Church of the Churchless

We are all atheists

"I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

“We are all atheists, some of us just believe in fewer gods than others."

These are two well known quotes from Stephen F. Roberts. On his Without Gods blog, Mitchell Stephens cites a quotation from skeptic par excellence Michael Shermer along the same lines:

Christians today might say, I don't believe in Zeus, that was a silly superstition. Yet for many people that was a real god. So it turns out there are 10,000 gods and yet only one right one. That means we're all atheists on 9,999 gods. The only difference between me and the believers is I'm an atheist on one more god.

When you think about it, monotheism is indeed a pretty crazy idea. To wit, there’s a guy in the sky who is a person like us, but with vastly greater powers. Do what he says, and you’ll enjoy a good life and ever better afterlife. Cross the dude, and there will be hell to pay.

Literally.

James Foley says, “Enough with the ‘One God’ stuff.” His cautionary essay makes good sense. The exclusiveness of monotheism leads to nasty competition between religions, each of which believes that they know what the One True God wants.

Here in the high-tech futuristic 21st century, the punitive, vengeful, sky god is as strong and legitimate as he's been in a long time. Modernity, it turns out, was no cure for monotheism. If anything, it increases extremism, especially -- but never only -- among the dispossessed. And now in the Middle East we have the volatile blend of pissed-off Jews, Muslims, and Christians, each convinced they possess an a iron-clad mandate from their one and only angry god.

But it isn’t only the big three Western religions who preach an exclusive brand of monotheism. Yesterday the October newsletter from Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) came in the mail. I’ve been associated with this India-based group for many years. For a long time I enjoyed feeling that, as a RSSB initiate, I was one of God’s chosen people.

However, now the exclusiveness of the Sant Mat philosophy strikes me as both metaphysically unlikely and psychologically unhealthy. Here’s what Vincent Savarese wrote about spiritual truth in the newsletter:

The Guru who unveils this truth to the world may be a boy, a man, a woman, an aged sage. It is God Himself who decides what messenger to send…After fifteen hundred years later [after the time of Jesus], Guru Nanak Dev spoke of God the Creator as Truth and that Truth is revealed through the grace of the Guru.

Well, maybe. I don’t know. But it is clear to me that if you believe (1) there is only one true God, (2) this God decides who is going to be His messenger, (3) you’ve been taken under this wing of that special mediator between humanity and divinity, then (4) you’re going to feel damn special.

And therein lies the rub of monotheism. Virtually every form of spirituality that I’m aware of advises that an excessively enlarged ego keeps us from feeling connected to the larger reality that surrounds us. Yet each monotheistic religion feeds that sense of separateness by teaching believers, “We’ve got an exclusive connection with God. How special we are!”

Monism, a belief that there is only one fundamental impersonal foundation of reality, avoids most of the problems of monotheism. A monist considers that there is something more to the cosmos than what most of us are aware of now: unity. Yet obviously the One can’t be exclusive.

As Foley points out in his essay, polytheism, a belief in many gods, also is psychologically and societally healthier than monotheism. If there are lots of gods hanging out together, as the Greeks, Roman, Egyptians, and Hindus believed, then these multiple divinities serve as checks and balances on each other. A devotee of Minerva doesn’t consider that she has a monopoly on the truth, like a follower of Jesus does.

So I’ll take my spirituality monotheism-free, thank you. Hold the big guy in the sky and give me an extra helping of humility, openness, and pluralism. I’ll believe in One God when the evidence of his/her/its existence is indisputable.

Until then, I’ll just have to take my chances. And perhaps after too.

Balancing Sant Mat faith and doubt

Recently I received some emails from a fellow initiate of Charan Singh, a Sant Mat guru who belonged to the Radha Soami Satsang Beas branch of this movement. I enjoyed what this person had to say and got permission to edit the messages into a postable form.

Like my correspondent, I too resonate with the Buddhist outlook. And I similarly try to retain from the Sant Mat teachings what works and makes sense. The rest is eminently discardable.

Here are some thoughts about balancing faith and doubt. I found them interesting. Hope you do too.
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“I realized at the tender age of twenty-one that I was unlikely to be able to walk the razor's edge and if I did start traveling inside, then I might as well look for the highest guide—one fully enlightened. Frankly, I wanted protection from the unknown world. Instead of going from one guru to another, let's go to the top, get cleansed at initiation by the highest.

Charan Singh fulfilled a list of criteria; Julian Johnson's book [“The Path of the Masters”] was persuasive; the Gita said Bhakti [devotion] is the easiest and quickest route.

Now that I am much older...I have been reading up a little regarding the history of Sant Mat and Surat Shabd Yoga, and realize that a lot is based on faith that the guru is a Param Sant, God, and if Jaimal Singh was excommunicated because he was not a fully realized master, then the other masters following him weren't either.

Charan claimed not to be and he leaned heavily on the fact that Sawan Singh [his guru] was—he could always be dependent on his master's power—maybe it wasn't there. Remember, Soamiji [another Sant Mat guru] also had to fit into his criteria. He even left out the hookah smoking section of Sar Bachan [a book written by Soamiji].

Intriguingly I have learned also that Surat Shabd practice is pre-vedic; hundreds of Sant Mat groups exist; thirty Radhasoami groups exist with Soamiji as their originator; the five simran names [mantra] and related sounds are used in Kundalini yoga and are sometimes given in different order.

So, as you've mentioned we are more careful about buying a second-hand car than deciding on a guru. I think that the “When a disciple is ready, the guru appears” attitude is to blame. I have just seen a friend who said that when she saw Charan, she knew that she was in the presence of God.

Well, if I inherited big properties and hosted many people free of charge and they put me on a dais all dressed up and Indian with thousands below all sending me love and boosted me with the idea that I am God, I might also appear to be God. If a Westerner was to do this in the West he/she would end up in jail.

I could never read books like “On Wings of Love,” the written outpouring I find nauseatingly self indulgent that, yes, belongs to the twenty-somethings. I also find satsang [Sant Mat talks] to be limiting and don't go. Even though the present master would say that is arrogance, I am not fooled or afraid.

Sant Mat books lean heavily on the “Love the guru.” while the Guru says, “Get over me.” Also, each guru is inconsistent on the little things—like cut flowers, photos etc.—they all seem to have their own brand of Sant Mat. In Buddhism, as you no doubt know, there are also many approaches.

Before initiation I trained under several Buddhist masters and searched various other Eastern paths. My preference has always been the Buddhist approach which approves of doubt, and where simply being harmless (very difficult to achieve) and in the present, is considered an enlightened state.

Regarding the difference between Buddhism and Sant Mat meditation: In Buddhist group sitting meditation, instead of calling up names and a form eyes are half open and lowered. Meditators are in touch with the world, but not its effect. Meditators have to work on themselves to develop their own enlightenment.

Since Buddhism has many different meditations, I isolated two and a half hours of meditation, the necessity of a perfect guru and a vegetarian diet. Also it was necessary not to have to become a nun. So Sant Mat seemed the discipline to fit the bill.

