Exploring the "Greater Self" in Whitman's Leaves of Grass

During 2011, the Ikeda Center explored the various dimensions of the Buddhist concept of the “greater self,” with special attention paid to cross-cultural resonances. Throughout Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman celebrates a “greater self” that is expansive enough to include all the phenomena of life within it. Here are some selected excerpts that illustrate what the greater self looks like from Whitman’s quintessentially American perspective.

Greater Self Excerpts

I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. (p. 27)

***

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun … . there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand … . nor look through the eyes of the dead … . nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

I have heard what the talkers were talking … . the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. (p. 28)

***

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers … . and the women my sisters and lovers, (pp. 30-31)

***

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward … . and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe … . and am not contained between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good,
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself;
They do not know how immortal, but I know. (pp. 32-33)

***

And I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.

I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all.

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

I am the poet of the body,
And I am the poet of the soul.

The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself … . the latter I translate into a new tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. (p. 46)

***

Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,
Disorderly fleshy and sensual … . eating drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist … . no stander above men and women or apart from them … . no more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me … . and whatever is done or said returns at last to me,
And whatever I do or say I also return.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging … . through me the current and index.
I speak the password primeval … . I give the sign of democracy;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves,
Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons,
Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars — and of wombs, and of the fatherstuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the trivial and flat and foolish and despised,
Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts … . voices veiled, and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured. (p. 50)

***

Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me.

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen;
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,
My embryo has never been torpid … . nothing could overlay it;
For it the nebula cohered to an orb … . the long slow strata piled to rest it on … . vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.

All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
Now I stand on this spot with my soul. (p. 80)

***

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then … . I contradict myself;
I am large … . I contain multitudes. (p. 87)

***

I depart as air … . I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop some where waiting for you (p. 88)

* All excerpts are from: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, in Poetry and Prose, ed. Justin Kaplan (New York: Library of America, 1982).