It is a thing in it self - which is usually a load of bollocks according to Satre. Objectively speaking, it cannot exist, because it is purely subjective.

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re: drugs, in the Seth material, Jane Roberts says she used altered states, and given the books were wriiten in the early seventies, there still was some good acid around. maybe she used shrooms, she didn't go into detail.

Which is my one big problem with Nirvana; the only things we know about it are a) we know nothing about it, and b) some cunt thinks we absolutely MUST attain Nirvana, even though a) we know nothing about it. If Nirvana can't be imagined by the unenlightened mind, surely it's a serious cruelty to make someone aware of it at all?

A bit like "ORGASM" ?

"We shouldn't talk in front of the children, we might give them ideas" --1950's thinking.

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Marerophilia:
A depth of love that youth can seldom appreciate or communicate;
A love that never can die for it is a wild seed living inside us, and it is what it is;
Love: that which bonds the reality of one's being to the mystery of the unknown;
Wildflowers: evidence revealed."
~~carefulcarpenter

If you can't describe an orgasm to someone who's never had one, you're not fit to call yourself a poet. Which is precisely my point: the English language is so vast, diverse and flexible that I simply can't believe there is anything we would be unable to describe if we just thought about it for a minute. And that's if you only speak one language! Expand your range to two or three languages, and you have a vast repertoire of nuance, metaphor, implication and connotation at your disposal. So our hypothesis is: a) nirvana is a state that cannot be described to those who have not attained it, or b) nirvana is totally describable, and those who say it isn't are either a) inarticulate, or b) really into lauding their enlightenment over others.

I'm gonna say b) b).

Well, Nirvana is a state of mind rather than a collection of words. Y'see, words are subjective, they are used to reflect our inner thoughts which are obviously been interpreted by our self.

Take for example witnesses at a crime scene. Every one witnesses the same thing but from their own perspective and interprets the truth (Nirvana) in their own statements (words).

That is the problem you are describing and it was something we touched upon in A-Level Psychology.

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Wow that's a stiff arguement and I agree. I've only heard men having this experience too and I've found men have more of a problem controling their ego.

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- Please note irony is wasted on you

Didn't Lacan come up with some stuff about us thinking in words? Meaning that we'd struggle to understand concepts that we lack the words to describe. I don't know if that covers similar ground but it seemed to suggest that we couldn't experience anything undescribable because we wouldn't know we were experiencing it.

It's not really. I'm not saying Nirvana doesn't exist, just like the fact that most people who claimed that they've been abducted by aliens are mentally unstable drunks doesn't prove that they weren't abducted. Maybe aliens just go for people like that? I know a few guys who do.

Ok, my opinion on this will most likely not be taken seriously seeing as I have no knowledge of pholosophy or psychology.
But basically, I don't think there's anything that can't be known, but there are limits to how much an individual can know. So in that way, yes there are a lot of things that can never be known. No one person can ever know everything there is to know. That's my humble opinion.

Unfortunately, most people will never really know themselves in their lifetime. Science doesn't KNOW what gravity IS exactly; science works with theories, which is like saying to a lover, "Lay back and enjoy--I KNOW what you want". Life is a mystery that should be explored via the internal realm equally as with the external world. But who takes the care and effort to love thy neighbor as thy self?



"Take good care of yourself and manifest that care into the world each day--a richer life depends on it"
~~carefulcarpenter

*waits for punishment by those who resist growth and love*

__________________
Marerophilia:
A depth of love that youth can seldom appreciate or communicate;
A love that never can die for it is a wild seed living inside us, and it is what it is;
Love: that which bonds the reality of one's being to the mystery of the unknown;
Wildflowers: evidence revealed."
~~carefulcarpenter

Short waits for the win! :growth:

Nah, all I was going to say was that, even if science doesn't know what gravity is, it hasn't given up on finding out. The scientific mind doesn't have the option to just say "meh, it's probably all subjective and spiritual and shit, why not let's knock off early and hit on some señoritas at the poolhall?".

Nah, makes total sense. I may experience in my life time what it's like to have my leg cut off. But I won't experience what it's like to have YOUR leg cut off.

OK, crap example, but yes, certainly the limits of our senses mean that every single nanosecond we miss out on vast numbers of experiences, which may in turn have led to other experiences, provoked us to go down different avenues of thought, etc.

I think it's why the anthropocentric parallel universe model is so appealing: we like the idea that the experiences we miss out on in this life are not lost to us, that they aren't being "wasted".

I'm glad somebody understood what I was saying. I wasn't really sure if I explained it well enough. I'm pretty bad at expressing myself sometimes. Either way, you're right about the parallel universe concept. It's easy to think about another reality where you're living the path not taken. It makes you feel as if there's no wrong choices to be made. Just different ones. That's always a comforting thought. Who knows if it's true.

Before the parallel universe, we had stuff like doppelgangers and deja vu. There's a lot in Freud along these lines which I found kind of interesting, the kind of "mythology" we've constructed around regret.

But yeah, I think there are probably limits to human knowledge. Not spiritual stuff (which is made up and thus doesn't exist until you "know" it) but there are probably things which we are simply physically incapable of perceiving and lack the reference points to imagine. Spatial dimensions offer an idea of unimaginable things. We can, sort of, visualise a 4(+1)-dimensional form; we can compare a square to a cube, and try and work out what a form with a similar relationship to a cube as a cube has to a square would look like. But once we get beyond that, into 5 or 6(+1) dimensional space, we have problems. Because we can only guess at the 4D object, it is hard for us to extrapolate it into 5D, and harder still to extrapolate from 5D to 6D, 6D to 7D. It is like jumping from one shore to another, but then jumping and trying to jump again before you've landed.

So basically, I think there are physical limits to our senses which will, to a lesser extent, also limit our capacity to imagine certain things that could, nevertheless, exist.

KLF - No Limit (Excellent dance tune!)

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I prefer "You're Not Alone" by Olive. Klaxons should've covered that instead.

The answer to the question posed by the title of this thread cannot be known.