Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.42

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 contexture of the web.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4 (tr Long)

This is a passage charged with metaphysical meaning, and it is the sort of thinking that can reveal deep disagreements from different perspectives and schools. A traditional theist may object that this is pantheism, because it fails to distinguish between God and creation. A modern secularist may object that the very idea of an ordered Universe, under one Divine Mind, is unscientific. So the different sides take their corners, and they fight it out.

The division about such matter stands in a sharp contrast to the very unity of all things to which Marcus Aurelius is appealing. 

Questions about the ultimate order, purpose, and cause of the entire Universe may be difficult to approach, but they are hardly beyond the sound consideration of reason, and they are the necessary foundation for how our own lives find a place together with all other things.

I once found a very small, oddly shaped piece of metal under my bed. I had no idea what it did, and I could have easily just tossed it away, but I put it aside. It was only many months later that I realized what it was, a part of the end clasp for a watch chain I had inherited from my great-grandfather. The clasp and the chain were reunited, and not only was a whole object brought back together, but my heart was brought back together.

One piece of metal played a part in a chain, the chain was there to carry a watch, the watch was there to tell time, the measure of time helps me to live my life well, and living my life well can hopefully serve anything and everything. One piece of metal also played a part in something else, how much people can mean to one another, and how a tiny part of something can remind us of all the bigger things in life that matter the most.

I could try to write a whole book about the one and the many, about unity and diversity, about the whole and the parts, about God and creation, about transcendence and immanence. I could try to reference the Bible and the Upanishads, Parmenides and Heraclitus, St. Augustine and St. Thomas, Spinoza and Leibniz. How are things the same, and how are they different? Do they share in the very same identity, or do they participate with one another? I could speak of atheism, theism, pantheism, and panentheism.

That task is far beyond my own ability, and while I often ponder the theory, I leave its expression to the more gifted. What remains most important to me, in humble daily practice, is how I should consider the one and the many in the way I choose to live.

What I do certainly know is that while I am different from the pen and paper in front of me, or the neighbor laughing loudly next door, or the cat just now asking to be let into the yard, all of these things are also one and the same. They are different because they express different qualities, but the substance, existence itself, as understood in the original Stoic sense, is identical.

The existence of any one thing, however I choose to philosophically understand existence, is inseparable from the existence of any other thing. They have no being apart, but only being together. There is no me without everything around me, and there is no everything without all the bits that compose it. That even includes me.

However we may choose to understand it, we are all one. There is one joined perception that makes us the same, one joined movement that makes us the same, and one joined cooperation that makes us the same. We may kick and fight and protest all we like; in doing so, we only end up playing the part we wish to reject.

With all respect, to the traditional theist: By all means, look to the benefit of what you say is somehow up there. Now consider how what is up there, by the order of causes, is also present within everything down here.

With all respect, to the modern secularist: By all means, look to the benefit of what you say is somehow down here. Now consider how what is down here, by the order of causes, is also present within everything up there.

With all respect, to each and every one of us: By all means, define yourself as yourself. Now consider that the only reason the “you” and the “I” are ever in conflict is because we have forgotten how we are one.

Written in 1/2006