The All

The All (also called The One, The Absolute, The Great One, The Creator, The Supreme Mind, The Supreme Good, The Father, The Universal Mother and The Nameless) is a term denoting major pantheistic, panentheistic, Hermetic, and other monistically mystical notions of Ultimate Reality, whether called the Monad, Cosmos, God, Goddess, Godhead, Allah, Brahman or Tao. The All is often characterized as androgynous, possessing both masculine and feminine qualities, personal and impersonal attributes or appearances, and positive and negative aspects, yet transcending all of them.


 * Alphabetized by author or source
 * A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · External links

A



 * There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling except in the infinite; for the soul except in the divine. Nothing finite is true, is interesting, is worthy to fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and all that is exclusive repels me. There is nothing non-exclusive but the All; my end is communion with Being through the whole of Being.
 * Henri-Frédéric Amiel, as quoted in the Introduction to The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1882), as translated by Mary Augusta Ward


 * What is so remarkable in all these theories and doctrines is their implicit monism, the claim that behind the obvious multiplicity of the world’s appearances and, even more pertinently to our context, behind the obvious plurality of man’s faculties and abilities, there must exist a oneness — the old hen pan, “the all is one”—either a single source or a single ruler.
 * Hannah Arendt, in The Life of the Mind (1971), p. 70


 * '''The nature of the All moved to make the universe.
 * Marcus Aurelius, in Meditations, VII, 75, as translated by George Long (1862)

B

 * Ananke must above all be regarded as cosmic force, that is as the ruling law in the universe; thus … the super-personal, cosmic significance of "the All" ruled by Ananke as well, can be accepted as certain. It represents in the universe the inviolability of cause and effect and does so as dual essence, as a mythical personage belonging to the oldest theogony or as the earliest philosophical concept of the mechanics of natural events.
 * Otto Brendel, on statements of Thales and other ancient greeks on Ananke (Necessity) and the All, in Symbolism of the Sphere : A Contribution to the History of Earlier Greek Philosophy (1977), p. 37


 * The infinity of All ever bringing forth anew, and even as infinite space is around us, so is infinite potentiality, capacity, reception, malleability, matter.
 * Giordano Bruno, in De innumerabilibus, immenso et infigurabili (1591); usually referred to as De immenso, I 1 as translated in Giordano Bruno : His Life and Thought with annotated translation of his work On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1950) by Dorothea Waley Singer


 * The single spirit doth simultaneously temper the whole together; this is the single soul of all things; all are filled with God.
 * Giordano Bruno, in De immenso (1591), IV 9; as translated by Dorothea Waley Singer (1950)


 * All things are in all.
 * Giordano Bruno, in De immenso (1591), V 9; as translated by Dorothea Waley Singer (1950)


 * Before anything else the One must exist eternally; from his power derives everything that always is or will ever be. He is the Eternal and embraces all times. He knows profoundly all events and He himself is everything. He creates everything beyond any beginning of time and beyond any limit of place and space. He is not subject to any numerical law, or to any law of measure or order. He himself is law, number, measure, limit without limit, end without end, act without form.
 * Giordano Bruno, in De immenso (1591), VIII 2, as quoted in The Acentric Labyrinth (1995) by Ramon Mendoza

C



 * Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence — for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness. Thus, just as the way of social participation may lead in the end to a realization of the All in the individual, so that of exile brings the hero to the Self in all.
 * Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Epilogue


 * The All of Things is an infinite conjugation of the verb To do.
 * Thomas Carlyle, in The French Revolution : A History (1837), Pt. II, Bk. III, Ch. 1


 * Tat Tvam Asi (Sanskrit: तत् त्वम् असि or तत्त्वमसि)
 *  That art thou.
 * Chāndogya Upaniṣad (circa 800–700 BCE), §6.8.7 and repeated refrain


 * Hen to pan
 * One is The All.
 * Cleopatra the Alchemist, in The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra


