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Uw 
 
 'U 
 
 COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS; A PAPER READ 
 BEFORE THE AMERICAN MEDICO-PSY- 
 CHOLO(iICAL ASSOCIATION IN PHILA- 
 DELPHIA, i8 MAY, 1894, HY DR. R. M. 
 BUCKE 
 
 ' ' Light rare, untel/able. lighting the very light. ' 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 THE CONSERVATOR 
 
 1894 
 
 t* 
 
 ''^m^ 
 
^F 
 
 VtfftbT WHlTiWAN PO^blCATIONS 
 
 I<eavei>l Ol" «ira»»l. Comprises all the author's Poetical Works down to date, 
 
 1892. I vol.. crown 8vo, gilt top, uncut edges, ... Ifaoo 
 
 ('Oin|llet« Pr«me WorktI. Containing " Specimen Days and Collect " 
 
 complete, and all the later prose from ■'November Houghs" and " (Jood-by 
 
 My Fancy." i vol., crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, uncut edges, #2.00 
 
 Above volumes, being )/ hitiiian' s ( •omptele II '.x-^i.are bound uniform; set, 2 vols..;f 4 
 
 Npfelnu'll BH.VH «"<• «"«••«'«'*• i vol.. lamo., cloth, $1.50 
 
 HfOVeiiltoer BoiikIih, Containing I'oenis under the title of " Sands at Sev- 
 enty ;" also in Prose, "A liackward (llanoe o'er Traveled Roads," and a Col- 
 lection of Kssays on Shakspere, Ihirns, Tennyson, etc. i vol.. crown 8vo, gilt 
 top, uncut edges, . . ■ ■ If'-^S 
 
 <ilO«Ml-by. My FBlll'y. Containing all I'ocms later than •• Sands at Seventy," 
 and a number of Essays in Prose. Crown 8vo, gilt tops, uniform with " Novem- 
 ber Houghs," • *'°° 
 
 After all SfOl to «"r«ate Only. ' >nly a sm.dl balance of the original 
 edition, Boston, 1871. lamo cloth, ... 5°^- 
 Aiiihor'N AiitOKraph Edition 
 
 CoinpletP Works, Kdition, 600 Copies. 1 vol., large octavo, half cloth, 
 paper label *»2°" 
 
 IjpaVPN of OraHH. Pocket Edition. i88y. lamo, morocco tuck $10.00 
 
 At the tiiraveHlllo of Walt Wilitinnn. Addiesses and Letters. Kd- 
 ited by Horace L. Tr.iubel. Edition limited. Kine gray paper, . 50c. 
 
 Walt Whitman. P>y Richard Maurice liucke. Illustrated with portrait of 
 Whitman, etched by Herbert H. Cilchrist, England ; a portrait from life of 
 Whitman in 1880 ; portraits of Whitman's father and mother, and three other 
 illustrations, umo, cloth, gilt top, inicut, .... #2.00 
 
 t'amtien'N <'om|»linient to Walt Whitman on HIn Neventi- 
 eth Birtiltlay. With frontispiece from bust by Sidney H. Morse. Con- 
 taining the Addresses, Letters, Notes and Telegrams. Edited by Horace L. 
 Traubel. Octavo, cloth, gill top. .... S°^- 
 
 In re Walt Whitman. Edited by Wliitman's Literary Executors. Con- 
 tains Essays and Poems, original or inaccessible, irom Symonds. Sarra?in. 
 Ingcrsoll, O'Coimor, Knortz, Rolleston, Schmidt and others. Edition limited 
 to I. ixx) copies, numbered. Cloth. $3.00 
 
 DAVID McKAY, Publisher, Philadelphia 
 
 i3'iS)li 
 
"n!f 
 
 ■'»<»• -*.«t*^ Urn ' V «»« W" 
 
 COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 All original work done by me within the last twenty 
 years has dealt, directly or indirectly (but generally 
 directly) with one subject — namely — with mental evolu- 
 tion. In papers read in '77 and '78, and more ex- 
 haustively in a volume published in '79, I considered 
 the evolution of the moral nature. In '81 I read a 
 paper on the evolution of the intellect and some of the 
 sense functions, and in '92 I dealt still further with 
 these latter. I venture to draw )our attention to these 
 labors of mine because they have a direct bearing upon 
 what I am to say to-day. Twenty years' study has 
 shown me clearly that the human mind has been 
 slowly evolved by a species of unfolding or growth, ex- 
 tending over millions of years. Not that the human 
 mind has existed as long as that, but that the mind which 
 we possess to-day, in its human and its anto-human 
 forms, extends back for unknown ages and eons into the 
 geologic past of the planet, sending its roots and draw- 
 ing its sap to-day from the lives of tens of thousands of 
 generations of our prehuman as well as human ancestors. 
 And, it may be said in jxissing, it is apparently this al- 
 most infinite experience, creasured up and handed down 
 the ages in the form of instincts, monitions of con- 
 science and delicate phases of emotion, that gives tr 
 the human mind of the p'-esent time many of its most 
 profound and subtle qualitit^s. 
 
■~l^ 
 
 Be this as it may, the tlioiij^ht and riNuHnj;- of twenty 
 years have conviiued me that tlie human mind, as we know 
 it to-day. is a hneal descendent of a certain prehuman 
 mind whicli could not iiave been very cHliferent from the 
 mind of the hijrher animals of the present time, and that 
 this animal mind grew into the human miml by means of 
 two cl(jsely related i)ut distinct i)n)cesses — fu'st, by the 
 unfoklini^ anil expansion of its various faculties, and, sec- 
 ond, by the s])rini,nn}< uj) within it from time to time of 
 entirely new functions, which, in their turn, unfoldetl and 
 expanded as the j^enerations and the centuries succeeded 
 one another. My volume on "Man's Moral Nature" 
 was intended to make clear whence proceeded and how 
 from hnver to hij^her planes advanced this important \y,\ri 
 of the human mind, and a paper read by me in '8i was 
 inlentled as an exi)osition of the manner of growth ot 
 the intellect. That, and another two years ago, set 
 forth reasons to l)elieve in thi-' addition from time to time 
 of new faculties to the immense aggregate. 
 
 The process is, in short, as I have before pointed out, 
 precisely similar to that of evolution in all other depart- 
 ments. A tree, for instance, both sends out new branches 
 and all its Ijranches, both new and old, increase in size ; 
 a language (like the original Aryan or the Latin) jnits 
 out as its branches dialects which grow into languages 
 and put forth others in their turn ; a sjiecies, either ani- 
 mal n: i)lant, puts forth as its branches varieties which 
 grow into species and in their turn put forth other vari- 
 eties which later also become species. 
 
 Suppose, then, we admit, as I think we must, that far 
 back in geologic time what we call mind had its origin in 
 some very low organization in the form of mere excita- 
 
^ 
 
 bility ; that later on, from tliis initial cxcital-ility, was 
 born sensation ; from that aj^ain, after many aj^^es and 
 generations and much experience, simple consciousness ; 
 and a^ain, from that, "when the time was ripe," self 
 consciousness. Su])i)Osini' we admit this to l)e a rough 
 description of the trunk of our mental tree, then we 
 have as its branches all the senses, each with its diverse 
 and wide-spreading congeries of functions, we have 
 also, us another vast trunk, the moral nature, and, as 
 another still, volition, without stopping to mention many 
 another limb and twig of less consec|uence. 
 
 The center of all is, of course, the trunk, and upon 
 this I want to keep your minds fixed for the moment. 
 That trunk, resting upon ami rooted in inorganic nature, 
 may be divided from the ground up, as before said, into 
 vitality, excitability, sensation, simple con.sciousness, 
 self consciousness — these being supposed to be superim- 
 posed, the one upon the other, in th<j order in which 
 they are named. The line between simple consciousness 
 and self consciousness is, of course, the line between the 
 brute anil the man, since self consciousness is the basis 
 of language, of human faculty in general, and of the 
 methods and arts that constitute objective human life. 
 
 As vitality, excitability, sensation, simple conscious- 
 ness and self consciousness each one arose, in its turn, 
 from anterior conditions which pi-epared the way for it 
 and made it possil/le, so every other faculty and function 
 existing to-day hail its own date of l)irth. F'or instance : 
 The general sense of sight dates back many millions of 
 years into geological times — the color sense only dates 
 back about a thousand generations. The sense of hearing 
 is very old — the nuisical sense is just coming into being. 
 
