Hi Jergen,

Good to hear from you.  Experience is any transaction between a subject and an object or objects.  There is only one Self, with apparent knowledge of who or what it is.  When it doesn't know who it is it...that is when it thinks its a  person, a body/mind/ego indivdual, it is in a state of continuous experience.  When it doesn't know who or what it is it has a sense of incompleteness and separation and it believes that certain experiences...or the 'big' experience (enlightenment), will erase its sense of incompleteness or separation. When its ignorance about who it is is removed with (Self) knowledge it no longer sees experience as something to be desired or feared but sees it as non-separate from itself.  Self knowledge negates the doer, the experiencer.  It is true to its object, the Self, so it is 'absolute' meaning that it knows for sure that nothing needs to be experienced for happiness, that the understanding that it is always complete and whole by itself is 'happiness.' It is happiness itself. 

Knowledge is 'what cannot be negated.'  It is true at all times, places and circumstances.  Sugar is always sweet.  Fire is always hot.  Water is always wet to use worldly examples.  The Self is always whole and complete actionless Awareness. Information, what Vedanta calls relative knowledge, is subject to correction or it is conditioned by various changing factors so you can never count on it to make you happy or to remove suffering.  Experience only produces relative knowledge because it is in Maya and subject to continuous change. 

When I said above that the Self has 'apparent' knowledge I meant that even 'absolute' knowledge is limited in the sense that Awareness is not a knower.  The jiva, the individual, is the knower, the second of Ramana's 'I's.  Absolute knowledge is only absolute with reference to what is relative.  But there is nothing 'relative' in our non-dual reality so the idea of absolute and relative knowledge is actually a form of ignorance. Nonetheless, absolute or Self knowledge is absolutely necessary if the jiva, the Self under the spell of Maya/avidya, is going to get free of its notion of incompleteness/separation. 

No experience, including non-dual epiphanies, will produce lasting Self knowledge. The experience might trigger the understanding "I am the Self" but usually (Ramana and a few others were exceptions) Self ignorance returns with the epiphany and the Self again falls under the spell of 'apparent' ignorance.  It is never actually ignorant of who it is.  It just thinks it is...owing to Maya, which makes the impossible (Self forgetfullness) possible. The spiritual world is nothing but hundreds of thousands of people who have had non-dual epiphanies but who failed to associate 'non-duality' with the 'I'.  They leave the 'I' as an experiencer.  To convert non-dual experience to knowledge one needs to know the value of knowlege.  By that I mean one needs to know (as the scripture and the sages say) that ignorance is the problem and that only knowledge removes ignorance.  If you take non-duality to be an experience it will do what every experience does...change into something else.  So when you are having one of your epiphanies you need to look into who or what is the source of the experience.  The source is always Awareness.  And then you need to identify with Awareness as Ramana did when he had it famous epiphany.

When Vedanta speaks of 'Knowledge' it is generally speaking of Awareness, the Self.  It is called 'knowledge' because it makes knowledge possible.  You can't be enlightened or ignorant without Awareness.  It makes knowledge possible but it does not need knowledge to survive, to exist. When it is under the spell of Maya/avidya it is absolutely dependent on (relative) knowledge just to survive. 

The whole point of Self inquiry is to remove one's dependence on experience.  Self knowledge doesn't stop experience it just stops the identification with the experiencer. Therefore it is called 'moksa,' freedom (from the doer/experiencer, from experience itself.  A person who does not know what a mirage is will chase the experienced water he or she sees on the desert, assuming he or she is thirsty (and who in this world is experience hungry/thirsty?)  But someone who knows what a mirage is will not waste his or her time chasing an experience that will not solve his or her thirst problem. 

This is why it is important for seekers to understand the relative values of knowledge and experience.  Vedanta is not against mystic experience at all.  It just says the there is always another factor involved and that knowledge of that factor is very useful...if you want to be happy.  My intention in writing and speaking on this topic is not to discourage spiritual practice or downplay the value of mystic experience but only to draw attention to the issue of the relationship between what is experienced and what is known. 

I hope this is helpful.

Ram