[mping]

Enlightenment is beyond words. It's not to be intellectualized. So I believe science will never truly understand enlightenment, because science is intellectualization. Besides there are several grades of enlightenment, don't think you meditate a few years and you get it.

As for meditation, although it is the best path for enlightenment, turns out there's alot of benefits for common people. When you bring your thoughts to a halt, your true mind manifests. The true mind is unimpeded - it is effortless - and this true mind allows you to solve your daily problems more easily. You shut off your "stupid" brain, and the true wisdom starts to manifest. You won't become a zombie; you will naturally discard your stupid habits and become better focused at whatever is that you do.

What this means is that throughout the day we are able to gain a better understanding of ourselves and our environment; we will become gradually less scattered (due to the meditation process) and we will focus on what is important to us, wheter its programming or science or anything else. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but I think it's a good basic description.

[PeterWhittaker]

If science works the way we believe it does, then nothing is beyond intellectualization.

Either the world and everything in it is accessible to empirical observation and the formation and validation of models (i.e., hypothesis formulation and testing, theory development) or it is not.

If there are things that are inaccessible to this process, then there is magic beyond the veil.

Where is the veil?

Given accessibility as described above, then there are those things that we have learned to measure and those things we have to learn to measure. Neuroscience is busily taking things from the latter set and placing them, slowly in the former.