Church of the Churchless

Spiritual reading list -- new and improved

I'm an avid reader of spiritual books. Not the overly religious kind, but the edgy variety – mystical and meditational writings that stretch my psyche's understanding of what reality is all about.

Last year Ron Gardner sent me a marvelous recommended spiritual reading list that I shared in a blog post. Now Ron has emailed me a new and improved list, "improved" naturally being in the eye of the list-maker, as likes and dislikes in any literary arena are necessarily personal.

However, just as there are classics in other genres, so also in esoteric spiritual writings. No one will agree with the placement of all of Ron's "highly recommended" selections, but I'm hugely impressed with the thoughtful care that has gone into the making of his list.

Thank you, Ron, for this gift. For many years, if not a lifetime, it'll help keep UPS trucks coming to my home with offerings from Amazon.

If you like, comment away on the list. Additions are especially welcome. Click below to read Ron's recommendations.

Religion as an art form

I've got no problem with religious mythology. Many children believe in Santa Claus. Lots of adults here in the Pacific Northwest believe in Bigfoot. Belief systems with little or no foundation in objective reality abound.

So what's the harm in using religion as a mythological art form? None. All of us engage in fantasies of one form or another.

When I played tennis seriously I always believed that the next new racquet I bought would eliminate my nasty double-faulting problem. That never happened, but I continued to have faith in the Perfect Racquet – thereby adding to the profitability of Prince and other manufacturers.

In a recent issue of New Scientist, Amanda Gefter reviews "Dawin's Angel: An angelic riposte to the God Delusion," by John Cornwell (note: this link is to Amazon UK, not Amazon US – where the book isn't listed)

She quotes Cornwell:

You think religion is a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. And yet, for most of those who studied religion down the ages, it is as much a product of the imagination as art, poetry, and music.

Well, yes, absolutely. My sentiments exactly. But we admire the works of Rembrandt, T.S. Eliot, and Beethoven – we don't worship them and found our entire outlook on life around a painting, poem, or symphony.

And few of us expect that other people will share our artistic sentiments, or consider that if they don't, they're deluded.

Thus Gefter is right on the mark when she says that while Cornwell aces his contention that religion satisfies a need that can't be met by cold hard scientific facts, he misses the mark in other respects.

But before celebrating a win he must presumably concede that in this version of religion, no particular set of religious beliefs can be taken as superior to any other. He must allow that "belief" is probably not the right word, and consider using "intuition" or "experience."

And that if a sacred text like the Bible is, as he says, not to be taken literally, then its metaphorical and allegorical insights cannot be held in any higher esteem than those of other great works of literature.

This short New Scientist article, which I'll include in its entirety as a continuation to this post, got me thinking about my personal myths and how they could easily become converted into religious dogma if I came to be seen as a great sage or prophet (unlikely, since I can't even get our dog to reliably bring a ball back to me when I throw it).

My mother had several strokes in her final years. After her last serious one, before I was able to fly from Oregon to the California hospital where she'd been admitted, I sat on a large Douglas fir stump outside my Salem home and came as close to praying as my non-monotheistic soul would allow.

I pretty much believed in karma at the time. Back then I also considered that my guru might be able to manipulate karma in a godlike fashion. So on that stump I talked to him: "Master, I want to give my good karma to my mother. Whatever you can do for her, please do, even if it means that my journey to god-realization takes a significant detour."

At the time I knew that I might be talking to myself. Now I'm almost sure of it. Yet I still cling to this myth.

Even today, before I meditate I often recollect standing by my mother's bedside and holding her hand as she, comatose, died after being taken off of life support (her brain was gone, and my sister and I were more than willing to respect my mother's wishes not to be kept alive artificially in such a circumstance).

At the time I silently wished her soul, Godspeed.

And now, I enjoy imagining that by letting go of my own thoughts, emotions, and other attachments in meditation, I'm helping to propel my mother across some sort of cosmic Truth Portal that she has found her way to, but can't enter without a last push of good karma from her son.

I know, this sounds crazy. And it is. I recognize that myself. However, this myth serves a purpose for me in a way I can't even explain to myself, much less to other people. Like everybody's relation to their parents, mine is so deeply personal it's barely communicable.

Yet this deeply personal myth of mine still could become the core of a shared mythology under the right circumstances. Provide me with an eloquent gift of gab plus a gullible audience, and you might see the seed of a new form of ancestor worship begin to sprout.

In short, a religion. One which could come to believe that it actually is possible to affect the afterlife of a deceased relative by bestowing your good karma upon them, and that it's the divine duty of everyone to do just that.

God forbid that such should ever happen. I've no interest in spreading my personal mythologies beyond the interior of my own mind.

I realize that my fantasy is, as Cornwell argues, a subjective art form that has nothing to do with external objective reality – and that the only critic whose opinion counts to me is myself.

(Here's the entire book review)

Beyond religion’s No to Yes, Yes, Yes

One of my enduring memories of the marvelously '60's ish Oregon Country Fair outside of Eugene is a banner strung high between two trees that simply said, "Yes…Yes…Yes." (though the fair does have some dos and don'ts)

When I saw it, I thought…Yes.

There's so much in that one word. Everything, really. What more could we want if we have Yes? It's the negative side of life that is so disenchanting.

Nobody likes to be told "No!" Not children, not anybody. We're Yes seeking creatures who long for affirmation, positivity, acceptance.

This is a big part of the reason why Taoism holds so much appeal for me, now that I've left behind most of the no-no-no's that divided life into distinct Good's and Bad's during my religious Radha Soami Satsang Beas phase.

Now I resonate with the Taoist approach to ethics described in Hans-Georg Moeller's "Daoism Explained."

Daoists try to prevent the necessity of morality in the first place. If people learn to follow the Way (dao) and the "own course" (ziran), then morality will not be required because everything will be just naturally fine. From a Daoist point of view, morality is the virtue of latecomers.

