WHAT IS COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS?

WHAT IS COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS?

© January 9. 2020 Edward R Close

I have mentioned Cosmic Consciousness several times in my posts and publications, indicating that it is nothing less than the real goal and purpose of all existence. But what exactly is cosmic consciousness? Cosmic Consciousness completely transcends the thoughts and concerns that dominate the minds of most sentient beings alive today. Because of this, and the ever-expanding, perhaps even infinite scope of the cosmos, i.e., all that is, and the state of being fully aware of it, it is very difficult, if not impossible to describe such an advanced state of enlightenment in the finite terms of any language known on this planet today. Despite these difficulties, there have been a number of attempts to describe Cosmic Consciousness by thinkers and writers in the past. But it is not my intent to discuss and compare those attempts, as interesting as that might be. I plan to simply start with the basic definitions offered by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, a Canadian Psychiatrist who undertook the daunting task of defining Cosmic Consciousness and examining the lives of several individuals he considered to be examples of this exalted state.

I find it interesting that Dr. Bucke finished his book, entitled Cosmic Consciousness, in 1900, and published it in 1901, the very historical time period during which Max Planck discovered the quantum nature of physical reality, and Albert Einstein was busy thinking about the Electrodynamics of Moving Objects (Special Relativity). Of equal interest, to me at least, is the fact that all three of these ideas fit very nicely into the cyclic nature of mental virtue revealed in the Ancient Indian Vedas and interpreted by Sri Yukteswar Giri, in his book The Holy Science, published in 1894. I have written in some detail about this in Secrets of the Sacred Cube, a Cosmic Love Story, and in my later, as yet unpublished manuscript, Survival.

I believe Dr. Bucke was the first in modern times, to consider what he called Cosmic Consciousness to be the next major evolutionary stage of sentient beings beyond the self-awareness level of the average human being in the upward struggle of conscious beings from the bare beginnings of awareness to the state of being fully aware of the entirety of reality, defined as the cosmos. He divided consciousness into three stages: 1) Simple Consciousness, 2) Self Consciousness and 3) Cosmic Consciousness. In this categorization scheme, Simple Consciousness is the awareness present in animals, Self Consciousness is experienced by human beings, and Cosmic Consciousness is a rare state, an elevated state of consciousness which only a few extraordinary human beings have ever attained in historical times.

Comparing these three categories of consciousness with the concepts of consciousness in the Neppe-Close paradigm, I find no major conflict. However, I would say that these categories are broad generalizations compared with the Neppe-Close view of consciousness, which is more detailed and more precisely related to the current scientific understanding of psychology and psychiatry. With the discovery of the existence of gimmel, the non-physical aspect of reality that is necessary for a stable universe to exist, we see indications that some level of consciousness is present in every electron, proton and neutron making up the stable atomic structures of the universe. Thus there is some basic level of awareness present even in plants and minerals.

As in our TDVP paradigm, Bucke sees individual conscious beings displaying a wide distribution across the spectrum of the levels of consciousness within each of the three stages. And he sees the number of individuals reaching the threshold of Cosmic Consciousness to be increasing slowly over time; and that is consistent with the current era of ascending mental virtue, the Dwapara Yuga, as described by Sri Yukteswar in The Holy Science.  But the purpose of this discussion is not to describe the entire spectrum of awareness from one quantum equivalence unit of gimmel, all the way to Cosmic Consciousness, other than to say that it exists. My intended focus here is on Cosmic Consciousness, and I will start with a brief summary of Dr. Bucke’s work, and discuss how it applies to us today.

