“Awake thou that sleepest – and Christ shall give thee light.” Cosmically understood this quote from Ephesians 5-14 turns out to be a fitting statement for the dynamics of the New Age. The Dynamic of a Great Awakening! The Aquarian Age is indeed an age for awakening for Earth. Awake! Awake! Awake! This is the clarion call to this age – to Earth and its inhabitants – long lost in this dream of life in physical matter.
Thus today it becomes a mark of intelligence, an activity of wisdom, to endeavor to gain a clear-cut understanding of this matter of awakening. Without this, a satisfactory appraisal of the New Age and the great changes which many of us will experience would be well nigh impossible. Earth itself, and everything therein, is now undergoing an awakening. Let us now consider the deeper meanings of this great cosmic fact.
Human Awakenings
First of all let us realize that any awakening always involves something to awaken from, and something else to awaken to. It is always a two-sided action. For every type of sleep there must be a corresponding awakening. It is always a couplet. It is always a shift of consciousness or of awareness from one state or one level to a different state or level. It is a change of tune-in. In three-dimensional life, we are all familiar with certain types of awakening. We all recognize what we call normal sleep from which we repeatedly awaken. Every twenty-four hours most humans go from what they call a sleeping state to an awakened state.
Most of us are also familiar with some forms of artificially induced sleep, such as that induced by anesthetics or by drugs. It may take longer to awaken from such a sleep than it does from so-called normal sleep. Others are familiar with hypnosis, which is often considered as another form of sleep from which we also awaken.
Some people even refer to death as a matter of “falling asleep”. This is not too bad because there is also a corresponding awakening from this death-sleep – namely awakening to the astral plane of life. We fall asleep (die) relative to the physical world, and we awaken to the astral world or state of consciousness, or at least to that phase of it to which we are attuned. Then after a time we reincarnate – shift back to the physical body awareness – from one seeming reality – and awaken to another state of consciousness, another apparent reality. This is life without end. This is living. We are always dealing with the continuity of consciousness – which is the continuity of life – whenever we consider this matter of sleeping and awakening. It is all a matter of consciousness.
The Great Cosmic Awakening
But these lesser human awakenings are a far cry from the great cosmic awakening with which we are dealing with here. To grasp the deep meaning of cosmic awakening, we must understand at least something of the cosmic fact that we have already lived in cosmic evolution through eons of time in many forms, circumstances and environments. Our consciousness – our soul if we prefer that term – is actually a vast storehouse of endless experiences on both the Earth plane and the astral plane. We must also understand the fact that we have been reincarnating time after time. In fact to understand cosmic awakening we must step beyond the orthodox human viewpoints of life and death and reality, and expand our understanding more into the cosmic realms. We must enlarge our ideas of what is normal, because cosmic normality is so vastly different from limited human normality.
We realize this is not easy to do, particularly for those conditioned in the belief that man is a body, and that the five physical senses alone testify to “reality”. All we can say is that the following remarks on cosmic awakening are addressed to those who already have some inner awareness of the cosmic truths herewith being presented. Also we shall try to keep this presentation as simple as possible.
The first thing to note about cosmic awakening is that there must be a cosmic sleep or dream from which we can awaken, and there must also be a very different state of affairs, a different aspect of life, to which we can awaken. In other words there must be the two sides to the activity, awakening from something to something different. Now let us carefully and thoughtfully consider in turn these two sides of this subject of cosmic awakening. From what – to what – do we awaken cosmically?
From What?
What is the cosmic sleep or dream from which Earth man may awaken? Most students would say: “It is Earth life – the life we are now living.” Yes, this is indeed true, but if we consider the cosmic facts of life, our present life emerges as only a small part of a much larger picture. When we as human beings are what we call “awake” on Earth and are experiencing Earth situations, these seem very real and very factual to us. But, the great cosmic masters calmly tell us that no matter how real this seems to us, nevertheless cosmically viewed it is all a passing dream.
Is this present life, this waking dream, then the only thing we must awaken from? Far from it, because behind our present life there is a fantastic series of past lives – a vast hinterland of other lives both physical and astral – tremendous composites of experiences and memories. These go back thousands of years. In fact the past cosmic history of each of us makes Mr. Rip Van Winkle look like an amateur! And somewhere within us is the cosmic memory of all this past experiencing during many reincarnations.
