to God:  that it is a state of bliss, and is unconscious not because consciousness is suspended but because no objects are presented to it.  Even higher than dreamless sleep is another condition known simply as the fourth state[51], the others being waking, dream-sleep and dreamless sleep.  In this fourth state thought is one with the object of thought and, knowledge being perfect, there exists no contrast between knowledge and ignorance.  All this sounds strange to modern Europe.  We are apt to say that dreamless sleep is simply unconsciousness[52] and that the so-called fourth state is imaginary or unmeaning.  But to follow even popular speculation in India it is necessary to grasp this truth, or assumption, that when discursive thought ceases, when the mind and the senses are no longer active, the result is not unconsciousness equivalent to non-existence but the highest and purest state of the soul, in which, rising above thought and feeling, it enjoys the untrammelled bliss of its own nature[53].

If these views sound mysterious and fanciful, I would ask those Europeans who believe in the immortality of the soul what, in their opinion, survives death.  The brain, the nerves and the sense organs obviously decay:  the soul, you may say, is not a product of them, but when they are destroyed or even injured, perceptive and intellectual processes are inhibited and apparently rendered impossible.  Must not that which lives for ever be, as the Hindus think, independent of thought and of sense-impressions?

I have observed in my reading that European philosophers are more ready to talk about soul and spirit than to define them[54] and the same is true of Indian philosophers.  The word most commonly rendered by soul is atman[55] but no one definition can be given for it, for some hold that the soul is identical with the Universal Spirit, others that it is merely of the same nature, still others that there are innumerable souls uncreate and eternal, while the Buddhists deny the existence of a soul in toto.  But most Hindus who believe in the existence of an atman or soul agree in thinking that it is the real self and essence of all human beings (or for that matter of other beings):  that it is eternal a parte ante and a parte post:  that it is not subject to variation but passes unchanged from one birth to another:  that youth and age, joy and sorrow, and all the accidents of human life are affections, not so much of the soul as of the envelopes and limitations which surround it during its pilgrimage:  that the soul, if it can be released and disengaged from these envelopes, is in itself knowledge and bliss, knowledge meaning the immediate and intuitive knowledge of God.  A proper comprehension of this point of view will make us chary of labelling Indian thought as pessimistic on the ground that it promises the soul something which we are inclined to call unconsciousness.

In studying oriental religions sympathy and a desire to agree if possible are the first requisites.  For instance, he who says of a certain ideal “this means annihilation and I do not like it” is on the wrong way.  The right way is to ascertain what many of our most intelligent brothers mean by the cessation of mental activity and why it is for them an ideal.