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Richard Beck - Cosmic Consciousness
Study of the evolution of the human mind

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS
A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind

RICHARD MAURICE BUCKE
COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

RICHARD BUCK
UDC 130.123.4 BBK 88.6 B11

Böck Richard Maurice
Cosmic consciousness. Study of the evolution of the human mind / Transl. from fr. - M: LLC Publishing House "Sofia", 2008. - 448 p.
ISBN 978-5-91250-603-1

Standing at the origins of modern esotericism, this book is a true classic of paranormal research. In an unusually simple and clear way, understandable to everyone, Dr. Böck, exploring the evolution of consciousness, came to conclusions that rise to the level of the highest peaks of philosophical thought. He considered the present human form of consciousness to be transitional to another, higher form, which he called cosmic consciousness and which he already felt approaching, at the same time foreseeing a new phase in the history of mankind.
“Cosmic consciousness, Böck tells us, is what in the East is called the Brahmic Radiance...” - Peter Demyanovich Uspensky respectfully quotes the author. The same Ouspensky is a student of Gurdjieff and the author of the “New Model of the Universe”.
Canadian physiologist and psychiatrist Richard Maurice Beck is the same era in esotericism as the American psychologist William James with his book “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” which was published exactly a year after the publication of “Cosmic Consciousness.”

UDC 130.123.4
BBK 88.6

ISBN 978-5-91250-603-1

Tsareva G. I. Mystery of the spirit 9
Part I. Preface 19
Part II. Evolution and involution 39
Chapter 1. Towards Self-Awareness 39
Chapter 2. On the plane of self-awareness 43
Part III. Involution 77
Part IV. People who had cosmic consciousness 111
Chapter 1. Gautama Buddha 111
Chapter 2. Jesus Christ 131
Chapter 3. Apostle Paul 147
Chapter 4. Dams 160
Chapter 5. Mohammed 166
Chapter 6. Dante 173
Chapter 7. Bartholomew of Las Casas 182
Chapter 8. Juan Yepes 187
Chapter 9. Francis Bacon 202
Chapter 10. Jacob Be"me
(the so-called Teutonic Theosophist) 228
Chapter 11. William Blake 243
Chapter 12. Honore de Balzac 252
Chapter 13. Walt Whitman 269
Chapter 14. Edward Carpenter 287
Part V. Addition. Several less striking, imperfect and dubious cases. . . 307
Chapter 1. Dawn 309
Chapter 2. Moses 310
Chapter 3. Gideon, called Jerubbaal 311
Chapter 4. Isaiah 313
Chapter 5. Lao Tzu 314
Chapter 6. Socrates 321
Chapter 7. Roger Bacon 323
Chapter 8. Blaise Pascal 326
Chapter 9. Benedict Spinoza 330
Chapter 10. Colonel James Gardiner 336
Chapter 11. Swedenborg 337
Chapter 12. William Wordsworth 339
Chapter 13. Charles Finney 340
Chapter 14. Alexander Pushkin 343
Chapter 15. Ralph Waldo Emerson 345
Chapter 16. Alfred Tennyson 347
Chapter 17. I.B.B 349
Chapter 18. Henry David Topo 350
Chapter 19. D. B 354
Chapter 20. Part 355
Chapter 21. The case of G.B. in his own presentation. . . 360
Chapter 22. R.P. S 364
Chapter 23. E. T 367
Chapter 24. Ramakrishna Paramahansa 367
Chapter 25. D. X. D 371
Chapter 26. T.S.R 373
Chapter 27. V. X. V 374
Chapter 28. Richard Jeffreys 375
Chapter 29. K. M. K 380
Chapter 30. The case of M.K.L., stated by himself 389
Chapter 31. Case of D.W.U 392
Chapter 32. William Lloyd 402
Chapter 33. Horace Traubel 405
Chapter 34. Pavel Tainer 412
Chapter 35. S.I.E 419
Chapter 36. Case of A.D. S 423
Chapter 37. G. R. Derzhavin 425
Part VI. Afterword 429
Sources 435

Mystery of the Spirit

The "Mystery of the Spirit" is the experience of spiritual growth, which is a fragile, gradual and natural process of elevation into the divine infinity, when the light of knowledge, flashing through the "entry of God into the soul", gives a person Cosmic Consciousness, which means a comprehensive vision of the world in which infinity not only intuitively comprehended, but also implemented. Each soul has its center and sphere in God, and man reaches the Supreme through the direct “gifting” of divine energies.
People, for the most part, have lost contact with the supersensible world to such an extent that they have come to deny it, so understanding the need to talk on this topic is necessary for everyone who believes in the reality of spiritual experience.
Throughout human history, there have been people with superconsciousness, those who, at the beginning of their journey, asked themselves a single inexhaustible question: “What is God and what is I?” - and sometimes answered it at the end of their search. These people were called mystics.
Despite the difference in beliefs, mental development, time and place, their lives have much in common, being a series of ascending steps that replace one another. Not all mystics can find all the moments of mystical life, nevertheless, one can easily indicate its main stages, common to all.
What is the main element of spiritual experience, what revelations and states can be its integral part and what do they lead to?
All who have achieved divine illumination speak of three phases of reflective consciousness; about the three heavens revealed to man; about the three stages of spiritual growth; about the three orders of reality, the three principles or aspects of the divine essence. For many mystics this three-stage experience can almost always be traced.

