Message of the Kosmos
A reader's story of his search for Truth
Guest article by B. A. George
Introduction by Occult Mysteries
We are delighted to share the following story sent to us by another "lurker". He has been kind enough to share his profound mystical experience with our readers in the hope that it may encourage others to seek the One Light of Truth. Such experiences are more common than many people realise, but as the author discovered, few wish to hear about them, and those who do, most often dismiss them as hallucinations.
This merely displays the ignorance of the average man or woman in regard to anything their senses cannot cognise or explain. This is not to say that there aren't such things as hallucinations, but there is an unmistakable difference between them and genuine spiritual vision or exaltation, and this lies in the nature of the emotions and thoughts such experiences arouse in us, as the author of this story relates.
Our customary afterword has been adapted from Vision 8 of The Golden Star, in which the two Egyptian pilgrims—Ma-u and Ma-uti—attend a lecture in a higher realm and learn about the formation of the Kosmos.
My story begins about six years ago. On an impulse, I had decided to watch the initial episode of the television series Cosmos: a personal voyage, narrated by the late astronomer Carl Sagan. He began:
"The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our contemplations of the cosmos stir us. There is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice a faint sensation, as if a distant memory of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries. The size and age of the cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home, the Earth. The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we've waded a little way out—maybe ankle-deep—and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. The journey for each of us begins here."
When the episode ended, I was unable to get two thoughts in particular from my mind. So I began to pace the room and brood over them. I imagined myself as a mote of dust floating serenely in the cosmos as though it were the morning sky. Then I imagined myself as that same cosmos acting through me in order to get to know itself. And as I reflected thus, something happened: suddenly and without warning my awareness shifted. I was no longer aware of my apartment. I am not quite certain what I was aware of, but it seemed like a peculiarly lucid darkness. A vast expanse opened out before my inner vision. I seemed to be seeing the entire universe. I was no longer B. A. George; I was the very Cosmos Itself, and George was but an infinitesimal portion of Me. In that moment I felt that I knew everything there was to be known; a profound sense of peace accompanied this knowledge. When my awareness returned to the surroundings of my living room, I found tears streaming down my cheeks. I was so full of feelings of love and compassion that I thought I might burst and enwrap the entire world within my embrace. How could I ever want to hurt anyone, my other selves? I thought.
I was an atheist before that night, but in that moment—if moment it was, for there was a timelessness to it—I felt that I knew God was real and that I was secretly, in my inmost essence, none other that He. I walked out onto the stairs leading up to my apartment; and, as I stood there in the night air, looking out upon the trees in the yard, I thought, these trees are my brothers and the whole world is my kin.
For a few weeks afterwards, I attempted to share my experience with a few people to whom I was especially close. I thought I had discovered a great secret; I wanted to share it with the world: if only everyone could understand their own divinity, their own kinship with each other, then the enmity existing in the world would dissolve like mist in the morning sun. Or so I thought. I did not know that others had had the same or similar experiences and had also attempted to share them with those who had not. I did not realise that such attempts often ended poorly. But I was soon to learn.
One evening after sharing my experience with a friend I ended my story by telling her that I thought she, too, was secretly God. After listening patiently, she responded, "That sounds beautiful, but you don't actually tell people that, do you?" After that I certainly didn't! Not at least without great reservation; and to this day I don't think I have shared my experience with more than a dozen people.
In describing that night I have tried to keep as close as possible to my understanding of the event at the time it happened.
That said, I do doubt very much that I am able to present it unadulterated by my subsequent studies and attempts to understand it; but I have not, for example, edited out my feeling of being identical with God, despite having read in the afterword to the final part of your Astral Conversations series that "It has been said that it is only the bigot who, in the first flush of his discovery proclaims to the world that he has found the secret of existence. The true Philosopher waits for further developments." [We would add that there is a very great difference between proclaiming one is God and the inner conviction that we are part of God, and therefore one with Him in the ultimate (Ed.)]
I won't deny my ignorance, nor even exclude the possibility of my being deluded; but I was raised in the Christian tradition, and despite having long ago dismissed most of the orthodox conceptions of that religion, I knew at that time next to nothing of any other tradition. I knew little of Buddhism. I knew less of Hinduism or Islam. I knew nothing at all of Occultism. In fact, even today I cannot honestly say that I understand very much of the teachings of these or other of the world's great religious traditions except in their broadest outlines—and this despite having spent the past five years in reading and study! Still—it has often vexed me that I did not have a better framework for understanding what happened that night. I have had to approach it retrospectively; and in doing so, my understanding of it has undoubtedly been coloured by my readings of the descriptions of the experiences of others.
Now I shall briefly give my current understanding of that night. It is as follows: That there was symbolism inherent to the thoughts which I contemplated and by exercising my imagination in so contemplating them I was able to a degree to enter into the essence of these symbols and experience it. The mote of dust floating in the morning sky would seem to emphasize or highlight a multiplicity (the motes of dust) against the backdrop of unity (the cosmos); conversely, that we are the cosmos' way of knowing itself would seem to shift the focus to a unity working though a multiplicity. In more mathematical terms, this might be symbolized by a point and space—individual consciousness symbolized by the point and Consciousness per se symbolized by space. By entering into the symbol and shifting from one thought to the next, my consciousness was carried along such that I was able to feel myself as space: for is not space the point expanded to infinity, the point space contracted to the infinitesimal?
Whatever the process, it seems clear to me that it was either a bestowal of grace from God or, perhaps, a memory recalled from a previous incarnation as I can think of nothing that I have done in my current life to merit such a gift; that it was given as a foretaste of future possibilities so that I might be impelled onwards with renewed vigour; and that two secondary but no less precious gifts were those of discrimination and faith, or an amplification of those faculties—discrimination that manifests as a heightened (but still developing) ability to discern when Truth abides in a thing (even if I am often unable to grasp the full meaning of it, or if my mind often covers over the truth with a false interpretation) and a deep faith in an essential Unity as the basis of the universe.
It was about this time that I encountered several self-styled occult orders online, none of which seemed to be possessed of any real living Light. Genuine occult orders existing in the world were, to my mind, a thing of the past; they belonged to a bygone era; and I had often lamented the fact that there was no such teacher living today whom I recognized as being possessed by Truth and who was available to teach me. Despite this—despite having only encountered what I felt were pretenders to wisdom online—after this experience I was suddenly moved to search online. I cannot explain the motivation except that it was a suggestion from on high, and that was how I discovered your website. As I read over the material more closely, I became filled with a sense of awe.
Since then, I have spent my time in study. I have not had any additional mystical experiences; and the few waking imaginings that I have had have not been nearly as impactful or long lasting. My life has instead been spent in the attempt to take the reins of my lower self so that I might make myself a more useful instrument for sharing what little I comprehend of the Light with others who seem to be longing for it also. I am still full of many errors: I can be short-tempered, gluttonous, greedy—in short, the entire gamut of human frailties exist within me. But I long ago decided to dedicate myself to the task of bringing my lower self into harmony with my higher self; to be a servant of God and my fellow men; and to manifest ever more of Life, Light, and Love to all whom I contact. No other goal seems worth having.
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Article © B. A George. Commentary © Copyright occult-mysteries.org. All worldwide rights reserved. Published 5 November 2017.
