The term ‘All’ in the depth-psychology corpus functions less as a grammatical universal than as a philosophical absolute — a marker for totality, wholeness, and the ground of being. Across the corpus, the concept operates on at least three distinct registers. In the Neoplatonic and Vedantic streams (Plotinus, Aurobindo), ‘All’ designates the emanative plenum from which individual existences derive and to which they return: the One overflows into All, and All aspires back toward the Good or Sachchidananda. In the mystical-theological traditions (Augustine, John of Damascus, the Philokalia), ‘All’ marks the divine comprehensiveness — God as all life, all knowing, all presence, bracketing creaturely partiality. The Buddhist-inflected voices (Nhat Hanh, Campbell, Harvey/Baring) employ ‘All’ through the lens of interdependence: each point contains all points; one is all, all is one. Marcus Aurelius provides the Stoic counterpoint, reading ‘All’ as temporal compression — all present time but one point of eternity, all things soon altered and perished. The Jungian alchemical material (Jung, Alchemical Studies) preserves an archaic cosmological sense: all things woven together, mingled, united, and separated in cyclical process. The tension running throughout is between ‘All’ as an ontological affirmation of plenitude and ‘All’ as a soteriological imperative — an invitation to realize that the soul already participates in the totality it seeks.
each gem contains all the other gems… ‘one is all, all is one.’ Every point of the circle is of equal importance. Each is vital to the existence of the whole and therefore to the existence of all the other parts.
Nhat Hanh articulates the Buddhist principle of interpenetration as a logical identity: each element contains All, making the formula ‘one is all, all is one’ not a mystical metaphor but a structural description of interdependence.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988thesis
all things are woven together and all things are undone again; all things are mingled together and all things combine; and all things unite and all things separate; all things are moistened and all things are dried; and all things flourish and all things fade in the bowl of the altar.
The alchemical text cited by Jung presents ‘All’ as the universal substrate of cyclical transformation, encompassing union, separation, generation, and dissolution within a single cosmological process.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967thesis
All flows, so to speak, from one fount not to be thought of as one breath or warmth but rather as one quality englobing and safeguarding all qualities.
Plotinus defines the hypostatic All as a single all-encompassing quality — the source from which all differentiated life flows — locating the intelligible plenum as the ontological ground of every particular existence.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
We are aware of an unwounded Delight, a pure and perfect Presence, an infinite and self-contained Power present in ourselves and all things, not divided by their divisions, not affected by the stress and struggle of the cosmic manifestation; it is within it all, but it is superior to it all.
Aurobindo identifies the immanent Self — the All-encompassing Sachchidananda — as simultaneously present within all things and transcendent of them, constituting the ground of cosmic consciousness.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948thesis
The Good is that on which all else depends, towards which all Existences aspire as to their source and their need.
Plotinus situates ‘All’ in its teleological dimension: the Good is the universal attractor, the source and end to which all existences, however differentiated, are oriented.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
not only is Being one in itself, but it is one everywhere, in all its poises and in every aspect, in its utmost appearance of multiplicity as in its utmost appearance of oneness.
Aurobindo argues that the integral knowledge of All requires recognising that oneness is not reserved for mystical peak-states but is equally present across every plane and aspect of manifestation.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948thesis
All, petty things; all things that are soon altered, soon perished. And all things come from one beginning; either all severally and particularly deliberated and resolved upon, by the general ruler and governor of all; or all by necessary consequence.
Marcus Aurelius reads ‘All’ through Stoic providential logic: the totality of things derives from a single rational source and is unified either by deliberate governance or by necessary causation, rendering temporal multiplicity ultimately trivial.
, Meditations, 180supporting
Its play of conscious being it would be aware of as manifestation of That in forms of Sachchidananda… in its every state or act of delight, joy or love aware of the Transcendence embracing itself by a form of conscious self-enjoyment.
Aurobindo presents the liberated soul’s relation to the All as a continuous awareness in which every state of being — knowing, willing, feeling — is experienced as the Absolute’s self-manifestation in form.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
God is therefore all life, and all one, not compounded of parts, but perfect in His simplicity.
John of Damascus employs ‘All’ in a strictly theological register, asserting divine totality as ontological simplicity: God is all life and all unity precisely because he is without composition or partiality.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
All words, structures, dogmas, formulations, and conceptions are ‘empty’; when this is realized beyond thought we are initiated into the ground of our being, which is that shining boundless void of wisdom and compassion that is the Mother of all reality.
Harvey and Baring identify the experiential dissolution of all conceptual structures with initiation into the Feminine ground of reality — the Mother of All — understood as a living void rather than a metaphysical substance.
, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Throughout the World, 1996supporting
we are initiated into the ground of our being, which is that shining boundless void of wisdom and compassion that is the Mother of all reality, and so, of all true awakening.
Campbell frames the Mahayana Prajnaparamita as the womb of All: the void that mothers all reality is simultaneously the ground of all awakening, grounding the universal in a feminine cosmic principle.
, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013supporting
those things be good which yet are corrupted; which neither were they sovereignly good, nor unless they were good could be corrupted… all which is corrupted is deprived of good.
Augustine’s dialectic of corruption and goodness implies that ‘All’ existing things, insofar as they exist, participate in the Good — their very corruptibility presupposes a prior goodness from which they are subtracted.
, Confessions, 397supporting
Truth signifies the sole and unique cause, origin, kingdom, power and glory of created beings, from which and through which all things were made and are being made, by which and through which the being of all things is sustained.
Maximos the Confessor, as rendered in the Philokalia, defines Truth as the all-encompassing causal principle — the source, medium, and sustaining ground of everything that exists.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
Through grace God in His entirety penetrates the saints in their entirety, and the saints in their entirety penetrate God entirely, exchanging the whole of Him for themselves, and acquiring Him alone as the reward of their ascent towards Him.
The Philokalia presents theosis as mutual total interpenetration: the All of God and the all of the saint exchange places completely, enacting a living image of the ‘one is all’ formula within Christian mystical theology.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
conscious being is many in its individual souls, but in its self we can experience it as one in…
Aurobindo acknowledges the Sankhya pluralism of souls while insisting that at the level of the Self — the All-ground — individual multiplicity resolves into experienced unity.
, The Life Divine, 1939aside