Knower Quotes

Conceiv'd out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism -personifying ill unparalleled ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation) -only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works -works in some respects greater than anything else ill recorded literature. ~ Walt Whitman

Truly, there are terrible primal arcana of earth which had better be left unknown and unevoked; dread secrets which have nothing to do with man, and which man may learn only in exchange for peace and sanity; cryptic truths which make the knower evermore an alien among his kind, and cause him to walk alone on earth. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know ... And if he can match her import, the two, the knower and the known, will be released from every limitation ... The hero who can take her as she is, without undue commotion but with the kindness and assurance she requires, is potentially the king, the incarnate god, of her created world. ~ Joseph Campbell

He by whom the whole universe is constantly pervaded is the Knower, the Author of time. He is sinless and omniscient.

It is at His command that the work which is called earth, water, fire, air and akasa appears as the universe. All this should be reflected upon by the wise. ~ Svetasvatara Upanishad

The fundamental text of the Hindu tradition is, of course, the Bhagavad Gītā; and there four basic yogas are described. The word yoga itself, from a Sanskrit verbal root yuj, meaning "to yoke, to link one thing to another," refers to the act of linking the mind to the source of mind, consciousness to the source of consciousness; the import of which definition is perhaps best illustrated in the discipline known as knowledge yoga, the yoga, that is to say, of discrimination between the knower and the known, between the subject and the object in every act of knowing, and the identification of oneself, then, with the subject. "I know my body. My body is the object. I am the witness, the knower of the object. I, therefore, am not my body." Next: "I know my thoughts; I am not my thoughts." And so on: "I know my feelings; I am not my feelings." You can back yourself out of the room that way. And the Buddha then comes along and adds: "You are not the witness either. There is no witness." So where are you now? Where are you between two thoughts? That is the way known as jñāna yoga, the way of sheer knowledge. ~ Joseph Campbell

Remember that you can know yourself, and with that you know enough. But you cannot know others and everything else. Beware of knowing what lies beyond yourself, or else your presumed knowledge will suffocate the life of those who know themselves. A knower may know himself. That is his limit.
- Carl Gustav Jung ~ C. G. Jung

There's an old saying that the difference between abstract knowledge and real wisdom is that "wisdom is knowledge with the knower left in." It is taking the truth into all your relationships. It is to ask, "What does this mean for my relationship to God? to myself? to this or that person or group? to this or that behavior or habit? to my friends, to the culture? ~ Timothy Keller

The problem with living forever, of course, is you have to live forever before you know you're immortal ... or invincible. Even the gods, in this way, must always remain uncertain. Time trumps immortality just as uncertainty trumps omniscience, for a knower can only ever know what it knows, never what it doesn't.
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) ~ Mort W. Lumsden

The world of enlightenment doesn't know of its own existence. We're beyond both the knower and known. There's no conceptual identity whatsoever. ~ Frederick Lenz

Beyond Islam and unbelief there is a desert plain. For us, there is a passion in the midst of that expanse. The knower who reaches there will prostrate, there is neither Islam nor unbelief, nor any 'where' in that place. ~ Rumi

Some of the verse in "AshthavakraGIta" are so powerful that will take you to the far beyond cosmos and you will feel oneness with everything in the universe and all cosmos will be projected inside you. The day you know that all the things are the object is perceivable by the subject(knower) that is you, and you are not the body not the mind but the pure consciousness that illuminates the entire world. ~ Pawan Parashar

We even, at the worst, reach the state for which Buddhism, in the East presents most ably the case: as in the West, does James Thomson (B.V.) in The City of Dreadful Night; we come to wish for - or, more truly to think that we wish for "blest Nirvana's sinless stainless Peace" (or some such twaddle - thank God I can't recall Arnold's mawkish and unmanly phrase!) and B.V.'s "Dateless oblivion and divine repose."

I insist on the "think that you wish," because, if the real You did really wish the real That, you could never have come to exist at all! ("But I don't exist." - "I know - let's get on!")

Note, please, how sophistically unconvincing are the Buddhist theories of how we ever got into this mess. First cause: Ignorance. Way out, then, knowledge. O.K., that implies a knower, a thing known - and so on and so forth, through all the Three Waste Paper Baskets of the Law; analysed, it turns out to be nonsense all dolled up to look like thinking. And there is no genuine explanation of the origin of the Will to be.

