). If we surrender our mental autonomy by accepting others as authorities, without even establishing their credentials on the basis of evidence, then our beliefs are no longer knowledge: they do not constitute objective mental integration of our own experience. In short, if we are to know what reality is, we cannot avoid exercising independent judgment.
Authentic knowledge necessitates rising beyond what one "was brought up to believe." If we compare what we were told by the authority figures of our childhood against reality, we may or may not find it necessary to alter our beliefs radically. Until we have engaged in such an objective evaluation, however, we have no basis for regarding those beliefs as true, and we can hold onto them only by evading that fact—an evasion which (as will become clear during this course) can only be psychologically destructive. 
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