Section 2

, the most striking is the cudden sense of being immersed \ in flame or in a brilliant light ; this occurs entirely with- out warning or outward cause, and may happen at noonday or in the middle of the night. In order to y give some notion of this dazzling subjective light I will show you what a few of these men have said about it.
Paul (in his speech to Agrippa) said: ‘‘As I jour- neyed to Damascus I saw on the way a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun.’’? Then he heard the voice and then was caught up into the third heaven and heard unspeakable words. But the initial fact was the subjective light.
In the night called by the Arabs Al Kader—in the month of Ramadan—in the fortieth year of his age—in the cavern of Mount Hara—Mohammed heard a voice calling upon him ; immediately thereafter, or at the same instant, a flood of light broke upon him of such intoler- able splendor that he swooned away. On regaining his senses he beheld an angel in a human form, which, approaching from a distance, displayed a silken cloth covered with written characters. The angel said to him : ‘*Read.’’ Mohammed said he did not know how to read, but immediately afterwards his understanding was
h Y
10
illumined and he read what was written on the cloth. In the first canto of the ‘‘ Paradise’? Dante gives am account of the oncoming of the Cosmic sense in his case. And as descriptive of the commencement of the series of his experiences he has these words: ‘‘On a sudden day seemed to be added to day as if He who is able had’ adorned the heaven with another sun.’’ The report made by Whitman of the same occurrence is in very similar language. He says : ‘¢ 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.’’
The dazzling, sudden, unexpected, subjective light, then, is usually the first thing known of the change that is taking place. It is usually succeeded by alarm. For a longer or shorter time the person fears that he is be- coming insane. Very often a voice is. heard and the form of the person speaking may be seen. These phenomena (the light, the voice, the person seen) soon all pass away and the essential elements of the new order dawn upon the mind. These essential elements are a con- sciousness of the Cosmos, or, in other words, a con- sciousness of the life and order of the universe ; not, you will please understand, a knowledge of this, but a consciousness of it—just as self consciousness, when it comes, gives the person not simply a hearsay or learned knowledge of himself as a separate and distinct individ- ual, but something far deeper—v. e., a consciousness of himself as a distinct personality.
With the intellectual illumination comes an indescrib- able moral elevation—an intense and exalted joyfulness,
pete aR RT — ane
= ere te on
2 Ae i ON ON ACL NTS BIEL SOE AALS! lly GC ao ONO ED Bey SRE EL SOC EL! LT LOE OU Ra CE CEI ON OLE IETS Te OE IEG IE CORE ee
but a consciousness that the life now being lived is’ eternal—death being seen as a trivial incident which does not affect its continuity. Further, there are annihi- lation of the sense of sin and an intellectual competency not simply surpassing the old, but on a new and higher plane.
Let us hear, now, in conclusion, very briefly, for my time is short, some of the words of a few of the men having Cosmic Consciousness, descriptive of this new state after they had fully entered upon it.
Gautama Buddha attained illumination at the age of
about thirty-five years, under the Bo tree since and hence so celebrated. In the Dhama-Kakka-Pavattana-
II and, along with this, a sense of immortality ; not merely a belief in a future life—that would be a small matter—
sutta he is reported to have said that ‘‘the noble truths ”’ taught therein were not among the ‘doctrines handed down, but that there arose within him the eye to per- ceive them, the knowledge of their nature, the under- standing of their cause, the wisdom that lights the true path, the light that expels darkness.’’ This is an excel- lent description of the intellectual illumination that belongs to Cosmic Consciousness. In the Maha Vagga it is said that during the first watch of the night following on Gautama’s victory over the evil one—that is, the night following upon his attainment of Cosmic Con- sciousness and his consequent victory over his old and lower condition—‘‘ he fixed his eyes upon the chain of causation, during the second watch he fixed his eyes upon the chain of causation, and during the third watch he fixed his eyes upon the chain of causation.’’ That is to say, the Cosmic order became visible to him, and he
12
could not for a long time remove his mind from this the grandest and most entrancing of all sights. Again, in the Akankheyya-sutta, are set forth, as taught by Buddha, the distinctive marks of Arahatship—that is, of Cosmic Consciousness. The attainment of this condition, he says, will cause a man to become ‘‘beloved, popular, respected among his fellows, victorious over discontent and lust, over spiritual danger and dismay ; will bestow upon him the ecstasy of contemplation ; will enable him to reach with his vody and remain in those stages of deliverance which are incorporeal and pass beyond phenomena ; cause him to become an inheritor of the highest heavens; make him, being one, to become multiple—being multiple, to become one ; endow him with clear and heavenly ear surpassing that of men ; enable him to comprehend by his own heart the hearts of other beings and of other men; to understand all minds ; to see with pure and heavenly vision surpassing that of men.’’