~»JC iS'' •». 
 
 The aiiiinal instincts which are the basis of it go hack far 
 hihiiul the carboniferous era, but anything we wouUI to- 
 day call a human moral nature is probably less than a 
 liundrccl thousand years old. How do we know how 
 long any given faculty has existed in any given race ? 
 Chiefly by three indications : 
 
 1st. the average age at which the faculty appears in the 
 individual ; 
 
 2(1, the more or less universality of the faculty in the 
 mi'inbers of the race as we see it at inx-sent ; 
 
 3d, the readiness (or the reverse) with which the fac- 
 ulty is lost (iis in sickness). 
 
 I'or the sake of illustrating the position taken let us 
 briefly compare almost any two faculties. Let us take 
 for this purpose simple and self coasciousness. 
 
 1. Simple consciousness appears within a few hours or 
 days of l)irth. Self consciousness apjiears at about the 
 age of three years. 
 
 2. Sim])le consciousness is ab.solutely univensal in the 
 human race. .Self consciousness is congenitally absent 
 in all true idiots — /. <'., in aliout one or two in every 
 thousand individuals of the race. 
 
 3. Simple consciousness is only lost in the most pro- 
 found disturbances, as in epilepsy and coma, and only 
 for short periods — a few minutes, hours or days. Sell 
 consciousness is always lost when simple consciousness is 
 lost, and over and above it is frequendy lost as in the 
 delirium of fever and in insanity (simple consciousness 
 remaining i)resent), and it often remains absent for days, 
 weeks, even months. 
 
 These three facts clearly show that simple conscious- 
 ness is a much older facultv than is self consciousness. 
 
But wliy is it that the older a fatuity is in a race the 
 earlier it shall he aajuired by the uieiul)ers of the race? 
 The answer is not far to seek, and has a most important 
 bearinj; upon the subject immediately under discussion — 
 i. e., the existence or not in the race of the new faculty 
 which I have named Cosmic Consciousness ; it is, 
 briefly, as follows; Suppose that a race is coiuinj^ into 
 possession of a new faculty — say, self consciousness, the 
 human moral nature, or color sense — it uuist be that the 
 new faculty or sense will l)e fust accjuired by the foremost 
 members of the race and at that time of life when these 
 are at their best. The new taculty havinjr been aciiuired 
 by the foremost member of the race (foremost at least in 
 that direction), is later acc|uired by any other member 
 of the race who has in that ])articular line attained the 
 position occupied by the member who first accpiired it. 
 As the race moves forwaril a larji>;er and larijer number 
 of its members acquire the new faculty, until it becomes, 
 let us say, fairly universal. Then another process sets 
 in: the race j^ains, as it were, upon the new faculty, or 
 upon the level upon which the new faculty rests; and 
 whereas no member at first acquired it under full matu- 
 rity, say thirty years of aj^e, later, certain meiubers 
 accpiire it at twenty-five, then at twenty years, and, 
 after thousands of jrcnerations, at three years of ajj^e, as 
 in the case of self consciousness. 
 
 In the light of this short n's/imc of a larire subject I 
 will now briefly set forth what I have to say on the real 
 subject of this paper. And, in the first jjlace, does it 
 not seem pretty certain that a race which has been en- 
 abled by its own inherent growth to advance from excit- 
 ability to sensation, from that to simple consciousness, 
 
from that to si-lf consciousness ; that has l)ec'n able to 
 take on the human moral nature, color sense anil a 
 hundred other faculties — docs it not seem pretty certain, 
 I say, that this race, still as full of vitality as ever, will 
 taki' on, as time passes, still other faculties? Have we 
 any reason to think that a process which has been in full 
 oi)eration certainly for many millions of years, and i)rob- 
 al)ly from all eternity, will now cease? No rational 
 bi'ini; with tlu' liicts in his mind can sui)pose anything o( 
 tlu' kind. To start with, then, we have the probability, 
 if not certainty, that the human mind will advance be- 
 yond its present status, and that the next step made will 
 be comparable to those made in the past, as from sensation 
 to simple consciousness, or from that to self conscious- 
 ness. Further, if the next step made in direct ascent is 
 in the nature of a new consciousness it is rea.sonable to 
 sup|TOse that it will come per sail urn, as does self con- 
 sciousness, and not by infinite, almost imperceptible, de- 
 grees, as came, or is coming, for instance, the color 
 sense. 
 
