Church of the Churchless

Don’t obscure life with blind beliefs

It was one of those moments when the universe seemed to be sending me a wake up! call. I have them fairly frequently.

I'd probably be aware of more if I wasn't asleep so much of the time. Not literally, though napping is one of the things I'm best at; what I mean is sleepwalking through life – absorbed in something other than what is really going on.

A few days ago I was walking up our driveway to get the morning newspapers. We live in rural Oregon countryside, so when I talk to myself on a cold dry December day I don't expect that anyone will be around to hear me.

On this particular newspaper-getting mission I was thinking about my Galobet acronym. Though basically faithless now, I still like to keep my salvation options open.

So I was running through my GALOBET divinities, saying hello to some entities who might, just might, have something to do with the fact that I was alive, in beautiful Oregon, on a winter day when it wasn't raining (will miracles never cease?).

"Hi," I said aloud. "God, Allah, Lord, One, Brahman, Emptiness, Tao – thanks for doing whatever you do, assuming any of you exist and are listening to me. I'm happy to be something rather than nothing."

That was a nice sentiment, I suppose. And I was enjoying hearing me talk to myself.

But then I glanced up and came eye to eye with a genuine being. A deer. Which was standing in a field next to the driveway, looking right at me.

I'd almost missed it. I was so focused on hearing my thoughts spoken aloud, I wasn't paying much attention to the world outside of my head.

A world of deer, grass, wintry air, a barely risen sun, men talking to themselves as they walk to get the newspaper.

In short, the real world.

I'd been talking, in my faithless fashion, to religious/spiritual entities that I either don't believe in at all (God, Allah, Lord – the Western pantheon) or don't envision listening to me (One, Brahman, Emptiness, Tao – the more philosophically plausible Greek and Eastern pantheon).

Even so, I'd distracted myself from perceiving what was right in front of me. Of course, I could just as well have been musing to myself about what would be on the front pages of the newspapers we get.

Or anything else.

But the genre of religious conceptions is a particularly powerful obscurer of really real life. That's because dogmatic beliefs are clung to with a power that my half-hearted interest in Galobet or the front page news pales in comparison to.

I know, because I've been there and done that: tried to keep my mind full of religious thoughts during as much of my waking hours as possible.

Of course, I didn't consider that I was obscuring reality back when I envisioned the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas accompanying me throughout my day. A lot like Harvey, but not as tall.

I've heard that Christians do the same thing. Except it's an invisible Jesus instead of an invisible guru who stands by your side – your best friend, leaving aside the minor detail (for many) that friends should be real.

There could be life after death. Or life before birth, as was suggested on one of the first Church of the Churchless Message Board posts.

But who knows for sure? Only someone who has died. And they can't tell the rest of us.

Who are here, living – very likely the only life we'll ever experience. A life that is so unbelievably precious, it begs to be lived as fully and eyes-wide-open as possible – not veiled behind beliefs about what may be.

What is: that's always right before us. Looking back wide-eyed. Like a deer standing in an Oregon field on a winter day.

Converse. Connect. Question. Answer.

After visiting this blog, head on over to the Church of the Churchless Message Board. It's another way to practice faithless faith and be part of a non-dogmatic community. The Message Board is new, but the topics are old – timeless, in fact. Learn more about it here.

Message Board added to Church of the Churchless

Check it out. Note: Due to lack of use, the Message Board will go out of business near the end of 2009, as I won't be renewing my subscription for the board service.

As part of my unending (until it ends) dedication to serving the churchless, I've put up a Church of the Churchless Message Board.

My hope is that this will be another way visitors to this blog can share ideas about spirituality, religion, mysticism, and such.

Up to now, commenting on blog posts has been the only way to do this.

The Message Board opens up another option. Start by reading my introductory "Welcome" message. It describes how to get going with this forum.

Which, at this moment, is a blank slate. Virgin territory. On the main page at this moment you'll see a bunch of zeros in the "posts" column, aside from my Welcome.

I've provided a framework for discussions, conversations, sharing, ranting and raving, whatever. It'll be great if people use it. If not, nothing has been wasted. Just a few hours of my time and a small amount of money to the hosting service.

My main focus will continue to be blogging. The Message Board should run itself, more or less, the content being visitor/member generated. I'll moderate the Message Board and deal with problems or questions.

Some of which I might even be able to answer. I've used message boards like this one, but have never set one up. So this is an experiment, a new churchless activity for an almost New Year.

Be part of it. Click on one of the forum links and then click on "new topic." Share some thoughts. You might start a conversation. Whether you do or not (it takes two to converse, or tango), sharing is its own reward.

When we say something honestly, directly, truly, from the heart, it resonates no matter how, or whether, others respond to it. We've spoken with our own self.

And that's always a good conversation to have.

Founders’ faith was pretty much faithless

Listening to conservative talk radio before Christmas, to hear what the uninformed and clueless have to say, I wasn't disappointed when the subject turned to how the founding fathers of the United States supposedly were devout Christians.

That's a bunch of hooey. The main evidence that usually is dragged out for this crock of historical B.S. is the reference in the Declaration of Independence to the Creator.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It's well known, of course, that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin were deists who believed in reason, not revelation, and in a God detached from the creation, not a God who intervenes and takes an interest in human affairs.

Columnist David Ignatius echoes this truth in an excellent piece I read today, "Wisdom From The Founding Rationalists: What Jefferson and Adams Might Tell Mitt Romney."

A bracing text for this Christmas week is the famous correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Their letters are a reminder that the Founders were men of the Enlightenment -- supreme rationalists who would have found the religiosity of much of our modern political life quite abhorrent.

It's not that these men didn't have religious beliefs: They were, to their deaths, passionate seekers of truth, metaphysical as well as physical. It's that their beliefs didn't fit into pious cubbyholes. Indeed, the deist Jefferson took a pair of scissors to the New Testament to create his "Jefferson Bible," or, formally, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," which cut out the parts he regarded as supernatural or misinterpreted by the Gospel writers.

Yes, the founding fathers were not Christians. At least, not in any sense even remotely connected with the hateful, closed-minded, dogmatic, anti-science Christianity prevalent in the United States today. Ignatius has it exactly right.

One theme in this year's political campaign has been whether the United States will move from the faith-based policies the Bush administration has celebrated to a more rationalist and secular approach. In this debate, religious conservatives like to stress their connection to the Founders and to the republic's birth as "one nation under God." But a rereading of the Adams-Jefferson letters is a reminder that in this debate, the Founders -- as men of the Enlightenment -- would surely have sided with the party of Reason.

Interestingly, it seems that the original draft of the Declaration of Independence didn't use the word "Creator." The language said: "…that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation… ."

