THE MAIN PURPOSE of part five is to illustrate the inevitable fact that granted that there is such a mental faculty as Cosmic Consciousness and that it has been brought forth, as were the others, by gradual evolution, there must exist minds on all intermediate planes between mere self consciousness and the fullest Cosmic Consciousness so far produced by the onward and upward march of the race.
If we think of the oncoming of the Cosmic Sense as the rising of a sun in the individual life it becomes clear, carrying out the analogy as we may probably do without fear of material error, that between the comparative darkness of the night of mere self consciousness and the light of the day which is Cosmic Consciousness there must exist an interval of what may fairly be called twilight – a region in which the sun of the Cosmic Sense will give more or less light, although not yet risen and perhaps never to rise in the life of that person. This twilight is often distinctly traceable (as in the case of Dante and Böhme) in lives that later become fully illumined. After momentary illumination, too, in the lesser cases a glow is left lasting for years, as if the sun, after appearing for a few moments above the horizon, remained immediately below it, very slowly descending, like the physical sun in northern latitudes about the time of the summer solstice. In another class of cases the individual spiritual life may be compared to a winter day within the arctic circle. The sun slowly approaches the horizon, its path slanting gradually upward until the fiery ball nearly touches the earth’s rim, passes slowly along the southeast, south, southwest, lighting the landscape but never showing its dazzling face – effecting a genuine illumination but without rising – yielding a glow which is in strong contrast to the darkness of night but which is yet infinitely short (in splendor and especially in fructifying power) of that of the direct solar rays. Such a case was one of the most note-worthy in this Fifth Part, that, namely, of Richard Jefferies.
Today innumerable men and women must be living in this twilight. Undoubtedly many cases of so called conversion are simply instances of, generally sudden, spiritual ascent from the average self conscious level into the region of greater or less splendor, according to the altitude reached, which lies between that and Cosmic Consciousness. And if Carlyle’s opinion, which is in full accord with what we know of mental evolution – that “conversion,” namely, “was not known to the ancients but has come to light for the first time in our modern era,” be accepted, does this not clearly indicate a gradual spiritual ascent of a vast section of the human mind? Cases of conversion occurring in the young are not here noticed. These are probably generally, if not always, cases of more or less sudden spiritual ascent within the region strictly belonging to self consciousness and do not therefore concern us. But cases of so called conversion occurring at thirty or thirty-five years of age (such as that of C. G. Finney, chapter 13, infra) are in themselves more striking phenomena and are doubtless always, or nearly always, instances of ascent into the region which lies beyond the limits of the ordinary self conscious mind.
One word may be said in this place to guard against a possible suspicion. In the reporting of no case was the reporter (the person having the experience) prompted by word or sign. Every one of the following reports (as is manifestly true of those which are included in Part IV) is given absolutely spontaneously and nearly always without any knowledge of the phenomena belonging to other cases, and certainly without being influenced in narration by a knowledge of other cases. In view of the extraordinary uniformity of the accounts given (as far as these go) it is important that this fact should be clearly realized.
RENAN TELLS US THAT the oldest documents in which Moses is mentioned are four hundred to five hundred years posterior to the date of the Exodus, at which time Moses lived, if he lived at all: Les documents les plus anciens sur Moise sont posterieurs de quatre cents ou cinq cents ans á l’époque ou ce personage a du vivre. Could there have been older, lost, written narratives, upon which those we have were based? Or could the long interval of over four hundred years have been bridged by tradition in such manner as to make the accounts we have of any value? It is hard to say. But if we should dare believe that the incidents in this man’s personal history given in Exodus are in any sense reliable (they cannot, of course, be expected to be accurate), then we have in the great Egyptian Israelite lawgiver a probable case of Cosmic Consciousness. The burning bush that he saw in Horeb, which was not consumed by the fire, would then be the form taken in tradition by the subjective light: “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed”. And the shining of his face: “And it came to pass, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, when he came down from that mount, the skin on his face shone or sent forth beams by reason of his speaking with Him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.” This shining of Moses’ face, when he descended Sinai, would be the “transfiguration” characteristic of Cosmic Consciousness.
At the time that Moses saw the “fire,” it would seem that he was already married and had sons, but he was, however, still young, for he lived and labored for forty years there.. after. It seems likely that he was at or near the usual age of illumination at the time. He was at first alarmed at the “fire,” or light, as is usual: “And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God”. He distrusted his fitness for the task laid upon him: “Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh”? Just as Mohammed distrusted himself. The “voice” giving more or less explicit commands is a common phenomenon. It is doubtful if this voice is ever heard with the outward ear – perhaps occasionally – more likely never. The light is almost certainly always subjective, and no doubt the voice also. But with the Cosmic Sense comes a consciousness of certain facts, and the impression made upon the person is that he has been told these, and if so, then by someone – some person (but, of course, not by a human being) – hence the voice of God to Moses, the voice of the Father to Jesus, the voice of Christ to Paul, the voice of Gabriel to Mohammed, the voice of Beatrice to Dante. Who the person thought to be heard (into whose mouth the teaching is put), shall be supposed to be, will be determined by the mental habitudes of the subject and of his age and nation.
What, now, was actually “told” Moses – if we may believe the report – and it seems credible – is (as far as the present writer can judge) exactly what would have been told him by the Cosmic Sense: The unity, power and goodness of God, namely, and that he should work for the people, of whom he was one. It seems likely, moreover, that there came upon Moses at about the epoch of the “burning bush” a great intellectual and moral expansion. The tables of the law (doubtless composed by him) go to prove this – so does the recognition of his superiority and authority, apparently so freely rendered by a people not especially inclined (it would seem) to surrender their own ideas and place themselves under the control of a leader having no hereditary or priestly jurisdiction.
Since the above was written the editor has had a letter from C. M. C., whose case is included in this volume (Chapter 29, infra), in which she gives an experience so very similar to that of “the burning bush,” that it is impossible to resist the temptation to quote it. She says:
“Two lady friends and I were out driving a few days ago. It was a lovely, perfect morning. As we passed along the shaded country road, we got out of the carriage to gather the purple aster, which was blooming in all its perfection by the wayside. I was in a strangely joyous mood – all nature seemed sweet and pensive. The asters had never before seemed so beautiful to me. I looked at the large bunches we had gathered with growing amazement at their brightness, and it was some little time before I realized that this was unusual. But I soon found that I was seeing the aura of the flowers. A wonderful light shone out from every little petal and flower, and the whole was a blaze of splendor. I trembled with rapture – it was a ‘burning bush.’ It cannot be described. The flowers looked like gems or stars, the color of amethysts, so clear and transparent, so still and intense, a subtle living glow. The veil almost parted; not quite, or I should have seen them smiling and conscious and looking at me. What a moment that was! I thrill at the thought of it.”
AND THE ANGEL OF THE LORD came and sat under the oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, and said unto him: The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. And Gideon said unto him, Oh, my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his wondrous works which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? but now the Lord hath cast us off, and delivered us into the hand of Midian. And the Lord looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and save Israel from the hand of Midian: have not I sent thee? And he said unto him, Oh, Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is the poorest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house. And the Lord said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. And he said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, then show me a sign that it is thou that talkest with me. Depart not hence, I pray thee, until I come unto thee, and bring forth my present, and lay it before thee. And he said, I will tarry until thou come again. And Gideon went in, and made ready a kid, and unleavened cakes of an ephah of meal: the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out unto him under the oak, and presented it. And the angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth. And he did so. Then the angel of the Lord put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and there went up fire out of the rock and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and the angel of the Lord departed out of his sight. And Gideon saw that he was the angel of the Lord; and Gideon said, Alas, O Lord God! Forasmuch as I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face. And the Lord said unto him, Peace be unto thee; fear not: thou shalt not die. Then Gideon built an altar there unto the Lord, and called it Jehovah shalom: unto this day it is yet in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.
Renan’s comment on the life of this man would, were it taken seriously, make him, if not a great, at all events a case of Cosmic Consciousness. He says:
“Circumstances of which we are ignorant inclined him to the exclusive worship of Jahveh. This conversion was attributed to a vision, and it is possible that in the case of Gideon, as in that of Moses, a sensible experience may have intervened. It would appear that there occurred to him one of the apparitions of flame in which Jahveh is supposed to reveal Himself”.
Nothing definite can be said in this case. Gideon’s age at the time is not known. The subjective light (if he experienced it), his sudden conversion from a lower to a higher religious plane (which seems pretty certain), his rapid elevation in the esteem of his countrymen, his long and strenuous life, his marked recognition of God, his refusal to reign in any other sense than as the agent of Jahveh – all these point to the possibility of his illumination.
HAD “THE GREATEST of the Hebrew prophets” the Cosmic Sense – it does not seem unlikely. As Isaiah lived and wrote for thirty-nine years after his “vision” it might easily be that he was something over thirty years of age at that time – that is to say, in the year of the death of Uzziah, 740 BC. The vision itself, as he describes it, suggests illumination – the oncoming of Cosmic Consciousness. Isaiah writes:
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the threshold were moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: and he touched my mouth with it and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, here am I; send me.*
*The chief points to be noticed are: (1) He saw God. (2) He saw that God is the Cosmos. (3) The expression “the house was filled with smoke” ought (if the hypothesis is correct) rather to read “with light” or “with flame,” since it should refer to the subjective light; but it seems doubtful whether the Hebrew word Ashan ever means “light” or “flame.” If, however, it is connected philologically with the Sanskrit Arman it ought to be capable of bearing an analogous interpretation. (4) He loses the sense of sin.
LÏR, WHO IS COMMONLY called Lâo Tzu (the old philosopher), was born about 604 BC, in Honan, China. For part of his life, perhaps a large part, he was curator in the Royal Library. Kung fu tse (Confucius) visited Lî in 517, when he (Li) was in his eighty-eighth year. In the course of their conversation Lî said to Kung: “The men about whom you talk are dead and their bones are moldered to dust; only their words are left. Moreover when the superior man gets his opportunity he mounts aloft; but when the time is against him he is carried along by the force of circumstances. I have heard that a good merchant, though he have rich treasures safely stored, appears as if he were poor; and that the superior man, though his virtue be complete, is yet to outward seeming, stupid. Put away your proud air and many desires – your insinuating habit and wild will. They are of no advantage to you; this is all I have to tell you.” Kung is made to say to his disciples after the interview: “I know birds can fly, fish swim and animals run. But the runner may be snared, the swimmer hooked, and the flyer shot by the arrow. But there is the dragon: I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds and rises to heaven. Today I have seen Lâo Tzu, and can only compare him to the dragon”. It seems to have been after this meeting that Lâo Tzu wrote his book on the Tao and its attributes in five thousand characters. After writing the book he is said to have gone away toward the north-west. It is not known when or where he died.
What is this Tao? It is said to keep those who possess it young. A famous Taoist, an old man, is represented as being addressed as follows: “You are old, sir, while your complexion is like that of a child; how is it so?” And the reply is: “I became acquainted with the Tao”. In the first translation of the Tao Teh Ching into any Western language Tao is taken in the sense of Ratio or the Supreme Reason. Abel Remusat’s account of the character Tao is: “It does not seem possible to me to translate this word except by Logos in the triple sense of Sovereign Being, Reason and the Word.” Remusat’s successor in the chair of Chinese at Paris, Stanislas Julien, who made a translation of the Tao Teh Ching, decided that it was impossible to understand by Tao Primordial Reason or Sublime Intelligence, and concluded that the Tao was devoid of action, of thought, of judgment and of intelligence – in fact, he seems (without saying so) to have made the word synonymous (as it doubtless is) with Nirvāna. Finally he translates it as “a way” or “the way,” in the sense of “I am the way, the truth and the life,” and so again it becomes synonymous with “Christ,” with Nirvāna and with Cosmic Consciousness.
Lâo Tzu speaks of certain results which flow from the cultivation of the Tao, and if we will rightly understand his language we shall find that it holds good of those who have the Cosmic Sense. He says: “He who is skillful in managing his life travels on land without having to shun rhinoceros or tiger, and enters a host without having to avoid buff coat or sharp weapon. The rhinoceros finds no place in him into which to thrust its horn, nor the tiger a place in which to fix its claws, nor the weapon a place to admit its point. And for what reason? Because there is in him no place of death.” And again: “He who has in himself abundantly the attributes (of the Tao) is like an infant. Poisonous insects will not sting him; fierce beasts will not seize him; birds of prey will not strike him”.
