Cosmic Consciousness Explained

My spiritual path has been blessed with a number of extremely powerful breakthroughs that led to dramatic shifts in my consciousness. One of the most dramatic and impactful was an experience of cosmic consciousness that I had during a meditation retreat just over 20 years ago.

How did I know it was an experience of cosmic consciousness?
I would say that anyone who experienced what I did, would know it was.

How can I be sure what I experienced and recognized as cosmic consciousness, was the same as what someone else experienced and recognized as cosmic consciousness?
Well, how do I know what I see as the color red is the same as what you see, or what I taste as a strawberry is the same as what you taste? Ultimately, we can never compare our subjective experience to anyone else's, but when we speak about our experience with others we can certainly get a reasonable sense that we are speaking about the same thing.

A few years ago I did a deep dive into how the concept of cosmic consciousness was developed. I read how Edward Carpenter coined the phrase, how Richard Maurice Bucke and William James popularized it, and how numerous other mystics such as P.D. Ouspensky and M.C. Nanjunda Rao clarified the idea further. The result of all that research was my book The Path of Cosmic Consciousness and it deeply confirmed that I had experienced exactly what they were all talking about.

I want to describe my experience and explain what it means to me so that you can direct your own inner awareness in ways that might illuminate cosmic consciousness within you.

It was August of 2001 and I was somewhere in the second month of a two month meditation retreat sitting on the floor for yet another hour of practice. I was sitting cross legged with my eyes slightly open staring at a spot on the floor in front of me when all of a sudden I realized that the floor was moving away from me.

My memory of that moment is so tangibly clear to me. I was floating up off the ground. My meditation practice was strong enough that I didn’t react to this dramatic event. This, I believe, was key. Because I wasn’t startled and I didn’t recoil, I was effortlessly carried away. As I went higher into the air it occurred to me that I wasn't floating, I was expanding. I could feel my body, not my physical body, but my body nonetheless, growing larger.

As I grew in size my line of sight passed through the ceiling. I could see inside the crawl space of the attic between the ceiling and the roof and then I was outside above the building. I could see all around the neighborhood. I grew and grew and I could see from higher and higher in the sky. Eventually I could see the round curve of Earth’s surface and then Earth was a round ball in a sea of stars. Then I could see the Sun, but Earth was now too small to see.

Eventually I stopped expanding and the whole universe was my body. I was the living cosmos. I knew that this was my home and my true self. I knew that this expanded self was who I was before I was born, who I was now, and who I would continue to be after I died. I felt an incredible depth of pure love and I remembered very distinctly that I used to feel this way when I was very young.

That was my experience as accurately as I can describe it. One might say that it is not cosmic consciousness, but it is to me and always will be. Of course, what we call an experience doesn’t really matter, what matters is what results from it and that depends on what the experience means to us. Experiences become powerful when they mean something to us, so what is most important about our spiritual experience is the meaning we make from them.

I want to support as many people as I can to experience and be transformed by cosmic consciousness. I believe that this state of expanded awareness reveals who we are beyond the limitations of our earthly existence. My own experience of cosmic consciousness showed me that my earthbound self was the tip of the iceberg of the totality of who and what I am, – not unreal or unimportant, but just the tip.

Ever since that initial breakthrough experience I have felt an ongoing connection with my cosmic existence. I sometimes get lost in Jeff’s perspective, but I always emerge back to my cosmic self. I know that the cosmic part of myself existed before this lifetime and will continue after. I don’t feel like I was born on my birthday or will die when this lifetime comes to an end. This life is a step in a much larger journey.

I am not asking you to adopt my conclusions. I am simply expressing what is true for me to see if you can relate to it. Do you know what I know? Do you see what I see?

About a year ago I started to realize that the experience of cosmic consciousness is with us all the time, maybe not in its most dramatic form, but in the more subtle experience of mind without thought. This was the great realization that compelled Edward Carpenter to coin the phrase in the first place.

When you look beyond the content of your mind – the thoughts, feelings, emotions, and memories – you discover a mysterious emptiness that is the space that all of your mind’s content arises in. You can place your attention on this space between thoughts at any moment, and when you do you are experiencing the first hint of cosmic consciousness.

Imagine a loud sound coming from way off in the distance. If you are standing right next to the source of the sound it would be deafeningly obvious, but if you are far away it is barely audible. The key to opening to cosmic consciousness is developing your ability to experience the very subtle murmur of it that is humming in the back of your mind right now.

Learning how to tune into that background of awareness at any moment allows you to move closer and closer to its source. Maintaining that connection as much as possible will initiate a process of awakening that will expand your sense of self to cosmic proportions. You are a cosmic being now, not later when you experience it dramatically, but right now in the background of your current experience.