Experience does indeed for the spirit what education can do for the mind. What then can be the meaning of life, if there is no experience? If life were easy, nothing would be desirable, right or wrong, good or evil. Nothing would be valuable, except possessions. Experience brings to man’s knowledge of life in the perception of things which he has seen and done, in their immediate experience.
Experience is that one thing, which separates the ignorants from the learned men and the wise from the foolish. It is not so much the possession of knowledge, as it is the readiness with which one acquires this knowledge. In other words, experience is that one faculty by which man learns to make use of his many different possibilities. Knowledge, on the other hand, is that one faculty by which man masters the world of ideas. We must both understand that there is a hierarchy among the two; knowledge comes first, while experience comes last.
Man lives, therefore, by experience, and it is through his experience that he makes progress and develops his soul, in the process.
But how come this knowledge comes before man’s eyes?
Surely, it is not by birth, for man never receives knowledge at birth. On the contrary, experience is something that is continually passing before his eyes, but what he views in experience depends on his previous knowledge. Therefore, one cannot say that knowledge and experience are one and the same thing.
It would be more accurate to say that knowledge is a preparation for the experience, and experience is the knowledge of what to expect in life. This is why man is made the way he is, because he has prepared for it by gaining experience through his earthly experience. And experience through his soul is also something that comes by experience; the soul has already been through it all.
Hence, one cannot say that knowledge and experience are the same thing. Knowledge may have come from experience, but experience is something that is independent of knowledge, and knowledge only comes from knowledge. We are therefore left with this conclusion: that knowledge precedes the soul, and the soul precedes knowledge. We know that knowledge can be acquired by man in his daily life, and experience follows as a subsequent stage in the development of man. In other words, knowledge is something that one obtains and experience come as a preparation for it.
But the experience itself is something very different from knowledge. Knowledge pertains to definite knowledge which is objective, whereas experience relates to subjective knowledge, that is, knowledge produced by the soul itself. If you want to have knowledge about an object, you must make an effort to experience it, but if you want to have experience about an object, you have to simply see it or touch it. Experience does not stand in the place of knowledge, for knowledge only comes from a higher order of reality, whereas experience comes as a preparation for it.