Dr. Richard Bucke’s Experience and Approach

Taking note that certain historic figures, and even a few people who were alive during the time of his investigations (roughly 1870 to 1900), who appeared to have attained exceptional physical and intellectual abilities and moral characteristics, all far beyond the mean or average person in the general population, Dr. Bucke proposed that such exceptional persons represent the next step in human evolution, and he set out to gather the available information about such individuals to see what they had in common. In this way, he sought to define the state he called Cosmic Consciousness. which, in his words, was, and is: “… a higher form of consciousness than that possessed by the ordinary man.” - Cosmic Consciousness, Page 1. He goes on to say: “Cosmic Consciousness is a third form which is as far above Self Consciousness as is that above Simple Consciousness.” – CC page 2.

It is important to note that one would not be able to write authentically about the subject of Cosmic Consciousness, with no more than intellectual superficiality, unless one had experienced personally at least a glimpse or a taste of it. In the spring of 1872, Richard Maurice Bucke, himself, had the experience of illumination. His experience is described in the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Series H, Vol. 12, pp 159, as follows:

“He and two friends had spent the evening reading Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman. They parted at midnight and he had a long drive in a hansom [a two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage]. His mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images and emotions called up by the readings and talk of the evening, was calm and peaceful. He was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment.

            “All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around, as it were, in a flame colored cloud. For an instant he thought of a fire = some sudden conflagration in the great city [London, England]. The next (instant) he knew the light was within himself.

            “Directly after there came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness, accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into his brain streamed one momentary lightning flash of Brahmic splendor which ever since lightened his life. Upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an after taste of Heaven.”

It was probably this experience that prompted him to undertake the study that led to the writing of the book Cosmic Consciousness, which he published in 1901. In that book, Dr. Bucke listed fourteen individuals as real-life examples of individuals possessing Cosmic Consciousness, and provided a second list of 36, saying that “some of them were lesser, imperfect and doubtful instances” of Cosmic Consciousness. He provided biographical sketches of many of these individuals, especially of the fourteen that he considered to be definite examples of Cosmic Consciousness. Data common to these individuals included: A reported sudden experience of “illumination” after which they exhibited intellectual, moral and spiritual enlightenment. Each of them experienced an immense joy or bliss, impossible to adequately describe, but which imbued them with the realization that they were immortal souls who could not be touched by death. This state of ecstatic illumination, even if it did not last as a permanent state of consciousness for some of them, changed their lives forever. A few, like Moses, Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, William Blake, and Walt Whitman, apparently enjoyed Cosmic Consciousness continuously from the time of their illumination onward.

The fact that I am writing about Cosmic Consciousness in this article, immediately raises the question of whether or not I am qualified to write authentically about it. I believe I am, by virtue of personal experience, and I will present my evidence, but it is up to you, the reader, to decide for yourself whether you believe what I report is authentic knowing, or the height of the proverbial “delusion of grandeur”.

The first time I felt compelled to write about my personal experiences of inner illumination was during the years of 1970 to 1977. During that time period, I was one of the seven charter members of the Department of Interior Systems Analysis Group with headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. In my first published book, The Book of Atma, written mostly at night on an upright Underwood typewriter in a partially-finished attic room in my home in Falls Church, Virginia, and published by Libra Publishers of New York, in 1997, I described relevant personal experiences that occurred in 1951, in Texas County, Missouri, and in 1960 in Los Angeles California. I will describe those experiences briefly here, summarizing the details of the experiences, previously published elsewhere.

Note: The Book of Atma, is available on Amazon, or can be ordered directly from EJC Advantage, P.O. Box 368, Jackson, MO 63755, for $20 plus $3 for shipping anywhere in the US.

Texas County Missouri, 1951

At twilight on a summer evening, I strolled out of the yard of my parents farm home located south of the small town of Raymondville, Missouri, past a row of large double-trunk catalpa trees to the bank of a small pond. I was fourteen, and would be entering high school in Houston, Missouri in the fall. I had been reading math and physics books that summer, and was taken by the ideas of Special Relativity expounded by Albert Einstein in his little book, Relativity the Special and General Theory, a Clear Explanation that Anyone can Understand, published in 1916. I did indeed understand the Special Theory, but had become bogged down in the General Theory, which presented ideas that required an understanding of mathematical physics beyond my ability to comprehend at that time. Frustrated, I stood on the pond bank, and as the reflections of the stars began to appear on the surface of the pond, I looked up at the sky and exclaimed: “God, I want to know everything!”

