Church of the Churchless

Finding meaning in meaninglessness

I was a true believing existentialist my sophomore year in college.

I devoured Sartre, Camus, all those guys who I could picture sitting in a Parisian coffee house, smoking unfiltered cigarettes, sipping thick expresso, and waving their hands animatedly as they agreed, in so many ways, that Life, it is so totally fucked! (in a French accent and with more of a literary twist to the sentiment, naturally).

That's just how I felt.

So I got a tremendous amount of meaning out of all the meaninglessness that I absorbed from existentialist writings. That's what held me together through some pretty weird 1968'ish Flower Child experiences.

I've been reminded of this by reading Robert Burton's "On Being Certain," the subject of several previous posts. Rather lengthy and complicated posts, because his book is filled with subtleties, scientific and otherwise, that are hard to briefly encapsulate.

Here's another try.

The main personal insight I've gotten from "On Being Certain" is that everyone is hard-wired neurologically and biologically to have an uncontrollable sense of meaning and knowing (the two are so similar, it seems OK to lump them together).

Scientists. Religionists. Atheists. Theists. Whatever "ist" you are, there's this sense of meaning/knowing within your consciousness. It's so fundamental, you could almost say that it is your consciousness.

Without it, we'd barely be human. And likely suicidal.

So as I noted in my last post, religious believers and unbelievers aren't as different as I thought before I read Burton's book. He helped me see that we all necessarily believe in something that's immune to rational analysis or willful control.

This something is a sense of meaning/knowing that springs from a "hidden layer" of the brain. That layer takes perceptual inputs and converts them into our personal take on reality.

We can't see or understand how the mysterious conversion process works. That's why neurologists call it "hidden." Thus each of us sees through a glass darkly. There's no other way to see. It's impossible to disentangle our individual sense of meaning/knowing from the "objective" world.

So is everything relative? Is knowledge a personal choice? Do we create our own reality?

No. Burton emphasizes this over and over. Speaking of medicine, he says:

The purpose of this chapter is to expose the limits of any concept of rationality or objectivity, not to suggest that all answers are equal and everything is relative. Some opinions are more likely to be correct than others….To provide the best care possible, we should know when we are basing our decisions on science and when they are based upon unsubstantiated experience, hunches, and gut feelings.

…Recognizing the limits of the mind to assess itself should be sufficient for us to dispense with the faded notion of certainty, yet it doesn't mean that we have to throw up our hands in a pique of postmodern nihilism.

And yet…

To insist that the secular and the scientific be universally adopted flies in the face of what neuroscience tells us about different personality traits generating idiosyncratic worldviews. Try telling a poet to give up his musings and become a mechanical engineer. Or counsel a clown that he'd more useful as a mortician.

…For me, Beckett's portrayal of meaningless is both hilarious and curiously uplifting. Watch a good Beckett production and you often find yourself nodding at others in the audience. The great mystery is how the humorous presentation of pointlessness creates its own deep sense of inexpressible meaning, including a feeling of camaraderie with others sharing the same ironic viewpoint.

We are meaning-seeking creatures. We can't help it. Even when life appears to be meaningless, we say to ourselves Ah, now I get it!

Humility is in order. Also, compassionate understanding. Of both ourselves and others. We're all hungry for meaning and knowing. We feed ourselves in many different ways. Starvation is the only option not on the table. I look at other people's choices and think "Yuck! That's disgusting!"

But to them, it's marvelous meaning-fare. We don't consider that there's an absolute food preference truth; people just have different tastes. It's the same with the meaning of life: this is a personal choice, not objective reality.

I usually skip endnotes in a book, figuring that this is where the author puts non-essential stuff that's too boring or scholarly to fit in the main narrative. Browsing through the final section of "On Being Certain" though, I ran across a couple of interesting notes from Burton.

Honest. Reflective of his main theme. Pleasingly self-reflective.

In writing this book, I have caught myself selecting facts to fit or support a preconceived idea that I've wanted to convey. This isn't a prudent admission if I want you to accept my ideas as being reasonable. On the other hand, it is an inescapable component of my thesis.

And…

I don't personally see the point of Weinberg's comment that our increasing understanding of the world makes it seem all the more pointless. I understand his arguments, but rather than evoking a sense of personal despair, they make me laugh at the ridiculousness of believing that we can understand why we are here.

If there is some meaning or purpose, please don't tell me. If a sign were to drop out of the sky and tell me what the meaning of life was, and it wasn't to my liking, I'd be much more disappointed than if I didn't see the sign. Not knowing gives me license to pursue the ridiculous.

My basic personality has prompted my writing a book pointing out that the determination of pointless or purposeful cannot be a purely rational decision. I enjoy the basketball-gorilla video because it confirms my deepest suspicions that we are more likely to see what we want to see and less likely to see that which isn't of any interest – including purpose or pointlessness.

Diving off the dock of fundamentalism

Why not jump all the way in? The water of openness is so inviting. Non-dogmatic, fresh, cleansing. Why continue to just dangle feet over the dock of fundamentalism instead of leaping free and taking the plunge?

Because unexamined assumptions hold us back. We non-believers actually believe in more than we're aware of. Decrying religious absolutism, we've got some absolutes of our own enshrined in our psyches.

This is one of the disconcerting (but in a pleasing way, like when you're shoved off a place you didn't really want to be at) messages I've gotten from Robert Burton's "On Being Certain," the subject of some previous posts – here and here.

I was contentedly chugging along through the book, having read about two-thirds of it, feeling pretty good about myself as Burton (a neurologist) kept showing how people aren't justified in taking what they know as absolutely certain, because our feeling of knowing is a product of hidden brain mechanisms that we can't know about.

Oh, yeah, I kept saying to myself, this supports my churchlessness! A few pages further: Ooh, this too! I'm so right about not feeling that I'm right.

There's nothing more pleasurable than a book that reinforces my positive view of myself. That's why I had an inkling of distress when I starting reading the chapter on "Faith" and came to a warning: Caution: Deconstruction Zone Ahead.

Burton started off his demolition project by quoting Richard Dawkins, a relentless proponent of science and critic of blind religious faith. Then Burton said:

When I read recommendations for cobra venom injections as the definitive treatment for multiple sclerosis or hear someone insist that a blastocyst has a soul, I feel compelled to ask, "Where's the evidence?" When terrorists fly planes into the World Trade Center, I am horrified by the power of religion to subvert the minds of the young. One of the overriding fears of our time is that excesses of belief may destroy civilization.

So at first glance, Dawkins's criticism of faith-based arguments is right on. But can we follow his advice and still get up in the morning? Is it possible to have a sense of meaning and purpose without some feeling of faith?

Some additional quotes from Dawkins revealed that he "both believes in his powers of introspection and self-assessment and that he is mentally capable of understanding why the world and we exist – the myth of the autonomous rational mind. This is coupled with another act of faith – the belief that possessing complete knowledge of the physical laws of the universe will tell us why we are here."

Fascinating.

What Burton is pointing to here, and he goes on to further deconstruct religious, scientific, and every other sort of faith, is something that I'd taken for granted. On faith.

