Church of the Churchless

Why are beliefs so important?

Here's a guest post from Osho Robbins, who emailed what follows to me.

He points out the difference between the beliefs held by devotees of a particular India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, and the reality of what the current leader of the organization, a guru (Gurinder Singh Dhillon) says the RSSB teachings are.

Why are beliefs so important?

What do you think of a person who still believes that the earth is flat?  Or someone who knows it's a sphere, but believes it is the centre of the universe and that the sun rotates around the earth?

What about a follower of Ram Rahim, who still thinks he is innocent and is just being persecuted?

I dont think you would be very impressed with such a person. In fact you might consider a person like that to be insane. But now - what if that person was YOU?

Do you think its important that your beliefs are accurate? Or is it okay to have false beliefs?

Beliefs run your life. It is a well known fact that you don't live life. You live a limited life based entirely on your beliefs. Whatever you believe appears to be TRUE for you.

You alter your perceptions to make the world fit into your beliefs, so you never experience the world. You experience only YOUR VERSION, which is the world, seen through the filter of your beliefs.

Now look at the beliefs of an RSSB (Radha Soami Satsang Beas) follower and let's see how they have changed over the years. Does the follower have inaccurate beliefs?

Traditional beliefs about the master: 

1. The master is ALL KNOWING. He literally knows what you are thinking and he knows the future.

2. The master is ALL POWERFUL. He has the power to do anything he chooses.

3. The master is a super human with amazing powers beyond your comprehension. Do not consider him to be just a man. The Sar Bachan actually states "Do not consider the guru to be a mere mortal. He is the darling of Sat Purush." (God)

4. The master has the power to alter your karmas. So many stories and anecdotes portray this as true.

5. The master never makes a mistake - literally. How can the master make a mistake? There is a higher meaning and purpose in everything he does and says.

6. The master is perfect.

7. The master has the highest moral standard you can imagine

8. The master is an HONEST and decent human being

9. The master is not subject to karmas as he is God in human form

10. The master is above pride and ego

11. The radiant form of the master will come at death to meet each disciple and personally take charge of his soul.

Now compare this to the REALITY. I wont go into detail, but any intelligent person can make a realistic asessment of the truth. If the master himself says that he is not 'perfect' why would you insist he is? If evidence shows you something different, why would you ignore the evidence?

So then you have to re-assess what you really believe if you are intelligent. It is insanity to continue to hold outdated and inaccurate beliefs and you will pay the price because your expectations will not be met.

Traditional beliefs about the RSSB path and the teachings:

1. God is called Sat Purush and resides in Sach Khand, the fifth region. Just Google "Radha soami spiritual regions" and you will get graphic pictures of them (click on images). Your purpose is to meet him.

2. in meditation your soul leaves your body via the third eye and reaches the astral region where it meets the radiant form of the master, who then takes the soul through all the regions, and eventually to Sach Khand.

3. Once you are initiated, you will always come back only as a human and not lower species, and within four lifetimes you will reach Sach Khand.

4. The purpose of the spiritual path is to reach Sach khand. Others (like Krishna, Buddha and Jesus) never reached Sach Khand. They only reached the lower regions (region 2 or 3 of the 5).

5. The master will come at death and take your soul into safe care and put it where is can meditate and eventually reach Sach Khand

6. Sach Khand is a real place and so are the regions.

7. The advaita type of teachers were of a much lower standard and never got to Sach Khand

8. Only the people with the highest karma will find a true guru and Sant Mat is the ONLY valid way to get to Sach Khand. All other religions failed to reach Sach Khand. Read Dr Johnson's "The Path of the Masters" for validation of this point. The book even goes into a detailed comparison with other religions.

9. It's not just about Realisation or ONENESS. There are regions to traverse in the inner world.

How much of this still applies?

Some people justify the changes by saying "The gurus change and adapt with the times" but this is simply not true when the teachings fundamentally change. A person following RSSB in the 70's and 80's would not recognise RSSB today as the same path. There are just too many differences.

So then the uncomfortable truth has to be faced: that maybe i am following just another belief system but am convinced this is the real truth and that ONE DAY I will see this for myself, after lots of meditation.

