Church of the Churchless

Starbucks coffee and the big bang

I don't know why drinking a latte at Starbucks makes me feel so cosmically strange. But here's what been happening recently.

I sit down at a table, look at my cup, all festooned with the Starbucks logo and a quotation from somebody or other, and it just feels unbelievably weird. So freaking unlikely.

That me, Brian, is existing right here and now, in an Oregon Starbucks, about to sip a warm caffeinated drink out of a cardboard container.

What are the chances of this happening, given our 13.7 billion year old universe that sprang into existence from a speck of pure energy much smaller than a sub-atomic particle, and now has expanded to an incomprehensible size – some 46 billion light years from us, because the universe has been expanding faster than light.

Holding my latte, dumbstruck by the seeming discordance between how mundane this Starbucks moment is and how majestic the cosmos is, I visualize myself whizzing around the Earth at the equator more than seven times in a second – like Superman did in the old TV show (showing my age) but at the speed of light.

Then going that fast for 46 billion years. Mind-blow!

That's how large the observable universe is, courtesy of the big bang. It's filled with wonders that I can't begin to conceive of. And I'm clutching a Starbucks latte. What are the chances?

Well, 100% obviously. Because this all seems perfectly real. Starbucks, me, the table, other customers, the whole earthly shebang.

Yet from another perspective it's all exceedingly unlikely, as physicist Paul Davies talks about in "Cosmic Jackpot: Why the Universe is Just Right for Life," the book I blogged about in my previous post.

The laws of nature, and their associated constants, have to be almost exactly just the way they are or life (including me and my Starbucks latte) couldn't exist as we know it.

This leads religious types to posit a creator who made a universe perfectly suited for us. And scientific types to ponder why, of all the countless sorts of universes a big bang could have fashioned, ours is so peachy-keen for us human beings.

Maybe I've got a philosophical blind spot, notwithstanding my attraction to most other Big Questions About Existence, but I find it difficult to see what the problem is here that theologians, physicists, and other deep thinkers are trying to solve.

Because my feeling of Starbucks' strangeness obviously is part of my subjective psyche, not objective reality. I mean, it's all in my mind – the product of learning a lot about cosmology and our place in the universe.

Speculations abound about why things are as they are.

Davies runs through the main candidates in his book (listed in my post). For example, there could be countless universes of every variety, and we happen to have evolved in one of the few that are suitable for life. Or this all could be a computer simulation run by an advanced civilization, ala the Matrix movie.

Though I've always been spiritually inclined, I seem to be coming around to the first option described by Davies: The Absurd Universe. He clearly doesn't like it, as his description strikes me as slanted.

This is probably the majority position among scientists. According to this point of view, the universe is as it is, mysteriously, and it just happens to permit life. It could have been otherwise, but what we see is what we get. Had it been different, we would not be here to argue about it.

The universe may or may not have a deep underlying unity, but there is no design, purpose, or point to it all – at least none that would make sense to us. There is no God, no designer, no teleological principle, no destiny. Life in general, and human beings in particular are an irrelevant embellishment in a vast and meaningless cosmos, the existence of which is an unfathomable mystery.

Davies goes on to explain seven other possibilities (including "none of the above"), his favorites being "The Life Principle" and "The Self-Explaining Universe."

However, he readily admits there's no solid evidence that favors one hypothesis over another. So the universe remains an unfathomable mystery, just as The Absurd Universe proponents recognize.

"Absurd" doesn't seem to be the right word, though. Davies chose it because he believes, or wants to believe, that the universe is endowed with a life principle of some sort – a quasi-religious conception. Leaving mystery as mystery clearly bothers him.

I used to feel that way also. Now I'm more at ease with the astounding strangeness of drinking a latte on an insignificant planet in a universe that extends 46 billion light years from the Starbucks I'm sitting in.

Absurd. Strange. Mysterious.

Human conceptions. Somehow I doubt that the universe uses these words to describe itself. It just is what it is. Contentedly, if that word – like all words – means anything when applied to the cosmos.

Yes, for us the universe is a mystery. We strive to explain it. And though bits and pieces have come to be understood, the whole remains a mystery.

What's wrong with that? I drink a latte in Starbucks and marvel. Einstein did the same. He said:

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.

It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves.

Hey, Einstein and me have something in common. I can't conceive of such a God either. Questions – that's all we need to be "religious" in the Einsteinian sense. Answers not required.

Mysteries should remain mysterious. Until they're not.

Physics ventures into the territory of mystics

I find scientific explanations of the universe much more satisfying than religious ones.

Science grounds hypotheses in reality that can be observed, tested, and experimented upon. Religion constructs airy-fairy castles in the sky that are divorced from everyday experience.

But there's a point, way out there, where observing, testing, and experimenting aren't possible – not even in theory. For example, much of the universe is forever beyond human knowledge because it is receding from us faster than the speed of light, so no signal will ever reach us from this domain.

However, we can envision a possibility, remote as it is, that someday, somehow, faster than light travel or communication will be available to humans. Then much more of the universe will be within the bounds of what can be known.

When it comes to ultimate explanations, though, I'm decidedly skeptical that science ever will be able to come up with answers to the questions that mysticism, spirituality, and religion explore with such zeal.

Why does existence exist? Where do the laws of nature come from? Are there other universes besides our own? Does reality consist of more than the four dimensions we're familiar with?

Last November I criticized physicist Paul Davies' new book, "Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life," for claiming that science could supply answers to essentially religious questions.

Davies strikes me as a scientist who brings religion into his work through ungrounded philosophical speculation.

His ideas sometimes sound like what you'd expect from a bunch of stoners sitting around smoking dope and musing on What It's All About. "Man, there could be a whole universe in one molecule of that smoke, and we could just be a puff of hot air in the Big Dude's hookah pipe!"

I admitted that I hadn't read his book, having based my critique on reviews by other people and an essay Davies wrote. I've now finished "Cosmic Jackpot" and haven't changed my mind.

Still, it's a fascinating read. Davies clearly lays out possible explanations for why the universe is as it is, and why living beings (us) have evolved an ability to comprehend, albeit most imperfectly, the cosmos. In a final chapter he lists them as:

A. The Absurd Universe
B. The Unique Universe
C. The Multiverse
D. Intelligent Design
E. The Life Principle
F. The Self-Explaining Universe
G. The Fake Universe
H. None of the Above

Davies says that his inclinations lie in the directions of E and F. Yet he admits that this predilection isn't based on much more than a hunch.

Many scientists will criticize my E/F inclination as being crypto-religious. The fact that I take the human mind and our extraordinary ability to understand the world through science and mathematics as a fact of fundamental significance betrays, they will claim, a nostalgia for a theistic worldview in which humankind occupies a special place. And this even though I do not believe Homo sapiens to be more than an accidental by-product of haphazard natural processes.

But I do believe that life and mind are etched deeply into the fabric of the cosmos, perhaps through a shadowy, half-glimpsed life principle, and if I am to be honest I have to concede that this starting point is something I feel more in my heart than in my head. So maybe that is a religious conviction of sorts.

Yes, maybe. Indeed, probably. Old habits die hard. In Davies. In myself. In everybody.