As discussed in my previous post, Taoism unites rather than divides. It embraces the entire wheel of creation: the empty hub is inseparable from the radiating spokes.

Religions, however, seek a transcendent ideal that always seems to be just around the corner, never here and now.

Salvation, enlightenment, redemption, forgiveness – you've got to believe that they're coming. Just have faith, obey the dictates, and stifle your natural impulses. You're fallen, a sinner, a sheep following the Shepherd. Don't turn to the right or left. Keep to the straight and narrow.

Which means a lot of no's. Every religion has them. And they're supposed to apply to everybody. Sheep don't get to choose their own path.

By contrast, Moeller says about Daoists:

They were not so much concerned with profound thoughts and deep meanings – they were rather experts in how to avoid these philosophical pitfalls. And they did not aim at transcending the limits of time and space or of language and thought, but were much more willing to cultivate an attitude that allowed for a perfect affirmation and appreciation of all that lives and dies, of all that is said and thought.

I'd have my convertible Mini Cooper S by now if I had gotten a dollar every time a fellow devotee said to me during my Radha Soami Satsang Beas days, "Brian, you think too much."

I'd generally think (hey, what else could I do?) "And you give advice too much." But instead I'd reply, "Yes, you're probably right."

From your point of view. From your perspective as one spoke on the wheel of life, which is going to be different from that of every other spokesperson. Including me.

I could say "Yes" to that bit of advice. I could also say "Yes" to my love of thinking.

Yes…Yes…Yes.

Daoist philosophy, as I hoped to show, generally affirms the world of "presence" (you), that is, all the "ten thousand things<' life and death, even action and speech. The nonpresence (wu) in the midst of presence – the emptiness that is neither dead nor alive and neither acts nor speaks – does not expose any "relativity" of the present.

Daoist emptiness and nonpresence do not diminish but rather confirm the authenticity of the present…A core element of Daoist philosophy is the affirmation of the full authenticity of all there is.

Yes.

Taoism’s empty hub vs. religion’s transcendent seal

Ever ready to reduce the complexity of reality to a simple dichotomy, here I go again:

Virtually all of the debate over spirituality comes down to choosing between an empty hub or a transcendent seal.

By "seal" I don't mean an animal. Rather, my much beloved "Daoism Explained," by Hans-Georg Moeller, talks about the difference between (1) Taoism's here-and-now view of reality and (2) the Truth is there-and-then perspective of most religions (likely every religion).

Moeller says these outlooks are encapsulated by two images. One is of a wheel consisting of spokes connected to an empty hub. The Daodejing says:

Thirty spokes are united in one hub.
It is in its [space of] emptiness,
Where the usefulness of the cart is.

Moeller comments:

At the center of the wheel there is the hub, just as at the center of any efficient scenario there has to be an empty middle. This element of the scenario has four main characteristics: it is positioned at the center, it is empty, it does not move and thus it is still, and, fourth and finally, being a center it is single.

The Tao is the whole shebang, spokes and hub. You can't have a wheel without both. Yet as the wheel turns, the spokes move around and around, while the hub remains stationary. So the Tao (or Dao) is both movement and stillness, fullness and emptiness, spokes and hub.

Since the Dao is like a wheel, it is – for instance, unlike a rock (which is, as it is generally known, a quite important image in Christianity) – less a foundation or a principle for things than a structure or a pattern of happenings.

The image of the wheel demonstrates that the Dao is not to be understood as a divine source or a higher "form" in the Platonic sense. It is neither an ultimate origin or creator, nor a fundamental law of logic or nature.

However a seal, as in what a king signs proclamations with, is. The impression left by a seal is a copy of the seal itself. Less permanent, less real. But only a favored person, close to the king, is able to see the seal.

We peons only perceive the impressions. Which are the laws of nature, the physical creation – everything down here in materiality that supposedly emanates from a transcendent divine realm.

Following Moeller's philosophical language, the signifier (creation) is separate and distinct from the signified (God). This is like the difference between a copy and the original, such as a painting of a mountain and the mountain itself.

The pattern of representation is based on the gap between the full reality of the signified and the deceptive reality of the signifier. Within this pattern the two constituting elements (signifier and signified) are not equally real. One is more than the other.

This representational structure creates an "ontological" hierarchy between the signifier and the signified. The "ontological difference" entailed in this pattern is quite alien to the ancient Daoist philosophy of presence.

…There is an "ontological" hierarchy included in the relation between the seal and its impressions: by representing the seal, the impressions are of less "being" or reality – they are always secondary.

Between the hub and the spokes there is not such a hierarchy. The spokes in no way "represent" it – and they do not lack any authenticity of being in comparison with the hub.

…Unlike the relation between the seal and its impressions, the relation between the hub and its spokes is not one of presence and representation, but rather a relation between nonpresence and presence. The empty hub is nonpresent, but it nevertheless balances and unites the spokes that present the wheel.

I love it. To me this isn't dry and dusty philosophical language (though it is that also), but a deliciously moist description of two alternative approaches to living life.

I also love the ardent debates that go on in this blog between me and me, and also between various commenters to my posts – who often use a new post (entirely appropriately) as a means of carrying on a Hub vs. Seal debate.

At least, that's how I see it: Hub vs. Seal. Nonpresence vs. presence. Immanence vs. transcendence. Reality here and now vs. reality there and then. It's all good vs. there's good, better, and the best.

I used to be a committed Seal'er. My book about the Greek philosopher Plotinus looks favorably on the Plotinian notion that Platonic forms (better) mediate between this world (good) and the transcendent One/God (best). Each level of reality has a different level of being.

As Moeller said, in that view some things are more than others. Now, I'm much more in the hub camp. Yet I still have some lingering seal tendencies, for sure.

Anyway, all this is food for thought and self-examination. Empty hub or transcendent seal? Which spiritual image are you most attracted to? Or is there another image that seems more true to you?

