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The axial religion." religions all agree in claiming to disclose what is authentic and therefore what is true and right. Accordingly, each ofthemof them, by its own claim, not only provides means for understanding oneself authentically and therefore knowing what is true and doing what is right, but itself i:·j is such a means. 

The same is true of the explicit primal source by which each of the axial religions is authorized~ authorized: it, too, is a means -- for the religion in question, indeed, 'he the means, the deci.... 'decisive means -- of understanding oneself authentically and therefore knowing what is true and doing what is right. 

This explains, then, the threefold classification of all such means as belong to each religion as either !·secondary,'econdaty, in the case ofthe of the means the religion provides~ prinu.uyprovides; primary, in the case ofthe of the means the religion itselfis~ itself is --  and primal, in the case of the means by which the religion itself, together with the means it provides, is explicitly authorized. 

I February 2004; rev. to December 2008