Just knowing something intellectually doesn’t get us … OK, me … very far, if we’re looking for certain knowledge.
For instance, I assert that life is a journey from God to God. I predict that loving everything is the way to complete that journey.
But knowing that is for me intellectual knowledge. It doesn’t yield certain knowledge.
Not at street level.
Deep underground I’m convinced that loving everything is the answer to everything. There it shows up for me as accepted truth, as invisible as the air we breathe. But culturally we don’t accept this kind of knowledge.
So, at surface level, no. I only know it as a thought, not as experience or realization. Let me explore this.
I notice that ideas have very little juice to them, very little power to move. I run out of steam fairly soon drawing on my intellectual knowledge alone.
Drawing on experiential knowledge gets me further. There’s a great deal of juice in that.
Realized knowledge of course decides the question, for all times. Realization brings certainty and transcends any other form of knowledge. It tends to be full of juice, whether permanent or temporary.
At the same time our knowledge frontier is exploding. A few decades ago, I thought of seventh-chakra enlightenment or Brahmajnana as full and complete enlightenment. But that remains within the Third/Fourth Dimension.
Now we’re talking about the Transcendental beyond the Twelfth Dimension. Our spiritual horizons are greatly expanding.
Finally, I reach the limits of my understanding and my mind falls silent.
I’m now present and still. I’m in the realm of experience. I’m simply aware. This has more juice to it than intellectual knowledge.
There’s nothing I must do. I’m being the observer/envisioner in my life at this moment, not the participant/actor. I’m drawing love up from my heart, which is by its very nature universal, and so flows to everything.
I’m now up to experience: I experience loving everything.
This is as far as I can take it through my own ordinary, day-to-day efforts. But I do see the difference in power between thinking about loving everything and experiencing my unconditional love.