We're necessarily locked into ways of looking at the world that reflect our animalistic capacities. Our eyes capture a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, so we speak of "divine light." Our legs allow us to move from place to place, so we speak of a "spiritual path."

Yet how do we know that the way we relate to the world bears any resemblance to how things really are? Or whether the words "how things really are" possess any meaning beyond what a human being gives to them?

How. Things. Really. Are.

Upon even a slight bit of reflection, every thought in my head, or yours, turns out to be a product of mentality that has evolved upon a single insignificant planet circling one of several hundred billion stars in a galaxy that is but one of a hundred billion or so others.

Yet we think we know what it is all about. Or at least, that we can speculate about where the answers may lie.

Writing about Davies, the Rationally Speaking blog reminds us of Wittgenstein's adage, ""Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

In the chapter preceding Davies' E/F preference, he ends with what strikes me as a more honest and defensible posture than his admitted "hunch."

Both religion and science draw their methodology from ancient modes of thought honed by many millennia of evolutionary and cultural pressures. Our minds are the product of genes and memes.

Now we are free of Darwinian evolution and able to create our own real and virtual worlds, and our information-processing technology can take us to intellectual arenas that no human mind has ever before visited, those age-old questions of existence may evaporate away, exposed as nothing more than the befuddled musings of biological beings trapped in a mental straitjacket inherited from evolutionary happenstance.

The whole paraphernalia of gods and laws, of space, time, and matter, of purpose and design, rationality and absurdity, meaning and mystery, may yet be swept away and replaced by revelations as yet undreamt of.

Yes.

How to talk with each other

It bothers me when visitors to this blog don't talk courteously with each other. Now, I realize that this is an endemic problem in cyberspace. Anonymity breeds contemptuousness.

Everybody who leaves comments here is a person (possibly aside from some robo-spam, which I have to delete now and then).

Yet if the people who engage in heated Church of the Churchless comment conversations were face to face in a coffee house, it's hard to believe that they'd be talking to each other in their online fashion. Even, or especially, if they'd just met.

There's no hard and fast rules for talking with each other. All I can do is share my own experience about what works and doesn't work.

By "work," I mean that the conversation, the dialogue, is satisfying and productive. For everybody. People feel that they can say what they want, and be understood by others. Disagreements don't degenerate into verbal fist fights.

This isn't rocket science. Mostly it's common courtesy. And application of the Golden Rule. Talk unto me as you'd like me to talk unto you.

I'll listen to you if you listen to me. I'll consider what you have to say if you consider what I have to say. If you don't like being called insulting names, then don't call me insulting names. If you can't stand self-righteous proclamations, then don't proclaim self-righteously.

I've done a lot of public speaking. I'm married to a psychotherapist (recently retired from many years in private practice). I got a master's degree in social work myself, before I realized that I wasn't cut out for counseling. I've been part of a monthly Salon discussion group that has met for many years. I organized dozens of community meetings where controversial death with dignity and health care rationing topics were discussed. I've been in the thick of highly emotional land use battles on both our neighborhood and state level.

So I know something about talking with people.

And this is why I get bothered when Church of the Churchless comments flow into my Outlook inbox that have a tone which wouldn't be tolerated if expressed in my living room (being the creator of this blog, TypePad emails me every comment).

Don't get me wrong. I'm not into censorship. Or keeping anybody from using whatever language they want, profane or otherwise. Fuck, sometimes no other word will do but an obscenity.

It's just that I consider myself the host of a discussion group which happens to meet in cyberspace, rather than a physical space. Like my living room.

If some people were sitting around in my house, conversing with each other, and one person started calling another an idiot who should shut up and go home, I'd feel the need to restore harmony. "Hey, that isn't appropriate. You can disagree without making personal attacks."

I usually don't do this on my blogs for a couple of reasons. One, people can stop reading anything they don't like, whereas you can't not hear whatever is said in a living room. Two, the medium of expression is part of the message being conveyed.

Thus how someone talks, in speech or writing, can communicate as much as what they're saying. So if someone claims to have knowledge into what life, spirituality, religion, and/or the cosmos is all about, how they share their insights is part and parcel of what they supposedly know.

To take a fundamentalist example, if a Christian says that he believes in a God of love and proceeds to vilify gays, abortionists, unbelievers, and sundry other heathens for being the Devil's spawn, I sense that the guy isn't living the faith that he claims to profess.

Realize that I appreciate each and every comment people leave on this blog. I understand the passion people have on subjects that are near and dear to them, because I'm the same way – when a certain button is pressed, I get fired up.

I just wish that when people write something – me included, naturally – we visualize that those we're speaking to are face to face with us. Real people, just like us. With feelings, emotions, egos, failings, blind spots, hang-ups, just like us.

To disagree is divine. But our disagreement should be with what a person is saying, not with him- or herself.

Let all of religion fall down. Every bit.

It's such a Byzantine structure, all these notions about God, salvation, life after death, soul, spirit, ultimate meaning. The Grand Temple of Speculation sprawls endlessly, with more building continuously going on.

Floors piled on top of floors, rooms tacked on to rooms, furnishings added and subtracted as dogmatic decorators fine tune how they want things to look.

For most of my life I've enjoyed wandering through the building. I'm familiar with most of the basic architecture – the religious, mystical, spiritual, metaphysical, and philosophical teachings that have blossomed and multiplied from the dawn of recorded history (and likely long before that).

Now I look at the Grand Temple of Speculation from a more detached perspective.

Instead of judging the relative merits of this floor vs. that floor, this room vs. that room, the whole damn building strikes me as worthy of being torn down to bare ground.

This won't happen in reality, of course. Not with billions of people firmly committed to keeping the structure not only intact, but also to strengthening and expanding it.

But I can dream. I visualize huge pieces of the temple crumbling, shattering, falling in chunks with a roar. I don't see any part of it withstanding the explosive charges of reality.

Not a bit.

This goes against other dreams. Almost every believer, whether of the explicitly religious variety or of a more subtle spiritual sort, considers that in the end his or her chosen belief structure will keep on standing while others fade away.

At the Second Coming Jesus will show the doubters what's up. When Allah rends the veil, disbelievers will prostrate themselves before His Glory. Jehovah has some tricks up His sleeve for those who fail to follow the divine law. After death those who failed to find a god-realized guru will be thrown into the whirlpool of reincarnation again.

The details differ, naturally. But the common theme is that when the hurricane of ultimate truth blows by, only one part of the Grand Temple of Speculation will be left standing.

Those who have chosen to place their faith in that particular structure will be seated comfortably on soft lounges, sipping sweet juices while divine Muzak plays. The rest of us will be face down in the muck, clutching at whatever flimsy support our bloodied fingers can grasp, moaning and crying at what's befallen us, wishing we'd chosen a safer place to spend eternity.

Well, as I often say, maybe. But I doubt it.

I feel that this is a lot more likely: whatever ultimate reality is, whatever absolute truth is, it isn't like anything humans have been able to cognize, to describe, to speak of, to write holy books about.

If that whatever-the-heck-it-is were to make an appearance, every single human on Earth would cry out What the fuck! Unbelievable! I had it so goddamn wrong! (in his or her own profanity strewn language, naturally).

Religious believers. Scientists. Philosophers. Ordinary people. Geniuses. Idiots. Everybody. Our notions about reality would crumble before the real thing.

