Knowledge and understanding are the spiritual path. That path is the revelation of the true, supreme Self.
The ego is quite aware that if our sense of limitation, our smallness, our insufficiency were to go, then it too would have to go. It is our ego that shows us to ourselves in the wrong light, in a limited and worthless light. The ego creates a veil, a screen over the true Self and creates our limited understanding. When the ego becomes pure, then what is revealed is the real us, the true knowledge, the true understanding of our divinity.
The impure ego creates boundaries and wrong understandings. It confuses us into believing that what is not good for us might make us happy. The pure ego is God.
When the creative intelligence and power of God assume different roles, we call it different things. When that intelligence and power is thinking, it is called mind. When it is analyzing and judging, it is called intellect. When it is lost in the role of me and mine and selfishness and it assumes a limited role that creates a false self, it is called ego. When that intelligence and power is in the supreme stillness, it is the pure I consciousness; God.
Blessings,