Ridiculing my own religious fundamentalism

Recently I made fun of keeping kosher – including the absurd practice of getting around a prohibition of lighting a fire on the Sabbath by starting an oven ahead of time and disabling its light bulb.

Some commenters gave me heat for ridiculing this practice of observant Jews, even though I was careful to point out that I wasn't singling out Judaism. Every fundamentalist religious practice deserves to be laughed at.

I replied to one comment with:

Like I said, I'm an equal opportunity ridiculer. I particularly enjoy ridiculing my own previous unsupported beliefs.

So now let's have some laughs at my expense. Here's a partial list of what I used to hold near and dear when I was an unquestioning Radha Soami Satsang Beas true believer. This is part of the RSSB version of "keeping kosher."

-- Initiated disciples (satsangis) were supposed to meditate 2 ½ hours a day. I'd set a timer on my watch. Before midnight I'd make sure that it registered 150 minutes of meditation time. Sometimes I'd stare at the seconds going by until I could hit the stop button after the magic 150^th minute passed. Not exactly deep concentrated meditation, but I was precisely obeying the letter of the RSSB law, which gave me great fundamentalist satisfaction.

--Like most other satsangis, I believed that food blessed by the guru was really special. I'd treasure little bags of blessed puffed rice or granulated sugar that initiates would bring back from India to share. I'd string out the supposed spiritual benefit of consuming this parshad by eating a teeny bit every morning before I meditated. If any spilled, I'd eat it off the floor, along with any dust or dirt it might have attracted. After all, it was holy!

--Eggs weren't permitted to be eaten on the RSSB vegetarian diet. Even non-fertilized eggs, since these were still considered to be potential instruments of conveying life. So buying new items in a grocery store went slowly. I'd read every ingredient to make sure there weren't any eggs in the product. When I got older and couldn't see as well, I'd pass an item up if the fine print was illegible. For if I ate a smidgen of egg white, I'd have sinned!

--At first there was no problem with cheese. But then my guru died, and his successor decided that animal rennet was a no-no. Satsangis put great effort into researching cheese brands to distinguish those that were theologically pure from those that weren't. Great fun (not!) for hapless waiters who'd be asked by an initiate, "Your pizza looks good. But before I order could you check and see whether the cheese on it has animal rennet?" (What the !@#$% ? would be the evident reaction, but we didn't care, because even a speck of "non-kosher" cheese could ruin your good karma. How'd we know? The guru said so.)

--I followed the RSSB injunction against drinking alcohol for more than thirty years. With a single lapse at my 10-year high school reunion that was just too freaking weird to get through completely sober. As I wrote about before, I felt morally superior to anyone who'd I see having a drink, especially a "lapsed" satsangi. So rigid spiritual practice doesn't lead to humility – I can testify to that.

Fortunately, my second wife (who I married in 1990) wasn't a RSSB initiate. Almost from the moment we met Laurel would kid me about how seriously I took my sacred satsangi vows.

She could do a damn fine Saturday Night Live "Church Lady" imitation. "You're doomed, Brian, doomed, if you eat an egg white!" Laurel would intone. "You're going straight to hell if your lips touch that piece of cake!"

This could get mildly irritating at times. But looking back, I'm grateful that Laurel wasn't shy about making gentle fun of me. Over the years her kidding began to sound more like wisdom than ridicule. She helped open my eyes to the unthinking dogmatism with which I held certain beliefs.

Right now I'm sipping a glass of red wine as I sit on our deck, enjoying a warm summer evening in the company of some beautiful Oregon countryside, a wi-fi laptop, and my current churchless sentiments.

I can smile at what I once believed without regretting having held those beliefs so firmly. Like the cliché says, It's all good.

Yet also worthy of ridicule, if some of that "all" is ridiculous.

Comments

[Osho Robbins]

Brian,
Nice topic. When a person begins to see the madness, the absurdity of his own beliefs - he is set free of them. The difficulty is in seeing. It is easy to see others - but we refuse to look at our own. We laugh at others. The man who laughs at himself is free because he will not take himself seriously - and in truth there is nothing to take seriously. God is having a big laugh at our expense. And what makes God laugh the loudest is how serious we become. Over what? Over this silly sunday game He is playing called life. He was bored on Sunday and decided to create people and the world - just to see what these people would do. And now all He does it laugh - it was so funny that She created humans just for a laugh and they took the game so seriously.

You tell the story of your second wife who said "You're DOOMED, Brian, DOOMED, if you eat an egg white"

That is how all religious people live all the time. And it takes a second wife to wake them up. So I would highly recommend a second wife to anyone who wants to wake up. And also it is the perfect excuse to trade-in the old model without feeling guilty - You can say "I am doing it for my spiritual journey." Which sounds a lot better than "I am bored with you and want someone more exciting."

We take our life far too seriosuly. We are trying to be "right" and hope to be "saved" by doing the "right" thing and being a "good" person.