The response I received was totally unexpected. It seemed as if someone had flipped a switch that turned off the normal sounds of the evening countryside: frogs, crickets, birds, etc. Those sounds were replaced almost immediately by a deep humming sound, like the thrilling sound of rushing waters. Several years later, I would learn that that sound was something called the Aum, or Om Sound in esoteric Eastern religious philosophies. With the swelling of that deep sound of the internal workings of the universe, everything around me began to glow and throb with life, a life that I now experienced as part of the conscious awareness of my own being! I accepted that experience as my answer, and vowed to become a theoretical physicist like Albert Einstein. For more detail, see pp 43-49, of The Book of Atma.

Mount Washington, Los Angeles California, 1960

On the evening of September 17^th, 1960, atop Mount Washington, an outlier of the Hollywood Hills, just north of downtown Los Angeles, at the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) Mother Center, I was initiated into the venerable practice of Kriya Yoga by Sri Dayamata, then President of SRF, the organization founded by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1920. What happened during the initiation cannot be told more succinctly than the brief description that was published as part of the description of the event on page 206 of Transcendental Physics, published by Gutenberg-Richter Press, in 1977, and by toExcel Press, iuniverse, in 2000:

“I beheld an inner light like nothing I had ever seen before. There was nothing vague or dream-like about this light. It was just as real as any light I have ever seen from any external source. It was golden in color, spinning rapidly, and vividly three dimensional.…The reason I am describing this event in this book is because it is an example of inner objectivity, a clear observation of an objective aspect of consciousness that I have experienced myself.”

For more detail, see The Book of Atma, p 53, and Transcendental Physics, pp 205-209.

At the end of The Book of Atma, I returned to the subject of Cosmic Consciousness. Here are some relevant excerpts:

“Knowing is all it takes. If we find our present consciousness too structured and complex to allow true knowledge and understanding to dawn, we may start by making our total existence, our every instant of consciousness, in short, every aspect of our lives, a path to cosmic consciousness. Change your perspective to see each act, each breath, each now, as an opportunity to touch Reality or God.…Realize that the real, unthinkable, indescribable Reality is always there, waiting for you to recognize your own identity. … Rest in absolute assurance of your basic unity and oneness with the Infinite. Humanity has never been anything but God asleep, entertaining Itself with dreams of shadow and light, plus and minus, pleasure and pain!

            “Enlightenment! Satori! Samadhi! Paradox of paradoxes. Nothing has been attained, and nothing has been gained, for the realization has dawned that consciousness is, and always has been Bliss. I have only recognized what already was the case. In truth, only Truth exists! The mountain is just a mountain, the flower is simply a flower. There is no dilemma, there never has been. There is no pleasure or pain, no life separate from death. There is no separateness. I simply recognize my original state, which has never actually changed. Earth life passes, a stream of images, of events, all equally important, equally unimportant. Consciousness is Bliss.”

Poetic description comes closest to describing the exalted state of Cosmic Consciousness. One thinks, for instance, of William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

William Blake was one of the prime individuals that Bucke identified as examples of Cosmic Consciousness. I would argue that not only does the beginning couplets of this poem give us a hint of the vision of an enlightened soul, but the rest of the poem, as the title suggests, implies that thoughtless actions harming other sentient beings are sure to bring about dire consequences to individuals and civilizations alike. For example, later in the poem we find:

A Horse misused upon the Road

Calls to Heaven for Human blood 

Each outcry of the hunted Hare

A fibre from the Brain does tear …

And, common to the thoughts of those enlightened beings is the resolution of opposites as suggested by the following lines:

