Panentheism, Monism, Monotheism, Polytheism and Pantheism
-
Asalaamu alaykum,
I've wanted to discuss the difference between monism, panentheism, monotheism, polytheism and pantheism because its come up in a few threads and I thought I would clarify.
Monism - God is Nature
Pantheism - Nature is God
Panentheism - Nature is in God
Monotheism - God is the separate Creator of Nature.
Polytheism - God manifests as many subjective and thus partially independent entities throughout Nature.
Personally, I am a Panentheist, and in my view Monotheism and Monism combined equals Panentheism, where God is Nature and yet the separate Creator of Nature at the same time. God is both immanent and transient simultaneously. Panentheism is confused with Pantheism often because pantheism recognizes that Nature is God and thus the immanent physical existence itself is the intelligent God - but unlike panentheism there is no transient or metaphysical existence of God recognized by pantheists. With Panentheists, the ultimate reality is a transient and metaphysical one. That ultimate reality is God and is the most superior level of Consciousness, and that superior existence is additional to the physical, temporary and discontinuous manifestation of God (nature or the universe). The quarrel I have with Monotheists is their recognition of God as a HE/SHE/PERSON. I don't believe, philosophically speaking that the Divine is any PERSON at all, rather I recognize God as the Creative Force, The Ultimate Reality, and Supreme Consciousness without the limitations of a subjective PERSON, although because The Divine is the Creator of the PERSON, certain qualities of PERSON can be attributed to The Divine without limiting God to PERSON.
But what that Force creates in the physical realm that we experience itself is a Manifestation of the power and glory and wisdom and intelligence and creativity of that Force. As Rumi said, we are not a drop in the ocean, but we are the ocean in the drop. The Sufi Mystic Ibn Arabi likewise pioneered Islamic Panentheism often referred to as Wahdatul Wajood - or the Unity of Existence. Tawheed is defined as The Unity of God.
The reason I do not actually worship a tree or the sun or the moon is the same as me not being able to acknowledge that a drop of your blood, or a piece of your hair, or your finger nail is YOU. You are not the parts that make you WHAT you are (what you manifest as in the physical sense - i.e. the human body that dies); nor can I go inside of your body or your brain and find YOU there. WHO you are is beyond your bodily existence. A metaphysical experience called Consciousness. God manifests in and as the very thing God creates ... but physical creation is not all that exists, there is creation beyond the physical as well ... Nothing exists without Consciousness. As the observer effect in theoretical physics says a conscious observer has to observe something in order for it to exist. The Creative Force (God) which is the highest level of consciousness (divine consciousness) likewise observes reality in order for it to exist. You are not separate from your reality, you are in your reality and that reality is in your consciousness. God is in the reality God creates (God progressively creates) and so God is the Ultimate Reality and that Ultimate Reality is manifested in our Universe through physical properties. You are Consciousness. Consciousness is you. Without Consciousness nothing exists. When you lose consciousness, your body is off, just like the radio or television can be off, but the signal is continuous. All of the individual components of physical and nonphysical reality and existence make up the whole of what this Intelligent Creative Force is. Just as how all of organs and bones and body parts and the millions of body cells, molecules, atoms and subatomic particles and continuous vibrating energy and quantum levels of reality make up the Intelligent Individual you are. And yet the billions of individual cells and molecules and atoms within your body each of them too have certain levels of this same metaphysical Intelligence and Consciousness in order for them to function. You can describe physical existence as a manifestation of WHAT God is and what God is capable of. But WHO is God? First and foremost, God is a not a HE or a SHE or a PERSON. God is not to be found in any physical direction or location (i.e. up or beyond the skies or stars) but God is to be found within Yourself, within the reach of your subjective level of Consciousness, and yet beyond the physical Manifestation .... but the physical Manifestation exists only because metaphysical Consciousness which is everywhere and in everything focuses on it to Be and it is.
Farhan
-
I don't have much to add. Just wanted to say that I currently share your same perspective. Panentheism is actually the strictest possible form of tawhid.
2115 And to God belong the east and the west, so wherever you turn, there is the face of God. God is Encompassing, Knowledgeable.
573 He is the First and the Last, the Evident and the Innermost. And He is fully aware of all things.