Church of the Churchless

The positivity of unbelief

Unchurched, nonbeliever, atheist. Those prefixes – un, non, a – imply an undeserved negativity. Consider "atheist." That simply means, not a theist.

To most people this is something bad. If you don't believe in an unknown, unseen god, there's something wrong with you. But there's no term for those who don't believe in unicorns or the Tooth Fairy.

Except, "those who don't believe in unicorns or the Tooth Fairy."

A commitment to understanding reality as it really is usually is viewed as a good thing. But not when it comes to belief in god. Then those who want their reality founded on facts, rather than faith, get tarred with an epithet like unbeliever.

Carl Van Doren, though, revels in that appellation. I enjoyed his essay, "Why I Am an Unbeliever," in Christopher Hitchens' "The Portable Atheist."

Here are some excerpts for your unbelieving pleasure:

Belief, being first in the field, naturally took a positive term for itself and gave a negative term to unbelief. As an unbeliever, I am therefore obliged to seem merely to dissent from the believers no matter how much more I may do. Actually I do more. What they call unbelief, I call belief.

…What I have referred to as the gift of faith I do not, to be exact, regard as a gift. I regard it, rather, as a survival from an earlier age of thinking and feeling: in short, as a form of superstition. It, and not the thing I am forced to name unbelief, seems to me negative.

It denies the reason. It denies the evidences in the case, in the sense that it insists upon introducing elements that come not from the facts as shown but from the imaginations and wishes of mortals. Unbelief does not deny the reason and it sticks as closely as it can to the evidences.

…Many believers, I am told, have the same doubts, and yet have the knack of putting their doubts to sleep and entering ardently into the communion of the faithful. The process is incomprehensible to me. So far as I understand it, such believers are moved by their desires to the extent of letting them rule not only their conduct but also their thoughts. An unbeliever's desires have, apparently, less power over his reason.

…There is no moral obligation to believe what is unbelievable any more than there is a moral obligation to do what is undoable.

…Beliefs, like tastes, may differ. The unbeliever's taste and belief are austere. In the wilderness of worlds he does not yield to the temptation to belittle the others by magnifying his own. Among the dangers of chance he does not look for safety to any watchful providence whose special concern he imagines he is.

…He builds himself up upon truth and barricades himself with it. Thus doing, he never sags into superstition, but grows steadily more robust and blithe in his courage. However many fears he may prove unable to escape, he does not multiply them in his imagination and then combat them with his wishes.

Austerity may be simplicity and not bleakness.

Another RSSB initiate bites the dust

It's always a pleasure to hear from another heretic. Yesterday Fred, a fellow disillusioned initiate of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, sent me an email titled "Another one bites the dust."

Well, Fred says he's back to sipping red wine. So his un-conversion isn't as dryly uncomfortable as that title implies.

In fact, when you read his thoughtful message you'll see that he's doing just fine. Real fine, in fact.

Apart from his observations about RSSB, I enjoyed Fred's description of an orgasmic meditation session. He asked me for meditation pointers, but obviously I should be kneeling at his feet (oops, that doesn't sound quite right, given the context).

I've offered up the message in three formats. It can be read as a continuation to this post. It also can be downloaded in Word or PDF format by clicking on the links below.

Word: Download note_to_brian.doc

PDF: Download note_to_brian.pdf

Paul Davies’ “Cosmic Jackpot” comes up empty

Where do the laws of nature come from? Great question. Here's an equally good one: Where do the laws of nature reside?

I've always wondered about this.

Science has found that the universe is remarkably well-ordered. Mathematics describes its fundamental laws (such as gravity and electromagnetism) so perfectly, Paul Dirac said, "If there is a God, he's a great mathematician."

But how does every bit of matter know how to obey the law of gravity? Where's the software, the program, that controls the hardware of the universe? Or are these even meaningful questions?

I used to think that they were. I wondered why science books didn't contain a lot of philosophy.

Instead of just describing the laws of nature, I wanted scientists to ponder whether those laws existed in an ethereal Platonic realm of pure mathematics separate from material existence, or were part and parcel of the physical universe (to name but two possibilities).

Physicist Paul Davies takes the two "where" questions above seriously. That's admirable.

But the big question about those questions is: Can any human being, no matter how wise or intelligent, attempt to explain the source of the laws of nature in any meaningful fashion?

My answer, which is echoed by others more knowledgeable about these matters than me, is "No."

That's why I can title this post the way I did, even though I haven't read Davies' book, "Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life." (There needs to be a question mark in the subtitle, for sure.)

A Church of the Churchless commenter pointed me to an New York Times essay by Davies, "Taking Science on Faith." His thesis is summed up in the final two paragraphs :

It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.

In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

The last sentence strikes me as ridiculous. I have no idea what Davies is talking about.

In the essay he says science has decided on "faith" that the laws of nature exist outside of the universe. That's news to me, as I'm pretty sure it would be to virtually every scientist.

Chad Orzel, another physicist, doesn't find the questions Davies grapples with to be very compelling. Like most scientists, he's interested in the practicalities of how the laws of nature operate, not why they exist.

In his review of Davies' book, Orzel says that it's hard to write about a topic you can't take seriously.

If you ask me what the constants of nature are, that's a well-formed question. I can do a measurement, and find a value. If you ask me why the constants of nature have the values they do, that's not a well-formed question.

