The word for understanding that everything is one? [closed]

Is there an actual a word for the understanding that everything and everyone is one?


Solution 1:

Everything and everyone is one strikes me as a philosophical... let's say claim, so a term borrowed from philosophy comes to mind:

monism:

  1. The wide definition: a philosophy is monistic if it postulates unity of origin of all things; all existing things go back to a source which is distinct from them.

  2. The restricted definition: this requires not only unity of origin but also unity of substance and essence.

from: Wikipedia.

Whether this works for you is a question of interpreting everything and everyone is one but to me it is an ontological question, so (ontological) monism seems appropriate.

There are many sorts of monism (e.g. substantial, attributive, partial) depending on which sort of unity you want to focus on (it seems a bit contradictory, all is one but there are several aspects of unity? but then our attempts to describe something don't have to be perfect as the thing we are describing). My personal favourite is:

dialectical monism:

an ontological position that holds that reality is ultimately a unified whole, distinguishing itself from monism by asserting that this whole necessarily expresses itself in dualistic terms.[1] For the dialectical monist, the essential unity is that of complementary polarities, which, while opposed in the realm of experience and perception, are co-substantial in a transcendent sense.

(from Wikipedia; emphasis mine).

Solution 2:

"holistic harmony" comes to mind.

  • holistic - "emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts." TFD
  • harmony - "a pleasing combination or arrangement of different things" MW

A term also used by Confucius, but here I refer to the stoical view of life and death of ancient Greek phylosophers, that we are all part of the universe, we are born from it and when we die we join it again. The earth, and all living beings are only one thing.

  • The universe itself is god and the universal outpouring of its soul; it is this same world's guiding principle, operating in mind and reason, together with the common nature of things and the totality that embraces all existence; then the foreordained might and necessity of the future; then fire and the principle of aether; then those elements whose natural state is one of flux and transition, such as water, earth, and air; then the sun, the moon, the stars; and the universal existence in which all things are contained. —Chrysippus, in Cicero, De Natura Deorum, i.39

  • Everything is subject to the laws of Fate, for the Universe acts according to its own nature, and the nature of the passive matter it governs. The souls of people and animals are emanations from this primordial fire, and are, likewise, subject to Fate: Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things that exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the structure of the web. —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, iv. 40 from Wikipedia