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Cosmic Consciousness, by Richard Maurice Bucke, [1901], at sacred-texts.com

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PART III.

FROM SELF TO COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS.

I.

As the faculties referred to in the last division of this volume, and many more, came into existence in the race, each in its own time, when the race was ready for it, let us assume, as we must, that growth, evolution, development, or whatever we choose to call it, has (as thus exemplified) always gone on, is going on now, and (as far as we can tell) will always go on. If we are right in such an assumption new faculties will from time to time arise in the mind as, in the past, new faculties have arisen. This being granted, let us assume that what in this book is called Cosmic Consciousness is such a nascent, such a werdende, faculty. And now let us see what we know about this new sense, state, faculty, or whatever it may be called. And, first, it may be noted that the new sense does not appear by chance in this man or that. It is necessary for its appearance that an exalted human personality should exist and supply the pre-conditions for its birth. In the great cases especially is there an exceptional development of some or all of the ordinary human faculties. Note particularly, since that case is unmistakably known to us, the singular perfection of the intellectual and moral faculties and of the special senses in Walt Whitman [103: 57–71]. It is probable that an approximation to this evolutionary excellence is necessary in all cases. Then certainly in some, probably in all, cases the person has an exceptional physique—exceptional beauty of build and carriage, exceptionally handsome features, exceptional health, exceptional sweetness of temper, exceptional magnetism.

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II.

The faculty itself has many names, but they have not been understood or recognized. It will be well to give some of them here. They will be better understood as we advance. Either Gautama himself, or some one of his early disciples, called it "Nirvâna" because of the "extinction" of certain lower mental faculties (such as the sense of sin, fear of death, desire of wealth, etc., etc.) which is directly incident upon its birth. This subjugation of the old personality along with the birth of the new is, in fact, almost equivalent to the annihilation of the old and the creation of a new self. The word Nirvâna is defined as "the state to which the Buddhist saint is to aspire as the highest aim and highest good." Jesus called the new condition "the Kingdom of God" or the "Kingdom of Heaven," because of the peace and happiness which belong to it and which are perhaps its most characteristic features. Paul called it "Christ." He speaks of himself as "a man in Christ," of "them that are in Christ." He also calls it "the Spirit" and "the Spirit of God." After Paul had entered Cosmic Consciousness he knew that Jesus had possessed the cosmic sense and that he was living (as it were) the life of Jesus—that another individuality, another self, lived in him. This second self he called Christ (the divinely sent deliverer), identifying it not so much with the man Jesus, as with the deliverer which was to be sent and which had been sent in his person, who was both Jesus (the ordinary self conscious man) and Messiah (the herald and exemplar of the new, higher race). The duplex personality of men having cosmic consciousness will appear many times as we proceed and will be seen to be a constant and prominent phenomenon. Mohammed called the cosmic sense "Gabriel," and seems to have looked upon it as a distinctly separate person who lived in him and spoke to him. Dante called it "Beatrice" ("Making Happy"), a name almost or quite equivalent to "Kingdom of Heaven." Balzac called the new man a "specialist" and the new condition "Specialism." Whitman called cosmic consciousness

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"My Soul," but spoke of it as if it were another person; for instance:

Bacon (in the Sonnets) has treated the cosmic sense so emphatically as a distinct person that the world for three hundred years has taken him at his word and has agreed that the "person" in question (whatever his name may have been) was a young friend of the poet's!

To illustrate the objectification of this purely subjective phenomenon (though it must be remembered that to the person with cosmic consciousness the terms objective and subjective lose their old meaning—and "objects gross" and the "unseen soul" become "one"), it will not be amiss to quote a passage [173: 5] from a poet who, though he is a case of cosmic consciousness, is not included in the present volume for the reason that the present writer has not been able to obtain the details necessary for that purpose.

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III.

It has already been incidentally mentioned that a race entering upon the possession of a new faculty, especially if this be in the line of the direct ascent of the race, as is certainly the case with cosmic consciousness, the new faculty will necessarily be acquired at first not only by the best specimens of the race but also when these are at their best—that is, at full maturity and before the decline incident to age has set in. What, now, are the facts in this regard as to the coming of the cosmic sense?

