It says that behind the surface of the life which we know lies something much bigger and more important.

Until we know more about what lies behind, all our knowledge of life and of ourselves is really negligible.

First of all we do not know enough about ordinary psychology, that's why we cannot study super-normal psychology (clairvoyance, thought transference and so on).

But certain real knowledge exists and there are special schools, which know exactly what we want to know.

This is esoteric knowledge.

From the point of view of esoteric teaching the evolution of man can only be the result of knowledge (awareness) and effort.

So serious study begins with the study of psychology that is to say with the study of oneself.

A man has to study himself, not psychology as science.

First thing we should do is to get rid of wrong ideas about ourselves and find methods for studying ourselves.

So we should understand psychology as study of oneself - in order to see yourself from a new point of view.

We begin our study with the word 'I', ‘I like', ‘I dislike', ‘I feel' and so forth.

But we don't realise that we have hundreds of different ‘I's connected with our feelings and desires and have no controlling ‘I'.

These ‘I's change all the time; one suppresses another, one replaces another and this entire struggle makes up our inner life.

To begin self-study it is necessary to study methods of self-observation, but that again must be based on a certain understanding of the divisions of our functions.

We know the difference between intellectual and emotional functions.

For instance, when we discuss things and try to explain them, this is all intellectual work, whereas love, hate, fear, anger, suspicion and so on are emotional.

But very often we mix these two functions; when we really feel, we call it thinking and vice versa.