Cosmic Consciousness
The Monist January 18, 2022 DOI: 10.1093/monist/onab022 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Traces the origin of the phrase "cosmic consciousness" to Edward Carpenter's paraphrase of the Indian sage Ramaswami's teaching, and its later reinterpretation by William James as a form of cosmopsychism. |
Abstract
AbstractThe phrase “cosmic consciousness” has a surprising and fascinating history. I will show how it first enters into circulation in the writings of the remarkable Englishman Edward Carpenter (1844–1929), a socialist, philosopher, and prescient activist for gay rights and prison reform. Carpenter made a trip to India and Sri Lanka in 1890, where he spent two months sitting at the feet of Ramaswami, an Indian sage and disciple of Tilleinathan Swami. Carpenter invents the phrase in order to paraphrase Ramaswami’s teaching, which was itself a commonplace among the Advaita-inspired sages of the period, that there is in human beings the possibility of an all-encompassing consciousness (the Sanskrit phrase jñāna-ākāśa would later be offered as a translation of Carpenter’s phrase). Later still, in the writings of William James and others, the phrase acquires a new and different meaning in the idea that the cosmos itself exhibits a form of consciousness. James, indeed, uses just this phrase in his early formulation of cosmopsychism.