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Emerson, Ralph Waldo - History - There is one mind common to all individual men
Identifier
018611
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Ralph Waldo Emerson – History
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate.
What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent… of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation.
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.
Why should we make account of time, or of magnitude or of form? The soul knows them not….
Beautifully shines a spirit through the bruteness and toughness of matter. Alone omnipotent, it converts all things to its own end