“What you don't know, can't hurt you.”

    These sayings are popular, but are they really true? I don't think so. And I doubt that Thomas Gray, a Cambridge University professor, believed it either, at least not in general. These sayings originated as references to specific circumstances in which they may have been true, at least short term, but not as a general condition. Not knowing that your mother died in an accident yesterday may allow you to be happy today, but eventually you learn the truth.
    Just looking at the materialistic side of it, we know that those who are better educated and therefore have more knowledge, at least more knowledge of the material world, are more likely to get and keep good jobs. You certainly wouldn't want to be represented in court by an ignorant lawyer and you definitely wouldn't want to be operated on a doctor that was ignorant of proper surgical procedures. There is a good reason why education is emphasized in nearly all civilized nations. Of course, public schools are often tools of the state to indoctrinate the youth, but, even then, they are also useful in helping them learn the skills they need to survive and, perhaps one day, to brake free of oppression.
    On the spiritual side, knowledge is even more important. This is especially true today when we have so many preachers teachings things that were never taught by Jesus, Buddha, Moses or and of the other religious founders. The Essenes and the early Christians, an offshoot of the Essenes, understood this and made all effort to gain spiritual knowledge and truth, Gnosis. When you gain gnosis, you are learning directly from God and therefore you know that it is 100% true and accurate. And that knowledge makes it possible for you to obtain true immortality. Without that knowledge, you cannot get immortality, it's that simple. Now some will argue that knowledge is what got Adam & Eve kicked out of the Garden of Edin, but that was not gnosis, that was the knowledge of good & evil, the knowledge of the material world.