This presumes that there is such a beast – the real thing. But if there isn't, the same crumbling would occur. Because now the appearance would be a non-appearance. A void. A nothingness.

And that would collapse the Grand Temple of Speculation just as surely. Actually, with more force, since nothing is more destructive of beliefs without a foundation than nothing.

Whoosh…down the rabbit hole.

So to me it makes sense to keep our belief structures as simple as possible. A small thatched hut. Bamboo and palm fronds. Open on the sides to fresh air.

If it falls down, no big deal. We haven't settled in to lavish quarters on the ninetieth floor of a religious dogma tower. Best to stay as close to solid ground as possible. You never know when the high wind of reality is going to blow through.

Turning around the guns of religious skepticism

It's so easy to fire skeptical bullets at deluded religious believers. Because they aren't me. It's a lot tougher to turn my big guns around and point them at myself.

Yet that's what we all need to do – especially those who call themselves "churchless."

The way I see it, we often fail to recognize that while we've demolished the most obvious walls of blind faith that kept us confined within dogmatic bounds, often we've just retreated to a smaller and less obvious belief structure.

We've shrunk our religiosity from a grand cathedral to something much more humble. However, it's still a church. And there's more demolishing to do before we're closer to the bare rubble of reality.

As noted in "Is there anything to do but be?" I enjoy the comment conversations on this blog. Visitors have different styles, because everybody is different.

Some come off sounding pretty darn confident that they know what the cosmos is all about. Others express their best guess in a personal fashion and leave it at that. You could call this "I'm right" versus "I like."

I fly both ways, though I make an effort to stay within "I like" as much as possible. At least when it comes to mysticism, metaphysics, philosophy, and similar sorts of subjective speculations.

With science, claims of "I'm right" can rest on a much solider foundation. Why? Because the scientific method demands skepticism.

And a competent scientist will direct his most intense skepticism at himself. A hypothesis about the nature of reality has to be falsifiable. If there's no way you can be wrong, you can't be right.

Increasingly, the Western monotheistic religions are being rejected because the notion of a personal anthropomorphic God who intervenes in human affairs is too unbelievable.

But as Meera Nanda, a philosopher of science, observes in "Spirited Away," those who are deeply skeptical about traditional religious claims often are shallowly accepting of New Age, Eastern, and holistic ways of looking at the world.

But as secularists have begun to take on religion there is a danger that in calling for a rigorous evidence-based examination of one area they leave other areas untouched. In banishing religion from the front door some of these secularists are happily letting other forms of supernatural thinking in through the back.

… Attacks by feminists, environmentalists and others on the sins of 'reductionist western science' have created a positive aura around 'holistic science' which, it is claimed, overcomes the gap between the subject and the object. It is easy to debunk faith. Faith is by definition a relationship of trust regardless of evidence.

Spiritualism has learned to dress up its metaphysical abstractions in the clothes of empiricism, neuro-physiology and quantum physics. In contrast to the obvious irrationality of believing in an all-powerful, all-knowing invisible being, belief in 'spiritual energies' which can be 'directly experienced' by anyone simply by altering the state of their consciousness can appear so much more rational, even 'scientific'.

However, they're not. Nanda takes Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith," to task for not being as critical of his own spiritual beliefs as he is of Islamic, Christian, and other fundamentalists.

But this bilious attack on faith, the aspect of the book which has received all the attention, only sets the stage for what seems to be his real goal: a defense, nay, a celebration of Harris' own Dzogchen Buddhist and Advaita Vedantic Hindu spirituality. Spirituality is the answer to Islam's and Christianity's superstitions and wars, he tells us. Spiritualism is not just good for your soul, it is good for your mind as well: it can make you "happy, peaceful and even wise". Results of spiritual practices are "genuinely desirable [for they are] not just emotional but cognitive and conceptual".

She makes some good points. It's easy to forget that while "God," "Allah," and "Jehovah" are abstractions, not directly observable or demonstrable, so are "Being," "Nonduality," and "Pure Awareness."

In science (Thomas Kuhn notwithstanding) anyone with functioning senses, adequate training and right apparatus can see the same star, the same DNA molecule, the same electron. But not everyone with adequate training in meditation techniques, and the right atmosphere, sees the same mystical reality: some see God, some see nothing at all and some, without any meditation at all, see what the mystics see. The mystical beliefs which Harris so approves of are every bit as unscientific, untestable and unverifiable as the religious belief he so aggressively attacks.

Is there anything to do but be?

I love it when a Church of the Churchless post comes back to life. Resurrection! Praise Blog!

The past week there's been an intense high-quality discussion on last November's "Another RSSB initiate bites the dust" – a 75 comment interchange since February 12. I've followed the conversation mostly from afar, though I've thrown in a comment or two of my own.

As frequently happens on this blog, the specifics often have to do with Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the mystic-religious organization I was involved with for thirty-five years.

But the general themes are universal.

One of which, to my mind the central topic, is whether spirituality involves doing anything at all. My innate laziness likes this notion.

Just be. Simple.

And entirely in line with deep mystic philosophy, from all sorts of sages. Including the guru, Gurinder Singh, who currently heads up Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

I went to India in 1998. While I was at the Dera, RSSB's headquarters in the Punjab, I heard Gurinder say at an evening meeting of Western disciples, "How difficult is it to do nothing?"

He was talking about meditation. Interestingly, this is the only thing I remember from any of the meetings where he spoke (aside from some comments he made to me about a book I was working on).

It struck me at the time as being both remarkably trite and remarkably true.

Meaning, it was one of those statements that sound profoundly wise coming from a distinguished looking Indian guru, replete with beard, turban, and flowing white garments, and profoundly simplistic coming from almost anyone else.

Of course, it's indeed difficult to do nothing if this is taken to mean stopping all thoughts, emotions, imaginings, and what not in meditation.

But there's a broader meaning, one which kept arising in the comment conversation that started February 12. Doing nothing except being what you are. Now that's really doing nothing, because there's nothing to be done.

For example, on February 17 Tulsi said:

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 as it is.

On the same day Aman replied:

Yes there's no where to go or reach in the end the final realization is of the self which is present now agreed but just the knowledge of the self is not enough there has to be a process which will unfold the real self & that realization will not be a mere thought or belief system which you've come to understand but instead it will be a result & conclusion to your experiment with your self & your soul.

And so the dialogue goes. Where it stops, nobody knows. At least, I sure don't.

More and more, I find myself tilting toward the nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to become camp. But what do I know? I could be completely wrong.

Maybe my soul needs a total makeover, and I'm sitting here contentedly unkempt, not realizing what a shabby state my self is in.

Who knows for sure? Again, not me.

I'll end by mentioning that while I read and enjoyed all of the 75 comments, Manjit's February 18 submission was particularly interesting. I appreciated his openness and honesty in talking about the validity of his "mystical" experiences.

However, my intense desire for the truth caused me a great, great deal of problems. I began to question, REALLY question, what my inner experiences really showed. I tried testing them. Astral projecting to a place and counting the money on top of a cupboard and then subsequently checking in 'real' life if I was correct (never). Reading the testimonies of countless other 'seekers' who saw the 'radiant form' of their obviously deviant 'guru'. Reading Neural surfer and Chand. Etc etc etc. The avenues which disprove the RS theology quite convincingly are both obvious and many.

