Early
afternoon. You are about to work out a more specific definition to work from in
terms of Panentheism and the soul. – Amorella
** **
Continued in Wikipedia: [Pantheism in the Greater World]
In Europe
Neoplatonism is
polytheistic and panentheistic. Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable
transcendent "God" (The One) of which subsequent realities were
emanations. From the One emanates the Divine Mind (Nous) and the Cosmic Soul
(Psyche).
Neoplatonists such as lamblichus attempted to reconcile this perspective
by adding another hypostasis above the original monad of force or Dunamis. This
new all-pervasive monad encompassed all creation and its original uncreated
emanations.
Modern philosophy
For Spinoza, our universe (cosmos) is a mode under two
attributes of Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes, which
are not present in our world. According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers,
when Spinoza wrote "Deus sive Natura" (God or Nature) Spinoza did not
mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that
God's transcendence was attested by his infinitely many attributes, and that
two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's
immanence.
Furthermore, Martial Gueoult suggested the term
"Panentheism", rather than "Pantheism" to describe
Spinoza’s view of the relation between God and the world. The world is not God,
but it is, in a strong sense, "in" God.
The German philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832)
seeking to reconcile monotheism and pantheism, coined the term panentheism
("all in God") in 1828. This conception of God influenced New England
transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. The term was popularized by
Charles Hartshorne in his development of process
theology and has also been closely identified with the New Thought. The
formalization of this term in the West in the 18th century was not new;
philosophical treatises had been written on it in the context of Hinduism for
millennia.
Beginning in the 1940s, Hartshorne examined numerous conceptions
of God. He reviewed and discarded pantheism, deism, and pandeism in favor of
panentheism, finding that such a "doctrine contains all of deism and
pandeism except their arbitrary negations." Hartshorne formulated God as a
being who could become "more perfect": He has absolute perfection in
categories for which absolute perfection is possible, and relative perfection
(i.e., is superior to all others) in categories for which perfection cannot be
precisely determined.
Panentheism was a major force in the Unitarian church for a long
time, based on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s concept of the Oversoul. This survives today as the panentheistic religion,
Oversoul. Charles Hartshorne, who conjoined process theology with panentheism,
maintained a lifelong membership in the Methodist church but was also a
Unitarian.
Hinduism
Earliest reference to panentheistic thought in Hindu philosophy is
in a creation myth contained in the later section of Rig Veda called the
Purusha Sukta, which was compiled before 1100 BCE. The Purusha Sukta gives a
description of the spiritual unity of the cosmos. It presents the nature of
Purusha or the cosmic being as both immanent in the manifested world and yet
transcendent to it. From this being the sukta holds, the original creative will proceeds, by which this vast universe is projected in
space and time.
Panentheism is also expressed in the Bhagavad Gita. In verse
IX.4, Krishna states:
By Me all this universe is pervaded through My unmanifested
form.
All beings abide in Me but I do not abide in them.
In Kashmir Shaicism, all things are believed to be a
manifestation of Universal Consciousness (Cit or Brahman). So from the point of
view of this school, the phenomenal world (Śakti) is real, and it exists
and has its being in Consciousness (Cit). Thus, Kashmir Shaivism is also
propounding of theistic monism or panentheism.
Shaktism, or Tantra, is regarded as an Indian prototype of
Panentheism. Shakti is considered to be the cosmos itself – she is the
embodiment of energy and dynamism, and the motivating force behind all action
and existence in the material universe. Shiva is her transcendent masculine
aspect, providing the divine ground of all being. "There is no Shiva
without Shakti, or Shakti without Shiva. The two [...] in themselves are
One." Thus, it is She who becomes the time and space, the cosmos, it is
She who becomes the five elements, and thus all animate life and inanimate
forms. She is the primordial energy that holds all creation and destruction,
all cycles of birth and death, all laws of cause and effect within Herself, and
yet is greater than the sum total of all these. She is transcendent, but
becomes immanent as the cosmos (Mula Prakriti). She, the Primordial Energy,
directly becomes Matter.
Sikhism
Ik Oankar Satnaam KartaaPurakh Nirbhau Nirvair AkaalMoorat
Ajooni Saibhan GurPrasad
One Universal Creator God, Truth is his Name, Creative Being
Personified, No Fear, No Hatred, Image Of The Timeless One, Beyond Birth, Self
Existent, By Guru's Grace.
Guru Arjan, the fifth guru of Sikhs, says, "God is beyond
colour and form, yet His/Her presence is clearly visible" (Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 74), and "Nanak's Lord transcends the world
as well as the scriptures of the east and the west, and yet He/She is clearly
manifest" (Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 397).
Knowledge
of the ultimate Reality is not a matter for reason; it comes by revelation of
the ultimate reality through nadar (grace) and by anubhave (mystical
experience). Says Guru Nanak; "budhi pathi na paiai bahu chaturaiai
bhai milai mani bhane." This translates to "He/She is not
accessible through intellect, or through mere scholarship or cleverness at
argument; He/She is met, when He/She pleases, through devotion" (GG, 436).
Guru Nanak prefixed the numeral one (ik) to it, making it Ik
Oankar or Ek Oankar to stress God's oneness. God is named and known only
through his Own immanent nature. The only name which can be said to truly fit
God's transcendent state is SatNam ( Sat Sanskrit, Truth), the changeless and
timeless Reality. God is transcendent and all-pervasive at the same time.
Transcendence and immanence are two aspects of the same single Supreme Reality.
The Reality is immanent in the entire creation, but the creation as a whole
fails to contain God fully. As says Guru Tegh Bahadur, Nanak IX, "He has
himself spread out His/Her Own “maya” (worldly illusion) which He oversees;
many different forms He assumes in many colours, yet He stays independent of
all" (GG, 537).
