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Cosmic Consciousness by Ali Nomad

I THE NEW BIRTH: WHAT IT IS: INSTANCES DESCRIBED

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Like the Lord Buddha, this Indian sage also describes his experience as accompanied by "unbounded light." Speaking of this strange and overpowering sense of being immersed in light, Sri Ramakrishna described it thus: "The living light to which the earnest devotee is drawn doth not burn. It is like the light coming from a gem, shining yet soft, cool and soothing. It burneth not. It giveth peace and joy."

This effect of great light, is an almost invariable accompaniment of supra-consciousness, although there are instances of undoubted cosmic consciousness in which the realization has been a more gradual growth, rather than a sudden influx, in which the phenomenon of _light_ is not greatly marked.

Mohammed is said to have swooned with the "intolerable splendor" of the flood of white light which broke upon him, after many days of constant prayer and meditation, in the solitude of the cavern outside the gates of Mecca.

Similar is the description of the attainment of cosmic consciousness, given by the Persian mystics, although it is evident that the Sufis regarded the result as reunion with "the other half" of the soul in exile.

The burden of their cry is love, and "union with the beloved" is the longed-for goal of all earthly strife and experience.

Whether this reunion be considered from the standpoint of finding the other half of the perfect one, as exemplified in the present-day search for the soul mate, or whether it be considered in the light of a spiritual merging into the One Eternal Absolute is the question of questions.

Certainly the terms used to express this state of spiritual ecstacy are words which might readily be applied to lovers united in marriage.

One thing is certain, the Sufis did not personify the Deity, except symbolically, and the "beloved one" is impartially referred to as masculine or feminine, even as modern thought has come to realize God as Father-Mother.

In all mystical writings, we find the conclusion that there is no _one way_ in which the seeker may find reunion with The Beloved.

"The ways of God are as the number of the souls of men," declare the followers of Islam, and "for the love that thou wouldst find demands the sacrifice of self to the end that the heart may be filled with the passion to stand within the Holy of Holies, in which alone the mysteries of the True Beloved can be revealed unto thee," is also a Sufi sentiment, although it might also be Christian or Mohammedan, or Vedantan.

Indeed, if the student of Esotericism, searches deeply enough, he will find a surprising unity of sentiment, and even of expression, in all the variety of religions and philosophies, including Christianity.

It has been said that the chief difference between the message of Jesus and those of the holy men of other races, and times, lies in the fact that Jesus, more than his predecessors, emphasized the importance of love. But consider the following lines from Jami, the Persian mystic:

"Gaze, till gazing out of gazing
Grew to BEING HER I gazed on,
She and I no more, but in one
Undivided Being blended.
All that is not One must ever
Suffer with the wound of absence;
And whoever in Love's city
Enters, finds but room for one
And but in Oneness, union."

These lines express that religious ecstacy which results from spiritual aspiration, or they express the union of the individual soul with its mate according to the viewpoint. In any event, they are an excellent description of the realization of that much-to-be-desired consciousness which is fittingly described in Occidental phraseology as "cosmic consciousness." Whether this realization is the result of union with the soul's "other half," or whether it is an impersonal reunion with the Causeless Cause, The Absolute, from which we are earth wanderers, is not the direct purpose of this volume to answer, although the question will be answered, and that soon.