Church of the Churchless

Service without servitude

Doing some deck sweeping this afternoon at a cabin in central Oregon that we share with three other owners, I got to thinking about service.

This used to be a big deal to me in my Eastern religion days. Seva is an Indian word for service. It really just means volunteering. But when seva is done for the guru, who devotees consider to be God in human form, the service takes on an aspect that's hard to describe if you haven't experienced it.

I wrote about seva in my "When it isn't good to do good" post.

One of my points there was that it isn't good to feel that selfless service to your religious organization is vastly more important than volunteering close to home – like I've done for seventeen years for our neighborhood association.

As secretary, I've spent countless hours writing minutes, slaving over a hot copier at Kinkos, putting stamps and labels on a mailing, and other secretarial chores.

Interestingly, I spent about the same number of years serving as secretary for our local branch of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (guess I've got some significant secretary karma). That also involved many, many hours of service.

One difference: my neighborhood association service – like my cabin sweeping – is considerably humbler than my religious seva was. That's because service to God or a guru is much more of an exchange relationship, rather than truly selfless.

You're hoping to please God or the guru. You're looking to get on his good side. You're envisioning that all of your seva will help to reduce your ego and thus speed your way on the path to enlightenment.

I know this, because I used to see seva that way. And over thirty-five years or so, I talked with lots of other sevadars who felt the same.

People enjoy belonging to a religious organization because it feels good to do good for others. But there's nothing special about volunteering for your church, temple, mosque, or other religious group. Service is service, no matter where it's done or who it's done for.

Today I enjoyed my sweeping. I do a more careful job than I really need to. Pine needles continually fall onto the decks. By the time the next owner comes to the cabin, my meticulous sweeping isn't even going to be apparent, most likely.

But I like to sweep for sweeping's sake. I don't figure that it's going to bring me any spiritual benefit. Or any material benefit either, for that matter.

I imagine that the next family coming to the cabin will appreciate a deck that's cleaner than if I hadn't done my sweeping thing. I realize that this is mostly a fantasy, though, given that the pine trees are also doing their needle falling thing.

Anyway, however I felt during my seva days is still much like how I feel in my current churchless days. Except, as noted above my ego isn't nearly as involved.

Service is just service now, not a means to some spiritual end.

And that, perhaps, makes it a lot more spiritual.

OK, now I believe in Jesus

I've been waiting for the proof. Now I've found it. Nothing else to do but embrace Jesus. Praise the Lord!

And a kitten's fur. Because there Jesus is, if you look really closely.

(Actually, I couldn't make him out on this CNN video. But that's probably because my faith isn't at its maximum yet.)

This shows that I need to pay closer attention to our dog's coat when I pat her. I can't believe that the Lord chose a cat to reveal the divinity of His Son, and not a canine – given that dog spelled backwards is you know what.

Talking back to RSSB foolishness

Usually I read trash-talking comments on my blogs and then put them out of my mind. I enjoy responding to thoughtful people who have a different point of view. But I don't see much point in answering gibberish.

Today, though, I'll make an exception. I'm in the mood to reply in kind to a guy who strongly challenged my churchlessness. I assume you won't mind me being (almost) equally blunt, Richard.

You said it like you see it. Here's my own outlook on Radha Soami Satsang Beas, based on my thirty-eight years of experience with the organization.

The content of Richard's comment is in italics. My response follows each of the quotes from his blog comment, which I've left as he wrote it.
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The Masters of RSSB-are an example for all of us in the world

Sure. Agreed. So is everyone else in the world. Each person can serve as an example for someone else. That's what parenting is all about. And teaching. Sports, also. There are good examples and bad examples. We have to pick and choose who deserves our emulation, and who doesn't.

if you have beeen lucky enough to see them hear them talk read their discourses-with an open unbiased mind-they do not want followers to rush blindly after them-this path is one of total commitment -just like any path.

I've seen them. I've heard them talk. I've read their words. I was totally committed to the RSSB path for well over thirty years. So I've walked the path and know where it led for me.

