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Biography

Ralph Emerson is Notable.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was a Minister, an essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society. He disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".

Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1842) – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet, and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.

Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul."^[1]

His essays remain among the linchpins of American thinking, and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that have followed him. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man." Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of fellow Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. These two in American literature, as well as Emily Dickinson, E.E. Cummings, Henry Miller, and Robinson Jeffers "were clearly familiar with the wakeful state", as documented in the source book "The Leap: The psychology of spiritual awakening". Much in Chapter 1 of his book 'Nature', such as "all mean egotism vanishes" (ref.1, p.13) shows that he did have awakened experiences in association with natural surroundings.

However, Richard Maurice Bucke, who made as detailed analysis of the lives of possibly 50 people, concluded that neither Ralph Waldo Emerson or any of the above, actually attained the final stage of wakefulness, which he terms 'Cosmic Conscious'. In his chapter on Emerson ^[2] he actually provides quotes from Emerson that confirm his conclusion. The only one who did attain a permanent, final state of what Taylor referred to as 'Natural Wakefulness' in America was Walter Whitman.

Sources

1. ↑ Wikipedia: Nature (essay)
2. ↑ CHAPTER 15. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cosmic Consciousness, by Richard Maurice Bucke (1901), at sacred-texts.com

• Massachusetts Historical Society - Edith Emerson Forbes and William Hathaway Forbes Papers and Additions

• The living legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harvard Square Library

• Death records: Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts.

• Haskins, David G. Ralph Waldo Emerson, His Maternal Ancestors, With Some Reminiscences of Him (Cupples, Upham & Co., Boston, 1887)

• Find A Grave: Memorial #320

• Steve Taylor, 2017, 'The leap: The psychology of spiritual awakening', An Eckhart Tolle Edition, New World Library, Novato, California.

• Richard Maurice Bucke, 1901, 'Cosmic Consciousness'.

See also:

• Wikipedia: Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Wikisource: Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Wikidata: Item Q48226, en:Wikipedia
• Wikipedia: Brook Farm
• 3-cent Ralph Waldo Emerson single (1940), Great Americans series, Smithsonian National Postal Museum.
• Library of American Literature: The Lives and Portraits of Our Great Authors (New York: Eliot Publishing, 1901) p. 70ff Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Liberator of American Literature.