Lately, at bedtime, I've been reading bits and pieces of Richard Maurice Bucke's famous 1901 study Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind. The book is a compilation of accounts featuring persons both notable and unknown who underwent mystical experiences that uplifted their thought and character – essentially what psychologist Abraham Maslow called "peak experiences" and what Hindu tradition calls "kundalini experiences."
Some of these accounts are more interesting and persuasive than others. Many of the best are those provided at first hand by Bucke's contemporaries – otherwise ordinary people whose lives were changed by a transcendent sense of oneness with the cosmos lasting anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. One of the most intriguing of these reports is related in Chapter 29 of Part V and involves a woman identified only as C.M.C.
What follows is an abridged version of her story.
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I was born in the year 1844. I have been told that as a child I never seemed young – that is, that along with my youth there was an air of thoughtfulness that belongs to more advanced years. I cannot remember a time when I did not think and wonder about God. The beauty and sublimity of nature have always, from early childhood, impressed me deeply.…
The vastness and grandeur of the God which I felt in nature I could never reconcile with the God in the Bible, try as I would, and of course I felt myself a wicked skeptic in consequence. So it went on and though to all appearance I was happy and full of life like other girls, there was always that undercurrent – a vein of sadness deep down, out of sight.…
At twenty-two I was married. Ten years later a change of place broke up the old routine of my life, giving me new associates and new interests. I was thrown into relation with people of more liberal tendencies… From that time, without my going very deeply into the subject, a general idea of evolution was gained, and gradually the old conceptions gave place to more rational ones…. My attitude was that of an agnostic.
There I rested, not altogether content, it is true. Something in life had been missed which it seemed ought to be there; depths in my own nature which had never been sounded; heights I could see, which had not been reached.… An illness, combining extreme bodily prostration with the equally extreme mental and emotional disturbance, revealed to me the depths in my own nature. After some months my strength was restored and my mental condition to some extent improved, but the deep unrest remained. With the power to suffer came the power of sympathy with all suffering. What I had hitherto known or realized of life was as the prick of a pin to the thrust of a dagger. I had been living on the surface; now I was going down into the depths, and as I went deeper and deeper the barriers which had separated me from my fellow men were broken down, the sense of kinship with every living creature had deepened, so that I was oppressed with a double burden. Was I never to no rest or peace again?…
Passing over the interval between this time in September, 1893, as unimportant, except for the constant struggle within me, I proceed to describe, as well as may be, the supreme event of my life, which undoubtedly is related to all else, and is the outcome of those years of passionate search.
I had come to see that my need was greater even than I had thought. The pain and tension deep in the core and center of my being was so great that I felt as might some creature which had outgrown its shell, and yet could not escape. What it was I knew not, except that it was a great yearning – for freedom, for larger life, – for deeper love. There seemed to be no response in nature to that infinite need. The great tide swept on uncaring, pitiless, and strength gone, every resource exhausted, nothing remained but submission. So I said: There must be a reason for it, a purpose in it, even if I cannot grasp it. The Power in whose hands I am may do with me as it will!…
At last, subdued, with a curious, growing strength in my weakness, I let go of myself! In a short time, to my surprise, I began to feel a sense of physical comfort, of rest, as if some strain or tension was removed. Never before had I experienced such a feeling of perfect health. I wondered at it. And how bright and beautiful the day! I looked out at the sky, the hills and the river, amazed that I had never before realized how divinely beautiful the world was! The sense of lightness and expansion kept increasing, the wrinkles smoothed out of everything, there was nothing in all the world that seemed out of place….
The light and color glowed, the atmosphere seemed to quiver and vibrate around and within me. Perfect rest and peace and joy were everywhere, and, more strange than all, there came to me a sense of some serene, magnetic presence – grand and all pervading. The life and joy within me were becoming so intense that by evening I became restless and wandered about the rooms, scarcely knowing what to do with myself. Retiring early that I might be alone, soon all objective phenomena were shut out. I was seeing and comprehending the sublime meaning of things, the reasons for all that had before been hidden and dark. The great truth that life is a spiritual evolution, that this life is but a passing phase in the soul's progression, burst upon my astonished vision with overwhelming grandeur. Oh, I thought, if this is what it means, if this is the outcome, then pain is sublime! Welcome centuries, eons, of suffering if it brings us to this! And still the splendor increased….
