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THE NOTION OF GROWTH
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other unresolved experiences that accompany our life and which we choose to ignore and forget as well.
Hidden deep inside our memory we therefore carry a number of experiences we are hardly aware of, but which nevertheless contain vital information how other, more comprehensive states of existence feel like.
The type of knowledge mentioned in the sutra (samyag jnana) has the purpose to alert us to these hidden experiences and to make them accessible.
It is special knowledge that can reach us through a variety of channels. Some of these channels are unknown to the West or their mechanisms are misunderstood. Sutras 9 - 31 explain the bandwidth and range of each of these channels and describe the different types of knowledge they transmit.
How this knowledge is communicated to us - by verbal instruction, by reading the corresponding scriptures or by sudden intuitive comprehension - is not of primary importance.
The knowledge awakens us to that part of the path we already experienced.
If we already have access to more comprehensive levels of experience without knowing it, the knowledge will make us conscious of this opening. It is therefore essential that we familiarize us with the concepts that describe the expansion of consciousness, - and then link these concepts to our experiences.
Apart from this it always pays to take interest in this special knowledge because it enlivens areas of our consciousness we are unacquainted with.
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