Now what are these two great methods?  One of them may be described as seeking the Self by the Self; the other may be described as seeking the Self by the Not-Self; and if you will think of them in that fashion, I think you will find the idea illuminative.  Those who seek the Self by the Self, seek him through the faculty of Buddhi; they turn ever inwards, and turn away from the outer world.  Those who seek the Self by the Not-Self, seek him through the active working Manas; they are outward-turned, and by study of the Not-Self, they learn to realise the Self.  The one is the path of the metaphysician; the other is the path of the scientist.

To the Self by the Self

Let us look at this a little more closely, with its appropriate methods.  The path on which the faculty of Buddhi is used predominantly is, as just said, the path of the metaphysician.  It is the path of the philosopher.  He turns inwards, ever seeking to find the Self by diving into the recesses of his own nature.  Knowing that the Self is within him, he tries to strip away vesture after vesture, envelope after envelope, and by a process of rejecting them he reaches the glory of the unveiled Self.  To begin this, he must give up concrete thinking and dwell amidst abstractions.  His method, then, must be strenuous, long-sustained, patient meditation.  Nothing else will serve his end; strenuous, hard thinking, by which he rises away from the concrete into the abstract regions of the mind; strenuous, hard thinking, further continued, by which he reaches from the abstract region of the mind up to the region of Buddhi, where unity is sensed; still by strenuous thinking, climbing yet further, until Buddhi as it were opens out into Atma, until the Self is seen in his splendour, with only a film of atmic matter, the envelope of Atma in the manifested fivefold world.  It is along that difficult and strenuous path that the Self must be found by way of the Self.

Such a man must utterly disregard the Not-Self.  He must shut his senses against the outside world.  The world must no longer be able to touch him.  The senses must be closed against all the vibrations that come from without, and he must turn a deaf ear, a blind eye, to all the allurements of matter, to all the diversity of objects, which make up the universe of the Not-Self.  Seclusion will help him, until he is strong enough to close himself against the outer stimuli or allurements.  The contemplative orders in the Roman Catholic Church offer a good environment for this path.  They put the outer world away, as far away as possible.  It is a snare, a temptation, a hindrance.  Always turning away from the world, the Yogi must fix his thought, his attention, upon the Self.  Hence for those who walk along this road, what are called the Siddhis are direct obstacles, and not helps.  But that statement that you find so often, that the Siddhis are things to be avoided,