Whitman had the experience
of being immersed in a sea of light and love, so frequently a phenomenon
of Illumination; he retained throughout all his life a complete and perfect
assurance of immortality.
His sense of union with and relationship to all living things was as much a
part of him as the color of his eyes and hair; he did not have to remind
himself of it, as a religious duty.
He experienced a keen joy in nature and in the innocent, childlike
pleasures of everyday things, and at the same time possessed a splendid
intellect.
All consciousness of sin or evil had been erased from his mind and actually
had no place in his life.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
In the case of Lord Tennyson, we have a definite recognition of two
distinct states of consciousness, finally culminating in a clear experience
of cosmic consciousness; this experience was so positive as to leave no
doubt or indecision in his mind regarding the reality of the spiritual, and
the illusory character of the external life.
In truth Tennyson had so fixed his consciousness in the spiritual rather
than in the external, that he looked out from that inner self, as through
the windows of a house; he was prepared, as he said, to believe that his
body was but an imaginary symbol of himself, but nothing and no one could
persuade him that the real Tennyson, the _I am_ consciousness of being
which was he, was other than spiritual, eternal, undying.
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