This dissertation seeks to construct a profile of Thoreau as a mystic. It examines Thoreau's life up to the publication of Walden, using in the main Thoreau's Journal and letters. It elucidates Thoreau's mystical experience and temperament chiefly by paralleling them with the experience and temperament of other mystics. It comments extensively on Walden throughout its chapters in an attempt to clarify Walden's mystical dimension.The Introduction justifies the method of paralleling Thoreau's experience with that of other mystics. It also defines the terms "mystic" and "mystical experience" and briefly argues the appropriateness of regarding Thoreau as a mystic. The Introduction gives special attention to explaining the various aspects of "illumination," the particular mystical state that Thoreau experienced numerous times in his life.Chapter 1 summarizes and comments in detail on many of Thoreau's illuminative experiences. Thoreau could facilitate these experiences either through meditative practice or through the cultivation of a passive, open, receptive condition while on walks in nature. Thoreau's illuminations included experiences of mystical "Silence," incommunicable noetic experiences, experiences of infinity and of flotation in infinity, experiences of calm and infinite self, "illuminative light," transfiguration and sacramentalization of external nature, joyfully reborn self, and other experiences.Chapter 2 shows that Thoreau conceived of his life as a quest for more and more complete mystical experience. Deliberate pursuit of illumination through nature formed one of the means through which he could make progress on this quest. Thoreau sought out certain natural locales, for example, that might catalyze illumination. Efforts of moral self-examination and self-shaping, efforts of character change, formed another means of progress. Thoreau sought to eliminate negative elements from his character and to cultivate non-self-preoccupation, trust, love, imperturbability, joy.Chapter 3 explores the effects on Thoreau of the gradual lessening, starting perhaps in 1841, of the frequency and intensity of his illuminations. The chapter shows that Thoreau shared in a period common in mystical lives called the Dark Night of the Soul, a period of despondency and spiritual deprivation that springs from the phenomenon of declining illuminations. Thoreau's purpose in going to Walden was partly to dispel the Dark Night he was experiencing and to recover the full illuminative state that he enjoyed previously. Thoreau's Dark Night continued past the Walden sojourn, however. Thoreau's Dark Night was rather frequently brightened by illuminations, although Thoreau commonly expressed dissatisfaction with them. The chapter explores why Thoreau came to regard these later illuminations as insufficient. By the time Thoreau published Walden, he had not advanced to Union, the final stage of the mystical life. The chapter suggests that remaining self-preoccupation and an acquisitive approach to the joys of illumination may have been the reason for Thoreau's not passing completely out of both the Illuminative and Dark Night phases of the mystical life and proceeding to Union. Thoreau seemed to be aware of the hindering effects of his remaining self-involvement, however, so he was in a likely way to grow out of this self-involvement.Chapter 4 discusses the possible effects on Thoreau's character of his numerous illuminative experiences. The chapter finds some of these effects to be a deep feeling of self-worth and of personal security, a sense of belonging in the world by rights as an integral part of it, asense of a loving presence that infuses life, self-detachment, inward calm, loving feeling and behavior, joy and zest in living, liberation from material pursuits, experience of the external world as sacramental or paradisal, and the ability spontaneously to poeticize or mythologize daily experience.

Thesis (S.T.L.)--Catholic University of America, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-115).

Thesis (M.A.)--Central Connecticut State University, 1997. / Thesis advisor: John A. Heitner. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in English." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-92).

Proefschrift--Amsterdam. / Bibliography: p. 170-174.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 2002. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-72).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 224-233). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

No description available.

Frank Norris uses the sixth sense in his writings as a creative device, explaining the illusory characteristics of life mainly in six works: The Responsibilities of the Novelist, Blix, Vandover and the Brute, McTeague, The octopus, and The Pit. In The Octopus, Vanamee, a character fashioned after Norris's friend Bruce Porter, becomes the focal point for the author's elucidation of the sixth sense, and also of related powers such as telepathy, hypnosis, and transmigration, all related to a moral natural order. In the other works the sixth sense is consistently utilized by Norris's special characters in correctly perceiving unknown knowledge. It is conclusive that Norris acknowledges and accepts the mysterious as a reality and attempts to explain it.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2005. / Bibliography: leaves 90-93.