The Spiritual Journey. Walden is, above all, the account of Thoreau’s own exploration of his capabilities and his search for spiritual understanding. Thoreau recounts his personal quest to demonstrate to his readers the possibility of surmounting the obstacles that materialistic society places in the path of the individual. He does not—cannot—spell out for the reader the spiritual truth that lies at the end of the journey. He focuses on the search itself and the compelling need to make it. Walden chronicles spiritual growth, but the progress of this growth is not linear. It has peaks and valleys, periods of latency as well as of inspired perception.
In “Economy,” Thoreau explains his purpose in going to live at the pond. He distinguishes between the outer man—the ephemeral physical being that “is soon ploughed into the soil for compost,” and the inner man. He points out the forces that dull and subjugate the inner man, materialism and constant labor in particular. He recognizes the pervasive malaise that results from society’s suppression of what we might be—the “stereotyped but unconscious despair . . . concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.” In “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” he advises self-improvement, the cultivation of our intellectual and spiritual needs:
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake . . . by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.
The ultimate goal of the author’s experiment at Walden is not to prove the economic advantage of living simply, but rather to nurture understanding of self and of the universe.
In the “Conclusion,” Thoreau urges us to seek “our own interior . . . on the chart,” regardless of whether it proves to be good or bad, to investigate the “continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet.” Actual voyages of exploration and discovery pale by comparison to the journey inward and upward. He encourages the reader to begin right now. We tend to “esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star.” But, as the author writes in “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”:
. . . all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality which surrounds us.
Our existence occupies one moment in the continuity of time (“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in,” Thoreau writes at the end of “Where I Lived . . .”). From any particular point of existence, the universal is accessible. By living deliberately, self-reliantly, and independently in the present, we may transcend the limits of time, “walk with the Builder of the universe . . . not . . . live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by” (as Thoreau writes in his “Conclusion”).
Life at Walden Pond provides Thoreau with the opportunity to journey into himself, into nature, and into the divine, but other men may have approaches of their own, reflecting their particular conditions and circumstances. Even for Thoreau, his Walden experiment is only one expression of the spiritual impulse. As he explains in the “Conclusion,” he leaves Walden because he has “several more lives to live,” and can spare no more time for the one he has so fully described in his book. He does not prescribe living at Walden as a remedy for the spiritual ills of others; he offers it only as an example.
Thoreau uses an astonishing range of metaphors to characterize the spiritual quest. Walden Pond itself, where Thoreau’s own journey unfolds, is both real and symbolic. It represents the reality of nature, an expression of the divine, human potential for clear perception and understanding, and the mystery of the universe, which, although vast, may nevertheless be approached and understood. Thoreau’s bean-field symbolizes the author’s inner field, which must be planted, hoed, and tended. Others cultivate themselves by studying art in Boston or Rome, but Thoreau’s Transcendental self-culture takes place in the bean-field. Described in “House-Warming” as “an independent structure, standing on the ground and rising through the house to the heavens,” Thoreau’s chimney symbolizes individual aspiration toward the spiritual and infinite. As it dives into Walden’s depths, the loon that shows up repeatedly in the book stands for man in search of higher understanding. The imagery of morning and light in Walden suggests increased perception, insight, and inspiration. And the sand foliage in “Spring” represents the work of the creator, evident to man through nature.