There's no measurement I can do to answer that, and as a result, I just don't find it that compelling. If it scratches your teleological itch, great, but as far as I'm concerned, it's vaguely interesting to debate in a casual bull-session manner, but not really worth the effort of writing a three hundred page book.

I have a lot of respect for Paul Davies. I've read quite a few of his books. I included copious quotes from them in my book about mysticism and the new physics, "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder."

Still, Davies strikes me as a scientist who brings religion into his work through ungrounded philosophical speculation.

His ideas sometimes sound like what you'd expect from a bunch of stoners sitting around smoking dope and musing on What It's All About. "Man, there could be a whole universe in one molecule of that smoke, and we could just be a puff of hot air in the Big Dude's hookah pipe!"

For example, Alejandro's thoughtful review of "Cosmic Jackpot" notes that Davies criticizes the anthropic principle, which generally posits a multitude of universes in addition to ours, because he feels it is much more likely that we'd be living in a computer simulation of a universe than in a real one.

Well, I liked The Matrix as a movie. But I wouldn't base a scientific understanding of reality on it.

So I feel justified in calling "Cosmic Jackpot" an empty payoff, even without having read the book. Davies is asking religious questions. For thousands of years people have speculated about how the universe came to exist, and how it is sustained.

Religion hasn't come up with any believable answers.

And while I've got a lot more confidence in science than in religion, I'm seriously skeptical that a scientific explanation of where the laws of nature come from is going to be found either.

I could be wrong, of course. It simply seems that Davies is asking unanswerable questions. To definitively know the source of the laws of nature that formed our universe, seemingly you'd have to get outside of it – the universe.

If you were part of a computer simulation, how could you know about the programmer? If you're wandering in a maze, how would you be able to figure out who constructed it?

Davies believes that it's possible to comprehend the whys and wherefores of the laws of nature, even though we're all part and parcel of those laws.

I can't see my own eyes without the aid of a mirror. Where's the mirror that lets us observe the universe from an outside perspective?

Religions claim that such a "mirror" exists – in revelation, prophets, mystic experience. I doubt it. I also doubt that science ever will be able to get an objective view of the laws of nature, as Davies thinks is possible.

The universe is. So are we. That might be the best answer to the fundamental questions of existence we'll ever be able to come up with.

Grace & mercy or cause & effect?

Over my 59 years I've heard a lot of talk about grace. God's grace. Guru's grace. The word – "grace" – sounds good, maybe because it's what would be said before family Thanksgiving get-togethers.

Someone would utter, "Let's say grace." We would. Then we could eat.

In this sense grace was a predictable prelude to something desirable. But in spirituality and religion grace is much more mysterious.

An Indian word, "mauj," sort of sums it up. It means the will of God or the guru, which often is considered to be one and the same, as in this passage (#23).

One should have faith in the Supreme Being and Sant at [as?] Guru. As far as possible, one should conform to His Mauj (will, please [pleasure?]) and ordainments.

God or His delegate can do whatever the heck He wants. When this divine will is to our liking, it's known as "grace." When the mauj is much less desirable, as in much of the Old Testament (consider Job), it's the theological equivalent of the colloquialism shit happens.

I got thinking about all this after reading more of the previously mentioned notes from a talk (satsang) given by the current Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru, Gurinder Singh.

Meditation is nothing but begging for His mercy…Meditation is begging for His mercy and asking for his forgiveness…the rest is His Grace which will come in His Mauj.

Now, as I so frequently say, I don't know. It could be that the guru (who is the "His" referred to above, being viewed as equivalent to God) has the power to erase karma, sins, and other barriers to spiritual elevation.

However, I doubt it, just as I doubt that Jesus saves in a similar fashion.

And increasingly I'm also distrustful, even repelled, by this talk of grace and mercy. Cause and effect strikes me as a concept that's more appealing and more scientific, not to mention more likely.

I wrote a book called "Life is Fair." It was published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), so we're on the same wavelength when it comes to the primacy of cause and effect in the cosmos.

The difference between us is that RSSB holds out the promise of grace and mercy as a "get out of karma free" card, and I'm not even sure I would want to play such a card if it were handed to me – as well as doubtful that such a card exists.

I talked about this in my Life is Fair post.

So when we look for fairness or unfairness in life, there aren't any objective signs of either. What we find are people who stamp something as "Fair" or "Unfair" on the basis of their subjective perspectives.

How, then, can I believe so confidently that life is fair? Simple. I don't see any evidence of the privileged position that unfairness requires. There's no Fairness King or Queen who can sit on his or her throne and proclaim, "This is fair; that is unfair."

What we do have is a demonstrably interconnected universe where no thing, living or inert, stands alone.

Grace and mercy require a disconnected dualism. Cause and effect require an integrated unity.

I like the notion of cosmic oneness more than twoness, just as I like the saying "we're all in this together" more than "each to his own" (though I use both of them depending on my mauj).

Consider a "fair" roulette wheel in Las Vegas. The physical laws of motion determine where the ball lands after the wheel is spun.

The gamblers place their bets with the understanding that they're all standing on a level playing field. The roulette wheel doesn't divvy out "grace" or "punishment." It just does what it does.

Spin, with the ball falling fairly in accord with universal laws of cause and effect.

