How should one define the typical journey of acquiring knowledge? Is it moving toward perfection or simply lesser ignorance?
Read more about this in this Facebook post July 6, 2021 from Imam Ahmed Alhasan:
“The knowledgeable person is one who realizes that no matter how much he increases in knowledge, he remains surrounded and bound by ignorance. In fact, though he gains more knowledge, his ignorance becomes even greater than before. Whenever he moves beyond the limitations of ignorance to a wider knowledge space, he realizes that these limitations have become even greater.
It is just like someone who exits a place that is narrow and enters a wider one. Even if he finds spaciousness, beauty, and comfort in the new place, he is still in confined; it’s just that this jail is more spacious. If he looks closely, he will find himself surrounded by new restrictions and limitations that prevent him from seeing what lies beyond—that which is bigger, more vast, and might be even more important.
So, he becomes aware of his even greater state of ignorance and that it has amplified. He again finds himself in the same predicament when he exchanges his new dwelling for a more spacious one—and this continues without end since Absolute knowledge is infinite. We keep moving beyond certain limitations of ignorance only to discover new ones that are even greater.
We are simply finite creatures that imagine and think we possess knowledge and understanding, yet we are immersed in ignorance. No matter how much time we spend moving toward perfection, our cognizance of our ignorance increases.
We are confined and restricted by our imperfection, and we cannot attain Absolute knowledge. No matter how accomplished we become, our knowledge is limited and tainted with imperfection. We have not achieved true perfection and calling it perfection is quite generous. Actually, what we are doing [here] is moving from one state of ignorance to a lesser one. What we are calling perfection or imagine it to be as we strive for it is simply less ignorance—nothing more.”