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knowledge requires two.
This problem of self-knowledge has been concisely and metaphorically stated by Simone de Beauvoir. She says: "It is easy to say 'I am I'. But who am I? Where to find myself? I would have to be on the other side of every door. But when it is I who knock on the door, the other on the other side becomes silent. To know the self, the self must be on both sides of the same door. But, alas, when the self knocks on the knower side of the door, there is no one on the other side of the door to open the door. And when there is a self on the other side, the known side of the door, to open it, there is no self on the knower side of the door to knock! So what should one do?"
Do you understand? If you are the knower, then who is there to be known? And if you are the known, then who is there to know? This is what Beauvoir means, that you have to be on both sides of the door. For example: if you are knocking at a door, and you are the one, the only one there, if you knock on the door, there is nobody from the inside to answer the knock. If you are inside the door and ready to open it, then there is nobody to knock. And you have to be on both sides -- only then can there be some communication, some knowledge.
This is impossible. How can you be on both sides of the door? This looks like a Zen Koan -- it is. It is the basic Koan. Out of this Koan, thousands of other khans have been created. So what should one do?
Some say: "Keep on knocking!" That is the way of the will.
"Go on knocking".Jesus says: Ask and it shall be given to you. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Seek and ye shall find.
This is one answer: Go on knocking... persevere, be patient. Don't feel frustrated if the door is not opening. You go on knocking, you go on knocking, you go on knocking.... One day the door is bound to open. That is one answer.
The other answer is: "Stop knocking and wait!" That is the way of surrender, of the devotee, of the lover, of prayer. The first is the way of the yogi who functions through will-power. The second is the way of the surrendered devotee, who waits, trusts, prays.
But I say to you: Look...
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