The mystical quality and lyrical power of Whitman's writing also suggest that he experienced some degree of spiritual illumination during his lifetime; although he may not have practiced a specific meditation method. His writings reflect his intense, ecstatic realization of the oneness of all beings and objects in the universe. His most dramatic poetry springs from this experience of becoming "one with all things." On this topic, Master Ching Hai says that achieving enlightenment and transcending the ego allows one to live in a new way, and to identify one's cosmic or true Self: "Enlightenment is the process of knowing what is greater than life, what is greater than the things we can see with our physical eyes, or touch with our physical instruments; it is the moment when we begin to know something greater than that, the true governor of the whole universe, which is also within ourselves."

Whitman describes this feeling of universal oneness in several verses from Leaves of Grass. One of the best known of these is the highly spiritual and inspired narrative poem "Song of Myself," which may be read as the song of the soul's journey to enlightenment. For the poem suggests that even though the physical body is restricted to the illusory realm of Maya ('all the art and argument of the earth'), the soul has the ability to transcend this dimension, enter higher realms and last forever. Consider the following lines:

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge
that pass all the art and argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the elder hand of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers
.....and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson* of the creation is love.
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, and heap'd stones, and elder,
and mullein and poke-weed.

*foundation

The results of Whitman's knowledge of the oneness of his individual self and the True Self are the end of his absorption in Maya, the expansion of his soul, and a gleeful sense of empathy with all that exists. Readers familiar with descriptions of the higher realms beyond the physical can recognize the feeling of bliss and ecstatic inner illumination expressed in these further lines from Leaves of Grass:

As in a swoon, one instant,
Another sun, ineffable, full-dazzles me,
And all the orbs I knew, and brighter, unknown orbs;
One instant of the future land, Heaven's land.