Ignorance only creates further ignorance

The lack of comprehension of oneself is ignorance
The lack of comprehension of oneself is ignorance. That is, one must discern how one has come into being, what one is, all the tendencies, the reactions, the hidden motives, the self-imposed beliefs and pursuits. Until each one deeply understands this, there can be no cessation of sorrow, and the confusion of divided action, as economic and religious, public and private, will continue. The human problems that now disturb us will disappear only when each one is able to discern the self-sustaining process of ignorance. To discern needs patience and constant awareness.

Until we begin to break down this vicious circle of ignorance which only creates further ignorance, self-reliance cannot bring about release from sorrow. Yet to understand this continuity of ignorance and sorrow, each one must become utterly self-reliant to be able to probe into craving, fear, tendencies, memories, and so on. Mere self-expression is not creativeness, and to be truly creative, one must understand the process of the self and so be free from it. Through earnest awareness as to what it is that is expressing itself, we begin to understand the limited causes of the past which control the present, and in this strenuous understanding there comes a freedom from the cause of ignorance. True self-reliance, not the self-reliance for the purpose of mere aggressive expression of the self, can come about only through understanding the process of craving, with its limiting values, fears, and hopes; then self-reliance has great significance, for through one´s own strenuous awareness there is a wholeness, a completeness.

 Knowledge is always accompanied by ignorance

A great many scientists in the West have gone into the question of the brain. They say that we are using only a very small part of the whole brain. We can observe whether this is so in ourselves, for it is part of meditation to find out—for ourselves—whether the whole brain or only a very small part is operating. Now, thought is the response of memory which has been stored through knowledge; knowledge is gathered through experience. That is, experience, knowledge, memory stored in the brain, then thought, then action. This is our pattern of living, and the whole process is based on this movement. Man has done this for the last million years. He has been caught in the cycle, which is the movement of thought. And within this area he has choice. He can go from one corner to the other and say, “This is my choice, this is my movement of freedom”—but it is always within the limited field of the known. And knowledge is always accompanied by ignorance because there is no complete knowledge about anything. So we are always in this contradictory state: knowledge and ignorance.