Through the senses, man contacts the different grades of universal substance, material and spiritual. By the material senses, he contacts the spiritual world. Therefore, by contact of the polarities, these "pairs of opposites," he senses pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, all of which imparts what is called experience. By experience, he arrives at knowledge; by knowledge, he wins the power to discriminate between good and evil. He enters into the light of Wisdom. To strike another key, in the beginning the evolving pilgrim soul possesses the innocence of ignorance. Then at the end, by traveling the Path -- which is himself -- and by contacting its shine and shadows, he evolves through the Gateway of Experience to the innocence of Wisdom. He has consciously identified with the Highest Good, which is another name for God.

-- Temple Teachings, Vol. 2, page 267