The Value of Direct Experience

“The value of direct experience is many things. One benefit is the ability to follow ourselves, to guide ourselves, rather than fully handing ourselves over to spiritual leaders. Recently, a spiritual leader with innumerable devotees throughout the world was uncovered as a paedophile. He used the guise of a spiritual leader very convincingly, as a way of attracting unsuspecting people for his horrible desires. This is one of many examples proving the dangers of blind belief and the lack of inner investigation.

Another benefit is apparent in the person's own spirituality. While many spiritual people seem to walk a vague and abstract path that on inspection has no solid foundation, a person who is able to experience spiritual phenomena themselves comes to realise the concrete nature of spirituality. We lose the misty fog that surrounds much modern spirituality. Instead, we develop along a tangible spiritual path due to the fruits of our own efforts.

Directly experiencing mystical things is magical, strengthening and beyond our imagination. It is exciting and clarifying, gradually giving us everything we need, answering our many questions and putting us personally in the realm of the esoteric. The experience of astral projection, for example, coming out of our body and encountering awesome spiritual beings, occult temples, etc is incredibly liberating and refreshing in that our experience solidifies the reality of things, blowing all the tedious theory that clogs our mind out of the water. What we are capable of is beautiful and we are all able to do it, no matter who we are — even you.

Legitimate spiritual experience reveals the spiritual path. While this is lacking, we can't really penetrate into the heart of what is spiritual. Belief in itself is not enough. We need to know.

There is no requirement in Gnosis to believe or disbelieve, to accept or reject. All that is needed is the interest in approaching the techniques with an open mind, testing the information through sincere effort. We would all testify that the teachings are real and effective — but you don't need to take our word for it; aim for the first-hand experience.”

Dave, The Value of Direct Experience, (www.mysticweb.org)

If this page was accessed during a web search you may wish to browse the websites listed below where this topic titled "The Value of Direct Experience" or related issues are discussed, commented, criticized or researched in detail to promote global peace, progress in religious harmony, and spiritual development of humanity:

http://www.adishakti.org/
http://www.al-qiyamah.org/