The Extensive Continuum and
a Buddha of Many Worlds
A Whiteheadian Buddhist Cosmology
Created by Jay McDaniel and ChatGPT
Imagining Worlds with Three Hundred and Thirty-Three Dimensions
So far as mere extensiveness is concerned, space might as well have three hundred and thirty-three dimensions, instead of the modest three dimensions of our present epoch. The three dimensions of space form an additional fact about the physical occasions. Indeed the sheer dimensionality of space, apart from the precise number of dimensions, is such an additional fact, not involved in the mere notion of extension. Also the seriality of time, unique or multiple, cannot be derived from the sole notion of extension.
- AN Whitehead, Process and Reality
Imagining Worlds without Arithmetic
We hardly ever apply arithmetic in its pure metaphysical sense, without the addition of presumptions which depend for their truth on the character of the societies dominating the cosmic epoch in which we live. It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the fact, that ordinary verbal statements make no pretence (sic) of discriminating the different senses in which an arithmetical statement can be understood.
There is no difficulty in imagining a world—i.e., a cosmic epoch—in which arithmetic would be an interesting fanciful topic for dreamers, but useless for practical people engrossed in the business of life. In fact, we seem to have been only barely rescued from such a state of things. For amid the actual occasions located in the wilds of so-called ‘empty space,’ and well removed from the enduring objects which go to form the enduring material bodies, it is quite probable that the contemplation of arithmetic would not direct attention to any very important relations of things. It is, of course, a mere speculation that any actual entity, occurring in such an environment of faintly coordinated achievement, achieves the intricacy of constitution required for conscious mental operations.
- AN Whitehead, Process and Reality
Imagining Worlds without Shapes, Dimensions, or Measurability
...the real potentialities relative to all standpoints are coordinated as diverse determinations of one extensive continuum. This extensive continuum is one relational complex in which all potential objectifications find their niche. It underlies the whole world, past, present, and future. Considered in its full generality, apart from the additional conditions proper only to the cosmic epoch of electrons, protons, molecules, and star-systems, the properties of this continuum are very few and do not include the relationships of metrical geometry. An extensive continuum is a complex of entities united by the various allied relationships of whole to part, and of overlapping so as to possess common parts, and of contact, and of other relationships derived from these primary relationships. The notion of a ‘continuum’ involves both the property of indefinite divisibility and the property of unbounded extension. There are always entities beyond entities, because nonentity is no boundary. This extensive continuum expresses the solidarity of all possible standpoints throughout the whole process of the world. It is not a fact prior to the world; it is the first determination of order—that is, of real potentiality—arising out of the general character of the world. In its full generality beyond the present epoch, it does not involve shapes, dimensions, or measurability; these are additional determinations of real potentiality arising from our cosmic epoch.
- AN Whitehead, Process and Reality
Imagining a Vast Nexus of Many Cosmic Epochs
"In these general properties of extensive connection, we discern the defining characteristic of a vast nexus extending far beyond our immediate cosmic epoch. It contains in itself other epochs, with more particular characteristics incompatible with each other. Then from the standpoint of our present epoch, the fundamental society in so far as it transcends our own epoch seems a vast confusion mitigated by the few, faint elements of order contained in its own defining characteristic of ‘extensive connection.’ We cannot discriminate its other epochs of vigorous order, and we merely conceive it as harbouring the faint flush of the dawn of order in our own epoch. This ultimate, vast society constitutes the whole environment within which our epoch is set, so far as systematic characteristics are discernible by us in our present stage of development. In the future the growth of theory may endow our successors with keener powers of discernment"
AN Whitehead, Process and Reality
Many World-Systems, Cosmic Epochs,
and the Cosmic Buddha
Buddhist cosmologies have long spoken of multiple world-systems arising and perishing throughout vast stretches of time. They imagine cosmic domains populated by innumerable sentient beings inhabiting many realms of existence, not just one universe alone. These domains are often understood to include the six realms of existence: hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, jealous gods, and heavenly beings — all caught, in varying ways, within the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth. Each world has its Buddha: its awakened figure who helps creatures escape the round of rebirth and discover the peace of nirvana. And some Buddhist traditions speak of a cosmic Buddha — Vairocana — who is the living unity of the entirety of these many world-systems.
Is there an analogy in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead? Might a Process Buddhism have its own way of recognizing a multiplicity of world-systems or cosmic epochs? And is it not the case that, in Whitehead’s philosophy, all actual entities — all beings whatsoever — are sentient in some sense, in that they possess capacities for prehending or feeling their actual worlds and responding thereto? Moreover, are these sentient beings not separate substances existing independently of their experiences, but rather momentary acts or occasions of experience themselves, coming into being through their relations with others? Is this not Anatman, Whitehead-style.
And might Whitehead’s notion of the consequent nature of God — whose awareness embraces all cosmic epochs — resemble a cosmic Buddha: a compassionate presence overlapping all world-systems, feeling all joys and sufferings, and seeking the liberation, healing, or fulfillment of each and all? Such a divine reality would not stand outside the cosmos as an omnipotent creator ruling from afar. Rather, it would dwell within the ongoing life of the universe as its deepest receptivity, its living memory, and its tender lure toward wisdom, beauty, and compassion.
