The Third Kind of Knowing

First comes opinion.

It’s light, fast, and contagious. You inherit it from your parents, absorb it from your culture, pick it up from the scroll. It changes shape with your mood. It hardens in groups and dissolves when challenged. Everyone has it. Most never question it.

Then comes science.

Now you’re building. You observe, test, repeat. You cut through illusion with precision. You discard what doesn’t hold. This kind of knowledge is harder to carry. It has weight, method, resistance. It demands humility. It asks you to see the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.

But there's a third kind. And Plotinus, the Ancient Greek philosopher who founded Neoplatonism in the 3rd century, called it illumination.

It’s not learning. It’s recognition. It doesn’t arrive through effort. It arrives through contact.

You don’t just know something. You are it.