Church of the Churchless

Another soul says “RSSB not for me”

It’s always a pleasure to hear from a like-minded soul: someone who approaches spirituality with a scientific bent and isn’t shy about questioning dogmas that don’t seem to make sense.

Yesterday I got an email from Cynthia, who is, like me, an initiate of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). She shared what brought her to this spiritual path and also what has caused her to draw away from it.

Below is the core of her message, mildly edited for clarity and readability. When Cynthia told me that it was fine to post her words, she asked me to make sure that she didn’t say anything incorrect about RSSB. So I changed her “And why are all the Masters related?” to “And why are so many of the Masters related?”—since not all of the RSSB gurus have been members of the same family.

I resonate with Cynthia. She’s right: RSSB is indeed a religion, though the organization makes claims to being a science. When I read the list of what doesn’t sit well with her, for every item I said to myself “right on, sister.”

She says that now she likes the idea of “not being on a mission to accomplish something during meditation.” That’s a great notion. The incongruence of desiring to attain desirelessness, or willing to give up your will to a higher power, has become more evident to me in my own meditative practice.

Thanks for sharing, Cynthia. Here’s her message:

Looking back, I believe that Sant Mat came along when I was feeling the need to connect with a spiritual path that could offer me “purpose,” structure, and connections with like-minded individuals. I have always been very open-minded and willing to learn from others, and I saw Babaji [Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the present RSSB guru] as another teacher on my spiritual educational path.

I was not sure about the “GIHF” [god in human form] aspect, and chose to view the Master as “especially enlightened.” I liked the fact that we were told that through meditation, we could achieve the same state, although it would most likely take many years. I am a scientist by training, and I liked the scientific aspect of the Path.

I did pretty well for the first few months. Sometimes instead of meditating, I would spend the time reflecting on things in my life and reading the books. I had a few good experiences with meditation, achieved a nice relaxed state, and felt good. I was fine with the [eggless vegetarian] diet this whole time and learned how to love it and live it.

At the end of November I entered my typical year-end reflective period. I had some quiet time to think about my "spiritual work" and what I wanted to commit to for the next year. For whatever reason, I had begun to have a different perspective of Sant Mat: that it was really a religion, even though they say it is not. Here is a list of what is not sitting well.

--RSSB initiates are the “chosen ones” and have been selected to go back to the Lord. What does this mean for the others, like my husband, who are not initiated?

--The Master is GIHF [god in human form]. If we are all drops from the same ocean, why do we need someone outside of ourselves to connect us with what is already supposed to be a part of us? How can one person take on the karma of 3 million people? Why would he have to? How can someone else be responsible for the good things that happen to us? And why are so many of the Masters related? A family business, perhaps? And no female Masters?

--We are all equal “drops” but RSSB discriminates against homosexuals, as evidenced by Charan Singh’s quote [see this Church of the Churchless post].

--The over-the-top obsession with the diet restrictions, so much that it has become a way of life for satsangis [RSSB initiates]; what ever happened to everything in moderation?

--The fact that we are isolated from each other by not being allowed to meditate together or talk about our experiences, which just serves to elevate the Master all the more (I would love to hear his meditation stories).

--We can't interface with God directly.

--The mind is an evil force to be overcome (which discourages questioning about the Path, as you have experienced).

--We need to obey and worship the Master or bad things will happen to us; I feel like I am back in Catholic church again, or back home as a little girl with mom and dad saying that God is putting black marks about me in his "book" when I misbehave. Give me a break.

--Stories like someone secretly feeding an initiate an egg, and causing that person to come back in the reincarnation cycle, or the one about Babaji wanting to dig up all the flowers at Dera [Indian headquarters of RSSB] because their beauty is distracting satsangis from their meditation.

Well, there's the main list. I think that I am finally ready to accept responsibility for my own spiritual growth.

I have read the RSSB sections of your blog and enjoyed every minute of it. I went to the bookstore yesterday and got a copy of Hagen's “Buddhism Plain and Simple,” and finished it this morning.

I like the idea of “no self” and that all of us are interconnected and constantly changing. I know that since I am not freaking out about leaving RSSB that it must be the right decision for me. I have learned a lot about myself from the two years I spent on the Path, and my personal spirituality has accepted some of the RSSB teachings.

I do believe that meditation is a useful process, and I plan to continue doing it. I like the idea of just listening to my breathing and not being on a mission to accomplish something during meditation; I do enough of that in my worldly work. I am not sure what to do about my diet. I will go back to eating eggs, but I am not sure what I will do about the rest. I went out to lunch today, knowing I could eat anything on the menu, and I just couldn't do it.

Well, Brian, thanks for listening.

Best,
Cynthia

Something’s happening here: Existence

With our electricity off for a reason known only to God and Portland General Electric, my laptop’s battery is showing a quasi-ominous (given my normal weblog verbosity) “87% remaining.” So this is an excellent time to share some thoughts from Will and keep my writing relatively brief tonight.

Will, a new cyberspace acquaintance, said in an email that he had just stumbled across the Church of the Churchless. I’m glad he did. For his relatively brief message was sufficient for me to recognize a kindred spirit—both of us being fascinated by Existence.

Not the existence of things that exist, but the big “E” variety. The Existence that lies beneath time, space, matter, energy, and everything else that we can identify as an existent.

As Will says, pure and simple Existence (assuming “pure” and “simple” have any meaning when associated with the big E) is something that stands apart from all our usual naming, inquiring, analyzing, investigating, worshipping, and all the other “ing’s” that normally occupy our attention.

In my previous post I was trying to get at this difference between everything that exists and does things within space-time, and that “something else” which exists apart from all that. For lack of a better word, I call it Existence. Others say “God.” Still others, “ultimate reality.”

Like Will, I sense its presence. Not through my physical senses, obviously. Nor through thought or emotion. It’s hard to describe, but somehow Existence is just there as a presence that isn’t present in the same way other things are. That sensation is the closest I’ve come to what might be termed a “mystical experience.”

Yet it doesn’t strike me as at all mystical. Rather, it is an exceedingly natural sensation. I mean, if Existence didn’t exist, then neither would I. Nor anything else. So my nature, and the nature of everything in the cosmos, is nothing but Existence—when you strip away all that can be stripped away.

This, to me, is what meditation is all about. Getting down to basics. Finding out what my essential nature is. Exploring the possibility that there is something other than space-time. Opening up to Existence.

It’s here. It’s there. It’s everywhere. Got to be. Can’t shut Existence out of any nook or cranny, for nooks and crannies exist.

I’ve got this idea that when I’m on my death bed I’ll just keep on saying to myself, “I am.” When I don’t hear those words, I’ll be something else. Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. Whatever it is, I think it will still exist. But probably not as me.

