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functions of their senses or the mind; but no two persons seem to agree in regard to their soul-experience of God. How can we account for this difference in the different systems of religion in this connection?
All these questions have been raised before, and it is not my intention to answer them here. I have referred to them to explain the difficulty of the problem. In my humble opinion religious faith, properly understood, is like all other forms of faith-but an extension of reason, a philosophy of life. Indeed, as I have observed, if there is any great achievement of the systems of Philosophy and Religion which had their birth in India in the ancient past, it is to "prove" the existence of God by means of Pratyaksha Pramana or evidence acceptable to our common sense and normal experience; and it is this that I have attempted in this little volume.
Here it might be asked-Has Religion any essential connection with God? Of the great systems of religion existing in the world today, Christianity and Islam are 'fundamentally based on belief in God. But of the four great systems of religion that had their origin in India in the past-Vaishnavism, Saivism, Buddhism and Jainism-only the first two enjoin a definite belief in the Deity. The Digambara school of Jainism is frankly atheistic; the Svetambara school of Jainism and the Hinayana school of Buddhism are agnostic in character; and the Mahayana school of Buddhism gives a definite but, comparatively speaking, a small place to God in the