I do not suggest that a Whitehead-influenced Buddhism of this sort is identical with traditional Buddhism. Rather, I suggest that it represents a form of Buddhist modernism: a creative hybrid of Whiteheadian process philosophy and Buddhist cosmological imagination. I offer an outline of this way of thinking in this essay, composed by me (Jay McDaniel) with help from ChatGPT.
Consider his notion of the extensive continuum and cosmic epochs.
The Extensive Continuum
In Whitehead's philosophy, the extensive continuum is a matrix of potentiality that includes all worlds. It is not empty space; empty space is itself populated by actual entities. Rather, it is the underlying field of potentiality that embodies all possible standpoints and is “atomized” by actual entities. It is the condition that allows entities to be together, to overlap, to inherit from one another, and to form ordered relations. In Whitehead’s words, it expresses the “solidarity of all possible standpoints.” These standpoints include worlds — indeed universes — that may be very different from our own, with different laws of nature and dimensions utterly foreign to our understanding, or perhaps with no dimensions at all. Whitehead calls them cosmic epochs.
Cosmic Epochs
In Whitehead's philosophy, a cosmic epoch is a world-system characterized by a distinctive pattern of order, relation, and natural law. Our own cosmic epoch, which scientists tell us is about 13 or 14 billion years old. includes the kinds of entities familiar to us — electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, stars, galaxies, and living beings — together with the spacetime geometry and physical laws that govern their interactions. But Whitehead proposes that other cosmic epochs may embody very different forms of order and entirely different kinds of actual entities.
A cosmic epoch is thus not simply a region of outer space. It is an entire mode of world-ordering: a way in which actual entities relate, endure, inherit from one another, and form a coherent universe. Different cosmic epochs may possess different dimensional structures, different temporal patterns, different forms of extensiveness, and different laws of nature. Some may include geometries unlike our own; others may lack anything resembling geometry altogether.
Yet all cosmic epochs belong to the wider extensive continuum, which expresses the relational solidarity of all possible standpoints and all possible worlds.
A Vast Nexus of Epochs
It is important to recognize how different some of this cosmic epochs may be from one another. Some may not have three-dimensional space, or even “shapes” as we recognize them, or arithmetic and geometry, or serial time measured by clocks. They may embody radically different kinds of extensiveness and order, perhaps beyond our capacity fully to imagine. Yet all would belong to the wider relational nexus of the extensive continuum, united not necessarily by geometry or metric space, but by more fundamental relations of whole and part, overlap, inclusion, continuity, and mutual relevance.
Each of these worlds is unique, even if like others in some ways. Each has its own standpoint within the vast nexus of the extensive continuum, and so do the beings that inhabit them. Every entity, in every cosmic epoch, prehends reality from its own unique locus of feeling and relation. No standpoint exhausts the whole. Each discloses the world from a particular perspective within the wider relational nexus of the extensive continuum. Four speculative possibilities can be made, expanding upon and developing Whitehead's ideas.
Epochs within Epochs
First, cosmic epochs may unfold within other cosmic epochs. They may overlap and interpenetrate one another. It is possible, for example, that our own universe — with its electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, stars, galaxies, and living beings — contains many subordinate cosmic epochs associated with different galactic systems or other localized patterns of order. A cosmic epoch need not encompass the whole of reality; it may itself be nested within larger epochs while containing smaller ones.
Epochs of Different Sizes
Second, cosmic epochs may be very small as well as very large. We naturally imagine cosmic epochs on a vast galactic scale, but there is no reason in principle why a distinctive mode of order could not emerge within a much more localized domain. A cosmic epoch is defined not primarily by size but by the character of the relations, patterns, and laws that govern the entities composing it.
Durationally Diverse Epochs
Third, there is no definitive temporal scale for cosmic epochs. Some may endure for billions of years, while others may last only a second. What defines a cosmic epoch is not its duration but the distinctive mode of order and relation that characterizes it. And "time" itself refers, not to clock time, but to what Whitehead calls the "perpetual perishing" of actual entities or "occasions of experience" as they (or their subjective immediacy) comes into being and passes out of being.
Non-Dimensional Epochs
Fourth, and this point is made by Whitehead as well, given cosmis epochs need not involve "space" as we know them, either because they are non-three-dimensional or because they have no dimensions at all, given familiar understanding of dimensioins. They involve extensive connections among inhabitants, but in ways that do not involve space and measureable time.
A Living Whole of the Many Epochs
And yet all cosmic epochs are interconnected through the extensive continuum. They are self-contained in their standpoints, but they are also parts of a greater whole that includes them all. A vast nexus, as Whitehead puts it.
The question emerges: Who surveys the whole? Who, if anything, holds all the epochs together seeing their infinite range and diversity?
One answer, of course, would be nobody. There is no sentient being who is awake to the whole of the vast nexus, feeling it and including it within a single inclusive standpoint. A standpoint which nevertheless overlaps all the standpoints such that each standpoint is known to it. A standpointless standpoint, as it were.
But we cannot help but wonder if, after all, there is not some kind of awakened being who, while not independent of the nexus and its infinite of cosmic epochs, nevertheless sees and know them, at least those who have come into existence, however momentarily, and perhaps even feels compassion for them. For a Buddhist this would be, I would think, a divine Buddha. Who might this Buddha be?