I had also done Insight or Vipassana meditation along with Loving Kindness meditation and read in the Bhagavad Gita that the quickest and easiest route to merging with the higher consciousness was through Bhakti Yoga or Devotional Yoga.

I then proceeded to put a great deal of time and effort into meditation in the hopes of scientifically proving that what the guru said was true. By the time I woke up and really looked at Sant Mat (about 14 years later), I had invested a great deal into meditating on Charan Singh's form and was literally joined at the hip—I still can't shake loose.

Ask a Buddhist how many levels exist on the inner spiritual plane. They will say more than a hundred. Other paths will answer differently. Sant Mat says five or seven. What type of ultimate position can be reached for consciousness? We don't know, and do we really buy the route that Sant Mat uses? Are the five words effective and really what they say they are? This is just the start of the questions.

I am happy to be doubtful.

From what I see, simply put: Simran [repetition of a mantra] prevents repetitive negative worldly thinking—blocks it out for peace and clarity. Listening to the inner sound connects to what may be the source, or what is our actual nature. Darshan [visualization of the guru’s form] should focus on refinement and thereby develop it along with creating a protective memory—this is based on faith and we like it because it feels good.

Vipassana observes and lets go of arising thought until peace and clarity arise. Being present prevents extraneous unnecessary thinking. Loving Kindness means freeing oneself from attraction and repulsion and creating a position in which one can be helpful. Practicing Harmlessness creates discernment.

A common thread in the Buddhist and Sant Mat approach is that the mind should not be reasoning, deducing, thinking so much and should be left to rest while simran and bare attention are practiced. From the still mind; clarity, wisdom, etc. arise automatically without prodding: "leave it alone, don't mess with it." Obviously we have to think at times, many times—but not unnecessarily.

In Sant Mat, the guru says he's not going to leave us. Now, this is true because try meditating two or more hours a day for 10 years on anyone's face, and practicing diligently what they tell you to do (including not discussing with the curious and the opposition the pros and cons of the approach they've mapped out for you). Believe me, that person you’ve been meditating on won't leave you so easily.

Yes, one does become more realistic, less fanciful, realizing that it's not in the fireworks, but in the small simple daily efforts. If the guru does ride up on his super-white charger after we die, maybe we won't be so happy to go where he says we should go and if we are, maybe it's not so far.

So a little research, a little letting go for the heretics.

As you've mentioned, once one admits that a classical satsangi-by-the-book is not me, there are a lot of changes that occur. We keep bursting the bubble.

It's good to be disillusioned.”

I go to a Hollywood medium, Marcel Cairo

Yesterday I lost my medium virginity. During a visit to Hollywood to see my daughter Celeste and her husband Patrick, Marcel Cairo was kind enough to treat Celeste, Laurel, and me to a reading.

Marcel is an afterlife medium and spiritual therapist. (Check out Marcel’s website for more info). Last Tuesday I got an email from Marcel that said, in part:

I came across your site and really got a kick out of it. I like how you present thought provoking concepts with a sense of humor. I kind of take the same approach to my work. I am a medium, and have been for 23 years now, and humor is a key bridge that unites the here and the hereafter.

Anyway, on occasion I co-host a weekly radio show called Conversations from Beyond with fellow medium, Lenny Feldsott. The show is part Crossing Over w/ John Edward and part Car Talk from NPR and on occasion, a bit of Howard Stern “Lite”. It would be interesting to talk to you about your blog and your Church of the Churchless.

I replied with a “sure” (though now it looks like I’ll be on the “In Good Spirit” show on October 11). I told Marcel that coincidentally, if there is such a thing, my wife and I would be in his Hollywood neck of the woods in a few days.

I wasn’t (consciously) expecting anything to result from that comment, but Marcel responded that he’d try to fit us in for a free reading if we wanted and our schedule, and his, permitted. Which, it did.

So there we were at 10:30 on Sunday morning, lined up in skeptical order on Marcel’s couch. Celeste to the left of me, Laurel to the right.

Laurel has been to several mediums and psychics. She’s a believer. I’m open-minded, though I probably lean toward the skeptical side. Celeste, like Patrick, is about as here and now as they come. They believe in what they experience.

Me too. Marcel started out by asking me to summarize my Church of the Churchless philosophy in a couple of sentences. I think it took me a couple of paragraphs, and I was just warming up. He cut in and tried to summarize.

“So it’s a matter of seeing and believing, right?” “Yes,” I said. “I like to say that I’ll believe it when I see it, not that I’ll see it when I believe it.” From there we were off and medium’ing.

I won’t try to describe all that transpired in the two-plus hours we spent with Marcel. The bottom line is that I enjoyed our session. I found Marcel to be genuine, humorous, sensitive, and spontaneous. He made some observations that hit me hard, though I can’t say that they knocked me for a loop.

I mean, it seemed unlikely, though not impossible, that the information he was conveying came solely from his purely human brain.

I’d give examples, but the most intriguing messages conveyed through “spirit” (departed souls) were directed to Celeste and Laurel, and were quite personal.

Interestingly, Patrick got a lot of attention from spirit even though he was at home watching football and is even more of a spiritual skeptic than Celeste. Marcel shared some zingers about Patrick that were right on the money—specific enough that they seemed unlikely to be lucky guesses.

But again, not impossible. Given this semi-skeptical attitude of mine, I guess this is why spirit declined to pay me much of a visit. I probably ended up getting 10% of the departeds’ attention. They just didn’t have much to share with me.

Marcel did say that my mother pitied me. Which I can believe, I suppose. Marcel asked if my mother was a strong, independent woman, the feeling he was getting. I said, “Yes, indeed.”

Basically her message to me was that I should stick with the intuitive non-verbal connection I have with “God” when I go on my nature walks and put to rest my questioning intellectual side that is always saying, “But then again…” My mother, or whoever, made sense. Still, I’ll have to think about it.

One thing I need to ponder is that my mother was much more intellectual than I am. She also was much less attuned to nature than I am. So she must have been working on the Taoistic side of her soul during the twenty-one years since her death.

Somebody else—maybe it was Evie, my sister who died as an infant—told Marcel that I was a know-it-all. Well, I do know a lot. But I’ve never considered myself a know-it-all. Maybe that message was meant for someone else. Like my ex-wife.

I also was advised to duke it out with my dark side. Borrowing from the first Star Wars trilogy, Marcel passed on the word that I’m Luke Skywalker. Yet also Darth Vader. (Aren’t we all?) The two sides of me are supposed to take up psychological light sabers and finally determine who’s going to rule Brian’s Brain.

This wasn’t new news to me. I’ve been wrestling with the various sides of myself for as long as I can remember. (Again, haven’t we all?) However, I appreciated being reminded that it’s best if only one entity inhabits the cranium where the sense of Me resides.

But then again, when I shared the Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader insight with my Tai Chi instructor this afternoon he said, “There is dark and light, yin and yang, in everyone.” Yes, opposites make the world go round. That’s the nature of Tao.

