desiring personal worship. This, the great sage
particularly avoided, as indeed have all illumined ones.

It is evident that Gautama the Buddha had experienced that divine influx of
light and wisdom in which he sought for others the happiness he had gained
for himself, and to this end he was eager to leave to his friends and
disciples such rules of conduct of life as should aid them in attaining the
divine peace that comes from illumination.

But that he founded a religious system of worship of himself, is wholly
unbelievable in the light of a study of comparative religions and the
wisdom which illumination confers.

To realize that one has attained to immortality, and claimed his
birthright of godhood, is not synonymous with the claim to worship as the
one eternal source of life.

It is a part of human weakness to insist upon idealizing the personality of
a teacher, and this tendency becomes in time merged into actual worship,
whereas the teacher, if he or she be truly illumined, seeks only to
inculcate the philosophy which will bring his faithful followers into a
realization of cosmic consciousness.

The points which characterize the person who has experienced a degree of
illumination (entered into cosmic consciousness), were particularly evident
in the life and character of Gautama, the Buddha. They may be summed up
thus:

A marked seriousness in youth.

A great sympathy and compassion with the sorrows of others.

A deep tenderness for all forms of life.

A realization of the nothingness of caste and pomp and power.

The firm conviction that he was instructed by angels.

The wonderful magnetism and illumination of his person.

The firm conviction of immortality--released from the "wheel of life" as
he expressed it.

The knowledge of when and where he was to pass out from the life of the
body.

The love of solitude and meditation. The intellectual power maintained even
into old age.

The unselfish desire to help others.

Great and never-failing sympathy with suffering, a divine patience, and
insight into the hearts of all forms of life, earned for this great soul
the name "Buddha--The Compassionate."

CHAPTER IX

JESUS OF NAZARETH

Turning now to the next in order of the world's great masters, or illumined
ones, we come to a consideration of Jesus of Nazareth, in whose name the
great moral system of religion, called "Christianity," is promulgated.

It has been conclusively shown that