Friday, October 19, 2018

"There is no God"

"There Is No God. This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken."
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab, Canto VII, Note 13


I just saw this quote today and I'm struck by how it contemplates the concept of an "oversoul", similar to C.G. Jung and John Steinbeck (among hundreds more intellectuals, poets and scholars).  Did Shelley come upon this revelation on his own, or was he influenced?  This seems to prefigure the Human Potential Movement and the whole New Age Movement itself, and even points to the rather recent idea in science and spirituality that the universe itself is intelligent.