Actually when you start to see through the beliefs, you can see how absurd we are.

Nobody is going to save you - even if you never eat an egg white. Even if you meditate 2.5 hours a day - to the second.

The seva you do at Haynes does not give you any spiritual benefit - not even one ounce.

The meditation will not give you any spiritual benefit at all.

When you can see this - you become free. You stop trying to get saved - because in truth you will never be saved. There is nobody there to be saved. You are trying to save "YOU" and you are unsavable because your sense of "I" or "ME" is nothing more than ego - and ego is never saved.

You are doomed if you do and doomed if you don't. You are doomed - period.

Accept your doom and you will be free of trying to save yourself. The Buddha said that you cannot be saved - there is no saviour - because there is nobody to be saved.

God is laughing at you - because it is a joke that you think you can be saved. You are not real in the first place. You are a character that God created in this little game he is playing - and you want to be saved! If you are not careful then God will fall over backwards laughing.

Brian, if anyone was your savior, it was your second wife. And her mantra was a magical potion called "friendly ridicule." A potion I highly recommend to anyone who takes himself too seriously.

When we look back we can laugh at ourselves. And if we look at ourselves today - we can laugh even louder. When we can go up to anyone and say "I am the biggest joke on this planet" - then we are totally free. And when we can add "and I don't care to be any different" - that is the cherry on the icing on the cake.

Nice topic Brian - and I hope you enjoy the wine. I will come and visit you one day and perhaps take a sip of your wine.

[Robert Paul Howard]

Dear Brian,

I, too, am glad that you are less of an idiot now than you used to be.

Robert Paul Howard

[Tucson Bob]

I like the point Osho Robbins is making in his comment above, but someone may get the impression he is saying that God is laughing AT himself suffering and struggling with an imaginary ego.

Maybe this God which is no 'thing' is just laughing, period?

How can that which is no 'thing' have an object to laught at?

[Paul Sunstone]

Any man who can laugh at himself is admirable.

[Robert Paul Howard]

Dear Brian,

Just in passing, some might be interested in the following site: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000481.

Robert Paul Howard

[Robert Paul Howard]

Dear Brian et al.,

I regret that the site address I supplied above does not seem to open on the article I desired to draw your attention to. If you are interested, perhaps google might lead you to Scott Horton's "A Knight's Quest for Humanity" (July 10, 2007) in Harper's Magazine. It deals with Shota Rustaveli (ca. 1190) and his tale "The Knight in Panther's Skin" (Vivian trans. in 1977). Perhaps that will serve better.

Robert Paul Howard

[Brian]

Robert, thanks for the additional info. I too found that the link didn't work. A Google search did indeed lead me to the article, which looks interesting. See:
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000481

This passage caught my eye:

"Rustaveli’s is the romance of the quest. It is not what one loves that matters so much as that one loves. It is not the object of the questing, but the quest."

Yes.

[oshoRobbins]

Tucson Bob wrote:
I like the point Osho Robbins is making in his comment above, but someone may get the impression he is saying that God is laughing AT himself suffering and struggling with an imaginary ego.

Maybe this God which is no 'thing' is just laughing, period?

How can that which is no 'thing' have an object to laught at?

Hi Tucson,
God IS laughing at Himself and You and I. Me in particular. He laughs loudest when He sees me. But am I concerned? I laugh back and I laugh louder.
And He really has a good laugh when He reads this blog. He wants to know what we are saying about Him.

And WHY does He or She laugh? Because as Tucson pointed out, He is not anything that we say He is! He is a "NO-Thing". Not a "thing". The absence of all "things". Simply an emptiness - a vacuum.

Every statement we make about "Him" is a lie - because we only have concepts and no concept is the truth - because we have made Him into a "thing" in order to relate.

As far as our thinking is concerned - a "no-thing" means "nothing" or non-existence. In other words - there IS no God.

Because something that is "nothing" is non-existent - therefore we say "it does not exist."

The athiest says "There is no God"
The thiest says "There IS a God"

Both are wrong and right at the same time.

The mind only deals with "things" so a "no-thing" is beyond it's grasp.

If the mind cannot grasp - in some form - then it says "there is nothing"

Which is the precise point. God IS the nothing. The athiest is right when he says God is non-existent - because God does not need the attribute called "Existence" or "thing" in order to survive.

God is a "special case" - He IS even though he does not "exist" in teh way we relate to "existence".

That is why there is so much confusion about the Big Dude. We cannot relate to Him - simply because He is not a person like other people. He does not have the same attributes - He does not think or operate within TIME and SPACE.

As Tucson says - He does not Laugh. Also He does not Cry, Love, Judge, Wake Up, Sleep, Dream, go for a walk, drink tea, play, work, create, destroy, live in Sach Khand, love us, hate us, or anything else we might say.
He simply watches (even that is a lie).
Quite simply the mind is never going to 'grasp' or 'understand' God - so the best it can do is say "God does not exist" and it is the truth if existence is measured be being a "separate thing".

