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  • Writer's pictureMaegan Kenney

Cosmic Consciousness

The psychological mind lives in the body whereas the cosmic mind lives beyond the body.


Excerpts from The Heart and Soul of Spiritual Practice, Chapter 9: Meditation on Cosmic Consciousness by Swami Krishnananda.

"You have to transform yourself completely into a divine context in order that you may be really able to meditate. Do not think meditation is just closing the eyes and chanting something. It is not like that. It is a complete burnishing of your whole personality, because who can think like the cosmic mind? This itself is the very secret of meditation."


"This peculiar technique is highlighted in an aphorism of Patanjali: bahih akalpita vrittih maha-videha tatah prakasha avarana ksayah (Y.S. 3.43)."


"The very birth of individuality is the original agony, we may say, of individuality. What is agony? It is the feeling that the soul of one's own self is cut off from the real soul to which belongs. Here I am reminded of Plato's imagery that we are actually in heaven, and we are shadows imagining that we are originals here. Immediately--to repeat what the Upanishad says--you are caught by the anguish of self-supporting effort, as you have lost contact with that which is supporting you, which has been supporting you, which was your very soul... "


"Hunger and thirst immediately arise in this individual because the original cosmic soul, which was the sustenance of this individual, has been severed in its contact during the coming down of the process of evolution...it cannot go on in this condition. It is in hell. It wants to create a heaven in hell itself. Unless a heaven is created in hell, you cannot survive there..."


"To free yourself from tragedy, engage yourself in deep meditation on that very condition in which you were prior to your fall… yoga is not a simple thing; it is a tremendous job. It is wrenching yourself from yourself and placing yourself in that context of the cosmic mind. You are struggling to think as the cosmic mind thinks, which is the real way of thinking, and to free yourself from the disease of thinking through the body conscious."

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