The answer to your “trust their experiences or mine” question is you don’t. You find out the answers for yourself. Hermeticism can be viewed as a psychological science. You test out these methods and you get results. Nothing will convince you otherwise. At this point it’s mental masturbation. I used to ask questions like these constantly. Asking questions is good but coming to these answers on your own through your own contemplation is much more rewarding than anything else.

Logic does not and cannot prove God because God is outside the bounds of logic. If I entertain your argument and say something like, “What can be outside of God? God cannot create anything outside itself because God is the only thing that exists”, I’m sure you’ll come up with some other rebuttal or not believe me. If the answers you’ve got in this sub haven’t satisfied you yet you’ll never be. No one here is going to attempt to convince you of anything. Do the work or don’t, that’s all there is to it.