They may be summarized in a few words as follows: Of thirty-four cases, in which illumination was instantaneous and the period at which it occurred was with some degree of certainty known, the age at which the person passed into cosmic consciousness was in one instance twenty-four years; in three, thirty years; in two, thirty-one years; in two, thirty-one and a half years; in three, thirty-two years; in one, thirty-three years; in two, thirty-four years; in eight, thirty-five years; in two, thirty-six years; in two, thirty-seven years; in two, thirty-eight years; in three, thirty-nine years; in one, forty years; in one, forty-nine years, and, in one, fifty-four years.

Evidence will be given as the cases are treated individually, and the age of each person at illumination will be given below in a tabular statement, along with other facts.

IV.

Cosmic Consciousness, then, appears in individuals mostly of the male sex, who are otherwise highly developed—men of good intellect, of high moral qualities, of superior physique. It appears at about that time of life when the organism is at its high watermark of efficiency, at the age of thirty to forty years. It must have been that the immediate precursor of Cosmic Consciousness—Self Consciousness—also appeared at first in mid-life, here and there, in isolated cases, in the most advanced specimens of the race, becoming more and more nearly universal (as

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the race grew up to it), manifesting itself at an earlier and earlier age, until (as we see) it declares itself now in every fairly constituted individual, at about the age of three years.

Analogy, then, would lead us to believe that the step in promotion which is the subject of this volume also awaits the whole race—that a time will come when to be without the faculty in question will be a mark of inferiority parallel to the absence at present of the moral nature. The presumption seems to be that the new sense will become more and more common and show itself earlier in life, until after many generations it will appear in each normal individual at the age of puberty or even earlier; then go on becoming still more universal, and appearing at a still earlier age, until, after many thousands of generations, it shows itself immediately after infancy in nearly every member of the race.

V.

It must be clearly understood that all cases of Cosmic Consciousness are not on the same plane. Or, if we speak of Simple Consciousness, Self Consciousness and Cosmic Consciousness as each occupying a plane, then, as the range of Self Consciousness on its plane (where one man may be an Aristotle, a Cæsar, a Newton, or a Comte, while his neighbor on the next street may be intellectually and morally, to all appearance, little if at all above the animal in his stable) is far greater than the range of Simple Consciousness in any given species on its plane, so we must suppose that the range of Cosmic Consciousness (given millions of cases, as on the other planes) is greater than that of Self Consciousness, and it probably is in fact very much greater both in kind and degree: that is to say, given a world peopled with men having Cosmic Consciousness, they would vary both in the way of greater and less intellectual ability, and greater and less moral and spiritual elevation, and also in the way of variety of character, more than would the inhabitants of a planet on the plane of Self Consciousness. Within the plane of Cosmic Consciousness one man shall be a god while another shall not be, to casual observation,

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lifted so very much above ordinary humanity, however much his inward life may be exalted, strengthened and purified by the new sense. But, as the Self Conscious man (however degraded) is in fact almost infinitely above the animal with merely simple consciousness, so any man permanently endowed with the Cosmic Sense would be almost infinitely higher and nobler than any man who is Self Conscious merely. And not only so, but the man who has had the Cosmic Sense for even a few moments only will probably never again descend to the spiritual level of the merely self conscious man, but twenty, thirty or forty years afterwards he will still feel within him the purifying, strengthening and exalting effect of that divine illumination, and many of those about him will recognize that his spiritual stature is above that of the average man.

VI.

The hypothesis adopted by the present writer requires that cases of cosmic consciousness should become more numerous from age to age, and not only so but that they should become more perfect, more pronounced. What are the facts? Putting aside minor cases, such as must have appeared and been forgotten by hundreds in the last few millenniums, of those given above at least thirteen are so great that they can never fade from human memory—namely: Gautama, Jesus, Paul, Plotinus, Mohammed, Dante, Las Casas, John Yepes, Francis Bacon, Jacob Behmen, William Blake, Balzac, Walt Whitman.

From Gautama to Dante we count eighteen hundred years, within which period we have five cases. Again from Dante to the present day we count six hundred years, in which we have eight cases. That is to say, while in the earlier period there was one case to every three hundred and sixty years, in the later there was a case to each seventy-five years. In other words, cosmic consciousness has been 4.8 times more frequent during the latter period than it was during the former. And before the time of Gautama? There were probably no, or few and imperfectly developed, cases.

