October 15 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT The MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

Cosmic Consciousness - Illumination (Continued)

"The intelligence in an animal which directs its actions and tells it where to go to find food and shelter, we call instinct.  It is really Omniscience in the animal.  The same quality, more highly developed, makes a conscious appearance in man and is what we call intuition.  Intuition is God in man, revealing to him the Realities of Being; and just as instinct guides the animal, so would intuition guide man, if he would allow it to do so.

Here again we must be careful not to mistake a psychic impression for an intuitive one.  Psychic impressions may control; intuition remains in the background and waits for recognition.  "Behold I stand at the door and knock."

All arbitrary control of man must have stopped as soon as he came to a point of self-knowingness.  From this point, he must discover himself; but intuition, which is nothing less than God in man, silently awaits his recognition and co-operation.  The Spirit is  always with us if we would but sense Its Presence.  Mystics have felt this wonderful Power working from within; and have responded to It; and as certain evidence that they were not laboring under delusions, THEY HAVE ALL SENSED THE SAME THING.  Had the impressions been psychic only, each would have seen and sensed a different thing, for each would merely have been seeing through the darkness of his own subjective mentality.

Cosmic Consciousness is not a mystery, it is the Self-Knowingness of God through man.  The more complete the operation of that Power, the more complete is man's conscious mentality, for the illumined do not become less, but more, themselves.  The greater the consciousness of God, the more complete must be the realization of the True Self - the Divine Reality."

October 13 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT The MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

Cosmic Consciousness - Illumination

"Dr. Bucke defines Cosmic Consciousness as:  "One's consciousness of his unity with the Whole."  The mystic intuitively perceives Truth, and often without any process of reasoning - immediately is aware, with what Swedenborg called a sort of "interior awareness," a spiritual sense.

There can and does descend into our minds - embody and personify in our person - a Divinity, a Unity, the Spirit of God, the direct incarnation of the Original Thing, in us - the mystical presentation of Christ.

Dean Inge, perhaps the best thinker in the Anglican Church of today, tells us that Plotinus had seven distinct periods of cosmic consciousness, in which state he was so completely unified with the Universe that he became One with It.  His spiritual philosophy was a result of these experiences.  Plotinus, you will recall, was one of the greatest of the Neo-Platonic Philosophers.

Dr. Buck, the author of that most rational book, "Cosmic Consciousness," cites many instances of known and authentic records of people who have had definite Cosmic experiences.  In his scientific approach to this subject, he calls attention to the necessity of distinguishing between psychic revelations and Cosmic Consciousness.

Reports of the experiences of most psychics are contradictory.  While on the other hand, the experiences of those who have entered into Cosmic Consciousness - over a period of thousands of years - tell us an identical story, once we get the key to their language - all tell the same story of Reality.  The psychic may or may not be true; the spiritual is always true. The psychic realm is the realm of the subconscious, or relative first cause.   The spiritual is the realm of First Cause.  Therefore, we may read Buddha, Jesus, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Swedenborg, Emerson, Whitman, Browning or any of the other great mystics, no matter in what age they have lived, and we shall find the same Ultimate.  By reading the writings of most psychics, we enter confusion; therefore, we must understand clearly this vital difference between psychism and mysticism.  One may or may not be true; the other is always true."