“Oceans of Light: The Spiritual Revolution of American Transcendentalism”
Chapter Three from The UU Tree of Faith
© 2016 Rev. Ted E. Tollefson
“By the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial,
which burns until it shall dissolve all things
into the waves and surges of an ocean of light,
we see and know each other, and what spirit each is of.”
(Emerson, “The Over-Soul”)
********
In previous chapters I traced the early history of Unitarian Universalism in America to two
movements. The Radical Unitarian Deists (1770-???) drew inspiration from Greek Philosophy
and the European Enlightenment. This generation of Founders not only invented American
democracy but began the work of creating a religion or philosophy of life that was compatible
with the Scientific, Industrial and Democratic Revolutions of the 18 th century. The Unitarian
Christians (1825-???)sought a balance of faith and reason from their roots in the New
Testament and Greek Philosophy. Their brand of Unitarianism was rational, serene and attractive
to New England's upper class. They found guidance in life the teachings of Jesus envisioned as
“more than human but less than divine”. This chapter introduces a third deep root of our UU
Faith: Asian Wisdom which helped animate the American Transcendentalists (1830-???)
Though it is not easy to document, some Transcendentalists like Henry David Thoreau were also
inspired by the 4th root of our UU Faith: the Indigenous Wisdom of Native Americans.
Sometimes a spiritual revolution begins with a single thought and several happy
accidents. In the case of American Transcendentalism, there were at least three happy
accidents which helped generate their movement. First, the neighborhood of Boston.
In the 1820's, 30's and 40's, many young people gathered in and near Boston, MA.
Many of the members of the “Transcendental Club” were children of Unitarian parents
including many Unitarian preachers kids like Ralph Waldo Emerson. Many of the
young men came to attend Harvard College and stayed to study at Harvard Divinity
School. Boston, like San Francisco in the 1960-s and 1970's, like Seattle or Brooklyn
now, was a mecca for young people, new ideas and social interaction. Elizabeth
Peabody's bookstore on West Street was one of many places for “lively conversations”.
In September 1830, “Hedge's Club” later the “Transcendental Club” was founded by
Henry Hedge, a brilliant scholar of German philosophy (Kant, Hegel) and poetry
(Goethe, Schiller). Thanks to the Harvard Library, many of this generation also had
access to new translations of Asian Wisdom (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and
Taoism) from Max Mueller's Sacred Texts of the East. Thoreau and Emerson both kept
copies of The Bhagavad Gita near their beds for inspiration. Like many spiritual
revolutions, Transcendentalism was born of the synergy between seemingly random
elements: the neighborhood of Boston, Harvard College, German philosophy and
poetry and Asian Wisdom. [1] It created a cultural and spiritual chain-reaction that
“lit up” New England and America for many generations to come.
The “single thought” was both simple and surprising. The Transcendentalists
gave themselves permission to re-draw the map of God, Nature and Humankind.
Trinitarian Christianity had for centuries promoted a pyramid model which created
hierarchal order and emphasized the differences between different levels in the “Great
Chain of Being”.
God: Father, Son, Spirit
Church: Sacraments, Bible, Priesthood
Men
Women
Children
Animals
Unitarian Christians following the lead of Revs Joseph Priestley and William Ellery
Channing, moved Jesus and the Holy Spirit a step down from their unitary God. They
also elevated Nature (along with Jesus and Spirit) as trustworthy mediators between
God and humankind:
God the Father
Christ, Spirit & Nature
Men & Women
Children
The Transcendentalists put forward an entirely new model. They dared to ask: what if
the universe is not composed of solid building blocks arranged in a pyramid? What if
the universe is composed of waves like a pond or piece of music, where each wave
effects and is effected by the others? This more fluid model, echoed in Emerson's essay
“Nature” and Thoreau's reflections on Walden Pond, suggested interdependence and
circular causality. While the Trinitarian pyramid high-lighted the difference and
distance between Divinity and Humanity, the pond emphasized our “likeness to God” in
Rev. William Ellery Channing's prophetic phrase.
God
Nature
Human Soul
The Five Cardinal Principles of American Transcendentalism
1. The Divine is fully present in the human soul.
Emerson, who was one of the most charismatic speakers of his day, said that in
all his years on the lecture circuit, that he spoke of a single idea: “the infinitude of the
common man”. Emerson and many of his followers proclaimed that the Divine was
fully present in the human soul. Emerson fearlessly embraced impersonal or
transpersonal images of the Divine except in times of great personal need. (Journals).
