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Whitman and Mysticism

What is mysticism: Mysticism is not a coherent philosophy of life, but much more a mood of mind. A mystical expertise, according to BERTRAND RUSSEL, entails insight, a perception of unity and the unreality of time and place, and a perception that evil is mere physical appearance. A mystic’s vision is intuitive he feels the presence of a divine reality driving and inside the ordinary planet of feeling perception. He feels that God and the Supreme Soul animating all things are similar. He sees an vital id of getting in between Gentleman, Mother nature and God. He believes that “all things in the seen planet are but types and manifestations of the one particular Divine Existence, and that these phenomena are changing and short-term, even though the soul that informs them is everlasting”. The human soul, way too, is everlasting. Transcendentalism is closely related to mysticism, for it emphasizes the unintuitive and non secular earlier mentioned the empirical.

Whitman’s poetry is full of mystic and transcendental strains: He was deeply influenced by Emerson, the American transcendentalist. His believed was intuitive and not systematic like a logician’s. He wrote like a mystic:

Knowledge is of the soul, is not vulnerable to evidence, is its own evidence.
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities, and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immorality of items and the excellence of things.
Something there is in the float of the sight of factors that provokes it out of the Soul.

Whitman thought the soul to be immortal. He felt identification with all animate and inanimate factors around him. What is exciting about Whitman’s mysticism is that, as Schyberg observes, “in his book we can discover the typical traits of absolutely all the various mystic doctrines”.

Whitman is a mystic with a big difference: One can’t phone him a pure mystic in the perception of oriental mysticism. He is not a praying male. Like all mystics he considered in the existence of the soul, and in the existence of the Divine Spirit, in the immortality of the human soul, and in the capability of a human getting to create conversation among his spirit and the Divine Spirit. But he differs from the oriental or traditional mystics in that he does not subscribe to their perception that communication with the Divine Spirit is possible only by means of denial of the senses and mortification of the flesh. christian mysticism declares that he sings of the human body as considerably as of the soul. He feels that religious communication is attainable, certainly fascinating, without having sacrificing the flesh. As a result there is a fantastic offer of the sexual aspect in Whitman’ s poetry, specially in the early poetry-Part five of Tune of Myself is a scenario in point the place the sexual connotations are inseparable from the mystical encounter.

The Substance Globe is not denigrated: Whitman does not reject the content planet. He seeks the spiritual by means of the materials. He does not subscribe to the perception that objects are illusive. There is no tendency on the part of the soul to leave this globe for good. In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, we see the soul making an attempt to play a substantial role in the administration of this world of scenes, sights, sounds, etc. Whitman does not belittle the achievements of science and materialism. In Part 23 of Music of Myself, he accepts the fact of materialism and says:

Human for optimistic science!
Extended live specific demonstration!
Mother nature and male shall be disjoined and subtle no a lot more.

Seeking the divine reality: Whitman acknowledged the Idea of Evolution but could not think evolution to be a mechanical procedure. In the sluggish process of progress, improvement and modify that science was revealing, Whitman saw God making Himself obvious and unmistakable to gentleman. The soul of gentleman finds total dissatisfaction only in seeking out the fact guiding the manifestations. As he claims in Passage to India:

Bathe me O God in thee, mounting thee,
I and my soul to variety in range of thee.
At the end of the journey the soul satisfies with God-or the “Excellent Camerado” as he claims in Track of Myself.

Whitman’s feeling of unity of the entire: His cosmic consciousness.: Whitman has through his poetry revealed his religion in the unity of the entire, or “oneness” of all. This sense of the essential divinity of all produced issues is an critical element of mysticism and is also carefully relevant to Whitman’s religion in democracy calling for equality and fraternity. Tune of Myself is replete with strains proclaiming this “oneness”. He knows

… that all males ever born are also my brothers… and all the females my sisters and fans,
And that a keelson of the creation is enjoy.

He praises, not just existence, but the absolute wroth of every particular and personal individual, every single genuine existing becoming. Whitman equates all opposites, and accepts evil as considerably as component of Actuality.