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We know that at present there are many of what may be called lesser cases, but the number of these cannot be compared with the number of similar cases in the past, for the reason that the latter are lost. It must also be remembered that the thirteen "great cases" given above are only perhaps a small fraction of cases just as great which have occurred since the time of Gautama, for prob. ably only a small proportion of the "great cases" undertake and carry through work which ensures them remembrance. How easily might the memory even of Jesus have been obliterated from the minds of his contemporaries and followers almost before it was born. Many to-day think that, all else granted, if he had not been immediately followed by Paul, his work and name would have expired together almost with the generation that heard him speak.

So true is this that so able a man as Auguste Comte considers St. Paul "le vrai fondateur du Catholicisme" (which in this connection is synonymous with "Christianisme") [65:356], gives him the eighth month in the "Calendrier Positiviste" [65: 332], and does not even award a day to Jesus, so little part did this latter seem to him to have played in the evolution of religion and of the race.

And even of those who write, the work and memory must have often died and been lost. Of one of the greatest of these it may be said that had the great fire occurred only a few years earlier it might possibly have destroyed every copy of the 1623 folio and deprived the world forever of the "Shakespeare" drama. Either the spoken or written work of these men can only, in the nature of things, be appreciated by a select few of their contemporaries and is in almost every case exceedingly liable to be forgotten. That this is as true to-day as in the day of Gautama no one can doubt who has closely followed the career of Walt Whitman. Even in his case the written word would almost certainly have been lost if he had died (as he easily might) from accident or disease during the war, even although at that time three editions of the "Leaves" had been printed. He himself did not consider his message secure from extinction even almost down to the time of

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his death, although he had labored unremittingly for thirty-five years at the planting of it.

Then as to the relative greatness of ancient and modern cases. The judgment of the world at large must necessarily be against the latter, because the time required to arrive at an appreciation of them has not elapsed. And what is reason and so-called common sense worth in such a question as this, anyway f

As Victor Hugo says of Les Genies: "Choisir entre ces hommes, preferer l’un a l’autre, indiquer du doigt le premier parmi ces premiers, cela ne se peut" [96:72–3]. What living man, indeed, is able to say, time enough having surely gone by, who was the greater, Gautama or Jesus f And if we cannot decide between these two, still less can we between either of them and, for instance, Whitman.

Many believe to-day that the last named was the greatest spiritual force yet produced by the race—which would mean that he is the greatest case of cosmic consciousness to date. But the balance of opinion would be, of course, thousands to one averse to this contention.

VII.

While its true nature has been (and necessarily so) entirely unapprehended, the fact of cosmic consciousness has been long recognized both in the Eastern and Western Worlds, and the great majority of civilized men and women in all countries to-day bow down before teachers who possessed the cosmic sense, and not only so but because they possessed the cosmic sense. And not only does the world at large look up with reverence to these men, but perhaps it would be nothing more than the simple truth to say that all uninspired teachers derive the lessons which they transmit directly or indirectly from the few who have been illumined.

VIII.

It seems that in every, or nearly every, man who enters into cosmic consciousness apprehension is at first more or less excited,

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the person doubting whether the new sense may not be a symptom or form of insanity. Mohammed was greatly alarmed. I think it is clear that Paul was, and others to be mentioned further on were similarly affected.

The first thing each person asks himself upon experiencing the new sense is: Does what I see and feel represent reality or am I suffering from a delusion? The fact that the new experience seems even more real than the old teachings of simple and self consciousness does not at first fully reassure him, because he probably knows that delusions, when present, possess the mind just as firmly as do actual facts.

True or not true, each person who has the experience in question eventually, perforce, believes in its teachings, accepting them as absolutely as any other teachings whatsoever. This, however, would not prove them true, since the same might be said of the delusions of the insane.

