Contemplating the Nature of Ultimate Reality

Since the dawn of recorded history humans have been contemplating and speculating about the nature of ultimate or prime reality. Several views have gained prominence. These include the views of monists, dualists, pluralists and non-dualists. Let's explore them briefly:

"Absolute Monists" say the ultimate "number" of ultimate or prime reality is ONE. There is really only one reality, whether it is conceived as either body or mind, nature or spirit, existence or essence, being or nothingness, permanence or change, consciousness or energy, or whether these two sets of dualities are conceived as identical. There are transcendental (or spiritual, metaphysical) monists, and there are immanent (or naturalistic, cosmological) monists. They do not agree as to whether ultimate or prime reality is matter or mind, nature or spirit, but they both agree that there is ultimately only one prime reality. Either Matter (body) is "reduced" to a superficial phenomenon of Mind (Spirit), or Mind (Spirit) is "reduced" to a superficial phenomenon of Matter. Both types of monism reduce reality to one thing that excludes or diminishes the other.

"Philosophical dualists" say the "number" of ultimate or prime reality is TWO. Descartes is famous as a modern philosopher for positing the existence of two independent realities: body and mind. He came to believe that mind or consciousness exists apart from the physical body and brain, but did not offer a philosophical account as to how the two might be essentially related. In the modern secular age of scientific materialism neo-Darwinians view the mind or consciousness as nothing other than an epi-phenomenon or surface activity of the physical brain. For monistic materialists, when the body and brain die, the mind (or consciousness) dies with it. Mind (soul, spirit) has no enduring reality or awareness beyond the physical death of the body.

By way of contrast with monistic materialists, "pan-psychists" and "pan-experientialists" like Henri Bergson, William James and Alfred North Whitehead conceive of an infinite primordial mind or consciousness that eternally pre-exists and infuses matter (bodies and brains) it such a way that when finite human bodies (and brains) die there is an infinite mind or consciousness that objectively remembers, and adds to its ever expanding memory and emotion, the actual experiences of those finite bodies and minds. In this way the actual experiences of bodies and minds are preserved in the "eternal and emergent life of God" - the primordial and emergent divine mind or consciousness. Some pan-experientialists and process theologians go further and believe in the "subjective" immortal consciousness of individual persons as well as the "objective" immortal consciousness of the Universal Divine Mind. These "pan-experientialist" ideas are associated with "process panentheism" as distinguished from "pantheistic monism." In the process theological perspective, ultimate or prime reality is an integral and interdependent relationship between God, the cosmos and creativity. But it would be a mistake to see these as three independent prime realities. For "process panentheists" these three realities are integral and relational rather than external and separate from each other.

Absolute metaphysical pluralists are those who believe that prime reality is comprised of multiple autonomous realities. An absolute metaphysical pluralist might believe that the ultimate or prime reality is comprised a limited number of totally separate and autonomous entities. Or she might believe that prime reality is comprised of an infinite number of irreducible realities that can be conceived as either primordial entities or emergent processes, or both. This view is consistent with polytheism.

Classical or traditional theists are those who believe in the primordial and unchanging reality of an infinite, eternal, personal, transcendent, immanent, all-present, all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving God, and in the contingent and conditioned reality of the created universe, including all finite, living and sentient beings.

Process panentheists have modified traditional theism by positing the idea that God has two polarities in the divine nature: God's primordial nature and God's consequent nature. What this means is that God's axiological character as perfect goodness, beauty, truth and love is unchanging and everlasting. But God's "creative experience" is endlessly evolving and emerging. And so God does not have an absolute foreknowledge of all events of history and of our individual lives before they actually happen in time, though God may anticipate the various possibilities. And God does not have absolute sovereign power to dominate and coerce the open, free, emergent and creative processes of the evolving universe, and the changing events of human history. God exercises influence but it is not through authoritarian coercion but through the transcendent "lures" of the divine manifestations and human intimations of Eternal Beauty, Truth, Goodness and Love. It is not difficult to see the attraction of process panentheism to the ideas of platonic realism. At the same time, this platonic realism is augmented by an evolutionary idealism, a transcendental vision of "spiritual evolution" and "creative emergence" as the cosmos, nature, humanity and culture are persistently guided by "the divine lure" toward the realization and fulfillment of God's ultimate purpose - that all of creation might participate in and be united with the divine life through the paradoxical power of God's eternal self-emptying love.

Non-dualists are those believe that ultimate or prime reality is comprised neither of only one absolutely singular monistic reality or only two absolutely separate dualistic realities, or of an infinite number of totally separate and autonomous realities, but rather of a creative, dialogical, pluralistic and integral relationship between mutually interdependent dimensions. This paradoxical non-dualist vision of ultimate or prime reality envisions an infinite di-polar unity of opposites, a perpetual movement and "dance". It is a polymorphic and pluriform "movement" and "dance" between the One and the Many, the Unitive and the Differentiated, the Absolute and the Relative, the Infinite and the Finite, the Eternal and the Temporal, the Transcendent and the Immanent, the Beyond and the Within, the Trans-personal and the Personal, the Primordial and the Emergent, the Conscious and the Energetic, the Aware and the Experiential, the Potential and the Actual, the Ethereal and the Sensuous, the Essential and the Existential, the Majestic and the Elegant, the Sublime and the Beautiful, the Above and the Below, the Sacred and the Secular, the Comic and Tragic, the Romantic and Ironic -- that is, all the linguistically constructed "dualities" of consciousness and culture relationally engaged in an integral pluralist movement and dance .

Note: Some persons who call themselves "non-dualists" are actually "monists", having conflated the terms. This conflation is evident in the wikipedia article on "non-dualism". I believe a true understanding of "non-dualism" is neither monist nor dualist, but relationally integral (or integrally relational), that is, a "paradoxical parabola."

Still others, of course, perhaps most people, are simply content to say,"The whole thing is an inscrutable mystery inside an enigma, an infinite abyss we can never plumb, an infinite horizon we can never scale. Let the mystery be."

What's your view?

Rich Lang