The path I took to PD Ouspenski many years ago is somewhat circuitous. I begins with my reading a book by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke on Cosmic Consciousness. It is strange to read now in the Google write up on the book that that the book was also one of the favourites of PD Ouspenski and William James. Dr. Bucke's medical research at the London Ontario insane asylum is to find an explanation of insanity occurring in his patients during the 1800's. He suspects that many of his patients are not really insane but that what appears to be insanity is the result of an evolution of the human mind. And, so Dr. Bucke's research begins.
My interest in the writing of Dr. Bucke arose because of father's period of insanity at age 57 in 1963 while he, the Rev. William Reed Lake, was a United Church Minister at the Royal York United Church in Etobicoke, Toronto, Canada. My father's bedroom room was next to mine and so I had almost constant awareness of what was occurring in his room and with his insanity. The results of that period were certainly etched on his mind in an unbelievable manner. My own conclusion became that he was not insane, and in fact, he overcame his period of disability to survive for 40 more so more years.
What Dad experienced was something similar to what Dr. Bucke the psychologist in London referred to as a mental experience of the evolution of 'man's brain. It was not so much the evolution of my Dad's brain that I was witnessing as much as the evolution of the brain of human beings. At least, that was the opinion of Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke of the many people with similar experience that he studied in the mid 1800's. His work is a major opus of scientific research which drew the attention of Walt Whitman, the famous American author of the poetry of 'The Leaves of Grass.'
At issue is the question of whether man is evolving. Both psychologists Dr. Bucke and Dr. Ouspenski came to the conclusion that certainly was the case.
Another idea of mine is that it is not so much evolution taking place but the future calling the present. I tend to think the time arrow is an illusion the mist of which will be lifted just as the mist of the flat earth was lifted. In my mist-less world, we can influence the past as much as we can the future. Although, we may have to figure out the means, but it is there for the asking. One approach is already available through the medium of light, which I have stated in another blog pages does not obey the normal laws of time, as we know them. Seriously, the playing field for this invention or discovery is wide open. My belief arises from personal experience that I have no way of denying. Just as a foreseer is able to see into the future in a dream, we have that capacity lurking within us, as the experimental studies of time by John Dunne may show.
Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke and His Ideas About Cosmic Consciousness
The story for me begins with the book by John Bucke, author and medical doctor in London, Ontario, who has met with Walt Whitman, author and poet. Walt Whitman has no fear of death and willing walks out on to the battlefield to collect the wounded and transport them to safety. Whitman writes of another state of being that he experiences and which inspired him to author 'Leaves of Grass.' I will continue.