Page:The Science of Religion (1925).djvu/43

Rh on a little reflection, that Universal Religion is surely the permanent avoidance of pain and the conscious realization of Bliss, but few, due to their inertness, understand the importance and practical necessity that this religion carries with it.

Now it is necessary for us to investigate the ultimate cause of pain and suffering, mental and physical, in the avoidance of which the Universal Religion partly consists.

First of all we should assert, from our common universal experience, that we are always conscious of ourselves as the active power performing all of our mental and bodily acts. Many different functions are we performing, indeed—perceiving, apperceiving, thinking, remembering, feeling, acting, etc. Yet underlying these functions we can perceive that there is an “Ego,” or “Self,” which governs them and thinks of itself as substantially the