Sure, we're all created. In our mother's wombs. Out of physical matter and energy. Which comes to us courtesy of the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago.

If you want to call whatever lies behind the grand unfolding of the universe "Creator," I've got no problem with that. Just don't expect me to equate this force with any religious entity, Christian or otherwise.

No, Virginia, Santa Claus is just as unreal as God

I've managed to only read the dreadful "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" piece a few times in my 59 years. It pops up each Christmas day in every newspaper that I've subscribed to. I notice it, but rush on to more important stuff – like the comics and sports page.

Today I decided to see if I could read this response to an eight year old girl, first published in the New York Sun in 1897, without getting sick to my churchless stomach.

I suspected that this syrupy drivel wouldn't go down so well now that I've become much more of a religious skeptic. I was right. My granddaughter is just nine months old, but I'm going to warn her parents now: Don't ever let her read this crap!

Understand, I've got nothing against Christmas. Except everything about it that has to do with Christ.

If people would just leave out the whole ridiculous fantasy thing about a guy being born of a virgin and forced by his father in heaven to die miserably on a cross because some chick ate an apple a long time ago which pissed God off so much he had to sacrifice his only son to make things right, then we could celebrate the holidays in a fine fashion, just as the pagans intended before Christians and Big Business messed things up.

Here are my comments, in red italics, on Francis Church's attempt to keep Virginia O'Hanlon believing in both Santa Claus and God.

-----------------------------------

"Dear Editor: I am 8 years old.
A good age to start learning about reality.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
They're catching on to truth. Good for them.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
We've come a long way from this blind belief in media reporting. Thank god. Except if there really was a good god, Fox News wouldn't exist.
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?
The truth. This is what Virginia wants. But she gets bullshit.

"Virginia O'Hanlon.
"115 West Ninety-Fifth Street."

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. Otherwise known as "The Enlightenment" and the "Age of Science." They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. Compared to what? In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Ah, the B.S. begins. Could this "intelligence" be, perhaps, just maybe, God? Methinks that's what Francis is getting at.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Horrible reasoning. What logical connection is there between a fat man in a red suit who slides down chimneys and love? Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. Highly debatable. I sort of suspect that if all the children in the world vanished, that'd have just a bit more effect on things than if belief in an imaginary man went away. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. So tell me, Francis, how much enjoyment would you have with no senses and no sight? That's called a coma, basically. Doesn't sound like much fun to me.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! Well, gosh, I don't! And probably Virginia doesn't either. Do children have to believe in everything imaginary to get a glimpse of your fabulous "eternal light"? You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. So how does anybody know about them? Oh, right. They imagine them. But how does this make them real? Dude, get real. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. Well, if anybody can, I'd bet on you, Francis. But I don't want you infecting children with a belief that the unseen and unseeable is more important than the seen and seeable. That way lies fundamentalist religious madness.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. You lived before "atom smashers" (particle accelerators) Francis, so I'll give you a bit of a pass on this falsity. Still, even back then you knew that science was revealing all sorts of previously unseen wonders. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. Faith. Finally, the word comes in after Francis has softened Virginia up. Accept an unseen Santa Claus and it isn't much of a leap to embrace…

No Santa Claus! Thank God! Oh, yeah, now we're getting down to it! God! And what do people say about God? he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. Hard to tell who the "he" is now. Santa Claus, or God. Francis tries to merge the two, knowing that if children give up a belief in one imaginary unseen entity, there's no telling what other blind faiths will bite the dust next.

-----------------------------------

Today I also read a wonderful essay posted at The Daily Kos, "A Dog at Christmas." This is a tale I'd much rather have my granddaughter hear. It's mostly about how dogs – and wise humans – don't pay attention to the fantastical aspects of Christmas, just what they can sense and see.

A sample:

This of course all makes perfect sense, as my dog is not Saved, and would therefore have no reason to suspect Christmas was anything more than another day. Dogs have yet to have anyone die for their sins, and are therefore, according to most theologians, banned from heaven along with all other animals, plants, rocks, and the vast majority of human beings. I have never tried to explain heaven to my dog, and am not sure I could if I tried: aside from the language problem, I have my doubts that my dog would even accept the basic premise. Dogs tend to be literal creatures, not prone to belief in anything they cannot smell, hear, see, or bite.

You can explain the concept of cow or skunk or deer or snake all you want, but the dog will not understand any of it until it suddenly happens upon one or the other of them in a field. Ah ha!, the dog will say. This is something new! And then the dog will classify it according to the very simple and entirely sufficient rules passed down by dogs from generation to generation. They will file it away in the parts of their brains that organize things into bigger than me or smaller than me, dangerous or not dangerous, delicious or not delicious, and so on, and then get on with their lives.

So I am not sure that a dog would understand the central concept of heaven, which is that God is so magnificent, magnanimous, and kind that He created an entire universe for us, surrounding a planet of immeasurable nuance and beauty, with more hidden meadows and grand vistas and deep, river-carved canyons than any one of us could explore in a hundred lifetimes, and He gave us existence itself, and that he is furthermore so magnificent, magnanimous and kind that He then devised a plan to save some of us from this selfsame miserable rathole of a universe he created and put us somewhere else, upon our death -- a place of brilliant light, and fluffy clouds, and absolutely no pain, or frustrations, or sadness, or embarrassment, or surprises, or explorations, or consequences.

Lastly, here's another cynical take on "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

Conversing is cool

I've been doing a lot of conversing lately. That's cool.

By and large I have a grinch'y attitude toward Christmas – I absolutely hate the Salvation Army guy who plays "Joy to the World" on a loud trumpet in the foyer of a store that I go too frequently.

But I enjoy the social events that blossom this time of year, and the conversations that accompany them. Last night my wife and I hosted our annual Holiday Potluck and White Elephant Gift Exchange.

Aside from being able to get rid of some junk that we wrapped up and foisted onto some guests, I hugely enjoyed talking with old (and new) friends about subjects both profound and inane.

With I chat with Steve, it's often hard to tell the difference between our profundities and our inanities. Our minds work pretty much the same when it comes to spirituality and religion, a decidedly scary proposition for anyone trying to make sense out of what ushers from our mouths.

Even when we're completely clear-minded and sober, like we were last night.

I wish I had a buck for every time we agreed, "What is, is." This is a new (and old) favorite saying for both of us. The plus side of it is how it cuts through so much metaphysical, philosophical, and religious crap. The down side is that we end up sounding like 17 year old skateboarders.

Assuming that's really a down side. More and more, I'm coming to the conclusion that the big question – "What's It All About? – probably is a lot easier to answer than most people, including me, make it out to be.

