Pantheism

views updated

Pantheism

Pantheism ("all God") is a family of views espousing total immanence—that is, the essential identity of the Divine and the world. It resembles but is distinguishable from panentheism ("all in God") in which the world is part of the Divine, the Divine also transcending the world. It stands in contrast to monotheism ("one God"), which tends to see God as separate from and transcending the world. It may contrast with polytheism ("many Gods"); but polytheism and pantheism may also be combined, with the many Gods seen as varied images of the Divine Oneness.

Modern forms of pantheism have major roots in Hindu Vedanta and the Neoplatonic tradition. The conception of God of Barukh Spinoza (1623–1677) was reached by reflective analysis; God is Substance, the changeless Unity underlying the fleeting many. God is not the external creator of Nature but is Nature as source: "Nature naturing," whereas the many things are "Nature natured." God does not possess intellect, will, or freedom, though "he" could be said to be the totality of thought.

Pantheistic themes appeared in about 1790 in German and English romantic thinkers, partly influenced by Spinoza and Indian thought. The romantics' starting point was not analysis but the human feelingawareness of the Infinite Oneness that generates, permeates, and sustains the finite many. It is when we reflect on these experiences that we form specific images of God. The human imagination, its perception and creativity, are one with the Divine generative powers.

The New England Transcendentalists of the 1830s and 1840s drew upon these themes. Generally optimistic, they held a view that the world is one and one with God; the Divine Mind indwells the world in every part, and each part presents in microcosm the laws and meaning of the whole. This is especially true of the human soul, and thus the deepest human intuitions are divinely authoritative. Some of the Transcendentalists, such as Henry David Thoreau, translated these views into action against slavery.

Pantheistic elements also appear in the "metaphysical" movements of the mid-nineteenth century onward. They have roots in the visionary teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg that the world of Spirit is the ultimate reality, in Anton Mesmer's concepts of an invisible magnetic fluid permeating all things, and to some extent in Transcendentalism and Hindu ideas. Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, taught that the only reality is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestations. Matter is unreal, disease is unreal; human beings are not material but spiritual. False ideas lead to disease, whereas knowledge of the Truth heals.

Among her followers was the influential Emma Curtis Hopkins, mother of the New Thought movement. Strongly feminist, Hopkins saw the present age as the period of the Spirit or Mother-Principle, the time for the rise of women. Her students formed such groups as the Unity School of Christianity and the Church of Religious Science. They affirm God as Universal Wisdom, Love, and Truth, and the universe as the Body of God. Matter is real, but secondary; a human being is an individualized expression of God. To move from sickness to health, from poverty to prosperity, is to manifest Divine Truth.

At the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions appeared the magnetic Hindu teacher Vivekananda, who founded the Vedanta Society. Its members taught the identity of Brahman, the impersonal Absolute, with Atman, the human self. By the disciplines of study and devotion, one may pierce the veil of Maya (enchantment) that makes the world appear to be separate things, and realize that all things and persons are essentially Divine.

Aldous Huxley, Ram Dass, and others informed by Hindu ideas influenced New Age thought, an amorphous movement of the 1960s and thereafter. Ranging from psychedelic religion and neoshamanism to near-death experience and UFO movements, it rejects dualistic and mechanistic worldviews and focuses on altered states of consciousness leading to both individual and planetary transformation: full realization that the cosmos is one and permeated by the Divine.

Pantheism is supported by intuitions and mystical experiences of the universe and all within it as one and Divine. It stands in tension, however, with intuitions of individual freedom and the reality of evil. If all is God, it would seem that human choice really cannot make a difference, nor can there be any basis for opposing evil and promoting good. Thus pantheistic movements tend toward quietism. However, despite the tension, individuals such as Vivekananda and Thoreau have been inspired by the perceived sacredness of all beings to take action on behalf of the oppressed.

See alsoChristian Science; Ecospirituality; Hinduism; New Age Spirituality; New Thought; Theism; Vedanta Society.