What does 'you shall not cease from exploration and the end of all your exploring will be to arrive where you started and know the place for the first time' mean?

Answer 1

One View: It simply means that experience will teach you wisdom. If you travel from your starting point you will come back to that point with more depth, more capacity to understand and see things in different ways and so your perception of where you began will be different because of all that you have been through in the mean time. And, you will be able to understand then perhaps why you left that place in the first place, you will be able to understand the role you played there and the role it played for you.

Another View: The first part of the answer above reminds me of David A. Kolb's Experiential Learning Model. The second part seems like more of a personal statement about homecoming and reconciliation. My impression of this T.S. Eliot phrase, which comes at the last of his Four Quartets, is that this is a statement of his own Awakening - similar to Nietzsche's idea of Eternal Recurrence and James Joyce's book Finnegan's Wake, wherein he says "Finnegan, begin again" as the last line. All imply the author's sense that he will, at death, be reborn as himself.