Hi Lewis, I'm only an "interested layman" in these areas, but a couple of articles I found recently seemed to give clues as to how the know-nothing state might be explained - 1. http://www.brainconnection.com/content/174_1 quote "An especially intriguing discovery emerged out of brain imaging studies that Newberg and D'Aquili conducted with meditating Tibetan Buddhists and praying Franciscan nuns. The research focused on regions of the parietal lobes (in the top rear section of our brain) that orient us in and allow us to navigate through physical space. The left hemisphere segment of this system processes our inner sense of self, and the right hemisphere segment processes our outer sense of the surrounding environment. So this is our brain's self/non-self system, an important component of consciousness. They discovered that both hemispheric segments are normally quite active, but that they (and especially the left hemisphere/self segment) exhibit a marked decrease in neuronal activity during peak transcendent periods. In effect, the self/non-self system loses its ability to locate the mental border between self and the surrounding world -- and so it perceives the biological reality of an endless self that's at one with all creation, a merging with God. Transcendence thus meets biology." end quote Perhaps this gives clues to what's happening when we get that sense of "suspension of self" in the know-nothing state? 2. http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00002546/01/CandC.htm Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying the Creative Process quote "Martindale has identified a cluster of psychological attributes associated with creativity which includes defocused attention, and high sensitivity, including sensitivity to subliminal impressions; that is, stimuli that are perceived but of which we are not conscious of having perceived." end quote Which made me wonder whether the know-nothing state might be an extreme version of what happens in the "Brainstorming and Intuition" phase of creativity. Subjectively, I "feel" a similarity, from my own experience, but I don't yet have the vocabulary to describe it! :-) Hope that's useful, be glad to hear your more informed thoughts! Cheers, Jon