Monism Quotes

Most of the makers of the twentieth-century mind, figures such as Freud, Heisenberg, Picasso, Joyce, and Eliot, have in common an about-face on the subject-object question and the mindmatter question; they all reject the dualism that arbitrarily and irreversibly splits the world into pieces. This rejection of dualism and the corresponding reach for monism are of the essence in understanding the revolutionary nature of twentieth-century science and art. ~ Jewel Spears Brooker

For the record, Parmenides' metaphysics-which is even wilder than the D.B.P's, and in retrospect seems more like Eastern religion than Western philosophy-is describable as a kind of static monism, and Zeno's paradoxes (of which there are really more than four) are accordingly directed against the reality of (1) plurality and (2) continuity. For present purposes we are concerned with (2), which for Zeno takes the form, as Russell mentions, of regular physical motion. ~ David Foster Wallace

if you know whether a man is a decided monist or a decided pluralist, you perhaps know more about the rest of his opinions than if you give him any other name ending in IST. To believe in the one or in the many, that is the classification with the maximum number of consequences. ~ Will James

The conscious events that we are aware of are physical events in their own right, just as much as the brain events observed in the lab by researchers. If we allow the mental its own existence as a category disjoint from the physical, we will never be able to get it back in. ~ William Hirstein

I have yet to meet a single person from our culture, no matter what his or her educational background, IQ, and specific training, who had powerful transpersonal experiences and continues to subscribe to the materialistic monism of Western science. ~ Albert Einstein

The picture of a universe of infinitely many wholly unrelated substances is at least as hard to understand as the monism of Spinoza, and far less easy to reconcile with appearances. ~ Roger Scruton

Dualism is the closest human feeling, but it is not necessarily the highest human philosophy. On the contrary, all great philosophies have been monistic. Man experiences the world dualistically, but monism is the essence of all human thinking. Philosophy disagrees with dualism. However, this fact does not mean too much, because life, being superior to thought, may not be judged by it. In reality, since we are human beings, we are living two realities. We can deny these two worlds, but we cannot escape from them. Life does not depend too much on our understanding of it. ~ Alija Izetbegovic

Thomas Merton, of course, constitutes a special threat to Christians, because he presents himself as a contemplative Christian monk, and his work has already affected the vitals of Roman Catholicism, its monasticism. Shortly before his death, Father Merton wrote an appreciative introduction to a new translation of the Bhagavad Gita, which is the spiritual manual or "Bible" of all Hindus, and one of the foundation blocks of monism or Advaita Vedanta. The Gita, it must be remembered, opposes almost every important teaching of Christianity. His book on the Zen Masters, published posthumously, is also noteworthy, because the entire work is based on a treacherous mistake: the assumption that all the so-called "mystical experiences" in every religion are true. He should have known better. ~ Seraphim Rose

Enigma, positive confusion (delirium), problematic, pain, whatever we want to call it; the torment of the philosophers in any case, is the stimulus to ecstatic creation, to an interminable "resolution" into the enhanced provocations of art. What the philosophers have never understood is this: it is the unintelligibility of the world alone that gives it worth. "Inertia needs unity (monism); plurality of interpretations a sign of strength. Not to desire to deprive the world of its disturbing and enigmatic character". Not, then, to oppose pain to the absence of pain as metaphysical pessimism does, but, rather, to differentiate the ecstatic overcoming of pain from weariness and inertia, to exult in new and more terrible agonies, fears, burning perplexities as the resource of becoming, overcoming, triumph, the great libidinal oscillations that break up stabilized systems and intoxicate on intensity; that is Dionysian pessimism -"refusal to be deprived of the stimulus of the enigmatic"; "the effect of the work of art is to excite the state that creates art -intoxication". ~ Nick Land

Division and differentiation are the processes by which things are created. Since things are emerging and dissolving all the time, you cannot specify the point when this division will stop. ~ Liezi

Ancient astrology, and, to some degree,
its modern descendant, are compelling mixtures of science (or pseudo-science) and classical myth.
Jung interpreted astrology as the psychology of antiquity.
The stars and planets, he suggested, are 'archetypal images': manifestations of the collective unconscious. Jung's student, Erich Neumann, developed his ideas on archetypes, especially in relation to the archetype of the nurturing Goddess. His ideas were influential upon those who later promoted goddess worship, a central element in most (though not all) New Age practice. New Agers believe that the energy of the cosmos flows from one single source (monism), and that what we call 'god'
or 'goddess' is a principle identified with the cosmos. New Age philosophy has embraced the idea that goddess worship originated in prehistoric times, when, broadly speaking, matriarchal society preceded the patriarchal order, and people worshipped the 'Great Goddess'. ~ Helen Morales

Awakening in Love is realizing all truths originate from a single point from which they expand. The point is 'Love'. ~ Wald Wassermann

Totalitarian regimes justify their existence by means of a philosophy of political monism, according to which the state is God on earth, unification under the heel of the divine state is salvation, and all means to such unification, however intrinsically wicked, are right and may be used without scruple. This political monism leads in practice to excessive privilege and power for the few and oppression for the many, to discontent at home and war abroad. But excessive privilege and power are standing trmptations to pride, greed, vanity and cruelty; oppression results in fear and envy; war breeds hatred, misery and despair. All such negative emotions are fatal to the spiritual life. Only the pure in heart and poor in spirit can come to the Knowledge of God. Hence, the attempt to impose more unity upon societies then their individual members are ready for makes it psychologically almost impossible for those individuals to realize they are unity with the divine Ground [of being] and with one another. ~ Aldous Huxley