HE Cosmic Consciousness is the all of everything of which we know. It is all of life, love, truth, and power. It includes everything within itself. There is nothing whatever outside of it. Whatever exists, therefore, must be explained in relation to it. Whatever form appears, whatever expression of life we may find, must be within the One even though it exists or stands forth as distinct from others forms. It is easier to understand this when we realize that All is Mind and that different forms are merely different thoughts put into expression. Thus the same spirit manifests in the stone, the rose, the bird and the man. Yet man himself must be explained as other than a thought of God, for he himself is a thinker; he is not only conscious but self-conscious. He thinks of himself as apart from any other self. He has individuality, that is, he conceives that there is an "I" and another that is not I. God does not have individuality in that sense : He cannot recognize another outside of Himself, for there is no outside. Thus we cannot attribute personality to God* in the ordinaryn5564 ¶1
(Note : This statement often causes offense at first because not fully understood. If it is a problem to you, turn at once to Part II, Chap. 2, and read about the impersonal law and the Personal God, or read my "Being and Becoming," pages 22-25, and "Law of Mind in Action," pages 166-171. It is the highest joy of the soul to awake to this enlarged concept of God and to find our place In the Cosmic Mind.)n5564 ¶2
limited sense of the term, for personality must necessarily imply limitation ; and He is the Limitless One.n5564 ¶3
Personality indicates, not only separation, but also all those other attributes which we connect with it; choices of will apart from law; passions, prejudices, conflicts of opinion, purposes at variance with others, in short, all those qualities which mythology attributed to its gods. They grew angry, they fought, they sought revenge, they played favorites, they ate and drank, and granted or withheld their favors as their fickle will desired. Such a concept of God was held by the ancient peoples of the Bible ; and many people today think of Him merely as an enlarged theologian, sitting on the rim of the heavens and passing judgment upon mankind.n5564 ¶4
Such a concept of personality is impossible to those who recognize God as the Cosmic or Universal Consciousness. Being intelligence or consciousness, Spirit exists independent of time and space : it has no purposes apart from the law of its being: it acts not by choices of will but by law : it is the power that stands back of everything that appears; for we are told in Scripture "the things that are seen are not made from that which doth appear.' ' In other words, Spiritual or the Cosmic Consciousness must be recognized as the Thinker that conceives things, the substance of which they are composed, and the power that sustains them. As the water of the sea enters here to become a harbor, there to become a canal; in one place to be the ice upon the bosom of the bay, in another to be the foam of the breaking wave, and yet never loses itself as the sea ; so Spirit passes into all things and all minds without losing its universality.n5564 ¶5
OUR OWN INDIVIDUALITY To so perceive the Cosmic Consciousness is to learn the secret of all demonstration, for upon its impersonality is based our power to control the affairs of our life. We get a picture of this in the analogy of the wind. The wind blowing in fresh from the sea is absolutely impersonal and impartial to all. Here it enters a window and fans a fevered brow: there it turns the great wings of the mill and grinds the grain : for one it winnows the wheat, and for another it fills the sail and drives the vessel before it. One man calls it "good" because it lifts his burden; another curses it because it whirls the sand in his face. But, neither good nor bad, the wind blows full and free and becomes to each man what he allows it. Each sets his own sail, shuts his window or opens it, exposes his grain or withholds it.n5564 ¶6
"One ship drives east, and another west, With the self -same wind that blows;n5564 ¶7
'Tis the set of the sails and not the gales Which tells us the way it goes. ' 'n5564 ¶8
In other words, it is clear that we may recognize in the Cosmic Consciousness the impartial, impersonal spirit with universal powers and limitless resources, acting as the substance and the energy which man may draw upon at his own will. We apply our own conditions to it. If it is love we desire, we can draw that forth out of the infinite of love, by choosing it. If it is wisdom, we can "ask of God who giveth to all men freely and upbraideth not." If life, we may choose in what form it shall express. Were the Cosmic Consciousness other than impersonal, this would be impossible, for we would be coming constantly into conflict with its will.n5564 ¶9
It is thus evident that man makes his own world by choosing that which he will have out of the universal. "Whence did he get this endowment of power t He got it from his ageless heritage in the heart and mind of the Infinite. Consciousness, from its verynature, is that which is and was, and ever shall be. It is impossible to conceive of it as having beginning or ending in time. That is the very mystery of its nature, that it goes before all. What man is in himself, we cannot know. As he exists, or stands forth in the Infinite or Universal as a distinct point of consciousness; and, as the Universal is One, we can conceive of man only as at one with that One, and therefore as the Universal reproducing Itself in the Particular. Man is therefore coextensive with God in the potential nature of his being; and, however exalted and wild an idea this might seem in view of man's earthly history and experience, the logic of idealism, the testimony of the prophets, and the vision of the soul alike bear witness to it. Consciousness or the ego never was born, for it exists forever in the Eternal One. You, the eternal one of Spirit, have never been born, you never can die. ' ' The kingdom of heaven is within you," said Jesus. "Now, Father, glorify thou me with Thine own self with the glory that I had with Thee before the world was: For thou lovest me before the foundation of the world." " Before Abraham was. I am." Whether the consciousness of the individual returns again and again to embody itself in brain and muscle, nerve and neuron, I do not know. That he shares in that Eternal Light that shines from eternity to eternity, is attested by every reason by which we are enabled to say that we exist at all or that there is a God.n5564 ¶10