A Truth that’s told with bad intent

Beats all the Lies you can invent 

It is right it should be so 

Man was made for Joy & Woe 

And when this we rightly know 

Through  the World we safely go 

Joy & Woe are woven fine 

A Clothing for the Soul Devine

The American poet, Walt Whitman was one of the poets who inspired Richard Bucke and may have been the primary influence triggering Bucke’s personal experience of illumination. Bucke was said to be able to recite the entirety of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass from memory. Here are a few excerpts from Leaves of Grass:

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books, I have said that the soul is not more than the body,

And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,

And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is,

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own

funeral drest in his shroud,

And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the
earth,

And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds
the learning of all times,

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following
it may become a hero,

And there is no object so soft, but it makes a hub for the wheel'd
universe,

And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and
composed before a million universes.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,

For I who am curious about each, am not curious about God,

(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God
and about death.)

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not
in the least,

Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than
myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each
moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in
the glass,

I find letters from God dropt in the street, and everyone is sign'd
by God's name,

And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

Comment: Having read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass several times, I think that I can summarize it as follows:

I am Walt Whitman and he is me,

I am in everything, and everything is in me.

Finally, to make this discussion complete, I include the following discussion, relating gimmel, the necessary third form of reality (which is non-physical) to Cosmic Consciousness. This discussion was previously posted in part on this blog site on Sunday, September 4^th, 2016, under the heading THE ECSTASY OF COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS:

Is Cosmic Consciousness real? Is it something everyone can experience? The short answer is YES! The spiritual geniuses of all ages have extolled the ecstasy of Oneness with the Infinite, and now, science is at long last on the threshold of confirming the reality of their revelations. The ultimate paradigm shift is here. But most scientists are unaware of it and, in some cases, opposed to it, because science education has slipped farther and farther in the last 50 years toward abject materialism and atheism. As a result, contemporary science has very little to say about consciousness, and virtually no awareness of the reality of the existence of Cosmic Consciousness shining forth eternally behind the façade of the physical universe.

Why has science missed the true essence of reality? The truth is, it hasn’t, - not entirely. Many hints have been there, bursting forth in the brilliance of the occasional genius, like Pythagoras, Poincare, Cantor, Fermat, Newton, Leibniz, Planck, Schrödinger and Einstein. Compelling clues are there, in the results of the insights of such geniuses; most noticeably in pure mathematics, relativity and quantum physics. Most contemporary scientists, however, blinded by the lesser light of the material success of the technological applications, miss the brilliance of the very real light of Cosmic Consciousness, shining behind all things. But this is about to change.

Why is this about to change? It is about to change because the fundamental nature of science is the search for truth, and the truth cannot be hidden by the superficial metaphysical cloud of materialism. The truth is that no physical universe could exist without the third, non-physical substance, and this third form of reality is the ray of light that illuminates new science beyond the dead-end of materialism. We call this new science the Triadic Dimensional Vortical Paradigm (TDVP). The nature of this third form is not theoretical: it is derived from particle physics data and pure mathematics. We have called this third form, possessing no mass and no energy, gimmel. The measure of the three forms, gimmel, matter and energy, is the Triadic Rotational Unit of Equivalence (TRUE), discovered by this writer and discussed on this blog and defined in Neppe-Close publications, including the e-book Reality Begins with Consciousness, available on www.BrainVoyage.com, and in a peer-reviewed article published in the IQ Nexus Journal.

It comes as no surprise to me that the ratios of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ to baryonic (normal physical matter and energy) found by the Hubble probe are virtually the same (within the limits of measurement error) as the ratios of electron and nuclear gimmel to matter and energy in the natural elements of the universe. The mathematical details of this, worked out by Dr. Neppe, are published in our IQ Nexus Journal article.

