I’m reading a review of Bucke’s ‘Cosmic Consciousness’ and came across this:

‘In a time of cosmic consciousness religion would not exist, as there would be no need to profess belief or unbelief – everyone would have first-hand awareness of God and the perfect spiritual spiritual nature of the universe. The difference between that world and the one we know now would be like that between the dawn of humanity and the present.

‘A leap in evolution of this magnitude sounds far-fetched, but Bucke points out that all new human traits or abilities began first with one person and in time became universal. The apprehension of color, for instance, came relatively late to humans. There is no mention in the Bible of the sky being blue, and the ancient Greeks perceived no more than three or four colors. Bucke’s point was that as time has gone on, [humans] have been able to perceive things that weren’t previously considered to exist.’

Tom Butler-Brown, 50 Spiritual Classics, p. 40.