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Cosmic Consciousness by Ali Nomad

VII MOSES, THE LAW-GIVER

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The salient feature of the law as given by Moses unto his people, the Jews, is that of strict cleanliness of mind and body. In this we find a similarity to the oft-repeated behest of Gautama, the Buddha, who constantly admonished his followers to keep their hearts pure and their minds and bodies clean.

This spirit of cleanliness finds also a counterpart in the saying ascribed to Jesus, "blessed are the pure in heart."

The cleanliness here referred to is doubtless not so much physical neatness as mental purity of thought--thought free from doubt and calumny and petty deceits and hypocrisy and selfishness and debasing perversions of the life forces; but during various stages of history we find that all teachings have their esoteric and their exoteric application.

The law, as enunciated by Moses, according to the Jewish reports, laid much stress upon physical cleanliness, as an attribute of godhood.

But Moses, if we may credit reports, was something far more inspired and illumined than a mere physical culturist--commendable as is personal cleanliness--and his admonitions were the result of that fine sense of discrimination and enlightenment which comes from cosmic perception even if he had not experienced the deeper, fuller realization of liberation, of which Buddha is a shining example.

It is evident that the laws laid down by Moses were taught and practised by the Egyptians many many years prior to the time in which Moses lived, which from the most reliable authorities, must have been about four to five hundred years before the Exodus.

This does not detract from the evidence that the great Egyptian-Hebrew, was a man of wonderful intellectual attainments, and from what we know of modern examples of Illumination, he also possessed a degree of cosmic consciousness.

The story of the seemingly miraculous birth of Moses, and the mystery with which his ancestry is surrounded, is also typical of one who has attained to cosmic consciousness.

The Illumined one realizes his birthlessness and his deathlessness, and expresses it in symbolism, meaning of course, the realization that as the spirit is never born and can never die, the idea of age is an unreality--and should find no place in the consciousness of one who regards himself as an indestructible atom of the Cosmos.

But the evidences regarding the probable Illumination of Moses are to be found in the reports of his ascension of Mt. Sinai, and what occurred there.

The phenomenon of the great light which is inseparable from instances of cosmic consciousness, and which gives to the phenomenon its name "Illumination," was apparently marked in the case of Moses.

The "burning bush," which he describes is the experience of the mind when the illusion of sense has ceased, even temporarily, to obscure the mental vision.

"And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire, and out of the midst of a bush; and he looked and behold, the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed."

There is a subtler interpretation to this report than that usually given, even by those who realize that this expression is an evidence of the sudden influx of supra consciousness which attends the soul's liberation from the limits of sense consciousness.

The "burning bush" is synonymous with the "tree of life" which is ever alive with the "fires of creation."

All who realize liberation are endowed with the power to understand this symbol. For those who have not attained to this degree of consciousness, the esoteric meaning is necessarily hidden.

The phenomenon of the strange mystical light which seems to enfold and bathe the Illumined one, is concisely expressed in the case of Moses.

"And it came to pass, that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the tablets of the testimony in hand, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone, or sent forth beams by reason of his speaking with Him.