I felt myself going, losing myself. Then I was terrified, but with a sweet terror. I was losing my consciousness, my identity, but was powerless to hold myself. Now came a period of rapture, so intense that the universe stood still, as if amazed at the unalterable majesty of the spectacle! Only one in all the infinite universe! The All-loving, the Perfect One! The Perfect Wisdom, truth, love and purity! And with the rapture came the insight. In that same wonderful moment of what might be called supernal bliss, came illumination. I saw with intense inward vision the atoms or molecules, of which seemingly the universe is composed – I know not whether material or spiritual – rearranging themselves, as the cosmos (in its continuous, everlasting life) passes from order to order. What joy when I saw there was no break in the chain – not a link left out – everything in its place and time. Worlds, systems, all blended in one harmonious whole. Universal life, synonymous with universal love!… How long the vision lasted I cannot tell. In the morning I awoke with a slight headache, but with the spiritual sense so strong that what we call the actual, material things surrounding me seemed shadowy or a shadowy and unreal. My point of view was entirely changed. Old things had passed away and all had become new. The ideal had become real, the old real had lost its former reality and had become shadowy. This shadowy unreality of external things did not last many days. Every longing of the heart was satisfied, every question answered, the "pent-up, aching rivers" had reached the ocean – I loved infinitely and was infinitely loved!…
How foolish, how childish, now seemed petulance of discontent in presence of that serene majesty! I had learned the grand lesson, that suffering is the price which must be paid for all that is worth having; that in some mysterious way we are refined and sensitized, doubtless largely by it, so that we are made susceptible to nature's higher and finer influences – this, if true of one, is true of all. And feeling and knowing this, I do not now rave as once I did, but am "silent" "as I sit and look out upon all the sorrow of the world" – "upon all the meanness and agony without end." That sweet eternal smile on nature's face! There is nothing in the universe to compare with it – such joyous repose and sweet unconcern – saying to us, with tenderest love: All is well, always has been and always will be.…
The consciousness of completeness and permanence in myself is one with that of the completeness and permanence of nature. This feeling is quite distinct from any that I had before illumination and has sprung from that. I often ponder on it and wonder what has happened – what change can have taken place in me to so poise and individualize me. My feeling is as if I were as distinct and separate from all other beings and things as is the moon in space and at the same time indissolubly one with all nature.
Out of this experience was born an unfaltering trust. Deep in the soul, below pain, below all the distraction of life, is a silence vast and grand – an infinite ocean of calm, which nothing can disturb; Nature's own exceeding peace, which "passes understanding."
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The piece probably doesn't require much comment, but I will note that a major part of C.M.C.'s "illumination" consisted of seeing the order of things:
I saw with intense inward vision the atoms or molecules, of which seemingly the universe is composed – I know not whether material or spiritual – rearranging themselves, as the cosmos (in its continuous, everlasting life) passes from order to order. What joy when I saw there was no break in the chain – not a link left out – everything in its place and time. Worlds, systems, all blended in one harmonious whole.
Though I don't mean to reduce C.M.C.'s highly emotional and life-changing experience to cold, impersonal, quasi-scientfic terms, I can't help noting that this passage possibly relates to an idea we have often considered on this blog – namely, that the universe ultimately consists of information and information processing, and that this informational content is constantly changing as part of a vast, interconnected system. Passing "from order to order" is actually a very precise and concise way of describing the visible changes in such a system – for instance, the constant change from one ordered pattern to another in the animated graphics on a computer screen that occurs every time the screen refreshes.
I would add that the "atoms or molecules, of which seemingly the universe is composed ... whether material or spiritual" could be interpreted as bits of data in this information processing system, which would be neither material nor spiritual, but would occupy some other ontological status as pure information; or, to make a related argument, they could be interpreted as Leibniz's monads (see Matt Rouge's guest post on that subject).
Of course, C.M.C. immediately links the above revelation to the following:
Universal life, synonymous with universal love!
The universal love is, perhaps, the attention bestowed by consciousness on the system, which brings it to life – breathing fire into the equations, to borrow the words of Stephen Hawking's famous question. Consciousness, in this view, observes and interacts with this system, perhaps by choosing a given pathway to actualize out of many possible alternatives. This is not to say that consciousness cannot love the objects of its attention; indeed, bringing a world to life out of cold, abstract algorithms could be seen as not only the ultimate act of creation but also the ultimate act of love. It is just possible that some intimation of this reality-actualizing power of consciousness underlies the consistent view of God across cultures as the creator of life and order, the generative principle that makes all things possible, and without which nothing could exist.
Naturally, I don't suggest that this interpretation is the only possible one, or necessarily the correct one. An experience as profound as C.M.C.'s can be viewed from a variety of perspectives.
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