Church of the Churchless

Lowering our spiritual center of gravity

I was walking along the Metolius river in central Oregon, semi-lost in thought. Which isn't unusual for me. Like most people, I spend a lot of my day focused on what's going on inside my head.

That's as far from earth level as my six foot bodily consciousness can rise.

Since I've been reading "Tajiquan Theory" in the morning before I meditate, some Taoist lessons came to mind.

Breathe. Focus on your abdominal center, the lower dan tian. Simply be aware. Without thought.

I've heard this in each of the Tai Chi classes that I've been taking for three and a half years. "Rise from above. Sink from below."

Where does that leave you? Centered. Often we carry a lot of tension in our upper arms and shoulders. Letting it go, relaxing the elbows, softening the knees, we settle into a comfortable wu chi stance, rooted.

As in the Tai Chi dojo, so on the riverside trail.

Attention to a few breaths, feeling my abdomen expand on the inhale, contract on the exhale, and my psyche was several feet lower, seemingly. I wasn't teetering along inside wobbly mental confines any longer. Nature and me were much more intimately connected.

That's how I've been feeling ever since I entered my churchless phase: more attuned to the world that exists outside of conceptual thought.

Or at least, on the far edges of it – since I'm not sure that it's possible to completely separate sensation from cognition. The human brain isn't wired in such a dualistic fashion.

It's strange that I hear so frequently, "Brian, you think too much." This advice (or criticism) usually comes from true believers who question my leaving a religious fold. They view themselves as having gone beyond thought into pure spiritual experience.

Yeah, right. I don't see it this way at all. And I feel like I know whereof I speak, because I've been there and done that – the true believing thing.

Belief involves thought. So does faith. Each adds on something to direct experience that isn't naturally there. A complex conceptual superstructure is constructed on top of simple sensation, leaving the psyche top-weighted.

Christians believe in the presence of Jesus. But there's no Jesus actually there in prayer or a church service. Without all the dogma and theology of Christianity, Jesus wouldn't exist. He's only evident when the thought of a believer is active.

Same with guru worship in Eastern faiths, something I know a lot about. The elevation devotees feel in the presence of the guru comes from believing in his (or, rarely, her) divinity. No belief, no elevation.

It's all in the head, another example of top-weighted experiencing. This was the point of my "Did I see God in first class?" post. The ahhhhh from being a few feet away from a purported God-man erupted only from those who believed in him.

By contrast, when I walk along the Metolius there's no believing involved in recognizing the river's beauty. My thoughts keep me from fully experiencing what's really there, rather than being essential ingredients of the experience – as is the case with Jesus or guru worship.

There's nothing wrong with thinking. But when it's the foundation of religious or spiritual faith, we're out of balance, way up there in our own head, not grounded in natural reality.

I'll end with some Alan Watts.

The first element of Chinese Taoist yoga is to stop talking to yourself. Don't explain the world…So one has to get to the nameless state, the nonthinking state, which is called in Chinese wu nien. Wu means "not" and nien means "the heart-mind."

…Now, you will find, if you try, that it is a very difficult thing indeed to stop thinking. "Stopping thinking" doesn't mean to stop using your eyes and your ears and your hands and all your senses. It means that when you see a dog, you don't say "dog" to yourself; you just see what is there. The Buddhists call this the state of suchness.

…When in ancient texts of mysticism you read that it is necessary to go beyond the senses, that necessity can very easily be misunderstood. The texts are not saying that it is the senses – the eyes, the ears, and so on – that falsify.

It is our conceptions of what the eyes and the ears bring to us that cause the falsification…The splendor of a river is that it is the meaning and has none, and there is about it a quality of meaninglessness, of having no meaning and yet being meaning to all nature.

Feeling alive, undeadened by religion

Some more Maui meditations...following up on "Big waves, small waves: no difference?"

I enjoyed the comments on this post. I agree: splitting reality up into awareness and what we're aware of – how is this not another duality that the consciousness is all philosophy tries to get away from?

Reading further this morning into Peter Dziuban's book by the same name, my consciousness made clearer by Kona coffee, I'm struck by how Awareness (with a capital "A") can be made into an abstract divinity with pretty much the same characteristics as God.

I've never been aware of Pure Awareness, unsullied by anything I'm aware of. And I strongly suspect that neither Dziuban nor anyone else ever has either.

Yet somehow I'm supposed to consider this the really real reality, even though it is nowhere apparent. I'm supposed to view what my senses tell me as akin to images on a movie screen: passing, ephemeral, lacking unchanging being.

But where is this Being that Dziuban (and Plato, among many others) talk about? How can it be separated from my here and now awareness, which contains many beings, me included, naturally?

Methinks too much can be made of what most probably either is (1) so absolutely simple, we aren't recognizing it as such or (2) so absolutely different, we aren't looking in the right place.

Whatever.

I'm not interested in trading away the aliveness of the present moment for deadening promises that later, someday, tomorrow, after death, eventually, I'll be aware of something other than what I'm conscious of now.

Laurel and I went on a Pacific Whale Foundation sunset dinner cruise yesterday. It sure seemed real. But the whole time I was only aware of what my senses, thoughts, and emotions conveyed to me – not Awareness itself.

Which was good, because if I'd been in a state of Pure Awareness I would have missed the whales and dolphins that appeared next to the boat (against the odds, according to my experienced captain, given that only a couple of whales are still hanging around Maui).

I'm not denying the possibility that consciousness is separate from the body that each of us is (or at least, seems to be) at the moment.

But every time Dzuiban approaches the central question about consciousness that I raised earlier, it gets skirted. Here's an excerpt from a chapter I read today:

A question that may arise based on all of the preceding might go like the following:

"If the mind is not inside a body or brain, then why does the mind's activity stop when the body is anesthetized? How could anesthesia affect the mind if the mind is not there? And if the mind isn't in the brain, then why don't the mind and body function just as well when the brain is damaged or removed?"

Great questions. No good answer. This one leaves a lot to be desired.

So if it appears the state of a "body" is altered via chemical anesthesia or surgery, naturally the state of the "mind" will appear altered too, for it is all the same, one "stuff." It is not because a mind is inside a body…This book is not denying that such things seem to occur.

Well, as I said before I'm not big on relying on quotation marks to define reality. If I seem to be unaware when I'm anesthetized, a literary device – making it into "mind"—doesn't change the situation for me. Or anyone else.

Feeling alive. Isn't this what life should be about? When I'm catching a wave on my boogie board, soaring down a zipline, or watching a whale surface nearby, I'm absorbed in the moment.

I'm not anticipating the future or remembering the past. For me, this is where the feeling of increased aliveness comes from: being here and now, fully.

Positing some state of Being separate and distinct from what's present, this is the province of religion – whether it be a monotheistic creed or a philosophic exaltation of "consciousness is all."