Here are some excerpts from Will’s message:

I have a couple of comments on the matter of eternity, and the apparent necessity for it. It seems to me that if there were ever nothing, then nothing is all there could ever be. If we can accept this, at least tentatively, for purposes of discussion, then we have an unbeginning, unending, boundless in all directions, eternal reality existing.

The problem for us, at least for me, is that words are dichotomous, and are designed by and for converse with the phenomenological universe. They apparently begin and end. "Apparently" is my operative term because I cannot know this.

Anyhow, moving from the sublime to the possibly ridiculous, what we observe through our senses may be an illusion. Not an illusion in the sense that it doesn't have some tangible reality (via the finite senses), but in the sense that it goes away, vanishes in time.

When we try to apprehend the infinite, we just don't have the equipment, at least via the senses, to get far. We bog down in what Kahlil Gibran so elegantly noted as "man trying to comprehend God is like trying to pour the ocean into a drop of water.” Not actually so elegant -- but you get the drift.

…Anyhow, Brian, for me there is one thing that all existents have in common: existence itself. Simple stuff, really. And that existence is eternal and underlies limitless forms of being. It is truly miraculous (whatever that means). We are all connected to eternity all of the time. No other possibility.

I do not pretend to know what's going on here, but I do hold, with the Buffalo Springfield, that "something's happening here; what it is ain't exactly clear. . ." I love it, embrace it, and am sometimes (but not to the level of clinical diagnosis) carried away by it. And it never began, it will never end, and you are there (here).

Enjoyed your site. Look forward to more.

Ditto, Will. Thanks for the thoughts.

Meditation and space-time diagrams

Yesterday Scientific Santa brought me a book by physicist Leonard Susskind, “The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design.” Proving that I can get spiritual inspiration from seemingly unlikely sources, I read the first few chapters before meditating this morning.

Susskind begins his overview of particle physics with the best layman-friendly description of Feynman diagrams that I’ve ever come across. You can see an animated Feynman diagram here.

It shows two electrons and a photon traveling through space and time. Time is the vertical axis, and space (with three dimensions necessarily condensed into one) is the horizontal axis. So vertical movement is through time, and horizontal movement is through space. In the diagram one electron emits a photon, which is absorbed by another electron.

All that sounds pretty complicated for us non-physicists. So courtesy of an Astronomy 201 class at Cornell, here’s a-day-in-your-life space-time diagram (a student’s life, obviously, though it left out “drink beer” and “watch TV instead of doing homework”).

Everything that happens in space and time can be put on a space-time diagram. Each of our lives. Planetary and galactic motions. Fish swimming in the sea. A bug crawling across the sidewalk.

Plus, going to church. Reading a holy book. Listening to a sermon. Praying. Bowing at the feet of a guru. Making a pilgrimage to Mecca. Bathing in the Ganges.

Everything that most people consider to be religious or spiritual occurs in space and time. In this regard there’s no difference between the most elevated act of spirituality and an electron emitting a photon. It’s all occurring on the worldly stage of space and time.

Maybe this is all there is. However, it seems to me, and physicists also, that space-time (better to use one word for this continuum) has to come from somewhere. That is, there is something deeper than space-time, a more foundational level of reality. I’ll leave it to scientists to puzzle out what the objective nature of this entity—superstrings?—might be.

My interest in meditation is in exploring its subjective nature. I can’t say that I’ve made a whole lot of progress in this experiment, but it is an always-fascinating exercise—which today I realized can be explained via a space-time diagram.

Much of my waking time is spent moving through space. When I meditate, I’m pretty much motionless, aside from occasionally shifting into a more comfortable position. That leaves my space-time line essentially pointing straight up on the diagram: all motion through time, virtually none through space.

It could be argued, though, that there is indeed motion in me: mental movement. For a brain scanner hooked up to my cranium would indicate that neurons in various brain places are being activated as I think of different things. For even though I practice mantra meditation, the repetition of a single word, “practice” is the operative word. My mind often wanders onto other subjects, such as what I’m going to write about on my weblog later on, which is what I’m doing right now.

We humans have a unique ability (or disability) to be bodily moving along one line of a space-time diagram, while mentally moving along quite another line. I can be physically sitting on a meditation cushion in Salem, Oregon while my mind is in a far distant space and time.

So the first goal of meditation is to become a single concentrated space-time line. This is the purpose of Buddhist mindfulness meditation, as it is of most mantra-based meditative practices. But these sorts of mediation still leave you as a line in a space-time diagram. You may be motionless and doing just one thing, yet that action remains firmly enmeshed in the everyday world of space-time.

Again, maybe this is all there is. The intriguing possibility, though, is that other levels of reality exist which can be experienced through a non-everyday state of consciousness—one which breaks through the stage of space-time into…who knows?

Such a breakthrough couldn’t be captured on a space-time diagram. It would have nothing to do with space, nor with time. The consciousness experiencing that state would be somewhere and sometime else. A point, perhaps. Or a formless bubble of being. A nothing unlike anything.

Who knows? No one can say. For that knowing wouldn’t occur where we all live, breathe, think, feel, ponder, question, worship, and exist—in those space-time diagrams that so precisely and perfectly mirror our space-time lives.

Is there something else?

Is there any more tantalizing question to ask?

God is born in everybody, not just Jesus

With the supposed day of Jesus’ birth about to be celebrated tomorrow, it’s worth remembering that God became human not just once a few thousand years ago but countless times. Such is the teaching of the German Dominican Meister Eckhart, one of my favorite mystical theologians.

Back in the middle ages he reached understandings about God, Jesus, and the incarnation that are much more spiritually advanced than the confused rantings of modern Christian fundamentalists, who mistakenly worship Jesus as if he was a one-time special deal.

Rather, says Eckhart:

People think that God became human only in the Incarnation, but this is not the case, for God has become human just as surely here and now as he did then, and has become human in order that he might give birth to you as his only begotten Son, and no less.

To you. And, of course, me. Not just Jesus. All of us. This is the true Christian teaching that has gotten hidden under masses of dogma. The organized institutions of Christianity have a powerful vested interest in keeping this truth under wraps (that’s why the Catholic Church accused Meister Eckhart of heresy).

For if people realized that the ultimate reality of God is directly accessible to them without a religious intermediary, the hold that churches have on the faithful would loosen greatly, if not be released completely.

So celebrate your own divine birth tomorrow. Jesus is dead and gone. As Eckhart says, you are alive and here. Forget about Jesus and remember yourself. You accomplish this, paradoxically, by forgetting yourself. And not only yourself, but you have to forget everything else that you think you know, whether it be about worldly or godly matters.

