The Individual Nature : 6.

6.

The desire to understand, or to know is a rational urge.
There are various forms of this urge, working through different channels, but aiming at the fulfilment of the desire to know. Sometimes, it is merely curiosity, and at other times, it is a necessity felt on account of problems that have arisen in life, that rouses in the individual the desire to know.

At first, the knowledge that is desired is only a means to vaster and higher acquisitions, and later on, it becomes an end in itself. Except the desire for higher knowledge which is self-existent, and the instinct of self-preservation (the latter when not carried beyond the limit of real necessity), all these urges are outlets for the externalisation of energy towards objects other than what is indispensable to the individual for its self-evolution.

Desire for knowledge, however, should be called a supernatural urge, though it becomes really supernatural only in the end, and involves some amount of effort and spending of energy in the beginning stages.
The highest self-existent knowledge is not really an urge, but is the end of lower knowledge, and only this latter can be included among urges.

by Swami Krishnananda