I liked it when Steve said, "Meditation should be fun." That hit a nerve, because often it isn't for me. I've been meditating every day for almost forty years. It's always something I enjoy, but usually I wouldn't call it fun.

However, it should be. And I want it to be. So that got me thinking about what is fun for me. OK, one activity easily came to mind. But aside from that, what else? And how does it relate to #1?

Boogie boarding popped into my head right away. I've done a lot of it, always in Hawaii (the Pacific ocean off of Oregon is just too damn cold). Like #1, it's an activity that requires you to be both out of control and in control. Which is the source of the fun, as it is for most things.

In boogie boarding, like surfing, the goal is to be carried away by a wave – something a whole lot more powerful than yourself. To do that, you have to be in the right place at the right time. That's where the control comes in.

After that…it's enjoy the ride.

So when Steve said what he did, it struck me that letting go is what I want meditation to be all about. Otherwise it's like boogie boarding without ever catching a wave, or having sex without an orgasm. Not fully satisfying; not really fun.

But meditation isn't different from life. Whatever goes on closed-eyed during my morning meditating should bear a close resemblance to what happens open-eyed the rest of the day. Namely, fun.

Which doesn't mean hilarious ecstatic rolling-in-the-aisles, but a sense of enjoyable lightness. I'm finding that fun is almost always close at hand, but I push it away with various devices – mostly of my own making.

Trying too hard, for example. Adding more to a simple situation than needs to be there. Failing to accept that what is, is, and what isn't, isn't.

This is so simple, it's going to take more explaining. On another day.

For now, I wanted to end with another observation about conversing. Some of this blog's regular commenters have been talking about how the conversations that go on in comments to posts are often more interesting (and fun) that the posts themselves.

I heartily agree. So I've been thinking about how to facilitate these "ad lib" interactions between Church of the Churchless visitors.

I'm leaning toward trying out a new message board approach. This would be an addition to this blog, not a substitute. It'd be a way for people to initiate discussion topics on their own, and have more control over their comments (being able to edit and delete posts, for example).

I'm playing around with a trial version of a Church of the Churchless message board. So far, I'm liking it.

After all, conversing is cool. Whether face to face, or in cyberspace.

Near death experience revelation: “No B.S.”

Today I talked with an old friend. We'd only spoken once before since our college days, when we were initiated on the same day in 1971 into the Indian mystic-religious faith of Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

We're both heretics now, a comfortable state for each of us. He'd been perusing some of my Church of the Churchless posts and felt like giving me another call.

I'm glad he did. I enjoy conversations that start out with a bang, in this case with "I died this year." Yeah, that grabbed my interest. He had me at "I died."

Which was true.

And disturbing, because he's a few years younger than me, and I don't like to hear about guys having heart attacks at 57, since I'm 59. Especially when they've been a vegetarian for as long as I have (thirty-seven years), had normal cholesterol, and no symptoms of heart disease.

Well, life happens. That was the main theme of our conversation. What is, is. Deal with it. There's always only one thing going on: what's going on.

Wishing, thinking, believing, hoping – nothing makes any difference, except the one thing that's actually happening. In this case, a heart attack.

He had just enough time to dial 911 before falling unconscious. In the ambulance his heart stopped. He was resuscitated (obviously). Not many people with this sort of coronary blockage survive. He did.

Naturally I wanted to know what he felt, aside from a lot of pain, after the heart attack hit. He'd once been a believer. Now he wasn't.

Did he get any inkling of what happens after death from coming so close to dying? Nope. He told me that he wasn't scared after he realized what was happening. He just knew that soon, real soon, he might stop existing. Forever.

Or, not. He might live on in some other non-bodily state. There wasn't any sense that one was more likely than the other. Just that either was a possibility, and either was all right.

What is, is. When you're dead, you're dead. When you're not dead, you're not dead. Pretty darn simple.

We agreed, happy heretics that we are, that having faith in life after death or salvation won't make any difference when the last breath or heartbeat comes. It isn't faith that is going to rule at that point, but reality.

Descriptions of near death experiences sometimes are exceedingly sickly religiously sweet. The person who has drifted to the Other Side and come back to tell his or her tale talks about being filled with light, the glorious presence of Jesus, or some other life-altering experience.

So it was refreshing to have my friend tell me that the big difference in him now is that he's utterly unwilling to put up with B.S. Bullshit, for those unfamiliar with American slang abbreviations.

That's understandable. If you've gotten that close to not existing for forever, which he thinks is the most likely destination after death, I can see why you wouldn't be interested in frittering your remaining life away on meaningless crap.

The question is, of course, why any of the rest of us would want to do that either. For me, that includes not putting up with religious crap – beliefs, concepts, imaginings, superstitions and such with no connection to here-and-now reality.

I enjoyed hearing about someone coming this close to dying, and remaining as confident that there's no life after death as he was before.

Not that I wouldn't like there to be life after death. Just as he would.

But we agreed that it's much better to live life fully, right here and right now at every moment, than to live partly here and now, and partly there and then – in an imaginary anticipation of what will happen in the next life, and what God or the guru requires of us so that we'll enjoy the afterlife.

Enjoyment is now. Life is now. Reality is now. Awareness is now. Experience is now. There and then will only be true when it comes into the here and now.

What is, is. Including B.S.

But we don't have to put up with it. Or have to nearly die in order to realize this.

Some comments flagged as spam

I just realized that TypePad, which hosts this blog, has been over-zealously filtering some legitimate comments as spam. I just added a comment to a recent post (the subject of most of the rejected comments) explaining the problem.

Amazingly, my own comment about the over-zealous spam filter was rejected as spam! That's what happens when rigid dogma, in this case programming related, overrides common sense.

Hopefully TypePad will get its act together soon. Until then, I'll check regularly to see if any legitimate comments have been flagged as spam and publish them if they have been. Here's what I said in the comment:

Regarding the "censoring" of comments, I didn't have anything to do with this. It was TypePad's fault, the service that hosts this blog, as explained here.

TypePad recently made its spam check more aggressive. Overly so, obviously.

I'd rarely gotten spam comments after requiring the verification check where you have to type in some letters to verify that you aren't a spam "robot."

So it never dawned on me that genuine comments might be getting filtered until I read a notice from TypePad recently.

Anyway, I found eight comments in a "spam" section and published them. I believe most were related to this post -- forgot to check this more closely before moving them to the "active" category.

I apologize, on behalf of TypePad, for any confusion this has caused. Again, it wasn't me censoring the comments.

Blessed bottled water – not for sinners!

Watch out, Church of the Churchless visitors.

In my never-ending quest to promote honest sin and discourage hypocritical virtue, I've got to warn you about a seemingly innocent product that could be extremely dangerous to your health.