The mind is obsessed with what is True (Like - Does God exist? it is TRUE?)
and false, and RIGHT and wrong
(Is it RIGHT that God just watches as we suffer!) Why doesn't he DO something?
and what is GOOD and BAD.
Is it a GOOD thing if there is life after death? What will my life be like? will it be GOOD (in heaven/Sach Khand) or BAD (Hell or even back on earth!)

The next question is WHY - or MEANING.
Let's say that after death - it is the end. Life ends - finished - no more YOU - the party is OVER.

Now - suddenly you want to EXIST - you want to continue to BE - you want another life!
If I say "believe in jesus and you will have an everlasting life" - you will ask me where to sign up.

Now take the opposite: After life you are REBORN - and if you do BAD deeds you will be reborn as an animal or insect. Now who wants that? Don't all rush at once!

We DON'T want to be reborn (because - well -it is a BAD thing). So if you want to avoid this fate worse than death then you will have to MEDITATE really hard - and you MUST find a PERFECT MASTER who will tell you the inside secrets because He is real Pally pally with The Sat Purush Dude in Sach Khand. He may even get you a really nice 5 bedroom detached house to live in there - if you play your cards right.

So we pursue the dream. The question is WHAT FOR? The answer is because you are SEEKING to BENEFIT - You WANT to be in God's Goods books.

I have news for you - God doesn't keep books - He failed his accountancy exams and is not ALLOWED to keep books - it was a High court Judgement against Him. I know some people who were present when the case was heard.

Can you SEE the ABSURDITY of it all? What total madness! The Mind is trying to WIN. There is no winning.

Enlightenment is realising the madness of it all. It is like Alice in Alice in Winderland. She says "I don't to be around MAD people!" She is told: "Oh you can't avoid that - we are ALL mad here"

It is the same with us here - we are ALL MAD. That is why God laughs! (That's assuming He even NEEDS a reason. He actually laughs for no reason - it is rumoured that HE is also mad - He must be in order to create mad people!)

Now for a secret:

The mind SEEKS more and more. It is greedy. It wants what it can't have - hence the search for Sach Khand, Truth, Enlightenment. Once you SEE this - you are free to simply enjoy and wander around doing nothing in particular. This is the art of living and the true meditation. No more struggle. Why struggle? For what? For a meaning you created in your own mind!

So what is the truth? Simply that there is NO MEANING. All meanings are MADE up by the MIND. Life is simply life. No meaning - no goal - no purpose. Good and Bad only exist if you have a purpose or goal. If you simply wander - there is no good or bad - you never get closer or further away because you have no destination.

God simply wanders - no destination. If you also wander - you become like Him - and who knows - one day as you wander - you may suddenly notice that the beggar wandering with you is just God in disguise. Then you can sit on a park bench and have a good hearty laugh at the madness of it all.

- Osho Robbins (grandson of God - I could not take the position of "Son" since that Jesus dude took it already)

By the way - hey - sorry if I offended anyone - it was intentional

[Tucson Bob]

I have found that following a spiritual path has no particular relevance to 'understanding' which can occur at any time under any circumstance. It's a thin veil, a trick of perception that is a result of our habits and conditioning.

A spiritual path is based on the presumption of an individual that needs to go through a variety of disciplines and correct behaviors in order to purify and get rid of the 'I' or ego, and then achieve reunion with God.

The fundamental point that is missed is that the seeker, at every stage of this quest, is already what he/she is seeking. There is no way to make the seeker any more what they already are. It is a simple tweak of perception, of looking in the right direction, which is no direction at all, to see this: to see you are just a phantom, a dreamed character in a play you are playing a role in. There is no individual. No separate soul. No ego to overcome.

There are no particular qualifications for perceiving this because Consciousness is perfectly present in all circumstances and has no need for special diets, disciplines or gurus.

Consciousness is always present HERE whether one is loading the dishwasher or experiencing a grand vison of the creation in some exotic inner region.

When this is seen, the game of the spiritual quest appears silly, like a dog chasing it's tail. It may appear critical when one sees this and points it out to those in this illusion, but really, there is nothing wrong with playing that game. It is your role in the play. Carry on, have fun, but none of it leads to what you already are, which you are, whether you know it or not. Your glasses are on your nose, silly!

What you already are is the unborn and thus undying Presence that is prior to all phenomena and thought. It can't be conceived or circumscribed in any way because in doing so it would be making an object out of itself. This is how the One becomes two and creation manifests and the illusion of individuality begins.

The One is playing a game of hide and seek with itself. All paths lead to nowhere because there is nowhere to go. Just be as you are, really are, right now which is just fine unless you think about it!

[tao]

A most excellent comment from Tucson Bob!