Cosmic Consciousness

Cosmic Consciousness

When I was driving cab back in the early seventies, I ran into a lot of really spiritually minded people. One was a fellow cab driver that we called the preacher because he always carried a Bible with him. We had several really interesting discussions about religion and higher consciousness.

I remember one night I climbed into his cab while we were in line at the Greyhound stand. Right away we begin discussing our search for what is real, and how driving a cab is not too bad a place to look from. He told me that there is a lot of religion out on the streets, a lot of people looking for something different. “People are tired of the same old happenings. They’re tired of being taken. They be wanting something more than the house and two cars...”

We discussed how religion is not in the church anymore. “Man, it never was inside the church, the spiritual feeling… Jesus was out in the streets. He was out among the people. He was showing the way through his own example,” the preacher told me.

“Yet, you know, man, it was the people who killed him, who cried our for his crucifixion.”

“No, man. I wasn’t the people. It was the chief priests and rulers of the people who gathered in audience with Pilate, the ruling class. Jesus didn’t speak to those in power. He was out in the streets, man. He talked to people one on one.”

“That’s right. He never did preach from a pulpit did he?”

“Yea, man, people forget. There was no church. The Christian Church was founded upon Jesus. At least on his ideas…”

“Yea, ideas that were corrupted by the change from action to words,” I said as I stroked my mustache and closed one eye in thought.

“True… true… You cannot understand what Jesus is saying through the word alone. And the church once it becomes institutionalized doesn’t even give the real word. Man, Jesus be right out here with you and me. He was a carpenter. He spent his time alone. He returned from his meditations to work among the fishermen and prostitutes. There was nothing saintly about him. He didn’t drive no chariot.”

“Think he’d be in the Peace Movement today?” I asked.

“Right at the head. The Prince of Peace, you know. Yea, I was reading jus’ this morning from Luke, the scene from the Garden of Gethsemane. The chief priests and captains of the temple came after him with swords and clubs. One of the disciples cuts off the ear of a high priest servant. Jesus tells him to lay down his sword. He heals the man. Jesus saw through all that jive, man. He knows it ain’t no good fighting force with force. He knows that shedding blood ain’t gonna stop what’s happening from happening. He tells him lay down the sword. He tells the high priests and captains, I am doing no wrong… I follow my father’s way.”

“Wow, wouldn’t it be great to feel that even in the face of death? I am doing no wrong. I am following my father’s way...”

“Yea, then you know, his way is still with us. There are some outward changes since Jesus’ time but nothing’s changed that much. Nothing’s changed inwardly…”

A bus pulled in and we ended our conversation there as we got out of my cab to usher in our fares.

We ran into each other a couple nights later and continued our conversation in my cab. I told the preacher about my study of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. How Richard Bucke believes that Whitman and Jesus and several hundred others of our race have shared the same experience of cosmic consciousness. How Whitman gives the same message as Jesus. I told him how I first really got into Leaves of Grass a couple summers ago. “Yea, I read from it a half hour or so every day while I waited for my shift to start at the cannery in Hayward. I read every day, but the deeper meaning of the poem didn’t penetrate. I just took in the surface level. His detailed description of street scenes from every day life increased my sensitivity. I began to look more closely at the buildings across from my room at the Y on Telegraph, at the people that I worked with at the cannery. But, the deeper meaning didn’t come clear to me. It’s only a couple months ago that I caught its universal proportions.

“It’s really strange how it happened. I walked into the front room and turned on the stereo. The dial was set at K.P.F.A. you know, I tuned into the middle of a program. I’m not really paying attention to what’s going on. I’m studying one of my latest watercolors. The guy on the radio is making belching noises and strange sounds in his throat. There’s some kind of new wave music in the background. Then, everything is quiet and a reading of Whitman begins. No introduction… just Whitman’s words. It was an awakening experience hearing the poem read in the way that it was read.

“ ’I celebrate myself,’” I heard in a deep bass voice.

“ ‘I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease… observing a summer spear of grass.’

“The words come into my mind and rolled slowly. Each separate syllable stretched and bounced from ear to ear. I was carried into each sentence as if I were entering a dark caravan and sliding deeper and deeper with each word. The words didn’t make pictures in my mind. It was as if they come alive and just of themselves evoked all the feeling and meaning that a word can stand for. I was so into the experience that I didn’t know where I was.

“Wow, that’s something else, “ the preacher told me.

I recited as much as I could remember of the poem for the preacher.

“Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the earth much?

Have you practiced so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get to the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall posses the origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun…there are millions of suns left.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children.

They are alive and well somewhere;

The smallest sprout shows there really is no death,

And if ever there were it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,

And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward … and nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what one supposes, and luckier.”

“The words made an indelible imprint on my consciousness. I went to my copy of Leaves of Grass and read the poem over and over. And each time I read it I heard it exactly like it was read on K.P.F.A.” I told the preacher.

During our next meeting in the preacher’s cab a week or so later, I explained how I believe that Leaves of Grass is a description of a mystic experience that Whitman had just prior to his writing of it. “Bucke calls it an experience of cosmic consciousness. He says that this higher vision of life is available to all of us. It’s the higher consciousness that we are all evolving toward,” I said.

“Then Whitman and Jesus were forerunners of the race?” the preacher asked.

“Yea, Jesus and Whitman and at least a hundred others whose message was passed on. Bucke says that there must have been more who experienced cosmic consciousness and lived a different life, but never left a record of their experience. Henry Miller writes about this higher level of life, and so does Krishnamurti. The thing is when you reach this level you have an overwhelming sense of confidence in life. You celebrate life because you know there is something to celebrate. You experience the vastness of your totality in the universe. You recognize that all things are possible. You leave the safety of shore and enter the waters with the full realization that you will not be overwhelmed.”

“I know what you saying, man. Whitman does have the same message as Jesus, then. Truth just is. What is real is what is real. It’s just a different way of seeing the same thing. I guess what really matters is looking. Knowing how to look.

“You know, man, I grew up in West Oakland. I hung out in the neighborhood bars, the poolrooms, the clubs. I spent a couple years in the same school as Bobby Seal. I was good friends with Bobby’s older brother. Man, I was into the militant movement with both feet. There was hate and violence in my heart. Using power and guns to fight against oppression seemed sanctified by history. Then, I don’t know how it happened but I started reading the Bible. I began to see things differently. My attitude began to change. I still live in the same neighborhood, mostly have the same friends. But, it’s different, now. I’m not just reacting to what’s coming down. I step back now and look at myself and how I’m reacting…” the preacher told me before he got a call for a grocery order.

It seems that Cosmic Consciousness did touch Jesus and Walt Whitman and that in many ways they give the same message. If we can reach a higher level of consciousness we will begin to celebrate life, to really live life as it was meant to be lived. We may not reach that level, but we can all look for a higher level of meaning. That’s the first step.