Page:The Science of Religion (1925).djvu/69

This page has been validated.
THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
45

rise to the Perfect Being to whom our responsibility is due. Still, we should admit that these proofs are more or less the products of inference. We can not have full or direct knowledge of God through the limited powers of the intellect. Intellect gives only a partial and indirect view of things. To view a thing intellectually is not to see it by being one with it: it is to view it by being apart from it. But Intuition, which we shall later explain, is the direct grasp of truth. It is in this Intuition that Bliss-consciousness, or God-consciousness, is realized.

There is not a shadow of doubt as to the absolute identity of Bliss-consciousness and God-consciousness, because when we have that Bliss-consciousness we feel that our narrow individuality has been transformed and that we have risen above the duality of petty love and hate, pleasure and pain, etc., and have attained a level from which the painfulness and worthlessness of empirical consciousness