Namely, that there are answers to the big questions of life that I'm so uncertain about. I may never know the answers. No one may. But the answers are out there, potentially accessible to a human consciousness.

My life has a purpose: to fathom what life is all about. I'm assuming that dogmatic religious, spiritual, or metaphysical faith doesn't help with the fathoming. However, my feeling of purposefulness underlies assumptions of every sort.

Meaning, I could be like Dawkins – unfettered by supernatural varieties of faith. Yet there still would be a common denominator between me and religious fundamentalists.

A sense of purpose. Burton says:

There is a problem basic to the science-religion controversy: Although the sense of purpose is a necessary and involuntary mental sensation, it isn't easily comprehensible solely as a sensation. It doesn't feel right to say, "I have a sense of purpose but don't know what it is."

…Try to state your purpose or the meaning of life without expressing thanks, gratitude, obligation, moral imperative, and a need for a greater understanding of the unknown. Whatever the explanation there is an underlying implication of a something beyond us that needs to be acknowledged or pursued – from an all-knowing God to the awe-inspiring physical laws of the universe.

Religious purpose might be described as the movement toward the understanding or embracing of a higher power. Scientific purpose might be described as a movement toward understanding the nature of the mystery of the universe.

How different the science-religion controversy would be if we acknowledged that a deeply felt sense of purpose is as necessary as hunger and thirst – all are universally necessary for survival and homeostasis. How we express those sensations will be a matter of personal taste and predilection.

Our sense of purpose is closely related to our sense of knowing. Neither is under conscious control. Each pops out of that hidden layer of brain activity/organization mentioned in my previous post. Burton writes:

Imagine the sense of purpose as a powerful committee member within the hidden layer. It carefully weighs all inputs, positively weighting those experiences and ideas that feel right while negatively weighting those that feel wrong, strange, or unreal…Stated purpose is a personal hidden layer-based narrative – not a reasoned argument.

My own sense of personal purpose is different from Burton's. As is yours from mine. And any other person's from everybody else's.

Yet my sense of purpose feels so right to me. As yours does to you. Ditto for my sense of knowing, because I just know. Geez, why can't other people see that my purpose and my knowing are so obviously the way things are?!

Because those other people aren't me. Only I am.

I am, however, constantly changing. As new inputs from fresh experiences are added to the hidden layer of consciousness, Burton says that the "cognitive stew" is altered.

But this is a low probability uphill battle: the best of arguments is only one input pitted against a lifetime of acquired experience and biological tendencies operating outside of our conscious control. To expect well-reasoned arguments to easily alter personal expressions of purpose is to misunderstand the biology of belief.

What we can do, seemingly, is better understand the nature of our understandings. Not with an eye to changing them, but so our vision of who we are is more in tune with the way things are rather than how we imagine them to be.

My whole life, I've assumed that a central purpose of life is to know more about the cosmos. Underlying that assumption was a fundamental core belief: that it's possible for people to grasp the nature of the universe, whether this be physical, spiritual, or a mixture of material stuff and ethereal soul.

Now, "fundamental" isn't the same as "fundamentalism." Still, there's enough commonality between me and a religious zealot to term us cousins, if not blood brothers.

In his book, Burton reminds us that we're biologically driven to search for meaning. This is a fundamental aspect of our existence, just as the ever-present sense of knowing is.

Knowing this won't change the reality of it. However, pondering the deconstruction section of "On Being Certain" has helped me see the limits of my worldview, even I can't do much, if anything, about it.

I have no reason to believe that the cosmos is comprehensible. But I believe that it is. That's an act of faith, a inescapable bit of grace from the hidden layer of my brain. Recognizing this, I feel like I've taken another step into the deep waters of openness to reality – including the very real possibility that ultimate reality can't be known.

Clear? I don't blame you if you're thinking, "…as mud." Maybe some final quotes from "On Being Certain" will add some clarity.

Burton notes that Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg famously said, "The more the universe appears comprehensible, the more it also appears pointless." Burton goes on to say:

The underlying assumption is that the presence or absence of purpose can be determined based upon whether or not the universe evolved in a random manner. Randomness is an observation; it isn't evidence against a higher-order design.

If I want my garden to look like a jungle, my best chance is to let the plants crawl all over one another. The garden may look like utter chaos, but that was my intent. Perhaps we are a well-designed experiment in futility.

The belief that we can rationally determine the difference between purpose and pointlessness arises out of a misunderstanding of the nature of purpose. We are further burdened by having a brain that learns by seeking generalizations over ambiguity. This preference prods us by producing its own mental state – the uncomfortable feeling that an ambiguous situation must have an answer.

I suspect that this feeling is a prime mover in the science-religion debate. No matter how strong the evidence for our inability to know why we are here, we continue to search for an answer.

Even when these questions arise out of paradoxes generated by contradictory brain functions, we feel that we should be able to solve the problem. The result is that we see patterns where none exist and don't see patterns that might exist.

What to do?

Wholeheartedly diving into not-knowing the big questions of life, for now and evermore – that's one way to go. Finding meaning in not knowing the meaning of it all.

There's more to say on this, naturally. Later…

Knowing that you know: impossible

It's strange, but the most familiar sensation we have also is the most mysterious: knowing. I know this. And yet, I don't.

Just like everything else that I know. Or you know. Or anybody knows.

We don't know how we know. Which means we can't trust what we know – not with 100% certainty. So this should squash fundamentalism of every variety.

Except…people can't control their knowing. Reason, facts, information, persuasion: our sense of knowing isn't influenced by any of that.

Our knowing can't be trusted. Yet it's what we rely upon at every moment. Go figure. (But you can't, because knowing isn't capable of being figured.)

I've finished reading Robert Burton's "On Being Certain," the subject of a previous post after I'd read an article about the book. It's been quite a ride.

Loopy. That's the best word to describe it. Over and over, I'd find Burton pulling the rug out from under a viewpoint that I'd thought was solid. And believed in myself.

So I'd be thrown for a loop, experiencing some mental vertigo, turned upside down, searching for another certain spot of ground.

I'm still digesting the book. I don't quite know how to talk about what I've learned about not knowing – as the subtitle puts it, "believing you are right even when you're not."

This is a first stab. More posts will follow, probably. Can't say for sure. Uncertainty rules the day. Every day.

One of Burton's central points, which seems as certain as anything can be (he's a neurologist), is that human awareness – including our sense of knowing – is mediated by a hidden layer of brain activity.

The hidden layer, a term normally considered with AI [artificial intelligence] jargon, offers a powerful metaphor for the brain's processing of information. It is in the hidden layer that all elements of biology (from genetic predispositions to neurotransmitter variations and fluctuations) and all past experience, whether remembered or long forgotten, affect the processing of incoming information.

It is the interface between incoming sensory data and a final perception, the anatomic crossroad where nature and nurture intersect. It is why your red is not my red, your idea of beauty isn't mine, why eyewitnesses offer differing accounts of an accident, or why we don't all put our money on the same roulette number.

What this means is that stuff we're absolutely, completely, supremely confidently sure about, we can be wrong about.

Because we only know what pops out of the hidden layer into our conscious awareness. We can't know how the incoming data were manipulated by the hidden layer.

