Cosmic Consciousness

First Words

• Three sorts of consciousness: 1) simple (possessed by us and animals, knowledge of body), 2) self (possessed by us, knowledge of self as separate), 3) cosmic (possessed by few)
• If all were in contact with the ‘flux of cosmic consciousness’, there would be ‘no missions to save men from their sins or to secure them entrance to heaven,’ for they would already be there. It would ‘not teach a future immortality nor future glories, for immortality [would] live in every heart as sight in every eye.’
• “There is a tradition, probably very old, to the effect that the first man was innocent and happy until he ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That having eaten thereof he became aware that he was naked and was ashamed. Further, that then sin was born into the world, the miserable sense whereof replaced man’s former feeling of innocency. That then and not then man began to labor and to cover his body. Stranger than (so it seems to us), the story runs, that along with this change immediately following upon it there came into man’s mind the remarkable conviction which has never since left it but which has been kept alive by its own inherent vitality and by the teaching of all true seers, prophets and poets that this accursed thing which has bitten man’s heel (laming him, hindering his progress and especially making this halting and painful) should eventually be crushed and subjugated by man himself-by the rising up within him of a Saviour-the Christ.”
• “The Saviour of man is Cosmic Consciousness…the cosmic sense crushes the serpent’s head—destroys sin, shame, the sense of good and evil as contrasted one with the other, and will annihilate labor, though not human activity.”
• “[The author] saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain.“
• Burke’s evolution of the intellect: 1) percepts (‘taken in’), i.e. sense impressions, are gathered via the senses. 2) similar precepts compound over time and sensory development, and these generalized precepts find home in recepts (‘taken in again’) and receptual centres adapt to register recepts. 3) the composite image of precepts, the recept, is conceptualized (‘taken together’) and labeled as a concept (“to replace a great cumbersome recept by a simple sign was almost like replacing actual goods—as wheat, fabrics and hardware—by entries in the ledger”). Possession of concepts implies possession of language (for concepts are communication symbols), which implies (?) the possession of self-consciousness. (Not sure about this…the abused dog can get strung up on concepts that men are bad, neglecting percepts that say otherwise (that a particular man is kind)).
• “of which instead of being concepts ay
• small numbers it is true) an established fact, and the form of consciousness that belongs to that intellect may be called and has been called-Cosmic Consciousness.
• “These four stages [of intellect] are, first, the perceptual mind— the mind made up of percepts or sense impressions; second, the mind made up of these and recepts— the so called receptual mind, or in other words the mind of simple consciousness; third, we have the mind made up of percepts, recepts and concepts, called sometimes the conceptual mind or otherwise the self conscious mind—the mind of self consciousness; and, fourth, and last, we have the intuitional mind—the mind whose highest element is not a recept or a concept but an in-tuition. This is the mind in which sensation, simple consciousness and self consciousness are supplemented and crowned with cosmic consciousness.”
• Simple consciousness: to be conscious of things about one, but not to be conscious of one’s self.

Ch 2. On the Plane of Self Consciousness

• Some simple definitions of self consciousness: “the faculty by which we realize”. Or again: without self consciousness a sentient creature can know, but its possession is necessary in order that he may know that he knows.”
• Intellect = inter (among, between) + legere (to gather, to choose). To gather among, a sort of attentive sorting.
• “The registration of [concepts] we call memory, the comparison of them with one another reasoning.”

• “Words correspond with concepts, and with concepts only, so that we cannot express directly with them either sense impressions or emotions, but are forced always to convey these (if at all) by expressing, not themselves, but the impression they make upon our intellect, i. e., the concepts formed from the contemplation of them by the intellect—in other words, their intellectual image.”

• So long as it attempts to express what is sensed, our minds must make use of concepts, for to express requires a language to communicate those expressions, and those symbols we communicate are concepts. Concepts ‘stand in’ as it were for what is perceived and received; we conceive through language.