Holy Drinking Water. As described in a Newsweek article, "Bless This Bottled Water," this spiritual alternative to Evian is blessed before it's shipped off to be sold.

The Holy Drinking Water website has a warning, which may or may not be tongue-in-cheek:

"If you are a sinner or evil in nature, this product may cause burning, intense heat, sweating, skin irritations, rashes, itchiness, vomiting bloodshot and watery eyes, pale skin color, and oral irritations."

Makes me want to buy a bottle just to see if I'm as sinful as I hope I am. But, hey: that's what the Holy Drinking Water folks want me to do. So, I won't.

However, I do appreciate their broad definition of "blessing." Newsweek said that the blessing is done by an Anglican or Roman Catholic priest, but the web site lists a considerably more inclusive bunch of potential water blessers, including a lama (Buddhist priest).

I suspect the Holy Drinking Water marketing department doesn't want this to be widely known, as it could crimp their sales in the Bible Belt.

Christians would be better off buying bottled water with Jesus' image on it. This is sold by SpiritualH2O. There are several choices. I like the crown of thorns – just the sort of energizing hydration a good Christian will want to carry into her jazzercise class.

Having mocked these ridiculous products – who really believes that a blessing by a holy person makes any difference? – I need to answer my own question with: Me, in the not so distant past.

Yes, along with hundreds of thousands of other Radha Soami Satsang Beas disciples I used to treasure the food that would be blessed by the guru and distributed to the faithful at special events. Sometimes it was puffed rice, sometimes granular sugar, sometimes something else.

Known as prashad or parshad in India, food blessed by a holy man is considered to be beneficial to one's spiritual progress.

I never was sure how prashad worked (now "placebo effect" comes to mind). But even though I always looked on spirituality with a decidedly scientific bent, I still would make my bag of prashad last as long as possible, eating just a tiny bit each morning before I meditated.

So far as I can tell it never had any effect. At least it was free, though, unlike Holy Drinking Water.

Nonetheless, when I saw that Holy Drinking Water was accepting applications for blessing their drinking water, I got excited. Until I noticed that you had to be an ordained clergy to apply.

Darn.

Somewhere I've got my ordination from the Universal Life Church that I acquired in the '60s, when this was thought to be a way of avoiding the draft. (Smoke enough pot and you'll believe anything, particular if it promised to keep you from going to Vietnam.)

But I see that online ordination now is available. Even easier. Maybe I've got a shot at blessing bottled water after all.

What’s wrong with thinking too much?

Fairly often I'm told, "Brian, you think too much." Invariably this statement comes from someone who is thinking that I think too much.

So this pot calling the kettle black sort of sentiment doesn't have much effect on me. I find it interesting, though, that almost always the person telling me I think too much is a religious devotee.

Usually a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, my once chosen faith, because I still hang out with RSSB initiates – most of whom have no problem with my current churchlessness.

But even when I was giving talks to the faithful I'd still hear the same refrain once in a while: "You think too much." The implication is that spirituality and thoughtfulness are necessarily opposed, that somehow God gave us brains but doesn't want us to use them.

Which reminds me of an insightful comment that I got today on a post on my other blog. I wrote about our "Further unplugging of the Christmas machine." Harry responded by saying that I needed to go even further down the no-Christmas road, as he and his wife have.

But we are adults and have free wills just as God planned it.
Out of respect for him, we use our free will to chose [sic] and direct our efforts.

Agreed, Harry. I also have eyes. It'd be ridiculous to not use them, because I see too much.

When religious types decry thinking, what they really object to is questioning. Because I don't know anyone, religious or not, who doesn't think. A lot. It's part of being human.

Devotees think when they pray, worship, meditate, read holy books, attend church services. They think when they go to work, talk to friends, watch TV, or play a sport.

All of this thinking apparently is fine. But when someone like me thinks about whether a certain spiritual or religious practice makes sense, then this is Bad thinking!

Actually, I'm pretty sure the difference between me and those who say that I think too much isn't in the quantity of our respective thoughts.

I meditate every morning and try to quiet my mind. I often practice Tai Chi, a mind-slowing activity recommended today by a commenter to another blog post. I try to keep my own simple thought-free mantra in mind as much as possible during the day.

So I'm not thinking all of the time, for sure.

Even more: I'm not nearly as attached to my thoughts as I used to be. Especially religio-spiritual-philosophic thoughts. If they point me in a different direction that feels right and makes sense, I change course.

Thus it's more than a little strange that those who tell me I think too much are decidedly reluctant to let go of their own thinking. Year after year, decade after decade, religious devotees have the same old thoughts running through their heads.

"God is…" "The moral thing to do is…" "To reach divinity it's necessary to…" "The truth about reality is…"

My ideas along these lines are continually changing. And I'm comfortable with accepting a big blank thoughtless I don't know in my mind – which threatens the faith of the faithful.

There's nothing wrong with thinking. I'm doing it right now, and so are you. We just should recognize when to think, and when to stop thinking.

Which is why I'm about to turn on the TV.

Questioning a politician’s religious belief isn’t unconstitutional

In a recent column, "An Overdose of Public Piety," Charles Krauthammer gets the issue of religion in politics partly right and partly wrong.

That's pretty good for Krauthammer, because usually I find myself disagreeing with his conservative world view. But in this piece he appropriately decries how Republican presidential candidates, like Mitt Romney, feel that the only source of genuine inspiration for "values voters" is religious belief.

Romney has been faulted for not throwing at least one bone of acknowledgment to nonbelievers in his big religion speech last week. But he couldn't, because the theme of the speech was that there was something special about having your values drawn from religious faith. Indeed, faith is politically indispensable. "Freedom requires religion," Romney declared, "just as religion requires freedom.

But this is nonsense -- as Romney then proceeded to demonstrate in that very same speech. He spoke of the empty cathedrals in Europe. He's right about that: Postwar Europe has experienced the most precipitous decline in religious belief in the history of the West. Yet Europe is one of the freest precincts on the planet. It is an open, vibrant, tolerant community of more than two dozen disparate nations living in a pan-continental harmony and freedom unseen in all previous European history.

However, Krauthammer also says that it's wrong to question a candidate about his or her religion. He decried a questioner at the Republican CNN/YouTube debate who held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe every word of this book?"

Krauthammer considers that the candidates should have replied, "None of your damn business." Actually, it is.

It's every voter's business, every citizen's business, every person on Earth's business – because each of these guys wants to be the president of the United States, with tremendous influence over national and world policies.

Many of the candidates say that religion is the most important thing in their lives, that it guides their every waking moment, that they look to their faith for guidance in matters large and small.

