THE different avenues which lead to spiritual understanding can be understood best through an initial distinction between spirit and matter. In order to understand matter we have Spirit cannot be understood through mind material means, and in order to understand the spirit we have spiritual means. Matter is understood through the mind or the intellect working upon data given through the different senses, but Spirit can be understood only through the spirit itself. This highest form of understanding, in which the spirit enjoys self-knowledge without using any instrument or medium, is very rare and most difficult to attain. The best approach for the understanding of spirit is through the heart and not through the mind.

         The mind is accustomed to work upon material things, and its driving power for this intellectual understanding of material objects is derived from lusts and cravings. When mind is turned Conceptions and attitudes of mind towards matter inadequate for spirit towards spiritual problems it tackles them along lines to which it is accustomed and, in so doing, uses concepts which it has invented for the intellectual understanding of material things. However, this approach to understanding