 * The Many is as adorable to the One as the One is to the Many. This is the Love of These; creation-parturition is the Bliss of the One; coition-dissolution is the Bliss of the Many. The All, thus interwoven of These, is Bliss. Naught is beyond Bliss.
 * Aleister Crowley, in The Book of Lies (1913), 3 : The Oyster


 * The All which is beyond comprehension — the All which is perpetually discovered, yet undiscovered: sexual, sweet, Alive! 
 * E. E. Cummings, in Him (1927)

D

 * As far as I'm concerned we are all God That's the difference If you really think another guy is God he doesn't lock you up Funny about that.
 * Ram Dass, in Be Here Now (1971), contrasting the attitude of those who think they are especially "divine" and thus believe other people "owe" them deference — and those who think all are divine manifestions of "The All", and thus are respectful of others and their rights.

E

 * These [Elements] never cease changing place continually, now being all united by Love into one, now each borne apart by the hatred engendered of Strife, until they are brought together in the unity of the all, and become subject to it.
 * Empedocles, in Fragments, Bk. 1, line 66, as quoted in The First Philosophers of Greece (1898) edited and translated by Arthur Fairbanks, p. 165
 * The alchemical ideogram of "One the All," is O, the circle: a line or movement that encloses within itself and contains in itself both its end and beginning. In hermetism this symbol expresses the universe and, at the same time, the Great Work. In the Chrysopoeia it takes the form of a serpent-Ouroboros-biting its own tail, containing within the space of the circle that it creates, the ἕν τὸ πᾶν. In the same palimpsest is found another pentacle formed by two rings, the inner bearing this inscription: "One is the serpent, which contains the poison, according to the double sign" while in the outer circle it says: "One is the all, the source of all and the culmination of all: if the all did not contain the all, it would be nothing."
 * Julius Evola, in The Hermetic Tradition: Symbols & Teachings of the Royal Art, page 21.

F

 * There are many stories in Twin Peaks — some of them are sad, some funny. Some of them are stories of madness, of violence. Some are ordinary. Yet they all have about them a sense of mystery — the mystery of life. Sometimes, the mystery of death. The mystery of the woods. The woods surrounding Twin Peaks. To introduce this story, let me just say it encompasses the All — it is beyond the "Fire", though few would know that meaning. It is a story of many, but begins with one — and I knew her. The one leading to the many is Laura Palmer. Laura is the one.
 * Mark Frost and David Lynch in the Pilot episode of Twin Peaks (8 April 1990)

H

 * To a person whose transfigured and transfiguring mind can see the All in every this, the first-rateness or tenth-rateness of even a religious painting will be a matter of the most sovereign indifference.
 * Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception (1954)

J



 * Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All.
 * Jesus, as quoted in the Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?) attributed to Thomas the Apostle, verse 2


 * He who knows the All but fails to know himself lacks everything.
 * Jesus, as quoted in the Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?) attributed to Thomas the Apostle, verse 67


 * It is I who am the light which is above them All. It is I who am the All. From me did the All come forth, and unto me did the All extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.
 * Jesus, as quoted in the Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?) attributed to Thomas the Apostle, verse 77


 * It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness...
 * James Joyce in Ulysses (1922), Ch. 11: Sirens


 * We are all by nature so closely dependent on the heavens and the gods that are visible therein, that even if any man conceives of another god besides these, he in every case assigns to him the heavens as his dwelling-place; not that he thereby separates him from the earth, but he so to speak establishes the King of the All in the heavens as in the most honourable place of all, and conceives of him as overseeing from there the affairs of this world.
 * Emperor Julian, in Against the Galilaeans (c. 362) as translated by Wilmer Cave Wright


 * He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God.
 * Julian of Norwich, in Revelations of Divine Love (c.1393), Ch. 5


 * I saw no difference between God and our Substance: but as it were all God; and yet mine understanding took that our Substance is in God: that is to say, that God is God, and our Substance is a creature in God.
 * Julian of Norwich, in Revelations of Divine Love (c.1393), Ch. 54

