Church of the Churchless

God’s here, but I’ve got to go

If Jesus returned to earth and you were part of the multitudes listening to him preach in person, what would you do if you had to go to the bathroom? This is the sort of deep theological question that we love to consider here at the Church of the Churchless. It also was a deep experiential quandary for me back in December of 1977 when I made my first visit to India.

I went to see the guru, Charan Singh, who had initiated me by proxy six and a half years earlier. I had never seen Charan Singh in person, just heard him on audiotapes, seen him on film, and read his books.

So even though I was in between jobs at the time and it was the Christmas season (two facts that my ex-wife never failed to remind me of before, during, and after my Indian pilgrimage), I had decided that spending two weeks in the Punjab at the spiritual colony of Dera Baba Jaimal Singh was good for my soul—though not for my depleted savings account nor my marriage (I wasn’t home on December 25 to put together my daughter’s first bicycle, another fact I was reminded of regularly by my wife until our divorce twelve years later).

The community where the guru of the spiritual path known as Radha Soami Satsang Beas lives is known as the Dera. In 1977, as now, disciples like me came from all over the world to absorb the Dera atmosphere and commune with the guru (or master). We Westerners were able to attend intimate evening meetings with Charan Singh where interesting questions were asked about all sorts of subjects, and even more interesting answers were given by the master.

Indians rarely could get so close to the guru. In large part this was because there were many more Indian initiates than non-Indian initiates. Several times every year huge gatherings, or bhandaras, would be held at the Dera. Hundreds of thousands of Indians would journey by train, bus, truck, foot, or however to the Dera (modes of transportation in India are wondrously diverse and often wondrously terrifying, as I wrote in a Christmas letter about my New Delhi cab ride).

These pilgrims would assemble in a vast open space to hear the guru speak in Punjabi or Hindi (I’m not sure which). This photo doesn’t begin to capture the throngs who extended far back and to the sides from where I was standing near the dais where the master soon would be sitting. The Indians would arrive hours early in order to get a seat (on the ground) fairly close to the dais. We Westerners got preferred seating right in front, and had the luxury of mats to put our posteriors on instead of just bare earth.

This day the talk (or satsang) was in late morning. I had eaten breakfast about an hour earlier and drunk my habitual cup of coffee, not a good idea. But this was my first bhandara, and I didn’t know the drill. Which was…being courteously seated by Indian volunteers (sevadars) in the close-to-the-dais area, waiting a half hour or so for the guru to arrive, and then sitting through a nearly two hour talk in a language I couldn’t comprehend, so I had no way of knowing how close the master was to finishing up his topic.

For an hour or so, everything was cool. This photo shows the view I had of the guru and of the pathi who would chant excerpts from the Sikh Adi Granth, which Charan Singh then would explicate. The best way to imagine the atmosphere is how I began this post: How would Christians feel if they were in the presence of Jesus?

For virtually all Indian disciples of the guru, as well as most Western disciples, considered that Charan Singh was god in human form. I wasn’t sure back then, and I’m less sure now, but there was no doubting the amazingly powerful force of several hundred thousand people sitting in pindrop silence before a highly revered mystic and spiritual master.

I too appeared reverential. On the outside at least. On the inside I came to have a single overwhelming thought: “Oh my God, I’ve got to pee so bad!” I tried to distract myself from bladder consciousness. No go. I considered all the possibilities open to me to pee while sitting on the ground, covered by the wool shawl that I was wearing. My camera case seemed like an option, but I couldn’t see how I could pull off peeing in the case without drawing a lot of unwanted attention from the seemingly blissed-out disciples sitting near me.

Pretty soon a loud voice in my brain was screaming at the guru, “Shut up! Stop speaking! Go home!” A smaller voice was simultaneously saying, “You should be ashamed of yourself! God in human form is sitting right above you, and all you can think about is taking a piss.”

