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 -

power need not mean a cessation from individual consciousness, but rather, a full realization of individual unity with the sum of all consciousness.

There is another mistaken interpretation of the means of attainment of that state of liberation, which has been alluded to in so many varied terms. The fact that Buddha, like many of the Oriental Masters, sought the seclusion of the forest; the isolation, and simplicity of the hermit,--has given rise to the belief, almost universally held among Oriental disciples, that liberation from maya, the delusions of the world, can not be attained save by these methods.

Monasteries are the result of this idea, and this Buddhistic practice was adopted by the first Christian church, since which time the real purpose and intention of the monastery and the nunnery have become lost in the concept of sacrifice or punishment. The Christian monk almost invariably retires to a monastery, not for the purpose of consciously attaining to that enlarged area of consciousness which insures liberation, mukti, but as an "outward and visible sign" that he is willing to undergo the sacrifice of worldly pleasures at the behest of the Lord Jesus. Thus, the real object of retirement is lost, and

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