According to Eckhart, who often sounds like a Christian Zen master, God is only born in an absolutely empty soul that is free of thoughts, images, imaginings, and concepts.

For this birth to take place God required a bare soul, untrammeled and free, in which nothing is but himself and which is filled with expectation for nothing other than himself…God who is the master of nature, cannot tolerate emptiness in anything. Therefore remain still and do not waver from this emptiness, for if you turn away from it at this point you shall never be able to find it again.

I love how Eckhart would preach that the very sort of activity he and his parishioners currently were engaged in—namely, a church sermon—was completely useless in finding God. Those who stay serenely at home tomorrow, he implies, will be acting more divinely than the churchgoers.

God is no more likely to be found in external observances than he is in sin. But these people, who practice many external devotions, have great status in the eyes of the world, which comes from their likeness to it. For those who understand only physical things, have a high regard for the kind of life which they can perceive with their senses. Thus one ass is adored by another.

If you don’t want to be a religious ass, take to heart Meister Eckhart’s central teaching: there is no distance between God and you. Perhaps Jesus understood this also. But again, Jesus’ realization (whatever it may have consisted of) is of zero value to you and me. What we need are our own realizations.

So don’t focus on Jesus tomorrow. Marvel at the birth of God that is constantly taking place within you. Here’s my favorite Eckhart quotation:

The eye with which I see God is exactly the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowledge and one love.

Barbara Walters special may be closest I’m getting to heaven

I put in several hours last night watching a recording of Barbara Walters Tuesday special: “Heaven: Where is it? How do we get there?” Unfortunately, none of her guests said that watching a spiritually-oriented TV show garnered good heaven-karma. Otherwise, opinions were all over the map concerning Walters’ central questions.

The head of an atheist society expressed her firm opinion that we weren’t alive before we were born and we won’t be alive after we’re dead. Several Christian clergy were just as sure that those who believe in Jesus and have been “born again” (whatever that means) are absolutely, positively entering heaven after death.

Buddhists seemed to be split. The Dalai Lama said that according to Buddhist teachings heavens and hells do exist, though these generally are temporary habitations prior to being reincarnated. Nirvana, the ultimate goal, is worlds apart from either heaven or hell.

On the other hand, Richard Gere—a long-time Buddhist—thought that heaven and hell are what we make for ourselves right here on earth, and said he didn’t spend much time thinking about what would happen after he died.

The most annoying guests, not surprisingly, were the Christian true believers. They were the most judgmental and sanctimonious, by far. Heaven’s gates are closed to anyone who doesn’t accept Jesus, God’s sacrificial lamb. Jewish spokesmen were easier on the ears, having more of a Gereish attitude that how we live our life now should be our main focus, not anticipating the goodies that will be enjoyed in heaven.

Christians, Jews, and Muslims all agreed that heaven is a super wonderful place. “No problems, mate” is the watchword. You get to spend quality time with loved ones who died before you, can eat whatever you want without getting fat, and, I assume, never hook or slice your drive on the Pearly Gates Golf Course.

It’s sort of strange that Islam, the most repressive of the Western monotheistic religions, offers up the most sensual description of heaven. A suicide bomber in an Israeli prison (who was unsuccessful, obviously) was the creepiest Walters guest. He would smile as he’d speak about dying as a martyr, as would he, less surprisingly, when he talked about the 72 virgins who were expected to be awaiting him if his bomb had detonated as planned.

I’ve always wondered about where the precise figure, 72, came from. A Muslim scholar explained that this entire virgin notion comes from the hadith, sayings attributed to Mohammed, and not from the Koran itself. He also said that in Arabic the phrase “seventy two” means “a lot,” sort of like when we say in English, “You don’t need to bring any extra plates to the potluck; we’ve got a hundred of them.”

I’m not sure what to think about this whole heaven deal. As a scientist pointed out to Walters, there is strong evidence of what he calls a “God gene” that makes some people more prone to believe in heaven—and religion in general. He theorized that there must be something about such a belief that offers an evolutionary advantage or the gene wouldn’t have been passed down to us modern humans.

Death is scary. Since believing in a good life after death takes some of the edge off that primal fear, maybe this lessened anxiety confers some sort of survival advantage. Heaven-believers are out and about fearlessly hunting saber-toothed tigers while heaven-deniers are fretting in the cave, Woody Allen-like, existentially pondering their uncertain future.

The atheist woman had a good point, though. If heaven is believed to be so much better than this life, she said, we all should grab a rope and hang ourselves. Touché. This is one of the many religious tenets that is intellectually accepted to a much greater extent than it is actually lived—notwithstanding the historical evidence of faithful who have gone to their deaths courageously and cheerfully.

I enjoyed the stories of those who had had near-death experiences. At least these tales of what heaven is supposed to be like sprang from direct vision, not distant theologies. Interestingly, not a single near-death experiencer mentioned seeing a traditional religious figure. No Jesus, no Buddha, no God, no Allah. Just love and light and warmth and the feeling, “I never want to leave this place.”

I hope this also is what I’ll experience when I die. But who knows? I certainly don’t. It will be a big adventure, for sure. Maybe an extremely short adventure—one quick psychic step into nothingness—maybe not.

Of all the people who appeared in the show, the Dalai Lama was my favorite. I loved his infectious laugh, evident humility, and lack of pretension. When Barbara Walters asked the Dalai Lama if he was God, he said something like, “Oh, no! I’ve got a problem with my eye today. Would God have a sore eye?”

The Dalai Lama’s complete embrace of his humanity is the best evidence, I’d say, that he is more than human. One sincere “I’m just like you” Dalai Lama is worth hundreds of holier-than-thou religious pretenders, of whom there is no shortage in the world.

I found myself thinking “Huh?” when I heard author Mitch Albom (who wrote “The Five People You’ll Meet in Heaven”) say that even though heaven may not be real, a belief in heaven makes someone a better person while he or she is alive. I don’t think so.

Albom seemed to believe that the promise of heaven encourages people to live an exemplary life, doing good to others and practicing an exalted morality. The suicide bomber argues against that theory. As do the countless other religious fundamentalists whose belief in a sectarian heaven leads them to hate, judge, chastise, condemn, and look down upon other people who don’t accept that particular theology.

I’m with John Lennon on this one. If acting hellishly here on earth really is how you get to heaven, I think I’ll pass on that journey.

Evolution triumphs over intelligent design

It was a great Christmas present for believers in reality rather than fantasy: a Pennsylvania judge ruled today that intelligent design can’t be taught in the classroom because that would violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

Intelligent design is, of course, merely creationism in disguise. There’s nothing scientific about it. Not a single research paper ever has been published in a reputable scientific journal supporting the premise that our universe was designed by a creator god.

