Church of the Churchless

Be natural

Got some sort of Mr. Natural theme going on. Recently I ran across David Lane’s right-on musings about the problem with “perfection” when it comes to gurus. Or, anyone else. David says:

"If we say something like the guru is infinite, then if we see something that is finite, something that is limited, then if we subtract that finite aspect from Infinity we end up with something infinitely less.

There isn't apparently degrees of infinity here.

So any thing that appears less than Perfect is going to become a point of contention, whether it is reactions about photos or internet bans or what have you.

The perception of imperfection is what fuels these criticism and sometimes even the most petty offense will loom much larger precisely because it contradicts Beas' notion that the guru must be perfect."

Yes. Again, the same applies to any person. When we match them (or ourselves) against an impossible ideal, something has to be discarded: either the unreasonable standard of perfection or our ability to see things as they naturally are.

To err is human. And very possibly, also divine. We’ve got this idea that the spiritual heights should be pristine, pollution free, clear to the horizon. Yet nature herself is messy. So if the Creator bears any resemblance to the Created, paradise has some dirt under the carpet.

Here’s another take on naturalness from the blog of a West London socialist. I found his post in the course of perusing the links that lead people to the Church of the Churchless. This guy wrote about hearing would-be guru Gangaji talk. A commenter added a link to my own Gangaji-related post.

I enjoyed his well-written honest description of the evening. I too have wondered, “How many Babaji’s are there in India?” He’s got a Mr. Natural philosophy of life:

"It doesn't matter what you do, you will surely die; it doesn't matter what you do, you will be forgotten; it doesn't matter what you think, what you believe, what you crave or crush or kill or desire – it will all be gone. This amazing fleeting reality we experience – this hour we strut and fret upon the stage – it's a mayfly existence. An amazing colour show.

So, my advice to you, should you wish to take advice from someone you've never met, is, first and bloody foremost stop worrying. Stop worrying about life, stop worrying about whether you're good enough, stop worrying whether you're sexy enough or bright enough or cool enough or rich enough or happy enough or old enough or young enough or fit enough or strong enough or tough enough or successful enough – it doesn't matter."

Then today I got an email from Catherine, a Church of the Churchless visitor who always has an interesting perspective on the cosmos. Here’s what she had to say:

"Godlessness--bring it on!

I used to know I could produce a loaf of bread. Producing a human was not something I could do. I surely was the incubator only in the whole birth process.

Birth, however, is completely natural. Phenomenally and spectacularly natural is what we are through millennia of natural adaptation. Us humans find ourselves so amazing that we cannot conceive of the fact that we and all around us have produced ourselves. We attribute it all to something other that we also create out of the finer natural mind.

We rely on other people and books to tell us stories which smother our natural intelligence. No need to praise or pray to something outside ourselves. Graceful effort at knowing and strengthening our natural selves and environment is the best we can do to improve.

What is the best place to be? Priests, Gurus coax us with heaven or Sach Khand (the latter a sort of perpetual bliss ocean! - no thanks). I am guessing that the most heavenly place people can conceive of is a six star hotel in the clouds with all the extras.

Whatever else is promised by Gurus, Gods and Lords, is in fact hoped for by disciples as in many cases, the best that they can conceive of in luxury. In fact, like in the “Blood Diamonds” film, people will go through and cause hell in the hopes of eventually ending up with some peaceful luxury.

The best place to be is in fact the best, most natural self. Giving credibility to something outside of our natural selves is the root cause of all disease."

Nicely said. I’m assuming she’s speaking mainly of mental afflictions. But unnaturalness certainly harms our physical being also. High heels are alluring. However, human heels weren’t evolved to tilt inches into the air.

We usually pay a price for walking down a road that nature didn’t fashion. Like, with podiatrist visits.

Does God exist? Science says no.

Proving (sort of) that no-god has a plan for my life, on Friday the mailman delivered two ungodly packages that I’d been anticipating for quite a while: Victor Stenger’s new book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis,” and the free DVD, “The God Who Wasn’t There,” I got for sending myself to hell via the blasphemy challenge.

Back in August I wrote about an advance description of Stenger’s book that led me to pre-order it. Good decision. I’m several chapters into “God: The Failed Hypothesis” and am enjoying a physicist’s scientific demolishing of the God hypothesis.

Stenger’s central thesis is that if God exists, there should be evident signs in the material world.

My analysis will be based on the contention that God should be detectable by scientific means simply by virtue of the fact that he is supposed to play such a central role in the operation of the universe and the lives of humans.

I’ll write more about the lack of evidence for God after I’ve finished the book. From what I’ve already read, though, it’s clear that Stenger has his evidentiary ducks in a row and succeeds in knocking down God’s presence in the physical universe.

But who is the God being debunked? For Stenger it is the Judeo-Christan-Islamic God, which gets a capital “G” in the book to differentiate this hypothesized divinity from other possible gods.

Here’s Stenger's listing of the attributes of the God that there is no scientific evidence for:

1. God is the creator and preserver of the universe.
2. God is the architect of the structure of the universe and the author of the laws of nature.
3. God steps in whenever he wishes to change the course of events, which may include violating his own laws as, for example, in response to human entreaties.
4. God is the creator and preserver of life and humanity, where human beings are special in relation to other life-forms.
5. God has endowed humans with immaterial, eternal souls that exist independent of their bodies and carry the essence of a person’s character and selfhood.
6. God is the source of morality and other human values such as freedom, justice, and democracy.
7. God has revealed truths in scriptures and by communicating directly to select individuals throughout history.
8. God does not deliberately hide from any human being who is open to finding evidence for his presence.

When I reached page 41 and read these attributes of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God (which sounded pretty accurate to me), I thought, “Hmmmm. This sure sounds like the God of Sant Mat also.”

Sant Mat (which means “teachings of the saints”) is usually thought of as an Eastern religion, since its roots are in Sikhism and Hinduism. The branch of Sant Mat that I joined in 1971, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), is headquartered in India, where most initiates live.

Yet the eight attributes of God listed by Stenger describe the divinity worshipped by Sant Mat almost as well as they depict the Christian God.

This reflects the fact that some Eastern religious practices assume a personal dualistic God who stands apart from the cosmos, while some Western mystics (such as Meister Eckhart and Plotinus) wholeheartedly embrace a monistic godhead, the One.

When I signed on with Sant Mat, I was attracted to what I thought was an alternative to the anthropomorphic Judeo-Christian-Islamic God who looks down upon the world and chooses to intervene in human affairs when he feels like it, saving some souls and condemning others.

Eventually, however, I saw the similarities between this seemingly “Eastern” mystic path and the traditional monotheistic religions. RSSB was big on pointing out that the guru who led the organization was the living counterpart of dead and gone Jesus, a messenger from God who serves as a link between fallen humanity and the highest divinity.

