Part I: Cosmic consciousness in the modern time. Chapter one. Cosmo-consciousness : introduction / Rico Sneller and Mahmoud Masaeli -- Chapter two. Richard Maurice Bucke and the modern study of cosmic consciousness / Ulisses Schlosser -- Chapter three. Emanuel Swedenborg : a human cosmology / John Poynton -- Chapter four. Why was Pictures excluded from Leaves of grass? On the extended self in Whitman's poetic project / German Bula -- Chapter five. Walter Russell and the cosmogony of consciousness / Constanza Cárdenas Trejos and Paul Dávila Mateus -- Chapter six. Cosmic consciousness and nature from a phenomenological viewpoint / Gérald Hess -- Chapter seven. In celebration of trees / Richard Berengarten -- Part II: Between transcendence and reality. Chapter eight. The birth of tragedy in Christianity and the tragic sense of law / Timo Slootweg -- Chapter nine. Cosmic consciousness in kabbalistic Judaism / Rico Sneller -- Chapter ten. Return to the heart of Christ consciousness : Catholic thought on Islamic terrorism and the road towards interfaith dialogue / Marco Ceccarelli -- Chapter eleven. Plotinus and the problem of the political : on the tension between becoming the one and being with others / Samuel Harrington -- Chapter twelve. Fourfold ecstasy, leading to cosmic consciousness : Marsilio Ficino's comments on a Platonic theme / Rijk Schipper -- Chapter thirteen. 'Symbolic healing - C. G. Jung' for cosmic consciousness and human excellence / Barbara Helen Miller -- Part III: Cosmic consciousness and global ethics. Chapter fourteen. Cosmic consciousness and the prospect of a global humanistic pedagogy : Saint Augustine's heritage / Anthony Ikechukwu Kanu -- Chapter fifteen. African hermeneutics of illuminating consciousness : the intercultural problem of language and hermeneutics / Stanley Uche Anozie -- Chapter sixteen. The view of the future seen from the past for human excellence-- the Colombian case : stellar history / Robert Ojeda Perez and Maria Isabel Zapata -- Chapter seventeen. Cosmic dynamism and the principle of self-regulation / Ann Van Sevenant