To come down to our own day, here in America, to illustrate this passage. The writer has seen Walt Whitman on Long Island, New York, remain on a verandah a whole long summer evening, the air being literally loaded with mosquitoes. These would settle upon him in large numbers, but he did not appear to notice them. From time to time he waved a palm leaf fan which he held in his hand, but did not use it or his other hand to drive away or kill any of the mosquitoes. He did not appear to be bitten or in any way annoyed by the small creatures, who were driving the rest of the party almost wild. It is well known that Walt Whitman came and went freely and with impunity for years, off and on as he pleased, among the most dangerous people of New York. It has never been said that he was at any time molested or even spoken roughly to. As to the life of the possessor of the Tao (if that is Cosmic Consciousness) being indestructible by tigers, or other wild beasts or armed men, that is the simple truth. Again it is said of the Tao that its “highest excellence is like that of water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving to the contrary, the low ground which all men dislike. Hence (its way) is near to that of the Tao. There is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water, and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can take precedence of it. Everyone in the world knows that the soft overcomes the hard, and the weak the strong, but no one is able to carry it out in practice”.
So Whitman says of the Cosmic Sense: “What is commonest, cheapest, meanest, easiest, is Me.” And again: “There is nothing so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.”
It is said further that: “It is the way of the Tao to act without (thinking of) acting, to conduct affairs without (feeling) the trouble of them, to taste without discerning any flavor, to consider the small as great, and the few as many, and to recompense injury with kindness”.
Here follow a few passages from Lî R’s book, the Tao Teh Ching, accompanied by parallel passages from the sayings or writings of other men possessed of Cosmic Consciousness:
Ordinary men look bright and intelligent, while I alone seem to be benighted. They look full of discrimination, while I alone am dull and confused. I seem to be carried about as on the sea, drifting as if I had nowhere to rest. All men have their spheres of action, while I alone seem dull and incapable, like a rude borderer. (Thus) I alone am different from other men, but I value the nursing mother (the Tao).1
The partial becomes complete; the crooked, straight; the empty, full; the worn out, new. He whose (desires) are few gets them; he whose (desires) are many goes astray.2
The Tao, considered as unchanging, has no name. Though in its primordial simplicity it may be small, the whole world dares not deal with (one embodying) it as a minister. If a feudal prince or king could guard or hold it, all would spontaneously submit themselves to him. Heaven and earth (under his guidance) unite together and send down the sweet dew, which, without the directions of men, reaches equally everywhere as of its own accord.3
To him who holds in his hands the Great Image (of the invisible Tao) the whole world repairs. Men resort to him, and receive no hurt, but (find) rest, peace, and the feeling of ease. Music and dainties will make the passing guest stop (for a time). But though the Tao as it comes from the mouth seems insipid and has no flavor, though it seems not worth being looked at or listened to, the use of it is inexhaustible.4
Without going outside his door, one understands (all that takes place) under the sky; without looking out from his window, one sees the Tao of heaven. The farther that one goes out (from himself) the less he knows.5
He who gets as his own all under heaven does so by giving himself no trouble (with that end). If one takes trouble (with that end) he is not equal to getting as his own all under heaven.6
He who has in himself abundantly the attributes (of the Tao) is like an infant. Poisonous insects will not sting him; birds of prey will not strike him.7
He who knows (the Tao) does not (care to) speak (about it); he who is (ever ready to) speak about it does not know it. He (who knows it) will keep his mouth shut and close the portals (of his nostrils). He will blunt his sharp points and unravel the complications of things; he will temper his brightness, and bring himself into agreement with the obscurity (of others). This is called “the Mysterious Agreement.” (Such a one) cannot be treated familiarly or distantly; he is beyond all consideration of profit or injury – of nobility or meanness; he is the noblest man under heaven.8
(Its) admirable words can purchase honor; (its) admirable deeds can raise their performer above others. Even men who are not good are not abandoned by it.9
(It is the way of the Tao) to act without (thinking of) acting; to conduct affairs without (feeling the) trouble of them; to taste without discerning any flavor; to consider what is small is great, and a few as many; and to recompense injury with kindness.10
That whereby the rivers and seas are able to receive the homage and tribute of all the valley streams, is their skill in being lower than they; it is thus that they are the kings of them all. So it is that the sage (ruler), wishing to be above men, puts himself by his words below them, and, wishing to be before them, places his person behind them.11
All the world says that, while my Tao is great, it yet appears to be inferior (to other systems of teaching). Now it is just its greatness that makes it seem to be inferior. If it were like any other (system), for long would its smallness have been known!12
But I have three precious things which I prize and hold fast. The first is gentleness; the second is economy, and the third is shrinking from taking precedence of others.
With that gentleness I can be bold; with that economy I can be liberal; shrinking from taking precedence of others, I can become a vessel of the highest honor. Nowadays they give up gentleness and are all for being bold; economy, and are all for being liberal; the hindmost place, and seek only to be foremost; (all of which the end is) death.
Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere; those who are skilled (in the Tao) do not dispute (about it); the disputatious are not skilled in it. Those who know (the Tao) are not extensively learned; the extensively learned do not know it.13
1.”Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes,
This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck,
My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm”.
“The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head”.
2. “The felon steps forth from the prison, the insane becomes sane … the throat that was unsound is sound, the lungs of the consumptive are resumed, the poor distressed head is free”.
3.”It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown upon the earth, though it be less than all the seeds that are upon the earth, yet when it is sown, groweth up and becometh greater than all the herbs, and putteth out great branches; so that the birds of the heaven can lodge under the shadow thereof”.
4.“The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God [of the Cosmic Sense], for they are foolishness unto him”. The teachings of the Cosmic Sense are always tasteless and insipid at first, but their use “is inexhaustible.”
5.“In vain the speeding or shyness, In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes”. “I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion, Why do I need your paces when I myself out gallop them? Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you”.
“What is commonest, cheapest, meanest, easiest, is Me”. “Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last”.
6.“To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it, To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and the flowers of gardens, To gather the minds of men out of their brains, the love out of their hearts.”
7.”Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein”.
8.It is curious that men with Cosmic Consciousness will not speak of it. Years ago, when the writer was as intimate with Walt Whitman as he ever was with any of his brothers he tried hard to get Whitman to tell him something about it (for he knew well there was something special to tell and Whitman knew that he knew), but he could never extract a word from the poet. These men put it in their writings in an impersonal manner, but will hardly ever speak face to face of their personal experiences; these are too sacred to be dealt with in that manner.
9.”Then came Peter and said to him, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Until seven times? Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven”.
10.”But I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you”.
11.”Whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister; and whosoever would be first among you shall be your servant”.
12.Consider and compare the lives and teachings of Gautama, Jesus, Paul, Whitman, Carpenter, and nearly all the great cases.
13.”Logic and sermons never convince”.
“I cannot beguile the time with talk”.
“In the learned coterie sitting constrained and still, for learning inures not to me”.
“If any man thinketh that he is wise among you in this world, let him become a fool, that he may become wise”.
BOTH BY HIS MORAL qualities and intellectual gifts, Socrates seems to take rank with the foremost men of all history. But it would be obviously absurd to argue that because of these facts he was a case of Cosmic Consciousness, and that among the marks of Cosmic Consciousness are moral elevation and intellectual enlightenment. Xenophon tells us that Socrates claimed that “intimations were given him by a God”. He says that “Socrates had been admired beyond all men for the cheerfulness and tranquility with which he lived”, and he further quotes Socrates as saying: “I would not admit to any man that he has lived either better or with more pleasure than myself”. These indications, without being absolute, suggest strongly that Socrates had the Cosmic Sense. It is well known that he had exceptional health and constitutional strength, and it seems that at the time of his death, though over seventy years of age, both his mind and body were as vigorous as ever. Also it seems clear that he had a very strong conviction of immortality, though possibly this did not amount to the sense of immortality which belongs to Cosmic Consciousness. His optimism, also one of the marks of the Cosmic Sense, must not be forgotten, nor must his far more than average personal attractiveness. The phenomenon of the “sign,” “voice,” “god,” “genius” or “dæmon” is said to have dated from his early years.
On the other hand, Lelut dates what he considers as Socrates’ insanity* from the siege of Potidæa, 429 B.C., when Socrates would have been about forty years old. What happened on this occasion is given as follows in the Symposium: “One morning he was thinking about something which he could not resolve; he would not give it up, but continued thinking from early dawn until noon. There he stood, fixed in thought; and at noon attention was drawn to him, and the rumor ran through the wondering crowd that Socrates had been standing and thinking about something ever since the break of day. At last, in the evening, after supper, some Ionians, out of curiosity (I should explain that this was not in winter but in summer), brought out their mats and slept in the open air that they might watch him and see whether he would stand all night. There he stood all night until the following morning; and, with the return of light, he offered up a prayer to the sun and went his way.”
If, now, we accept this narrative as fact we shall possibly prefer Ela m’s explanation of it to that of Lelut. It runs: “It is not impossible that he who had turned his back upon an old, worn out, effete system of philosophy, and who out of the depths of his own thought had eliminated the great truths of the immortality of the soul, and the certainty of a future state of rewards and punishments; who from a chaotic polytheism had arrived at the belief in One God, the Creator and upholder of all things – it is not impossible that such a man may have been so wrapt and lost in the opening immensity and profundity of these considerations as to become insensible to surrounding objects for even so long a time as is here mentioned”.
Let us add the testimony of Balzac in Louis Lambert, in which a state analogous to catalepsy is described as accompanying illumination in that case.
If we put all the facts together – the age of Socrates at the time, the character of the man physically, intellectually and morally – we may not be far wrong if we conclude that he belonged to the order of men of which this volume treats.
NEITHER THIS NOR any other man should be classed among the members of the new race because he had an extraordinary wit, for some of the greatest human intellects are clearly outside Cosmic Consciousness; neither would any extraordinary development of this faculty alone lead a man into it. It is not, then, because of his intelligence, extraordinary as this seems to have been, that the question, Was Roger Bacon a case of Cosmic Consciousness is raised here? On the other hand, unfortunately, no details, such as instantaneous illumination or the subjective light, have come down to us as having existed in this case. All we have are references of Bacon’s to a certain “Master Peter,” from whom he received extraordinary assistance in his philosophical work. And the question is, does not this Master Peter bear the same relation to Bacon that Christ bore to Paul, Beatrice to Dante, Seraphita to Balzac, Gabriel to Mohammed? For we must never forget the essential quality of the Cosmic Conscious mind.
This, then, according to Charles, is the way matters stood between Bacon and Master Peter. Let each judge for himself who or what Master Peter may have been. Charles has been speaking of the intellectual stir and life of the time, and goes on: “In the midst of it all under what flag shall the Oxford student fight? What master shall he choose among so many illustrious doctors? He contemplates at its most brilliant focus this science of which his contemporaries are so proud, and the sentiment he feels is not enthusiasm but scorn. He listens to the most eloquent voices, but for master he chooses not an Alexander of Hales, or an Albert, but an obscure person of whom history knows nothing. This apparent renaissance seems to him a veritable decadence. To him these Dominicans and Franciscans are ignorant men when compared with Robert de Lincoln and his friends, and the moderns generally barbarians as contrasted with the Greeks and the Arabs. Experience, he thinks, is worth more than all the writings of Aristotle, and a little grammar and mathematics more useful than all the metaphysics of the schools. So he applied himself passionately to these disdained sciences. He learns Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee – four languages – in an age in which Albert knew only one of them and in which St. Thomas is glad to use the bad translations of William de Morbeke. He reads with avidity the books of the ancients, studies mathematics, alchemy, optics. Before reforming the education of his age he reconstructs his own education, and to this end associates himself with mathematicians and obscure savants in preference to the most renowned philosophers. Alexander de Hales inspires him with nothing but scorn. Albert, in his eyes, is ignorant and presumptuous, and his influence fatal to the epoch over which its dominance extends. William of Auvergne alone merits respect. The friends whom he values are less celebrated persons – William of Sherwood, according to him, much more learned than Albert; Campano de Novarre, mathematician and arithmetician; Nicolas, tutor of Amansy de Montfort; John of London, believed by Jeff to be John Peckham, and, above all, the most unknown, according to him, the most learned of the men of that time, him whom he venerates as his master, admires as the living example of true science and whom he names “Master Peter.”