A consideration of these cosmic facts gives us a glimpse of the vastness of the cosmic dream from which man is awakening. How long has it lasted? For thousands of years. For thousands of different kinds of bodies. For many reincarnations in human form. Awakening from this prolonged adventure in three-dimensional consciousness is indeed a tremendous step. When thus view, we believe many of our readers will agree that we are dealing with a king-sized awakening, from a king-sized sleep!
To What?
This brings us to a brief discussion of that to which we awaken. We know that it must be different from that which we have been experiencing, or it would not represent an awakening. By this time we hope that many of us have gained enough of the cosmic viewpoint to see very clearly that ordinary “dying” out of the physical into the astral heavens or hells is not synonymous with cosmic awakening. Cosmic awakening is not just a matter of dying or going to the “places” taught in so many orthodox religions!
People have been doing that kind of dying for thousands of years, only to find themselves again reincarnated as babes on the Earth plane with their cosmic memory blanked out each time. Cosmic awakening is something much more than this. It means progressing beyond both the physical consciousness and the lower astral world, and rising above any desire or any tendency (karma) to reincarnate again. If we have but gained this one point of higher understanding, we have gained a definite foothold in cosmic truth.
There are many names and designations applied to this higher step of awakening beyond the horizons of the repetitive Earth-astral cycle. Some call it awakening to the Christ consciousness, or to spirit, or to etheric or cosmic consciousness or to the inner self, or to the true self, or to the god self, or to our own divine nature, or the kingdom of heaven. Others call it self-realization, or yoga, or union with the infinite, or nirvana. Still others call it entering the fourth dimension. Also, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, there is much information regarding it available right here and now on Earth.
This awakening is a cosmic process, a progression, and it comes not all at once, but one bit at a time. This is fortunate, as it gives the individual consciousness the opportunity to adjust itself gradually and harmoniously to the great changes involved. Just as almost any set of circumstances, from falling out of bed to the gentle voice of a loved one, can awaken one from normal human sleep – just so an incredible variation of events, shocks, experiences, thoughts, inspirations, etc., gradually serve to awaken the individual soul-consciousness to its divine cosmic status. Let us forever bear in mind that cosmic awakening is an individual matter. “Know thyself” said the Greek philosophers. To know one’s self cosmically, or spiritually, is cosmic awakening!
Also it is important that no soul awakens before its time. There is absolutely no use whatsoever talking about cosmic awakening to those souls just starting enthusiastically to experience Earth life! All souls have a right to experience Earth life to the point of satiation, if they so desire. That is what three-dimensional life is for – to experience it. Well meaning individuals who try to awaken the sleepers – as they are cosmically termed – before their time, find that the sleepers are apt to turn on them and rend them. There is a time to dream the three-dimensional dream – and a time to awaken from it. Awakening in this age is not for everyone. It is only for those who are ready for it.
Some cosmic teachers compare this step in human awakening – from the third to the fourth dimension – to the great evolutionary step which Earth souls experienced long ago in moving from sea-life to land-life. This was a moving from a water type “sea of energy” to an air type “atmosphere” in which to experience life. These teachers state that entering the fourth dimension corresponds to entering a still different atmosphere, or sea of energy – a more spiritual atmosphere – pulsating and vibrating at a higher rate than the three-dimensional level.
What Makes It Possible?
Awakening from a cosmic sleep or dream of thousands of years duration might seem a downright impossibility to the human mind. But fortunately greater powers than the human come into play to make this possible, in fact inevitable. To a lowly caterpillar, becoming a butterfly could seem downright impossible. But this transformation does take place.
Cosmic awakening is the destiny of all life, because all life, cosmically viewed, represents the ALL experiencing itself. To grasp this great cosmic truth, even to a small degree, is in itself a step in cosmic awakening. No element of life or consciousness is ever really alone. Somewhere within it is the spark, the essence of the creator itself, and this spark has never been asleep!
This spark, this element of the ALL within each individual, is our incontrovertible assurance of cosmic awakening, our “salvation” if that term is preferred, our passport to the higher echelons of life. Everything in heaven or Earth belongs to man by right of awakening consciousness to its reality.
This cosmic awakening means awakening consciousness to this spark of pure being within us which always has been cosmically awake. No wonder that all the great cosmic teachers and all the great religions, in their inner teachings, say: “Go within! Awaken to the inner self!” This existence of the inner self is what makes cosmic awakening possible.
Excerpt from The Advent Of The Cosmic Viewpoint