Cosmic Consciousness

There is an ages-old unexplained mystery of genius and enlightenment.

Many people talk of "seeing the light" as a temporary, intense affair where all the world's knowledge and understanding is unveiled to an individual in a brief moment outside of time.

He carefully researched and compiled all the illuminated individuals he could find. As a trained M.D. and psychiatrist working in a mental institution, he was in a unique position

Bucke provides three dozen very consistent examples of 'cosmic consciousness.' Some of these were contemporary case-histories which he collected. Bucke proposed that these enlightened figures are evolutionary jumps, the precedecessor of a more advanced species. Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Dante, William Blake, Shakespeare and others were included.

According to Wikipedia, Burke's experience started in 1872, while in London, Bucke had the most important experience of his life — a fleeting mystical experience that he said consisted of a few moments of cosmic consciousness. He later described the characteristics and effects of the faculty of experiencing this type of consciousness as:

• its sudden appearance
• a subjective experience of light ("inner light")
• moral elevation
• intellectual illumination
• a sense of immortality
• loss of a fear of death
• loss of a sense of sin

Bucke's personal experience of the inner state had yet another attribute, mentioned separately by the author: the vivid sense of the universe as a living presence, rather than as basically lifeless, inert matter.

Describing this scene in his book: "The supreme occurrence of that night was his real and sole initiation to the new and higher order of ideas. But it was only an initiation. He saw the light but had no more idea whence it came and what it meant than had the first creature that saw the light of the sun."