PANTHEISM
What exactly is pantheism??? Pantheism comes from the Greek word pan (all) theos (god/divine), implying that all-is-god… that the universe is divine or sacred. Only immature and unevolved religionists could suggest that pantheism is the worship of nature, or the material world. Pantheistic thinking can be found in many of the philosophically developed ancient cultures such as the Daoist and Hindu East – to the Greek and Kabbalistic Middle East and West. In more modern times, Baruch Spinoza, the Dutch-Jewish renegade, was credited with popularizing monism (“oneness” view of the universe) in the West. In the last century, Albert Einstein’s views of the universe were strikingly pantheistic.
Some have suggested that pantheism is synonymous and/or compatible with Monism and Panpsychism. Monism is a “oneness” philosophy that upholds only one essential and unifying substance in the universe. The Hindu form of monism, or Advaita Vedanta (Sanskrit for ‘non-dualism’), believes in the concept of one infinite, undifferentiated, impersonal, divine essence of bliss and consciousness (satchitananda) which is called Brahman. This Brahman is said to be the only reality. Panpsychism comes from the Greek word meaning ‘all-is-soul’ (or mind), i.e. all is consciousness. Panpsychism is interesting in that it makes consciousness the unifying field, creative force, and vital energy of all existence. All of these philosophies stress a non-dualistic, or better stated, a unified understanding of the universe. Scientifically-inclined monists generally understand matter to be ultimately composed of energy, and energy or consciousness becomes that “one substance” or glue tying the world together in an interconnected oneness. Pantheism and monism makes more sense to me as we find our modern world smaller and more interconnected.