But when will that ONE DAY arrive?

In the latest video Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru, clarifies many of these beliefs we hold: invalidating them. Like that he is not knowing and there are no miracles and the guru cannot take on your karmas, etc.

GSD video no 16: 

05:24  As human beings we never learn in life. We are making the same mistakes again and again. We dont use our vivek (discrimination). We bring the suffering on.  

10:30  Seva (service) is not real seva because you cannot avoid the 'calculation' unless you are very elevated spiritually. 

12:00   Karmas have to ba PAID - cannot be forgiven except by "Shabd".

13:00 Books refer to miracles such as Bhai Shaadi when he was bitten by a snake and Sawan Singh healed him. Is this not a fact?  How do we know the snake was even poisonous? Video is then edited when the questioner says "But that is what is written in the books". 

The only miracle is that someone like me became the master.

14:00 I know some people who like to come back to this world again and again. Heaven would be so boring. (not me - others). He laughs. 

15:00  When did you get to know you would be the next master? No - I never knew - I was told. 

I shouldn't question, but I do! I should have faith in what Maharaj Ji did. (previous RSSB guru)

Let's say, I wonder "why me?" In my entire life I can't say that I excelled.

Maharaj Ji put me here to say "If such an average person can succeed, you can all succeed".

"That's your humility, Baba Ji..."

That's one thing I don't have (humility). Humility is not my strong point. Baba Vaswani was (humble) not me.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, RSSB guru

I try to explain my relationship with reality

Periodically I like to ponder my relationship with reality. Like, now.

Hey, movie theaters aren't open here in Oregon. My wife and I aren't eager to test our COVID luck by going to a gym or restaurant. My Tai Chi classes are on hold, though this week we started meeting on Wednesday afternoon in a park.

So I've had some extra time to contemplate ways reality and I can improve how we get along.

Of course, the first thing I realized is that the burden of improving the quality of our relationship falls on me, not reality, since I'm the one who is concerned about this, not the big wide wonderful world that exists beyond the confines of my cranium. 

Here's some of my current conclusions on this subject, which are definitely open to change at any moment, including the next one.

(1) When in doubt, look without, not within. I used to be a big fan of "going inside," as the meditation approach I followed for 35 years termed it. Meaning, ignore sensory impressions and focus on what lies within my mind or consciousness. 

Well, now I believe the exact opposite is, in general, a better approach. I feel happier and more grounded when I'm in tune with my physical surroundings. Also, less anxious.

A few minutes ago I watched our dog, who was sitting on our deck, tied to a railing by a leash, watch several deer passing through our rural Oregon yard, munching their way on whatever delicacies (like clover) caught their eye and nose. Our dog found the deer fascinating. I found the whole scene fascinating. 

Way more interesting than looking at the contents of my own mind, though I'm having to do that now as I compose this blog post.

(2) Pay closest attention to the physical now, not a mental past or future. The most real things are here and now. Not long ago this included our dog on the deck and deer in our yard. But now those things are a memory, so they exist only in my mind when I'm remembering them.

Ditto for everything that comes after me typing the word I'm typing now. I have a vague idea of what I want to say next. However, until a thought becomes converted to pixels on my laptop screen, it possesses less substantial reality. 

I often find myself worrying about what might happen in the future, or regretting something that happened in the past. It helps when I shift my attention to what is happening right here, right now. I remind myself that reality is immeasurably more vibrant when it is a concrete physical presence.

Memories. Thoughts. Worries. Anticipations. All the mental stuff inside my head is hugely less substantial. So I do my best to take it less seriously than my immediate physical surroundings.

(3) "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." As I've noted in numerous blog posts, and surely will note in more of them, I consider these words by Phillip K. Dick to be the best one-sentence bit of metaphysical philosophizing ever written.

I close my eyes. I stop believing in my MacBook Pro. I open my eyes. My laptop hasn't gone away. I'm sure of this, because my wife would let me know if I possessed the power of making my computer disappear by not believing in it. (If I could do this, rest assured that Donald Trump would disappear from the presidency.)