Cosmic Buddhas
Various options from traditional Buddhism come to mind:
In Mahāyāna texts, Buddhas are often described as possessing vast awareness extending through innumerable Buddha-fields. They perceive the suffering of beings and respond skillfully according to circumstances. The emphasis is less on omnipotent control and more on omnipresent compassion and liberating responsiveness.
This is especially evident in the doctrine of the Dharmakāya — the “truth body” of Buddhahood. The Dharmakāya is sometimes understood as a universal awakened presence permeating reality itself. Buddhas are manifestations or expressions of this awakened compassion within different worlds.
The Consequent Nature of God
I suggest that the consequent nature of God, as envisioned by Whitehead, resembles such images of a cosmic, inclusive Buddha with a standpointless standpoint: a responsive presence that feels the sufferings and joys of all beings throughout the multiplicity of world-systems and responds with compassionate understanding. This does not imply omnipotent control or creation ex nihilo. Rather, it suggests a universal receptivity — an all-inclusive awareness in which every actuality is felt from its own standpoint and lovingly woven into a wider harmony.
From a Buddhist perspective, this image may evoke cosmic Buddhas such as Vairocana or bodhisattvas such as Avalokiteśvara, whose compassion extends throughout innumerable worlds. From a Whiteheadian perspective, however, this cosmic responsiveness is not merely one enlightened being among others but the consequent nature of God itself: the living memory of the universe, the fellow-sufferer who understands, the tender companion of all becoming.
Yet the phrase “standpointless standpoint” must be used carefully. In Whitehead’s philosophy there is never a wholly disembodied or abstract view from nowhere. Even God prehends the world relationally. The divine standpoint is “standpointless” only in the sense that it includes and feels all standpoints without being restricted to any finite one of them. God is the inclusive receptacle of the world’s many perspectives, the unity of infinitely many here-nows gathered into compassionate awareness.
And there is a further point to make as well. Even as God "surveys" the many cosmic epochs, or, better, feels them, the very act of surveying them adds something new to the whole. This means that it is never complete and is always changing. Even the cosmic Buddha is subject to impermanence or, as Whitehead puts it, the creative advance into novelty. God is everlasting, but not flowless.
The Existential Stakes
What, then, are the existential stakes of this way of seeing things? Surely we cannot spend our lives speculating about cosmic epochs or the nature of cosmic Buddhas alone. We have lives to live, people to love, losses to endure, injustices to confront, and daily decisions to make. If a process Buddhist cosmology has value, it must ultimately illuminate the character of lived experience here and now.
Perhaps its first existential implication is humility. We inhabit but one small region within an immeasurable plurality of worlds and standpoints. Our perceptions are partial, our judgments incomplete, our certainties fragile. Yet this humility need not lead to despair. It can also lead to wonder: a renewed sense that reality exceeds our grasp and that existence is richer, stranger, and more mysterious than we ordinarily imagine.
A second implication is compassion toward sentient beings in our local context. If all beings are interconnected occasions of experience, internally related to one another in varying degrees, then no suffering is wholly isolated. Every act reverberates outward. To injure another being is, in some measure, to injure the larger web of life of which one is a part. And to respond with kindness, tenderness, or mercy is to contribute to the healing of the world. Compassion ceases to be merely a moral command; it becomes a recognition of the relational structure of existence itself.
A third implication is reverence for life in its many forms. A process Buddhist perspective widens the circle of concern beyond the human world alone. Animals, forests, rivers, ecosystems, perhaps even realities beyond our present comprehension, participate in the unfolding adventure of existence. The world becomes less a collection of inert objects and more a community of experiencing beings.
Finally, this cosmology offers a transformed understanding of the sacred. The sacred is not focussed on a supernatural ruler standing outside cosmic process. It is found within the very becoming of things: in the compassionate lure toward beauty, wisdom, intensity, and peace that moves through all existence. Whether web name this presence God, Vairocana, Avalokiteśvara, Amitābha, the Dharmakaya, or simply the mystery of life itself, the invitation is similar: to live with awareness, compassion, and participation in the ongoing healing and creative transformation of the world.
Reincarnation and the Journey of Experience
A process Buddhist cosmology may also open the door to renewed reflection on reincarnation or rebirth. Traditional Buddhist thought has long affirmed that the stream of becoming does not simply terminate with bodily death. The forms of rebirth differ greatly among Buddhist traditions, but the underlying intuition is that the death of the physical body does not necessarily bring an end to the deeper currents of experiential continuity.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, such a possibility is by no means dismissed out of hand. Whitehead does not reduce experience to the brain alone. The brain is one highly complex society of actual occasions within the body, and in ordinary waking life our dominant stream of experience is deeply intertwined with it. Yet the stream of experience is not simply identical with the brain as a material object. The self is not a static substance housed inside a body; it is an ongoing succession of experiential occasions inheriting from one another across time.
