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What is Cosmic Consciousness - Excerpt

When rid of fetters which soul freedom bar
I am borne swiftly, like a feather, far
And far away, towards the sun and moon,
With senses still alert and not in swoon,
With thought subdued, but more alive within,
Oblivious to surrounding noise and din
When not too loud, for I soon feel withdrawn
From my corporeal frame of flesh and brawn.
Then light as air and bright as sunshine roam,
From one end to the other, the ambient dome.

Where am I now, who earlier felt himself
Completely shut up in a narrow shelf,
With no awareness of his sorry plight,
Like that of an imprisoned ray of light,
Or beaming splendour tight shut in a box,
Or ravishing beauty hid behind an ox?
Where am I when I look down from aloft
And watch my living body, warm and soft?
Half bound to it by some invisible link
For while I float around I also think;
A conscious Titan of unmeasured size,
Still hearing with his ears, seeing with his eyes,
Aware yet of his presence everywhere,
A puny man, also a cosmic seer.

What marvel is this, what unique estate?
How did I merit this rare boon from fate?
Attired in vestments of empyrean light
My own ethereal person greets my sight,
From every object in the void of space
As if I hold creation in embrace.

Far from the thoughts of earth, beyond the pale
Of every sorrow mortals can assail,
A living ocean of discarnate life
Serene, beyond all stress, away from strife,
Not that embodied “I” of narrow girth,
But a colossus measuring heaven and earth;
A giant awareness stretching far and near
As highly conscious here as it is there.

A strange sensation I feel through and through
Reflected when I see myself in you,
And your whole person, figure, face and all
Looks like a picture in the open hall
Of my awareness which enshrining you,
Both inside and out, shows we are not two,
But one, formed of the same amazing stuff
That seen as matter seems so hard and rough.

In full alertness, nor asleep nor drunk,
I feel detached from body, head and trunk,
Only a vague sort of remembrance ties
Me to the flesh and senses, ears and eyes,
But for the rest spread out on every side
In every point of compass I reside,
A lustrous beam compounded with the scene
Which it surveys, the seer become the seen.

For reasons of which yet I am not sure,
But maybe when the nerves are rendered pure,
And Prana freely pours into the brain,
Breaking the spatial and temporal chain,
I find myself in heaven, more than a king,
So filled with ecstasy I dance and sing,
In all abandon, like a spouting fount
Whose waters spread out widely as they mount,
Linked to the body by a slender thread,
I fill the whole span of sky over-head.

What can possession, power and riches mean
To one who has with awe and wonder seen
Himself alive in disembodied form,
Immune to fire, untouched by rain and storm;
A bodiless mind, from cramping ego free,
Of vast expanse, as far as one can see,
Void of desire and lust, free from the sway
Of passion, spread both near and far away,
With thought as steady, intellect as keen,
Observing carefully the impossible scene:
A drop, expanding o’er the surface of
An ocean, while its waters wave and toss,
Become perceptive of the whole expanse,
At this astounding feat to laugh and dance.

Imagine that you press in close embrace
A sweetheart, your ideal of form and face,
Tasting most exquisite thrill after thrill
Of swooning rapture, as long as you will,
Conscious the whole time of her ravishing charm,
Voluptuous throbbing body, soft and warm,
Pressing hard, panting, as if dying to unite
With you in one prolonged throb of delight,
Oblivious to the world and all it holds
As every moment a new joy unfolds,
While time stands still in an unending now
And thought dissolves in one blaze of love,
Leaving alone before the ravished mind
Unbounded rapture with no thorn behind.

Now picture, with this transport in your mind,
A vast awareness which no limits bind,
Akin to an ocean of bliss stretching far,
With no restriction anywhere to bar
Our own expansion in this deep until,
Enfolding all you see, the plain and hill,
And all the immense stretch of the world in you,
Not as an outer but an inner view,
You swim in such a flood of joy, as if
The whole of nature, no more hard and stiff,
Become a melting lass hugs you to kiss,
Drenching herself and you with streams of bliss,
So that the Seer and the Seen unite
In one long-drawn thrill of supreme delight.

