Image from Spitzer and Hubble. Courtesy of NASA, ESA, T. Megeath (University of Toledo) and M. Robberto (STScI).
Image from Spitzer and Hubble. Courtesy of NASA, ESA, T. Megeath (University of Toledo) and M. Robberto (STScI).

“You ask, how can we know the Infinite? I answer, not by reason. It is the office of reason to distinguish and define. The Infinite, therefore, cannot be ranked among its objects.

You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer—in which the divine essence is communicated to you.

This is ecstasy [Cosmic Consciousness]. It is the liberation of your mind from its finite consciousness. Like only can apprehend like; when you thus cease to be finite, you become one with the Infinite. In the reduction of your soul to its simplest self, its divine essence, you realize this union—this identity.

But this sublime condition is not of permanent duration. It is only now and then that we can enjoy this elevation (mercifully made possible for us) above the limits of the body and the world. I myself have realized it but three times as yet, and Porphyry hitherto not once.”

Trumpler 14, Hubble Image Gallery. NASA, ESA, and J. Maíz Apellániz (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain).
Trumpler 14, Hubble Image Gallery. NASA, ESA, and J. Maíz Apellániz (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain).

“All that tends to purify and elevate the mind will assist you in this attainment, and facilitate the approach and the recurrence of these happy intervals.

There are, then, different roads by which this end may be reached. The love of beauty which exalts the poet; that devotion to the One and that ascent of science which makes the ambition of the philosopher, and that love and those prayers by which some devout and ardent soul tends in its moral purity towards perfection.

These are the great highways conducting to that height above the actual and the particular, where we stand in the immediate presence of the Infinite, who shines out as from the deeps of the soul.”

~ Plotinus (204 to 270 C.E.), shared in Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Maurice Bucke, 1901.

Moments of contact with The Infinite are very often epically transformative, as Near Death Experiencers (NDErs) and others who have had such transformative experiences know very well.

And it often goes well beyond the ability of words to even allude to, much less accurately describe, because it’s so deeply felt, and so totally transformative … that which “shines out as from the deeps of the soul.”

Researchers and experiencers like Gopi Krishna (Kundalini) and Kenneth Ring (IANDs), to name just a very few, see these experiences … these ‘touchings’ with or by The Infinite … as being part of an overall quantum leap in human consciousness, stirring awake part of the perfectly natural human genius.

That makes sense. Life is smart that way.

Big Love,

Jamie