Moreover, Whitehead’s notion of the extensive continuum suggests dimensions of reality that exceed the particular spacetime geometry of our present cosmic epoch. The extensive continuum is not merely empty physical space. It is the relational matrix from which many possible forms of order and many cosmic epochs may emerge. If this is so, then it is conceivable that after bodily death a stream of experience might continue in ways not confined to the biological structures through which it previously operated.
Such a continuation need not imply the survival of an unchanging ego or permanent soul. Buddhism has traditionally resisted precisely that idea. Instead, what may continue is a living stream of karmic inheritance: patterns of feeling, memory, desire, habit, and aspiration taking new form within new experiential contexts. The journey after death may therefore involve transitions into other dimensions, realms, or modes of existence within the larger fabric of reality.
From this perspective, reincarnation is not merely the transmigration of a fixed self from one body to another. It is the ongoing pilgrimage of experience itself: the continuation of relational becoming across multiple worlds and forms of existence. Whether understood literally, symbolically, or metaphysically, such a possibility encourages a wider imagination concerning the meaning of life, death, and consciousness.
None of this can be proven with certainty. It remains speculative. Yet a process Buddhist cosmology suggests that reality may be more hospitable to continuing journeys of experience than modern materialism ordinarily allows.
Is there an analogy in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead? Might a Process Buddhism have its own way of recognizing a multiplicity of world-systems or cosmic epochs? And is it not the case that, in Whitehead’s philosophy, all actual entities — all beings whatsoever — are sentient in some sense, in that they possess capacities for prehending or feeling their actual worlds and responding thereto? Moreover, are these sentient beings not separate substances existing independently of their experiences, but rather momentary acts or occasions of experience themselves, coming into being through their relations with others? Is this not Anatman, Whitehead-style.
And might Whitehead’s notion of the consequent nature of God — whose awareness embraces all cosmic epochs — resemble a cosmic Buddha: a compassionate presence overlapping all world-systems, feeling all joys and sufferings, and seeking the liberation, healing, or fulfillment of each and all? Such a divine reality would not stand outside the cosmos as an omnipotent creator ruling from afar. Rather, it would dwell within the ongoing life of the universe as its deepest receptivity, its living memory, and its tender lure toward wisdom, beauty, and compassion.
I do not suggest that a Whitehead-influenced Buddhism of this sort is identical with traditional Buddhism. Rather, I suggest that it represents a form of Buddhist modernism: a creative hybrid of Whiteheadian process philosophy and Buddhist cosmological imagination. I offer an outline of this way of thinking in this essay, composed by me (Jay McDaniel) with help from ChatGPT.
Consider his notion of the extensive continuum and cosmic epochs.
The Extensive Continuum
In Whitehead's philosophy, the extensive continuum is a matrix of potentiality that includes all worlds. It is not empty space; empty space is itself populated by actual entities. Rather, it is the underlying field of potentiality that embodies all possible standpoints and is “atomized” by actual entities. It is the condition that allows entities to be together, to overlap, to inherit from one another, and to form ordered relations. In Whitehead’s words, it expresses the “solidarity of all possible standpoints.” These standpoints include worlds — indeed universes — that may be very different from our own, with different laws of nature and dimensions utterly foreign to our understanding, or perhaps with no dimensions at all. Whitehead calls them cosmic epochs.
Cosmic Epochs
In Whitehead's philosophy, a cosmic epoch is a world-system characterized by a distinctive pattern of order, relation, and natural law. Our own cosmic epoch, which scientists tell us is about 13 or 14 billion years old. includes the kinds of entities familiar to us — electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, stars, galaxies, and living beings — together with the spacetime geometry and physical laws that govern their interactions. But Whitehead proposes that other cosmic epochs may embody very different forms of order and entirely different kinds of actual entities.
A cosmic epoch is thus not simply a region of outer space. It is an entire mode of world-ordering: a way in which actual entities relate, endure, inherit from one another, and form a coherent universe. Different cosmic epochs may possess different dimensional structures, different temporal patterns, different forms of extensiveness, and different laws of nature. Some may include geometries unlike our own; others may lack anything resembling geometry altogether.
Yet all cosmic epochs belong to the wider extensive continuum, which expresses the relational solidarity of all possible standpoints and all possible worlds.
A Vast Nexus of Epochs
It is important to recognize how different some of this cosmic epochs may be from one another. Some may not have three-dimensional space, or even “shapes” as we recognize them, or arithmetic and geometry, or serial time measured by clocks. They may embody radically different kinds of extensiveness and order, perhaps beyond our capacity fully to imagine. Yet all would belong to the wider relational nexus of the extensive continuum, united not necessarily by geometry or metric space, but by more fundamental relations of whole and part, overlap, inclusion, continuity, and mutual relevance.
Each of these worlds is unique, even if like others in some ways. Each has its own standpoint within the vast nexus of the extensive continuum, and so do the beings that inhabit them. Every entity, in every cosmic epoch, prehends reality from its own unique locus of feeling and relation. No standpoint exhausts the whole. Each discloses the world from a particular perspective within the wider relational nexus of the extensive continuum. Four speculative possibilities can be made, expanding upon and developing Whitehead's ideas.
