Can man know himself fully

Archpriest Vasily Kucher on the limits of self-knowledge.

Oleksandr Vasylchenko asks: Can a person fully know himself?

Archpriest Vasily Kucher answers:

I will say at once: no, he cannot know himself fully. And the reason is not that we are not trying hard enough. A human being is constructed far more deeply than he himself imagines. One could cite scientific data showing that most processes in our psyche take place entirely without the participation of consciousness, but the fact remains: we see only the tip of ourselves. The Prophet David prayed about precisely this: "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from my secret faults." That is, he understood that there is something in him of which he himself is unaware.

Only God knows a person fully. The Apostle Paul says that now we see "through a glass, darkly", we know in part, and we shall know fully later, even as God knows us.

Does this mean that we should not even try? Of course not. The holy fathers spoke a great deal about self-knowledge, only they understood it differently from how it is customary today (tests, "personality types," analysis of one's childhood). For them, to know oneself is first of all to see one's passions. St. Peter of Damascus wrote that the beginning of the enlightenment of the soul is when a person begins to see his sins as the sand of the sea.

And how does this happen? Very simply: the closer a person is to God, the more darkness he sees within himself. It is like a room with the curtains drawn: you cannot see the dust, but open the window, and every speck is visible in the ray of sunlight. That is why the saints sincerely considered themselves worse than everyone else, and this was not a pose.

And one more point. It is impossible to know oneself alone. We learn much about ourselves only in the presence of other people: in the family, at work, when we have been offended or when we must yield. It is precisely there that it becomes clear what is really inside us (and most often it comes as a surprise).

So we will not be able to know ourselves fully. But to come to know ourselves little by little, in the light of God and alongside our neighbor, is precisely the work of our entire life.