The threefold path to God begins with passionate desire, which is the beginning of everything, when physical, mental, spiritual laziness is overcome, when a certain internal preparedness and spiritual stimulus is required, strong enough to discard all habitual ideas and prejudices.
External feelings and reason separate a person from the world: they make him a “world in itself,” a person in space and time. A spiritualized person ceases to be a separate being, since he destroys his isolation.
Step by step the mystic passes through the stages of Beginner, Experienced and Accomplished. This formula could not have survived for thousands of years if it did not agree with the facts.
The ascent begins from the lowest level, the most accessible to man - from the surrounding world. The physical world, which is a narrow circle of our egocentric world of illusions in which we live at the social level of consciousness, satisfying our lower instincts, is the starting point from where the first stage begins - the path of purification, where the mind strives to study true wisdom and its darkness is illuminated by the light of knowledge . And only the “purified” soul at the end of this stage begins to see the absolute and eternal beauty of Nature. After this, a deepening of the vision of the world occurs, a change in a person’s worldview, a change in his character, his moral state.
The next stage of ascent is the “path of illumination” or “world of light”, visible to those who join it, when, through reflection, a feeling of ardent love and harmony with the Supreme is aroused, when the soul submits to the rhythm of the divine life and perceives the not yet fully revealed God, feeling like a part of the universe. A wide range of mystical knowledge can be classified as the second stage of spiritual growth. Some of its secrets have been revealed to those whom the sense of beauty transports to another level of existence, where everything is given new value; This category may include people inclined to creative knowledge of the world, as well as those who experience divine communication during passionate prayers or various contemplative practices. The mystic Ruysbroeck ascribes to the contemplative life "the inward and upward paths through which man can pass into the presence of God." This is the second world of reality, where God and Eternity become known, but with the help of intermediaries.
There is no perfect isolation between the worlds, and reality is present in every part of it; in man there is the ability to perceive and the power to transmit this reality, since he is the image and likeness of the Supreme.
And finally, in ecstasy the mystic reaches the supersensible world, where without intermediaries the soul unites with the Eternal, enjoying the contemplation of the inexpressible reality, entering the third path - the path of union with God; and only here is superconsciousness achieved, when a person feels divinity and his connection with it, when the knowledge of God is higher, the more developed this consciousness is. At this stage, the mind is silent, the will is paralyzed, the body freezes in complete stillness - this is a state of ecstasy, or an internal sensation of God, which is the basis of all mystical experiences. Here is “smart light” and “deafening darkness”, here is delight and despair, here is rise and fall.
The Upanishads say that the bliss we get in this world is only a shadow of divine bliss, a weak reflection of it.
A second birth occurs - a birth in the spirit, when the mystic dies to himself, completely dissolving in God, becoming one spirit with him in all respects, just as “flowing rivers disappear into the sea, losing their direction and form, so does the wise man, freed from name and form, goes to the deity who is beyond everything,” as stated in the sacred Indian text.
God reveals himself to different people and in different ways, and this revelation goes through the three main components of man: spirit, soul, body. Each soul has its center and sphere in God. The Universe is an outpouring, a radiation of the One. The pulsation of divine energy is felt throughout the entire Cosmos, taking various forms in various things, and man reaches the Supreme through the direct influence of the divine gift.
A new understanding can occur either suddenly, without apparent reason or reason, when spontaneous enlightenment is achieved, or a person, naturally inclined to “true wisdom,” through hard work, step by step encourages the opening of his inner gaze.
But even speaking about spontaneous enlightenment, it should be divided into several categories: a) enlightenment achieved as a result of strong emotional shock, leading to psychological trauma, which can lead to a decrease in the threshold of perception of the subtle world; b) when a person finds himself in an environment conducive to the development of a mystical state, which is typical, for example, for monasteries, or participation in various mystery processions, sacraments, as well as being in deserted wild places (desert, forest, mountains); c) the “supernatural” is incomprehensible to ordinary perception, but a person can receive insight, what is called “suddenly”, as in the case of Jacob Boehme - and only once endowed with higher abilities, thanks to the influence of divine energies, they can comprehend things and phenomena beyond them essence, in accordance with the degree of wisdom received from God, therefore man perceives the supernatural solely by its effect; d) many factors can provoke and stimulate the emergence of mystical abilities: dreams, near-death states and clinical death experiences, music, smells, sounds, daydreams, play of sunlight, splashing waves, etc.; e) in an unexpected collision of the mind, predisposed to subtle-material perception, with one or another sacred tradition containing symbols of transcendental reality, expressed in certain mysterious formulations. And even such a person, who does not have any education or book knowledge, if the vibrational flows coincide with the vibration of what he heard or saw, crosses the threshold of internal perception, gaining the opportunity to identify with this reality. An example is the Sixth Patriarch in China, who achieved a state of spontaneous enlightenment due to “accidentally” hearing the recitation of the Diamond Sutra in the market, which led an illiterate man to open his spiritual vision.
Having analyzed what has been said, we can assume that God is not comprehended by scholarship and intense study of books, but is comprehended by mystics at the moment of insight. This is direct cognition or immediate penetration when in the mystical experience in the presence of the Supreme the soul finds itself and, liberated, becomes identical with everything, living a life of unity with God, the knowledge of which can be immediate and whole and not conditioned by any other cognition.
It is impossible to retell the vision of the mystic, and they all say that what they felt and saw with their spiritual gaze is completely indescribable. “Oh, how poor is my word and how weak it is, compared with the image that is in my soul!” - this is how Dante exclaims when remembering what he saw and experienced.
What happens to the personality of a person who has experienced this indescribable state - is his former “I” destroyed or only transformed, freed from the oppression of matter? Perhaps the great mystics “shook off” their own “I” and became demigods - not themselves, as the German mystic Angelius Silesius said: “Only gods are accepted by God.”
The individual ego of a person is dissolved in God by love, but his individuality is not destroyed, despite the fact that it is transformed and deified, since the divine substance penetrates into it.
But spontaneous insights are very rare, and a person who has embarked on the path of God-seeking, as a rule, is not given the opportunity to immediately immerse himself in the contemplation of other worlds, since it is first necessary to free himself from the power of the physical world, therefore the mystic can only work hard, improving the body and spirit, step by step rises to God. In this case, asceticism is a necessary preparatory stage of the mystical path, meaning hard spiritual work, the strictest mental, moral and physical discipline, where humility can be an integral part of the purifying path.
For a true mystic, asceticism is nothing more than a means of moving towards the end and can often be abandoned when this end is reached, because true asceticism is an exercise not of the body, but of the soul.
There is another way to achieve mystical states, when the latter are induced using certain methods of stimulation, which are an integral part of various religious and spiritual practices. This includes breathing control among yogis; refusal to sleep; ecstatic dance used by the mystical sects of Islam, Sufis, and also in shamanic cultures;
various meditative practices; chants; sexual rituals among tantrists; sensory hunger; the practice of silence among Christian hesychasts and pillarism in Orthodoxy. According to the adherents of Vedanta, spontaneous mystical states are not pure - pure enlightenment can only be achieved through yoga.
Modern psychologists have also developed practices that help achieve certain ecstatic states - rebirthing, various types of hypnosis, free breathing practices and reincarnation. Until now, no fundamental differences have been discovered between spontaneous and stimulated mystical states with regard to their characteristics and effects.
And another method is used to achieve ecstatic states - the use of drugs and medications that activate mental activity and stimulate the onset of “mystical” states. Their use goes back centuries, and some researchers believe that drug use has been an integral part of all religions except Christianity.
There is an idea that drug visions correspond to mystical experiences - in fact, they are incomparable, since the states caused by such drugs are not truly mystical and should be considered “pseudo-states” that do not go beyond the boundaries of a specific mental experience. A painless transition with the help of drugs to other areas, no matter how bright and colorful it may be, is just a downward movement, since it does not require internal discipline and does not allow achieving sustainable positive personality changes.
Along with this, mysticism itself can be illusory. The mystical consciousness can be open to invasion from the lower worlds. These intrusions were not always correctly understood by mystics when they did not recognize the darkness that appeared in the form of spiritual light, which could be accompanied by such phenomena as visions, voices, prophetic dreams, clairvoyance, levitation. Some believe that such phenomena should be excluded from the concept of "mystical experience", while others are of the opinion that they are a preliminary and necessary step towards the goal of mysticism.
It was believed that these phenomena could be both from God, as grace or testing, and from dark forces, as various kinds of seduction. But spiritual life in general is dangerous, and the best mystics have always recognized the dual nature of the so-called divine revelations, since only some of them are mystical in the true sense, and their reality could only be determined intuitively.
Spiritual things require spiritual knowledge, and intuition is the breakthrough between the natural and the supernatural. Man has the gift of divine insight or mystical intuition, through which the unknown becomes known, the inaudible becomes audible, the imperceptible becomes perceived. At the lowest level of consciousness, a person has the simplicity of sensory perception, at the highest - intuitive knowledge, which perceives reality in its entirety, as it is, therefore, of all sources of knowledge, intuition is the most important. Consciousness is not the highest criterion of the universe, since life cannot be understood by reason alone. There is something that goes beyond the limits of human consciousness, which cannot be adequately described, which is why it is called by various names - revelation, intuition, superconsciousness.
When the soul reaches the truth, then all evil perishes in it. Man is united with the Whole and is no longer an individual doing anything, since his life becomes the life of God, his will becomes the will of the Almighty and all human actions flow from a single source.
God is eternal, but there are times when it seems that He stops addressing people, when spiritual impoverishment and hopeless darkness of the soul sets in. But after this, outbursts of mystical emotions are possible, which are equivalent in strength to external pressures expressed in economic and political turmoil. We are seeing this process now in our country, when, after spiritual impoverishment, people began to show a craving for religion, and a widespread interest in mysticism has become a characteristic feature of our days.
But it would be wrong to explain the appearance of mystical phenomena only as a result of social conditions. Mysticism to one degree or another is inherent in almost every person, only the form of its manifestation can be different. Mystical phenomena are observed at different times and may not depend on external circumstances, and the apparent difference in the number of mystical phenomena may be illusory, since at some times people pay less attention to these phenomena and describe them less than when they are “in fashion.”
Is there an increase in the number of people with cosmic consciousness over time? We cannot determine this yet, since we do not have enough material for this. It is impossible to compare the number of famous mystics of antiquity with the present manifestation of mysticism among modern people, since we do not know the scale of its occurrence in the past. If we talk about the level of mystical consciousness, then at present mystics like Swedenborg are still unknown, and those closest to us in time can literally be “counted on one’s fingers.” Perhaps they are still unknown and our time is the launching pad from which a qualitative change will occur in people’s consciousness. The transition from one level of consciousness to another is not simple and involves the emergence of completely new elements, accompanied not by the instant destruction of old ones, but by their slow transformation, with a gradual movement of the fulcrum. A person changes continuously, while the structure of consciousness becomes more and more complex. It is now becoming undeniable that the superconscious person of today is not just a solitary master secretly searching for the “elixir of life” or the “philosopher’s stone” in his laboratory, but a scientist with a cosmic philosophy trying to peer into tomorrow , whose daring ideas do not fit into the rigid framework of modern science. But many “crazy” discoveries are increasingly being introduced into official science, and what previously seemed like “out-of-this-world fantasy” is now becoming real facts that enter our lives, revolutionizing science, thereby pushing the boundaries of our worldview.
One who has cosmic consciousness has a strong spiritual conviction and is not subject to the power of the flesh, fear and anger. He neither exalts in prosperity nor falls into disaster, having peace
with a strong mind and a chaste look. Not many of us have these qualities.
But let us not despair, because through the eternity of existence, man gradually increases his knowledge and understanding of the world, and this universe, which we now comprehend, is a reflection of our own consciousness. Our life is only a step on the path to infinity. Perfection is infinite and achievable, apparently, only by continuous striving forward, towards God. Perhaps the ever-expanding consciousness contains within itself an even greater eternity, and even in the present state a person is only at the beginning of his insight!
Tsareva G. I.

Preface

I
H
What is cosmic consciousness? This book is an attempt to answer this question. But we think it useful to make a brief introduction first, setting it out in as clear a language as possible, in order to open the door to a further, more detailed and thorough presentation of what constitutes the main task of this work.
Cosmic consciousness is a higher form of consciousness than that possessed by modern man. The latter is called self-consciousness and is the ability on which our entire life (subjective and objective) is based, distinguishing us from higher animals; from here we must exclude that small part of our psyche that we borrow from the few people who have a higher cosmic consciousness. To imagine this clearly, you should understand that there are three forms, or stages, of consciousness:
1. Simple consciousness, which is possessed by the highest half of the representatives of the animal kingdom. With the help of this ability, a dog or a horse is also aware of its surroundings, just like a person: they are aware of their body and its individual members and know that both are part of themselves.

2. In addition to this simple consciousness that animals and humans possess, the latter is endowed with another, higher form of consciousness, called self-consciousness. By virtue of this soul faculty, man is not only conscious of trees, rocks, water, his own members and his body, but also of himself as a separate being, distinct from the rest of the universe. Meanwhile, as is well known, not a single animal can express itself in this way. In addition, with the help of self-awareness, a person is able to consider his own mental states as an object of his consciousness. The animal is immersed in its consciousness, like a fish in the sea; it is therefore unable, even in imagination, to step out of it, even for one moment, in order to understand it. A person, thanks to self-awareness, can, distracting himself from himself, think: “Yes, the thought that I had on this issue is correct; I know she is true; and I know that I know that it is true.” If the author is asked: “Why do you know that animals cannot think in this way,” he will answer simply and convincingly: there is no indication that any animal could think in this way, since if it had this ability, then we would have known about this a long time ago. Between beings living as close to each other as people, on the one hand, and animals, on the other, it would be easy to establish relations with each other if both had self-consciousness. Even with all the difference in mental experiences, we can, by simply observing external acts, quite freely enter, for example, the mind of a dog and see what is happening there; we know that a dog sees and hears, that it has a sense of smell and taste, we also know that it has a mind with the help of which it applies appropriate means to achieve certain goals, and we know, finally, that it reasons. If a dog had self-awareness, we would have known this long ago. But we still don't know this; It is certain, therefore, that neither dog, nor horse, nor elephant, nor monkey have ever been self-conscious beings. Further, everything that is definitely human around us is built on human self-awareness. Language is the subjective side of that, the subjective side of which is self-consciousness. Self-awareness and language (two in one, because they are two halves of the same thing) represent the sine qua condition of human social life, customs, institutions, all kinds of industry, all crafts and arts. If any animal had self-consciousness, with the help of this ability it would undoubtedly create for itself a superstructure of language, customs, industry, arts, etc. But not a single animal did this, and therefore we come to the conclusion that The animal does not have self-awareness.
The presence of self-consciousness in man and the possession of language (the other half of self-consciousness) creates a huge gap between man and higher animals, endowed only with simple consciousness.
3. Cosmic consciousness is the third form of consciousness, which is as much higher than self-consciousness as the latter is higher than simple consciousness. It goes without saying that with the advent of this new form of consciousness, both simple consciousness and self-consciousness continue to exist in man (just as simple consciousness is not lost with the acquisition of self-consciousness), but in combination with these latter, cosmic consciousness creates that new human ability, which will be discussed in this book. The main feature of cosmic consciousness, as reflected in its name, is the consciousness of the cosmos, that is, the life and order of the entire universe. More on this below, since the purpose of the entire book is to shed some light on this issue. Besides the above-mentioned central fact associated with cosmic self-consciousness - consciousness of the cosmos, there are many other elements belonging to the cosmic sense; some elements can now be specified. Along with the consciousness of the cosmos, intellectual enlightenment or insight comes to a person, which in itself is capable of transporting a person to a new plane of existence - turning him almost into a being of a new type. Added to this is a feeling of moral exaltation, an indescribable feeling of exaltation, elevation, joy and intensification of the moral sense, which is as amazing and important both for the individual and for the whole race as is the increase in intellectual power. Along with this, what can be called a sense of immortality comes to a person - the consciousness of eternal life: not the conviction that he will possess it in the future, but the consciousness that he already possesses it.
Only personal experience or long-term study of people who have crossed the threshold of this new life can help us clearly understand and feel what it really is. However, it seemed valuable to the author of this work to consider, at least briefly, those cases and conditions in which such mental states occurred. He expects the result of his labors in two directions: first, in enlarging the general idea of human life, first of all by comprehending this important modification in our mental insight, and then in endowing us with some ability to understand the true condition of such people who have hitherto time, they were either elevated by average self-consciousness to the level of gods, or, going to the other extreme, they were considered insane. Secondly, the author hopes to help his fellow humans in a practical sense. He holds the view that our descendants, sooner or later, as a race, will reach a state of cosmic consciousness, just as many years ago our ancestors passed from simple consciousness to self-consciousness. He finds that this step in the evolution of our consciousness is already taking place, since it is clear to the author that people possessing cosmic self-consciousness are appearing more and more often and that we as a race are gradually approaching that state of self-consciousness from which the transition to cosmic self-consciousness is made .
He is more than convinced that every person who has not passed a certain age can, if there are no obstacles from heredity, achieve cosmic consciousness. He knows that intelligent communication with minds endowed with such consciousness helps self-conscious people to move to a higher level of existence. Therefore, the author hopes that by facilitating contact with such people, he will help humanity take this highly important step in the field of spiritual development.
II