This emphasis on the transpersonal Divine made it easier for Emerson and his
contemporaries to find the Divine in themselves:
When it (the Deep Power in which we exist)breathes through our intellect,
it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it is virtue;
when it flows through our affection, it is love.” (Emerson, “The Over-Soul”)
This emphasis on the impersonality of the Divine also allowed Emerson and his
contemporaries to distance themselves from the personality traits of Jehovah who
sometimes behaved like an ego-centric tyrant.
Emerson's theological break-through was supported by what he found in the
sacred texts of Hinduism which began a shift from many personal deities to a unified
impersonal model of the divine in the 5th century BCE. One of the most compelling
summaries of the Upanisads comes from my mentor, Joseph Campbell, who in many
ways carried forward Emerson's spiritual revolution into the late 20th century.
Joseph Campbell was once invited to speak to a compulsory chapel at a boy's
prep school in New England. His mission was to explain the Upanisads in 20 minutes
or less. Luckily, he took a moment to survey his audience. Like many prep schools, the
room was filled with children of privilege who were much more interested in the girls
school near-by than anything to be found in the Upanisads. Campbell looked up
(always a good idea) and found inspiration in the light fixtures of the chapel.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “look up! Do you see the light bulbs on the ceiling of the chapel?
Notice how some are brand new, others are about to wink out and be replaced. Still
others are not bright but still provide warmth and illumination. Gentlemen, these light
bulbs are like the millions of gods and goddesses of ancient India. They provide
illumination for awhile, but then grow dim and need to be replaced. Behind all of
these lights bulbs and all the other electrical devices of this building is the power-house
which lights them up. Gentlemen, this is the first great insight of India's Upanisads:
behind the million gods and goddesses is Brahman, the Power-house of the gods.”
Like any good story-teller, Campbell paused to let the first insight soak in. Then
he continued “Notice gentlemen, another light source more subtle and yet equally
important. Within each of you, to varying degrees, there is another light which allows
you to become aware of the external lights and, when need be, change them. That
interior light, call it consciousness or conscience, is another form of electricity, a psychic
or spiritual electricity. And gentlemen, it's just a short step to the second great insight
of the Hindu Upanisads: the lights within and without are one. That Thou Art!
Atman (the Soul within) is Brahman!” (Campbell 1951)
Emerson, Thoreau and many of the American Transcendentalists arrived at a
similar insight: the power behind the stars and the gods also shone within themselves.
As Emerson said in his journals, “consciousness is our Christ” and “Christ is a symbol of
the Soul.” It is difficult to over-estimate how this change in the picture of divinity
changed everything. Instead of a religion based on fretting about sin, the
Transcendentalists practiced a kind of Yankee Yoga whose purpose was to “yoke and
unite” themselves with the divine power they found in Nature and Soul. A culture of
“atonement” as blaming ourselves for our imperfections gave way to a culture of
“at-one-ment” as deepening our felt sense of union with the Divine. (Gura 2007; Watts
1950) An anecdote about Thoreau illustrates this difference. When Thoreau was dying
at home of tuberculosis, neighbors came by to said good-bye. One religiously
conventional neighbor asked Thoreau: “Have you made your peace with God yet?”
Thoreau replied: “I was not aware that we had quarreled.” (Richardson 1986)
2. The human soul is essentially good and god-like.
The second principle of American Transcendentalism follows from the first:
if Soul or Self is infused with Divine Light, then it is essentially good and godlike. As Emerson says: “the soul in its motions is always right”. It is possible to
look at this as a blurring of a boundary between the Soul and its Source. But it
is equally possible to view it as removing an artificial and unnecessary boundary
as Emerson suggests in his reflections on the “Over-Soul”:
“...As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens,
so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God,
the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the
deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and know,
Love, Freedom, Power.”(Emerson, “The Over-Soul”)
Whatever it is called, the optimism of the early Transcendentalists suggests that
human beings have within themselves a fully adequate guidance system which, if
left to its natural inclinations, would lead us towards what is Good and Godly:
“Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to
which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.... When it
breathes through our intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it
is virtue; when it flows through our affection, it is love.” (Emerson, “The OverSoul”, degenderized)
This shift in understanding human nature and its possibilities had two practical
consequences. First, it helps us understand why the Transcendentalists were
willing to give such free reign to the “glimmers of Light” that flickered across
their hearts and minds. Many of their experiments with language, solitude,
community and education begin with this deep trust in Soul or Self. (Emerson
1841) Second, the powerful indwelling presence of the Divine as consciousness
and conscience, may help us appreciate why many of the Transcendentalists were
wary of the external trappings of religion---from myths and rituals to sermons
and churches---which could obscure if not totally block the capacity to
experience Divinity first hand. Emerson's call for a religion of direct revelation
now, rather than a received religion based on past revelations flows directly
from the experience of the divine presence in Soul and Nature:
“Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes
biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and
nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an
original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy
of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the
history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream
around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action
proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or
put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines
to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new
men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.”
