I suspect that most of you are familiar with Richard Maurice Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind [E.P. Dutton and Company, NY, 1901/1956, my copy].
Bucke’s work is monumentally important but seems to have been lost in the vast array of books dealing with “consciousness.”
Dr. Bucke (he was a medical doctor), in Part One of the work, provides three kinds of awareness or consciousness: Simple Consciousness (attributed to the upper half of all living things), Self Consciousness (the awareness by mankind of Earthly things), and Cosmic Consciousness (an awareness of the life and order of the Universe, the cosmos.
Dr. Bucke offers list of those who have had the epiphany he calls Cosmic Consciousness, including notables such as Gautama, the Buddha, Jesus the Christ, St. Paul, Plotinus, Dante, William Blake, Balzac, Walt Whitman, et al. and lesser or “imperfect” lights: Moses, Socrates, Pascal, Spinoza, Thoreau, Wordsworth, Pushkin, et al.
Some persons (men and a few women, noted by initials, not their full names) are also included.
The persons “named” or noted were cited by events in their lives or, in the case of Bucke’s near contemporaries, detailed descriptions of what they experienced.
One notable lapse is the legendary “epiphany” of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was allegedly seen levitating, which is an apocryphal tale, as I see it, but who did have a “cosmic consciousness” moment that caused him to say that all he experienced and wrote about in his daily, real life was “as straw in the wind” and he stopped his theological discourses accordingly and removed himself from his academic endeavors.
Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas] puts it this way:
“On one occasion, at 1273 at the Dominican convent of Naples in the chapel of Saint Nicholas, after Matins, Thomas lingered and was seen by the sacristan Domenic of Caserta to be levitating in prayer with tears before an icon of the crucified Christ. Christ said to Thomas, “You have written well of me, Thomas. What reward would you have for your labor?” Thomas responded, “Nothing but you, Lord.” After this exchange something happened, but Thomas never spoke of it or wrote it down.
“On 6 December 1273, another mystical experience took place. While he was celebrating Mass, he experienced an unusually long ecstasy. Because of what he saw, he abandoned his routine and refused to dictate to his socius Reginald of Piperno. When Reginald begged him to get back to work, Thomas replied: “Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me” (mihi videtur ut palea). As a result, the Summa Theologica would remain uncompleted. What exactly triggered Thomas’ change in
behavior is believed by Catholics to have been some kind of supernatural experience of God.”
Aquinas “saw” something while in his ecstasy, something that was so profound and transcendental that it took him away from his personal existential life and theological speculations.
Bucke doesn’t mention Aquinas but Bucke’s discourse on St. Paul’s “illumination” is of a kind like that of Thomas Aquinas.
Advocates of hallucinogenic drugs try to compare “cosmic consciousness” with what users of such drugs experience. The “revelations” of drug users are far apart in description and actuality from a cosmic consciousness experience.
Near Death Experiences are said to mimic “cosmic consciousness.” They don’t.
UFO abductees (experiencers) are said, by some, to have had a cosmic consciousness experience. They haven’t.
Cosmic Consciousness is a transformational event, so profound for the person having such an awareness that it is life-altering and indescribable.
No UFO contactee professed anything like that proffered by those who’ve had a cosmic consciousness epiphany.
There are other realities, as most of you accept, I think.
And some persons from the past and near present have seen one of those realities, a reality so profoundly transcendental that it shook them to their core, causing a new and overwhelming insight to what is real and what isn’t.
Has any UFO witness had such an experience? Or an NDE participant? Not exactly.
But what is it that is seen? An hallucinogenic panorama? Or a glimpse of another dimension or universe? Or the “real reality” that Plato discusses in his cave mataphor?
How can we know?
RR
http://ufocon.blogspot.com – The UFO Iconoclast(s)
Source:
http://ufocon.blogspot.com/2016/12/cosmic-consciousness-and-real-reality.html
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