The Open Road of Cosmic Consciousness
By Laara Lindo

In the summer of 1888, when Walt Whitman visited him at his home in Ontario, Canada, Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke wrote his Life of Whitman.
There he describes the already famous poet:

“His face is the noblest I have ever seen.  I have never seen his look, even momentarily, express contempt or any vicious feeling. I have never known him to sneer at any person or thing, or to manifest in any way or degree either alarm or apprehension, though he has in my presence been placed in circumstances that would have caused both in most men.  Perhaps, indeed, no man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few as Walt Whitman.  All natural objects seemed to have a charm for him; all sights and sounds, outdoors and indoors, seemed to please him. 

“He had a way of singing, generally in an undertone, wherever he was or whatever he was doing, when alone. You would hear him the first thing in the morning ... and a large part of the time that he sauntered outdoors during the day he sang, usually tunes without words, or a formless recitative. 

“I believe all the poet’s senses are exceptionally acute, his hearing especially so; no sound or modulation of sound perceptible to others escapes him, and he seems to hear many things that to ordinary folk are inaudible.  I have heard him speak of hearing the grass grow and the trees coming out in leaf.

“He said, one day, while talking about some fine scenery and the desire to go and see it, ‘After all, the great lesson is that no special natural sights—not the Alps, Niagara, Yosemite or anything else—is more grand or more beautiful than the ordinary sunrise and sunset, earth and sky, the common trees and grass.’ I believe this suggests the central teaching of his writings and life—namely, that the commonplace is the grandest of all things; that the exceptional in any line is no finer, better or more beautiful than the usual, and that what is really wanting is not that we should possess something we have not at present, but that our eyes should be opened to see and our hearts to feel what we all have.”

Walt Whitman holds a foremost place in Dr. Bucke’s famous exposition, Cosmic Consciousness: “Walt Whitman is the best, most perfect, example the world has so far had of the Cosmic Sense, first, because he is the man in whom the new faculty has been, probably, most perfectly developed, and especially because he is, par excellence, the man who in modern times has written distinctly and at large from the point of view of Cosmic Consciousness, and who also has referred to its facts and phenomena more plainly and fully than any other writer either ancient or modern.”

What is the experience of cosmic consciousness?  From his study of   ‘enlightenment’ recorded throughout history, Dr. Bucke writes a summary of various descriptions of the experience, including his own:

“The person, suddenly, without warning, has a sense of being immersed in a flame, or rose-colored cloud, or perhaps rather a sense that the mind is itself filled with such a cloud of haze.  At the same instant he is, as it were, bathed in an emotion of joy, assurance, triumph and ecstasy. 

“Simultaneously or instantly following the above sense and emotional experience there comes to the person an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe.  Like a flash there is presented to his consciousness a clear conception (a vision) in outline of the meaning and drift of the universe.  He does not come to believe it merely, but he sees and knows that the cosmos, which to the self-conscious mind seems made up of dead matter, is in fact far otherwise—is in very truth a living presence.  He sees that the life which is in man is eternal, as all life is eternal; that the soul of man is as immortal as God is; 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 individual is in the long run absolutely certain.”

“Their spiritual eyes have been opened and they have seen.”

The universe, Walt Whitman tells us, is a road, and many roads, for traveling souls.  His poetry, like other poetry of spiritual depth and meaning, may certainly be read at the obvious literal level. Whitman loved the world and the people in it and enjoyed traveling about America singing the praises of its natural beauty and wealth, its people’s vitality and purpose, the pioneer spirit and the excitement of building a new nation on new principles of individual freedom, vision and initiative.  But even the most casual uninitiated reader of Walt Whitman’s poetry does not read far before realizing there is much more to what their author says than a simple literal cataloguing of observation and experience.

The “I” of the poetry, Whitman himself, we soon become aware, is “everyman and everywoman.” As Whitman expounds the greatness and goodness of the human state, the I, which is everyone, takes on heroic, lyric-epic qualities, though in a very democratic, modern American sense of the word.  The heroic is in the everyday, in the work and love and living of every person in every walk of life.

 The Soul he speaks of as going on the journey with him is obviously not the ‘soul’ of traditional religious thinking, but a recognition of and connection with the higher aspect of human consciousness: the Inner Light of the Quakers; the Holy Spirit of the New Testament; the Buddha of Zen; the Cosmic Consciousness of Richard Bucke’s analysis; the creating, healing, Omnipotent and Omniscient Mind of Mary Baker Eddy; the centering inspirational creative Source, the Universal One, of Walter Russell’s cosmogony.

The natural world, the universe and all its life and action, is not the measurable mechanistic mathematical formula of science, but is a pulsing, living, breathing, loving, joyous, energetic thrust of teaming life and action, the very source of which is love and goodness.  The visible universe is the objective correlative of all that comprises the Soul and its Source.  No thing is separate unto itself, all people are extensions of all others.  Through all the drama of living, loving, working, playing, aging and dying, through every action of every life, is underlying cosmic love and goodness, felt in the soul as ecstasy and joy.

