The All

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

The All (also called The One, The Absolute, The Great One, The Creator, The Supreme Mind, The Supreme Good, The Father, and The Universal Mother) is a term denoting major pantheistic, panentheistic, Hermetic, and mystical notions of Ultimate Reality, the Monad, the Cosmos, God or Godhead. The All is often characterized as androgynous, possessing both masculine and feminine qualities, and transcending them, and thus often equated to conceptions of Brahman and the Tao.

Quotes

There is nothing non-exclusive but the All; my end is communion with Being through the whole of Being. ~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel

The nature of the All moved to make the universe. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Alphabetized by author or source

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

One is The All. ~ Cleopatra the Alchemist

The All, thus interwoven of These, is Bliss.
Naught is beyond Bliss. ~ Aleister Crowley

• 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)

• 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

• 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

• 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.

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

• 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)

• 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)

• 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

• 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)

• 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

• 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)