Epochs within Epochs
First, cosmic epochs may unfold within other cosmic epochs. They may overlap and interpenetrate one another. It is possible, for example, that our own universe — with its electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, stars, galaxies, and living beings — contains many subordinate cosmic epochs associated with different galactic systems or other localized patterns of order. A cosmic epoch need not encompass the whole of reality; it may itself be nested within larger epochs while containing smaller ones.
Epochs of Different Sizes
Second, cosmic epochs may be very small as well as very large. We naturally imagine cosmic epochs on a vast galactic scale, but there is no reason in principle why a distinctive mode of order could not emerge within a much more localized domain. A cosmic epoch is defined not primarily by size but by the character of the relations, patterns, and laws that govern the entities composing it.
Durationally Diverse Epochs
Third, there is no definitive temporal scale for cosmic epochs. Some may endure for billions of years, while others may last only a second. What defines a cosmic epoch is not its duration but the distinctive mode of order and relation that characterizes it. And "time" itself refers, not to clock time, but to what Whitehead calls the "perpetual perishing" of actual entities or "occasions of experience" as they (or their subjective immediacy) comes into being and passes out of being.
Non-Dimensional Epochs
Fourth, and this point is made by Whitehead as well, given cosmis epochs need not involve "space" as we know them, either because they are non-three-dimensional or because they have no dimensions at all, given familiar understanding of dimensioins. They involve extensive connections among inhabitants, but in ways that do not involve space and measureable time.
A Living Whole of the Many Epochs
And yet all cosmic epochs are interconnected through the extensive continuum. They are self-contained in their standpoints, but they are also parts of a greater whole that includes them all. A vast nexus, as Whitehead puts it.
The question emerges: Who surveys the whole? Who, if anything, holds all the epochs together seeing their infinite range and diversity?
One answer, of course, would be nobody. There is no sentient being who is awake to the whole of the vast nexus, feeling it and including it within a single inclusive standpoint. A standpoint which nevertheless overlaps all the standpoints such that each standpoint is known to it. A standpointless standpoint, as it were.
But we cannot help but wonder if, after all, there is not some kind of awakened being who, while not independent of the nexus and its infinite of cosmic epochs, nevertheless sees and know them, at least those who have come into existence, however momentarily, and perhaps even feels compassion for them. For a Buddhist this would be, I would think, a divine Buddha. Who might this Buddha be?
Cosmic Buddhas
Various options from traditional Buddhism come to mind:
- Vairocana is sometimes understood as the all-pervading Buddha whose enlightened awareness encompasses the entire cosmos. In Huayan Buddhism especially, Vairocana is the living unity of the interpenetrating cosmos itself.
- Avalokiteśvara embodies universal compassion and is traditionally described as hearing the cries of suffering beings everywhere in the worlds. Avalokiteśvara is not said to “govern” reality but to respond compassionately throughout it.
- Amitābha vows to receive beings from countless worlds into the Pure Land, extending salvific compassion across cosmic distances.
In Mahāyāna texts, Buddhas are often described as possessing vast awareness extending through innumerable Buddha-fields. They perceive the suffering of beings and respond skillfully according to circumstances. The emphasis is less on omnipotent control and more on omnipresent compassion and liberating responsiveness.
This is especially evident in the doctrine of the Dharmakāya — the “truth body” of Buddhahood. The Dharmakāya is sometimes understood as a universal awakened presence permeating reality itself. Buddhas are manifestations or expressions of this awakened compassion within different worlds.
The Consequent Nature of God
I suggest that the consequent nature of God, as envisioned by Whitehead, resembles such images of a cosmic, inclusive Buddha with a standpointless standpoint: a responsive presence that feels the sufferings and joys of all beings throughout the multiplicity of world-systems and responds with compassionate understanding. This does not imply omnipotent control or creation ex nihilo. Rather, it suggests a universal receptivity — an all-inclusive awareness in which every actuality is felt from its own standpoint and lovingly woven into a wider harmony.
From a Buddhist perspective, this image may evoke cosmic Buddhas such as Vairocana or bodhisattvas such as Avalokiteśvara, whose compassion extends throughout innumerable worlds. From a Whiteheadian perspective, however, this cosmic responsiveness is not merely one enlightened being among others but the consequent nature of God itself: the living memory of the universe, the fellow-sufferer who understands, the tender companion of all becoming.
Yet the phrase “standpointless standpoint” must be used carefully. In Whitehead’s philosophy there is never a wholly disembodied or abstract view from nowhere. Even God prehends the world relationally. The divine standpoint is “standpointless” only in the sense that it includes and feels all standpoints without being restricted to any finite one of them. God is the inclusive receptacle of the world’s many perspectives, the unity of infinitely many here-nows gathered into compassionate awareness.
And there is a further point to make as well. Even as God "surveys" the many cosmic epochs, or, better, feels them, the very act of surveying them adds something new to the whole. This means that it is never complete and is always changing. Even the cosmic Buddha is subject to impermanence or, as Whitehead puts it, the creative advance into novelty. God is everlasting, but not flowless.
The Existential Stakes
What, then, are the existential stakes of this way of seeing things? Surely we cannot spend our lives speculating about cosmic epochs or the nature of cosmic Buddhas alone. We have lives to live, people to love, losses to endure, injustices to confront, and daily decisions to make. If a process Buddhist cosmology has value, it must ultimately illuminate the character of lived experience here and now.