I like to win. But I wouldn't enjoy making money from a roulette wheel where the outcome was fixed by the casino management.

Yet most religious people have no problem believing that they're going to get special treatment from God or a guru. They look forward to cutting to the front of the salvation line through divine grace and mercy, undeserved as this may be.

I've said that salvation isn't so serious to me anymore. Especially if it comes unfairly.

As Patrick Henry might have said, if he was me, "give me cause and effect or give me death." I suspect I'm going to get both.

And that isn't a bad thing. (As if I have a choice about it.)

Thanks to thankfulness on Thanksgiving

Last year I thought I'd said about all there was for to me say about "Who should I thank on Thanksgiving?"

Existence. You can't get down to a deeper level of thankfulness than that.

I am. Oh yes. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

If I wasn't, there'd be no thanking. Or anything else.

Well, there's always something more to say. Just not a whole lot. About thankfulness. Right now.

Yesterday I was given some notes that described recent talks given by the current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh.

Glancing through them I was struck by a question and answer about thanking.

Someone got up and thanked the organizers who made it possible for the meeting to be held. The guru reportedly said:

You will be doing them a disservice by thanking them.

I thought, "how sad." Religions end up with so many ridiculous rules and restrictions.

In an effort to crush the ego and become a selfless servant (of God, the guru, whoever), disciples are being asked to give up normal human niceties.

"Thank you." What's wrong with saying that?

Beats me, as I said last month in "RSSB's strange fear of praise."

We shouldn't be shy about expressing our thankfulness.

To other people. To existence. To anyone or anything else.

Tomorrow, like every day, is a time for Thanksgiving.

Here’s how to follow a comment conversation

Good news from TypePad, the host of this blog: it's now possible to be notified when a new comment has been added to a Church of the Churchless post.

I've described this new blog feature here. I've also offered up some tips about Google Reader, which I've found to be a good way of keeping track of web site and blog content, including comments on posts.

For quite a while it's bothered me that TypePad only allows bloggers like me (who don't customize their blogs via their own programming) to only show the most recent 10 comments in the sidebar.

If a post gets lots of comments, older comments soon get shoved off of the sidebar. So there hasn't been any way of knowing that someone has contributed to a comment conversation without checking out a particular post.

Now, there is – by subscribing to the feed option shown at the beginning of every post's "Comments" section. Again, go here for more information about this.

And feel free to comment on what I've written about comments.

What is religion?

Some people want to be called "religious." To them, this term is a honor. Others don't. They see religions as relics of a pre-scientific superstitious age.

I'm in the call me what you want, so long as it isn't "religious" category. It's difficult, though, to pin down what is, and isn't, a religion.

Wikipedia takes a stab at it. Unsatisfyingly, in my opinion. Too many definitions fit just about any strongly held systematized belief or passion, as when someone says "Golf is my religion."

So when I browsed through the table of contents for Christopher Hitchens' "The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever," my eye was caught by an excerpt from one of Daniel Dennett's books titled "A Working Definition of Religion."

Here's what Dennett says:

Tentatively, I propose to define religions as social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought. This is, of course, a circuitous way of articulating the idea that a religion without God or gods is like a vertebrate without a backbone.

Sure, it's possible to quibble with this definition. But intuitively it feels right to me.

And it goes a long way toward explaining why, no matter how often I heard during my devoted Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) days, "this is not a religion," the organization still felt like it was.

For if you're expected to follow vows, commandments, rituals, or forms of worship because a supernatural being (in this case, God and/or the guru) will reward you with spiritual goodies, that sure seems like a religion – no matter the protestations to the contrary.

One of the RSSB books, "Spiritual Letters," contains this quote from one of the early gurus.

Consider that each and every thing in the world – body, mind, and wealth – belong to the Satguru, that you are nothing. Do all of your work knowing it to be thus, and stay within the Satguru's instructions. He will then take you with him [to spiritual regions] when he considers you fit.

Well, maybe. All I know is that for about thirty years I followed the guru's instructions, and I didn't get taken anywhere. Maybe others got a different result.

Regardless, my point is that Radha Soami Satsang Beas, like other religious groups, puts a lot of emphasis on winning the favor of a supernatural being (the guru is considered to be much more than a physical body; God incarnate, in fact).

Similarly, Jesus saves. If you're deserving of salvation.

I like Dennett's definition of religion because it draws a line between belief systems that often are mistakenly lumped together.

Taoism and Buddhism don't belong with Christianity and Islam. The former are world views that don't include an anthropomorphic supreme being who intervenes in human affairs and demands a certain moral code. The latter are religions that do believe in such a god.

I'm with Albert Einstein, who used the term "religious" in a non-theistic sense.

The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe.

It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image – a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being.

For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere.

Letter to a Rabbi in Chicago, from "Albert Einstein, the Human Side," pp. 69-70

Flying Spaghetti Monster gaining religious credibility

It's good to see that Pastafarianism, the glorious revelation of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is back in the news.

I was an early embracer of this alternative to both evolution and intelligent design, praising this witty rebuke to creationism several years ago. And supporting the cause by buying a Kansas Museum of Science t-shirt.

Bobby Henderson is the prophet through whom the Flying Spaghetti Monster (blessed be His Noodly Appendage) speaks.