What reality is really made of

Oh, man, did my philosophical heart flutter when I looked at the cover of the most recent New Scientist magazine and read:

WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS REALLY MADE OF: strip away human notions of reality and one thing remains

I feverishly turned to page 38. Finally, I'd know What It is All About. I had a suspicion. Which was confirmed when I saw the heading, "Reality by numbers."

Yes, it isn't wildly surprising that a science magazine would contain an article by a physicist, Max Tegmark, who believes that the essence of the universe is mathematical.

Surprising or not, the notion makes a lot of sense. For if you want to get beyond an anthropomorphic conception of reality, what's better to take you there than a pure abstract number? Tegmark talks about the search for a theory of everything, a complete description of reality:

My personal quest for this theory begins with an extreme argument about what it is allowed to look like. If we assume that reality exists independently of humans, then for a description to be complete, it must also be well-defined according to non-human entities – aliens or supercomputers, say – that lack any understanding of human concepts.

Put differently, such a description must be expressible in a form that is devoid of human baggage like "particle," "observation" or other English words.

In contrast, all physical theories that I have been taught have two components: mathematical equations, and words that explain how the equations are connected to what we observe and intuitively understand. When we derive the consequences of a theory we introduce concepts – protons, stars, molecules – because they are convenient.

However, it is we humans who create these concepts. In principle, everything could be calculated without this baggage: a sufficiently powerful supercomputer could calculate how the state of the universe evolves over time without interpreting it in human terms.

All of this raises the question: is it possible to find a description of external reality that involves no baggage? If so, such a description of objects in this reality and the relations between them would have to be completely abstract, forcing any words or symbols to be mere labels with no preconceived meanings whatsoever. Instead, the only properties of these entities would be those embodied by the relations between them.

Well, if you're only somewhat confused by this overview of Tegmark's outlook on reality, read his core paper "The Mathematical Universe" to dive into much deeper thought-waters.

I swam back to the surface of my usual mundane ideas after just a few pages. But while there I saw that Tegmark helpfully boils down his perspective to a couple of hypotheses: (1) There exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans, and (2) Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure.

He admits that more than a few physicists (and lots of metaphysicians) disagree that reality exists without observation. Yet if the ERH (External Reality Hypothesis) is correct, it does make sense that the universe wouldn't be founded on human concepts.

After all, the cosmos preceded us by over thirteen billion years. Why would the root of existence be capable of being captured in a word like "God," "quantum," "vacuum energy," or "Buddha nature"?

So I like Tegmark's emphasis on shedding language-baggage. That's what most deep mystical philosophies do. He takes the same concept-less route in pursuing a scientific, rather than spiritual, approach to grasping the nature of reality.

Without words, what would religions rest on? Take them away and you're left with an appealing voidness, empty of dogmatism fueled by a belief that this description of the ultimate is how things really are.

Admittedly, there's more than a little feeling of vertigo – ooh, I'm spinning with no thought place to stand on! – if you embrace Tegmark's hypothesis. It takes some getting used to.

Ultimately, why should we believe the mathematical universe hypothesis? Perhaps the most compelling objection is that it feels counter-intuitive and disturbing. I personally dismiss this as a failure to appreciate Darwinian evolution.

Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic trajectories of flying rocks. Darwin's theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we look beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down.

I keep coming back to "don't know" as the wisest idea we could ever have about ultimate reality.

Online confessions – ideal for the churchless

Say you're a lapsed Catholic. You haven't seen the inside of a church since Pope what's-his-name was in office. Long ago you forgot the difference between a venial and a mortal sin, but you're pretty sure you've committed bunches of each.

You enjoy being faithless. But deep in your sin-drenched soul there's a longing you're barely willing to admit to yourself, it's so incongruous with the rest of your current debauched lifestyle.

The confession booth. Ah, those were the days.

My own days date back to when I was ten, or thereabouts. I remember my first communion, which included, I'm pretty sure, my first confession. I was too young to have done much serious sinning. I seem to remember that the priest had to jog me into coming up with something confessable.

"So, do you attend Mass every Sunday."

"No, Father, my mother rarely takes me to church."

"Well, you should try to do better. Say ten Our Father's and five Hail Mary's."

I did. And immediately felt better. I knew that I still wasn't going to go to Mass very often, but now I had a time-saving technique that seemed to offer all the benefits of church without the crazy-ass Latin and that damnably hard railing that you had to kneel on a bunch of times during the Mass.

I could whip through ten Our Father's and five Hail Mary's much more quickly than getting dressed up, driving to the Catholic Church, sitting through the impossibly boring service, and going home again – all the while wishing that I was with my friends in Presbyterian Sunday School, where they got to do a lot more fun things than sit, kneel, sit, kneel, sit, kneel while the priest blabbed in a language that nobody could understand.

So confession is cool. Back then I saw it as a shortcut, a quick way to reboot the moral software when you've screwed up the Virtue Operating System (of course, in 1958 slide rules still ruled for almost everybody but a few Univac geeks, so this metaphor wouldn't have applied).

Now that we're in the Internet Age, it figures that online confessions are a trendy approach to absolution. A Los Angeles Times story, "Confessions in Adaptation" mentioned some web sites that enable people to bare their soul anonymously without leaving their laptop.

I kept trying to reach Ivescrewedup.com, offered through Florida's Flamingo Road Church, but it looks like their server is screwed up. Sigh… I'll confess anyway: It pissed me off when I kept getting "The connection was reset" messages and I called this web site some nasty names.

Switching to a Google search, I had better luck with Absolution Online. Check out the virtual rosary if you want to experience a few penitential Our Father's and Hail Mary's yourself.

Daily Confession has some pluses, most notably the ability to comment on other people's confessions.

