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Oceanic Unity
Oceanic as a term is derived from Freud's correspondence with Romain Roll and. Rolland defines the Oceanic feeling as "a sensation of 'eternity', a feeling of something limitless, unbounded - as it were, 'oceanic'" Freud goes onto describe it as "a feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being one with the external world as a whole. Freud proceeds to compare this feeling with the height of being in love, in which a man may feel that he is one with his beloved."

Oceanic Unity encompasses this idea of oceanic feeling in relation to the the cosmos and is linked strongly to the transcendental sublime experience, transcending the self and achieving a state of oneness with the cosmos. This is nicely articulated by the account of Admiral Byrd who, in 1934, took a solitary posting to a forward weather base in the Antarctic. His diary entry from the  14th April reads:"'Took my daily walk at 4p.m. today in 89degrees of frost... I paused to listen to the silence... The day was dying, the night being born - but with great peace. Here were imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence - a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres, perhaps.""It was enough to catch that rhythm, momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of man's oneness with the universe. the conviction came that that rhythm was too orderly, too harmonious, too perfect to be a product of blind chance - that, therefore, there must be purpose in the whole and that man was part of that whole and not an accidental off-shoot. It was a feeling that transcended reason; that went to the heart of man's despair and found it groundless. The universe was a cosmos, not a chaos; man was as rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the day and night.' Richard E Byrd - Alone (London, 1958) p 62-63"