His open letter to the Kansas School Board first revealed the gospel of Pastafarianism to a spaghetti-starved world. I'm proud that Henderson is a recent physics graduate of Oregon State University – which is close to where I live.

May his unemployment be short-lived. This man's talents mustn't be wasted.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is coming in for serious attention at the American Academy of Religion's Annual Meeting.

Indeed, the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers cuts to the heart of the one of the thorniest questions in religious studies: What defines a religion? Does it require a genuine theological belief? Or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?

In short, is an anti-religion like Flying Spaghetti Monsterism actually a religion?

I don't think so, for reasons I'll describe in my next post. My current focus is on deciding which new t-shirts to buy from the FSM store.

There's a intimate, albeit appropriately mysterious, link between pirates and Pastafarianism. So I think I'll show my devotion to the Flying Spaghetti Monster by getting a Pirate Fish t-shirt.

An iconic image of His Noodly Appendage also is appealing. Likely I shall wear both with the religious zeal of a true believer in non-belief.

When the old sermon doesn’t soar anymore

What seems to be the final newsletter that I'll be getting from my old "church," Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), came in the mail yesterday.

RSSB no longer is going to mail the newsletters. You'll have to go to meetings (satsangs) to get the information – some of which is about upcoming meetings, so go figure.

I'll miss getting this publication, which comes from the Western Regional Office headed up by Vince Savarese. I read it mostly to gauge my reaction to reading it.

Like lots of other people who have become more churchless over the years, I used to find the RSSB literature inspiring. It made my psyche soar. Now, it doesn't. The sermons haven't changed. My attitude toward them has.

I'm not claiming that now I know the truth about God, the cosmos, life, and the hereafter. I just look upon those who do make just a claim with considerably more open-minded skepticism.

In Christopher Hitchens' new book, "The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever," he says in the introduction:

I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record of any human being who was remotely qualified to say that he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim – so modestly and so humbly – to possess.

It is time to withdraw our "respect" from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.

In the Fall 2007 RSSB newsletter, Vince quotes from a book by Sawan Singh, "Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. III." Sawan Singh supposedly knew the "mind of God." Even more, he is considered by RSSB devotees to be God, as are all satgurus (true gurus).

Gurus describe the real austerities through which the cycle of birth and death is ended and the soul reaches the door of the Master. The greatest of the austerities is the Master's service, through which the Lord dwells in the heart.

…He who withdraws his mind and senses from the pleasures of the senses and puts them in the service of the Master is a real ascetic.

Even when I was a RSSB true believer, all this talk about reaching the door (or feet) of the Master struck me as strange. What about God? Isn't the supreme being our goal, not a human being? It's similar to how Jesus dominates Christianity, while God fades into the background.

Further, given my scientific approach toward spirituality I'd get frustrated with the circular reasoning found in the RSSB literature. In the newsletter Vince quotes from another RSSB book, "Call of the Great Master."

Someone has asked the guru, Sawan Singh, how one can recognize a perfect Master and know that the Path he teaches is the true one. Here's the guru's answer:

There are one hundred and one kinds of Gurus in the world, and a seeker certainly finds it difficult to choose the right one from amongst them. Saints have mentioned in their writings signs and marks by which one can recognize a perfect Master and the true "Word" with which He baptizes.

Hmmmm. So you're supposed to read the writings of a perfect Master to learn what the signs are of a perfect Master. Not surprisingly, the perfect Master who wrote those writings describes someone exactly like himself.

In the same fashion, whenever I read a brochure from, say, Toyota, I learn that the best cars in the world are made by – no big surprise – Toyota. Now, this may indeed be the case. But there has to be an independent source of truth for claims like that, whether they be for the best guru or the best car.

It's like when Christians say, "The Bible is the word of God because it says in the Bible, This is the word of God." That's how con artists operate, asking people to believe them because they're so believable.

Another newsletter-inspired thought: I've done a lot of "seva" (volunteering) for RSSB. An awful lot. Years and years of it. So I understand the attraction of performing selfless service for the guru and a spiritual community in general. It feels good to give of yourself.

But Hitchens makes an excellent point:

Nine times out of ten, in debate with a cleric, one will be told not of some dogma of religious certitude but of some instance of charitable or humanitarian work undertaken by a religious person…My own response has been to issue a challenge: name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.

As yet, I have had no takers. (Whereas, oddly enough, if you ask an audience to name a wicked statement or action directly attributable to religious faith, nobody has any difficulty in finding an example.)

The RSSB teachings put a big emphasis on serving the Master. The newsletter contains a call for volunteers to construct bathrooms at the RSSB center in Petaluma. Design/Construction seva (service) also is available at other centers around the world.

There's nothing wrong, and a lot right, with volunteering. But there are plenty of "seva" opportunities close to home for anybody, religious or not. Charitable organizations always are looking for warm bodies willing to lend a hand.

What bothers me now, and even concerned me in the days when I did a lot of volunteer work for RSSB, is that members of religious groups often come to feel that volunteering done under the auspices of their group somehow is more worthy than other sorts of service.

It isn't very selfless to consider that the service you're providing is going to result in your getting spiritual goodies, up to and including salvation. Yet this is how the RSSB faithful look upon seva for the guru.

Hitchens again:

If we stay with animal analogies for a moment, owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are god.