How, then, shall we know that this is a new sense, revealing fact, and not a form of insanity, plunging its subject into delusion? In the first place, the tendencies of the condition in question are entirely unlike, even opposite to, those of mental alienation, these last being distinctly amoral or even immoral, while the former are moral in a very high degree. In the second place, while in all forms of insanity self-restraint—inhibition—is greatly reduced, sometimes even abolished, in cosmic consciousness it is enormously increased. The absolute proof of this last statement can be found in the lives of the men here cited as examples. In the third place (whatever the scoffers of religion may say) it is certain that modern civilization (speaking broadly) rests (as already said) very largely on the teachings of the new sense. The masters are taught by it and the rest of the world by them through their books, followers and disciples, so that if what is here called cosmic consciousness is a form of insanity, we are confronted by the terrible fact (were it not an absurdity) that our civilization, including all our highest religions, rests on delusion. But (in the fourth place), far from granting, or for a moment entertaining, such an awful alternative, it can be maintained that we have the

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same evidence of the objective reality which corresponds to this faculty that we have of the reality which tallies any other sense or faculty whatever. Sight, for instance: You know that the tree standing there, across the field, half a mile away, is real and not an hallucination, because all other persons having the sense of sight to whom you have spoken about it also see it, while if it were an hallucination it would be visible to no one but yourself. By the same method of reasoning do we establish the reality of the objective universe tallying cosmic consciousness. Each person who has the faculty is made aware by it of essentially the same fact or facts. If three men looked at the tree and were asked half an hour afterwards to draw or describe it the three drafts or descriptions would not tally in detail, but in general outline would correspond. Just in the same way do the reports of those who have had cosmic consciousness correspond in all essentials, though in detail they doubtless more or less diverge (but these divergences are fully as much in our misunderstanding of the reports as in the reports themselves). So there is no instance of a person who has been illumined denying or disputing the teaching of another who has passed through the same experience. Paul, however little disposed by his prepossessions to accept them, as soon as he attained to the cosmic sense saw that the teachings of Jesus were true. Mohammed accepted Jesus as not only the greatest of the prophets, but as standing on a plane distinctly above that upon which stood Adam, Noah, Moses and the rest. He says: "And we sent Noah and Abraham and placed in their seed prophecy and the book; and some of them are guided, though many of them are workers of abomination! Then we followed up their footsteps with our apostles; and we followed them up with Jesus the son of Mary; and we gave him the gospel; and we placed in the hearts of those who followed him kindness and compassion" [153: 269]. And Palmer testifies: "Mohammed regards our Lord with particular veneration, and even goes so far as to call him the 'Spirit' and 'Word' of God, the 'Messiah'" [152: 51]. Walt Whitman accepts the teachings of Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Mohammed, especially of Jesus, of whom he knew the most. As he says: "Accepting

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the gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine" [193:69]. And if, as Whitman once wished: "The great masters might return and study me" [193: 20], nothing is more certain than that they would each and all accept him as "a brother of the radiant summit." So all the men known to the present writer who have been (in greater or less degree) illumined, agree in all essentials with one another, and with all past teachers who have been so. Also, it seems that all men, free from prejudice, who know something of more than one religion, recognize, as does Sir Edwin Arnold, that the great faiths are "Sisters," or, as Arthur Lillie says, that "Buddha and Christ taught much the same doctrine" [110: 8].

IX.

As has been either said or implied already, in order that a man may enter into Cosmic Consciousness he must belong (so to speak) to the top layer of the world of Self Consciousness. Not that he need have an extraordinary intellect (this faculty is rated, usually far above its real value and does not seem nearly so important, from this point of view, as do some others) though he must not be deficient in this respect, either. He must have a good physique, good health, but above all he must have an exalted moral nature, strong sympathies, a warm heart, courage, strong and earnest religious feeling. All these being granted, and the man having reached the age necessary to bring him to the top of the self conscious mental stratum, some day he enters Cosmic Consciousness. What is his experience? Details must be given with diffidence, as they are only known to the writer in a few cases, and doubtless the phenomena are varied and diverse. What is said here, however, may be depended on as far as it goes. It is true of certain cases, and certainly touches upon the full truth in certain other cases, so that it may be looked upon as being provisionally correct.

a. The person, suddenly, without warning, has a sense of being immersed in a flame, or rose-colored cloud, or perhaps rather a sense that the mind is itself filled with such a cloud of haze.