Eventually I noticed a few Indian women standing up who must have been suffering from the same affliction I was. The reaction they got from the imposing turbaned male sevadars wasn’t encouraging. As soon as a woman would rise, a sevadar would vigorously motion with his hands for her to sit down. To leave before God has finished speaking simply isn’t done, no matter what your bladder says.

Somehow I made it through the end of the talk and raced at light speed back to my room, where I enjoyed a near-orgasmic release of bodily fluid. I passed quite a few women raising their saris in ditches by buildings near the bhandara grounds, proving that I wasn’t the only one who suffered a serious split between the needs of the body and of the spirit.

Which I guess is the theological point I’m finally getting to, and will end with. Why do spiritual people so often consider that the body is unnaturally opposed to soul? It was natural for me to want to go to the bathroom after drinking coffee and sitting for hours listening to the guru talk. Why couldn’t I feel comfortable standing up, walking off to a toilet, and then coming back to hear the rest of his satsang with a calm mind and empty bladder?

And why is it necessary to elevate “gurus” such as Charan Singh, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, whoever so far above the rest of us? Aren’t they considered to be the most humble of the humble? If I, who am not at all humble, was giving a talk, it wouldn’t bother me at all to see someone rise and go off to the bathroom. So why was this considered a serious sacrilege at that 1977 Indian bhandara, just as I strongly suspect it would be if somehow Jesus made a second coming and preached longer than the bladders of his listeners could tolerate?

“God’s here, but I’ve got to go.” For skeptical believers like me there is a deeper significance to these words than bathroom humor, I’m quite sure of that.

How to talk to a fundamentalist

This is both an important question, and the working title of a book that a bunch of us are hoping to get Bill Long, a recovered evangelical Christian, to write. Bill understands the fundamentalist mindset much better than I do, so I’m looking forward to reading his thoughts on this subject. Here are a few of my own, stimulated by watching a few minutes of a recent Larry King show.

King was interviewing Rick Warren, a minister and author of “The Purpose Driven Life.” This is a best-seller that Warren’s web site says will help “readers understand God’s incredible plan for their lives. Warren enables them to see the big picture of what life is all about and begin to live the life God created them to live.” Well, that’s fine. I’ve got no problem with a Christian advising other Christians about how to best live a godly life.

What bothered me was Warren’s answer to a question about whether Jews or other non-Christians could meet God after death. “No, Larry, I’m afraid not,” I recall Warren saying. “In the Bible Jesus clearly says, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

King followed up with, “What about if a Jew has lived a good life, and a Christian has lived a bad life?” He got the same answer from Warren: if you don’t believe in Jesus, you’re not going to heaven.

Well, that’s not fine. I was disappointed that King merely frowned and went on to have Warren answer phone calls from viewers. I don’t think this is the way an intelligent, rational, open-minded person should talk to a fundamentalist. I realize that King didn’t want to antagonize Warren and his many Christian fans, but the truth should trump ratings.

This is how I see the situation: if a pre-schooler says to me, “There are fairies living in our garden; they make the flowers bloom,” I’d smile and say “How wonderful!” The child is young, a belief in fairies at that age is almost certainly harmless, and he or she will grow out of the fantasy before long.

However, if an adult said the same thing to me and didn’t seem to be joking, I’d start worrying about the person’s mental health. I’d first want to make sure that they weren’t putting me on, and then would let them know that their ideas are nonsensical. “There’s no evidence that fairies are real, you know. And scientists don’t need fairies to explain how flowers blossom.”

Fundamentalists like Warren need to be treated in the same fashion if they put forth unprovable religious propositions as, well, the gospel truth. I wouldn’t mind if Warren had said, “I believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, but I’m not absolutely sure of this.” Or, “I hope that….” That would be like him saying, “It sure would be nice if fairies existed.” Yes, it would. They’d make gardens so much more interesting.

The problem is, there’s absolutely no proof of fairies, just as there is absolutely no proof that Jesus Saves. Fundamentalists should be reminded of this at every opportunity for their own good and, more importantly, for the good of those who are marginalized by their closed-minded, irrational, faith-based view of the world.