In Buddhism Nirvana, which literally means ‘‘a blow- ing out,’ as of a candle, is the word which stands for Cosmic Consciousness—the ‘' blowing out,’’ or ‘‘ extinc-
)
tion,’ being not that of the soul, as sometimes sup- posed, but of the desires and instincts which belong to the self-conscious mind and which are thought to stand in the way of the attainment of the Cosmic sense.
The great Apostle Paul was (using the word in its medical sense) an admirable ‘case’’ of Cosmic Con- sciousness. His initial earnestness of character, his
probably
instantaneous illumination, his age at the time
a little over thirty—the subjective light, the voice which spoke to him, his consternation, the resulting intellectual
morscsninscouatisinsnaeesianisnteseet
= Seo
0 eee ene tet OSA ALLL ALEO LCE! tet
ae ere oe oneeneretantnae iene neither tate thet te LO ACL ON
13
illumination and moral exaltation—all these typical symptoms make the true nature of his ‘conversion ”’ as plain as would be a case of typhoid fever with frontal headache, diarrhoea, ochre stools, characteristic temper- ature and rose spots. But still more absolute proof of
} |
Paul’s entry into Cosmic Consciousness is his own
account of his subsequent habitual feelings and convic-
tions as given us by himself in those letters which have
come down to us. He says, for instance, in Second
Corinthians : ‘‘I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ fourteen years ago (whether in the body or out of the body I know not); such a one caught up even to the third heaven—into Paradise—and heard unspeakable words.’’ Again, Gala- tians: ‘‘For I make known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man. For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through the reve- lation of Jesus Christ.’’ Here Paul uses almost exactly the same words as above quoted from Gautama. There is only time to give one more short quotation from Paul, but all his writings may be read with very great ad- vantage from the present point of view. He says, in Romans: ‘‘There is therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh ; but they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the spirit is life and peace.”
morscninscomaiiasnaeeianntaset
= ee
That is to say: In Cosmic Consciousness there is no
sense of sin and death. The merely self-conscious man
14
cannot by ‘‘keeping the law,’’ or in any other way, destroy either sin or the sense of sin, but ‘‘ Christ,’’ that is, the Cosmic sense, can and does accomplish both.
In the case of Mohammed there was the same initial earnestness of character, the same instantaneous illumi- nation. His age was thirty-nine. There were the intense subjective light, the voice which spoke to him; the same extreme consternation, the same _ intellectual illumination, the same moral exaltation.
In the case of Dante there was the same initial earnest- ness of character combined with unusual spirituality, the same instantaneous illumination. He was of the typical age at the time, namely, thirty-five years. There was the intense subjective light. The voice—that is, the duplex personality that belongs to the new condition—- spoke to him. There was the same consternation, fol- lowed immediately by the same intellectual illumination and the same moral exaltation.
The evidence of Dante’s illumination in his great work, ‘‘ The Divine Comedy,”’ is overwhelming, but I have only space here for one short quotation, namely, the passage in which he describes the oncoming of the Cosmic sense. He says: ‘‘ Beatrice was standing with her eyes wholly fixed on the eternal wheels, anc on her I fixed my eyes from thereabove removed. Looking at her, I inwardly became such as Glaucus became on tasting of the herb which made him consort in the sea of the other gods. Transhumanization cannot be signi- fied in words ; therefore, let the example suffice for him to whom grace reserves experience. If I was only what of me thou didst last create, O Love that governest the heavens, Thou knowest who with Thy light didst lift me.”’
rN sie naman nalts
| |
ne SAT et
Nite naemiarcamelll
| |
15
Beatrice (7. ¢., ‘‘making blessed'’) is Dante's name for Cosmic Consciousness. He says that when his illu- mination took place he fixed his eyes on the Cosmic sense, and the eyes of the Cosmic sense were wholly fixed on the eternal wheels (in the language of Gautama, ‘(on the chain of causation’’—both expressions mean- ing the same thing—7. ¢., the life and order of the universe). Then he says: Looking upon this new sense that had come to me, I became transhumanized into a god. He says that of course this change that had been wrought in him cannot be expressed in words, and that no one will be able to understand it until he himself experiences it, and, like Paul, he does not know whether at that time he was in heaven or upon the earth, whether he continued during the experience in the body or whether for a time he left the body.