Thus those moments of intuitive, mystical, spiritual, unitive insight, where we feel "Ah, so this is what life is all about!" – those moments also are states of knowing that pop out of the hidden layer.

Being hidden, the insight can seem like an act of grace, a gift from God, an unquestionable revelation. Burton quotes William James:

Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.

Burton then comments:

This is a brilliant observation, equating religious and mystical states with the sensation of knowing, and with the further recognition that such knowledge is felt, not thought…James' description is perfectly straightforward – with mystical states, people experience spontaneous mental sensations that feel like knowledge but occur in the absence of any specific knowledge. Felt knowledge. Knowledge without thought. Certainty without deliberation or even conscious awareness of having had a thought.

But there's that hidden layer…

Just because we have a feeling of inerrant knowing doesn't mean that feeling is accurate. What pops into awareness is sort of like picking up the phone and hearing someone say, "Congratulations, you've just won a million dollars."

You don't know who is on the other end of the line, whether they can be trusted, what their motivation is, where they're calling from. Everything we're aware of, Burton says, is like this. Including the knowledge that we're aware.

Think about it. Or rather, don't think about it. Just be aware of being aware, of knowing your knowing. It's something we usually don't pay any attention to.

How I simply know what I want to write, and how my fingers type out that knowing. How you simply know whether what I've written makes sense, is understandable, means anything to you, is just gibberish or profoundly insightful.

But what the heck is that knowing? Is it a feeling, a thought, a sensation, none of the above? Is it under our control? Can you intentionally change your knowing? Or is that mysterious perception outside of our control?

Burton:

The feeling of knowing is universal, most likely originates within a localized region of the brain, can be spontaneously activated via direct stimulation or chemical manipulation, yet cannot be triggered by conscious effort.

These arguments for its inclusion as a primary brain module are more compelling than those postulated for deceit, compassion, forgiveness, altruism, or Machiavellian cunning. One can stimulate the brain and produce a feeling of knowing; one cannot stimulate the brain and create a politician.

What a predicament. The idea of a thought being created by more specialized modules, some operating outside of our control and awareness, seems both intuitively obvious and antithetical to how we experience our thoughts.

That's because we have a mental circuit breaker. It allows us to function without paralyzing indecision. Problem is: it can be wrong, and there's no way we can know that we don't know what we are sure we know.

As an isolated system, thought is doomed to the perpetual "yes, but," that arises out of not being able to know what you don't know. Without a circuit breaker, indecision and inaction would rule the day. What is needed is a mental switch that stops infinite ruminations and calms our fears of missing an unknown superior alternative.

Such a switch can't be a thought or we would be back at the same problem. The simplest solution would be a sensation that feels like a thought but isn't subject to thought's perpetual self-questioning. The constellation of mental states that constitutes the feeling of knowing is a marvelous adaptation that solves a very real metaphysical dilemma of how to reach a conclusion.

I love it. And, I hate it.

I love it because I can't tell you how many times I've been told by true believers, "Brian, you think too much." They say this because they just know what the truth beyond thought is.

Why? No why. They just know that ultimate truth isn't a thought. And since my metaphysical beliefs seem to be founded on thinking, and their knowing isn't, then obviously their knowing trumps my thinking.

Which is ridiculous. Because Burton's book presents lots of evidence that every sort of knowing, even the kind that doesn't seem to be based on anything but direct awareness, actually flows out of that hidden layer of brain functioning.

So I hate it. Because my knowing is just as unreliable as a true believer's, who I don't believe knows the truth. How to balance this loving and hating?

That'll have to wait for another post.

Benefits of blogging and bitching

Yesterday I got an email from a Church of the Churchless visitor who offered me some advice:

It seems to me like you spend more time writing on this blogging thing than is healthy for anybody to do….We all get disillusioned with something, but we can move on or we can waste our time bitching about our disillusionment in cyberspace all day.

Well, I beg to differ. I'm not in cyberspace all day.

Though when our well pump stopped working this afternoon, and I had to find a way to get it fixed at the start of the Memorial Day weekend, I sure wanted to escape into a more pleasant realm of reality.

Which for me, is writing – the essence of my blogging. It's therapeutic for me to sit down for an hour or two every day, write about whatever strikes my fancy, then publish it on one of my two blogs.

Science agrees that it's good for me. And other people too, naturally.

Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits.

Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.

I suspect that my correspondent felt better after writing me to say that I shouldn't spend so much time writing. He needed to bitch about how I bitch about my experiences with Radha Soami Satsang Beas, though in his message he also said:

A lot of the things you say about the path are valid, and many are similar to the reasons why I didn't follow in my parents spiritual footsteps.

If you want to read about someone really into sharing the details of their inner self online, check out Emily Gould's tale of blogging semi-addiction in the New York Times magazine.

Of course, some people have always been more naturally inclined toward oversharing than others. Technology just enables us to overshare on a different scale. Long before I had a blog, I found ways to broadcast my thoughts — to gossip about myself, tell my own secrets, tell myself and others the ongoing story of my life.

I was sort of similar. In my pre-teen years I founded a neighborhood "newspaper" via my mother's typewriter and carbon paper. It lasted a couple of single page issues, surely disappointing my handful of subscribers.

Like Emily, I've always had an urge to write down thoughts and, however I could, get them into other people's brains. Like she said, with the Internet it's just a lot easier now to do the mind-melding.

So I don't agree that sharing ideas already in my head deserves to be called "bitching." In my admittedly self-absorbed world view, it's "openness."

My notion of bitching is irritation feeding upon itself, the act of complaining serving as fertilizer that grows a larger crop of bitchum.

By contrast, almost always I feel calmer and more content after I write a blog post. Getting out what's inside lowers the level of my psyche's Lake Irritation (though I realize that often it raises other people's).

Here's another thing: today I mailed off the questionnaire Consumer Reports sends me every year. I dutifully reported on our experience with cars, restaurant chains, cameras, lawn mowers, and various home appliances.

I love Consumer Reports. I always have ten year's worth of issues stacked in a cabinet. Whenever we're considering buying something, I check to see what Consumer Reports says.

I also Google potential choices. I like to learn how other people feel about this or that. Likewise, Amazon reader reviews frequently sway my decision about whether to buy a book.

Why, if all this is so helpful, is it wrong for people to similarly share their experiences with buying into a religion, philosophy, meditation practice, or spiritual path? Sure, there's less objectivity here compared to, say, the performance of a vacuum cleaner.

But there's still a lot to like about someone sharing as honestly as possible how they feel about a "product" that supposedly brings one closer to God or Self.

Results may vary. Sure, that has to be remembered. Nonetheless, I'm interested in knowing what the results were. And in sharing my own, bitchily or otherwise.

Meditation – an ever present “church”

I meditated before I became a true believer. I meditated all during my faith-filled years. And I continue to meditate now that I'm in my churchless phase.

For me, meditation is an opportunity to open myself up to…whatever. The motto of the X-Files (American TV show) was "The truth is out there."

Also, in here: consciousness.

Where you don't need anyone else – no preacher, guru, rabbi, priest – to show you the way. Nor do you need to go some place – a church, temple, mosque – to be on the way.