“If we judge by the portrait Bacon has drawn of him, this is a singular person. Master Peter is a solitary, as careful to avoid renown as others to seek it; taking pains to veil and hide his science from men, and who refuses men the truth which they are not worthy to receive. Master Peter does not belong to any of the powerful church orders of the day; he does not teach, and desires neither students nor admirers; he shuns the importunity of the vulgar. He is proud, and to his disdain of the crowd he unites an immense faith in himself. He lives isolated, content with the mental wealth he has, which he could multiply many times if he desired so to do. Did he deign to fill a professor’s chair the whole world would come to Paris to hear him; should he be willing to attach himself to some sovereign no treasury could pay the value of his marvelous science. But he despises the mass made up of madmen tainted with the subtleties of law, charlatans who by their sophisms dishonor philosophy, render medicine ridiculous and falsify theology itself. The most clear sighted of them are blind, or should they make vain efforts to use their eyes the truth dazzles them. They are like bats in the twilight – the less light there is the better they see. He alone looks face to face at the radiant sun. Hidden in a retreat which gives him security with silence, Master Peter leaves to others long discourses and the war of words to give himself up to the study of chemistry, the natural sciences, mathematics, medicine, and, above all, experience, of which he alone in this age realizes the importance. His disciple salutes him by the name of ‘Master of Experience,’ which replaces in his case the ambitious and sonorous titles of the other doctors.
“Experience reveals to him the secrets of nature, the curative art, celestial phenomena and their relation to those of earth; he disdains nothing and does not shrink from applying science to the realities of the common earth; he would blush if he found a layman, an old woman, a soldier or a peasant better informed than himself in matters that concern each.
“To cast and forge metals, to manipulate silver, gold and all minerals,* to invent deadly instruments of war, new arms, to make a science of agriculture and of the labor of the rustic, not to neglect surveying nor the art of building, to seek with diligence the basis of truth hidden even under the charms of the sorcerer, under the impostures and artifices of jugglers – this is the work to which he has devoted his life. He has examined all, learned all, separated everywhere the true from the false, and through the void and sterile wilderness has discovered a practicable route. Is it desired to hasten the progress of science? Here is the only man equal to the task. Should he make up his mind to divulge his secrets, kings and princes would crown him with honors and gifts, and in an expedition against the infidel he would render more service to St. Louis than half – yes, than all – his army.‡
“It is from this great unknown, this undiscovered genius, whose name has remained unregistered in the history of science, that (according to him) Bacon learned languages, astronomy, mathematics, experimental science, everything, in fact, that he knew. Compared with this Master Peter, the students, professors, writers, masters, thinkers of the universities were dull, lumpish, insensate [compare Paul, Bacon, Böhme, Mohammed; it is indeed the universal testimony that when the Cosmic Sense appears the wisdom of self consciousness is reduced to dust and ashes]. The piety of Bacon toward his unknown master ought to rescue this latter from the obscurity in which he is buried, but it seems impossible to identify him among the infinite number of savants of the same name who are to be found in the catalogues”.
*”In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I find the developments, and find the eternal meanings.”
‡ The above account of Master Peter is collected by Charles from Bacon’s Opus Tertium, Opus Minus, his De Septem Peccatis, and other works.
HE WAS BORN on the 19th of June, 1623. As a child, boy, and young man, he was exceptionally precocious – in this respect comparable to Bacon. It is said that, although his parents endeavored to restrain his mental development, yet “at the age of ten he had propounded an acoustic theory in advance of the views then entertained; at twelve he had evolved geometry from his own reflections; and at fifteen he composed a treatise on conic sections which Descartes refused to believe in as having proceeded from so young a mind”.
Pascal’s health was all his life delicate. He was probably always a perfectly moral man, though fond of gaiety and the social pleasures of his time and country.
He gave abundant evidence throughout his whole life that he possessed in an unusual degree the mental honesty and earnestness that seems always to belong to those who attain to the Cosmic Sense.
In November, 1654, he being then thirty-one and a half years old, something happened which radically altered Pascal’s life. From that date he practically abandoned the world and became and remained, until his death, markedly religious and charitable. From that date, however, his life was very secluded and few details appear to be known.
Bright as his intellect was before November, 1654, it was still brighter afterwards. About a year subsequent to that date he began the Provincial Letters, and later wrote his Pensées, both of which works (though the latter is only a series of notes for a book to be written) show extraordinary mental qualities. It is safe to say that he could not have written either of them before the above date.
A few days after Pascal’s death a servant felt by chance something hard and thick under the cloth of his doublet. Ripping the seam in the neighborhood he found a folded parchment, and within this a folded paper. These both bore writing in Pascal’s hand, the words of which are those here given. Both parchment and paper were taken to Pascal’s sister, Madame Périer, who showed them to some friend. They all saw at once that these words thus written by Pascal in duplicate and preserved by him with so much care and trouble (removing them himself, as he did, from garment to garment), must have had in his eyes a profound meaning. Some time after the death of Madame Périer (which happened twenty-five years after the death of her brother), her children communicated the documents to a friar, who was an intimate friend of the family. He copied the document and wrote some pages of commentary upon it, to which Marguerite Périer added some further pages. These commentaries are now lost, as is also the parchment. The paper copy, however, in Pascal’s hand, is still extant in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Paris. It was Cordocet who gave the document the name of Pascal’s Mystic Amulette.
Translated into English the words of the amulet are as follows:
The year of grace 1654, Monday, 23 November, day of St. Clement, Pope, and Martyr. From about half-past-ten in the evening until about half-past-twelve, midnight, FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers nor of the Wise. Assurance, joy, assurance, feeling, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ, my God and thy God. Thy God shall be my God. Forgotten of the world and of all except God. He is only found in the ways taught in the Gospel. The sublimity of the human soul. Just Father, the world has not known thee but I have known thee. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. I do not separate myself from thee. They left me behind, me a fountain of living water. My God, do not leave me. Let me not be separated from thee eternally. This is eternal life that they should know thee the only true God and him whom thou hast sent. Jesus Christ – Jesus Christ. I have separated myself from him; I have fled, renounced, crucified him. Let me not be forever separated from him. One is saved only by the teaching of the Gospel. Reconciliation total and sweet. Total submission to Jesus Christ and to my director. Continual joy for the days of my life on earth. I shall not forget what you have taught me. Amen.”*
No one who has read this book so far will have, I think, the least doubt as to the meaning of the words of the amulet.
The subjective light was evidently strongly marked. Immediately following it comes the sense of liberation, salvation, joy, content, intense thankfulness. Then the realization of the grandeur of the human soul, immediately followed by the rapture of the realization of God. He glances back and sees how futile his life and ambitions have so far been. Then realizes his present reconcilement with the cosmos and that the rest of his life must be continual joy.
The words of the amulet, the care and secrecy with which it was preserved, its date in reference to Pascal’s age, Pascal’s splendid intellect and previous character so far as known to us, the change in his life, synchronous with the date of the amulet, his moral exaltation and intellectual illumination from and after that time; above all, the subjective light, which seems to have been more than usually pronounced and longer than usually continued, though in the case of John Yepes it is said to have lasted a whole night. All these taken together make it certain to the mind of the writer that Pascal was a case of Cosmic Consciousness. Of course, it has been said of him, as it was of Jesus, Paul, Blake, and others, that Pascal was insane; but I see no evidence of anything of the kind. The words of the amulet bear testimony to having been written immediately after illumination (before he went to bed that night, it would seem). They are, therefore, naturally somewhat incoherent. They bear witness to joy, triumph, enlightenment, not to disease. The man who writes them has just seen the Brahmic Splendor and felt the Brahmic Bliss. That is all.
Lelut (112a: 154] gives the exact words of the amulet, their form and arrangement, as follows:
L’an de grace 1654
Lundy 23e novbre jour de St Clement
Pape et m. et autres au martirologe Romain
veille de St. Crisogone m. et autres, etc. …
Depuis environ dix heures et demi du soir
jusques environ minuit et demi.
_______________ FEU_______________
Dieu d’Abraham. Dieu d’Isaac. Dieu de Jacob non des philosophes et des savane
Certitude joye certitude, sentiment, veue joye paix.
Deum meum et Deum vestrum
Jeh. 20. 17
Ton Dieu sera mon Dieu. Ruth.
Oubly du monde et de tout hormis Dieu
Il ne se trouve que par les voyes enseignées
dans l’Evangile. Grandeur de l’ame humaine.
Père juste, le monde ne t’a point
connu. mais je t’ai connu. Jeh. 17
Joye, joye, joye, et pleurs de joys______
Jem ’en suis separé__________________
Dereliquerunt me fontem aqua vivæ____
mon Dieu me quitterez vous___________
que je n’en sois pas separé éternellement.
Cette est la vie éternelle qu’ils te connaissent
Seul vray Dieu et celuy que tu as envoyé
Jésus christ_________________________
Jésus christ_________________________
Je m’en suie separé__________________
je l’ay fuy renoncé, crucifé,
que je n’en sois jamais separé__________
Il ne se conserve que par les voyes ensignées
dans l’Evangile
Renonciation totale et douce___________
Soûmission totale à Jésus christ et â mon Directeur.
éternellement en joye pour un jour d’exercice sur la terre
non obliviscar sermones tuos. Amen.
BORN AT AMSTERDAM, November 24th, 1632, the son of a Portuguese Jew and a Jew himself until the age of twenty-four, when he was “solemnly cut off from the Commonwealth of Israel”. He was an accomplished Latinist and an enthusiastic disciple of Descartes, though he ceased to be his follower by the end of the five years of concentrated thought and study that followed his excommunication. This is not the place to insist on the greatness of Spinoza, which indeed should be known to all who read serious books.
Few moderns indeed have been so endorsed by the discipleship of great men as he – by that of Goethe, for instance, and Coleridge, of Novalis, Hegel, Lessing, Herder, Schelling, Scheiermacher and many others. So true is this that “it is admitted that Spinoza was the founder of modern philosophy”.
It will not be possible to show that Spinoza was a case of Cosmic Consciousness in the same sense that it can be shown, for instance, that John Yepes was a case; we have not the necessary details of his illumination. All that can be done is to set down such facts as we have and let the reader judge for himself. We shall consider first the nature of his philosophic teaching and then the facts of his actual life. We shall find that both point almost inevitably to the same conclusion. Spinoza (for instance) “cannot allow that sin and evil have any positive reality, much less that anything happens contrary to God’s will. Nay, it is only an inexact and human fashion of speech to say that man can sin against or off end God”. Again: “The Universe is governed by divine laws, which, unlike those of man’s making, are immutable, inviolable and an end to themselves, not instruments for the attainment of particular objects. The love of God is man’s only true good. From other passions we can free ourselves, but not from love, because for the weakness of our nature we could not subsist without the enjoyment of something that may strengthen us by our union with it. Only the knowledge of God will enable us to subdue the hurtful passions. This, as the source of all knowledge, is the most perfect of all; and inasmuch as all knowledge is derived from the knowledge of God, we may know God better than we know ourselves. This knowledge in time leads to the love of God, which is the soul’s union with Him. The union of the soul with God is its second birth, and therein consists man’s immortality and freedom”. The last clause of the above sentence, italicized by the present editor, if taken absolutely, settles the question – for the union of the soul with God is illumination, is the second birth, and in it is immortality and freedom. Again he says: “Love toward a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind with pure joy, and is wholly free from sorrow; this is to be greatly desired and strenuously sought for”. This is the Brahmic Bliss – the joy that Whitman, Carpenter, Yepes and the rest never tire of celebrating. Then farther on he tells us that the chief good is to be endowed with a certain character. “What that character is we shall show in its proper place – namely, that it consists in knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole of nature”. But such knowledge does not exist apart from illumination, while on the other hand all those who have entered Cosmic Consciousness possess it. So Spinoza, instead of seeking in the usual way an artificial explanation for the correspondence of two such (apparently) different things as body and mind pronounces boldly that “they are the same thing and differ only as aspects”. So Whitman (and all the rest in varying language): “Was somebody asking to see the soul? See your own shape and countenance, etc.”. So, again, Spinoza more than once classifies the kinds of our knowledge in such manner as to necessitate the inclusion of what is called in this book intuition, which is that form which belongs to the Cosmic Conscious mind and to that mind only. He says, for instance: “We may learn things (1) by hearsay or on authority; (2) by the mere suggestion of experience; (3) by reasoning; (4) by immediate and complete perception”. And he says further that this last mode of knowing “proceeds from an adequate idea of the absolute nature of some attribute of God to an adequate knowledge of the nature of things.” That is to say, the man enters into conscious relation with God (in the act of illumination), and through that contact – as far as it goes – he has an “adequate knowledge of things.” It is doubtful whether any merely self conscious man could have used this language, for to such a man nothing seems more absurd than a claim to knowledge by simple intuition, and yet nothing is more certain than that such a knowledge is thus acquired. The following is equally characteristic: “To know God – in other words, to know the order of nature and regard the universe as orderly – is the highest function of the mind; and knowledge, as the perfect form of the mind’s normal activity, is good for its own sake and not as a means”. If Spinoza means here (as it seems likely he does) the same as Balzac meant when he said of specialism that it “alone can explain God,” then Spinoza was a specialist. So when he says that “clear and distinct knowledge of the intuitive kind engenders love towards an immutable and eternal being, truly within our reach”, he implies in himself the possession of Cosmic Consciousness and teaches that this is within reach of all. Equally characteristic is the following: “In all exact knowledge the mind knows itself under the form of eternity; that is to say, in every such act it is eternal and knows itself as eternal. This eternity is not a persistence in time after the dissolution of the body, no more than a preexistence in time, for it is not commensurable with time at all. And there is associated with it a state or quality of perfection called the intellectual love of God”. Spinoza, as Whitman, taught that “there is in fact no evil”; he says: “The perfection of things is to be reckoned only from their own nature and power; and things are not therein more or less perfect that they delight or off end the sense of men, or that they are convenient for the nature of man or repugnant thereto. If any ask why God hath not so created all men that they should be governed only by reason? I give them no answer but this: Because he lacked not matter for creating all things, even from the highest degree of perfection into the lowest. Or more exactly thus: Because the laws of his own nature were so vast as to suffice for producing all things which can be conceived by an infinite understanding”. As Pollock remarks, this is “a hypothetical infinite mind, which must be distinguished from the infinite intellect, which we have met with as one of the things immediately produced by God”.
