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1.  What is the inclusive object of one's self-understanding,

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or understanding of existence?  (Otherwise put, what is ultimate reality, in the

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sense of everything that we are all finally obliged to take account of insofar as we

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exist humanly at all, whatever other things we mayor may not have to

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 take account

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of in each leading our own individual life?)

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2.  I  am accustomed to

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 answering this question by saying that the

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inclusive object of one's self-understanding, or understanding of existence, is

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 the whole

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as inclusive of self and others.

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 I  am also inclined to

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 think that this answer

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is authorized by our experience or self-understanding itself, insofar as we

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experience ourselves as making a difference not only to ourselves and others but also to

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the whole including us.

But as essential as such an experience may be to theistic

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religious experience, it is  hardly essential to human experience, witness the

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 nontheistic religions of Hinduism and Buddhism.

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 For them, the strictly ultimate reality

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that I call "the whole" makes a  difference to us, but is not such that we make

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any difference to it-—whether it be the One or whether it be emptiness. 

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4.  With this (and perhaps other)

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 consideration(s) in mind, it may be

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worth considering another way of analyzing the inclusive object of self-understanding,

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 or ultimate reality, that does not beg the theistic question as my customary

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answer evidently does.

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 In this way, one would distinguish between self, others, and

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the strictly transcendental properties that they and any even conceivable

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subject necessarily imply.

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