Continued from Verse Ten
11. Is it not, rather, ignorance to know all else without knowing oneself, the knower? As soon as one knows the Self, which is the substratum of knowledge and ignorance, knowledge and ignorance perish.
Commentary: When you look into the knower of the relative world, that is, the egoic I, which thinks it is the body and the mind, that ego shows itself to be not the knower but merely an object that is known — known in the light of the Self. Knowing that Self, one can no longer take seriously the claims of the ego to be separate. If those claims fall, then the knowledge of the world, and equally the ignorance of the world, also cannot be taken seriously.
All our knowledge of the world is based on taking the ego seriously. All our projects and desires, which make use of that knowledge, are based on taking the ego seriously. We live our lives thinking that we are the body and the mind when that is not the case. That is the harshest ignorance.
When the ego is looked into and seen to be a mere puppet, and not our actual self, then this deep ignorance disappears — indeed, reveals itself never to have existed in the first place, for to believe that we were affected by that ignorance is itself ignorance.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.