The author looks at the near future of humanity with great hopes. At present, three revolutions inevitably await us, in comparison with which ordinary historical processes will seem downright insignificant. These changes are as follows: 1) material, economic and social revolutions as a result of the establishment of aeronautics; 2) economic and social revolutions that will destroy individual property and thus free the earth from two enormous evils at once: wealth and poverty; and 3) the psychic revolution discussed in this book.
Already the first two changes in our lives can and will indeed radically change the conditions of our existence, raising humanity to unprecedented heights; the third will do hundreds and thousands of times more for humanity than the first two. And all this, acting together, will literally create a new heaven and a new earth. The old order of things will end and a new one will begin.
As a result of aeronautics, national boundaries, customs tariffs, and perhaps even differences in languages will disappear like shadows. Large cities will no longer have a reason to exist and will melt away. People who now live in cities will begin to live in the summer in the mountains and on the seashore, building their homes on elevated and beautiful places, now almost inaccessible, from where the most magnificent and wide panoramas will open. In winter, people are likely to live in small societies. The crowded life of the big cities of the present time, as well as the removal of the worker from his land, will become a thing of the past. Distance will virtually be destroyed: there will be no crowds of people in one place, no forced life in deserted places.
A change in social conditions will abolish oppressive labor, cruel want, offensive and demoralizing wealth, poverty, and the evil arising from them will become only the theme of historical novels.
Under the influx of cosmic consciousness, all hitherto known religions will disappear. A revolution will occur in the human soul: another religion will gain absolute dominance over humanity. This religion will not depend on tradition. It will be impossible to believe in it or not to believe in it. It will not be a part of life associated with certain hours, days or certain life events. It will not rest on special revelations, nor on the words of deities descending to earth to teach humanity, nor on the Bible or bibles. Its mission will not be to save humanity from its sins or provide it with paradise in heaven.
It will not teach future immortality and future glory, because both immortality and glory will exist entirely here and in the present. The evidence of immortality will live in every heart just as vision lives in every eye. Doubting God and eternal life will become as impossible as doubting your own existence; the evidence of both will be the same. Religion will guide every minute, every day of all human life. Churches, priests, forms of confession, dogmas, prayers, all agents and intermediaries between man and God will once and for all be replaced by direct communication that does not raise any doubt. Sin will cease to exist, and along with it the desire for salvation from it will disappear. People will not be tormented by thoughts about death and about the future Kingdom of Heaven awaiting them and about what may happen after the cessation of life in their present body. Each soul will feel its immortality and know it, as well as the fact that the entire universe, with all its benefits and with all its beauty, belongs to it forever. A world inhabited by people possessing cosmic consciousness will be as far from the modern world as this latter is from the world as it was before the establishment of self-consciousness in it.
III
There is a legend, probably very ancient, about how the first man was innocent and happy until he ate the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, how, having eaten these fruits, he saw that he was naked and felt shame. After this, sin was born into the world - a pitiful feeling that replaced the feeling of innocence in the soul of the first man, and it was then, and not before, that man began to work and cover his body with clothes. What is most surprising (as it seems to us) is that tradition says that simultaneously with this change, or immediately after it, a strange conviction arose in the mind of a person, which since then has never left him and was supported both by the vitality inherent in the conviction itself and and the teachings of all true seers, prophets and poets, - the conviction that this curse that stings man in the heel (making him lame, preventing his progress, and especially accompanying this progress with all kinds of obstacles and suffering) will, in turn, be completely crushed and was overthrown by man himself - who had the Savior Christ born in him. The ancestor of man was a creature (animal) that walked on two legs, but possessed only simple consciousness. He was incapable (just as animals are now incapable) of sinning or being ashamed (at least in the human sense of the word): the feeling of sin and shame was alien to primitive man.
He had no sense or knowledge of good and evil. He did not yet know what we call work, and he never worked. From this state he fell (or rose) to self-consciousness, his eyes were opened, and he knew his nakedness, felt shame, acquired a sense of sin (and actually became a sinner) and, finally, learned to do certain things in order to achieve certain goals in a roundabout way, that is, he learned to work.
This painful state lasted for long periods; the feeling of sin still haunts man on his life’s path, he still earns his bread by the sweat of his brow; He still has a feeling of shame. Where is the liberator, where is the Savior? Who or what is he?
The Savior of man is cosmic self-consciousness - in the language of St. Paul - Christ. The cosmic feeling, in whose consciousness it appears, crushes the head of the serpent - it destroys sin, shame and the sense of good and evil as something opposite to each other and eliminates the need for work as hard, forced labor, without, of course, eliminating the possibility of activity in general . The fact that simultaneously with the acquisition of the ability of self-consciousness or immediately after it, a premonition of another, higher consciousness, which at that time lay in the very distant future, came to a person, of course, deserves special attention, but should not seem unexpected to us. In biology we have many similar facts of premonition of the future and the preparation of the individual for such states and circumstances that he has not previously experienced; We see confirmation of this, for example, in the maternal instinct of a very young girl.
The scheme of the entire universe is woven in one piece and imbued with consciousness or (mainly) subconsciousness through and through and in all directions. The Universe is a vast, grandiose, terrible, diverse and at the same time uniform development of forms. That part of it that primarily interests us - the transition from animal to man, from man to demigod - forms that majestic drama of humanity, the stage for which is the surface of our planet, and the duration of action is millions of years.
IV

The purpose of these preliminary remarks is to throw as much light as possible on the contents of this book, and at the same time to increase the pleasure and benefit of acquaintance with it. The presentation of the author's personal experiences when what was the central point of this work was revealed to him can, perhaps, lead to this goal better than anything else. The author will therefore endeavor to give here a frank and perhaps brief sketch of the early years of his mental life and a concise description of his brief experience in what he calls cosmic self-consciousness.
He was born into a simple middle-class English family and grew up almost without any upbringing on a Canadian farm, surrounded at that time by virgin forest. As a child, he took part in work that was feasible for him: herded cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, carried firewood, helped during mowing, drove oxen and horses, and ran errands. His pleasures were as simple and unpretentious as his work. A chance trip to a nearby small town, playing ball, swimming in the river that flowed through my father's farm, building and launching boats, in the spring - looking for bird eggs and flowers, in the summer and fall - picking wild fruits - all this, along with skating on skates and hand sleds in the winter was his very favorite home entertainment, which was a rest after work. While still small, he devoted himself with increased ardor to reading Marietta's short stories, Scott's poems and short stories, and other works that spoke about external nature and human life. Never, even as a child, did the author accept the doctrines of the Christian Church; but as soon as he was old enough to consciously focus his attention on such questions, he realized that Christ was a man, great and good, no doubt, but still only a man, and that no one should ever be condemned to eternal suffering. That if there is a conscious God, then he is the supreme ruler of everything and, in the end, wants the good of everything; but at the same time, the author realized that if visible, earthly life is finite, then it is doubtful, or more than doubtful, that a person’s personal consciousness will be preserved even after death. In his childhood and youth, the author dwelled on such questions more than one might imagine; but probably no more so than his other thoughtful peers. At times he fell into a kind of ecstasy, curiosity associated with hopes. So, one day, when he was only about ten years old, he most seriously passionately wished to die so that the secrets of the other world would be revealed to him, if such a world existed. He also had fits of anxiety and fear; so, for example, being approximately the same age, he read one day, on a sunny day, Reynolds’ “Faust”; he was already approaching the end, when he suddenly felt that he had to leave the book, absolutely not being able to continue reading, and go out of the room into the air in order to cope with the fear that gripped him (he remembers this incident clearly after the lapse of 50 years). The boy's mother died when he was young, and then his father died soon after. The external circumstances of his life were in some respects so unfortunate that it would be difficult to describe them. At the age of sixteen, the author left his home to earn his own living or die of hunger. For five years he wandered across North America, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Upper Ohio to San Francisco, working on farms, railroads, steamships and the gold mines of Western Nevada. Several times he almost died from disease, cold and hunger, and once, on the banks of the Humboldt River in Utah, he had to defend his life for half a day in a battle with the Shosho-Ne Indians. After five years of wandering, when he was 21 years old, he returned to the places where he spent his childhood. The modest amount of money left after the death of his mother enabled him to devote several years to scientific pursuits, and his mind, which had remained so long uncultivated, began to absorb scientific ideas with surprising ease. Four years after returning from the shores of the Pacific Ocean, he received the highest awards in the educational institution. In addition to studying the subjects taught at the college, he greedily indulged in the reading of many works of a speculative nature, such as Tyndall's Origin of Species, Heat and Essays, Buckle's History and Essays and Reviews, and many poetic works , especially those who seemed free and bold to him. Of all types of this literature, he soon began to give preference to Shelley, and his poems “Adonis” and “Prometheus” became his favorite reading. For several years, his whole life was a search for answers to the basic questions of life. Upon leaving college, he continued his search with the same ardor and zeal. He taught himself French in order to study Auposte Comte, Hugo and Renan, and German in order to read Goethe, especially his Faust. At the age of thirty, he came across “Leaves of Grass” and immediately realized that this work, more than anything he had read so far, could give him what he had been looking for for so long. He read Leaves with ardor and even passion, but for several years he could get little out of them. At last the light shone, and the meaning of at least some of the questions was revealed to him (as far as such things are likely to be revealed). Then something happened to which everything that preceded was only a preface.
It was early spring, at the beginning of the thirty-sixth year of his life. He and his two friends spent the evening reading the poets Wordworth, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman. They parted at midnight, and the author had a long journey home in a carriage (it took place in an English city). His mind, deeply impressed by the ideas, images and emotions evoked by reading and conversation, was calm and peaceful. He was in a state of calm, almost passive joy. Suddenly, without any warning, he saw himself as if enveloped in a cloud of fiery color. For a moment he thought it was a fire that had suddenly broken out in a large city; but the next moment he realized that the light was flaring up within himself. Following this, he had a feeling of delight, enormous joy, which was immediately followed by an intellectual enlightenment that defies any description. A momentary flash of Brahmic Radiance dawned on his brain, illuminating his life forever; a drop of Brahmic Bliss fell into his heart, leaving there forever a feeling of heaven. Among other things that he could not take on faith, but which he saw and recognized, was the clear consciousness that the cosmos is not dead matter, but a living presence, that the spirit of man is immortal and the universe is built and created in such a way that, without any doubt that everything works together for the good of each and all together, that the fundamental principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of each of us, in the final result, is absolutely certain. The author claims that within a few seconds, while enlightenment lasted, he saw and learned more than in all the previous months and even years of searching, much that no study could give.
The enlightenment lasted only a few moments, but it left behind indelible traces, so that he could no longer forget what he saw and learned in this short period of time, just as he could not doubt the truth of what appeared then to his mind. This experience was not repeated either that night or after. Subsequently, the author wrote a book in which he tried to embody into one whole what enlightenment taught him. Those who read this book had a very high opinion of it, but, as might be expected, for many reasons it was not widely distributed.
The highest event of this night was the real and only introduction of the author to a new, higher order of ideas. But this was just an introduction. He saw the light, but he had no more idea about the source of this light and its meaning than a living being who saw the light of the sun for the first time. A few years later he met S.P., whom he had often heard about as a person with the ability of amazing inner spiritual vision. He became convinced that S.P. had already entered that higher life, on the eve of which the author had only managed to cast a fleeting glance, and experienced the same phenomena as the author, only to a greater extent. The conversation with this man brought to light the true meaning of what the author had personally experienced.
Then surveying the human world, he understood for himself the significance and meaning of the subjective enlightenment that once happened to the apostle. Paul and Mohammed. The secret of Whitman's unattainable greatness was revealed to him. Conversations with I. X. I. and I. B. also helped him a lot. Personal conversations with Edward Carpenter, T. S. R., S. M. S. and M. S. L. contributed greatly to the expansion and clarification of his observations, to a wider interpretation and coordination of his thoughts and views. However, it took a lot of time and effort before the idea that had arisen in him was finally developed and ripened that there was a family of people descended from ordinary humanity and living among it, but hardly forming a part of it, and that the members of this family were scattered among the advanced human races throughout the world. over the last forty centuries of world history.
What distinguishes such people from ordinary mortals is that their spiritual eyes are open and they see with them. The most famous representatives of this group, if brought together, could easily fit into some modern living room; however, they created all the perfect religions, starting with Taoism and Buddhism, and through religion and literature created all modern civilization. The number of books they wrote is not so great, but the works they left behind inspired the authors of most of the books that were created in modern times. These people have ruled over the last twenty-five centuries, especially the last five, as the stars of the first magnitude rule over the midnight sky.
A person is introduced to the family of such people by the fact of his spiritual rebirth at a certain age and transition to a higher plane of spiritual life. The reality of such a new birth is manifested by the inner subjective light and other phenomena. The purpose of this book is to teach other people what little the author himself has been fortunate enough to know about the spiritual condition of this new race of people.
V

