By Victor M Fontane
What is spiritual liberation or enlightenment? The process by which the aspirant or Sādhaka manages to stop the wheel of birth and death through Dharma and wisdom. Dharma means that which sustains or gives order. Reading and studying, having many books as well as accumulating many tantric initiations, etc. it doesn't really make people more spiritual or closer to spiritual enlightenment or liberation. Erudition is not the same as enlightenment. It is really the spiritual practice and realizations that advance the path.
Wisdom (Prajna) in Vedanta or Buddhist epistemology means mind. Now, why do we say that wisdom is really the capacity or ability to be able to see and recognize the ultimate reality of our experiences?
According to Vedanta philosophy, this does not happen because when we face our experiences we pour the content of our mind into them. When facing experiences or knowledge, the mind has a primary or initial non-conceptual contact with that experience but then with mental concepts projecting our mind and not with the direct perception of the experience. This mental content is saturated with the concepts that we have already learned from other sources, be it parents, family, school, society, religions, etc. which conceals and mask this true and ultimate reality of experience, knowledge or process.
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