The Integral Message

Panikkar's Creature-Creation Polarity

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The poles of Creature and Creation are the two most obviously active domains of Panikkar’s description of life. They stand as two separates when perceiving one’s daily living in the dualistic world of sight. Consciousness tends to operate regularly as separates. However, when one takes a closer look and with increased knowledge and instrumentality one becomes aware that there is a consistency of make up across all creation, whether matter, or biology.  

 

To reflect upon the place the creature has within the totality of creation and understand the polarity, Panikkar discusses the part and the whole, in particular the example of Isabel as an example of the part. The part is simply a sample of the whole, yet it is unique for it focuses on the consciousness of the whole.

 

We can note Panikkar’s words concerning this:

Isabel is not an independent part of humanity and ultimately a piece, an atom of the universe, but the concretion of her universe in her - a spark of the Divine says a certain mystic.[1]

 

The contrasting vision between the rational and the advaitic or integral is clear in Panikkar's description. Here I recall his words:

The advaitic intuition ... It does not look first at Isabel and then at her environment, trying afterward to relate the two. The advaitic intuition sees primordially the relationship that “makes” the “two,” sees the polarity that makes the poles. It can discover that the poles are neither one nor two. Only by negating the duality (of the poles) without fusing them into one can the relationship appear as constitutive of the poles, which are such only insofar as they are conceptually different and yet existentially or really inseparable.[2]

 

Panikkar takes a moment to turn to another field to affirm his philosophical perceptions. He turns to a similar insight described poetically by William Blake: ‘To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, holding infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.’[3]

 

[1] ibid., 31.

[2] ibid.

[3] ibid.