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The German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel on what he termed the “absolute law” (the Delphic “know thyself!”):
“The significance of that ‘absolute commandment’, know thyself … is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man’s genuine reality — of what is essentially and ultimately true and real — of spirit as the true and essential being.”
“Know thyself doesn’t have the meaning of a law externally imposed on the human mind by an alien power; on the contrary, the god who impels to self-knowledge is none other than the absolute law of mind itself. Mind is, therefore, in its every act only apprehending itself” (EPM § 377 A).
Hegel was scared of hindu art though.
“Hindu art marks the difference between the spiritual (or divine) and the merely natural by extending, exaggerating and distorting the natural forms in which the divine is imagined to be present. The divine is portrayed not in the purely natural form of an animal or human being, therefore, but in the unnaturally distorted form of an animal or human being. (Shiva is portrayed with many arms, for example, and Brahma with four faces.)
Hegel notes that such portrayal involves the work of “shaping” or “forming” the medium of expression (PKÄ, 78). In that sense, one can speak of Hindu “art.” He claims, however, that Hindu art does not fulfill the true purpose of art because it does not give appropriate and adequate shape to free spirit and thereby create images of beauty. Rather, it simply distorts the natural shape of animals and human beings—to the point at which they become “ugly” (unschön), “monstrous,” “grotesque” or “bizarre” (PKÄ, 78, 84)—in order to show that the divine or spiritual, which cannot be understood except in terms of the natural and sensuous, is at the same time different from, and finds no adequate expression in, the realm of the natural and sensuous. Hindu divinity is inseparable from natural forms, but it indicates its distinctive presence by the unnaturalness of the natural forms it adopts.
Hegel’s judgment on Hindu art does not mean, by the way, that he finds no merit at all in such art. He remarks on the splendor of Hindu art and on the “most tender feeling” and the “wealth of the finest sensuous naturalness” that such art can display. He insists, however, that Hindu art fails to reach the height of art, in which spirit is shown to be free in itself and is given appropriate natural, visible shape (PKÄ, 84).”
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)