I can’t speak for Celeste and Laurel. What I got out of the session were some fresh viewpoints on my psyche and approach to life. It doesn’t matter much to me where they came from: Marcel, the spirit world, or both.

I didn’t experience anything that made me a firm believer in life after death. But I’m probably a bit more open to the possibility now. Marcel said that I should repeat to myself, “I believe in the survival of consciousness.”

Well, I want to. The thing is, I’m still a “I’ll believe it when I see it” kind of person. Marcel advised that I open myself to signs of spirit, which might come from any direction.

That was good advice. Communicate away, spirit. I’m open 24/7. Once I see, I’ll believe. To me, the best form of spiritual belief is an empty receptivity to whatever reality may exist beyond what I know now--not blind faith in some dogma or theological assertion.

Lastly, we got to meet Marcel's charming wife and child after the session. Nina, his daughter, is a red-haired bundle of cute. In the course of searching for information about Marcel to share in this post, I ran across a Cairo family video on Google Video. Watch "The Art of Sharing." Nice music, nice family.

[Next day update: OK. I get the message.

When I read this post to my wife last night, she said, “You didn’t mention your father.” When I checked my email this morning, I read a message from Marcel that said about my father, “You failed to mention him at all in the story.” When I perused the comments to this post, I saw that Roger asked, “Did Marcel discuss anything about your Dad?”

So…Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father. To put it mildly, he was a Force to be reckoned with. He turned to the dark side until, at the end of his life, he saw the light. My own father never did, so far as I know.

Yesterday evening my psychotherapist wife observed to me, “From what I know about your father, he was like Darth Vader: powerful, domineering, highly intelligent. You may think that he wasn’t much of an influence on you because you only spent an hour with him in your entire life. But no matter how little or how much kids know about their dads, the influence is there because fathers are so important to us.”

Yes, Marcel mentioned him. I can’t remember all of the details. And I don’t feel like listening to the tape of the session right now. My father is my dark side, my Darth Vader. I tried to convince my wife that the reason I didn’t mention my father at first in this post is that everyone has a dark side, like Warren, my Tai Chi instructor, said. So why focus on my father when I’m speaking about that aspect of myself?

“Because he wasn’t like most fathers,” Laurel told me. “Your father was strongly dark. Not just a little. A lot.”

I know. As I said in my “One hour with my father” post, ever since I got to know what a jerk my father was, I’ve been wary of the paternal genetic heritage that’s lurking in every cell of my body. Identical twin studies seem to show that about 50% of personality has a genetic basis; he’s one-half of my genes; so I figure that a quarter of who I am, more or less, is Pure Jerk.

Which feels about right. I keep that side of myself fairly well hidden, but it’s there. Probably that’s why Marcel advised that the climactic battle between my Luke and my Darth has to take place. Or maybe it could be a reconciliation. Whatever. I’m not going to force the two of them together. We’ll just see what the Force has in store for us.

I get glimpses of what that energy is. I suspect that I’m not firing on all cylinders because I don’t trust letting myself go. I enjoy feeling the higher revs of my inner engine, but am afraid that if I unhook the horsepower limiter I’ll take a turn too fast and do a Thelma and Louise over the cliff.

And yet…in just about every Tango class I’m reminded that tentativeness is a kiss of death for the male lead. Last night my partner and I were having some problems with a clockwise basic turn. I tried to figure out what was going wrong, then got frustrated and said to myself, “Screw it. I’ll just do it.”

Which I then did. Just fine. In Tango the woman only knows what to follow when the lead is unambiguous. Passionate Darth Vader energy melded with pure Luke Skywalker intention.

Get them together and you’ve got something. Good.]

Jesus Camp: turning kids into Christian soldiers

Jesus Camp. Only in America.

Well, also in Pakistan. But they’re called “madrassas” there. And it isn’t Jesus the children are being trained to die for.

However, in fairness to the camp director, Pastor Becky Fischer, I heard an interview with her on the Ed Schultz show.

She said, convincingly, that the Jesus Camp documentary didn’t include all of her “radically laying down their lives for the Gospel” comment. (Which you can see here, if you have broadband).

Fischer said that what she means by “lay down your life” is dedicating yourself to Jesus 100%. Makes sense. I really don’t believe that Jesus Camp is out to produce little Christian suicide bombers.

It’s still scary though.

The joy of nihilism

Nihilism has a bad rep. For many the word signifies anarchy, destruction, meaninglessness, bombs thrown by black-garbed acolytes of Nothing. (I copied these images from nihilist web sites; it’s nice not to have to worry about copyright laws; nihilists don’t sue, I assume.)

I have a “nihilism” wrist band. I don’t wear it very often, but when I do it gives me a good feeling when I glance down at it. Free. Independent. Open-minded. That’s what nihilism means to me.

I like the definition offered by the Catholic Encyclopedia: “a Nihilist is one who bows to no authority and accepts no doctrine, however widespread, that is not supported by proof.”

Well, I do bow to authority—if it’s garbed in a judge’s robe, police uniform, IRS agent suit, or such. However, if we’re speaking of religious authority then I am becoming more of a nihilist all the time. Proudly.

This morning I was reading Don Cupitt’s intriguing book, “After God: The Future of Religion.” Cupitt has some good things to say about spiritual nihilism.

It is very postmodern suddenly to realize that we no longer actually need roots, identity, stability, or a provenance. We can do without all those things. Me, I don’t want them anymore. I prefer to be without identity. I’d like to belong to no ethnic group, and to have no Other. They call me a nihilist: but I’m beginning to feel at ease, at home in nihilism.

A friend recently spoke about her churchless evolution. She said that after she stopped going to gatherings of her faith, there was a period during which she felt a sense of loss. Old beliefs were fading away. Old friends also, at least those whose friendship was conditioned on her remaining part of the religious fold (which means they weren’t genuine friends to start with).

The church newsletter kept coming in the mail each month. She’d look at it and feel some pangs. This and that was happening, meetings and celebrations that she used to enjoy being part of, and now she wasn’t. Then…

One day the newsletter came and she started to smile. And laugh. Glory, glory, free at last! Those old connections didn’t matter anymore. The past was past. Now is now. Not having a firm religious belief became joyful rather than problematic.

“Now I’m free to explore whatever sort of spirituality I want to,” she said. “I pick and choose from the spiritual smorgasbord, enjoying what is tasty to me.” She isn’t dining any more on what someone else has ordered for her. She’s trusting her own taste buds.

Nihilism comes from the Latin nihil, meaning “nothing.” Yet to me and my friend, having nothing sure to believe in doesn’t feel like an absence. It’s a warm, energetic, exciting presence of limitless possibility, of explorable territory, of untapped potential.

Cupitt speaks about three tricks, heritages of the old religions, that are worthy of being kept. One trick is “The Blissful Void.”

The Blissful Void is the trick of relaxing completely, slowing oneself and one’s passions down until the self is, as it were, dispersed into the fleeting insubstantial emptiness of all existence. You must learn to experience nihilism as levity, lightness. The strange unexpected happiness this brings is a wonderful deliverance from the fear of death, loss, and suffering.

