es of religion. The whole of religion on this level of Law
is a replica of the relations which obtain on a smaller scale between a
sovereign and his subjects, or between a master and his slave. Authority
is something purely external. The two Religions of Redemption--the
Indian and the Christian--seek the meaning of religion in a very
different manner. They both agree that human capability, which seems so
evident to the Religions of Law, is the most difficult and important of
all questions. They agree further that the essence of religion does not
consist in guiding life for the sake of something that life is to
participate in or to avoid in the future; they agree that a change must
happen within the soul in this world, and that this change only comes
about through the aid of a supernatural power. But these two religions
differ fundamentally in their different ways of looking at the world. To
the Indian religions, the existence of the world is an evil; the world
is itself a kingdom of illusions. "All in it is transient [p.176] and
unreal; nothing in it has duration; happiness and love are merely
momentary, and men are as two pieces of wood floating on the face of an
infinite ocean which pass by one another, never to meet again. Fruitless
agitation and painful deception have fallen upon him who mistakes such a
transient semblance for a reality and who hangs his heart upon it.
Therefore it behoves man to free himself from such an unholy arena. This
emancipation will take place when the semblance is seen through as
semblance, and when the soul has gained an insight right into the
foundation of things. Then the world loses its power over man; the whole
kingdom of deception with its evanescent values goes to the bottom, all
the excited affections caused by the world are extinguished, and life
becomes a still and holy calm; it reaches the depth of a dreamless
sleep, enters, through its immersion into an eternal essence, beyond the
shadows; it passes, according to Buddhism in its most definite
interpretation, into a state of entire unconsciousness."[62]

How different a spirit from all this breathes in Christianity! In
Christianity the world is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far
enough. Something of the revelation of the Divine may be discovered
within it, but this is only a segment of a greater whole which comes to
realisation within the soul. Here, the world is not cast away, despite
all its limitations, but [p.177]