Thanks to all for this stimulating interchange. Per usual, no answers. Just great questions.

Christian sex toys

Well, finally. Some Christianity that I can get behind. Or on top of. Whatever.

Christian sex toys. Though the offerings are fairly tame.

The NPR story says the "site steers clear of certain types of sexual activity that they believe are unholy." Any guesses?

Well, at least Joy Wilson and her husband are making good use of Biblical passages from the Song of Solomon. Sexual theology appeals to my churchless soul.

[Update: Gosh, does God have a plan for me? Am I about to convert to Christianity? Could be. Just noticed a CNN story about a minister asking his married couples to have sex every day for a month.

All of a sudden Christian dogma is looking quite a bit more appealing.]

Religious beliefs keep us from spiritually dancing

I've learned a lot from dancing. Or, even after several years of lessons, what often feels more like attempting to dance.

Regardless, it's a lot more like real dancing than I was capable of before. Just as I now feel like I'm better able to dance spiritually, having given up religious beliefs that kept me overly rigid.

Rigidity and dancing – not a good mix. Sure, after just a few lessons it's natural to be unsure of yourself. You haven't gotten the steps down, so you earnestly try to move just right.

And pretty soon you realize that this earnestness, necessary as it may be in the beginning, is keeping you from experiencing what ballroom dancing is all about.

Moving harmoniously with a partner to the music.

When Laurel (my wife) and I can do this, it feels great. More and more, we're able to. Why? Because we're learning how to go beyond the idea of dancing to the experience of dancing.

In the terrific book by Alan Watts ("The Wisdom of Insecurity") that I wrote about in my last post, he talks in a similar fashion about how religions mistake words for reality.

They never get around to actually dancing spiritually, but keep on talking about how one day they'll get out on the floor and give their partner a spin. After death. After enlightenment. After salvation. Someday.

The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than to follow it. Religious ideas are like words – of little use, and often misleading, unless you know the concrete realities to which they refer.

I'm at the ballroom dancing stage where, mostly, my goal is to learn the defined movements of Tango, Waltz, Foxtrot, Nightclub 2-Step, and other dances my wife and I have been exposed to.

But a day will come, hopefully fairly soon, where I'll be capable of the increased spontaneity and free-form expressiveness that marks more expert dancers. I see this in the senior students at the dance studio where we take lessons, and I really see it in the professionals competing in PBS's America's Ballroom Challenge.

These top-of-the-line dancers mix together all sorts of styles in their show dances. They aren't constrained by convention, rigid rules, or "thou shalt's."

Except the commandment to look good, shake it, express yourself, and show what you've got. They flow. Which, as Watts says, is what religion is terrible at.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. Religion, as most of us have known it, has quite obviously tried to make sense out of life by fixation.

It has tried to give this passing world a meaning by relating it to an unchanging God, and by seeing its goal and purpose as an immortal life in which the individual becomes one with the changeless nature of the deity.

…We think that making sense out of life is impossible unless the flow of events can somehow be fitted into a framework of rigid forms.

In other words, beliefs. But it isn't possible to fluidly dance with life when you're bound to a rigid framework. (Though some try.)

With partner dancing, you quickly realize that mis-steps happen. A lot. However, the biggest mistake is to compound a mis-step by not moving with it.

If the leader heads off in a direction the follower wasn't expecting, go with him (usually the man leads). If the follower responds in an unexpected fashion to a lead, go with her.

In dancing with life, whatever is happening to us and with us – that's our partner. We're attached, so long as we're alive. So go with the moment. Wherever, however, whenever.

Pretty damn simple. A lot simpler than ballroom dancing. But not easy.

Because we think it isn't simple. And that makes it complex. Silly us. Watts:

The natural world gives us many examples of the great effectiveness of this way. The Chinese philosophy of which judo itself is an expression – Taoism – drew attention to the power of water to overcome all obstacles by its gentleness and pliability.

…A body of water does not run away when you push it; it simply gives at the point of the push and encloses your hand.

…Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared.

…From this follows, quite naturally, absorption. It is no effort; the mind does it by itself.

…To ask how to do this, what is the technique or method, what are the steps and rules, is to miss the point utterly. Methods are for creating things which do not yet exist. We are concerned here with understanding something which is – the present moment.

Keep it simple. Now.

The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music, also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course.

Insecurity: the only safe place

I'll admit it: sometimes I start to lose faith in my faithlessness. I get this craving to believe.

I'm not fully cured of my thirty-year addiction to dogma. I sniff some 80 proof belief and have a little fantasy about bellying up to the church bar again.

Then the saner side of me whispers, Stay strong, Brian. WWWD?

Ah, yes. WWWD. Others, of course, find inspiration in WWJD – but these are folks looking for security, and I've come to realize that this is the root of religious addiction.

So a few days ago I renewed my commitment to sobriety by pondering WWWD: What would Watts do? Or at least, what does Alan Watts advise in his classic, "The Wisdom of Insecurity"?

I love this book. Almost every sentence makes my churchless soul tingle with re-energized faithless faith. It reminds me of the one and only time I saw Watts in person.

It was at San Jose State College, the fall of 1966 or 1967. I'd gotten to the auditorium early and was sitting in the front row, between the podium and an outside door that was left open on this warm California night.

Watts had begun to speak. A dog ran into the auditorium, stopped just inside the door, and started barking at him. He glanced at it, picked up a drinking glass, and smoothly tossed the water at the dog, hitting it right in the face.

The dog shook its wet head and ran out the door.

Watts continued talking without missing a beat. That's the only thing about his presentation that I remember – a spontaneous act, perfectly suited to what was happening at the moment.

And that's the central message of "The Wisdom of Insecurity." Staying with the moment, which is all there is.

So long as the mind is split, life is perpetual conflict, tension, frustration, and disillusion…But the undivided mind is free from this tension of trying always to stand outside oneself and to be elsewhere than here and now. Each moment is lived completely, and there is thus a sense of fulfillment and completeness.

The religious impulse is fed by incompleteness. Religion promises that lacks in our lives will be fulfilled one day. Not this day. But someday.

For when the mind is divided, and "I" wants to get away from present experience, the whole notion of a supernatural world is its happy hide-out. The "I" is resisting an unhappy change, and so clings to the "unchanging" Absolute, forgetting that this Absolute is also the "unfixed."

…The misunderstanding of religious ideas is vividly illustrated in what men have made of the doctrine of immortality, heaven, and hell. But now it should be clear that eternal life is the realization that the present is the only reality, and that past and future can be distinguished from it in a conventional sense alone.

Watts gets it absolutely right when he says that the only security is in the seeming insecurity of the present moment.

We want to control life, but this keeps us from really living. So we feel a lack in our life, and that lack keeps us searching for the control – salvation, satori, self-realization – that will finally bring us to the promised land of Everything is Absolutely Fine.

Only problem is, life doesn't work that way. Our efforts to make it into something that it's not are the problem that we're trying to solve. Crazy.

We have been accustomed to make this existence worth-while by the belief that there is more than the outward appearance – that we live for a future beyond this life here…Human beings appear to be happy just so long as they have a future to which they can look forward – whether it be a "good time" tomorrow or an everlasting life beyond the grave.

