[18] Buddha gives to Ananda, his _initiated_ disciple, who enquires for the reason of this silence, a plain and unequivocal answer in the dialogue translated by Oldenburg from the _Samyuttaka Nikaya_:—“If I, Ananda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me: ‘Is there the Ego?’ had answered ‘The Ego is,’ then that, Ananda, would have confirmed the doctrine of the Samanas and Brahmanas, who believed in permanence. If I, Ananda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me, ‘Is there not the Ego?’ had answered, ‘The Ego is not,’ then that, Ananda, would have confirmed the doctrine of those who believed in annihilation. If I, Ananda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me, ‘Is there the Ego?’ had answered, ‘The Ego is,’ would that have served my end, Ananda, by producing in him the knowledge: all existences (dhamma) are non-ego? But if I, Ananda, had answered, ‘The Ego is not,’ then that, Ananda, would only have caused the wandering monk Vacchagotta to be thrown from one bewilderment to another: ‘My Ego, did it not exist before? But now it exists no longer!’” This shows, better than anything, that Gautama Buddha withheld such difficult metaphysical doctrines from the masses in order not to perplex them more. What he meant was the difference between the personal temporary Ego and the Higher Self, which sheds its light on the imperishable Ego, the spiritual “I” of man. VI. THEOSOPHICAL TEACHINGS AS TO NATURE AND MAN. THE UNITY OF ALL IN ALL. ENQ. Having told me what God, the Soul and Man are _not_, in your views, can you inform me what they _are_, according to your teachings? THEO. In their origin and in eternity the three, like the universe and all therein, are one with the absolute Unity, the unknowable deific essence I spoke about sometime back. We believe in no _creation_, but in the periodical and consecutive appearances of the universe from the subjective on to the objective plane of being, at regular intervals of time, covering periods of immense duration. ENQ. Can you elaborate the subject?