This occurs entirely without worrying or outward cause,
and may happen at noonday or in the middle of the night, and the person at
first feels that he is becoming insane.
"Along with these feelings comes a sense of immortality; not merely a
feeling of certainty that there is a future life,--that would be a small
matter--but a pronounced _consciousness_ that the life now being lived is
eternal, death being seen as a trivial incident which does not affect its
continuity.
"Further, there is annihilation of the sense of sin, and an intellectual
competency, not simply surpassing the old plane, but on an entirely new and
higher plane. * * * The cosmic conscious race will not be the race that
exists to-day, any more than the present is the same race that existed
prior to the evolution of self-consciousness. A new race is being born from
us, and this new race will in the near future, possess the earth."
Dr. Bucke later published an article in a current magazine, illustrating
the illumination of his friend Walt Whitman, and supplemented with an
account of his own experience.
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