Q: I am still confused about the relative value of experience and knowledge. Some teachers seem to say that scriptures only give you ‘intellectual’ knowledge and you then have to convert this into actual ‘experience’ in order to become enlightened. But then there are metaphors like rope-snake and dream-waking. The snake that we experience is not real and we have to wake up from the dream. This means gaining knowledge, doesn’t it?

A: You cannot experience the Self/Brahman/Absolute. But then neither can you ‘know’ it in the usual sense of the word. Reality is non-dual. The empirical, experienced world of duality is an appearance; name and form of Brahman. All of this can be intellectually understood by the mind. When it is firmly believed to be true, without any doubt, that is enlightenment.

You should also understand that it is not the case that ‘all of this is unreal’. ‘Unreal’ is not the correct adjective. Every empirical perception is name and form of Brahman and therefore ultimately real. Just not ‘real’ as its perceived ‘object’. This is why the world does not disappear on enlightenment. The scriptures tell us ‘sarvam khalvidam brahma’ – all of this is Brahman. So, if it disappeared, it would mean that Brahman disappeared!

The dream metaphor is good so far as enabling you to appreciate that the dream which appeared real to the dreamer no longer appears real to the waker. Similarly, the waking objects that appear real to the waker, are realized not to have been truly real by the enlightened. If you want to say that the dream was fabricated by the mind of the waker and similarly the waking world is fabricated by Ishvara, that is acceptable as an interim understanding but cannot ultimately be true. Ishvara is just as much mithyā as the jīva. In reality, there is only Brahman-Consciousness and it does not do anything.

So experience on its own can be misleading. And any ideas that you have to gain some ‘experience’ through nirvikalpa samādhi or whatever in order to gain enlightenment or liberation are quite false. Enlightenment simply means Self-knowledge, and we are already ‘free’, whether or not we know it.