From Old Age to New Age: Eastern Monism as a Reaction to the Ecological Crisis of the West
From Old Age to New Age: Eastern Monism as a Reaction to the Ecological Crisis of the West

Summary/Abstract: It is a fact that the entire world, but especially the West, experiences an acute ecological crisis. Besides the technical and economical solutions, it seems that a profound paradigm shift is necessary which should also encompass the outlook on the Ultimate Reality and cosmology. Accordingly, the western paradigm is silently replaced with the eastern one: the belief in a personal, transcendental God or Ultimate Reality, distinct from the world, declines in favor of the belief in an immanent “life force” or “spirit”, in which all things have their existence. This monism, brought up especially by the New Age movement, is clearly inspired from Eastern Vedantic philosophy. In Vedantic philosophy, and especially in the thought of Sankara, who systematized the metaphysical principles of monism, Ultimate Reality is ekam-eva-advityam (“One-without-a-second”). The monism of Vedantic philosophy proposes a revalorization of the universe, on the basis of metaphysical unity of the Absolute and what is manifested, as a response to the current ecological crisis.

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