Passing over the ancient philosophers, Aristotle, Albertus Magnus,
Plotinus, Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, Socrates, Plato, Aspasia, and others,
all of whom had glimpsed, if not fully attained, cosmic consciousness, we
come to a consideration of those cases in our own day and age, in which
this superior consciousness has found expression through intellectual
rather than through religious channels.

Of these latter, no more illustrious example can be cited than that of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the sage of Concord.

Emerson's nature was essentially religious, but his religion was not of the
emotional quality so often found among enthusiasts, and which is almost
always openly expressed when this religious enthusiasm is not balanced by
intellectuality.

Analysis is frequently a foe to inspiration, but there are fare instances
where the intellect is of such a penetrating and extraordinary quality that
it carries the power of analysis into the unseen; in fact what we
habitually term the unseen is a part of the visible to this type of mind.
True intellect is a natural inheritance, a karmic attribute. The spurious
kind is the result of education, and it invariably has its limitations. It
stops short of the finer vibrations of consciousness and denies the reality
of the inner life of man--which inner life constitutes the _real_ to the
character of intellect that penetrates beyond _maya_.

Of such a quality of intellect is that exemplified in Emerson. No mere
tabulator of facts was he, but a dissector of the causes back of all the
manifestation which he observed and studied and classified with the mental
power of a god.

Nor is there lacking ample proof that Emerson experienced the phenomenon of
the suddenness of cosmic consciousness--a degree of which he seems to have
possessed from earliest youth.

In his essay on Nature, we find these words:

"Crossing a bare common in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky,
without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I
have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear."

Emerson here alluded to a feeling of fear, which seems to have been
experienced during a certain stage by many of those who have entered into
cosmic consciousness. This fear is doubtless due to the presence in the
human organism of what we may term the "animal instinct," which is an
inheritance of the physical body. This same peculiar phenomenon oppresses
almost everyone