It remains to say a few words about the psychological origin of what in this work we call cosmic consciousness and which in no sense should be considered as something supernatural and supernormal or beyond the limits of natural growth.
Although the moral nature of man plays an important part in the manifestation of cosmic consciousness, nevertheless, for many reasons, it will be better to concentrate our attention now on the study of the evolution of intelligence. There are four distinct stages in this evolution.
The first of them is sensations formed on the basis of the primary property of excitability. From this moment, the acquisition and more or less perfect registration of sensory impressions, i.e. sensations, began. Sensation (or perception) is undoubtedly a sensory impression - a sound is heard, an object is noticed, and the impression they produce constitutes a sensation. If we could go far enough into the depths of centuries, we would find among our ancestors a creature whose entire intellect consisted of sensations alone. However, this being (whatever it was called) also had the capacity for what can be called internal growth. The process developed this way. Individually, from generation to generation, this creature accumulated sensations; the constant repetition of these sensations, which required their further registration, led to a struggle for existence and, under the influence of the law of natural selection, to the accumulation of cells in the central nerve node that controls sensory perceptions; the accumulation of cells made it possible to further register sensations, which, in turn, necessitated further growth of the nerve ganglion, etc. As a result, a state was reached that enabled our distant ancestor to combine groups of similar sensations into what we now call presentation (reception).
This process is very similar to taking a complex photograph. Identical sensations (for example, sensations from a tree) are noted one above the other (the nerve center has already adapted to this) until the moment they are generalized into one sensation, but such a complex sensation is nothing more, no less than a representation - something obtained in the indicated way.
Then the work of accumulation begins again, but on a higher plane. The sense organs continue to produce sensations invariably; the perceptive (receptive) centers constantly continue to create more and more ideas from old and new sensations; the faculties of the central nervous system are forced, out of necessity, to continually note sensations, process them into ideas, and, in turn, note the latter; then, since, thanks to constant exercise and selection, the nerve centers progress, they begin to permanently develop from sensations and initially simple ideas more and more complex - in other words, ideas of a higher order.
Finally, after the succession of many thousands of generations, a moment comes when the mind of the creature in question reaches the highest possible point in its ability to operate through pure ideas: the accumulation of sensations and ideas continues until the possibility of storing the impressions received and their further processing into ideas ceases in proportion

« Richard Maurice Beck was a highly respected Canadian psychiatrist who immersed himself in poetry and literature in his spare time, sometimes spending entire evenings reciting poetry with friends Whitman, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats And Browning. After one such evening in England, during a long ride in a horse-drawn carriage, inspired by poetry Whitman, Beck experienced a powerful insight, a flash of "cosmic consciousness" - that's what he called it.

At that moment he realized that space is not dead matter, but completely alive; that people have souls and are immortal; that the universe is designed so that everything works in favor of good, so that everyone is sure to be happy; and that love is the basic principle of the universe .

Beck claims that he learned more in that moment than in years of study. Although it was only a short glimpse of true enlightenment, he learned that in history there was a select group of people constantly in this state, which influenced the rest of humanity disproportionately for such a small number of people. Some of them - Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha- marked the beginning of new religions because they offered a new understanding of what it means to be human. Raising consciousness is a component of our evolution, Beck believed, and these great personalities foreshadowed a new quality of life and consciousness that is still inaccessible to the bulk of people. […]

Beck established differences between different levels of consciousness. Simple consciousness is the knowledge that most animals have about their body and their environment. As Beck puts it, “the animal is immersed in its consciousness, like a fish in water; it cannot for a moment, even in the imagination, get out of it, nor realize it.” Self-awareness is unique to humans and gives us a completely different understanding of ourselves: we can think about what we think. Self-awareness, together with the presence of language to express and use it, makes homo sapiens human.

Cosmic consciousness, in turn, places some people much higher. Beck describes it as a high awareness of the true "life and system of the world" in which one experiences oneness with God, or universal energy. This intellectual awareness or recognition of truth brings with it amazing joy because the erroneous perception of ordinary self-consciousness disappears. When people learn that the fundamental quality of the world is love and that we are all part of the immortal conscious life force, they will no longer be able to experience fear or doubt. […]

Beck compiled a list of historical figures who, in his opinion, had clearly achieved cosmic consciousness. This Jesus Christ, Buddha, Muhammad, Saint Paul, Francis Bacon, Jacob Boehme, John the Baptist, Bartolomé de Las Casas, Plotinus, Dante Alighieri, Honoré de Balzac, Walt Whitman And Edward Carpenter. His list of the "less enlightened" - those about whom he is uncertain - includes Moses, Socrates, Blaise Pascal, Emmanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sri Ramakrishna and several of his contemporaries, identified only by initials. There were four women on this second list, including the medieval mystic Madame Guyon.

Discussions Beck These examples make for most interesting reading and form the bulk of the book. He considered the following characteristics of people who have achieved cosmic consciousness:

The average age at the moment of insight is 35 years;

A history of serious spiritual pursuits, such as a love of sacred books or meditation;

Good physical health;

Love of solitude (many on this list were not married);

Sympathy and love for them from those around them;

Lack of interest in money.

The features or signs of cosmic consciousness are:

At first there is a very bright light;

An understanding comes that disunity is an illusion and everything in the world is one;

Recognition of eternal life as a fact;

After insight, people are always happy; they really look different, they have a joyful expression on their faces;

No fear of death, no sense of fear or sin - Whitman, for example, moved in New York among dangerous people, but no one ever touched him;

Those who have experienced insight recognize other people like them, although they find it difficult to explain what they see in them.

Beck made a few more interesting comments:

Most experiences of cosmic consciousness occur in the spring or summer;

The level of education does not affect this - some of the enlightened ones were highly educated, while others only graduated from school;

Enlightened people usually have parents of opposite temperaments, for example, a sanguine mother and a melancholic father.”

Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 great books about fortitude, M., Eksmo, 2013, p. 61-62 and 64-65.

Study of the evolution of the human mind

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind

RICHARD MAURICE BUCKE

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

RICHARD BUCK

UDC 130.123.4 BBK 88.6 B11

Böck Richard Maurice

Cosmic consciousness. Study of the evolution of the human mind / Transl. from fr. - M: LLC Publishing House "Sofia", 2008. - 448 p.

ISBN 978-5-91250-603-1

“Cosmic consciousness, Böck tells us, is what in the East is called the Brahmic Radiance...” - Peter Demyanovich Uspensky respectfully quotes the author. The same Ouspensky is a student of Gurdjieff and the author of the “New Model of the Universe”.

Canadian physiologist and psychiatrist Richard Maurice Beck is the same era in esotericism as the American psychologist William James with his book “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” which was published exactly a year after the publication of “Cosmic Consciousness.”

UDC 130.123.4

ISBN 978-5-91250-603-1

Tsareva G. I. Mystery of the spirit 9

Part I. Preface 19

Part II. Evolution and involution 39

Chapter 1. Towards Self-Awareness 39

Chapter 2. On the plane of self-awareness 43

Part III. Involution 77

Part IV. People who had cosmic consciousness 111

Chapter 1. Gautama Buddha 111

Chapter 2. Jesus Christ 131

Chapter 3. Apostle Paul 147

Chapter 4. Dams 160

Chapter 5. Mohammed 166

Chapter 6. Dante 173

Chapter 7. Bartholomew of Las Casas 182

Chapter 8. Juan Yepes 187

Chapter 9. Francis Bacon 202

Chapter 10. Jacob Be"me

(the so-called Teutonic Theosophist) 228

Chapter 11. William Blake 243

Chapter 12. Honore de Balzac 252

Chapter 13. Walt Whitman 269

Chapter 14. Edward Carpenter 287

Part V. Addition. Several less striking, imperfect and dubious cases. . . 307

Chapter 1. Dawn 309

Chapter 2. Moses 310

Chapter 3. Gideon, called Jerubbaal 311

Chapter 4. Isaiah 313

Chapter 5. Lao Tzu 314

Chapter 6. Socrates 321

Chapter 7. Roger Bacon 323

Chapter 8. Blaise Pascal 326

Chapter 9. Benedict Spinoza 330

Chapter 10. Colonel James Gardiner 336

Chapter 11. Swedenborg 337

Chapter 12. William Wordsworth 339

Chapter 13. Charles Finney 340

Chapter 14. Alexander Pushkin 343

Chapter 15. Ralph Waldo Emerson 345

Chapter 16. Alfred Tennyson 347

Chapter 17. I.B.B 349

Chapter 18. Henry David Topo 350

Chapter 19. D. B 354

Chapter 20. Part 355

Chapter 21. The case of G.B. in his own presentation. . . 360

Chapter 22. R.P. S 364

Chapter 23. E. T 367

Chapter 24. Ramakrishna Paramahansa 367

Chapter 25. D. X. D 371

Chapter 26. T.S.R 373

Chapter 27. V. X. V 374

Chapter 28. Richard Jeffreys 375

Chapter 29. K. M. K 380

Chapter 30. The case of M.K.L., stated by himself 389

Chapter 31. Case of D.W.U 392

Chapter 32. William Lloyd 402

Chapter 33. Horace Traubel 405

Chapter 34. Pavel Tainer 412

Chapter 35. S.I.E 419

Chapter 36. Case of A.D. S 423

Chapter 37. G. R. Derzhavin 425

Part VI. Afterword 429

Sources 435

Mystery of the Spirit

People, for the most part, have lost contact with the supersensible world to such an extent that they have come to deny it, so understanding the need to talk on this topic is necessary for everyone who believes in the reality of spiritual experience.

