Monism is not Monotheism

“Listening not to me but to the Logos,

it is wise to agree that all things are one.”
Heraclitus

"Oneness is like the clear blue sky--everything arises, unfolds, and subsides within its all-compassion. Oneness is our real Self. Everything is an aspect of Oneness. Our quest to know this comes from Oneness."

Abhinavagupta (Kashmr Saivism)

"Being without passion, behold the source! Being with passion, behold the flow! The two are one--born of the same root, differently named when they appear. Both may be called mystery. Going from mystery to deeper mystery, enter the secret of life!"

Lao Tzu

"Pantheists are ‘monists’...they believe that there is only one Being, and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it."

H. P. Owen

This blog is published under the motto “Neither monotheist nor hard-polytheist, Spirit is Infinite Consciousness. Godhead is simultaneously many and one and is present throughout the natural world.” There four concepts embedded in that header that deserve amplification: Monism, Simultaneity, Immanence and Infinity. I’d like to explore each of these in greater detail in the next four posts.

The motto is a monist statement about the nature of Reality. Monism—a philosophical position quite distinct from both monotheism and polytheism—is a vital thread in many religions around the world and represents the core of the so-called "perennial philosophy" that appears cross-culturally and transhistorically. Monism is present in many forms of animism and pantheism, in the religion of ancient Egypt, in the teachings of multiple Hellenic philosophers, and in multiple schools of Hinduism.

As a Western Pagan monist, a recurrent peeve of mine is that many of the descendants of American Jews and Christians without exposure to Eastern religion and with inadequate knowledge of classical philosophy seldom have a conceptual reference point for monism and persistently confuse it with monotheism. That’s largely a phonetic accident occasioned by the "mono" root of the word, coupled with the tendency of Westerners to reduce every choice to a binary either/or. Westerners tend to think that of course one must be either monotheist or polytheist. There are far more than two choices, however, and there is more difference between monism and monotheism than there is between monotheism and polytheism. Monism is not a combination of monotheism and polytheism, but a distinct position. (To highlight this distinction, both monotheism and polytheism are necessarily theistic; monism may be theistic, but doesn't necessarily require Gods at all).

Mystical monism can be expressed as the notion that all things are “one,” but it must be kept in mind that this is oneness or unicity, a quality of being. Ancient Greek metaphysics points to it as to hen, “the unity”. The monist “one” does not refer to the number one, to something that can be counted, but to a quality of being that transcends difference. The oneness of monism is everywhere and in everything, including matter, the cosmos and the individual. It is a oneness that persists and that is not threatened by all the acts of distinction and discrimination that the human mind uses to navigate the world. It's what's really there apart from the human social mind. Its evidence includes the coherency and continuity of the universe and the phenomenon of mutual recognition. It does not cancel out apparent difference, but is coextant with it. It is a oneness that unites red and black, color and colorlessness.

Monism and polytheism go together and seem to be mutually constituting. Monism began only in polytheist cultures like those of Egypt and Greece. Today its biggest advocate is polytheist Hinduism, which articulates multiple forms of monist cosmology. The monist “one” is not a God/dess, but rather contains all Gods and is the stuff of which they, and all else, is made. I call this oneness “Godhead” to indicate that it is not a personal God, but the full awareness of all the Gods—I also frequently refer to it as Kosmos, Consciousness, or Divinity. In order for monism to assert the kind of transpersonal and paradoxical oneness that it does, it depends on internal diversity. Monism is not singularity, number one. It is is not some apparent oneness—like the undifferentiated ocean or sky. It is an actual oneness that gives rise to and accommodates all difference but that permits a cosmos of difference to congeal and persist and replicate. Its glory is that it reconciles the paradoxical, that it is a power greater than opposition. It is the preserving, linking power that pervades all things and lies at their roots; it is the power that keeps two or more opposing things in existence, recognizable to one another, and in proximity. In monism, there is no #1, but rather an unendingly unified plurality linked through essence, relationship and knowledge. Monism is ultimately about subtle connection and irreducible elegance. It is polytheistic, but it is also wholistic, about the whole.

In contrast to monism, monotheism dwells on the number one, not the quality of oneness. For the monotheist, there is but one God or Goddess and all others are false. God and creation are separate, not one in essence or destiny. (The Jewish concept of tzimtzum is an excellent illustration of the gulf between creator and creation posited by monotheism).

Monism focuses more on the essence or consciousness of Divinity, which it sees as the invariant substrate of all other things, than on the personalities of Gods and Goddesses. Monism places both the self and nature within the Divine Unity. The monist one is comprehensive, total and absolute. Monotheism, on the other hand, focuses more on the personality of its one God, who exists apart from self and nature. It is about God’s power over all else. It doesn’t exactly have a concept of “Whole,” since its God isn't dependent on creation; monotheist creation is made by God, not of Godstuff. The monotheist one God is separate and partial. Monotheism is ultimately about an irreducible division between that which is God and that which is not. The monotheist one God is obviously quite different from monist oneness.

