Can philosophy/words inquire into the Immeasurable?

Hello,
I wonder, can words, thought, logic ever lead consciousness to the perception of the eternal/ground of being?

Words can prove apparently anything one is inclined to and one chooses to prove - whether that choice is prompted by unconscious conditioning, temperamental inclinations or other factors, which one is perhaps not aware of.

But once one gets or hears such a 'proof' (such as the existence of God, or its non-existence) then what?
Either one holds on onto that, one becomes a believer in it or a preacher of it, or at some point one gets tired of it - since it perhaps does not give one more than cerebral stimulation - and one switches camps and one clings to an opposite proof, or one carefully fabricates the proof mathematically, as I have seen the author of a message doing, while another, more clever person comes along and dis-proves it...
and so one keeps on navigating, sailing while being blown about by unknown winds.

But one's life, remains essentially as it is, though one's intellect might get a bit more knowledgeable and polished.

So I wonder, is our interest in philosophy, forever moving in the enclosure of the 'word' and its manipulation, or does it ever lead to something original, self-created and not merely just another 'God', created in man's image?

I just found the below text, you might be interested to reflect on.
Regards, jbji
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/J-Krishnamurti_andLife/

"The unknown is not measurable by the known. Time cannot measure the timeless, the eternal, that immensity which has no beginning and no end. But our minds are bound to the yardstick of yesterday, today and tomorrow, and with that yardstick we try to inquire into the unknown, to measure that which is not measurable. And when we try to measure something which is not measurable, we only get caught in words."
- J. Krishnamurti, New Delhi 1970

Hi Fido,

You wrote:
"Sure; we do it all the time. It is called meaning, which is a judgement of individual people and of humankind into the value of all intangibles. Look. All realities, physical and moral, ask us a moral question, and demand a moral judgement. The stuff we talk about does not have to be real, physically real, for us to give it some meaning and value."

It seems to me, that there is no communication here (which is not unusual on the net).
So O would suggest, let's be careful, for we are here moving about in the slippery dimension of the Babel Tower (of words), and _not_ the factuality of what-is as it is.
I communicated on inquiry leading to an _actual_ 'perception of the eternal/ground of being';
you speak of interaction of Thought-forms. of concepts with their values, judgements and the endless varieties of 'morals' (mind made)... an activity occurring in Time, forever bound and imprisoned in its own matrix, producing its own value-structures, being steered by it and so a conditioned slave, in its views on the world.
And thus never discovering something original, free, independent, cause-less.

And _can_ and Thought-activity in Time (for thought being created in time, is time) with the limited 'me/i' at its centre, ever discover the Time-less?

You also point to the 'world of intangibles' as different from that of the physical reality.
The timeless reality I point to, is another than the temporary time-bound reality as intangibles of mentation/conceptualization/morals and the physical.
However, if your interest is only in the two forms of reality you mention, then that's quite ok; but then, we do speak of two different things.

Regards,
jb

If you are trying to deal with infinites, you are already stepping beyond words, abstractions, and even philsosphy into a dream world where you can have what you want only by wishing for it. We live in this world, and it is intangible enough in its moral and social dimension. The one thing that makes meaning portable, so we can carry it from place to place, and from situation to situation is life, our lives, which give all thing meaning, even time, but it is not infinite. All time before us and after us has less and less meaning as its distance grows until it has little, if any at all. What is real is what we have, to some extent, experienced, with life..

My q. was:
'Can philosophy/words inquire into the Immeasurable?'
To go into that, it is not to deal with 'infinities' or 'step into a dream-world'.
It would necessitate first to see into what the 'word' is.
Which means, what 'knowledge' is.
Knowledge is gathered thru time.
It is a form of conditioning.
The 'known' can only move within its own matrix.
The eternal/immeasurable/timeless/un-conditioned, the _actuality_ of 'it', though it can be labeled _conceptually_ and talked _about_, it cannot be touched by the 'known'.
If it could, it would suffice to read some philosopher's verbalized proofs of 'it', in a book. But info is one thing, and the actuality another... - or as Krishnamurti points out 'the word is not the thing'
But all one gets, are ideas, which are merely more grist for the dream world, of word, and so never stepping out of it.

Insight into the limitations of the 'known', regardless how polished and 'deep' it might be, might bring into being, the un-known.

So yes, I would agree that dealing with/insight into the 'tangibles' is important, or else they might fool oneself.
However, an interest, exclusively in the known, (via the word/thought), as a stimulating occupation, might unawares become an addiction, and therefore a clinging to the limitations' cell, without ever investigating into whether there is a door somewhere, or not.
jbji. www.kfa.org

It is in my nature to differ so I feel quite natural in saying ding dong you're wrong. It is because things can be infinitely large, or small, or long or short in time or size, so that we cannot see the end of them that they are infinites. All those bits of reality we can concieve of we concieve as we grasp them, in our hands, with full measure. Now, Even of infinites we can say we know one thing, though it is more of ourselves than of our infinite things. Whether they exist or not, whether they are phenomenon or concept, and no matter what they may be; If they have no physical reality they are at minimum, Moral Realities. Then it does not matter what they are or if they are; but what does matter is the moral choices we make in regard to them. So, as we concieve of that which has no substance, we rank and classify our concepts according to a moral valuation, so everything without certain being has a certain meaning as we find it more necessary... We put our finger on the scale whether we are weighing tangibles or intangibles.

And, If I may correct you; the word is the thing. Say dog and it brings the dog to mind. But, we do not know the dog. We cannot grasp the essence of dog. What we know with the word, Dog; is a part of the concept standing for the whole. And it is not dogs we know, but concepts of dogs. The word is the concept and the concept is the thing as much as we can know the thing.