Well, as I frequently say: maybe. But now I lean toward Stenger, who writes:

The scientific argument against the existence of God will be a modified form of the lack-of-evidence argument:

1. Hypothesize a God who plays an important role in the universe.
2. Assume that God has specific attributes that should provide objective evidence for his existence.
3. Look for such evidence with an open mind.
4. If such evidence is found, conclude that God may exist.
5. If such objective evidence is not found, conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that a God with these properties does not exist.

There are different god models, though. The personal dualistic God hypothesized by Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Sant Mat is one divine option; the universal non-duality of Buddhism, Taoism, and Neoplatonism is another possibility—one that fits much more comfortably with a scientific worldview.

In my book about Plotinus, a Greek mystic philosopher, this passage had a ring of truth for me as soon as I wrote it. It still does.

Some people believe that they have a personal relationship with God. Thinking like Plotinus, we might ask them: “Does this mean that God is a person? Or does it mean that you are a person?” Perhaps it is possible for my relationship with the One to be markedly different from the One’s relationship with me, because I am a minute part of creation and the One is the whole of creation.

Meditation teaches the brain new tricks

Okay, so nobody knows what consciousness is. Doesn’t really matter, so long as we use the consciousness that we have—whatever the heck it is—wisely. Which includes training the brain.

In TIME’s “How the Brain Rewires Itself,” Sharon Begley presents some encouraging research that overthrows the depressing notion that “the adult human brain is essentially immutable, hardwired, fixed in form and function, so that by the time we reach adulthood we are pretty much stuck with what we are.”

She goes on to say:

But research in the past few years has overthrown the dogma. In its place has come the realization that the adult brain retains impressive powers of “neuroplasticity”—the ability to change its structure and function in response to experience.

One way the brain can rewire itself is through meditation. Begley cites a study that involved Buddhist monks, some of whom have spent more than 10,000 hours of their lives in meditation.

Hey, that’s nothing.

I’ve spent over 20,000 hours in meditation (though if you subtract the time I spent dozing or letting my mind ramble, it’d likely be closer to 2,000; maybe less). So it’s nice to know that researchers are finding that all that sitting in a dark place with my eyes closed, mostly repeating a mantra, probably has altered the structure and function of my brain for the better.

After putting the Buddhist monks through their meditation paces in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, neuroscientist Richard Davidson considers this to be a viable hypothesis: “That we can think of emotions, moods and states such as compassion as trainable mental skills.”

So the brain is turning out to be a lot more flexible than was previously believed. It’s interesting that meditation, which usually involves focusing or concentrating awareness, leads to more looseness in the psyche.

Maybe reducing the amount of useless cognitive crap that floats around the brain in the form of meandering thoughts and unrestrained emotions frees up space for more positive relations with reality.

Whatever, it’s clear that meditation can lead to changes in how our consciousness functions, opening up possibilities for fresh insights and new understandings. It’s healthy to shake up the branches of our brain’s neuronal tree. Fruits never before tasted may drop onto our plate of awareness.

I’m not surprised that all those hours of meditation I’ve put in have helped me become the person I am now. More agnostic, skeptical, non-dogmatic, irreligious, open-minded.

I’m still as committed to meditation and the possibility of directly experiencing a “mystical” state of consciousness. I just don’t want to be confined inside any sort of rigid conceptual framework during my exploring of plastic possibilities.

It’s not strange when long-time meditators find their approach to spirituality becoming more flexible. What’s strange is the belief that someone could seriously study the nature of their own consciousness for years or decades and not find their spiritual beliefs changing.

Digging into the hard problem of consciousness

Want to tackle one of the most intractable mysteries in science? You’ve got a hold on it right now: consciousness. Nobody knows what it is, though everybody uses it to think, “What is it?”

Steven Pinker has a terrific article in this week’s TIME magazine, a special issue devoted to the mind and brain. In “The Mystery of Consciousness” he talks about the Easy Problem of consciousness, which basically concerns how mental processes function and are correlated with neural goings-on in the brain.

Tough enough, certainly, but researchers are making good progress delving into this area. However, barely a scratch has been made on the surface of the Hard Problem. This, says Pinker:

Is why it feels like something to have a conscious process going on in one’s head—why there is first-person, subjective experience….The Hard Problem is explaining how subjective experience arises from neural computation. The problem is hard because no one knows what a solution might look like or even whether it is a genuine scientific problem in the first place.

Cognitively, I’ve been fascinated by the Hard Problem ever since I read David Chalmer’s classic 1995 article in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.” (I used to subscribe to the journal, until I realized that most of the articles focused on the Easy Problem).

Existentially, I’ve been fascinated much longer. Like, for as long as I’ve been aware that I was going to die one day. For the crux of the Hard Problem is how consciousness arises. If it’s the result of purely physical processes—brain cells reaching a certain level of complex functionality—then the precious self I know as “me” is dead meat when Brian’s body dies.

But if consciousness is somehow distinct from physical matter, hey!, I’ve got a chance of continuing on after I die in some form or another. I was glad to see that Pinker quoted Woody Allen, because Allen perfectly sums up my attitude toward death:

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.

I also was pleased that Pinker gave Descartes the due that I believe he deserves. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard Descartes put down by mystically-inclined types who dismissively say, “What an intellectual dualist! He thought that thinking makes you exist, cogito ergo sum. The guy didn’t know much about meditation, evidently.”

Well, Pinker gets Descartes right: “As Rene Descartes noted, our own consciousness is the most indubitable thing there is.” Yes. From my reading of Descartes he wasn’t referring to only thinking with his cogito. Rather, he meant consciousness of anything: thoughts, sensations, emotions, perceptions, imaginings, whatever.

Each of us is directly aware of our own awareness. We can be deceived about what is present in our consciousness (a mirage can make sand masquerade as a lake), but there’s no room for doubt that we’re conscious of something or other.

John Gregg puts it nicely near the end of his take on the Hard Problem:

Some people argue that what I call subjective consciousness is some kind of illusion. As attempts to dismiss consciousness go, this one does not stand up to much scrutiny. What is an illusion? It is something that seems one way but is really another. My claims rest on the observation that that red really seems red to me. The counter claim that this is an illusion boils down to, "red doesn't really seem red, it only seems that it seems red."

But seeming, like multiplying by 1, is idempotent - inserting more "seeming" clauses into my claim does not change it one bit. Whether red seems red, or seems that it seems that it seems that it seems . . . red, the Hard Problem stands before us. The Hard Problem consists of the fact that anything seems like anything at all. If subjective consciousness is an illusion, then who or what exactly is the victim of that illusion, and how can it be such a victim without the Hard Problem being a problem for it?

