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The details of these philosophies will interest none but a student of metaphysics. My purpose therefore lies in giving you the essential principles which make up what are known as Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. In the first place, therefore, let us see what Hinduism says as to the existence and nature of soul, for the theory of soul must be the foundation of every religion which deserves a name. In all ages it has been supposed that there is something divine in man; that there is in him the non-phenomenal agent on whom the phenomenal attributes of feeling, thinking and willing depend. To the Hindu philosophers this agent was selfevident (svayamprakāśa). Of course, this agent, which they called Self was not discovered in a day. We see in the Upanişads many attempts to discover and grasp it. I shall give you a kind of allegory representing the search after this Self from the Chandogya Upanişad. It is a dialogue supposed to have taken place between Prajāpati, the lord of creation, and Indra, representing the Devas, the bright gods, and Virocana representing the Asuras, the opponents of the Devas. Prajāpati is said to have uttered the following sentence: "The Self (Atman) free from sin, free from age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it ought to desire and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that is what we search out, that is what we must try to understand. He who has searched out that Self and understands it obtains all worlds and desires-that is final beatitude."
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