Every Christian knows the difference between "Information" and "Illumination"!
Or do they?

In my experience I have come across few Christians who have put on the new man in Christ, and therefore they don't know of which mind they are of (i.e. they are operating from).

A simple rundown of the differences between that unyielded mind that merely is enlightened by information and that yielded mind that is enlightened by illumination is in need of explanation here....

Picture if you will, a simple telescope. A telescope consists of a long hollow tube, a mirror or lense at one end to gather up the light, aimed at a focusing lense at the other with a focusing knob attached.

In a nutshell... the tube represents the impossible distance between us the sinner and God The Holy One. The mirror can be likened to our soul in our ability to seek out the Lord and come to know Him. The lense or focus is what we use to Hear the Lord with, and the knob represents our hearing Him perfectly through fine-tuning in His words to our heart.

Now the mind that is out searching in the dark for "Information" is nothing more than "the natural mind". This is the kind of "mind" that doesn't know how to "focus" on the object it is looking at. The "object" in this case being "Christ"! All it gathers are "dead, meaningless words" compared to the brilliance that is found only in Christ.
The mind that is out gathering "Light" and focusing it is known as "the spiritual mind". This is "The mind of Christ" . This is the person who has put on the new man. Eph.4:24; Col.3:10.

Now it is known that "the natural man" cannot receive the things of the Spirit (such as Spirit-filled Illumination), for in their unbroken self there is no way to gather such evidence. In fact such evidence is foolishness to him - foolish to his way of thinking and seeing things. Nor can he know them because they can only be "spiritually discerned".

The Bible/written word of God; is similar in a way to the moon and planets, yet this is but only a "reflection" of the real thing. And there are as many "reflections" of the real as there are doctrines and denominations.
In and of itself the word is proof of God, but in order to make that proof come alive and personal (Hebrews 11:1) one must be able to gather the light from seeing the true, glorious object Himself (the Living Word) in focus and not become caught up in forever studying a reflection of Him from others...

Ye search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
Yet ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. John 5:39-40

Each and every one of us must have our own "revelation knowledge" of Him; our own "personal encounter" of Him as He really is, if we are to enter the kingdom. Flesh and blood cannot see God nor enter the kingdom of God!

All that the natural man knows of God is merely "information". If that information is true then it is either gathered from others who KNOW what they've seen and thus KNOW what are talking about (lining up with what the Scriptures say), and/or that came from reading the Bible itself.
Yet this is all merely "second hand information" - "Head Knowledge". This kind of information that will save no one if that is all they care to see and operate from and go no further.

To read and believe in a crucified Christ is one thing, but to wholeheartedly believe in and obey the risen Lord is quite another. One without the other does no good. Death without life does no good! And that "Life" must be formed in "you"!
His death on the cross cost Jesus His life! His resurrection from the dead will cost us ours! Both to have and to know personally that Christ is both risen for your righteousness and crucified for your sins is necessary.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Heb 11:1

In other words, "IF" one truly believes (by tuning in to the the word of God) that Christ died and paid for our sins on the cross then it follows that "seeing Him risen from the dead" gives all the "Evidence needed of things not seen by the natural eye/heart, to the spiritual man's new heart instead.

Unless and until a man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. John 3:3

In order to go beyond the boundaries and sinful limitations of the natural man and his limited information gathering powers, one must first "HEAR AND UNDERSTAND" what the Gospel is saying to them personally.
The ability for us to hear at all comes from the word of God. Our ears become "The Focus" of that telescope. The more we become "focused" to what God is saying, and the greater our heart-response will be, then the greater becomes our source of light-gathering power as we steer full circle towards His direction and His radiant glory, as given through the Illumination of the Holy Spirit.

All in all the natural man has absolutely no comprehention of the wickedness of his sins nor of God, therefore whatever he may consider wise and good for him is right and smart. The natural man sins because he was born a sinner, just like a marble was made to role.
He has no light gathering power to see with because he considers God in His wisdom to be foolishness. He lacks light altogether because; in his quest to appease self, he left the lens cap on over the opening of his telescope. The lens cap represents "self importance". Hearing God's word effectively eliminates self-righteousness, self-importance and self-worth.

God cannot be known to the mind and heart that thinks they are something special. The best that the natural man can do when it comes to obeying the Gospel is what the word of God calls, "works of the flesh". Only the man who has been "born-again" is the man who has heard and seen God, and therefore has "God-given faith".

The natural man is the fallen man. A man of self, of reason only, of intellect, a man of darkness with no light in him. His mind and opinions are formed by himself through the gathering of light from other sources - some good, some bad.
Until he seeks to find out and know the source of Light for himself he can always be said to live with the lense cap on (the cloud) over his heart and mind. Until then he is a blind follower. A follower of the crowd, a follower of what he knows not. He just goes through the motions!

An earthly telescope; like the one on Mount Palomar in California, works because that is what it was designed to do: "Gather up Light (no matter how little) from the object it's aiming at and reflect this light back to the eyepiece a thousand times or more".
In the same way God designed us to know Him heart and soul, but sin has seperated us and cut us off from Him. [Enter Jesus Christ so that through Him (through focusing upon Him) we may come to know Him again.]

If we were to look at the moon from earth it would look to be about the size of a quarter held at arms length. If we looked at that same moon with a small 6 inch (lense or mirror size) telescope it would look to be larger than a basketball held at arms length. If we looked at it with the large telescope on Mount Palomar it would seem to be so close as to touch it.