A strange time (Pt. 2)

At that Dalton bookstore, I spent a lot of time in the psychology and religion sections, looking for anything that would take me out of the present and stimuate my mind and mental capacity. The paralegal job was a trial, a continuing punishment. This was my escape.

I’ve always been interested in other religions, beliefs, spiritual practices, religio-philosophical teachings and the like, but never have studied them in any systematic or determined way. I just accepted that I would always find myself drawn back to the mainstream, mainline churches of Christianity.

I kept picking up rather esoteric books at the library and reading them, or thumbing through the pages of titles that piqued my interest at the bookstore.

To this day, I remember one of them, a strangely compelling and mystical account of human evolution and spiritual development by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, titled “Cosmic Consciousness.” What an outlandish name for a work, I thought, so grandiose and bizarre. I opened the book, I recall, and read these words, which I quote here. They describe the experience Bucke went through, and which he later discovered, or thought he had discerned, were similar to experiences recorded in the works of such disparate figures throughout history as Dante, Paul the Apostle, Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Jacob Boehm, and Francis Bacon. There were others. Here is how Bucke described his experience. He was in a carriage, at midnight in London. The year was 1872. He had left a gathering of friends in which works by Shelley, Keats, Browning, Wordsworth, and especially, Whitman were read. He wrote:

All at once without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next thing I knew the fire was within myself. Directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness acocompanied or immediately followed by intellectual illumination impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure, all things work together for the good for each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each [person] is in the long run absolutely certain.

Bucke believed that during the course of humanity’s evolutionary development, there are three forms of consciousness: 1) simple consciousness — our instinctual consciousness; 2) Self-consciousness, that self-awareness that allows a person to see himself or herself as a distinct entity; and 3) cosmic consciousness, a new and developing faculty at the pinnacle of our evolution.

I was intrigued by the book and bought it and read further. Bucke also believed that few attain such experiences of illumination, but that certain figures in history have, and their works serve as guides to other humans seeking enlightenment.

“Cosmic Consciousness” was not written until the turn of the century, and is considered one of the classics of mystical experience. It is the only book I remember from that troubled period in my life 16 years ago. Out of a nine-month period of time in which the indignities of a job stand out in bold relief in my memory, there was that curious discovery of a book that, at least for a short time, made me think beyond the bounds of all the prior religious instruction I had obtained, all the creeds and teachings, the authority and structure of organized religions such as Christianity.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about that book, for some reason, and about that almost lost period in my life. For a long time afterward, I never could read Whitman the same way as before reading Bucke . Nor Wordsworth. But I came to realize once again, in subsequent years, how strange and mysterious the human mind is, and how fallible the mortals who attempt to serve as guides and explicators of the secrets of the universe, which they claim continue to be revealed to a select few persons.

What do these incidents, such as my stumbling on that book years ago at B. Dalton, tell us? How does one incorporate into one’s thinking about Bucke the fact that for 25 years he was superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane in London, Ontario? Was his revelation perhaps merely an episode of psychosis? Was he able to detach himself from the prevailing beliefs about mental illness at that time during the 19th century? Was he an enlightened humanitarian?

I am open to illumination from the teachings and writings of others, and I want to think my consciousness is evolving, as are my moral and spiritual selves. But who are we to believe, and, can any mere human serve as a trusted guide? Yes, but they have to speak to us first. We can return to the words of saints, mystics, teachers, guides, and spiritual leaders later in life, or we can continue to search, beyond the scope of what we already claim to know and believe. I don’t believe the process ever ends. And I have no way of accounting for, or fully comprehending, the experience of a man like Bucke in that carriage in London 128 years ago. I can marvel at what he claimed happened to him. I can try to read the works of those he said had attained the level of cosmic consciousness. Or I can think that I am fortunate that my life has not been so drastically altered by a mystical experience, and that I am a relatively ordinary human being, struggling each day to find and achieve his place in the world — one day at a time, and incrementlally, with much assistance from all the people I encounter daily, and from whatever I “chance” to read on any given day.

I can only remember certain bit and pieces of what occurred in my life in 1984, but I can never forget those significant incidents, for they are essential pieces of the puzzle. Perhaps one day I will understand.

(Written on Sept. 30, 2000)