The fourth aspect of our being is beyond explanation. It is joy, happiness. Man seeks for joy, and when the circulation of the joy which belongs to the depths of man's being is congested so that he cannot feel it, then he tries to experience it in what he calls pleasure. Pleasure is the shadow of happiness, something that passes away, that does not last. Being continually occupied in seeking the wrong thing instead of looking for the right thing, man loses his hold on something that belongs to him: his happiness. He begins to look for it everywhere, wherever he thinks he can find it, but he may look for it all his life and yet it will always elude him. He thinks, "Now I have grasped it," and it is gone; he thinks, "Now I have got it," and it is lost; he thinks, "Now it is mine," and it is no longer there. For it is a shadow, and pursuit after a shadow is pursuit after nothingness. The joy becomes eclipsed because man does not know that his very being is joy, that his very self is happiness.

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.

One might ask why one cannot understand self by studying human nature in general. Why must one study self by trying to understand oneself? The answer is that to study human nature is most interesting, but one can only study it well after one has studied oneself, for that enables one to understand human nature. As long as one remains ignorant of self one cannot study human nature properly. Often we hear people say, "I am so disappointed in my friends," "I am so disheartened by my neighbors," "I have lost my faith in mankind," "I can bear animals, I can stand trees and plants better than human beings; I always try to avoid places where there are people." Why do these thoughts come? Where do they come from and what causes them? It is the lack of understanding of oneself. The more one understands oneself, the more one finds that everything that is lacking in others is also lacking in oneself. Does a person become less by finding faults in himself? No, he becomes greater, for he not only finds that all the faults which are in others are also to be found in him, but that all the merits of the others are also his own merits. With faults and merits he becomes more complete; he does not become less.

What a great treasure it is when a man has realized that in him are to be found all the merits and all the faults which exist in the world, and that he can cultivate all that he wishes to cultivate, and cut away all that should be removed! It is like rooting out the weeds and sowing the seed of flowers and fruits. One finds that all is in oneself, and that one can cultivate in oneself what one wishes. A world opens for the man who begins to look within himself; for it is not a little plot of ground that he has to cultivate; he has a world to make of himself, and to make a world is a sufficient occupation to live for. What more does one want? Many think that life is not interesting because they make nothing, but they do not realize that they have to make a world, that they are making a world, either ignorantly or wisely. If they make a world ignorantly then that world is their captivity; if they make a world wisely then that world is their paradise.

Only self-realization can give man full independence. It would be no exaggeration to say that by self-realization the heart of man becomes greater than the universe. The world in which man lives like a drop in the sea then becomes a drop in the ocean of his heart. The saints and sages, the illuminated souls who have brought light to others, have been the self-realized ones.

One might ask, then where is the place of God, if self-realization brings one to perfection? The answer is that God is a steppingstone to self-realization. The godly one is not always self-realized, but the self-realized one is godly. All the different ways that lead to God, different religions, faiths, occult schools, mystical paths, all these bring one in the end to the same goal, and that is self-realization. Even where there is a great difference such as that between the teachings of the Hebrews and those of Buddha, both teachings will meet in one thing, and that is self-realization.

There are four different ways by which one can attain to the knowledge of this truth.

One person has been told that self-knowledge is the guide to perfection, and he says, "Yes, it must be so." He knows no more than that.
There is another person who has read in this or in that book that it is self-knowledge which leads to perfection; and he thinks it must be true because it is written in a book.
There is a third person who has reasoned it out; and by his reasoning, by synthesizing, he comes to the knowledge that it is one which has become many, that this variety is again gathered into one, and that this one is to be found in oneself. No doubt the more his reason helps him, the more he will be consoled.
But then there is a fourth person who realizes this truth himself, not by reason but by experience, and that is the way of the mystic.

How does the mystic proceed to experience it? By the mystical process of turning the eyes within, by shutting out the outside world for a moment and going into meditation, and by realizing, "I do not exist only as a physical body, which I always see myself to be, but I also exist as a life, as a magnetism, as an energy." Meditation which lifts him, in other words the consciousness, from the physical body, helps to make it clear to the mystic that he is not only (1) a physical body, but that he is (2) a being of energy, of magnetism, of breath, by the touch of which the physical body lives, being attached to it. As he goes further in the meditative life, he then begins to see that the faculty of thinking, of imagining, of feeling, is independent of the first two aspects; that he himself is a thought, that he himself is a feeling, and that he himself is the creator of thought, even a creator of feeling. And as he goes still higher, he sees that he is happiness himself as well as the creator of happiness.

It is by this process that one arrives at and experiences the happiness which is in oneself and which does not depend upon anything outside. As long as that happiness is not attained, all else that is taken as a substitute for it must disappoint sooner or later; and therefore, if there is any knowledge which can be said to be the only knowledge worth attaining, it is the knowledge of self.