Horrible as is war, because of the spirit of hate and destruction it embodies and keeps alive, yet the fact remains that man in his soul knows that he can neither slay nor be slain by the mere act of destroying the physical shell called the body. It is inconceivable that human beings would lend themselves to warfare, if they did not know, as a part of that area of supra-consciousness, that there is a something over which bullets have no power.
This fact, regarded as a more or less vague belief to the majority, becomes incontrovertible fact to the person who has entered cosmic consciousness. His view is reversed, and where he formerly looked from the sense-conscious plane forward into a possible spiritual plane, he now gazes back over the path from the spiritual heights and sees the winding road that led upward to the elevation, much as a traveller on the mountain top looks back and for the first time sees all of the devious trail over which he has, climbed to his present vantage point. During the journey there had been many times when he could only see the next step ahead, and nothing but his faith in the assurance of his fellow men who had attained the summit of that mountain, could ever have sustained him through the perils of the climb, but once on the heights, his backward view takes in the details of the journey and sees not "through a glass darkly," but in the clear light of achievement.
Such is the effect of cosmic consciousness to the one who has seen the light.
"One of the benefits of a college education," says Emerson, "is to show the boy its little avail."
Does this imply that an unlettered mind is desirable? Not necessarily, but there is a phase of intellectual culture that is detrimental while it lasts.
It is as though one were to choke up a perfectly flowing stream which yielded the moisture to fertile lands, by filling the bed of the stream with rocks and sticks.
The flow of the spiritual currents becomes clogged by the activities of the mind in its acquisition of mere knowledge, and before that knowledge has been turned into wisdom. The same truth is expressed in the aphorism "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." It is dangerous because it chains the mind to the external things of life, whereas the totally unlettered (we do not use the term ignorant here) person will, if he have his heart filled with love, perceive the reality of spiritual things that transcend mere knowledge of the physical universe.
Beyond this plane of mortal mind-consciousness, which is fitly described as "dangerous," there is the wide open area of cosmic perception, which may lead ultimately to the limitless areas of cosmic consciousness. If, therefore, an education, whether acquired in or out of college, so whets the grain of the mind that it becomes keen and fine enough to realize that knowledge is valuable ONLY as it leads to real wisdom, then indeed it is a benefit; unless it does this, it is temporarily an obstruction.
Out of the lower into the higher vibration; out of sense-consciousness into cosmic consciousness; out of organization and limitations into freedom—the freedom of perfection, is the law and the purpose. This Emerson with his clearness of spiritual vision, saw, and this premise he subjected to the microscopic lens of his penetrating intellect. In his essay on Fate he says:
"Fate involves amelioration. No statement of the Universe can have any soundness which does not admit its ascending effort. The direction of the whole and of the parts is toward benefit. Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty. * * * The Better; the Best. The first and worse races are dead. The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom."