The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog

Sire observes that, for many in the Western world, none of the worldviews previously discussed are viable. Convinced that Western thought is stuck in an impasse, they embrace traditional worldviews of East Asia (e.g., India, China, and Japan) as an alternative. The “swing to Eastern thought” among Westerners goes back a long way (135), but the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s made this brand of thought popular in the West on a large scale.

Although Eastern thought is as rich and complex as Western thought, the Eastern worldview embraced by Westerners is most often some variant of pantheistic monism—the philosophical view underlying Hinduism and Buddhism and expressed in spiritual literature like the Upanishads.

Pantheism implies the belief that the soul (“atman”) of every human being is the Soul of the cosmos (“Brahman”); in other words, human beings are part of the entire cosmic consciousness. This implies monism, or the belief that all reality is ultimately one. For the pantheist, God is the cosmos itself—the “one, infinite-impersonal, ultimate reality” (139). God is all that exists, and nothing exists that is not God. Human individuality is maya (illusion) because we are all part of God or cosmic reality as a whole. For Eastern thought, to know reality is to pass beyond distinctions and categories and thus to realize the oneness of all being, expressed by the phrase “the One.” This is the ideal state known as Nirvana, the equivalent of salvation in Eastern religion.

The existence of maya implies that “reality is a hierarchy of appearances” (140). Different forms of being—from mineral life to animals to human beings—are at various stages of oneness with pure being. The spiritual journey consists in overcoming maya and becoming united with the One. However, according to Sire, in Eastern philosophy ideas and beliefs are less important than techniques; there are many paths leading to transcendence, hence the importance of the guru or spiritual master in Eastern religion, who helps others draw closer to the One.

Among the techniques recommended by gurus are the recitation of a mantra (Sanskrit syllable) and meditation in a quiet place. Such meditation is “intellectually contentless,” aiming at getting one’s soul in tune with “the harmony of the cosmos” in which all seemingly rational distinctions (true/false, good/evil) have been recognized as illusions and transcended (142). The goal is not “rational content” but “metaphysical union,” in which the individual has become the most “real” they can be.

The core difference between pantheistic monism and Western theism lies in the nature of God/the One/ultimate reality. In pantheism, “the chief thing about God is Oneness,” which effectively “puts God beyond personality” (144). By contrast, theism believes that “personality is the chief thing about God and the chief thing about people” (144). Personality implies self-consciousness, which in turn implies duality (a thinking subject and the thing known) and complexity. In pantheism, both God and human beings are One, and thus simple and impersonal.

Sire states that “consciousness” in Eastern thought—the pure union with the One—is thus not consciousness in Western terms (awareness and rational knowledge) but rather nonconsciousness and oblivion, more like the dream state. Eastern spirituality therefore leads to “quietism and inaction”—i.e., contemplation or meditation—as the ideal state of being.

The Eastern view of ethics is tied in with the concepts of karma and reincarnation. Karma is the belief that “one’s present fate […] is the result of past action, especially in a former existence”—a variation on the ethical belief that “you reap what you sow” (146). The related idea of reincarnation posits that all beings are gradually finding their way back to the One and may take many lifetimes to do so. In this way, Eastern thought posits immortality, but not a personal immortality, since an individual being or animal may be reborn as another being or animal in another life, always continuing its journey toward the One. Sire concludes that, in essence, Eastern ethics is “self-helping” rather than for the benefit of others; one does good for one’s own benefit in the eternal cycle of life and rebirth.

But since all human actions are maya, this means that ultimately good and evil are an illusion and don’t exist. This holds likewise for time and history: They are illusory and to be transcended. Time only appears to exist to human beings because we cannot see things from the larger perspective of the One. History is thus not linear but cyclical, and there is no real use in trying to change things. Particular events in the past have no meaning; all that is important is the “all-encompassing whole” to which all things return.

Buddhism built upon the ideas of Hinduism, but with a few differences. Buddhist thought emphasizes ultimate reality as total nonbeing or The Void. Human beings have no core identity because they are (through reincarnation) aggregates of previous human beings. The goal is to arrive at a state of mind in which “all distinctions disappear” and the seeker realizes his or her root in nonbeing. In its practical commitments, Eastern pantheistic monism urges followers to empty themselves of all desire and “illusory material existence,” which are the source of all suffering. To this end, Buddhism presents an “eightfold path” of regular life practices.

Sire adds that dialogue between Western and Eastern thought remains complex and fraught with difficulty because of the very different assumptions of each. Although the phenomenon of Westerners “going East” has slowed somewhat in recent decades—and the East has itself become quite Westernized—Eastern thought and spirituality still holds attraction for many.