(3.) Identifies, in its pantheism, subject and object, worshipper and worshipped; (4.) Aims at ultimate absorption in the Infinite; (5.) Inculcates, as the way to this dissolution, absolute passivity, withdrawal into the inmost self, cessation of all the powers,—giving recipes for procuring this beatific torpor or trance; (6.) Believes that eternity may thus be realized in time; (7.) Has its mythical miraculous pretentions, _i.e._, its theurgic department; (8.) And, finally, advises the learner in this kind of religion to submit himself implicitly to a spiritual guide,—his Guru. With regard to (1), it is to be observed that the disinterestedness of the worship enjoined by Crishna is by no means absolute, as Madame Guyon endeavoured to render hers. The mere ritualist, buying prosperity by temple-gifts, will realise, says Crishna, only a partial enjoyment of heaven. Arjoun, too, is encouraged by the prospect of a recompence, for he is to aspire to far higher things. ‘Men who are endowed with true wisdom are unmindful of good or evil in this world,—wise men who have abandoned all thought of the fruit which is produced from their actions are freed from the chains of birth, and go to the regions of eternal happiness.’ In some hands such doctrine might rise above the popular morality; in most it would be so interpreted as to sink below even that ignoble standard. (3.) ‘God,’ saith Crishna, ‘is the gift of charity; God is the offering; God is in the fire of the altar; by God is the sacrifice performed; and God is to be obtained by him who maketh God alone the object of his works.’ Again, ‘I am moisture in the water, light in the sun and moon, ... human nature in mankind, ... the understanding of the wise, the glory of the proud, the strength of the strong,’ &c. (4.) This eternal absorption in Brahm is supposed to be in some way consistent with personality, since Crishna promises Arjoun enjoyment. The mystic of the Bagvat-Gita seeks at once the highest aim of the Hindoo religion, the attainment of such a state that when he dies he shall not be born again into any form on earth. Future birth is the Hindoo hell and purgatory. So with Buddhism, and its Nirwana. But the final absorption which goes by the name of Nirwana among the Buddhists is described in terms which can only mean annihilation. According to the Buddhists all sentient existence has within it one spiritual element, homogeneous in the animal and the man,—Thought, which is a divine substance. This ‘Thought’ exists in its highest degree in man, the summit of creation, and from the best among men it lapses directly out of a particular existence into the universal. Thus the mind of man is divine, but most divine when nearest nothing. Hence the monastic asceticism, inertia, trance, of this kindred oriental superstition. (_See_ Spence Hardy’s _Eastern Monachism_.)