Is the world we see before us insubstantial- illusion -or not? The answer is: It depends upon the one who is looking at it.
The truth about ourselves and the truth about the world is never known except through our actual experience in Reality Itself. In Illumination alone can we learn what we are, and what the world is.
It is said that the world and our experience are within us. Actually, the world is not within us; nor outside of us. To That which is One-All, One-Whole, there is no within; there is no without.
In moments when we experience ourselves as we ARE, and the world as it IS, we know no difference between ourselves and our world. They are not two - one within the other. Self and world are one. We know everything in its beauty, form and color. Bucke 's book -Cosmic Consciousness - gives the striking experience of "C.M.C." as follows:
One day, for a moment, my eyes were opened. It was in the morning, in the early summer of 1894.I went out in happy, tranquil mood to look at the flowers, putting my face down into the sweet peas, enjoying their fragrance, observing how vivid and distinct were their form and color.
The pleasure I felt deepened into rapture; I was thrilled through and through, and was just beginning to wonder at it, when deep within me a veil or curtain suddenly parted, and I became aware that the flowers were alive and conscious. They were in commotion! What a revelation it was! The feeling that came to me with the vision is indescribable --I turned and went into the house, filled with unspeakable awe.
To those unacquainted with the Infinite -infamiliar and intimate fashion -such things are incomprehensible. To those who have themselves experienced Reality, such things are simple indeed -natural and understandable.
An occasion is recalled when the author would doubtless have been involved in a tragic situation had not the Supernal opened a way of escape, allowing something altogether different and transcendent to take place.
It happened while driving in this city.
I was about to descend a rather long and steep hill, when suddenly, and without warning, a tiny child emerged from the rear of a car, parked at the left curb.
She came running directly toward my moving car.
There was nothing I could do. Even then she was about to vanish directly in front of me. Relatively speaking, nothing could prevent a tragedy. At that precise instant, a new world opened to me, and I was part of it - I, my car and the child. Many things happened all at once. I cannot say which was first - I was immediately aware of so great a number.
It was as if the world-clock just instantly stopped -its age-long journey to nowhere coming to a sudden and abrupt halt. A gate or curtain swung aside -I was admitted into another realm. Here things went on at the same instant, and in the same place.
All personal sense of myself abruptly ended. Spontaneously, my Real Self took complete charge of everything. I was conscious that I was doing nothing personally, having no personal thought; yet I was keenly aware of everything taking place in and about me. With infinite skill -seeing all and knowing all - the Self was now in full command, doing everything. My arms and hands, taken over by this Presence, were at once filled with great new power.
Dexterously, and with lightning speed, the wheels were swung first one way, then the other.
The car was in constant motion, and at what seemed to be the same rate of speed, yet I had no glimpse of the little tot out in front of me. When the wheels were straight again, she emerged.
Running to the sidewalk, she disappeared from view.
It was then I distinctly felt the world-clock start up again- counting off its countless time as before. I was my former self again. Although I had been conscious of so much taking place, I seemed at the same place on the street as when I had just seen the child.
Filled with uncontrollable wonder and joy, I stopped at the curb. People were standing still on both sides of the street.
I knew they had been watching.
Two men approached me, their shining faces filled with deep concern and emotion. Desperately they tried to tell what they had seen, but found they could explain nothing. No words of theirs could explain the inexplicable.
They said that they had seen something which could not have taken place - nor could they fathom how the child had escaped both oncoming wheels.
Such experiences prove that things are not what they seem -the world before us is not as it appears. The Super world is not another world -but is the world of Pure Consciousness.
With finite view, we see everyone , and everything acting as many separate entities, each apart from the other.
Finite sense sees a finite world. How could it be otherwise? Seeing in and as pure Consciousness, there is nothing structural or material- there is nothing external to us. Time, place and thing are our own Consciousness.
Ouspensky, in his illuminating book -Tertium Organum -declares MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES to be super-logical, that is, to transcend the ordinary, logical point of view. He writes: "Mystical states give knowledge -WHICH NOTHING ELSE CAN GIVE. Mystical states give knowledge of the real world with all its signs and characteristics."
In Consciousness, things are neither small or great, they are not outside, within or separate from us.
Ourselves and our world are one -in inseparable
Harmony,
Beauty,
Love and
Light.
By Lillian DeWaters from "Light of the Eternal" written in 1945
