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A Mystic Doctor You’ve Got to Meet
Long before he entered medical school, the future Richard M. Bucke, M.D., was already choosing roads less traveled. Perhaps the resulting hardships he overcame engendered the strength to transcend nay-saying adversaries he was to encounter in both his medical and spiritual explorations.
Raised in rural Ontario, Bucke developed a hardy physique laboring on the family farm. After hours, an equally strenuous mental labor honed his mind to a fine point on the classics of the enormous private library his father had built. Already bereft of his mother at age seven, Bucke’s loss at age seventeen of his kind step-mother signaled time for him to venture outward. During the next four years he traveled across North America, experiencing its people and their providence first hand. Simple jobs on the railroad, Mississippi river boats, or simply gardening initiated the Canadian youth to The States.
Mild adventures turned harsh when in a primitive expedition Bucke and fellow explorers attempted to cross the Rocky Mountains. Suspicious locals vigorously fended off Bucke’s group until the young travelers were out of ammunition; he and one remaining companion were then forced to set out across 150 miles of desert with no sustenance but flour stirred into hot water. Relief was far from glorious when they finally staggered into a bare-bones mountain trading camp. Apparently Bucke forgave his harsh welcome to the American West, for he regained his strength and made his way to the old silver mines of Nevada’s Comstock Lode.
Even such this wild outdoor enthusiast could finally be slowed by the severity of a Sierra Nevada snow experience — the kind that immortalized the Donner Party and its tragedy. Richard Bucke escaped with his life, but was to be maimed for the duration of it, losing all of one foot and part of the other to frostbite and amputation. That winter of recovery offered ample time for reflection on his life’s direction while the wanderlustful young man was confined to bed. Freshly filled with the wisdom of the west and boosted by a modest inheritance from his late mother, Bucke returned to Canada to put himself through medical school. Aches and shooting pains from his legs (and one remaining foot) would harass him for life, but they were not permitted to slow his intellectual or spiritual work. He graduated with honors from McGill Medical School and went on to postgraduate work in England, France and Germany before returning to practice medicine in Ontario.
Bucke specialized in neurology and psychiatry and dedicated himself to reforming inhumane conditions in mental institutions and changing the public’s prejudices against mental disabilities. The good doctor’s battles on those fronts are fascinating, but expand beyond this small page. The reader is encouraged to rent the Canadian video Beautiful Dreamers to get a feel for the enormous heart that Bucke brought to his professional crusades. Let us proceed here to the Bucke’s inner crusade.
Spring of the doctor’s 36th year found him in London where his evening hours afforded time to share with friends the poetry of the romantics and transcendentalists. Bucke enjoyed intimate recitations of verse, and must have been a memorable phenomenon for those present: his giant intellect was magical in its ability to commit poetry to memory: he could recite volumes by heart. But this evening more than the poetry was to prove transcendental. The following paragraphs partially modernize Bucke’s narrative:
Dr. Bucke and his friends parted at midnight, and Bucke set off on his long cab ride through London. His mind was deeply under the spell of the ideas, images, and emotions called up by the reading and talk of the evening, leaving him profoundly at peace. It was a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment. Then without warning of any kind he found himself as if wrapped around by a flame-colored cloud. For an instant he thought there must be some huge conflagration engulfing London. Then realized that the light was... within himself!
The experience of The Light was immediately followed by an immense joyousness, an exultation, and then an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into his brain streamed one momentary lightning-flash of The Brahmic Splendor — which ever after lightened his life. Upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving him forever with an aftertaste of Heaven.
He claims that he learned more within the few seconds of the illumination than in previous years of study and that he learned much that no study could ever teach. Among other things, he then saw and knew (not just believed): that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence; that the human soul is immortal; 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 everyone is in the long run... absolutely certain!
The supreme occurrence of that night was his real and sole initiation to the new and higher order of ideas. But it was only an initiation. He saw the light but had no more idea whence it came and what it meant than had the first creature that saw the light of the sun. In subsequent years, contact with others touched by the Divine Hand threw a flood of light upon the true meaning of his experience.
Looking around upon the world of man, the new-seeing doctor comprehended the significance of the subjective light in the cases of Paul and of Muhammad. The secret of Whitman’s transcendence was revealed to him. Discussions with others who had been similarly blessed assisted him in broadening and clarifying his speculations, but much time and labor were still required before the germinal concept could be satisfactorily elaborated and matured into The Idea: that there exists a tiny, exalted family — sprung from and living among but scarcely forming a part of ordinary citizenry — whose members are seeded sparsely throughout the past 4,000 years of history.
The trait that distinguishes
these people from others is: their spiritual eyes have been opened and they
have seen. The better known members of this group could all be collected
into one residential living room, yet these few individuals created foundations
for all the great modern religions, beginning with Taoism and Buddhism, and
have really (through religion and literature) created modern civilization. The
tiny number of writings which they directly produced inspired in turn entire
libraries of modernity. These beings dominate the last 3,000 years (and especially
the last 300) as stars of the first magnitude dominate the midnight sky.
Later in his eternal volume, Cosmic Consciousness, Dr.
Bucke went on to highlight the mind of Shakespeare as a prime example of that
family, whose astounding gifts to civilization were made possible only through
his illumination by the Divine. Of that illumination, more later.
____________
Note: For simplicity of reading, this material contains unmarked direct quotes
from Bucke’s volume, mingled with modifications intended as “improvements”
on the Victorian style of the good doctor, while retaining many of his inspired
expressions. It is hoped that this strange conglomeration will help Dr. Bucke’s
story gain access to the 21st Century eye, but it is also hoped that readers
will acquire a copy of Dr. Bucke’s full, original volume of Cosmic Consciousness
to read verbatim his own expressions and to enjoy digesting their nourishment
throughout their lives.
© Richard Pinneau, 2003 Feedback appreciated: rp@richardpinneau.com |
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