d
sticking their bodies full of pins and needles, or perhaps holding the
arms over the head till they stiffen in that position. Meantime in other
places whole regions are given over to sensual indulgences, and companies
of abandoned women are connected with different temples and consecrate
their gains to the support of their worship.

As one-sided spiritualism will manifest itself in morals in the two forms
of austerity and sensuality, so in religion it shows itself in the
opposite direction of an ideal pantheism and a gross idolatry.
Spiritualism first fills the world full of God, and this is a true and
Christian view of things. But it takes another step, which is to deny all
real existence to the world, and so runs into a false pantheism. It first
says, truly, "There is nothing _without_ God." It next says, falsely,
"There is nothing _but_ God." This second step was taken in India by means
of the doctrine of _Maya_, or _Illusion. Maya_ means the delusive shows
which spirit assumes. For there is nothing but spirit; which neither
creates nor is created, neither acts nor suffers, which cannot change, and
into which all souls are absorbed when they free themselves by meditation
from the belief that they suffer or are happy, that they can experience
either pleasure or pain. The next step is to polytheism. For if God
neither creates nor destroys, but only seems to create and destroy, these
_appearances_ are not united together as being the acts of one Being, but
are separate, independent phenomena. When you remove personality from the
conception of God, as you do in removing will, you remove unity. Now if
creation be an illusion, and there be no creation, still the _appearance_
of creation is a fact. But as there is no substance but spirit, this
_appearance_ must have its cause in spirit, that is, is a _divine_
appearance, is God. So destruction, in the same way, is an appearance of
God, and reproduction is an appearance of God, and every other appearance
in nature is a manifestation of God. But the unity of will and person
being taken away, we have not one God, but a multitude of gods,--or
polytheism.

Having begun this career of thought, no course was possible for the human
mind to pursue but this. An ultra spiritualism must become pantheism, and
pantheism must go on to polytheism. In India this is not a theory, but a
history. We find, side by side, a spiritualism which denies the existence
of anything but motionless spi