Which might well be no way. I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I'm going somewhere in meditation. Other times, nowhere at all.

Mark Morford's column, "Sit down, shut up, breathe," sings the praises of meditation. He's anti-religion but pro-cushion sitting.

But meditation, well, it abides none of that noise. It brings you into the here and now and plops you into the lap of stillness and reminds you that there is more to it all than mania and media and political moronism, that you have incredible power to change your own habits and tendencies and daily love quotients, that god often speaks in whispers and flutters and quiet little licks on your heart and only when you dial down your raging internal dialogue can you actually hear what the hell she's trying to say. Hell, what's not to like?

After reading countless books about meditation and mysticism, I keep coming back to my favorite: "Open Mind, Open Heart." (I prefer the original edition, maybe because it's so familiar to me; this is the new edition).

It's sort of strange that with all the Buddhist, Taoist, Vedantist, and other Eastern writings on my book shelves, a Christian guide to contemplative prayer resonates so readily with me.

But I'm fine with strange. Some time ago I stopped trying to figure myself out. I like my morning meditation because it's an opportunity to stop figuring.

Me. The world. My wife. Our dog. The "Lost" TV show. Everything.

I like "Open Mind, Open Heart" because it offers up a specific, easy to understand, not so easy to do, method of meditating.

This morning I re-read Thomas Keating's summary of the centering prayer method. It bears a lot of resemblance to mantra meditation, except the word(s) being repeated are downplayed – they're viewed as a pointer rather than a means.

Generously, this chapter is available on the Centering Prayer web site in two parts, here and here (the whole book is, in fact; scroll down to "Open Mind, Open Heart").

Don't let all the mentions of "God" turn you off if you're not into a personal deity. Keating views God as mystery. Though a male mystery, apparently, along with 62% of people in Britain who took part in a recent poll.

Our experiences of God, however, are not God as He is in Himself. God as He is in Himself cannot be experienced empirically, conceptually, or spiritually. He is beyond experiences of any kind. This does not mean that He is not in sacred experiences, but that He transcends them. To put this insight into another way, He leads us by means of sacred experiences to the experience of emptiness.

Here's the best recommendation for Father Keating's centering prayer method: a Catholic fundamentalist considers it dangerous.

I’m so proud of Oregon

Way to go, Obama-loving churchless Oregonians.

Struggling to label my belief in unbelief

Sometimes silence says more than words. Recently an old friend asked me, "Do you still consider yourself to be a satsangi?"

I stared into the depths of my Starbucks latte. I started to speak, then closed my lips. The question spiraled deeper into my psyche. I waited to see if it'd hit bottom.

Satsangi – I knew what my friend meant by the word. An initiated member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a mystic-religious group with headquarters in India and branches around the world.

But the term is used much more broadly. Wikipedia associates it with another belief system. And here's a really different satsangi.

A non-fundamentalist member of any religion would face the same difficulty as I did. If you feel comfortable with some aspects of Catholicism, Buddhism, Judaism or any other "ism," but not other aspects, are you faithless or faithful?

I was baptized a Catholic. I had my first communion. But I never went through confirmation. So am I still a Catholic? I don't feel that I am, not a bit. Yet I've been told that baptism entitles a person to burial in a Catholic cemetery.

So maybe I am, from the Church's perspective.

And almost surely I'm still a satsangi from the point of view of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, because it's believed that the guru who initiates you never leaves the side of your soul – until the highest heaven is reached. Well, maybe. For sure, I'm not sure.

Eventually I answered my friend in a roundabout way. I told him that for a while in my true believer days I felt like I was standing on a solid spiritual floor.

Then, bit by bit, the ground started shifting beneath me. I was on an elevator, not terra firma. A jerky elevator. I'd stay on one belief level for a while, then whoosh! – I'd suddenly drop a ways down my tower of faith.

I'd remain there for a bit longer, until another whoosh! free fall dropped me further down the scaffolding of belief that I'd once perched myself upon. And I haven't reached bottom yet, I'm confident.

I said that I used to find these seeming descents (I don't know which way is up anymore) disconcerting. Now, though, they're enjoyable. I like the feeling of floating more freely, less encumbered by dogmatic ties.

Maybe eventually I'll become a completely unattached bubble of unbelief, I said, blown by whatever winds reality conjures up.

"This sounds to me like just what Radha Soami Satsang Beas teaches," my friend commented. "You're detaching from the mind and attaching yourself to spirit."

Well, I'll be, I thought. He might be right. My unbelief could be making me into a true believer of a different sort, sort of like going around the world by turning 180 degrees from the direction I faced before and ending up in the same place – but with a contrary viewpoint.

The main thing I thought, however, was how limited words are. We like to ask, "Republican or Democrat?" "Believer or unbeliever?" "Chocolate or vanilla?" Nuances, shades of gray, kind of this/kind of that – these aren't as appealing as black and white categories or labels.

Yesterday the Portland Oregonian ran a lengthy story in the Sunday paper, "Oregonians take many paths to religion: a state where fewer claim a particular faith yields stories of unusual journeys."

A while back the reporter, Nancy Haught, had asked for readers to send her an email describing their change of faith. Naturally, I did. A blurb from my message was included in a sidebar to the main story.

"Each of us is left with our private faith. Which again, for me, is faith that reality is all we need (though I readily admit that I'm still prone to fantasies and wishful thinking, especially when reality gives me harder knocks than I feel I deserve).
--Brian Hines, Salem, skeptical Taoist"

Last week Nancy emailed me, asking for permission to print the quote. She also wanted a one word description of my current beliefs.

I didn't labor too long over my response. "Taoist" came to mind right away. But that didn't sound quite right. So I added in "skeptical" and pressed the send button.

Skeptical Taoist still is lacking. Yet so is any word.

Believe! In witticisms about belief.

I learn a lot in the bathroom, thanks largely to Funny Times – which habitually resides in a drawer within convenient reach of my white pondering place.

The May issue features quotes about belief in the Curmudgeon column (using content from "The Big Curmudgeon").

I liked these quotations, because I believe them. The others obviously are wrong, so I left them out.

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The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. – George Bernard Shaw

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. – H.L. Mencken

The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums. – G.K. Chesterton

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. – H.L. Mencken

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. – Bertrand Russell

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. – Voltaire

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. – Mark Twain

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. – Bertrand Russell

We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant. – Daniel J. Boorstin

Not knowing is much more interesting than believing an answer which might be wrong. – Richard Feynman

The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions. – Maurice Chapelain

Certitude is not the test of certainty. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand. – Kurt Vonnegut

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Nice quotes. But an obvious omission is the best one-sentence metaphysics ever written. At least, that's what I believe.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. – Philip K. Dick

Morality thrives without belief in immortality

Why would believing in life after death make us act more morally?

Religions argue that if people didn't anticipate some sort of afterlife – the nature of which depends on behavior in this life – there'd be little motivation to do the right thing here on Earth.

To my mind, there's an even better argument in the other direction: a belief in immortality creates an atmosphere where life as it is here and now is disrespected, disparaged, and downplayed.

That's immoral.

