The term transcendentalism began to be used in the 1820s to describe a movement of religious thinkers, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who described spiritual life as one that was much more intuitive to people than formal religions had hitherto taught. The word itself appears to have reflected the life of the Buddha when he transcended his own existence to ascend to Nirvana. Emerson and others led a movement called Unitarian Universalism which placed spirituality in a world view that was closer to European Romanticism and neo-Platonism than the mainstream of religious thought at that time. Part of the universalist approach to spiritual life meant accepting the wisdom and truths of religions outside of one's own direct experience. In certain ways, this 19th-century movement was a precursor to the New Age beliefs that would take off over a century later.
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