A private belief shouldn’t be open to public challenge, just as I don’t mind if you step on your own toes. However, if you purposely step on my toes, that’s a different matter. Now I have the right to tell you, “Get off my foot.”

Fundamentalists, especially those of the Christian and Muslim faiths, have a bad habit of wanting to force other people to live in accord with their beliefs. Another bad habit is making dogmatic statements unsupported by objective facts, and then feeling offended when someone challenges their dogma. Bad habits like these should be discouraged, not encouraged.

A classics scholar, A.H. Armstrong, has some apt advice about how to talk to fundamentalists:

When claims to possess an exclusive revelation of God or to speak his word are made by human beings (and it is always human beings who make them), they must be examined particularly fiercely and hypercritically for the honor of God, to avoid the blasphemy and sacrilege of deifying a human opinion.

Or, to put it less ferociously, the Hellenic (and, as it seems to me, still proper) answer to “Thus saith the Lord” is “Does he?,” asked in a distinctly skeptical tone, followed by a courteous but drastic “testing to destruction” of the claims and credentials of the person or persons making this enormous statement.

So the next time someone says to me, “Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life,” I’ll reply: “Oh, really? How do you know? What makes you think that statement is true? I’m all ears, all highly skeptical ears.”

Our Creedless Creed

Note: to make this Creed more readable, some qualifiers have been omitted. So "God" signifies God/ultimate reality/final truth, not just a personal divinity. And "religion" signifies religion/spiritual path/philosophy, not just a mainstream theology.

There is no objective proof that any religion knows the truth about God. If there were such proof, most people on Earth would have converted to that faith long ago and all scientists would be believers.

Spirituality thus is an individual affair. Proof of any metaphysical realities that exist will be subjective, not demonstrable to others.

Every person has the right to pursue their own spiritual quest without interference, so long as he or she doesn't interfere with the rights of others.

Since the veracity of each and every religion is unprovable, equally unprovable are the moral and ethical tenets derived from any and all religious teachings.

Thus morality also is an individual affair. There are no absolute laws of right and wrong as there are absolute laws of physics. Subjectivity rules in ethics.

Individual ethical decisions may be formed into a collective codification of societal norms, or laws. These are purely human, not divine.

Science is the surest means of finding truth. Theory, experiment, analysis of data: such are the tools of science, whether directed toward knowing material or immaterial reality.

Religious teachings are hypotheses to be confirmed through individual research. As such, they must not be taken as gospel truth by adherents of a particular faith.

Religious doubters, skeptics, and heretics should be honored for their efforts to assure that unproven assertions about God are not put forward as solid truth.

Every adherent of a particular religion should say to himself or herself,"I could be wrong." If he or she won't do this, other people can say it for them: "You could be wrong."

This creedless creed of the Church of the Churchless also could be wrong. It needs to be reexamined and revised regularly.

Death provides the final answers (if only momentarily). The spiritual quest is to get answers ahead of time. But the big question is, "What are the questions?"

Church symbol

[Note: This post refers to a previous Church of the Churchless symbol, shown below.]

Our church's symbol is part of the Ten Oxherding Pictures that express the essence of Zen Buddhism. This picture is number eight in the series. In the words of Kakuan Zenji, it represents an evolved Zen realization:

This "I" (person) which had been seeking, and the essential self (ox), which has been the object of our search, did not exist at all.

Click on the link above to read the whole story of the Ten Oxherding Pictures. What I like about this stage, number eight, is the emphasis on going beyond ideas about spirituality or enlightenment.

"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" Buddhists are fond of saying. And not just Buddha: also Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Lao Tzu, Guru Nanak, every spiritual teacher. And not just these people are to be killed: also the concepts that comprise the shell of their teachings. For only then can the kernel of truth be released.

All this destroying takes place entirely within our own minds, of course. The empty circle above signifies an eminently wise consciousness, one that sees things exactly as they are, not as they are conceived or imagined to be.

