Obviously they missed, in fact from the accounts available it is unlikely that they truly experienced the cosmic consciousness especially because their problem was the problem of individual bondage, individual ignorance, individual suffering etc.
Basically one reaches the limit of what one aspires for, the methods notwithstanding. The idea or aspiration for a reconciliation of earthly life with the spiritual was not yet there. It was presumed that it is not possible. This aspiration to reconcile the earthly life with the spiritual is found in the Vedas but it was lost to the strict Adwaitin.
I suppose a sincere search for truth should be unbiased and disinterested. But with the Buddhist, there is already the assumption that earthly life is primarily suffering. It is not true. It is a mixed bag where still the moments of joy largely overpower suffering. In fact joy is taken for granted hence suffering strikes as an anomaly. It is this false premise that ended up concluding that the world is the result of desire. With pure Adwaitic thought, the philosophy has preceded the aspiration. This is the big problem of reading the scripture first. It conditions the mind in certain ways and all subsequent understanding is limited and coloured by it. The true method should be to feel one’s aspiration, what is it that one is looking for? Why is one reading a spiritual philosophy at all? Interest in spiritual things? But why? Seeking for knowledge? But why? Knowing God, but why? That aspiration is missing which we find so much burning in Sri Aurobindo.
‘A Will, a hope immense now seized his heart,
And to discern the superhuman’s form
He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights,
Aspiring to bring down a greater world.
The glory he had glimpsed must be his home.
A brighter heavenlier sun must soon illume
This dusk room with its dark internal stair,
The infant soul in its small nursery school
Mid objects meant for a lesson hardly learned
Outgrow its early grammar of intellect
And its imitation of Earth-Nature’s art,
Its earthly dialect to God-language change,
In living symbols study Reality
And learn the logic of the Infinite.
The Ideal must be Nature’s common truth,
The body illumined with the indwelling God,
The heart and mind feel one with all that is,
A conscious soul live in a conscious world.’
This burning quest is missing post the intense Vedic period, hence the answer is also missing.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