So Judge Jones was absolutely correct when he wrote in his opinion, "We have concluded that it is not [science], and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

Fundamentalists surely will keep trying to get religion in the American science classroom, but it’s encouraging that in this important precedent-setting legal battle evolution easily proved itself to be superior to creationism in a scientific “survival of the fittest.”

Watching cable news tends to depress me. Today, seeing this story pop up on the screen made me hopeful. Perhaps the United States really is still the land of the free (thinkers) and the home of the brave (defenders of the constitution).

Hats off to the Dover, Pennsylvania residents who were the plaintiffs in this case. They stood up for scientific truth after the Dover school board decided that students should be read a statement that cast doubt on evolutionary theory and suggested intelligent design as an alternative.

The best piece of reporting that I’ve read about the Dover case was Margaret Talbot’s “Darwin in the Dock” (The New Yorker, December 5, 2005). The New Yorker Online Only features an interview with Talbot where she talks about her story. Here are some excerpts from her print story about the trial in Dover:

And scientists who believe that intelligent design is merely a repackaged version of creationism made a case for evolution that was thrilling in its breadth (evidence from homology, modern genetics, molecular biology, the fossil record) and satisfying in its detail (a recently excavated fossil of the oviraptor, a small carnivorous dinosaur of the kind that evolved into birds, depicts the creature brooding over its eggs like a hen).

…Under cross-examination by Eric Rothschild, a dogged lawyer for the plaintiffs, Behe [Michael Behe, a chemist who advocates intelligent design] conceded, for example, that a definition of science that could be expanded to include intelligent design could, by the same token, embrace astrology. And he was unable to name any peer-reviewed research generated by intelligent design, though the movement has been around for a decade.

…Behe and other advocates will freely admit that, for them, the designer of life on earth is the God of Christianity. (Intelligent design, Behe has written, is “less plausible to those for whom the existence of God is a question, and is much less plausible for those who deny God’s existence.”)

…In the end, it wasn’t very hard for the plaintiffs to make the case that several of the school-board members had been eager to see creationism added to the curriculum and, after discovering that the idea was legally problematic, had latched onto the term “intelligent design.”

There’s as much as you’d ever want to know about the case on Kitzmiller, et. al. v. Dover Area School District, including the 139 page opinion that was released today.

Gurus and disciples—masters and slaves

I’m not attracted to being the slave of someone. Some people are. The Master/slave Conference is dedicated to “exploring dominant/submissive relationships.” Many websites and weblogs, such as Magdala’s Submission, are devoted to the M/s and BDSM lifestyle.

All that is fine with me. Whatever turns you on. But melding dominance and submission with spirituality strikes me as strange. I’ve never been able to look upon God as someone who desires a Master/slave relationship with the beings He/She/It has created. Yet religious and mystical literature is replete with claims that God desires just that.

Here are some excerpts from “Sar Bachan Poetry,” a book published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas. It contains writings by Soami Shiv Dayal Singh, a guru of the late 1800s who emphasized the importance of total submission to a spiritual Master.

Admirable, among all disciples, is the one who has earned the pleasure of the Master. For if the Master is pleased, the Creator is pleased…So do what you can to please the Master—trying to please others is of little advantage.

Do not think of the Master as a human being—he is the very life and spirit of Sat Purush, the true Lord.

My Guru is the benefactor, I am the slave.

The basic Christian-like notion here is that God has taken on a human form: the guru. So whatever you do for the guru is done for God. If you want to get into God’s good graces, then suck up to the guru. Then word will get passed on to God that you’re a devoted dude or dudette, deserving of salvation.

Now, I’ve got problems with this theology. To pick one quibble among many, I find it exceedingly difficult to accept the anthropomorphism that the highest divinity gets pleasure from being obeyed. Wouldn’t you think that God is beyond such egoistic concerns? As would be, by implication, a guru who supposedly is one with God?

Yet Soami Shiv Dayal Singh says:

Live in the will of the Master, my friend, and hold it dear to your heart. Consider as kindness whatever the Master does and accept with an open heart whatever the Master says. Learn the meaning of gratitude, O thoughtless one! He will give you happiness or pain as he in his wisdom thinks fit. Your indulgence in sense pleasures is a perversion for which, out of his love for you, he might punish and chastise you… Serve the Master, please him with your service.

A woman into BDSM speaks similarly in her “The Submissive’s Prayer.”

Let me be able to show Him each day my love of my service to Him.
Let me open myself up to completely belong to Him.
Let my eyes show Him the same respect, rather I sit at his side, or kneel at his feet.
Let me accept my punishment with the grace of a woman.
Let me learn to please Him, beyond myself.
Grant me the power to give myself to Him completely.
Give me the strength to please us both.
Permit me to love myself, in loving Him.
Allow me the peace of serving Him.
For it is my greatest wish, my highest power
To make his life complete, as he makes mine.

As I said before, I’ve got nothing against freely chosen dominance and submission relationships. A woman who calls herself Rarejewel speaks quite eloquently about “The Power of Submission.” But this essay is on the cuffs.com web site. People attracted to a Master/slave approach to spirituality might do well to keep this in mind.

Plus, fear is a prime motivation for obeying the guru. Soami Shiv Dayal Singh says that if a disciple doesn’t do everything possible to please the Master and questions the guru’s godliness, that damnable heretic will be taught a lesson by the angels of death. Creepy. Sounds like the Old Testament.

If someone attempts to please everyone else but is hostile towards the Master, not hesitating to find fault with him and taking him to be a mere human, consider his actions to be suicidal—the messengers of death will pull him down. Learn from this and understand, brother, and make every effort to please your Master.

This morning I was reading Alan Watts’ last book, “Tao: The Watercourse Way.” His description of the Taoist conception of obedience is far removed from a personalized Master/slave relationship. For a Taoist, the goal is to flow with the entire river of life, not to try to conform to the command of any particular entity.

Wu-wei is to roll with experiences as they come and go, like a ball in a mountain stream, though actually there is no ball apart from the convolutions and wriggles of the stream itself….There is no resistance to the up when now going up, and no resistance to the down when now going down. To resist is to get seasick.

Acquiescing to the natural movements of the cosmos makes sense to me. What else can we do? Becoming the slave of another human being--that's unappealing.

However, if the Indian personage I was expected to be enslaved to looked less like this...

and a lot more like this, then I might well change my mind.

The nothingness we fear is the everything we are

What do we fear the most? Losing our identity, a firm sense of who we are. And how does every deep mystic tradition describe the highest reality? As an entity with no characteristics that can be described, existing as it does outside of all limitations and boundaries.