So, as I see it, nihilism is far removed from meaninglessness. As this definition points out, it’s a rejection of blind faith, not a rejection of reality. It’s a commitment to the “nothing” that remains when dogmatism, authoritarianism, intellectualization, imagination, and rationalization are swept away.

Buddhism and Taoism say that this suchness is what’s really real. I think they’re on to something.

Or rather, nothing.

The Pope isn’t infallible. Oh my god!

Well, another religious bubble has burst. The Pope makes mistakes, just like the rest of us. So much for infallibility—though the Catholic Church is smart enough to attach conditions to infallible Papal statements, leaving themselves an out when he makes a mistake.

Which I’d say he did in his recent speech to a German university, parts of which seriously offended Muslims. But I don’t think it was a mistake to quote a medieval emperor, who said:

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

That’s an interesting observation that deserves open discussion. Kudos to the Pope for having the guts to point out that Islam’s theology contains undesirable elements. Undesirable, that is, if you’re an infidel. Or a woman. Or a Muslim writer who criticizes his faith. Or on the receiving end of an Al Qaeda explosive.

I’m all for studying comparative religion. Let’s compare the most idiotic elements of every religion. We need a theological Consumer Reports that warns of beliefs which are hazardous to our humanity. Islam has its fair share. But so does Catholicism.

I suspect that Muslims would have found the Pope’s remarks about Islam more palatable if he’d accompanied them with mention of the Inquisition and the Crusades, just to show that things “evil and inhuman” are part and parcel of Catholicism also.

So far the Pope’s apology has been decidedly half-hearted. He must have an American public relations firm advising him. The tone of his apology is familiar: “I’m sorry that _____ felt offended by what I said. It never was my intention to make _____ feel bad.”

George Bush uses this half-assed sort of apology a lot. “I’m sorry that the defeatists and terrorist sympathizers in this country are offended by my decision to invade Iraq in order to keep this country safe.” Like the Pope, Bush tries to maintain an aura of infallibility around him, even when he’s caught in a major screw-up.

Again, though, it doesn’t bother me that the Pope said what he did. The mistake he made was saying it in such an incredibly boring fashion. I mean, given the attention his “evil and inhuman” statement has received, the Vatican had a great opportunity here to convey some gripping Catholic doctrine.

Yesterday I had some dental work done. My dentist, an anti-religious Taoist (much like me), said that he dug out and read the Pope’s entire speech via the BBC. I followed in his footsteps today, but decided to go right to the source. Yes, the Vatican has a web site. And a darn good-looking one, too.

Where I didn’t have much trouble finding…

APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG
(SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg
Tuesday, 12 September 2006
“Faith, Reason and the University
Memories and Reflections”

Ugh. Boring, boring, boring. I managed to highlight my way through seven printed single-spaced pages, filling the margins with lots of question marks. What a letdown. I finally am drawn to read a Papal pronouncement and bummer, I could hardly make any sense of it.

Pope Benedict’s speech was so incomprehensible to me, I couldn’t even understand it well enough to disagree with him. Which I’m sure I would, if I knew what he was getting at. Something about faith and reason. And the university. I got that from the title.

But I’m not sure how faith and reason tie together. I read that “not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.” However, here the Pope is echoing the thought of the medieval emperor, so I don’t know if Benedict really believes this.

Because he then starts to talk about the “profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God.” Hmmmm. As an admirer of the Greeks, I’m not sure about that.

The Pope moves on to speak about the “dehellenization” of theology. I gather he’s talking about the upswing of faith over reason, but it’s hard to tell. He does put down science if that means “the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements.”

God forbid that god and the divine might be considered empirical. If they were, people might expect to actually get in touch with them through religion. Then a Religious Consumer Reports could hold faiths accountable for their promises. Can’t have that.

So the Pope says that “any attempt to maintain theology’s claim to be ‘scientific’ would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self.” That doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me, but I guess I can understand why the Pope would feel otherwise.

Anyway, I figured that Benedict would sum up his message at the end, making clear whatever the heck he’d been trying to say. So I read:

The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur—this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.

Clear as mud.

Let’s see. Reason is good. Except when it is empirical scientific reason, then it’s not good. So reason has to be broader than what is empirically verifiable. That leads to faith. Thus faith and reason are the same thing. To the Pope. For most people, including moi, they’re quite different. But hey, I’m fallible.

If anyone wants to read the Pope’s speech in its entirety and make sense of it for me, I’ll be grateful. The BBC has an abridged version that, however, doesn’t do justice to the confusion of the original.

The virtue of a Playboy philosophy of life

No, I don’t read it just for the articles. But frequently Playboy does feature thoughtful articles on one of my favorite subjects, the relation of religion and science.

For example, the April 2006 issue had “Faith & Reason” by philosopher Michael Ruse. Several other writers threw in their two cents on the subject. My favorite was comedian Lewis Black, who offered up some pithy advice about how to handle intelligent design believers.

The concept of evolution doesn’t take away from the concept of God. You’d have to be out of your mind not to see through the bullshit. You can buy into both without a complete loss of rationality. I’m not going to change their mind. There is no reasoning with these people—because they don’t reason.

We have the facts in carbon dating and fossils. I have tried to be nice, but I am exhausted. Fossils, fossils, fossils. I win. They really exist, and they are not the devil’s handiwork. Facts are fucking facts.

Yes, they are. What I like about the Playboy philosophy is that it recognizes when a hand of facts needs to be laid on the table, and when it’s OK to keep it hidden.

In the private realm, the only fact you have to be concerned about is your own experience. Like to have sex with the opposite gender? That’s a fact. Like to have sex with your own gender? That’s a fact. The end. In my life I haven’t spent even one second trying to justify to myself or anyone else why I’m heterosexual. Homosexuals have a similar right to simply say, “This is who I am. End of story.”

Ditto with other private preferences, moral or otherwise. I prefer vanilla ice cream. You like chocolate. No problem. Each to his own. (However, every time my wife makes Brussels sprouts she asks if I want some and I say “No, I don’t like them.” She then says, “But they’re good for you.” I reply, “I still don’t like them; I’ll have a salad instead.” It’s our little ritual.)

Disturbingly often, though, religious types forget that their beliefs are just that: beliefs. They’re private preferences about how to look on the mysteries of life: whether God exists, what happens after death, why bad things happen to good people, and such.

Nobody has the answers to such questions. More precisely, nobody can prove that they have the answers. So for practical purposes, nobody has the answers. Similarly, I can’t explain why I like vanilla ice cream and can’t stand Brussels sprouts. I just do. So don’t try to tell me why I should feel otherwise, because there’s no “why” to tell.

Similarly, don’t claim that the theory of evolution is a fraud or stem cell research is morally wrong unless you have a better reason than “Because I say so.” Saying so doesn’t make it so. I learned that on my elementary school playground.

Evolution and stem cells are objective public realities, not subjective private preferences. You don’t need a reason to have sex with whatever consenting adult you choose to hook up with. But if you want to influence public policy or public education, you damn well better have a good reason to back up your stand.

