“Theo (cont): On the other hand, the interpreters of Buddha have failed to understand the meaning and object of the Buddhist four degrees of Dhyana. Ask the Pythagoreans, “Can the spirit, which gives life and motion and partakes of the nature of light, be reduced to non-entity?” “Can even the sensitive spirit in brutes which exercises memory, one of the rational faculties, die and become nothing?” observe the Occultist.
In Buddhistic philosophy annihilation means only a dispersion of matter, in whatever form or semblance of form it may be, for everything that has form is temporary, and is, therefore, really an illusion. For in eternity the longest periods of time are as a wink of the eye. So with form.
Before we have time to realize that we have seen it, it is gone like an instantaneous flash of lightning, and passed for ever. When the Spiritual entity breaks loose for ever from every particle of matter, substance, or form, and rebecomes a Spiritual breath: then only does it enter upon the eternal and unchangeable Nirvana, lasting as long as the cycle of life has lasted – an eternity, truly.
And then that Breath, existing in Spirit, is nothing because it is all; as a form, a semblance, a shape, it is completely annihilated; as absolute Spirit it still is, for it has become Be-ness itself.
The very word used, “absorbed in the universal essence”, when spoken of the “Soul” as Spirit, means “union with”. It can never mean annihilation, as that would mean eternal separation.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 