(Emerson, “Nature” opening paragraph)
The fact that many Transcendentalists (and their UU descendants) preferred
lively dialogues to sermonic monologues, a walk in the woods to a morning in
church, their own oracular poetry to the poetic revelations of the ancient
Hebrews and Greeks is the practical consequence of their audacious faith in the
divine Light of the Soul.
3. Nature is our first Temple, our primary Text
The special place of Nature as the “original testament” of
Transcendentalism is signaled in the opening paragraph of Emerson's “Divinity
School Address”:
“In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass
grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of
flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-ofGilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome
shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays.
Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night
bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn.
The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. The corn and the wine
have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken silence with which the
old bounty goes forward, has not yielded yet one word of explanation. One is
constrained to respect the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse.”
Emerson's talk carries within its luxuriant language in praise of Nature a
theological time-bomb: Nature is not fallen, it is revelatory of the Divine Light
shining through the Natural World! (Gura 2007) Some of Emerson's early critics
sensed this heresy which could undermine the entire edifice of Biblical religion
and its claimed of “supernatural” revelation. What need had Emerson's
generation of Biblical revelations if their natural surroundings, properly
regarded, were direct revelations of the Divine?
In their views of Nature, the Transcendentalists departed from and
deepened the views of earlier generations of Unitarians and Universalists. The
Revolutionary Unitarian Deists turned to the scientists of the 18th century, like
the Unitarian physicist Isaac Newton, who used both mathematics and
experiments to detect the laws of gravity, optics and what we now call “physics”.
But while the Revolutionary Unitarian Deists used science to unlock the resources
of Nature for human benefit, the Transcendentalists had a different end in mind.
Unitarian Christians like William Ellery Channing, found in Nature evidence of a
benign Creator and combined this with study of the miracles of Jesus to point
towards the powers of God who transcended Nature and Natural Law.
Transcendentalists from Emerson and Thoreau to Annie Dillard and Mary
Oliver have proclaimed that Nature is their true home, their first Temple. For
many Transcendentalists, the beauty of Nature is a looking glass which reveals
the Divine Light illuminating both Nature and the Human Soul. What the
Transcendentalists developed was a way of writing which renders the outward
appearances of nature transparent to the divine light, power or principle lurking
within or behind the glittering surfaces. Consider the following examples, drawn
from the writings of Emerson and Annie Dillard:
“So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless
inquiry of the intellect, -- What is truth? and of the affections, -- What is good? by
yielding itself passive to the educated Will. Then shall come to pass what my poet
said; `Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility
or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile,
it is obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and
beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you.” (Emerson,
“Nature” concluding section)
“...One day I was walking along Tinker creek and thinking of nothing at all and I
saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning
doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the
grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly
dreamed. It was less like seeing that like being for the first time see, knocked
breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending
the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell and
never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.” (Annie Dillard,
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek).
This capacity to see through the surface of Nature to its depths is “revelatory” in
its original sense: the dis-closure of a hidden truth which changes our lives
forever. For decades, I have had the honor of listening to Unitarian Universalists
who found something sacred in Nature: in a beloved grove of trees, a pulsating
field of light in the prairie or open water, a boundless night sky. Nature is for
many UU's our first and favorite Temple. Why? Because we are Nature looking
at and through Nature. When we recognize who we really are, everything
changes. (Griffin 1978)
Mary Oliver has written a lovely benediction for this spiritual capacity to see
through Nature not just look at it:
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life? (Mary Oliver, “The Swan”)
4. Intuition or Unitive Wisdom is the key to recognizing and realizing the
Divine in Nature and Human Nature.
One of the decisive break-throughs of the Transcendentalists was a shift in
how they chose to know the world and themselves (“epistemology”). They did
not take the path of the Revolutionary Unitarian Deists who valued scientific
and mathematical Reason as the most reliable path to trustworthy knowledge.
