The fact that there is a technique such as Yoga practices, whereby Cosmic Consciousness can be attained is in itself proof that higher sense is indeed an inherent faculty of all men, needing but the necessary training to call it forth. Most people believe that divine Knowledge comes to only a few chosen people, and that the average man can approach no nearer to God than his 'faith' will take him. Realisation that there is a definite way to contact God, a technique usable by all men in all circumstances, has come with such a liberating shock to students of Hindu spiritual science that they feel they have undergone a new birth.
I have one such case in mind. An American man who, as soon as he had heard the Yogoda Message brought to America by Swami Yogananda of India was swept up into Cosmic Consciousness. This student was possessed of intense religious faith and aspiration. Though well read in the sacred scriptures of the world, especially those of the Hindus, he knew that this intellectual knowledge was barren and stony; it did not feed the soul‑hunger within him. He did not wish merely to read about spiritual food, but to taste it. Under the even tenor of his days there yawned a black abyss of despair-despair that he was worthy of any direct contact with God, since no such experience was given him. He finally came to doubt not God, but the possibility that he would ever be able to have more than an intellectual comprehension of Him. This conviction struck at the roots of his life and made it seem a worthless and meaningless thing.
Into this dark night of his soul came a dazzling light brought by the teacher from India. The student felt the heavy weight of despair lifting from his heart. Returning to his home one night from the last of the public lectures, he was conscious of a great peace within himself. He felt that in some deep fundamental way he had become a different person. An impulse urged him to look into a mirror in his room, that he might see the new man. There he saw not his own face, but the face of the Hindu teacher whose lecture he had attended that evening.
The flood‑gate of joy broke in his soul; he was inundated with waves of indescribable ecstasy. Words that had been merely words to him before-bliss, immortality, eternity, truth, divine love-became, in the twinkling of an eye, the core of his being, the essence of his life, the only possible reality. Realisation that these deep, everlasting founts of joy existed in every heart, that this immortal life underlay all the mortality of humanity, that this eternal, all‑inclusive love enveloped and supported and guided every particle, every atom of creation burst upon him with a surety and divine certainty that caused his whole being to pour forth in a flood of praise and gratitude.
He knew, not with his mind alone, but with his heart and soul, with every cell and molecule of his body. The sublime splendour and joy of this discovery were so vast that he felt that centuries, millenniums, countless aeons of suffering were as nothing, as less than nothing, if by such means that bliss could be obtained. Sin, sorrow, death-these were but words now, words without meaning, words swallowed up by joy as minnows by the seven seas.