There is nothing more important in spirituality than maintaining an open mind. But it is difficult to loose the rigid hold with which most of us cling to familiar dogmas, theologies, belief systems, philosophies.

If deep down the universe truly is One, as both scientists and mystics say it is, then the essence of us is the essence of the cosmos. Crystal clear reality, plain and simple. To realize this, we just need to let go of what isn't real and be aware of what remains.

The science fiction author, Philip K. Dick, expressed this truth wonderfully simply:

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

How do I join?

We all want to belong.

The Church of the Churchless welcomes those who feel like they don't belong, even if they are members of an organized religion or spiritual faith.

You can be a member and not belong. You can sit through a communal service, sermon, celebration, or cermony, and still say to yourself: I don't belong here. You are going through the outward motions of what it means to be a member, but deep down you know that somewhere else is your real spiritual home.

A lot of people feel this way. No one is alone in feeling alone. The big questions we all need to ask are: What am I missing? And: Can any organization give it to me?

Every person has to come to grips with these questions by himself or herself. That said, here are my own pithy answers: Reality and No.

By "reality," I mean a direct experience of what is really, really, real--what lasts when everything else passes away. Let's call this "God" for lack of a better term.

If I am to experience God, where will this occur? Where every other experience of mine occurs: in my consciousness. The same is true for you, and for every other person on Earth. Nothing is real for us except what we consciously experience.

A religious organization provides experiences of--no surprise here--a religious organization. What else would we expect? Well, many people illogically believe that an experience of something that isn't God can substitute for the real thing. It can't. God is God. Ultimate reality is ultimate reality. Everything else is everything else.

So if you want to truly belong to God, to reality, you can't belong to anything else. For that thing will water down your experience of God to a greater or lesser degree. Usually greater, because our natural tendency is to cling tightly to the familiar rather than embrace mystery. And God is the ultimate Mystery.

Bottom line: you can join the Church of the Churchless.
Even more: you must join the Church of the Churchless if you want to know God.

But this joining is wholly within you, not without. There are no application forms to fill out, no dues to be paid, no initiation ceremonies to be gone through.

You are the Church of the Churchless. So am I. And so is everyone who wants to experience reality rather than religion, truth rather than dogma, substance rather than shadows.

Each of us must make a choice. You or I can say, "I am a Christian," "I am a Muslim," "I am a Buddhist," "I am a Hindu," "I am a Wiccan," "I am a Taoist," or whatever other faith we subscribe to at the moment.

The other option is to simply say with conviction, "I am."
Do that, and you have joined the Church of the Churchless.
Welcome. You belong. We have a lot to share.

Just have faith

Faith is wonderful.
Faith is all we need to be spiritual.
Just faith. Faith alone.
So we shouldn't have faith in anything other than pure, naked, empty faith.

What is faith stripped of thought, emotion, perception, expectation, imagination? Whatever it is, that's what we are seeking. Such is the message at the mystical core of every deep spiritual teaching. A few examples:

Christianity: "Be silent therefore, and do not chatter about God, for by chattering about him, you tell lies and commit a sin....Also you should not wish to understand anything about God, for God is beyond all understanding....If you understand anything about him, then he is not in it, and by understanding something of him, you fall into ignorance." Meister Eckhart (Selected Writings, Penguin Books)

Judaism/Kabbalah: "God is not what we think It is. God is not a thing, a being, a noun....Jewish mystics often refer to It as Ein Sof, which means Endlessness....Ein Sof precedes thought and it even precedes the Nothingness out of which thought is born. Nothingness is viewed as a level of awareness that is the result of the 'annhilation of thought.'" Rabbi David Cooper (God is a Verb, Riverhead Books)

Islam/Sufism: "Anything that has a beginning and an end is a 'shell.'...There is more to the pronouncement of faith than what is said with the tongue because it too has a beginning and an end....We know then that the 'soul' of prayer is not only its external form but also a state of total absorption and unconsciousness during which all these external forms, for which there is no room, remain outside." Rumi (Discourses of Rumi, Threshold Books)