…The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present.

Especially when religious dogmas hold sway. So many promises. To be fulfilled around the corner, not on the spot the believer is standing now.

Truth is, we don't know what's around the corner. We can't. There's no way to be sure of what's going to happen to you, or me, or anyone else in the next instant, much less for eternity.

If there's anything certain in life, it's the uncertainty.

So, embrace it. Dive into it. Accept that never, not ever, not tomorrow, the day after, or any time, will you or I be able to know what's coming up next on the big roulette wheel of life.

It could be our lucky number. It could be the loss of all our chips. We can't know. That's what makes the game so interesting.

Indeed, every experience is in this sense new, and at every moment of our lives we are in the midst of the new and the unknown. At this point you receive the experience without resisting it or naming it, and the whole sense of conflict between "I" and the present reality vanishes.

For most of us this conflict is ever gnawing within us because our lives are one long effort to resist the unknown, the real present in which we live, which is the unknown in the midst of coming into being.

So what to do? The ageless adage: be here now.

The art of living in this "predicament" is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past and the known on the other. It consists in being completely sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

Jesus is alive and well in India

Most Christians would be surprised to learn that right now, in 2008, millions of people believe that a man in India not only teaches the same spirituality as Jesus, but is the same godly being.

Yes, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a branch of Sant Mat, holds that the path of the saints (a translation of "Sant Mat") is identical with the teachings of Jesus. One of the RSSB books, "Light on Saint John," says:

Since most of you have a Christian background, I shall try to explain the teachings of all the Saints in the light of the Bible, for their teachings exactly coincide with those contained in the Bible, if rightly understood.

…If you go deep into the roots of Christ's teachings, you will find that his teachings are the same as the teachings of all other Saints, and in that light I will discuss Saint John with you.

Pretty amazing. And to my currently churchless soul, extremely difficult to accept.

For even during the thirty years or so I was a largely uncritical RSSB devotee, this purported equivalence between the message of the Gospels and Sant Mat was hard to swallow.

As I noted in a recent post, RSSB uses the New Testament in contradictory ways to cozy up to Jesus. On the one hand, the Bible is decried (correctly) as an entirely human document whose language has been fiddled with for centuries, not a one-time divine revelation.

Yet certain Biblical verses are also cited unquestioningly to support the contention that Jesus' message is the same as the teachings promulgated by RSSB gurus such as Charan Singh (who wrote "Light on Saint John").

A few days ago I got an email message from someone who said:

I've been reading your blog about RSSB, the organization, and have been enjoying it a great deal. Could you tell me which books by the RS masters claim that Jesus was a "sant mat 'guru'?" I know that you say this is an RSSB contention but I'm wondering if any of the masters, in their writings or tapes, have said as much. From what I remember of the master's books, tapes, this claim is not directly made.

Well, actually it is. I dug out some RSSB books from storage boxes in our attic and browsed through them yesterday. It was interesting to re-read passages that now strike me differently.

What's most interesting is that Master Charan Singh is speaking as much about himself, as he is about Jesus, when he interprets the Bible in the light of Sant Mat teachings.

The teachings of different Saints cannot themselves be different. Because the Lord is one, the way to realize Him must also be one, for He is within every one of us. We have to search for Him within ourselves, under the guidance of one who has himself realized Him within, as Christ did in his lifetime …Masters may take birth in any nation, race, or religion, but they all preach the same Truth.

So since Jesus is a Master or Saint, and Charan Singh is a Master or Saint, and all Masters or Saints have trod the same path to God-realization, whatever Charan Singh says about Jesus applies to himself.

This helps explain why so many RSSB initiates come from a Christian background. In the person of the guru they believe they've found the 21^st century Jesus (the current RSSB master is Gurinder Singh Dhillon, who succeeded Charan Singh after he died in 1990).

I used to find these Sant Mat dogmas appealing, because I liked the idea that I was "chosen" and "saved." But now they strike me as overtly religious. I can't accept Christianity in an Indian guise. (All quotes from "Light on Saint John." My comments on a quote follow in italics.)

John the Baptist's answer points out a fundamentally important law of the Creator: that each Master has been allotted a certain number of "sheep" to initiate and take home to the Father, and that only the Father determines which souls are for which Mystic.

Well, maybe. But this notion of predestination is ethically challenging. Repugnant, even. Some people are born to be saved and returned to God; others aren't. And that's it. The Creator decides who merits salvation and who doesn't.

There are two types of people in this world: those who are devoted to a perfect Master, and hence devotees of the Lord, and those who are devoted to the mind and senses. The devotees of the Lord always remain devoted to their Master and become free from sin by doing the spiritual practice as directed by him. The others are dominated by the mind and senses and have worldly values, which cause them to do worldly things, and this in turn causes an accumulation of sins and karmas – the chains that bind us to the material world – thus preventing us from going home to our Father in heaven.

There's a lot to comment on here. The duality. The "us" vs. "them" mentality. The equation of devotion to the guru with devotion to God. The warning that only the spiritual practice enjoined by the guru is sin-free. My wife, who isn't a RSSB initiate, used to do a great Saturday Night Live "church lady" imitation when she heard these sorts of sentiments expressed. "I'm doomed," she'd say, "doomed!" Somehow, I doubt it.

There is no difference between me and my Father. You are spiritually blind and deaf, you cannot see and hear Him in the Spirit. Therefore, out of His mercy and grace He has come down to your level in the physical form to instruct you and put you on the path leading back to Him. It is He that you see in the physical form and it is He who is teaching you. I do nothing. It is the Father who is doing everything.

In Sant Mat and RSSB, the guru is God. This is similar to Christian Trinitarianism, but a bit more extreme. My understanding is that Christians consider Jesus to be one in nature with God the Father, but not the same as God. Here Charan Singh seems to be saying that Jesus (and by implication, himself) is God in human form.

People believe that they are worshipping God, but they do not really know what they are worshipping. In fact, they are being deceived by the negative power, who will further ensnare and entangle them in this world again and again. The negative power tricks them into thinking that they are worshipping the Father and thus prevents them from contacting a living Master, so that they may not know and worship the one true God.

I keep hearing from RSSB devotees, "this is not a religion." But the quote above is pure fundamentalism. There is one way to God, devotion to a living Master or guru. If you're not on that path, you've been deceived by the negative power, the Devil. Again, my wife would disagree. Of course, from the RSSB perspective that's just the negative power speaking.

Until we contact a living Master who has realized God, we can never realize the Father.

Clear and simple. Only problem is, how can anyone know that someone has realized God? This is the big question. And I've never gotten a good answer to it.

Skepticism is genuine faith

Fairly frequently people question, Why this Church of the Churchless blog? I've got an email in my "to reply" file that asks just this.

Why be critical of religion? Why discuss the believability of theological tenets, including those of the group to which I belonged for thirty years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas? Why place articles of faith under the looking glass of reality?

Because truth is worthy of veneration.

Now, some people consider that there is no such thing as objective truth, that reality is whatever we consider it to be. There's, well, some truth to this.

But you see – I've just made my point. Even the statement "there's no objective truth" has some truth content, or why say it?