Way back in the '60s I grooved over Be Here Now. I haven't moved much, if anywhere, since. How could I?

When I’m unconscious, why aren’t I enlightened?

My second straight post with a question mark in the title. I still don't know if awareness can be aware of nothing, so I'll extend my ignorance by talking about what happens when we're unaware of everything.

Like, under anesthesia. Or after being hit on the head with a baseball bat. Or in deep dreamless sleep.This latter state is particularly praised by Advaitist sages such as Ramana.

I like Ramana a lot. But whenever he extols dreamless sleep as being akin to a realized consciousness, I'll pause in my reading and think: Gosh, I'm not sure I want to be enlightened if it means I'm unaware of everything.

What's the difference between being (1) dead and gone and (2) alive and unconscious? Not much.

That's why lots of people have signed living wills that allow life support to be withdrawn if they're in an irreversible persistent vegetative state.

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm reading "Consciousness is All" while here on Maui. A good book, creatively and intelligently written, very much in the Advaita tradition – but without the Indian cultural trappings (which appeals to me).

Today I made my way through the "Consciousness is not the 'human mind'" chapter. In arguing that consciousness isn't tied to the body, Peter Dziuban said:

This point can be illustrated by this typical human assumption: "Consciousness has to be inside the body. Why? Well, suppose my body had surgery, and was given heavy anesthesia. Or suppose my body got knocked out. In each case I would be 'unconscious' or 'unaware.' When any of those things happen to my body, Consciousness stops functioning – at least temporarily – so Consciousness must be inside the body."

First, a literary quibble. I understand the purpose of the quotation marks around 'unconscious' and 'unaware.' But they don't change the fact that when I got my tonsils out as a kid and had an ether-soaked cloth put over my nose, I really was unconscious and unaware for quite a while.

Similarly, you could say that when I take my last breath I'll be "dead." Well, it's sort of nice to see those not really quotation marks again. However, they're not going to change the reality of the situation.

Which, for the anesthesia and knocked out examples, Dziuban sees differently from me.

In such cases something seems to cease functioning, of course. But it is not Consciousness, the Infinite that stops. It is the so-called human, sensing "mind," or that which is finite, that stops. They're not the same.

…In other words, it would be everything one appears to be conscious of that gets disrupted, not Consciousness Itself. It would be everything observable that gets knocked out. Consciousness Itself never is observable to begin with – because it's infinite! So the fact that everything observable seems to have gone doesn't mean Consciousness itself has gone.

Though I'm attracted to Advaitist and non-dual approaches, this is where they and me start to part company: when I'm asked to have what sounds like blind faith in infinite Consciousness. How is this different from blind faith in God?

I mean, I'm unconscious. I'm unaware. Yet supposedly Consciousness and Awareness (the capital letters signifying their universality) proceed on their merry way.

They're still there. They just can't be observed. Well, if consciousness is all, as the title of the book says, why isn't it more noticeable rather than less when the obscuring physical body and mind are removed from play?

In other words, why doesn't being knocked out with a baseball bat lead to enlightenment? Now that the senses aren't working and thoughts have stopped being produced by the mind, shouldn't the purity of Awareness shine much more clearly?

Conceptually (and I know: concepts are a no-no in nonduality) this is a big problem for Consciousness is Everything folks. As for those who believe that immaterial soul consciousness is the true Self.

Again, why isn't the soul's intrinsic awareness evident when the normal functioning of brain/mind is interrupted? What happens is just the opposite. We become much less conscious and aware when the body isn't functioning as usual.

On this note I'll end with a pointer to an interesting post by Manjit on the Church of the Churchless message board, who also tilts strongly toward non-duality, but has some reservations about it. An excerpt:

Midway through a 4 week mini meditational home retreat, checking my emails and reading the posts on the main blog, I thought I'd add my personal understandings of the value of 'spiritual practice'.

Spiritual practice specifically in relation to the absolutist, pure non-dual and so-called 'neo-advatist' etc, views or positions. A View that is promoted by so many, including myself on occassion, on the ChurchoftheChurchless blog. More specifically, the complete and total dismissal of any kind of  'spiritual practice' whatsoever, with a kind of implied belief that by simply adopting that View, it will in and of itself resolve all the various factors which lead to the primal suffering/existential angst/incompleteness etc, which caused one to 'seek' or search for spiritual peace or God or whatever.

Having myself often expressed myself with this 'View' too, it may seem strange or contradictory when I say that sometimes this View comes across as rather hollow or shallow sounding? Even stranger, from my perspective, and I have considered it deeply, it is entirely integral!

In the end, what the @#$%&! do I know? Or any of us knows? Maybe a lot. Maybe nothing.

Today I enjoyed Mark Morford's column about the Earth singing its own music, along with the entire cosmos.

Me, I like to think of the Earth as essentially a giant Tibetan singing bowl, flicked by the middle finger of God and set to a mesmerizing, low ring for about 10 billion years until the tone begins to fade and the vibration slows and eventually the sound completely disappears into nothingness and the birds are all, hey what the hell happened to the music? And God just shrugs and goes, well that was interesting.

Yeah, for sure.

Each of us gets a lot less time than the Earth to ring (maybe). Regardless, when our tone comes to an end, at least we can also say, "well that was interesting."

Can awareness be aware of nothing?

My wife and I are in Maui. We've overcome a lot of struggles to get here, as documented in "From snow to sunshine with snafus."

For example, our first class upgrades didn't get us much of a vegetarian meal on Hawaiian Airlines. The Buddha was right: life is suffering.

I like to keep things simple on Maui. Today we sat in some shade on the beach until the mid-day sun drove us into the ocean -- Laurel to snorkel, me to swim back and forth across Napili Bay.

When to lie on the sand; when to go in the water. Of such Big Questions a vacation should be made of.

It's also another good time to work on my Wu. Which involves a query of more cosmic proportions than our beach dilemma. Namely, can awareness be aware of nothing?

Intuitively, I doubt it. But as I so often say on this blog, what do I know?

My Wu Project, or anybody's, necessarily hits a major roadblock if the answer is "No." Seeking the root of whatever lies at the bottom (or top, or middle) Of It All, one is left with something within consciousness – a duality of (1) something and (2) consciousness of that thing.

I brought with me a new book, "Consciousness is All." I figured, correctly, that it'd blend nicely with the mellow buzz of my cup of Kona coffee in the morning, and more generally, with the whole laid back Maui vibe.

The author, Peter Dziuban, has an engaging style. I'm much attracted to what seems to be a complete lack of quotations in his 296 pages. He just says what he thinks, with no corroboration from holy books, gurus, saints, or seers.

After reading just a few chapters I can tell that a central thought regards the reality of pure awareness.

Awareness truly is. For this to be clear, start with pure Awareness, pure Consciousness only – entirely distinct from the body and everything else you seem to be aware of. One who is alert sees that pure Awareness, all by Itself, alone, never changes or goes away.

