This post is in answer to the question ‘What is Monism?’
Monism is the concept of just One,
of only One cause operating through multiple Qualities as concepts, properties, aspects, or attributes …
Qualities of
- One Thing,
- One Potential
- One Essence
- One Being
- One Reality
- One Life
- One Principle
- One Principal
- One Self
- One Love …
One Thing That is articulated as the source of all multiple things as objects of the senses,
One Potential That is released as energy for all multiple interactions,
One Essence That is reified as the multiplicity of existential events,
One Being That is transformed through a multiplicity of subsidiary identities,
One Reality That is recognized in all multiple ways,
One Life That is lived in the multiplicity of mutually supporting living forms and systems,
One Principle That is understood as the expression of all multiple principles and practices,
One Principal That is recognized as hierarch and director of all subsidiary domains,
One Self That focuses its perception and activity throughout its extent as all other selves,
One Love That breathes those selves out to create the world and draws them in when done.
This One as sentient power or potential is known as Brahman in Vedanta. In the Hebrew Kabbalist teaching, that same One as undifferentiated, limitless, boundless sentient power is known as Ayin, the absence of things, with the implication of being the potential for everything. I will refer to it as the Unmanifest Self. The Self-generation of a point of stress within the undifferentiated multi-dimensional extent of Brahman–Ayin sets in motion the initiation of a Self-limiting, Self-constraining process of a creative epoch as the Manifest Self, as Brahma– Elohyim of the Vedic-Hebrew equivalent teaching. In Vedanta, Vishnu as the Preserver of creation, presides over the evolving process; in Kabbalah as Ein Soph, this endless Self- Identification as I Am, as That which Is, Was and Will Be, the unspoken name designated as the Tetragrammaton, the Self-differentiation of Ayin as the Elohyim initiates and presides over a creative process, culminating with the intended process in the imperative ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’. Here, the Elohyim, said to be a female plural of a male stem term ‘El’ stated as Gods–Goddesses in the original Hebrew text before the patrification of the distributed canon as the monotheistic ‘God’ of the King James version of the Bible, represent the Kingdom of Heaven of the Christian tradition, the Manifest Selves of this exposition.
The nature of this Monism can be represented graphically with the use of the tools of differential geometry and topology. In this Monist modeling, Unmanifest Self is represented as an undifferentiated n-dimensional continuous Euclidean space for which every location in the expanse is an n-dimensional point of Self-sentient potential for realization and reification according to an inherent prescience, where the set of all shapes, forms, and the processing of all interactions between such forms are comprised of and accessible to such Self-sentience as archetypal ideals or Platonic forms; as Manifest Self, the Creator, a single point of tension is initiated within this expanse from which the observed phenomenal universe as a 3-dimensional manifold is activated and evolves over time to create an observable 4-dimensional space and time. We will avoid the use of the term ‘spacetime’ due to the various connotations associated with the scientific use in the modeling of general relativity.
We will suppress one of the three spatial dimensions by representing the expanding space in the following depictions at a given point in time as a 2-sphere, 3-ball system, where time is represented by the radius of the expanding sphere. In topological terminology, such a 2-sphere is a 2-dimensional surface area, the cover of a 3-dimensional volume referred to as a 3-ball. We can draw a diagram of a 2- sphere with a radial vector, R1, proceeding from the center origin, OB, of the 3-ball, 3B, to a point on the surface of the sphere, 2S, which then serves as the center of a circle, 1s, a topological 1-sphere drawn on the surface of the sphere as, 2S.1s, with a subsidiary vector, r1, pointing from the circle center, os, to a point on its circumference, r1f.
We can repeat this depiction but show 2S.1s as a subsidiary sphere 2S.2s, with the vectors, r1 and r2, pointing to points, r1f and r2f. 2S can be thought of as the universe in its entirety, or as a cascaded subset of the universe as a galaxy or solar system or planet or aspect of a biosystem or human social system.
R1 is an ensouling Self-focus of observational attention and interactivity, an individual Self, that has proceeded from the creative center, OB, over time to the current position at the point end of the vector, os, so that os is an embodied Soul that is experiencing the world of physical phenomena, 2S.1s, currently focused on that world at r1f. That world, 2S.1s, is comprised of the body, r1, of Soul, os, but not os itself, which is merely or not so merely the nexus of the sum focus of the that body and all the ‘things’, living or not, and ‘personas’ with which os interacts on a daily basis.
In the second depiction, the extant Soul as indicated by r2 at r2f, instead of on the physical environment, is focused on 2S.2s as some experience of emotional or mental imagery, as in a dream or daydream or working out the solution of some puzzle or problem. This series of depictions of A through H describe in these graphics the story of an individual Self as it evolves from novice matriculation through expert graduation, or the release of moksha.
With respect to Monism, it is important to understand that there is still, in all the created worlds of observation and experience, Only One Thing, with all the multiplicity of Love and Self and Principal and Principle and Life and Reality and Being and Essence and Potential and appearance of separate Thingness and any number of other qualities we might envision, and that Thing is Brahman—or if you prefer to call That Supreme Being, Krishna or the resurrected Christ or Elohyim—which in the creative process focuses its pervasive Self throughout its eternally present extent in the process of observation and activity and love that unites it all that I call Life.
The goal of enlightenment is to free oneself from distractions of the lower worlds of physical, emotional, and mental forms and focus with full intention back along the vector, R1, to the source, OB, which is one in space and time with every oS, which by its very nature of Grace, glorifies oS by acknowledging that OB is within it. The goal of all human devotion is to learn to Love Life in all its forms that by so doing each of us can come to realize that we are That and thereby in the full Consciousness of Our Divinity come to Live Love in the eternity of divine endeavor. It’s as simple as That. But it takes time, dedication, work, persistence, patience, faith, hope, but above all else, Love. This is Monism.
Peace to you, my Friends.