Before judging this path -have you ever read one word written by the RSSB masters,- concepts of spirituality remain in the domain of the intellect-whereas experiencing first hand within the inner bliss say of meditation-this is the path,the real path of sound and light,the holy name,word shabd,nam,Tao,bang-i-ismani. give it any namit is the same EXPERIENCE.

Good god. I've read every word in every RSSB book. Several times. I know the difference between concepts and experience. Every mystic, every spiritual guide, every philosopher – everybody knows that difference. If you've had a experience, Richard, that's your experience. I've had my own experiences. They're all just that: personal experiences. Christians have them. Buddhists too. And Hindus. Not to mention atheists and agnostics. They don't prove anything about the nature of really real reality.

For those so called ex -satsangis remember this is a path of forgiveness-the teacher who has your best interests at heart has not turned his head away from you-go back to class and see-there he is 24/7

There's no sign of him, dude. He hasn't popped up in thirty-eight years of meditation. Best explanation: the guru isn't who devotees believe he is, God. I've never heard one disciple, not one, tell me that they're in contact with the astral/spiritual form of the master. So he's not there to be seen, in my experience. The guru is only there to be imagined, which is a big difference.

-He is ready to accept ALL those who wish to learn -don't forget WE are not teachers are we?

We're all teachers. As well as students. There are countless teachers, and countless students. It's crazy to believe that only your teacher has the truth. In religion and spirituality everyone believes they, and only they, have the truth. Obviously, everyone who believes this is wrong. Like you are, Richard.

however one can not relinquish ones duty as a student in a university to study and pass the core curricculum nor blame the institution if we fail at passing our exam-it is not the libraries fault if we refuse to digest the knowledge therein. So it is with the perfect masters The Professors Emiritus of The University of Spritualty-the Shabd Illumni-so to say

You're a true believer, Richard. I used to be one too. So I can't fault you for believing. But I can criticize you for being blind to your own dogma. You're no different from a fundamentalist Christian, Muslim, or Jew. They all think they're right, and everyone else is wrong. In university studies, scholars come to agree on core truths. This doesn't exist in religion or spirituality. I used to argue that it did, but I was wrong. There isn't a core spiritual curriculum, Richard. It only exists for you, not in reality. Again, there's a big difference between what you believe and what is real.

These perfect ones and I mean perfect-they never hurt anyone , never accept a single dime from anyone personally-they work normal jobs they havefamilies or not .they go through the samr problems as us-they meditate daily they pay taxes have friends are generous build charitable hospitals-now does a selfish person wrapped up in their own little world do that ?

You make no sense. You're saying that the RSSB masters are just like us. And they are. Lots of people, including me, never hurt anyone, don't accept a single dime from anyone personally, work a normal job ( before I retired), have a family, pay taxes, and go through problems. So I guess I'm a perfect master. You may worship me, Richard. I give a lot to charitable causes. I spend countless hours serving my community/neighborhood. Obviously I'm perfect – along with countless other normal human beings. What makes a RSSB guru more perfect than any other person? Answer me, Richard. Show me the evidence, the experience.

In short do any or all of YOU American haters of the path of Sant Mat TAKE ON THE KARMAS OF OVER 2 million human beings? No! I didn't think so.

I don't know. Maybe I do. Maybe this explains why my hair has turned gray. What makes you think the RSSB masters do this? This is just a concept that you've come to believe, Richard. Where's the proof of it?

Well before you cast aspersions on Gurinder Singh or any other master past or present-have a look at your own spirituality-take a good long look at your past lives,your present self righteous one -and I know about that -I am in the club too-but I have EXPERIENCED the mountain top, I have been to the summit of Christ,-I KNOW who Gt Master is Charan Singh and all the VERY FEW perfect masters in this world -maybe just One....

