to intangible traits. In the end they came to conceive of an intangible world beyond the realms of sense and experience. Thus, in the first period they believed in various tangible gods that were the spirits be-hind wind and rain, and mountains and rivers, but their imaginations eventually shifted. They began to think of the many gods as intangi-ble. They then ultimately came to believe that there is one god above all others. People came to believe that this one physical god ruled over both matter and mind. All changes occurring in all phenomena were either conceived or mediated by this god. Therefore, in this age all mysteries were explained as being due to divine intervention or revelation of truth. However, these explanations were based on imagination and this was a time when logical thought was not yet at work. In the third period, the age of reasoning, the human intellect de-veloped greatly and, through stable reasoning that did not factor in fiction and imagination, it now extended from near to far, from tan-gible to intangible, from within the senses to without. Their explana-tions were those of today’s age of arts and sciences. They are based on the laws of the universe and explain all sorts of phenomena with precise and reliable logic. This has also forced a major change in the explanations of mysteries. Enryō said, “My mystery studies are conducted in the style of this third period of explanation.” There are three approaches to the ex-planation style of the third period, which give it its worth: first, a supra-rational or mystical approach; second, a spiritualistic or ideal-istic approach; and, third, an experiential or naturalistic approach. 106
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