On the metaphysical meaning of major religious symbols for a globalized world

Two running themes of this paper are as follows: (1) there is an underlying unity—which in fact is ‘identity’ of the substance—of all major world religions, and (2) different modes of Universe and the unification of cognitions therein are expressions of answer to various metaphysical questions. The present endeavour in this way keeps the unity of human society—a step towards realizing ‘vasudhāeva kuṭumbakam’—‘Whole of Earth is a family’—as its ultimate goal. This paper envisages the realization of this objective through arriving at the common metaphysical structure of religions that constitute the core of humanity’s beliefs. The endeavour in this sense is essential for a globalized world since a globalized world of twenty-first century will be awfully susceptible to cataclysmic possibilities in the absence of knowledge of existence and understanding of such a common metaphysical structure, unlike as in the non-globalized world of nineteenth or even that of twentieth century, for example.

1. Radhakrishnan (1965).

2. Wheaton (2008) “The New York Times obituary on Samuel Huntington notes,…, that his “emphasis on ancient religious empires, as opposed to states or ethnicities, [as sources of global conflict] gained…. more cachet after the Sept. 11 attacks.””.

3. Philosophy East and West (1965).

4. IPQ (1998).

5. Hawking (1988, p. 50).

6. It clearly appears that Buddhism, Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita and Dvaita, are in a Fibonacci series—{Zero, One, One, Two, Three, …, n}.

7. See Govindacharya (1996) for Madhva’s “Tantrasārasaṁgraha” of Madhvācārya.

8. “Many Orthodox Christians annually celebrate Christmas day on or near January 7…described in the Christian Bible. This date works to the Julian Calendar that pre-dates the Gregorian Calendar, which is commonly observed.” “Time and Date” (2014). If this date is almanac based then we have to find out the the original day of birth of Jesus. On the contrary, if 7th January is a sort of fixed date then it essentially refers to the 7th layer of the Pyramid where the tesseract has come into full bloom with kenosis being complete.

9. Pickthall (1989).

10. After all, what has been projected forth in creation needs to be withdrawn back. Precisely this is the function performed by projective geometry in the present context.

11. Wikipedia (2011(k)).

12. Wikipedia (2011(k)).

13. See Bogomolny (2012).

14. Summers (2012).

15. Wikipedia [2012(h)].

16. Wikipedia (2014(a)).

17. Wikipedia (2014(a)).

18. “In mathematics, tensor calculus or tensor analysis is an advanced extension of vector calculus to more general mathematical objects called tensor fields (tensors that may change over a manifold, e.g. with space and with time)” Wikipedia [2012(ag)].

19. Wikipedia (2014).

My grateful thanks to the reviewer of AI&S who reviewed an earlier version of this paper, and made very useful points. I have responded to these points in Sect. 7 above. This is an abridged version of my work entitled “Synthesis of World Religions: Arriving at the Common Metaphysical Structure” to be published shortly. The work was carried out at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla as Fellow during 2010–2012. I gratefully acknowledge the then Director of the Institute, Prof. Peter Ronald de Souza, for his whole-hearted support and encouragement.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Philosophy, Goa University, Goa, 403 206, India

   U. A. Vinay Kumar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to U. A. Vinay Kumar.

Reprints and permissions