The Cosmic Mind
Charlesetta Blare
Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind is a 1901 book by the psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke, in which the author explores the concept of cosmic consciousness, which he defines as "a higher form of consciousness than that possessed by the ordinary man".[This quote needs a citation]
This consciousness shows the cosmos to consist not of dead matter governed by unconscious, rigid, and unintending law; it shows it on the contrary as entirely immaterial, entirely spiritual and entirely alive; it shows that death is an absurdity, that everyone and everything has eternal life; it shows that the universe is God and that God is the universe, and that no evil ever did or ever will enter into it; a great deal of this is, of course, from the point of view of self consciousness, absurd; it is nevertheless undoubtedly true.[3]
Moores said that Bucke's cosmic consciousness is an interconnected way of seeing things "which is more of an intuitive knowing than it is a factual understanding".[4] Moores pointed out that, for scholars of the purist camp, the experience of cosmic consciousness is incomplete without the element of love, "which is the foundation of mystical consciousness".[4]
Juan A. Herrero Brasas said that Bucke's cosmic consciousness refers to the evolution of the intellect, and not to "the ineffable revelation of hidden truths".[6] According to Brasas, it was William James who equated Bucke's cosmic consciousness with mystical experience or mystical consciousness.[6] Gary Lachman notes that today Bucke's experience would most likely be explained by the "God spot", or more generally as a case of temporal lobe epilepsy, but he is skeptical of these and other organic explanations.[7]
Both Bucke and James argue that all religions, no matter how seemingly different, have a common core; both believe that it is possible to identify this core by stripping away institutional accretions of dogma and ritual and focusing on individual experience; and both identify mystical illumination as the foundation of all religious experience.[9]
James popularized the concept of religious experience,[note 1] which he explored in The Varieties of Religious Experience.[11][12] He saw mysticism as a distinctive experience which supplies knowledge of the transcendental.[13] He considered the "personal religion"[14] to be "more fundamental than either theology or ecclesiasticism",[14] and states:
In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which bring it about that the mystical classics have, has been said, neither birthday nor native land.[15]
What again, are the relations between the cosmic consciousness and matter? ... So that our ordinary human experience, on its material as well as on its mental side, would appear to be only an extract from the larger psycho-physical world?[16]
James understood "cosmic consciousness" to be a collective consciousness, a "larger reservoir of consciousness",[17] which manifests itself in the minds of men and remains intact after the dissolution of the individual. It may "retain traces of the life history of its individual emanation".[17]
In Schleiermacher's theology, higher consciousness "is the part of the human being that is capable of transcending animal instincts".[19] It is the "point of contact with God" and the essence of being human.[19]
When higher consciousness is present, people are not alienated from God by their instincts.[19] The relation between higher and lower consciousness is akin to St. Paul's "struggle of the spirit to overcome the flesh".[19] Higher consciousness establishes a distinction between the natural and the spiritual sides of human beings.[20]
The concept of religious experience was used by Schleiermacher and by Albert Ritschl to defend religion against scientific and secular criticism and to defend the belief that moral and religious experiences justify religious beliefs.[12]
All this seems to force upon us an interpretation of Hegel that would understand his term "mind" as some kind of cosmic consciousness; not, of course, a traditional conception of God as a being separate from the universe, but rather as something more akin to those eastern philosophies that insist that All is One.[22]
The Marginalian has a free Sunday digest of the week's most mind-broadening and heart-lifting reflections spanning art, science, poetry, philosophy, and other tendrils of our search for truth, beauty, meaning, and creative vitality. Here's an example. Like? Claim yours:
It was in the early spring, at the beginning of his thirty-sixth year. He and two friends had spent the evening reading Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman. They parted at midnight, and he had a long drive in a hansom (it was in an English city). His mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images and emotions called up by the reading and talk of the evening, was calm and peaceful. He was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment. All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame-colored cloud. For an instant he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city; the next, he knew that the light was within himself. Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into his brain streamed one momentary lightning-flash of the Brahmic Splendor which has ever since lightened his life; upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an aftertaste of heaven. Among other things he did not come to believe, he saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain.
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 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.
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.
Drawing on the memoirs, biographies, and letters of historical figures, he goes on to compose a kind of ledger of such spiritual giants who have reported experiences indicative of cosmic consciousness, noting next to each person the age at which they underwent the illumination. Among them he lists:
Either of the first two would (and will) radically change the conditions of, and greatly uplift, human life; but the third will do more for humanity than both of the former, were their importance multiplied by hundreds or even thousands.
The net result, Bucke envisions, will be nothing less than a revolution of the human soul. While human beings will remain resolutely spiritual, this revolution would be predicated on the dissolution of organized religion:
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The Present (feat. Eric James DeAratanha), Shani Sloka (Vedic Verse to Saturn), No Time Not to Love (Storyteller Sessions), Surrender to the Flow (New Version), INTEGRATION, NECTAR MEDICINE- Volume 2, For Giving (acoustic version), LET IT FLOW, and 11 more. , and , . Purchasable with gift card Buy Digital Discography $74.75 USD or more (35% OFF) Send as Gift about This is a song for our star, Our Sun! Bringer of the Light energy and to our own divine star within!
I incorporated the ancient Gayatri mantra in this song. Chanting this mantra bestows the devotee with purification of the mind, body and soul. This song came to me directly from the stars. We too are starseeds, awakening, singing awake our dreams! $(".tralbum-about").last().bcTruncate(TruncateProfile.get("tralbum_about"), "more", "less"); lyrics O Cosmic Mind
O Cosmic mind of which we shine....
may we never not remember and cherish for forever this cosmic love divine. (repeat)
Om bhur bhuvah suvah
tat savitur varenyam
bhargo devasya dhimayi
dhiyo yo nah pracodayat.
We meditate on the glory of the radiant Sun.
And the being that created this universe.
May our minds be enlightened, by the One, we meditate on...
We meditate on the glory of the radiant sun.
O cosmic weaver thank you for these signs..
and these harmonious alignments of our sun the stars and planets,
we are rejoicing in your Light. (repeat)
Stars shine the ancient wisdom...telling the stories that we find ourselves in.
Star seeds awaken! We live to sing awake our dreams!
Everything it shines, when we perceive the Divine! We are growing out of time, spiralling out of our minds! Everything it shines! When we perceive the Divine, we are growing out of time into the Cosmic mind...... $(".lyricsText").last().bcTruncate(TruncateProfile.get("tralbum_long"), "more", "less"); credits from NECTARIAN, released February 21, 2013 license all rights reserved tags Tags cosmic gayatri mantra inspirational lyrical world beautiful consciousness devotional medicine positive music spiritual universal Hawaii Shopping cart subtotal USD taxes calculated at checkout Check out about Mary Isis Hawaii