Ignorance imprisons. Knowledge liberates. Self-knowledge is the key.
Step 1: unconscious ignorance. “I don’t know that I don’t know myself”. The being who does not know himself is necessarily an idolater. He cannot find an echo or reflection of himself. Purely exteriorized, he stretches towards foreign truths because they are external to himself.
Step 2: Conscious ignorance. “I know that I don’t know myself”. A painful stage because it is a difficult observation to realize self-ignorance, inner emptiness. For having recognized his ignorance, Socrates was called wise.
Step 3: Conscious knowing. “I know that I know”. This is the discovery stage. But paradoxically, the further he advances on this path, the more he experiences the impression of being further from his goal.
Step 4: Unconscious knowledge. “I don’t know that I know”. The realized being has become impersonal. He achieved self-knowledge through the depth of his interiority and his relationship to reality. Everything has become a reflection of himself. The boundary between outside and inside has disappeared.