(Cats may sometimes share the cold entrails of a kill with you, but this is just what a god might do if he was in a good mood.) Religion, then, partakes of equal elements of the canine and the feline. It exacts maximum servility and abjection, requiring you to regard yourself as conceived and born in sin and owing a duty to a stern creator.

But in return, it places you at the center of the universe and assures you that you are the personal object of a heavenly plan. Indeed, if you make the right propitiations you may even find that death has no sting, and that an exception to the rules of physical annihilation may be made in your own case.

It cannot be said enough that this preachment is immoral as well as irrational.

Taoism and the Trinity

Ron Gardner, compiler of an excellent spiritual reading list, just gave me some feedback about four Taoism books that I recommended to him.

I found his email so interesting, I wanted to share it. By "interesting," I don't mean that I understand it completely. But I get where he's coming from, to use a wonderfully imprecise '60s term.

It just isn't where I come from. Which is absolutely, completely, marvelously fine.

I can't tell you how many times I've said or written something that seemed to be so compelling, so inspiring, so truthful, so eloquent, that after my saying or writing had been communicated I sat back and waited for the applause to reverberate through my not-so-humble mind.

And I waited. And I waited some more.

Until I realized that my "Oh my god, this is so right!" was so wrong to my audience that they couldn't wait to get off this boring, confusing, inexplicable subject and start talking/reading about something a whole lot more interesting.

So I'm not surprised that the books I told Ron about elicited the reaction they did from him. I'm grateful, though, for his thoughtful response – which I've shared below.

I need to ponder my response to his response, which it's too late to do tonight. I will say, however, that I just opened up an issue of TIME magazine that came in the mail today.

A Toyota ad grabbed my attention. It shows a dirt road stretching into the distance between two fields. The headline says: "Can you have an impact by making none at all? Why not?"

They're talking about zero emissions from a car and zero waste from a manufacturing plant. But this also is a thoroughly Taoist spiritual sentiment.

Nothing, none, is one. Three…that's two more. Nothing wrong with a trinity, though. It' s just not one.

Here's Ron's message:

Hi Brian,

I checked out the four Taoism books you recommended, and none of them particularly impressed me. Just as I'm not a big fan of Zen, I'm also critical of Taoism. Why? Truth is a circuit--not unlike an electrical circuit.

An electrical circuit  functions according to Ohm's law. That means  it involves voltage (electro-magnetic force), amperage (current flow), and ohms (resistance), which, spiritually speaking, equates to conscious force, presence or pressure; reception or conductivity of the descending flow (Holy Spirit or shaktipat), and utter surrender or emptying, or non-resistance.

Taoism is all about non-resistance, or letting go--and if that is all you do spiritually, you'll lack the force, grounding and integration that holistic Enlightenment necessitates.

 IMO, and based on my experience, real spiritual life is about the Trinity--Sat-Chit-Ananda (or Siva-Shakti-Narada) in Hinduism; the Trikaya (Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya) in Vajrayana Buddhism, and the Father-Son-Holy Ghost in Christianity.

Consequently, I really vibe with Kashmir Shaivism, Dzogchen, Mystical Christianity, and Daism. In Christian terms,  real meditation is Holy Communion (or Awareness + Oneness, or Plugged-in Presence), reception of the Holy Spirtit (or Ghost) and poverty (or utter emptying, or unconditional surrender).

From a Hindu tantra perspective, the pressure of the presence (Siva) generates a downpouring spiritual power (or Shakti). When Siva (or Consciousness) and Shakti (or the Energy) unite into a permanent, single adamantine Intensity that always already outshines the meditator, that is spiritual Enlightenment.

Best Regards,
Ron

Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become

More and more, I'm into specifics when it comes to spirituality. I've spent a lifetime floating in the philosophical, theological, and metaphysical heavens. Now, show me the meat! (or, tofu)

I still enjoy airy-fairy speculation. Heck, what would this blog be without it? Both the posts and comments would be exceedingly brief, that's for sure.

But whenever I get a new spiritual, religious, or philosophical book these days, I thumb through it right off the bat, looking for details. Especially if it deals at all with meditation.

What does the author say we (or even just he/she) should do in an attempt to understand what It Is All About?

Don't give me elevated abstractions. I want down to earth instructions. Absent that, a writing is just a bunch of speculative blah, blah, blah.

Entertaining. But not scientifically or practically persuasive.

So since I don't want to be a pot calling the kettle black, here's what I generally do when I sit down for my morning meditation – fortified with a strong cup of coffee, which caffeinatedly elevates my mood even if the mediation session doesn't.

I have a saying that I repeat, and contemplate, before meditating.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become

I say this to myself as an encapsulation of my current spiritual outlook. It also serves to get me in a groove that, hopefully, I'll stay in for as much of the meditation period as possible.

Nowhere to go… Here I am, stock still on my cushion. No place else I need to be for the next 30 minutes or so. This is It.

Nothing to do… No mental place I need to arrive at either. I don't need to think, feel, imagine, perceive, or do anything else inside my head.

No one to become… Even more, no transformation of my basic being needs to happen from on high, or down below. Like Popeye, I am what I am (or, I yam what I yam).

This centers me in three dimensions of space, time, and being – exactly where I am. I realize that every movement from this center, on what spiritual traditions call a "path," is going to take me farther away from really real reality, not closer.

That's my theory, at least.

