By looking for happiness, what does man seek after? He is seeking after his self, though he does not know it. There is nothing so easily lost as self; in one instant a person can lose it, because he is always accustomed to hold things that are in his hand, and there is only one thing that he can never hold and that is self; it instantly slips from his grasp. Naturally happiness is lost in the search for pleasure, and self becomes drowned in the pursuit of outer things. The way of the mystic is to find self in all its aspects, to learn and to understand the self within and without.