 I have next to say that the human mind is now in the 
 . very act of making this supposed step — is now in the 
 very act of stepping from the plane of self con.sciousness 
 to a higher plane, which I call Cosmic Consciousness. 
 
 I have in the last three years collected twenty-three 
 cases of this so-called Cosmic Consciousness, and what 
 little further I have time to say at i)rcsent will be based 
 on the actual facts belonging to them. But you will 
 kindly remember that anything I may say in the brief 
 time at present at my dis]V)sal will bear an exceedingly 
 small proportion to the mass of facts collected by me on 
 this subject. 
 
First, as tn thv ami' at uliicli, if at all, ("osinic Cnii- 
 scioiisiK'ss is attaiiu'd. In twi'iity-itnc nf tin- twciity- 
 thri't' casrs I liavi' Ir'L'II ahlt- to tix this with (•(nisidiTahli' 
 ctTtainty and accuracy, and 1 tiiid tliat illiiiniiiation took 
 place : In two cases at the aj^e of thirty, in one case at 
 thea^fe of thirty-one, in three ca.ses at the aj^e of tliirty- 
 two, in three cases at the aj^e of thirty-three, in two 
 cases at the aye of thirty-four, in five cases at the aj^c of 
 thirty-five, in one case at the .i^v of thirty-seven, in 
 two cases at the aj^c of thirty-ei^ht, in one case at tiie 
 a^e of thirty-nine, and in one case at the aye of forty. 
 
 Thns, then, the new consciousness ol)eys the first sup- 
 posed necessary condition and appears when tl'.e orj^an- 
 ism is at its hijj^hest point of efficiency and excellence. 
 
 You will please keep steadily in mind that I claim that 
 what I call Cosmic Consciousness is not sim])ly an e\- 
 p;insion or extension of the self conscious mind with 
 which we are all familiar, hut the superaddition of a 
 function as distinct from any po.sse.ssed by the averaji^e man 
 as self consciousness is distinct from any function pos- 
 sessed by one of the hijjjher animals. It is my purpose 
 now to attempt to j^ive yon some idea of what this new 
 function is, and to show you (or at least to ^ive you 
 some hints) how the Cosmic Conscious, differs from 
 the merely self conscious, mintl. Hut I warn you that 
 with the best intentions in the world I shall not be able 
 to make this at all clear to you, and that if you desire 
 enlightenment on this point you will have to seek it in 
 the books that contain the explanations of these men 
 themselves — in, for instance, the Upanishads and Sutras, 
 which give us the experience of one of the earliest cases, 
 that, namely, of Gautama the Buddha; in the Epistles 
 
of Paul; in the "Shakspere" sonnets ; in Dante's "Divine 
 Comedy" respec'>'lly in the "Paradise"); in the works 
 of Honor*' de Balzac (especially in " Louis Lambert " 
 and "Seraphita " ) ; inBehmey's "Aurora" and "Three 
 Principles ;" in the works of William Blake and those of 
 Edward Carpenter; and, lastly, in the "Leaves of 
 Grass" and other works of Walt Whitman. But the 
 great difficulty has always been and is still that the Cos- 
 mic Conscious and self conscious minds are so far apart 
 that words coming from the former are often strange and 
 meaningless to the latter. They contain, as Paul ex- 
 presses it, " a wisdom not of this world" — a wisdom, 
 consequently, which is very apt not to be understood, 
 and for that reason to be accounted no wisdom at all, but 
 foolishness. I ought to say further, in the way of intro- 
 duction, that though Cosmic Consciousness has certain 
 fixed elements which give to it a clear individuality, yet 
 that the range and \ariety of mind upon the plane of 
 Cosmic Consciousness appears to be still greater than 
 the range and variety of mind on the plane of self con- 
 iiciousness — ^just as the range and variety of mind on the 
 •self conscious plane is far greater than are these in any 
 given species on the plane of simple consciousness. So 
 that, in all ways, the men possessed of the new faculty 
 are liable to difHer and do differ enormously and in all 
 directions one from the other; some of them being, for 
 instance, supreme poets, others religious founders, 
 prophets and apostles, others great artists, and so on. 
 Also, I ought to say that, while some of them are so 
 obviously great t'^at they are counted superhuman, 
 others are not to outward seeming strikingly different 
 from their merely self conscious contemporaries. Even 
 