For me it comes down to where my allegiance lies. I'm a semi-serious sports fan, paying special attention to the Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers, two colleges within fifty miles of my home.

Depending on how well a U. of O. or OSU team is doing, I'll identify with it for a while. When the team wins, I feel good, because I've won also in some crazy sense. Losing, not so pleasant, for the same reason.

However, my genuine commitment is to the game, not teams. I enjoy the physical and psychological drama of sports, the ebb and flow of an event, how games are won and lost in such entertaining and interesting ways.

Other people are attached much more to a particular team, just as a religion attracts adherents for whom certain dogmas are the be-all and end-all of spirituality.

They aren't committed to the game of finding truth, but to identifying with a group that claims without justification to be the winner.

I say "without justification" because there's no proof that any religion or spiritual path is more in tune with a metaphysical reality than its competitors.

That's why four years ago I said on my other blog, "Heresy is heretical."

Usually we think of heretics in the realm of religion, not of science. Someone who disagrees with a well-accepted scientific "truth" (using this word advisably, since all scientific truth is open to refutation) usually is considered to be wrong, not heretical. And if a truth, or law of nature, isn't well-accepted because it hasn't been scientifically proven, then heresy is unthinkable; when there is no orthodoxy, there can be no heresy.

I've been enjoying the comment discussion on my "Playing fair with words" post. Some has dealt with the issue of believers feeling superior to non-believers, because they've been chosen for God's team.

In the case of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, people attending a gathering were classed as either "seekers" or "satsangis," depending on whether they'd been initiated into the fold or not. The obvious implication was that once you became a satsangi, you'd found.

Problem is, there was precious little evidence that anything uniquely godly, spiritual, or mystical had indeed been found by the chosen initiates – who supposedly were destined to join the Radha Soami Satsang Beas organization because eons ago they'd been "marked" by God in some mysterious fashion.

I don't believe in that proposition anymore, even though I'm supposed to be one of the blessed chosen souls. But I've got faith. Faith in truth.

Faith that somewhere, somehow, someday – and that "where," "how," and "day" is here and now, as well as there and then – humankind will come closer to the truth about ultimate reality.

How do we get there? By questioning, being skeptical about hypothesized truths until there's reason to embrace them

I quoted this passage from A.H. Armstrong, a classics scholar, in my earlier post. It resonates with me as much now as it did then.

When claims to possess an exclusive revelation of God or to speak his word are made by human beings (and it is always human beings who make them), they must be examined particularly fiercely and hypercritically for the honor of God, to avoid the blasphemy and sacrilege of deifying a human opinion. Or, to put it less ferociously, the Hellenic (and, as it seems to me, still proper) answer to "Thus saith the Lord" is "Does he?," asked in a distinctly skeptical tone, followed by a courteous but drastic "testing to destruction" of the claims and credentials of the person or persons making this enormous statement.

Nicely said. Deifying a human opinion indeed is blasphemy, if God exists. Blessed are the skeptics, for they shall inherit genuine truth.

Playing fair with words

Yesterday I got some advice from a commenter on a post to "be silent." I responded right away, because this is one of my favorite subjects – playing fair with words.

Zion, I always find it interesting when someone, like you, advises that silence is the best policy -- and posts a public comment using many words.

If I should be silent, shouldn't you? Or do you know me better than I know myself? And does your advice only apply to me, or also to yourself?

…I'm curious about this: how do you know that "those who know always keep quiet." Does this mean that someone who never speaks or writes anything "knows"? You just wrote something. Apparently this means that you don't know.

So how is it possible that you can offer such contradictory advice? If you knew, you would keep quiet. Since you didn't, I have to assume that you don't know.

If you are to be believed, every single holy book and every single holy person who ever uttered a word, or taught in some other communicative fashion, doesn't know. I find this easy to believe, by the way -- that people who claim to know about higher realities, really don't.

But again, when you undercut everyone else who speaks, your own speaking is cut away also. Anyway, thanks for the advice. As you can see, I'm not taking it.

I don't mind people telling me what I should do. If I did, I wouldn't have been able to stay married for 36 of my 59 years, that's for sure.

My wife frequently tells me I should be neater and cleaner around the house. She's neat and clean, so her actions match her advice. That's consonant with the Golden Rule approach to morality (mentioned here).

But when someone uses thoughts to tell me "you think too much," or words to tell me "be silent," my bullshit detector goes off.

Start with yourself, dude is my immediate response.

The post that stimulated the "be silent" comment was about RSSB books. So it's appropriate to use some Radha Soami Satsang Beas publications as another example of how words are used unfairly.

A number of RSSB books relate Christianity to Sant Mat, which is the foundation of RSSB teachings. I won't go into the nature of these relations here, because my concern is with how the Bible is used to support the RSSB contention that Jesus basically was a Sant Mat "guru."

On the one hand, RSSB authors (including the guru who initiated me, Charan Singh) correctly note that the words in the Bible have been messed around with since the New Testament was written.

And that these writings were composed a long time after Jesus lived. So we don't have a dependable record of what Jesus said.

Yet after saying this, somehow these same authors feel justified in explaining the genuine message of the Gospels, using quotations from the Bible to support the notion that Jesus was a vegetarian, meditating mystic who initiated disciples into an inner path of light and sound that leads to higher spiritual realms.

Even when I was a fervent RSSB devotee, I'd read this stuff and think, huh?

How could it be that some words in the Bible can't be trusted when they support a traditional view of Christianity, but other words can be used to argue that Sant Mat and Jesus' teachings are essentially identical?

I'm up with wordlessness, believe me. I spend a good share of my day doing my best to keep my psyche as word-free as possible.

Other times, like now, I open the gate to my word animals and let them run free. Words are what they are, neither good or bad. How we use them – that's the question.

Fairly. That's part of the answer. We shouldn't expect other people to adhere to a word standard that's different from our own.

A parent who screams to a child, "You're too loud!" doesn't have much credibility. Nor does someone who writes, "we should keep our thoughts to ourselves."

I’m an ignorant fool (happily)

For most of my life I'd get pissed off if someone told me, You're an ignorant fool! But now I've begun to say that to myself. And it makes me feel good.

Today the words came to me before I began my habitual morning meditation.

I'd drunk my strong cup of coffee. I'd read from my eclectic mix of books, a bit of science, a bit of philosophy. I'd settled onto my cushion, preparing to open myself to insights into the Meaning of It All.

And the voice that speaks inside my head blurted out, You're an ignorant fool!

My reaction? "Yes, yes, yes. Say it like it is. I couldn't agree more. Talk truth to me."

I felt a delicious sense of weightlessness, of the pressure of being right lifting from my psyche.

I like to be correct. I like to win arguments. I like to sound like I know what I'm talking about. But when it comes to the big questions of life, I'm clueless.

I don't know whether God exists. I don't know if there's life after death. I don't know what's right or wrong. I don't know where the universe came from. I don't know if life has a meaning other than what we ascribe to it.

For the rest of my meditation time I sat immersed in a welcoming embrace of ignorant foolness. I didn't have any other revelations.

Can't say that I had any, really. Because understanding that I'm ignorant about the questions religion claims to have answers to is so blatantly obvious, it shouldn't count as a "revelation."

Yet maybe it does, since I often ignore the obvious. Such as the fact that I'm an ignorant fool. I get reminders, but they don't stick with me as much as they should.