A plane crashes. There's a disaster in a coal mine. A stray bomb kills innocent children. Religious believers say to themselves, "The victims have gone to a better place. They're in the hands of God/Allah/Guru/whoever now."

But what if the dead are just that: dead. They had one chance to live a life. And now it's gone.

How precious does life now seem? Does earthly existence appear to be more or less of a treasure if it's viewed as just a way station on a much longer journey?

I say, less. So if you want to foster a culture of life, don't believe that it continues after death. Nurture life now. Protect life now. Embrace life now.

Consider stem cell research. Or providing condoms to prevent AIDS. Or global climate change. Or any of a host of other social issues where action isn't taken to alleviate a clear and present problem partly because religion preaches that the focus should be on an unseen heaven rather than evident reality.

Since most people believe in the survival of a soul, there's a pervasive, if largely unconscious, attitude that what doesn't get done in this life can be taken care of later on.

Whether it's called karma or God's will, the notion is that whatever apparent wrongs are committed on Earth will be made right in another lifetime or state of existence.

Maybe. But "maybe" is a shaky foundation for morality. It'd be a heck of a lot better if people did what needed to be done out of a clear-eyed compassionate recognition of how life could be made better right here, right now.

If this life is all there is, it's infinitely precious. Every life cut short because of inadequate health care is a freaking tragedy. So is every life lost from any other preventable cause: war, famine, violence, accidents.

Yeah, I'm hearing the song in my head. Maybe you are too. Let's sing it together. And imagine.

[Update: Here's another argument against religion-based morality. There I was a few days ago, waiting at a red light to turn left. Watching kids at both ends of the crosswalk, I didn't immediately notice the left turn arrow turn green.

A nano-second later the guy behind me in an big extended cab pickup, with a large dog hanging out the passenger side window, honks his horn at me in my humble Prius. Not just once, as a signal, but twice -- as a sign of irritation.

I turn left. A ways down the street he floors his truck and passes me on the right, on a two lane road, just to show me, I suppose, how he's still pissed that I held him up for a few seconds.

This sort of behavior is rare in Oregon. I've seen drivers wait through an entire green light behind a car that didn't notice the signal had changed. I've done it myself.

I think, "I don't want to disturb that person unnecessarily. They'll probably notice the light soon. It's no big deal for me to wait a while." I don't act the way I do because of some religious commandment. It just seems right.

But what if a supposedly holy book that lots of people believed in said, "Thou shalt honk when a driver fails to start off immediately when the light changes."

An intuitive sense of right and wrong, which in Oregon at least (don't know about New York City) generally manifests as patience, would be replaced with an artificial code of behavior that isn't as caring and compassionate.

The idea that people are selfish creatures whose negative tendencies are held in check only by religious authority isn't borne out by facts. Our social nature, honed by evolution, urges us toward cooperation and mutual back-scratching.

Religion says "Love your neighbor." But we already knew and felt that. Religion also says, "Do this because you're told to." Man-made commandments get mistaken for genuinely moral principles, leading to religiously inspired craziness.]

Proof of life after death? Not yet.

If truth can't be found on Google, it must not exist. That's my cyberspace-centric view of reality. So here's the result of my hour or so of Googling the question: is there persuasive scientific evidence of life after death?

Short answer: no. As some commenters (one of whom was me) on my "Life is a mystery. Afterlife, ditto" post observed, if such evidence existed, it'd be trumpeted to the heavens – plus the front pages.

Now, quite a few people believe that scientists and the media are censoring evidence of life after death. Such as this guy.

There are two expert opinions as to what so-called paranormal phenomena are, but in this "free" country the British people are only allowed access to the explanation that is politically correct, the first version that is listed below, because it is no danger to the powerful religious and scientific establishments.

Huh? It's difficult to believe that scientists, who are as egotistical and ambitious as everyone else, are willfully ignoring evidence for what would be the biggest discovery of all time – the survival of individual consciousness.

And I'm not sure why religious authorities would be opposed to this truth being revealed either, though I suppose the monotheistic religions could be threatened by someone (maybe everyone) surviving bodily death without the aid of Jesus, Allah, or God.

So if evidence for life after death was as strong as believers in the paranormal and psychic phenomena make it out to be, we'd know about it.

For sure, web sites like the Survival Research Institute of Canada would feature that evidence. Yet I read:

Today there is a growing body of evidence suggestive of life after death, including near-death experiences, death-bed visions, spontaneous apparitions, and spirit communication through mediums. While personal survival of death has yet to be scientifically proven, the potential implications of the evidence to date for philosophy, psychology, science and religion are enormous.

OK, granted. Enormous isn't a big enough word. But let's also pay attention to other words here: "growing," "suggestive," "has yet to be," "potential."

What would it take for this evidence to become strong enough to pass over into a validated scientific theory? Hard to say. To me, there's a difference between (1) life after death and (2) consciousness separate from a body.

Seemingly brain-dependent consciousness could be capable of perceiving events that aren't known to the bodily senses. I don't know how this would happen, obviously, but extrasensory perception doesn't seem to necessarily imply survival of consciousness after death.

Still, near-death experiences are deeply interesting to most people – since we're all going to die without the "near" one day. It makes sense that coming close to death, and returning to tell the tale, would offer insights into the real deal.

I found a Scientific Evidence for Survival web site that was nicely organized. I haven't checked out the 53 categories of evidence very closely, but appreciated that links to supporting information (which I'd bet isn't entirely scientific) were included.

Nonetheless, even this site says:

A scientifically controlled NDE that can be repeated which provides such evidence would be the scientific discovery of all time. However, science does not yet have the exact tools to accomplish this. But, science is coming very, very close. This kind of evidence and others provide very strong circumstantial evidence for the survival of consciousness.

"Circumstantial." Another sign that even those who believe in the survival of consciousness after death recognize this can't be proven to skeptics.

TIME magazine ran an article in 2007, "The Science of Near-Death Experiences." I was curious to see what conclusions a mainstream news organization, armed with fact checkers and hyperbole averse editors, would come to.

Clearly, NDE's are a mystery. Much more needs to be learned about them.

A flat electroencephalogram (EEG) recording doesn't suggest mere impairment. It points to the brain having shut down. Longtime NDE researcher Pim van Lommel, a retired Dutch cardiologist, has likened the brain in this state to a "computer with its power source unplugged and its circuits detached. It couldn't hallucinate. It couldn't do anything at all."

Yet it's in this period, between switch-off and resuscitation, that many researchers believe NDEs occur. "Many near-death experiencers describe heightened perceptions and clear thought processes, and form memories, at a time when the brain is incapable of coordinated activity," says Greyson, director of the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies. "Our current neurophysiological models can explain NDEs only if one ignores much of the empirical data."

Yet materialistic explanations still are credible.

Science is trying to solidify the brain-based theory of NDEs, which goes something like this: Survival is our most powerful instinct. When the heart stops and oxygen is cut, the brain goes into all-out defense. Torrents of neurotransmitters are randomly generated, releasing countless fragmentary images and feelings from the memory-storing temporal lobes. Perhaps the life review is the brain frantically scanning its memory banks for a way out of this crisis. The images of a bright light and tunnel could be due to impairment at the rear and sides of the brain respectively, while the euphoria may be a neurochemical anti-panic mechanism triggered by extreme danger.

