Inwardness is the method by which Augustine attains his clearest views of God. First reading in the Neoplatonists the advice to look inward for the truth, this idea will become central to what Augustine sees as the path to God. External things, for Augustine, simply scatter the mind into multiplicity and dependence on transient things. Turning away from these things and looking inward, Augustine searches for God. This practice leads to two ecstatic visions of God, the first while he is reading the Neoplatonists and the second with Monica in Ostia. In both cases, Augustine ascends by moving up through the levels of himself (such as body, senses, memory, or mind) until only God is higher. In Book 10, Augustine answers the problem of how to seek God without knowing what he looks like by arguing that God is simply that which is higher than the highest in himself. By knowing himself inwardly, he can find God.