All the great founders of religions, but also great philosophers and other people in the field of metaphysics, experienced Reality as an Expansion of their consciousness (of simple human consciousness) to a Higher State, as an overcoming of the narrow limits of the ego to a Vast State of Consciousness which lies at the base of all consciousness as a sink in the Infinite Consciousness.

Examples: 1) The Buddha experienced Enlightenment as an extinguishing (nirvana) of the existential flux (of the skandas), as a State which he characterized as Asamskrita.

2) Sankara and other followers of Vedanta experienced Moksha as a transcendence of all the peripheral manifestations of the being, the intellect, beyond the inner states of the atman, as a realization of the Absolute Background, Brahman.

3) Panthazali and the followers of Samkya Yoga experienced Liberation (Kaivalya), as the cessation of all mind activity (citta), as the restraining of the mind from taking various forms (vrittis).

4) The Christian Neptics and other Christian mystics experienced Theosis (deification) as the final stage of purification of the mind until the mind becomes formless: then only the mind can perceive the Infinite Divine Being, Unite with God, Deify.

5) All the great Sufis in the field of Islam experienced the Ultimate Reality (Al-Haqq) as an erasure of the illusory personality, as an expansion of consciousness into the Infinite (Fana Fi'llah).

6) Plato and the Platonists experienced Reality as an elevation to the "universal being" (beyond mental processes) and beyond that to the "utterly being" (vision of the Agathon).

7) Plotinus who codified the Platonic theory and the Neo-Platonists experienced the Elevation as One as "simplification" (simplification, contraction into absolute simplicity of the universal mind), as "ecstasy" (exit from the "self").

All of them who were human like all humans (like all of us) conveyed the Experience in a simple and clear way (later commentators confused them). So they talked about the following:

1) They spoke of the Supreme Reality underlying all consciousness, as a Superset of consciousness, as our Real Essence.

2) They thus identified the relationship between Reality and given consciousness, what we perceive as self, as ego (a complex of perceptions, behaviors and experiences).

3) The following defined the way in which we can experience the Inner Reality, which is the transcendence of the peripheral manifestations, the actions of the ego. They described in detail the stages, from the lowest, the control of the body, to the highest, the control of the external mental activity, the control of the internal states of the mind... to Consummation.

In all traditions they say more or less the same. The Buddhist dhyana (samapatti), the astanga yoga of Panthazali, the Christian "nepsis" and the Sufi "amal" and the "forgotten" dialectic of Plato, all describe (of course within the context of a particular culture and with a particular terminology) the same way and point to Reality Itself.

Reality Is One, Not only because all the esoteric traditions say so but because it is the Basis of all human beings, all beings, One Objective Reality.