Similar in experience, in its effects, is a case related by Theodore F. Seward, the well-known American philanthropist, Mr. Seward relates the following story: 

“The strange experience which I here relate came to a friend whom I knew intimately, and from whose lips I received the account.  It is a lady in middle life, who has for years been an earnest seeker for truth and spiritual light.  She was alone in her room sewing.

“Thinking, as was her wont, of spiritual things and feeling a strong sense of the presence and power of God, she suddenly had a consciousness of being surrounded by a brilliant white light, which seemed to radiate from her person.  The light continued for some minutes, and at the same time, she felt a great spiritual uplifting and an enlargement of her mental powers, as if the limitations of the body were transcended, and her soul’s capacities were in a measure set free for the moment.  The experience was unique, above and beyond the ordinary current of human life, and while the vision or impression passed away, a permanent effect was produced upon her mind.  She had never heard the term ‘cosmic consciousness,’ and did not know that the subject it covers is beginning to be discussed.”

It must be noted that in these experiences, the idea most strongly felt was the one of the “power and presence of God,” and we are impressed with the fact that, no matter how varied may be the creeds of the world, as founded by “saviours” and incarnations of God, there is a unity among all races, as to the fact of a one supreme universal power, which is Aum, the Absolute, and which must represent perfect love and perfect peace, since all who have glimpsed their unity with this power, testify to a feeling of happiness, peace and satisfaction, rare and exalted.

By comparing the experience of those who have attained this state of liberation from illusion, through religious rites and ceremonies, or “sacrifice to God,” as it is not infrequently called, with the experience of those who have recorded the phenomenon, apparently arriving at the goal through intellectual and moral aspiration, we will find that the results are almost identical, and the after-effects similar.

It has been said that those who attain liberation have invariably sought to found a new system of worship, and this fact has given rise to the many paths or methods of attainment which have been taught by various Illumined Ones, both in the Orient and in the western world, supplementary as it were to the main great religious systems.

We will take a short survey of a few of these systems in Japan and India in comparatively modern times, or at least during the last two thousand years, which is modern compared to the history of the Orient.

CHAPTER VI

EXAMPLES OF COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS, WHO HAVE FOUNDED NEW SYSTEMS OF RELIGION

The early religion of Japan, before the advent of Buddhism, was extremely simple.