To know thyself is a great achievement. It is power unto salvation. Happy, peaceful, and secure is the individual who has been awakened from his dream of pain and pleasure in matter and has at last found his true selfhood above and beyond the confines of material living. This joyous realization of life in God is always an individual realization, accomplished through the enlightened union of desire and effort. There is no vicarious realization of Truth. Everyone must ultimately find the truth of being for himself, and by himself, not by examining outside physical phenomena but by piercing the depths of metaphysical noumenon. True knowledge is of the Spirit and is found in the infallible universe of Mind, and one wastes his time in searching for it in any other place.
The search for the truth of individual being has had a long human history, a record of triumphs and defeats which provides the background for our present understanding of man. The ancient Greeks, early workers in metaphysical research, did much to cultivate the practice of self-knowledge. In fact, "Know thyself" was one of their precepts and was inscribed in gold letters on the temple at Delphi. But noble precepts, however displayed, will never transform the thought habits of men until deeply inscribed in their hearts by the invisible hand of pure desire. Nowhere in the arts, sciences, or literature of any period is the search for spiritual self-knowledge so completely satisfying, so completely rewarding, as in the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy.
Jesus' self-knowledge was complete. He knew himself as the son of God and proved his knowledge conclusively in the resurrection and ascension, when his human selfhood was swallowed up in immortality. He preached that individual man is the embodiment of divine knowledge and power and based his thesis on the spiritual fact that "the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). Some of Jesus' followers understood his doctrine, but many were unable or unwilling to grasp his teaching regarding man and God. But the truth he taught shines on, to be glimpsed from age to age by those fearless thinkers who were reborn in its redeeming light.