So what does go away when I stop believing in it? Or more generally, stop any mental activity about it. Notably, the past and future, since they are entirely mental constructs -- leaving aside the time-space continuum posited in Einstein's theory of relativity. 

Yes, the past and future may exist as a concrete reality if time is inextricably linked with space. But I'm not aware of anything other than the physical reality of the present moment. 

(4) Rumi has it right, even in translation. I've grown out of my previous obsession with Rumi, when I devoured every translation of his words I could find in English. Yet I still love this Rumi quotation, which I've committed to memory.

Fear the existence in which you are now!
Your imagination is nothing, and you are nothing,
A nothing has fallen in love with a nothing,
a nothing-at-all has waylaid a nothing-at-all.
When these images have departed,
your misunderstanding will be clear to you.

Wow, so seemingly true. What would reality be like without (a) our imaginings about what reality is like, and (b) our sense that each of us exists as a separate self?

That sense of independent selfhood is part of the imagining that keeps us from really knowing reality. As Rumi says, our imagination and our sense of self have fallen in love with each other. They have waylaid each other.

Yet neither truly exists. They are both nothings, or nothings-at-all. The departure of those images leaves behind... reality. At least, that's my current understanding. Tomorrow, or the next moment, I might look upon things differently. 

"Consciousness" might be a meaningless word

Below you can read a letter in New Scientist that raises a question I've pondered. Is there really such a thing as consciousness? 

It's clear that, along with other living beings, we humans are aware of both our external surroundings and internal states like hunger, thirst, fear, sexual attraction, thoughts, and such.

However, since that awareness is the brain in action when neurons reach a certain level of complexity, is it necessary to call that brain activity by a special name? Perhaps. Perhaps not. 

As the letter writer notes, at one point people thought that there must be some medium that allows light waves to move through space. But when electromagnetism came to be understood, the need for that medium vanished. 

Likewise, it is possible that what we now call consciousness is the product of our ignorance about how brains function. When the mechanisms of brain activity are more fully understood, "consciousness" may come to be viewed as a concept that no longer is relevant.

On a related note, today I listened to part of a dialogue Sam Harris had with Loch Kelly regarding dual and non-dual awareness. Because they are both deep into esoteric Buddhist philosophy, I'm finding their hour and a half discussion both interesting and irritating. 

Irritating, because both Harris and Kelly like to talk about how consciousness is unbounded, not being confined to the space within the head. I sort of get why they say this, but it seems obvious that (1) the brain is inside the head, and (2) the brain is necessary for consciousness.

Thankfully, today I heard Harris say something that went a long way toward alleviating my irritation. He noted that there is a difference between how we experience consciousness, and the ontology of consciousness.

Meaning, there is the reality of what consciousness actually is, how it arises, what its nature is, and all that, and then there is the felt subjective experience of consciousness or awareness. Harris and Kelly are mainly, if not entirely, speaking about the experiential aspect of consciousness, not how science currently objectively understands it.

So two things can both be true. Consciousness feels like it is unbounded, and consciousness also is the product of brain activity within the limited area of a human head.

Here's the New Scientist letter.

Consciousness could be another aether

Published 1 July 2020

From Ólafur JÓnsson, Mendrisio, Switzerland

I do enjoy the frequent letters and occasional articles on the subject of consciousness (Letters, 6 June). I am, however, bewildered by how the concept is defined. It seems to me that no two people can agree on what it is they are trying to describe.

Maybe because I have learned a spattering of languages in my life, I’m used to trying to guess a word’s meaning from its context, and the context seems to me to vary significantly in writing on the matter of consciousness. I wonder if the search for it is like that for the luminiferous aether, the proposed medium that would allow light waves to move through space. What reason do we have to assume consciousness exists, however much we “feel” it must?

Magic fairies, like God, don't exist. But we do.

Comic strips can say a lot in just a few words and pictures. Here's one in yesterday's Sunday paper that I like a lot.

Wouldn't it be great if everybody worked to make the world a better place without resorting to supplications to imaginary beings like gods and fairies? 

