Ultimate complexity: A hindu process theology

Abstract

This paper will present an overview of a Hindu process theology. The specific problem it will address, utilizing this theological model, is whether there is only one ultimate reality, or more than one. A source of recent controversy among process thinkers is the approach to religious pluralism that has been developed by John Cobb and David Ray Griffin. This approach operates with the idea that there is more than one ultimate reality. But does this not contradict the very notion of what an ultimate reality is? Or do Cobb and Griffin use an understanding of the term ultimate different from conventional understandings? This paper will suggest that Cobb’s and Griffin’s basic thesis can be preserved with the idea of a single, but internally complex, ultimate reality, and that this concept is available from within the Vedānta tradition.