Is animism the same as ‘all is one’?

What do people usually mean by ‘all is one’? #

Usually that, beneath appearances, everything is a single reality, and that the separateness of things is in some way unreal. In non-dual teachings this is the experience of everything being part of one undifferentiated whole;¹ in pantheism, the idea that God and the universe are the same thing; in some ecological spirituality, the search for a single consciousness shared by all beings. The religious studies scholar Graham Harvey describes the ‘depth ecology’ of the philosopher Arne Naess and his collaborators, which seeks what the philosopher Erazim Kohák called “the common protoconsciousness of all being in its prereflective unity”, and so treats our difference from mountains, wolves and trees as the problem to be overcome.²

Often the idea goes one step further, and the experience of oneness is taken to be the ultimate state of reality, the truest truth, with everything else a lesser stage on the way to it. In ‘spiritual’ social media groups people regularly insist that the self is only an illusion, because any truly “enlightened” person would know that everything is in fact one.³

Does animism say that everything is connected? #

Yes, and that everything is conscious. Everything is made of Spirit, and Spirit is conscious, so things very different from us are conscious too, in their own way.⁴ Animists experience themselves as part of nature, never above it: humans are one of the Animal People, cousins of the Plant People and Stone PeopleStone People. All physical matter: mountains, sea, rivers, clouds, sun and stars: the oldest and widest of the Peoples. As some animist cultures put it, ‘we are just the Stone People, dancing for a while’. Read the full answer, part of an interconnected and inter-dependent web of life, with no hierarchy anywhere in it.⁵

There are many kinds of consciousness, though, not one. Stone, Plant and Animal are each conscious in different ways, and what modern spirituality calls consciousness is one particular flavour of it. So animism agrees that nothing stands alone. What it does not do is turn connection into sameness. See What does it mean to say the world is alive and full of persons?

Is there a place where everything really is one? #

Yes. At the very top of the Upper-World, and at the very bottom of the Lower-World, are convergence points where everything merges back into oneness, into Father Sky at the upper point and Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this at the lower.⁶ In the Upper-World, the higher one goes, the more everything simply becomes one, and this is what is often called non-duality. Upper-World practices help us transcend the sense of separation, move beyond our limited self and experience everything as part of one undifferentiated whole; they also bring perspective, healthy detachment, compassion and good ethics.⁷ See What is the Upper-World?

What animism does not accept is that this is the ultimate truth. It is true at that level, and true when you are there. The mistake is to treat it as the one real reality and everything else as illusion.

What is the Lower-World’s kind of unity? #

Unity through ecology. The Lower-World is just as much a unity, but of a different kind. A human body can be seen as one thing, which is like the Upper-World view, or as a cooperation of organs, tissues and cells, each with its own role, and none able to do that role cut off from the rest. An ecosystem works in the same way: many plants depend on fungi around their roots to take up what they need, and everything in nature is an ecosystem of individuals, each part of a greater whole.

The clearest picture of it is a great tree. Each person in the middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer is like the tip of a twig. Followed back towards the trunk, human twigs converge into a branch, Human with a capital H; Human, Chimpanzee and Gorilla converge into Great Ape; then come Mammal, and Animal, one of two great trunks beside Plant; and Animal and Plant converge in turn into the Stone People, the original trunk, which grows out of Mother Earth herself.⁸ The branches are what Therapeutic Shamanism calls OversoulsOversoul. A branch of Mother Earth representing the whole of a species: the single being all the individuals arise from. Lower-World work is always with the Oversoul, never an individual; environments are composite Oversouls, wheels within wheels. More about this. See What is an Oversoul?

There is individuality in the Lower-World, or it would be experienced as an undifferentiated mass, but much less of it than in the middle-world; what look like separate beings are revealed as parts of a far greater whole.⁹ So the Lower-World holds two things at once: our absolute uniqueness, the being each of us is meant to be, and our belonging. Lower-World practices help us realise that we are unique and of value, and at the same time part of an immeasurably greater whole, taking our own sacred place in the web of life.¹⁰ See What is the Lower-World?

Is separation an illusion, then? #

No. The middle-world is where we experience ourselves most as separate individuals, and on its own level that separation is real. In shamanic terms everything is indeed part of Great SpiritGreat Mystery (Great Spirit). The unknowable from which everything comes. Better rendered ‘the Great Mystery’: animism has no interventionist creator-god, and the truly infinite cannot be prayed to, bargained with or journeyed to. More about this, and on another level separation is real too; the two levels do not cancel each other out. Someone can believe all they like that separation is an illusion and that everything is just energy, but if they step in front of a moving bus they will still experience the reality of physical matter.¹¹

Dismissing the middle-world in this way is a symptom of spiritual bypassing. It also suits the dominant culture very well: if the middle-world is not really alive and does not matter, it can be plundered at will.¹¹ See What is spiritual bypassing, and how can psychotherapy help prevent it? and What is the middle-world?

Why does it matter which kind of oneness comes first? #

Because ranking them is hierarchy, and hierarchy is the thing animism refuses. To say the Upper-World is better than the Lower-World is as nonsensical as saying that yang is better than yin, or masculine better than feminine; they are two equal, complementary parts of a whole.¹² It is like saying the higher notes on a piano are better and more evolved than the lower ones, or that a tree’s branches matter more than its roots, when a tree can only reach as far up as its roots go down.

When the Upper-World’s oneness is made the highest truth, the living world of particular beings, rivers, foxes, oaks and people, becomes something lesser. And the human branch of the great tree then behaves like an organ that has declared independence from the rest of the body, a kidney announcing, “I don’t need you lot.” That comes with terrible costs, which can be seen all around us. See How does animism understand power and hierarchy? and Why does Therapeutic Shamanism begin with the Lower-World?

Is animism a form of pantheism or monism? #

Some ecological writers draw a living world and ‘all is one’ close together. The depth ecology Harvey describes looks for the deeper unity of all life, much as Jung’s depth psychology does, and offers a mystical practice of identification with the whole as part of the answer to our alienation from nature.¹³

Others resist the move. The ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood, as Harvey reports her, holds that pantheistic and globalising views often still leave particular beings as non-agents, drawing all value from a single centre: “Such a deity is theft.” What is needed instead, she says, is a richer account of individuals themselves, together with their intricate interconnectedness.¹⁴ Harvey himself describes animism as encouraging thinking that is “non-dualist (but also non-monist)”.¹⁵

Therapeutic Shamanism holds both unity and individuality as real, at different levels, and ranks neither. Nor is animism pantheism, the idea that the world as a whole is God: what takes animism beyond pantheism is personhood, every being a person in its own right, a Wolf or a River, not simply a part of a divine whole. See What is animism? and Do animists believe in God, or in gods and goddesses? What is the Great Mystery?