Pantheism vs Panentheism

[Windwalker]

The world is illusion.
Brahman alone is real.
Brahman is the world.

 

[Willamena]

The world is illusion.
Brahman alone is real.
Brahman is the world.

And that's pantheism.

 

[Ouroboros]

I, for one (namely me), sincerely believe it is.

I think so too.

Simply because if it's true that consciousness emerges from the biological parts and processes, even if it's an "illusion", it is still an experience more than just parts flying around and doing things. The wholeness of the experience of awareness is more than just a sum of the parts.

 

[Windwalker]

And that's pantheism.

No, this is pantheism:

"The world is illusion.
Brahman alone is real."

The last sentence is nonduality, "Brahman is the world". You see, the first sentence says the world is illusion, and Emptiness alone is real, but the world is real, which is a paradoxical contradiction to the first statement. It is saying the world is real. Brahman is the world. But it's real only in first seeing Brahman and the illusion of the world we perceive.

This explains that quote better

Ramana, echoing Shankara, used to say:

The world is illusory;
Brahman alone is real;
Brahman is the world.

The world is illusory, which means you are not any object at all -- nothing that can be seen is ultimately real. You are neti, neti, not this not that. And under no circumstance should you base your salvation on that which is finite, temporal, passing, illusory, suffering-enhancing and agony-inducing.

Brahman alone is real, the Self (unqualified Brahman-Atman) alone is real -- the pure Witness, the timeless unborn, the formless Seer, the radical I-I, radiant Emptiness -- is what is real and all that is real. It is your condition, your nature, your essence, your present and your future, your desire and your destiny, and yet it is always ever-present as pure Presence, the alone that is Alone.

Brahman is the world, Emptiness and Form are not two. After you realize that the manifest world is illusory, and after you realize that Brahman alone is real, then you can see that the absolute and the relative are not-two or nondual, then you can see that nirvana and samsara are not-two, then you realize that the Seer and everything are not-two, Brahman and the world are not-two -- all of which really means the sound of those birds singing!...
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From here: Wilber on Advaita Vedanta - Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality

 

[Willamena]

No, this is pantheism:

"The world is illusion.
Brahman alone is real."

The last sentence is nonduality, "Brahman is the world". You see, the first sentence says the world is illusion, and Emptiness alone is real, but the world is real, which is a paradoxical contradiction to the first statement. It is saying the world is real. Brahman is the world. But it's real only in first seeing Brahman and the illusion of the world we perceive.

Brahman is the world (illusion, materialist or concrete, per individual preference). Or it isn't. If it isn't, it is more than the world (dualistic realism); if it is, it is the world. In this, I agree with Sum.

If you don't recognize Brahman as illusory, as Mara, as the no-object and no-subject, as the Atman, then where is the non-duality? Brahman is the world.

I think the distinction between pantheism and panentheism for the non-dualist is minor. I don't think it relies on a not-dualism. I think that stresses a point that misses the point.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Brahman is the world (illusion, materialist or concrete, per individual preference). Or it isn't. If it isn't, it is more than the world (dualistic realism); if it is, it is the world. In this, I agree with Sum.

If you don't recognize Brahman as illusory, as Mara, as the no-object and no-subject, as the Atman, then where is the non-duality? Brahman is the world.

I think the distinction between pantheism and panentheism for the non-dualist is minor. I don't think it relies on a not-dualism. I think that stresses a point that misses the point.

I absolutely agree - to deny Brahman is to deny non-duality. Not only that, but I'd think denying Brahman is to deny existence itself.

For your last paragraph: Does this pretty much mean panentheism is a spiritual pantheism?

 

[idav]

I addressed this in a later edit to my post which we apparently cross-posted as you were responding while I was editing. What I added which I'll put here instead was this:

Monism is subtle dualism because it creates a dichotomy between samsara and Nirvana, between the phenomenal world and ultimate reality. They are still separated. That's the point. It's not integrating them, which is what nonduality does.

So yes, they "deal" with phenomenal reality by calling it an illusion of form. That is what makes it a subtle dualism, as Nagarjuna pointed out. It doesn't address the relationship between form and formless, between emptiness and the phenomenal world, between the relative and the Absolute. It simply calls the phenomenal world false. Thereby creating a dichotomy, and hence it is dualistic, True/False.

Nonduality on the other hand says "True/True/False/False", or something like that. The absolute and the relative are both true at the same moment. It embraces both monism and dualism as true, and themselves only partial descriptions of ultimate reality.

I don't think pantheism is against non-duality but panentheism says something is greater and therefore dualistic. Creating a dichotomy doesn't make it dualistic, the dichotomy is created by acknowledging the transformations that ultimately come from one source. Recognizing that the dichotomy is false gets passed dualism. The world, existence, isn't false, just illusory which takes knowledge to see through to the real.

 

[Willamena]

For your last paragraph: Does this pretty much mean panentheism is a spiritual pantheism?

I think they are just complementary images of the world. Either can be 'spiritual,' in that people find satisfaction in their place in the whole.

 

[Ouroboros]

I think they are just complementary images of the world. Either can be 'spiritual,' in that people find satisfaction in their place in the whole.

Agree.

Being spiritual is more (or different) than participating in specific "spiritual activities." Any daily ordinary routine can be spiritual and uplifting for one's own "spirit". For instance, you can contemplate life and existence while listening to music or doing dishes. You can feel exaltation and excitement eating food that's been prepared right and that tastes amazing. You can feel part of a community by being on a forum like this one and posting random thoughts like I do.

 

[Willamena]

Agree.

