I am not going to preach or claim anything in this post, I am simply going to share two radically different perspectives on what reality is because I am curious about people's experience of going further than Oneness/God/Universe. I've noticed that a lot of spiritual teachings talk about merging with universe, oneness with everyTHING, union, god-unity, losing borders between internal external and so on, essentially all the Advaita stuff I've read is about this belief that identifying with the universe instead of your body is enlightenment or that somehow the goal is to mix yin with yang, day with night, life with death, inner with outer and achieve some enlightenment soup out of this which never made any sense to me. Not only it didn't lead to any understanding of any sort but also it didn't seem to match any of what the Buddha described as the Buddha-nature in his teachings (a reality beyond coming and going). On the other hand if you go to the more advanced Buddhist and Taoist stuff there are multiple warnings against this Oneness mentality.
For example:
"A Buddha said, identifying with anything, even the universe at large, is an ego illusion." Lao Tzu said, “The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to yin and yang. Yin and yang give birth to all things.” (Notice how Oneness/Union which is synonymous with God/Brahman isn't the ultimate truth) Theravada Buddhism suggests that maya (Oneness + Yin/Yang) is a distortion, rather than an illusion; whereas in Vajrayana, the perceived reality of maya is considered literally unreal, while Mahayana Buddhists see the universe as a manifestation of Avidya or ignorance. Theravada is an offshoot of the earlier teachings of the Buddha while Mahayana is based on the later teachings with the Heart sutra being one of its core texts. So I am curious if anyone has actually surrendered to or directly experienced a reality beyond the magic show of oneness and maya, beyond gods and heavens, beyond unity. If so I'd love to hear about their experience