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b. At the same instant he is, as it were, bathed in an emotion of joy, assurance, triumph, "salvation." The last word is not strictly correct if taken in its ordinary sense, for the feeling, when fully developed, is not that a particular act of salvation is effected, but that no special "salvation" is needed, the scheme upon which the world is built being itself sufficient. It is this ecstasy, far beyond any that belongs to the merely self conscious life, with which the poets, as such, especially occupy themselves: As Gautama, in his discourses, preserved in the "Suttas"; Jesus in the "Parables"; Paul in the "Epistles"; Dante at the end of the "Purgatorio" and beginning of "Paradiso"; "Shakespeare" in the "Sonnets"; Balzac in "Seraphita"; Whitman in the "Leaves"; Edward Carpenter in "Towards Democracy"; leaving to the singers the pleasures and pains, loves and hates, joys and sorrows, peace and war, life and death, of self conscious man; though the poets may treat of these, too, but from the new point of view, as expressed in the "Leaves": "I will never again mention love or death inside a house" [193: 75]—that is, from the old point of view, with the old connotations.

c. Simultaneously or instantly following the above sense and emotional experiences there comes to the person an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. 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 does not come to believe merely; but he sees and knows that the cosmos, which to the self conscious mind seems made up of dead matter, is in fact far otherwise—is 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 eternal, as all life is eternal; that the soul of 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. The person who passes through this

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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 ever taught or can teach. Especially does he obtain such a conception of THE WHOLE, or at least of an immense WHOLE, as dwarfs all conception, imagination or speculation, springing from and belonging to ordinary self consciousness, such a conception as makes the old attempts to mentally grasp the universe and its meaning petty and even ridiculous.

This awakening of the intellect has been well described by a writer upon Jacob Behmen in these words: "The mysteries of which he discoursed were not reported to him, he BEHELD them. He saw the root of all mysteries, the UNGRUND or URGRUND, whence issue all contrasts and discordant principles, hardness and softness, severity and mildness, sweet and bitter, love and sorrow, heaven and hell. These he SAW in their origin; these he attempted to describe in their issue and to reconcile in their eternal results. He saw into the being of God; whence the birth or going forth of the divine manifestation. Nature lay unveiled to him—he was at home in the heart of things. His own book, which he himself was (so Whitman: 'This is no book; who touches this touches a man') [193: 382], the microcosm of man, with his threefold life, was patent to his vision" [79: 852].

d. Along with moral elevation and intellectual illumination comes what must be called, for want of a better term, a sense of immortality. This is not an intellectual conviction, such as comes with the solution of a problem, nor is it an experience such as learning something unknown before. It is far more simple and elementary, and could better be compared to that certainty of distinct individuality, possessed by each one, which comes with and belongs to self consciousness.

e. With illumination the fear of death which haunts so many men and women at times all their lives falls off like an old cloak—not, however, as a result of reasoning—it simply vanishes.

f. The same may be said of the sense of sin. It is not that the person escapes from sin; but he no longer sees that there is any sin in the world from which to escape.

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g. The instantaneousness of the illumination is one of its most striking features. It can be compared with nothing so well as with a dazzling flash of lightning in a dark night, bringing the landscape which had been hidden into clear view.

h. The previous character of the man who enters the new life is an important element in the case.

i. So is the age at which illumination occurs. Should we hear of a case of cosmic consciousness occurring at twenty, for instance, we should at first doubt the truth of the account, and if forced to believe it we should expect the man (if he lived) to prove himself, in some way, a veritable spiritual giant.

j. The added charm to the personality of the person who attains to cosmic consciousness is always, it is believed, a feature in the case.

k. There seems to the writer to be sufficient evidence that, with cosmic consciousness, while it is actually present, and lasting (gradually passing away) a short time thereafter, a change takes place in the appearance of the subject of illumination. This change is similar to that caused in a person's appearance by great joy, but at times (that is, in pronounced cases) it seems to be much more marked than that. In these great cases in which illumination is intense the change in question is also intense and may amount to a veritable "transfiguration." Dante says that he was "transhumanized into a God." There seems to be a strong probability that could he have been seen at that moment he would have exhibited what could only have been called "transfiguration." In subsequent chapters of this book several cases will be given in which the change in question, more or less strongly marked, occurred.