In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the poet has achieved the unity of all mankind: “The easy, compact, properly-joined plan myself disinterested but component of the scheme”. Time gets one particular in Whitman’s poetry. Previous, present and potential are merged into a spiritual continuum. Hence in Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, he claims:

It avails not, time nor area-length avails not,
I am with you, you males and females of a technology,
Or at any time so a lot of generations hence.

Mysticism governing the photographs and symbolism of Whitman’s poetry: The mystic quest for Fact and communion with the Divine simply lends by itself to be represented in phrases of the voyage impression. The Song of the open up Road is a poem whose topic is a journey symbolic of an exploration of the spiritual as well as the actual physical universe. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking symbolizes the mystic quest for fact and the ultimate discovery of the meaning of life. When Lilacs previous in the dooryard Bloom’d use symbols and pictures created to affirm the relevance of Demise. Loss of life is seen as a deliveress because it leads to new life, and the poet getting experienced the mystical experience of this truth, seeks to be a “uniter of listed here and hereafter”

As G. W. Allen factors out, the “attempt to reveal the path in between reality and the soul very virtually sums up Whitman’s total intention in Leaves of Grass”. The mysticism listed here is obvious. The cosmic “I” of Whitman’s poems is on a perpetual journey. His soul is but a fragment of the entire world soul. The mass of photographs which race via his poems symbolize the unity and harmony in himself and all generation. The spear of grass assumes mystical significance by way of its symbolic price-celebration of individuality and the enmasse, exclusion of none, exception of all. In Track of Myself, Whitman speaks of God as his beloved and his “mattress-fellow” sleeping at his facet all night. The mystical experience is conveyed in conditions of very charged sexual imagery.

Whitman seldom misplaced touch with the physical fact even in the midst of mystical expertise. Bodily phenomena for him ended up symbols of non secular actuality. He considered that “the unseen is proved by observed” hence he makes use of very sensuous and concrete imagery to convey his perception of divine truth. He finds a goal powering natural objects-grass, sea hen, bouquets, animals-for,

The smallest sprout demonstrates there is really no demise…
and
… al leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars…

Certainly, 1 may well say that mysticism constitutes the quite poetic kind of Whitman’s poems, he looked upon the universe as constituting a unity of disparate objects, unified the Divine Spirit thus his poems are “Leaves of Grass” signifying at after separateness and unity. Whitman’s dominant metaphor of grass presents a circumstance for unity and harmony, a fundamental element of composition.

Mystical construction of Track of Myself: Track of Myself is possibly the ideal illustration of Whitman’s mysticism influencing that means, form and symbolism. Suggests James E. Miller: “When seen in phrases of the phases of the standard mystical encounter, Song of Myself will take on a comprehensive structural form”.

The reader can rediscover what the poet by observing his possess spear of summer time grass and by launching his personal mystical journey. Music of Myself is an “inverted mystical knowledge”¬- Even though the conventional mystic attempted to annihilate himself and mortify his senses in planning for his union with the divine, Whitman magnifies the self and glorifies the senses in his development in direction of union with the Complete.

Conclusion: Whitman is a mystic as a lot as he is a poet of democracy and science, but a “mystic with no a creed”. He sees the human body as the manifestation of the spirit which is “delivered” by loss of life into a greater life. A spear of grass is not an inert compound for him but God’s handkerchief, “the flag of disposition”. Typically in his sensibility, make a difference is dissolved, trees turn out to be “liquid” and contours “fluid”. The genuine is transmuted and he has cosmic visions. He gets a comet travelling spherical the universe with the speed of mild.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runway sunlight,
I effuse my flesh in eddies,
And drift in lacy jags.

If Leaves of Grass has been referred to as a “Bible” of The usa, it has a fantastic deal to do with its mystical strain. Real, Whitman’s brand name of mysticism is not identifiable with the selflessness of the Christian assortment or the passivity of the Oriental. What we may possibly phone Whitman’s mysticism is “democratic” mysticism-accessible to every man on equal conditions and embracing contradictory elements. But it is simple that mysticism is central to the that means of Leaves of Grass.