Richard Maurice Bucke (1837-1902) was an important Canadian progressive psychiatrist in the late nineteenth century. An adventurer in his youth, he later studied medicine, practiced psychiatry, and was a friend to 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 Cosmic Consciousness.

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 young man, he traveled for new sights and adventure down into the U.S. - 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. He returned to Ontario.

In 1858, Bucke enrolled in McGill University's medical school in Montreal, where he delivered a distinguished thesis. Though he practiced general medicine (briefly as a ship's surgeon, in order to pay for sea travel), Bucke went on to specialize in psychiatry. He did his internship in London, England (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 Compte's rationalist philosophy. He also enjoyed reading poetry.

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 remander 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 term "occupational therapy").

Bucke always had friends among the literati and lovers of literature (especially poetry). In 1869 he had read, and was deeply impressed by, the Leaves of Grass by American poet Walt Whitman. He met Whitman in 1877 and a lasting friendship developed (Bucke eventually wrote a published biography of the poet). 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 Canadian Royal Society .

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.

The magnum opus of Bucke's life was the 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 numerous contemporaries (most notably Whitman), and (as evidenced through literature) the experience and outlook of humanity's spiritual giants, men like Jesus, Lao Tze, Buddha, Jacob Behman , William Shakespeare, and others of fame or whose followers founded religions revering them.

Bucke developed a theory involving three main stages of the development of consciousness: simple consciousness (that of animals); self-consciousness (that of the mass of humanity - encompassing reason, imagination, etc.); and cosmic consciousness (the emerging faculty and next region of human development). Among the effects of this, he believed he detected a lengthy historical trend in which religious conceptions and theologies had become less and less fearful.

His legacy is at least twofold: Bucke's was part of the progressive movement concerned with the treatment of society's mentally disturbed individuals; second, his concept of cosmic consciousness took on a life of its own (not always very well understood, perhaps) and has drifted into the thought and writings of many other people.

However, along with other classics like William James' Varieties of Religious Experience, and some more recently published volumes, Bucke's study has become part of the foundation of Transpersonal Psychology .

Books

authored by Bucke:

• Man's Moral Nature (original edition, 1879 - long out of print)
• Walt Whitman (original edition, 1883)
• Cosmic Consciousness (original edition, 1901 - still in print)[1]

References

• Rechnitzer, Peter A. R.M. Bucke 1994

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online