Hmmm. I don't know about that, though maybe I'm not alert enough to see it. Sure, for every moment of my 59+ years I've been aware (which Dziuban says is synonymous with being conscious).

I've also been aware of something for each of those moments – except when I was unconscious. Then I wasn't aware of anything, including awareness.

I like the notion of pure awareness, of pure consciousness. It just sounds so…pure. And simple. But I can't imagine what it would be like.

Neither, says my skeptical soul, do many (if not all) of the people who talk about it. Again, though, I could be wrong. It just seems to me that pure awareness is like pure existence: a concept.

How empty can awareness or existence be, and still be something that we can be aware of or know as existent? I find it difficult to imagine being aware only of awareness, or of existing solely as existence.

For one thing, it's deeply creepy. Like being dead, yet not quite. Totally alone. A nothing knowing only its nothingness.

But, hey, I'm just 21 pages into Dziuban's book. Maybe things will clear up with more Kona coffee-aided reading. And perhaps the beauty of Maui is what's making me wonder…

Can there be awareness without stuff to be aware of?

Can there be existence without stuff that exists?

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.

Absolute unitary being – nothing that’s really something

AUB. An acronym for the highest reality humans can perceive. Or, more accurately, not perceive – because Absolute Unitary Being isn't anything you can be aware of, because it is awareness without any content other than itself.

This isn't just another wild-eyed, New Age, mystic-religious, or psychedelic inspired bunch of far out fantasizing.

Rather, the notion is founded on some solid science. In the book "The Mystical Mind" that I've been blogging about recently (here, here, and here), physician researchers Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg show how the brain produces experiences that often are termed mystical.

In their opinion, the most mystic experience of all is that of Absolute Unitary Being.

AUB is a state of pure awareness without the perception of discrete reality, without the sense of the passage of time, without the sense of the extension of space, and without the self-other dichotomy. In short, it is pure awareness or awareness without content.

As such, it's the common denominator of every deep form of spirituality or religion, the glue that binds together otherwise disparate philosophies, theologies, and ways of looking at the cosmos.

AUB is analogous to the clear sky across which clouds of all kinds of shapes and sizes move, leading people to look up and say, "That one resembles Mickey Mouse, that one a dog, and there's some large breasts!"

Clearly, in AUB there can be no distinction between what is experienced by different individuals, even from totally different cultures. There may be significant differences in how these experiences are described and interpreted, particularly since they are usually related in terms of the specific cultural and societal milieu from which the experiencer comes.

We maintain, however, that the actual experience of AUB in itself is necessarily the same for any individual who experiences it. This is necessary from a neurophysiological as well as a philosophical perspective. It is necessarily experienced as an infinite, unified, and totally undifferentiated state.

The basic reason for this is that the brain normally does its best to locate the body to which it's connected in time and space. Evolutionarily speaking, this makes great sense. If you're being chased by a saber-toothed tiger, it's important to know exactly where you and the threat are in relation to each other.

But when sensory inputs are shut down, as in closed-eyed quiet meditation (or a sensory deprivation chamber), the brain may do some strange stuff. This is the result of deafferentation, which occurs when incoming information into a brain structure is cut off.

The deafferented neurons, d'Aquili and Newberg say, then begin to function according to their own "internal logic." Here's what happens with the orientation association area.

If this structure is totally deafferented so that it receives no input from the outside world, then it cannot form a sense of space and time abstracted from sensory input. It is still trying, however, to generate an orientation in time and space. It is still working by its internal logic.

It continues to attempt to generate a sense of space and time even without input from the external world to work on. The result is a sense of no space and no time, or conversely it might be described as infinite space and infinite time.

No matter how it is defined, it is the same sensation. The world's mystical literature is replete with experiences of no space and no time or infinite space and infinite time. Therefore, it appears that total or near-total deafferentation of the orientation association area may be involved in the generation of such mystical states.

Note the may. That's how scientists talk. Cautiously, unwilling to bind themselves to a view of the world that makes sense, but hasn't yet been experimentally confirmed to such a degree that it can be termed a valid theory.

However, d'Aquili and Newberg note that functional brain scans of experienced meditators (such as Tibetan Buddhist monks) show the changes that their model of the "mystical brain" predicts.

So, what can we make of all this? To me, it supports my churchless predilections. Because as noted above, AUB is considered to be the highest of mystical states in most traditions (some elevate a "non-dual" consciousness that includes awareness of the physical world to be more elevated than AUB).

A big reason for this is that those who have had an experience of Absolute Unitary Being generally say that it felt a lot more real than everyday reality. They come back changed, as is often the case with those who have a near-death experience.

d'Aquili and Newberg conclude that notwithstanding thousands of years of human pondering about what is real and what isn't, the phenomenological sense of This is real is the best measure of absolute reality. In this article, the authors make their case.

Clearly, baseline reality has some significant claim to being ultimate reality. However, AUB is so compelling that it is very difficult indeed to write off the assertion of its reality. Actually, for individuals having experienced AUB, it seems virtually impossible to negate that experience.

This being the case, it is a foolish reductionism indeed which states that, because unitary consciousness can be understood in terms of neuropsychological processes, it is therefore derivative from baseline reality. Indeed the reverse argument could be made just as well.

Neuropsychology can give no answer as to which state is more real, baseline reality or hyperlucid unitary consciousness often experienced as God. We may be reduced to saying that each is real in its own way and for its own adaptive ends.

It's interesting that people interviewed by d'Aquili and Newberg who have had an AUB experience describe it as neither subjective nor objective. That is, it wasn't a subjective local consciousness, and it wasn't consciousness of objective external reality.

It was something else. Itself. Pure awareness. Thus it's tempting to call it the "ground of being," or some such foundational term.

Well, whatever it is, it sure isn't religious. There's no ritualistic, theological, or personalized content in an experience of Absolute Unitary Being.

No Jesus. No Buddha. No guru. No God. No Allah. No anything that points to a particular religion or spiritual path.

However, some AUB'ers experience it as being suffused with positive affect that leads them to personalize it as "God." Others, such as Buddhists, experience it as suffused with neutral affect and describe it as nonpersonal or void consciousness.

This is one of my few quibbles with d'Aquili and Newberg. Seemingly in an effort to meld personal and impersonal AUB experiences into a single overarching framework, they equate them as reflecting "anterior" and "posterior" natures of God.

Whatever that means. I don't get how an experience of absolute unitary being can be divided into two, or how using the word "God" adds to their scientific explanation of AUB.

But this is a minor quibble. On the whole I've found the notion of absolute unitary being -- the product of specific brain states – to be a marvelous support for a truly scientific spirituality.

One that doesn't seek for ultimate reality "out there" in some mysterious hidden realm known only by revelation, divine grace, or secret mystical techniques, but rather within the brain that each of us possesses right here and right now.

