Regarding this last, “Cosmic Consciousness,” we would state that it means more than an intellectual conviction, belief or realization of the facts as stated, for an actual vision and consciousness of these things came in the moment of Illumination.  Some others report that they have a deep abiding sense of the reality of the facts described by the report of the Illumined, but have not experienced the “vision” or ecstasy referred to.  These last people seem to have with them always the same mental state as that possessed by those who had the “vision” and passed out of it, carrying with them the remembrance and feeling, but not the actual consciousness attained at the moment.  They agree upon the essential particulars of the reports.  Dr. Maurice Bucke, now passed out of this plane of life, wrote a book entitled “Cosmic Consciousness,” in which he describes a number of these cases, including his own, Walt Whitman’s and others, and in which he holds that this stage of consciousness is before the race and will gradually come to it in the future.  He holds that the manifestation of it which has come to some few of the race, as above stated, is but the first beams of the sun which are flashing upon us and which are but prophecies of the appearance of the great body of light itself.

We shall not here consider at length the reports of certain great religious personages of the past, who have left records that in moments of great spiritual exaltation they became conscious of “being in the presence of the Absolute,” or perhaps within the radius of “the light of Its countenance.”  We have great respect for these reports, and have every reason for believing many of them authentic, notwithstanding the conflicting reports that have been handed down to us by those experiencing them.  These reports are conflicting because of the fact that the minds of those who had these glimpses of consciousness were not prepared or trained to fully understand the nature of the phenomena.  They found themselves in the spiritual presence of Something of awful grandeur and spiritual rank, and were completely dazed and bewildered at the sight.  They did not understand the nature of the Absolute, and when they had sufficiently recovered they reported that they had been in the “presence of God”—­the word “God” meaning their particular conception of Deity—­that is, the one appearing as Deity in their own particular religious creed or school.  They saw nothing to cause them to identify this Something with their particular conception of Deity, except that they thought that “it must be God,” and knowing no other God except their own particular conception, they naturally identifying the Something with “God” as they conceived Him to be.  And their reports naturally were along these lines.