Beyond Perceptions and Conceptions to 'Acceptive Consciousness'

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

In our ordinary consciousness we see the world as a manifested reality of "things" - animal, mineral and vegetable. But at the smallest levels, physicists tell us that our "world" consists of granular, distinct quanta (or, sub-particles) of energy, which are "realized" by the act of observation. Because of this, it has been said that modern physics has become "the study of the structure of consciousness."

Humans, with our many layers of consciousness, are capable of "envisioining" our world at both levels. In his most personal writing, "Some of the Dharma" Beat-writer, Jack Kerouac, set this out rather poetically:

---FORM IN THE NORM---
 Instead of bothering with one side of the coin
  or the other, throw it away---in the same way,
   instead of either bothering with arbitrary conception
    of manifested phenomena or non-manifested non-phenomena,
     the coin of existence,
                                       throw it away----
                                                                  Rest beyond conception.

Richard M. Bucke (1837-1902)

Richard M. Bucke, one of the first Westerners to attempt a "scientific" explanation and synthesis of the mystic or enlightenment experiences recorded in the world's wisdom traditions, discussed four progressively higher states of consciousness in his iconic work "Cosmic Consciousness" (sometimes referred to as "The Hippie Bible.")

At the lowest state of consciousness, the simplest animal organism will respond to stimuli. This receptive consciousness, may be illustrated by a simple earth worm recoiling from the prick of a needle. 'Reception' of the stimulus begets a reaction.

At a higher level of consciousness, what Bucke called perceptive consciousness, the "perception" of a stimulus will provoke a reaction. Thus, the second time you take your dog to the vet for its shots, your dog will react when it merely sees the needle.

At the higher level of ordinary human consciousness, what Bucke called conceptive consciousness, the mere "idea" of the stimulus will provoke a response. If you tell a child that he or she is going to get a shot, that the doctor will poke a needle into her arm, the mere thought (or "concept") causes a "response," most often tears.

Bucke speculated that there is yet another higher level of consciousness beyond 'ordinary' human, "conceptive consciousness" - a level he called cosmic consciousness - and he compared the recorded experiences of saints and sages, from Lao-Tze to Jesus, and from Paul, Mohammed, St. John of the Cross and Shakespeare to his mentor, Walt Whitman - in order to outline the parameters of what this higher state of consciousness is. He theorized, like so many before and after, (see, "Pain, Sex and Time" by Gerald Heard, or the "evolutionary enlightenment" teachings of Andrew Cohen), that humankind is inexorably evolving towards this higher state of consciousness and awareness.

In that higher state (known in the West as "enlightenment" and in the East as 'samadhi,' 'moksha,' 'nirvana' or, simply, "liberation") ordinary consciousness, with its "conceptions" that crystallize the world, moves to a higher all-inclusive awareness that is beyond stimuli. For that reason, I call it "acceptive" rather than "cosmic" consciousness. It is in this state of "acceptive consciousness" - beyond the labelling and attachments of our egoic conceptions - that the spiritually adept has an experiential realization and radical acceptance of both the 'manifest' and 'unmanifest' realms or worlds. It is "the ineffable" or what, I believe, the Buddha pointed to as "suchness."

Poetic Transcendentalism

Nobody says it like a master poet. And William Wordsworth ( (1770-1850) - who has perhaps the most fitting name of all the bards - is without question a master poet. His work transcends the ordinary and reaches the Divine.

In his Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, Wordsworth enters the sublime with his intimations of the transmigration of the soul and his explicit recognition of  a universal "home" in the Godhead.

William Wordsworth

“ … Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come,
From God who is our home. ”

(William Wordsworth, from his poem, "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.")

 The two poems that seem to approach the same spiritual heights as the above passage from Intimations are William Blake's The Tyger and Emerson's Brahma. Blake (1757-1827) was one of those rare individuals to experience wholesale spiritual enlightenment, according to Richard M. Bucke in his groundbreaking treatise on Cosmic Consciousness, while Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) provided a good deal of the impetus to the American Transcendentalist movement that centered around his Concord, Massachusetts home.

William Blake

"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

Richard M. Bucke

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?


Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

(William Blake, The Tygre, 1794)

And last, but not least, is Emerson's Brahma, which reflects the impact that the introduction of Eastern wisdom traditions had on Western religious understanding,  particularly on the development of Emerson's Unitarianism.

If the red slayer think he slays,
  Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
  I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near, 
  Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
  And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
  When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
  And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
  And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
  Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

 (Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Brahma," 1856)