• Perceive, receive, conceive - same etymology as percept, recept, concept (Latin capere: to take, gather)

• Grasp what is there —> accept what was given —> to gather together (into conceptual groups)

• The metaphorical mind. It deals, due to economy, with amalgams rather than a litany of unique samples. To touch reality unfettered by concepts requires relaxing the intellectual urge.

• “…the human intellect feels along the face of the outer world presented to it, attempting a lodgment in each cranny it finds, however slight and precarious may be the hold that it gets.“
• “as ontogeny is nothing else but philogeny in petto—that is, as the evolution of the individual is necessarily the evolution of the race in an abridged form…[thus] organs and faculties must appear in the individual in the same order in which they appeared in the race…”

Part 3: From Self to Cosmic Consciousness

• “Earthly language is entirely insufficient to describe what there is of joy, happiness, and loveliness contained in the inner wonders of God. Even if the eternal Virgin pictures them to our minds, man’s constitution is too cold and dark to be able to express even spark of it in his language” (Behmen)

• Speech is the tally of the self conscious intellect, but cannot tally or express the Cosmic Sense.

• Implying some supra-conceptual nature to Cosmic Consciousness

Part 4: Instances of Cosmic Consciousness

Ch 1: Gautama the Buddha

• “So long, Ānanda, as the monks do not engage in business, delight in chatter, indulge in sleep, keep bad company, or stop halfway in their course because of some lesser attainment, they may be expected not to decline but to prosper.” (Buddha, more recent translation, old one had some western language imports)
• Author emphasizes that it is not desire in eternal life that is characteristic of CC, but having already realized it. E.g., in one Suttra it says he who has ‘attained the depth of immortality, him I call a Brahmana.”
• Nirvana means to ‘blow’ (vana) ‘out’ (nir). Buddha saw our cravings, aversions, attachments as fires that consume us (think, fire sermon: the senses are burning, the mind is burning, …, burning with the fire of greed, hatred, delusion). Nirvana is the state achieved when this fire is blown out.
• “[Nirvana] is the extinction of that sinful, grasping condition of mind and heart which would otherwise, according to the great mystery of Karma, be the cause of renewed individual existence.” (Rhys Davids)
• “Those who are in earnest do not die, those who are thoughtless are as if dead already.” (Dhamma-pada)

• “Men who have no riches, who love on recognized food, who have perceived void and unconditioned freedom (Nir-vâna), their path is difficult to under-stand, like that of birds in the air [156: 27]. He whose appetites are stilled, who is not absorbed in enjoyment, who has perceived void and unconditioned freedom (Nirvâna), his path is difficult to understand, like that of birds in the air [156: 28].“

• To have a path difficult to understand, like that of birds in the air.

• “The Awakened call patience the highest penance, long-suffering the highest Nirvana; for he is not an anchorage who strikes others, he is not an ascetic who insults others. [156:50]”

• “The Buddha taught that patience is the highest form of self-discipline. / Nirvana is the supreme goal. / One who harms others is not a true monk; / one who abuses others is not a true seeker.” (Eknath Easwaran transl.)

• “There is no meditation without wisdom, / and no wisdom without meditation. / When these two are fully developed, / one is very near to Nirvana.” (Eknath Easwaran transl.)

• Wisdom in this sense is seeing things as they are. Meditation affords this clarity, but can only center in on what is already gathered. Some contemplative, outreaching, scope-broadening, wisdom nurturing practice is meanwhile needed.

Ch2. Jesus the Christ

• “[Bacon] felt in himself such enormous capacity that he imagined he could absorb the wealth of both the Cosmic Sense and Self Consciousness—both Heaven and earth. Later he bitterly repented his greed.”

