Richard Maurice Bucke (18 March 1837 – 19 February 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.[1] 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.
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Richard Maurice Bucke was born in 1837, in Methwold, England the son of Rev. Horatio Walpole Bucke (a parish curate) and his wife Clarissa Andrews. The parents and their children emigrated to Canada when Richard Maurice was a year old, settling near London, Ontario. A sibling in a large family, he had a typical farm boyhood of that era (his father, H. W. Bucke, having given up the role of religious minister as a profession). When Richard Maurice left home aged 16, he 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.[2]
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.[3] He had to walk 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.[4][5]
Bucke enrolled in McGill University's medical school in Montreal, where he delivered a distinguished thesis in 1862.[4]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.[2] 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."[6] 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.[4]
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,[4] 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.[2]
Bucke enjoyed reading poetry. He always 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.[2] He met Whitman in 1877 in Camden[4] and the two developed a lasting friendship. Bucke eventually testified that he was "lifted to and set upon a higher plane of existence" thanks to Whitman.[4] He published a biography of the poet in 1883, and was one of Whitman's literary executors[7].
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.[2]
In 1872, while in London, England, Bucke had the pivotal experience of his life, 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.
Though well read in French and German, as well as English, and though much influenced by the writings of Whitman, Bucke disclosed that in his attempts to more fully understand his illumination experience of 1872, he was indebted to Caleb Pink ("C.P."), whom he met shortly thereafter. C.P. was a self-educated laboring man, regarded by many who knew him as one who had a Christ-like presence and lived an admirable and honest life.
The magnum opus 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. It was published the year before his death in 1901, and has been continuously republished ever since. 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, Sri Ramakrishna, Paul, Plotinus, Muhammad, Dante, Francis Bacon, and William Blake.
Bucke developed a theory involving three stages in the development of consciousness: the simple consciousness of animals; the self-consciousness of the mass of humanity (encompassing reason, imagination, etc.); and cosmic consciousness — an emerging faculty and the next stage of human development. Within the level of self consciousness, obviously there are gradations and differences (among individuals) in degrees of talent, intellectual development, and so forth.
Among the effects of this progression, Bucke believed he detected a lengthy historical trend in which religious conceptions and theologies had become less and less fearful.
Surprisingly, to Bucke it seemed this progression is as much evolutionary as spiritual (the work of Charles Darwin probably dominated most educated discourse in the late nineteenth century). In Cosmic Consciousness (starting with Part II, Chapter 2, Section IV) he explains how animals developed the hearing sense (noise detection) in order to survive. Noise detection evolves by including frequency measurements which we experience as tones. Further development in this area culminates in the ability to experience and enjoy music. Likewise, animals developed the sense of light detection which then progressed to black-and-white vision. Some animals (including humans) progressed further by including frequency measurements which we experience as colors, but only mankind extended this into the appreciation of visual beauty, including art. Bucke states that, initially, only a small number of humans would have been able to experience music or see colors, but eventually these new traits would race through human society until only a very small number of people would not be able to hear music or experience colors.
Starting in the book's Part III, Section III, Bucke hypothesizes that the next stage of human mental development, which he named "Cosmic Consciousness," is slowly beginning to appear but will eventually spread widely throughout all of humanity.
Bucke’s vision of things was profoundly optimistic. He wrote in Part I (“First Words”) “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 one is in the long run absolutely certain.”
On February 19, 1902, Bucke slipped on a patch of ice in front of his home and struck his head. He died a few hours later without gaining consciousness.
He was deeply mourned by a large circle of friends, who loved him for his sturdy honesty, his warm heart, his intellectual force, but most of all for his noble qualities as a man.[5]
Bucke was part of the progressive movement concerned with the treatment of society's mentally disturbed individuals. Also, his concept of cosmic consciousness took on a life of its own (though not always well understood) and influenced the thought and writings of many other people.
Along with classics like William James's Varieties of Religious Experience (which itself cites Bucke), and some more recently published volumes, Bucke's study has become part of the foundation of transpersonal psychology.
One of the founders of the University of Western Ontario's medical school, his papers are held at the university's Weldon Library.
Bucke was portrayed by Colm Feore in the 1990 film Beautiful Dreamers with his friend Walt Whitman (Rip Torn).