Years ago I started my own business with my husband and we offered so many services, we decided to name the business Pansophists because our dictionary defined a pansophist as "one possessing or pretending to possess all knowledge". The same dictionary also stated that Pansophism had been an ancient religion that worshipped everything that lives, and we felt good with that, too. We lost that dictionary and in the years that followed found it increasingly difficult to find anything about Pansophism.Not too long ago, I came to a web site that had a tremendous amount of information on ancient religions but nothing on Pansophism. That didn't deter me and I wrote the author of the site. EUREKA! The author, Bruce Fisher, returned a wonderful explanation. It is quoted here:
"I humbly suggest that you not trouble yourself too much longer with the ancient Greek Pansophism movement but, rather, focus on the universal meaning of Pansophy in the NOW as the cultivation of an open receptive mentality which can connect with your intuitive faculty which is able to see the interconnectedness of everything in a vast and wonderful web of relationships and that all that exists is an expression of that Infinite All-Pervading Life which consciousness is space itself. The word Pantheism -- which implies that divinity is reflected in every thing, including rocks, and certainly in the atom of which they are constituted -- might be a better term on which to concentrate.
"Pansophy or pansophism means, literally, knowledge of all, knowledge in all, universal knowledge, etc. It implies that life and divinity is in everything -- from a galaxy to an atom. the ONE INFINITE LIFE encompasses everything because it is the Source of all being and contains within itself infinite possibilities -- including all of us human beings -- and therefore everything that we can conceive as well as everything that is inconceivable to us, is an expression of this ONE INFINITE LIFE.
"Another way of looking at this issue is that everything, including us human beings, is an idea in the Universal Mind. Our physical bodies, the cells and atoms of which are, for the most part, replaced about every seven years, are constructed around a subtle archetype or idea which, when no longer viable or useful, disintegrates and we die to it physically (although psychically and spiritually we continue to exist in more subtle worlds or dimensions of reality). The same is true for an atom or an electron or any other "subatomic particle" which, according to both modern Quantum philosophy as well as Eastern Mysticism, are events which are driven by the urge of the ONE INFINITE LIFE to express itself.
"To summarize: Eastern mysticism, Western occultism (esoteric or spiritual science) and quantum physics conclude that (as Krishnamurti repeatedly affirmed) the observer and the observed are intimately interconnected (i.e., we affect everything that we observe), that consciousness is the driving and creative force of the universe and that at each moment many possibilities of choice exist for us."
I couldn't let you go away without letting you meet the author of the above:
Dr. Fisher's Ancient Wisdom site
