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2.  I  am accustomed to  answering this question by saying that the inclusive object of one's self-understanding, or understanding of existence, is  the whole as inclusive of self and others.  I  am also inclined to  think that this answer is authorized by our experience or self-understanding itself, insofar as we experience ourselves as making a difference not only to ourselves and others but also to the whole including us.

3.  But But as essential as such an experience may be to theistic religious experience, it is  hardly  hardly essential to human experience, witness the  nontheistic religions  nontheistic religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. For  For them, the strictly ultimate reality that I call "the whole" makes a  difference  difference to us, but is not such that we make any difference to it-—whether it be the One or whether it be emptiness. 

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