Forms of consciousness[edit]

In Cosmic Consciousness, Bucke stated that he discerned three forms, or degrees, of

consciousness:[1]

 Simple consciousness, possessed by both animals and mankind

 Self-consciousness, possessed by mankind, encompassing thought, reason, and
imagination
 Cosmic consciousness, which is "a higher form of consciousness than that possessed by the
ordinary man" [2]
According to Bucke,
This consciousness shows the cosmos to consist not of dead matter governed by unconscious, rigid,
and unintending law; it shows it on the contrary as entirely immaterial, entirely spiritual and entirely
alive; it shows that death is an absurdity, that everyone and everything has eternal life; it shows that
the universe is God and that God is the universe, and that no evil ever did or ever will enter into it; a
great deal of this is, of course, from the point of view of self consciousness, absurd; it is nevertheless
undoubtedly true.[3]
Moores said that Bucke's cosmic consciousness is an interconnected way of seeing things "which is
more of an intuitive knowing than it is a factual understanding".[4] Moores pointed out that, for
scholars of the purist camp, the experience of cosmic consciousness is incomplete without the
element of love, "which is the foundation of mystical consciousness".[4]
Mysticism, then, is the perception of the universe and all of its seemingly disparate entities existing
in a unified whole bound together by love.[5]
Juan A. Herrero Brasas said that Bucke's cosmic consciousness refers to the evolution of the
intellect, and not to "the ineffable revelation of hidden truths".[6] According to Brasas, it was William
James who equated Bucke's cosmic consciousness with mystical
experience or mystical consciousness.[6] Gary Lachman notes that today Bucke's experience would
most likely be "explained" by the so-called "God spot", or more generally as a case of temporal lobe
epilepsy, but he is skeptical of these and other "organic" explanations.[7]
Bucke identified only male examples of cosmic consciousness. He believed that women were not
likely to have it.[8] (However, there are some women amongst the "additional cases" listed in the
second half of the book.)
He regarded Walt Whitman as "the climax of religious evolution and the harbinger of humanity's
future".[9]

Similar concepts[edit]
William James[edit]
According to Michael Robertson, Cosmic Consciousness and William James's book The Varieties of
Religious Experience have much in common:[10]
Both Bucke and James argue that all religions, no matter how seemingly different, have a common
core; both believe that it is possible to identify this core by stripping away institutional accretions of
dogma and ritual and focusing on individual experience; and both identify mystical illumination as the
foundation of all religious experience.[10]
James popularized the concept of religious experience,[note 1] which he explored in The Varieties of
Religious Experience.[12][13] He saw mysticism as a distinctive experience which supplies knowledge of
the transcendental.[14] He considered the "personal religion"[15] to be "more fundamental than either
theology or ecclesiasticism",[15] and states:
In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This
is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In
Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same
recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a
critic stop and think, and which bring it about that the mystical classics have, as been said, neither
birthday nor native land.[16]
Regarding cosmic consciousness, William James, in his essay The Confidences of a "Psychical
Researcher", wrote:
What again, are the relations between the cosmic consciousness and matter? ... So that our ordinary
human experience, on its material as well as on its mental side, would appear to be only an extract
from the larger psycho-physical world?[17]

Collective consciousness[edit]
Main articles: Noösphere and Collective consciousness
James understood "cosmic consciousness" to be a collective consciousness, a "larger reservoir of
consciousness",[18] which manifests itself in the minds of men and remains intact after the dissolution
of the individual. It may "retain traces of the life history of its individual emanation".[18]

Friedrich Schleiermacher[edit]
A classification similar to that proposed by Bucke was used by the influential theologian Friedrich
Schleiermacher (1768–1834), viz.:[19]

 Animal, brutish self-awareness

 Sensual consciousness
 Higher self-consciousness
In Schleiermacher's theology, higher consciousness "is the part of the human being that is capable
of transcending animal instincts".[20] It is the "point of contact with God" and the essence of being
human.[20]
When higher consciousness is present, people are not alienated from God by their instincts.[20] The
relation between higher and lower consciousness is akin to St. Paul's "struggle of the spirit to
overcome the flesh".[20] Higher consciousness establishes a distinction between the natural and the
spiritual sides of human beings.[21]
The concept of religious experience was used by Schleiermacher and by Albert Ritschl to defend
religion against scientific and secular criticism and to defend the belief that moral and religious
experiences justify religious beliefs.[13]

Other writers[edit]
Cosmic consciousness bears similarity to Hegel's Geist:[22][23]
All this seems to force upon us an interpretation of Hegel that would understand his term "min" as
some kind of cosmic consciousness; not, of course, a traditional conception of God as a being
separate from the universe, but rather as something more akin to those eastern philosophies that
insist that All is One.[23]
Teilhard de Chardin's concept of the noösphere also bears similarity to Bucke's ideas.[citation needed]
According to Paul Marshall, a philosopher of religion, cosmic consciousness bears resemblances to
some traditional pantheist beliefs.[24]
According to Ervin László, cosmic consciousness corresponds to Jean Gebser's integral
consciousness and to Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan's turquoise state of cosmic
spirituality.[25]
Ken Wilber, integral philosopher and mystic, identifies four state/stages of cosmic consciousness
(mystical experience) above both Gebser's integral level and Beck and Cowan's turquoise level.[26]