X.

The passage from self to cosmic consciousness, considered from the point of view of the intellect, seems to be a phenomenon strictly parallel to the passage from simple to self consciousness.

As in the latter, so in the former, there are two chief elements:

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a. Added consciousness;

b. Added faculty.

a. When an organism which possesses simple consciousness only, attains to self consciousness, it becomes aware for the first time that it is a separate creature, or self existing in a world which is apart from it. That is, the oncoming of the new faculty instructs it without any new experience or process of learning.

b. It, at the same time, acquires enormously increased powers of accumulating knowledge and of initiating action.

So when a person who was self conscious only, enters into cosmic consciousness—

a. He knows without learning (from the mere fact of illumination) certain things, as, for instance: (1) that the universe is not a dead machine but a living presence; (2) that in its essence and tendency it is infinitely good; (3) that individual existence is continuous beyond what is called death. At the same time:

b. He takes on enormously greater capacity both for learning and initiating.

XI.

The parallel holds also from the point of view of the moral nature. For the animal that has simple consciousness merely cannot possibly know anything of the pure delight in simply living that is possessed (at least part of the time) by every healthy, well-constituted young or middle-aged man or woman. "Cannot possibly," for this feeling depends on self consciousness and without that can have no existence. The horse or dog enjoys life while experiencing an agreeable sensation or when stimulated by an agreeable activity (really the same thing), but cannot realize that everyday calm in the enjoyment of life, independent of the senses, and of outward things, which belongs to the moral nature (the basic fact, indeed, of the positive side of this), starting, as may be truly said, from the central well-spring of the life of the organism

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[paragraph continues] (the sense of bien-etre—"well-being") that belongs to man as man and is in truth one of his most valued heritages. This constitutes a plain or plateau, in the region of the moral nature, upon which the sentient creature steps when passing, or as it passes, from simple to self consciousness.

Corresponding with this moral ascent and with those steps, above noted, taken by the intellect from simple to self, and from self to cosmic consciousness, is the moral ascent that belongs to the passage from self to cosmic consciousness. This can only be realized, therefore only described, by those who have passed through the experience. What do they say about it? Well, read what Gautama and the illuminati of the Buddhists tell us of Nirvâna; namely, that it is the "highest happiness" [156:9]. Says the unknown, but unquestionably illumined writer, in the Mahabharata: "The devotee, whose happiness is within himself, and whose light [of knowledge] also is within himself, becoming one with the Brahman, obtains the Brahmic bliss" [154: 66]. Note the dicta of Jesus on the value of the "Kingdom of Heaven," to purchase which a man sells all that he has; remember the worth that Paul ascribes to "Christ," and how he was caught up into the third heaven; reflect on Dante's "transhumanization" from a man "into a God," and on the name he gives the cosmic sense: Beatrice—"Making Happy." Here, too, is his distinct statement of the joy that belongs to it: "That which I was seeing seemed to me a smile of the universe, for my inebriation was entering through the hearing and through the sight. O joy! O ineffable gladness! O life entire of love and of peace! O riches secure without longing!" [72:173]. See what Behmen says on the same subject: "Earthly language is entirely insufficient to describe what there is of joy, happiness, and loveliness contained in the inner wonders of God. Even if the eternal Virgin pictures them to our minds, man's constitution is too cold and dark to be able to express even a spark of it in his language" [97: 85]. Observe Elukhanam's oft-repeated exclamation: "Sandosiam, Sandosiam Eppotham"—"Joy, always joy." And again Edward Carpenter's "All sorrow finished," "The deep, deep ocean of joy within," "Being filled

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with joy," "singing joy unending." Above all, bear in mind the testimony of Walt Whitman—testimony unvarying, though given in ever varying language, and upon almost every page of the Leaves, covering forty years of life: "I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing." "Wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee." "O the joy of my spirit—it is uncaged—it darts like lightning."

"I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O death." And that forecast of the future taken from his own heart—that future "when through these states walk a hundred millions of superb persons"—that is, persons possessed of the cosmic sense. And finally: "The ocean filled with joy—the atmosphere all joy! Joy, joy, in freedom, worship, love! Joy in the ecstasy of life: Enough to merely be! Enough to breathe! Joy, Joy! All over joy" [193: 358]!

