Swami Vivekananda once remarked, ‘The Universe is God’s manifestation of Himself.’ Such a belief that the universe, with everything that it contains and the laws governing it, is God and there is no separate God, is called Pantheism.
The term is made from the Greek roots pan (all), and theos (God). In simple words, it can be summarised as–God is in everything, everything is God. Nothing is outside God, and God himself is not outside or distinct from the universe. Whatever we see around us–people, animals, objects–is part of God. It stresses a strong identification with and deep respect for the world around us. It states that God can be encountered directly in what we experience around us. It rejects the view held by most major religions that God is a person who sits far away and judges our actions as right or wrong.
Pantheism is not a religion by itself, but the idea has been present in most parts of the world. The early gods of the Vedas were mostly forces of nature such as Surya (Sun), Varuna (Ocean), Agni (Fire), Ushas (Dawn), Nisha (Night) etc.
As the Vedic society moved from a simple agrarian one to a more complex one, the gods too were codified in more complex ways. A similar pattern can be seen in other ancient civilisations too. African traditional religions and Native American religions are mostly Pantheistic. Sikhism, Kabbalistic Judaism, Celtic spirituality, and Sufi mysticism also contain elements of Pantheism.
The basic teaching of Advaita Vedanta, a school to which Swami Vivekananda and Adi Shankaracharya belonged, is that God and the world are not two entities but one. Brahman is the supreme reality, and nothing lies outside it. Christianity regards Pantheism as heresy and has burnt pantheists like Giordano Bruno at the stake. But there have been a number of Western philosophers and thinkers like Baruch Spinoza, Albert Einstein, Carl Jung, Nikola Tesla, Nietzsche and Thoreau who have championed Pantheism.
Besides philosophy and religion, the ideas are quite popular in culture too. In the movie, Avatar, the fictional planet of Pandora is inhabited by the Na’vi who worship a goddess, Eywa. Everything that is a part of their land is part of Eywa. At death, every soul is joined to Eywa. The famous Star Wars movies had the concept of ‘The Force’ which is also a pantheistic entity. Disney movies like Pocahontas and The Lion King also contain pantheistic beliefs. When Avatar was released, one critic remarked that Pantheism ‘has been Hollywood’s preferred religion for years.’ Pantheism believes that the universe is not a random collection of objects but an interconnected coherent whole, of which we are a small but important part.