Reality is composed of TRUE quantum units of mass, energy and consciousness, these triadic structures are the building blocks of the universe, and the source of TRUE is the infinite substrate of Cosmic Consciousness, as informed by the Conveyance Equations, derived and described in several Close-Neppe, and Neppe-Close publications, including the book Reality Begins with Consciousness. The bottom line is: Reality is Consciousness, and the realization that every spark of individualized consciousness is actually a temporarily limited bubble of Cosmic Consciousness, reveals the fact that the goal of finite existence in the physical universe is the full realization of Cosmic Consciousness. And that realization is pure Ecstasy.

THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

WHERE DID EVERYTHING COME FROM?

My Answer, or Still Crazy After All These Years!

I am so Blessed! The most important person in my life has always supported my craziness! In 1996, when we attended our first “Toward a Science of Consciousness” seminar in Tucson Arizona, where I presented my derivation of the “non-quantum receptor”, as we entered the lecture hall for the opening session, Jacqui remarked: “We’re in a room filled with over three hundred people that are crazy just like you!”

In an informal talk given by Paramahansa Yogananda, the founder of Self-Realization Fellowship in the US and Yogoda Sat-Sanga Society of India, he told the story of encountering a famous Hollywood actor once while travelling in the US. The actor was openly critical, almost offended, by Yogananda’s appearance, including his dark skin, his ochre-colored robe, long hair and turban. Yogananda replied to the effect: “We are all crazy in some way, and I know about your craziness, but you don’t know about mine!”

Of, course, it turned out that none of the three-hundred and some-odd scientists and philosophers in that room on the University of Arizona Campus that day in 1996 were crazy exactly like me. A few were similar, but most were afflicted with a slightly different kind of craziness. But, I’ve been blessed to have at least three friends in this life, my college roommate, now Dr. David Stewart, my wife, Jacqui, and my research partner, Dr. Vernon Neppe, whose craziness was and is enough like mine to help me believe that there is some value to my craziness. 

As we walked out of one of the Tucson II sessions, a few days later, I happened to be walking next to a well-known physicist whose ideas had impressed me. I turned toward him and asked:

 “Have you started meditating yet?” 

He looked at me quizzically, and answered: “No. Why should I?” 

Before I could respond, he disappeared into the crowd.

I firmly believe that any serious thinker, scientist, philosopher or ordinary person, should learn to meditate. It could mitigate their inflated sense of self-worth some. Most scientists like to think that the thoughts they think, the ideas they put forth are theirs alone. I don’t think that is quite true. Many of the ideas that have proved valuable in my career as a scientist and engineer, came to me after periods of deep meditation. In my opinion, this reveals the fact that theories about the nature of reality, like quantum theory and the theory of relativity, or any idea, while ostensibly produced by one or a few, belong to no one. The truth about the nature of reality is available to everyone, and accessible by anyone who is willing to contemplate deeply enough.

Rene Descartes, revered by many as the father of modern science, famously said: “I think therefore I am!” Of course, what he actually said was: “je pense, donc je suis!” when he published this thought in his native language, French, as the primary axiom of his “Discourse on the Method”. Later he published the thought in Latin, the formal scientific language of his day, as “Cogito ergo sum!” in his scholarly work, “Principles of Philosophy.” Reading Descatrtes’ statement, most of us think, yes, that’s right! I am thinking, and that implies that I exist. But, as we all have done, from time immemorial, with this declaration, Descartes did not really start at the beginning, he started well into the middle of the story! His seminal statement assumes that we know What thinking is, and what being is. Do we? Really? Many, many books have been written about thinking and being, but do we really know what they are? Apparently not. We are writing, and we are still in the middle of the story. How do we start at the beginning?

You may be beginning to suspect that I am crazy enough to think that I can figure this out! So, how do we start at the beginning? What, when, where, or who is/was the beginning, the origin of all things? To see how we have tackled the question: “How did all this Begin?” in the past, let’s look at some answers from some of the Homo sapiens cultures of the Earth.