This is one of the many enlightening observations that I’ve come across in Luther Askeland’s essay, “When the Word-Animal Discovers Signlessness: A Reflection on the Possibility of the Mystical,” which is available on Luther’s website.

I’ve been reading a few pages of this lengthy essay every morning before I meditate. The first two chapters hooked me, for it was here that Luther introduced the idea that the common feeling (for me at least) of “I’m clueless!” is a state of consciousness to be embraced, not feared. It’s called the Other Paradox.

The Other Paradox is the fact that the image we have of the best possible condition and the image we have of the worst possible condition are the same image. It is the fact that our perceptions of destiny’s contrary extremes—the most exalted perfection even a god might achieve, and the most wretched fate which might befall any being—are the same perception.

…It is the fact that we picture absolute perfection in the same way as we picture ruination and utter shipwreck. It is the fact—ironic in the “rational animal”—that we reverently, adoringly, longingly, contemplate in God or Brahman a condition which, regarded as a possibility for us, is the most dismal fate we can imagine, an appalling nothingness and oblivion from whose very prospect we spontaneously flee.

Great stuff. As I’ve observed before in other posts about Luther Askeland’s writings, he has a wonderful ability to delve another layer deeper in the world’s spiritual/mystical literature than I’m able to dig myself. I’ve read most of the material Luther references in this essay but haven’t been able to tie my insights together in such a fresh, creative fashion.

He’s absolutely right. God, or ultimate reality, never is considered to be something you can set on a pedestal, look at from every angle, lay bare all of its secrets, and describe down to a “T”.

It’s mystery. Unlimited. Unfathomable. Immeasurable. Inconceivable. It’s the endless spiritual ocean that stretches infinitely beyond the shores of the physical universe. It’s the impossibly vast sky that rises above the small hills and valleys of Earth.

And, says Askeland, as manifested within us it’s the fringes of our awareness—the barely sensed intuition of something more that hovers in the shadows just outside the clear light of the shared common reality where we live our everyday worldly existence. The paradox, then, is that what we’re trying to push away—doubt, mystery, uncertainty, wordlessness, incomprehension—is what leads us closer to the ultimate truth of the cosmos.

We long to be able to say who we are, but his very inability to say who he is is God’s omniscience…Each day we long for something new…but a god’s first response, each morning upon awakening, is infinite and joyful relief that nothing has changed, that it still is and knows “nothing.”

We struggle to escape the dark waters and formless mysteries of our origins; the infinite Brahman rests, marveling and content, in the dark waters and formless mysteries of its origins. We dress ourselves up in words so as to conceal from others and from ourselves the shame of our nothingness, but Shiva exults in his nudity, his non-containment by any name, his breakout from all limiting awareness of being “Shiva” or “God."

…The nothingness which devours us is, for God, the felicitous absence of anything which might retard or attenuate joy’s flow. The appalling abyss into which we fall is the unfathomable source and springhead of that delight’s eternal upwelling. The fringes, those wastes formed of desolation, despair, and madness, lie spread out before the Perfection of Wisdom as a holy and edgeless desert.

There she roams, free of all division and limit, and has happily lost track of all things, even herself.

I like Luther’s message: don’t worry if you feel like you’re the only one who doesn’t have it all figured out. Be assured that “it” isn’t so amenable to figuring. “It” can’t be contained in thoughts, images, theologies, or philosophies. Nor can “It” be encompassed in a holy book or person.

What Luther likes to call This is much more akin to unknowing, doubt, and chaos than to knowledge, faith, and order. When you have no idea about what it is, where it is, why it is, or how it is, this state of emptiness brings you face to face with it.

Don’t fear being a heretical, faithless, unchurched, confused blob of nothing. The mystics of every tradition say with one reassuring voice: “Now you’re getting somewhere! Nothingness is the straight road to everything.”

A Playboy moral lesson

The January issue of Playboy arrived a few days ago. It’s been sitting on the kitchen counter where we dump our mail, as I haven’t had time yet to give the magazine the concentrated attention that it deserves.

However, Playboy’s mere presence has stimulated me to blogishly contemplate a somewhat surprising subject: morality. Of course, when I turn the issue’s pages my mind surely will turn in other directions.

But for now I’m interested in the feelings that I have whenever I walk by the counter and glance at the cover. Rightness. Honesty. Sincerity. Truth. I'll explain, since I realize that those four words are difficult to associate with a man’s Playboy subscription.

I had never subscribed to Playboy until last November. Then, in an act of defiance to the supposed “values voters” that exit polling indicated were responsible for electing Bush to a second term, I decided to invest $12 in a year’s worth of moral turpitude (a dollar a month, what a bargain).

Naturally I’d enjoyed looking at Playboy over the years. I’d say “reading,” but what man does much of that? Whenever I had the chance to pick up an issue, I’d eagerly do so. Thus all this time I was a Playboy fancier who wasn’t a subscriber.

It wasn’t the small subscription price that kept me from enjoying the magazine monthly. Rather, it was a split between two Brians. There was the me who liked to look at photographs of beautiful naked women, and then there was the me who was reluctant to admit to himself and others how much he liked to look at photographs of beautiful naked women.

The first “me” was honest; the second “me” was hypocritical. I could tell the difference between them when a Playboy ad would arrive in the mail, stimulated, no doubt, by my purchase of a single issue (August 2003) that featured Jenna and Heidi, two attractive contestants from the Survivor reality TV series. (Laurel and I are big fans of Survivor. I couldn’t pass up the chance to delve beneath the surface, so to speak, of this show.)

So whenever I’d get the mail and see a Playboy catalog, that would be the object of my attention as I walked back to the house. Scientific American. TIME. National Geographic. They could wait.

In short, I was a Playboy “reader” who didn’t read Playboy. Not because I thought there was anything morally wrong with doing so—there just was a discrepancy between the person I really was and the persona I wanted to project to the world.

I’d wonder, “What will the mailman think if I get a subscription? What if friends come over and see a copy lying around the house? Will this besmirch my reputation (such as it is)? Will I appear to be a fifty-something guy who likes to leer at young babes (which I am)?”

Eventually the ridiculousness of these wonderings hit home. I am who I am. If some aspect of who I am feels absolutely right to me when I’m alone in my subjective I-am-ness, then I shouldn’t worry about how it looks to those who see me from the outside.

Morality should spring from within, not without. As I noted in my “Talking with a churchless Christian” post, often we feel guilty about doing things that shouldn’t generate any guilt in us at all. The guilt is produced by social pressure (or more accurately, our perception of social pressure).

