FOREWORD

FOREWORD ~ 7 ~ objects of human ambition are numberless, and can arouse in the human breast all kinds of hopes, fears, longings and agonies. The fulfillment of these ambitions is obviously associated with happiness, and their non-fulfillment with grief. Religion directs human beings just as certainly towards a goal, but it is along quite another path, because the goal, itself, is so different. The kind of life led by those directed in this way entirely depends upon the nature of the religion they have adopted. Their thinking, emotions, activities, commitments, transactions all revolve around whatever has been accepted by them as their religion. Their lives are ruled by it, so that just as they make all-out efforts in their everyday lives to attain material goals, so do they spare no effort to attain the non-material goals placed before them by religion. Even if they cannot draw near to these goals, they take care to do nothing, which would take them further away from them. The non-material goal of religion demands the same will, effort, concentration and dedication as the material goal. But the quality of such application in