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The Over-Soul

1841 essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Field	Value
name	"The Over-Soul"
image	Ralph Waldo Emerson by Josiah Johnson Hawes 1857.jpg
caption	Ralph Waldo Emerson by Josiah Johnson Hawes, 1857
author	Ralph Waldo Emerson
series	Essays
genre	Essay
pub_date	1841
pages	28
preceded_by	Heroism
followed_by	Circles
wikisource	Essays: First Series/The Over-Soul

"The Over-Soul" is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson first published in 1841. With the human soul as its overriding subject, several general themes are treated: (1) the existence and nature of the human soul; (2) the relationship between the soul and the personal ego; (3) the relationship of one human soul to another; and (4) the relationship of the human soul to God. The influence of Eastern religions, including Vedanta, is plainly evident, but the essay also develops ideas long present in the Western philosophical canon (e.g., in the works of Plato, Plutarch, Plotinus, Proclusall of whose writings Emerson read extensively throughout his career) and the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg.

With respect to the four themes listed above, the essay presents the following views: (1) the human soul is immortal, immensely vast, and beautiful; (2) the conscious ego is slight and limited in comparison to the soul despite the fact that humans habitually mistake their ego for their true self; (3) at some level, the souls of all people are connected, but the precise manner and degree of this connection is not spelled out; and (4) that the soul is created by and has an existence that is similar to God, or that God exists within humans.

The essay is now considered one of Emerson's greatest writings, though some scholars have argued that attempts to cast it as a keystone to understanding his work are misguided.

History

The essay includes the following passage:

For Emerson the term denotes a supreme underlying unity which transcends duality or plurality, much in keeping with the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. This non-Abrahamic interpretation of Emerson's use of the term is further supported by the fact that Emerson's Journal records in 1845 suggest that he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke's essays on the Vedas. Emerson goes on in the same essay to further articulate his view of this dichotomy between phenomenal plurality and transcendental unity:

"Over-soul" has more recently come to be used by Eastern philosophers such as Meher Baba and others as the closest English language equivalent of the Vedic concept of Paramatman. (In Sanskrit the word param means "supreme" and atman means "soul"; thus Paramatman literally means "Supreme-Soul".) The term is used frequently in discussion of Eastern metaphysics and has also entered western vernacular. In this context, the term "Over-soul" 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 said to be 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, unencumbered by past impressions (the unconditioned or liberated mind), perceives itself as the One indivisible totality, i.e. the Over-soul.

References

Richardson Jr., Robert D. ''Emerson: The Mind on Fire''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 65-66.
Harrison, John S. ''[https://archive.org/details/teachersemerson01harrgoog/page/n92/mode/2up The Teachers of Emerson]''. New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1910.
Detweiler, Robert. “The Over-Rated ‘Over-Soul.’” ''[[American Literature (journal). American Literature]]'', vol. 36, no. 1, 1964, pp. 65–68.
Over-soul, from ''Essays: First Series,'' Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841
''India in the United States: Contribution of India and Indians in the United States of America'', Sachin N. Pradhan, SP Press International, Inc., 1996, p 12.
[[Meher Baba. Baba, Meher]]. ''[https://archive.org/details/godspeaksthemeof0000mehe_e6v7/page/1/mode/1up God Speaks, The Theme of Creation and Its Purpose]''. Dodd Meade. 1955. Sec. Ed. pp. 1 ff., 156, 172
"Sanskrit: Param".

Info: Wikipedia Source

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