ABSTRACT
In every age God-men have proclaimed it, each according to his own spiritual vision, and in every age people have asked for proofs that it is true. Many plausible demonstrations have been devised by philosophers, establishing God as a logical necessity. Although in the course of its long history, reaching far back into an unrecorded past, Indian religion has had its share of sects and doctrines, of reformations and revivals, it has nevertheless preserved at its core, unchanged, four fundamental ideas. These may be very simply expressed: God is; he can be realized; to realize him is the supreme goal of human existence; he can be realized in many ways. From the dim ages of the Vedic seers, down through the many centuries to our own day, it has been consistently declared that the ultimate reality of the universe can be directly perceived—though never in normal consciousness.