Throughout human history, there have been people with superconsciousness, those who, at the beginning of their journey, asked themselves a single inexhaustible question: “What is God and what is I?” - and sometimes answered it at the end of their search. These people were called mystics.

Despite the difference in beliefs, mental development, time and place, their lives have much in common, being a series of ascending steps that replace one another. Not all mystics can find all the moments of mystical life, nevertheless, one can easily indicate its main stages, common to all.

What is the main element of spiritual experience, what revelations and states can be its integral part and what do they lead to?

All who have achieved divine illumination speak of three phases of reflective consciousness; about the three heavens revealed to man; about the three stages of spiritual growth; about the three orders of reality, the three principles or aspects of the divine essence. For many mystics this three-stage experience can almost always be traced.

External feelings and reason separate a person from the world: they make him a “world in itself,” a person in space and time. A spiritualized person ceases to be a separate being, since he destroys his isolation.

Step by step the mystic passes through the stages of Beginner, Experienced and Accomplished. This formula could not have survived for thousands of years if it did not agree with the facts.

The ascent begins from the lowest level, the most accessible to man - from the surrounding world. The physical world, which is a narrow circle of our egocentric world of illusions in which we live at the social level of consciousness, satisfying our lower instincts, is the starting point from where the first stage begins - the path of purification, where the mind strives to study true wisdom and its darkness is illuminated by the light of knowledge . And only the “purified” soul at the end of this stage begins to see the absolute and eternal beauty of Nature. After this, a deepening of the vision of the world occurs, a change in a person’s worldview, a change in his character, his moral state.

The next stage of ascent is the “path of illumination” or “world of light”, visible to those who join it, when, through reflection, a feeling of ardent love and harmony with the Supreme is aroused, when the soul submits to the rhythm of the divine life and perceives the not yet fully revealed God, feeling like a part of the universe. A wide range of mystical knowledge can be classified as the second stage of spiritual growth. Some of its secrets have been revealed to those whom the sense of beauty transports to another level of existence, where everything is given new value; This category may include people inclined to creative knowledge of the world, as well as those who experience divine communication during passionate prayers or various contemplative practices. The mystic Ruysbroeck ascribes to the contemplative life "the inward and upward paths through which man can pass into the presence of God." This is the second world of reality, where God and Eternity become known, but with the help of intermediaries.

There is no perfect isolation between the worlds, and reality is present in every part of it; in man there is the ability to perceive and the power to transmit this reality, since he is the image and likeness of the Supreme.

And finally, in ecstasy the mystic reaches the supersensible world, where without intermediaries the soul unites with the Eternal, enjoying the contemplation of the inexpressible reality, entering the third path - the path of union with God; and only here is superconsciousness achieved, when a person feels divinity and his connection with it, when the knowledge of God is higher, the more developed this consciousness is. At this stage, the mind is silent, the will is paralyzed, the body freezes in complete stillness - this is a state of ecstasy, or an internal sensation of God, which is the basis of all mystical experiences. Here is “smart light” and “deafening darkness”, here is delight and despair, here is rise and fall.

The Upanishads say that the bliss we get in this world is only a shadow of divine bliss, a weak reflection of it.

A second birth occurs - a birth in the spirit, when the mystic dies to himself, completely dissolving in God, becoming one spirit with him in all respects, just as “flowing rivers disappear into the sea, losing their direction and form, so does the wise man, freed from name and form, goes to the deity who is beyond everything,” as stated in the sacred Indian text.

God reveals himself to different people and in different ways, and this revelation goes through the three main components of man: spirit, soul, body. Each soul has its center and sphere in God. The Universe is an outpouring, a radiation of the One. The pulsation of divine energy is felt throughout the entire Cosmos, taking various forms in various things, and man reaches the Supreme through the direct influence of the divine gift.

A new understanding can occur either suddenly, without apparent reason or reason, when spontaneous enlightenment is achieved, or a person, naturally inclined to “true wisdom,” through hard work, step by step encourages the opening of his inner gaze.

But even speaking about spontaneous enlightenment, it should be divided into several categories: a) enlightenment achieved as a result of strong emotional shock, leading to psychological trauma, which can lead to a decrease in the threshold of perception of the subtle world; b) when a person finds himself in an environment conducive to the development of a mystical state, which is typical, for example, for monasteries, or participation in various mystery processions, sacraments, as well as being in deserted wild places (desert, forest, mountains); c) the “supernatural” is incomprehensible to ordinary perception, but a person can receive insight, what is called “suddenly”, as in the case of Jacob Boehme - and only once endowed with higher abilities, thanks to the influence of divine energies, they can comprehend things and phenomena beyond them essence, in accordance with the degree of wisdom received from God, therefore man perceives the supernatural solely by its effect; d) many factors can provoke and stimulate the emergence of mystical abilities: dreams, near-death states and clinical death experiences, music, smells, sounds, daydreams, play of sunlight, splashing waves, etc.; e) in an unexpected collision of the mind, predisposed to subtle-material perception, with one or another sacred tradition containing symbols of transcendental reality, expressed in certain mysterious formulations. And even such a person, who does not have any education or book knowledge, if the vibrational flows coincide with the vibration of what he heard or saw, crosses the threshold of internal perception, gaining the opportunity to identify with this reality. An example is the Sixth Patriarch in China, who achieved a state of spontaneous enlightenment due to “accidentally” hearing the recitation of the Diamond Sutra in the market, which led an illiterate man to open his spiritual vision.

Having analyzed what has been said, we can assume that God is not comprehended by scholarship and intense study of books, but is comprehended by mystics at the moment of insight. This is direct cognition or immediate penetration when in the mystical experience in the presence of the Supreme the soul finds itself and, liberated, becomes identical with everything, living a life of unity with God, the knowledge of which can be immediate and whole and not conditioned by any other cognition.

It is impossible to retell the vision of the mystic, and they all say that what they felt and saw with their spiritual gaze is completely indescribable. “Oh, how poor is my word and how weak it is, compared with the image that is in my soul!” - this is how Dante exclaims when remembering what he saw and experienced.

What happens to the personality of a person who has experienced this indescribable state - is his former “I” destroyed or only transformed, freed from the oppression of matter? Perhaps the great mystics “shook off” their own “I” and became demigods - not themselves, as the German mystic Angelius Silesius said: “Only gods are accepted by God.”

The individual ego of a person is dissolved in God by love, but his individuality is not destroyed, despite the fact that it is transformed and deified, since the divine substance penetrates into it.

But spontaneous insights are very rare, and a person who has embarked on the path of God-seeking, as a rule, is not given the opportunity to immediately immerse himself in the contemplation of other worlds, since it is first necessary to free himself from the power of the physical world, therefore the mystic can only work hard, improving the body and spirit, step by step rises to God. In this case, asceticism is a necessary preparatory stage of the mystical path, meaning hard spiritual work, the strictest mental, moral and physical discipline, where humility can be an integral part of the purifying path.

For a true mystic, asceticism is nothing more than a means of moving towards the end and can often be abandoned when this end is reached, because true asceticism is an exercise not of the body, but of the soul.

There is another way to achieve mystical states, when the latter are induced using certain methods of stimulation, which are an integral part of various religious and spiritual practices. This includes breathing control among yogis; refusal to sleep; ecstatic dance used by the mystical sects of Islam, Sufis, and also in shamanic cultures;

various meditative practices; chants; sexual rituals among tantrists; sensory hunger; the practice of silence among Christian hesychasts and pillarism in Orthodoxy. According to the adherents of Vedanta, spontaneous mystical states are not pure - pure enlightenment can only be achieved through yoga.

Modern psychologists have also developed practices that help achieve certain ecstatic states - rebirthing, various types of hypnosis, free breathing practices and reincarnation. Until now, no fundamental differences have been discovered between spontaneous and stimulated mystical states with regard to their characteristics and effects.

And another method is used to achieve ecstatic states - the use of drugs and medications that activate mental activity and stimulate the onset of “mystical” states. Their use goes back centuries, and some researchers believe that drug use has been an integral part of all religions except Christianity.

There is an idea that drug visions correspond to mystical experiences - in fact, they are incomparable, since the states caused by such drugs are not truly mystical and should be considered “pseudo-states” that do not go beyond the boundaries of a specific mental experience. A painless transition with the help of drugs to other areas, no matter how bright and colorful it may be, is just a downward movement, since it does not require internal discipline and does not allow achieving sustainable positive personality changes.

Along with this, mysticism itself can be illusory. The mystical consciousness can be open to invasion from the lower worlds. These intrusions were not always correctly understood by mystics when they did not recognize the darkness that appeared in the form of spiritual light, which could be accompanied by such phenomena as visions, voices, prophetic dreams, clairvoyance, levitation. Some believe that such phenomena should be excluded from the concept of "mystical experience", while others are of the opinion that they are a preliminary and necessary step towards the goal of mysticism.

It was believed that these phenomena could be both from God, as grace or testing, and from dark forces, as various kinds of seduction. But spiritual life in general is dangerous, and the best mystics have always recognized the dual nature of the so-called divine revelations, since only some of them are mystical in the true sense, and their reality could only be determined intuitively.

Spiritual things require spiritual knowledge, and intuition is the breakthrough between the natural and the supernatural. Man has the gift of divine insight or mystical intuition, through which the unknown becomes known, the inaudible becomes audible, the imperceptible becomes perceived. At the lowest level of consciousness, a person has the simplicity of sensory perception, at the highest - intuitive knowledge, which perceives reality in its entirety, as it is, therefore, of all sources of knowledge, intuition is the most important. Consciousness is not the highest criterion of the universe, since life cannot be understood by reason alone. There is something that goes beyond the limits of human consciousness, which cannot be adequately described, which is why it is called by various names - revelation, intuition, superconsciousness.

When the soul reaches the truth, then all evil perishes in it. Man is united with the Whole and is no longer an individual doing anything, since his life becomes the life of God, his will becomes the will of the Almighty and all human actions flow from a single source.

God is eternal, but there are times when it seems that He stops addressing people, when spiritual impoverishment and hopeless darkness of the soul sets in. But after this, outbursts of mystical emotions are possible, which are equivalent in strength to external pressures expressed in economic and political turmoil. We are seeing this process now in our country, when, after spiritual impoverishment, people began to show a craving for religion, and a widespread interest in mysticism has become a characteristic feature of our days.