Group Hug is OK, but this was another site with a @#$%&! slow web server that drove me freaking nuts, and I wanted to strangle the bozo who's in charge of it.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

(Ah, web-surfing karmic slate has been wiped clean. Now I can visit sites, like this one, that really bring out the obscenity-filled side of me.)

Boltzmann brains can blow your mind

Who needs far-out religious myths – walked on water! resurrected from the dead!— when science is able to come up with equally mind-blowing hypotheses that have the advantage of being plausible?

Take the case of Boltzmann brains. These aren't actual brains, but most likely are free-floating conscious entities that pop out of random quantum fluctuations in the vacuum that pervades the universe.

None have been observed. In fact, a New Scientist article on the subject (August 18 issue) says:

A Boltzmann brain is so improbable, in fact, that there is essentially no chance that even a single one has appeared in the 13.7-billion year history of our universe. But factor in the accelerating expansion of the universe, and the picture changes: it points to an infinitely large space that will last an infinitely long time, with ongoing fluctuations in the vacuum.

This will be a cold, dark and inhospitable place for conventional creatures, but a perfect breeding ground for Boltzmann brains, which would see only empty space around them.

Pretty creepy. From our point of view. However, if you're a Boltzmann brain you've just arisen spontaneously out of nothing. No history. No evolution. No words like "creepy" in your consciousness.

So it's impossible to say how a Boltzmann brain would see things. Which is why the New Scientist article has this sub-heading: Cosmologists are afraid – very afraid.

This is what I find most interesting about Boltzmann brains: how they point to the subjectivity of Homo sapien'ish conceptions of the cosmos. This is what scares some scientists, because our understanding of the laws of nature is necessarily founded on how we go about understanding things.

Cosmology, indeed most of science, assumes that we humans are typical observers in the grand scheme of things…So here's the problem: some well-established cosmological models predict that, trillions of years in the future, Boltzmann brains could vastly outnumber "ordinary observers" like us, who depend on aeons of evolution and life support.

If that is true, then over the lifetime of the universe, they – not we – might be the typical ones. That's scary, because models suggest that their view of the cosmos would be strikingly different from ours.

Well, yeah.

Um, let's see. Would (1) a disembodied consciousness that just sprang into existence from a quantum vacuum fluctuation look upon the universe differently than (2) a human being acculturated by other people, all of whom perceive the world through physical organs? Sure seems so.

Now some people who are skeptical about science likely are going to jump on the Boltzmann brain bandwagon and say, "Told you so! Science is just one way of looking at reality. The so-called 'laws of nature' are just artifacts of human cognition, not how things really are.'"

OK, there's some truth to that.

But to my mind the possibility of Boltzmann brains undercuts a lot more than the scientific method. It demolishes the objectivity of everything – including every defined form of spirituality, religion, and mysticism, which usually are promoted by science skeptics as being more valid ways of knowing.

What I love about Boltzmann brains is how they stretch (or blow to smithereens) our usual assumption that human consciousness is the template for every sort of consciousness. Rather, says the New Scientist article:

What exactly might these things be? In theory, they could take on almost any form, but the larger and more complex they are, the less likely it is that they will appear, according to the laws of probability and quantum mechanics.

They could be disembodied brains with eyeballs, floating in outer space. They could consist of a whole body, encased in a space suit and equipped with an oxygen tank. They could be human brains, animal brains, or an intelligent alien species made of gas.

What matters is that they qualify as conscious – by whatever definition researchers agree on.

Well, if I was a Boltzmann brain I might take issue with that last sentence. Hey, humans! I'll decide whether I'm conscious! Not you. Things look differently out here in the infinite vacuum.

I've enjoyed pondering a cosmos with no consciousness. As well as a cosmos that is only consciousness. Boltzmann brains stimulate the notion of another alternative: a cosmos with a freakingly inconceivably different form of consciousness from ours.

Some attributed quotes:

Physicist Arthur Eddington. "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."

Biologist J.B.S. Haldane: "Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

Sounds like a blown mind is a lot closer to truth than a certain mind.

Krishna Consciousness isn’t churchless

I haven't given much thought to the Hare Krishnas since the '60s and '70s. Then it was hard to miss the saffron-robed devotees' ecstatic chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra at airports, college campuses, and other public places.

Now I'm reminded of them via my perusal of an interesting comment exchange that began September 2 on a Church of the Churchless post. Scrolling down the comments to that date, you'll find one that begins:

Landofpar, Please chant the Hare Krsna ("Hahraay Krishna") mahamantra and be happy.

A moments association with a pure devotee can save one from the greatest danger. That danger is to suffer on the wheel of karma for millions of births in the material world. A.C. Bhaktivedant Swami Prabhupada appeared to deliver a sublime message to us all:

You are not the body. You are spirit-soul. You are part and parcel of Shri Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Krishna is God. He is the all-attractive Supreme Person. Your eternal home is with Him in the spiritual world (Vaikuntha). You have a loving relationship with Krishna. The easiest method for reviving that spiritual love is to chant the names of God:

Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna
Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare
Hare Rama, Hare Rama
Rama Rama, Hare Hare

Well, could be. Philosophically speaking my mantra is: "I don't know. I don't know. Don't know. Don't know."

But along with other Church of the Churchless regulars, I was surprised that the person advocating an embrace of Krishna Consciousness was none other than Tao – who has been harshly critical of "churchy" religious organizations, including India-based ones like Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

Over on the Yahoo Radha Soami discussion group, where a similar discussion has been taking place, Manjit said:

Hello Tao - are you kidding? Chant Hare Krishna to 'make your life happy and sublime'? For real? I'm flabbergasted!! I've been reading your recent comments, and am totally blown away by what I perceive to be outstanding irony in your praise of the Hare Krishna theology, especially in light of your often vitriolic criticisms & contempt for the RS system.

I've always enjoyed Emerson's "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Being an advocate of spiritual independence, I'll all for individualistic creativity when it comes to fashioning a personal philosophy of life or spiritual faith.

