Showing posts with label oversoul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oversoul. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Emerson's The Over-Soul

I read Ralph Waldo Emerson's short essay, The Over-Soul and found it very interesting and very much true to my experience.  Though very much based in a Judeo-Christian view of the world (unsurprising, given that Emerson was a Unitarian Minister), his transcendent, nature-based view of the divine and of religious experience very much resonates with my own.  For example, he says, "Let man, then, learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind", making nature out to be the (or at least a) revealer of truth. 

Moreover, when he says, "We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this communication is an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life," he is very much touching upon my own experiences of the divine -- the Other that is not other, the reconciliation of a false dichotomy that is accompanied by the most amazing feeling of connection to all things, and a joy at that connection.  This is even more pronounced when he says:
The soul gives itself, alone, original, and pure, to the Lonely, Original, and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads, and speaks through it. Then is it glad, young, and nimble. It is not wise, but it sees through all things. It is not called religious, but it is innocent. It calls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, its nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which change and pass.
"I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect."   For in these feelings of ecstatic connectedness is a deep understanding of one's own flawed nature, but the perfection of that nature as well.  Akin to wabi-sabi, it is a concept that is immensely difficult, I think, for those of us who have not grown up with the concept, to grasp.  For how can this be?  Emerson answers: "I am somehow receptive of the great soul".  And if I should ever forget my part in divinity, there are reminders all around, for "the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh".

Thursday, October 4, 2012

So what do I believe, anyway? Part 2

In addition to believing in the Gaia hypothesis, I also believe in a sort of Jungian oversoul.  I believe that archetypes help to form the structure of this oversoul or collective unconscious, and that as such, they form a mythos that can help us to grasp the often slippery ideas of spirituality.  I think that myths and folktales -- as well as contemporary literature and all forms of art -- are often composed of or involve archetypal figures, and that as such, these forms of art can help us to understand metaphysical themes.  This is where things like the Tarot come in.  They don't predict the future so much as act as a conduit for us to better understand ourselves and our situations

The oversoul I believe in differs from Jung's in a critical way.  I believe that all life feeds into this oversoul -- that there aren't separate collective unconsciouses for different species the way Jung though.  In fact, I'm not sure if inanimate objects have a part in the oversoul or not.  They may, but I am rather trending toward thinking that they don't.

I have not read Emerson's The Over-soul , but I rather think I should.  Maybe that will be my next post -- what I think of that essay.