However, it's founded on a whole lot of book learning and life experience. I just choose to ignore all of that learning-experience in favor of the no, no, no at the center of my Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become.

I then use a simple sort of mantra meditation to stay close to the center during my meditation.

Lately I've been favoring Wu because it means nothing/negation in Chinese. And I hear "wu chi" a lot in my Tai Chi classes (this is the motionless ready stance that begins and ends each form; from wu chi the tai chi begins).

Something…wu…out of nothing…the empty center. Endlessly fascinating. A sound in my head, uttered by me, where before and after there is silence.

So, yes, I do something. Not nothing. But as little as possible, which is a heck of a lot less than I'm going to do the rest of the day, after I stop meditating.

I enjoy beginning the day with this period of mostly passive yin that contrasts with my mostly active yang the rest of my waking hours.

It's the core of my spirituality, really. Yet it's nothing that I can describe beyond how I've already described it. For there's nothing much to it.

Even less than I think, for sure.

Googling "nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become" before I wrote this post, I came across a book whose title is two-thirds of my meditation saying.

Well, no one has a copyright on nothing. Though lots of people have said quite a bit about it. Like...

There is really nothing you must be.
And there is nothing you must do.
There is really nothing you must have.
And there is nothing you must know.
There is really nothing you must become.

However, it helps to understand that fire burns,
and when it rains, the earth gets wet.
Japanese Zen scroll

As for me, when I meditate my saying is as minimal as I can make it. Wu, wu, wu.

Religion needs to dance – freely

Mark Morford, a columnist for SF Gate, gets it just right in his "Does your religion dance? Behold, the most dangerous issue facing modern faith: it's inability to evolve, nakedly."

If you've never read Morford, his free-floating stream of consciousness writing style takes some getting used to. But what he says, and how he says it, sound just fine to me in this piece.

We as a culture just might be suffering a slow, painful death by spiritual stagnation, by ideological stasis, by cosmic rigor mortis. It has become painfully, lethally obvious in the age of George W. Bush and authoritarian groupthink that our major religious systems and foundations don't know how to move. They don't learn, adjust, evolve, see things anew. They don't know how to dance. And what's more, this little problem might just be the death of us all.

I hadn't done much dancing until February of last year. That's when my wife and I started taking Argentine Tango lessons.

Since, the Tango/Dance category of my other blog has filled up with quite a few dance-related posts. We've also tried American Tango, Nightclub 2-Step, Waltz, and a dash of Cha-Cha-Cha.

It probably isn't a coincidence that the more churchless I've become, the more I've been attracted to moving freely on a dance floor.

"Freely" is the key word. I've practiced martial arts for about fifteen years. Traditional katas, or forms, are akin to rigid religions: you don't mess with how they're performed.

So I was familiar with moving on a hardwood floor long before I started dancing. But there's a big difference between moving to somebody else's preconceived beat, and your own creative expression.

This is what Morford is calling for: flexible spontaneity in religion and spirituality.

It is through the creative impulse, through imagination and our deep need for mystery, that the gods can truly dance, remain fresh, stay alive and vital and interesting. It is only through our ability to reinvent them and honor them in new and miraculous ways that humanity will keep afloat and vibrant. The gods are, after all, our creation. Why not let our creation tango?

Here's a take on dancing Argentine Tango improvisationally. It's difficult, something I can only aspire to. (Argentine Tango is called the "Ph.D. of social dances" for that reason.) The authors say:

A much greater mastery of tango and more improvisational freedom is found in the ability to break off patterns and switch to others without hesitation. The highest degree of improvisational freedom is found in choosing individual steps without regard to any pre-determined patterns.

Sounds like good advice for dancing with the divine also.

That said, I enjoyed Morford's mention of the "profane masculine" – as contrasted with the "divine feminine." Like him, I'm more a devotee of the former.

Time to fire our gurus

Thanks to my friend Randy, I got turned on to Tijn Touber's thoughtful piece, "D.I.Y. Guru." (For the acronym impaired, like me, D.I.Y. stands for "do it yourself").

I liked it. It fits with my understanding of how we should regard a guru – as someone begging to be fired.

So it's time to fire our gurus (facts, truths, religious persuasions, principles, dogmas) so the guru in ourselves can emerge. It's time to become as great as the gurus we followed--just as authentic, unique and obstinate.

This is not an act of aggression or disrespect. On the contrary, it is an act of love and gratitude. The greatest compliment we can pay our gurus, coaches and therapists is to make clear that we no longer need them. The treatment was successful; the guru died.

Any guru who wants lifetime employment as the disciple's lord and master isn't worthy of being followed. Yet too often spiritual seekers end up in a position of fawning dependence that stifles their growth.

An unequal relationship means there is a glass ceiling the follower can barely penetrate. To grow beyond the master is difficult, particularly when you are taught not to trust your own wisdom.

Today my Tai Chi instructor talked about Bruce Lee, who is generally regarded as the greatest martial artist of the twentieth century.

He said that Lee never took on any title. Not "Sifu," not "Sensei," not "Master." He was just Bruce Lee, himself. Yet he clearly knew his martial arts stuff and could teach with the best of them.

One of the comments on the Ode Magazine web site, where the piece was originally published, says that the true translation of the Sanskrit word "guru" is "teacher."