Hard-polytheism—the belief that there are many irreconcilably distinct divine personalities with no essential relationship--multiplies Gods and Goddesses, but otherwise it perpetuates the same understandings as monotheism. Whereas monism focuses on ontology and essence, both monotheism and hard polytheism focus on personalities and power relations. Monism emphasizes the similarity in essence between Gods and human beings; both monotheism and hard polytheism dwell on the differences between Gods and humans and construct them as insurmountable. Monotheism is about a being; polytheism is about beings; monism is about Being. Monism is polytheist pantheism. For the monist, “Know thyself” means “know that you are God/dess.” In contrast, for the monotheist or hard polytheist, “Know thyself” means “know your place.”

There is a widespread misunderstanding that monism always sees diversity as “illusion” or that its oneness is just one God putting on different masks. There’s also a misconception that the experience of oneness depends on ego negation. Those are misunderstandings promulgated by Advaita Vedanta, which is only one of many monist philosophies within Hinduism (an atypical but a elite one that has had disproportionate influence in the Western reception of Hinduism and monist mysticism in both popular and scholarly circles). I will discuss the concept of “illusion” when I write about simultaneity.

My own monism is grounded in my personal experience and more than twenty years of contemplative practice. When I was 17 years old, I had a profound experience that convinced me of the reality of monism. I had the experience in a Hindu context, but its implications eventually led me to Western Paganism. In many ways, my spiritual life since then has been a progressive “unpacking” of that experience and a quest for its repetition. My ultimate goal is to be permanently established in it.

The experience is very difficult to relate. It is simultaneously the most influential experience I have had and the most elusive of expression. In a moment of intensely praying to “see” God, all barriers and distinctions seemed to unexpectedly fall away. In an instant, I felt, saw and identified with EVERYTHING. I seemed to both behold the universe and to hold it all within me. My sensory awareness was saturated and I felt thoroughly embodied, yet was boundless and blissful. It felt as though the universe opened up and that I was able to behold everything at once. I felt myself infinite and timeless, at utter peace. Yet awareness and sensation were inestimably heightened. Each of my senses seemed somehow liberated from their bounds: I saw infinitely, smelled, infinitely, tasted infinitely… I seemed to behold my whole life and all lives, everything in time and space. In that moment, all was right with the world, I was thoroughly divine, and though I was self-aware, I was self-aware in a multitude of centers and there was no separation between me and anything else. There was no conflict between light and dark, good and evil, past and future. I seemed to view colors and shapes that I’d never seen; I seemed to see every living thing and be united with them all. I knew myself—and the selves of all—to be God/dess.

I say “difficult to relate,” but it is in fact impossible. Any effort is paltry, any attempt a weak contrivance. The experience became my reference point for understanding mystical descriptions and objectives. I recognize when others are trying to describe something similar—in mystical literature or the annals of psychedelic experience—but I have seen no one capture the essence of the experience itself. In that state, I was actively united with everything and knew everything and experienced everything at once, without bias or preference for any part. Its effect was to induce cathartic weeping, and in its wake I felt exceptionally clean and clear. I have had this experience twice more since I was seventeen. It is always self-confirming, beyond reason, indescribable.

When I think of the nature of the Divine, or Infinity, or of Bliss—I think of what I experienced that January day more than twenty years ago. It felt timeless—both longer than my entire life and shorter than its actual duration, which could not have been more than half a minute (and probably much less). In those few seconds, I experienced what I regard as the Divine’s true self-introduction to me; Godhead said “this is what I am” and held up a mirror to me to show me what I am, too—not theoretically, but experientially. After that experience, I know exactly what I seek, exactly what the destiny of my soul is. To borrow idioms, I have been to “heaven” and know what to expect. That moment is the source of everything I have since become, of everything I know. That moment is my one guru, my one teacher. My religious quest is to not only return to that state, but to dwell in it consciously without break. I believe, in fact, that that is the goal and purpose of spiritual evolution. Years later, I can call the experience to mind and almost taste it. I have had the experience a total of three times, but I cannot induce it and I do not dwell in it. For me, it is the measure of Truth and the only sort of abiding fulfillment.

Visionary experience is useful in spiritual life if it imparts knowledge or kicks off a process of discovery and growth. That is, it’s worthwhile if it leads to something worthwhile. It is also useful if it shows us a goal or telos. Otherwise, it is little more than a waking dream. My experience of the Universal Form filled me with a deep conviction about the nature of Reality, the primacy of consciousness, and the universal mystical telos of unity in diversity. It has illuminated my awareness and guided my experience ever since. Gods are many, Godhead is unicity; neither can be counted.

Note: The language around monist discourse is infamously thorny. Wikipedia on Monism will provide a toe-dip into this linguistic hotbed. In Wikipedia terms, my own monism is closest to dialectical monism (a la Empedocles or Kashmir Saivism), not Advaitin and only somewhat Neoplatonic. Ideational work with monism is valuable for spiritual experience; philosophical and semantic hairsplitting is not. Perceiving and expressing monist Truth is a different task from debating verbal formulations or understanding and comparing monist teachings.