Religions frequently are the source of obsolete moral injunctions that continue to be accepted by people not because the codes mesh with their inner sense of right and wrong, but because it is more socially acceptable to run with the herd rather than follow your own moral compass.

I’m still a long way from being free of unproductive fretting about how other people regard me. But Playboy has helped me lighten my load of hypocrisy.

There shouldn’t be a big divide between what we feel is the right thing to do and what we’re actually doing. Nor should there be a marked divide between our private sense of morality and how we present ourselves in public.

This is why PostSecret is so popular, even though the postcard confessions are anonymous. It’s healthy to let out honest truth that has been held within.

Don’t just do something, stand there!

This topsy-turvy notion came to me today as I was pondering how every religion or spiritual path claims that it, and it alone, has the map that leads to the Treasure of All Treasures, variously termed salvation, nirvana, enlightenment, and so on.

There are countless maps. Bible, Koran, Talmud, Dhammapada, Upanishads, Tao Te Ching, Adi Granth, many others. Believers in these supposedly sacred writings consider that they contain directions to a spiritual treasure chest. All you have to do is follow a particular way and eventually you’ll get the holy goodies.

The problem, though, is that these maps lead every which way, based as they are on radically varying conceptions of reality. So followers of different faiths are running in all sorts of different directions. The only thing they agree on is the conventional wisdom: “don’t just stand there, do something!”

There’s plenty of alternatives about what that thing is. Make your choice and place your bet.

Some say that you have to accept a savior of the past. Others teach a living savior is essential—a guru of the present day. Still others proclaim that no savior is needed at all: salvation is in your own hands.

Divinity is monistic, one without a second. No, God is distinct from the creation, making two. You’re both wrong: reality is neither one nor two. So goes the never-ending debate between theists, pantheists, monists, non-dualists, and the dizzying variations on these metaphysical schemas (even the apparently simple idea that the cosmos is one has many offshoots).

This physical universe is all that there is. Wrong, there are higher spiritual planes of reality. When the body dies, that’s the end of us. No, the soul lives on. Self or god-realization takes much time and effort to accomplish. Absolutely not, truth is right before our eyes. Salvation is realized after death. Nope, it can happen while living.

And so it goes: endless speculations, dogmas, theories, conjectures, philosophies, systems. For most of my life I’ve delved into them. I’ve read countless books and articles. I’ve had innumerable conversations with devotees of many different faiths. So I feel confident in reaching this conclusion:

Everything cancels out. All those things the world’s religions and spiritual paths insist must be done instead of just standing there—they’re an equation whose terms end up equaling a big fat zero.

Now, I don’t have a mathematical proof for that statement. It’s an intuitive understanding.

Savior needed, savior not-needed. Personal god, impersonal god. Prayer is essential, prayer is useless. Soul exists, soul is a fiction. Heaven is real, heaven is imaginary. Reality is one, reality is many. Morality is commanded, morality is chosen.

Spin around in any theological direction and you’ll find a faith that says “This is the way; join us on our unexcelled unique path.”

My response now: “No, thank you.” Another way makes a lot more sense to me: No way. Which means, potentially any way.

When you don’t do something and just stand there, you’re able to scan your surroundings in every direction. I have no idea in which direction the treasure lies. Up, down, right, left, ahead, behind. Could be anywhere. And it could be found at any time. Or not.

I keep thinking of the first sentence in my book, “Return to the One.” I wrote many first sentences, dozens of them. None of them seemed just right until some words flowed out of my mind that I knew wouldn’t be changed as soon as they appeared on my computer screen.

If something has been lost and you’re not sure where to look for it, there’s good reason to start searching right where you are rather than far afield.

In other words: don’t just do something, stand there! Maybe the treasure is right under your feet. Maybe you are the treasure. Maybe the treasure will come to you when you’re absolutely still. Maybe you’ll be drawn in a direction unique to yourself.

All kinds of possibilities open up when you stop treading well-worn religious paths and begin to discover your own way.

(Humble note: like all of my apparently original great ideas, I learned that “Don’t just do something, stand there!” actually has a rich history.)

Salem Universists fail to answer life’s big questions

No answers, but great conversation about the questions. That’s how our Salem Universists monthly get-together went last night at the Blue Pepper coffee house. A couple of new members (who are a couple themselves) joined us: Eva and Matt.

As Eva says on her Meetup member page, she and Matt recently escaped from Roseburg. Progressive, open-minded, and non-religious people that they are, living in Roseburg turned out not to be a good fit for these ex-San Diego residents. Eva noted that in southern California diversity is embraced; in most of rural Oregon, Christian conservatism is the accepted norm.

Here are a few remembrances from the meeting.

My wife, Laurel, walks into the meeting room (late as usual), looks at Eva, and says “Don’t I know you? Haven’t I seen you somewhere?” Indeed, she had. At the Minto-Brown off-leash dog park a few weeks ago, where Eva’s two purebred German Shepherds and our Shepherd-colored half-breed brought the women together to talk about all things doggish.

And now they see each other again in a completely different setting. A small world. Karma. Coincidence. Destiny. Random event. None of us knew which, if any, of these words fit the situation. “Interesting,” we could all agree on.

Eva (Mather) originally is from Germany. I enjoyed hearing her talk about the differences between Europe and the United States. “In Europe it’s considered bad form to ask someone you just met what his or her job is,” she said. “Here, it’s usually one of the first questions: Glad to meet you, Joe. What do you do?”

Luckily I hadn’t asked Eva and Donn what they did when they introduced themselves. It never occurred to me. I’m not much interested in people’s professions, actually. Job talk usually bores me. Last night I mentioned that I can’t stand chit-chat, which is why I enjoy the Universists meetings so much. By and large we talk about fairly deep subjects: life, death, happiness, despair, and, yes, dogs (yesterday, at least).

I enjoyed Donn’s story about a fishing trip on a coastal river that he took recently. A large fish was caught (a salmon, I believe). Someone grabbed a bat and starting hitting the fish on the head to kill it. Donn heard him say, “You can tell when it’s dead by the cold eyes.”

Donn may be on the way to becoming a non-fisherman, for it suddenly struck him that one moment the fish was a conscious living being, and another moment it wasn’t—after being hit on the head. He looked toward the banks of the river and saw cows standing in a field. Conscious cows, watching the boat go by.

How similar are they and the fish to us? It’s impossible to say. But we all agreed that animals in general, and dogs in particular, are considerably more intelligent and aware than most people give them credit for. Laurel observed that some parrots not only can speak in coherent sentences (not just “parroting” words) but also appear to have ESP, being able to say what their owner in another room is thinking about.