All these men recognize clearly three states or stages of mind—namely, simple consciousness, self conscious- ness, Cosmic Consciousness—and that there exists as clear and broad a distinction between the last two as between the first two.
Thus, Balzac says: ‘‘The world of ideas divides itself into three spheres—that of instinct (simple con- sciousness) ; that of abstraction (self consciousness ) ; and that of specialism (Cosmic Consciousness ).’’ ‘As an instinctive, man is below the level ; as an abstractive, he attains to it ; as a specialist, he rises above it. Spe- cialism opens to man his course; the infinite dawns upon him ; he catches glimpses of his destiny.”’
Balzac proceeds as follows: ‘‘ There exist three worlds—the natural world, the spiritual world, the divine world. Humanity moves hither and thither in
16
the natural world, which is fixed neither in its essence nor in its properties. The spiritual world is fixed in its essence and variable in its properties. The divine world is fixed in its properties and in its essence,’’ In other words, men who live almost entirely in simple conscious- ness float on the stream of time as do the animals—drift with the seasons, the food supply, etc., as a leaf drifts on a current, not self-moved or self-balanced, but moved by outer influences and balanced by the natural forces, as are the animals and trees. The fully self-conscious man takes stock of himself and is, so to say, self-cen- tered. He feels that he is a fixed point ; he judges all things with reference to this point. But outside of him- self, we know, there is nothing fixed for him ; he trusts what he calls God, and he does not trust. He is a Deist, an Atheist, a Christian, a Buddhist. He believes in sci- ence, but his science is constantly changing and will rarely tell him in any case anything worth knowing. He is fixed, then, on one point and moves freely on that. The man with Cosmic Consciousness, being conscious of himself and conscious oi the Cosmos, its meaning and drift, is fixed both without and within—in Balzac’s words, ‘‘in his essence and in his properties.”’
To sum up: The creature with simple consciousness only is a straw floating on a tide, moving freely every way with every influence. The self conscious man is a needle pivoted by its center—fixed in one point but oscillating and revolving freely on that with every influ- ence, The man with Cosmic Consciousness is the same needle magnetized. It is still fixed by its center, but besides that it points steadily to the north. It has found
ASAE nN
j | 4
{ |
17
something real and permanent outside of itself toward which it cannot but steadily look.
One word in conclusion: I have been searching three years for cases of Cosmic Consciousness and have so far found twenty-three. Several of these are contemporary, minor cases, such as may have occurred in any age and no record of them remain. I have, however, found thirteen, all of them so great that they must live. Of these thirteen cases five appeared in the thirteen hundred years extending from Gautama to Mohammed, and in- clude, of course, both of these men. But including Dante, and from him to the present time (a space of barely six hundred years), there have lived no less than eight cases, and these, as far as I can see, just as great as the five cases of the earlier thirteen hundred years.
But eight cases in six hundred years is more than three
and a half times as great a frequency as five cases in thirteen hundred years. I do not pretend to say that cases of Cosmic Consciousness are becoming more frequent in exactly this ratio. There must have occurred a large number of cases in the last twenty-five hundred years that I know nothing about, and I suppose no man could say positively how many lived in any given epoch. But it seems to me certain that these men are more numerous in the modern than they were in the ancient world, and this fact, taken in connection with the general theory of psychic evolution propounded by the best writers on the subject, such as Darwin and Romanes, points to the conclusion that just as, long ago, self con- sciousness appeared in the best specimens of our ances- tral race in the prime of life, and gradually became more and more universal, and appeared earlier and earlier,
18
until, as we see now, it has become almost universal and appears at the average age of about three years—so will Cosmic Consciousness become more and more universal, and appear earlier in the individual life, until practically the whole race will possess this faculty. I say the whole race, but as a matter of fact a Cosmic Conscious race will not be the race which exists to-day, any more than the present is the same race which existed prior to the evolution of self consciousness. The simple truth is, that a new race is being born from us, and this new race will in the near future possess the earth,
cba:
BELTS See pee: