Experience
Jeffrey K. Hadden cites Prem Rawat in saying that "Knowledge is a way to be able to take all your senses that have been going outside all your life, turn them around and put them inside to feel and to actually experience you... What you are looking for is inside of you."
Glen Whitaker, former national organizer of Elan Vital in the UK, said "That which we seek is already within us. The process of reaching it is one of learning to experience what is already there. It is one the individual needs to perform for him — or herself, with the guidance and help of the teacher".
According to George D. Chryssides, this Knowledge was based on self-understanding, providing the practitioner with calmness, peace, and contentment, as the inner-self is identical with the divine, and that Prem Rawat emphasizes that Knowledge is universal, not Indian, in nature.
According to Stephen J. Hunt "the major focus of Maharaji is on stillness, peace, and contentment within the individual, and his 'Knowledge' consists of the techniques to obtain them. Knowledge, roughly translated, means the happiness of the true self-understanding. Each individual should seek to comprehend his or her true self. In turn, this brings a sense of well-being, joy, and harmony as one comes in contact with one's "own nature." The process of reaching the true self within can only be achieved by the individual, but with the guidance and help of a teacher. Hence, the movement seems to embrace aspects of world-rejection and world-affirmation. The tens of thousands of followers in the West do not see themselves as members of a religion, but the adherents of a system of teachings that extol the goal of enjoying life to the full."
The experience of Knowledge is described by practitioners as internal and highly individual. The techniques are to be practised privately, with no social structure or hierarchy related to their practice. According to students, there is no liturgy or social obligation involved, but Prem Rawat instructs them to practise the techniques daily for at least one hour to fully benefit from them. They also say that the techniques are universally applicable and their practice has no impact on or relationship to a student's gender, race, sexual orientation, economic status or national origin. Elan Vital, the organization that succeeded the Divine Light Mission, also states that practice of Knowledge will not affect a person's religion.
Read more about this topic: Techniques Of Knowledge
Famous quotes containing the word experience:
“My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don’t know anything at all.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience, which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and defective.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss- house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)