Richard Maurice Bucke
[1] Besides publishing professional articles, Bucke wrote three non-fiction books: Man's Moral Nature, Walt Whitman, and Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind, which is his best-known work.
He was part of a travelling party who had to fight for their lives when they were attacked by a group of Shoshone people, on whose territory they were trespassing.
Although he practiced general medicine briefly as a ship's surgeon (in order to pay for his sea travel), he later specialized in psychiatry.
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.
He continued this practice until his death, despite receiving increasing amounts of criticism from the medical health care community.
[6] In 1872, after an evening of stimulating conversation with his friend Walt Whitman in the countryside, Richard M Bucke was traveling back to London in a buggy when he had a religious experience.
He later described the characteristics and effects of the faculty of experiencing this type of consciousness as:[citation needed] Bucke's personal experience of the inner state had yet another attribute, mentioned separately by the author: the vivid sense of the universe as a living presence, rather than as basically lifeless, inert matter.
[citation needed] Bucke's magnum opus was his book Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind.
Bucke borrowed the term "cosmic consciousness" from Edward Carpenter, who had traveled and studied religion in the East.
Among the effects of humanity's natural evolutionary progression, Bucke believed he detected a long historical trend in which religious conceptions and theologies had become less and less frightening.
In Cosmic Consciousness, beginning with Part II, Bucke explains how animals developed the senses of hearing and seeing.
But eventually these new abilities spread throughout the human race until only a very small number of people were unable to experience colors and music.
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.”[8] Bucke was deeply involved in the poetry scene in America and had friends among the literati, especially those who were poets.
[15] In India, Aurobindo uses the term cosmic consciousness extensively in his work [16] and Ramana Maharshi was asked about Bucke's concept.
[citation needed] Bucke was part of a movement that sought to improve the care and treatment of mentally ill persons.