(Of course, John Lennon wrote a song along that line.)

The coronavirus doesn't care what people think of it

Philosophically, the coronavirus (novel coronavirus, actually, since COVID is a new version) has some interesting aspects. Most obviously, the virus is teaching us something important.

It doesn't give a shit what people think of it. It just does what it is designed to do by evolution -- spread between individuals whenever it has a chance. 

You can't pray your way out of getting it. You can't wish your way out of getting it. You can't positive-think your way out of getting it.

The only way to protect yourself is to avoid contact with the virus. Wear a mask. Physically distance from other people. Wash your hands often. Don't touch your face. You know, familiar advice.

Which a whole lot of Americans are ignoring, along with other clueless people around the world. People who believe they are smarter than a dumb virus, even though it's obvious that from the chart above, the virus has the upper hand in the United States right now.

Americans aren't very scientifically literate. And we have a president, Donald Trump, who takes pride in ignoring science, facts, and experts. 

So this country had a moderate decline in COVID cases after a peak in early April. Then people got complacent, figuring they knew more that public health experts, and now we're suffering from a steep unswing in cases. Also, in deaths.

It isn't a coincidence that the United States also is one of the most religious countries in the world. Denial of facts about the physical world goes hand-in-hand with an embrace of fantasies about God, heaven, and such. Too many Americans consider that belief has a magical power.

Actually, it doesn't. Only in the human mind do beliefs have an influence. Nature couldn't care less what people believe. Nature just does what comes naturally: act in accord with the laws of nature.

The coronavirus is immune to human thought. It can only be controlled by preventing its spread through specific physical actions, not by wishing it away. The same is true of global warming.

What's hugely disturbing is how badly the United States is doing at controlling COVID in comparison to Europe,

That's because we never had a unified national response owing to the incompetence and uncaring'ness of Trump, combined with governors and mayors who failed to maintain stay home/shelter in place orders for a long enough time. 

UPDATE: Just came across this tweet that supports what I said above.

So even though the European Union has more people than the United States, our cases have been skyrocketing whiie Europe only has a modest uptick. 

Perhaps some good will come of this. Maybe it will dawn on Americans that science is our best way of understanding the world around us, not religion or other fantasies. Maybe...

Know when to step back, to reassess, to go in a different direction

As I make my way through Maria Konnikova's book about learning poker, "The Biggest Bluff," I keep my eye out for insights by this Ph.D. psychologist that pertain to a churchless way of life.

Below are some passages I read this morning that are pertinent to those who are wondering whether they should stick with a religion, spiritual path, or mystical teaching that no longer seems to make sense.

Konnikova speaks of the sunk cost fallacy. Basically, it means that you keep on doing something because you're invested in it. The investment could be money, but it also could be psychological, mental, emotional. 

You're reluctant to give the thing up even though if you had to do it over again, you wouldn't want that thing. But those sunk costs make you think that you need to hold on, even though this is irrational, as in the saying "Don't throw good money after bad." A Wikipedia entry on this subject offers an example:

In an everyday example, a person may purchase a ticket to a baseball game and find after several innings that they are not enjoying the game. Their options at this point are:

• • Accepting the waste of money on the ticket price and watching the remainder of the game without enjoyment; or
  • Accepting the waste of money on the ticket price and leaving to do something else.

The economist will suggest that, since the second option involves suffering in only one way (wasted money), while the first involves suffering in two (wasted money plus wasted time), option two is preferable.

In either case, the ticket-buyer has paid the price of the ticket so that part of the decision should no longer affect the future. If the ticket-buyer regrets buying the ticket, the current decision should be based on whether they want to see the game at all, regardless of the price, just as if they were to go to a free baseball game.

Many people, however, would feel obliged to stay for the rest of the game despite not really wanting to, perhaps because they feel that doing otherwise would be wasting the money they spent on the ticket.

They may feel they have passed the point of no return. Economists regard this behavior as irrational. It is inefficient because it misallocates resources by taking irrelevant information into account.

With that introduction, here's excerpts from Konnikova's book.

Why not exercise some creative thinking in what my journey is going to be?