This is Walt Whitman’s cosmic message.  He invites everyone to join him in his cosmic paean of joy and praise, on the soul’s journey on an open road of spiritual insight and song.

SONG  OF  THE  OPEN  ROAD

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

Walt Whitman uses his fine poetic skill in giving at once the energizing feeling of literally setting out on an actual road on an actual journey towards an actual destination, while at the same time fully indicating that he is talking about the journey of the soul, a journey to cosmic awareness and the joy and infinite potentiality such a journey contains: (Note: “Allons” is French for “Let’s go.”)

Allons! To that which is endless as it was beginningless,

            to undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,

To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,

Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,

To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,

To look up and down no road but it stretches and waits for you,

            however long but it stretches and waits for you,

To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,

To see now possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or                       

purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it, ....

To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.

All parts away for the progress of souls,

All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or is apparent

            upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners

            before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the                     

universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.

...

Whoever you are, come forth! Or man or woman come forth!

You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house,

            though you built it, or though it has been built for you.

Out of the dark confinement! Out from behind the screen!

It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.

...

Camerado, I give you my hand!

I give you my love

            more precise than money,

I give you myself

            before preaching or law;

Will you give me yourself?

Will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other

            as long as we live?”

In the Bible we are told: “You shall see a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth have passed away.” Walt Whitman has discovered a “new heaven and a new earth.”  As it is universal truth that “love longs to share itself,” so he extends an invitation to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear the potential of the glorious new world provided by the experience of cosmic consciousness to travel with him to that joyful, love-filled and beautiful state of understanding and knowing.

In the chapter “First Words” in Cosmic Consciousness, Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke defines four states of developing intellect: First, the perceptual mind made up of sense impressions without awareness or consciousness; second, simple consciousness of objects but not of self; third, the state of self-consciousness which is the state of  the majority of human beings in the world today; and finally, cosmic consciousness, that is consciousness of the cosmos and an inner knowing of the unity of all things and oneness with all, including the Source of all life.

Dr. Bucke believed that the next evolutionary stage for humanity is cosmic consciousness, and that just as evolution from simple consciousness to self-consciousness ushered in experience of a new and expanded universe, so will a whole new world be opened up to the person endowed with cosmic consciousness.  It is the road to this new and joyous world Walt Whitman invites us to join him in travel. Of cosmic consciousness, Dr. Bucke says:

“... our descendants will sooner or later reach, as a race, the condition of cosmic consciousness, just as, long ago, our ancestors passed from simple to self consciousness.”

“In contact with the flux of cosmic consciousness all religions known and named today will be melted down. The human soul will be revolutionized.  Religion will absolutely dominate the race.  It will not depend on tradition.  It will not be believed and disbelieved.  It will not be a part of life, belonging to certain hours, times, occasions.  It will not be in sacred books nor in the mouths of priests. It will not dwell in churches and meetings and forms and days.  Its life will not be in prayers, hymns nor discourses. It will not depend on special revelations, on the words of gods who came down to teach, nor on any bible or bibles. It will have no mission to save men from their sins or to secure them entrance to heaven. It will not teach a future immortality nor future glories, for immortality and all glory will exist in the here and now.  The evidence of immortality will live in every heart as sight in every eye. Doubt of God and of eternal life will be as impossible as is now doubt of existence; the evidence of each will be the same.  Religion will govern every minute of every day of all life.  Churches, priests, forms, creeds, prayers, all agents, all intermediaries between the individual man and God will be permanently replaced by direct unmistakable intercourse. Sin will no longer exist nor will salvation be desired.  Men will not worry about death or a future, about the kingdom of heaven, about what may come within and after the cessation of the life of the present body. 

Each soul will feel and know itself to be immortal, will feel and know that the entire universe with all its good and with all its beauty is for it and belongs to it forever. The world peopled by men and women possessing cosmic consciousness will be as far removed from the world of today as this is from the world as it was before the advent of self-consciousness.”

Walt Whitman, through the powerful poetry of his cosmically inspired Leaves of Grass, dramatically invites us to join him in this great adventure, traveling the Open Road to Cosmic Consciousness.

Allons! whoever you are

            come travel with me!

Traveling with me

            you find what never tires.

The earth never tires,

The earth is rude, silent,

incomprehensible at first,

Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,

Be not discouraged, keep on,

there are divine things well envelop’d,

I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

Allons!  we must not stop here,

However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling

            we cannot remain here,

However shelter’d this port and                                

however calm these waters we must not anchor here,

However welcome the hospitality

that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

...

Allons! the inducements

            shall be greater,

We will sail pathless and wild seas,

We will go where winds blow,

waves dash, and the Yankee clipper              

speeds by under full sail.

....

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similies, rhymes,

We convince by our presence.)

— Walt Whitman