The third path is the path of discipline, and it is in this path that concentration, meditation, contemplation, and all different forms of discipline are necessary, in order to bring about that realization which is the ultimate goal. The path of meditation enables man to experience different planes of life, not always classified as people do when speaking about this plane and that plane, this grade and that grade. The real experience of inner life cannot very well be classified.

For instance, if one asks a meditative person, "Are there seven planes of existence?, he will say, "Yes it is so." But when another person says, "I have read in a book on Greek philosophy that there are nine planes of existence; can it be true?" he will answer, "Certainly." Then another one comes and says, "I think that there are only three planes", and again he will agree. He does not say this to please; he is able to see these planes as five, seven, nine, in as many forms as he likes, because he actually sees them so. Go to a beginner in music and ask how many notes there are. He will answer, seven; and perhaps he will mention the semitones besides. But if you asked of an experienced musician who has given all his life to music and has come to understand the essence of sound, "Is it not true, as the Chinese say, that there are twenty notes in the octave?" he will say, "Yes, it can be true, but when the Indians say that there are twenty-four notes in the octave, that is true too; it is how you look at it."

All that man learns intellectually about metaphysics keeps him limited to book-learning. He derives no benefit but a passing interest; it is a surprise to him to know that there are so many different planes of our being. He does not go further, and if he wanted to see them and know what they are, he could not. But by meditation he can realize them, and by this realization he can give the interpretation of any philosophy, whether Buddhist, or ancient Greek, or Vedanta philosophy, any philosophy you put before him, for he knows what he has experienced through meditation.

No doubt the way of self-discipline is a very difficult way. It is the way of mastery, of power; but it is a hard and difficult path. Practicing discipline by sitting in a certain pose or posture is very difficult to keep up for a long time. If one makes a vow to refrain from eating fruit, sweet or sour things, a vow of silence, of fasting, of standing so many hours, or walking, or staying up for part of the night or the whole night, it is not always easy to keep to it. Self-discipline is learned by going against one's own inclinations. Why should one go against them? Are inclinations not natural? One cannot say what is one's own inclination; all inclinations are borrowed here, and what one calls natural is what one has become accustomed to.

The word "natural" is a word that one can study for years and years, and one will find at the end of the study that there is no such thing as natural. There are natural inclinations to pleasure and comfort which clash with the still greater and deeper inclinations we have for more power and strength, for more light and for more life. So the inclinations can be divided into two aspects: the innermost inclinations, and the inclinations which one feels in everyday life. There is always a conflict between them; and the innermost inclinations are sometimes undermined by the outer inclinations. By learning self-discipline one learns to suppress the outer inclinations in order to make way for the inner inclinations to rise and to flourish, which finally culminates in what we call mastery.