“The universe is connected,” Eva said. Even more amazing, she told us, is that it exists. I could relate to that statement. I’ve often thought myself about the marvelous mystery of the two simple words: existence exists.

Eva spoke about looking out a window one morning and feeling so thankful that she and the universe existed. For it could have been otherwise. Nothingness could have been rather than being. Or more accurately, nothing could have been, not even nothing.

With life there’s a lot to be thankful for, and you don’t have to be religious to recognize that. For two hours we in the Blue Pepper conference room shared what I’d call a “spiritual sense” that felt a heck of a lot more real than the preachy churchy variety.

Plus, I could sip a vanilla latte and eat a bagel with cream cheese during our unchurch’s unservice. Works for me.

Doubt differentiates science and religion

Here’s a simple way of determining whether you’re scientifically or religiously inclined: how do you feel about doubt? If you’re opposed to doubt, or even, well, doubtful about doubt, then you’re a religious sort. If you’re open to doubt, then you’re a scientific type.

I got to thinking about the pros and cons of doubt after thumbing through the August 2005 issue of “Spiritual Link.” This magazine is published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an organization based in India that also is referred to as the Science of the Soul or Sant Mat.

I came across an article titled “Enough with the Questions.” These quotations sounded out of place for a group that claims to practice a spiritual science:

Our whole system of education trains us to question and to analyze, and then even when we’ve accepted an idea, to go back and question and analyze it some more. We consider this to be scientific, and therefore admirable. In the case of satsangis [RSSB members], idiotic more like!

So if we have the misfortune to be afflicted with a so-called enquiring mind, we need to tell ourselves: just stop! Enough with all the questions! Enough with the endless analyzing…Doubt is a cruel, destructive thing. It eats away at the very foundations of our faith, at our confidence in ourselves, and at our very trust in our Master.

Here’s one thing that I have no doubt about: I heartily disagree with these sentiments. For I’ve cast my lot with science rather than religion. The anonymous author (all articles in Spiritual Link are unsigned, another sign that RSSB is unscientific) espouses a point of view that is thoroughly religious.

Just have faith: don’t question, don’t analyze, don’t doubt. Do what you’re told until your last breath, regardless of what you experience through your doing.

Meditation is the centerpiece of RSSB spiritual practice. I consider that meditation can be a genuinely scientific means of investigating the as-yet unsolved mystery of what ultimate reality consists of.

But the article’s author advocates a decidedly unscientific attitude toward meditation: “Let us not allow our lack of visible results to become a reason for doubting our Master.” (Who is considered to be a human embodiment of God; thus to a believer doubting the Master is the same as doubting God).

Courtesy of geologist Greg Anderson, here’s a nifty schematic diagram of the scientific method (scroll down the page a little ways to see it). Notice all the loops? That’s the essence of the scientific method: hypothesis testing, feedback, experimentation, learning through experience and observation. A scientist is continually adjusting to what reality is teaching him or her, not sticking blindly to an article of faith that is impervious to being falsified.

Wikipedia says, “Falsifiability is an important concept in the philosophy of science that amounts to the apparently paradoxical idea that a proposition or theory cannot be scientific if it does not admit the possibility of being shown false.”

For example, if you claim that all sheep are white, this assertion would be meaningless from the standpoint of science if there was no possibility of ever seeing a non-white sheep. One verified black sheep would demolish the claim, even if millions of white sheep had been observed previously.

This is one reason the scientific method has so many feedback loops. Doubt, which is closely aligned with falsifiability, is ever-present in science. A scientist never stops doubting that more and better truth can be found. Anderson says:

Something important to keep in mind. Despite all the constant checking and rechecking which goes on, you can never be 100% certain you are right. There is always at least a little bit of doubt out there; you can never be entirely sure that someone, somewhere, will find a piece of data which kills off a previously wonderful idea. On the other hand, you can sometimes be sure you are wrong.

So if you seek to know reality, either physical or spiritual, embrace doubt. However, if you’re content with dogma, belief, and theology, then by all means shun doubt and cling to blind faith. See how far it gets you.

Along these lines, here’s an interesting blog post by Ellen Beth Gill on “Karl Popper, Falsifiability and Intelligent Design" that discusses the utterly unscientific nature of intelligent design/creationism.

I like the tagline of Gill’s weblog: using my free speech while I still have it. You go, girl!

The Chronicles of Narnia: a myth about a myth

Christians are getting excited about the release this week of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” a movie based on C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” fantastical allegory. Newsweek reports that “preachers are reportedly urged to give ‘Narnia’-themed sermons and invite non-Christians to see the movie with the congregation.”

Well, when my daughter, Celeste, was young I read “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” to her. I don’t remember thinking, “Ah, how Christ-like is Aslan the lion.” Of course, maybe if I had been a Christian the allegory would, let’s say, have leapt out at me.

A few weeks ago The New Yorker published a marvelous overview of C.S. Lewis’ life and works. Written by Adam Gopnik, “Prisoner of Narnia” will be regarded by the Christian faithful as more proof of the liberal media’s anti-religion bias.

But it has the ring of truth to me. Gopnik presents us with a picture of Lewis that isn’t painted in the blacks and whites favored by fundamentalists.

As one reads the enormous literature on Lewis’ life and thought—there are at least five biographies, and now a complete, three-volume set of his letters—the picture that emerges is of a very odd kind of fantasist and a very odd kind of Christian. The hidden truth that his faith was really of a fable-first kind kept his writing forever in tension between his desire to imagine and his responsibility to dogmatize.

His works are a record of a restless, intelligent man, pacing a cell of his own invention and staring through the barred windows at the stars beyond. That the door was open all the time, and that he held the key in his pocket, was something he discovered only at the end.

Lewis’ conversion to Christianity was sparked by a famous walk with J.R.R. Tolkien, author of another not-too-shabby fantasy series about some hobbits searching for a ring. Tolkien convinced Lewis that (as Lewis later wrote) “The story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.”

Well, I doubt it. In my opinion there’s no evidence that the story of Christ as related in the Bible is actually true. The contradictions between the various gospels argue more for myth than fact, as does the almost complete absence of any independent corroboration of Jesus’ life and death.

So to me and many other skeptics “The Chronicles of Narnia” is a myth about a myth, a fantasy about a fantasy. This shouldn’t diminish anyone’s enjoyment of the movie, which enthusiastic fans are giving rave reviews.

Let’s just remember that the stories in the New Testament are far removed from the actuality of whoever Jesus might have been. And C.S. Lewis’ imaginative allegorical treatment of those stories is another big step away from whatever spiritual reality Jesus may have represented—not a step toward it.