My seeing of red is not a philosophy; it is not a way of thinking about or interpreting some theory or idea; it is not an abstraction; it is not an inference I have drawn or some metaphysical gloss I have put over reality. It is a brute fact about the universe, a fact of Nature. It is really, really there. It is not a theory - it is explanandum, not explanation.

As such, it is incumbent upon our natural science to explain it. If my seeing of red is not amenable to the currently accepted methods of natural science, then so much the worse for the currently accepted methods. Those who deny the existence of qualitative consciousness remind me of the church officials who refused to look through Galileo's telescope because they did not want their neat and tidy theological world upset by what they might see.

Amen, brother. I am. My subjective awareness is much more self-evident to me than any other fact, because the evidence of everything else in existence depends on my self. Gregg says:

The problem is that subjective consciousness (or qualia) is not something we drag into the picture to explain something or other that we observe, as elan vital was invoked to explain what we observe about life, or to use another example reductive physicalists like, as the luminiferous ether was invoked to explain light waves in the 19th century. Consciousness is the raw data, the observed thing that needs explaining. It is the light, not the ether.

Every day I put in some meditation time, digging into the Hard Problem. Ever prone to grandiosity, I admit to fantasizing that could be me! when I read what Pinker thought might happen to his own favorite theory about how the Hard Problem will be solved.

I admit that the theory could be demolished when an unborn genius—a Darwin or Einstein of consciousness—comes up with a flabbergasting new idea that suddenly makes it all clear to us.

Well, I’d be happy just to make the Hard Problem clear to me alone. Making it clear to anyone else would be an unexpected bonus.

Pinker’s theory is that the human brain hasn’t evolved to the point where it can understand how consciousness arises; if he’s right, which seems likely, the only solution to the Hard Problem is going to lie outside of understanding.

Grokking. That’s where I place my hope, not in understanding. The nature of consciousness (a.k.a. “soul” if you’re spiritually minded) isn’t going to be comprehended by me or you trying to examine consciousness as if it were a specimen on a dissecting table.

For the examiner is the specimen is the dissecting table. It’s all one big mysterious glob of…who knows? There is a reasonable surmise, however, based on lots of research into the Easy Problem. Virtually every scientist accepts Francis Crick’s “astonishing hypothesis.” As Pinker puts it:

The idea that our thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological activity in the tissues of the brain. Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is the activity of the brain.

Maybe. But I’m holding out hope that the alternative thesis held by nearly every mystic is true. Namely, that actually consciousness is the primal foundation of reality, not matter/energy, and it is possible for human awareness to merge with—or at least cozily nestle up to—the unseen conscious One that lies behind all manifest forms.

Plotinus, a second century Greek mystic philosopher, taught that consciousness has to be turned around from a preoccupation with outside things (the Easy Problem, essentially) and directed toward itself, thereby facing the Hard Problem head-on.

When it turns its attention to the nature of the things illuminated, it sees the light [of consciousness] less; but if it abandons the things it sees and looks at the medium by which it sees them, it looks at light and the source of light.

…This is the real goal for the soul: to touch and behold this light itself, by means of itself. She does not wish to see it by means of some other light; what she wants to see is that light by means of which she is able to see.

In his book, “Buddhism: The Religion of No-Religion,” Alan Watts said much the same thing in the form of a limerick.

There was a young man who said, “Though
It seems that I know that I know.
What I would like to see
Is the I that knows me
When I know that I know that I know.”

Oh, yeah. Me too.
Knowing that I know—easy. Knowing the I that knows—hard.

But well worth knowing. Heck, maybe the only thing worth knowing. Along with Woody Allen quotes, of course.

It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

How would Jesus have us pee?

When you need to go, you’ve got to go. Peeing is simple. At least, it should be.

But when going to the bathroom gets mixed up with religious dogma, organizational rules, and guru worship, it’s amazing how much controversy arises about getting up to go during a “sermon.”

My post about blind obedience being a hallmark of cultish religion got noticed over on the Radhasoami Studies discussion group. I’d talked about how the leader of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh, objected to having his photo taken in a public place, and how devotees tried to force a man to surrender the film in his camera.

I made no mention of peeing. Nor did the discussants of some group messages, “Don’t take my picture and more on Gurinder’s control tactics—from Brian Hines” and “To Brian Hines.” (scroll down to see the message threads)

For a while. But somehow the cyber conversation turned to needing to pee during a satsang (talk) given by a guru, a subject I addressed several years ago in my “God’s here, but I’ve got to go” post..

That led to a flow of responses to “‘To pee or not to pee, that is the question’—Brian Hines.” Why, the debate just kept on gushing. I guess people couldn’t hold themselves back.

I unzipped my brain and let loose with a few comments of my own. Including:

You can't believe how much enjoyment I've gotten from observing the (entirely justified) interest in photos and peeing. These are subjects--particularly peeing--that deserve both serious and non-serious discussion.

My own take on having to pee during a talk is this: I've given lots of talks. I've never minded a bit when someone got up from his or her seat and walked out of the room. To pee, or any other reason. And I'm a huge egotist.

Shouldn't someone who supposedly has lost his ego, having merged his soul with the Lord, be hugely more humble? Can you imagine Jesus orBuddha going along with "Sit down! No peeing during the sermonizing!"

I see them smiling a generous "Go right ahead, my friend; I want you to be comfortable."

So what this pee discussion points to, in my opinion, is the seemingly strange situation of a guru acting less compassionately and naturally than an average human being.

I can’t agree with those who said that forcing audience members to stay seated during a talk by a holy person, no matter how great the urge to go to the bathroom, is entirely reasonable. Somehow I can’t imagine Jesus giving the evil eye to someone who walked off to relieve himself during the Sermon on the Mount.

Peeing is natural. As spirituality should be. Thus this semi-comical “to pee or not to pee” debate points to a serious issue: the artificiality of dogmatic religious practice, and the control tactics used to keep the faithful in line. Cults often don’t let members go to the bathroom without permission.

Neither do most schools. But like this child advocate says, “Using the bathroom is your right, not a privilege!” Right on, sister. Power to the pee-er!

During another of my Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) security stints, back in my devoted days, I was assigned to be outside the auditorium during a talk by Gurinder Singh in Palm Springs. I felt an urge to urinate, so sought out a restroom in the hotel complex.

Finding a men’s room, I walked in the door. And almost stumbled over a man who was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. He was another RSSB sevadar (volunteer) who’d be assigned to keep the restroom empty in case the guru needed to use it.

Now, I understand why a personage is entitled to privacy when he takes a leak. Especially if there are reasonable security concerns involved. President Bush doesn’t use a public restroom either. But this anecdote points to the obvious: everybody has to pee, gurus included.