The article's final paragraph pointed in a certain direction, but reflected the uncertainty of life, death, and consciousness.

On balance, it's almost certain that NDEs happen in the theater of one's mind, and that in the absence of resuscitation, it's the brain's final sound and light show, followed by oblivion. Nonetheless, there's still no definitive explanation. There mightn't be a ghost in the machine. But it's a machine whose complexities remain well beyond our grasp.

We don't know what happens after death. That bit of knowledge is worth keeping in mind. So long as we have one.

Life is a mystery. Afterlife, ditto.

I like how Zen talks about the need for a "great ball of doubt." It seems like I should have enjoyed a satori by now, my doubt is so balled up.

Some days more than others. This was a good doubting day.

I just had an interview with my Zen master, who, conveniently, is myself (makes it easy to get appointments). He reviewed the enigmatic koans that life presented me on this Sunday, along with my responses.

I think he was pleased. But I can't say for sure. That doubt thing, you know.

Sundays usually follow a fairly predictable routine for me – breakfast at home, coffee at Starbucks with friends, exercising at athletic club, napping and chores. Today was way different.

Which got me to thinking: if it's so tough to figure out what's going to happen moment to moment here in this material world, how the heck can anyone believe they've got the afterlife figured out?

When I walked into Starbucks and didn't see anyone familiar there, "Mother's Day" popped into my mind. My mother being dead and gone who knows where, I'd forgotten that spending the day with Mom is what this May 11 means for a lot of people.

Including, apparently, my usual coffee klatch group.

Well, no problem. Starbucks still was pleased to sell a skinny venti vanilla latte to me, along with a New York Times. A third of my way into the latte an older woman walks over to my chair. Sort of eccentric looking. With purple fingernails.

One bit of small talk from her: "Nice shirt." "Thank you." Then: "Do you have a phone?" "Yes." "Can I borrow it for a local call?" "Sure."

Never happened to me in Starbucks before. But then, lots of things happen that never have happened to me before. Well, everything, in fact. Same for everybody. We just get lulled into the illusory quasi-predictability of life.

The woman went back to her table. She fiddled with my phone for quite a while. At one point she asked, "Do you have a watch?" "Yes." "What time is it?" "12:15"

I never heard her actually talk to anybody. I pictured her putting my phone into her purse and walking off with it. I wondered how I'd get it back. The way it happened was, she walked over and handed it to me. So predictable, it surprised me.

Turned out I needed the phone again, a few minutes later. A barista steps out from behind the counter and yells, "Anyone named 'Brian' here?" "Yes."

She walked over. "Your wife just called. Some sort of water emergency. She wants you to phone home."

Laurel and I never turn on our cell phones except when we need to make a call. So she found me via Starbucks. Another first.

After talking with Laurel I knew that the day was going to be even less predictable than I'd already found it to be. Gigantic bursts of air, and not much water, was coming out of our pipes.

Living in the country, with a well connected to a complex mass of water treatment equipment – softener, iron filter, ph adjuster, ozonator – we're used to dealing with water problems. This one, though, was beyond Laurel's ability to handle herself.

The man of the house was needed. I fired up the Prius and headed home.

Where I spent the next four hours dealing with mystery after mystery, aided in my quest by a couple of phone consultations with the guys who installed our water treatment system.

My usual fix for air in the pipes (disconnect ozonator solenoid; dislodge debris with paper clip) didn't work. More drastic measures had to be taken, stretching my minimalist plumbing skills.

Another trip into town to the hardware store to buy an O-ring became obviously necessary when water sprayed into my face after turning the system on, expecting that I'd solved the problem, only to find that the original problem had morphing into a fresh form.

Throughout, I was surprised at how serene I remained.

My churchless soul didn't see this, as it once would have, as: karma to be gone through, an opportunity to practice detachment from worldly concerns, or a test of my ability to perform selfless husbandly service.

It just was life. Stuff happens. Unpredictable stuff. Stuff with no meaning other than the need to deal with it.

A few weeks ago the Religion columnist in our local newspaper, Hank Arends, quoted Salem's Unitarian Universalist minister, Rev. Rick Davis. Davis likes to break out of conversational ruts. Recently, when he checked into the church office by phone he'd ask the office administrator, "What is the meaning of life?"

She ducked the question for several days, then answered: "To reflect the Divine Light into Earth's dark places." Here's what Davis said in the newsletter.

This answer provides a good 'purpose' for life but dodges the question about the 'meaning' of life. Seems to me that question is an imposition of a human concept upon a universe that doesn't operate according to our limited frameworks of understanding.

That's for sure.

We strive to find meaning in events because their unpredictability threatens our humancentric position at the center of existence. There's got to be some purpose, some master plan, some reason behind a malfunctioning water treatment system that consumes my entire afternoon, right?

No. Life can just be what it is. Arends continued:

By getting so involved in studying for the meaning of life, one could consume years of time and thereby miss life itself. Davis pointed to those who questioned Buddha with abstract metaphysical questions.

In response, Buddha said in essence: "Knock it off. You can endlessly speculate about such matters but that will not add to the quality of your present condition. Be aware. Pay attention. Wake up."

That's all we can do, really. Moment to moment, life is a mystery. The afterlife, infinitely more so, since we don't have any history, any regularities, any experience to base a prediction on.

Driving home after picking up the O-ring I tuned to the Oregon State baseball game with UCLA. OSU won the national championship the past two years, but the team has been slumping recently.

They were behind 7-4 in the top of the eighth. Bummer. Oregon State needed a win to take the weekend series and bolster their chances for post-season play. I figured I'd open up the paper tomorrow and read about another disappointing loss.

I turned on the radio on my third trip into town today, finally getting to get to my Sunday athletic club workout after mastering the mystery of the ozonator problem. First words I heard were…

"One of the greatest baseball games I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot. Unbelievable – a grand slam home run in the bottom of the eighth with one out. Then a double play in the ninth to seal the win."

Life. Who can figure it? When religious true believers say they can, don't believe them.

Unless they can reliably predict the outcomes of baseball games with one out in the eighth. And whether, when I'm sitting in Starbucks peacefully drinking a latte, I'll soon find myself playing with plumbing.

Being absolutely right, you’re wrong

You can't have "right" without "wrong." So if what you say is absolutely 100% certain, no doubt about it – that can't be true.

The Taoists figured this out a long time ago. Yin requires yang. Up needs down. Truth depends on falsity.

Much more recently, Karl Popper made falsifiability the cornerstone of what distinguishes a scientific theory. I echoed his ideas in "If a religion can't be wrong, it surely is."

I keep coming back to this notion, because both intuitively and logically it appeals to me. Sure, something may be real, yet improvable or indescribable.

Existence, for example. "What is, is." That statement sounds marvelously correct. And it is. But it doesn't mean anything. Not really.

"The Dream Weaver," a book I'm reading now, talks about words without meaning.

Basically, when you use a word, it needs a criterion. There must be a way to use the word incorrectly. It can't be the case that everything is selfish, or that everything is natural. If that were the case, then the word would become meaningless. If everything were considered natural, what would be the point of asking, Is this thing natural? It's sort of paradoxical in a way: I create a word that means everything and, in doing so, it means nothing.

