Richard Bucke and Cosmic Consciousness
I began our narrative with the mention in the third post, Are you Certain you're Conscious, that the question “Who else has know this?” was my initial inquiry following my realization. The discovery of Richard Bucke's classic Cosmic Consciousness was pivotal in that quest. For those of you unfamiliar, we'll spend today introducing this work.
Richard Maurice Bucke passed away in 1902. A fascinating, adventurous, and occasionally harrowing youth (he lost one foot and several toes on the other to frostbite in the Sierra Nevadas while still in his teens), Bucke returned to his native Canada to study medicine at 21 years of age in 1858.
After several years of private practice as a general practitioner, he eventually landed a prestigious position in psychiatry as superintendent of the London Asylum for the Insane in London, Ontario beginning in 1877, where he served until his death. His life was quite interesting, and included a close friendship with the poet Walt Whitman, which was was met with great distress by both friends and family. (Whitman was regarded by many as a pretty difficult character).
Despite his considerable professional accomplishments, Richard Maurice Bucke personally considered the most significant event of his life to have occurred near midnight on an otherwise ordinary day in 1872, as he was returning home via hansom cab from an evening of poetry readings with friends while visiting England.
Describing his mind as “in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment”, Bucke spontaneously experienced “an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe . . . one momentary lightning-flash of the Brahmic Splendor which has ever since lightened his life; upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an aftertaste of heaven . . . Among other things he did not come to believe, he saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence”.
This brief experience inspired Bucke to spend the better part of the next three decades researching and curating a wide variety of sources in developing what would become the publication he is best known for today, Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind.
Published in 1901, just a year prior to his death, Cosmic Consciousness presents Bucke's thesis that mystical realization was an emergent element of human evolution, and supports his thesis with numerous examples of the experience culled from history. Equipped with his own history of a personal illumination, he applied the understanding gleaned from his experience to nearly 50 other examples. Part IV of his book lists 14 cases he considers definite examples, and includes the usual suspects - Buddha, Christ, Paul, Mohammad. Here we also find the Neoplatonist Plotinus, St John of the Cross, Francis Bacon, William Blake, the obscure German shoemaker Jacob Behmen (more commonly known today as Jacob Boehme), and yes, Walt Whitman.
It was in Part V, however, that I discovered what I had been searching for. Bucke describes the reports in this section of the book as those who had experiences of what he called the “twilight”, “lessor or imperfect cases”. I don't always agree with his categorical conclusions here, as I find some of these reports to be among the most significant in the entire compilation. For sprinkled among many additional religious and philosophical giants such as Moses, Isaiah, Lao Tzu, Socrates and Spinoza we find cases of otherwise common people, usually anonymous, identified only by their initials.
These were the people I had been seeking. Here was J.B.B, Doctor, born 1817. This brief entry includes one of the first Near Death Experiences (NDE's) recorded in contemporary times. (NDE's became another subject of my inquiry over the years and parallel spontaneous mystical experiences in numerous important aspects). Here's J.B, described only as a Methodist, who “prayed fervently for light, for assurance of salvation, etc. Seemed no use, so he ceased praying—then light broke gradually”. Several other anonymous accounts follow.
Perhaps the report that resonates most deeply for me personally, due to the parallels with my own realization, was the first person account of a women identified only as C.M.C. She describes her longing to understand existence in meticulous detail, as she moves from her Presbyterian upbringing to arrival at agnosticism, ultimately culminating as follows:
“If I had realized then, as I did afterwards, what a great thing was happening to me, I should doubtless have dropped my work and given myself up to the contemplation of it, but it seemed so simple and natural (with all the wonder of it) that I and my affairs went on as usual. The light and color glowed, the atmosphere seemed to quiver and vibrate around and within me. Perfect rest and peace and joy were everywhere, and, more strange than all, there came to me a sense as of some serene, magnetic presence grand and all pervading.”
For those interested in the perceived power of these experiences, her entire account is highly recommended.
Well over a century following publication, Richard Maurice Bucke's volume remains one of very few genuine attempts to explore this subject in detail. It is also very (unintentionally) illustrative in demonstrating how unaffected certain personal convictions remain, even following such powerful personal realizations. Bucke's overt racism, unfortunately commonplace in the 19th century, is on full display. His rosy anticipation of the arrival of socialism in the near future would prove horribly wrong, as the actual practice of collectivism would lead to tens of millions of brutal and unnecessary deaths, and untold other horrors visited on the whole of humanity throughout the 20th century, and well into the 21st, as most obviously demonstrated today by communist China. Advocates of socialism today, imagining “if only their vision could be realized”, should be very wary of what they wish for.
Whatever its author's flaws, however, Cosmic Consciousness illustrates quite thoroughly that while mystical experience may be marginalized, or simply dismissed as an aberration in contemporary society, it has been a critical component of human experience since the dawn of history. Bucke anticipated that such experiences would become more commonplace as time went on (recall that his premise was that realization was another step in humanity's evolution). On this, time may eventually prove him right.
For now, though, these experiences remain rare. Yet, those who have had such realizations find it impossible to question their veracity. At the same time, as Thomas Paine reminds us, those without a similar perception in their own personal history remain under no obligation to do so.
Your narrator would go one step beyond Thomas Paine, and suggest that simply accepting any second hand report as factual is actually unwise. I would suggest that the wisest path available to anyone is to explore what you know to be true, not what anyone else believes to be so, while adopting enough humility to remain open to whatever fresh insights may arise.