By Schubert Ogden
1. What is the inclusive object of one's self-understanding, or
understanding of existence? (Otherwise put, what is ultimate reality, in the sense
of everything that we are all finally obliged to take account of insofar as we exist
humanly at all, whatever other things we mayor may not have to take account of
in each leading our own individual life?)
1. What is the inclusive object of one's self-understanding, or understanding of existence? (Otherwise put, what is ultimate reality, in the sense of everything that we are all finally obliged to take account of insofar as we exist humanly at all, whatever other things we mayor may not have to take account of in each leading our own individual life?)
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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