In his 1841 essay “The Over-Soul”, Emerson describes a unity within which every person’s particular being is contained and made one with all others. In moments of insight the individual opens to it and knows truth not by reasoning but by revelation. The idea draws on Neoplatonism and on the Upaniṣads.
Over-Soul
Emerson’s name for the universal mind in which every soul participates.
Also: Oversoul