Here's how "The Mystical Mind" ends.

Since the approach presented in this book is firmly based on the neurosciences, on neuroevolutionary theory, and on strict phenomenological analysis, we hope that it will carry a compelling plausibility, indeed probability, to twenty-first century readers steeped in a scientific culture and demanding proof.

Thus, the mystical mind has led us down a new and fascinating path toward the understanding of human beings and their relationship to religion, spirituality, and God. As we stated in our dedication, we certainly believe that neurotheology can help open us to a greater sense of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans – the tremendous and spellbinding mystery – and to the awareness that we, who are brought together in a love of truth, are the mystical minds seeking that mystery.

Ibn ‘Arabi on the impossibility of becoming nothing

I've read the Koran (in translation, naturally). It didn't resonate with me. Really tough to get through – but Muslims say that a lot, maybe everything, is lost in translation.

Somewhat strangely though, I went through a phase where I couldn't stop reading Rumi. He was a Sufi, the mystical side of Islam. My bookshelves are full of Rumi titles, including Nicholson's three volume translation of the Masnavi.

I rarely pick up a Sufi book any more. There's too much monotheism left over from Sufism's Islamic roots to appeal to me, now that I'm in a Taoist/Buddhist phase.

All this Rumi talk of "His ruby lips" and "kiss of the Beloved" …ugh.

But I just read an excerpt from Ibn 'Arabi's "Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom" that gave me a fresh outlook on Sufism and mystical Islam. It's included in One: Essential Writings on Nonduality, edited by Jerry Katz.

I liked these passages because the notion of becoming nothing is appealing only insofar as it is a metaphor, not reality.

During my deeply devoted Radha Soami Satsang Beas days, when I'd hear disciples say "The guru is everything, I am nothing," I liked the humble sentiment. But it never made sense to me.

After all, if someone is in love with the guru and wants to be just like him, and the guru is everything, then shouldn't that person want to be everything also, rather than nothing? Plus, if you're nothing, how can you love? Or be devoted? Or be anything?

Religions often preach the virtue of extinguishing individuality, ego, willfulness. Yet as Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240) says below, this presumes that there is something to extinguish.

If reality is truly one at its foundation – a hypothesis that makes a lot of sense to me, both scientifically and spiritually – what's up with all this talk of nothingness and somethingness?

Here's how Ibn 'Arabi puts it, presenting Islam in a refreshing non-dualistic fashion.

You cannot know your Lord by making yourself nothing. Many a wise man claims that in order to know one's Lord one must denude oneself of the signs of one's existence, efface one's identity, finally rid oneself of one's self.

This is a mistake. How could a thing that does not exist try to get rid of its existence? For none of matter exists. How could a thing that is not, become nothing? A thing can only become nothing after it has been something.

Therefore, if you know yourself without being, not trying to become nothing, you will know your Lord. If you think that to know Allah depends on you ridding yourself of yourself, then you are guilty of attributing partners to Him – the only unforgivable sin – because you are claiming that there is another existence besides Him, the All-Existent: that there is a you and a He.

Our Master, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), said:

He who knows himself knows His Lord

He did not say:

He who eliminates himself knows his Lord!

…That which exists and is visible is He. There is nothing but He, so how could nothing cease to be?

…Therefore, do not think anymore that you need to become nothing, that you need to annihilate yourself in Him. If you thought so, then you would be His veil, while a veil over Allah is other than He. How could you be a veil that hides Him? What hides Him is His being the One Alone.

Well, I still don't like the "He's" and "Lord's" in reference to Allah. But these are just ways of speaking. I mentally translate them into "It" and "Reality," which seems to be the sense Ibn 'Arabi is intending.

There's only One Thing Going On. It's all around us, and indeed is us.

No need for religion when there's nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become.

Taoism wants us to be holey, not holy

I've been attracted to Taoism for a long time. Even before I knew anything about it. Early in my teen years (maybe a bit before) I visited San Francisco's Chinatown.

I came back with a bunch of cheap art, bought from my allowance. I was enthralled with the images of misty mountains drawn with a few brushstrokes, usually including a tiny solitary figure walking along a path.

Who knows where that early instinctive attraction to Taoism came from? I sure don't. My mother had no inclination toward Eastern philosophy or art. I wasn't exposed to such in any other fashion, so far as I can remember. But I had those scrolls and prints up in my bedroom for quite a few years.

They seemed entirely natural to me. As does Taoist philosophy now, along with Tai Chi, the current stage of my martial arts evolution.

I've been reading and hugely enjoying a new book in my Taoism collection. "Daoism Explained" by Hans-Georg Moeller is brilliant. It looks at Taoism/Daoism in a fresh light. Familiar Taoist stories and images are becoming new for me again, thanks to Moeller's insightful take on classic writings.

He translates the eleventh chapter of the Daodejing (or Tao Te Ching).

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

The hub, says Moeller, is at the center; it is empty; it is still; and it is single, being a center. This is the Tao. Yet it isn't only the empty hub. The Tao is the spokes also. It is the process (not a substance) that makes the world go 'round.

So Taoists try to reflect the emptiness of the hub. They seek to be holey, rather than holy. An artificial morality is anathema to them. In ancient China it was the moralistic Confucians who came in for Taoist scorn. Today fundamentalists of other persuasions make the same mistake:

Failing to see that prevention is better than cure, that emptying oneself of notions about right and wrong produces a natural ethical sense. Moeller:

If people learn to follow the Way (dao) and the "own course" (ziran), then morality will not be required because everything will be just naturally fine. From a Daoist point of view, morality is the virtue of latecomers…Instead of focusing on the Dao and trying to naturally follow it in the first place, the Confucians seem to attempt to "help" the Dao once they have already failed to correspond to it.

It's easy to miss the Tao. That's why Taoism is so simple to follow. You want to miss the Tao. The entire difficulty comes from making the Tao into something that can be spotted, understood, perceived, sensed, worshipped, contemplated, meditated upon.

In Chinese Tao is wu (emptiness, non-presence) rather than you (fullness, presence). If you believe you've got it, you don't.

If something "is there" or if somebody "has something," there is fullness; and if nothing is there or if somebody "has nothing," then there is emptiness. In this sense you designates a place or spot where there is something while wu designates a place or spot where there is nothing. In the image of the wheel, the spokes are obviously in the place of you – in the space where there is something (the turning spokes cover all the space around the hub), whereas the hub is in the space of wu.

Religions adore presence. They make God or ultimate reality into something transcendent that exists Out There, a Platonic form of divineness that we fallen humans must struggle to reach.

Religious humility, egolessness, surrender – this is a means to attain a glorious end. True believers see themselves as being on a spiritual roller-coaster. "If I can just go down far enough, I'll then be able to rise up."