It’s natural. As I said in my original post on this subject:

It was natural for me to want to go to the bathroom after drinking coffee and sitting for hours listening to the guru talk. Why couldn’t I feel comfortable standing up, walking off to a toilet, and then coming back to hear the rest of his satsang with a calm mind and empty bladder?

I’m not attracted to a spirituality founded on artificiality. Let me pee, or let me be.

I like the notion of a “refrigerator friend.” This is someone who can unhesitatingly walk into your house and open your refrigerator without asking. Doesn’t even need to say, “I’m hungry, what do you have to eat?”

To me, god or guru should be an even more intimate friend, someone you feel completely at ease with. No pretense. No formality. A bathroom friend who lets you know, “No problem with peeing; when you need to go, you’ve got to go.”

Consider a cosmos that is only consciousness

There’s always another side. To anything. A coin can’t have “heads” without “tails.” Being on this side of the wall implies a that side. So I have no problem flipping the pancake of my “Consider a cosmos with no consciousness” post.

Reading the final pages of Suzanne Segal’s Collision With the Infinite this morning got me thinking about what lies behind, beyond, within, and without my consciousness of thinking about those final pages.

Early on in the book I read that Segal had a profound experience at a bus stop in Paris. In fact, it’s listed in her Acknowledgments:

The Parisian mass transit system, for providing a bus stop in lieu of a bodhi tree.

Suddenly she felt separate from her body, a disconcerting feeling.

“I” was now behind my body looking out at the world without using the body’s eyes…Instead of experiencing through the physical senses, I was now bobbing behind the body like a buoy on the sea.

Segal had been a long time practitioner of Transcendental Meditation before she became disillusioned with the TM organizational bullshit and ego trips. Yet, she writes:

The thought did arise that perhaps this experience of witness was the state of Cosmic Consciousness Maharishi had described long before as the first stage of awakened awareness. But the mind instantly discarded this possibility because it seemed impossible that the hell realm I was inhabiting could have anything to do with Cosmic Consciousness.

Her book describes the frustration of consulting psychotherapist after psychotherapist, spiritual adept after spiritual adept, none of whom could explain what had happened to her. Segal eventually earned a Ph.D. in psychology, which didn’t cast light on her condition either.

On her own, with the aid of some intensive meditation, she got it. Which essentially was: Segal was it. Or you could say, IT. That’s all there is. One substance she likes to call “vastness.” In other words, the infinite.

What seems to have occurred at the bus stop in Paris is that the human circuitry of this life started to participate consciously in the sense organ with which the vastness is constantly perceiving itself. The vastness is the substance of all things, existing everywhere simultaneous with the appearance of form.

…The human circuitry is made of the same substance. When it consciously participates in the sense organ that the vastness is always using to perceive itself, the human circuitry becomes aware—not through its own sense organs, but through the sense organ of the vastness—that the substance of the infinite is its naturally occurring state.

Cool. And believable. I liked Segal’s book a lot more than I thought I would. I was prepared for New Agey pabulum. But she drew me in with her apparent honesty and forthright determination to figure out what had happened at the bus stop.

For a long time Segal thought that she was going (or had gone) crazy. That indeed is one interpretation of her dissociated state of consciousness. But she eventually concluded that if the cosmos indeed is only consciousness, realizing this is so “awesome” (a word I don’t like much, but Segal does), it’s crazy to expect that the experience is going to be akin to anything familiar to her, or us, now.

The infinite reveals itself to the mind in mysterious, unimaginable, and ungraspable ways. But the mind, by its very nature, tends to reject what it cannot grasp…In my case, the mind mounted an all-out effort to pathologize the emptiness of personal self in an attempt to get rid of it. This attempt proved unsuccessful.

…Life is being lived out of the infinite substance of which it is made, and this substance—which is what and who we all are—is constantly aware of itself out of itself. What an extraordinary way to live!

Indeed. And a scientific way also, in my opinion. For the vastness of the cosmos clearly is conscious, in some mysterious fashion, of the laws of nature that are identical with the vastness of the cosmos.

As above, so below, it’s often said. But to Segal, there’s no “above” or “below.” Just It.

Blind obedience a hallmark of cultish religion

“Don’t do that!” We hear this a lot when we’re children. Often for good reasons. Like when we want to flush kitty down the toilet, or see what happens when the bathtub water just keeps getting higher and higher.

But once we can think things out reasonably for ourselves, few of us want to be treated like two year olds. So why are so many people attracted to religions that demand blind obedience, no matter how nonsensical the command?

I guess because humans also value security. If we let someone else make decisions for us, we may not be free, yet we have something to cling to: our submission. “I’ll do whatever you want” is a solid unequivocal statement. No distressing ambiguities.

Some people love being part of a military-like chain of command. I understand the appeal. I’ve been a committed religious soldier myself. However, now I look back on my jump and ask “how high” on the way up days with more than a little embarrassment.

One example: I used to be an enthusiastic Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) “sevadar” (volunteer). After I started learning Shotokan karate, I got to be a security sevadar during the guru’s occasional visits to the United States and Canada.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with security. Except when it’s overzealous. During a visit Master Gurinder Singh made to Honolulu I was standing outside the auditorium when the guru’s entourage strode by.

Gurinder Singh walked past me and toward the building where he was to speak. He stopped and turned around about thirty yards away, looking and waving his hands in a “no, no” gesture toward my general direction.

The reason? A man near me had pulled out his camera and was taking photographs of the guru. From a good distance—not at all a paparazzi sort of intrusion. But RSSB initiates were under firm orders not to photograph Gurinder Singh or record his words.

However, this guy was in a public place. And we had no way of knowing if he was a member of RSSB. Plus, even if he was, what right did we have to stop him from taking a photo of the guru?

Such considerations didn’t enter the mind of the aggressive security sevadars around me (myself, I had no inclination to confront the man). They yelled “Stop!” He looked confused. “You can’t take photographs of the master,” he was told.

It was a unpleasant scene, especially considering this was supposed to be a weekend of spiritual love. I can’t recall all of the details of the encounter. I’m pretty sure the man got talked into taking the film out of his camera and handing it over.

I do know that I’ve seen a similar scene in movies, like when a Mafia boss is photographed in a compromising situation and his goons rough up the camera man.

What’s most disturbing to me now is how little I was disturbed at the time. Like everyone else around me, I assumed that obedience to the guru trumped respect for non-sectarian niceties like the First Amendment. After all, the guru was considered to be God in human form, and it isn’t a good idea to disobey God.

In short, I was enmeshed in a cultish way of thinking back then. Heck, I may still be, but at least now I’m a devotee of the Cult of Me—which has a much more flexible code of conduct. Scanning these “Warning signs of dysfunctional cults,” I see quite a few that apply to RSSB.

