Emerson and the American Transcedentalist

As part of my coursework in 21W.775 (Writing about Nature and Environmental Issues), we've started reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's first serious work "Nature." Upon reading the first half, I'm completely blown away at the ideas that Emerson was turned onto way back in 1836. I quote:

"Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena" (P. 3)

ALL PHENOMENA?!?!?!?

So maybe he's reaching a little bit there, and really can't hope for such lofty goals. Does Emerson tuck his tail between his legs and step down a few layers of transcendental abstraction? Hardly...

"Standing on the bare ground -- my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God." (p. 6)

I became a transparent eyeball... At this point of reading the essay, I was expecting Allen Ginsburg and Ram Dass to come skipping over the hillsides to join Emerson, chanting "Hare Krishna, Hare, Hare..." while The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane are helping Thoreau outfit his cabin with the latest and greatest stroboscopic lights and audio feedback effects.

But seriously, Emerson seems totally turned onto a whole way of thinking, that seems culturally disconnected from him. At times his musings seem almost painfully and obviously Buddhist in nature.

"Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour and is not reminded of the flux of all things?" (p. 14)

The answer, Emerson buddy pal, is pretty much the majority of Western Civilization isn't reminded of the impermanence of all things. At times when reading Emerson, I find it hard to believe that this is a guy in Massachusetts and not some ambitious American monk taking up sanctuary in a Tibetan monastery.

The number of jewels of insight that Emerson packs into this sub 40 page essay truly is remarkable. I leave you with these few morsels, because otherwise I'd be quoting verbatim the entire work. The number of ideas that Emerson and his Transcendental Club seem tuned into a full 130 years before the counter-culture movement of the 1960s is suggestive that there is a rich tradition to be explored here. That sense of longing that so many of us Western spiritual children of the East have by being misplaced physically in this wide world is quelled when we find a great grandfather of American literature spiritually and physically close to home.