Perhaps its first existential implication is humility. We inhabit but one small region within an immeasurable plurality of worlds and standpoints. Our perceptions are partial, our judgments incomplete, our certainties fragile. Yet this humility need not lead to despair. It can also lead to wonder: a renewed sense that reality exceeds our grasp and that existence is richer, stranger, and more mysterious than we ordinarily imagine.
A second implication is compassion toward sentient beings in our local context. If all beings are interconnected occasions of experience, internally related to one another in varying degrees, then no suffering is wholly isolated. Every act reverberates outward. To injure another being is, in some measure, to injure the larger web of life of which one is a part. And to respond with kindness, tenderness, or mercy is to contribute to the healing of the world. Compassion ceases to be merely a moral command; it becomes a recognition of the relational structure of existence itself.
A third implication is reverence for life in its many forms. A process Buddhist perspective widens the circle of concern beyond the human world alone. Animals, forests, rivers, ecosystems, perhaps even realities beyond our present comprehension, participate in the unfolding adventure of existence. The world becomes less a collection of inert objects and more a community of experiencing beings.
Finally, this cosmology offers a transformed understanding of the sacred. The sacred is not focussed on a supernatural ruler standing outside cosmic process. It is found within the very becoming of things: in the compassionate lure toward beauty, wisdom, intensity, and peace that moves through all existence. Whether web name this presence God, Vairocana, Avalokiteśvara, Amitābha, the Dharmakaya, or simply the mystery of life itself, the invitation is similar: to live with awareness, compassion, and participation in the ongoing healing and creative transformation of the world.
Reincarnation and the Journey of Experience
A process Buddhist cosmology may also open the door to renewed reflection on reincarnation or rebirth. Traditional Buddhist thought has long affirmed that the stream of becoming does not simply terminate with bodily death. The forms of rebirth differ greatly among Buddhist traditions, but the underlying intuition is that the death of the physical body does not necessarily bring an end to the deeper currents of experiential continuity.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, such a possibility is by no means dismissed out of hand. Whitehead does not reduce experience to the brain alone. The brain is one highly complex society of actual occasions within the body, and in ordinary waking life our dominant stream of experience is deeply intertwined with it. Yet the stream of experience is not simply identical with the brain as a material object. The self is not a static substance housed inside a body; it is an ongoing succession of experiential occasions inheriting from one another across time.
Moreover, Whitehead’s notion of the extensive continuum suggests dimensions of reality that exceed the particular spacetime geometry of our present cosmic epoch. The extensive continuum is not merely empty physical space. It is the relational matrix from which many possible forms of order and many cosmic epochs may emerge. If this is so, then it is conceivable that after bodily death a stream of experience might continue in ways not confined to the biological structures through which it previously operated.
Such a continuation need not imply the survival of an unchanging ego or permanent soul. Buddhism has traditionally resisted precisely that idea. Instead, what may continue is a living stream of karmic inheritance: patterns of feeling, memory, desire, habit, and aspiration taking new form within new experiential contexts. The journey after death may therefore involve transitions into other dimensions, realms, or modes of existence within the larger fabric of reality.
From this perspective, reincarnation is not merely the transmigration of a fixed self from one body to another. It is the ongoing pilgrimage of experience itself: the continuation of relational becoming across multiple worlds and forms of existence. Whether understood literally, symbolically, or metaphysically, such a possibility encourages a wider imagination concerning the meaning of life, death, and consciousness.
None of this can be proven with certainty. It remains speculative. Yet a process Buddhist cosmology suggests that reality may be more hospitable to continuing journeys of experience than modern materialism ordinarily allows.
The Six Realms of Existence:
A Whiteheadian Interpretation
In traditional Buddhist cosmology, sentient beings wander through six realms of existence: gods, demi-gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings. These realms are not merely places. They are modes of experience shaped by karma, perception, desire, fear, attachment, and habitual patterns of feeling and action. They are existential worlds.
A Whiteheadian interpretation of the six realms begins with a similar intuition. Alfred North Whitehead does not think of reality as composed of static substances but of momentary acts of experience — “actual occasions” — each inheriting a world from the past and responding to it creatively. Every moment of experience is shaped by patterns of feeling, habits of response, and relations to others. Reality is thus experiential, relational, and processive all the way down.
From this perspective, the six realms can be understood not simply as supernatural locations but as enduring patterns of experiential organization within the extensive continuum. They are modes of concrescence — recurring ways in which streams of experience interpret and feel the world.
1. The God Realm (Deva Realm)
The god realm represents states of pleasure, abundance, refinement, power, and ease. In Buddhist thought, devas enjoy extraordinary happiness but are often spiritually complacent because suffering is distant from them.
A Whiteheadian interpretation would understand this realm as a society of occasions dominated by harmonious contrasts, intensity of enjoyment, aesthetic richness, and relative freedom from disruptive suffering. Yet precisely because these occasions are stabilized in satisfaction, novelty may diminish. The danger is not pain but stagnation. The subjective aim narrows into preservation of pleasure.
This realm can appear in human life whenever privilege, success, beauty, or security create a cocoon of self-satisfaction disconnected from vulnerability and compassion.
