A Japanese term is _Dai Zikaku_. The Zen sect of Japanese Buddhists say
_Daigo Tettei_, and one who has attained to this superior phase of
consciousness is called Sho-Nin, meaning literally "above man."

Emerson, the great American seer, expressed this Nameless One, as The
Oversoul, and Herbert Spencer, the intellectual giant of England, used the
term Universal Energy.

Emerson was a seer; Spencer was a scientist, which word, until recently,
was a synonym for materialist.

But what are words?

Mere symbols of consciousness, and subject to change and evolvement, as
man's consciousness evolves. The student of truth will recognize in these
different words, exactly the same meaning. The "eternal energy from which
all things proceed" is a phrase identical with "The Oversoul," or "The
Absolute," from which all manifestation comes.

Man's evolution, then, is an evolution in consciousness, from the
subjective _awareness_ of the monad to a realization of the entire cosmos.

Each phase of life is a specific degree of consciousness and each
successive degree brings the individual nearer to the realization of the
_sum_ of all degrees of consciousness, into godhood--the highest degree
which we can conceive.

Such, briefly, is a statement of that phenomenon which is attracting the
attention of occidental students of psychology, and which has been