Both Jesus and Gotama must have realized the hopelessness of imprinting their so-called esoteric teaching (which underlay and intertwined with the ethical) upon the understanding of those who had not cultivated noumenal instincts. Gotama had need, even on his death-bed, to explain everything all over again to his closest companion, the beloved disciple Ananda. In how many ways Jesus endeavoured to convey the meaning of the kingdom of God to his hearers! Yet to this day how few have grasped a fraction of its import. The meaning must be felt rather than understood by the intellect. In fact, it is necessary to become a Parsifal to do so ("for not many wise men after the flesh are called"). Also, one must get as far as possible away from the bondage of the intellect, which handicaps one in the attempt. A full knowledge of such mysteries cannot be attained until the machinery of the brain is left a considerable distance behind; until ideas are no longer in positive connection with the neural vibrations of the brain. The clock cannot hear what is going on around it for the noise of its ticking. Plotinus says: "To reach the ultimate goal, thought itself must be left behind; for thought is a form of motion, and the desire of the soul is for motionless rest, which belongs to the One." Neither Jesus nor Gotama committed themselves to writing; hence we are entirely dependent, in our judgment of the purport of their mission, upon the general tenour of communications vouchsafed to us by the special correspondents of their era. It is upon these synoptists and other recorders that people build their theories, and pile up interpretations in various very restricted senses. But defining is truly dethroning in the cases of Jesus and Gotama. Like the dove in the Song of Solomon, they abide in the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places of the stairs. The suppliant can only satisfy his thirsty soul with an invocation: "Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely!" Theism, Atheism, Deism, and many other 'isms must be cast out of our minds into the bottomless pit before we can hope to place our trembling feet within even the threshold of their presence. There, perforce, we must arrest our progress, lost in transcendent wonder. This, as Carlyle says, is worship in its highest sense.