Just as with “The Passion of the Christ,” the enthusiasm toward this new Christian-themed movie points out how religious belief is a hunger that demands constant feeding, because it isn’t intrinsically satisfying. Adam Gopnik puts the matter neatly:

A startling thing in Lewis’ letters to other believers is how much energy and practical advice is dispensed about how to keep your belief going: they are constantly writing to each other about the state of their beliefs, as chronic sinus sufferers might write to each other about the state of their noses. Keep your belief going, no matter what it takes—the thought not occurring that a belief that needs this much work to believe in isn’t really a belief but a very strong desire to believe.

After Lewis’ wife died (she was an older passionate woman who rescued him from priggishness), he wrote “A Grief Observed.” It tells of how he came to question the goodness of God and, for a time, lost his Christian faith.

As Gopnik says, you have to wonder how believable Christianity is if a true believer’s belief in it is so fragile.

Lastly, I loved this excerpt from The New Yorker article. Lewis not only converted generally to Christianity, but also specifically to the Anglican creed. Gopnik’s pointing out of Lewis’ theological absurdity is right on the money.

Lewis insists that the Anglican creed isn’t one spiritual path among others but the single cosmic truth that extends from the farthest reach of the universe to the house next door. He is never troubled by the funny coincidence that this one staggering cosmic truth also happens to be the established religion of his own tribe, supported by every institution of the state, and reinforced by the university he works in, the “God-fearing and God-sustaining University of Oxford,” as Gladstone called it.

Yes, how amazing, that a man on a planet circling one of several hundred billion stars in one of the universe’s several hundred billion galaxies just happens to be living smack dab in the middle of a provincial culture that possesses the absolute truth about this whole shebang.

And what is even more amazing? That there are so many other men and women on this planet who believe the same thing.

Prize for proof of superior religion

Do you believe that your religion is The One, the most fabulous faith in the whole wide world? Do you have a convincing reason why your belief should be believed?

If so, you’re on the inside track to winning 25,000 yen, courtesy of The Huge Entity’s “Can You Prove Religious Superiority?” competition. Now, before you get all excited about the new car you’re going to be able to buy, I should point out that according to the XE.com currency converter your prize will be a not-so-huge $207.51.

But, hey, that would buy a bunch of Bibles, Torahs, Korans, Dhammapadas, Adi Granths, Upanishads, or whatever, to add to your current collection. So head on over to The Huge Entity and submit your entry.

The Honorable Huge, a.k.a. Mr. Danieru, says, “Prove beyond reasonable doubt that one specific religion is the only possible way the observed world should be understood and the ¥25000 is yours. Any evidence is acceptable.”

His point, of course, is that religious belief is just that: belief. There’s no proof that any belief system is superior to any other. So you take a guess, place your bet, and hope that your number comes up. The big payoff, though, only is made after death. Sounds like a sucker’s game to me, but billions of people keep on playing.

I like The Huge Entity’s style. Any blog that issues a call for blasphemous haiku gets my churchless thumbs up. Example:

Mary was easy.
Had Father and Holy Ghost,
The Queen of threesomes

A personal relationship with God, good or bad?

I continue to think about whether I even want a personal relationship with “God” (leaving that term suitably vague and undefined, per my churchless bent).

As I observed recently, the idea that God is right by my side, watching everything that I do, is creepy and voyeuristic, similar to fears about what the Department of Homeland Security might become, except a lot more omnipresent and omniscient.

Omnipotent too. Because most conceptions of a personal God presume that He/She/It can intervene in the affairs of the person with whom God has a personal relationship.

This makes sense. How can you have a relationship without relating? Give and take, back and forth, talking and listening, doing and being done to. You can have a pseudo-relationship with a pet rock, but all the relating is on one side. The rock just sits there, passive and inert.

Most people aren’t attracted to the idea of a stone-cold God. They like the feeling that God is walking by their side, supporting them through good times and bad times, stepping in to offer a helping hand when the situation (or prayer) demands.

On the face of it, that sounds good. And some Eastern and most Western theologies affirm that it is true. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are, by and large, entirely comfortable with the notion of a God who inserts himself into human affairs on both an individual and societal level.

And so are certain Eastern mystical faiths, such as Sant Mat, as I observed in my previous post. Much like Christianity, these faiths usually posit that a transcendental divine being exists (the “father”) who becomes embodied in a human form (the “son”). The embodiment of God, such as Jesus or a guru, has many of the powers of God—including the ability to jump into people’s lives/minds and change things around.

However, there is a competing conception of how divinity interfaces with the world that also has had, and continues to have, many adherents in both the East and West. This is a universal and impersonal metaphysics. Or, perhaps stating the case more accurately, a not-particular and not-personal metaphysics.

Not this, not that. Such is the manner of speaking of the via negativa, the way of approaching “God” that leaves divinity mysterious, ineffable, beyond purely human understanding. Since there remains a gap between what God really is, and what we can know about God with our intellect and senses, the idea of divinity coming down to our level doesn’t mesh with what we might call the way of mystery.

This way teaches that the universe is governed by universal forces that appear impersonal. Karma, in Eastern thought. Providence, in Western (Greek) thought. The cosmos is connected. Unity prevails. Life is fair. Destiny is deserved. What goes around comes around. All this happens naturally, without any need for God or a guru to step in and make wrong things right.

I don’t know which way of looking at the world is correct. But clearly the second “God is universal” hypothesis is much more in tune with modern science than the first “God is personal” hypothesis. For the laws of nature have been found to be remarkably, well, lawful. You don’t find gravity deciding, “I think I’ll take a break and let that car soar into space.”

Yet many people believe that God does just that: deciding to intervene in their lives and make something happen that otherwise wouldn’t. On cable news today I heard President Bush intoning something like, “And we pray that our troops in Iraq will be kept safe.”

A nice thought, on the face of it. Who could object to God keeping American troops safe? However, what this means, when you delve beneath the prayerful platitude, is that Bush wants God to assure that American soldiers will be successful in killing Iraqi insurgents without being killed in return.

The insurgents, of course, are praying to God for the same thing in reverse: for them to be successful in killing Americans while they remain safe. If there is a personal God who answers prayers of this sort, one or the other side in the Iraqi conflict is going to incur excess deaths because of a divine decree.

That doesn’t sound very Godly to me. For sure, this isn’t a God that I feel like worshipping—a God who plays favorites in choosing who will live and who will die. And even if this sort of God is just a fiction in the minds of true believers, belief in such a being leads to a destructive and divisive “God is on my side” mentality.

Which leads, in turn, to such atrocious behaviors as sky pointing. After the 2004 World Series ended I felt drawn to pray “Please, God, no more sky pointing.”

I’ve watched a lot of sports on TV since then and I can tell you, God isn’t answering my prayer.