But it would be wrong to explain the appearance of mystical phenomena only as a result of social conditions. Mysticism to one degree or another is inherent in almost every person, only the form of its manifestation can be different. Mystical phenomena are observed at different times and may not depend on external circumstances, and the apparent difference in the number of mystical phenomena may be illusory, since at some times people pay less attention to these phenomena and describe them less than when they are “in fashion.”

Is there an increase in the number of people with cosmic consciousness over time? We cannot determine this yet, since we do not have enough material for this. It is impossible to compare the number of famous mystics of antiquity with the present manifestation of mysticism among modern people, since we do not know the scale of its occurrence in the past. If we talk about the level of mystical consciousness, then at present mystics like Swedenborg are still unknown, and those closest to us in time can literally be “counted on one’s fingers.” Perhaps they are still unknown and our time is the launching pad from which a qualitative change will occur in people’s consciousness. The transition from one level of consciousness to another is not simple and involves the emergence of completely new elements, accompanied not by the instant destruction of old ones, but by their slow transformation, with a gradual movement of the fulcrum. A person changes continuously, while the structure of consciousness becomes more and more complex. It is now becoming undeniable that the superconscious person of today is not just a solitary master secretly searching for the “elixir of life” or the “philosopher’s stone” in his laboratory, but a scientist with a cosmic philosophy trying to peer into tomorrow , whose daring ideas do not fit into the rigid framework of modern science. But many “crazy” discoveries are increasingly being introduced into official science, and what previously seemed like “out-of-this-world fantasy” is now becoming real facts that enter our lives, revolutionizing science, thereby pushing the boundaries of our worldview.

One who has cosmic consciousness has a strong spiritual conviction and is not subject to the power of the flesh, fear and anger. He neither exalts in prosperity nor falls into disaster, having peace of mind.

with a strong mind and a chaste look. Not many of us have these qualities.

But let us not despair, because through the eternity of existence, man gradually increases his knowledge and understanding of the world, and this universe, which we now comprehend, is a reflection of our own consciousness. Our life is only a step on the path to infinity. Perfection is infinite and achievable, apparently, only by continuous striving forward, towards God. Perhaps the ever-expanding consciousness contains within itself an even greater eternity, and even in the present state a person is only at the beginning of his insight!

Tsareva G. I.

Preface

What is cosmic consciousness? This book is an attempt to answer this question. But we think it useful to make a brief introduction first, setting it out in as clear a language as possible, in order to open the door to a further, more detailed and thorough presentation of what constitutes the main task of this work.

Cosmic consciousness is a higher form of consciousness than that possessed by modern man. The latter is called self-consciousness and is the ability on which our entire life (subjective and objective) is based, distinguishing us from higher animals; from here we must exclude that small part of our psyche that we borrow from the few people who have a higher cosmic consciousness. To imagine this clearly, you should understand that there are three forms, or stages, of consciousness:

1. Simple consciousness, which is possessed by the highest half of the representatives of the animal kingdom. With the help of this ability, a dog or a horse is also aware of its surroundings, just like a person: they are aware of their body and its individual members and know that both are part of themselves.

The presence of self-consciousness in man and the possession of language (the other half of self-consciousness) creates a huge gap between man and higher animals, endowed only with simple consciousness.

3. Cosmic consciousness is the third form of consciousness, which is as much higher than self-consciousness as the latter is higher than simple consciousness. It goes without saying that with the advent of this new form of consciousness, both simple consciousness and self-consciousness continue to exist in man (just as simple consciousness is not lost with the acquisition of self-consciousness), but in combination with these latter, cosmic consciousness creates that new human ability, which will be discussed in this book. The main feature of cosmic consciousness, as reflected in its name, is the consciousness of the cosmos, that is, the life and order of the entire universe. More on this below, since the purpose of the entire book is to shed some light on this issue. Besides the above-mentioned central fact associated with cosmic self-consciousness - consciousness of the cosmos, there are many other elements belonging to the cosmic sense; some elements can now be specified. Along with the consciousness of the cosmos, intellectual enlightenment or insight comes to a person, which in itself is capable of transporting a person to a new plane of existence - turning him almost into a being of a new type. Added to this is a feeling of moral exaltation, an indescribable feeling of exaltation, elevation, joy and intensification of the moral sense, which is as amazing and important both for the individual and for the whole race as is the increase in intellectual power. Along with this, what can be called a sense of immortality comes to a person - the consciousness of eternal life: not the conviction that he will possess it in the future, but the consciousness that he already possesses it.

Only personal experience or long-term study of people who have crossed the threshold of this new life can help us clearly understand and feel what it really is. However, it seemed valuable to the author of this work to consider, at least briefly, those cases and conditions in which such mental states occurred. He expects the result of his labors in two directions: first, in enlarging the general idea of human life, first of all by comprehending this important modification in our mental insight, and then in endowing us with some ability to understand the true condition of such people who have hitherto time, they were either elevated by average self-consciousness to the level of gods, or, going to the other extreme, they were considered insane. Secondly, the author hopes to help his fellow humans in a practical sense. He holds the view that our descendants, sooner or later, as a race, will reach a state of cosmic consciousness, just as many years ago our ancestors passed from simple consciousness to self-consciousness. He finds that this step in the evolution of our consciousness is already taking place, since it is clear to the author that people possessing cosmic self-consciousness are appearing more and more often and that we as a race are gradually approaching that state of self-consciousness from which the transition to cosmic self-consciousness is made .

He is more than convinced that every person who has not passed a certain age can, if there are no obstacles from heredity, achieve cosmic consciousness. He knows that intelligent communication with minds endowed with such consciousness helps self-conscious people to move to a higher level of existence. Therefore, the author hopes that by facilitating contact with such people, he will help humanity take this highly important step in the field of spiritual development.

Already the first two changes in our lives can and will indeed radically change the conditions of our existence, raising humanity to unprecedented heights; the third will do hundreds and thousands of times more for humanity than the first two. And all this, acting together, will literally create a new heaven and a new earth. The old order of things will end and a new one will begin.

As a result of aeronautics, national boundaries, customs tariffs, and perhaps even differences in languages will disappear like shadows. Large cities will no longer have a reason to exist and will melt away. People who now live in cities will begin to live in the summer in the mountains and on the seashore, building their homes on elevated and beautiful places, now almost inaccessible, from where the most magnificent and wide panoramas will open. In winter, people are likely to live in small societies. The crowded life of the big cities of the present time, as well as the removal of the worker from his land, will become a thing of the past. Distance will virtually be destroyed: there will be no crowds of people in one place, no forced life in deserted places.

A change in social conditions will abolish oppressive labor, cruel want, offensive and demoralizing wealth, poverty, and the evil arising from them will become only the theme of historical novels.

Under the influx of cosmic consciousness, all hitherto known religions will disappear. A revolution will occur in the human soul: another religion will gain absolute dominance over humanity. This religion will not depend on tradition. It will be impossible to believe in it or not to believe in it. It will not be a part of life associated with certain hours, days or certain life events. It will not rest on special revelations, nor on the words of deities descending to earth to teach humanity, nor on the Bible or bibles. Its mission will not be to save humanity from its sins or provide it with paradise in heaven.

It will not teach future immortality and future glory, because both immortality and glory will exist entirely here and in the present. The evidence of immortality will live in every heart just as vision lives in every eye. Doubting God and eternal life will become as impossible as doubting your own existence; the evidence of both will be the same. Religion will guide every minute, every day of all human life. Churches, priests, forms of confession, dogmas, prayers, all agents and intermediaries between man and God will once and for all be replaced by direct communication that does not raise any doubt. Sin will cease to exist, and along with it the desire for salvation from it will disappear. People will not be tormented by thoughts about death and about the future Kingdom of Heaven awaiting them and about what may happen after the cessation of life in their present body. Each soul will feel its immortality and know it, as well as the fact that the entire universe, with all its benefits and with all its beauty, belongs to it forever. A world inhabited by people possessing cosmic consciousness will be as far from the modern world as this latter is from the world as it was before the establishment of self-consciousness in it.

There is a legend, probably very ancient, about how the first man was innocent and happy until he ate the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, how, having eaten these fruits, he saw that he was naked and felt shame. After this, sin was born into the world - a pitiful feeling that replaced the feeling of innocence in the soul of the first man, and it was then, and not before, that man began to work and cover his body with clothes. What is most surprising (as it seems to us) is that tradition says that simultaneously with this change, or immediately after it, a strange conviction arose in the mind of a person, which since then has never left him and was supported both by the vitality inherent in the conviction itself and and the teachings of all true seers, prophets and poets, - the conviction that this curse that stings man in the heel (making him lame, preventing his progress, and especially accompanying this progress with all kinds of obstacles and suffering) will, in turn, be completely crushed and was overthrown by man himself - who had the Savior Christ born in him. The ancestor of man was a creature (animal) that walked on two legs, but possessed only simple consciousness. He was incapable (just as animals are now incapable) of sinning or being ashamed (at least in the human sense of the word): the feeling of sin and shame was alien to primitive man.

He had no sense or knowledge of good and evil. He did not yet know what we call work, and he never worked. From this state he fell (or rose) to self-consciousness, his eyes were opened, and he knew his nakedness, felt shame, acquired a sense of sin (and actually became a sinner) and, finally, learned to do certain things in order to achieve certain goals in a roundabout way, that is, he learned to work.

This painful state lasted for long periods; the feeling of sin still haunts man on his life’s path, he still earns his bread by the sweat of his brow; He still has a feeling of shame. Where is the liberator, where is the Savior? Who or what is he?

The Savior of man is cosmic self-consciousness - in the language of St. Paul - Christ. The cosmic feeling, in whose consciousness it appears, crushes the head of the serpent - it destroys sin, shame and the sense of good and evil as something opposite to each other and eliminates the need for work as hard, forced labor, without, of course, eliminating the possibility of activity in general . The fact that simultaneously with the acquisition of the ability of self-consciousness or immediately after it, a premonition of another, higher consciousness, which at that time lay in the very distant future, came to a person, of course, deserves special attention, but should not seem unexpected to us. In biology we have many similar facts of premonition of the future and the preparation of the individual for such states and circumstances that he has not previously experienced; We see confirmation of this, for example, in the maternal instinct of a very young girl.

The scheme of the entire universe is woven in one piece and imbued with consciousness or (mainly) subconsciousness through and through and in all directions. The Universe is a vast, grandiose, terrible, diverse and at the same time uniform development of forms. That part of it that primarily interests us - the transition from animal to man, from man to demigod - forms that majestic drama of humanity, the stage for which is the surface of our planet, and the duration of action is millions of years.

