Religions, regardless of how accurate one finds them to be, serve as a means to attaining a more spiritual and deeper perspective in existence and life. They all hold deep philosophical contexts beneath the parabolic surface and they all tell a similar story.
And while you will hear many divided opinions regarding the role of religion in society, the truth is that all of these opinions take on different approaches to notions that can be easily viewed from different angles.
As a result, the many -isms that pop up serve to define the attitudes of the people toward the religious and spiritual interpretations of reality and existence. The most common approaches to this are the monotheistic (there is one God) and atheistic (there is no God) viewpoints which are on the opposite sides of the spectrum.
In between, there is deism (the belief that there is a God who doesn’t get personally involved), polytheism (the belief in many gods), and agnosticism (the uncertainty that there is a God).
And the one viewpoint which encompasses all these viewpoints and embraces them with equal understanding is OMNISM – the recognition and respect of all religions.
The word ‘omnism’ comes from the Latin word ‘omnis’ which means ‘all’. The Oxford Dictionary defines an omnist as “a person who believes in all faiths or creeds; a person who believes in a single transcendent purpose or cause uniting all things or people, or the members of a particular group of people.
Omnism means taking every religious approach with an open mind and finding the connection between them, thus uniting them into a singular philosophy. And omnists believe that every religion serves to provide pieces of information in the great puzzle of life and existence as a whole.
Most importantly, omnism stands in opposition to dogmatism, as these people take religious information with a grain of salt and create a universal understanding of the spiritual teachings, focusing on the wisdom they provide, rather than the ‘facts’ they impose. A realised mystic on the different religious streams will tell you that the only real knowledge is self-knowledge.
Omnism comes as a result of an awakened society, and many people practice its philosophy even without being aware of the existence of the word.
In truth, today’s society has taught us that religious stigmatization on the basis of stereotypes and misconceptions is completely irrelevant and incorrect. We now know that people of different religions are not ‘monsters’ and ‘backward savages,’ but rather a beautiful collection of loving and peaceful ideologies that have a lot in common.
Which is more, advancements in science and technology have taught us much about the things we didn’t know and opened our eyes to a truth different from the one portrayed in religious texts.
And really, one’s mind cannot be but transformed in the vastness of information and insight that is available to all of us and understand what truly matters in life. Omnists embrace the path of spirituality and understand that the Universe is much more complex than previously thought.
In some way, it seems that most of society today is heading toward omnism. While the vast knowledge available to us today doesn’t allow us to simply disregard it in favor of outdated ideologies, many people still have faith in something greater than themselves.
At its root, omnism comes with a strong sense of open-mindedness, thought, and exploration of different aspects in order to create a more broadened and accurate picture of reality in which there is more than just the material, tangible world.
Can you relate to this philosophy? Are you an omnist without being aware of it?
I cordially recommend this article that fairly describes (and promotes) the omnist’s spiritual philosophy.
Indeed, omnism today is so much more than recognizing spiritual and religious paths.