Or shut up. Public discourse is for people willing to exchange viewpoints, not engage in one-way moral diatribes. Daniel Dennett puts it nicely in his book, “Breaking the Spell.” This is a lengthy quote, yet well worth reading.

I am urging, on the contrary, that anybody who professes that a particular moral conviction is not discussable, not debatable, not negotiable, simply because it is the word of God, or because the Bible says so, or because “that is what all Muslims [Hindus, Sikhs …] believe, and I am a Muslim [Hindu, Sikh …]” should be seen as making it impossible for the rest of us to take their views seriously, excusing themselves from the moral conversation, inadvertently acknowledging that their own views are not conscientiously maintained and deserve no further hearing.

The argument for this is straightforward. Suppose I have a friend, Fred, who is (in my carefully considered opinion) always right. If I tell you I’m against stem-cell research because “my friend Fred says it’s wrong and that’s all there is to it,” you will just look at me as if I was missing the point of the discussion.

This is supposed to be a consideration of reasons, and I have not given you a reason that I in good faith could expect you to appreciate. Suppose you believe that stem-cell research is wrong because that is what God has told you. Even if you are right—that is, even if God does indeed exist and has, personally, told you that stem-cell research is wrong—you cannot reasonably expect others who do not share your faith or experience to accept this as a reason.

You are being unreasonable in taking your stand. The fact that your faith is so strong that you cannot do otherwise just shows (if you really can’t) that you are disabled for moral persuasion, a sort of robotic slave to a meme that you are unable to evaluate. And if you reply that you can but you won’t consider reasons for and against your conviction (because it is God’s word, and it would be sacrilegious even to consider whether it might be in error), you avow your willful refusal to abide by the minimal conditions of rational discussion.

Either way, your declaration of your deeply held views are posturings that are out of place, part of the problem, not part of the solution, and we others will just have to work around you as best we can.

Reasons. Know when to hold them; know when to show them. In the game of private religion, you can keep them to yourself, if you have any at all. But if you want to play in the public square, you'd better be prepared to show your best stuff.

Million dollars says there’s no evidence of the supernatural

Almost every time I write something like “There’s no proof of anything beyond the physical” I get challenged by believers in ESP, astral projection, life after death, or other supernatural phenomena.

That’s fine. I love challenges. If I wanted to have everything that I say accepted without question, I wouldn’t be a blogger. Nor would I have been married for thirty-five years.

But here’s the thing: when I say “proof” I mean proof. The real deal. Scientific confirmation. Controlled studies. Replicated studies worthy of being published in a major journal. Proof that makes skeptics into believers.

The James Randi Educational Foundation has a One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge. Yes, a million bucks awaits anyone “who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.”

So if you know someone who can demonstrate a paranormal ability, or if you can do this yourself, check out the application procedure. And remember me if you win the prize. Sending 5% my way would be a nice thank-you for cluing you in to the Challenge.

I promise that I’ll put a personalized plate on the convertible Mini that I’ll buy with my share: ESPTRU, or whatever you want.

Now, I realize there are lots of supposed scientific studies that claim evidence of the supernatural. A Church of the Churchless comment led me to the “Science is a method, not a position” blog, where I dutifully clicked away on links that purport to shed light on the blind spots of reductionist materialism.

I wanted to find the proof that I’m looking for. After all, I’m made of matter. And I’m not wild about the prospect of being reduced to nothing when I die. So any evidence to the contrary is going to grab my attention.

Unfortunately, I came away empty-handed, my skepticism still intact. I read about the dog who seems to know when his owner is coming home. I’d seen this feat demonstrated on a TV special and it certainly raises questions. But answers? No.

Ditto with this study of telephone telepathy, also by Rupert Sheldrake. There was a 1 in 20 chance that the results were a statistical fluke. Without replication by independent researchers, telepathy remains highly questionable.

One of Randi’s FAQs is “Scientific papers have been written supporting paranormal events and talents. Therefore, how can you deny them?” His answer:

Scientists can be wrong — sometimes, very wrong. The history of science is replete with serious errors of judgment, bad research, faked results, and simple mistakes, made by scientists in every field. The beauty of science is that it corrects itself by its own nature and design. By this means, science provides us with increasingly clearer views of how the world works. Unfortunately, though science itself is self-correcting, sometimes the scientists involved do not correct themselves. And there is not a single example of a scientific discovery in the field of parapsychology that has been independently replicated. That makes parapsychology absolutely unique in the world of science.

Some say that scientists aren’t willing to even consider evidence for paranormal phenomena. That doesn’t make sense. Scientists are driven by a desire for fame and fortune just like other people. To make a discovery that turns the world upside down—as would solid proof of the supernatural—that’s the dream of most scientists.

Carl Sagan said that one of the most important functions in science is to reward those who disprove our most closely held beliefs. Randi is taking this function literally. A million dollars literally.

There’s no excuse for not taking the Randi Challenge. Claus Larsen has come up with an answer to the most common excuses, such as “I don’t do this for personal gain.” Like he says, you can always give away the million dollars to a worthy cause.

May I suggest my Mini-Cooper Convertible Fund?

Americans see four faces of God

Step right up and choose your God: Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical, or Distant. A major national survey of American attitudes toward religion has found that an Authoritarian image of the Almighty is the most popular at 31%. Distant comes in second at 24% with Benevolent not far behind, 23%. Critical brings up the rear with 16%.

This finding goes a long way toward explaining why our country is so screwed-up. Almost half of our citizens go through their days believing that an authoritarian or critical god is looking over their shoulders, judging them for every moral misstep.

When I read the descriptions of the four Gods, “none of the above” sure seems like the wisest choice. From USA Today:

Authoritarian God. Highly involved in the daily affairs of the world; angry and punishes the unfaithful or sinful.

Benevolent God. Positive influence in the world; not as angry or wrathful as Authoritarian God; heavily involved in lives of humans but less willing to punish them.

Critical God. Watches world from afar with displeasure but does not interfere; believers think unfaithful will feel God’s anger in another life.

Distant God. A creator who set life and nature in motion; not active in the world or angry at what happens; does not help people or hold opinions about the world or human beings.

To me the most disturbing, yet unsurprising, finding in the study was that these images of God are strongly related to people’s political views. For example, only 4% of those who embrace a Distant God (hard to do, actually) say that supporting embryonic stem-cell research is always wrong, compared to 39% of believers in an Authoritarian God.

So those who think for themselves, basing their opinion on the facts at hand, unswayed by fear of eternal damnation, favor this life-enhancing research. But those who put blind faith in a several thousand year old text of dubious authenticity, composed when scientific knowledge was virtually nonexistent, consider that God is saying “Thou shalt not”—without any demonstrable reason for this belief.

That’s why I’ve argued to keep religion and individual morality out of lawmaking. Too many people believe too many crazy things to allow these delusions into the public policy arena. They need to be kept isolated in religious minds so they don’t infect the body politic with irrationality.