He was born into a simple middle-class English family and grew up almost without any upbringing on a Canadian farm, surrounded at that time by virgin forest. As a child, he took part in work that was feasible for him: herded cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, carried firewood, helped during mowing, drove oxen and horses, and ran errands. His pleasures were as simple and unpretentious as his work. A chance trip to a nearby small town, playing ball, swimming in the river that flowed through my father's farm, building and launching boats, in the spring - looking for bird eggs and flowers, in the summer and fall - picking wild fruits - all this, along with skating on skates and hand sleds in the winter was his very favorite home entertainment, which was a rest after work. While still small, he devoted himself with increased ardor to reading Marietta's short stories, Scott's poems and short stories, and other works that spoke about external nature and human life. Never, even as a child, did the author accept the doctrines of the Christian Church; but as soon as he was old enough to consciously focus his attention on such questions, he realized that Christ was a man, great and good, no doubt, but still only a man, and that no one should ever be condemned to eternal suffering. That if there is a conscious God, then he is the supreme ruler of everything and, in the end, wants the good of everything; but at the same time, the author realized that if visible, earthly life is finite, then it is doubtful, or more than doubtful, that a person’s personal consciousness will be preserved even after death. In his childhood and youth, the author dwelled on such questions more than one might imagine; but probably no more so than his other thoughtful peers. At times he fell into a kind of ecstasy, curiosity associated with hopes. So, one day, when he was only about ten years old, he most seriously passionately wished to die so that the secrets of the other world would be revealed to him, if such a world existed. He also had fits of anxiety and fear; so, for example, being approximately the same age, he read one day, on a sunny day, Reynolds’ “Faust”; he was already approaching the end, when he suddenly felt that he had to leave the book, absolutely not being able to continue reading, and go out of the room into the air in order to cope with the fear that gripped him (he remembers this incident clearly after the lapse of 50 years). The boy's mother died when he was young, and then his father died soon after. The external circumstances of his life were in some respects so unfortunate that it would be difficult to describe them. At the age of sixteen, the author left his home to earn his own living or die of hunger. For five years he wandered across North America, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Upper Ohio to San Francisco, working on farms, railroads, steamships and the gold mines of Western Nevada. Several times he almost died from disease, cold and hunger, and once, on the banks of the Humboldt River in Utah, he had to defend his life for half a day in a battle with the Shosho-Ne Indians. After five years of wandering, when he was 21 years old, he returned to the places where he spent his childhood. The modest amount of money left after the death of his mother enabled him to devote several years to scientific pursuits, and his mind, which had remained so long uncultivated, began to absorb scientific ideas with surprising ease. Four years after returning from the shores of the Pacific Ocean, he received the highest awards in the educational institution. In addition to studying the subjects taught at the college, he greedily indulged in the reading of many works of a speculative nature, such as Tyndall's Origin of Species, Heat and Essays, Buckle's History and Essays and Reviews, and many poetic works , especially those who seemed free and bold to him. Of all types of this literature, he soon began to give preference to Shelley, and his poems “Adonis” and “Prometheus” became his favorite reading. For several years, his whole life was a search for answers to the basic questions of life. Upon leaving college, he continued his search with the same ardor and zeal. He taught himself French in order to study Auposte Comte, Hugo and Renan, and German in order to read Goethe, especially his Faust. At the age of thirty, he came across “Leaves of Grass” and immediately realized that this work, more than anything he had read so far, could give him what he had been looking for for so long. He read Leaves with ardor and even passion, but for several years he could get little out of them. At last the light shone, and the meaning of at least some of the questions was revealed to him (as far as such things are likely to be revealed). Then something happened to which everything that preceded was only a preface.

It was early spring, at the beginning of the thirty-sixth year of his life. He and his two friends spent the evening reading the poets Wordworth, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman. They parted at midnight, and the author had a long journey home in a carriage (it took place in an English city). His mind, deeply impressed by the ideas, images and emotions evoked by reading and conversation, was calm and peaceful. He was in a state of calm, almost passive joy. Suddenly, without any warning, he saw himself as if enveloped in a cloud of fiery color. For a moment he thought it was a fire that had suddenly broken out in a large city; but the next moment he realized that the light was flaring up within himself. Following this, he had a feeling of delight, enormous joy, which was immediately followed by an intellectual enlightenment that defies any description. A momentary flash of Brahmic Radiance dawned on his brain, illuminating his life forever; a drop of Brahmic Bliss fell into his heart, leaving there forever a feeling of heaven. Among other things that he could not take on faith, but which he saw and recognized, was the clear consciousness that the cosmos is not dead matter, but a living presence, that the spirit of man is immortal and the universe is built and created in such a way that, without any doubt that everything works together for the good of each and all together, that the fundamental principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of each of us, in the final result, is absolutely certain. The author claims that within a few seconds, while enlightenment lasted, he saw and learned more than in all the previous months and even years of searching, much that no study could give.

The enlightenment lasted only a few moments, but it left behind indelible traces, so that he could no longer forget what he saw and learned in this short period of time, just as he could not doubt the truth of what appeared then to his mind. This experience was not repeated either that night or after. Subsequently, the author wrote a book in which he tried to embody into one whole what enlightenment taught him. Those who read this book had a very high opinion of it, but, as might be expected, for many reasons it was not widely distributed.

The highest event of this night was the real and only introduction of the author to a new, higher order of ideas. But this was just an introduction. He saw the light, but he had no more idea about the source of this light and its meaning than a living being who saw the light of the sun for the first time. A few years later he met S.P., whom he had often heard about as a person with the ability of amazing inner spiritual vision. He became convinced that S.P. had already entered that higher life, on the eve of which the author had only managed to cast a fleeting glance, and experienced the same phenomena as the author, only to a greater extent. The conversation with this man brought to light the true meaning of what the author had personally experienced.

Then surveying the human world, he understood for himself the significance and meaning of the subjective enlightenment that once happened to the apostle. Paul and Mohammed. The secret of Whitman's unattainable greatness was revealed to him. Conversations with I. X. I. and I. B. also helped him a lot. Personal conversations with Edward Carpenter, T. S. R., S. M. S. and M. S. L. contributed greatly to the expansion and clarification of his observations, to a wider interpretation and coordination of his thoughts and views. However, it took a lot of time and effort before the idea that had arisen in him was finally developed and ripened that there was a family of people descended from ordinary humanity and living among it, but hardly forming a part of it, and that the members of this family were scattered among the advanced human races throughout the world. over the last forty centuries of world history.

What distinguishes such people from ordinary mortals is that their spiritual eyes are open and they see with them. The most famous representatives of this group, if brought together, could easily fit into some modern living room; however, they created all the perfect religions, starting with Taoism and Buddhism, and through religion and literature created all modern civilization. The number of books they wrote is not so great, but the works they left behind inspired the authors of most of the books that were created in modern times. These people have ruled over the last twenty-five centuries, especially the last five, as the stars of the first magnitude rule over the midnight sky.

A person is introduced to the family of such people by the fact of his spiritual rebirth at a certain age and transition to a higher plane of spiritual life. The reality of such a new birth is manifested by the inner subjective light and other phenomena. The purpose of this book is to teach other people what little the author himself has been fortunate enough to know about the spiritual condition of this new race of people.

Although the moral nature of man plays an important part in the manifestation of cosmic consciousness, nevertheless, for many reasons, it will be better to concentrate our attention now on the study of the evolution of intelligence. There are four distinct stages in this evolution.

The first of them is sensations formed on the basis of the primary property of excitability. From this moment, the acquisition and more or less perfect registration of sensory impressions, i.e. sensations, began. Sensation (or perception) is undoubtedly a sensory impression - a sound is heard, an object is noticed, and the impression they produce constitutes a sensation. If we could go far enough into the depths of centuries, we would find among our ancestors a creature whose entire intellect consisted of sensations alone. However, this being (whatever it was called) also had the capacity for what can be called internal growth. The process developed this way. Individually, from generation to generation, this creature accumulated sensations; the constant repetition of these sensations, which required their further registration, led to a struggle for existence and, under the influence of the law of natural selection, to the accumulation of cells in the central nerve node that controls sensory perceptions; the accumulation of cells made it possible to further register sensations, which, in turn, necessitated further growth of the nerve ganglion, etc. As a result, a state was reached that enabled our distant ancestor to combine groups of similar sensations into what we now call presentation (reception).

This process is very similar to taking a complex photograph. Identical sensations (for example, sensations from a tree) are noted one above the other (the nerve center has already adapted to this) until the moment they are generalized into one sensation, but such a complex sensation is nothing more, no less than a representation - something obtained in the indicated way.

Then the work of accumulation begins again, but on a higher plane. The sense organs continue to produce sensations invariably; the perceptive (receptive) centers constantly continue to create more and more ideas from old and new sensations; the faculties of the central nervous system are forced, out of necessity, to continually note sensations, process them into ideas, and, in turn, note the latter; then, since, thanks to constant exercise and selection, the nerve centers progress, they begin to permanently develop from sensations and initially simple ideas more and more complex - in other words, ideas of a higher order.

Finally, after the succession of many thousands of generations, a moment comes when the mind of the creature in question reaches the highest possible point in its ability to operate through pure ideas: the accumulation of sensations and ideas continues until the possibility of storing the impressions received and their further processing into ideas ceases in the relevant area of cognitive abilities of intelligence. Then a new breakthrough occurs, and higher-order ideas are replaced by concepts (ideas). The relation of concept to representation is to a certain extent reminiscent of the relation of algebra to arithmetic. A representation is, as I have already said, a complex image of many hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of sensations; it is itself an image abstracted from many images; the concept is exactly the same complex image - the same idea, but already given a name, numbered and, so to speak, put aside. A concept is nothing more than a named representation - and the name itself, i.e. the sign (as in algebra), then replaces the thing itself, i.e. the representation.

It is now quite clear to anyone who takes the trouble to think a little in this direction that the revolution by which concepts replaced ideas must have increased the productivity of our brain in the field of thinking as much as the introduction of machines increased the productivity of human labor - or as much as the use of algebra increases the power of the mind in mathematical calculations. The replacement of a cumbersome representation by a simple sign is almost equivalent to the replacement of real goods - wheat or iron - by an entry in an office book.

But, as noted above, in order for a representation to be replaced by a concept, it must be named, i.e.

marked with a sign that replaces it, just as a receipt replaces luggage or an entry in an office book replaces goods. In other words, a race that has concepts must also have language. Further, it should be noted that just as the possession of concepts requires the possession of language, so the possession of concepts and language (which are two types of the same thing) requires the possession of self-consciousness. All this leads to the conclusion that there is a point in the evolution of the mind when the intellect, possessing only ideas and capable of only simple consciousness, almost suddenly or completely suddenly becomes possessed of concepts, language and self-consciousness.

When we say that an individual (whether an adult, distant from us for centuries, or a child of the present time - it does not matter) comes into possession of concepts, language and self-awareness in an instant, we mean that the individual suddenly becomes self-aware, one or several concepts, one or more words, but not the whole language phase: in the history of individual development, a person reaches this stage at approximately the age of three; In the history of the development of races, this moment was reached and passed several hundred thousand years ago.

Now in our research we have reached the point of intellectual development at which each of us is now individually, namely: the stage when our mind has concepts and self-awareness. But at the same time, we should not think for a single moment that along with the acquisition of this new and higher form of consciousness we have lost the capacity for concepts or our old perceiving mind; in fact, without sensations and ideas we can exist no more than an animal whose mind has no other faculties than these. Our present intellect is a very complex mixture of sensations, ideas and concepts.

