Ignorance can make your comprehension more simple or complex, it can make your experience more comfortable or uncomfortable, but it can never make your situation more beneficial. Knowledge provides both opportunities and potential to mitigate threats and even provides power in certain circumstances, ignorance does none of these. Indeed ignorance can remove your awareness of opportunities/threats and it can lead you to believe that non existant opportunities/threats are there, leading to detrimental behaviours. Ignorance facilitates holding incorrect 'knowledge' as being a rational enterprise where it would be irrational were one informed leading one to recognise that the 'knowledge' was incorrect and thus revising their understanding.
Ignorance (of the other) may be advantageous, it may facilitate a power difference that allows you to obtain opportunity at the expense of (and exercise power over) others and to reinforce their detrimental behaviours that benefit you alternatively it may be disadvantageous as they are unwilling or unable to grasp information that would allow them to either contribute or at least not obstruct societal progress (technological developments, alterations to societal norms etc) that would benefit you. Ignorance (of the other) can be either beneficial or detrimental - depending on how immoral you are and how well their ignorance facilitates your aims; that is why some people are so keen to have others be ignorant.
Ignorance (of the self) may be comforting, it may help you to hold onto false understandings, it may have subjective benefits based on your current world view. Ignorance (of the self) is objectively detrimental.
Determining what germs were was probably not the most blissful episode in the lives of the scientists who pioneered the Germ theory of disease (though it may well have been exciting or validating) - their reduction of ignorance led them to be aware that there were tiny things that no one could easily see all around us which could cause us immense harm, this is hardly the most comforting idea. It was however extremely advantageous - as a result we have managed to strongly mitigate the impact of germs on our lives. Knowledge provides opportunities; Ignorance forgoes.
That is a very nice explanation - frubals coming your way.
How I see it is like this:
Taken to the 'nth degree', my Religion, Vedanta only becomes a futile exercise in combined nihilism and solipsism.
We are led to believe that
everything is 'ignorance' (Maya) as opposed to what really 'is' (ParaBrahman) and that is Sat-Chit-Ananda (as WonderWho stated).
So, we forever walk around going 'ne-iti'...'ne-iti'...not this...not that...oh, I see Siva there, but that cannot be Siva because Siva 'doesn't exist', so yeah...not that either...
Oh look... now I am being ignorant of my own ignorance - fine! Just tell me when you are done playing mind games and tell me just
who is being 'ignorant' of
what so we can move on here...
It's a constant balance between 'becoming' and simply 'being'.
Ignorance
is bliss when one is unaware of their own ignorance. It's total hell when they are aware of it but choose to remain ignorant and it's bliss again when they know they are, but choose to remain ignorant of this ignorance.
So, let me love God for just a little while longer before I become 'one' with Him.....