A Wisdom Archive on Cosmic Consciousness

What is Cosmic Consciousness?

Cosmic Consciousness was coined by the Canadian psychologist Richard M. Bucke, in his book Cosmic Consciousness 1902. He describes Cosmic Consciousness as a transpersonal mode of consciousness, an awareness of the universal mind and one''s unity with it. Cosmic Consciousness prime characteristic is an awareness of the life and order in the universe.

An individual who at attains the state of Cosmic Consciousness is often described as ''Enlightened'' and such a person is also said to have a sense of immortality, not of attaining it but of already having it. Burke saw this state of consciousness as the next stage in human evolution, very much as spiritualists have always seen it.

Bucke argues that during the course of humanity''s evolutionary development there are three forms of consciousness.

• Simple Consciousness, our instinctual consciousness.
• Self Consciousness, that self-awareness that allows a human to realize hirself as a distinct entity.
• Cosmic Consciousness, a new developing faculty at the pinnacle of our evolution.

Bucke outlines the evolutionary struggle on our planet which has produced self-consciousness and then describes the appearance of a new species that possesses cosmic consciousness, a consciousness that expands to become one with all. Bucke theorizes that, with increasing frequency, persons like Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Walt Whitman and others are making their appearance on our planet and by their teaching are helping to transform life on this planet. This evolutionary process continues up until today. Bucke studied the lives of these persons that had attained cosmic consciousness and found common characteristics such as:

• intuitive understanding
• elevated moral stature
• loss of sense of sin
• intellectual illumination
• sense of immortality
• no fear of death
• definite moment or period of transformation

"The person who passes through this experience will learn in the few minutes, or even moments, of its continuance more than in months or years of study, and he will learn much that no study every taught or can teach. Especially does he obtain such a conception of *the whole*...Along with moral elevation and intellectual illumination comes what must be called, for want of a better term, a sense of immortality."

From his book he describes how those he interviewed had experienced the state:

"Like a flash there is presented to his consciousness a clear conception (a vision) in outline of the meaning and drift of the universe...He sees and knows that the cosmos...is in fact...in very truth a living presence. He sees that instead of men being, as it were, patches of life scattered through an infinite sea of non-living substance, they are in reality specks of relative death in an infinite ocean of life. He sees that the life which is in man is as immortal as God is; that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of every individual is in the long run absolutely certain."

 

Cosmic Consciousness according to Evelyn Underhill

Cosmic Consciousness represents the greatest possible extension of the spiritual consciousness in the direction of Pure Being: the blind intent stretching here receives its reward in a profound experience of Eternal Life. In this experience the departmental activities of thought and feeling, the consciousness of I-hood, of space and time...all that belongs to the World of Becoming and our own place therein...are suspended. The vitality which we are accustomed to split amongst these various things, is gathered up to form a state of pure apprehension...a vivid intuition of the Transcendent."

"This is that perfect unity of consciousness, that utter concentration on an experience of love, which excludes all conceptual and analytic acts. Hence, when the mystic says that his faculties were suspended, that he *knew all and knew nought,* he really means that we are so concentrated on the Absolute that he ceased to consider his separate existence...so merged in it that he could not perceive it as an object of thought, as the bird cannot see the air which supports it, nor the fish the ocean in which it swims. He really *knows all but thinks nought, perceives all, but conceives nought.*"

From Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill.

Cosmic Consciousness according to Marsha Sinetar

"The peak experience is critical to any discussion of the mystic''s journey, since through it and because of it the individual gains an overarching and penetrating view into what he is at his best, into what he is when he simply *is.* The peak experience means that the person experiences himself *being* rather than becoming. He also experiences direct...the Transcendant nature of reality. He enters into the Absolute, becoming one with it, if only for an instant. It is a life-altering instant which many have described as one in which the mind stops, as a time in which the paradoxical change/ changeless nature opens up to a person."

"The peak experience expands the individual''s field of consciousness to include everything in the universe...he feels he *has* everything because he experiences everything within. This field is what author Joseph Chilton Pearce calls the *crack in the cosmic egg.* Although Pearce is also talking about the metanoia... the transformation of an individual''s entire believe system which accompanies the peak experience or the moment of illumination...he writes of the exquisite inshight which makes *all things new again,* the unifying, integrative moment which provides the individual with a glimpse of the connectiveness of all things...the micro-macro web of the universe, interrelationships of all people and things."

From Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics by Marsha Sinetar.