How different, how simple, how self-evident, is the doctrine of The Book of the Law! ~ Aleister Crowley

When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer world. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Nothing that can be known has existence in itself. It depends on a knower. The knower is consciousness. ~ Jean Klein

All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower. ~ Karl Mannheim

Prana, according to the Vedanta, is the principle of life. It is like ether, an omnipresent principle; and all motion, either in the body or anywhere else, is the work of this Prana. It is greater than Akasha, and through it everything lives. Prana is in the mother, in the father, in the sister, in the teacher, Prana is the knower. ~ Swami Vivekananda

What is seen is not the Truth
What is cannot be said
Trust comes not without seeing
Nor understanding without words
The wise comprehends with knowledge
To the ignorant it is but a wonder
Some worship the formless God
Some worship his various forms
In what way He is beyond these attributes
Only the Knower knows
That music cannot be written
How can then be the notes
Say Kabir, awareness alone will overcome illusion. ~ Kabir

The less you think you know, the more will be known. It's amazing what you can know when you let go of being the knower. ~ Art Hochberg

Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known. ~ Parker J. Palmer

Finally you come to a point where you almost know it all. You are very wise. You are very pure ... except for the fact that you may well have gotten caught in the last trap ... the desire to know it all and still be you, "the knower." This is an impossibility. For all of the finite knowledge does not add up to the infinite. In order to take the final step, the knower must go. That is, you can only BE it all, but you can't know it all. The goal is non-dualistic - as long as there is a "knower" and "known" you are in dualism. ~ Ram Dass

Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely adrift and alone. From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman, the god-within ... underlying its whirlpool of transient feelings, emotions, and delusions is the self-luminous, abiding point of the transpersonal god. As the sun lights the world even when cloud-covered, "the Immutable is never seen but is the Witness; it is never heard but is the Hearer; it is never thought but is the Thinker; it is never known but is the Knower. There is no other witness but This, no other knower but This." from the Upanishad ~ Huston Smith

In the ultimate depths of his being man knows nothing more surely than that his knowledge, that is, what is called knowledge in everyday parlance, is only a small island in a vast sea that has not been travelled. It is a floating island, and it might be more familiar to us than the sea, but ultimately it is borne by the sea and only because it is can we be borne by it. Hence the existentiell question for the knower is this: Which does he love more, the small island of his so-called knowledge or the sea of infinite mystery? ~ Karl Rahner

Sometimes coincidentally an unintelligent person can accomplish a task but that does not mean that he is a knower of means and device or is experienced. A ruler should be careful enough to designate other tasks to such persons. ~ Chanakya

The Knower of the Soul is considered Self Realized (The Enlightened one). The knower of all the eternal elements is known as Omniscient (sarvagna). ~ Dada Bhagwan

Knowledge depends on the mode of the knower; for what is known is in the knower according to the measure of his mode ~ Thomas Aquinas

When the veil of the knower falls away the creative force of discovery guides your way - each moment is revealed as new. ~ Jon Bernie

The one with 'egoism' and 'my-ness' (mamata); the one with the awareness that 'I am the doer'- are all called 'Jiva' [living beings] and he who has attained the realization that 'I am not the doer, I am the Knower-Seer and I am the form of the eternal-bliss', then he is the 'Soul'! ~ Dada Bhagwan

But when you know for sure that your separate ego is a fiction, you actually feel yourself as the whole process and pattern of life. Experience and experiencer become one experiencing, known and knower one knowing. ~ Alan W. Watts

We know Existence, because we are existence.

We know Truth, because we are truth.

We know Life, because we are life itself.

The mind cannot remember this, because it is an experience far removed from it. The mind is an observer, not a knower. It can remember, but it cannot become what it remembers.

The mind is a false witness to truth, life, and existence. ~ Robert S. Cosmar

In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem. ~ Allen Tate

All Through Eternity


All through eternity
Beauty unveils His exquisite form
in the solitude of nothingness;
He holds a mirror to His Face
and beholds His own beauty.
he is the knower and the known,
the seer and the seen;
No eye but His own
has ever looked upon this Universe.


His every quality finds an expression:
Eternity becomes the verdant field of Time and Space;
Love, the life-giving garden of this world.
Every branch and leaf and fruit
Reveals an aspect of His perfection-
They cypress give hint of His majesty,
The rose gives tidings of His beauty.

Whenever Beauty looks,
Love is also there;
Whenever beauty shows a rosy cheek
Love lights Her fire from that flame.
When beauty dwells in the dark folds of night
Love comes and finds a heart
entangled in tresses.
Beauty and Love are as body and soul.
Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.

