One of the characteristic signs of this awakening, the Millenium Dawn, as it has been named, lies in a very general optimism shining through the mists of doubt and unrest and inexpressible desire, which accompany the new birth in consciousness.
Amid the seeming chaos of present day conditions is it not easy to discern the coming of that dawn of which all great ones of earth have foretold—a time when “the earth shall be made a fit habitation for the gods”?
“The heavens” is a term employed to specify the Constellation which is composed of planets and stars, but we use the term “Heaven” also to mean a state of happiness and bliss attainable through certain methods, a consideration of which we will take up later.
The immediate point is that this planet is being prepared for a position in the solar system consistent with that which is the abode of the gods—Heaven.
This proposition is made in its literal meaning. Corroborative of this statement, which is consistent with all prophecies, is the information recently given to the world, by Camille Flammarion, and other great astronomers, that “the earth is changing its position in the heavens at an astonishing rate.” The idea that “there shall be no night there,” is foreshadowed by the estimate that this change will give to the earth a perpetual and uniform light, and heat.
The New Thought preachment of physical immortality is but a faint and imperfect perception of this time, when “there shall be no death,” because the animal man, subject to change, shall give place to the changeless, deathless, spiritual man; not through cataclysms, and destruction, but through the natural birth into a higher consciousness.
The Occidental mind is easily affrighted by a name. Perhaps we should not specify the Occidental mind, but rather the mind of man among all races is easily put to sleep by the hypnotism of a word.
The word Pantheism is a bugaboo to the Occidentalist. He fears the destruction of the Monistic faith, if he admits that man is in essence a god, and that therefore there are many gods in the one God, even as there are many members to the one physical organism.
Nevertheless all literature, whether sacred or profane, teaches the attainment of godhood by Man. This can not mean other than the attainment of realization of godhood, by the individual and the retention of this realization to the end that reincarnation shall cease and identity with the cosmic, principle, be established, beyond further loss, or doubt, or strife, or death.
This is what it means to attain to cosmic consciousness. It is inclusive consciousness. It is not absorption into the vast unknown, in the sense of annihilation of identity. It is consciousness plus, not minus.
An ancient writing says:
“And thou shalt awake as from a long dream. Thou shalt be like the perfume arising from the flower in which it has been so long enclosed. And thou wilt float above the opened flower. And thou wilt say ’There is time before me in eternity.’”