Whatever turns you on. If it feels good, do it. Different strokes for different folks. ('60's ish sentiments that still ring true to me)

That said, I have to agree with Manjit that there are a lot of similarities between the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) and Sant Mat groups such as Radha Soami Satsang Beas. On the ISKCON web site I found a summary of the Hare Krishna philosophy, which says in part:

The Vedic scriptures state that spiritual life begins when one inquires into the nature of the absolute truth, the Supreme Godhead…The ultimate goal of Gaudiya Vaisnavism is to develop a loving relationship with the Supreme Godhead.

…To understand knowledge of self-realisation one must approach a genuine spiritual master, just as one learns the essence of any subject from a perfected practitioner.

…The Vedas describe the [Hare Krishna] mantra as a prayer to the Lord, "Please Lord, engage me in Your service".

Devotees may accept formal initiation into the chanting of the Holy Name vowing to abstain from intoxication, gambling, illicit sexual connections and the eating of meat, fish or eggs.

Though I once was a true believer in a particular path to God, I now can't accept that repeating certain words as a mantra, accepting a particular guru, or following prescribed ethical precepts are keys to unlocking the door that separates us from ultimate reality.

I also find it difficult to resonate with the notion of a personal divinity. Christian mystics repeat the Jesus Prayer as a mantra: "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me" (or a variant). Hare Krishnas call upon Krishna. RSSB devotees look toward the guru while repeating their own mantra.

Everybody thinks their own way is the way.

Again, I don't know for sure that there are many ways, rather than just one (assuming there is a way at all). Who knows? Maybe there really is a distinct personality at the end of the God road who favors being called by this name rather than that name.

I doubt it, though. When I feel most in touch with the reality of either my own self or the world around me, I don't have much of a need to label, analyze, dissect, or conceptualize. I am as I am, and it is as it is.

Which is why I'll continue to say "I don't know," which amounts to saying "I can't say."

(However, I will say that even though I'm not attracted to Hare Krishna as a religion, I'm on board with its vegetarianism. Got some fond memories of Hare Krishna feasts.)

Death no big deal to most over 50

I rarely pick up the AARP magazine, but a stint in my eye doctor's waiting room got me reading "Life After Death." The article describes the results of a poll that asked people over 50 questions about death, religion, heaven/hell, reincarnation and such.

Death scares me. Not as much now as it used to, but I've still got a primal fear of not-existing.

Looks like I don't have a whole lot of company, since only 20% agreed that "Thinking about my own death and what happens to me after I die scares me."

Interestingly, the somewhat religious were more afraid of death (25%) than the very religious (16%) or not at all religious (13%). Uncertainty breeds fear, it seems.

Given that 94% believe in God, it isn't surprising that 88% of those polled believe they'll be in heaven after they die. However, those responding said that just 64% of all people get to heaven.

Only 17% thought that people who don't believe in Jesus Christ go to hell, which is lower than I would have expected. In fact, just 29% said that believers in Jesus enter in to heaven. This points to less fundamentalism among American Christians than is generally believed to exist.

Another sign: 23% believed in reincarnation. The article quotes Jeffrey Burton Russell, a historian:

If you took this study 50 years ago, the belief in reincarnation would be down at about one percent. Generally, the traditionally clear Christian vision of Heaven has declined, while the vaguer visions of the continuation of life have taken its place.

Sounds like a good trend to me. I can understand why people seek reassurance from their religion that death won't be the final chapter in the story of their existence. The End isn't an appealing final plot twist.

But divisiveness and intolerance sprout when visions of an exclusive heaven dance through religious heads, the gates to paradise thought to be open only to a select few.

So it was nice to learn that just 40% believe heaven is "a place," while 47% say it is a state of being. I wonder, though, where you reside after death in your state of heavenly being. No place? Placelessness? Every place?

(Detailed poll results are in a PDF file here).

Ceaseless prayer: Christian vs. Sant Mat

Like I said in my last post, I enjoy reading the regional Radha Soami Satsang Beas newsletter because it reminds me of what I like and dislike about what used to be my chosen faith: Sant Mat.

The current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh, is notoriously adverse to having his talks recorded or transcribed. Plus, he rarely writes anything for public consumption. So the only way of learning about his pronouncements, aside from seeing him in person, is second hand.

In the September 2007 newsletter, Vince Savarese offers up an interesting snippet:

We turn now to the words of the Masters on how to become an ideal satsangi [RSSB initiate]. Baba Ji [Gurinder Singh] last month in Fayetteville told the sangat [congregation] that ceaseless prayer, a Christian practice, is the same as our simran practice. We are to keep the remembrance of the Lord always with us.

This caught my eye because I'm a big fan of both "The Cloud of Unknowing," the classic medieval guide to Christian mysticism by an unknown author (likely an English country parson), and "Open Mind, Open Heart" by Thomas Keating, a modern take on The Cloud of Unknowing's meditative practice.

Which actually is quite different from that of RSSB and Sant Mat. So Gurinder Singh's equation of the two isn't accurate, in my considered judgment.

Naturally I'm intimately familiar with the RSSB "simran," or repetition of five holy names given to the disciple at the time of initiation. These serve as a mantra that is supposed to be repeated not only during the time of mediation, but also throughout one's waking hours when the mind isn't otherwise occupied.

Christian "ceaseless prayer" encourages the use of a short word, preferably one syllable. The Cloud of Unknowing recommends "God." It doesn't matter much what word is used, whereas RSSB simran is supposed to be solely of the five holy names – which supposedly are the names of rulers of higher realms of reality beyond the physical.

This points to a significant difference between Christian and Sant Mat meditation, one that makes me tilt toward the Christian approach to mysticism. The Cloud of Unknowing, as befits its title, preaches the value of honestly saying "I don't know."

