The doctrine of Gotama as expressed in his earliest utterance on the subject to the five monks at Benares is that neither the body, nor any mental faculty to which a name can be given, is what was called in Brahmanic theology atman, that is to say an entity which is absolutely free, imperishable, changeless and not subject to pain.  This of course does not exclude the possibility that there may be something which does not come under any of the above categories and which may be such an entity as described.  Indeed Brahmanic works which teach the existence of the atman often use language curiously like that of Buddhism.  Thus the Bhagavad-gita[477] says that actions are performed by the Gunas and only he who is deluded by egoism thinks “I am the doer.”  And the Vishnu Purana objects to the use of personal pronouns.  “When one soul is dispersed in all bodies, it is idle to ask who are you, who am I[478]?” The accounts of the Buddhist higher life would be easier to understand if we could suppose that there is such a self:  that the pilgrim who is walking in the paths gradually emancipates, develops and builds it up:  that it becomes partly free in nirvana before death and wholly free after death.  Schrader[479] has pointed out texts in the Pitakas which seem to imply that there is something which is absolute and therefore not touched by the doctrine of anatta.  In a remarkable passage[480] the Buddha says:  Therefore my disciples get rid of what is not yours.  To get rid of it will mean your health and happiness for a long time.  Form, sensation, perception, etc., are not yours; get rid of them.  If a man were to take away, or burn, or use for his needs, all the grass, and boughs, and branches and leaves in this Jeta wood, would it ever occur to you to say, the man is taking us away, burning us, or using us for his needs?  Certainly not, Lord.  And why not?  Because, Lord, it is not our self or anything belonging to our self.  Just in the same way, replies the Buddha, get rid of the skandhas.  The natural sense of this seems to be that the skandhas have no more to do with the real being of man than have the trees of the forest where he happens to be[481].  This suggests that there is in man something real and permanent, to be contrasted with the transitory skandhas and when the Buddha asks whether anything which is perishable and changeable can be called the self, he seems to imply that there is somewhere such a self.  But this point cannot be pressed, for it is perfectly logical to define first of all what you mean by a ghost and then to prove that such a thing does not exist.  If we take the passages at present collected as a whole, and admit that they are somewhat inconsistent or imperfectly understood, the net result is hardly that the name of self can be given to some part of human nature which remains when the skandhas are set on one side.