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changes when one shifts one's field of perception.
11 Evelyn Underhill wrote a sort of Bible of mysticism in 1912, in which she says that mystics shift their field of perception from one level of consciousness to another, and actually unite with an aspect of reality that is different from ordinary waking consciousness.12 Because the reality of the mystic is timeless, and all things seem interconnected, it becomes difficult to describe and categorize mystical perceptions into language when a person shifts her field of perception back to the more ordinary sensory awareness. As I gained experience as a spiritual healer in the years that followed, I realized that the state of consciousness typical of a healing interaction was similar to that of the mystics. |
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The man who introduced himself to me before I left the Philippines in 1974 told me that, in the Hindu tradition, the concept of light was equated with the expansion and intensification of consciousness, the creative impulse, and bliss. He said that I could read about people's experiences of light, expanded awareness, and merging with a unity-consciousness from a more contemporary Westerner's point of view in Richard Bucke's book, Cosmic Consciousness. Bucke was the physician to poet Walt Whitman. |
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Their association influenced Bucke to investigate and write about the illumined state of awareness wherein self-consciousness is transformed, and an enduring sense of oneness with all creation is experienced. Buddha, Jesus, the apostle Paul, Moses, Isaiah, Muhammed, Ramakrishna, St. John of the Cross, Blake, Dante, Socrates, Swedenborg, Spinoza, and Whitman were all among the ranks of those who had, in the opinion of Bucke, encountered varying degrees of cosmic consciousness. The eminent American philosopher William James, author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, wrote that Bucke's book was "an addition to psychology of first-rate importance."13 James himself had written of the experience of "the light," which he called "photism.'' He told of many people throughout history who had had such an experience, and he declared it to be fully normal.14 |
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Dr. Bucke described his own experience of illumination, which he defined as the temporary entry of a percipient into the cosmic consciousness: |
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