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Ultimate reality is "the supreme, final, and fundamental power in all reality".Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Ultimate reality It refers to the most fundamental fact about reality, especially when it is seen as also being the most valuable fact. This may overlap with the concept of the Absolute in certain philosophies.
Aristotle (384–322 BCE) held that the unmoved mover "must be an immortal, unchanging being, ultimately responsible for all wholeness and orderliness in the sensible world" and that its existence is necessary to support everyday change.
Democritus (c. 460–370 BCE) and Epicureanism (c. 307 BCE) rejected the idea of ultimate reality, saying that only atoms and void exist, but they do have the eternal, unbounded, and self-caused nature of non-materialism views of the concept.
In Neoplatonism (3rd century CE), the first principle of reality is "the One" which is a perfectly simple and ineffable principle which is the source of the universe, and exists without multiplicity and beyond being and non-being.
Stoic physics (c. 300 BCE – 3rd century CE) called the primitive substance of the universe pneuma or God, which is everything that exists and is a creative force that develops and shapes the cosmos.
Mahayana Buddhism has different conceptions of ultimate reality, which is framed within the context of the two truths, the relative truth of everyday things and the ultimate truth. Some traditions, specifically those who rely on the Madhyamaka philosophy, reject the notion of a truly existing or essential ultimate reality, regarding any existent as empty ( sunyata) of inherent existence ( svabhava).
Other strands of Mahayana thought have a more positive or cataphatic view of the ultimate reality. The Yogachara school tends to follow an Idealism metaphysics. Other examples include those traditions which rely more heavily on Buddha-nature thought, such as East Asian Mahayana schools like Huayan and Tibetan traditions like shentong.
Contemporary philosophy notes the possibility that reality has no fundamental explanation and should be seen as a brute fact. Adherents of the principle of sufficient reason reject this, holding that everything must have a reason.
According to Mircea Eliade, ultimate reality can be mediated or revelation through .Dadosky, 2004. p. 85 For Eliade the "Arche" mind is constantly aware of the presence of the Sacred, and for this mind all symbols are religion (relinking to the Origin). Through symbols human beings can get an immediate "intuition" of certain features of the inexhaustible Sacred. The mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things because reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and therefore can't be described in . It is therefore the image as such, as a whole bundle of meaning, that is "true" (faithful, trustworthy). Eliade says:Dadosky, 2004. p. 100 Common symbols of ultimate reality include , the tree of life, microcosm, fire, children.See George MacDonald's The Golden Key
Paul Tillich held that God is the ground of being and is something that precedes the subject and object (philosophy) dichotomy. He considered God to be what people are ultimately concerned with, , and that religious symbols can be recovered as meaningful even without faith in the personal God of traditional Christianity.
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