Can life a more intense enjoyment give,
Ready at hand, as long as one does live,
The acme of delight which ne’er will cloy,
And e’er with added thrill one can enjoy,
No sign of weakness, no exhaustion feel
While senses with the flood of transport reel.

Such have been oft the ecstatic thrills of those
Who as enlightened seers and prophets rose,
Drunk with intoxicating love divine
More heady than the most exciting wine,
Yet keeping mind alert and wit intact
To know that this Elysium is a fact.
What they experienced in the rapturous trance
Excels the transports of love and romance.

No wonder that the ravished senses swoon,
And midnight changes into brilliant noon,
All gloomy thoughts, like shadows of the night,
Dissolve at once in this entrancing light,
And leave the mind unoccupied with aught,
Suggesting e’en remotely painful thought.
“Supreme joy fills the yogi who has gained
Freedom from sin” Says Gita “and attained
Union with Brahma, who his mind has weaned
From turbulent passion and its flow serened.”

“He who is here in man’s organic mould
Is also in the sun” So we are told
In Taittiriya Upanishad; “and one
Who from his flesh and world release has won
Attains to bodies made of Prana, mind
And intellect, supreme Bliss last to find.”

What we deduce sometimes is pure surmise
Which true one day the next we must revise,
To keep pace with new facts that come to light
With better instruments to aid our sight,
Or better methods for the study done
By thousands of observers one by one.
Again to fish out from the boundless main
Of mind some fresh pearls by applying the brain.

The constellations, galaxies and clouds
Of nebular dust among the starry crowds,
The quasars, pulsars, comets, holes in space
And other wonders which now grow apace,
As more and more observing minds apply
Themselves to a study of the evening sky,
Borrow their measure, size, duration, mass,
Their shape and form, as they diurnally pass
Before the vision of the astronomer,
From his own mind which only can confer
The amazing properties that make the skies
A book of joy and wonder for the wise.

But more amazing than the luminous host
That greets our vision from the starry coast,
At which we look at night with eager eyes
To know what mystery behind it lies,
Is our incredible apathy towards
The Wonder from which spring these shining worlds.

The Wonder of our consciousness which we
Neglect to explore in depth, although we see
That it and it alone provides the cast
That makes the universe so huge and vast,
That it and it alone supplies the base
For all the immensity of time and space,
That it and it alone allots the size,
The shape and form which we mark with our eyes,
Also the number, distance and the span
Of time we try to calculate and scan.

Divested of the wondrous vesture lent
By consciousness to star-lit firmament,
It is not hard to envision what is left,
If anything at all, will be bereft
Of all the exciting features—form and size,
Distance and time which from the mind arise.
And all alluring qualities will cease,
And with that our emotions too would freeze.

Will not the bright, star-spangled sky then sink
Into oblivion with no star to wink,
Causing our whole astronomy to shrink
To Zero of which we e’en cannot think?
Our study of the stars, in fact, implies
Whate’er the knowledge gathered of the skies,
For which apparently we space explore,
The plumbing of our own mind more and more.

Can we refuse to own that when we probe
The glowing sky at night it wears a robe
Of staggering breadth and mind-bewildering length,
Of vastness, fineness, density or strength,
Of wondrous workmanship, and grand design,
Not that it has on it the slightest sign
Of such a garment, but because our mind
Invests it with the features which we find
So fascinating and so marvellous
That they excite, amaze and stagger us.

We have to admit then that when we explore
The sky, or o’er the gathered data pore,
We dig at something present in our mind
Which, to come out, needs prodding of some kind,
And our astronomical study pokes
A smouldering fire which, lighted up, evokes
The images and feelings that combined
Reveal a depth profound of our own mind,
In course of time, with further prodding done,
Which may expand it more until the Sun
Of Cosmic Consciousness begins to shine
To show creation one with Life Divine.

[Excerpt taken from the book The Riddle of Consciousness]