Now, I'm fine with indescribable meaninglessness. That could well be the most meaningful thing in the world. Lots of experiences just are what they are – incommunicable to anyone else, but filled with Wow! for the experiencer.

Like the Greeks, we need to distinguish Truth from Beauty. A rose is a rose is a rose. That's beauty. Water is two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen. That's truth.

A rose can't be anything other than a rose. Several molecules can be something other than water.

Similarly, much religious or metaphysical dogma can't be wrong because words are used in a way that defy falsification.

"God is everything."
"Consciousness is all."
"Whatever happens has to happen."
"A perfect guru never makes a mistake."
"Everything is destined."
"The world is illusion."
"Jesus is coming."

In each case, someone making the statement can't be pinned down if you try to show they could be wrong. They always have a way to wriggle out from skepticism because there's no "there" to what they're saying.

As I noted before, Eastern philosophies and religions are as prone to this as Western ones are. The Bible is true because it says in the Bible, "This is the word of God." The guru is perfect because his predecessor was flawless, and perfect gurus can't err when they appoint a successor.

Whenever I run up against words that can't be wrong, I start to lose interest in them – since they can't be right.

This explains why I've found myself gritting my teeth and filling the margins with question marks as I make my way through the last chapters of "Consciousness is All," a book that started off more interestingly than it is ending up for me.

In the beginning I liked how the author directed my attention to how awareness works. But when he turned to saying (over and over, in various ways) that everything is consciousness, it sounded just the same as "God is love."

Religious. Dogmatic. Meaningless.

Yet those words sound so wonderful. They explain it all! Karl Popper writes:

I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated.

Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. This its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still "un-analysed" and crying aloud for treatment.

Recently there's been quite a bit of discussion on this blog about awareness. This can be another example of a word that doesn't mean anything, yet can seem deeply meaningful.

Yes, without awareness we can't be aware of anything. And without existence, nothing exists. Nor would life be lively if we weren't alive.

These are realities – awareness, existence, life. But they're not truths, not in any sort of scientific, logical, or evidentiary sense, because there is no untruth to which they can be contrasted.

How could I be aware of unawareness, or exist as nonexistence, or live a non-life? If such were possible, then speaking of these contraries would have some purpose.

As it is, discussions of these subjects can end up sounding to me like the oft-heard quote on sports radio: "It is what it is." (frequently spoken after a devastating loss or embarrassing athletic moment)

Don't get me wrong: there's nothing more interesting to me than awareness, existence, and life. That's because I've got a huge interest in being aware of existing after I stop living my life.

It's just that when I hear talk of "awareness never ends" it strikes me as no different in kind from "Jesus saves." Namely, a belief that can't be tested. At least, not in this life – which is the only life I can be sure of.

While I have a fondness for philosophies that assure me life is just fine exactly the way it is, and I don't need to do anything about it, I'm skeptical about whether there's any meaning to these assurances beyond the warm, fuzzy feeling they produce in my often-anxious soul.

Zen tells me, "first there is a mountain; then there isn't; then there is." I also have heard that the world appears just the same to an enlightened sage as an unenlightened fool. So why not remain a fool if there's no way to tell the difference?

In the end, there could well be no beginning and no end. But so long as we're not there, isn't there a "here" as well as a "there"?

[Note: Popper's proposition that falsifiability is what distinguishes science isn't universally accepted, for sure. See here and here (scroll down to Goldstein).

But even though I don't claim to fully understand the objections to his view, one reason seems to be that falsifying isn't what scientists really do, mostly. They set out to prove rather than disprove.

Fine. I'd be just as happy if metaphysical propositions could be proven to be true, rather than capable of being shown to be false. Sort of seems like the same difference to me, but someone more knowledgeable is free to prove me wrong.]

Update: This blogger has a nice take on falsifiability, viewing it as a necessary but not sufficient condition for a scientific hypothesis.

Which raises the question…if you hold to a metaphysical, spiritual, or religious belief, what would it take for you to admit, "I'm wrong"?

If you can't come up with an answer, that belief either is blind faith or not really anything capable of being believed (as noted above, awareness, existence, and life are outside the arena of belief, being pre-requisites for playing the game).

I know I’m right about uncertainty

Ooh! It feels so good to have my view of life confirmed. Today someone sent me a link to "On Being Certain," which talks about a book with the same name by Robert Burton, M.D.

It's subtitle is believing you are right even when you're not. Nice!

Not that it applies to me. Because I know I'm right about uncertainty. Why, I've read marvelous blog posts about this subject, each of which, I'm pleased to say, was written by me (see here, here, here, and here).

And now I learn from a description of Burton's book that science shows I've been even more right than I thought I was.

You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001--you know these things, well, because you just do.

In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know. He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge. In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact. Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason. But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen.

I get an enjoyable tingle up my spine (caused by a primitive area of my brain?) when I hear about how uncertainty rules the mental roost.

Of course, part of that good feeling comes from a sensation of it's good to be able to depend on something…I mean, nothing.

Regardless, this shows that I'm much more of a Taoist than a fundamentalist. In Taoist writings people jump into raging rivers, bounce around in the current, then emerge with advice for those watching with wide-eyed amazement from the bank.

"Just go with the flow, dude." (or words to that effect)

This seems a lot closer to how life really is than the "find a path and stick to it" philosophy. But the author of the "On Being Certain" article, Harriet Hall, says that some may be genetically predisposed to embracing certainty.

Richard Feynman said, "I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things… It doesn't frighten me."

On the other hand, many people, especially religious fundamentalists, can't deal with uncertainty. They demand absolute answers and cling to their certainties even in the face of contrary evidence. Why are people so different in their need for certainty? We know there is a gene associated with risk-taking and novelty-seeking. Burton makes an intriguing suggestion: could genetic differences make individuals get different degrees of pleasure out of the feeling of knowing?

I can't quite figure out the connection between all this and another story I read this morning that, intuitively, seems deeply significant to me: "Wine's Pleasures: Are They All in Your Head?"

But I'm certain there is one.

I started drinking red wine only a few years ago. It didn't take me long to realize that the descriptions on the back of the bottle bore little resemblance to how the wine tasted to me.

As the article says, one description of an Argentine red goes: "Dark and rich, with lots of fig bread, mocha, ganache, prune and loam notes. Stays fine-grained on the finish, with lingering sage and toast hints."

Toast? Mostly me and my wife get tongue-tied after we say, "Um. Good."

I was pleased to read that price doesn't relate much to quality when it comes to wine. What counts more is that the imbiber believes he or she is drinking an expensive bottle. Thoughts of high cost translate into yum, apparently.

Much like religion.

Feeling you're part of a rare and exclusive spiritual vintage adds much to its enjoyment. The religious equivalent of Two-Buck Chuck (which was equal to a $55 cabernet in a taste test) often doesn't have the same appeal.

But it can.

Just as understanding when to dress up and when to dress down is intuitive for many people, so, too, does it become instinctive over time for wine lovers to know which is the proper bottle to open. But that requires experience of many different wines. Eventually the novelty of great wines, or expensive wines, can wear off.

