"cosmic consciousness": the vivid sense of the universe as a living presence

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 in Ontario, and befriend a number of noted men of letters in Canada, the U.S., and England. 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.

He was born in 1837, in Methwold, England to Rev. Horatio Walpole Bucke (a parish curate) and his wife Clarissa Andrews. They emigrated to Canada when he was only one year old, settling near London, Ontario. He left home aged 16, 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.In the winter of 1857-58, he was nearly frozen in the mountains of California, where he was the sole survivor of a silver mining party. He walked out over the mountains, suffering severe exposure (losing a foot and several toes) and a long recovery. He returned to Canada via the Isthmus of Panama in 1858.
Bucke enrolled in McGill University's medical school in Montreal, where he delivered a distinguished thesis in 1862. Though he practiced general medicine briefly as a ship's surgeon, in order to pay for his sea travel, Bucke went on to specialize in psychiatry. He did his internship in London, England (1862-3 at the University College Hospital), and while on the east shores of the Atlantic Ocean, visited France. Bucke was for a number of years an enthusiast for Auguste Comte's positivist philosophy. As Huston Smith has said of Comte's view, "Auguste Comte had laid down the line: religion belonged to the childhood of the human race... All genuine knowledge is contained within the boundaries of science." Comte's point about "religion" having been outmoded by science is in some ways in keeping with, and yet also in sharp contrast with, Bucke's later position concerning the nature of reality.He returned to Canada in 1864 and married Jessie Gurd in 1865. The couple had eight children.In January 1876, Bucke became Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane in Hamilton; in 1877 he was appointed head of the 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.
He 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. Meeting Whitman in 1877, in Camden, the two developed a lasting friendship. Bucke would say that he was "lifted to and set upon a higher plane of existence" thanks to Whitman. He 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 he was elected to the English Literature Section of the Royal Society of Canada.In 1872, while in London, England, Bucke experienced a fleeting mystical 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.
The greatest work of Bucke's career was a book that he researched and wrote over many years titled “Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind” which was 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, Muhammad, Dante, Francis Bacon, and William Blake.His theory involved three stages in the development of consciousness:
1. the simple consciousness of animals;
2. the self-consciousness of the mass of humanity (encompassing reason, imagination, etc.); and
3. 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. 

Additionally, Dr. Bucke came to adopt a philosophy of non-restraint, based on the observation, expressed in his 1879 Annual Report, that "the use of restraint makes restraint necessary." His initiation of an open door policy in 1882 also gave nearly 200 patients in the main asylum building the freedom to access the LAI's well-kept grounds. For Dr. Bucke, redirecting the patients' energies into constructive activities, especially those of a work nature, was important. It made reliance on restraint or seclusion no longer necessary.
As Medical Superintendent, Dr. Bucke also fulfilled other professional duties. He was a charter member of the Royal Society of Canada as well as Professor of Nervous and Mental Diseases at Western University in London, Ontario, whose Medical School he helped to found in 1882. He was also elected President of the Psychological Section of the British Medical Association in 1897, and, a year later, was named President of the American Medico-Psychological Association.
Beyond his professional interests, Dr. Bucke was also deeply drawn to literature and philosophy, and wrote extensively on these topics. His personal life was characterized by adventure and intellectual growth, as well as a life-changing friendship with American poet, Walt Whitman. [ http://www.lib.uwo.ca/archives/virtualexhibits/londonasylum/buckeintro.html ]
Bucke, Richard Maurice. An Episode in the Life of R.M.B. In The New Consciousness: Selected Papers of Richard Maurice Bucke, compiled by Cyril Greenland and John Robert Colombo. Toronto: Colombo and Company, 1997.
Bucke, Richard Maurice. Books That Have Influenced Me. In The New Consciousness: Selected Papers of Richard Maurice Bucke, compiled by Cyril Greenland and John Robert Colombo. Toronto: Colombo and Company, 1997.
Bucke, Richard Maurice. Notes for Life (1897). In The New Consciousness: Selected Papers of Richard Maurice Bucke, compiled by Cyril Greenland and John Robert Colombo. Toronto: Colombo and Company, 1997.
Bucke, Richard Maurice. The Saguenay. In The New Consciousness: Selected Papers of Richard Maurice Bucke, compiled by Cyril Greenland and John Robert Colombo. Toronto: Colombo and Company, 1997.
Bucke, Richard Maurice. The Value of the Study of Medicine. In The New Consciousness: Selected Papers of Richard Maurice Bucke, compiled by Cyril Greenland and John Robert Colombo. Toronto: Colombo and Company, 1997.
Bucke, Richard Maurice. Twenty-five Years Ago. In The New Consciousness: Selected Papers of Richard Maurice Bucke, compiled by Cyril Greenland and John Robert Colombo. Toronto: Colombo and Company, 1997.
Bucke, Richard Maurice. Two Hundred Operative Cases - Insane Women. (From the proceedings of the American Medico-Physiological Association at the 56th Annual Meeting held in Richmond, Virginia May 22-25 1900).

BUCKE, RICHARD MAURICE, physician, asylum superintendent, and author; b. 18 March 1837 in Methwold, England, seventh of ten children of the Reverend Horatio Walpole Bucke and Clarissa Andrews; m. 7 Sept. 1865 Jessie Maria Gurd in Mooretown, Upper Canada, and they had five sons and three daughters; d. 19 Feb. 1902 in London, Ont. More @ http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=40710