Sunday 8 May 2011

Pan-ek-theism

I may have just coined this term...at least a quick Google survey didn't turn it up.

Some explanation of 'pan-ek-theism' which I intend by use of the ancient greek components of the word to mean 'everything - out of/from - God. The term by the way is my own, but the concept is very ancient, usually being described as a form of qualified monism or non-dualism.

For me Pan is 'everything, the all' the cosmos, but what I mean here by cosmos is physical, manifest nature including all matter and all forms, known through science and everyday reason
Theism is problematic as per the previous post, but if theism is allowed  ( thought my last post sought to disallow it!) to actually encompass spiritualities that deny that God has an individuated 'mind' or 'will'  or even a 'cosmic consciousness' e.g. pantheism then it follows the label 'theism' might also apply to me.
I don't think the Pan is 'in' God as fish are 'in' the sea. Panentheism is taken to mean that the divine is 'transcendent' as well as 'immanent', that God is in everything but God is yet more than 'everything' . Wrong, I say. There is no 'outside' of nature (though there might be a spiritual 'inside') The deeper reality which I am strongly disinclined to call 'God' (though Goddess is somehow perhaps more appropriate if such God terms be used at all - see previous posts)
ek or ex or even ec  Explains how I think the physical cosmos is realated to an Unus Mundus, deeper reality

Here is a general  but very rough draft of my metaphysical framework:

A rather subtle distinction I will make is between

Panentheism e.g. process theism  and  the religious end of the road for immanentism viz Scientific or Naturalistic Pantheism. My system is I think a 'middle term' and conceputally a form of  qualified non dualistic and dynamic monism. Perhaps I could use the term pan-ek-theism because everything we generally take to be the 'all' (i.e the physical cosmos) arises I think 'out of' the deeper 'spiritual' reality (by this I mean not efficient or mechanical cause and effect, but as a necessary metaphysical dependency like the notion of the Son of God as the 'only begotten' of the Father does not imply a creation in time of the former in traditional Xian theology).

However the deeper reality is in my view not 'also more than nature', it is not encompassing the pan or nature. So contrary to some definitions of panentheism I don't think we are fish swimming in the ocean of God. Rather I think the spiritual deeper nature is instead co-extensive with the physical nature we know, indeed it is the invisible interiority or dimension of physical nature (there is no 'outside' nature, only a 'surface' nature and an 'inside' nature in my view). As I say the 'pan' arises out of the deeper nature it is superficially perhaps similar  to an 'emanationist' viewpoint except for me what arises 'nature' is not better or more profound in its gloriousness than the hidden deeper reality or vica versa - logical priority (the pan is eternally begotten by the deeper reality) does not I think imply a value judgement. The spiritual is not 'more good' than nature, because 'Good' is seen as a relative and not absolute term as it seems to have been for Plato ( we must always ask, about any state of affairs, Good for whom?). That said the deeper reality involves not absolute  random chaos but a hidden harmony and patterns (c.f.the Tao)  and perhaps a spiritual 'great attractor' is the tendency to move toward manfiestation, to ultimately to know and be known, a creative will to be, even yes, a 'will to power' after Nieziche. This hidden harmony is probably also ultimately 'mathematical' in nature but involving a form of logic quite different to human conceptions of the same. It goes without saying that the hidden harmony of the deeper reality does not care about human individual interests.

No comments:

Post a Comment