Nor did they follow the Liberal Christians like William Ellery Channing who
sought to reconcile Reason and Faith, the emerging body of scientific knowledge
with the teachings and miracles of Jesus. Instead, the Transcendentalists
followed a track laid down by German philosophers and poets, the Romantic
poets of England and the philosophical yogis of ancient India. The
Transcendentalists believed that they could know directly the divine qualities and
powers hidden behind the screen of the physical universe. Here is Emerson
defending this “direct knowing” to skeptics:
“The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let
skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have
spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an
error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when
we are awake that we are awake... We are wiser than we know. If we will not
interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God,
we know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man. For the Maker of all
things and all persons stands behind us, and casts his dread omniscience through us
over things.” (Emerson, “The Over-Soul”)
The Transcendentalists called this direct knowing by many names. When they
drew upon the writings of philosopher Immanuel Kant, they called it “Reason”
(a priori knowledge) as distinct from “Understanding” (empirical knowledge).
When they followed the Romantic poets of Germany and England, they called it
“Intuition” or “Imagination”. Sometimes they linked it back to Plato's assertion
that the philosopher can know directly the Ideal Forms of Goodness, Truth and
Beauty. 20th century Transcendentalists like Alan Watts and Joseph Campbell
connect this Unitive Wisdom to “Prajna”: the non-dual knowing of Reality that is
common to the Upanisads, the Buddhists and the Gnostics. (Joseph Campbell
1951 and Alan Watts 1950).
How does “Intuition” or “Unitive Wisdom” work to directly realize the Ideal
principles and powers lurking behind the surface of facts? Perhaps a single
example from Thoreau's masterful meditation at Walden Pond will illustrate the
power of Intuition at play:
“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the
sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity
remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I
cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been
regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.” (Thoreau, Walden,
Chapter 2, concluding paragraph)
Intuition shifts our attention from surface to depth, from detail to pattern, from “time”
to “eternity”. Once the mind has shifted into an intuitive mode, we begin to see how
all things are connected: river and sky, stones and stars, below and above. Whereas
intellectual knowledge often divides, wisdom tends to unify. This unitive wisdom is
timeless, it comes as Thoreau said “in flashes of light from heaven”. It is not built up by
the slow and cautious workings of the scientific method.
The emergence of psychology as a separate discipline in the 20th century,
helps us understand intuitive wisdom in new ways. Carl Jung included intuition
as a component of the human personality which synthesizes thoughts (Intuitive
Thinking) and feelings (Intuitive Feeling) into cohesive patterns. His followers
developed reliable inventories (the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) to measure
Intuition in individual personalities. (Jung 1921) Cognitive psychologists in the
late 20th century localized Intuition in the right-hemisphere of the brain for most
right-handed people. (Ornstein 1972). They noted that this way of knowing is
literally “timeless” because it is physically separated from the circuits of the lefthemisphere which arrange facts in logical, causal and temporal sequences. A
cognitive scientist who suffered a stroke in her left-hemisphere, described and
celebrated the simultaneous connective wisdom of the right-hemisphere.
Frequently her descriptions of right-hemispheric wisdom could easily be
mistaken for mystics east and west and Thoreau and Emerson writing from the
seat of unitive wisdom. (Taylor 2008)
We can get a feel for the power of Intuition or Unitive Wisdom, when we
are “carried away” by music or poetry or painting into an experience that is
inwardly powerful and coherent but resists rational explanation or translation.
If we're lucky, we also experience this unitive knowing when we fall in love or
are inspired to act beyond our own self-interest. We also get a sense of this
when we visit a new community or meet a stranger and shift our attention from
details to patterns, from a summary of facts to the over-all feeling tone or “vibe”.
What happens to you when you listen to a poem, a dream or a piece of music
with an open heart and open mind? That is Unitive Wisdom.
5. Spiritual progressive is inevitable.
Like most of their Unitarian and Universalist ancestors, the
Transcendentalists were radiantly optimistic about the progress of humankind.
Radical Unitarian Deists derived their optimism from capacity of Scientific,
Industrial and Democratic revolutions to make life better for millions of people.
Their success in liberating the American colonies from England and establishing
American democracy confirmed their faith. Unitarian and Universalist
Christians drew their optimism from theological sources. As Thomas Starr King
famously remarked, “while the Univeralists believed that God was too good to
damn them, the Unitarians believed that they were too good to be damned.”
