Y'dig?

“Know thyself” is supreme wisdom; but how can we know ourselves? Is it a mere intellectual knowledge that we want? Modern psychology may explain a good many of the workings of the mind and make interesting and helpful guesses; but this is the study of the mind as an object. How can the mind be known as a subject, except by experience? We all know different values in our daily life: the difference of inner life when the routine of daily tribulations, great or small, makes us feel that we’re not really living, or when we hear a symphony of Beethoven, or read Shakespeare, or Dante or the Upanishads,  if we can read or listen; but can we know what allows us to be conscious of our own consciousness? Can we know the essence of our life which allows us to live and to feel and to think? If we did, we would then know ourselves, our Atman (AW. Spirit), we would know God. We could then know, even as we know that we are alive, but with far greater intensity, that there is a centre within us which gives us that oneness which we call consciousness and that can be one with the ONE, the invisible link that gives the unity of our little lives and is the oneness of this vast universe.

That is the great adventure and the great discovery. No one can do it for is. Until we reach the top of the mountain we cannot see in full glory the view that lies beyond; but glimpses of light illumine our path to the mountain. These glimpses of light give us faith, because then we can know, not with the external knowledge of reading books, but that certainty of faith that comes from moments of inner life. But if in intellectual pride or in the dullness we deny the light, thereby denying ourselves, how can we avoid being in darkness?

This is why the greatest prayers of men have always been prayers for light and love. We cannot buy light and love in the marketplace of men; but they are given to us without money and without price.”

From the introduction to the Penguin Classics, The Upanishads, translated by Juan Mascaro.