"We are all one" = Solipsism?

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There alot of people that believe there is no duality. “We are all one”, but yet none of these people believe in solipsism which is the belief that self is all that exists and any ‘other’ is an illusion.

So how is “We are all one” not solipsism?, since ‘We’ is technically just one and only one entity that is conscious and aware. If you replace 'We are all one" with “All is one with me”, it’s the same thing.
 
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They are both faulty philosophies from the onset, so it’s not surprising that there’s this kind of inconsistency.
 
In Buddhism at least in how Thich Nhat Hanh explains this we are all interconnected. Could this be another way of saying we are all one. I’ve read similar teachings in Christianity that relate we are connected- we are all brother’s and sisters, we are all one? I’m not familiar with Judaism, or with Islam but wouldn’t have a hard time believing they have similar teachings but different wording as well. After all we are all one. )
 
We are all connected as brothers and sisters =/= we are all one.

We are all individuals. Unique souls, distinct from every other soul in existence. This cannot in any circumstances be equate to the notion of all being one.
 
It is not either/or but both/and.

Look at the Trinity as a model for all reality. Is it one or is it three? How is it three? How is it one?
 
Shakuhachi said:
It is not either/or but both/and.

Look at the Trinity as a model for all reality. Is it one or is it three? How is it three? How is it one?
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I think that actually makes sense for thinking of how we’ll be in Heaven, since Jesus prayed we would be just as much One as the Trinity is. But I don’t think we’re yet there, in this life. I think that kind of oneness is so deep, you’ll know it, it won’t just be a theory. In this life, the best we can usually hope for is to be one body, like two body parts are part of “one” whole but they’re still separate (not just distinct) body parts. But I do tend to think in Heaven we’ll be more than that, and be sort of like what you say: Like the Trinity, not exactly but in how “one” we are, while somehow also not being just one lone person.
 
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Looked at another way, only God has true being. We share in His and without it we do not exist. Coming from a fallen nature we are slow to actually realize that.
 
Shakuhachi said:
Looked at another way, only God has true being. We share in His and without it we do not exist. Coming from a fallen nature we are slow to actually realize that.
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If that is true, wouldn’t God have a fallen nature as well since we are him and he is us?
 
We are fallen in our relatively independent individualism and free will.
 
Shakuhachi said:
Looked at another way, only God has true being. We share in His and without it we do not exist. Coming from a fallen nature we are slow to actually realize that.
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Even if this is technically incorrect, although it is certainly more right than wrong, it is an astute observation nonetheless…

But lets just assume that you was correct. Even if God is the beingness of things, he still isn’t identical with the nature he causes to exist. There would still be a distinction between the nature of a thing and the fact that it has existence because it begins to exist (or begins to have God, since to have existence in this case is to have God), whereas with God, his nature is identical with his act of reality, God is existence, and therefore does not begin to exist. Therefore while there would be no truly unique existences, there would certainly be different natures. Thus there would still be a duality between creation and God…
 
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Shakuhachi said:
Isn’t that what you want to stay orthodox?
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The problem is that it looks like panentheism becuase people find it hard to imagine how God can be the being of a things nature and not be identical with that nature. And panentheism appears to be rejected by the church. I could be wrong however. You might be right.
 
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How can panentheism be rejected by the Church if God is both imanant as well as transcendent?
 
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I am not going to pretend i know the answer to that.

In any case, if our nature as it exists is identical with God’s nature, then not only would this be impossible it would contradict the Catholic distinction between creation and God.
 
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God is immanent and transcendent, but He is not actually the creation itself, nor is the creation itself God. He permeates, transcends, and maintains all things, but those things are not Him. An analogy that might go a little way is this: Gravity is omni-presence on all of the livable Earth. There is no place in the Earth’s habitable environment where gravity is not naturally found. All things on Earth depend on gravity, to some extent, to function correctly. But these things are not gravity, and gravity is not these things. It can be found at work in, and in a sense, through all things. But there is a distinction between the gravity and the things.

God, likewise, is everywhere, and maintains everything. There is no existence where God is not, which is irrelevant since there is no space where God is not. But He is not, in Himself, those things He transcends. Transcendence, after all, is technically to be independent and distinct, and you cannot be independent and distinct from what you actually are.

So neither imminence (to be everywhere) nor transcendence (to be distinct and independent of) to the universe imply that God IS everything or that everything IS God. We all depend upon His imminence, but we are not Him.
 
Thanks for the thoughtful response but in my simple mind it makes no sense. I have already been stretching the limits of traditional Catholic thinking on the forum so I don’t want to challenge further. PM me if you want to continue this discussion.
 
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