I am too married to what it is all "supposed" to look like, and not critical enough of the fact that I simply made some decisions earlier on with incomplete information -- and now that I know more, I should change course. No one is telling me to quit poker, merely to reassess where I am.

But somehow I convince myself that swerving wouldn't be a demonstration of my adaptability and flexible thinking. Instead, it would be a hit to my reputation, a demonstration of failure, of a lack of ability.

It's the classic sunk cost fallacy in action: you keep to your course because of the resources you've already invested. 

I've written about it many times. Only it seems that when it comes down to it, I don't quite apply it to myself, right now. In my mind, sunk costs are supposed to be physical. Somehow it doesn't occur to me that they can also be intangible. 

An accurate self-reassessment would have shown that I was nowhere near ready to take on what I had planned, and that the bigger blow to my reputation might actually be proceeding with my set course. No matter.

It's easy to spot sunk costs in others. This person held on to their investment too long. That CEO didn't switch his management strategy in response to a new market environment. That company didn't recognize that their star product was going obsolete.

In yourself, it can become more difficult -- especially when you're dealing not with a concrete action but rather a lack of action.

One of the most important lessons of poker strategy, intimately connected to self-assessment, is this: sometimes, it's the hands you don't play that win you the title. We remember the hero calls. What about the hero folds? What you don't do rather than what you do -- that can be greatness.

The art of letting go can be the truly strong one. Acknowledging when you're behind rather than continuing to put good money after bad. Acknowledging when the landscape has shifted and you need to make a shift yourself as a result. 

It happens all the time in our lives. We find ourselves in an appealing situation -- and then we hold on to it for dear life, even when any objective outside observer would tell us that the appeal is long gone. We start at a promising job, only to be stymied in promotions over and over -- yet we cling to the notion that the job is great.

We embark on a promising relationship, only to find that we have less and less in common with our partner -- yet we forge ahead, refusing to admit that what seemed so right is now wrong.

Sometimes, the most difficult thing of all is to stop playing. All too often, we stay in a hand long after we should have gotten out.

...In 2018, Kaitlin Woolley and Jane Risen demonstrated that people will often actively avoid information that would help them make a more informed decision when their intuition, or inner preference, is already decided. 

They will, for example, avoid learning how many calories are in an attractive dessert, or how much they will be paid if they choose to take on a boring task instead of a more exciting one. Part of them knows that the information might mean they need to change their decision, so they choose to ignore it.

...Never feel like you have to do something just because it's expected of you -- even if you're the one who expects it of you. Know when to step back. Know when to recalibrate. Know when you need to reassess your strategy, prior plans be damned.

RSSB guru asks good question: "How do you know I'm not a fraud?"

Back in 2006 I wrote a post called "Who is the guru?" In it I said this about the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Gurinder Singh is fond of saying, “How do you know that I’m not a fraud?” and “Maybe I just have the gift of gab.” Devotees consider statements like these to be Zen-like pointers toward his divinity. But who knows? Maybe he’s pointing toward his humanity without being able to explicitly speak of who he directly knows himself to be.

I don't know if the guru has continued to say those words. But I was reminded of them yesterday when I responded to an email sent to me by a disillusioned RSSB devotee who asked me some questions about my previous involvement with the organization and Gurinder Singh.

In part I said:

There are thousands of religions in the world. There’s no demonstrable evidence that any of them is objectively true.

 

If such evidence comes along, I’d seriously consider believing in that religion. Absent that evidence, I consider all religions to be false, including Sant Mat/RSSB. There rarely is a way to prove that something doesn’t exist, so the burden of proof rests on those who claim that something does exist. We can’t be 100% sure about anything, of course. All we can do is pursue truth and evidence as honestly as possible, recognizing it always is possible that we could be wrong.

 

...All religious leaders sound convincing, but that doesn’t mean they are speaking the truth. Every good salesperson sounds convincing. But we still need to think for ourselves to make sure the product they’re selling really is as good as they say. Same applies to people trying to sell us on a religion.