For many years I've engaged in Sunday morning coffee house conversations about subjects both sacred and profane (the latter being a lot more interesting). Not infrequently debates would get hot and heated.

We'd be arguing this way and that, pretending that we knew what we were talking about. I remember times when a friend, who would go nameless if I didn't call him Steve, was asked what he thought about the contentious subject.

"I don't know," he'd say. "I've got no idea."

That was the most honest thing any of us had heard all morning. It'd bring the conversation to a momentary stop as everyone pondered this unusual take on whatever the hell it was we were dissecting and analyzing with such enthusiasm.

Then we'd ignore Steve and get back to it. Not-knowing often is the truest thing that can't be said, but it puts brakes on the illusory confidence that fuels passionate coffee house conversations. Or religious organizations.

On the positive side, the Fool occupies a high place in certain circles. Such as Tarot cards, where the Fool is the first major arcana card.

"He represents new beginnings as he starts his heroic quest for self knowledge. In his naive innocence, the FOOL is very creative for he does not yet know rules or limitations. He is the court jester, village idiot, clown, time traveler, speaker of truth, and prodigal son. Mythologist Joseph Campbell interpreted the FOOL as the hero with 1,000 faces. His number is 0, the empty vessel waiting to be filled. He is ruled by the planet Uranus, the planet of revolution and liberation."

OK. I know zilch about Tarot. But I'm up with fools, being one.

For those wanting to dive more into foolishness, John R. Boettiger's blog has a nice post: "The Holy Fool."

The holy fool, or the fool as wise soul, is a figure in many wisdom traditions, including notably those of the Sufis of Islam, Zen Buddhism, Christianity and the inheritors of the Hasidic movement of Judaism, as well as folklore that is not specifically religious, like some of the tales collected by the brothers Grimm.

… there is another sense of the holy fool, less a matter of conscious and intentional disguise, more a matter of guilelessness, transparency, embrace of wonder and mystery.

"The path of soul, writes Thomas Moore, "is also the path of the fool, the one without pretense of self-knowledge or individuation or certainly perfection. If on this path we have achieved anything, it is the absolute unknowing Cusanus and other mystics write about, or it is the 'negative capability' of John Keats--'being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.'" (Care of the Soul, p. 261-262)

Irreligious questions for the presidential candidates

Oh, if only the press would have the balls to ask the twelve questions John Allen Paulos wants posed to our presidential candidates. A sampling:

For Huckabee:

Do you really believe, Mr. Huckabee, that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and that humans and dinosaurs cavorted together?

For Romney:

Do you not see an implicit religious test in your statement that "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom"? Furthermore, are not, respectively, most of Europe and some Islamic countries obvious counterexamples to your statements?

For others:

Do any of you think God speaks to you, only to Gov. Huckabee, or to none of you? And, if I may, does God have a tax policy, a health care policy, a policy on Iraq, Iran, gay marriage, Guantanamo or the Riemann Hypothesis?

How literally do you take the Bible or other holy book? Do you subscribe to any argument(s) for God's existence other than the one that God exists simply because He says He does in a much extolled tome that He allegedly inspired?

Looking into the future, it seems obvious that these strangely religious 21^st century days will, before too long, appear as superstitious hangovers from humanity's pre-scientific lineage.

As Paulson points out, it's freaking weird that the United States elects people to high office who hold such bizarre unproven and unprovable beliefs.

Good god. There's a chance this country might be led by a Mormon president who believes that special underwear confers religious benefits.

At the end of the PBS series, "A Brief History of Disbelief," philosopher Colin McGinn is interviewed. He foresees a time when questions of religious belief and disbelief simply are irrelevant to people, much as debates about the nature of phlogiston have vanished.

I'd like to distinguish atheism from anti-theism. Anti-theism is opposition to theism. I'm an anti-theist because I believe that religion is harmful. I'm not just an atheist who my only values are, that I don't agree with it. I'm actively opposed to it.

I'd distinguish that from I'd call post-theism or post-atheism. Which is the healthy state of mind where you've put all that behind you. Now we can't do that yet because there's lots of religion in the world and lots of bad results of it.

To me the ideal society would be one in which the question of religion didn't really arise for people. Or if it did, it wasn't a heavy question for them.

They would say to each other, "You know, those humans used to believe back there in 2003, some of them believed there was this god who did this, others didn't, and there were TV programs about why they didn't. What a funny debate that was, you know."

So it'd be a post-theist society where it just wasn't an issue.

May it come sooner rather than later. Like, tomorrow.

My inside look at RSSB books

It's interesting that currently churchless me once was so involved in writing books for a decidedly churchy organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

A couple of years ago I blogged about "How writing a book rewrote me." This was the third, and last, major RSSB book project that I was involved with.

The end result was "Return to the One: Plotinus' Guide to God-Realization." But it wasn't published by RSSB, even though the plan all along was that this would be the first in a Mystics of the West series.

I have to give credit to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru who heads up Radha Soami Satsang Beas, for wanting to study the teachings of Western philosophical mystics like Plotinus – even though the effort came to a crashing halt.

Early on in the book project, Gurinder Singh mailed me a list of possible subjects for a Mystics of the West book. I chose Plotinus because I was intrigued by him and resonated with the approach of Greek philosophy – open-minded non-religious, and rational, as noted in my earlier post.

Also to Gurinder Singh's credit, when I was in India in 1998 I asked him, "If I find a conflict between the teachings of Plotinus and of RSSB, what should I do?"

His reply: "Stick with Plotinus."And that's what I did.

Which is one reason why I ended up publishing the book myself. I wasn't willing to compromise my description of Plotinus' marvelous mystic philosophy to fit with how the RSSB Publication Department powers-that-be wanted the book to turn out.

Our disagreements came down to a few areas that might seem fairly inconsequential, but were important to me. I talked about one issue in the other post – whether there is such a thing as a "Western mind." (Since I have one, I'm convinced that there is.)

Also, RSSB wanted to include quotations from a previous RSSB guru, Charan Singh, after each chapter title – to show that West and East were on the same wavelength when it came to spirituality.

I was OK with this, but just for the version of the book that would be published non-commercially by RSSB. I saw no reason, none at all, to mix up RSSB teachings with Plotinus' philosophy in the commercial version that would be sold to the general public.

This related to another disagreement I had with RSSB Publications staff. They wanted me to include a mention of my involvement with Radha Soami Satsang Beas, so that readers would know "where I was coming from."

I even was asked to thank Charan Singh (the guru who initiated me in 1971) in the introduction for making it possible for me to write the book – supposedly, I guess, by infusing my consciousness with enough wisdom to grasp Plotinus' not always easily graspable teachings.

I balked at that too.

I told RSSB that I've always had a better than average ability to understand complex subjects and write about them fairly clearly. That preceded my involvement with RSSB meditation. It's an integral part of my makeup, not a gift from my guru.

And on the "where I'm coming from" front, my position was that if a knowledgeable reader couldn't tell that I'd been a member of an Indian-based mystic/meditation group for thirty years, then there was no need to mention this.

I mean, I sent drafts of the book manuscript to scholars who were experts on Plotinus. I got lots of suggestions and criticisms back, but nobody ever suggested that my interpretation of Plotinus was slanted in a particular fashion.