 II 
 
 r 
 
 
 mii 
 

 
 a casual study, however, of the characters and Hves of 
 these great men will reveal the plain fact that both by 
 the intellect and by the moral nature they are enor- 
 mously in advance of their self conscious contemporaries. 
 
 What, now, are these fixed elements belonging to 
 Cosmic Consciousness, to which I have referred ? 
 
 First, there are certain phenomena connected with the 
 onset, or oncoming, of the new faculty — which is usually, 
 perhaps always, sudden, instantaneous. Among these 
 the most striking is the Ludden sense of being immersed 
 in flame or in a brilliant light ; this occurs entirely with- 
 out warning or outward cause, and may happen at 
 noonday or in the middle of the night. In order to 
 give some notion of this dazzling subjective light I will 
 show you what a few of these men have said about it. 
 
 Paul (in his speech to Agrippa) said : "As I jour- 
 neyed to Damascus I saw on the way a light from heaven 
 above the brightness of the sun." Then he heard the 
 voice and then was caught up into the third heaven and 
 heard unspeakable words. But the initial fact was the 
 subjective light. 
 
 In the night called by the Arabs Al Kader — in the 
 month of Ramadan — in the fortieth year of his age — in 
 the cavern of Mount Hara — Mohammed heard a voice 
 calling upon him ; immediately thereafter, or at the same 
 instant, a flood of light broke upon him of such intoler- 
 able splendor that he swooned away. On regaining his 
 senses he beheld an angel in a human form, which, 
 approaching from a distance, displayed a silken cloth 
 covered with written characters. The angel said to him : 
 "Read." Mohammed said he did not know how to 
 read, but immediately afterwards his understanding was 
 
mrmibmti:" ^...-..->**.fc«-«nt*'"'*Hii <i 
 
 illumined and he read what was written on the cloth. 
 In the first canto of the " Paradise" Dante gives an. 
 
 account of the oncoming of the Cosmic sense in his case. 
 
 And as descriptive of the commencement of the series 
 
 of his experiences he has these words : " On a sudden 
 
 day seemed to be added to day as if He who is able had' 
 
 adorned the heaven with another sun. 
 
 The report made by Whitman of the same occurrence 
 
 is in very similar language. He says : 
 
 " As in a swoon one instant, 
 
 Another sun, ineffable, full dazzles me. 
 
 And all the orbs I knew— and brighter, unknown orbs ^ 
 
 One instant of the future land, Heaven's land." 
 
 The dazzling, sudden, unexpected, subjective light, 
 then, is usually the first thing known of the change that 
 is taking place. It is usually succeeded by alarm. For 
 a longer or shorter time the person fears that he is be- 
 coming insane. Very often a voice is heard and the form 
 of the person speaking may be seen. These phenomena 
 (the light, the voice, the person seen) soon all pass 
 away and the essential elements of the new order dawn 
 upon the mind. These essential elements are a con- 
 sciousness of the Cosmos, or, in other words, a con- 
 sciousness of the life and order of the universe ; not, 
 you will please understand, a knowledge of this, but a 
 consciousness of it— just as self consciousness, when it 
 comes, gives the person not simply a hearsay or learned 
 knowledge of himself as a separate and distinct individ- 
 ual, but something far deeper—/, e., a consciousness of 
 himself as a distinct personality. 
 
 With the intellectual illumination comes an indescrib- 
 able moral elevation — an intense and exalted joyfulness, 
 
II 
 
 and, along with this, a sense of immortality ; not merely 
 a belief in a future life — that would be a small matter — 
 but a consciousness that the life now being lived is' 
 eternal — death being seen as a trivial incident which 
 does not affect its continuity. Further, there are annihi- 
 lation of the sense of sin and an intellectual competency 
 not simply surpassing the old, but on a new and 
 higher plane. 
 
