This is a notion prevalent among seekers who have encountered a diluted form of Vedanta and/or have not yet cultivated the qualifications necessary to enable them to properly assimilate the teachings that even though self-inquiry is a means of knowledge, the knowledge it produces is only theoretical, and that it therefore has to be subsequently validated by a direct personal experience of a mystical or otherwise special state of consciousness. The claims that a special experience is required to convert theoretical knowledge into reality are based on the fact that generations of yogis, Tantra masters, and mystics have been talking about and placing great emphasis on the value of experiences and, moreover, prescribing techniques and methods intended to help seekers cultivate various altered states of consciousness. The fundamental error underlying the erroneous notion that enlightenment or self-realization is a particular state of being and all the yogic practices aimed at attaining it is that reality is a duality, that the self is something other than and separate from oneself. The idea that any action is necessary to obtain the non-dual awareness in which all objects appear and of which all are essentially made – the very awareness, in other words, that is now, has always been, and will always be aware of everything, the very awareness that is presently illumining one’s mind, the very awareness because of which one knows both what one knows and what one doesn’t know – is upon even the most cursory analysis absurd.
