you are self-nature. When you arrive at the mountain, you become one with the mountain. Is there still a mountain to return to? No. At that point you don't know where the mountain is. Why? Because you are it.

Maybe you think you can grab hold of yourself ─ you can grab your nose and say, "This is myself." But if it were truly yourself, you wouldn't be able to grab hold of it. It wouldn't be separate from yourself, something other than yourself.

When you become one with self-nature there no longer is self-nature. There is no person who is cultivating and no cultivating that needs to be done. Since there is not one, of course there are not two. At this point, do you exist or not?

If there is a consciousness, then there are definitely two, because consciousness only manifests when it comes in contact with something else. There has to be relativity in order for consciousness to exist. There is no absolute consciousness.

There are no words to describe this experience, and there is no way to experience it with the mind. You cannot communicate it to others. If you use words to express it, then you're already dealing with it relatively. It is also the same if you try to express it with the mind or with thoughts. At the eighth stage, there is no big and no small, no near and no far.

Even absoluteness is relative. Great unity, supreme absoluteness, all things like this are relative terms. If there is something that is absolute, then there must be something that is not absolute. If you experience a state of great unity, then you are at the level of "great self, " not at the level of "no self."