Well, then, I want to know what sort of religious beliefs would influence you if, god forbid, you should beat out the Democratic candidate next November. I want to know if you do indeed believe every word in the Bible: if you think that creationism is true and evolution false; if homosexuality is a sin; if prostitutes should be stoned and slavery is OK.

Krauthammer says that the U.S. Constitution prohibits a religious test for office. Yes, it does. The founders of this country didn't want belonging to a particular religion to be a requirement for being elected.

However, the framers of the Constitution didn't intend religion to be off limits when considering a candidate's qualifications. The Republican presidential candidates, though, want to have it both ways.

They bring up their religious beliefs at every opportunity. Then when someone asks them to answer some specifics about those beliefs, such as whether every word in the Bible is to be taken literally, they're offended that this oh-so-personal aspect of their lives is being brought out for public scrutiny.

Well, if you don't want your religious belief scrutinized, keep it to yourself. If you're running for office, say "I'm a religious person, but my beliefs won't have any impact on how I go about deciding political or policy questions."

If you can't say that, then you've got to expect some serious questioning about what sort of unsubstantiated, subjective, and unscientific world view is going to support your decisions if you're elected.

Will Zeus guide your thoughts and actions? Or God? How about Jesus? And how will you know what your divine source of inspiration requires of you? Do you pray? Study a holy book? Hear messages from above in your head?

These are important and valid questions. I just wish they were asked more often at press conferences and debates.

Talking about One is fun, but decidedly Two

It's a good day when I combine a tall nonfat vanilla latte with some stimulating philosophical conversation. This afternoon I enjoyed both in the company of Patricia Herron, a religious studies professor.

We get together periodically at the south Salem Beanery to solve the mysteries of the universe. Never quite get there, no matter how large the latte, but the journey is the thing.

Today we started out musing about nonduality and duality. It's fun to talk about the One, my favorite non-religious euphemism for "God."

But as countless mystics and philosophers have pointed out, as soon as you say anything about One, you've got Two. Ditto with a thought, emotion, intuition, or anything else about One.

So, basically, you've contradicted yourself right off the bat. Guess that's why Buddha did his holding-up-the-flower thing, though that's dualistic also.

Heck, everything is. Because as soon as there's a thing, there's at minimum two: the thing and someone aware of it.

Which led our musing down the trail of consciousness.

I said that when you try to get closer and closer to One, throwing out as many Twosies as possible – perceptions, thoughts, emotions, sensations, imaginations – reducing the contents of consciousness to bare bones, you're irreducibly left with…

Consciousness. Awareness. Knowing.

Because if consciousness was absent also, there'd be no awareness of One. There would just be One. And it's difficult to argue that One can be aware of itself, since then it'd be Two. Itself and its awareness of itself.

So knowing One, being aware of One, requires a consciousness that's separate from One.

I realize that all this sounds sort of abstract and intellectual (maybe a lot more than "sort of"). However, what we talked about is at the core of a whole lot of spiritual-religious-mystical seeking. And people go off in different directions depending on how they make sense of the One vs. Two business.

Countless times I've heard devout devotees say, "God is everything." Or, "The guru is everything; I am nothing."

I'd think, "Well, if you're nothing, how could you just tell me what you did?" More: do you really want to be nothing? Or is this just a way of speaking, and you really haven't considered the implications of what you're saying?

If God or the guru is everything, and you're nothing, there's just One. And you're on the outside of unity, looking in. How much sense does this make, though?

On the outside of unity? Where's that? How do you separate yourself from One, if it is truly One?

Beats me. And Patricia too. I've heard so much talk about the drop merging into the Ocean, the ray merging into the Sun, the soul merging into God.

But all that talk comes from people who obviously haven't done what they say is possible: merging completely with ultimate reality, a.k.a. "God."

Their talk is conceptual, theoretical, hypothetical. It isn't something they've experienced , because they're clearly still here in the world, as two'ish as you and I are.

The One isn't going to let you enter and leave again. All that coming and going would create dualities. So, yes, it's fun to speak about the One. However, that's just idle talk unless you can walk a One-way walk.

After which, there'd be no more talking. Or, walking.

Where have all the miracles gone?

Before class started yesterday, a Tai Chi friend (Eric) and I were talking about miracles. Christian miracles, specifically, but a miracle is a miracle.

Well, more accurately: no miracles are no miracles. Because we mused about the fact that they sure are in short supply these days.

Where's the walking on water, the resurrection of the dead, the mysterious manifestation of bread loaves?

Conveniently, with the arrival of modern science – including video cameras, medical monitors, and other hard to fool objective instrumentation – miracles have taken a leave of absence. Religious types would say, "On God's command."

I say, "Bullshit. People can't get away with miraculous claims anymore in this appropriately skeptical secular world, so they rarely try."

And it's not just Christianity that lacks miracles. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, every religion on Earth is suffering through a down market in the miraculous commodity market.

I mentioned to Eric that Sai Baba, a modern Indian holy man, is notorious for faking the production of supposedly sacred ash. Sai Baba is a con artist, but he still has lots of followers.

What's surprising, I said, is that people are content with such a picayune miracle. Why doesn't Sai Baba manifest piles of flawless diamonds, rather than worthless ash?

Because he's a sleight of hand artist (and not a very good one), rather than a miracle worker.

My once-chosen faith, the Radha Soami Satsang Beas branch of Sant Mat, has an interesting way of explaining away the absence of miracles.

Which should be much in evidence, because the RSSB guru is considered to be God in human form, like Jesus. And everyone knows that God can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants.

Not the guru, though, because "Kal" (a secondary god who rules the lower regions of the cosmos) got the Big Guy God to grant him some favors – as I recall the dogma, by standing on one leg (who knew that gods had legs) for millions of years.

One of the favors was that saintly gurus couldn't perform miracles. If they could, this would depopulate Kal's realm, because everybody would be attracted to these holy men (sorry ladies, saints are almost universally male), learn how to gain God's favor, and never be reborn again in the material world.

So supposedly this is why gurus, though godly, don't reveal any miraculous powers. They aren't permitted to by this agreement between God and Kal (a.k.a. the "negative power").

Another convenient agreement is between disciples and the guru. Initiates aren't supposed to reveal their inner experiences, miraculous or otherwise. This means that it's impossible to know if someone has experienced an inward "miracle," because the recipient of such is duty bound to say, "Can't say."

The end result is that RSSB miracles (1) can't be performed, and (2) even if they could be, they can't be revealed.

Fortunately for Jesus, the authors of the Gospels, and Christianity, these rules weren't in effect in the Holy Land a couple of thousand years ago. God only instituted them recently.