2. The Demi-God Realm (Asura Realm)
The asura realm is marked by envy, competitiveness, aggression, and wounded pride. The demi-gods are powerful but perpetually resentful of others.
Whitehead might interpret this realm as one in which prehensions are dominated by comparison, rivalry, and antagonistic contrasts. Experience becomes organized around the felt threat posed by competing centers of value. Creativity is present, but it is defensive and conflictual.
Many political, institutional, and interpersonal systems drift into asuric forms of existence when identity becomes organized around status anxiety, domination, or resentment.
3. The Human Realm
In Buddhism, the human realm is especially precious because it combines suffering and possibility in a balanced way. Human existence contains enough pain to provoke spiritual awakening and enough freedom to pursue it.
A Whiteheadian interpretation would see the human realm as a particularly fertile mode of concrescence in which conflicting feelings, contrasts, memories, anticipations, ideals, and decisions can be integrated with unusual intensity and flexibility. Human life is neither fully trapped nor fully satisfied. It is unstable in a creative sense.
This instability allows for moral transformation, artistic creation, philosophical reflection, compassion, and awakening. The human realm is thus not superior in power or pleasure but in its openness to creative transformation.
4. The Animal Realm
The animal realm represents instinct, fear, survival, habit, and vulnerability. Traditional Buddhism sometimes portrays it negatively, but a Whiteheadian approach would resist reducing animals to mere ignorance.
Whitehead attributes experience, feeling, and value to all living beings. Animals are not machines; they are centers of experience with their own standpoints and forms of enjoyment.
The animal realm might therefore be interpreted as modes of existence governed primarily by immediate sensory prehensions, bodily needs, inherited habits, territoriality, and direct emotional responsiveness. There may be less reflective abstraction than in human life, but there is often a greater immediacy of participation in the living world.
A Whiteheadian Buddhism would likely emphasize kinship with animals rather than superiority over them.
5. The Hungry Ghost Realm (Preta Realm)
Hungry ghosts are beings of insatiable craving. They hunger endlessly but cannot be satisfied.
In Whiteheadian terms, this realm emerges when desire becomes detached from fulfillment and when concrescence repeatedly organizes itself around absence, deficiency, and compulsive acquisition. The subjective aim collapses into endless repetition of unsatisfied longing.
This realm is vividly present in addiction, consumerism, obsessive ambition, compulsive distraction, and emotional emptiness. One continually reaches outward but cannot metabolize experience into satisfaction.
The hungry ghost realm is especially relevant to modern technological and economic life, where stimulation multiplies faster than fulfillment.
6. The Hell Realm
The hell realms are states of terror, rage, torment, hatred, and unbearable suffering.
A Whiteheadian interpretation would understand them as patterns of experience in which destructive feelings become overwhelmingly dominant, narrowing the possibilities for creative transformation. Concrescence becomes trapped in cycles of pain, fear, violence, or despair.
Hell is not necessarily eternal punishment. It is a self-perpetuating organization of suffering.
Human beings may enter hellish states psychologically, socially, politically, or historically. Entire societies can become hell realms when systems of domination, warfare, cruelty, or dehumanization overwhelm the possibilities for compassion and beauty.
The Realms as Psychological, Social, and Cosmic
A Whiteheadian interpretation need not decide whether the six realms are “literally real places” or merely symbols. Whitehead’s cosmology allows for multiple layers of reality, multiple cosmic epochs, and multiple dimensions of experiential order. Thus the realms may simultaneously be:
What matters most is that the realms are forms of experience shaped by habits of feeling and relation.
At any given moment, human life may move among them. One hour may be heavenly, another hellish, another hungry-ghost-like, another deeply human in its vulnerability and openness.
Compassion and InterdependenceIn both Buddhism and Whitehead’s philosophy, no being exists in isolation. Every actuality prehends others and is internally related to the world around it. The suffering of others is never entirely external to oneself.
This means that the six realms are not sealed compartments. They interpenetrate one another. The gods depend upon the animals; the humans carry traces of hell and heaven within themselves; hungry ghosts wander through affluent societies; compassion can appear even in hellish conditions.
A Whiteheadian Buddhism would therefore emphasize not condemnation of beings in lower realms but solidarity with all forms of experience. Every being, no matter how trapped, retains some measure of responsiveness, some opening toward transformation, some possibility of beauty.
And in this pilgrimage through the many realms of existence, the role of the cosmic Buddha — the spirit of universal love in whose life all world unfold — is to awaken compassion within the worlds themselves.
A Whiteheadian interpretation of the six realms begins with a similar intuition. Alfred North Whitehead does not think of reality as composed of static substances but of momentary acts of experience — “actual occasions” — each inheriting a world from the past and responding to it creatively. Every moment of experience is shaped by patterns of feeling, habits of response, and relations to others. Reality is thus experiential, relational, and processive all the way down.
From this perspective, the six realms can be understood not simply as supernatural locations but as enduring patterns of experiential organization within the extensive continuum. They are modes of concrescence — recurring ways in which streams of experience interpret and feel the world.
1. The God Realm (Deva Realm)
The god realm represents states of pleasure, abundance, refinement, power, and ease. In Buddhist thought, devas enjoy extraordinary happiness but are often spiritually complacent because suffering is distant from them.