Finally Spinoza sums up in the following noble passage:
“I have finished everything I wished to explain concerning the power of the mind over the emotions and concerning its liberty. From what has been said we see what is the strength of the wise man and how much he surpasses the ignorant who is driven by blind desire. For the ignorant man [the self conscious mind – compare Balzac – supra and where he classifies the human mind as Spinoza does here] is not only agitated by external causes in many ways, and never enjoys true peace of soul, but lives also ignorant, as it were, both of God and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer ceases also to be. On the other hand, the wise man [the Cosmic Conscious man], in so far as he is considered as such, is scarcely ever moved in his mind, but, being conscious by a certain eternal necessity of himself, of God, and of things, never ceases to be and always enjoys true peace of soul. If the way which, as I have shown, lead shither (i.e., to Cosmic Consciousness) seems very difficult, it can nevertheless be found. It must indeed be difficult, since it is so seldom discovered; for if salvation lay ready to hand and could be discovered without great labor, how could it be possible that it should be neglected almost by everybody ‘s But all noble things are as difficult as they are rare”.
A few words now as to the personal characteristics of the man. John Colerus, minister of the Lutheran church, at that city, during Spinoza’s residence at The Hague, knew him well, and what follows will be taken largely from his narrative, which is included in Sir Frederick Pollock’s volume. Colerus says:
“Spinoza was of middle size, had good features, complexion dark, black curly hair, long black eyebrows, so that one might easily know by his looks that he was descended from Portuguese Jews. As for his clothes, he was very careless of them; they were not better than those of the meanest citizen”.
Spinoza was in fact very poor. Like Thoreau, Whitman, Carpenter, Buddha, Jesus and many other men of his class, he seemed to prefer poverty. He made a very plain living by grinding glasses for telescopes. He was several times offered money by well-off persons who knew and liked him, but always refused until a friend, de Vries, from whom he had refused during his life to accept money, dying, charged his brother, who was his heir, to pay to Spinoza out of his estate a suitable maintenance. The brother wanted to pay Spinoza five hundred florins a year, but Spinoza would only accept three hundred – about one hundred and fifty dollars. Spinoza lived in the plainest possible way; he was never married; most of his life he lived with others, paying his board; the rest of the time he lived alone in lodgings, buying what he needed and keeping very retired. “It is scarcely credible how sober and frugal he was all the time. Not that he was reduced to so great a poverty as not to be able to spend more if he had been willing. He had friends enough who offered him their purses and all manner of assistance. But he was naturally very sober and could be satisfied with little, and he did not care that people should think that he had lived, even but once, at the expense of other men. What I say about his sobriety and good husbandry may be proved by several small reckonings which have been found among his papers after his death. It appears by them that he lived a whole day upon a milk soup done with butter, which amounted to three pence, and upon a pot of beer of three halfpence. Another day he ate nothing but gruel done with raisins and butter, and that dish cost him four pence halfpenny. There are but two half pints of wine at most for one month to be found among these reckonings, and though he was often invited to eat with his friends he chose rather to live upon what he had at home, though it were ever so little, than to sit down at a good table at the expense of another man”. “His conversation was very sweet and easy. He knew admirably well how to be master of his passions, and was never seen very melancholy or very merry. He was very courteous and obliging, and would often discourse with his landlady and the people of the house when they happened to be sick or afflicted – never failing to comfort them. He would put the children often in mind of going to church and taught them to be obedient and dutiful to their parents. One day his landlady asked him whether he believed she could be saved in the religion she professed. He answered: “Your religion is a good one; you need not look for another, nor doubt that you may be saved in it provided while you apply yourself to piety you live at the same time a peaceable and quiet life.” When he stayed at home he was troublesome to nobody; he spent the greater part of his time quietly in his own chamber. When he happened to be tired by having applied himself too much to his philosophical meditations he went downstairs to refresh himself and discoursed with the people of the house about anything that might afford matter for an ordinary conversation and even about trifles. He also took pleasure in smoking a pipe of tobacco”.
Spinoza was never a robust man. “Consumption had been making its insidious inroads upon him for many years, and early in 1677 he must have been conscious that he was seriously ill. On Saturday, 20th of February, he sent to Amsterdam for his friend, Dr. Meyer. On the following day the people of the family with whom he lived, having no thought of immediate danger, went to afternoon service. When they came back Spinoza was no more; he had died about three in the afternoon, with Meyer for the only witness of his last moments”. At the time of his death Spinoza was forty-four years and three months old.
All that remains is to show that, as in his life and teachings, so in his reception by the world, is Spinoza closely allied to the class of men with whom it is here sought to associate him. “The first effect of his writings in Holland was to raise a storm of controversial indignation”. And the man whom Novalis truly described as “God intoxicated,” was pronounced “blasphemous, atheistic, deceitful,” while his books were described as the “souldestroying works of Spinoza”. For a hundred years after his death he was little read, but since then more and more, and he now takes rank where he belongs, as one of the great spiritual leaders of the race.
BORN JANUARY 10, 1688. Is said to have fought three duels before he was grown up. He entered the army young and fought with great bravery. His relations with women said to have been free, even licentious. He was not religious, even the reverse of that, but at times suffered “inexpressible remorse,” on account of his life, which seemed to him evil. In the middle of July, 1719, when he was thirty-one and a half years of age, occurred the event which gives him a place in this volume: “He had spent the evening in some gay company and had an unhappy assignation with a married woman, whom he was to attend exactly at twelve. The company broke up at eleven, and, not judging it convenient to anticipate the time appointed, he went into his chamber to kill the tedious hour, perhaps with some amusing book, or some other way. But it very accidentally happened that he took up a religious book, which his good mother or aunt had, without his knowledge, slipped into his portmanteau. It was called, if I remember the title exactly, The Christian Soldier, or Heaven Taken by Storm,’ and it was written by Mr. Thomas Watson. Guessing by the title of it that he would find some phrases of his own profession spiritualized in a manner which he thought might afford him some diversion, he resolved to dip into it; but he took no serious notice of anything it had in it.† And yet while this book was in his hand an impression was made upon his mind (perhaps God alone knows how) which drew after it a train of the most important and happy consequences. He thought he saw an unusual blaze of light fall upon the book which he was reading, which he at first imagined might happen by some accident in the candle; but lifting up his eyes, he apprehended, to his extreme amazement, that there was before him, as it were suspended in the air, a visible representation of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, surrounded upon all sides with a glory, and was impressed as if a voice, or something equivalent to a voice,§ had come to him to this effect (for he was not confident as to the words): ‘Oh, sinner, did I suffer this for thee, and are these thy returns?’ Struck with so amazing a phenomenon as this, there remained hardly any life in him,‡ so that he sank down in the armchair in which he sat and continued, he knew not how long, insensible”. The immediate effect of Gardiner’s experience is said to have been a knowledge, or rather a sight, of the “majesty and goodness of God,” and his after life (a period of twenty-six years) was of distinguished excellence. The “new man” was as virtuous and pure and godly as the “old” had been licentious and profane.
† He was wide awake – probably extra wide awake – and at the same time his mind (for the moment) was a blank. This is the condition which we are told by all the authorities from Gautama to the present is sine qua non for the oncoming of illumination.
§ As to the objectivity or subjectivity of the “voice” in such cases see remarks under head of “Moses” – what the person sees comes, of course, under the same category.
‡ “Less than a drachm of blood remains in me that does not tremble,” says Dante, under similar circumstances.
INDEPENDENTLY OF ILLUMINATION, Swedenborg was one of the great men of all time – a great thinker, a great writer, a great scientist, a great engineer. In 1743, at the age of fifty-four years, something happened – some change took place in him; it does not seem to have been any form of insanity, since he was not sick, maintained and even increased all his friendships, was apparently entirely unsuspected by those about him of any mental alienation. His own account of his illumination to his friend Robsahm, as far as it goes, is very characteristic; he reports that God appeared to him and said, “I am God the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer of the world. I have chosen thee to unfold the spiritual sense of the Holy Scriptures. I will myself dictate to thee what thou shalt write.”.
It is admitted by all students of Swedenborg’s life that the change was in reality an illumination, that putting aside his visions of angels and demons he actually had thereafter a spiritual insight beyond that of ordinary men, and if he was a visionary he also “led the most real life of any man then in the world”. As for his visions, it may be said that they were not fundamentally different from those of Blake, Böhme, Dante and others. It must be remembered that these men see things that we do not see – things that are outside of our language; if, then, they use this language (which is all they have) to set them before us, it seems inevitable that we should not understand their words as they understand them. The result, in the case of every such expositor, however common sense he tries to be – in the case of Jesus, Gautama, Paul and all the rest – is terrible misunderstanding and confusion; and yet, in spite of all, something passes from these men to us of more importance than all that we could get from the ordinary scientists and philosophers.
Many facts indicate that Swedenborg may have belonged to the class of men here in question. “He was never married. He had great modesty and gentleness of bearing. His habits were simple; he lived on bread, milk and vegetables”. “He was a man who won the respect, confidence and love of all who came in contact with him”. Though many of those about him did not believe in his visions they respected him too much to make light of these in Swedenborg’s presence. His teaching at bottom is that of all the great seers – that God in himself is infinite love – that his manifestation, form or body is infinite wisdom – that divine love is the self subsisting life of the universe.
Swedenborg departs from the norm of these cases especially by his age (fifty-four years) at illumination. It seems incredible that a man could go on growing to such an age; still this is what we must believe if we include him. Mohammed was thirty-nine, Las Casas forty, C. M. C. forty-nine; these were undoubted cases, and it does not seem as if Swedenborg’s personal history can be explained on any other hypothesis.
THAT THE MIND OF THIS writer (nearly if not quite a poet) in his loftier moods attained a very close neighborhood to Cosmic Consciousness, if he did not actually enter the magic territory of the kingdom of heaven, no one will deny who knows what these words mean and who also has read him with any sympathy. In fact the following short passages, from lines written at Tintern Abbey in his twenty-ninth year, prove as much. In the first he speaks of “that blessed mood”
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened – that serene and blessed mood
In which the affections gently lead us on –
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and becomes a living soul.
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
This passage indicates plainly the relief (approaching to joy) and the enlightenment (approximating illumination) which belong to the unrisen sun of the Cosmic Sense. But there is no evidence that upon him, at any time, the sun actually rose – that the veil was ever rent and the splendor let through; in fact it may be considered as quite clear that this did not happen. Then, next line, follows the usual doubt:
If this but be a vain belief
(whether or not the revelation can be relied on) – a question never asked, at least after the first few minutes or hours, by a person who has obtained even one glimpse of the “Brahmic Splendor.”
Later, in the same poem, is another passage describing in other words the same mental condition, which may be properly called the twilight of Cosmic Consciousness:
I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thought; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man –
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
THIS CASE IS OF MORE than usual interest from the fact that although in it occurred almost certainly, although not strongly marked, the phenomenon of the subjective light, together with pronounced moral exaltation and probably some intellectual illumination, yet it was not crowned by the cosmic vision – the Brahmic Splendor. It is not therefore complete, but only partial or imperfect.
That the illumination of Charles G. Finney was not accompanied by the consciousness of the Cosmos is certain because the account of the Cosmic vision, had this been present, could not have been omitted from his relation of his “conversion,” of which it would have been the most striking feature – the very core and centre. What he did see and feel was wonderful and striking enough. How surprised, and probably how incredulous, would he have been if he could have been told that although he had reached the threshold of and strongly felt the Divine Presence to which he was so close, that yet the vision which would have meant so much to him was still hidden behind the veil of sense and for the time denied to him!
