Over-soul
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The Over-soul is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson which was first published in 1841.
"Over-soul" as a term has more recently come to be regarded by eastern philosophers such as Meher Baba as the closest English language approximation of the Hindu Paramatma or Brahman (Vedantic), and is used frequently in discussion of eastern metaphysics. The term is used extensively in this context in Meher Baba's book God Speaks. [1]
In this context, the term is understood as the collective indivisible Soul, of which all individual souls or identities are included. The experience of this underlying reality of the indivisible "I am" state of the Over-soul is veiled from the human mind by sanskaras, or impressions, acquired over the course of evolution and reincarnation. Such past impressions form a kind of sheath between the Over-soul and its true identity, as they give rise to the tendency of identification with the gross differentiated body. Thus the world, as apperceived through the impressions of the past appears plural, while reality experienced in the present, unemcombered by past impressions (the unconditioned or liberated mind), perceives itself as the One indivisible totality.
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[edit] History
The phrase originates with Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay by that name.
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- The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart. [2]
For Emerson the term appears to denote a supreme underlying unity which transcends duality or plurality, much in keeping with the eastern philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. This non-Abrahamic interpretation Emerson's use of the term is further supported by the fact that Emerson's Journal records in 1845 that he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke's Essays on the Vedas. [3] Emerson goes on in the same essay to further articulate his view of this dichotomy between phenomenal plurality and transcendental unity:
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- We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.[4]
[edit] Analogous concepts
The eighth century Indian philosopher Adi Shankara refers to Brahman, i.e. the indivisible "I am" state. Adi Shankara concludes that Atman (individual self) is in fact One with Brahman (the Absolute, or singular transcendental Self). For Shankara, what shields man's consciousness from this reality is maya or the principle of ignorance. Brahman thus closely correlates with the western concept of the Over-soul.
Carl Jung posited the existence of a "collective unconscious" and in his later writing the "collective psychology." This concept could be construed to be somewhat analogous to the Over-soul (an underlying collective Self) if Jung is interpreted to be speaking transcendentally. Other interpretations of Jung, however, would not lead to such a conclusion.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ "God Speaks" Meher Baba, Dodd Meade. 1955.
- ^ "The Over-Soul," Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Essays: First Series (1841)
- ^ Sachin N. Pradhan, India in the United States: Contribution of India and Indians in the United States of America, Bethesda, MD: SP Press International, Inc., 1996, p 12.
- ^ The Over-Soul from Essays: First Series (1841)