But now you will ask me, "How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?" and I cannot answer you except to say "I do not know!" For with this question you have brought me into the same darkness, the same cloud of unknowing where I want you to be!

For though we through the grace of God can know fully about all other matters, and think about them – yes, even the very works of God himself – yet of God himself can no man think.

Contrast this with the Sant Mat notion that the guru, a person like you and me, is to be viewed as God in human form. In the RSSB meditation practice, visualization of the guru's physical form is to be done along with the mantra meditation, or simran.

This would be anathema to Christian mystics, who warn of the danger of thinking about anything other than the one syllable word, since God won't be found in anything other than an open consciousness that has no expectations concerning the nature of divinity. The Cloud of Unknowing says:

Should he (the thought) ask, "What is this God?" answer that it is the God who made you and redeemed you, and who has, through his grace, called you to his love. "And," tell him, "you do not even know the first thing about him."

And then go on to say, "Get down," and proceed to trample on him out of love for God; yes, even when such thoughts seem to be holy, and calculated to help you find God. Quite possibly he will bring to your mind many lovely and wonderful thoughts of his kindness, and remind you of God's sweetness and love, his grace and mercy.

If you will but listen to him, he asks no more. He will go on chattering increasingly, and bring you steadily down to think of Christ's Passion…Before you know where you are you are disintegrated beyond belief! And the reason? Simply that you freely consented to listen to that thought, and responded to it, accepted it, and gave it its head.

RSSB initiates, on the other hand, are supposed to imagine that the guru is with them always, like an invisible friend that no one else can see but they can talk to (usually mentally, but some speak aloud to the guru as if he was actually physically present).

I've done this on occasion, but it always seemed more than a little strange. I much prefer the approach of Christian mysticism, which eliminates the middleman between the meditator and the mystery of God. This Cloud of Unknowing passage is wonderfully Zen like.

Therefore strain every nerve in every possible way to know and experience yourself as you really are. It will not be long, I suspect, before you have a real knowledge and experience of God as he is.

Even when I was strictly following the RSSB meditation practice, I looked upon it much more as a scientific consciousness experiment rather than an exercise in religious devotion – as most initiates do, and as the above-quoted newsletter enjoins.

The way I see it, astrophysicists studying how gravity affects light from far-off galaxies don't look through their telescopes and think of Einstein while they're conducting their observations. Yes, Einstein is the "guru" of gravity, but he was an individual person and gravity is a universal power.

Einstein pointed others toward understanding the nature of gravity. However, gravity exists independent of Einstein. Similarly, Christian mysticism recognizes that whatever comprises the root of ultimate reality – call this "God," or call it anything else – isn't going to be known by looking through a consciousness that contains familiar objects, mental or physical.

The lens of a telescope has to be clean and clear before it reveals light from across the universe. Likewise, Christian mystics seek to still their minds and strip away obscuring thoughts, perceptions, and imaginings.

Sant Mat and RSSB meditation, on the other hand, places before the mind words that conjure up impressions of higher spiritual realms, along with a memory of the guru's physical form.

That's a lot of clutter. I prefer the sweep-it-clean approach of the Cloud of Unknowing.

Let go this "everywhere" and this "everything" in exchange for this "nowhere" and this "nothing." Never mind if you cannot fathom this nothing, for I love it surely so much the better. It is so worthwhile in itself that no thinking about it will do it justice.

…In this exercise every speculation of the natural mind is to be utterly and completely rejected and forgotten. Then there will be no fear of fantasy or falsehood to foul the naked feeling of your blind being, or to draw you away from the real value of this exercise.

For if you think about anything in particular except your own bare, blind existence – and this, remember, is God's purpose and your own – then you are on the wrong track; you are back again at your speculating and guessing; and this distracts and separates you not only from God but from yourself as well.

Spirituality: following fences or bursting barriers?

I just got the September issue of the Western USA Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) newsletter. It made me sort of sad to see that soon I won't be getting it any more.

(Starting in 2008 it'll only be available at the RSSB equivalent of "church," satsangs, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since the inspiration and information in the newsletter can be conveyed directly at satsang, while many "churchless" RSSB initiates stay in touch with organizational goings-on only through the newsletter).

I like to read it, even though I'm no longer a RSSB true believer, because I enjoy the sensations of ah yes! and oh no! that course through my mind as I come across sentiments that either still resonate with me, or now turn me off.

In the "turn me off" category, I question whether this definition of an ideal satsangi by RSSB representative Vince Savarese really captures the essence of what spirituality is all about for satsangis (RSSB initiates).

Get up at 3:00 AM; that is, rise and shine and sit somewhere other than your bed, fully awake and alert with a straight spine, unmoving for two to three hours or more every day, including Sundays and holidays.

While sitting do not fall asleep, do not lie down, do not think of anything but the Lord and your Master and his instruction.

Next eat only enough to satisfy hunger, not to satiety. While working, whatever you do to earn your livelihood or maintain your home and family obligations, remember God and your Master throughout the entire day as your main preoccupation.

And it goes on from there, the basic message being to "spend the bulk of your life cultivating spiritual desires and meditation practice and spend some time fulfilling your worldly obligations and needs."

Now, this advice leaves a lot to comment on. For now I'll limit myself to a general question. Is spirituality really about following rigid rules such as these?

What if, God forbid, you were to meditate with an unstraight spine? Or eat until you felt your stomach would burst? Or threw yourself into an educational, professional, or child-raising pursuit that consumed most of your time every day?

Would you be a bad satsangi? Would God be displeased if you had to work twelve hours a day to make ends meet and needed to spend your remaining free hours with your family rather than meditating?

Rules. Some people need them, some don't. I've got nothing against rules. I follow many pretty rigidly myself (such as "Thou shalt browse the World Wide Web and write a blog post daily").

But rules also are made to be broken (when I'm on vacation, sometimes I don't blog). And when it comes to spiritual rules, they have to be left behind at some point – in my unhumble opinion.

