Nexus State Theory

The “Nexus States” of this site’s title are meant to to be states of the mind and body. They are states in which discrepant evidence is considered. That is, if we believe with our whole being that it is going to rain tomorrow, we can enter a nexus state by considering the possibility that it won’t rain.

Another way of putting it: nexus states are states in which one single story, one script, does not dominate or take over our consciousness.

Some relevant ideas from the literature:

In the Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh tells us that “Nirvana” means the “extinction of ideas.” For example, the idea of self (which itself is a bundle of scripts or stories) should be extinguished, as should the idea of non-self.

Ursula le Guin’s interpretation of the Tao Te Ching says: “The name you can say isn’t the real name.” In other words, to tell a story about the Tao is to ensure that you aren’t talking about the Tao at all.

Lyotard says that postmodernism is an “incredulity toward metanarratives” – i.e. toward scripts that dominate our consciousness.

So it follows that there is no Nexus State Theory – no script about nexus states – because if there were, they wouldn’t be nexus states. Sorry! It appears I took a wrong turn after all. For this reason, I will not mention Nexus States again in this work.