When the universe itself runs down and disintegrates given enough time, how can this little and limited being of man hope to preserve his personal consciousness, his personality, his character just as it is today? Any belief fostered by any kind of authority--religious or metaphysical or any other--which fosters this illusion is a false one. But, this said, let it be countered by that other truth which is needed to complete the thought. If the individualized being must one day part with its limited consciousness, this is only in order to return to its origin in the universal consciousness, for consciousness cannot come out of nothing. It came from and goes back to the universal mind. Therefore, if a man loses the little and temporary immortality of the ego, it will only be to gain the greater and true immortality of that mind.
-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind > Chapter 2 : Enlightenment Which Stays > # 211