I'm speaking about the mystical side of spirituality here, not the religious side. Mystics seek wide open spaces, boundless horizons, oceans without shores. For ultimate reality is viewed as Oneness. Unity isn't divided into pieces by nice neat fences, which religions love to put up.

For many years, more than thirty, I stayed within the confines of the RSSB rules. When I bumped up against a thou shalt or thou shalt not barrier I followed it, making sure that I never, or rarely, strayed from the straight and narrow path enjoined by the organization's (and guru's) dictates.

However, the goal of all this fence-respecting supposedly was freedom. Breaking out of habitual ways of perceiving, thinking, acting, believing. RSSB's Enlightenment Stockyard was billed as a holding pen that prepared you for finding the gate that led to endless green pastures where the soul roamed freely.

Not in my experience, which is the one and only experience I can rely on when it comes to the inner side of my life.

Eventually I came to recognize what probably should have been obvious much earlier: you can't leave a fence behind if you're still holding onto it.

In the passage above RSSB initiates are told to think of "the Lord and your Master and his instruction" during meditation. Well, if you keep on thinking of these things. when are you ever going to reach a realm beyond thought, beyond instructions, beyond distinctions of this person and that person?

In every deep mystic practice that I'm aware of, there's this notion that what you're looking for is right here, right now. It isn't at the end of a long white fence plastered with rules. It isn't reached by following confining chutes constructed by religious leaders.

That nameless, featureless, mysterious Whatever is realized by dissolving all the barriers that keep you from recognizing what you really are and the universe truly is.

That's the theory, at least. And I can point to countless instances of it in the world's great mystical traditions: Christian, Sufi, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Neoplatonic.

None of them say that rule-fences are to be stayed within forever. If they serve any purpose at all, they're to lead you to look over them and say, "Wow, there's so much more beyond."

Then, to hop over and not look back.

Mother Teresa’s crisis of faith

Reading about Mother Teresa's crisis of faith in TIME magazine left me with a (slim) hope that sainthood could be in the works for me someday.

Why not? I was baptized Catholic. I help the poor. (Once in a while, at least, when it isn't too much trouble.) And I've got lots of doubts about God, like Teresa did.

Until I read the article I didn't know that someone who felt divorced from God could be on the road to sainthood. But this was Mother Teresa's condition for nearly the entire last fifty years of her life.

In previously unpublished letters that are included in a recent book about her, she said:

Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone ... Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated

This shows: (1) You can do good works without feeling any connection with God, and (2) Supposedly saintly people can have two spiritual selves, an outer holy persona that is presented to other people and a more honest inner self that is filled with doubt, lack of faith, and darkness of the soul.

Naturally Christian apologists will look upon Teresa's divine dryness as part of God's plan for her, the cross she had to bear. However, I look upon her situation more in line with this passage from the TIME article:

But to the U.S.'s increasingly assertive cadre of atheists, that argument [God's absence is a divine gift] will seem absurd. They will see the book's Teresa more like the woman in the archetypal country and western song who holds a torch for her husband 30 years after he left to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returned.

My wife enjoyed reading about Teresa because she is distinctly skeptical that any human being can rise above the imperfections that are the hallmark of humanity.

When I mention a guru-figure who is considered to be God in human form, Laurel likes to say, "I sure would like to be able to observe them through every moment of the day, not just when they're on a public podium."

Good point. These newly discovered letters of Mother Teresa point to the above-mentioned duality (some would call it hypocrisy) in which the outer message of revered religious men and women turns out to be at odds with their inner realization.

Christopher Hitchens calls Teresa a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud. Maybe so. But I also resonate with the perspective of another atheist, Nica Lalli, who focuses on Teresa's doubts.

Anne Lamott has a quote which has become one of my favorites. She says, "The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty." Mother Teresa proves this point in a lovely and very human way. In having her letters published there has been something new to see about her and about the notion of faith. She has become very human. The work she did, even as she doubted even as she feared that there was no ultimate reward, no invisible friend to guide her through life, showed that she was a humanist at heart. She helped people for the sake of helping. Not for convictions that were ironclad and unexamined.

The notion of faith is more and more narrowly defined, and the "true believers" think that they own the word. But they don't. And as an atheist I resent being told I am a person of no faith. I have lots of faith, even as I have doubts. I doubt the Yankees will make it, but I have faith that they will get the pitching staff in shape and will get to the playoffs. It isn't really a contradiction, it is just two sides of the same coin. I have faith in humanity, in gravity, in medicine and in many other things. I just don't have faith in the big guy in the sky.

I thank Mother Teresa for the example she gives me, not only as a humanitarian but as a human. And I hope that the people who think that they know for sure that there is a god can allow for some doubt. Even a wisp of doubt will erase the arrogance and ultimately allow for more faith in more things. This will especially help if we are going to start to bridge the gap between "them" and "us" which will only happen if we can sit down and have a conversation.

Nica, I don't follow baseball very closely. But since I live in Oregon I'm aware that the Yankees are three games ahead of the Mariners (the northwest's only major league team) in the race for a playoff spot. So it looks like your faith is well-founded.

Jesus may not be alive in your heart, but Alex Rodriquez surely is.

Finding my inner self in a light beer

It was a moment of clarity. Not exactly a kensho, but what do you expect from a Miller Chill? Very little, according to a scathing review of this lime'ized light beer that garners a whoppingly low 1 percentile drinkability ranking.

However, I didn't know this a few days ago when Jerry, the husband of my wife's sister (my brother in law?) asked me if I drank beer. We were sitting on the deck of his rural central Illinois home on a hot end-of-summer day, surrounded by corn and soybean fields, being serenaded by cicadas.

For most of my adult life the answer would have been simple: "No." Initiated into the mystic-religious faith of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) at the age of 22, I obediently followed an injunction to not consume alcohol for over thirty years – with a single slip-up at a high school class reunion that was too freaking weird to get through without a stiff drink.