For example:

Proud feeling of being the chosen people, of possessing the exclusive truth or means of salvation, or being superior to those outside the group.

Blind obedience to harmful or unwise directives from on high.

Suppression of dissent, doubt, critical thinking, sincere questions, discussion or independent judgment.

Legalistic obsession with myriad rules. Enslavement to authoritarian, military-style organization and procedure.

Before my Church of the Churchless days, a few years ago I wrote on my other blog about giving a talk to a large gathering of RSSB devotees in Petaluma, California. In that post I said, “No, I’m not a member of a cult, no matter what my wife says.”

Well, once again Laurel is right. Maybe I should always unthinkingly do whatever she commands. No, wait, there’s no “maybe” involved here. I forgot that I’m married. (Cultish behavior is entirely acceptable if you’re a husband, so sayeth the sacred Book of Woman).

Silent snow has a lot to say

This is a Church of the Churchless day when some Oregon snow is going to do most of the talking. I learned quite a bit from it on my walk this morning.

When you feel the spirit, jump up and dance with snowballs.

Bare bright branches are beautiful. No leaves necessary.

Even blah barren brush turns into wow! with a coating of white.

Put on the right coat and you'll say "It's not cold."

Dead trees are still alive. Oh, yes, very much so.

It’s possible to walk in your own footsteps (our dog can, at least, which is how she makes four paws look like two).

At the end, dive in. Unless you don't want to.

Suddenly--a flash of color.

On the edge…an interesting place to be

It’s true: bending low, bamboo doesn’t break.

Keep flowing. Always.
Around rocks. Wherever.

It’s nice to have a friend along when exploring shadowy woods. (But alone is fine too.)

Shabd is a power, not a person

Currently I’ve got a heretical reputation in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) branch of Sant Mat, which means “teachings of the saints.” Earlier though, I wrote a couple of books under RSSB auspices, one published directly by the organization and one that was published commercially, then bought and resold.

My Church of the Churchless blogging led to me being fired as a RSSB speaker. And regularly I get emails from other RSSB initiates who take me to task for supposedly having strayed from the core Sant Mat teachings.

In my own mind, though, I consider myself a true Sant Mat disciple. For the foundation of my spiritual practice is this hypothesis: that unity is the ultimate nature of the cosmos, not multiplicity.

This also happens to be a eminently scientific hypothesis, which is why I embrace it.

Physicists are seeking a theory of everything, not multiple theories. The big bang that brought the universe into being started as a unitary “superforce,” which later manifested as the four forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, plus the strong and weak nuclear forces).

I was reminded of what a true disciple I am when I picked up the January 2007 issue of Spiritual Link, a magazine published by RSSB. I read one of the articles, “Reliance on the Master,” and found myself thinking: “Whoever wrote this is a heretical satsangi (initiate), not me.”

Here’s why the article is wrong, along with countless other misguided RSSB initiates, and I’m right. The goal of Sant Mat meditation, and its other supportive spiritual practices, is to merge with a universal power called shabd. Universal, not personal.

The guru who initiated me, Charan Singh, said:

This Power pervades everywhere and therefore it has been sometimes described as Universal Consciousness.

But the article I read points the reader in a wrong direction: toward the individual physical form of the guru. The anonymous author says that we should “develop a mental stance where we consciously rely on the Master when embarking on any act, whether meditation or anything else.”

It’s evident from this article excerpt that “Master” means a person, not an all-pervading power.

One can never achieve the attitude of being carefree without worry without also achieving a degree of reliance on the Lord and his manifestation, the Master. Constantly remembering how our Master cares more about our welfare than we do ourselves helps us gradually give up worry. Masters urge us to rely on their grace for our needs, spiritual and worldly, and not on our own devices.

Heresy! I reject this twisting of my guru’s teachings. I turn to Charan Singh’s own words for proof that anyone who relies upon a person for support, spiritual or otherwise, is far from understanding what Sant Mat is all about.

Surrender implies surrender to Shabd, which is the Real Master or Guru, and not to any physical form. We should, by constant practice, not only contact the Sound [Shabd] but merge ourselves into It so that It will take care of us entirely, in every situation and in every respect.

Shabd is the same as Tao is the same as Spirit is the same as any other name given to the universal power that lies at the heart of reality. This is the essence of every deep mystical teaching: that only One is really real.

Of course, there are degrees of realizing this unity. So long as we’re alive, it isn’t going to be possible to leave aside dualities: male/female, right/wrong, virtue/sin, all that divisive stuff.

But spirituality is about moving beyond separateness, not embracing it.

When the universal power of the cosmos is considered to reside in a particular person, the ugly side of religion is given a reason for being. My way is considered to be the only way, because my guru, prophet, or savior is God and yours isn’t. Nyah, nyah.

I like to call the One, “Tao.” Yet if you prefer another name, great. Just don’t claim that you have a special relationship with an all-pervading reality. That’s non-sensical. And also, non-spiritual.

Consider a cosmos with no consciousness

I’ve always thought that the “we create our own reality” folks didn’t have much of an argument to stand on. It just seems so darn obvious that the universe stands apart from any conception of it.

How we perceive the cosmos certainly depends on our sensory and cognitive capabilities. However, that there is a cosmos—however it may appear—prior and separate to any perception struck me as self-evident common sense.

In other words, I considered that the universe stands on its own (anthropomorphically envisioned) feet. While we humans are able to create subjective realities within our minds, the grander cosmos outside our cranium is objectively real, existing independent of any consciousness of it.

But a thought experiment is leading me in a different direction: I try to imagine a cosmos with no consciousness. No human awareness. No animal awareness. No plant awareness. No alien life form awareness. No angelic awareness. No awareness of any kind. None at all.

(Note: I consider “consciousness” and “awareness” to be terms pointing to the same mysterious phenomenon, as this Wikipedia article implies).

Now, this is where the thought experiment should end, because it’s already failed. For I’m aware. And awareness, or consciousness, obviously can’t envision a cosmos with no awareness, for the same reason I can’t picture what the world would be like without me in it.

Nevertheless, I keep forging ahead because the experiment is so intriguing, ignoring the impassible existential abyss that’s stopped me in my tracks.

I consider a universe with no life, no awareness, no sentience. It’s easy to do. I think: “What a marvelously simple thought experiment!” The universe appears to me just as it does now, planets, stars and galaxies filling the fabric of space, yet with nobody conscious of it.

Obvious questions then crash the party of my thought experiment: Who is doing the considering of this cosmos with no consciousness? From what perspective is this entity contemplating the universe?

