The business man uses the phrase "let us get together on this" without knowing that he is expressing in terms of sense-consciousness, the urge of his own and his fellow beings' inner mind, which senses the fact of our unescapable Brotherhood.
All religious systems then, are good, as are all systems of philosophy. They are good because they are an attempt at bringing into the perspective of the mortal mind the reality of the soul and the soul life; the rule of the spiritually conscious ego over the physical body in order that we may now, in our present incarnation, claim immortality.
CHAPTER XIII
MODERN EXAMPLES OF INTELLECTUAL COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: EMERSON; TOLSTOI; BALZAC
Passing over the ancient philosophers, Aristotle, Albertus Magnus, Plotinus, Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, Socrates, Plato, Aspasia, and others, all of whom had glimpsed, if not fully attained, cosmic consciousness, we come to a consideration of those cases in our own day and age, in which this superior consciousness has found expression through intellectual rather than through religious channels.
Of these latter, no more illustrious example can be cited than that of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the sage of Concord.
Emerson's nature was essentially religious, but his religion was not of the emotional quality so often found among enthusiasts, and which is almost always openly expressed when this religious enthusiasm is not balanced by intellectuality.
Analysis is frequently a foe to inspiration, but there are fare instances where the intellect is of such a penetrating and extraordinary quality that it carries the power of analysis into the unseen; in fact what we habitually term the unseen is a part of the visible to this type of mind. True intellect is a natural inheritance, a karmic attribute. The spurious kind is the result of education, and it invariably has its limitations. It stops short of the finer vibrations of consciousness and denies the reality of the inner life of man—which inner life constitutes the real to the character of intellect that penetrates beyond maya.
Of such a quality of intellect is that exemplified in Emerson. No mere tabulator of facts was he, but a dissector of the causes back of all the manifestation which he observed and studied and classified with the mental power of a god.
Nor is there lacking ample proof that Emerson experienced the phenomenon of the suddenness of cosmic consciousness—a degree of which he seems to have possessed from earliest youth.