Jesus said, Whoever knows everything, but fails [to know] himself, lacks everything. (67–Brown translation)
Patterson and Maeyer: Those who know all, but are lacking in themselves, are utterly lacking.
Why Why are we here? Even more: why do we keep coming back here? The answer is that the creation is a vast school in which we must learn. Certainly we see that people have learned a great deal, much of it useless though certainly complex and the result of at least externalized intelligence. But back they come to this world over and over because they have not learned the “one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) and have not “chosen the good part” which is eternal. And that is the knowledge of who and what they are, a knowledge that will lead them to know God.
In the Bhagavad Gita we are told: “Know this [ultimate knowledge of the Self], and you shall not again fall into delusion. By this you shall come to see all creation in your Self and then in me. Even if you should be the most sinful among all the sinful, yet you would cross over all sin by the raft of knowledge alone. As the kindled fire reduces wood to ashes, in the same way the fire of knowledge reduces all karmas to ashes. No purifier equal to knowledge is found here in the world. He who is himself perfected in yoga in time finds knowledge in the Self” (Bhagavad Gita 4:35-38). He who possesses this knowledge has everything; without it he has nothing.
Jesus of course is not pointing us to mere intellectual knowledge, but to the knowing of the individual spirit that leads to the knowing of the infinite, cosmic Spirit. This is because in his years in India he had studied the Bhagavad Gita which had told him (and through him, us): “To you I shall explain in full this knowledge, along with realization, which being known, nothing further remains to be known in this world” (Bhagavad Gita 7:2). “To you I shall declare this most secret knowledge combined with realization, which having known you shall be free from evil” (Bhagavad Gita 9:1).
And now we have learned the same.
Read the next article in the Gospel of Thomas for Yogis: The Blessings of Persecution