 Let us hear, now, in conclusion, very briefly, for my 
 time k short, some of the words of a few of the men 
 having Cosmic Consciousness, descriptive of this new 
 state after they had fully entered upon it. 
 
 Gautama Buddha attained illumination at the age of 
 about thirty-five years, under the Bo tree since and 
 hence so celebrated. In the Dhama-Kakka-Pavattana- 
 sutta he is reported to have said that ' ' the noble truths 
 taught therein were not among the ' ' doctrines handed 
 down, but that there arose within him the eye to per- 
 ceive them, the knowledge of their nature, the under- 
 standing of their cause, the wisdom that lights the true 
 path, the light that expels darkness." This is an excel- 
 lent description of the intellectual illumination that 
 belongs to Cosmic Consciousness. In the Maha Vagga 
 it is said that during the first watch of the night following 
 on Gautama's victory over the evil one — that is, the 
 night following upon his attainment of Cosmic Con- 
 sciousness and his consequent victory over his old and 
 lower condition — "he fi.xed his eyes upon the chain of 
 causation, during the second watch he fi.xed his eyes 
 upon the chain of causation, and during the third watch 
 he fi.xed his eyes upon the chain of cau.satlon." That is 
 to say, the Cosmic order became visible to him, and he 
 
..JbJ^J. 
 
 12 
 
 could not for a long time remove his mind from this the 
 tfrandest and most entrancing of all sights. Again, in the 
 Akankheyya-sutta, are set forth, as taught by Buddha, 
 the distinctive .marks of Arahatship — that is, of Cosmic 
 Consciousness. The attainment of this condition, he 
 says, will cau.se a man to become "beloved, popular, 
 respected among his fellows, victorious over discontent 
 and lust, over spiritual danger and dismay ; will bestow 
 upon him the ecstasy of contemplation ; will enable him 
 to reach with his .jody and remain in those stages of 
 deliverance which are incorporeal and pass beyond 
 jjlienomena ; cause him to become an inheritor of the 
 highest heavens ; make him, being one, to become 
 nniltiple — being multiple, to Ijecome one ; endow him 
 with clear and heavenly ear surpassing that of men ; 
 enable him to comiirehend by his own heart the hearts 
 of otiier beings and of other men ; to understand all 
 minds ; to see with pure ;uid heavenly vision surpassing 
 tliat of men." 
 
 In Buddhism Nirvana, which literally means "a blow- 
 ing out," as of a candle, is the word which stands for 
 Cosmic Consciousne.ss— the " blowing out," or "extinc- 
 tion," being not that of the soul, as sometimes sup- 
 posed, but of the desires and instincts which belong to 
 the self-conscious mind and which are thought to stand 
 in tile ^v.iy of the attainment of the Cosmic sense. 
 
 The great Ai)ostle Paul was (using the word in its 
 medical sense ) an a(tmiral)le "case" of Cosmic Con- 
 scionsness. His initial earnestness of character, his 
 instantaneous illumination, his age at the time — probably 
 a little over thirty — the sulijective light, the voice which 
 si)oke to him, his consternation, the resulting intellectual 
 
13 
 
 illuniinatiiJii and moral exaltation — all these typical 
 symptoms make the true nature of his ' ' conversion 
 as plain as would be a case of typhoid fever with frontal 
 headache, diarrhcea, ochre stools, characteristic temper- 
 ature and rose spots. But still more absolute proof of 
 Paul's entry into Cosmic Consciousness is his own 
 account of his subsequent habitual feelings and convic- 
 tions as given us by himself in those letters which have 
 come down to us. He says, for instance, in Second 
 Corinthians : "I will come to visions and revelations of 
 the Lord. I knew a man in Christ fourteen years ago 
 (whether in the body or out of the body I know not); 
 such a one caught up even to the third heaven— into 
 Paradise — and heartl unspeakalile words." Again, Gala- 
 tians : "For I make known to you, brethren, as 
 touching the gospel wliicii was preached by me, that it is 
 not after man. For neither did I receive it from man. 
 nor was I taught it, but it came to rae through the reve- 
 lation of Jesus Christ." Here Paul uses almost e.xacdy 
 the same words as above cjuoted from Gautama. There 
 is only time to give one more short quotation from Paul, 
 but all his writings may l)e read with very great ad- 
 vantage frt)m the present point of view. He says, in 
 Romans : ' ' There is therefore no condemnation to 
 them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit 
 of life in Christ Jesus madr me free from the law of sin 
 and death. For they that are after the flesh do mind 
 the things of the flesh ; l)ut they that are after the spirit 
 the things of the spirit. l'"or the mind of the flesh is 
 death, but the mind of tlic' sjjirit is life and peace." 
 That is to say : In Cosmic Consciousness there is no 
 sense of sin and death. The merely self-conscious man 
 
