Shyam asked:

It is my belief that there is no end to 'know'-ing anything. If yes, is it worth the effort trying to know the
self?

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It is debatable whether there is an end to knowledge if you learn everything. In theory if all the facts of
the universe were laid out, you would then be able to figure out everything and answer all existential
questions. The great thing about knowledge however isn't the fact of knowing something, the great
thing is searching for that little fact to know. Imagine how boring it would be to know everything
though? Can you describe how happy you are when you find out something new, something that you
had never known before? And now try to imagine what you would do if you knew everything. What
would there be to look forward to? Life itself would not be worth living.

Fortunately, it is not that simple due to the fact that with every single question that is answered
another one is created. Joseph Priestley in Experiments and Observations on Different kinds of air
(18th century) writes "In completing one discovery we never fail to get an imperfect knowledge of
others of which we could have no idea before, so that we cannot solve one doubt without creating
several new ones."

Even though in my opinion it's theoretically possible to gain knowledge of everything if we were to
capture all facts and lay them out before us, it is and will be practically impossible to ever know
everything. The moment that man knows everything, he becomes God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote "There is no knowledge that is not power". Taking from that bold
statement you can deduce that the more knowledge you obtain the more powerful you are. I mean
'powerful' in a metaphorical sense, the power that is gained from knowledge is relative. It is relative in
the sense that the power from knowledge has many uses. This is true unless you were to conclude
that some knowledge can be used against certain people as a form of black mail. In a case such as
that, the knowledge loses its power and instead becomes a tool for terrorists.

The question is whether it is in fact worthwhile to get to know the self if in reality we have only such a
short period of time to gain as much knowledge as we can about everything. And thus you imply that
really we should not sacrifice the little time we have acquiring the knowledge of ourselves when it can
be better disposed towards learning the outside perspective of reality. However in all true
understandings, before we can continue on to step two which is in actuality the outside view of the
universe, we must first understand the inside view of it which is our own personal understanding of
ourselves. I think Charles Steinmetz best put it when he said "No man really becomes a fool until he
stops asking questions".

Before we are able to acquire the knowledge of the outside we must first acquire the knowledge of
ourselves in order to understand better the relation of other knowledge we gain in perspective to what
we know about ourselves. To elaborate on this, here is an example: I want to gain the knowledge of
what the ultimate purpose of the universe's existence is, but before I can do that I have to acquire the
knowledge of what my ultimate purpose is in the universe. This is mainly due to the fact that you
cannot learn advanced findings before you know the basic revelant ones. For example, you wouldn't
be able to learn advanced calculus if you didn't even learn basic mathematics. Same with this, if you
don't know what your place is in the universe, how can you even comprehend what the universe's
place is in relation to reality?

In short, what I am saying is that the fundamental foundation of trying to know everything starts with
the ability to place yourself in perspective of the knowledge that you seek. As evidence of this, if you
had a problem with something, you must first understand and realize whether you are contributing to
the problem or the solution before trying to figure out how to apply a certain answer to it. When you
stop asking questions about what your perspective of understanding is in relation to what your
understanding is in perspective to existence, you lose out in your translation of what reality
knowledge is in.[!]

Michael G. Bruce
Metaphysics and Philosophy