On the positive side, about one out of ten Americans (11%) claim no religious preference or identification. May their numbers grow, no-god willing. However, this group also wasn’t homogeneous. USA Today reports that of the unaffiliated:

--45% believe in a higher power or cosmic force (which is impersonal, I assume)
--37% don’t believe in anything beyond the physical world
--12% believe in God with no doubts
--5% believe in God with some doubts
--2% sometimes believe in God

So hard core atheists comprise only about 4% of the United States population. By contrast, 20% of Britons say they hold no belief in a higher power and only 38% claim to believe in a traditional God.

Well, we’ve obviously got a lot of catching up to do with Europe. One in three adult Americans firmly rejects the concept of evolution, a significantly higher proportion than found in any western European country. But, hey, we weren’t dead last in scientific knowledge among the 32 countries surveyed.

We beat out Turkey.

America is deeply religious. America is deeply ignorant about science. Gosh, could there be a connection?

Taoism's Secret of the Golden Flower

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if what we were looking for in life is what we are? After we strip away what we are not, that is. This is the central message of “The Secret of the Golden Flower,” a delightfully simple book that could take a lifetime to grasp.

Thomas Cleary translated this classic Taoist guide to meditation. In his introduction he says:

The golden flower symbolizes the quintessence of the paths of Buddhism and Taoism. Gold stands for light, the light of the mind itself; the flower represents the blossoming, or opening up, of the light of the mind.

…This manual contains a number of helpful meditation techniques, but its central method is deeper than a form of meditation. Using neither idea nor image, it is a process of getting right to the root source of awareness itself. The aim of this exercise is to free the mind from arbitrary and unnecessary limitations imposed upon it by habitual fixation on its own contents.

…The essential practice of the golden flower requires no apparatus, no philosophical or religious dogma, no special paraphernalia or ritual. It is practiced in the course of daily life. It is near at hand, being in the mind itself, yet it involves no imagery or thought. It is remote only in the sense that it is a use of attention generally unfamiliar to the mind habituated by imagination and thinking.

Every religion is based on conjectures about the nature of God, soul, morality, salvation, heaven, and such. Yet the nature of the mind that is conjecturing about all this stuff rarely is given much thought.

Not that it is possible to understand that nature by thinking about thoughts. But at least this leads to the humble realization that we don’t really know where the contents of the mind come from, nor how much faith should be placed in them—especially when it comes to abstractions that have no evident connection to material reality.

The Secret of the Golden Flower suggests that before we start making bold pronouncements about God, we should give some attention to the mind that is prone to making bold pronouncements about things it doesn’t have a clue about.

Here are some passages from the book:

Naturalness is called the Way. The Way has no name or form; it is just the essence, just the primal spirit.

Turning the light around is not turning around the light of one body, but turning around the very energy of Creation.

If you can look back again and again into the source of mind, whatever you are doing, not sticking to any image of person or self at all, then this is “turning the light around wherever you are.” This is the finest practice.

Deliberate meditation is the light of consciousness; let go, and it is then the light of essence. A hairsbreadth’s difference is as that of a thousand miles, so discernment is necessary.

The Way is present before our eyes, yet what is before our eyes is hard to understand. People like the unusual and enjoy the new; they miss what is right in front of their eyes and do not know where the Way is. The Way is the immediate presence.

If you read “The Secret of the Golden Flower,” be sure not to skip Cleary’s extensive notes on virtually every passage. His deep knowledge of Zen and Taoism clarifies what would be murky to an average reader like me.

Cleary also offers an Afterword where he speaks about how he has applied golden flower principles in his own spiritual practice and further explicates the meaning of this profound churchless text.

This teaching calls itself a “special transmission outside of doctrine,” free from attachment to dogma and form, based on direct perception of the essence of mind and recovery of its inherent potential.

…For practical purposes, a distinction is made in the golden flower teaching between the “original spirit” and the “conscious spirit.” The original spirit is the formless essence of awareness; it is unconditioned and transcends culture and history. The conscious spirit is the mind-set of feelings, thoughts, and attitudes, conditioned by personal and cultural history, bound by habit to specific forms.

…Intuition belongs to the original spirit; intellect belongs to the conscious spirit. The essence of Taoism is to refine the conscious spirit to reunite it with the original spirit.

In doing so, you’ll be saying goodbye to religion, which can’t exist without dogma, theology, concepts, emotions, commandments, and other artificial creations of the human mind.

Trust your intuition. When the original spirit calls, put down your holy book and attend to its wordless message. You’ll never be able to tell anyone else what you heard. But the smile on your face will speak volumes.

Gaining an ear for religious disharmonies

I’m not at all musical. But I’ve got a pretty good ear for theological inconsistencies. These are statements that, when I hear them, sound like an obvious off-key note. Like a loud whaaaap! in the midst of an otherwise harmonious composition.

During my many unquestioning devotional years, I was able to sit through Radha Soami Satsang Beas “sermons” (a.k.a. satsangs) and pretty much tune out the disharmonies. I could do the same thing when my daughter briefly, blessedly, tried to learn to play the violin in elementary school.

When you’re attached to someone or something, you tend to overlook sour notes. I mean, you hear them, but your attention is focused on what you adore, not on what the object of adoration is doing.

However, if my daughter still was screeching ghastly sounds in my ear after several decades of practice, that’d get old. Glaring disharmonies can be tolerated only so long. This happened with me as I’d listen, week after week, month after month, year after year, to whaaaap!’s in satsang that I could no longer ignore.

For example, I’d be grooving along to a talk about how God, the One, transcends all distinctions, all comparisons, all attempts to shoehorn the infinite into any sort of box. Then I’d hear the speaker say, “Thus we need to devote all of our efforts to merging with the guru and obey his every command.”

Whaaaap! Wait, how did the subject change so completely? We were talking about the mystery of ultimate reality. Now God has been reduced to a human form. What gives?

I could understand that the guru, or any spiritual teacher, points in the direction of divinity. Sometimes you need a guide to show you the way to God. But the guide isn’t identical with that way. Not unless the guide is as infinite, all-encompassing, omnipotent, and so on as God is considered to be. Which the evidently bodily form of the guru clearly wasn’t.

So gradually I began to pay more attention to what grated on me in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas theology. I learned to trust my intuition about what made sense, and what was a product of confused overly-devotional thinking.

It wasn’t paradox that bothered me. I love to read Zen literature. It’s filled with paradox: “Buddha-nature pervades everywhere; Buddha-nature is a crock of shit.”

I find Zen to be so consistently inconsistent, it rings harmoniously true to me. But when a theology is unaware of its own disharmonies, believing that its discordant notes actually fit in with the rest of its religious composition, that’s a problem. Many fundamentalist Christians preach universal love, yet hate gays, feminists, unbelievers, liberals, and anyone associated with the United Nations. And as this open-minded Reverend points out, "thou shalt not kill" is ignored in favor of senseless war.

That’s a problem.

I still subscribe to the Radha Soami Satsang Beas magazine, “Spiritual Link.” I do so partly to keep my ear for disharmony in good working order. Here are a few examples from the September 2006 issue.