Again, just when science made it possible to rigorously test miraculous events. To repeat:

How convenient.

Intelligence analysts assess the evidence for God

I wish this would happen – competent, professional, skilled intelligence analysts sitting around a table, sifting through factual evidence for the existence of God, in the same fashion as was done recently with the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concerning Iran's nuclear weapons program.

I'd love to be able to listen to the discussion. And see what evidence would be considered worthy of supporting a "Yes, God exists" assessment.

It'd be slim to non-existent, for sure.

Just as the evidence for Iraq having weapons of mass destruction was. Yet the United States intelligence community got that wrong. So why should anybody trust their current conclusion that Iran halted a covert nuclear weapons program in 2003?

Or that God doesn't/does exist?

Well, today I heard Rand Beers of the National Security Network interviewed on talk radio. Beers has extensive national security experience and spoke knowledgeably about how the sixteen U.S. spy agencies did things differently this time.

Basically, they thought things through a lot more independently and critically. Beers said that alternative explanations for intelligence findings were actively explored, rather than trying to fit those findings into prior interpretative frameworks.

Sounds like good advice for anyone assessing the evidence for and against God's existence.

Yes, many have claimed to have received a divine revelation. That's a fact. But there are lots of ways of interpreting it.

I considered a few in my "Who is the guru?" post. By guru I meant anyone who is considered to be God in human form, or at least a conduit for God's messages, which naturally includes Jesus. I noted that Bart Ehrman, a Biblical scholar, says there are four options for considering who Jesus was.

Liar, lunatic, the Lord, or a legend. I added a fourth possibility for gurus: loyalist. Meaning, someone who doesn't speak the truth about what they know (or don't know) about God because it would threaten tradition and an organizational heritage.

Here's what Agence France-Presse (AFP) said in a story about the Iran National Intelligence Estimate:

Senior US intelligence officials said this week they were responding to new information, subjected to more rigorous analysis than in the past, in declaring with "high confidence" that Iran halted a covert nuclear weapons program in 2003.

… And unlike 2002, when US intelligence officials complained of administration pressure to "cherry-pick" intelligence that supported going to war, the intelligence community this time has asserted its independence.

"This is ours," a senior intelligence official said this week, telling reporters that policymakers had no input in the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate, as the assessment is called.

The AFP story says that an expert had reached the same conclusion as the NIE two years earlier – that Iran had given up its nuclear weapons program so it could play by the rules while still maintaining a nuclear "breakout" option.

US intelligence failed to see it [the new Iran strategy] sooner, he said, because it was intent on finding evidence to support the assumption that Iran had a nuclear weapons program.

"But if you don't take that assumption and you look for an alternative explanation, it's relatively easy to find."

Exploring alternatives. Open-mindedness. Critical thinking. This is how truth is arrived at, whether worldly or godly. If a policy pronouncement or dogma is taken on faith, reality gets short shrift.

A bit over two years ago I was fired as a speaker by my spiritual organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas. The reason: my writings on this blog were making people uncomfortable.

In my opinion, that's a good thing. The person who is made most uncomfortable by me is, clearly, me. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm an inveterate questioner and experimenter. I'm my mother's child, as I wrote about here and here. She loved to debate, to learn, to explore new territory in the boundless World of Knowledge.

She died not knowing whether God exists, or not. Just as we all will. The difference is that most people uncritically accept the religious dogma they've been given rather than challenging it. My mother didn't. She never stopped searching for truth that could be counted on, not merely believed.

This is just what intelligence analysts do. The competent ones, at least.

Question, question, question. That's the only way answers will be found.

Mitt Romney’s weird religion is relevant to voters

If someone who was running as a serious candidate to become president of the United States said, "I believe in the Tooth Fairy," wouldn't that be a reason to question his qualifications to lead our country?

I sure do. That's why I answered my own question on my other blog the way I did. To the query "Mormon Mitt Romney believes in really weird stuff. So?" I said:

We currently have a faith-based presidency. George Bush has absolute faith that Jesus Christ is the son of God who died for our sins. He also has absolute faith that invading Iraq was the right thing to do, despite all the evidence to the contrary. It's difficult, if not impossible, to separate these faiths.

When you're repeatedly willing to deny evident facts about reality in favor of a dogmatic belief, this points to a fundamental mindset. Lots of people do this. I have myself, back when I was a true believer in a religion.

But I wasn't running for president. Romney is. A politician's religious belief definitely shouldn't be off limits for questioning. I'd love to hear a reporter ask Romney, "Now, tell us what you think about those golden plates…"

In 1827 the golden plates supposedly were dug up in New York by the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith. They'd been protected by an angel named Moroni and engraved by Mormon, a pre-Columbian prophet-warrior. Smith translated the plates by looking into seer stones called Urim and Thummin.

And Romney believes this crap.

Which is even more disturbing than if he believed in the Tooth Fairy, because the Tooth Fairy doesn't take positions on important social issues like gay rights, abortion, stem cell research, and teaching creationism.

Yesterday Romney gave a speech, "Faith in America." It provides even more evidence why this guy, along with every other Republican presidential candidate, would be a disaster if, god forbid, he ever became president.

The speech has been criticized by the Portland Oregonian in an editorial, "Your America is too small." It's right on.

He could have articulated a vision of religious freedom so broad, so all-encompassing – and so confident in itself – that it could embrace even skeptics. But he didn't. Instead, he took a predictable slap at "the religion of secularism." And he failed to offer even a stout defense of his own faith, barely mentioning the word "Mormon."

I also liked a Washington Post editorial, "No freedom without religion?" Astoundingly, Romney said "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom…freedom and religion endure together or perish alone."

Huh? This makes no sense at all. Why the heck does freedom require religion? The Post pointed out:

But societies can be both secular and free. The magnificent cathedrals of Europe may be empty, as Mr. Romney said, but the democracies of Europe are thriving.

"Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government," Mr. Romney said. But not all Americans acknowledge that, and those who do not may be no less committed to the liberty that is the American ideal.

In his speech Romney said that he believes in his Mormon faith and he endeavors to live by it.

So Romney holds that Mormonism is believable, despite this description (by Christopher Hitchens in his book "God is Not Great") of what happened after Joseph Smith's wife destroyed the first 116 pages of her husband's revelation, which took place behind a blanket.

Mrs. Smith was having none of this, and was already furious with the fecklessness of her husband. She stole the first hundred and sixteen pages and challenged Smith to reproduce them, as presumably—given his power of revelation—he could. (Determined women like this appear far too seldom in the history of religion.)