The Transcendentalists, by drawing inspiration from European Romantics and
Asian philosophy, transcended all limits to what was possible. They were limited
neither by the necessity of proving their own beliefs logically nor cowered by the
specter of a God waiting to weigh their deeds on the scales of eternal judgment.
Because they believed that they could know directly the Divine principles and
powers behind both mind and nature, they could imagine---at least on a good
day---that their own powers and prospects were essentially good and god-like.
But by 1860's several limiting factors emerged that were difficult to deny.
Several Transcendental attempts to found utopian communities foundered on the
stubborn imperfectability of human nature and the harshness of New England
winters. The English Unitarian Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859)
offered views of Nature that were both factual and unromantic. The American
Civil War (1861-66) provided evidence of the cost in blood of noble ideals like
preserving the union and abolishing slavery. Henry Thoreau's death of
tuberculosis in 1863 demonstrated in a poignant way that the “tonic of the
wilderness” could not cure all ills.
Transcendentalism: Gifts and Limitations
In reflecting on the gifts and limitations of the American Transcendentalism,
I choose to err on the side of generosity. They are, after all, my most direct connection
to Unitarian Universalism. Without their sunny visions and contact with Asian Wisdom
via Paul Reps' Zen Flesh, Zen Bones and Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, I might not have
joined a UU fellowship in 1968 or attended a UU seminary in 1976.
The positive gifts of Transcendentalism to Unitarian Universersalism are many.
First, they continue the trend of building optimistic visions of human possibility.
This is one of our great gifts to the world, currently enshrined in our first UU Principle
(“The inherent worth and dignity of every person”). Second, just as the Radical
Unitarian Deists launched a political revolution, the Transcendentalists launched a
cultural and spiritual revolution. After their contributions as lecturers, authors,
poets, painters, educators and minister, it was possible to speak of a distinctive
American approach to literature, scholarly life, education and ethically inspired social
change. While it is customary to emphasize the introverted “spiritual” gifts of the
Transcendentalists, it's worth noting the many of the social reform movements of 19th
century America---the abolition of slavery, kindergarten, public education for all,
women's suffrage, better treatment for prisoners and the mentally ill---all were sparked
by Transcendentalists and their descendants.
Third, the Transcendentalists opened the doors of their hearts and minds to
Asian Wisdom texts and traditions. Without their careful attention to sacred texts
from Asia and their do-it-yourself approach to mediation and yoga, it might be possible
to hold inter-faith conversation in America by just including Biblical religions. Without
Transcendentalists opening the door to Asian texts, the World Parliament of Religions
held in Chicago in 1893 might not have happened. And without that broad inter-faith
gathering, thousands of Americans might have missed the chance to study with master
teachers like Vivekananda of India and D.T. Suzuki of Japan. (Fields 1992) The
Transcendentalists opened the gateway to Asian religions and thereby discovered a
continent of wisdom that had been overlooked for 2000 years.
The sometimes tragic limitations of the Transcendentalists follow directly from
their gifts. Their unbridled optimism about the human soul and its direct access to
goodness, truth and beauty did not help them in coming to terms with the persistent
imperfectability of human nature. Thoreau was never able to admit in his voluminous
writings the remorse he felt in causing a fire that burned down dozens of acres of forest
adjacent to Concord, MA. His buddy, Ellery Channing (nephew of WEC?) expressed no
regret on abandoning his wife and children to savor the tonic of the wilderness. Most
Transcendental communes were short-lived, under-financed, and lacking in those
willing and able to do the hard physical labor necessary to sustain life.
A parallel flaw comes from their high valuation of the solitary soul. To read
Thoreau's Walden, one might believe that Thoreau's cabin was built by the “labor of his
own hands” and that his life at Walden Pond was mostly solitary. The fact is that
Thoreau's cottage was built with the help of many friends on a wood-lot loaned by his
mentor Emerson. And Thoreau lived not in the distant wilderness, but a scant 2.5 mile
walk from his parents home in Concord. Thoreau could go home on weekends to
enjoy home cooking and get someone else to do his laundry. And on sunny afternoon
in late summer and fall, his sisters delivered the fruit pies that Thoreau loved to his
cabin on Walden Pond. The lives of the Transcendentalists in Boston, Cambridge and
Concord were intensely social. It was this community of neighbors and friends who
supported their flights of fancy and proofed each others' manuscripts. But without a
positively valued social self, they could not see or acknowledge their social sources of
support and inspiration. (Baker 1996)
A poignant image of the limits of Transcendentalism comes from their own bestknown journal “The Dial” (1840-1844). It was named for a Sun-dial and they
cheerfully proclaimed their intention to attend to the “day-light hours” and sunny
topics, leaving for others to chronicle the darker reaches of night and the human soul.