It seems that once again, the West has taken a word with quite a simple meaning and message from another part of the world and misunderstood it, or even deliberately manipulated it perhaps?

A good teacher is someone who indeed inspires us with their teachings and to learn, but also makes it very clear that it's the teachings that are the only important thing. All those I have had the privilege to come into contact with have stressed the absolute necessity of not taking their word for anything, but to find out the truth for oneself.

Absolutely, it's an absolute necessity to be your own D.I.Y . guru. Bruce Lee's philosophy encourages this.

I'm not a master. I'm a student-master, meaning that I have the knowledge of a master and the expertise of a master, but I'm still learning. So I'm a student-master. I don't believe in the word "master." I consider the master as such when they close the casket.

Loosening the bounds of “I am…”

Who am I? Well, that depends.

Yesterday I had an opinion piece published in our local newspaper. A few days ago an editorial page assistant phoned me and asked how I wanted to be described at the end of the piece.

I said, "Retired writer, blogger, and land use activist would be fine."

She must not have heard the "b" in "blogger" because I ended up as a "logger." Some readers must have wondered how an Oregon logger became such a strong supporter of an environment-friendly ballot measure.

But what's in a name? I wasn't bothered. Heck, I have a small chainsaw. And I've even managed to cut down some dead trees with it. Maybe I really am a logger.

Each of us fills in the "I am …" ellipses continually throughout our life. We have various occupations and avocations (blogger, logger), relationships (child, parent, spouse, grandparent), states of mind (happy, sad, frustrated, content), and much more besides.

The more flexible we are concerning our I-am ness, the more open we'll be to change, fresh experiences, expanding our boundaries. That's one of the problems I have with religion.

It expects you to have a rigid "I am…" identity. I am a Christian. I am a Buddhist. I am a satsangi. I am a Wiccan. I am a Muslim.

You can be happy one day and sad another. But you'd be seen as unduly fickle if you were a Jew yesterday, a Taoist today, and a Hindu tomorrow.

Yet, why couldn't you be?

Robert Thurman says in his book, "Infinite Life":

The Buddha was happy about not knowing who he was in the usual rigid, fixed sense. He called the failure to know who he was "enlightenment." Why? Because he realized that selflessness kindles the sacred fire of compassion.

When you become aware of your selflessness, you realize that any way you feel yourself to be at any time is just a relational, changing construction. When that happens, you have a huge inner release of compassion.

Your inner creativity about your living self is energized, and your infinite life becomes your ongoing work of art.

I'm no Buddha, that's for sure. But with the aid of mescaline, or some other psychedelic, I have a distinct memory of a '60s experience that at least was in the ballpark of what Thurman is talking about.

I was with a group of fellow "stoners" who'd headed off to a San Jose-area park to be high with nature. The path we were on led around a hill.

I felt energetic and forged on ahead by myself. My feet were flying through the northern California landscape. Until I rounded a corner and saw a different sort of group on the left side of the trail a short ways ahead of me.

Bikers. Drinking beer. Next to their choppers. With their equally tough-looking old ladies. At the time San Jose was a headquarters for the Gypsy Jokers motorcycle gang, which had a reputation rivaling the Hells Angels.

I didn't know anything about the bikers I was walking toward. But my first reaction was that I was an isolated peaceful hippie dude stoned on mescaline with long hair, glasses, and a corduroy coat, and they were cultural near-opposites in almost every way. Not good.

However, something snapped in me the very next moment. As I walked nearer to them I didn't feel like there was any difference between us. I could see them looking at me. I looked at them. More, I became them.

"What's happening, man?" someone called out. "Hell if I know," I said with a smile. They laughed. I laughed. I felt like I could sit down with them, have a beer, and fit right in.

My fear vanished as soon as I stopped thinking "I am…" and "They are…" Sure, it was partly (or mostly) the mescaline talking, but I suddenly felt that I was them and they were me, and we were all in this park getting high together.

Not exactly akin to the Buddha's enlightened experience of selflessness under the Bodhi Tree. But, hey, I'll take a speck of understanding any way I can get it.

Passing the biker group I realized that "I am…" can be flexible and boundless, not rigid and restricted.

Some things we always are; some things we always aren't; but there's a huge store of being-possibilities available to us moment to moment.

“Into the Wild” an inspiration for churchless roamers

Last night my wife and I saw "Into the Wild," a terrific movie that speaks to anyone (which means, almost everyone) who has harbored thoughts of chucking it all in and starting over – free of entanglements, material or mental.

Fittingly, it was a pretty wild night for us. The movie started at 8:50 pm and it runs two and a half hours. Almost all of the people in line with us were young people for whom a Saturday night just starts to get going at midnight.

For us, it's sleepy time. But with this being the "fall back" from daylight savings time, we were ready to cut loose into the wee morning hours. I even had some popcorn with real butter on it, forgetting for a moment my usual heart-healthy diet anxieties.

"Into the Wild" is the true story of Christopher McCandless, who was about to enter law school when he decided to burn his social security card (along with his money), donate his $24,000 college fund to Oxfam, and head out on the road by himself –seeking both an inner and outer Alaska.

Freedom. Independence. Reality. Truth.

Whatever it took to reach his "Alaska," McCandless was passionate about doing it. He took on the name of Alexander Supertramp and hitch-hiked around the country before ending up in the Alaskan wilderness. (You can listen to one of the Eddie Vedder songs featured in the movie and see photos of his journeying here.)

