“Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 40

Marcus Aurelius was both an Emperor of Rome (from 161 to 180 CE) and a highly respected Stoic Philosopher. As Emperor, he surely had to acknowledge the Gods and Goddesses of the Roman pantheon. But his quote above shows that as a stoic philosopher, his mind had reached further out to find something more fundamental.

Although he uses different words, I think Aurelius grasped the interconnected system-of-all- systems that I call “Continuing Creation.” In his quotation, he describes what we now call the Ecosystem of Earth, which is a pretty big chunk of Continuing Creation. And his use of the word “web” foreshadows our own use of “web” to describe today’s global system of interconnected information.