Quote:
|
Originally Posted by arive nan
And, yes, during that experience [of cosmic consciousness] there is no contrast.
|
I read this today and found it incredibly apropos. It is Alan Watts describing the mystical experience, or what Richard Bucke termed, "cosmic consciousness."
The following is from an essay entitled
This Is It:
"
It's clarity sometimes gives the sensations that the world has become transparent or luminous, and it's simplicity the sensation that it is pervaded and ordered by a supreme intelligence. At the same time, it is usual for the individual to feel that the whole world has become his own body, and that whatever he is has not only become, but always has been, what everything else is. It is not that he loses his identity to the point of feeling that he actually looks out through all other eyes, becoming literally omniscient, but rather that his individual consciousness and existence is a point of view temporarily adopted by something immeasurably greater than himself."
It is not "either/or" but rather "both/and." This one "supreme intelligence", in the words of Watts, exists as everything
but is conscious as the individual. The one becomes conscious of itself by and through individuation. And in this experience of "cosmic consciousness" a person's identity as a "point of view" of an "individual consciousness" remains intact. For if it didn't, there would be no experience and no realization of being the One
and the individual.
Linear Mode