Being spiritual is more (or different) than participating in specific "spiritual activities." Any daily ordinary routine can be spiritual and uplifting for one's own "spirit". For instance, you can contemplate life and existence while listening to music or doing dishes. You can feel exaltation and excitement eating food that's been prepared right and that tastes amazing. You can feel part of a community by being on a forum like this one and posting random thoughts like I do.

Right. Engagement that is informed by the sacred: that is my understanding of "spiritual," as well. Pantheism and panentheism are metaphysical images, and spiritual applies there in engagement of the image.

 

[Ouroboros]

Right. Engagement that is informed by the sacred: that is my understanding of "spiritual," as well. Pantheism and panentheism are metaphysical images, and spiritual applies there in engagement of the image.

Well put. Spirituality is to engage the image, I like that.

 

[Sundance]

I dig much of what's being said here. Allow me, if y'all will, to put out a thought: how do you envision the universe? As merely matter? Non-matter? Both? I wanna know.

 

[Windwalker]

I dig much of what's being said here. Allow me, if y'all will, to put out a thought: how do you envision the universe? As merely matter? Non-matter? Both? I wanna know.

I view as matter, which is Spirit manifest. But I see and experience Spirit in everything. I understand it with the mind, and with the soul.

 

[nash8]

1. I ask again... Pan means "everything" so, how can "everything" be in God, wouldn't that imply there is more than everything, in which case it never really was everything in the first place?

2. Would you say it is pantheistic or panentheistic to believe that the All is God's body and there is only One Consciousness which pertains to the All together? (however this all can be and is, by perception, infinitely divided)

Holographic universe theory. You take any piece of the whole, and you essentially get a lower resolution of the whole. Everything is a part of God, while at the same time, every part of God is God, and still at the same time the Whole is God too.

All different, but yet all the same.

 

[Orbit]

Panentheism is paradoxical. It means God is both wholly transcendent, and wholly immanent. That you cannot understand it with reason is a good thing. If it could be understood with reason, it would be scientific, like pantheism, or monism is. Panentheism is nondualist, which means it renders both dualism and monism unproblematic. It is not an intellectual realization. It is a lived realization that can hold such perspectives at will, without conflict or contradiction. Panentheism is not a rational proposition. It's an expression of theism in the context of nonduality (as opposed to monism).

Can you say a bit more about that last sentence, explain a bit?

 

[Willamena]

I dig much of what's being said here. Allow me, if y'all will, to put out a thought: how do you envision the universe? As merely matter? Non-matter? Both? I wanna know.

My pantheistic image is of a world that is substantially information. 'Matter' and other are information. I am information: informing and informed by the world.

 

[Windwalker]

Can you say a bit more about that last sentence, explain a bit?

Sure. My last sentence was that Panentheism is an expression of theism in the context of nonduality, as opposed to monism. Both theism and monism (or pantheism) are dualistic. The latter is a less obvious dualism, but still duality itself because it is saying that "oneness" in the true nature of reality, excluding the many. It is along the same thing as saying Emptiness is the Absolute, that we should flee samsara and seek nirvana. That you exclude the world in finding Source. That's dualistic, saying it's "this, and not that".

Theism is radically dualistic in that likewise says God is outside the natural world, and the world is outside of God, save for occasional moments of supernatural interventions, punching a hole down from heaven above into the mortal plane of existence. It chokes on understandings which saying things like "The kingdom of heaven is inside you".

Where panentheism has a home in nonduality, is that nonduality sees that emptiness is none other than form and form is none other than emptiness. There is not one, and not two. Panentheism speaks of God in this light, that Emptiness and Form, God and Creation, are 'not one, not two'. Nothing is reduced to the other. And that's the key, I believe. It is an aperspectival view of unfolding reality in the timeless now.

 

[Willamena]

Sure. My last sentence was that Panentheism is an expression of theism in the context of nonduality, as opposed to monism. Both theism and monism (or pantheism) are dualistic. The latter is a less obvious dualism, but still duality itself because it is saying that "oneness" in the true nature of reality, excluding the many. It is along the same thing as saying Emptiness is the Absolute, that we should flee samsara and seek nirvana. That you exclude the world in finding Source. That's dualistic, saying it's "this, and not that".

Theism is radically dualistic in that likewise says God is outside the natural world, and the world is outside of God, save for occasional moments of supernatural interventions, punching a hole down from heaven above into the mortal plane of existence. It chokes on understandings which saying things like "The kingdom of heaven is inside you".

Where panentheism has a home in nonduality, is that nonduality sees that emptiness is none other than form and form is none other than emptiness. There is not one, and not two. Panentheism speaks of God in this light, that Emptiness and Form, God and Creation, are 'not one, not two'. Nothing is reduced to the other. And that's the key, I believe. It is an aperspectival view of unfolding reality in the timeless now.

You've described nonduality--how do you see panentheism relating to that?

I ask (and sorry if I've asked before and forgot, but this question sounds familiar) because I see duality and nonduality appicable to both images (pantheism and panentheism).

 

[idav]

I ask (and sorry if I've asked before and forgot, but this question sounds familiar) because I see duality and nonduality appicable to both images (pantheism and panentheism).

It is applicable to both particularly nonduality. There is some overlap, there are points you want to call a panentheist pantheist and vice versa. Way I see it there isn't an outside to transcend, existence simply transcends itself, no distinction necessary.

 

[Windwalker]

You've described nonduality--how do you see panentheism relating to that?

I ask (and sorry if I've asked before and forgot, but this question sounds familiar) because I see duality and nonduality appicable to both images (pantheism and panentheism).

Nonduality embraces duality. Yes? Does duality embrace nonduality? I don't believe so. I see that pantheism does not embrace panentheism, whereas panentheism embraces pantheism.