Ignorance and Knowledge

Sri Ramana Maharshi

There is no knowledge apart from ignorance, and no ignorance apart from knowledge. That alone is jnana or real knowledge, which when enquiring to whom this knowledge or ignorance arises, reaches that Source which is the Self. 

The thought 'I am the body' is ignorance. That the body is not apart from the Self is knowledge. The body is a mental projection. The mind is the ego, and the ego rises from the Self. The body thought is distracting and strays away from the Self. For whom is the body or birth? Nor for the Self, the Spirit. It is for the non-self which imagines itself separate from the Self.