Works:
Works by Richard Maurice Bucke |
| 1883 | Walt Whitman. The Canadian doctor and devoted friend of the poet (he purportedly committed all of Leaves of Grass to memory) writes the first Whitman biography, with the poet's collaboration. Bucke would follow it with a critical study, Walt Whitman, Man and Poet (1897), and a work on the poet's mysticism, Cosmic Consciousness (1901). |
| Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia: Richard Maurice Bucke |
British-born writer who grew up in Canada and practiced as a psychiatrist. He was born March 18, 1837, in Methwold, Norfolk, England. When only a year old, his father took him to Canada, where he was educated at London Grammar School and studied medicine at McGill University, graduating in 1862. He pursued additional studies in England and France, then he returned to Canada in 1864 to take up medical practice. In 1876 he became medical superintendent of the insane asylum in Hamilton, Ontario, and in 1878 was medical superintendent of the insane asylum in London, Ontario.
He became a great friend of poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) and was fascinated by the recurring themes of spiritualism, human experience, and individual development in Whitman's writings. Around 1872 Bucke had what became for him a life-changing mystical experience which he called an "intellectual illumination." He spent the next thirty years seeking out other people who had a similar experience and reflecting upon the significance of such altering of consciousness. The literary result of his study, the book Cosmic Consciousness (1901), became a classic work on the subject. He theorized that a higher consciousness was a natural faculty in man at a certain state of development.
He became Whitman's literary executor and helped edit Whitman's complete writings in 1902, then wrote the first major biography of the poet. Bucke died February 19, 1902, in London, Ontario. His Cosmic Consciousness gave mystical experience a place in the secular world and provided psychiatry with a means of viewing religious experience in other than pathological terms.
Borrowing from Whitman's poem "Song of Myself," he wrote, "I saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain."
| Wikipedia: Richard Bucke |
Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) (often called Maurice Bucke) was an important Canadian progressive psychiatrist in the late nineteenth century. An adventurer in his youth, he went on to study medicine, practice psychiatry, and befriend several noted men of letters. In addition to writing and delivering professional papers, Bucke wrote three book-length studies: Man's Moral Nature, Walt Whitman, and – his best known work – Cosmic Consciousness, a classic in the modern study of mystical experience.
Bucke was born in 1837, near London, Ontario to quite-literate English immigrant parents. A sibling in a large family, he had a typical farm boyhood of that era. When he left home as a boy in his teens, he traveled south to the U.S. for new sights and adventure from Columbus, Ohio west to California, working manually at odd jobs along the way. He was part of a traveling party who had to fight for their lives under attack from the Shoshone, whose territory they traversed. Bucke tried gold prospecting, but failed to make a significant strike and returned to Ontario.
In 1858, Bucke enrolled in McGill University's medical school in
Bucke married Jessie Gurd in 1865. The couple had seven children.
In 1877, Bucke was appointed head of a provincial Asylum for the Insane in London, Ontario, a post he held for nearly the remainder of his life. Bucke was a progressive for his day, believing in humane contact and normalization of routines in the institution. Bucke encouraged organized sports and what we would now call occupational therapy.
Bucke always had friends among the literati and lovers of literature (especially poetry). In 1869 he read, and was deeply impressed by, Leaves of Grass by American poet Walt Whitman. He met Whitman in 1877, developed a lasting friendship, and published a biography of the poet in 1883. Bucke developed a theory of human intellectual and emotional evolution, and, besides publishing and delivering professional papers, wrote a book on his theory titled Man's Moral Nature, published in 1879. In 1882 Bucke was elected to the English Literature Section of the Royal Society of Canada.
In 1872, while in London, England, Bucke had the pivotal experience of his life, a fleeting mystical or cognitive experience that he regarded as a few moments of "cosmic consciousness." Bucke described the characteristics and effects of this "faculty" as follows: sudden appearance; subjective experience of light (inner light); moral elevation; intellectual illumination; sense of immortality; loss of fear of death; loss of a sense of sin. However, the term "cosmic consciousness" more closely derives from yet another feature: the vivid sense of the universe as a living presence, rather than as basically lifeless, inert matter. This direct perception, which Bucke took great pains to try to explain, vivifies Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's theory of Nature.
Though well read in French and German, as well as English, and though much influenced by the writings of Whitman, Bucke disclosed that in his attempts to more fully understand his illumination experience of 1872, he was indebted to Caleb Pink ("C.P."), whom he met shortly thereafter. C.P. was a self-educated laboring man, regarded by many who knew him as one who had a Christ-like presence and lived an admirable and honest life.
The magnum opus of Bucke's career was a book that he researched and wrote over many years, Cosmic Consciousness, published the year before his death, in 1901. In it, Bucke described his own experience, that of contemporaries (most notably Whitman, but also unknown figures like "C.P."), and the experiences and outlook of historical figures including Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Plotinus, Mohammad, Dante, Francis Bacon, and William Blake.
Bucke developed a theory involving three stages in the development of consciousness: the simple consciousness of animals; the self-consciousness of the mass of humanity (encompassing reason, imagination, etc.); and cosmic consciousness — an emerging faculty and the next stage of human development. Among the effects of this progression, he believed he detected a lengthy historical trend in which religious conceptions and theologies had become less and less fearful.
Bucke was part of the progressive movement concerned with the treatment of society's mentally disturbed individuals. Also, his concept of cosmic consciousness took on a life of its own (though not always well understood) and influenced the thought and writings of many other people.
Along with classics like William James's Varieties of Religious Experience (which itself cites Bucke), and some more recently published volumes, Bucke's study has become part of the foundation of transpersonal psychology.
One of the founders of the University of Western Ontario's medical school, his papers are held at the university's Weldon Library.
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 | Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Copyright © 2001 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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