Experience > Knowledge
Reality > Truth
Thinking > Feeling
The above are notations or summaries of what may be chosen as ways of understanding the human condition, including mortal life; on the basis of metaphysical decisions. The intent is that the first term is distinct from and superior to the second - but that the second is usually preferred.
Mots people focus on "knowledge" - including, nowadays, the debased forms of information or even "data". I am suggesting that these are secondary forms, without participation. Knowledge is "about" something, and the tendency is to regard it as abstract and separable from the person who knows.
But I am saying that the only real knowledge is in (or from) the experience of the knower - all knowledge includes the subjective, the knower. Knowledge is not all in the knower, but always includes the knower.
It could be stated that what we "really" known must always be a matter of our experience.
Truth is only a partial view of reality; because reality is what-is, whereas truth is a description of what-is.
This relates to my conviction that the most fundamental philosophy is metaphysics - which is concerned with the nature of basic reality.
Any stated metaphysics (any philosophy) is, of course, secondary and therefore a description of something, not the something itself.
But underneath that ought-to-be a direct experience of reality.
That personal experience should the basis of the knowledge that is metaphysics.
(Against this is the idea that the most fundamental philosophy is epistemology - the philosophy of "knowledge"; which is often focused on asking what are the valid criteria of knowing, or how can knowledge become objective. I regard epistemology as a blind alley. )
Having said that personal experience is primary, and that experience of reality is the basis of that philosophy I aspire to; the question arises as to the nature of that experience.
What kind of experience is sought? Well, here I am suggesting that it is a kind of thinking, rather than a kind of feeling.
Although having said that, the kind of thinking includes feeling... In other words, the ultimate activity is not the sort of mundane "voice in my head" thinking in which most people engage most of the time that they are awake and conscious.
Neither is it intense unthinking feeling; of the kind that most people regard as powerful emotions - the feeling that is driven by some external event or input; and that "overwhelms" us.
Instead I am attempting to describe a feeling-thinking (a feeling-reinforced thinking, perhaps?) attaining its objective of experiencing reality in a direct and primary way independent of words, or pictures.
What I hope to get across is that we should regard conscious and purposive thinking (a particular kind of thinking) as the situation in which we may experience reality directly.
This conviction (which I derived from Rudolf Steiner, with modifications) is very different from many or most religious or spiritual ideas about where and how we may encounter truth; and different too from mainstream scientistic-materialism.
It is neither the subjective and passive revelation or imposition of truth in traditional religions - requring obedience to legitimate church authority...
Nor is it the idea of truth as objective and out-there (something established by experts that we can only passively obey)...
Nor is it the "my truth" subjectivism of new Age affectations - I say affectation because nobody remotely lives up to it, but instead New Agers are relativistic about their spirituality which is regarded in a "lifestyle" way, while being serious and objective about the truths of current-leftist politics (which they regard as mandatory; and opposition to which is the only "evil" they (in practice) recognize and oppose with vehemence.
(A New Ager may be relativistic about which religion is true, or "anything goes" concerning the validity of spiritual practices such as acupuncture, crystals, channelling, meditation etc; but highly objective and very coercive in their opinions about "right wing" politicians, or "fundamentalist Christians" - and what ought to be done with/ about them!)
The idea that we need to experience reality, and that reality may be experienced in thinking; is therefore something qualitatively different from any of the mainstream perspectives. I can only point it out as a possibility. Whether you (or anyone else) chooses to adopt such a point-of-view, is (and can only be) a matter for individual spiritual responsibility. A matter of your ultimate freedom.