So this man’s life, though by the experience of that autumn day infinitely exalted as compared with that of the average self conscious man, is yet just as markedly below that of the men who have not only felt the Infinite One as Charles G. Finney felt him, but have passed into His presence and seen His inconceivable glory.
The distinction pointed out may be clearly realized by making a comparison of the book Charles G. Finney has left us with the epoch making books – the Suttas (for instance), the Gospels, the Epistles, the Qur’an, the Divine Comedy, the Shakespeare works, the Comédie Humaine, the Leaves of Grass and the rest – inspired or written by the men to whom has been shown the Brahmic Splendor as a visible fact.
The illumination of Charles G. Finney took place early in his thirtieth year – that is, in October, 1821. He had the usual earnest religious temperament, and for some time had been greatly troubled about his spiritual state, eagerly desiring, but unable to reach assurance of, salvation. Then occurred what he calls his “conversion.” He says:
The rising of my soul was so great that I rushed into the room behind the front office, to pray.
There was no fire and no light in the room; nevertheless it appeared as if it were perfectly light. As I went in and shut the door it seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. It did not occur to me that it was wholly a mental state; it seemed that I saw him as I would see any other man. He said nothing, but looked at me in such a manner as to break me right down at his feet. I have always since regarded this as a most remarkable state of mind; for it seemed that he stood before me, and I fell down at his feet and poured out my soul to him. I wept aloud like a child, and made such confessions as I could with my choked utterance.
I must have continued in this state for a good while; but my mind was too much absorbed to recollect anything I said. But I know, as soon as my mind became calm, I returned to the front office, and found that the fire, that I had made of large wood, was nearly burned out. But as I turned and was about to take a seat by the fire, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost. Without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul.
No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love; and I do not know, but I should say, I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushing of my heart. These waves came over me, and over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect I cried out, “I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.” I said, “Lord, I cannot bear any more;” yet I had no fear of death.
How long I continued in this state I do not know. But it was late in the evening when a member of my choir came to see me. He was a member of the church. He found me in this state of loud weeping, and said, “Mr. Finney, what ails you?” I could make him no answer for some time. He then said, “Are you in pain?” I gathered myself up and replied, “No, but so happy that I cannot live”.
The long, laborious and beneficent after life of this man proved, if proof was necessary, that his “conversion” was no accidental excitement that might have happened to any man, but an unmistakable mark of spiritual superiority.
Mr. Finney had, too, to an extraordinary degree, the personal magnetism that is so characteristic of the class of men to which he belonged. The effect of his preaching was indescribable, and yet it is doubtful whether the words uttered had much to do with its exceptional power. His presence, his touch, the sound of his voice, seemed often sufficient to arouse unutterable feelings – to uplift and regenerate in what may fairly be called a miraculous manner.
Not actually having Cosmic Consciousness, he had not the duplex personality which thereto belongs, and yet he had a feeling of that other self within himself which upon full illumination would have stood out as the “I am,” while the self conscious man would have taken second place as “The other I am.” As illustrating this inchoate duplex personality, he says:
“Let no man think that those sermons which have been called so powerful were productions of my own brain or of my own heart unassisted by the Holy Ghost. They are not mine, but from the Holy Spirit in me.”
Finally it should be noted that the life and the life work of Charles G. Finney were on strictly parallel lines, though on a less high plane, with the life and life work of the great religious initiators, he, as they, expending all his time and energy laboring to place his brothers and sisters on a higher moral plane than that on which they had heretofore lived, the only difference being that they worked on a somewhat higher moral level than that upon which he worked.
IF PUSHKIN TRACED the following lines after his own personal experience he was almost certainly a case of Cosmic Consciousness. Be this as it may, their descriptive power makes them worth quoting. The translation into English is by Dana, of the New York Sun:
Tormented by thirst of the spirit,
I was dragging myself through a gloomy forest,1
When a six winged seraph
At the crossroads appeared to me.
With fingers light as a dream
My eyes he touched,
And my eyes opened wide,
Like those of a frightened she eagle.
My ears he touched,
And roaring and noise filled them;
And I heard the trembling of the heavens;
And the high flight of the angels,
And the movement of the creatures beneath the sea,
And the growing of the grass in the valleys!
And he laid hold of my lips,
And tore out my sinful tongue –
Sinful, frivolous and cunning;
And the sting of a wise serpent,
Between my unconscious lips,
With bloody right hand he planted.
And he cut through my breast with a sword,
And took out the trembling heart,
And a coal blazing and flaming,
Into the open breast he thrust.
Like a corpse I lay in the desert,2
And the voice of God called me:
Rise up, Prophet, and see, and understand!3
Filled full of My Will,4
Going forth over sea and land,
Set men’s hearts afire with the Word.
1.Dante’s dark forest in which he was lost.
2.Compare Isaiah’s vision.
3.The dazed condition which is so common following illumination.
4.Intellectual illumination.
SPIRITUALLY EMINENT as was this great American, it does not appear that he belonged to the class of men discussed in this volume. He was perhaps as near Cosmic Consciousness as it is possible to be without actually entering that realm. He lived in the light of the great day, but there is no evidence that its sun for him actually rose. Emerson’s Oversoul was printed in 1841, when the author was thirty-eight years old. In it he tells us plainly where he stood at that time, and it is as good as certain that in later years he did not advance beyond that position. In it he says, for instance:
There is a difference between one and another hour of life, in their authority and subsequent effect.1. There is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences. Every man’s words, who speaks from that life, must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought on their own part.2.
Only itself can inspire whom it will, and behold! their speech shall be lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind.
In ascending to this primary and aboriginal sentiment, we have come from our remote station on the circumference instantaneously to the centre of the world, where, as in the closet of God, we see causes, and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow effect.
This energy does not descend into individual life, or any other condition than entire possession. It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to whomsoever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur. When we see those whom it inhabits we are apprized of new degrees of greatness. From that inspiration the man comes back with a changed tone. He does not talk with men, with an eye to their opinion. He tries them. It requires of us to be plain and true. The vain traveler attempts to embellish his life by quoting my lord, and the prince, and the countess, who thus said or did to him. The ambitious vulgar show you their spoons, and brooches, and rings, and preserve their cards and compliments. The more cultivated, in their account of their own experience, cull out the pleasing poetic circumstance; the visit to Rome, the man of genus they saw; the brilliant friend they know; still further on, perhaps, the gorgeous landscape, the mountain lights, the mountain thoughts, they enjoyed yesterday – and so seek to throw a romantic color over their life. But the soul that ascendeth to worship the great God is plain and true; has no rose color; no fine friends; no chivalry; no adventures; does not want admiration; dwells in the hour that now is, in the earnest experience of the common day – by reason of the present moment, and the mere trifle having become porous to thought, and bibulous of the sea of light.
1. If he had had experience of the Cosmic Vision – the Brahmic Splendor – he could not have used this exceedingly moderate, even cold, language when referring thereto. Neither could he omitting that, be here referring to other experiences.
2.These passages show how deep, however short of the bottomless deep, Emerson ‘s spiritual experience was.
THIS POET (for though not absolutely entitled to rank in the divine order, yet he has worthily served for and must be allowed that name) passed the greater part of a long life in that region of self consciousness which lies close upon the lower side of the Cosmic Sense. His “weird seizures” mentioned in “The Princess,” in which he seemed to “move among a world of ghosts, and feel (himself) the shadow of a dream”, belong to that spiritual realm; but far more certainly a condition well described in the following lines of the “Ancient Sage”:
More than once when I
Sat all alone, revolving in myself
The word that is the symbol of myself,
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,
And passed into the nameless, as a cloud
Melts into heaven. I touch’d my limbs, the limbs
Were strange, not mine – and yet no shade of doubt,
But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self
The gain of such large life as matched with ours
Were sun to spark – unshadowable in words,
Themselves but shadows of a shadowworld.
And again in the “Holy Grail”:
Let visions of the night, or of the day
Come as they will; and many a time they come
Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,
This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,
This air that smites his forehead is not air,
But vision – yea his very hand and foot
In moments when he feels he cannot die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision, nor that one
And yet once more in plain prose:
A kind of walking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has often come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently till, all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being; and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life.*
“Religion was no nebulous abstraction for him. He consistently emphasized his own belief in what he called the eternal truths, in an omnipotent, omnipresent and all loving God, who has revealed himself through the human attribute of the highest self sacrificing love, and in the immortality of the soul”.
“He invariably believed that humility is the only true attitude of the human soul, and therefore spoke with the greatest reserve of what he called ‘these unfathomable mysteries,’ as befitting one who did not dogmatize but who knew that the finite can by no means grasp the infinite, and yet he had a profound trust that when all is seen face to face all will be seen as the best”.
“He said again, with deep feeling, in January, 1869: ‘Yes, it is true there are moments when the flesh is nothing to me, when I feel and know the flesh to be the vision, God and the spiritual – the only real and true. Depend upon it, the spiritual is the real; it belongs to one more than the hand and the foot. You may tell me that my hand and my foot are only imaginary symbols of my existence. I could believe you, but you never, never can convince me that the I is not an eternal reality, and that the spiritual is not the true and real part of me.’ These words he spoke with such passionate earnestness that a solemn silence fell on us as he left the room”.
It was written of Tennyson just after his death: “It is understood that he believed that he wrote many of the best and truest things he ever published under the direct influence of higher intelligences, of whose presence he was distinctly conscious. He felt them near him, and his mind was impressed by their ideas”, the meaning of which, if the report, as it probably is, is true, is that the veil between him and the Cosmic Sense was so thin that he felt the teachings of the latter through it, but there is no evidence known to the present writer that it was ever torn away so that he saw the other world. In other words, there is no evidence that he ever actually entered into Cosmic Consciousness.
*”Repeating my own name.” Tennyson quite unconsciously was using the means laid down from immemorial time for the attainment of illumination: “He who thinking of nothing, making the mind cease to work, adhering to uninterrupted meditation, repeating the single syllable, Om, meditating on me, reaches the highest goal” (i.e., Cosmic Consciousness). Of course it makes no difference what word or name is used. What is required is that the action of the mind should be as far as possible suspended, especially that all desires of every kind be stilled, nothing wished or feared, the mind in perfect health and vigor, but held quiescent in a state of calm equipoise!
J.B.B., DOCTOR OF MEDICINE, born 1817. Entered into Cosmic Consciousness 1855, at the age of thirty-eight years. An informant says of him: “He is not a refined man,” and he goes on: “It is one of the strange things in this whole matter that the attainment of the truth seems to leave a man in this respect about as it finds him. Dr. B. was an example. He seemed content to live in a cheap, bare house, and he rather courted coarseness in dress, talk, and life.” As regards coarseness in dress, food, and surroundings, our informant need not have looked upon J.B.B. as so exceptional. He might have compared him with Tilleinathan Swamy, with Edward Carpenter, or even with Jesus, Mohammed, or Walt Whitman. “At the same time,” our informant continues, “touch him on the subject of the inner vision and he was alive to the core. He had been a spiritualist, but after illumination, while seeming to know that much that spiritualism taught was true, its importance was dwarfed by the much greater truths to which he had access.” “He once told me,” the informant continues, “a curious thing: He said he died, his spirit left his body for twenty minutes, and he looked at, hovered over, and finally went back into it. He told this in a grave, convincing way, which caused in the hearer a gruesome feeling. No one who heard him tell it could help believing it.”
THERE ARE SEVERAL REASONS for suspecting Toreau to have been a case of Cosmic Consciousness, such as his addiction to solitude, his love of mysticism and the mystics, the almost preternatural acuteness of his senses, his love for and fellowship with animals, his intellectual keenness and his moral elevation. The present editor has, however, searched in vain for data which might convert this presumption into anything like a certainty, and Thoreau is so close to us that, had he experienced illumination, the evidence thereof ought to be forthcoming and decisive. But what do these eight lines mean, if not that their author had passed through some such experience as is here treated of?
I hearing get who had but ears,
And sight who had but eyes before,
I moments live who lived but years,
And truth discern who knew but learning’s lore.1
I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight,* New earths, and skies and seas around, And in my day the sun doth pale his light.2
If Thoreau experienced illumination at the usual age, evidence of the fact should be found in Walden, which was written between 1845 and 1854, when its author was twenty-eight to thirty-seven years of age. As a matter of fact, we do find passages in that book which suggest that the writer of it, if not an actual case of Cosmic Consciousness, was yet well on the way thereto. For instance:
Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our hymn books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring him forever. One would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God.3
The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions for a poetic or divine life.4
Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain, while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once, like an atmosphere, sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in the scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and most human was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.
Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain storms in the spring and fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening, in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving north-east rains, which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunder shower the lightning struck a large pitch pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep and four or five inches wide, as you would groove a walking stick. I passed it again the other day and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that mark, how more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men frequently say to me: “I should think you would feel lonesome down there and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days, and nights especially.” I am tempted to reply to such: This whole earth, which we inhabit, is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men, surely, the depot, the post office, the barroom, the meeting house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar … I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called “a handsome property” – though I never got a fair view of it – on the Walden Road driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home to my bed and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to Brighton – or Bright town – which place he would reach some time in the morning.
Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually being executed. Next to us is, not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it; and that is no more I than it is you.5
1.”Have you ever asked for that instruction by which we hear what cannot be heard, by which we perceive what cannot be perceived, by which we know what cannot be known?”.
2.”Hearing ye shall hear and shall in no wise understand, and seeing ye shall see and shall in no wise perceive”.
“The eyesight has another eyesight and the hearing another hearing and the voice another voice”.
3.He finds God and human life greater and better than has ever been said, as indeed they are greater and better than anyone has said or can say.
4.Compare Whitman: “I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before, or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep”.
5. Whitman: “Trippers and askers surround me, people I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live in, or the nation, the latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new, my dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues, the real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love, the sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations, battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events; these come to me days and nights and go from me again, but they are not the Me myself.
“Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle unitary, looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, looking with side curved head curious what will come next, both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it”.
BORN 1821. Entered Cosmic Consciousness 1859, at thirty-nine years. He was a Methodist and in high standing in his church. He prayed fervently for light, for assurance of salvation, etc. Seemed no use, so he ceased praying – then light broke gradually; no subjective light, but a steady, continuous intellectual illumination, and with it a deeper and deeper feeling of moral peace, rest and happiness. This intellectual illumination and moral peace steadily grew until the whole man was transformed. He became an acknowledged authority among enlightened and able men on all spiritual matters. Consciousness of immortality came shortly after intellectual and moral new birth. It really came with the others, but took longer to attain to its full growth. He had had the hope of immortality all along, in common with other members of his church, but never the thing itself or anything approaching it. Now (that is, since illumination) he does not look forward to immortality, but is conscious that he has attained to it, entered into possession and enjoyment of it. He was born in England; was a weaver; in America has for years been an undertaker. Is, from the point of view of the schools, entirely uneducated. The present writer passed several hours in his company, about 1890, and was impressed by his intellectual enlightenment, but far more by his perfect happiness, his absolute moral peace.
An informant, himself an able and thoughtful man, a dweller in a great capital, who all his life has seen, heard and read the best men and books, and who for years has been an earnest seeker for the truth, saw J. B. first in 1870 and has been intimate with him ever since. He says: “I had not heard him talk ten minutes before I knew that I was now for the first time in the presence of a man who had what I wanted. I have never met a man who was so mighty in the Scriptures. He knew the Bible almost by heart and had the same inspiration as Paul and John. There never was a time when I met J. B. that he did not by a word, a sentence, or a long talk, make it clear that he stood on a rock of solid truth.”
BORN 1822. Has been all his life a laboring man. Was, and is, esteemed as a saint and sage by every man who knew and knows him. His conversation is enlightened to an extraordinary degree. Is, of course, uneducated. Attained to Cosmic Consciousness in the year 1859, when he was in his thirty-seventh year. An informant, who knew C. P. well, says: “He has been a great dreamer of curious and remarkable dreams. His chief charm is his wonderful exposition of the Scriptures. He is the very embodiment of the living Christ. He despises money. One feels in his presence that here is a brother. His letters are the most charming I have ever received. The most curious and strange thing in his case is that he believes that death ends all. He has been a fine public speaker for forty years; first in the Methodist church, then for a time in a semi infidel vein, but since his enlightenment his talks have been mostly Biblical. He has strong socialistic views.”
The writer of the present volume has had two long talks with C. P. and can testify to his extraordinary intelligence. His want of faith in the continuance of the individual life seems at first sight to set him apart from the class of men having Cosmic Consciousness; but, first, as before noted, we must make great allowance for range of spiritual life on that plane; and, second, it must be noted that his conviction was, probably, to him, more optimistic than would have been that of the usual eternal life. He believes, is indeed sure, that after death he will be absorbed into God, and that in losing his individuality he will gain something much more valuable. His feeling, his conviction, his knowledge (as in all these cases) is that the best will happen. He gives a slightly different interpretation to this best – that is all.
In July, 1895, C. P. published a book, in which he endeavored to set forth some of the spiritual results of illumination in his case. Such a task is no light one, as many besides C. P. have found. It is, in fact, in all cases really an impossible task, as Paul, Whitman and others have testified. C. P. was less qualified than have been some other men of the class for the enterprise, and his attempt, though exceedingly interesting, cannot be pronounced a perfect success. The following quoted passages will show, however, to whoever can understand them, that C. P., beyond all doubt, belongs to the order of men treated of in this volume – a fact which was positively known to the present writer long before the book quoted was written. C. P. says:
Paul said “the Jews missed the kingdom of heaven because they sought it by the deeds of the law of Moses” – by the righteousness of the moral law – ”instead of seeking it through righteousness of faith” in the perfection of the order of existence – the faith of the Christ. They could not see that there are two separate and distinct kinds of righteousness, or laws – one imperfect, for the imperfect or carnal mind, and the other perfect, for the perfect or spiritual mind, which two states are as separate and distinct from each other as sheep are from goats.1
The life is not in believing there is a divinity somewhere, but in knowing it. To know the Word of the Truth, and to have its spirit generated in the mind and heart, is to have its pure off-spring – its Son – begotten within, consciously crying “Father” with certitude.2
The government of the carnal mind, which hath not the Son of Divinity begotten in it, hath no actual knowledge of what the only true Divinity is. No one knoweth the names of the actual Divinity and its Lamb until these are written in their understandings by special revelation to each one individually. On this Rock of the actual revelation of the Christ in the mind by its eternal Father the congregation of the true Christ is built. This is the sole immovable basis of certitude; and the world may continue to divide indefinitely into disagreeing sects until it receives this revelation, because it can have no certitude until then; but all who receive it see eye to eye, and they cannot disagree.3
It was of this very part–this Son begotten in him–which was the spiritual mind, that the Spirit of Truth said, “Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten thee.” And he knew the very day he was begotten–the very day he became conscious of being made alive to this Father of his understanding, because this spiritual Son in him spontaneously “cried Father” with natural certitude as it had not cried before. And thus this begotten Son of the eternal Spirit of Truth so cries in everyone in whom it is begotten, so that they, and they only, know how the first born was begotten. And these only know what the dominion of the Divinity is, for, “Except a man be thus born again he cannot see it”.4
The carnal mind can talk about the “Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man,” but it realizes nothing of either, because this Son of God is not begotten in it.5
Moreover, he said, “At that day”–the day when they should be conscious of this Spirit’s having come to them–”ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” And as it was impossible for the man to be personally in them, and they in him, it is clear that when the Spirit of Truth had written itself clearly in their consciousness this would be both the Father and the Son in them, and they in that, and the work was purely that of a spiritual mental state.6
“He that was least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than John,” because those who entered into that were made perfect by the fullness of Light of the eternal Spirit. Hence “the law of the prophets were until John, but with him began the preaching of the kingdom of God”.7
And to these (the enlightened) it is entirely clear that this Divinity, being eternal, all existence must be eternal, because all Truth is simply the Truth of existence. To these existence is one eternal immensity of infinite existence, acting with infinite force, in an inevitable, infinite, therefore absolutely perfect order, in whose perfection, or truth, all things and their action must of necessity be included, and this Paul expressed in the one comprehensive, basic sentence, “All things are of the Divinity”.8
The apostles were ministers of the new Covenant, which was based on this Rock, which was an entirely new basis of ratiocination, and they were not ministers of the old covenant of the moral law at all. The moral law, being the knowledge of good and evil, is the “ministration of death,” while the new law is the ministration of life.
The old is the minister of condemnation, which is the death, and the new is the minister of justification, which is the life, hence those who pass into the dominion of the new necessarily pass out of the dominion of the old, and thus they must be “made free from the old,” and it is thus that there is no condemnation, no death, to those who are in the Covenant of the Christ”.9
This reveals the boundless radiance of the infinite face of the real Divinity, beaming on him who sees it its equipoise of “Mercy and Truth”.10
And when this Christ is formed in the mind and heart it is known to be the “Spirit of faith” in the infinite order of all existence as all true, and for this reason it “resisteth not the evil” which is an inevitable part of the Order, and seen in the Light of the whole Truth to be all good, having a perfect use.11
And it is thus that this Spirit of Faith in the whole Order is the Christ formed in the mind, and this is the “Lamb of God which taketh away all sin”–by taking away all resistance of the natural Order of existence. When this Christ is formed in the mind then it has the perfect Light by which all the things of the Divinity of all Truth are clearly understood. Then, and only then, it knoweth how all the things of the new Covenant are spiritually discerned, for then, and only then, it knoweth the only true Divinity and its Christ. And then the mind knoweth with entire certitude, by its own experience, that all that the first born, Paul, or any of the believers, had of the knowledge of the Truth (and they had its fullness) came to them by internal revelation, and not by any external “signs and wonders”.12
By being perfectly enlightened by the Spirit of all existence he was reconciled to it all, therefore could not resist any part of it as if it had no right to be; and he cheerily saw that the way to the peace and harmony of mankind with each other was through the reconciliation to, or harmony with, the infinite Order, which he saw to be all Truth, therefore infinite perfection.
1.The same misconception is universal, or almost universal, today. To every man who has had the smallest flash of Cosmic Consciousness this is as clear as day, “Unless your righteousness,” says Jesus, “shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.” And he does not mean to exceed in degree, but in kind. “Except a man be born anew.” “If any man is in Christ he is a new creature” – not the old creature bettered, but another, a new, creature.
2.Here again is a distinct and absolute mark proving the writer to have had the Cosmic Sense. No merely self conscious man knows of God as he knows of mundane matters of fact. Every Cosmic Conscious man does so. He knows by actual inward vision just as he knows (by self consciousness) that he is a distinct entity.
3.In other words: The merely self conscious mind may believe in God but cannot know Him–has never seen God, can never see Him. The only men who can and do know the Deity are the Cosmic Conscious men (the consciousness of the Deity and of the Cosmos being the same thing). What C. P. very properly calls the congregation of Christ is simply made up of those who have been illumined. This illumination is the sole basis of certainty in these matters. If all the world had Cosmic Consciousness all would agree on many basic questions of religion and philosophy which are now disputed–though doubtless other questions, many of which are not in sight at the present time, would arise and be disputed upon.
4.Needs no comment; is simply a statement of the definiteness of the new birth–that is, of the oncoming of Cosmic Consciousness.
5.God is the Father of each one of us; but no one, without illumination, can realize what these words mean.
6. Needs no comment.
7.Jesus looked upon himself as the first man of the new (Cosmic Conscious) race. Among merely self conscious men none ranked higher than John, but the least man of the new order would be greater than he.
8.One aspect of the Cosmic vision.
9.The “Rock” is, of course, the Cosmic Sense. Whether or not any of the apostles, besides Paul, had themselves Cosmic Consciousness, their work was on that plane, since the object of it was to preserve and extend the teaching of Jesus. In Cosmic Consciousness there is no condemnation, no sin, no evil, no death. This may be a hard saying, but it is true.
10. “This” refers to the Cosmic Vision, the “’Brahmic Splendor.”
11.”This Christ,” i.e., Cosmic Consciousness. When that comes to a mar he can say, as Whitman says: “There is in fact no evil”.
12.To the self conscious mind there is good in the world but also a great deal of evil. To the Cosmic Conscious mind all is good; there is no evil. The chief function of those few Cosmic Conscious minds that so far the world has had has been to reconcile (as far as may be) the self conscious mind to the cosmic order, which seemed to the one perfect, to the other imperfect. Whitman expresses this very well in a short poem:
“When the full grown poet came,
Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night), saying, He is mine:
But out spake too the soul of men, proud, jealous, and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone;
–Then the full grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand;
And today and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands,
Which he will never release until he reconciles the two,
And wholly and joyously blends them.”
“MY EARLY HOME was one of quite narrow limitations. I did not find myself among books, though such was my desire for them that nothing else had any attractions for me. My mental activity must have been noticeable, as I can now see it, in comparison with that of others about me. I never found much pleasure in the ordinary amusements of boyhood. I preferred to be alone, and in summer I loved most of all to be in the woods. I found companionship in the trees; they seemed nearer to me than human beings. I used to talk to them, and think they said something to me. All my life the woods have thus drawn me to themselves, and now, if I could, I would live among the trees. All my life I have loved to be alone and still do. Whether, according to Byron’s dictum, I am ‘a wild beast or a God’ I will not stop to guess. It is also true that I love the society of congenial spirits in domestic and general life.
