Probably before his so-called enlightenment and attainment of true knowledge, he was as firm a believer in the real existence of one Universal Spirit as the most orthodox Brāhman. He had become imbued with Brāhmanical philosophy while sitting at the feet of his two teachers Āḷāra and Uddaka (p. 29). At that time there were no definite or formulated philosophical systems, separated from each other by sharp lines. But the Sāṅkhya, Yoga, and Vedānta systems were assuming shape, and the doctrines they embodied had been foreshadowed in the Upanishads, and were orally current. In short, it had been repeatedly stated in the Upanishads, that nothing really existed but the one universally present impersonal Spirit, and that the whole visible world was really to be identified with that Spirit. Then it followed as an article of faith that man’s spirit, deluded into a temporary false idea of separate independent personal existence by the illusion of ignorance, was also identical with that One Spirit, and ultimately to be re-absorbed into it. Further, it followed that man’s spirit, while so deluded and so separated for a time from the One Spirit, was compelled to migrate through innumerable bodily forms, and that such migration entailed misery, from which there was no escape except by a process of disillusionment, that is, by dissipating the illusion of separate individuality, through the acquisition of perfect knowledge leading to re-union with the One Spirit, as the river blends with the ocean. And such knowledge was best gained by suppression of the passions, abandonment of all worldly connexions, and abstinence from all action. Finally, it was held, with apparent inconsistency, that the storing up of merit by good works assisted in effecting this object by raising a man, not yet fit for union with the supreme Spirit, to forms of existence in which such union might be accomplished. Now it is obvious that to believe in the ultimate merging of man’s personal spirit in One impersonal Spirit, is virtually to deny the ultimate existence of any human spirit at all. Nay more—it is virtually to deny the existence of a supreme universal Spirit also. For how can a merely abstract universal Spirit, which is unconscious of personality, be regarded as possessing any real existence worth being called true life? To assert that such a Spirit is pure abstract Entity or (according to Vedānta phraseology) pure Existence (without anything to exist for), pure Thought or even pure Consciousness (without anything to think about, or be conscious about), pure Joy (without anything to rejoice about), is practically to reduce it to pure non-entity. All that Gautama did, therefore, was to purge Brāhmanism of a dogma which appeared to him to be a mere sham (Brahma-jāla I. 26).