Cosmic Consciousness
The Monist January 18, 2022 Jonardon Ganeri
The phrase "cosmic consciousness" was coined by the English socialist, philosopher, and gay rights activist Edward Carpenter in the 1890s. Carpenter invented the term to paraphrase the teachings of an Indian sage, Ramaswami, who described a universal, all-encompassing consciousness possible for humans, a concept common among Advaita-inspired sages. Later, William James and others repurposed the phrase to argue that the cosmos itself might possess consciousness, an early formulation of cosmopsychism.