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so difficult. Self-knowledge is not the same kind of knowledge with which we are familiar. Not at all. It is not a relationship between the knower and an object. It is supreme knowledge, because after it there remains nothing else to be known. We can also call it supreme ignorance, because there is really nothing to be known. Objective knowledge is the relation between the subject and the object; self-knowledge is the absence of both subject and object. When this happens, only pure knowledge remains, unqualified.
It is through knowledge that all worldly objects are known. Through knowledge the object is known, but the one who knows is separate from the object. And our understanding of material things is this very relationship between subject and object.
Where there is neither subject nor object -- without an object the subject no longer exists -- there is knowledge of the self. Self-knowledge is the purest state of knowledge there is. We call this state self-knowledge because, as Buddha explained it, neither self nor non-self exists in this state.
To most people the word "self" suggests ego. But this is not the case. As long as the ego exists, there can be no self-knowledge.
But how can one attain to this knowledge? Where is the path to be found?
I was once a guest in a house that had so many things in it there was hardly any room to move about. The house was large, but because it was so overcrowded it seemed quite small. In fact, the house was really invisible. A house is the empty space enclosed by the walls, not the walls themselves. The space is the house; it is that space in which we live.
During the evening the host complained that there was no room in his house. He asked how he could make more space. I laughed and told him there was all kinds of room in his house. It was there; he had just filled it with things. If he got rid of some things, I told him, he would see how much space he really had.
The process of self-knowledge is not unlike this.
"I" is always there. Whether awake or asleep, whether sitting or walking, whether in pleasure or in pain, "I" is there. Whether one is knowledgeable or ignorant,
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