“I soon learned that men regulated their intercourse with each other by conventional rules and not by what I now understand as spiritual laws, but which I could not then name and could not understand, though I felt their presence, as Wordsworth felt ‘an outward presence’ in nature.
“The shocks that my spiritual consciousness experienced as I came in contact with rough men were such as no language can reach. There has been a gradual development of this perception, or spiritual vision, all through life. I early began to inquire how things came to be as they are, and that is what I am now trying to do. As things look to me now, I must always regard it as a misfortune that I was born into the atmosphere of the Calvinistic theology. I lived for a score of years under the shadow of that black cloud–years which might have otherwise been spent in healthy growth. This theology I tried to accept intellectually because everybody about me did; but my soul never endorsed it. At the age of forty I was quite free from the dwarfing influence of such a line of thought, and since then have breathed freely.
“What I am I owe mostly to books. I have been but little in contact with men who could have taught me and given me strength. A year or two at an academy and twenty weeks in college is all I have known in those directions. As I came out from the shadow of that dark theology I chanced to hear Emerson. I then got his books. I have been a close student of them for fifty years. I owe more to him than to, I almost might say, all other men beside. Next I found my way to Darwin. Mine was the only copy of the Origin of Species to be found in my community for ten years.
“The first real mental illumination I remember to have experienced was when I saw that the universe exists in each of its individual atoms–that is, the universe is the result of a few simple processes infinitely repeated. When a drop of water has been mathematically measured, every principle will have been used which would be called for in the measurement of the heavens. All life on the globe is sustained by digestion and assimilation; when by voluntary and traumatic action these stop death follows. The history of an individual mind is the history of the race. Know one thing in its properties and relations and you will know all things. All crystallography is in one grain of sand, all animal life in one insect, all vegetable in a single bud. I was then about forty.
“My next was when I saw there was no boundary line between vegetable and animal life, and hence no beginning nor end to either. The first of these experiences came to me long before I found what Thales said on this point. These statements are perhaps enough to indicate the direction in which my intellect has developed.
“Whatever calm delights have come to me through the intellect the true grandeur of my days has been found in the atmosphere of the moral sentiment–a grandeur which reduces all material happenings to the value of toys. I felt this when a boy as an overshadowing presence that was constantly drawing me away from all that seemed to make up the life of those about me–drawing me away I knew not how or whither. What I then saw dimly, or as ‘through a glass darkly,’ now shines all about me with a brightness exceeding that of the sun. In its light I see that love and justice cannot be limited by what, in the poverty of our ignorance, we call time and space. Hence all the thinking and all the teaching that has been done in the world, founded in our ideas of time and space, are blown away like chaff, or are consumed like ‘wood, hay and stubble.’
“I was nearly sixty when I came to see that what is true at any time and in any place is also true at all times and in all places, or, what we call law, found anywhere will be found everywhere, though men may give it different names. What men call gravity holds in mental no less than in physical phenomena, and all physical phenomena, at their best, are dull and murky till they come up into spiritual life. As an illustration that every law has its universality take the familiar law or principle that action and reaction are equal. What is this but reaping the whirlwind after one has sown the wind, or how does that natural law differ from this teaching: ‘Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap?’ Are they aught but different strains in the great cosmic melody?
“Soon after I began to understand the paradoxical teachings of Jesus, as when he declared that ‘he that would save his life must lose it and he that would lose it (for Jesus’ sake) alone shall find it.’ The same in Paul, ‘as having nothing yet possessing all things.’ From this it was but a step to a knowledge of the central principle of all spiritual life–namely, the giving of one’s self for others.
“About ten years ago, at the age of sixty, I found myself tormented with that question with which intelligence has wrestled since there was any of that commodity in the earth–namely, the beginning of things. When in deep agony, a side light was flashed upon my soul, with almost blinding suddenness–’If you could find a beginning, would not that beginning be itself an end?’ Hence, if you could find one end of things, would not that show you that there must also be another end? What! an end of all things, beyond which there could be only blankness, as there must have been before things began to be, if they did begin. No! ‘There was no beginning and there can be no end!’ Since that moment’s experience I have not been troubled as to the immortality of the soul, and I now think I never shall be again.
“Five years ago I had an experience which has proved more fruitful to me perhaps than all others combined. I had a fall, striking on my head. I lost consciousness. In regaining possession of myself I passed through all the experiences of the race! In the first stage I simply was aware of the fact that I was something; what that was, I neither knew nor cared to know. I did not know what knowing was. I was calm, blissfully happy, and to me there was no past nor any future. There was to me no time, no place, no anything, save that tiny speck of consciousness–myself. As there was nothing to note duration–that stage might have been in duration incomprehensible. At any rate, such was its lesson to me.
“This stage of blissful existence was ended by my discovering that there was something about me which was not myself. I began to see and seeing I began to reason, and so I at length found my objective world. As in the previous stage, I had no use for time, and so, to me, there was none. This stage might have lasted an eternity, so far as I took note of it. I was busy in studying myself first, and then the things about me, and so the infinite peace of my first experience was broken up.
“Unable to think otherwise, I concluded that what I saw must be like myself, and so I began my acquaintance with this outer world by transferring to its objects what I found in myself. This stage lasted in my experience from the moment I saw things about me to the dawn of experimental science. I then became acquainted with the beginning of all knowledge and especially of all religion. Of course, self consciousness soon returned and I came back into my old world again. Since that hour my experience has seemed more than that of all my previous life. Nothing is now any longer dim or obscure. My spiritual expansion has been rapid in these three or four past years. I live in the world, but I seem to myself not of it!
“I enjoy what I must call spiritual vision. No sooner does the intellect seize upon a fact than I see it in its spiritual relations, no less than in its material, only much more clearly. The perfection of mathematics is simply a demonstration of the spiritual truth that God cannot lie.
“Natural phenomena are but the shadows of the spirit from which they spring, as the human face changes under the influence of love, hatred or fear. Color in nature, which washes all things in its warm waves, shows us what spiritual love would do if once let loose in the world. The Bible is simply a picture, which I see with infinite clearness. This vision seems to extend to the atom dance in nature, no less than through all laws, all knowledge, all science, all history and all religion.
“You set me a hard task when you bid me give ‘the difference I perceive in myself’ since these experiences. I find no language in which I can tell of the things in this realm where I now am. I have not even discovered an alphabet. When, O when, shall I be able to reveal its poetry? I see everywhere and in every object unceasing motion, and in that motion a creative force forever and forever repeating and re-repeating the same simple process as to infinity. Through all nature the grand rhythms roll and heaven and earth are filled with the melody. Men are but boys chasing shadows. The spiritual significance of the world none seem to see–the infinite simplicity of its processes none care to understand.”
This seems to the editor to be probably, though not certainly, a true case of Cosmic Consciousness, in which the cosmic plane was reached gradually, and not as usually happens per saltum. If it is not that, then it is a case of gradual ascent to the extreme limit of the self conscious mind. In any case, the experience of H. B. is interesting and instructive and well deserves a place in this book.
IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR R. P. S. says: “I was about baptism came to me. To it I attribute results‡ immensely disproportioned to my very moderate natural ability or knowledge. A scientific, accurate diagnosis of it all would be a most valuable contribution to human knowledge.”
The experience may now be given in R. P. S.’s own words, beginning:
“Having always known that upon conversion the believer received the Holy Spirit, and that his guidance and power would be known, when needed, in unfolding the treasures of Scriptures, in service or in trials, I had not looked for any other special manifestations of His presence. And yet there was a large class of passages in the Old and New Testament the conditions of which were not fully met by any consciousness of my own, full as had been the knowledge of pardon, adoption and standing in Christ, nor yet by a later experience, which came to me ten years after my conversion, of the wonderful inward cleansing of the blood ‘from all sin.’
“I had read ‘Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.’ This was not true in my experience, in the full meaning evidently intended by the words. There did not always from my heart ‘flow rivers of living water’ freely and spontaneously. Too often the force pump, rather than the fountain, would have represented my condition. As I gazed in the mirror of the Word, upon the glorious person of my Lord, my soul was often bowed in adoring love, but I had never come to ‘know’ the Comforter in such a fullness that I could realize His indwelling presence as even better than that of the visible person of Jesus. I had read that as men were ‘possessed’ by an evil spirit and led to do things far beyond their natural powers, so these ‘filled with the spirit,’ seemed to be carried out of, and beyond, themselves. I had read the charge against the apostles, of being ‘drunken,’ and that afterwards Paul brought the same thought of the elevation of wine, as the illustration of being ‘filled with the Spirit.’ This seemed to be an ordained condition, since God’s commands are always promises; just as his promises are commands; the promises being always larger than the commands. As yet I had never known, in my consciousness, a being thus ‘filled with the Spirit,’ or the meaning of John the Baptist’s declaration, ‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.’
“So ignorant was I, even in the matters of the greatest importance to my spiritual interests, that, in finding the inward cleansing and the outward ‘victory’ over sin–that ‘faith which overcometh’ the world–I did not press beyond my education alhabits of thought to recognize that a far more glorious manifestation of God was yet to be known by the Spirit. I then scarcely noticed that it was after our Lord had breathed on his disciples. With the words ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost,’ they had yet to wait ten days at one time in prayerful expectation for the more full baptism of the Spirit; nor that it was some time after this event that, ‘When they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.’ I was not, indeed, in the condition of the ‘disciples’ who as yet had ‘not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost’; and yet I had formed no conception of what the promised baptism ‘with the Holy Ghost and with fire’ could be.
“Deeply thankful for the privileges of ‘sanctification through faith,’ realized in an unexpected fullness a few months before, I one day joined in the woods a few Christians who had met to wait before God for the baptism of the Spirit. Except a few low hymns or brief prayers, the half hour was spent in solemn silence. At length ‘there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing, mighty wind, and it filled all the (place) where they were sitting.’ No uninspired words could so describe my impressions. And yet no leaf above or blade of grass below was moved–all nature was still. It was to our souls, not to our senses, that the Lord revealed himself by the Spirit. My whole being seemed unutterably full of the God upon whom I had long believed. The perception of my senses could bring no such consciousness as now was mine. I understood the super sensual visions of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Paul. No created thing was now so real to my soul as the Creator Himself. It was awful, yet without terror. I lost no part of my senses, and yet they were all wrapped up in the sublime manifestation. A question put to me was answered as briefly as possible, that my soul might lose nothing of the Heavenly Presence enwrapping and filling my being. I do not remember to have then told anyone of it, but days afterwards, when I rejoined my wife, she burst into tears as we met, before we had spoken a word, so great was the change in my appearance. ‘Songs in the night season,’ the living waters welling up from my heart, came with the consciousness of waking. An awe, sweet but not burdensome, shadowed my spirit, as every moment was filled with the presence of God; nor did it leave me in the midst of the most engrossing occupations. Life became a psalm of praise.
“This elevation of feeling necessarily subsided after a season, but it left me with an inner consciousness of God which is expressed by the words: ‘I will dwell in them and walk in them.’ ‘We will come to him and make our abode with him.’ The scene upon the Cross of Calvary became often more real than the senses could make it. Without the materiality of bodily sight, the holy countenance of Jesus, in its tender, suffering humanity, lightened by the glory of divinity, seems now to me to look down from the cross, upon assemblies, as I tell of redemption for sinners. It is painful to endeavor to speak of these things. My poor words seem rather to cover than to reveal them. Would that the glorious reality would be conveyed to other hearts!”
Here is a case of ascent into the full light of the morning before the actual rising of the sun. This man was highly privileged, but it was not given to him to see “the heavens opened.” He passed into the “Brahmic Bliss,” but did not see (as far as it appears) the “Brahmic Splendor.”
‡ Referring to work done by him almost miraculous in character and quantity but which cannot be further specified here.
BORN 1830. Entered Cosmic Consciousness 1860, at thirty years. The writer has (at present) no details to give in this case and only includes it for the age of illumination.
WE ARE INDEBTED to Max Mueller and to Protap Chunder Mozoomdar for such scanty details as we have in this case. Their evidence is perhaps all the more valuable, since the first named, at least, who is the principal reporter, has never shown in his writings any knowledge or appreciation of the faculty here called Cosmic Consciousness, although his lifework in Indian literature has brought him in contact with the more or less perfect expression of it a thousand times. All that is done here is to epitomize such information as the reporters above named have given us.
