Knowledge of oneself

One of the main objectives of Gnostic knowledge is to know oneself, but what does this mean? Do we know ourselves?

A person often believes that he knows himself, because he knows what he likes, he knows his daily habits, what bothers him, what makes him happy, etc. However, in fact, he usually knows only a small part of his life, of himself.

If a person really knew himself, just as he knows the house where he lives, the objects he has, etc. he would know, for example, the psychological origin of a given thought or feeling. But generally he does not know the origin of these. They are processed within the person without any great order, merely by psychological association.

Test of self-knowledge

We can also do a self-knowledge test: we invite you to stop thinking for 5 minutes.

If this is not possible, let’s try to stop thinking for 1 minute, or maybe 30 seconds. So… was it possible?

If not, it’s because we don’t know how the mind works and we don’t know how our internal universe works either.

There are many things that happen in our external life, family, work, daily routines, relationship with people, etc. And also many things that happen in our inner life, thoughts, feelings, psychological states, happiness, bad or good moods, etc. So in the same way that we find it interesting to know the (outer) world, we should also consider it important to know ourselves.

Why do we need to know ourselves?

One of the important aspects of this is that when we analyze society, at all times, even today, we are faced with situations that are very difficult to understand. Because there is violence, dishonesty, social dramas, wars, situations of all kinds, etc. However, when the Human Being understands how the psychological mechanisms of his own inner life work, he also begins to understand the psychological mechanisms of Society, since they are very similar.

The human being is a miniature Universe, a Microcosm, where the laws and phenomena of the Macrocosm are found. That is why the ancient Greeks said so correctly “Man, know yourself and you will know the Universe …”. In the same vein, Galileo Galilei said: “The greatest wisdom that exists is to know yourself.”

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