Back in the days when I looked at the mystic-religious path of Sant Mat (Radha Soami Satsang Beas branch) through uncritical devotional eyes, I failed to recognize this. I didn't see that my efforts to prostrate myself before the guru, and thence before God, sprang from a elevational goal.

Even when my eyes were downcast, focusing on the humble descent of the spiritual roller coaster, I was keeping a look out for the anticipated swoop upwards. Wheeeeee! Sach Khand! God-realization! Paradise!

Now, I don't know where I'm heading. Up. Down. Sideways. Nowhere. Somewhere. I'm clueless.

Which, more and more, feels natural to me. Because after some forty-five years of investigating the meaning of life (including my teenage Taoist phase, which was followed by a lot of listening to Bob Dylan, so that period should count) here's a big part of what I've learned:

The sum total of agreed-upon human knowledge about what lies beyond the physical is precisely zero.

There's a virtually endless supply of religious dogma, countless volumes of philosophical speculation, large crowds of supposed spiritual gurus, endless stories of the miraculous. But when you add them all together and discard the unproven, unlikely, and unbelievable, what's left is a big pile of nothing.

And that exactly equals what Taoism says should be found by anyone seeking the hub of the cosmos, the pivot point around which everything in existence swirls.

Everything that exists, in its entirety, exists by itself, and at the center of this entirety of presence is "nothing" – or more precisely, nonpresence (wu). This is the "Dao of heaven" (tian dao).

Beautiful. Taoism finds emptiness at the core of reality. This empty Tao is holey, not holy. It can't be worshipped, revered, prayed to, or otherwise made an object of veneration, because it isn't separate from the potential venerator.

When I try to lay hold of my own innermost essence, I can't do that either. The core of my being is as squirmy, slippery, and shadowy as the Tao is. And as the God that religions and mystic faiths claim to know, but can never provide proof of.

There's a story in the Zhuangzi about fish drifting along free and easy. A couple of sages discuss this seeming happiness of fish, wondering whether it is possible to know what makes a fish happy if you're not one yourself. I liked Moeller's commentary.

If one "rambles" free and easy, one has no friction whatsoever with one's surroundings and so is part of a seamless, easygoing process…When Zhuangzi claimed to know about the happiness of fish, he did not claim to be able to feel the exact same feeling. He was just saying: I feel perfect by rambling around, and the fish feel perfect by rambling around.

At the center, wu. Nothing.

Rambling around wu. Perfect.

Sheer absence of soul reveals its nature

Ah, sheer poetry. About the soul. Featured on the front page of The Oregonian Living section yesterday, of all things. I've poeticized a quote from Gunther von Hagens, creator of the Body Worlds 3 exhibit that I wrote about recently.

In the exhibition
the pure absence of the soul
actually
underlines the soul

The longer I am
an anatomist,
the closer I am
to the soul

just
because of
its sheer
absence

I was surprised by the tone of the story, headlined "Exhibit or exhibitionism?" The reporter, Nancy Haught, must have gone out of her way to find people who were offended by this display of plastinated human bodies (plus a camel).

All of the people who donated their bodies did so voluntarily. Yet the story had numerous quotes along the lines of this ridiculous observation from a Unitarian minister (I'd expect a Unitarian to be a lot more open-minded).

People volunteer for all sorts of things. People volunteer to be prostitutes. People volunteer for genital mutilation, to kill themselves. That doesn't mean society should cooperate with their wishes.

My take is that underlying this sort of how could they?! reaction to the exhibit is the commonly held assumption among religious types that the soul, if not itself physical, still is closely linked to the body.

Why else would so much valuable real estate be taken up by graves? This is a great income producer for casket makers and embalmers, but theologically is absurd.

When the body is dead, it's a goner. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Finito.

If there's anything of us that survives death, it sure isn't material. There's no evidence of anyone being resurrected, notwithstanding the blind faith of Christian true believers (and members of other religions with similar supernatural dogmas).

So if you want to hang on to a belief in something spiritual – call it "soul" – that lives on after we die, any sort of physical evidence of it belies the belief.

When it comes to the soul, nothing trumps something.

That's why I liked von Hagens' statement so much. It's deeply profound, though I doubt most Oregonian readers appreciated it sufficiently, being a bump in the road on their dash through the Living section to the comics.

Spiritual emptiness: it's a good thing. The very best.

I don't know if the soul exists. But if it does, I'm pretty sure it won't be found in any familiar place. Like, the body. Or thoughts. Or feelings. Or perceptions.

It'll be hanging out where the really wild things roam.

Nothingness. Which, if you believe physicists and mystics, is a close kin to Everything.

Wu t-shirt leads to philosophical conversations

Usually I just wear my Wu t-shirt to Tai Chi class or the athletic club. Yesterday was pretty grey in central Oregon, so I decided to brighten it up with my yellow Wu attire.

Good decision. After a pleasant walk along the Metolius river, where this photo was taken, I had a couple of pleasant philosophical discussions stimulated by a "What does that mean?"

When I started my Wu Project some fifteen months ago, I knew that what I needed most of all, and first of all, was a Wu t-shirt. What's a project without a t-shirt?

I'm pretty sure that what I've got on my chest doesn't say Kick me or This dumb shit thinks this means Wu. The Wikipedia entry for "Mu/Wu" now shows the character in cursive script, but the small non-cursive icon looks like my t-shirt. Still, whenever someone Chinese walks by while I'm wearing it I prepare myself for hilarious laughter.

The cursive version is cool. Check out this animation that shows the calligraphy stroke order. Beautiful.

Like Wu. And conversations about Wu. My first was in the charming Camp Sherman store. One of the owners pointed at my chest and said, "Explain."

As if I could. But anyone who wears anything but a plain t-shirt should be willing to answer questions about the message they're broadcasting to the world.

"It's Chinese," I replied. "It means Wu. That's a negative—negation, nothingness. But it doesn't have, well, the negative sense we Westerners put on nothing. It's more like the universal that remains when everything particular is negated."

"Infinity," the owner said. "Exactly," I told her. Though exactly isn't exactly a word that fits with Wu, she seemed to hit the word-nail right on the head.

Anyway, it beat talking about the weather. Conversations like the one we had, even brief ones, are so much more satisfying than the usual "How's it going? … Fine" variety. It'd be nice if everybody had a t-shirt that succinctly expressed their philosophy of life (and they were amenable to talking about it).

My other t-shirt inspired conversation came near the end of the Metolius river trail, where you approach the headwaters and are stopped by a fence on private land.

The family pet and I had been following a woman and her yellow lab. Serena and I were faster walkers than they were. We caught up with them near the turning point. She was in her 70s. Her dog, about the same in dog years. The woman had the look of an elderly flower child.

Flowing smock. Brightly colored hearing aids, not disguised at all but prominently displayed in her ears like jewelry. Our dogs sniffed each other. Then she did the human equivalent.

