2. Attaining Spiritual Wisdom

World Scripture

The kami-faith is caught, not taught.
Shinto Proverb

A monk asked Joshu, “Has a dog the Buddha nature?” Joshu answered, “Mu [Emptiness].” Mumon’s comment: To attain this subtle realization, you must completely cut off the way of thinking.¹⁶
Mumonkan 1 (Buddhism)

God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
John 4.24-25

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit. The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 2.12-16

Knowledge is of five kinds, namely: sensory knowledge, scriptural knowledge, clairvoyance, telepathy, and omniscience. These five kinds of knowledge are of two types: the first two kinds are indirect knowledge and the remaining three constitute direct knowledge. In sensory knowledge… there is only the apprehension of indistinct things… But clairvoyance, telepathy, and omniscience is direct knowledge; it is perceived by the soul in a vivid manner without the intermediary of the senses or the scriptures.
Tattvarthasutra 1.19-29 (Jainism)

In the heart of the enlightened man there is a window opening on the realities of the spiritual world, so that he knows, not by hearsay or traditional belief, but by actual experience, what produces wretchedness or happiness in the soul just as clearly and decidedly as the physician knows what produces sickness or health in the body. He recognizes that knowledge of God and worship are medicinal, and that ignorance and sin are deadly poisons for the soul. Many even so-called “learned” men, from blindly following others’ opinions, have no real certainty in their beliefs regarding the happiness or misery of souls in the next world, but he who will attend to the matter with a mind unbiased by prejudice will arrive at clear convictions on this matter.
Al-Ghazzali, The Alchemy of Happiness (Islam)

Pure Knowing has nothing to do with hearing much.
Wang Yang-ming (Confucianism)

Teachings of Sun Myung Moon

We should cultivate the heart of true love through experience. True love cannot be learned through the spoken or written word, or through general education. This is how it was in the beginning. Adam and Eve, who were created as infants, were to grow and experience love at each stage of life, perfecting in turn the heart of true children, the heart of true brother and sister, and the heart of true parents. Only by experiencing each of these kinds of love, can we become ideal people who fulfill the purpose of creation.
(282:209, March 13, 1997)

There are generally two types of people: the intellectual type and the spiritual type. When intellectual type people search for an answer, if their research coincides with their reasoning they accept it, but if it does not they reject it. Spiritual type people are more intuitive, making decisions based on intuition more than reason. People of the spiritual type feel from inside and apply it to the outside, while the intellectual type experience the outside and apply it in the inside. One type is extroverted and the other, introverted.
Intellectual type people usually do not like to pray. They resist praying and question the need for it. They do not feel comfortable calling out, “Heavenly Father!” They do not feel that it is real. Prayer, God, etc. appear to them like superstition. Since they don’t believe in prayer, they feel to pray would be to deny their integrity. They judge the truth of something by whether it agrees with their theoretical model of the world. Spiritual type people, on the other hand, love saying the words, “Heavenly Father” from birth. They delight in prayer, and do not need any explanation.
Intellectual type people cannot launch a revolutionary spiritual movement. In the world of faith, those who can do something extraordinary are not intellectuals, but are rather uninformed and simple-minded people who are spiritual. They do what comes to them, disregarding what the world says. Believing that God told them to do it, they just go ahead and do it. After doing it, they find that what they did turned out to be right. Great persons can appear from among such spiritual people.
The apostle Paul was an intellectual type person. Nevertheless, after having a spiritual experience on the road to Damascus, he totally changed. Having felt something explosive from inside that was greater than anything he had experienced from external investigation, he came to deny everything he had been taught and accepted his new experience as the truth. Hence, he could become the pioneer of a new revolutionary religion, Christianity.
You should know which type of person you are. In general, spiritual people are thick in spirit but pointy in intellect. Therefore, although they may be solid in the beginning, they will not be consistent all the way, and after a time their works often fail. By the same token, although a person of truth may be strong, if his spirituality is weak his works will also eventually fall short. Therefore, whichever type of person we are, we need to balance these two aspects.
There is a saying, “Worship God in spirit and truth.” (John 4.23) It means that people should make these two sides parallel and find harmony between them. We should be able to control both the spirit world and the physical world. Standing in the center of spirituality and rationality, we should be able to make adjustments between the right and the left. Otherwise, we cannot reach perfection.
(76:136-37, February 2, 1975)

Fallen people have been overcoming their internal ignorance by enlightening their spirituality and intellect with “spirit and truth” (John 4:23)…
“Spirit” in this context denotes the inspiration of Heaven. Cognition of a spiritual reality begins when it is perceived through the five senses of the spirit self. These perceptions resonate through the five physical senses and are felt physiologically. Cognition of truth, on the other hand, arises from the knowledge gleaned from the physical world as it is perceived directly through our physiological sense organs. Cognition thus takes place through both spiritual and physical processes.
Human beings become complete only when their spirit self and physical self are unified. Hence, the experience of divine inspiration gained through spiritual cognition and the knowledge of truth obtained through physical cognition should become fully harmonized and awaken the spirituality and intellect together. It is only when the spiritual and physical dimensions of cognition resonate together that we can thoroughly comprehend God and the universe.
(Exposition of the Divine Principle, Eschatology 5.1)