A Whiteheadian interpretation would understand this realm as a society of occasions dominated by harmonious contrasts, intensity of enjoyment, aesthetic richness, and relative freedom from disruptive suffering. Yet precisely because these occasions are stabilized in satisfaction, novelty may diminish. The danger is not pain but stagnation. The subjective aim narrows into preservation of pleasure.
This realm can appear in human life whenever privilege, success, beauty, or security create a cocoon of self-satisfaction disconnected from vulnerability and compassion.
2. The Demi-God Realm (Asura Realm)
The asura realm is marked by envy, competitiveness, aggression, and wounded pride. The demi-gods are powerful but perpetually resentful of others.
Whitehead might interpret this realm as one in which prehensions are dominated by comparison, rivalry, and antagonistic contrasts. Experience becomes organized around the felt threat posed by competing centers of value. Creativity is present, but it is defensive and conflictual.
Many political, institutional, and interpersonal systems drift into asuric forms of existence when identity becomes organized around status anxiety, domination, or resentment.
3. The Human Realm
In Buddhism, the human realm is especially precious because it combines suffering and possibility in a balanced way. Human existence contains enough pain to provoke spiritual awakening and enough freedom to pursue it.
A Whiteheadian interpretation would see the human realm as a particularly fertile mode of concrescence in which conflicting feelings, contrasts, memories, anticipations, ideals, and decisions can be integrated with unusual intensity and flexibility. Human life is neither fully trapped nor fully satisfied. It is unstable in a creative sense.
This instability allows for moral transformation, artistic creation, philosophical reflection, compassion, and awakening. The human realm is thus not superior in power or pleasure but in its openness to creative transformation.
4. The Animal Realm
The animal realm represents instinct, fear, survival, habit, and vulnerability. Traditional Buddhism sometimes portrays it negatively, but a Whiteheadian approach would resist reducing animals to mere ignorance.
Whitehead attributes experience, feeling, and value to all living beings. Animals are not machines; they are centers of experience with their own standpoints and forms of enjoyment.
The animal realm might therefore be interpreted as modes of existence governed primarily by immediate sensory prehensions, bodily needs, inherited habits, territoriality, and direct emotional responsiveness. There may be less reflective abstraction than in human life, but there is often a greater immediacy of participation in the living world.
A Whiteheadian Buddhism would likely emphasize kinship with animals rather than superiority over them.
5. The Hungry Ghost Realm (Preta Realm)
Hungry ghosts are beings of insatiable craving. They hunger endlessly but cannot be satisfied.
In Whiteheadian terms, this realm emerges when desire becomes detached from fulfillment and when concrescence repeatedly organizes itself around absence, deficiency, and compulsive acquisition. The subjective aim collapses into endless repetition of unsatisfied longing.
This realm is vividly present in addiction, consumerism, obsessive ambition, compulsive distraction, and emotional emptiness. One continually reaches outward but cannot metabolize experience into satisfaction.
The hungry ghost realm is especially relevant to modern technological and economic life, where stimulation multiplies faster than fulfillment.
6. The Hell Realm
The hell realms are states of terror, rage, torment, hatred, and unbearable suffering.
A Whiteheadian interpretation would understand them as patterns of experience in which destructive feelings become overwhelmingly dominant, narrowing the possibilities for creative transformation. Concrescence becomes trapped in cycles of pain, fear, violence, or despair.
Hell is not necessarily eternal punishment. It is a self-perpetuating organization of suffering.
Human beings may enter hellish states psychologically, socially, politically, or historically. Entire societies can become hell realms when systems of domination, warfare, cruelty, or dehumanization overwhelm the possibilities for compassion and beauty.
The Realms as Psychological, Social, and Cosmic
A Whiteheadian interpretation need not decide whether the six realms are “literally real places” or merely symbols. Whitehead’s cosmology allows for multiple layers of reality, multiple cosmic epochs, and multiple dimensions of experiential order. Thus the realms may simultaneously be:
- psychological states,
- social worlds,
- collective historical conditions,
- patterns of rebirth,
- cosmological domains within a wider extensive continuum.
What matters most is that the realms are forms of experience shaped by habits of feeling and relation.
At any given moment, human life may move among them. One hour may be heavenly, another hellish, another hungry-ghost-like, another deeply human in its vulnerability and openness.
Compassion and InterdependenceIn both Buddhism and Whitehead’s philosophy, no being exists in isolation. Every actuality prehends others and is internally related to the world around it. The suffering of others is never entirely external to oneself.
This means that the six realms are not sealed compartments. They interpenetrate one another. The gods depend upon the animals; the humans carry traces of hell and heaven within themselves; hungry ghosts wander through affluent societies; compassion can appear even in hellish conditions.
A Whiteheadian Buddhism would therefore emphasize not condemnation of beings in lower realms but solidarity with all forms of experience. Every being, no matter how trapped, retains some measure of responsiveness, some opening toward transformation, some possibility of beauty.
And in this pilgrimage through the many realms of existence, the role of the cosmic Buddha — the spirit of universal love in whose life all world unfold — is to awaken compassion within the worlds themselves.