Buddhism: "If you want to reach the other shore of existence, give up what is before, behind, and in between. Set your mind free, and go beyond birth and death....I have conquered myself and live in purity. I know all. I have left everything behind, and live in freedom. Having taught myself, to whom shall I point as teacher?" Teachings of the Buddha (The Dhammapada, Nilgiri Press)

Here's how to tell the difference between true faith and false faith: Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a bare windowless room. Two doors lead out of the room. Both are closed, but can be opened with a turn of the doorknob. The doors are marked with signs that describe what awaits on the other side: (A) Reality, (B) Belief

After you open a door, you have to walk through it. The door then will shut and you never will be able to leave the place you have entered. Choose Reality and you will know things as they really are, from top to bottom of the cosmos. You will know whether or not God exists and, if so, the nature of this ultimate divinity. You will know whether death is the final end of your existence or if it is the beginning of another form of life. You will know whether there is a meaning to the universe beyond what human beings ascribe to it.

Or, choose Belief and you will know only what lies within the confines of your current suppositions about the nature of the cosmos. For the rest of your life you will be confident that what you believe to be true, really is. Any evidence to the contrary will not make an impact on your mind. You will remain doubt-free, faithful to the beliefs you now hold about God, creation, life, death, and the purpose of human existence.

Which door would you choose to walk through?

Before answering, consider carefully the potential ramifications of your choice. Reality is an unknown, a mystery. It could be frightening or fabulous, painful or pleasurable, warmly loving or coldly uncaring. Do you want to embrace absolutely real reality? Or would you rather hold on to your beliefs about what is real?

Someone with the type of faith extolled by the Church of the Churchless would unhesitatingly choose Door A and boldly stride into Reality. For their faith is not in anything particular, but is a faith that truth can be known, should be known, and, indeed, must be known.

This is the faith Henry David Thoreau speaks of in Walden:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living it so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the Devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'" (Where I Lived, and What I Lived For chapter)

Such is a scientific faith, a faith that does not foreclose in advance any possibility about what reality may consist of, a faith not in the unproven pronouncements of some supposedly holy person or book but in one's own direct experience of divinity--or direct non-experience, as the case may be.

Still, there is nothing wrong with belief, so long as our beliefs remain subservient to reality. When reality extends its hand, we should be able to happily surrender even our most cherished beliefs. This will not be difficult if our faith is in the rightness of whatever spiritual experiment we have chosen to undertake, and not in the surety of realizing a particular outcome.

A material scientist adjusts his beliefs, or hypotheses, in accordance with the results of his experiments. He does not design an experiment to produce certain desired findings, for this would not be science. The scientific method is what a scientist has firm faith in; everything else is provisional until proven.

Similarly, the height of spirituality is to just have faith.
Faith that reality is better than any and all beliefs.
Faith that the ultimate reality we may call "God" will be reflected in an open mind...but not a closed one.

Spiritual non-practice

"Practice makes perfect." Usually a true slogan.
But not when it comes to perfecting spirituality.
Here at the Church of the Churchless we don't believe in spiritual practice.
We believe in spiritual non-practice. Let me explain.

Practicing basketball isn't going to make you a practiced piano player. You have to practice the activity you want to become good at, not some other activity. But is this what most members of religions and supposedly spiritual paths do?

No, they assiduously practice worldliness, not spirituality. Don't be deceived by the outward appearance of religiosity; a bank robber wearing a nun's habit as a disguise isn't saintly. Look to the essence of the activity itself.

What does every person do each day regardless of his or her spiritual inclinations? Feel emotions. Think thoughts. Undertake actions. Feeling, thinking, acting: these are the three voluntary (or semi-voluntary) activities of everyday worldly existence (perceiving is mostly passive, as our senses perceive whether we want them to or not, a fact I'm reminded of each time I visit the dentist).

