Supreme Being

About: Supreme Being is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 192 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1615 citations.

On Divinities: A Comparative Analysis of Selected Yoruba and Chinese Divinities

Abstract: Traditional societies such as the Yoruba and the Chinese share a lot in common. Their values and traditions are modelled on rules and regulations set by supernatural beings or deities. Both societies have historical trajectories that reveals that certain deities have transcendental origins, unique attributes and supreme qualities that are based on an unquestionable truth. The Yoruba cosmology discloses the supremacy of Olódùmarè, who is seen as a supreme being and whose power is absolute. His uniqueness and preeminence is seen by all and acknowledged accordingly. Also from Yoruba cosmology we learn that the Orisas are divinities because they are seen as the offspring of Olódùmarè. Other Yoruba divinities include obatala (lady of mercy), Ogun (the patron of blacksmiths, metallurgists, soldiers, hunters), Sango (the divinity of vengeance) and Osun Seegesi (the elegant deity of wealth).

Mysticism and Altruism

Abstract: HE word, mysticism, stirs up various feelings in the minds of practical people and psychologists, philosophers, and religious leaders. In the popular mind, it provokes curiosity and amusement, as it is identified with fortune telling, hypnotic spells, or spiritualistic mediumship. To the ordinary man a mystic is a dreamer who indulges in extraordinary incidents and gives predictions of future events. The word yoga is also closely associated with this kind of mysticism. However, the true meaning of yoga or mysticism is not what the above connotations imply in ordinary human society. The word, yoga, is derived from the Sanskrit word yuj, meaning to yoke. It signifies union with God. In the state of yoga a man becomes directly and immediately aware of the presence of God. According to Webster's dictionary, mysticism is defined as direct awareness of the divine Being through intuitive methods. Real mysticism is direct knowledge of the supreme Being. In fact, it takes a man to the core of existence, while philosophy and theology give us description and discursive reasoning about Reality. Mysticism is intimate knowledge of God, while the other branches of discipline are the outer expressions. Most of the social and natural scientists raise objections against mysticism and completely deny its validity with the argument that it has no basis in experience. They say that it cannot be observed, scrutinized, and verified. According to them, observation, experiment, and verification can alone give valid knowledge. Physiological psychologists and other physical scientists seem to think that the only methods of finding the truth are controlled observations and generalizations thereof. When they find that their particular method of experimentation cannot be applied to mystic experiences, they jump to the conclusion that these experiences are not valid. It is extremely narrow to assume that the methods and instruments used by different branches of science are the only means of obtaining knowledge. Professor Eddington challenges this viewpoint in his Philosophy of Physical Science and he concludes that even scientific knowledge is relative. He questions whether the reality which science is trying to understand is within the scope' of scientific observation. Hindu Vedantic scholars are one with Professor Eddington in his thinking. Along with many other western and eastern scholars, they conclude that there are methods of knowing Reality. They claim that mystical proceduies are also methods, even though they are peculiar to mysticism in the same way that the methods followed in astronomy, chemistry, or biology are different and distinctive. So a mystic adopts his own method for understanding Reality or the divine Being. Mystical experiences are also verifiable and observable through similar practices and systems. A real mystic will never claim that he alone can have these experiences but that they are not possible for others. On the contrary, a mystic declares that anyone who follows the methods properly can come face to face with the divine Being. When Swami Vivekananda first met Sri Ramakrishna as a young boy, he asked his great teacher: "Sir, have you seen God?" Sri Ramakrishna immediately replied: "Yes, and I see Him more vividly than I see you. You can also see Him." This very statement stimulated Swami Vivekananda and he made successive experiments in realizing God and knowing Him in various ways. The history of religion makes it apparent that anyone belonging to any racial, national, or religious * SWAMI AKHILANANDA came to this country about twenty two years ago from Calcutta and belongs to the Ramakrishna order. He directs the Ramakrishna-Vedanta Societies of Boston and Providence. He is author of Hindu Psychology, 1946, and of a forthcoming volume on The Hindu View of Christ.

A Cosmic Insight

Abstract: The author describes the first of a series of cosmic experiences that explicitly demonstrated the workings of the Cosmic Order. These awesome visual and experiential insights over a period of years revealed a Universal Methodology that the author calls “The System.” [i] It can complement traditional approaches to the physical, biological and social sciences. Five days of continual organic ecstasy preceded the first cosmic experience. The Supreme Being explicitly identified Himself by demonstrating that there is no being apart from His Supreme Being. God is the living manifestation of Universal Values. He is Universal Wholeness as System 1, transcending and subsuming an open ended nested hierarchy of discrete higher Systems each of which elaborates on the lower Systems that transcend and subsume them. The subsumed hierarchy delineates how the whole of creation is structurally organized to work. Universal values bridge a Rift in Wholeness between self and other than self. God is a supreme universal aspect of Self in Other than self. He is alive within all creation and yet he also transcends and subsumes the whole of creation. The System exhausts all possible structural varieties of phenomenal experience with respect to active interface processes between a common inside and a common outside, neither of which can be known to the exclusion of the other. All we can ever know in phenomena of any kind is active interface processes between them. The cosmic order historically integrates experience via the timeless and formless Void from which the universe of physical form is synchronously recalled. The boundless Void is a master memory bank that the Supreme Being subsumes and can employ as a medium of revelation in cosmic insights at His sole discretion. [i] http://www.cosmic-mindreach.com/System_Intro.html

The Trinity in African Christian theology: An overview of contemporary approaches

Abstract: This contribution offers a survey of the modern African theological discourse on the Trinity as a distinctive Christian doctrine of God. It is a systematic narrative review of primary literature on the doctrine of the Trinity in modern African theology with a view to identify main trends, key concepts and major proponents. It is argued that the contemporary African Trinitarian Hermeneutics cannot be understood in isolation from African debates on translatability of concepts of God framed first in terms of the reinterpretation of the theological significance of pre-Christian African concepts of God and subsequently as an outcome of African Christological reflection. The article affirms an apophatic resistance to any tendency to take God for granted as recently advanced by Ernst Conradie and Teddy Sakupapa.

Sartre on the Ontological Need for God

Abstract: Adherents to the relatively new discipline of neurotheology profess that religious faith has a brain neural substrate, with structural, functional, and genetic elements that “hardwire” us to believe in God. It is argued here that a better way to approach the question of why people believe in a transcendent being would be to interrogate the structure of human being, with the intention of uncovering the meanings that underlie the phenomenon of faith. Jean-Paul Sartre may have already provided a necessary and sufficient explanation for this phenomenon. We are, he concluded, ontologically inclined to identify with a supreme being whose essence and existence transcend the limits of our own finite being. It is one thing to arrive at such a conclusion intuitively, but altogether something else to demonstrate, as Sartre does, how this conclusion follows from the structure of human being itself.