From the Middle East

“In the beginning YHVH created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of YHVH was hovering over the waters. And YHVH said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Then YHVH took dust of the earth and shaped it into the form of a man, and breathed life into that form, and it came to life.

From India

In the beginning there was absolutely nothing, Brahma thought, "Let me have a self", and Brahma created the mind. As Brahma moved about in worship, water was generated. Froth formed on the water, and the froth eventually solidified to become earth. Then Brahma created life, plants, animals and human beings.

From the West

Reality was at first endless space in which existed only Manito, the Creator. This reality had no time, no shape, and no life, except in the mind of Manito. Eventually the infinite creator created the finite, Kitchi Manito, as the agent to establish the nine universes. The finite manifestation Manito gathered together matter to make the solid worlds and gathered together the waters and placed them on these worlds to make land and sea. Then Kitchi Manito gathered together air to make winds and breezes on these worlds. And the fourth act of creation was the creation of life.

From the Far East

There was something featureless yet complete, born before heaven and earth; Silent—amorphous—it stood alone and unchanging. We may regard it as the mother of heaven and earth. Not knowing its name, call it “the Way.” The Way gave birth to unity, Unity gave birth to duality, Duality gave birth to trinity, Trinity gave birth to the myriad creatures. The myriad creatures bear yin on their back and embrace yang in their bosoms. They neutralize these vapors and thereby achieve harmony.

The Big Bang, a Scientific Answer

The current scientific answer is generally known as “the Big Bang Theory”. It was generated after the discovery by astronomer Edwin Hubble, of evidence that distant stars, once assumed fixed in space, appear to be hurtling away from us, implying that the universe is expanding in every direction. Applying Einstein’s theory of general relativity and imagining running the expansion backwards, cosmologists arrive at the conclusion that the universe exploded into existence from nothing, or nearly nothing, and evolved into the vast complex expanding universe we have now. Along the way, life and consciousness blossomed forth according to natural laws, not all of which we know or fully understand.

These “answers” were all generated during the past five to ten thousand years on this planet. They were spoken and written by human beings for communication to human beings. Notice that, even though they come from widely separated places on the Earth, and from different kinds of thinkers, they have some very similar elements: First there was nothing but an infinite nothing or mind or spirit, called by various names, all meaning in some way, the Creator. Then the Creator divided the infinity up into its various parts including our first ancestor(s), and Ba-da, Ba-da, Boom: Here we are today!

Even the Big-Bang scientific answer has some similar components. In it, there was virtually nothing, but then something caused it to explode into everything we have today. No one know what cause this to happen. The main difference between the scientific answer and the traditional answers is that no creator is assumed to be necessary. But, while that seems to be a reasonable assumption, is far from a provable fact.  

Are there other versions? Oh, yeah! Plenty. From Zachariah Stichin, to Erich von Dӓniken, to that wild-haired guy on the Ancient Aliens TV series, there are those who believe life originated elsewhere in the universe. There seems to be more and more evidence that there may be sentient beings from somewhere in the universe who are far more advanced than we are. Is that possible? Of course. We’ve seen before that thinking of ourselves as the end-all, be-all center of the universe is usually a blind form of self-centered ego-delusion.

My Answer

Believe it or not, the Calculus of Dimensional Distinctions (CoDD) mentioned so often in my posts and publications, plays a major part in my answer. To explain how this can be, I will start by quoting three short paragraphs from the beginning of the wonderful little book “Laws of Form”, by British Logician George Spencer Brown:

“The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to construct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance. The act itself is already remembered, if unconsciously, as our first attempt to distinguish different things in a world where, in the first place, the boundaries can be drawn anywhere we please. At this stage, the universe can not be distinguished from how we act upon it, and the world may seem like shifting sand beneath our feet.

