What differences are there between terms like Cosmic Consciousness, Higher Consciousness, Christ Consciousness, Buddha Consciousness and others?

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They pretty much refer to subtler aspects of the experience of training your mind on the particular ‘consciousness’. I’ll stop short of calling it all woo. But I’ve run into lots of people in my travels with lots of lofty spiritual concepts. Rarely is it ever backed up by theology of any sort.

Communicating spiritual concepts requires a ‘bridge’ of sorts to be built, because spirituality deals with subtle, fine aspects of existence. The bridge has to, at some point, connect with the solid, the rational, the real. Without this connection, it’s impossible to understand anyone’s claims as anything more than wishful thinking. Not that there’s anything wrong with wishful thinking, just that one person’s wishes is another person’s hell.

This is why religion is so important. It grounds spiritual claims and gives them a comfortable blanket of rationality. If you have great trouble being spiritual, or praying, then you can approach any of the dizzying variety of religious traditions and get some ideas.

All non-religious spiritual tradition tends to ground itself onto a religious one, if only to save time in communicating. Gnostic traditions build on Christianity and Judaism, Buddhism builds on Hinduism. These traditions give different answers to the questions raised by the people that founded the religion. They also encourage different mindsets and culture.

Where you see the “X Consciousness” terminology start to play in is in what’s called in religious studies soteriology, which is a ten dollar word that refers to the promise made to adherents of the religion. For Christians it’s heaven, for Buddhists it’s enlightenment.

For established and mainstream traditions it’s practically a requirement that soteriology happens on a timescale greater than a single life. If you didn’t, then that forces religious theology to actually put up or shut up, to leave the world of myth and legend and to actually make some falsifiable claims about material reality.

Esoteric traditions are not so limited. You have to be initiated into an esoteric tradition and that initiation process weeds out the overly skeptical. So they can make soteriological claims that are achievable here on Earth. Invariably they involve achieving some kind of consciousness state.

The very best. most rigorous, definable goal the world has to offer in this regard is the particular kind of enlightenment that is discussed ad nauseum in Western Buddhist circles as nonduality. But even though it’s the best, it’s a minefield of circular definition and subjectivity. I do my best to cut through the muck in my answers but it’s obscenely hard.

Nonduality is a state of mind. Don’t let anyone try to tell you it’s not. It is, that’s the best way to understand it. And so Christ Consciousness, Buddha Consciousness, Higher Consciousness, and Cosmic Consciousness are also states of mind.

To achieve the state of mind of nonduality, you need to push your mind in that direction. I call the act of doing this surrender. Nonduality is a weird, crazy, amazing thing. Things are happening, but there is nobody around to witness or change them. Mind functions but autonomously. It’s like the ghost has left the machine, and it turned out that the ghost was keeping all kinds of cool things from happening. It’s like Toy Story, when all the people leave, the toys can get up and play.

Nonduality is a wonderful thing, but it’s not the only cool crazy spiritual place you can push your mind, at least, not if you listen to the promises of esoteric traditions. Mysticism is accessible to everybody, so it should be no surprise that there are no shortage of mystics in the world, coming up with all kinds of crazy amazing ways to interact with the world and push the limits of what can be accomplished through meditation and interaction with the divine.

You may wish to investigate one of these ideas. Using the great spiritual research tool known only as “Google”, you can read all kinds of accounts written by all kinds of people. Some of them will be hucksterish, offering meaningless lofty words in exchange for your hard-earned cash money. Ignore it, there’s definitely space for information products in the spiritual marketplace, but invariably esoteric knowledge is best found in dusty old books at your local library and forgotten attics.

Some of them will sound outlandish, really just treat that sort of thing as scene setting. It really adds to the experience to consider the “Hermes Trismegistus, once known as Idris, traveler of outer space, teacher of alchemy.” There is a long and delightful genre of esoteric spiritual literature going all the way back to Roman times that’s just chock full of this sort of thing. Let it uplift your mind and carry you away from the mundane.

These traditions will draw on the work of centuries of mystics trying to do one thing, to bring the world of myth and legend into daily existence. To transform consciousness, remake it. I’d say it’s definitely worth exploring, and you might find your mind in some really fun places.