Let's dwell a little on the concept. The latter can be seen as an extended and complex view, much broader and more complex than the latter. A concept consists of one or more ideas, probably associated with several sensations. Then this highly expanded representation is marked with a sign, that is, it is called, and by virtue of the name it becomes

2 - JE97 Bskk

revolves around the concept. The concept, which has received a name and a mark, is put aside, so to speak, just as checked baggage is put into the baggage room after it has been marked on the receipt.

With the help of such a receipt, we can send a chest to any part of America without seeing it or even knowing where it is at the moment. In exactly the same way, with the help of designations alone, we can reconstruct concepts into more complex forms - into poems and philosophical systems, half knowing nothing about what the individual concepts that we use are.

One particular remark must be made here. It has already been noted a thousand times that the brain of a thinking person is no larger in size than the brain of a wild, unthinking person; between them there is nothing like the difference that exists between the mental faculties of a thinker and a savage. The reason for this phenomenon lies in the fact that the brain of Herbert Spencer had little more work to do than the brain of the Australian, since Spencer operated in the mental work that characterizes him all the time by means of signs or calculations that replaced concepts for him, while the savage does all or almost all of his mental work with the help of cumbersome ideas. The savage in this case is in the position of an astronomer making calculations using arithmetic, while Spencer is in the position of an astronomer operating using algebra. The first must, in order to achieve his goals, fill out many extensive sheets of numbers with numbers, spending enormous labor on this, while the second can perform the same calculations on a piece of paper the size of an envelope, with a relatively small expenditure of mental labor.

The next chapter in the history of the development of intelligence is the accumulation of concepts. This is a double process. Starting, say, from the age of three, each person year after year accumulates more and more individual concepts, and these concepts become more and more complex. Compare, for example, a scientific concept in the mind of a boy and a thinking person of middle age: for the first it corresponds to only a few dozen or hundreds of facts, for the second it corresponds to many thousands.

The question is, is there any limit to the growth of concepts in their number and complexity? Anyone who thinks carefully about this will see that such a limit must exist. The process of accumulation of concepts cannot go on indefinitely. If nature had decided on such a risky attempt, the brain would have been forced to grow to such a size that it could no longer receive nutrition, and this would create a condition that would preclude the possibility of its further progression.

We have seen that the expansion of the sensory mind is subject to necessary limits; that the inner growth of his life inevitably leads to his transformation into a mind with ideas; that then for the mind that has ideas, as it grows internally, the solution lies in the formation of concepts. A priori reasoning clearly indicates that there must be a corresponding outlet for the mind that has concepts.

And we do not need to resort to abstract reasoning to prove the necessity of the existence of a mind that stands above concepts and has superconcepts, since such minds exist and studying them is not associated with any greater difficulties than studying other natural phenomena. The existence of an intellect that stands above concepts, that is, one whose elements are not concepts, but intuition, is an already established fact (though in small numbers), and the form of consciousness that such an intellect possesses can be and is called cosmic consciousness .

So there are four distinct stages in the evolution of intelligence; all of them are richly illustrated by phenomena in the animal and human worlds, all of them are equally explained in the individual growth of the mind possessing cosmic consciousness, and, finally, all four live together in such a mind in the same way as the first three live in the mind of the ordinary person . These four stages are: 1) the mind having sensations, that is, consisting of sensations or sensory impressions; 2) the mind having ideas, consisting of ideas and sensations, in other words, having simple consciousness; 3) the mind, consisting of sensations, ideas and concepts, that is, possessing concepts or self-consciousness and sometimes called the self-conscious mind; and, finally, 4) the intuitive mind - a mind whose highest element is not ideas or concepts, but intuition, that is, in which simple consciousness and self-awareness are crowned with cosmic consciousness.

However, it is necessary to show even more clearly the nature of these stages of intellect and their relationship to each other. The sensory stage, in which the intellect has only sensations, is easy to understand, so that it can be passed over with only one remark, namely, that the mind, consisting solely of sensations alone, does not have any consciousness at all. But as soon as ideas appear in the mind, simple consciousness is immediately born, with the help of which animals (as we know) are aware of what they see around them. But such a mind is capable only of simple consciousness, that is, the animal is aware of the object of its observation, without knowing anything, however, about the very fact of this consciousness; in the same way, such an animal is not yet aware of itself as a separate being or personality. In other words, an animal cannot become an external spectator of itself and observe itself, as a self-conscious creature can do. This, therefore, is simple consciousness: to be aware of the world around us, but not to be aware of oneself. When I reach the stage of self-consciousness, then I not only am aware of what I see, but, in addition, I know that I am aware of it; Moreover, I am conscious of myself as a separate being and personality, I can become an external spectator of myself and observe myself, analyze and judge my own mental operations in the same way as I do in relation to other objects. Such self-awareness is possible only after the formation of concepts and the accompanying appearance of language. All human life is based on self-awareness, with the exception of what has been given to us by a few minds possessing cosmic consciousness over the past three millennia. After all, the basic fact associated with cosmic consciousness is manifested in its name - it is the fact of the consciousness of the cosmos, what in the East is called the Brahmic Radiance, which, according to Dante, is capable of turning a person into a god. Whitman, who has a lot to say about it, calls it in one place “a light ineffable, incomparable, incommunicable, illuminating the light itself, a light that cannot be conveyed by signs, descriptions, or language.” This consciousness shows that the cosmos does not consist of dead matter governed by an unconscious, immutable and purposeless law, but, on the contrary, that it is entirely immaterial, spiritual and alive; cosmic consciousness indicates that the idea of death is absurd, that everything and everyone has eternal life, that the universe is God and God is the universe, and that no evil has ever entered or will ever enter it. Of course, a significant part of this, from the point of view of self-awareness, seems absurd, but nevertheless it is an undoubted truth. But from all this it does not follow that if a person has cosmic consciousness, he knows everything about the universe. We all know that, having acquired the ability to self-awareness when we reach the age of three, we do not immediately know everything about ourselves. On the contrary, we know that after man’s long experience of himself over many millennia, he still knows relatively little about himself as a self-conscious individual. In the same way, a person cannot immediately learn everything about the cosmos just by the fact that he has become aware of the cosmos. It took humans hundreds of thousands of years after they acquired the power of self-awareness to create for themselves a small superficial knowledge of humanity; and it will take them, perhaps, millions of years to acquire even a grain of knowledge about God after acquiring cosmic consciousness.

If self-consciousness is the basis on which rests the whole human world as we see it, with all its affairs and ways, then cosmic consciousness will be the basis for the higher religions and higher philosophies and for everything that is given to them; when cosmic consciousness becomes the property of almost everyone, it will become the basis of a new world, about which it would now be an idle exercise to talk about.

The emergence of cosmic consciousness in an individual is very similar to the emergence of self-consciousness in him. The mind seems to be overflowing with concepts, the latter becoming wider, more numerous and more complex. One fine day (under favorable circumstances) a merger or, one might say, a chemical combination of several concepts with some moral elements occurs. The result is intuition and the establishment of an intuitive mind or, in other words, cosmic consciousness.

The pattern by which the mind is constructed is monotonous from beginning to end. An idea is made up of many sensations, a concept is made up of

several sensations and ideas and intuition - from many concepts, ideas and sensations, combined with elements belonging to the moral nature, and extracted from it. Cosmic vision or cosmic intuition, from which what can be called the new mind receives its name, is thus apparently a close complex of all thoughts and experiences that preceded this latter, that is, self-consciousness.

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Study of the evolution of the human mind

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind

RICHARD MAURICE BUCKE

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

RICHARD BUCK

UDC 130.123.4 BBK 88.6 B11

Böck Richard Maurice

Cosmic consciousness. Study of the evolution of the human mind / Transl. from fr. - M: LLC Publishing House "Sofia", 2008. - 448 p.

ISBN 978-5-91250-603-1

UDC 130.123.4

ISBN 978-5-91250-603-1

Tsareva G. I. Mystery of the spirit 9

Part I. Preface 19

Part II. Evolution and involution 39

Chapter 1. Towards Self-Awareness 39

Chapter 2. On the plane of self-awareness 43

Part III. Involution 77

Part IV. People who had cosmic consciousness 111

Chapter 1. Gautama Buddha 111

Chapter 2. Jesus Christ 131

Chapter 3. Apostle Paul 147

Chapter 4. Dams 160

Chapter 5. Mohammed 166

Chapter 6. Dante 173

Chapter 7. Bartholomew of Las Casas 182

Chapter 8. Juan Yepes 187

Chapter 9. Francis Bacon 202

Chapter 10. Jacob Be"me

(the so-called Teutonic Theosophist) 228

Chapter 11. William Blake 243

Chapter 12. Honore de Balzac 252

Chapter 13. Walt Whitman 269

Chapter 14. Edward Carpenter 287

Part V. Addition. Several less striking, imperfect and dubious cases. . . 307

Chapter 1. Dawn 309

Chapter 2. Moses 310

Chapter 3. Gideon, called Jerubbaal 311

Chapter 4. Isaiah 313

Chapter 5. Lao Tzu 314

Chapter 6. Socrates 321

Chapter 7. Roger Bacon 323

Chapter 8. Blaise Pascal 326

Chapter 9. Benedict Spinoza 330

Chapter 10. Colonel James Gardiner 336

Chapter 11. Swedenborg 337

Chapter 12. William Wordsworth 339

Chapter 13. Charles Finney 340

Chapter 14. Alexander Pushkin 343

Chapter 15. Ralph Waldo Emerson 345

Chapter 16. Alfred Tennyson 347

Chapter 17. I.B.B 349

Chapter 18. Henry David Topo 350

Chapter 19. D. B 354

Chapter 20. Part 355

Chapter 21. The case of G.B. in his own presentation. . . 360

Chapter 22. R.P. S 364

Chapter 23. E. T 367

Chapter 24. Ramakrishna Paramahansa 367

Chapter 25. D. X. D 371

Chapter 26. T.S.R 373

Chapter 27. V. X. V 374

Chapter 28. Richard Jeffreys 375

Chapter 29. K. M. K 380

Chapter 30. The case of M.K.L., stated by himself 389

Chapter 31. Case of D.W.U 392

Chapter 32. William Lloyd 402

Chapter 33. Horace Traubel 405

Chapter 34. Pavel Tainer 412

Chapter 35. S.I.E 419

Chapter 36. Case of A.D. S 423

Chapter 37. G. R. Derzhavin 425

Part VI. Afterword 429

Sources 435

Mystery of the Spirit

What is the main element of spiritual experience, what revelations and states can be its integral part and what do they lead to?

Step by step the mystic passes through the stages of Beginner, Experienced and Accomplished. This formula could not have survived for thousands of years if it did not agree with the facts.

The Upanishads say that the bliss we get in this world is only a shadow of divine bliss, a weak reflection of it.

The individual ego of a person is dissolved in God by love, but his individuality is not destroyed, despite the fact that it is transformed and deified, since the divine substance penetrates into it.

with a strong mind and a chaste look. Not many of us have these qualities.

Tsareva G. I.

Preface

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