She asked "What's that?" I started to go through my usual explanation, but she politely cut me off. "Yes, Wu. Like Wu-wei." Once again I said, "Exactly."

It turned out that she was a massage therapist who did Qigong. I told her that I practiced Tai Chi and had some experience with Qigong. I demonstrated the "wu chi" (readiness) posture and showed how "tai chi" makes an appearance as soon as Wu differentiates into one thing or another—yin or yang.

Listening to myself talk, I liked what I heard. Not because I was saying it. Because it made sense, in spite of the speaker's Wu ignorance.

"There's got to be something beyond everything that we can ever know or understand," I said. "Out there on the other side of beyond, that's Wu." She smiled.

She and her husband had just moved to Camp Sherman, a quirky community of 200 or so full-time residents. She'll fit right in. Folks around here resonate with Wu as the Metolius River wordlessly speaks it.

Me finding myself. And Van Morrison.

It happened again today. Searching for the meaning of existence via the Great God Google, I looked into the mirror of cyberspace and saw my own truth looking back at me.

Not surprisingly, I agreed with myself. Which, naturally, raises the question: "If what I'm searching for is what I already know, what the hell am I doing Googling?"

I'd been thinking about Tai Chi. Which got me thinking about Wu Chi. Which reminded me of a web site that had a reference to using "Wu" as a mantra – the sound of wind whistling through tree tops. Whoooooooo. Whoooooooo.

Which stimulated me to fire up Google and see if I could find the web site again. Which led to a page of results with only one item of real interest.

One of my Wu Project posts. So I ended up finding what I really was looking for: someone who fully agreed with me. Which, not surprisingly, turned out to be me.

Why don't I trust myself when it comes to the deep questions of life, those no one else can answer for me? I'm more than willing to follow the advice of someone who is expert in an area I'm ignorant about—like plumbing or car repair.

But each of us is our own authority when it comes to What's it all about? Even if we submit to someone else, that act of submission is under our control (I must give credit to a sex article in a women's magazine I recently thumbed through in a waiting room for that bit of insight).

So I'm telling myself to stand taller. As should you, if, like me, you find yourself looking for outside encouragement platform shoes for reassurance that your view of the cosmos is at least a smidgeon above ground level.

I'm never going to find anyone else who totally agrees with me about what it's all about. Or not about. My best shot at a boon philosophical companion is myself. And only then, if I don't get in the way of establishing a trust bond between myself and me.

None the less, I enjoy all of the others on the Road That Isn't Quite Where I Want To Go But is Darn Interesting Nonetheless.

Including the visitors to this here Church of the Churchless.

In a comment today Edward said:

Now drop what you're doing, find the song "Tupelo Honey" by Van Morrison and listen to it like it was your first birthday card. There will be a part of you, big or small, loud or quiet, that says, "Yes, this is true." Not a formal truth, not a provable theorem - just blood warmingly true.

Good advice. You can watch here. Or below. And read the lyrics here. Yes, that's truly true truth. It's got to be. I just said it was.

Soul is superfluous

Usually spirituality is associated with "soulfulness," whatever the heck that means. I used to believe that I knew something about soul. Now, I don't.

Perhaps because soul is superfluous—it's an notion that is so much a part of most cultures, we take it for granted that a human being consists of something above and beyond the physical.

Before leaving for Maui I bought Nicholas Fearn's "The Latest Answers to the Oldest Questions" at a Powell's Books outlet (one of the world's great bookstores; don't miss the main store if you visit Portland, Oregon).

Interestingly, the first chapter I read on "The Problem of the Self" echoed Douglas Hofstadter's conclusions in "I Am a Strange Loop," which I'd just finished (and have been blogging about).

In searching for a self we look for something over and above our attributes, but we do not usually think this way about ordinary objects. For example, I believe that my favourite armchair persists through time without imagining it to have a chair-soul or a chair-ego that possesses its traits.

It has characteristics such as being three feet high at the seat, padded with foam and covered with green cloth, but there is no chair over and above these characteristics.

If we took away the foam and the seat and the cloth and so on, we would not be left with a naked chair, as if objects were ghostly coat hangers upon which traits are hung. Yet this is precisely what we often imagine to be true in the case of persons.

Well, who knows? Maybe it is true. But since soul is, by most definitions, distinct from materiality and mentality, there's no way to perceive it or cognize it.

Like Fearn says, soul is considered to be something ethereal—pure consciousness perhaps—that (or who) somehow manages to serve as the core of our being even though it's essentially nothing.

The more we wish to gain immortality by divesting ourselves of earthly trappings such as physicality, memories and the like, the more we reduce ourselves to nothing at all – and, to quote the American children's author Norton Juster, doing nothing is hardly worth the effort.

Along the same lines, Hofstadter persuasively argues that the "I" of each of us starts out as a blank slate. He finds no evidence that a soul enters the body at birth, or conception, or somewhere in between, and thereafter serves as the "coat hanger" on which the attributes I consider to be Me are hung.

The key point, uncomfortable for you though it will be, is that no one started out in that brain – no one at all. It was just as uninhabited as a swinging rope or a whirlpool. But unlike those physical systems, it could perceive and evolve in sophistication, and so, as weeks, months, and years passed, there gradually came to be someone in there.

…This "I", this unreal but unutterably stubborn marble in the mind, this "Epi" phenomenon, simply takes over, anointing itself as Reality Number One, and from there on it won't go away, no matter what words are spoken.

It turns out, then, that soulfulness is eminently unspiritual. For when we believe that some part of us—no, even more, the essence of us—is eternally distinct from everyone and everything else we encounter in the world (sticks and stones may break my bones, but my soul is immutable), a sense of separateness is inevitable.

Soul is considered to be separate from body. The realm of soul is considered to be separate from the physical universe. Awareness of soul is considered to be separate from material and mental perceptions.

The writings of British philosopher Derek Parfit are discussed at some length in Hofstadter's book. Parfit also pops up in Fearn's first chapter. Hmmmmm. Parfit sightings in two consecutive reads, after a lifetime of never having heard of him.

Here's how that initial chapter ends:

The personal identity debate shows just what happens when we dispense with the soul. For Parfit, the consequences are liberating. He writes that when he thought his existence a fact distinct from his physical and psychological continuity, he seemed 'imprisoned' in himself. 'My life seemed like a glass tunnel, though which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there as darkness.' However:

'When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.'

Another response might be to dwell on how the fleeting status of human existence has been accentuated. Not only are human beings continually coming into being and passing away, but they are even doing this on countless occasions within a single lifetime. We are, it seems, a flicker within a flicker.

If I’m not an “I,” what am I?

My admiration for Douglas Hofstadter's "I Am a Strange Loop," the subject of my previous post, is evidenced by the fact that I just carted the 410 pages to Maui—adding the weight of this hardcover book to my 50 pound suitcase limit, every ounce of which I'm going to need on our return trip after our usual rampaging through Lahaina t-shirt shops.

