Pantheism The Belief that "God" is not a seperate from the universe but is in fact the substances, forces and manifestations of the universe. This is another school of thought that very beautifully makes people stop and think twice before abusing the environment, or any part of it. It is a belief that was introduced to me by one of my old landlords, a very devout Muslim. he told me that while many christians believe God is a being in the sky, Allah is in everything, Allah is the soil and the air and so Muslims do not abuse the environment as Allah is in their environment. It's beautiful and a far cry from the misconception of Muslims as a world dominating, terrorist society. (I don't know if all Muslim groups share this belief.) I want to introduce you to a little more of my way of seeing things here. For me Pantheism ties in beautifuly with the belief in Animism. If the Universe as a whole is a deity, why not a forest, a river? A human being is, in fact, not a single being, rather the body which houses our spirit is made up of millions of living organisms all working together as a community. Each of these organisms has its own spirit, its own "life force" and yet, individual as these things are, they come together to create a human body. Think now of a Forest, it is made up of millions, billions, millions of billions of living organisms, the trees, the shrubs, the grasses, the mosses, the beasts and birds, the worms, the bacteria. None of these things is specifically a forest, but collectively they are. And just as the collective of things that make a human body come together to make a house for our spirits or souls, so to do the collective beings of a forest come together to make a house for a forest spirit, so to do all the forests come together to house an overall forest deity. Click here are some definitions of Pantheism from different sites |