On p. 6 I read:

Our Master has not asked us to achieve, perform, donate, travel or follow him. He has asked us to do his work by doing nothing. Well, not nothing. There is one action we must do; we must repeat those five words [a mantra].

On p. 9 of the same article I read:

Yes, it is such a privilege to be in a Sant Sat Guru’s presence. Our limited minds and tarnished souls do not comprehend the significance, the blessing.

Did the author, or the magazine’s editors, stop to consider whether the contradictory message being conveyed here makes any sense? I doubt it. I suspect that words were repeated out of habit, not out of an understanding of what mysticism truly consists of.

Another example from p. 32:

Kal, the negative power, relies upon the mind and senses to pull us out into the physical world and involve us there. This is his job. By constantly keeping us busy with processing information by our mind and senses, Kal makes sure we are not turning inward towards the Master and following the path homeward through the spiritual regions.

Yet on p. 34 of the same article I read:

We can open our sails by looking beyond the evidence of the mind and senses and pay attention to the presence of the Master, during meditation and also throughout the day. He is always present. We have to remember him during our daily activities, with the aid of simran [repeating the mantra].

Um, dear anonymous author, what do you think is repeating the mantra? The mind. What do you think is imagining that the Master is present when the senses aren’t aware of him, because he’s not there? The mind.

May I suggest that imagination isn’t reality. It’s better to sense what is actually before us than try to create a illusory shadow world of our own making. If the Master is there with you, you’ll know it. Remember: reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

Dear author, have you ever actually thought about the meaning of the Buddhist quotation you cited next—which struck me as a whaaaap! in relation to the rest of your article.

As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life.

Now, that strikes me as harmoniously true. The question is: does imagination bring you closer in touch with where you are, or further away?

The best one-sentence metaphysics ever written

Here it is. My absolute favorite sentence. It’s wise. It’s profound. It’s deep. It’s practical. It’s spiritual. Best of all, it’s true. Drum roll, please. Pregnant pause for dramatic effect…

A little longer…(don’t peek! don’t look below!)

OK. I can’t stand the waiting, even though I know what I’m about to say.

From Philip K. Dick’s “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” (1978), ninth paragraph:

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

Here’s the entire paragraph:

It was always my hope, in writing novels and stories which asked the question “What is reality?”, to someday get an answer. This was the hope of most of my readers, too. Years passed. I wrote over thirty novels and over a hundred stories, and still I could not figure out what was real. One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." That's all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven't been able to define reality any more lucidly.

For quite a while my spiritual practice has been founded on that one line. I’ve used it in many talks and writings. I repeat it to myself a lot. I first read it in the “Edge” section of the Portland Oregonian. That’s a humor column. Dick’s quote was in a collection of supposedly weird items found on the Internet.

I didn’t think it was weird at all. I memorized it right away. I’m still trying to fathom the implications of that single sentence. From those thirteen words an entire metaphysics can be constructed. Or, perhaps we might better say, deconstructed.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see a white hold-the-newspaper-down rock on the patio table where my laptop sits. Whether or not I believe in the rock, it’s there. My wife senses it too. So does everyone else who walks onto our deck. The rock is real, no doubt about it.

On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve thought once about God today. Certainly not this evening. I was focused on playing ball with our dog, eating dinner, and then watching a recording of the Oregon State—Boise State football game.

God hasn’t been in evidence, unlike the rock. Ditto for Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, Holy Spirit, Tao, Big Foot, Godzilla, King Kong, and every other entity that requires a thought to bring it into existence. Beliefs are sustained by thoughts. No thoughts, no beliefs. (Or so I believe; I could be wrong; but even if there is such a thing as a thoughtless belief, I’ll bet that it was born through thought).

My daily meditation now is founded on Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. So are my spiritual beliefs, which is why I don’t have many. I’ve found that when I stop thinking about religion or spirituality, there isn’t much left of what generally passes for divinity.

What remains is either nothing or everything. I mean, during the brief meditative moments when I’m neither aware of the external world or internal thoughts, emotions, and such, there’s just awareness of me being aware of nothing but awareness.

When external sensations and internal cognitions return, everything is present. But all this isn’t present as beliefs. Right now I don’t believe that I’m hearing crickets, feeling the weight of my body on a chair, and thinking what I’m going to write next. These are clear and evident realities.

And that’s what I want: reality. Yes, I want a pleasant, meaningful, satisfying reality. But prior to those adjectives is what they modify: reality. If pleasure, meaning, and satisfaction are merely free-floating abstractions with little or no connection to substantial existence, they’re useless.

So I’m with Philip K. Dick. I’d rather surrender my insubstantial religious beliefs that don’t point to anything concrete, than dilute reality with fantasy. Concerning the times in my life that have meant the most to me, I can say, “Wow, that was real!”

I’ve done a lot of believing. But none of it has been memorable. There’s quite a bit of empty space on my bookshelves now, because I’ve been storing or discarding books that are belief-full and reality-empty. A passage from Thoreau’s “Walden” (which always will be on a shelf) comes to mind:

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.

In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. “Tell the tailors,” said he, “to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch.” His companion’s prayer is forgotten.

Adyashanti bursts my orgasmic bubble

Just as I predicted, I’ve been enjoying Adyashanti’s “Emptiness Dancing.” But I was disappointed when I read this morning that enlightenment isn’t going to be something like an infinitely extended orgasm.

Well, to be more precise Adyashanti left open at least a slight possibility that this could be the case. So I won’t let my hopes die entirely. He did say, though, that orgasmic enlightenment wasn’t his experience. And since his breakthrough occurred after 15 years of Zen meditation, I’ll take him at his word.

However, my experience of enlightenment was simply the demolition of everything that I thought it was going to be. And I have never met anyone who has truly and authentically awakened to the Truth who has ever said anything other than that.

I have never met a single person who has come back and said, “Adya, you know it’s pretty much like I thought it would be. They usually come back and say, “This is nothing like anything I thought it would be. And this is nothing like any of the spiritual experiences I have had before in my life, including experiences of bliss, love, union with the divine, or cosmic consciousness.”

Makes sense. I like how Adyashanti keeps emphasizing that experiences always are transitory—even mystical ones. So they aren’t what the genuine spiritual seeker is really looking for: enduring truth. A state of being, on the other hand, never ceases to be.

Like, I’ve always been aware of being whatever I am for as long as I’ve existed as a self-aware human being. Yet I’ve also had lots of experiences that have come and gone, most of which I’ve consciously forgotten.

So there’s the being that is the lasting me, and then there is the conglomeration of transitory experiences that I often (or usually) mistake for the entity that I am. My problem, says Adyashanti, is that I’ve never gotten in touch with awareness pure and simple.

Recognize that there is nothing that experiences this moment, but even that nothing is known and experienced. There is something mysterious that knows, something mysterious that experiences in this moment, but you can’t say what it is because, when you say what it is, it’s not that.

It’s closer, more immediate. As soon as you think about it, you see it’s not that thought. It’s before that thought. No description is necessary, so just rest on that edge, on the precipice, on the direct experience, directly feeling as though you do not exist and yet knowing that you do.