XII.

"Well," some one will say, "if these people see and know and feel so much, why don't they come out with it in plain language and give the world the benefit of it?" This is what "speech" said to Whitman: "Walt, you contain enough, why don't you let it out, then?" [193: 50]. But he tells us:

[paragraph continues] So Paul, when he was "caught up into paradise," heard "unspeakable words." And Dante was not able to recount the things he saw in heaven. "My vision," he says, "was greater than our speech, which yields to such a sight" [72: 212]. And so of the rest. The fact of the matter is not difficult to understand; it is that speech (as fully explained above) is the tally of the self conscious intellect, can express that and nothing but that, does not tally and cannot express the Cosmic Sense—or, if at all, only in so far as this may be translated into terms of the self conscious intellect.

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XIII.

It will be well to state here (partly in recapitulation) for the benefit of the reader of the next two parts, briefly and explicitly, the marks of the Cosmic Sense. They are:

a. The subjective light.

b. The moral elevation.

c. The intellectual illumination.

d. The sense of immortality.

e. The loss of the fear of death.

f. The loss of the sense of sin.

g. The suddenness, instantaneousness, of the awakening.

h. The previous character of the man—intellectual, moral and physical.

i. The age of illumination.

j. The added charm to the personality so that men and women are always (?) strongly attracted to the person.

k. The transfiguration of the subject of the change as seen by others when the cosmic sense is actually present.

XIV.

It must not be supposed that because a man has cosmic consciousness he is therefore omniscient or infallible. The greatest of these men are in a sense in the position, though on a higher plane, of children who have just become self conscious. These men have just reached a new phase of consciousness—have not yet had time or opportunity to exploit or master this. True, they have reached a higher mental level; but on that level there can and will be comparative wisdom and comparative foolishness, just as there is on the level of simple or of self consciousness. As a man with self consciousness may sink in morals and intelligence below the higher animal with simple consciousness merely, so we may suppose a man with cosmic consciousness may (in certain circumstances) be little if at all above another who spends his life on the

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plane of self consciousness. And it must be still more evident that, however godlike the faculty may be, those who first acquire it, living in diverse ages and countries, passing the years of their self conscious life in different surroundings, brought up to view life and the interests of life from totally different points of view, must necessarily interpret somewhat differently those things which they see in the new world which they enter. The marvel is that they all see the new world for what it is as clearly as they do. The main point is that these men and this new consciousness must not be condemned because neither the men nor the new consciousness are absolute. That could not be. For should man (passing upward from plane to plane) reach an intellectual and moral position as far above that of our best men to-day as are those above the average mollusk, he would be as far from infallibility and as far from absolute goodness or absolute knowledge as he is at present. He would have the same aspiration to achieve a higher mental position that he has to-day, and there would be as much room over his head for growth and amelioration as ever there was.

XV.

As summary and introductory anticipation of the cases that are to follow, a tabular statement of those considered as probably genuine is here given. A few words upon this may be of interest. Upon glancing over it the first thing to strike the reader will be the immense preponderance of men over women among those who have had the new faculty. The second will be the, at first sight, curious fact (to be referred to again later) that in nearly all the cases in which the time of year is known illumination occurred between early spring and late summer, half of all the cases occurring in or about May and June. The third will be (and this fact is interesting from the point of view of physiology) that there appears to be a general correspondence between the age at illumination and the length of life of the individual. Thus the average age at illumination of Socrates, Mohammed, Las Casas and J. B. was 39 years, and the average age at death was 74½ years (though

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one of them was executed while still hale and strong. In the case of Bacon, Pascal, Blake and Gardiner, the average age at illumination was 31 years, and at death only 55¼ years, being thus (on the average) 8 years younger at illumination and 9¼ years younger at death; while Gautama, Paul, Dante, Behmen, Yepes and Whitman, who all entered cosmic consciousness at the mean age of 34 to 36, had an average life duration of 62 years, one of them, Paul, having been executed at 67. We might expect this correspondence, for, as illumination takes place at full maturity, this would of course (in a general way) correspond with the life limit of the person.