Some people are more inclined to feeling, others to thinking, still others to acting. Recognizing this, the ancient Hindu sages matched up a spiritual activity, or "yoga," with each of these worldly activities. Bhakti yoga leads to God through love. Gyana yoga leads to God through knowledge. Karma yoga leads to God through selfless action.

Love, knowledge, action. These aren't just spiritual choices for Hindus. Everyone--Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Wiccan, whatever--has to decide how their spirituality will be practiced.

But if all you have to choose between is feeling, thinking, and acting, then you're bound to continue practicing what you already know how to do. If you suspect that your spiritual practice is keeping you stuck, you're absolutely right. How can anything new be experienced when you are doing the same old things?

A Christian feels sorrow when he imagines Jesus dying on the cross. And also when his favorite sports team loses a championship series. A Muslim thinks about what she reads in the Koran. And also about what she reads in the newspaper. A Jew does charitable work through his temple. And also volunteers at his child's public school.

Those whose spirituality is limited to feeling, thinking, and acting aren't engaged in any special godly activity. They're just doing almost exactly what they always do and calling it "religious." But it isn't. Not really.

For the root meaning of "religion" is found in the Latin religare, to bind back, or reconnect, the individual with God. If the everyday activities of life could achieve this reconnecting with ultimate reality, we'd all become saints just by living. Yet obviously this doesn't happen.

Genuine spirituality means taking a course opposite to worldly ways. Practice makes us imperfect when it comes to realizing God if we merely keep on practicing how to feel, think, and act. These activities are just baby steps that don't get us very far. What we need is a single great stride that bridges the gap between what we now falsely believe we are, and what in truth we are.

This great stride is the fourth way of the Hindu sages, Raj yoga, the path of meditation. Again, it isn't just for Hindus. There also have been, and are, countless Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and other sorts of contemplatives. Deepak Chopra says the fourth path is inclusive:

By following it you are actually following all four at once. Your meditations go directly to the essence of your being. That essence is what love of God, selfless action, and knowledge are trying to reach....The spiritual secret that applies here is this: What you seek, you already are. Your awareness has its source in unity. Instead of seeking outside yourself, go to the source and realize who you are. ("The Book of Secrets," pp. 42, 48)

Eventually the Church of the Churchless will contain sermons that preach the power and the glory of self-realization through meditation. This is much more a spiritual non-practice than a practice. The less you feel, think, and do, the more you realize higher truths.

Nobody has said it better than an anonymous fourteenth century English country parson: ("The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works," Penguin Classics, pp. 142-144)

...One can feel this nothing more easily than see it, for it is completely dark and hidden to those who have only just begun to look at it. Yet, to speak more accurately, it is overwhelming spiritual light that blinds the soul that is experiencing it, rather than actual darkness or the absence of physical light.

...Work hard and with all speed in this nothing and this nowhere, and put on one side your outward physical ways of knowing and going about things, for I can truly tell you that this sort of work cannot be understood by such means.

Welcome to the Church of the Churchless

If you are spiritual but not religious,
If you don't belong to an organized faith but sometimes wish you did,
Or if you do belong but sometimes wish you didn't,
Welcome to the Church of the Churchless.

If you are tired of dogma that divides rather than unites,
That demands blind faith rather than open-eyed investigation,
That proclaims "You'll see when you believe"
Instead of "You'll believe when you see,"
Welcome to the Church of the Churchless.

You can browse the Church messages, or posts, in various ways. The ten most recent posts are in chronological order on the home page. To see all of the posts, click your way back in time month by month via the "Archives" links on the left side. Only the last ten months are shown. Click on the word "Archives" for a complete listing.

Posts also can be browsed by category. Each post is placed in one or more of the subjects listed under the "Categories" section to the left. The Basics of our faithless faith category is a good place to start if you've just started visiting the Church of the Churchless. Here you'll find posts about the central tenets of our gospel of spiritual independence.

Use the Google search feature to find posts that contain a key word or words. The "HinesSight" search will return results from all three of my blogs: HinesSight, Church of the Churchless, and Salem Political Snark.

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