We have already pointed out that, in our opinion, the whole difference between Buddhistic and Vedantic philosophies was that the former was a kind of Rationalistic Vedantism, while the latter might be regarded as transcendental Buddhism. If the Aryan esotericism applies the term jivatma to the seventh principle--the pure and per se unconscious spirit--it is because the Vedanta, postulating three kinds of existence--(1) the paramarthika (the true, the only real one), (2) the vyavaharika (the practical), and (3) the pratibhasika (the apparent or illusory life)--makes the first life or jiva, the only truly existent one. Brahma, or the ONE'S SELF, is its only representative in the universe, as it is the universal Life in toto, while the other two are but its "phenomenal appearances," imagined and created by ignorance, and complete illusions suggested to us by our blind senses. The Buddhists, on the other hand, deny either subjective or objective reality even to that one Self-Existence. Buddha declares that there is neither Creator nor an Absolute Being. Buddhist rationalism was ever too alive to the insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute consciousness, as in the words of Flint, "wherever there is consciousness there is relation, and wherever there is relation there is dualism." The ONE LIFE is either "MUKTA" (absolute and unconditioned), and can have no relation to anything nor to any one; or it is "BADDHA" (bound and conditioned), and then it cannot be called the absolute; the limitation, moreover, necessitating another deity as powerful as the first to account for all the evil in this world. Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony admits but of one absolute, indestructible, eternal, and uncreated UNCONSCIOUSNESS (so to translate) of an element (the word being used for want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything else in the universe; a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever was, is, and will be, whether there is a God, gods, or none, whether there is a universe, or no universe, existing during the eternal cycles of Maha Yugs, during the Pralayas as during the periods of Manvantara, and this is SPACE, the field for the operation of the eternal Forces and natural Law, the basis (as Mr. Subba Row rightly calls it) upon which take place the eternal intercorrelations of Akasa-Prakriti; guided by the unconscious regular pulsations of Sakti, the breath or power of a conscious deity, the theists would say; the eternal energy of an eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists. Space, then, or "Fan, Bar-nang" (Maha Sunyata) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the "Emptiness," is the nature of the Buddhist Absolute. (See Confucius' "Praise of the Abyss.") The word jiva, then, could never be applied by the Arahats to the Seventh Principle, since it is only through its correlation or contact with matter that Fo-hat (the Buddhist active energy) can