Ramakrishna Paramahansa was born in 1835, in a village near Jahanabad (Hooghly district), near Kamarpukur. His chief place of residence is said to have been at a temple of the Goddess Kali, on the bank of the Ganges, near Calcutta. He died 1886, in the Kasipur Garden, two miles north of Calcutta. He is said to have exercised an extraordinary influence upon a large number of intelligent and highly educated men, including Protap Chunder Mozoomdar and Keshub Chunder Sen. A score of young men, who attached themselves closely to him, have, since his death, become ascetics. They follow his teaching by giving up the enjoyment of wealth and carnal pleasure, living together in a college and retiring at times to holy and solitary places. Besides these, we are told that a great number of men with their families are ardently devoted to his cause.
Ramakrishna never moved in the world or was a man of the world. He seems, from the first, to have practiced severe asceticism. He was a Brahmin by caste, well formed in body, but the austerities through which his character developed seemed to have permanently disordered his system, leaving upon his features an appearance of debility, paleness and shrunkenness which excited compassion. Yet, in the midst of his emaciation, his face retained a fullness, a childlike tenderness, a profound visible humbleness, an unspeakable sweetness of expression, and a smile such as Mozoomdar says he never saw on any other face. A Hindu saint is always particular about his externals. He wears the Garua cloth, eats according to strict forms, refuses to have intercourse with men, is a rigid observer of caste, is always proud and professes secret wisdom; he is always a universal counselor and dispenser of charms. But the man Ramakrishna was singularly devoid of any such claims. His dress and diet did not differ from those of other men, except in the general negligence he showed towards both, and as to caste, he openly broke it every day. He repudiated the title of a teacher, showed displeasure at any exceptional honor which people tried to pay him, and he emphatically disclaimed the knowledge of secrets and mysteries. He worshiped no particular Hindu deity, neither Siva, Vishnu, or the Saktis, and yet he accepted all the doctrines, the embodiments, the usages and devotional practices of every religious cult. Each in turn was infallible to him. His religion meant ecstasy, his worship transcendental insight, his whole nature burnt day and night with the permanent fire and fever of a strange faith and feeling. His conversation was a ceaseless breaking forth of his inward fire and lasted for long hours. He was often merged in rapturous ecstasy and outward unconsciousness during the day, particularly when he spoke of his favorite spiritual experiences or heard any striking response to them. Krishna became to him the incarnation of loving devotion, and we are told that, while meditating on him, his heart full of the burning love of God, his features would suddenly become stiff and motionless, his eyes lose their sight, and while completely unconscious himself, tears would run down his rigid, pale, yet smiling face; and while in that state he would sometimes break out into prayers, songs and utterances, the force and pathos of which would pierce through the hardest heart and bring tears to eyes that never wept before through the influence of religion.
What is most extraordinary, his religion was not confined to the worship of Hindu deities. For long days he subjected himself to various kinds of discipline to realize the Mohammedan idea of all powerful Allah. He let his beard grow, he fed on Moslem diet, he continually repeated sentences from the Koran. For Christ his reverence was deep and genuine. He bowed his head at the name of Jesus, honored the doctrine of his sonship, and once or twice attended Christian places of worship. He showed how it was possible to unify all the religions of the world by seeing only what is good in each one of them, and by sincere reverence for everyone who has suffered for the truth, for their faith in God and for their love of men. He left nothing in writing. His friends wrote some of his sayings. He did not desire to found a sect.
Here follow a few more or less characteristic passages from his teachings:
How to get rid of the lower self. The blossom vanishes of itself as the fruit grows, so will your lower self vanish as the divine grows in you.
So long as the heavenly expanse of the heart is troubled and disturbed by the gusts of desire, there is little chance of our beholding therein the luminary God. The beatific godly vision occurs only in the heart which is calm and wrapped in divine communion.
The soiled mirror never reflects the rays of the sun; so the impure and the unclean in heart that are subject to Maya (illusion) never perceive the glory of Bhagavan, the Holy One. But the pure in heart see the Lord as the clear mirror reflects the sun. So be holy.
A recently married young woman remains deeply absorbed in the performance of domestic duties, so long as no child is born to her. But no sooner is a son born to her than she begins to neglect household details, and does not find much pleasure in them. Instead thereof she fondles the newborn baby all the livelong day and kisses it with intense joy. Thus man in his state of ignorance is ever busy in the performance of all sorts of works, but as soon as he sees in his heart the Almighty God he finds no pleasure in them. On the contrary, his happiness consists now only in serving God and doing his works. He no longer finds happiness in any other occupation, and cannot draw himself from the ecstasy of the Holy Communion.
As one can ascend to the top of a house by means of a ladder, or a bamboo, or a staircase, or a rope, so divers are the ways and means to approach God, and every religion in the world shows one of these ways.
Why can we not see the Divine Mother? She is like a high-born lady, transacting all her business from behind the screen – seeing all, but seen by none. Her devout sons only see Her by going near Her, behind the screen of Maya.
You see many stars at night in the sky, but find them not when the sun rises. Can you say there are no stars in the heavens of day? So, O man, because you behold not God in the days of your ignorance say not that there is no God.
In the play of hide and seek, if the player succeeds in touching the grand dame (Boori), he is no longer liable to be made a thief of by the seeker. Similarly, by once seeing God, man is no longer bound down by the fetters of the world. Just as the person touching the Boori is free to go about wherever he chooses without being pursued and made a thief of, so also in this world’s playground there is no fear to him who has once touched the feet of God. He attains freedom from all worldly cares and anxieties, and nothing can ever bind him again.
The pearl oyster that contains the precious pearl is in itself of very little value, but it is essential for the growth of the pearl. The shell itself may prove to be of no use to the man who has got the pearl. So ceremonies and rites may not be necessary for him who has attained the Highest Truth – God.
A little boy wearing the mask of the lion’s head looks indeed very terrible. He goes where his little sister is at play and yells out hideously, which at once shocks and terrifies his sister, making her cry out in the highest pitch of her voice in the agony of despair to escape from the clutch of the terrible being. But when her little tormentor puts off the mask the frightened girl at once recognizes her loving brother and flies up to him, exclaiming, “Oh, it is my dear brother, after all!” Even such is the case of all the men of the world who are deluded and frightened and led to do all sorts of things by the nameless power of Maya, or Nescience, under the mask of which Brahman hides himself. But when the veil of Maya is taken from Brahman, the men then do not see in him a terrible and uncompromising Master, but their own beloved Other Self.
It cannot, perhaps, be proved (in the usual way) that Ramakrishna was a case of Cosmic Consciousness. We cannot point to the presence of the subjective light or to sudden illumination at a certain age. Still there is little doubt about the diagnosis, and we can readily understand our want of definite information, which is probably due to the fact that those who reported the case to us had no conception of its real nature, or what were the characteristic and essential symptoms. To them subjective light (if they knew of it) would probably seem a matter of no consequence, and equally so the age and the more or less suddenness of the oncoming of such features in the case as they did report.
AMERCHANT IN A PRETTY large way of business. The advent of the Cosmic Sense–which was momentary and incomplete–made no visible change in his life, and very few of the hundreds who knew him had the least suspicion that he ever had any experience out of the common. He is not regarded as a saint or exactly as a sage, but he has many warm friends and is in several respects remarkably intelligent. He was born May 25, 1837. On the night of December 31, 1868, in the middle of his thirty-second year, he had the following dream. It is not at all clear that the dream had any connection with the subsequent illumination. I present it in his own language as part of the case, and each reader may form his own opinion as to its importance. The writer, however, may say that it seems to him that the sense of intense light experienced in it, if not actually the subjective light that belongs to the oncoming of Cosmic Consciousness, bore some close relation to it:
“I thought,” he writes, “I was standing behind the counter of my shop in the middle of a bright, sunshiny afternoon, and instantly, in a flash, it became darker than the darkest night, darker than a mine, and the gentleman who was talking with me ran out into the street. Following him, although it was so dark, I could see hundreds and thousands of people pouring into the street, all wondering what had happened. Just then I noticed in the sky, in the far southwest, a bright light like a star, about the size of the palm of my hand, and in an instant it seemed to grow larger and larger and nearer and nearer, until it began to light up the darkness. When it got to the size of a man’s hat, it divided itself into twelve smaller lights with a larger one in the centre, and then very rapidly it grew much larger, and instantly I knew that this was the coming of Christ. The moment this thought occurred to me the whole southwestern heavens became filled with a shining host, and in the centre of it Christ and the twelve apostles. By this time it was lighter than the lightest day that could possibly be imagined, and as the shining host advanced toward the zenith, the friend with whom I was talking, exclaimed; ‘That is my Saviour!’ and I thought he immediately left his body and ascended into the sky, and I thought I was not good enough to accompany him. Then I awoke.
“For some days afterwards I was very strongly impressed by this dream and could not tell it to anyone. In about a fortnight I told it to my family; afterwards to my Sunday school class, and since I have frequently repeated it. It was the most vivid dream I ever had.”
The rest of his experience is drawn from a letter, dated June 4, 1892:
“I had been for three years or more in the ‘wine press.’ I knew there must be a place of rest, or else the whole Bible was a lie. I had, from a boy, read and thought much about ‘the second coming,’ and, while I laughed at the ‘Millerites’ and knew that they were idiotic in their expectations, yet I still had enough of the marvelous in me to be looking for a sudden change of some sort. One day, in the late spring of 1871 (he was then just thirty-four years old), Mr. B. (the J. B. of this volume) told my wife that my ease was a very curious one. Said he: ‘Your husband is born again and don’t know it. He is a little spiritual baby, with eyes not yet open, but he will know it in a very short time.’ And about three weeks after that, about a quarter to eight o’clock, while walking on Second Avenue (N. Y.) with my wife, on my way to a lecture at the Liberal Club, I suddenly exclaimed to my wife: ‘A., I have eternal life!’ I cannot say there was a tremendous, though there was a marked, exaltation. The prominent feeling was a sort of undying assurance that the Christ in me had arisen and would remain in everlasting consciousness–and it has. There was a time after this, three years later, in August, 1874, on a Long Branch boat, when in a crowd of people, sitting, leaning back in my chair, I had an experience of the greatest mental and spiritual exaltation–when it seemed as if my whole soul, and body, too, were suffused with light; but this never made me forget the first experience, which, while something like the latter, was not so transporting.”
BORN 1840. Entered Cosmic Consciousness in 1872, at the age of thirty-two years. Was a member of a Presbyterian Church in good standing. Upon illumination left the church and has had no connection with any similar organization since. Was always an earnest, thoughtful man. “In 1872 (an informant says) his friends thought for a time that he was becoming insane.‡ He passed through a grave spiritual crisis, the exact nature of which is not known to me. Whatever it was, it, to all appearance, passed over, and he has been ever since not only sane but exceptionally intelligent and right minded. He is the best read Emerson scholar that I know. In all his home relations – by wife, children and friends – he is greatly beloved. He has a positive certainty of individual immortality. He is a very modest man, but has a certain air or manner which impresses those who meet him that he (being a mere clerk) is a richer man than his millionaire employers, and that he knows it.”
‡ Louis Lambert – that is, Balzac – was supposed by his friends to be insane at the time of illumination. Mohammed feared be was becoming insane. In the case of M. C. L. (infra) the same question came up. This question has undoubtedly presented itself to the mind of almost every person who has experienced illumination.
BORN 1842. Entered Cosmic Consciousness 1877, at the age of thirty-five years. Had a very strong and original mind and a wonderful memory. A gentleman who knew him writes: “He was an extraordinary conversationalist; it was as if he had absorbed the minds and works of Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer, and spoke with the authority and knowledge of all three; their works, thought, language, were at his tongue’s end; it was an education to be with him for a few days. He was a wonderful violinist–the equal of the best not known as a star. He heard of J. B. [the J. B. of this volume] in 1877, sent for him and had a five hours’ talk with him (he had a capacity of taking in a case, subject, book, musical composition, what not, and retaining permanently all he heard or read about it). He asked for another interview, and after a second talk of two hours said: ‘Now, Mr. B., I have done. I have just one more question to ask you and only one. Have you got what the scientists might call “a New Prime”?’ ‘I have,’ replied B., ‘and I can further add that you will get it, too. I don’t know when, but you will get it.’ J. B. went back to his own city that afternoon. The following afternoon he received a telegram from W. H. W. ‘I have got that Prime.’ I afterwards heard him describe the experience. He said: ‘I went into the yard to the pump, and just as I got there it came–a shock, a flood of light, and along with, or immediately following, the shock and the subjective glow–like a great internal blaze–came the feeling of absolute harmony with the power that made all things and is in all things. All striving stopped–there was nothing to strive for–I was at peace.’”