Yet RSSB wanted me to talk about how my immersion in the organization was related to my "take" on Plotinus. I kept saying that I'd never seen a similar mention of an author's personal philosophy in any of the scholarly books I'd read about Plotinus.

It simply was taken for granted that the author had done his or her best to write about Plotinus teachings, not his own way of looking at the world.

Sure, "Return to the One" includes a lot of Brian Hines along with Plotinus. That's inescapable, because I wrote the book, not a robot. However, I successfully separated the "me" aspects of the book from the "him" (Plotinus) aspects.

At the moment my book is #2 on an Amazon search for "Plotinus," right behind Plotinus' Enneads. That's satisfying. It's the most readable book about an influential Greek philosophy who should be more widely read.

I wish Radha Soami Satsang Beas had been less concerned about infusing the book with a RSSB slant. But this is par for the course with RSSB publications about mystics who aren't in the direct Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru lineage.

There's a decided tendency – and I can't go into this in detail in this already lengthy post – toward slanting a mystic's teachings to more tightly fit with RSSB dogma.

This would be somewhat understandable, though still not acceptable, if an overtly religious organization was doing it. But RSSB bills itself as a "science of the soul," and scientists need to be as objective as possible in their writings and research.

A key tenet of the RSSB philosophy, which is shared by all sorts of mystic teachings, is that words can't encompass ultimate reality. Given this, I always found it difficult to understand why RSSB books were so concerned with saying things the same way, and describing metaphysical principles in consistent language.

Might as well end by quoting myself (from the "Infinity is Ineffable" chapter).

Our whole approach to the One will be thrown off course if we believe we can travel to enlightenment through words or thoughts. It isn't a matter of, say, pondering the Buddhist Dhammapada for my whole life and then realizing that the Christian Bible contains a more correct description of divine reality.

This would be like me believing that God is square and then finding out that God actually is a circle. Since I was looking for some sort of spiritual shape, I wasn't far off the mark and might simply observe, "Oops, I made a slight mistake; now I know better."

But if God is formless and nameless, far removed from any shape or word, then a much more radical change of direction is needed. A person's entire consciousness must be transformed if he or she is to experience God. A way has to be found of experiencing emptiness, of entering into the nothingness that is the threshold to the One.

A wee bit of guidance on the Way

Over on my other blog, HinesSight, Joshua left a Taoism related comment on a DSL-themed post. Go figure, especially since some of the sentiments I expressed in the post were just a tad on the egocentric side.

Many of my neighbors are deeply grateful that I've brought the potential of DSL to some 240 homes in our area. Quite a few are trying to run businesses out of their homes. That's tough to do with a dial-up connection, and satellite is expensive.

I've been thinking that a bronze statue of me, commemorating my DSL triumph, would be a nice addition to one of our local streets. Which could be renamed after me also.

Regardless, in his comment Joshua asked for a wee bit of guidance about following the Way of Tao.

When I was younger I was incarcerated. The crimes although petty and debateable are of no matter here. But, one day I came across a pocket sized version of the Tao Te Ching. Even at my fairly young age I was intrigued. I loved how overwhelming the message was.

Ever since, although inconsistently, I have pursued these teachings. I carry the Tao te Ching with me practically every where I go. I have also started reading the Basic Writings of Chuang Tzu and have tried unsuccesfully many times to utilize that oracle of fortune we call the Book of Change(I ching).

I really feel as though I will never turn back and totally abandon the Way but I have a lot to "unlearn". Maybe you could refer me to some sources or give me a wee bit of guidance, because it feels as though I'm lost.

Figured that I might as well reply to Joshua in a Church of the Churchless blog post.

And a "wee bit" of guidance it will be, since I'm a lot better at coaxing Qwest to install DSL in our neighborhood than cajoling Taoist wisdom to reveal itself in my consciousness.

But for what it's worth, Joshua, here's a story and a suggestion.

My wife left for a trip to Florida today. Last night Laurel was having a tender moment with someone she's going to miss terribly. Our dog. (Not that she won't miss me also, but I'm not nearly as cute as Serena).

Serena and Laurel were having a cuddle-fest on the living room floor in front of some bookcases. I joined them. In the course of scratching a furry ear (not Laurel's, I hasten to add), something drew me to look at a bottom shelf that held a row of books on tape belonging to Laurel.

One item looked like it didn't belong. Which, it didn't. Because it was a real book. And not a book of Laurel's, but one of mine.

A book that I'd been trying to find for quite a while. A book that I'd remembered enjoying a lot, yet couldn't put my hands on, because it was somewhere I'd never thought of looking.

In short, a book that I'd lost. Much as you feel that you've lost the Way, Joshua. Except a book isn't the Way, one of the basic precepts of Taoism.

Nothing is. The Way is just the Way. And that happens to be a central theme of the book that I found last night, "Buddhism Without Beliefs" by Stephen Bachelor.

It's a terrific book, one of my all-time spiritual favorites. I suggest you read it, Joshua, if you haven't already. Heck, even if you have, read it again.

That's what I did this morning. Skimmed it at least, focusing on the passages that I'd highlighted in the slim book's 115 pages.

Bachelor says that Buddhism isn't a belief, but action. It's being fully alive and aware, right here, right now. His chapter on awareness starts with a quote.

And further, a monk knows when he is going, "I am going." He knows when he is standing, "I am standing." He knows when he is sitting. "I am sitting." He knows when he is lying down. "I am lying down."
-- The Buddha

The Buddha and Bachelor know a lot more about the Way than I do, Joshua. But what little I know, or rather, suspect, is in line with that starkly simple premise: the path is here and now, not there and then.

This is disconcerting, because we're used to orienting ourselves by structuring the real present within an imaginary past and future.

That locks us into a conceptual framework – yesterday was such and such; tomorrow will be such and such – which seemingly offers stability. But actually it constricts reality unnaturally, leaving us wanting more: the real thing.

And that lacks the boundaries we're accustomed to. Hence, we can feel lost just when we've found the Way.

To know emptiness is not just to understand the concept. It is more like stumbling into a clearing in the forest, where suddenly you can move freely and see clearly. To experience emptiness is to experience the shocking absence of what normally determines the sense of who you are and the kind of reality you inhabit.

It may last only a moment before the habits of a lifetime reassert themselves and close in once more. But for that moment, we witness ourselves and the world as open and vulnerable.

…As mindful awareness become stiller and clearer, experience becomes not only more vivid but simultaneously more baffling. The more deeply we know something in this way, the more deeply we don't know it.

Joshua, I'm not saying that your feeling of being lost is what you're looking for. Maybe it is; maybe it isn't.

But it sure seems to me that it's better for someone to feel genuinely spiritually lost than to imagine that they've found their self, when they really haven't.

The self may not be something, but neither is it nothing. It is simply ungraspable, unfindable. I am who I am not because of an essential self hidden away in the core of my being but because of the unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix of conditions that have formed me.

…This perplexed questioning is the central path itself.

…Like life itself, it just keeps going, free from the need to hold to any fixed positions – including those of Buddhism.

…Questioning is the track on which the centered person moves.

There's your Way, Joshua. Perplexed questioning.

Relax. You're on it.