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Cosmic Consciousness by Ali Nomad

I THE NEW BIRTH: WHAT IT IS: INSTANCES DESCRIBED

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No golden promises of speedy entrance into Paradise may be given the disciple. Nor any exact rules, or laws of equation by virtue of which the goal shall be reached. Nor yet may any specific time be correctly estimated in which to serve a novitiate, before final initiation.

Many indeed, attain a high degree of spirituality, and yet not have found the key of perfect liberation, although the goal may be not far off.

Many, very many, on earth to-day, are living so close to the borderland of the new birth that they catch fleeting glimpses of the longed-for freedom, but the full import of its meaning does not dawn. There is yet another veil, however thin, between them and the Light.

The Buddha spent seven years in an intense longing and desire to attain that liberation which brought him consciousness of godhood--deliverance from the sense of sin and sorrow that had oppressed him; immunity from the necessity for reincarnation.

Jesus became a _Christ_ only after passing through the agonies of Gethsemane. A Christ is one who has found liberation; who has been born again in his individual consciousness into the inner areas of consciousness which are of the _atman_, and this attainment establishes his identity with The Absolute.

All oriental religions and philosophies teach that this state of consciousness, is possible to all men; therefore all men are gods in embryo.

But no philosophy or religion may promise the devotee the realization of this grace, nor yet can they deny its possible attainment to any.

Strangely enough, if we estimate men by externalities, we discover that there is no measure by which the supra-conscious man may be measured. The obscure and unlearned have been known to possess this wonderful power which dissolves the seeming, and leaves only the contemplation of the Real.

So also, men of great learning have experienced this rebirth; but it would seem that much cultivation of the intellectual qualities, unless accompanied by an humble and reverent spirit, frequently acts as a barrier to the realization of supra-consciousness.

In "Texts of Taoism," Kwang-Tse, one of the Illuminati, writes:

"He whose mind is thus grandly fixed, emits a heavenly light. In him who emits this heavenly light, men see the true man (i.e., the _atman_; the Self). When a man has cultivated himself to this point, thenceforth he remains constant in himself. When he is thus constant in himself, what is merely the human element will leave him, but Heaven will help him. Those whom Heaven helps, we call the sons of Heaven. Those who would, by learning, attain to this, seek for what they _can not learn_."

Thus it will be seen, that according to the reports offered us by this wise man, that which men call learning guarantees no power regarding that area of consciousness which brings Illumination--liberation from enchantment, of the senses--_mukti_.

Again, in the case of Jacob Boehme, the German mystic, although he left tomes of manuscript, it is asserted authoritatively, that he "possessed no learning" as that word is understood to mean accumulated knowledge.

In "The Spiritual Maxims" of Brother Lawrence, the Carmelite monk, we find this:

"You must realize that you reach God through the heart, and not through the mind."

"Stupidity is closer to deliverance than intellect which innovates," is a phrase ascribed to a Mohammedan saint, and do not modern theologians report with enthusiasm, the unlettered condition of Jesus?

In the Orient, the would-be initiate shuts out the voice of the world, that he may know the heart of the world. Many, very many, are the years of isolation and preparation which such an earnest one accepts in order that he may attain to that state of supra-consciousness in which "nothing is hidden that shall not be revealed" to his clarified vision.