But I wanted to ponder my strange loopiness some more while on vacation. At the moment I'm listening to Napili Bay waves, rather than Oregon rain, but the same "I" seemingly is doing the listening though its body has traveled far today.

Or so I've always thought.

Hofstadter calls this the "caged bird" metaphor. The cage is the body, or cranium, and the bird is the soul. There's one bird to one cage. And if you're spiritually inclined, supposedly the bird can be freed from the cage.

Satori! Enlightenment! Salvation!

But this presumes that the bird is real. There's an "I" separate and distinct from the physical matter that comprises the brain and the rest of the body. What if there isn't? What if instead of a caged bird, we're actually…

Even Hofstadter has trouble finishing the sentence.

It is not easy to find a strong, vivid metaphor to put up against the caged-bird metaphor. I have entertained quite a few possibilities, involving such diverse entities as bees, tornadoes, flowers, stars, and embassies. The image of a swarm of bees or of a nebula clearly conveys the idea of diffuseness, but there is no clear counterpart to the cage (or rather, to the head or brain or cranium). (A hive is not what I mean, because a flying swarm is not at all inside its hive).

The basic problem is that when you go looking for the "I," it's impossible to pin down. That's what leads Hofstadter to say that the "I" is a hallucination hallucinated by a hallucination.

Sounds a lot like Buddhism and quite a few other maya-embracing philosophies. The difference, though, is that Hofstadter apparently doesn't offer a way out of the illusion (I've got a few more chapters to read). He strikes me as a Buddhist who doesn't believe in enlightenment, just the emptiness of individuality.

Hofstadter's favorite image concerning the sense of "I" comes from his experience of squeezing his hand around a pack of about a hundred envelopes that were in a box. When he did this, he felt a marble in the midst of them. Strange.

He tried to shake the marble out from the envelopes. No luck. Then he went through them one by one and found that each envelope was empty. Even stranger. Upon closer inspection, he realized that at the vertex of each envelope's flap there was a triple layer of paper and a thin layer of glue.

This area couldn't be compressed as much as the rest of the envelope. So when a hundred of them were aligned precisely and pressed together, voila, a marble. Or rather, an epiphenomenon that felt uncannily like a marble.

An epiphenomenon…is a collective and unitary-seeming outcome of many small, often invisible or unperceived, quite possibly utterly unexpected, events. In other words, an epiphenomenon could be said to be a large-scale illusion created by the collusion of many small and indisputably non-illusory events.

Just like the "I." According to Hofstadter my sense that I'm indisputably me (which for you, obviously, is that you're you—not me) arises from countless experiences from birth until now. Each of us is way more than a hundred experience-envelopes stacked up together.

That me-bump we feel in the center of us, it's as real as the marble.

The problem is that in a sense, an "I" is something created out of nothing. And since making something out of nothing is never possible, the alleged something turns out to be an illusion, in the end, but a very powerful one, like the marble among the envelopes.

However, the "I" is an illusion far more entrenched and recalcitrant than the marble illusion, because in the case of "I," there is no simple revelatory act corresponding to turning the box upside down and shaking it, then peering in between the envelopes and finding nothing solid and spherical in there.

We don't have access to the inner workings of our brains. And so the only perspective we have on our "I"-ness comes from the counterpart to squeezing all the envelopes at once, and that perspective says it's real!

I love it. And I hate it.

For me, pondering Hofstadter's book has been like getting on the best ride in the Existential Theme Park. It started off with some exciting ups and downs, which I enjoyed. But then I hit the part where you feel like everything has been pulled out from under you.

Whoa, momma! Stop the ride! No, wait, I want more! Changed my mind again, stop the freaking ride, NOW!

On the whole, I like the feeling of free-falling. Except when I don't. "I"s are like that—fickle. More on this later, after the jet lag wears off and the warm water wears on.

You’re a strange loop (and that’s OK)

Via Douglas Hofstadter, I've got some soul-shaking news to pass on to you. You're a strange loop.

So am I. As is he. We all are. And it's not a bad thing, once you get used to the strangeness and loopiness of our rarely recognized condition.

I'm most of the way through Hofstadter's "I Am a Strange Loop." His new book is an elaboration of themes creatively discussed in "Gödel, Escher, Bach," which I read a long time ago—with difficulty.

Hofstadter has come a long way, both personally and professionally (he's a professor of cognitive science at Indiana University). His wife died suddenly from a brain tumor in 1993. He writes of his love for her, and how he has struggled to relate his understanding of how the mind works with how Carol lives on in his consciousness.

Which, at heart, is a "strange loop." What this means takes a bunch of chapters to explain, some quite dense.

I thought I knew what Gödel's theorem was all about, non-mathematically at least, but it's a lot more involved than my thinking thought. However, the fact that I can think about my thoughts about what Gödel and Hofstadter think about thinking shows that I'm at least in the ballpark of a Gödelian frame of mind.

A plain loop is easy to grasp. It's akin to a thermostat that senses the temperature and turns the furnace on or off to keep the house comfortable. This isn't a strange loop because the thermostat isn't self-aware. There's awareness of the temperature, but not any awareness that the thermostat is aware.

Humans, by contrast, are hugely strange—the strangest loops in existence, so far as we know. We are masters of abstraction and symbols. We observe (generally) friendly furry animals of an astounding variety of shapes and sizes, summing them up as "dogs."

Our ability to conceptualize allows us to jump back and forth between levels of abstraction. Hofstadter observes that we can dream about ourselves dreaming about dreaming. More profoundly, he says, Gödel found that "one of the domains that mathematics can model is the doing of mathematics itself."

This talk about abstractions can easily sound, well, abstract. But when the core message of "I Am a Strange Loop" hits home, as it did to me today, it's anything but abstract. Some of the feel of what I felt is hinted at in Hofstadter's description of a strange loop.

What I mean by "strange loop" is—here goes a first stab, anyway—not a physical circuit but an abstract loop in which, in the first stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive "upward" shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle.

That is, despite one's sense of departing ever further from one's origin, one winds up, to one's shock, where one had started out.

Hofstadter illustrates this by M.C. Escher's lithograph Drawing Hands. But the thoughts that I'm thinking as I write this post about how we think, or the thoughts that you're thinking as you read what I've written, are equally good illustrations. Just shyer. He writes:

Fortunately, there are do exist strange loops that are not illusions. I say "fortunately" because the thesis of this book is that we ourselves—not our bodies, but our selves—are strange loops, and so if all strange loops were illusions, then we would all be illusions, and that would be a great shame. So it's fortunate that some strange loops do exist in the real world.

On the other hand, it is not a piece of cake to exhibit one for all to see. Strange loops are shy creatures, and they tend to avoid the light of day.