Somehow they did not pause long enough over this cardinal image to remember how a
Sun-dial works. It measures the progress of day-time hours from the shadows cast by
the sun. Without shadows as well as light, imperfectability as well as perfect
moments, they could not “tell time”. They were prisoners of “timeless moments” which
could neither be fully described nor reckoned within the scope of their assumptions.
A final limitation of the Transcendentalists comes from their position in time
and history. Most Transcendentalists did not read and few fully assimilated Darwin's
revolutionary and non-romantic views of Nature in The Origins of Species (1859). That
task was left for the next generation of Unitarian Universalists and free-thinkers who
would re-invent Humanism. So too, while Emerson and Thoreau were powerful
advocates for the abolition of human slavery, they could scarcely imagine the horrors of
the American Civil War and the disillusionment that followed. Finally, though their
attempts to intellectually integrate Asian Wisdom were productive, they came too early
to meet Asian teachers of those traditions and learn yoga and meditation first hand.
The task of embodying Asian wisdom rather than just talking about it, would await
Asian teachers like Vivekananda and D.T. Suzuki who would begin mentoring
Americans at the World Parliament of Religions in 1893. This movement to engage
Asian Wisdom with body, heart and mind through study and practice with Asian
mentors would help produce Universal Theism in the mid to late 20th century.
19th Century American Transcendentalism
Primary Sources:
Emerson's Essays: “Nature” (1836) “The Divinity School Address” (1838)
“The Over-Soul” (1841) “Self Reliance” (1841) “The Transcendentalist”(1849)
Henry David Thoreau, Walden or Life in the Woods (1854) especially chapter II.
Secondary Sources:
Charles R. Anderson, The Magic Circle of Walden (1968)
Shohei Ando, Zen and American Transcendentalism (1970)
Carlos Baker, Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait (1996)
Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England 1815-1865 (1981)
Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake....(1992)
Philip Goldberg, American Veda...(2010)
Philip F. Gura, American Transcendentalism: A History (2007)
Barbara L. Hacker, Emerson's Fall: A New Interpretation of the Major Essays (1982)
Todd Lewis and Kent Bicknell, “The Asian Soul of Transcendentalism” (2011)
Robert D. Richardson, Jr. Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995)
Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (1986)
Arthur Versluis, American Transcendentalism & Asian Religions (1993)
20th Century Transcendentalism
Gregory Bateson, Mind & Nature: A Necessary Unity (1979)
“Substance, Form & Difference” in Steps Towards an Ecology of Mind (1972)
Robert Bly, editor, News of the Universe: Poems of Two-Fold Consciousness (1995)
The Kabir Book (1977)
Joseph Campbell, Philosophies of India (1951) attributed to his mentor Heinrich Zimmer
The Power of Myth (1991)
Ram Dass, Be Here Now (1971)
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)
Susan Griffin: Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (1978)
Herman Hesse, Siddhartha (1922)
Delores Lachapelle, Sacred Land, Sacred Sex and Rapture of the Deep (1992)
Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems I and II (1992 and 2007)
Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (1957)
Gary Snyder, Earth House Hold (1969)
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now... (1997) and A New Earth... (2005)
Alan Watts, The Supreme Identity (1950) and In My Own Way (2007)
Psychological Perspectives on Transcendentalism
Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided...(2009)
James Hillman, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling (1996)
Carl Jung, Psychological Types (1921)
Robert Ornstein, A Psychology of Consciousness (1972)
Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight (2008)
Robert Walsh, Paths Beyond Ego: A Transpersonal Vision (1993)
Transcendentalism Self-Score Inventory © 2016 Rev. Ted E. Tollefson
1. The Divine is fully present in Soul and Nature.
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2. “God” is an impersonal power or principle.
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3. The human Soul is a trustworthy guidance system.
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4. Human Nature is essentially good.
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5. Nature is our first Temple.
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6. We read Nature like some people read the Bible.
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7. Intuition and Imagination help us discern deeper truths.
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8. Intuition and Imagination need to be balanced by Reason and Facts.
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9. Spiritual evolution is inevitable.
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10. Spiritual evolution is possible.
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