Experience vs Study

Experience vs Study
June 27, 2006

I found this interesting poser in one of my forums, and I enjoyed its 'food for thought':

It seems quite a few of the forums and groups that I'm on recently have been discussing Experience vs. Study so I thought I would bring it here.
On your path, do you think you learn more by experience, study or a combination? Are there certain things that you only learn through experience, and others that you only can learn through study? Do you notice any discernable patterns?
I have a problem with the idea that in order to know something you have to first experience it. I think that there are things that I can make a relatively safe judgement about without experiencing them.
What do you think?

Thanks for a very thought provoking question. Yes, I would agree that "there certain things that you only learn through experience, and others that you only can learn through study". The study and the experience must work together to form learning. Every thing that I study, makes my mind that more 'vast'. I get a tiny piece of the puzzle that is 'how everything works' and put it down and have a clearer idea of how the world came to be, in all aspects, historical, scientific, and so forth. Each piece of 'book learning' knowledge is a clue to the world's path of evolution. Yet it would only be just 'head' knowledge if I didn't try and apply it to my own 'willed conscious evolution', (aka 'Xeper'). Can I plan how that will go? Only in that sense of trying to make myself ever alert in all the six senses for any opportunity of experience. I direct my will towards that, and then make myself open to how this will manifest.

As for "the idea that in order to know something you have to first experience it", I think there are some things I can imagine well enough to know I don't want to experience it. I know I don't want to experience a heart attack, for instance. Having experienced gall bladder trouble and stones, yes, I have the 'knowledge that can only come by experience' of just how intense that pain was. But that is just thinking of painful things. I might think of an experience I'd like to have, but won't. I won't ever really know what it's like to be a mother, to give birth. (And at 47, I wouldn't want to.) So I just enjoy vicariously the experience of others. Not all experience is possible to us. It may be just one of the reasons we like to go to movies. For the span of the movie, we are transported to another world, where we can experience another reality. (I find this is more the case when I can see it on the big screen, and enter INTO the movie. By imagination, our minds and hearts (the intellect and the emotions, with possibility of reaching the deeper Self) can become more 'vast'. Perhaps this is how we learn empathy, we imagine what another's experience might be like. No, I can't know EXACTLY what their experience is. But by applying my imagination, I can have a closer understanding than if I don't try at all.

Have I noticed "any discernable patterns"? Mmmm. Just that it seems cyclical and spiraling in nature, book learning, imagination and direct experience working hand in hand to create Understanding.