Knowledge vs. Experience?

 Individual experience is the foundation of reality as Sartre approached it, yet Tillich looked more toward reality-meanings as the worthwhile prospect. Subjective dynamism in psychological pragmatism with mind being a kind of fiction is another philosophical approach.

 I am skeptical about gurus or whatever that advocate reliance simple on personal experience so that one has an amoeba-like existence. The Khmer Rouge were for ignorance-taking things back to the year zero. In the information age it really wouldn't place one in a good economic vantage point. Rulers sometimes like subjects to contemplate their navel and swill vodka.

 Carl Jung and his greater-than-Freud- observations surpassed his teacher's interpretation of dreams. Jung's w ere archetypes such as drowning or freezing, suffocating/witch sitting on one's chest, interpretation of pulsating blood with a cask of amontillado, a plekasaurus pit and a pendulum or whatever (just joking), having an animal bite off an appendage or of a collective unconscious was one interesting approach to common experience and then having a common PTSD experience/analysis about it. Without reading Jung it would be difficult to form a good opinion about his thoughts

 Jesus Christ was/is God though. Some want to morph that into he had a special relationship as the Son to the 'Father' who is the absolute transcendent for-himself. Christology is a field in-itself. He often quoted scripture and had a relationship with God who is the source of all experience.

 The Buddha aka Sakkyamuni was a brilliant prince from a decaying social order without upward mobility who went out to find his own way to relate to the pervasive social changes of his day. He obviously was familiar with the Vedic tradition and developed his own form of Stoic pragmatism to the challenges of reality.

 I think it is a common experience for people to associate all learning with authorities or hierarchical structures and then seek to controvert everything spiritually in some sort of a liberation process. The United States though was about individual freedom and liberty to learn for-oneself from whatever sources. Intellectual capital is a valuable thin. People make errors in regarding knowledge and in placing it's value in relation to personal experience. One doesn't want to be a programmed minion and instead needs to think for-oneself. One can learn to read, learn to tie knots, build boats, learn how to build electro-magnetic mass drivers or whatever and compartmentalize that knowledge without becoming a robot regurgitating data.

 Emerson and the transcendentalists were well educated as was Ben Franklin, William James and so many others. It is important to free oneself intellectually and pursue one's interests on a disciplined course following truth where it leads rather than to simply rise in a hierarchical social role that requires politically correct course curriculum, yet that can be very costly.

 It's an ancient role too-Socrates mentioned that the unexamined life isn't worth living and that probably is right. Jesus said that those who save their lives would lose them, yet if losing them for His sake will find them.

 The founders of the United States sought to free man from the oppressive burdens of class hierarchies yet corporations and government today informalize methods for driving government to become in opposition to democracy and to call corporate or social hierarchical control democratic. It is through education that is free than one can learn of the macro-social problems stifling rational social response to common challenges. The answers may not exist except as one makes a good judgment upon the basis of abstract learning as well as personal experience.

 Maybe its like flying an aircraft in zero visibility without relying just on one's personal senses to know up/down or guess how far from the mountain that is somewhere ahead one's location is.

 One cannot reinvent or rediscover all of history and philosophy with personal experience, and if people had to invent everything anew they wouldn't have clothes to wear and would need to hunt the fur-bearing mammals for hides. The world is a fly-by-wire kind of place today given its resources and demographics and the effort to conserve as much human liberty and resource health as possible requires brilliance as well as the ignorance of all social learning for two or three minutes a week to honor the tradition of trial and error development of science and liberty.

 I would agree that a priesthood of believers rectification of the ecclesiastical structures would support a better Christian experience for most today when even some Christians might be uncomfortable in churches where the congregants have a higher standard of living and go for other reasons than discipleship.