Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind (Compass) Summary and Reviews

Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind (Compass)
by Richard Maurice Bucke

Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind (Compass)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Richard Maurice Bucke
Introduction: George Moreby Acklom
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1991-10-05
ISBN: 0140193375
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Book Reviews of Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind (Compass)

Book Review: A Fascinating Study of Parallels
Summary: 5 Stars

Richard Maurice Bucke was a superintendant for a Canadian mental hospital, a medical doctor, and, most famously, Walt Whitman's friend, doctor, first biographer, and literary executor. It's in his connection with Whitman, and William James, that I first came to this fascinating study that reveals a great deal not only about a particular kind of religious phenomena, but of Bucke's attempt to make sense of and provide context for his own mystical experience.

The science of "Cosmic Consciousness" is pure late-1890's, and has some uncomfortable Victorian assumptions (about the relative "development" of the races, for instance): but what is really fascinating is Bucke's drive to find parallels in texts and biographies. From his own experience (to be found in James' _Varieties_, a pattern emerges that he finds spread throughout history.

Bucke's almost literal worship of Whitman (upon Whitman's death, Bucke wrote to a fellow friend of Whitman that "the Christ has died again") will likely strike readers as somewhere between touching and ridiculous, as might Bucke's evolutionary / materialist explanatory structure. But for the student of mysticism, Bucke's novel approach, (freeing the study of religious experience from religion, as it were, and presenting parallels to speak for themselves) will show itself to have been very influential indeed: from William James' seminal religious psychology to Freud to a thousand "new age" texts, Bucke this book (never long out of print since its original publication) has influenced the direction of the studies that came after.

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