“According to Emerson’s doctrine, there is no impenetrable wall, ‘no screen or ceiling,’ between the individual soul and the oversoul:

‘There is no bar or wall in the soul where man . . . ceases and God . . . begins.  The walls are taken away.  We lie open on one side to the depth of spiritual nature.’

“Like his masters, Plato and Plotinus, Emerson thinks of this oversoul, this universal reason, as the interpenetrating life and power and intelligence in nature, which is ‘the perennial miracle’ of spirit.  Nature is alive through the same oversoul which is within us.  At the center of nature, as at the center of man’s soul, one supreme mind is actively present, is showing its unvarying laws, and is weaving the web, which partly conceals and partly reveals the hidden-working spirit.  There is one common, penetrating pulse of nature and spirit — ‘the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat which makes the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood, and the sap of trees.'”

“Since Emerson’s day there have been many interpretations of ultimate reality in terms of oversoul.  William James concludes that ‘continuous and co-terminus’ with our personal selves there is a ‘wider Self through which saving experiences come.’  R. M. Bucke calls this ultimate reality ‘cosmic consciousness’ and gives many illustrations of its influence.  F. W. H. Myers worked out in much detail a doctrine of the subliminal self, from which, he holds, come inspirations, revelations, and a vast number of extraordinary experiences and manifestations.   There are, furthermore, in contemporary thought, many popular varieties of oversoul doctrine.”

–Rufus Jones in an essay called “Oversoul”

Rufus Matthew Jones (Jan. 25, 1863 – June 16, 1948), Haverford, Pa.) one of the most respected U.S. Quakers of his time, who wrote extensively on Christian mysticism and helped found the American Friends Service Committee.