Ignorance, Lower Knowledge & Higher Knowledge
The vibration of ignorance leads to other vibrations, like doubt.  So, since ignorance is unreal, doubt is also unreal.  You can give it up now.....

If there is a word for something, it exists.  We do not have words in the English language for these truth-principles found in Sanskrit.  By learning these words, then, one opens up previously unseen realms within one's mind!  This is called expansive mind, and it leads to Universal Mind.

The aparavidya, lower knowledge, is okay; you make your living with it, for instance.  But the Paravidya, supreme knowledge, is what you live by.  Make this distinction securely.

When we take the dharma, we are getting jnanam, knowledge.  One has to convert this into vijnana via practice and inner experience.  Vijnana does not come without samadhi, either lower or higher.

Sri Ramakrishna's criticism of modern education:  "They are using Mother's Wisdom merely for storing up bananas."

[Babaji presented the chart, Para & Aparavidya, The Clarifying Teaching of Lower and Higher Knowledge, and the following notes concerning the state of ignorance, which precedes lower knowledge, are derived from his elucidation.]

Aspects of  Avidya, Ignorance:
Avidhi – This is a Sanskrit term that refers to the kind of rituals that people get into that do not have any divine content, which are mindless, secular, dogmatic, and pedantic.  Avidhi ushers people into avidya.  This leads to samskaras of avidya, i.e., the habit of engaging in avidhi.  All this describes why people erroneously come to state that life is meaningless; religion is meaningless.

Avidya Paricchina – This is a very problematic samskara that becomes a samskara skanda [collection of related samskaras] on the order of: "I am an individual being; I am finite. I will not even consider an alternative perspective. I live only once, then die forever. I did not come from anything or anywhere, and thus I was created out of nothing." All this describes root ignorance, mulavidya.

Ashuddha Maya – This describes those who mix lower sattva* with rajas and tamas, thereby getting stuck in lower pleasures and derailed by life.  These beings treat pleasure as the solution to suffering.  This is actually worse than staying in tamas until "God comes along to help."  *(Higher sattva is the study of scriptures, performing sadhana, etc.)

We should study maya the way we study a fog bank.  One has to get above it.  Otherwise, if one tries to study it from inside, there comes fear, confusion, and disorientation.  From outside, one sees how the sun of wisdom just dissolves it.  Upon the advent of such a vision, one can go in and show others how to dissolve it

Fear, ignorance, and doubt – these are the ingredients of the curtain of nescience.  It is further thickened by brooding – brooding on death, on fear, on lack of money, etc.  This brooding covers your Self.