But let it be understood, that Buddhism as now taught and practiced is necessarily colored by the effect of the centuries which have elapsed since the Lord Buddha lived and taught the precepts of his Illumination.  Modern Buddhism, as a religious system of worship bears the same relation to Prince Siddhartha, as does modern Christianity to Jesus of Nazareth.

A short review of the life and character of the personalities around whom the great religious systems of the world have been formed will aid us in perceiving the unity of thought and character of the Illumined, and the similarity of reports as to the effect of this realization of cosmic consciousness will be apparent.

CHAPTER VII

MOSES, THE LAW-GIVER

The salient feature of the law as given by Moses unto his people, the Jews, is that of strict cleanliness of mind and body.  In this we find a similarity to the oft-repeated behest of Gautama, the Buddha, who constantly admonished his followers to keep their hearts pure and their minds and bodies clean.

This spirit of cleanliness finds also a counterpart in the saying ascribed to Jesus, “blessed are the pure in heart.”

The cleanliness here referred to is doubtless not so much physical neatness as mental purity of thought—­thought free from doubt and calumny and petty deceits and hypocrisy and selfishness and debasing perversions of the life forces; but during various stages of history we find that all teachings have their esoteric and their exoteric application.

The law, as enunciated by Moses, according to the Jewish reports, laid much stress upon physical cleanliness, as an attribute of godhood.

But Moses, if we may credit reports, was something far more inspired and illumined than a mere physical culturist—­commendable as is personal cleanliness—­and his admonitions were the result of that fine sense of discrimination and enlightenment which comes from cosmic perception even if he had not experienced the deeper, fuller realization of liberation, of which Buddha is a shining example.

It is evident that the laws laid down by Moses were taught and practised by the Egyptians many many years prior to the time in which Moses lived, which from the most reliable authorities, must have been about four to five hundred years before the Exodus.

This does not detract from the evidence that the great Egyptian-Hebrew, was a man of wonderful intellectual attainments, and from what we know of modern examples of Illumination, he also possessed a degree of cosmic consciousness.

The story of the seemingly miraculous birth of Moses, and the mystery with which his ancestry is surrounded, is also typical of one who has attained to cosmic consciousness.

The Illumined one realizes his birthlessness and his deathlessness, and expresses it in symbolism, meaning of course, the realization that as the spirit is never born and can never die, the idea of age is an unreality—­and should find no place in the consciousness of one who regards himself as an indestructible atom of the Cosmos.