 

...Soon after Gurinder became the guru he was fond of saying things like, “How do you know I’m not a fraud?” and “How do you know whether I just have the gift of gab? (of speaking persuasively) Those are still good questions. He’s now been viewed as God in human form by his followers for thirty years. I suspect that Gurinder either actually believes he is a mystical adept, or he has had so much practice acting as if this is true he now puts on a convincing show for his followers.

 

This morning I did some additional reading in a book about a woman's pursuit of becoming expert at poker, "The Biggest Bluff" by Maria Konnikova. In her Reading Myself chapter, she has some interesting observations about understanding (or reading) the motivations of other people at a poker table that pertain to the question of who the RSSB guru really is.

God? Or a fraud?

Basically, it's complicated -- in poker or elsewhere in life -- because we humans are complex beings. Here's an initial step at understanding, or reading, as described by Konnikova.

Frank Lantz has developed a poker concept that he calls "donkey space" about the dynamic between two expert players who understand the game at a high level and are playing a heads up match -- that is, one on one. There's perfect theoretical play, which is unexploitable by any opponent, and then there's adjustment to that play based on your opponent's strategy.

...You watch them act and react over multiple situations and you try to adjust based on that behavior, to be maximally profitable against that particular person.

But now, if your opponent is good, they realize what you're doing -- and they adjust in turn. It may even be the case that they moved to this particular spot in strategy space on purpose, Lantz points out, so that they now exploit you better. They've given up equity for a little bit to then kick you once you've moved.

"I call this donkey space because a donkey is a fish, a player who is not playing perfectly," Lantz explains. "But these two people are like fighter pilots, maneuvering around each other, because in a dogfight, what you want is to be on your opponent's tail. That's where you can shoot them." He continues, "You're doing barrel rolls and triple flips, and you're constantly trying to outmaneuver this other person."

So that's one lesson from poker, which I suppose most of us already know, at least intuitively. There are layers upon layers of possible deception. 

A guru says, "How do you know I'm not a fraud?" The person hearing this has to decide what to make of those words. Is the guru being honest? Is he admitting to being a fraud without outright saying this, making it into a question rather than a statement? Or is the guru casting the responsibility onto his devotees to find the truth about himself, which could be a positive thing?

But there are more complex possibilities. The guru knows he is a fraud, so he sounds like he is admitting this, knowing that most of his devotees will refuse to believe it and rather view his words as manifesting a divine humility that shows his godliness, not his fraudness.

Here's another factor Konnikova talks about: the importance of knowing yourself if you wish to know other people.

I've been so busy focusing on reading the motivations in play for other people that I forgot to factor in myself. 

...Through careful observation, you not only have to learn how to tell the difference between your faulty intuitions and real data, but understand how to exploit what you've seen -- and how to know if you're being exploited in turn.

That last part is the one I seem to have momentarily forgotten. I've been so busy reading others that I've missed the step of stopping to read myself. Blake can only tell me what I'm giving off physically [at the poker table]. He doesn't have enough to go on to unravel my inner psychology and understand the internal tug-of-war that may be governing my actions.

...In turning my mind to tells and reads at this stage in my learning, I may have missed a crucial step: the first person you have to profile -- psychologically, not physically -- is yourself.

Great point. When it comes to gurus, why does someone want to believe in them so much? What need is being fulfilled by embracing the notion that a guru is God in human form when there is no evidence of this? Why is blind faith so attractive in the realm of religion when so much care goes into not being taken advantage of in one's worldly life?

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

 

Let everything be just as it is

Here's part of what Sam Harris said yesterday in a guided meditation on his Waking Up app that I listen to most mornings, along with a guided meditation by Tamara Levitt on my Calm iPhone app.

What would this moment be like if there truly was nothing missing, and nothing to do? Nothing to improve. Nothing to wait for.

What if this is it? Is there any sign that it is insufficient? Is there any sign of its imperfection?

Is there something you’re trying to accomplish? Simply relinquish all effort to try to improve experience in this moment.

Let everything be just as it is. 

Give up all effort. Simply notice whatever appears, grasping at nothing, pushing nothing away. 

Just realize everything is in its own place. And everything is all there is in each moment. 

