For this seems clearly revealed in the last or highest stage to which the paths of uprightness and meditation were supposed to conduct, that of enlightenment (_panna_) or spiritual abstraction, alleged to be equivalent to prayer in other religions. The highest Christian conception of prayer is that of communion with God; the highest Buddhist conception of _panna_ is of a state of clairvoyance or ecstatic insight in which “men hear with clear and heavenly ear, surpassing that of men,” and “comprehend by their own hearts the hearts of other men,” and “recall their own various states in former existences,” and “see with pure and heavenly vision the procession of other beings as they pass from life to life.”[233] Buddha evidently was believed by his disciples to have possessed this power, and probably his own long fasting and severe austerities, practised in the beginning of his career, acting upon a highly nervous system, made him a believer in the reality of this perfect insight and ecstasy of contemplation, and that it might be acquired by all who were sufficiently persevering in pursuit of Arhatship.[234] It must be observed, however, that he does not appear to have regarded this as an experience to be enjoyed by the Arhat in perpetuity; on the contrary, it was the condition preceding final and eternal deliverance, and so it may be taken as the Buddhist conception of Euthanasia. The Christian in the highest and supreme moment of life aspires, if conscious, after the beatific vision. It is no Brahmanic absorption into the absolute that he desires, but likeness to and communion with God. The consciousness of personality was never more intense, the conviction was never stronger that he has been divinely created and trained as a separate character. By long and prayerful use of the means of grace he has sought to bring, and to keep himself under the control of the Holy Spirit; and he hopes that the next change will completely free him from every trace of “sensuality, delusion, and ignorance,” and purge away from the soul the last taint of selfishness. By long and sore experiences he has learned that selfishness is the evil root whence spring all the suffering and sorrow that poison life. He can therefore understand and sympathise with the Buddhist anathema upon “individuality,” if by that is meant the endeavour to abstract our life from the solidarity of humanity, to use it for our own ends, and to grudge what of it God uses for the rest of His family. This is the Christian conception of the cause of death and all its woe, and from this a Christian saint ever prays and struggles to be free; but it is not from “individuality” in this sense that the Buddhist Arhat seeks deliverance. He is bent upon the very thing from which the Christian is anxious to escape. He wants to isolate and withdraw his portion of life from the sum of humanity, to abstract himself from the mass, to save his own soul; and now that he nears the goal, his whole energies are