■ g^iii n nm 
 
 -~*Jf'-r 
 
 14 
 
 cannot by " keepinj^ the law," or in any other way, 
 destroy either sin or the sense of sin, but "Christ," 
 tliat is, the Cosmic sense, can and does accomplish both. 
 In the case of Mohammed there was the same initial 
 earnestness of character, the same instantaneous illumi- 
 nation. His age was thirty-nine. There were the intense 
 subjective light, the voice which spoke to him ; the 
 same extreme consternation, the same intellectual' 
 illumination, the same moral exaltation. 
 
 In the case of Dante there was the same initial earnest- 
 ness of character combined with unusual spirituality, 
 the same instantaneous illumination. He was of the 
 typical age at the time, namely, thirty-five years. There 
 was the intense subjective light. The voice— that is, the 
 duplex personality that belongs to the new condition- 
 spoke to him. There was the same consternation, fol- 
 lowed immediately by the same intellectual illumination 
 and the same moral exaltation. 
 
 The evidence of Dante's illumination in his great 
 work, "The Divine Comedy," is overwhelming, but I 
 have only space here for one short quotation, namely, 
 the passage in wiiich he describes the oncoming of the 
 Cosmic sense. He .says : " Beatrice was standing with 
 her eyes wholly fixed on the eternal wheels, ani on her 
 1 fixed my eyes from thereabove removed. Looking at 
 her, 1 inwardly became such as Glaucus became on 
 tasting of the herb which made him consort in the sea 
 of the other gods. Transhumanization cannot be signi- 
 fied in words ; tiierefore, let the example suffice for him 
 to whom grace reserves experience. If I was only what 
 of me thou didst last create. O Love that governest the 
 heavens. Thou knowest who with Thy light didst lift me." 
 
•■~Jwf'.' 
 
 t5 
 
 Beatrice (?. c, " imkinj;; blessed") is Dante's name 
 for Cosmic Consciousness. He says tliat when his illu- 
 mination took i)lace he fixed his eyes on the Cosmic 
 sense, and the eyes of the Cosmic sense were wholly 
 fixed on the eternal wh(;els (in the lanjijuage of (iautama, 
 "on the chain of causation "—both expressions mean- 
 ing the same thing—/, f., the life and order of the 
 universe). Then he says : Looking upon this new sense 
 that had come to me, I became transhumanized into a 
 god. He says that of course this change that had been 
 wrought in him cannot be expressed in words, and that 
 no one will be able to understand it until he himself 
 experiences it, and, like Paul, he does not know whether 
 at that time he was in heaven or upon the earth, whether 
 he continued during the experience in the body or 
 whether for a time he left the body. 
 
 All these men recognize clearly three states or stages 
 of mind — namely, simple consciousness, self conscious- 
 ness. Cosmic Consciousness— and that there exists as 
 clear and broad a distinction between the last two as 
 between the first two. 
 
