soybean2k@hotmail.com wrote:
>>  My conception is called experience. I speak only of things I've seen,
>
>Et cetera. This sort of reasoning -- that "personal experience" is
>certainly the best and probably the only reliable indicator of
>a given thing's validity or lack thereof -- is a very recent
>development, philosophically speaking. It has its roots in the work
>of the English Romantic poets and the American Transcendentalist
>philosophers of the 19th century 

It has even deeper roots in the upanisads and their comments:

Amrtabindupanisad 8,18:
The wise, having studdied the scriptures,
Having attended to the realization of knowledge,
Desiring grain, he leaves the husks,
Including this and other texts.

Bhagavad-gita 3,46:
To the enlightened brahmana
The Vedas are of no greater use
Than a small well 
In a place flooded with water.

Vivekacudamani 61-64:
If the supreme truth is unrevealed,
The study of scriptures is fruitless.
Even after the supreme truth is realized,
the study of scriptures is useless.

In the maze of words the mind is lost
Like a man in a dense forest.
Therefore the truth of the self must be received
from the one who knows the truth.

Of what use is veda to the man 
Bitten by the serpent of ignorance?
Of what use are the scriptures, chants
Or any medicine 
Other than the highest knowledge?

A disease is not cured
By saying the name of the cure 
Without taking it. 
The liberation is not attained 
By thinking about brahman 
Without realizing it.

-- 
Web (Kundalini-yoga): http://danijel.cjb.net