"Sometimes a great Beaujolais is a better choice than La Tâche," said Nathan Vandergrift, a statistical researcher at the University of California at Irvine, who has seen the wine business as a retailer, an importer and distributor, and most recently as a blogger at the Vulgar Little Monkey Translucency Report. Mr. Vandergrift has had plenty of Beaujolais, and a fair amount of La Tâche, one of the most highly sought wines in the world.

Would that we all could achieve that sense of freedom and zen-like serenity, where we've had our fill of all else and can simply choose the right wine because it's the right wine.

Start with mystery closest to home

I've been enjoying recent Church of the Churchless comment conversations, here, here, and here (plus a few other post places).

In this regard, I want to mention that I keep on telling TypePad, which hosts this blog, that they need to improve their comment features. It bugs me that only the ten most recent comments are shown on the left sidebar, and that it isn't possible for visitors to search through previous comments (I can, but others can't).

TypePad assures me that they'll get around to this. Someday. Guess I need to have faith.

Which brings me to a thought that's been stimulated by what others have been saying in their comments – and usually is front and center in my own questioning mind: What can we know for sure?

Really, not much. Even science recognizes this, because every scientific theory is provisional. Meaning, it can be falsified if new evidence comes along.

With religion, spirituality, mysticism, and philosophy, the knowing is even less certain. Here beliefs rather than observations predominate. And beliefs, being mental, always can be refuted by someone with a different mentality.

"Jesus died for our sins so that we may be born again and reside with our Father in Heaven."
"Prove it."
"It's a matter of faith."
"No, it's a matter of bullshit."

So it goes in the arena of belief. Nobody can be declared a winner, except by those who refuse to recognize the other contestants.

God remains a mystery. We don't know whether God exists. So obviously we also don't know how God might exist. Yet every religion and spiritual path believes that it has the answer, ignoring the evident fact of mystery.

As many commenters keep saying, either directly or indirectly, it makes sense to start from the other direction: with another mystery much closer to home. So close, it's right before our eyes. In fact, it is our eyes – plus every other sensory organ.

Because it's awareness, or consciousness. This is just as much a mystery as God is.

Science has no idea (though notions abound) as to how consciousness arises or what it is, really. Much is known about brain functions related to mental events, but the hard problem of consciousness — what is awareness? — shows no sign of being resolved.

Why not start here, if you're a spiritual seeker? Why speculate about far off divinities or heavens when you've got an equally peachy-keen gigantic mystery right here?

I'm aware. You're aware. That's so freaking amazing (and also the most natural thing in the world) that there's no need to look beyond awareness if we're wanting to grasp What It Is All About.

This morning I picked up one of my favorite books, "Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi." The first chapter starts off by talking about the mystery of awareness.

The essence of Sri Raman's teachings is conveyed in his frequent assertions that there is a single immanent reality, directly experienced by everyone, which is simultaneously the source, the substance, and the real nature of everything that exists.

He gave it a number of different names, each one signifying a different aspect of the same indivisible reality. The following classification includes all of his most common synonyms and explains the implications of the various terms used.

1. The Self. This is the term that he used the most frequently. He defined it by saying that the real Self or real "I" is, contrary to perceptible experience, not an experience of individuality but a non-personal, all-inclusive awareness. It is not to be confused with the individual self which he said was essentially non-existent, being a fabrication of the mind which obscures the true experience of the real Self.

He maintained that the real Self is always present and always experienced but he emphasized that one is only consciously aware of it as it really is when the self-limiting tendencies of the mind have ceased. Permanent and continuous Self-awareness is known as Self-realization.

Now, there's quite a bit in "Be As You Are" that, in my opinion, edges into esoteric Indian mysticism and beliefs that need to be taken on faith.

But it's impossible to argue with the fact that each of us is aware. And this is a mystery that holds the key to every other mystery – because consciousness is a prerequisite for being conscious of anything.

For a long time I've had an itch to write a book called "My Best Guess About God." Because that's all I have: speculations on the subject. There'd be one line in the book, though, that would be incontestable.

And cribbed from Descartes. Who echoes a multitude of other philosophers, mystics, and sages across the ages.

"I'm not sure about anything except that I am aware…of not being sure about anything."

Each of us has to start from somewhere. Awareness. Whether we ever can move from this place is exceedingly unlikely. In fact, impossible.

So religious dogmas that skip over this evident fact are worthless. They ignore the mystery (many would say, divinity) of our own self and would have us believe in artificial human conceptions rather than the most natural thing in existence.

Consciousness of existence.

Critics are our best spiritual friends

The worst thing about belief? In one way or another, it's always unbelievable.

The best thing about belief? When the unbelievable is stripped away, you're likely to be pointed toward truth.

So strippers – no, not that kind (sadly) – are all-important on a spiritual journey. Without them, religious or other sorts of dogma are accepted uncritically, leaving us wandering in a maze where every path leads anywhere you believe it will.

The Indian guru I began to follow in 1971, Charan Singh, was fond of saying: "Critics are our best friends." His disciples would nod, seemingly taking the words to mean that criticism can help make us humble.

True. But it's possible to embrace spiritual criticism more deeply, in a fashion that has the potential to change the entire direction in which we're moving (as opposed to merely proceeding in the same direction less egotistically).

This requires a lot more openness. And yes, humility. It means accepting the possibility that cherished beliefs you've held for many years, perhaps for most of your life, are just that: beliefs.

Not the truth.

Recently I've been alternating between reading two books before my morning meditation. One I've written about before in several posts, "Consciousness is All" by Peter Dziuban.

The title, not surprisingly, says it all about the book. Dziuban is an enthusiastic advocate of the notion that consciousness is the sole reality. So enthusiastic, often his advaitish, non-dual outlook seems uncomfortably dogmatic to me.

When that happens I put down his book and pick up "The Dream Weaver" by Jack Bowen. He's a philosopher.

Philosophers often are put down by spiritual types because they think and reason a lot. As if that's a bad thing. What's forgotten is that beliefs also are thoughts. Unexamined thoughts. Uncritically accepted thoughts.

What philosophical examination can do, and often does very well, is strip away the seemingly solid foundation of a belief structure. Bowen does this skillfully in his book.

So far I've read chapters about "Knowledge," "Self, Mind, Soul," "Science," and "God." With each subject I'm left with questions rather than answers. Ideas that seem to make sense are shown to be nonsensical from a different perspective.

For example, I came across a critique that pertains to the consciousness is all belief – which, for Dziuban, assumes that awareness is separate and distinct both from what one is aware of and also the brain/body.

Look at the clouds. It would be wrong to say that clouds have water in them, separate from them. Clouds are water – condensed water. There's no water separate from clouds, or clouds separate from water. We'd be wrong to say, "I have a mind and a brain" just like we'd be wrong to say "Look at the cloud and the water" or, "Look at the water and the H-two-O."

Your "mind is indivisible" argument assumes that the mind exists to begin with. If the mind doesn't exist, then it can't be indivisible. Just like little invisible Martians under your bed can't be red if they don't exist.

Just because someone perceives two things differently, doesn't