Transcendentalism

What is this big word transcendentalism, and what does it mean to us today? How does it relate to clouds of white butterflies, our yearning for something beyond our every-day existence and the potential for all of us to experience ecstasy? At the heart and root of transcendentalism is the idea that there is a desire in everyone to transcend the ordinary—that we have the capability to experience an inner spark and inherent goodness which can transcend our now-accepted normal lives filled with turmoil and amplified by today’s hyped-up electronic society.

Transcendentalism is a unique American philosophical movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the eastern United States. Transcendentalism became a coherent movement with the founding of the Transcendental Club around Harvard College in 1836 by prominent New England intellectuals, including Ralph Waldo Emerson. He made famous the idea that we can go beyond the rational mind into the intuitive, experiential inspiration that comes from the contemplation of the beauty in nature. His famous quote, “We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds," celebrates the innate power of the individual, free of the limits of the accepted rational norms of the day.

Adherents, including Henry Thoreau, Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott believed that individuals are capable of generating completely original insights with as little deference to past masters as possible. A core belief of transcendentalism is the inherent goodness of people and nature coupled with a belief that society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, and that people are at their best when truly self-reliant and independent.

Transcendentalists desired to ground their religion and philosophy in principles based on the inner spiritual and mental capabilities that exist in every human. They rejected the need for priests to interpret and act as intermediaries with God for them. Instead, they longed for a more intense, personal spiritual experience. Transcendentalists also believe that all people are a part of God. Because God is one, this unites all people as one being.

Transcendentalism is, in many aspects, the first notable American intellectual movement. It has inspired succeeding generations of American intellectuals, as well as spiritual, literary and artistic movements, including what is now considered “New Age” philosophy and culture.

Transcendentalism influenced the growing movement of "Mental Sciences" of the mid-19th century, which would later become known as the New Thought movement. Emma May Curtis "the teacher of teachers", and Ernest Holmes, founder of Religious Science, were guided and greatly influenced by the teachings of Transcendentalism. Depak Chopra, MD; Oprah Winfrey, entertainment personality; and Fritjof Capra, theoretical physicist, are good examples of new age thinkers popular today.

In the Preface, I have included my adaptation of a poem written by Ernest Holmes in 1938, inviting you to join us in exploring this distinctly American philosophy of New Age thinking and the spiritual dimensions of New Thought today.

I have included two poems based on landscape paintings by Asher Brown Durand (1796-1798), an American Transcendental Landscape Artist of the Hudson River School that illustrates some of the seminal ideas of the movement.

Many of the poems in this book are about my personal search for the ecstatic, sometimes in other countries and cultures, but often sitting, watching the clouds, loving the trees and listening to the birds in our back yard.