 Thus, Balzac says: "The world of ideas divides 
 itself into three spheres— that of instinct (simple con- 
 .sciousness) ; that of abstraction (self con.sciousness) ; 
 and that of .specialism (Cosmic Consciousness)." "As 
 an instinctive, man is below the level ; as an abstractive, 
 he attains to it ; as a specialist, he rises above it. Spe- 
 cialism opens to man his course ; the infinite dawns 
 upon him ; he catches glimpses of his destiny. " 
 
 Balzac proceeds as follows : ' ' There exist three 
 worlds— the natural world, the spiritual world, the 
 divine world. Humanity moves hither and thither in 
 
i^ 
 
 1 6 
 
 the natural workl, which is fixed ncithiT in its essence 
 nor in its properties. The spiritual world is fixed in its 
 essence and variable in its properties. The divine world 
 is fixed in its properties and in its essence." In other 
 words, men who live almost entirely in simple conscious- 
 ness rtoat on the stream of time as do the animals — drift 
 with the seasons, the food sujiply, etc., as a leaf drifts 
 on a current, not sc^lf-moved or self-balanced, but moved 
 l)y outer influences and bahnced by the natural forces, 
 as are the animals and trees. The fully self-conscious 
 man takes stock of himself and is, so to say, seli-cen- 
 tered. He feels that he is a fixed point ; he judges all 
 thiniLis with reference to this point. Hut outside of him- 
 self we know, there is nothin.i; fixed for him ; he trusts 
 what he calls God, and he does not trust. He is a Deist, 
 an Atheist, a Christian, a Buddhist. He believes in sci- 
 ence, but his science is constantly chanj>in^ and will 
 rarely tell him in any case anythinjr worth knowinjf. 
 He is fixed, then, on one point and moves freely on that. 
 The man with Cosmic Consciousness. bein_n conscious of 
 himself and conscious oi the Cosmos, its nuanini;; and 
 drift, is fixed both without and within — in Balzac's 
 words, " in iiis essence and in his properties." 
 
 To sum up : The creature with simple consciousness 
 only is a straw tk)atin.t; on a tide, moving freely every 
 way with every influence. The self conscious man is a 
 needle pivoted by its center — fixed in one point but 
 oscillatinj* and revolving freely on that with every influ- 
 ence. The man with Cosmic Consciousness is the same 
 needle magnetized. It is still fixed by its center, but 
 besides that it i)oints steadily tf) the north. It has found 
 
^ 
 
 17 
 
 something real unci permaneiU outside o(" itself toward 
 which it cannot but steadily look. 
 
 One word in conclusion : I havi; been searching three 
 years for cases of Cosmic Consciousness and ha\e so tar 
 found twenty-three. Several of these are contemporary, 
 minor cases, such as may have <iccurred in any a^e and 
 no record of them remain. I ha\'e, however, foinul 
 thirteen, all of them so j^reat that they must live. Of 
 these thirteen cases five appeared in the thirteen hundred 
 years extending from (lautama to Mohammed, and in- 
 clude, of course, both of these men. Hut inchuling 
 Dante, and from him to the present time (a space- ot 
 barely six hundred years), there have lived no liss than 
 eight cases, and these, as far as 1 can .see, just as great 
 as the five ca.ses of the earlier thirtecii hundred years. 
 But eight cases in si.x hundred years is more than three 
 and a half times as great a frecjuency as five casi's in 
 thirteen hundred years. I do not pretend to say that 
 cases of Cosmic Consciousness are becoming more 
 frequent in exactly this ratio. There must have occurncl 
 a large iuiml)er of cases in the last tweiUy-fue hundred 
 years that I know nothing about, and I suppose no man 
 could say positively how many lived in any given e]joch. 
 But it seems to me certain that these men are more 
 numerous in the modern than they were in the ancient 
 world, and this fact, taken in connection with the general 
 theory of psychic evolution propounded by the l^est 
 writers on the subject, such as Darwin and Romanes, 
 points to the conclusion that just as, long ago, self con- 
 sciousness appeared in the best sjiecimens of our ances- 
 tral race in the prime of life, and gradually l)ecame more 
 and more universal, and appeared earlier and earlier. 
 
I« 
 
 until, as vvc sei" now, it has beconu' almost univi'isal and 
 appears at the avcrajje a^e of about three years — so will 
 Cosmic Consciousness become more and more universal, 
 and appear earlier in the individual life, until |)ractically 
 the whole race will ])ossess this faculty. I say the whole 
 race, but as a matter of fact a Cosmic Conscious race 
 will not be the race which exists to-day, any more than 
 the present is the same race which existed prior to the 
 evolution of self consciousness. The simple truth is, 
 that a new race is being born from us, and this new race 
 will in the near future possess the earth. 
 
 V 
 
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