One thought about this mystery sets apart heaven and hell. Thought rips the unity into pieces to be analyzed by the mind. But silence unifies…Don’t get lost in thought or you miss your life. Just simply relax, and relax, and relax. It’s the simplest act of faith and trust.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

When there are no voices speaking in my head—my voices, crazily speaking to myself what I already know—everything falsely religious fades away. Where is Jesus when I’m not thinking about him? Where is Buddha, God, Allah, Tao, Guru? Dead and gone, along with all the other fantasies that have only as much reality as my mind gives them.

Silence. Stillness. Simply being what I am when I’m not busy pretending to be someone else. That’s when the wild real things start to appear. They shy away from pretension. They don’t like the company of hypocrisy.

The only way to enter silence is on its own terms. You can’t go there with something, only with nothing. You can’t be somebody, only nobody. Then entrance is easy. But this nothing is actually the highest price we ever pay. It’s our most sacred commodity.

We will give our ideas, our beliefs, our heart, our body, our mind, and our soul. The last thing that we’ll give is nothing. We hold on to our nothingness because that’s our most sacred commodity, and somewhere inside we know this.

Only the nothing enters the silence; that’s the only thing that gets in. The rest of what we are just bangs at the nonexistent door. As soon as you want something from the silence, you are moved outside of silence again.

Shhhuuuusssshhhh.

St. John of the Cross: “nothing, nothing, nothing”

This afternoon I came to appreciate the wisdom of St. John of the Cross’ emphasis on “nada, nada, nada.” And I didn’t even need to be given a koan by a Zen master. A worthy substitute, I can assure you, is trying to install a Linksys wireless router.

My old one had inexplicably stopped working. The new one wouldn’t start to work. My first call to India-based tech support led to a koanic download that supposedly would solve all my problems.

Nada. It didn’t.

What I kept getting, after dutifully connecting the router as instructed, was an error message that basically said, “We have been able to connect to the Internet. But your router is a mystery to us. We are unable to configure it because the installation program does not support this strange device we’ve encountered. Good luck, and goodbye.”

I’d bend down to stare at the router sitting under my wife’s desk. Yes, it was a brand new Linksys WRT54GS router, fresh out of the box, which I was trying to install via Linkys’ configuration program. The whole thing was a mystery. Just like God.

I took the path of hoped-for enlightenment so many have followed: I journeyed to India. Again. Via a toll-free number. This time my tech support guru led me through a manual install. It seemed to get the router working, but now my ThinkPad laptop couldn’t connect to it as I was able to before.

I had a sneaking suspicion that this might just possibly have something to do with the laptop falling off a TV table yesterday. Indeed, IBM tech support (in Atlanta) told me where the wireless hardware switch could be located. It’d been knocked to the “off” position.

Yet my wireless Internet connection was still nada. Nothing. A software problem was suspected. I tried to turn the software on. Nada. Nothing. I wasn’t able to perform a system restore, as IBM had suggested. Nada. Nothing. I was at my wit’s end—which doesn’t take long to reach when it comes to wireless computer mumbo-jumbo.

I gave up. I started composing a “help” message to IBM tech support, hoping to reach a more exalted level of software competence. I confessed my ignorance. I pleaded for a return call.

Then I glanced at the Wireless Network Connection icon. It was back to normal looking. I disconnected the modem cable. I was online! I had done nada. Nothing. Yet I was connected. Clearly, a message from the great god Nada in support of the Wu Project.

I had an overwhelming desire to get in touch with my inner nothing. An attitude of gratitude for getting my wireless Internet back. I took a nap. Nada for twenty minutes. Then I picked up a St. John of the Cross book and read some before I meditated. Not quite so much nada as with my nap. But a lot more nada than I’d experienced while working on the router problem.

Nothing can be a wonderful something. Doing nothing finally got my wireless connection working. Hopefully it’ll get my soul in good order also (assuming I have one).

This passage from St. John is from his creative tribute to nada, a sketch of the Ascent of Mt. Carmel.

To reach satisfaction in all
desire its possession in nothing.

To come to possess all
desire the possession of nothing.

To arrive at being all
desire to be nothing.

To come to the knowledge of all
desire the knowledge of nothing.

To come to the pleasure you have not
you must go by a way in which you enjoy not.

To come to the knowledge you have not
you must go by a way in which you know not.

To come to the possession you have not
you must go by a way in which you possess not.

To come to be what you are not
you must go by a way in which you are not.

If a religion can’t be wrong, it surely is

According to Daniel Dennett’s new book, here’s a surefire way to tell whether a belief system is a religion: is it invulnerable to disproof? In other words, is there any way to tell whether the beliefs are wrong?

For example, Jesus is the Son of God. We know this because the Bible tells us so. The Bible can’t be doubted because it is the Word of God. So is Jesus, according to St. John. Thus we have a skeptic-proof system operating here. If you doubt the truth of the Bible, you lack faith in Jesus, without which you will never be saved and come to know Jesus.

After death, of course. Conveniently. The proof of a religion always is found in a time or at a place that isn’t now or here. If it were, it could be disproved.

I’m a firm believer in science. The scientific method leads to right conclusions because it can be wrong. A hypothesis isn’t confirmed until there is demonstrable evidence for it. If no such proof can be found, the hypothesis gets thrown into the trash heap of unproven notions.

When was the last time you heard of a religion going out of business because its belief system was found to be untrue? I can’t recall of this ever happening. Maybe it has. If so, it wasn’t to a genuine religion.

Dennett says:

The postulation of invisible, undetectable effects that (unlike atoms and germs) are systematically immune to confirmation or disconfirmation is so common in religions that such effects are sometimes taken as definitive. No religion lacks them, and anything that lacks them is not really a religion, however much it is like a religion in other regards.

This is one reason why I feel justified in calling Sant Mat, the belief system with which I’ve been involved for many years, a religion. Its central tenets are immune to disproof.

The leader of a Sant Mat sect, the satguru (true guru), is considered to be a perfect being. Yet he does seemingly imperfect things. Once I was told a story about the guru throwing a book manuscript across the room at an writer who had meekly asked, “Have you read it yet?”

Most people would consider this to be a sign of irritation or anger. But the person on the receiving end of the pile of papers took it to be an ego-reducing gift of grace from the guru.

So if the guru acts in an exemplary manner, that’s considered to be a sign of his perfection. And if he acts like an ordinary human being, ditto—for this is how perfect beings act when they want to test the devotion, faith, and humility of their disciples.

Similarly, if the disciple gets expected results in meditation, such is regarded as the grace of the guru. And if no results are forthcoming, ditto—for the guru is saving up the merits of meditation for bestowal at the proper time. Usually, after death. Conveniently.

So, consider: How would you be able to tell if your religion is right or wrong? Not after death, but here and now. If there is some way, explore it. But I’ll bet that there isn’t. Religions aren’t big on tests. Unquestioning acceptance is their thing.

Yet you can’t be right if there’s no possibility of being wrong. That’s why if a religion can’t be wrong, it surely is.