Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun In the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a spiritual essence or vital force in the universe in which all souls participate and that therefore transcends individual consciousness.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The divine spiritual unity of things; God as the spiritual unity of all being and the source of spiritual illumination: used by Emerson, without precise definition, as a philosophical conception.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun rare The all-containing soul.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun philosophy A
supreme reality or mind; thespiritual unity of allbeing .
Etymologies
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Examples
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On Harmony a computer "oversoul" was left orbiting the planet, keeping the people from destroying themselves on a massive scale.
Earthborn by Orson Scott Card John Loyd 2009
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The oversoul is a guiding presence within each individual of a species, yet it’s greater than the individuals as separate entities.
When Animals Speak Penelope Smith 2009
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Thus, the "newness of life", of which St. Paul speaks, was conceived by some as a superadded entity, a kind of oversoul sublimating the "natural man" into a higher species.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 14: Simony-Tournon 1840-1916 1913
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Athenian ideal inspired the citizens so that they gave their bodies for the commonwealth, it seems to have been conceived of as a kind of oversoul, a being made up of immortal deeds and heroic spirits, influencing the living, a life within their life, molding their spirits to its likeness.
The National Being Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity George William Russell 1901
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The true self is a principle in you superior to both these natural characters, a kind of oversoul, as Emerson puts it.
The Essentials of Spirituality Felix Adler 1892
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There was no pretense, no "oversoul" in her emotion now.
The Second Generation David Graham Phillips 1889
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While driving around town upon his arrival in Chicago in 1985, Obama found himself sharing magically in the black oversoul, as he recounts in Dreams:
Deconstructing Obama Jack Cashill 2011
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There is a ‘bardo’ world where our souls go between here and the oversoul home.
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While driving around town upon his arrival in Chicago in 1985, Obama found himself sharing magically in the black oversoul, as he recounts in Dreams:
Deconstructing Obama Jack Cashill 2011
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A time when so much was on the line for so many yet amidst all the turmoil the culture reawakened (green again) to promises of another better, perhaps “older” way to live: the ancient message of sanity and sanctity re-connected by the Transcendentalist transformers of our time (Kerouac, Ginsburg Snyder, et. al) to the greater oversoul humming and glowing in the works of Emerson and Thoreau.
gary snyder | smokey the bear sutra « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2008
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