But was I really a non-drinker? I didn't drink for all that time. That's different, though, from being a teetotaler.

What I mean is, was I not drinking because I truly believed that this was wrong for me to do? Or was I abstaining because I wanted to follow a rule that was a requirement for becoming a member of a religious group? In short, did my moral sensibility spring from within or without?

When Jerry asked me the question I equivocated only slightly. "Yes," I said. "I guess I am. I hardly ever drink beer – last time was on Super Bowl Sunday, just to feel like a part of male America. However, I don't have anything against it."

In that moment I answered honestly. As I said in "I've become the person I warned myself about" (probably my favorite blog post title), I used to believe differently.

I've become the heretic that I used to warn myself about, one of those who thinks for himself and doesn't follow the party (or Master's) line simply because the word has come down from on high, "This is how it should be done." Yes, I start with this. However, if that turns out to be more efficacious than this, I make the change. Such is the way of science. And also of nature. Flexibility. Adaptability. Openness. Evolution.

Reading those words, most satsangis (RSSB initiates) would consider that I've lost my way by charting a course to a Miller Chill. I understand why they'd have that attitude, because it was my own for three decades.

Yet tossing down what barely tasted like a beer at all, which is why Miller Chill is called a beer for people who don't like beer, I didn't feel like a heretic, an apostate, a fallen disciple, or indeed like anyone special at all.

I just felt normal. A guy sitting outside on a hot day shooting the breeze with the other men at a family reunion while the women-folk got dinner ready, just as God and the Tao intended. (I liked the Miller Chill, by the way; but then, I don't like beer very much).

I'm not espousing drinking. Or, not-drinking. All I'm doing is encouraging an independent, think-for-yourself, intuitive approach to morality.

Figuring out what's right and wrong isn't rocket science. Each of us knows. For us. Not for anyone else. You've got to be loyal to yourself, not to a group. Otherwise morality is just paying shallow lip service to externally-imposed rules.

Some hamburgers were being grilled on the same deck where I sipped the Miller Chill. There's no way I'd eat animal flesh unless I was on the verge of starvation. I was a vegetarian before I became a RSSB initiate; I was a vegetarian after I became a RSSB initiate; I'm a vegetarian now; I'll probably be a vegetarian on the day I die.

Not eating meat springs from an inner moral sense. I don't need anyone to tell me or remind me that this is the right thing for me to do. When it came to not drinking wine or beer, on the other hand, I'd need to resort to platitudes from the RSSB "party line" to justify my continued abstinence:

Drinking alcohol leads to a man's (or woman's) downfall. No, believe me: a single Miller Chill or glass of red wine doesn't lead anywhere, other than to a mild feeling of relaxation

Drinking alcohol makes it impossible to meditate with a clear consciousness. Well, not in my experience. It was impossible for me to meditate with a clear consciousness before I started having a glass of wine in the evening, and it still is.

Whoever or whatever we are, deep down beneath the frothy foam of our individual egocentric attributes, I'm pretty sure that "drinker" or "not a drinker" isn't going to describe our innermost being.

The person who decides whether to drink a beer or not – ah, now we're getting closer to the Real Thing.

Which everyone knows has nothing to do with beer.

Surrendering to nothing outside myself

Sometimes I surprise myself. Reading along in a nicely non-dualistic advaitaish book I didn't expect to find myself moved by a passage about surrender.

If you surrender, doesn't it have to be to someone or something outside of yourself? That doesn't sound very non-dual. Usually religions preach the virtue of surrendering either to God or His earthly representative – a prophet, guru, messiah.

I don't like the idea of surrender under those terms. Throwing myself at the mercy of an imaginary being called "God" makes as much sense as pleading to the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus to take care of me.

And surrendering to another human being – that's got too much of a master/slave thing going on.

But there's another way of looking at surrender: to reality. Which, since I seem to be just about as real (or unreal) as anything else, includes me. Here's how Ramana Maharshi puts it in excerpts from his writings quoted in "One."

Complete surrender is another name for jnana or liberation. Offer yourself up unconditionally to the power that is your own source.

It is enough that one surrenders oneself. Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one's being. Do not delude yourself by imagining such a source to be some God outside you. Your source is within yourself. Give yourself up to it.

I've read several books about Ramana's teachings. What can be confusing about is the way he bounces back and forth between speaking of the Self as the non-dual essence of everything, and talking about God in a seemingly theistic manner.

However, just as with Ibn 'Arabi, I've learned to mentally translate Ramana's "He's" and "Him's" into "That's." Ramana recognized that some people are drawn to a conception of a personal divinity, so he gave them what they wanted.

What I want, though, isn't surrender to another person – even if it supposedly is the Big Man Upstairs. Reality will do just fine, thank you.

And that's what I feel I get from Ramana, once I burrow beneath the apparent monotheism of his words and hit a deeper vein of non-duality.

Complete surrender does require that you have no desire of your own, that God's desire alone is your desire and that you have no desire of your own.

Banish even the thought "I am a fit instrument for Him" and remain still.

Abidance in one's real state is ceasing to exist as a slave [of God]; it is remaining even without the thought "I am a slave" rising; it is egoless mauna [silence], utterly still, having no mental movements. The unlimited consciousness that shines in this state is the [true] consciousness.

Surrender to Him and abide by His will whether he appears or vanishes; await His pleasure. If you ask Him to do as you please, it is not surrender but command to Him. You cannot have Him obey you and yet think that you have surrendered.

He knows what is best and when and how to do it. Leave everything to Him. His is the burden; you have no longer any cares. All your cares are His. Such is surrender. This is bhakti.

Or, enquire to whom these questions arise. Dive deep in the Heart and remain as the Self. One of these two ways is open to the aspirant.

Two ways? Maybe. However, I suspect they're the same way.