“Although all forms, and thus all universes, are possible, and any particular form is mutable, it becomes evident that the laws relating such forms are the same in any universe. It is this sameness, the idea that we can find a reality which is independent of how the universe actually appears, that lends such fascination to the study of mathematics. That mathematics, in common with other art forms, can lead us beyond ordinary existence, and can show us something of the structure in which all creation hangs together, is no new idea. But mathematical texts generally begin the story somewhere in the middle, leaving the reader to pick up the thread as best he can. Here the story is traced from the beginning.

“Unlike some superficial forms of expertise, mathematics is a way of saying less and less about more and more. A mathematical text is not an end in itself, but a key to a world beyond the compass of ordinary description.”

I wholeheartedly share and agree with professor Brown’s view of mathematics. In my opinion, mathematical description reflects the logical structure of reality. In his book, which I highly recommend as a good introduction to the CoDD, Professor Brown presents the logic leading from the conscious drawing of a distinction to laws governing the forms that make up the universe we experience. While I may depart from what I see as his sterile path of logic, into aspects of reality Professor Brown probably did not anticipate, I believe that his starting point is truly the beginning of the story, and it is my starting point as well, but the CoDD completes the story by finalizing the logical loop of triadic, spherical reasoning and reconnecting the consciousness of the individual with the Consciousness of the Cosmos.

The beginning of reality, as we experience it, is the distinction of self from other, and all description, all thinking (getting back to Descartes’ Method) is always expressed in terms of distinctions. This is why the distinction I have called the quantum equivalence unit, the basic unit of the CoDD which I took so much care to define based on the smallest mass of the elementary particles that make up reality, the electron, is used in the CoDD as the basic unit of observation, measurement and description.

Following this line of reasoning, I come to the conclusion that consciousness has always existed in some form and is the matrix or source of the physical universe, not the other way around. The basic triad: consciousness, distinction, and object, has always existed and will always exist in some form. The creation stories, even the current scientific one, are all about how the essence of reality changes over time, not about an absolute creation from nothing. The CoDD applied to quantized physical reality and infinitely continuous consciousness, shows me that matter, energy, space, and time are illusions created by a primary form of consciousness, and the attainment of oneness with Cosmic Consciousness Itself, is the goal, the purpose and meaning of all creation and all individual sentient beings.

To complete this post, I will quote some sayings of some of my spiritual guides:

“It is the Infinite, the Ocean of Power, that lies behind all phenomenal manifestations. Our eagerness for worldly activity kills in us the sense of spiritual awe. Because modern science tells us how to utilize the powers of nature, we fail to comprehend the Great Life in back of all names and forms. Familiarity with Nature has bred contempt for her ultimate secrets; our relation with her is one of practical business. We tease her, so to speak, to discover the ways in which she may be forced to serve our purposes; we make use of her energies, whose Source yet remains unknown. In science our relation with Nature is like that between an arrogant man and his servant; or in a philosophical sense, Nature is like a captive in the witness box. We cross-examine her, challenge her, and minutely weigh her evidence in human scales that cannot measure her hidden values.

“On the other hand, when the self is in communion with a higher power, Nature automatically obeys, without stress or strain the will of man. This effortless command over Nature is called ‘miraculous’ by the uncomprehending materialist.” --Lahiri Maysaya

“God is Love; His plan for creation can be rooted only in Love. Does not that simple thought, rather than erudite reasonings offer solace to the human heart? Every saint who has penetrated to the core of Reality has testified that a divine universal plan exists and that it is beautiful and full of joy.” --Paramahansa Yogananda

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30) “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10). –Jesus

 “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalms 37:4)

“Names are unimportant; a rose by any other name is still a rose”. – William Shakespeare

“What is the difference if I wear a visible or an invisible wave on my ocean of Spirit?” --Babaji

The bottom line

Matter and energy, time and space, are temporary illusory distinctions. Reality is Eternal and Self-sufficient. Like waves on the surface of the Sea of Existence, we exist as part of the Ocean of Reality and unto it we shall return --fully aware of who we are and where we came from!