It dawns on me that this entity, namely me, is equipped with eyes that translate a certain wavelength of electro-magnetic radiation into perceptions of which I’m aware. Photographs of distant galaxies, for example, from which I derive some of the raw imaginative material for my thought experiment.

Yet what if I had the body of a bat and sensed with sonar? Or that of a snake with heat-sensing capabilities? The world would look entirely different.

So my envisioning of the cosmos as illuminated by light is terribly anthropomorphic, a fact I’m reminded of every time I walk the dog and watch her spending enthralled minutes sniffing a bush that my smell-impaired brain considers to be nothing special.

Still, my thought experiment has led me somewhere, though not to my intended destination of an imagined cosmos with no consciousness. I’ve understood that different sorts of consciousnesses are aware of the cosmos in different ways. We may not create reality, but our own unique perception of it is indeed created.

However, the question still remains: What is the “it” that any consciousness is aware of? Even if it isn’t possible for any of us to know whether “it” exists independent of awareness, isn’t there an answer that could be known, if it weren’t for that damn existential abyss?

We’re now venturing into the dense jungle of quantum physics, a world that I’ve spent a lot of time exploring, but which still remains mostly a mystery to me. I do know, though, that somehow the quantum domain of reality is intertwined with conscious observation of it.

Physicists agree that there is some intimate connection between the observer, “I,” and the observed, “it,” when it comes to quantum phenomena like photons. Light appears as either a particle or a wave depending on what sort of photon sensing apparatus an experimenter sets up.

But what if there was no conscious observer around to detect any sort of light, whether wave-ish or particle-ish? And the bigger question: What if there was no consciousness anywhere in the cosmos? Would light, or anything else, exist as we know it?

I’m already over my head in the scientific/philosophical sea of quantum physics. If you want to explore these questions with a guide who can actually float on the surface and paddle around, click on over to an interview with renowned physicist John Wheeler: “Does the Universe exist if We’re Not Looking?”

Here’s an intriguing excerpt:

At every moment, in Wheeler's view, the entire universe is filled with such [quantum] events, where the possible outcomes of countless interactions become real, where the infinite variety inherent in quantum mechanics manifests as a physical cosmos. And we see only a tiny portion of that cosmos. Wheeler suspects that most of the universe consists of huge clouds of uncertainty that have not yet interacted either with a conscious observer or even with some lump of inanimate matter. He sees the universe as a vast arena containing realms where the past is not yet fixed.

And here’s the view of another noted physicist, Andrei Linde:

“The universe and the observer exist as a pair,” Linde says. “You can say that the universe is there only when there is an observer who can say, Yes, I see the universe there. These small words— it looks like it was here— for practical purposes it may not matter much, but for me as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers.

“We are together, the universe and us. The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness. A recording device cannot play the role of an observer, because who will read what is written on this recording device?

"In order for us to see that something happens, and say to one another that something happens, you need to have a universe, you need to have a recording device, and you need to have us. It's not enough for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to anybody. It's necessary for somebody to look at it. You need an observer who looks at the universe. In the absence of observers, our universe is dead.”

Wheeler and Linde see the universe as participatory. Humans aren’t passive bystanders on the cosmic stage; we’re active creators of reality.

Makes increasing sense to me, as I gravitate toward the Taoist-Buddhist slope of metaphysical explication. I want my spirituality to be grounded in science. Or at least, not floating separate from modern scientific explanations of reality.

For me, a religion that can’t come to grips with the mystery of how consciousness relates to the cosmos isn’t worth holding on to. For somehow our awareness is part and parcel of the universe that we’re trying to be clearly aware of.

We’re Ouroboros.

Stages of spiritual growth: skeptics top believers

I was prepared to scoff at M. Scott Peck’s levels of spiritual development . But when I scanned the four stages and saw that I’m definitely a “three” and probably a “four,” I became an instant believer.

Somehow I’ve managed to never read any of Peck’s many books, he of “The Road Less Traveled” fame. He converted to Christianity after dalliances with Christian and Islamic mysticism, but I don’t hold that against him. Well, maybe a little.

I did enjoy reading an abridged version of Peck’s analysis of the stages of spiritual growth after Bob, a Church of the Churchless visitor, clued me in to it. Wikipedia summarizes the stages:

--Stage I is chaotic, disordered, and reckless. Very young children are in Stage I. They tend to defy and disobey, and are unwilling to accept a will greater than their own. Many criminals are people who have never grown out of Stage I.

--Stage II is the stage at which a person has blind faith. Once children learn to obey their parents, they reach Stage II. Many so-called religious people are essentially Stage II people, in the sense that they have blind faith in God, and do not question His existence. With blind faith comes humility and a willingness to obey and serve. The majority of good law-abiding citizens never move out of Stage II.

--Stage III is the stage of scientific skepticism and inquisitivity. A Stage III person does not accept things on faith but only accepts them if convinced logically. Many people working in scientific and technological research are in Stage III.

--Stage IV is the stage where an individual starts enjoying the mystery and beauty of nature. While retaining skepticism, he starts perceiving grand patterns in nature. His religiousness and spirituality differ significantly from that of a Stage II person, in the sense that he does not accept things through blind faith but does so because of genuine belief. Stage IV people are labeled as mystics.

Peck was a psychiatrist. These stages have a ring of psychological validity to them. Most religious people are in II: formal, institutional, fundamental. They feel superior to the lost souls in I, but are threatened by the skeptical atheists, agnostics, and scientifically inclined III’ers.

A true II believer considers it backsliding if you go from being a moralistic churchgoer to a hell-raising “I make my own rules” I’er. Yet the same person would look upon a move from skepticism to faith as spiritual progress, even though Peck says this is a regression from III to II.

Like all typologies, these stages are simplistic. Still, Peck’s analysis is one more reason, among many, for the churchless to stand tall. In an egoless fashion, of course, since one of the hallmarks of IV is an embrace of collective consciousness rather than a separate self.

I found this passage interesting in the light of Peck’s own life:

Similarly, we see people bouncing back and forth between Stage III and Stage IV. A neighbor of mine was one such person. By day Michael expressed his highly analytic mind with brilliant accuracy and precision, and he was just about the dullest human being I have ever had to listen to.

Occasionally in the evening, however, after he had drunk a bit of whisky or smoked a little marijuana, Michael would begin to talk of life and death and meaning and glory and become "spirit filled," and I would sit listening at his feet enthralled. But the next day he would exclaim apologetically, "God, I don't know what got into me last night; I was saying the stupidest things. I've got to stop smoking grass and drinking."

I do not mean to bless the use of drugs for such purposes but simply to state the reality that in his case they loosened him up enough to flow in the direction he was being called, from which in the cold light of day he retreated back in terror to the "rational" safety of Stage III.