They have together
since the beginning of time-
Side by side, step by step ~ Rumi

There are many names to Allah plus one you don't know. And each name is an attribute that flexes his characteristics: the Benevolent, the Merciful, the All-Knower ... And to me, my names be flexin' personalities of myself: Prince Rakeem, Bobby Digital, Bobby Steels, the RZA, the Rzarector ... These are personalities of myself. ~ RZA

The motive that impels modern reason to know must be described as the desire to conquer and dominate. For the Greek philosophers and the Fathers of the church, knowing meant something different: it meant knowing in wonder. By knowing or perceiving one participates in the life of the other. Here knowing does not transform the counterpart into the property of the knower; the knower does not appropriate what he knows. On the contrary, he is transformed through sympathy, becoming a participant in what he perceives. ~ Jurgen Moltmann

The mystery of the world is revealed only to the person who can look upon the material world with his physical eyes and simultaneously has the spiritual vision necessary to see the unseen spiritual world. One who knows both Matter and Spirit is thus the true knower, and is a spiritually intelligent being. ~ Awdhesh Singh

By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one ... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature
for instance in a biological survey of evolution
we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer. ~ Owen Barfield

You are the knower of knowledge; you perceive perceiving. Come to this place, and see if any questions remain there within you. ~ Mooji

God is identical with His attributes, so that it may be said that He is the knowledge, the knower, and the known. ~ Maimonides

Faith is the soul's witness to something not yet manifested, achieved or realised, but which yet the Knower within us, even in the absence of all indications, feels to be true or supremely worth following or achieving. ~ Sri Aurobindo

The 'knowledge' (gnan) that was resulting into 'the things to be known' (gneya); when that 'knowledge' results in the 'Knower' (gnata); this is known as Self-Realization [Atma Gnan]. ~ Dada Bhagwan

The Seeker himself becomes the knower. The thing to be known is already there. There is nothing to be known afresh. More-over there are no two things. There is only the seer, the knower. ~ Ramana Maharshi

Some people claim, 'I am the Knower-Seer (Gnata-Drashta)'. Hey! What do you mean you are 'Knower-Seer'? 'You' are still 'Chandubhai'? The Knower-Seer state begins after one realizes the Self, after one attains the awareness of the Self [the soul]. ~ Dada Bhagwan

How long does the experience of pleasure or pain stay with you? For as long as there is weakness within. Then, further ahead they will not be there. There, one remains the 'Knower' of experience of pleasure and pain. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Inaction, letting be, neither creating nor destroying
that is my evil. And also the knower as one without desire. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The Tathagatha ... is the originator of the path unarisen before, the producer of the path unproduced before, the declarer of the path undeclared before. He is the knower of the path, the discoverer of the path, the one skilled in the path. And his disciplines now dwell following that path and become possessed of it afterwards. ~ Gautama Buddha

You cannot see That which is the Seer of seeing; you cannot hear That which is the Hearer of hearing; you cannot think of That which is the Thinker of thought; you cannot know That which is the Knower of knowledge. This is your Self, that is within all; everything else but This is perishable. ~ Anonymous

For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit and the Son; but which we will call here the Knower, the Doer and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty. These three are equal. Each is that which he is, essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or analyzed, and each of these three has the power of the others latent in him and his own, patent. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you still experience the stars as something "over you," you still don't have the eyes of a knower. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Knowledge is a function of being. When there is a change in the being of the knower, there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing. ~ Aldous Huxley

What do the Vitraag Lords say? "I am Chandulal" is a Gneya (that which is to be known) yet one believes himself to be the knower. When the knower comes into the 'Knowing state (gnata padh) and that which is to be known, comes into the 'state of being known (gneya padh)', 'we' will call him 'Jitendriya-Jin'. ~ Dada Bhagwan

The source and essence of all creation can be found everywhere. It resides equally in you, in me, and in all things. True wisdom is the fullest understanding of this essence--an understanding that can happen only when there is no separation between the knower and the known. ~ Victor Shamas

Without knowing the Knower, all the knowledge that one gathers cannot be valid. ~ Ramana Maharshi

And if this disenchanted vision were elevated to the status of being the only legitimate vision of the nature of the cosmos upheld by an entire civilization, what an incalculable loss, an impoverishment, a tragic deformation, a grief, would ultimately be suffered by both knower and known.
~ Richard Tarnas

The paradox of the Cartesian project is that from a beginning point that is radically self-enclosed, one is supposed to proceed by an impersonal method, as this will secure objective knowledge - the kind that carries no taint of the knower himself. Polanyi turns this whole procedure on its head: through submission to authority, in the social context of the lab, one develops certain skills, the exercise of which constitutes a form of inquiry in which the element of personal involvement is ineliminable. ~ Matthew B. Crawford