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The very idea of non-duality stands seriously violated in the post-Śānkarite orthodoxy and to correct this severe aberration, an entirely new framework is introduced in this chapter. Based on classical Advaita doctrine that there is an experience dependent on senses and the mind (“experience”) which reveals empirical reality (“reality”), and an experience not so dependent (“Experience”) which reveals the Ultimate Reality (“Reality”), four cognitive possibilities are formulated and then all their logical implications are systematically deduced. One major logical consequence deduced is that the “illusoriness of the world”, a basic idea of traditional Advaita, is not at all allowed as a cognitive possibility duly entailed even by the assumptions made in traditional Advaita. This newly formulated framework of possibilities is adopted in the next chapter specifically to analyze afresh the theory of perceptual illusion in Advaita, with startling results.

Traditional Advaita holds that we experience false entities as is evident from rope-snake illusion. This chapter argues this thesis to be wrong on the ground that since the false snake is merely an imagined entity and a construction of our thought, it can never be an object of experience; it can only be regarded as an object of thought. Likewise, if the world is actually experienced by us, it has to be real and not false. Conversely, if it is false, it cannot be experienced by us. The very idea that something which is false is also experienced by us is absurd. Therefore the claim that the world is false and it is sublated upon our intuiting the Ultimate Reality should be rejected as wrong, illogical and completely groundless.

Another foundational idea of traditional Advaita is the sadasadvilaksana or “what is different from the real and the unreal”, a peculiar ontological status attributed to the empirical world. Since the world is both experienced by us and also sublated later on by the experience of Ultimate Reality, (1) it has to be different from the unreal since unreal entities are never experienced by us and (2) it has also to be different from the real as it is sublated unlike reality which is never sublated. But such an entity, if existent, has to be other than non-dual reality and hence must contradict it. So, Advaita declares that this “other” never truly exists. In that case it will be no different from asat or non-being. This “reduction” of sadasadvilaksana into asat is an awkward problem and its various dimensions are explored in this chapter.

This chapter introduces the study as a work of philosophical theology that adopts the morality of inquiry prevalent within the modern research university. This requires seeking knowledge without privileging the special interests of religious or anti-religious individuals or groups, doctrines, or traditions. The inquiry operates comparatively and evaluatively; it is post-foundationalist, coherentist, and fallibilist in its approach to argumentation, evidence, belief, and knowledge; and it is conducted within an apophatic frame of reference that promotes precision and play. A key term is defined: Ultimate reality is reality as it is most truly, most simply, most comprehensively, most significantly; it is the final word on reality. The chapter introduces three “Great Models” of ultimate reality and three cosmological frameworks that help to connect those models to empirical and experiential considerations. The result is six viable combinations, of which three form the focus of the reverent comparative competition presented in the book.

Subordinate-deity models of ultimate reality affirm that God is Highest Being within an ultimate reality that is neither conceptually tractable nor religiously relevant. Subordinate-deity models ceded their dominance to agential-being models of ultimate reality by refusing to supply a comprehensive answer to the metaphysical problem of the One and the Many in the wake of the Axial-Age interest in that problem, but they have revived in the twentieth century due to post-colonial resistance to putatively comprehensive explanations. Subordinate-deity ultimacy models resist the Intentionality Attribution and Narrative Comprehensibility dimensions of anthropomorphism to some degree but continue to employ the Rational Practicality dimension of anthropomorphism, resulting in a strategy of judicious anthropomorphism. Variations, strengths, and weaknesses of the subordinate-deity class of ultimacy models are discussed.

Agential-being models of ultimate reality affirm that ultimate reality is an aware, agential being. The Central Result of the scientific study of religion—that human beings will spontaneously create anthropomorphic supernatural agents to believe in, and to make religious use of, whether or not those agents actually exist—erodes the plausibility of any belief in supernatural agents, without proving such beliefs false, so it imposes a heavy burden on proponents of agential-being theism to show that the agential-being God hypothesis is plausible in light of all relevant information, and convincingly superior to competitor views. Agential-being ultimacy models resist the Rational Practicality and Narrative Comprehensibility dimensions of anthropomorphism to some degree but continue to employ the Intentionality Attribution dimension of anthropomorphism, resulting in a strategy of judicious anthropomorphism. Variations, strengths, and weaknesses of the agential-being class of ultimacy models are discussed.

Ground-of-being models regard ultimate reality as holy or sacred (unlike subordinate-deity models) and reject the idea that ultimate reality is an aware, agential being (unlike agential-being models). Ground-of-being models are radically anti-anthropomorphic, resisting the Intentionality Attribution, Narrative Comprehensibility, and Rational Practicality dimensions of anthropomorphism simultaneously. They are strongly amenable to the scientific study of religion and to apophatic metaphysical frameworks, within which ultimate reality surpasses the complete cognitive grasp of any possible creature. They offer a compelling and natural solution to the problem of religious diversity. They are and have always been relatively less popular than agential-being and subordinate-deity ultimacy models but it is not impossible to imagine a civilizational transformation after which ground-of-being models would become the dominant religious outlook. Variations, strengths, and weaknesses of the ground-of-being class of ultimacy models are discussed.

To appreciate the risks and benefits of anthropomorphism, it is important (1) to appreciate the genius and limitations of human cognition, (2) to compare ultimacy models to see what difference anthropomorphic modeling techniques make, and (3) to entertain the possibility of an apophatic approach to ultimate reality that relativizes and relates ultimacy models. An apophatic approach to ultimate reality relativizes ultimacy models but also implies a disintegrating metric that serves to relate ultimacy models to one another. Degree of anthropomorphism is an important component of this disintegrating metric. Comparative analysis helps manifest internal complexity in the idea of anthropomorphism by distinguishing three relatively independent dimensions: Intentionality Attribution, Rational Practicality, and Narrative Comprehensibility. Educational efforts stabilized in cultural traditions can confer on people the desire and ability to resist one or more dimensions of the anthropomorphic default modes of cognition to some degree.