Shortly before Peck died in 2005, his wife of 43 years walked out on him. I learned that from an article about him, “Gin, cigarettes, women: I’m a prophet not a saint.” Another article says Peck “made millions with his first book by advocating self-discipline, restraint, and responsibility - all qualities he openly acknowledged were notably lacking in himself.”

Well, who among us is worthy to throw a stone at Peck? Not me, for sure. The longer I live, the less confident I am that I know what life is all about. Peck struggled to find out. But like he famously said, “Life is difficult.”

Whether we’re a I, II, III, or IV, we all can agree on that.

Blasphemy Challenge video proof

Today I denied the Holy Spirit on camera and uploaded the video to YouTube. I now qualify for both a free DVD and eternal damnation, per my previous post.

Hope my afternoon is equally productive.

I considered filming another take of my blasphemy, but figured that if you’re going to deny the Holy Spirit, it should be spontaneous. (And you should bring your stuffed animal along with you.) See:

I condemn myself to hell. For a free DVD.

I haven’t made my Blasphemy Challenge video yet, but here’s the written version: “Hi. I’m Brian. I deny the Holy Spirit.”

According to Mark 3:29, my soul is now in deep hellish doo-doo.

“Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.”

On the plus side, if my video is among the first 1001 to be uploaded to YouTube, I’ll get a free DVD of The God Who Wasn’t There. That’s a $25 value, definitely enough for me to sell my soul.

Actually, I’d condemn myself to hell for a lot less. Like, for free, since I don’t believe that hell exists. Why, hell, I might as well condemn myself to Tartarus also while I’m at it. Along all the other mythical underworlds posited in the world’s religions.

If I’m wrong, the joke (and eternal damnation) is on me. But I’ll take my chances.

Bishop Carlton Pearson is on my side. He’s an evangelical minister of the United Church of Christ who preached fire and brimstone until he got a revelation from God. Which basically was: There isn’t any hell. All are saved. Christians and non-Christians alike. Everyone.

You’d think this positive, inclusive, non-judgmental message would be greeted by his congregation with a hearty “Praise the Lord!” But just the opposite occurred. His flock went from over 5,000 to just a few hundred.

Apparently hell sells. Which makes sense, in a sense.

If you’re a Christian believer, you damn well want to get some special benefit from all that believing. If hippies, drug dealers, homosexuals, and Buddhists are going to reach heaven along with you, what’s the point of going to church and filling the collection plate?

Nonetheless, it looks like Carlton Pearson now is doing fine. He has a snazzy web site and a nifty slogan: “The Friendliest, Trendiest, Most Radically Inclusive Worship Experience!”

Not surprisingly, Bishop Pearson is viewed as a heretic by fundamentalist Christians who aren’t into friendly, trendy, radical inclusiveness. This lengthy critique of Pearson’s hell-free theology calls him the charismatic bishop of heresy.

I suspect Pearson takes that as a compliment. As he should.

[Thanks to Church of the Churchless regular Randy for emailing me about Pearson, and to Newsweek for cluing me in to the Blasphemy Challenge.]

Reality is a terrible thing to waste (on religion)

I admire anyone who writes this boldly about believing in God:

You believe in God. You also believe that we have a soul that lives eternally once our earthly bodies fail us. You believe that both of these statements are true. Now that we’ve agreed upon what you believe, let me tell you what I know. (Not what I believe to be true, but what I know to be true.) I know these statements you believe to be true are false. I know they are false because I know they are not true.

That anyone is Jon, a Church of the Churchless visitor who sent me a link to his “This is all there is” blog post. Jon said that I’d helped him realize something that he already knew. Indeed, I mused along the same lines as he did in “What if this is all there is?”

Another reason I admire Jon’s essay is that he starts off with an algebraic bang. You don’t see that often in spiritual writings. He begins with a question and goes from there:

It’s true that you believe your soul (X) is (=) some part (Z) of (x) your earthly being (Y), correct?

Exercise your algebra-deprived brain and make your way through Jon’s interesting argument. Or, take a short cut to his mathematically-supported conclusion.

Come to find out, your “soul” and your earthly being, your heavenly being, and whatever “part” of you it is, is actually all the same thing. It’s all there is. This (right here, right now, at this very moment, is all there is.)

There will be never be anything else because this (This) is all there is and ever will be…There is never anything other than the truth. A lie (or belief) exists only in your imagination…Stop believing in things and start knowing things. The lies have got to stop.

…I know that I am here because I know that I’m not there. I can pretend I’m “there,” but that belief exists only in my imagination. I am always only ever here…“There” does not exist in reality. It’s a belief only in our imagination.

Yes. Reality is a terrible thing to waste (thanks, United Negro College Fund, for being able to adapt your famous phrase). We can spend our lives imagining that we’re experiencing something that we’re not. Or we can live in the truth of what actually is.

Which, if you’re a believer, is God’s creation. So denying reality is denying God. Thus faith and belief are blasphemies.

Yesterday our local newspaper’s religion columnist quoted from a church newsletter. Jim Young, of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, urged people to “discern the movement of the Spirit in our daily lives.”

The first step is to find a quiet place where one can be attentive to the ever-present God.

I thought, “good advice.” In fact, that’s as far as we need to go. Any further misses the mark.

Because Young then said to focus on the past and the future:

Reflect on the past year with gratitude…Review the past year like you would replay a movie in your mind…The final step is to reconcile and resolve to move forward.

Well, the first step made sense to me. As, I’m pretty sure, it would to Jon. Reality here and now is real. But the past and future isn’t. Most of us already do our best to flee from the unvarnished truth of the present moment.

Religion’s emphasis on imagination and fantasy just adds to our illusion.

Eliminate the middleman between you and God

It’s usually advisable to eliminate the middleman. He won’t like it. But if there’s no reason to keep him around, dump the guy. He adds extra overhead.

Especially if he’s standing between you and God. Or more accurately, if you believe he is. For given that the evidence of God’s existence is extremely scanty, it figures that a belief in the need for a middleman or mediator between humanity and divinity rests on even shakier ground.

Like, quicksand.

I used to buy cars the old-fashioned way. And hated it. You know the routine. Find a car you like. Talk to a salesman. Tell him how much you want to pay. Then cool your heels while he supposedly goes off to try and talk his boss into accepting the deal.

You never see the boss. All you see is the salesman dejectedly walking back into his office, telling you “Man, I’m sorry. I argued for you, but my boss says the dealership would be losing money if he accepted your offer. So this is what he’s willing to sell the car for…”

And so it’d go. Of course, the salesman wasn’t really on my side. Nor, I suspect, did he ever talk with his boss. He probably had a cup of coffee and joked around with his buddies for ten minutes, then plastered on a fake dejected look before he tried to suck more money out of me.

