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 -

It is a part of human weakness to insist upon idealizing the personality of a teacher, and this tendency becomes in time merged into actual worship, whereas the teacher, if he or she be truly illumined, seeks only to inculcate the philosophy which will bring his faithful followers into a realization of cosmic consciousness.

The points which characterize the person who has experienced a degree of illumination (entered into cosmic consciousness), were particularly evident in the life and character of Gautama, the Buddha. They may be summed up thus:

A marked seriousness in youth.
A great sympathy and compassion with the sorrows of others.
A deep tenderness for all forms of life.
A realization of the nothingness of caste and pomp and power.
The firm conviction that he was instructed by angels.
The wonderful magnetism and illumination of his person.
The firm conviction of immortality--released from the "wheel of life" as he expressed it.
The knowledge of when and where he was to pass out from the life of the body.
The love of solitude and meditation. The intellectual power maintained even into old age.
The unselfish desire to help others.