Cosmic Consciousness
Richard Bucke's Study of Human Evolution and the Human Mind
An overview of Cosmic Consciousness and it's relevance to today's seeker of the mysteries.
In 1902, Dr. Richard Bucke penned the seminal work "Cosmic Consciousness" [Book Tree - November 8, 2006] based on an extraordinary mystical experience he underwent at the age of 35. The experience proved to be so profound to him that he spent the remainder of his life studying the phenomenon, opening a new pathway of scientific understanding of the mystical. Unfortunately, his work has never entirely caught on in either the psychological or scientific realm, yet his didactic approach and objective analysis are as valuable today as they were in his own time.
What made his work particularly relevant was not simply the subjective nature of his esoteric experience, but the painstaking and analytical approach he took as a means to conveying it. Bucke was not a mystic, but rather a scientist. Where others often are led wayward simply by the aspect of experience itself, Dr. Bucke assimilated it as his singular life's work, applying all of the principles of scientific analysis to a subject often met with open disdain due to its mystical nature.
What is Cosmic Consciousness?
Cosmic Consciousness is the third stage of a three fold process of humanity, which includes
- The simple consciousness of animals - awareness at the basest level of existence
- The collective consciousness of humanity - awareness of existence with purpose, incorporating the divine in seminal forms such as art, literature and music;
- Cosmic Consciousness - awareness at the level of the Divine and the next stage of human evolution incorporating all aspects of unity and Love.
The Manifestations of Awakening
Because of Bucke's own personal experience, much of his life was spent formulating his theories around the experience itself. By the time he set those thoughts to paper, he compiled a specific set of traits that he believed were distinct to the 'illumination' which preceded that awareness.
A brief excerpt from the book which details the manifestations of this in his own words:
- The person, suddenly, without warning, has a sense of being immersed in a flame, or rose-colored cloud, or perhaps rather a sense that the mind is itself filled with such a cloud of haze.
- At the same instant he is, as it were, bathed in an emotion of joy, assurance, triumph, 'salvation.'The last word is not strictly correct if taken in its ordinary sense, for the feeling, when fully developed, is not that a particular act of salvation is effected, but that no special 'salvation' is needed, the scheme upon which the world is built being itself sufficient. It is this ecstasy, far beyond any that belongs to the merely self conscious life, with which the poets, as such, especially occupy themselves: As Gautama, in his discourses, preserved in the 'Suttas'; Jesus in the 'Parables'; Paul in the 'Epistles'; Dante at the end of the 'Purgatorio' and beginning of 'Paradiso'; 'Shakespeare' in the 'Sonnets'; Balzac in 'Seraphita'; Whitman in the 'Leaves'; Edward Carpenter in 'Towards Democracy'; leaving to the singers the pleasures and pains, loves and hates, joys and sorrows, peace and war, life and death, of self conscious man; though the poets may treat of these, too, but from the new point of view, as expressed in the 'Leaves'; 'I will never again mention love or death inside a house' [193:75]—that is, from the old point of view, with the old connotations.
- Simultaneously or instantly following the above sense and emotional experiences there comes to the person an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Like a flash there is presented to his consciousness a clear conception (a vision) in outline of the meaning and drift of the universe. He does not come to believe merely; but he sees and knows that the cosmos, which to the self conscious mind seems made up of dead matter, is in fact far otherwise—is in very truth a living presence. He sees that instead of men being, as it were, patches of life scattered through an infinite sea of non-living substance, they are in reality specks of relative death in an infinite ocean of life. He sees that the life which is in man is eternal, as all life is eternal; that the soul of man is as immortal as God is; 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 individual is in the long run absolutely certain. The person who passes through this experience will learn in the few minutes, or even moments, of its continuance more than in months or years of study, and he will learn much that no study ever taught or can teach. "
Bucke's Thirteen
Thirteen people, in Bucke's opinion, had achieved this consciousness in their lifetimes included:
- Gautama the Buddha
- Jesus the Christ
- Paul
- Plotinus
- Mohammed
- Dante
- St. John of the Cross
- Francis Bacon
- William Blake
- Balzac
- Walt Whitman.
Lesser, but notable possibilities included
- Moses
- Isaiah
- Lao-Tze
- Socrates
- Pascal
- Spinoza
- William Wordsworth
- Pushkin
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Alfred Tennyson
- Henry David Thoreau.
