Perusing the mysticism of Uncle Walt

Reading is one of the simple joys people most commonly associate with summer. Even we internet junkies can't resist the afternoon rays, giving up high tech amusements for more simple ones outdoors. Whether on the dock, at the beach or in a hammock under the shade of a favourite tree, this is the time many of us resurrect our old hardbound and paperback friends from dusty shelves. For me this has meant a return to the mystical fount of knowledge from the hearts of Walt Whitman and his ilk.

This diversion is barely relaxing. In fact, it might well challenge the mind to higher endeavours.

In The Essential Gay Mystics by Andrew Harvey, he writes:

Without a belief in, and the radical cultivation of, mystical consciousness and the insights into the interconnectedness of all reality in sacred joy and sacred love it alone can bring, we will not be able to develop the necessary awareness to help us solve the terrible problems that threaten our lives and the very life of the planet.

This "interconnectedness of all reality" sounds like a definition of the aspects of the life on earth that are studied by ecologists. Traditionally science has avoided the investigation of religious questions, and rightly so. But new frontiers of research like complexity and chaos are shaking our understanding of the cosmos and even the boundary between perception and truth.

If the spiritual realm of mysticism is so important, it shares its distinction with the field of ecology, also essential to the survival of our species and the earth as we know it.

It is no surprise that so many mystic thinkers, influenced as they were by the religious orthodoxies of their times and cultures, have often started with a simple-hearted contemplation of nature. That pre-eminent American nature writer, Henry David Thoreau, began his work by retreating to Walden Pond in the backwoods of Concord, Mass.

"Thoreau is among the most life-affirming and celebratory of mystic writers in any language;" writes Harvey, "the exalted but precise sensuality of his vision of the divine presence in nature and in the ordinary activities of life continues to inspire seekers everywhere."

But Harvey reserves his highest praise for Walt Whitman, whom he considers the "povital figure of gay mystical history," and by inference an essential thinker in the broader course of mystical thought. "His eloquence and direct gnostic passion make

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