Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Maurice Bucke - Read the Complete Text for free at NewThoughtLibrary.com

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Richard Maurice Bucke's

Cosmic Consciousness

Book page numbers, along with the number to the left of the .htm extension match the page numbers of the original books to ensure easy use in citations for research papers and books

Self and Symbol - Argument - The New Birth / What It Is - Man's Relations to God and His Fellow Men - Areas of Consciousness - Self-ness / Selflessness - Instances of Illumnination and its After Effects - Examples of Cosmic Consciousness - Moses, the Law-Giver - Gautama, the Compassionate - Jesus of Nazareth - Paul of Tarsus - Mohammed - Emanuel Swedenborg - Emerson, Tolstoi, Balzac - Tolstoi - Balzac - Illumination as Expressed In the Poetical Temperament - Methods of Attainment: The Way of Illumination - Contents -

with all that is, that has ever been and that can ever be--the sense that shall enlarge the horizon of your being, to the limits of the universe; to the boundaries of time and space; that shall lift you up into a new plane far beyond, outside all mean and miserable care for self. Why stand shrinking there? Give up the fool's paradise of 'This is I'; 'This is mine.' It is the great reality you are asked to grasp. Leap forward without fear. You shall find yourself in the ambrosial waters of Nirvana and sport with the Arhats who have conquered birth and death."

This admonition to give up the struggle and strife for separateness is interpreted by many to declare for annihilation of consciousness of identity, but we contend that union is in no wise akin to annihilation, and since this assurance of union is further described as an enlargement of the horizon of your being, it is evident that your being can not be enlarged by becoming annihilated, or even absorbed into The Absolute, as in that event it would cease to be your being. Moreover, you are told that you will "sport with the Arhats who have conquered birth and death." Arhats are alluded to in the plural, and not as One Being.

To be sure there may be a final state of

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