K

 * While All is in THE ALL, it is equally true that THE ALL is in All. To him who truly understands this truth hath come great knowledge.
 * The Kybalion : A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece (1908) by The Three Initiates, Ch. VII (online 1912 edition)

P



 * Compare not thyself with others, but with Me. If thou dost not find Me in those with whom thou comparest thyself, thou comparest thyself to one who is abominable. If thou findest Me in them, compare thyself to Me. But whom wilt thou compare? Thyself, or Me in thee? If it is thyself, it is one who is abominable. If it is I, thou comparest Me to Myself. Now I am God in all.
 * Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1669) § 555

And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.''' But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the ; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the : But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.
 * '''Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
 * Paul of Tarsus, in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 (KJV)


 * We are nothing, let us be all.
 * Eugène Edine Pottier, The Internationale (1864)

S



 * Inside most people there's a feeling of being separate — separated from everything. … And they're not. They're part of absolutely everyone, and everything.
 * Victor Salva, in Powder (1995)


 * Inconceiveable as it seems to ordinary reason, you — and all other conscious beings as such — are all in all. Hence, this life of yours... is, in a certain sense, the whole.
 * Erwin Schrödinger, as quoted in "The Mystic Vision" as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber

T


and though they make anew, they make no lie. Be sure they still will make, not being dead, and poets shall have flames upon their head, and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall: there each shall choose for ever from the All.
 * '''In Paradise they look no more awry;
 * J. R. R. Tolkien, in Mythopoeia (1931)


 * God is the infinite ALL. Man is only a finite manifestation of Him. Or better yet: God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part. God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love. God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists... We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us. All conclusions and guidelines based on this consciousness should fully satisfy both our desire to know God as such as well as our desire to live a life based on this recognition.
 * Leo Tolstoy, in an entry in his Diary (1 November 1910)

W



 * This mysterious something has been called God, the Absolute, Nature, Substance, Energy, Space, Ether, Mind, Being, the Void, the Infinite — names and ideas which shift in popularity and respectability with the winds of intellectual fashion, of considering the universe intelligent or stupid, superhuman or subhuman, specific or vague. All of them might be dismissed as nonsense-noises if the notion of an underlying Ground of Being were no more than a product of intellectual speculation. But these names are often used to designate the content of a vivid and almost sensorily concrete experience — the "unitive" experience of the mystic, which, with secondary variations, is found in almost all cultures at all times. This experience is the transformed sense of self which I was discussing in the previous chapter, though in "naturalistic" terms, purified of all hocus-pocus about mind, soul, spirit, and other intellectually gaseous words.
 * Alan Watts, in The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)


 * Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity — a total embrace of the entire Kosmos — a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
 * Ken Wilber, in A Brief History of Everything (1996)

Z

 *  "Fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water" do not matter. "I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality — the Nameless.
 * Roger Zelazny, in Lord of Light (1967) Kalkin/Sam to his followers.


 * I charge you — forget the names you bear, forget the words I speak as soon as they are uttered. Look, rather, upon the Nameless within yourselves, which arises as I address it. It hearkens not to my words, but to the reality within me, of which it is part. This is the atman, which hears me rather than my words. All else is unreal. To define is to lose. The essence of all things is the Nameless. The Nameless is unknowable, mightier even than Brahma. Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream. Essence dreams it a dream of form. Forms pass, but the essence remains, dreaming new dreams. Man names these dreams and thinks to have captured the essence, not knowing that he invokes the unreal. These stones, these walls, these bodies you see seated about you are poppies and water and the sun. They are the dreams of the Nameless. They are fire, if you like.
 * Roger Zelazny, in Lord of Light (1967) Kalkin/Sam to his followers.


 * To struggle against the dreamers who dream ugliness, be they men or gods, cannot but be the will of the Nameless.
 * Roger Zelazny, in Lord of Light (1967) Kalkin/Sam to his followers.