Isn’t everything enough?

There’s always just consciousness and its contents as a matter of experience. 

See if you can recognize this. 

Now, one thing that came to mind is that seemingly there's a considerably difference between (1) letting everything be just as it is while I'm sitting peacefully in a chair, headphones on, listening to a guided meditation, and (2) letting everything be just as it is while, say, I'm sitting in a dentist's chair having a tooth drilled into. 

Or having some other painful, unpleasant, or disagreeable experience. 

It's unclear whether Harris meant for his words to apply to all sorts of moments, rather than just peaceful moments. I have a feeling that he did mean just that, since later in the guided meditation I recall him saying that it is important to blur the distinction between formal meditation and activities of everyday life.

And it would indeed be strange if the advice above about pushing nothing away only was relevant to pleasurable experiences where there would be no inclination to push something away.

So I believe that Harris is pointing toward something universally applicable, as difficult as it may be to envision simply noticing whatever appears without trying to grasp at something or push something away. If we've got a painful headache, doesn't it make sense to push it away with an aspirin, or whatever?

Sure it does. I don't think Harris is espousing an extreme fatalism where no effort is made to improve our condition or that of others. Rather, he seems to be talking about a view of life that, as his app puts it, involves waking up. 

The question is, waking up to what? Having listened to a lot of what Harris has to say, and having read each of his books, here's some ideas about what he's asking us to wake up to.

-- The present moment, which by definition, can't be changed. It simply is what it is.
-- The interdependence of everything in existence. Emptiness, to use a Buddhist term.
-- The passing nature of reality, notably including our own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
-- Our lack of free will, even though most of us consider that we possess it.
-- Our incessant habit of dividing realty into good and bad, based on our own subjectivity.
-- Our constant desire to find something new and better.
-- The lack of evidence for an enduring self. A "me" separate and distinct from experience.

I'm not saying that what I just wrote actually reflects what Harris is getting at. This is just how I look upon his words that I shared at the beginning of this post.

If you have different ideas about Harris' meaning here, leave a comment with your own viewpoint. The screenshot below is from the Waking Up web site.

My talk about the One at a RSSB National Satsang Weekend

It's a discovery! Not of buried treasure, unfortunately, but of a post I wrote for my HinesSight blog a few months before I started this Church of the Churchless blog. 

I came across a link to it while looking through early churchless posts to include in a second book of post compilations. Since there has been recent discussion about oneness on this blog, I figured it would be good to share this May 2004 post.

Since I'd written a book about Plotinus' teachings, Return to the One, it was easy for me to talk on this subject.

Not lost in translation (May 30, 2004)

This morning I gave a 45 minute talk to the 500 or so National Satsang Weekend attendees at the Science of the Soul Center here in Petaluma, California.

No, I’m not a member of a cult, no matter what my wife says (jokingly, I should emphasize, just as I fondly call her “infidel” with a smile on my face). Aside from my talks, Laurel chooses not to attend meetings of my spiritual group, for reasons I can completely sympathize with.

I look upon spirituality as a science that investigates whatever may lie beyond the physical reality with which we are familiar now. So I resonate to the “science” aspect of the Science of the Soul. But other members take much more of a religious approach, believing that the mere fact of being accepted as an initiate by the Master who heads the organization makes you a Special Soul, marked for salvation while people like my wife are doomed to a lesser quality afterlife.

Today I couldn’t resist making some remarks about this annoying attitude.

I said that scientists the world over are united in their search for the truth about materiality. A physicist doesn’t care if a colleague comes from another country, another culture, another religion, another whatever. All that matters is their common commitment to unraveling the laws of physical nature through the scientific method.

So science unites people.

Strangely, most religions and spiritual paths divide people, even though they claim to be devoted to the one God, or the one metaphysical reality. Thus, I observed, it is strange that a materialistic enterprise, science, is a unifying force on our planet, while a supposedly non-materialistic enterprise, religion, is a divisive force.

My main theme was the One.

