When I was in college, I wanted to find ultimate truth, if there was such a thing. I suspected it was not in religion as I knew it—not a modernist’s neat and tidy formula. And I suspected it was not in a postmodernist’s notion that everything we know and believe results from our culture and environment.
I believed then, and even more now, that beyond everything we think we know is something greater, universal, and eternal. I compared every major religion and its take on ultimate truth. They all disagree. To think there is one, universal being or principle that embraces all religions is blindly naïve. People believe that because they want to; it’s nice and makes everybody happy. But the differences between these religions are fundamentally irreconcilable, which means such happy thoughts are nonsense.
Ultimate Truth is by necessity grounded in ultimate, eternal reality. So a good start would be to ask how major world religions view ultimate reality.
Hinduism conceives of ultimate reality in terms of “Brahman,” which is the origin of all things physical or non-physical and is ultimate truth. Brahman is both immanent (manifested here and now) and transcendent
(beyond our vision or reach). Ultimately nothing is real; we are part of a dream in the mind of Brahman. Earthly existence is thus only a dream state, and through many reincarnations we may achieve nirvana, liberation from the affects of karma on cycles of rebirth, where there is no longer a sense of self, and where there is neither suffering nor desire but only bliss.
