Whether this consummation is brought about through an unbroken chain of upward tendencies from the lowest forms of life to the highest; or whether it is symbolized by the old theologic idea of man's fall from godhood to sin, the fact remains that we know no other ideal than that represented by perfected man; and we know no lower idea than that of man still in the animal stage of consciousness. Artists, painters, sculptors, wishing to depict the beauty of spiritual things, must still use the human idea for a model--refined, spiritualized, supra-human, but still man. It is a truism that man epitomizes the universe. Therefore, the law of growth, which science names evolution, may be studied and applied with equal precision and accuracy to the individual; to a body of individuals called a nation; and to worlds, or planets. The evolution of an individual is accomplished when he has learned through the various avenues of experience, the fact of his own godhood; and when he has established his union with that indescribable spiritual essence which is called Om; God; Nirvana; Samadhi; Brahm; Kami; Allah; and the Absolute. A Japanese term is _Dai Zikaku_. The Zen sect of Japanese Buddhists say _Daigo Tettei_, and one who has attained to this superior phase of consciousness is called Sho-Nin, meaning literally "above man." Emerson, the great American seer, expressed this Nameless One, as The Oversoul, and Herbert Spencer, the intellectual giant of England, used the term Universal Energy. Emerson was a seer; Spencer was a scientist, which word, until recently, was a synonym for materialist. But what are words? Mere symbols of consciousness, and subject to change and evolvement, as man's consciousness evolves. The student of truth will recognize in these different words, exactly the same meaning. The "eternal energy from which all things proceed" is a phrase identical with "The Oversoul," or "The Absolute," from which all manifestation comes. Man's evolution, then, is an evolution in consciousness, from the subjective _awareness_ of the monad to a realization of the entire cosmos. Each phase of life is a specific degree of consciousness and each successive degree brings the individual nearer to the realization of the _sum_ of all degrees of consciousness, into godhood--the highest degree which we can conceive. Such, briefly, is a statement of that phenomenon which is attracting the attention of occidental students of psychology, and which has been fittingly termed "the attainment of cosmic consciousness." The phrase expresses a degree of consciousness which includes the entire cosmos--not only this planet called earth, and everything thereon, but also the spheres of the Constellation. Not that this degree of consciousness carries with it the power to express in words, that which it is. In fact, the one who has had this marvelous awakening, cannot adequately describe, or even _retain_, a full comprehension of what it signifies.