From this, it is to be inferred that Buddhism never discourages the scientific, critical investigation of religious beliefs. For it is one of the functions of science that it should purify the contents of a belief and that it should point out in which direction our final spiritual truth and consolation have to be sought. Science alone which is built on relative knowledge is not able to satisfy all our religious cravings, but it is certainly able to direct us to the path of enlightenment. When this path is at last revealed, we shall know how to avail ourselves of the discovery, as then Prajñâ (or Sambodhi, or Wisdom) becomes the {98} guide of life. Here we enter into the region of the unknowable. The spiritual facts we experience are not demonstrable, for they are so direct and immediate that the uninitiated are altogether at a loss to get a glimpse of them. CHAPTER V. BHÛTATATHÂTÂ (SUCHNESS). {99} /From/ the ontological point of view, Paramârtha-satya or Pariniṣpanna (transcendental truth) is called Bhûtatathâtâ, which literally means “suchness of existence.” As Buddhism does not separate being from thought nor thought from being, what is suchness in the objective world, is transcendental truth in the subjective world, and _vice versa_ Bhûtatathâtâ, then, is the Godhead of Buddhism, and it marks the consummation of all our mental efforts to reach the highest principle, which unifies all possible contradictions and spontaneously directs the course of world-events. In short, it is the ultimate postulate of existence. Like Paramârtha-satya, as above stated, it does not belong to the domain of demonstrative knowledge or sensuous experience; it is unknowable by the ordinary processes of intellectuation, which the natural sciences use in the formulation of general laws; and it is grasped, declare the Buddhists, only by the minds that are capable of exercising what might be called religious intuition.