Islam
Several Sufi saints and thinkers, primarily Ibn Arabi, held
beliefs that have been considered panentheistic. These notions later took shape
in the theory of wahdat ul-wujud (the Unity of All Things). Some Sufi Orders,
notably the Bektashis and the Universal Sufi movement, continue to espouse panentheistic
beliefs. . . .
Judaism
While mainstream Rabbinic Judaism is classically monotheistic,
and follows in the footsteps of Maimonides, the panentheistic conception of God
can be found among certain mystical Jewish traditions. A leading scholar of
Kabbalah, Moshe Idel ascribes this doctrine to the kabbalistic system of Moses
ben Jacob Cordovero (1522–1570) and in the eighteenth century to the Baal Shem
Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, as well as his contemporaries, Rabbi Dov
Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch, and Menahem Mendel, the Maggid of Bar. . . .
. . . According to Hasidism, the infinite Ein Sof is incorporeal
and exists in a state that is both transcendent and immanent. This appears to
be the view of non-Hasidic Rabbi Chaim of Volozhim, as well. Many scholars
would argue that "panentheism" is the best single-word description of
the philosophical theology of Baruch Spinoza. Aspects of panentheism are also
evident in the theology of Reconstructionist Judaism as presented in the
writings of Mordecai Kaplan, who was strongly influenced by Spinoza.
Gnosticism
In his Dictionary of Gnosticism, Andrew Phillip Smith has
written that some branches of Gnosticism teach a panentheistic view of reality,
and hold to the belief that God exists in the visible world only as sparks of
spiritual "light". The goal of human existence is to know the sparks
within oneself in order to return to God, who is in the Fullness (or Pleroma).
. . .
. . . Valentinian Gnosticism teaches that matter came about
through emanations of the supreme being, and to some this event is held to be
more accidental than intentional. To other Gnostics, these emanations are akin
to the Sephirot of the Kabbalists; they are deliberate manifestations of a
transcendent God through a complex system of intermediaries.
Buddhism
The Reverend Zen Master Soyen Shaku was the first Zen Buddhist
Abbot to tour the United States in 1905-6. He wrote a series of essays
collected into the book Zen For Americans. In the essay titled "The
God Conception of Buddhism" he attempts to explain how a Buddhist looks at
the ultimate without an anthropomorphic God figure while still being able to
relate to the term God in a Buddhist sense:
At the outset, let me state that Buddhism is not atheistic as
the term is ordinarily understood. It has certainly a God, the highest reality
and truth, through which and in which this universe exists. However, the
followers of Buddhism usually avoid the term God, for it savors so much of
Christianity, whose spirit is not always exactly in accord with the Buddhist interpretation
of religious experience. Again, Buddhism is not pantheistic in the sense that
it identifies the universe with God. On the other hand, the Buddhist God is
absolute and transcendent; this world, being merely its manifestation, is
necessarily fragmental and imperfect. To define more exactly the Buddhist
notion of the highest being, it may be convenient to borrow the term very
happily coined by a modern German scholar, "panentheism," according
to which God is πᾶν καὶ ἕν (all and one) and more than the totality of
existence.
Selected and edited (to my main working points) from Wikipedia – panentheism
** **
1630
hours. After having gone over this material I am more set internally (though
wordlessly) on a definition of panentheism in terms of how Amorella’s ‘soul
characters’ would fit into this philosophical concept.
The concept flows into your heart as a rich
pudding, a liner for what you have considered before in your life. Would you
have known and understood what you know now (conceptually on the subject) you
feel you would have been better off rejecting ‘The Apostles Creed’ before
becoming an official member of the First Presbyterian Church in Westerville
when you were twelve years old. – Amorella
1639 hours. I am reminded of Shakespeare’s character
MacBeth and how, had he died tripping on the stairs before killing King Duncan
both he and Duncan would have been better off and so would Lady MacBeth for
that matter. No murder and its consequences would have taken place, i.e. no
tragedy.
In here spirits have less fictional
concerns. How is it to see through the spirit eye of Foretoken? Let me show
you, boy. – Amorella
‘Eye’ Spirit – Amorella
1726
hours. Something ‘flew’ through my head on image and reality, being and nonbeing,
a paperclip – design and function – something to the effect. The soul is the
function the material body the design, the function comes first and cannot ‘materialize’
without the body, one the soul has a body it has form – the form cannot be
taken away from the function. Okay, this doesn’t make complete sense (a rough
draft) but this or something akin to it ‘flew’ through my mind, so to speak. –
rho
You picked up the gist, more than I thought
you might. Let it settle. Later, we can put this to work with Foretoken better
showing Merlyn who he is. – Amorella
1733
hours. This basically has to do with ‘form following function’ but it is the
other way around, in the spirit world ‘function is followed by form’. Perhaps
function is one or two-dimensional spiritual inertia until form is followed three
and four dimensionally. The inertia is no longer in a state of rest. A straight
line, so to speak, can become a three-dimensional wall with four dimensions in
that it can now follow the second law of thermodynamics as well as the other
two.
** **
The
first law, also known as Law of Conservation of Energy,
states that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system.
The
second law of thermodynamics
states that the entropy
of any isolated system always increases.
The
third law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of a system approaches a
constant value as the temperature
approaches absolute zero.
Selected from - https://www.boundlessDOTcom/chemistry/textbooks/boundless-chemistry-textbook/thermodynamics-17/the-laws-of-thermodynamics-123/the-three-laws-of-thermodynamics-496-3601/
** **
Post. - Amorella
1756 hours. This is very cool. Most cool. Most 'Beat' cool. In the groove cool. Amen. - rho
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