Credit: Wikipedia
I’ve referred to this subject in a number of posts, but I’d like to discuss it more completely here.
We have three modes of “knowing,” each of which impacts us more deeply than the one before.
Intellectual Knowledge
The first is intellectual knowledge. Predominantly everything we’re doing here on the Internet starts out as intellectual knowledge.
Intellectual knowledge is mostly, but not completely, word- or image-based. It consists of one person conveying an idea to another, which in common-sensical language we call getting the idea, getting the word out, passing the message along, etc.
Thought doesn’t stop with the quieting of the mind. Thought in the higher realms is highly and instantaneously creative. It’s creative in this dimension as well, but not instantaneous.
For us, believing is usually seeing. Our thoughts restrict and restrain us by placing limits on us where no natural limits exist. I cannot do this. I’m not good enough for that. I’ll never be able to do the other.
We bring all manner of illness and disease on ourselves by thinking in ways like others are a pain in the backside or I’m carrying the world on my shoulders. Our thoughts have a powerful influence on our bodies and our lives.
This form of knowing is not only necessary for interpersonal communication, at the level of evolution we’re at, but it forms the basis of the manner in which people in our culture understand what’s happening here and orient to what there is to do.
However intellectual knowledge is shallow in terms of its impact on us. Many people live in a world of ideas exclusively and have very little contact with their heart, with love, or – with the next stage of knowing – their feelings.
Credit: ifitnessnh.com
Experiential Knowledge
I’ve told the story many times of how, halfway through a three-month encounter group, I suddenly realized that I was out of touch with my feelings.
I vividly remember running down the trail between the residence and the meeting place, shouting at the top of my lungs, “I’m out of touch with my feelings! I’m out of touch with my feelings!” and laughing uproariously.
It took me that long in the group to arrive at the realization that my experiential knowledge was severely limited.
Experiential knowledge touches us more deeply and impactfully than conceptual knowledge. Experiential knowledge includes knowledge obtained from external events like sensations on the body and internal events like hunger, thirst, fatigue, pain, illness, etc.
But its most familiar and important form of content is feelings. “Most important” because people don’t usually act on our behalf until they know how we feel about the matter in question. Feelings are what enroll people to act for us or not.
We’ve all seen the movie in which people are not acting on behalf of another person until he or she breaks down in tears or does or says something else that clearly indicates how they feel about the situation. Then people rush to assist.
Ask a person how they feel and they’ll often respond “I feel that.” “Feeling that” doesn’t describe a feeling. It communicates a concept. It still doesn’t convey the information people need before they act on our behalf.
Being aware of our feelings leads to far greater certainty than does simply understanding most concepts. It’s something that isn’t rewarded a lot in our society, although it was for a brief period in the Sixties and Seventies. Then it was forgotten when the growth movement collapsed during and after the recession of the early Eighties.
The more we penetrate into our inner reality, the more impact our knowing has on us. Feeling love, for instance, has far more impact on us than simply discussing the notion of love.
I enjoyed those school and college teachers far more who could assist me to actually feel things connected with a subject than those who merely recited facts. I’d come alive in class when a teacher actually helped me to experience something. Our internal states are more interesting, absorbing, and satisfying than mere intellectual exercises.
Realized Knowledge
And then there’s knowledge gained through realization. We talk about realization in many ways: “getting” something, having an “Aha!” or “Eureka!” moment, seeing something clearly for the first time, having a transforming flash of insight, etc.
In its much deeper phase, we call it illumination, enlightenment, Self-Realization, etc.
Most people – and especially most lightworkers – are given an experience of realization at some point in their lives, usually, but not always, when they’re young.
These are usually designed to awaken interest in us or remind us of the deeper significance of life. The memory of these peak experiences often remains with us throughout our life.
Remember that time the whole family was on the beach and all of us were suddenly immersed in an experience of the most wonderful, enveloping love? Remember the day when I absolutely knew I was God? Remember the moment of intuitive insight that showed you that you were not from here?
When I emerged from the vision I had on February 13, 1987, I knew that the notion that “enlightenment is the purpose of life” was the one thing at that moment that I absolutely knew. I did not have certainty about anything else in life but that one thing.
Realized knowledge leaves us with certainty, confidence, dedication, energy. We seldom forget moments of realization. They have the impact of us knowing something for certain.
* * *
Without being too rigid, I’d like to suggest that the way we learn is by walking through these three steps: getting an idea of something, feeling it, and then realizing it. Whether we’re on the Third, Fourth, Fifth or higher dimensions, we first begin to suss out where we are and how things work. We then explore the experience of the things we’ve become aware of. And finally we start to get much deeper insights about them in moments of realization.
I know. I know. I didn’t mention love, bliss, and ecstacy. Those are not for me states of knowing. They’re states of being or experiencing.
It’s true that bliss makes a much deeper form of knowing possible than any level of experiencing does without bliss. But when knowing does occur while I’m in bliss, it occurs by thinking, feeling, or realizing.
It follows from what I’ve just said, therefore, that the complete human is a thinking/feeling/realizing being. These processes assist us to reach our natural state, which is one of love, bliss, ecstacy, and beyond.