MANNU.YOGA

Pantheism

the doctrine that the universe conceived of as a whole is God and, conversely, that there is no God but the combined substance, forces, and laws that are manifested in the existing universe. The cognate doctrine of panentheism asserts that God includes the universe as a part though not the whole of his being.

Pantheism and panentheism can be explored by means of a three-way comparison with traditional or classical theism viewed from eight different standpoints—i.e., from those of immanence or transcendence; of monism, dualism, or pluralism; of time or eternity; of the world as sentient or insentient; of God as absolute or relative; of the world as real or illusory; of freedom or determinism; and of sacramentalism or secularism.

The gods of the Vedas, the ancient scriptures of India (c. 1200 BCE), represented for the most part natural forces. Exceptions were the gods Prajapati (Lord of Creatures) and Purusha (Supreme Being or Soul of the Universe), whose competition for influence provided, in its outcome, a possible explanation of how the Indian tradition came to be one of pantheism rather than of classical theism. By the 10th book of the Rigveda, Prajapati had become a lordly, monotheistic figure, a creator deity transcending the world; and in the later period of the sacred writings of the Brahmanas (c. 7th century BCE), prose commentaries on the Vedas, he was moving into a central position. The rising influence of this theism was later eclipsed by Purusha, who was also represented in Rigveda X. In a creation myth Purusha was sacrificed by the gods in order to supply (from his body) the pieces from which all the things of the world arise. From this standpoint the ground of all things lies in a Cosmic Self, and all of life participates in that of Purusha. The Vedic hymn to Purusha may be regarded as the starting point of Indian pantheism.

In the Upanishads (c. 1000–500 BCE), the most important of the ancient scriptures of India, the later writings contain philosophical speculations concerning the relation between the individual and the divine. In the earlier Upanishads, the absolute, impersonal, eternal properties of the divine had been stressed; in the later Upanishads, on the other hand, and in the Bhagavadgita, the personal, loving, immanentistic properties became dominant. In both cases the divine was held to be identical with the inner self of each human person. At times these opposites were implicitly held to be in fact identical—the view earlier called identity of opposites pantheism. At other times the two sets of qualities were related, one to the unmanifest absolute brahman, or Absolute Reality (sustaining the universe), and the other to the manifest brahman bearing qualities (and containing the universe). Thus, brahman can be regarded as exclusive of the world and inclusive, unchanging and yet the origin of all change. Sometimes the manifest brahman was regarded as an emanation from the unmanifest brahman; and then emanationistic pantheism—the Neoplatonic pantheism of the foregoing typology—was the result.

During the 19th century, pantheism and panentheism were sustained by various kinds of idealism that developed during the period. In these systems the categories of relativity gained in prominence; God was conceived as entering history and as being more intimately related to processes of change and development.