Knowledge

Knowledge, in the usual philosophical sense, is true belief that is justified or reliably formed: knowing that something is so. Philosophers also distinguish knowing how, a skill, and knowledge by acquaintance, direct familiarity with something, from knowledge by description.

The contemplative traditions add a further kind: knowledge by identity or participation, in which the knower becomes, or realizes they already are, what is known. The Upaniṣads say that one who knows Brahman becomes Brahman. The Greek gnōsis, in Christian and Neoplatonic writers, is a saving knowledge of God, not information about God; the Sufis speak of maʿrifa, knowledge of God by direct experience, and al-Ghazālī of “tasting”. Such knowledge is said to transform the knower.

Many traditions also teach the limits of knowledge: that the ultimate is beyond every concept, and is known, if at all, by unknowing, love or silence. The relation between knowledge and love as ways to the ultimate is itself one of the great questions.