Here we are, you and I. Except when you say "you and I," I'm the "you" instead of the "I" that holds when I say it. Already that's darn strange. Because it's impossible to point to any sort of "I," whether it is in you or me.

Hofstadter goes so far as to say what he says below. I'll leave his saying alone for now. The hour is late, and while strange loops avoid the light of day, they also avoid the dark of night.

In this strange loop's mind, at least. There will be more to say another day, if the strange loop that is me wants to head that way.

That extremely slight doubt flies in the face of what we all take for granted ever since our earliest childhood, which is that "I"'s do exist—and in most people, the latter belief simply wins out, hands down. The battle is never even engaged, in most people's minds. On the other hand, for a few people the battle starts to rage: physics versus "I."

…My proposal for a truce to end this battle is to see the "I" as a hallucination perceived by a hallucination, which sounds pretty strange, or perhaps even stranger: the "I" as a hallucination hallucinated by a hallucination.

Honoring the mystery that is me (and you)

In 1977 I spent two weeks in India with a guru, Charan Singh. At that time visitors could spend up to three months at Dera Baba Jaimal Singh in the Punjab, soaking up the mystico-spiritual vibes gratis.

Flying off from the Amritsar airport to return home, via Delhi, I remember looking out of my window seat at the majestic Himalaya mountains, saying to myself, "I don't want my thoughts to be mine anymore, but yours."

I was a devoted disciple back then. I still am. What's changed is the meaning I give to yours. Thirty years ago it meant the guru; today it points to mystery.

This, actually, is entirely in accord with Charan Singh's teaching, for he said, "May your love of the form culminate in the love of the formless." It's a natural progression. Really, an inevitable one.

For what we know, no matter how much, is so much less than what there is.

Here each of us is, one of six billion people on an insignificant planet circling an average star that comprises just one of two hundred billion or so stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of a hundred billion or so galaxies in a universe that extends far beyond what can be observed, and could well be just one of countless universes in a cosmos that has no end.

And yet many (if not most) think they've got it all figured out, because the Bible, Koran, Torah, Adi Granth, Vedas, or whatever, tells them so.

They don't know what life is, what consciousness is, what matter/energy is, or what anything is at the root of its really real reality, not to mention what any possible metaphysical existence may consist of. Worse, they don't know that they don't know—or at least aren't willing to admit it to themselves.

I am. Now. That's why the sentiment of my Amritsar airport takeoff moment is still with me. I've just extended yours to encompass the mystery of what I, and you, and everything else in existence is.

Of which I'm clueless. Happily so.

I no longer feel that I have to fly halfway around the world to honor a sacred impulse. The mystery that is me provides worshipful opportunities aplenty.

In my previous three posts I've been equating meaninglessness with mystery. Makes sense, doesn't it? If I knew the Meaning of It All, there wouldn't be any mystery to the cosmos. And there's a lot. So, how to honor meaninglessness?

By not being meaningful. Usually this is considered to be undesirable. I say something to a companion and am told, "I have no idea what you mean." Communication failure! I try again, hoping to make sense this time.

However, if I'm facing in the direction of ultimate Mystery, my communication with what is uncommunicable should be as non-sensical as possible.

I may be speaking with myself. Or, not. Who knows? It's a Mystery. Either way, meaninglessness tunes me in, to some degree, with what lies beyond the meaning of the little I'm aware of now.

My meditation periods used to be deeply meaningful. Now my goal is different. I still enjoy mantra meditation—repeating a word (or words) to still my thought-stream. The mantra used to have a meaning for me. Mystery, though, deserves to be honored with meaninglessness.

D.T. Suzuki speaks of Buddhist mantra meditation as using a name ("Namu Amida Butsu") whose meaning consists in having no meaning. Essentially, the mantra becomes a koan.

Meditation, or "coming into the presence of the Buddha," thus gave way to the constant reiteration of the phrase as not always or necessarily referring to any definite objective reality, but merely as a name somehow beyond comprehension, or rather as a symbol standing for something indescribable, unpredictable, altogether transcending the intellect, and therefore suggesting a meaning beyond meaning.

In other words, meaninglessness.

Wu, Wu, Wu. Woo-woo. Wuuuuuuuuuuu. Whew!

My quest for the meaninglessness of life

I've spent most of my 58 years looking for the meaning of life. That was easy.

I've found lots of meanings in religion, family, friends, jobs, volunteer work, books, causes, charity, martial arts, television, nature, food, sex—you name it, I've probably found some sort of meaning in it.

But as I said before, and before that, I'm now on a quest for meaninglessness. That's tough. Everywhere I turn, there's meanings staring me in the face. And on one level I want them. I'm addicted to meaningfulness. It's what makes life, well, meaningful.

However, like James Park said in his intriguing, but not quite right on for me, cybersermon on "Looking for the Meaning of Life," there's a residual hollowness in all the meanings—even spiritual or religious—with which we desperately try to fill the perceived emptiness in our lives.

When we seek to make our own lives "meaningful", we might be struggling with two different sorts of meaninglessness. We can create many kinds of relative meanings within the assumed areas of meaningful life: money, achievement, love, marriage, children, enjoyment, & religion.

But even when we have fulfilled such meanings, we might still feel an ultimate hollowness, a spiritual or existential meaninglessness. This deeper meaninglessness is not overcome by any of the relative meanings we are able to create or achieve. Ultimate meaning comes only as a gift —independent of whatever relative meanings we can achieve.

Basically, I don't disagree. Park's endpoint, though, is "the removal of existential meaninglessness, not the attainment of any specific meanings." Myself, I'm drawn toward that very existential meaninglessness.

I guess you could call that my new meaning in life. Which, logically, sort of undermines the quest for meaninglessness.

But, hey, complete consistency isn't my goal. When you're trying to go beyond meanings, you've got to expect that some (or a lot) of paradox and confusion will pop up along the way.

Here's what isn't confusing to me: when you pull on an ultimate meaning thread, trying to figure out what the end is attached to, it always comes back loose in your hand.

This isn't true of relative meanings. They may be circular—this depends on that which depends on something else—but at least you have a sense of firm connectivity.

Yesterday my daughter gave birth to her first child, Evelyn Elizabeth Vos, reportedly the absolutely cutest baby that has ever existed in the history of Earth (I believe my daughter, even without having seen any photos yet).

I am the father of Celeste; she is the mother of Evelyn; and so the chain of meaningful relationships goes, without end (since anyone without a relationship to another human doesn't exist).

This is the sort of "emptiness" Buddhists speak of —an interdependence in which everything is connected.

There's another sort of emptiness though, the ultimate metaphysical, philosophical, scientific, spiritual, or mystical variety (ultimate truth-seeking comes in quite a few flavors).

Even when it seems that you've come to a pinnacle of understanding, a Mystery void lies beyond.

"God created the heavens and the earth." Who created God?

"Superstrings form the structure of time and space." What forms