A Priceless Course in Cosmic Consciousness

At this moment I am working my way through A Course in Cosmic Consciousness, by Walter and Lao Russell. Originally published in 1950, and revised to its current form in 2001, the Course is comprised of 12 Units with 48 lessons, and is spread over 520 pages.

I highly recommend this extraordinary treatise.

If ever there were a publication that could help you answer the deep questions of creation, and our individual and collective roles within it, this is it. If you truly want to know Who You Are… if you want to know where Power is and how to access It… if you truly want peace, happiness, health, and all measure of qualities that normally define life well-lived, you will benefit from the concepts and teachings that this publication delivers.

I took the liberty to snap pictures of the beginnings of some of the lessons, to give you a taste, a few morsels of what I mean. The Course begins with rational scientific explanations, that span the first three units of meditation, prayer, and thinking.

From Unit One, Lesson One, the authors make it perfectly clear that God, with no religious context or bias, is at the center of things in their cosmogony. But with all due respect, there’s no need to quote from “the good book” or grab Rosary beads.” There are ample quotations from other of the Russell’s inspired works, including The Message of the Divine Illiad, The Secret of Light, The Universal One, Atomic Suicide? and God Will Work With You, but Not For You.

Religious traditions lead us to believe ~ to imagine ~ that “God” exists as an all-powerful being who takes sides, “chooses” favored people, and to rest assured that we’re not those people. We’ve been led to believe that “judgment” is our fate. Just ask any man (or woman) who claims to be “of God”, or have paid for documents that claim it. They’ll assert their right to “advise” us due to being “closer” to God, perhaps due to some unnatural “sacrifice” that their particular “order” has made them believe they needed to make in order to gain God’s (or his representative’s) favor.

Hence, we have social norms where the perception of being isolated from God is endemic, where billions are spent trying to isolate and identify a “particle” of God, all the while a multiplicity of tyrannies push humanity further away from the true answer, which is comprehensible, and rests within each human being.

Russell’s reference to God as “He” and in the possessive “His” is not presented as a personification. As the Course unfolds the authors make it crystal clear that God is cause: the motionless, soundless, centering Life from which all motion, polarity, sound, energy, thought, comes.

Here’s a snapshot of the Prelude page, with Russell’s intent clearly spelled out.

From the inward beginnings of meditation, prayer, and thinking, the Course delves into dualism, electricity, and the sex-pairing principles that make motion possible, how “life” births death, and death births “life” as we know it, eternally.

As I said, I’m about 40% through, over 200 pages in, but this course presents fundamental truths that, if known, have practical implications on the decisions that we make in our day-to-day life, as well as the love that we give and re-give to life experience. For example, the concept of giving and re-giving is explained and contrasted with that of giving and receiving (or taking). The differences are simple and profound.

Everywhere you turn, someone is trying to “warn” you of dire times that lie ahead. And from the appearance of things, it seems that they may be “right”. Yet, as you begin to know that appearances are effects and not cause, and that you are cause when you allow yourself to be resonant with, and guided by Love in your giving and re-giving, then whatever happens, you have nothing to fear, and nothing else to expect other than something wonderful.

This doesn’t mean that you should passively smile in the face of atrocities. It is important for each to know that the changes that your heart seeks happen when you are an instrument for, and embodiment of said change, not when you’re sitting around expecting others, or “God”, to do it for you, or complaining about what others haven’t done to your satisfaction.

On the other hand, we’re only too willing to pay quite a bit more to have the latest in athletic shoe-ware, such as this model from Nike. I was prepared to comment on the $200 that so many paid for Air Jordans years ago, in demonstrating where our values, and hence, our social, political, education, medical, and spiritual problems lie, but things have only gotten worse. Every athlete who is any athlete has a $200 shoe, but how many have $300 shoes?

These may not be selling that well, since Nike is allowing you to “customize” them to be made and delivered in several weeks, but there are plenty that are between $200-$275 that you can buy with immediate delivery. You can indoctrinate your child into consumerism early, right after they get their vaccines, with these infant booties that go for $50.

The “Jordan” line is still alive and well for Nike, with several models at $200 and higher.

Ever notice that athletes, who are supposed to be the “healthiest” among us, are falling apart, breaking down, and generally becoming a fragile species? This is due in part because they epitomize the very displacement of value, wisdom, and health that has swept up the culture at large. By going “for the money,” they endorse “energy drinks” (that dehydrate), and have sacrificed knowledge, self-reliance, intelligence, wisdom, and relevance, as do all who turn away from their own Inner Presence, to “follow” their “lead”.

If you are moved to get the Course in Cosmic Consciousness home study course, please let me know. Imagine what it would be like to share insights and “a hah!” moments with others as we help each other shake off the spell of “be-lie-fs” that have so effectively convinced us how vulnerable and powerless we were, and that there was nothing inside us worth exploring, much less seeking and knowing.

A wake up call is certainly needed in our world today. Little did we know or suspect that the one that needed “waking up,” was us, to the Brilliant Mind, Eternal Life, and Powerful Love within. 

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