Cosmic Consciousness

[Philsdad]

Has anyone ever read this book? It was written in the early 1900s by a doctor who was doing research on human consciousness and its evolutionary patterns. Basically, throughout our evolutionary development, our consciousness has gone through several stages, as I'll type out below..

Simple Consciousness: The lowest form of consciousness possessed by all humans and the upper half of the animal kingdom. We are aware of our existence and our surroundings.

Self Consciousness: A higher form of consciousness, possessed only by humans. We know ourselves as a distinct entity and have a lot of unique mental faculties that no other species has.

Cosmic Consciousness: A higher form of consciousness than self consciousness. It is the next step forward in our evolution. A few isolated cases of brief periods of this consciousness have been reported.

If you believe in some form of evolution, then it's pretty obvious that it's a continuous process. In 100,000 years, humans are going to be much more advanced mentally than we are now.

This book discusses these topics in detail. Several chapters are given to discuss our current state of self consciousness and the mental faculties we have gained. For example, when a species obtains a new mental faculty, it is going to be very rare in the species for a long time. Eventually, it will become more and more widespread until the entire species has it. However, because it is still relatively new, there will be instances of the faculty being absent in some members of the species. Take color blindness. The color sense is a recently acquired faculty that most people possess. However, there are always those color blind folks! Most of them seem to move to my city and drive in front of me at traffic lights. Another recently acquired faculty is human moral nature. Most humans have the ability the know right from wrong, and usually act upon it. But then there are always those worthless bastards who seem to have no morals whatsoever. Do you think that people who are completely amoral are responsible for the way they are? Or is it like being color blind? Perhaps they are just lacking a mental faculty? I'm not sure myself, but it's an interesting concept to think about. Regardless, should these people still be held responsible for their actions?

Anyway, to move along.. The main focus of the book is of course on cosmic consciousness. There have been several recorded cases in history where people have had brief periods of enlightment and learned a great deal about life and about our place in the universe. No, they weren't toking up. I promise! The period of enlightenment usually lasted only a few seconds. But several of the people who experienced it said that they learned more about life in those few seconds, than in their entire life.

After discussing the scientific aspects of this new state of consciousness, the rest of the book (about 2/3 of it) consists of detailed cases of people who have experienced it throughout history. People such as Gautama Buddha, William Blake and other random people experienced it and their stories are pretty interesting.

Keep in mind that the book was written in 1902. So there are things in the book that are a little bit dated. But that doesn't stop it from being an interesting read. A lot of it is still accuate, and it's pretty cool to read the writings of someone so far ahead of his time like Dr. Bucke.

The book expands on all of this quite a bit..and I'd certainly hope so, or else it would probably have been a pamphlet, not a book. And it would have likely ended up in the fireplace instead of something that is still read to this day.

I think you can read it online for free now thanks to public domain laws. So go read it, and discuss because I'm bored.

[Lord of Spam]

Is "Cosmic Consciousness" the actual title of the book?

[Philsdad]

Yup. "Cosmic Consciousness" by Richard Maurice Bucke.

[Lord of Spam]

I'll look into it. If I get the time I'll read it by this weekend.

[Aesthetic]

I'll add that to my list of books I want to read. I'm not sure about my thoughts on evolution, but that doesn't stop me from being interested in this. The book seems to bring up pretty good points, at least from what you've said. 1902, huh? Thought-provoking. I'll keep it in mind, and will hopefully read it soon enough so that I can reply to this thread with a more detailed response other than just, "Sounds intriguing."

[Angelwang]

I'm definitely interested in reading this, as I very much believe and enjoy studying evolution. Thanks for informing us of this. I'll have to look around for it soon.

[Sk2k52]

This sounds like a very interesting book, I think i'll check if my libary gots it I'd love to read something like this.