But at least I knew the car I wanted was real, even if the middleman game was fakey. With “God” (a placeholder term, the way I use it, for ultimate reality), I neither know that my envisioned object of desire exists, nor that a mediator between me and God serves any purpose.

I don’t need a mediator to connect me with unicorns, fairies, or leprechauns. I can imagine them all on my own, thank you. No assistance required. Yet for some reason there’s a strong demand for a mediator between people and God, even though the middleman never delivers the goods.

Nice work if you can get it. It’s no wonder there’s never been a lack of prophets, gurus, priests, shamans, and all the other members of the God-human mediator class. If I could make a living by serving as a middleman between people and a being who I never had to prove even existed, much less actually show face to face, that’d be sweet.

I could even keep on with my go-betweening after I died. That’s what happened with Jesus. Countless Christians still consider that he’s striking a bargain for them with God: Jesus died for their sins. Since Christian theology says that you never get to talk about the deal with the Boss directly, believers have to take the word of the Salesman on faith.

My biggest problem with the God-human mediator business is this: the whole notion is founded on duality—separation. Jesus is considered to be the mediator between two estranged parties, God and humankind. Similarly, in Sikhism (and offshoots such as Sant Mat) the guru reunites separated ones with God.

However, a central thrust of modern science is that unity lies at the heart of reality. Physics speaks of the space-time continuum and quantum connectedness. It seeks the Theory of Everything, not Theories.

So it’s difficult for me to believe that the spiritual realm, if it exists, is more disconnected than the foundation of material existence. But this is what religions would have us believe.

Somehow we’ve supposedly gotten way out of touch with a distant God, and there’s no getting us back together without the aid of a middleman who says, “Listen, have I got a deal for you…”

In his book “Grassroots Spirituality,” Robert Forman says that wholeness is one of the hallmarks of a spiritual (as contrasted with religious) way of relating with the world. Speaking of the fresh ways of communing with the cosmos that are sweeping the world, he writes:

In short, the traditional western “transcendent” model of God is no longer operative in the Grassroots Spirituality Movement. Its Ultimate is reminiscent of the omnipresent, immanent yet infinitely extended vacuum state of quantum physics, more like an “It” than a “He” or “She.” In “It” “we live and move and have our being.”

…This sense of an “indwelling” One has an implication for our religious structures. If we each are gifted with an indwelling spark of the One, then we have no need for some mediating figure like a priest or a minister. For “It” is already available to each of us.

Nor do we need an intercessor, for it’s available to us by merely letting go of our attachments. If we’re each connected to the All through some deep inner wellspring, then no one of us is more connected to “It” than is any other.

Make your own deal with God. Eliminate the middleman. In the end, there might not even be two ends to ultimate reality. With One, there’s no middle. Nor a middleman.

But if you still want a guru (and have a broadband connection), I have a recommendation for you.

Worship at your own doorstep

This morning, before meditating, I read some inspiring words from Vivekananda about strength. Our strength. Not God’s. Not a guru’s. Not anyone else’s.

I decided to ask Google to tell me more about “Vivekananda” and “strength.” In the results I found myself. Thank you, Google. That’s exactly what I need to know.

Or rather, remind myself of. These distant gods, these elevated theologies, these remote sages—increasingly they seem like comic book characters to me. Two dimensional, artificial, unnatural, fantastical.

I may not have the answers to the big questions of life. I may be ignorant of what, if anything, lies beyond the physical. I may be clueless about how one even begins to unravel the mysteries of consciousness, life, death, and existence.

But there’s one big plus to me: I know that I am. Right here, right now, sitting on a chair, typing on my laptop, glancing out a window at a typically gray and rainy January Oregon day, I’m something real.

Now, what that “something” truly is, that’s a question for another day. Or moment. Or lifetime. However, there’s always an immediate answer to my what’s it all about? It’s whatever I’m aware of here and now.

Logically (and also intuitively) that’s always going to be the answer. It’ll shape shift along with every other changeable bit of the cosmos. Which, if the Buddhists have it right, is all the bits.

What I like about Vivekananda is what I like about myself when I’m not avoiding being who I am. He turns us around toward the person we see when we look in a mirror. He urges, “Worship that. Be that. Act boldly as that.”

My knowledge of Tango is as limited as my knowledge of ultimate reality. Still, I’ve learned this much: when the leader leads, he does so decisively; when the follower follows, she does so decisively.

No maybe’s. No perhaps’. No possibly’s. Either take a step, or don’t. If you do, do it. All the way. 100%. Full throttle. Pedal to the metal. That’s the ideal, at least.

Who can live up to it? Only a few, whether on the dance floor or in the meditation chamber. Still, whether we’re leading or following, yang’ing or yin’ing, pursuing or surrendering, the more strength and confidence we bring to whatever we’re doing, the better off we’ll be.

Religion is a strength sapper. Especially when your belief is in a personal god who is separate from creation. Vivekananda says:

There are, no doubt, great and wonderful things in the religions of the dualists. Wonderful is the idea of the Personal God apart from nature, whom we worship and love. Sometimes this idea is very soothing.

But, says Vedanta, that feeling is something like the effect that comes from an opiate; it is not natural. It brings weakness in the long run, and what this world wants today more than it ever did before is strength. It is weakness, says Vedanta, that is the cause of all misery in this world.

Weakness is the one cause of suffering. We become miserable because we are weak. We lie, steal, kill, and die because we are weak…We are miserable through delusion. Give up the delusion and the whole thing vanishes. It is plain and simple indeed.

What is so plain and simple?

I know it is Truth alone that gives strength. I know that Truth alone gives life, and nothing but approaching Reality will make us strong, and that none will reach Truth until he is strong. Any system, therefore, which weakens the mind, which makes one superstitious, makes one mope, makes one desire all sorts of wild impossibilities, mysteries, and superstitions, I do not like, because its effect is dangerous.

…When we have nobody to grope towards, no Devil to lay our blame upon, no Personal God to carry our burdens, when we alone are responsible, then we shall rise to our highest and best…Cry to all the gods in the universe. I cried for years, and in the end I received help. But the help came from within myself; and I had to undo what I had done by mistake.

…The idea that the goal is far off, far beyond nature, attracting us all towards it, has to be changed; the goal has to brought nearer and nearer, without degrading or debasing it. The God of heaven becomes the God in nature, and the God in nature becomes the God who is nature, and the God who is nature becomes the God within this temple of the body, and the God dwelling in the temple of the body at last becomes the temple itself, becomes the soul and man—and there Vedanta reaches the last words it can teach.

…The idea of freedom that you perceived was correct, but you projected it outside yourself, and that was your mistake. Bring it nearer and nearer, until you find that it was all the time within you, it was the Self of your own self.