I found "Into the Wild" deeply moving. It's a movie that sticks with you, unlike the usual quickly-digested cinematic fare that is seen today and forgotten tomorrow.

I liked a scene where McCandless asks a Grand Canyon ranger what it takes to do down the Colorado River. He's told that the waiting list for a permit is twelve years, but maybe he could find a guided tour able to take him soon, if it's had a cancellation. That'd cost over a thousand dollars, though.

McCandless buys a small kayak with some of the money he earned at a mid-west wheat farm. With no experience in white-water river running, and no helmet, he heads down the Colorado.

Somehow he makes it. All the way to the Gulf of Cortez in Mexico, in fact. With some dragging of the kayak through the desert, when the river water ran out.

Along his way McCandless meets intriguing characters. He challenges them to burst the boundaries that they've caged themselves behind. Do something different! Climb a mountain! See farther than you ever have before!

McCandless/Supertramp's wise-beyond-his-years outlook on life reminded me of the "Three Laughers at the Tiger Ravine." In this blog post I quoted Ray Grigg's description of a drawing by the same name.

[The drawing] shows a Taoist, a Confucian, and a Buddhist circled together in uproarious laughter. Apparently the Buddhist had taken a vow never to leave the monastery but, in the enthusiasm of visiting with his two friends, he inadvertently wanders over the bridge of the ravine that defines the monastery's grounds.

The distant roar of a tiger breaks the spell of their visit and they realize the vow of confinement has been broken. They clasp each other's hands and laugh. This is the playful spirit that supersedes vows and teachings and ideologies.

Rules. Vows. Commandments. Disciplines.

They have a place. But not in the wild, not nearly so much.

There's an Alaska within each of us that begs to be explored. We know it's there. We're attracted to it. But something holds us back from venturing into the terra incognita.

McCandless courageously cut the ties that bound him. He's an inspiration to the churchless. And to other adventurers who head off into unknown territory, whether inner or outer.

Religions’ desperate search for causes

Why? Why? Why? From an early age, we're all obsessed with finding the reason for things. I remember being driven almost crazy by my daughter when she entered her "why" phase.

"Why are you filling up the bathtub?"
"To give you a bath."
"Why?"
"Because you're dirty."
"Why?"
"Because you played outside all day."
"Why?"
"Because your friends came over."
"Why?"
"Because they didn't recognize what an irritating little girl you can be when you keep asking why when someone is trying to wash your hair." (OK, I didn't actually say that; but I'd think it).

Today I got to a chapter about causes in the book that I've been reading, and enjoying a lot: The Mystical Mind. Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg, the authors, talked about the brain's causal operator.

Basically this is the neurological function that makes little girls ask "Why?" It also spurs grown-ups to pursue philosophy, science, and – notably – religion.

We humans have an inherent urge to seek causes for what's happening around us. If the mind can't determine the cause of something from sense data and logical inference, the causal operator keeps on chugging away regardless.

Until it comes up with a satisfying myth or other explanation for what can't be explained. What happens when we die? No one knows for sure. But this nagging question won't go away once a self-aware human brain raises it.

So religions do a booming business in providing mythical answers. They generally don't make much sense. However, our desperate search for why's causes us to cling to just about any answer that's emotionally satisfying.

Why is my life so screwed up?
Don't worry, Jesus has a plan for you.
Oh, thank you. Now I feel better.

Many other words can be substituted for "Jesus." God. Allah. The guru. Destiny. The Tao. Providence. Karma.

Whichever, they all point to a pleasing alternative to chaotic unpredictable unknowingness. Somebody or some force is in charge of things, including what happens to us.

We may not know what's going to pop into or out of our life at any given moment. But the belief that all this popping has a plan behind it is deeply reassuring. Hence, the popularity of religions.

The religion I know best is of the Eastern variety, Sant Mat (in the guise of Radha Soami Satsang Beas).

I was initiated into this mystical-meditational form of spirituality in 1971, after my wild and crazy Flower Power '60s years. Suddenly I went from flowing freely with whatever happened into a worldview where everything had a place, and there was a place for everything.

Morality. Diet. Worship. Theology. I no longer had to struggle to figure out what to do or what to believe. All the answers were in the books, magazines, tapes, and videos that I filled my brain with.

My causal operator was being fed just what it wanted: answers, reasons, causes.

Consider karma. This is a marvelous explanation for everything and anything, though in truth it doesn't explain much at all – about the big questions of life, at least. "Instant karma" is a decent explanation for the course a ball struck on a pool table takes.

That's because you can see the cause and effect. However, saying "that was your karma" when someone has an auto accident really doesn't add to an understanding of the situation.

Still, it can give the person a feeling that life makes sense on another level. Not the level of everyday experience, where the general rule is stuff happens, but on a mythical plane of reality where life's events are being planned just so.

There's nothing wrong with desperately seeking causes. Without that urge, science and philosophy wouldn't exist. However, religion shortcuts the seeking.

And that's bad. We end up satisfied with explanations that really aren't satisfying. But they're available, so we hang on to them for dear life.

Like the song said, sort of, "If you can't be with the cause you love, love the cause you're with."

Well, that's fine, so long as we realize what we're settling for: a second-rate date with religious mythologies.