This is the best term for God, I argued, because it most clearly reflects an almost universal tenet of mystical philosophies: beneath all the manyness without and within us lies the ineffable, formless ground of being. Call it God. Call it the One. Trace anything in creation back to its source. There is the One.

Since the One is everywhere and everything, though also separate from everywhere and everything (statements like this are what make mysticism mystical), we too are the One. But this won’t be evident to us until we get rid of all the manyness that obscures our oneness. Meditation is the scientific practice that, theoretically, brings this about.

(I say “theoretically” because the practice is darn difficult to practice, for me as for most other people).

Yet meditation needs to be supported by a person’s whole approach to life. If this is divisive, as when someone thinks they are part of a special group that has a special claim to special spiritual knowledge, that attitude isn’t going to lead this person closer to unity. I think I got this point across pretty well, though it wasn’t my main emphasis. Mostly I talked about Plotinus’s teachings concerning the One and how we are able to return to this ultimate reality.

This was the first time I’ve had a talk translated.

Because many older members of the Science of the Soul group were born in India and don’t speak English well, 45 minute talks given in English get a 15 minute translation into Hindi (or maybe Punjabi, I don’t know which). The translator jotted down five or so pages of handwritten notes while I was talking, came out on stage and sat down next to me after I was done, and proceeded to summarize what I said.

It was sort of fun to listen to the cadences of a language I can’t understand, other than a few words. There were lots of “paramatmas,” which I’m pretty sure means God, or close to it. Heaven knows how some of my slang-infested English got translated, and whether “Stoic” means much to many of the traditional Indians—who also dress traditionally.

Laurel and I love the colorful attire of the Indian women, all the saris in every color of the rainbow. And the Indian food served at lunch and dinner brought smiles to our stomachs. All in all, a pleasant multi-cultural weekend, different sorts of people coming together in pursuit of the One.

Blind belief feels good, but isn't a reliable guide to truth

Here's a nice "guest blog post" from Osho Robbins, who emailed it to me yesterday. I like what he has to say. I"m continually amazed at how people can believe crazy stuff that has no basis in fact, reason, or demonstrable evidence. 

They've just heard it from somewhere and embrace it because it feels like it could be true.

That's incredibly lazy. It also is why there are so many defenders of Trump's countless lies, so many people who feel that masks aren't effective in combating the spread of the coronavirus, so many deniers of the reality of human-caused global warming.

I came across this video.

A few things stand out. 

 

1. The caller, like many people, doesn’t have a clear understanding of meanings of words and just guesses and makes it up. 

 

2. The caller, again like many people, is just going by their feelings, but feelings, while they might seem to be important to the individual, are not a reliable path to truth. You can feel many things, it doesn’t make it the truth. I might for instance trust someone because I feel they are truthful. It doesn’t make it true, even though it might feel like it. 

 

3. When pushed to reveal “how and why” they think “it’s God” that is doing or responsible for XYZ, there is no logical answer the caller can give. 

 

4. Another huge logical fallacy that is common among believers is the appeal to authority. For example “I believe God does everything because it says so in the Sikh Granth sahib.” 

 

The truth is “so what?” 

How do you know it’s true? 

The answer again is because of trust and blind belief. 

 

This explains why so many people continue to believe everything that Gurinder Singh Dhillon [an Indian guru] says simply because he says it, regardless of how absurd the statement is. The hidden belief is “If the guru says it, it HAS to be the truth." The Sikh has a belief “if it’s written in the Granth ahib, it HAS to be the truth because the Granth sahib is the word of god.” 

 

To challenge those underlying core beliefs normally brings a robot-like response like “Everyone knows that the Granth sahib is the word of god” or yet another quote. 

 

Once you take away the “quote proof” and the “everyone knows” proof, and similar, suddenly the person realises they have no foundation. This is extremely uncomfortable, hence people avoid it at all costs. 

 

Those core beliefs are their comfort blanket and they will not let them go. Not ever. Because their whole life depends on them. 

 

Take away those beliefs and they cannot continue to live unconsciously anymore. 

 

That is why they fight for those beliefs so vehemently. 

 

The first glimpse of truth comes only when we question our core beliefs and it’s not comfortable at all.