• Commentary on Jesus’ marriage feast parable:

• “The king is God, the marriage feast is Cosmic Consciousness, those who are bidden are those who have been given the best opportunities for spiritual advancement-plenty, leisure, etc.-but instead of using these for the purpose designed (spiritual growth) they became absorbed in them alone. Then God sent his prophets to persuade them that they were making a mistake, but they would not listen, and even misused the prophets. So when the well-off and the educated and the religious would not come the invitation was extended to all. But rich or poor, learned or ignorant, religious or outcast, whoever comes, must have on a wedding garment-the mind must be clothed in humility, sincerity, reverence, candor and fearlessness.”

Ch3. Paul

• “Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God: For they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged. But he that is spiritual judgment all things, and he himself is judged of no man.” (1 Corinthians, 2:10-16 or 3:1-3)
• “For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace; because the mind of flesh is enmity against God.” (Romans, 8:7?)
• “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean of itself; save that to him who accounteth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” (Romans, 14:14)

Ch4. Plotinus

• “The love of beauty which exalts the poet; that devotion to the One and that ascent of science which makes the ambition of the philosopher, and that love and those prayers by which some devout and ardent soul tends in its moral purity towards perfection. These are the great highways conducting to that height above the actual and the particular, where we stand in the immediate presence of the Infinite, who shines out as from the deeps of the soul.”
• The following passage [83: 336] may be taken as a fair summing up of Plotinus’ philosophy as this was understood by the Neoplatonists:
• “The human souls which have descended into corporeality are those which have allowed themselves to be ensnared by sensuality and overpowered by lust. They now seek to cut themselves loose from their true being; and, striving after independence, they assume a false existence. They must turn back from this; and, since they have not lost their freedom, a conversion is still possible. //Here, then, we enter upon the practical philosophy. Along the same road by which it descended, the soul must retrace its steps back to the supreme Good. It must first of all return to itself. This is accomplished by the practice of virtue, which aims at likeness to God, and leads up to God. In the ethics of Plotinus all the older schemes of virtue are taken over, and arranged in a graduated series. The lowest stage is that of the civil virtues, then follow the purifying, and last of all the divine virtues. The civil virtues merely adorn the life, without elevating the soul. That is the office of the purifying virtues, by which the soul is freed from sensuality, and led back to itself, and thence to the nous. By means of ascetic observances the man becomes once more a spiritual and enduring being, free from all sin. But there is still a higher attainment; it is not enough to be sinless, one must become “God.” This is reached through contemplation of the primeval Being, the One; or, in other words, through an ecstatic approach to it. Thought cannot attain to this, for thought reaches only to the nous, and is itself a kind of motion. Thought is a mere preliminary to communion with God. It is only in a state of perfect passivity and repose that the soul can recognize and touch the primeval Being. Hence in order to this highest attainment the soul must pass through a spiritual curriculum. Beginning with the contemplation of corporeal things in their multiplicity and harmony, it then retires upon itself and withdraws into the depths of its own being, rising thence to the nous, the world of ideas. But even there it does not find the Highest, the One… The last stage is reached when, in the highest tension and concentration, beholding in silence and utter forgetfulness of all things, it is able as it were to lose itself. Then it may see God, the fountain of life, the source of being, the origin of all good, the root of the soul. In that moment it enjoys the highest divinity, bathed in the light of eternity.”

Ch5. Mohammed

• Ramadan was the month that Mohammed went to Mount Hara and fasted, prayed, and meditated in isolation. It was at the conclusion of this month of devotional solitude that Gabriel appeared to him and gave him the Kuran, telling him to read it. Mohammed was illiterate, but after a few entreaties Mohammed was illumined and could read the text.

Ch6. Dante

• “Dante wanders through the self conscious world (“Inferno” and “Purgatorio”) guided by Virgil (chosen as a splendid example and type of the self conscious mind, and also probably because he had really been one of Dante’s principal guides before his illumination). But Virgil was not a case of Cosmic Conscious-ness, and of course he cannot enter into Paradise. Beatrice (the Cosmic Sense) leads Dante into that realm and is his guide there.”