After a very bad few weeks, the ingenious Smith countered with another revelation. He could not replicate the original, which might be in the devil's hands by now and open to a "satanic verses" interpretation. But the all-foreseeing Lord had meanwhile furnished some smaller plates, indeed the very plates of Nephi, which told a fairly similar tale.

With infinite labor, the translation was resumed, with new scriveners behind the blanket as occasion demanded, and when it was completed all the original golden plates were transported to heaven, where apparently they remain to this day.

Now, all religions are unbelievable. If they weren't, their tenets would be known as "science." In other words, founded in reality rather than fantasy.

So every presidential candidate who professes to be religious should be questioned as closely as he or she would be if a fervent belief in the Tooth Fairy had been proudly communicated to the voters.

Romney was interviewed on NPR a few days before his faith speech. He didn't like being asked if he has a literal belief in the Genesis version of creation. Yet Romney said that the Bible is the word of God, and he tries to live by it.

Meaning, he does believe that the universe was created a few thousand years ago in seven days. And his presidential actions would be founded on such astoundingly unscientific beliefs.

This disqualifies him to be president. Along with every other fundamentalist candidate. Hopefully the American voters will agree with me.

It's OK to believe in the Tooth Fairy when you're five years old. But if you want to hold onto the religious equivalent of that belief into adulthood, you shouldn't be seeking the presidency of the United States.

No beginning, no end. The universe simply is.

Why would you need religion, mysticism, or spirituality to expand your mind? Or, blow it. Science works just fine.

Much better, in fact, because science starts with is rather than what could be. If you're going to expand or blow your mind, you might as well be standing on a solid foundation before you explode into mindlessness.

Take the question of the universe's beginning and end.

Most of us assume that the universe began at some point. After all, the Bible tells us so in Genesis. And if we're scientifically minded, wasn't the Big Bang the beginning of time and space?

No, not necessarily.

Yesterday I was happily reading along in my copy of The Portable Atheist, re-reading an excerpt from physicist Victor Stenger's God: The Failed Hypothesis (I've already read the book, and blogged about it here and here).

My mind was rolling along fine, connecting ideas cleanly, until I came to this paragraph.

Craig and other theists also make another, related argument that the universe had to have a beginning at some point, because if it were infinitely old, it would have taken an infinite time to reach the present. However, as philosopher Keith Parsons has pointed out, "To say the universe is infinitely old is to say that it had no beginning – not a beginning that was infinitely long ago."

Mind blow! Red alert! Meltdown, meltdown!

I stopped reading. I put the book down. I tried to let the notion of a universe that had no beginning settle into what was left of my mind.

It was an enjoyable, though disconcerting, experience. Like being on the edge of an abyss that would be a hell (or heaven) of a ride if you jumped off.

No beginning. No end. A ride that just…is.

A few pages later, once I got my mind functioning again, I came to this:

While he avoided technical details in A Brief History of Time, the no boundary model was the basis of Hawking's oft-quoted statement: "So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end; it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

When I wrote about "it is what it is" recently, I wasn't thinking that this was a profound scientific statement. Yet here's Stephen Hawking saying about the universe, "It would simply be."

Taoism agrees. From the Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition (excellent book), verse 14.

Eyes look but cannot see it
Ears listen but cannot hear it
Hands grasp but cannot touch it
Beyond the senses lies the great Unity –
invisible, inaudible, intangible

What rises up appear bright
What settles down appears dark
Yet there is neither darkness nor light
just an unbroken dance of shadows
From nothingness to fullness
and back again to nothingness
This formless form
This imageless image
cannot be grasped by mind or might
Try to face it
In what place will you stand?
Try to follow it
To what place will you go?

Know That which is beyond all beginnings
and you will know everything here and now
Know everything in this moment
and you will know the Eternal Tao

Liberalists vs. fundamentalists in Sant Mat

Reminding me of myself when I was less than half of my current pushing 60, today disgustingly young Adam sent me an email about his take on Sant Mat.

I replied, and got his permission to share his thoughts. Below is Adam's message, followed by my reply. I like how Adam differentiates between "liberalism" and "fundamentalism."

The question in my mind (and Sam Harris') is how distinct these approaches to spirituality really are. Adam thinks that it's possible to separate out the crazily dogmatic aspects of an organized religion, while still remaining true to the group's core principles.

In my own experience, that way led to contradictions and stresses that eventually caused me to break away from the dogma and the organization.

And as I say in my reply to Adam, if the leader of a religious organization doesn't support the craziness and the dogma, how is it possible for that fundamentalism to continue? That's why I find it difficult to follow the leader while denying what is done under the auspices of the leader.

Here's today's email exchange (F.Y.I, Gurinder Singh is the current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the Sant Mat branch to which Adam belongs, and I used to be an active part of):

Dear Brian, I am a younger (27) recent initiate into Sant Mat. It has been interesting to read your blog, and also the posts of your regulars. I am pulled to share my perspective with you...don't know why exactly, probably because you're out there, listening, thinking about this stuff.

I still don't know exactly where you stand in regard to Sant Mat. It's clear to me that you have little or no faith in it anymore, but I also sense an undercurrent of love for your master, Charan Singh, and an open-minded curiosity about the universe that seems would fit quite well into the version of Sant Mat in my head. Maybe I'm wrong.

OK, my perspective. I have been involved in an ongoing email dialogue with a good long-time friend of mine from high school who also happens to be Muslim. We basically connected in high school because we could have metaphysical conversations with each other in an environment that didn't really encourage such discussions.

I have my meditation practice, he has his prayer rituals, but we differ on one point that has recently come up for us. I, like you, am very critical of religion. I have read Sam Harris' "End of Faith," as well as Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion," and haven't yet made it through the Christopher Hitchens literature, but want to.

I find all of this lit to be not completely in sync with how I feel, but insightful, and engaged in perhaps the most important cultural war of our time. In my discussions with my friend, we have (very simply and for the sake of argument) divided the Western world up into two large groups of people: those who have some sort of religious leaning, and those who have a more liberalist background.

Those with a religious background focus more on things like morality, right and wrong, ritual, holy books, "faith" (which often means lack of reason), and controlling one's actions, while a liberalist tends to focus more on scientific understanding, plurality of opinion, and democracy. Under a liberalist system, religion can exist, but liberalists often feel judged and controlled when they encounter religious systems.

This is the argument I have posited to my friend. This is because I feel the neocons in our country are basically the most dangerous group of people I have witnessed in my short life, and they couldn't exist without their connection to a (doubtless corrupted) version of Christianity.

This is all to say that both types of people can be found in Sant Mat. There are those who wish to treat it as a religion, are ritualistically oriented, etc., and then there are those more like you, who were at one time very drawn to Sant Mat, probably because it seemed like the greatest experiment in consciousness you could embark upon. Maybe I don't understand you, and I could be wrong. I am certainly in the second category.

