Information and Experience Are Different Kinds of Access

Information can travel farther than experience.

A recording, essay, podcast, transcript, diagram, or explanation can make an idea available to people who were never present when it was first spoken.

That is valuable.

It is not the same kind of access as practice.

We can know the instructions for listening and still fail to listen.

We can explain meditation without meditating.

We can describe a difficult conversation without entering one.

We can understand a physical technique intellectually without being able to perform it.

Information tells us something about the territory.

Experience places demands on attention, judgment, response, and repetition that information alone cannot reproduce.

The distinction works in the other direction too.

Experience without information can remain confused, hard to communicate, or difficult to test.

The two can strengthen each other.

A good explanation can prepare practice.

Practice can reveal what the explanation left out.

Access to information is not access to everything the information is about.

Sometimes the next step is not another explanation.

It is an encounter.