| What is Cosmic Consciousness?
When I look within I am lifted beyond the confines of time and space, in tune with a majestic, all-conscious existence, which mocks at fear and laughs at death, compared to which seas and mountains, suns and planets, appear no more than flimsy rack riding across a blazing sky; an existence which is in all and yet absolutely removed from everything, an endless inexpressible wonder that can only be experienced and not described. But when I look outside, I am what I was, an ordinary mortal in no way different from the millions who inhabit the earth, a common man, pressed by neccessity and driven by circumstances, a little chastened and humbled - that is all. The one really remarkable change I perceive in myself is that, not by my own effort but what at present I can only call grace, as the result of a day-to-day observable but still incomprehensible activity of a radiant kind of vital energy, present in a dormant form in the human organism, there has developed in me a new channel of communication, a higher sense. Through this extraordinary and extremely sensitive channel an intelligence, higher than that which I possess, expresses itself at times in a manner as surprising to me as it might be to others, and through which again I am able on occasions to have a fleeting gllimpse of the mighty, indescribable world to which I really belong, as a slender beam of light slanting into a dark room through a tiny hole does not belong to the room which it illuminates, but to the effulgent sun millions and millions of miles away. I am as firmly convinced of the existence of this supersense as I am of the other five already present in every one of us. In fact on every occasion when I make use of it, I perceive a reality before which all that I treat as real appears unsubstantial and shadowy, a reality more solid than the material world reflected by the other senses, more solid than myself, surrounded by the mind and ego, more solid than all I can conceive of including solidity itself. Apart from this extraordinary feature, I am but an ordinary human being with a body perhaps more susceptible to heat and cold and to the influence of disharmonious factors, mental and physical, than the normal one. |
Contrary to the belief which attributes spiritual growth to purely psychic causes, to extreme self-denial and renunciation, or to an extraordinary degree of religious fervour, I found that a man can rise from the normal to a higher level of consciousness by a continuous biological process, as regular as any other activity of the body, and at no stage is it neccessary or even desirable for him either to neglect his flesh or to deny a place to the human feelings in his heart.
A higher state of consciousness, able to liberate itself from the thraldom of senses appears to be incompatible, unless we take the biological factors into account, with a physical existence in which passions and desires nd the animal needs of the body, however restricted, exist side by side. But I can say confidently that a reasonable measure of control over appetites coupled with some knowledge of the mighty mechanism and a befitting constitution proved a surer and safer way to spiritual unfoldment than any amount of self-mortification or abnormal religious fervour can do. I have every reason to believe mystical experience and transcendental knowledge can come to a man as naturally as the flow of genius, and that for this achievement it is not neccessary for him, save for well-directed efforts at self-ennoblement and regulation of appetites, to depart eccentrically from the normal course of human conduct. Whether the transformative process is set in motion by voluntary effort or is spontaneous, purity of thought and disciplined behaviour are essential to minimise resistance to the cleansing and remodelling of the organism. The subject must emerge normal in every way from the great ordeal, metamorphosed but mentally sane and with unimpaired intellect and emotion, to be able to evaluate and taste in full the supreme happiness of an occasional enrapturing union with the indescribable ocean of consciousness in the transcendental state, by marking the difference between the frail human element in him on the one hand and the immortal spirit on the other. It is only in this way that the incomparable bliss of liberation can be realised, because unconditioned existence being beyond the pale of enjoyment or its opposite, the actual enjoyer in the egobound conditioned human creature, is the visionary and no other. extract from Kundalini: the Evolutionary Energy in Man (Shambhala, 1970. Gopi Krishna) |
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| Other extracts available from this book: Civilsation and cosmic consciousness |
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