0:00 CHAPTER XIV.
0:25 AN EXPERIENCE IN COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS Hansa Yogananda. Chapter 14. An Experience in Cosmic Consciousness.
0:29 I am here, Guruji. My shamefacedness spoke more eloquently for me.
0:36 Let us go to the kitchen and find something to eat. Sri Yukteswar's manner was as natural as if hours and not days had separated us master i would not use you for my own ends i am having a concrete example in your angelic self in the world without warning. But you show not the slightest vexation, though you must have been put to
1:47 great inconvenience by the many unfinished tasks I left behind."
1:54 We looked into each other's eyes, where tears were shining. A blissful wave engulfed me.
2:01 I was conscious that the Lord, in the form form of my guru was expanding the small ardours of my heart into the incompressible reaches of cosmic love a few mornings later i made my way to master's empty sitting-room planned to meditate, but my laudable purpose was unshared by disobedient thoughts. They scattered
2:28 like birds before the hunter. Mukunda, Sri Yukteswar's voice sounded from a distant inner
2:37 balcony. I felt as rebellious as my thoughts. Master always urges me to meditate, I muttered to myself. He should not disturb me
2:48 when he knows why I came into his room. He summoned me again. I remained obstinately silent.
2:56 The third time his tone held rebuke. Sir, I am meditating, i shouted protestingly i know you are meditating my guru called out with your mind disturbed like leaves in a storm come here to me to his side. Poor boy, the mountains couldn't give you what you wanted. Master spoke
3:28 caressively, comfortingly. His calm gaze was unfathomable. Your heart's desire shall be
3:37 fulfilled. Sri Yukteswar seldom indulged in riddles. I was bewildered. He struck gently on my chest above the heart.
3:48 My body became immovably rooted. Breath was drawn out of my lungs as if by some huge magnet.
3:58 Soul and mind instantly lost their physical bondage and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every pore the flesh was as though dead yet in my intense awareness i knew that never before had i been fully alive my sense of identity was no longer narrowly confined to a body but embraced these circumambient atoms people on distant streets seemed to be moving gently over my own remote periphery a dim transparency of the soil, I discerned the inward flow of their sap. The whole vicinity lay
4:49 bare before me. My ordinary frontal vision was now changed to a vast spherical sight,
4:57 simultaneously all perceptive. Through the back of my head i saw men strolling far down righart road and noticed also a white cow who was leisurely approaching
5:12 when she reached the space in front of the open ashram gate i observed her with my two physical eyes as she passed by behind the brick wall, I saw her clearly still. All objects within my panoramic
5:30 gaze trembled and vibrated like quick-motion pictures. My body, masters, the pillared courtyard,
5:39 the furniture and floor, the trees and sunshine occasionally became violently agitated until all melted into a
5:48 luminescent sea, even as sugar crystals thrown into a glass of water dissolve after being shaken.
5:57 The unifying light alternated with materializations of form, the metamorphoses revealing the law of cause and effect in creation.
6:10 An oceanic joy broke upon calm, endless shores of my soul. The Spirit of God, I realized,
6:18 is exhaustless bliss. His body is countless tissues of light a swelling glory within me began to envelop towns continents the earthitude of my being the sharply etched global outlines faded somewhat at the farthest edges there i could see a mellow radiance ever undiminished it was indescribably subtle the planetary pictures were formed of a grosser light the divine dispersion of rays poured from an eternal source blazing into galaxies transfigured with ineffable auras Again I saw the creative beams condense into constellations, then resolve into sheets of transparent flame.
7:30 By rhythmic reversion, sextillion worlds passed into diaphanous luster, fire became firmament i cognized the centre of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my fluidity the creative voice of god i heard resounding as om the vibration of the cosmic motor lungs. With a disappointment almost unbearable, I realized that my infinite immensity was lost.
8:29 Once more I was limited to the humiliating cage of a body, not easily accommodative to the spirit.
8:38 Like a prodigal child, I had run away from my macrocosmic home and imprisoned myself in a narrow microcosm.
8:49 My guru was standing motionless before me.
8:53 I started to drop at his holy feet in gratitude for the experience in cosmic consciousness
9:00 which I had long passionately sought.
9:04 He held me upright and spoke calmly unpretentiously you must not get over-drunk with ecstasy
9:14 much work yet remains for you in the world come let us sweep the balcony floor then we shall walk by the Ganges. I fetched a broom. Master, I knew,
9:29 was teaching me the secret of balanced living. The soul must stretch over the cosmogonic abysses,
9:39 while the body performs its daily duties. When we set out later for a stroll, I was still entranced in unspeakable
9:49 rapture. I saw our bodies as two astral pictures, moving over a road by the river whose essence was
9:57 sheer light. It is the Spirit of God that actively sustains every form and force in the universe yet he is transcendental and aloof in the flesh know a similar twofold existence.
10:28 Conscientiously engaging in earthly work, they yet remain immersed in an inward beatitude.
10:37 The Lord has created all men from the limitless joy of his being though they are painfully cramped by the body god nevertheless expects that souls made in his image shall ultimately rise above all sense identifications and reunite with him The cosmic vision left many permanent lessons. By daily stilling my thoughts, I could win release from the delusive conviction that my body was a mass of flesh and bones traversing the hard soil of matter. and the restless mind i saw were like storms which lashed the ocean of light into waves of material forms earth sky human beings animals birds trees except by calming those storms. As often as I silence the two natural tumults, I beheld the
11:50 multitudinous waves of creation melt into one lucent sea, even as the waves of the ocean,
11:58 their tempests subsiding, serenely dissolve into unity. A master bestows the divine experience of cosmic
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