One is All, All is One

Discussion in 'Eastern Philosophy' started by Bowser, Mar 12, 2013.

  1. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    Isn't it a common belief that the deity of existence lives in everything, from the atom to the individual? We are, by simple extrapolation, merely expressions of the same thing?

    Watched a program the other night that explored popular myths.
     
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  3. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    expansions from the same thing, yes .... expressions from the same thing, no. Much like sunlight taken from anywhere in our solar system is an expansion from the same thing (namely the sun), but that same sun itself partakes of a completely different and unique existence than the sunlight.

    IOW the problems of the "all is one, one is all" philosophy lies in examining relationships of contingency or cause and effect.
     
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  5. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    If you think in terms of a spatial concept, there is a way to satisfy all is one and one is all.

    Consider an automobile. It is composed of thousands of different parts, all of which are integrated to form the automobile. This integrated team of parts, called automobile, is more than the sum of the different parts.

    In other words, if we had all the parts separate, this is not the same as all the parts assembled. The assembled parts have way more capability when they work as a team. They allow travel. If we mathematically take the difference between all the parts assembled and all the parts separated we get a positive number, which is defined by the integration team. This team difference is also distributed as an extra to all the parts, since all the parts add to this difference, when integrated. All the parts make the team which defines extra, while the extra becomes distributed over the parts so they are more then when separate.

    Say we take our car, and drive it to work, on the expressway, with thousands of other cars. All these commuting cars need to work as a team so there are not constant accidents and delays. Everyone cannot act like a thousand separate cars all by themselves on an open road. Again the team approach, where each part (car) operates in the context of all the other cars, creates an auto organism that slithers to work in a very tight but safe fashion. This extra within the team adds extra to each auto, which would not be, if all were separated. The extra is in all and all this extra makes the one slithering commuter organism.

    The concept requires both differential and integral thinking.
     
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  7. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    My understanding of the concept is that we and everything else are all part of a cosmic organism, if you will. I suppose you would call it Monism. For some reason the concept appeals to me, though I have no subjective basis to believe it's true. I do think it beckons a more...unified view of existence, which is probably why I find it enticing.
     
  8. kwhilborn Banned Banned

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    Yes. There are beliefs like my own that suggest everything physical and imaginary is all part of the same thing, as much as everything you can imagine or remember is part of you.
     
  9. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    How could it not be part of the same thing??
     
  10. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    If I go back to the analogy of the complete automobile versus all the parts but unassembled, the team (complete automobile) is more than the sum of its parts, since all combined and integrated there is a new layer of capability. Since the team is more than the sum of the parts, the team (integration) has excess something compared to the unassembled parts. This difference extends to all the parts so each part is now more.

    Consider this situation. Your car is sitting in the driveway with all its extra compared to the separated parts. I remove one part, like the battery, now the entire car is not much better than the unassembled parts; it no longer works. That one part (battery), in essence, also contains all the extra, which if reinstalled now creates the team again; allows the all.

    If you look at nature the same schema applies with everything connected at some level to create an extra something that is more than the sum of the parts. This is why we need statistics; to explain the potential anomalies due to the extra. But like the car, if we remove any of a numbers of individuals link, in the integrated chain, the extra can disappear like one was all.
     
  11. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah. It's pantheism (God is everything) or panentheism (God includes everything on this plane of being and a lot more as well).

    A non-personalistic form of panentheism is probably the form of theism that I'm most attuned to, if I was going to be something more like a theist. I have occasionally sensed what seems to me like a transcendent dimension to the world around me, and also intuited that transcendence extends far beyond what's apparent to my human awareness and cognition.

    Actually I'm (sorta) convinced that's true. The philosophical questions that I face at this point are in understanding what 'transcendent' means in my thinking, and particularly in understanding why I feel that this kind of stuff is deeply relevant to me personally.

    Obviously there's the idea that whatever reality is, I'm a manifestation and embodiment of it just like everything else is. But my question is -- What does that fact offer my self and why should that self even care? Where does the religious feeling in the idea come from?

    Put another way -- What reason is there (if any) for my moving from the realization that I'm an integral part of a reality that totally exceeds my understanding of it, to the rather different idea (it's certainly different emotionally) that this should be thought of as the 'deity of existence'? What does the word 'deity' mean in there?
     
  12. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    The idea that all is one would be fine - if we wouldn't suffer. But we do.

    There is suffering, and there seems to be no quick fix, no easy explanation for why this is so.


    The "god of philosophers" is sometimes proposed as (part of ) a solution to the problem of suffering.
     
  13. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    The cosmos is manifested, felt, and understood in each person's perceptions, reflective thoughts, and emotional states (or at least those who bother to watch, research, and allow themselves to be awed by the environment at that scale). The unity or integration of things in such biological consciousness, also residing with that former, opposite plurality of its discriminated content, is accordingly going to pervade / saturate our representations of the world. Thus no surprise that people may have this feeling or POV of "oneness" or global "spirituality" that underlies experience of the interpersonal (objective) version of the world. For the religious, that may get converted into into monotheist beliefs.