And I get frequently turned off by religious attitudes, whether in Sant Mat or anywhere else. For me, though, this is not so much of a problem in my own relationship to Sant Mat. This is because I keep Sant Mat very simple in my mind. There are the four vows, three of which are meant to facilitate meditation and keep our karmas to a minimum, and then there is the meditation and the master. And that's it.

Yes, there's satsang [spiritual talks] and seva [service], the bhandaras [large gatherings] and the weekly meetings, and all that stuff. But Charan Singh has made it perfectly clear that no one has to do these things if they don't want to. Sometimes I go to satsang, and if I don't want to, I just don't go. Sometimes I do seva, and if I don't want to, I just don't do it.

And regarding the master, I don't get too hung up on the Guru, Sat Purush, God-in-human-form thing. I don't get it, but I also don't think it's so important for me to get. What is important for me is that I really want to meditate. The chakras seem real to me because I can feel them in my body. I like the feeling of concentration, and the notion of concentrating all of my energy at the eye center makes intuitive, visceral sense to me, and, having been around Gurinder Singh, I believe that at the very least, he is practiced in this exercise.

That's enough for me. When it starts to feel too Sant Mat'y, I just do my own thing. And the masters (at least Gurinder) have often said that the master-disciple relationship is very high -- and that it's ok to think of him like a teacher, a friend, a guide, or whatever word doesn't feel so far out as "master."

I wonder if your frustration is with your guru and the meditation, or is it more with the organization? For me, the guru and meditation is Sant Mat, and everything else is just the scaffolding. But you can't fault the teacher for the craziness of the students. You are a scientist, right? You don't believe in science less just because you have had to subsist alongside grant-hungry, egotistical, money-crazed peers, right?

All the best,
Adam

--------------------------
Here's my reply…

Adam, yes, I still do have fondness for Charan Singh. As a teacher who, by and large, made pretty good sense. I just don't view him as God in human form anymore, if I ever did. I say that, because looking back I'm not sure how much I believed, and how much I believed in believing, if you get what I mean (which I'm sure you do).

Your analysis of the two sorts of spirituality, liberalist and fundamentalist, rings generally true. Sam Harris, however, would say that the liberalists support the fundamentalists, because both sides support faith-based religiosity. I'm not as extreme as Harris, but I understand his position and agree with it by and large.

For example, the Sant Mat vows have to be taken on faith. Meditation is a consciousness experiment, but the other vows are basically moral in nature. I had sex with my first wife before we got married, and before we got initiated (both in 1971, the really old days). I know lots of satsangis who ignore the "no sex before marriage" thing. It just doesn't make any sense, except as a rule to be followed because it is a rule set down by the guru. Which gets back to believing in believing.

That said, I admire and respect your approach to Sant Mat. It meshes with mine back when I was a devoted satsangi. All I can say, and this is just my own experience, is that when that approach is taken consistently with the RSSB organization, I learned that the powers-that-be are much more fundamentalist than liberalist. And since they take their marching orders from the guru, it's hard to come to any other conclusion than that Gurinder Singh, for all his liberalist talk, supports the "straight and narrow" approach organizationally.

I eventually found that I couldn't reconcile my liberalist attitude with the fundamentalist actions that were expected of me if I was going to continue to be active in the organization. That conflict led me to make a break with RSSB, though I still go to coffee with my old satsangi friends most Sundays.

I'm not a scientist, by the way. I did spend two years working on a Ph.D. in Systems Science, but that's more a science of sciences than a discipline itself. I've just read a heck of a lot of science books and subscribe to several science magazines.

    --Brian

Don't be a metaphor of yourself

I love metaphors. And I hate metaphors.

Yes, a rose is a ruby reflection of ever-blossoming reality. And truer still, rose is a rose is a rose.

When it comes to religion, just about all we're offered is metaphors. God is like… Fill in the dots. Our father, our mother, our lover.

Heaven is like… Disneyland without the long lines. Everything good without the bad.

More and more I want the real deal without the metaphorical wrappings. Either say it like it is, plain and simple, or admit that you're just a metaphor-monger.

I still read a lot of philosophical, spiritual, and mystical books. But sometimes they make me want to throw up.

I start to gag on allegories and roundabout ways of saying nothing. Most disturbing are my own past attempts to describe what I don't know in words that only point to themselves.

Speaking of words, Rumi and I used to be best friends. In my own mind, at least. For more than a year about all I read was Rumi, Rumi, Rumi.

Somewhere I seem to recall a tale of him being asked, "Speak to us without metaphors." He said, "You're a metaphor of yourself. What else can I do?"

I thumb through my Rumi books now and wonder what I liked so much in them. But that bit about metaphors still speaks to me.

Heck, I may have made up the Q and A above myself. So maybe me is speaking to me.

One of the most oft-heard platitudes in the spiritual circles where I used to travel is "Self-realization before God-realization."

Sounds good. Start close to home. Nothing is nearer to me than my self, so far as I know (or don't know). So why is this self-realization business so darn difficult to transact?

Why can't I simply be who or what I am, minus all the metaphors of myself?

Some days I feel like… Fill in the dots. A physical being having a spiritual experience. A spiritual being having a human experience. A clueless being having a "what the #%$&@!" experience.

Here's another after-the-dots answer: None of the above, and who gives a shit anyway? There's a jillion ways to say "X is like…". None is true.

"It is what it is" supposedly was the #1 cliché of 2004. Whenever I hear those words I think, "That says nothing." And, "so true."

In his book The God We Never Knew, Marcus Borg quotes himself, saying this is a line made by a character in a novel he imagines writing.

Tell me your image of God, and I will tell you your theology.

Bork argues for a "spirit model" of God, rather than the "monarchial model" of modern day Christianity (and many other faiths).

But a model is still a metaphor of reality. Not the thing itself. If you want to go beyond theologies, images have to be discarded.

Right now some Sudanese Muslims want a British teacher executed because her class named a teddy bear "Muhammed."

This is what happens when metaphors run wild and images are mistaken for the Real Thing. Crazed crowds imagine that Allah is offended by a teddy bear called Muhammed.

Guys, a teddy bear is a lot more real than Allah or Muhammed. You should be hugging one rather than your religious fantasies.

If we're going to get excited about a heresy, here's a suggestion:

Death to metaphors! Stone those thoughts!

No more I'm like… , God's like… , Spirit's like… , Soul's like… , Heaven's like… .

A teddy bear is a teddy bear is a teddy bear. What is, is.

Remember, everybody must get stoned. Metaphors too.