We all know the difference between reading about a place and actually being there. You can scroll through pictures of Central Park on a website, or you can stand in front of the Bow Bridge and see it yourself. That gap—between knowing about something and directly experiencing it—feels fundamental to how we understand the world. But according to Vedanta, that gap exists for a particular reason, and it vanishes entirely when the thing we're trying to know is not distant from us, but already here.
This distinction between knowledge and experience forms the crux of a question posed to Swami Sarvapriyananda, resident minister at the Vedanta Society of New York, during a June 2025 Q&A session. A student, Harman, wanted to understand how knowledge differs from experience—and whether knowledge itself is personal, like experience, or whether it stands independent of individuality. The question cuts at the heart of what it means to become enlightened: Is it something you learn, something you live through, or both at once?
When the Thing You Seek Is at a Distance
Swami Sarvapriyananda's answer begins simply: the gap between knowledge and experience opens up only when what we're trying to know is *not* immediately accessible to us. "I can read in a brochure or see a website about Central Park without actually visiting Central Park," he explains. "So, there is a gap between knowledge and experience then." The knowledge exists—facts, descriptions, images—but it remains theoretical, a kind of secondhand report about something we haven't yet encountered directly.
In Sanskrit, this distant, inaccessible knowledge is called *paroksha*—literally, beyond the range of our senses. It's the knowledge you have about a place you've never been, a person you've never met, a phenomenon you've only read about. The gap is real and measurable. Only when you finally visit Central Park, when you see the lake and the trees with your own eyes, does the knowledge transform into experience. Only then can you say: I know this place not just as information, but as a lived encounter.
What Happens When Nothing Is at a Distance
But here's where Vedanta introduces a crucial pivot. "Now supposing there is something which is not at a distance, it is right here, then knowledge and experience will become the same thing," Swami Sarvapriyananda says. If what you're trying to know is already present, already within your immediate field of awareness, the distinction collapses. It becomes nonsensical to separate them.
He offers a vivid example. Imagine you're standing in Central Park, looking directly at the Bow Bridge. Does a photograph of the bridge help you know it better? Do you need a brochure? No—the actual thing is in front of you. The need for external knowledge vanishes when the thing itself is vivid and unmistakable and present.
Yet Swami Sarvapriyananda notes something subtle here: even when the actual thing is present, knowledge still has a role. But that knowledge takes a different form. It's not knowledge *about* something distant; it's the clarification of what's already being experienced. This is where his example of being introduced to someone becomes instructive. "Someone introduces Harman. I said, okay, oh, that's Harman. Now did I get a new experience or new knowledge about what was already being experienced? I am already seeing him. And somebody says, that's Harman. Now I know, oh, this person whom I already was seeing is Harman."
You were already experiencing the person. The introduction didn't create the experience—it clarified it. It gave you the right concept, the right understanding of what was already present to your awareness.
The Self You're Already Experiencing
This is where the teaching turns inward. In Advaita Vedanta, the non-dual philosophy Swami Sarvapriyananda teaches, the Self—pure consciousness, your own deepest nature—is not something distant that you have to travel toward. You are already experiencing it. You are it. Every moment of awareness, every thought, every sensation arises within your own consciousness. There's no gap to close; the thing is already here.
But ignorance clouds this truth. "Not knowing the real nature of the Self, who I am, what I am, I am seeing myself not as I am, as pure consciousness, but I am seeing myself as a body with consciousness," Swami Sarvapriyananda explains. You already know you are conscious—ask anyone if they're aware, and they'll say yes. But you experience yourself as a body that happens to be conscious, a body with a mind inside it. You miss the radical simplicity: you are consciousness itself. Not consciousness *in* a body, but consciousness that is appearing in the form of a body.
Vedanta's work is to turn your attention inward and investigate yourself until this truth becomes unmistakable. The knowledge that arrives—"I am consciousness itself, bare awareness and that too limitless"—is not theoretical. It's the removal of a misunderstanding about what was already being directly experienced all along. It's like someone saying, "By the way, the person you've been seeing all this time is Harman." Suddenly the facts align with the experience.
Does This Knowledge Grow?
Here Swami Sarvapriyananda gives a paradoxical answer: "It has to be given a nuanced answer. First of all, the first answer is no." Once the breakthrough occurs—once you see through the illusion and recognize your true nature as limitless consciousness—that realization doesn't evolve or improve. It's complete, final, unchanging. "It will not change. It's the fact of yourself as existence awareness. This will not change."
But then: "But what will change, that's why I said yes and no." What changes is how this knowledge integrates into your life, into your personality. The realization is immediate and total, but its *manifestation* is gradual.
Before the breakthrough, your personality was organized around the sense of being a separate individual—good or bad, successful or struggling, bound by the limitations of time and death. After the realization, your personality begins to absorb and live this tremendous fact: "I am limitless existence, I am Atman, Brahman, Buddha nature, whatever you call it, limitless awareness." This living integration is called *Jeevan Mukti*—freedom while living. It's not something that happens overnight. "If the preparation has been good before the breakthrough, before the enlightenment," it can be very quick. But "if the preparation has not been complete, it will still be a struggle."
The Teacher Who Lived 105 Years
To illustrate this long arc of integration, Swami Sarvapriyananda tells a story from his own lineage. He had a teacher, Damodar Ashram, who lived to be 105 years old. When they spoke (Damodar was in his late 90s), the teacher recounted a memory from his own youth in the monastery. As a young monk, Damodar would cross the Ganges to study with a great scholar, Yogendra Nath Tarkatirtha, learning Vedanta and other philosophical disciplines. When he returned to the monastery, he would report his learning to an elderly, blind monk named Gyan Maharaj, who had been a disciple of Swami Vivekananda.
One day, Damodar went to see the Pandit studying some new text. He asked: at your advanced age, and having studied so much already, why are you still learning new things? The Pandit's answer was uncompromising: "If I don't learn something new every day, there is no use living. I don't want to live if I do not learn something new every day."
Damodar, impressed, returned across the river and told Gyan Maharaj. The old monk heard the words and then offered a corrective. "That is all right for the Pandit," Gyan Maharaj said, "that's the Pandit's ideal. But you know, in enlightenment, it is once and forever. It will happen once and it will be forever."
The Pandit, still in the realm of intellectual study and the world of learning, needed fresh knowledge every day to stay engaged with life. But the realized being—the one who has awakened to their true nature—has arrived at something complete. The breakthrough is final. What continues is not new knowledge in that sense, but the deepening integration of that one realization into every dimension of how you live and move and are.
Where to go from here
If you're drawn to understand your own consciousness and the nature of the Self, the Vedanta Society of New York offers free introductory lectures and ongoing study groups. Many of Swami Sarvapriyananda's talks on Vedanta scriptures and specific topics are available on their website and podcast platforms. The question of enlightenment—whether it's knowledge, experience, or both—isn't merely intellectual; it's an invitation to investigate the one thing you can never be separate from: your own awareness. The gap between what you think you are and what you actually are is the only distance that matters. And according to Vedanta, it's the only distance that can close.
