Nirvana is difficult to write about because it is only ever experienced by individuals. It is not a public performance, or a moment that can be shared socially. It doesn’t make news. No one understands someone else’s Nirvanic experience. At the same time, Nirvana is the field of gold we all share — the very ground and basis of our existence.

As if that weren’t enough, many people think of Nirvana as a rock band. Even those who have some inkling that it has vaguely to do with spirituality believe it to be a kind of spaced-out condominium in the sky, an Eldorado or Pure Land for the mystical. Few understand its central position in the lives of all of us.

It is certainly true that Nirvana has not been explained with any precision in the West: the terms “extinction” and “blown out” do little justice to the reality. It has also been regarded as a protected realm by a small clique of initiates, and by the high priests of the ancient mystery religions who regarded it as a proof of life after death.

Despite too the dismissive attitudes of orthodox science, “Nirvanic” experience is part of our empirical knowledge. It is not, however, observed by the five familiar physical senses, or by the mind, but by another means of knowing which I once called Nirvanoception.

Currently, this is a dark region for science, though near-death experiences and the theory of morphogenic fields are opening up this whole area to fresh inquiry.

The notion of a single substance, or ground, underlying all things is not new. The presocratic Greek philosopher, Thales, thought that all matter was composed of water. His later colleague, Anaximenes, suggested that air was a more likely candidate. In a purely material reality this seems absurd. But if we were able to see the world in the manner of extended still-frame photography, one picture every ten years, say, over a period of several million, even the most solid mountain range would appear to move and flow. In fact it would be indistinguishable from the sea.

Any being living at that frequency of thought would see rocks as water. It is a sobering idea that such beings would drink mountains. Water itself would be too volatile to register in such a slow-coach consciousness.

Next : The three modes of knowing.