Knower Quotes & Sayings

Knower of the means makes impossible tasks also possible. — Chanakya

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

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

Blessed, blessed is the Knower of the Lord, my True Guru, He has taught me to look upon friend and foe alike. — Guru Gobind Singh

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

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

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

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

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

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

being of the knower, there is a corresponding — Aldous Huxley

Divine sound is the cause of all manifestation. The knower of the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the whole universe. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

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

Where there is any kind of doer-ship, there is karmic bondage, and where there is knower-ship and inner understanding, there is Moksha [Liberation]. — Dada Bhagwan

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 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

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

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

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

God is self-evident, impersonal, omniscient, the Knower and the Master of nature, the Lord of all. He is behind all worship and it is being done according to Him, whether we know it or not. — Swami Vivekananda

The Knower of 'taste' is the Soul. The enjoyer of 'taste' is not the Soul. — Dada Bhagwan

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

The one who has enlightened view (right belief; samkiti), he indeed does not have any problems, anywhere. He remains only the Knower-Seer everywhere. As long as there is any problem or objection, it cannot indeed be called samkit (enlightened view, right belief). — Dada Bhagwan

Attitude is that litmus test which differentiates a knower from a doer. Knowers have only the skills; doers have the skills and the will to do what they know! — Israelmore Ayivor

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

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

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

Knowledge, the object of knowledge and the knower are the three factors which motivate action; the senses, the work and the doer comprise the threefold basis of action. — Friedrich Schiller

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

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

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

Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred.In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists.
I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become thevictor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing then it is the eternal
dance or creation. The creator and creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing ... and dancing ... and dancing. Until there is only ... the dance. — Michael Jackson

Include the knower in the known. — Julian Jaynes

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

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

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

But the secrets of such a book are not perpetual. Once they are known, they become relegated to a lesser sphere, which is that of the knower. Having lost the prestige they once enjoyed, these former secrets now function as tools in the excavation of still deeper ones which, in turn, will suffer the same corrosive fate. And this is the fate of all the secrets of the universe. Eventually the seeker of a recondite knowledge may conclude - either through insight or sheer exhaustion - that this ruthless process is never-ending, that the mortification of one mystery after another has no terminus beyond that of the seeker's own extinction. And how many still remain susceptible to the search? How many pursue it to the end of their days with undying hope of some ultimate revelation? Better not to think in precise terms just how few the faithful are. — Thomas Ligotti

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

But if the biblical story is true, the kind of certainty proper to a human being will be one which rests on the fidelity of God, not upon the competence of the human knower. It will be a kind of certainty which is inseparable from gratitude and trust. — Lesslie Newbigin

Cognition modifies the knower so as to adapt him harmoniously to his acquired knowledge. — Ludwik Fleck

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

Isn't it easy to see that this line is imaginary, and that it, and the witness behind it, are the same old faking process automatically learned in childhood? The same old cleft between the knower and the known? The same old split between the organism/environment and the organism's feedback, or self-conscious mechanism? — Alan W. Watts

No scientist knows the world merely by holding it at arm's length: if we ever managed to build the objectivist wall between the knower and the known, we could know nothing except the wall itself. Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known. That encounter has moments of distance, but it would not be an encounter without moments of intimacy as well. Knowing of any sort is relational, animated by a desire to come into deeper community with what we know. — Parker J. Palmer

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

God is the Knower and not the sufferer of pain. — Dada Bhagwan

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 '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

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

To speak of God, however, as infinite consciousness, which is identical to infinite being, is to say that in him the ecstasy of mind is also the perfect satiety of achieved knowledge, of perfect wisdom. God is both the knower and the known, infinite intelligence and infinite intelligibility. This is to say that, in him, rational appetite is perfectly fulfilled, and consciousness perfectly possesses the end it desires. And this, of course, is perfect bliss. — David Bentley Hart

The ultimate point of view is that there is nothing to understand, so when we try to understand, we are only indulging in acrobatics of the mind. Whatever you have understood, you are not. Why are you getting lost in concepts? You are not what you know, you are the knower. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge. — Meister Eckhart

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

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

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

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

If there is a knower of tongues here, fetch him; There's a stranger in the city And he has many things to say. — Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

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

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

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

R5 Passive Knower: "If, whenever I have to make a judgement, I restrain my will so that it extends to what the intellect clearly and distinctly reveals, and no further, then it is quite impossible for me to go wrong" (Descartes, PWD 2:43). — Lee Braver

Brahman is beyond mind and speech, beyond concentration and meditation, beyond the knower, the known and knowledge, beyond even the conception of the real and unreal. In short, It is beyond all relativity. — Ramakrishna

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

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

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

When you know the knower within, you don't need to know further. When you know the meditator within, you don't need to meditate further. When you truly know the worshiper in you, you are to be worshiped. — Amit Ray

Worldly life is based on 'action' and the spiritual life is based on 'knowing'. One does the action and the other 'sees'. The 'doer' and the 'knower' can never be the same, they are always separate. They were separate, they are separate and they will remain separate. — Dada Bhagwan

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 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

Life is a mystery; that means it cannot be solved. And when all efforts to solve it prove futile, the mystery dawns upon you. Then the doors are open; then you are invited. As a knower, nobody enters the divine; as a child, ignorant, not knowing at all- the mystery embraces you. With a knowing mind you are clever, not innocent. Innocence is the door. — Rajneesh

As you make more and more powerful microscopic instruments, the universe has to get smaller and smaller in order to escape the investigation. Just as when the telescopes become more and more powerful, the galaxies have to recede in order to get away from the telescopes. Because what is happening in all these investigations is this: Through us and through our eyes and senses, the universe is looking at itself. And when you try to turn around to see your own head, what happens? It runs away. You can't get at it. This is the principle. Shankara explains it beautifully in his commentary on the Kenopanishad where he says 'That which is the Knower, the ground of all knowledge, is never itself an object of knowledge.'
[In this quote from 1973 Watts, remarkably, essentially anticipates the discovery (in the late 1990's) of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.] — Alan W. Watts

What you call the psychic being is the mind of the vital. The heart is the seat of this mind. And this mind is the essence of the senses. It receives things from outside, acts upon things that are outside - knows, gives consent, takes interest in them. But this mind cannot be the Ishwara, but it is the knower, the giver of the consent. — Sri Aurobindo

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

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

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

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