Ch 8. John Yepes (St. John of the Cross)

• “Rising above all that may be known and understood, temporally and spiritually, the soul must earnestly desire to reach that which in this life cannot be known, and which the heart cannot conceive; and, leaving behind all actual and possible taste and feeling of sense and spirit, must desire earnestly to arrive at that which transcends all sense and all feeling.” (203:75)
• “Our way to Him is, of necessity, in self denial.” (203:202)
• “That soul, therefore, has greater communion with God which is most advanced in love—that is, whose will is most conformable with the will of God.” (203:78)
• “Such is the sweetness of deep delight of these touches of God, that one of them is more than a recompense for all the sufferings of this life, however great their number.” (203:208)
• “[The exalted spirit] seeks not for consolation or sweetness either in God or elsewhere, neither does it pray for God’s gifts through any motive of self interest, or its own satisfaction. For all it cares for now is how it shall please God…for the graces it has received.” (204:134)

Ch9. Francis Bacon (Shakespeare?)

• “Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay, / To change your day of youth to sullied night; / And, all in war with Time, for love of you, / As he takes from you, I engraft you new.” (Sonnet XV)
• “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)
• “What is your substance, whereof are you made, / That millions of strange shadows on you tend? / Since every one hath, every one, one shade, / And you, but one, can every shadow lend. … In all external grace you have some part, / But you like none, none you, for constant heart.” (Sonnet LIII)

Ch10. Jacob Behmen (called the Teutonic Theosopher)

• “If thou climbest up this ladder on which I climb up into the deep of God, as I have done, then thou hast climbed well: I am not come to this meaning, or to this work and knowledge through my own reason, or through my own will and purpose; neither have I sought this knowledge, nor so much as know anything concerning it. I sought only for the heart of God, therein to hide myself from the tempestuous storms of the devil [41: 237]”.
• “…if thou canst for awhile cease from all thy thinking and willing thou shalt hear unspeakable words of God.” [50:75]

Ch11. William Blake

• “As to his religious belief, it should be understood that Blake was a Christian in a certain way, and a truly fervent Christian; but it was a way of his own, exceedingly different from that of any of the churches. For the last forty years of his life he never entered a place of worship [139: 76].”
• “He believed-with a great profundity and ardor of faith-in God; but he believed also that men are gods, or that collective man is God. He believed in Christ; but exactly what he believed him to be is a separate question. “Jesus Christ,” he said, conversing with Mr. Robinson, “is the only God, and so am I, and so are you” [139: 77].”
• “The player is a liar when he says: Angels are happier than men because they are better! Angels are happier than men and devils because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan’s gratification [95: 176].” (Blake)

Ch12. Honoré de Balzac

• “There exists three worlds-the natural world, the spiritual world, the divine world. Humanity moves hither and thither in 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 its essence. Consequently there is a material worship, a spiritual worship, a divine worship; which three are manifested by action, word and prayer, or (to express it otherwise) deed, understanding, love. The instinctive desires deeds; the abstractive turns to ideas; the specialist sees the end, he aspires to God, whom he inwardly perceives or contemplates.” [5:144]
• Mentions that rather than the word being made flesh, the gospel of the future will be marked by the flesh being made word.

Ch13. Walt Whitman

• “Bibles may convey and priests expound, but it is exclusively for the noiseless operation of one’s isolated Self to enter the pure ether of veneration, reach the divine levels, and commune with the unutterable. [195:233]”

Ch14. Edward Carpenter

• ”The individual consciousness takes the form of Thought, which is fluid and mobile like quicksilver, perpetually in a state of change and unrest fraught with pain and effort; the other consciousness is not in the form of Thought. It touches, hears, sees, and is those things which it perceives-without motion, without change, without effort, without distinction of subject and object, but with a vast and incredible Joy.”

• “The individual consciousness is specially related to the body. The organs of the body are in some degree its organs. But the whole body is only as one organ of the Cosmic Consciousness. To attain this latter one must have the power of knowing one’s self separate from the body—of passing into a state of ecstasy”