    But what the fully mind-independent or transcendent condition might be is speculation. For instance, the anti-panpsychism stance often associated with materialist metaphysics would simply feature "nothingness" for the universe as it normally is in itself (the absence of all phenomenal exhibitions, identifying cognitions, conceptions), if one could literally get outside of consciousness / intellection. And indeed, that's pretty much what is equated with dreamless sleep or other semi- or permanent terminations of consciousness.

    Whereas rival "mentalist" metaphysics might contend anything from a universal observer falling out of the extrinsic relationships of all entities and events (the latter still presented as existing outside themselves even minus their brain representations), in an anthropic-like fashion... To bizarre, alien phenomenal occurrences of "what it's like to be a cosmos in itself" that the human could hardly imagine.

    Physicalism seems to straddle both of those; probably acknowledging that there would be "nothing" when backed into the corner. But otherwise empirically referring to and abstractly describing the mind-independent manner of be-ing as if there was a "universal scientist" and a "universal philosopher" still producing perceptual manifestations, measurements, and intellectual distinctions everywhere -- still connecting the co-existence of entities into the relational structures of explanatory frameworks (the latter part of their re-unification, again).
     
  14. Economister Registered Member

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    No, I prefer strict and separate monotheism, myself.
     
  15. kwhilborn Banned Banned

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    @ OP,
    It is my belief that god is everthing. God sees every sparrow that falls in the forest because god is every sparrow that falls in the forest.
     
  16. rr6 Banned Banned

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    All is One and One is All via Gravity, at a Minimum

    Yeah, our finite, occupied space Universe, is one with all its parts, because, all the parts are connected minimally by gravity.

    There is no fair representation I can offer to show this connection but I will try anyway. In the following, the dots/periods are used merely for formatting purposes.

    .....O.....
    ....OO....
    .....O....

    If the gravity is circles, sphericals or tori, the are connected by being connected to a tangency that is acts as the pathway of connectedness irrespective of how far apart the two furthest apart geodesics are.

    r6
     
  17. just me Registered Senior Member

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    I think yes as I have encountered many who believe so.

    yes this is true by definition. everything is everything, including you.
     
  18. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    just me: I assume you're aware you're replying to a 7 year old thread?
     
  19. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Well, since someone else has already dredged the thread up from the past...

    Hmm... the "deity of existence"...

    In the context of eternalism, things can actually exist (they durably "are").

    Whereas in contrast the presentism or commonsense interpretation of "time" replaces existence with ephemeral "happenings". As a consequence, that sequence of short-lived events replacing each other requires regulation by principles/laws (metaphysical or conceptual entities). Not unlike a dream having to be governed by a brain (though in a much more sloppier and inconsistent fashion).

    In the past, managing principles or abstracted regularities of the world got popularly personified into gods, because humans have a traditional penchant for anthropomorphizing regulating concepts, so they can pray to them for intervention.

    Thus, "deity" suggests an overseer that manages in the context of presentism (reality as a process). Rather than simply a universal materialization that subsumes all things and incremental differences, and grants them actual, "shown" or phenomenal existence (which includes the tiny, subjective local sensory appearances correlated to brains of organisms on a planet).

    Ironically, all humans (which surpass vegetative status, anyway) seem to at least be implicit or subliminal panpsychists. IOW, our default adherence to a generic panpsychism is substantiated by our behavior and failures, not by verbal reporting and personal acknowledgment of such a belief. Due to humans having never actually produced either a useful instance or model of the universe that was truly devoid of phenomenal and intellectual properties (this includes clarification of what the word "failures" referenced).

    Primary/secondary quality distinction
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary/secondary_quality_distinction

    Although "primary qualities" are deemed to be properties of non-represented existence ("thing in itself" territory), they are actually technical or physical descriptions derived from measurement, relationship, and outer perceptual/sensory appearance. Aside from the obviousness of that artificial origin and dependency upon intellectual activity, abstract description just like everything else must manifest or be materialized to be useful (existence as "not even nothingness" is an otiose hypothesis).

    So... in conclusion, the totality of existence as some (knowable or unknowable) objective manifestation might fly as "all is one" in eternalism (i.e., it has no need to be a god-like manager -- just validly existing suffices). But in presentism, "all is one" as some deity or assembly of principles that is managing a process of ephemeral changes is more in the unnecessary metaphysical additions territory (presentism does need such baggage, but the rival view does not).
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2020
  20. river

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    Agreed but Disagree . Intelligence / Life . Slow and fast . Both exist in any ecology .

    Life is as in space as any Galaxy .
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2020
  21. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Or more to the point, the angle of the dangle, equals the heat of the meat, and the rise and the fall of the left hand ball!

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  22. river

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    No you missed the point .
     
  23. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    At the end of it, we're all connected so to speak?
     

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