Experiment with the Teachings
Question: Why is it important to not only hear and know the teachings, but to actually experiment with them?
Reading Time – 3 Minutes
Take, for example, a dragon fruit. People might say, “It’s such an exotic fruit, it’s so delicious, so delicious.” Many people can tell you, friends and neighbours can tell you, and you can see people on YouTube eating dragon fruit and saying how good it is. They don’t seem like they’re lying, so you believe them, but the conviction you have about how delicious dragon fruit tastes will be absolutely nothing compared to when you taste one yourself.
Just once, having your own experience of it, you will know, “Wow, they were right! Wow! Delicious! I see why dragon fruit is pretty expensive in the supermarket.”
So, experimenting—wanting to taste it for yourself and then actually tasting it yourself—gives you conviction in the truth. Then you want more of that in your life, and that becomes your life.
That’s why books can help on the spiritual path, because books can give you evidence that there are people tasting this thing and saying how good it is. This makes you want to experience it for yourself, and the only way to do that is by experimenting with it yourself.
The great Masters are not interested in a person believing or disbelieving what they say. They are indifferent about whether a person believes or disbelieves what they say. But there is a big difference between someone who is going to experiment with what they say and someone who is not.
If we agree with something, then we nod. If we disagree, we shake our heads. That’s it. The movement of the head in each case is very similar and they each take the same amount of effort.
But to experiment with the teachings, to live them, is very different.
From experimentation, then you start to witness the results for yourself, and when you witness the results your faith will increase. Otherwise, it’s very hard to be convinced.
If we haven’t experimented with the teachings, then our faith will be very weak. All it takes is another idea, or someone presenting something different in a very authoritative way, and we will shift to a new belief. Our whole life becomes a process of collecting ideas. We get one idea, “Yes, that’s great!” Then we are convinced something else is a better idea so we jump to that idea, another for our collection. Then another idea and we jump to that new idea.
Our whole life becomes a chase for new secrets and new ideas, without ever having that conviction in our bones of what love is, what compassion is, what joy is, what peacefulness is, what vitality is, what wisdom is, what true intelligence is, what happiness is.
That’s why the Masters say, “Experiment, and vouch for the teachings for yourself.”
Even in a factory workshop they have a process of quality control, where they test the product at the end of the production line to make sure it meets the company standard for that product. In a similar way, you be the quality control of the teachings. You make sure what is said is true, by experimenting with it. There is no other way.