Your humility is obvious, Richard. Clearly your vast spiritual experiences have done a lot to reduce your ego. Congratulations. As for me, I'm just an ignorant fool. Yes, I'm self-righteously ignorant. I'm supremely confident that I don't know squat about ultimate reality. I'm also pretty sure that no one else does either. You claim absolute knowledge, though. Pretty impressive. Please share one verifiable truth about the cosmos that no one else knows, but you do. Like, say, how quantum theory and relativity theory fit together. Einstein worked on this for several decades and couldn't figure it out. No scientist has, so far. Leave a comment on this blog that explains it. Since you've been to the "mountain top" of reality, that should be easy for you to do.

so American fanatics of hatred of the so called ex satsangi get real -WHY DID YOU APPLY to be INITIATED in the first place? Exactly! You want love-? You want bliss-? You want spirituality? Well then -GO INSIDE-shut the criticising mouth and meditate. Do your simran do your bhajan-read discourses -stay married. You heard.Be a diciple if YOU got the guts.

I meditated every day for over thirty years. Give me a break. Many of those years, for the prescribed two and a half hours. I've been a disciple. I've walked the walk. I just never had the experiences that RSSB claims a disciple will have in meditation. I got initiated because I wanted truth, love, and spirituality. I still want those things. Even more than before. That's why I'm looking for them in a different direction now, because I'm not going to spend my whole life in a spiritual dead end.

You and I are either on the bus or off the bus,-as Baba Ji says Here is an example of a prayer witten -n 1947 by the Great Master My Lord I am ignorant I do not know what to ask from you. Give me that which you think best for me.And give me the strength and wisdom to be happy about what you deem fit to give me and about how and where you keep me .I have no virtue , no devotion.My actions are all dark and sinful. I possess no merits and the mind has thoroughly crushed me,For a sinner like myself,O Lord there is no refuge but Thy Blessed Feet,I want nothing more. Make me Thy slave, that I become Thine and Thou mayst become mine Sawan Singh-1858-1948

I'm very familiar with that prayer. I assume you believe it, since you quoted it. The guru is saying that he has no virtue, no devotion. He has no merits and the mind has crushed him. Yet you, Richard, believe that you're way beyond all that. You know it all, whereas the Great Master didn't. You say he wrote this in 1947, a year before he died. It sounds like Sawan Singh was humble up to the end. Maybe you could learn something from him.

And another thing Mohammed was a perfect living master of his time-you never been inside -don't judge true muslims then until you have seen within so to say and you have never read the Koran -suggest you do then-then go to a mosque-ex satsangi -American racist oofas.

Hmmmm. I've never heard that Mohammed was a perfect living master. So I assume you believe the Koran is all true. I've read the Koran. It's full of a lot of ridiculous stuff, like every holy book. I'm not racist. I just don't believe in Islam, like I don't believe in Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, or any other religion. So why should I go to a mosque?

Also can Jesus and Mohammed Guru Nanak, Sawan Singh Charan Singh Rongomai O Te Whiti etc be seen within? The answer is yes- easier than sending am email to the Church of the Churchless Alofa Richard

Say hello to them for me, Richard. Tell them I'd like to have a chat. Have them drop by in my meditation tomorrow. I'd love to hear these guys explain to me the mysteries of the cosmos. It'll be especially interesting to listen to Jesus and Mohammed talk about how the Bible and the Koran are both true. I just have one request: since these perfect masters are all-knowing, please ask them to tell you the name of the girl I took to the prom my freshman year in high school. Leave another comment with her name and I'll be impressed.

[Update: I'd like to know the answer to the prom question. But there's a few people in the world, aside from me, who know her name. Here's a better test…I've folded a dollar bill up and put it in a compartment in my wallet. What is the serial number? The perfect masters must know, since they know everything.]

No problem with God not being perfect

Perfection and God are two words that go hand in hand. Most people feel that an imperfect God would be no God at all.

Some of the qualities usually associated with divinity are omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, omnibenevolence.

Well, if a being was all-powerful, all-knowing, present everywhere, and had love for everyone and everything, I can see why this entity would be deserving of being called perfect.

But why does "God," which I use as a synonym for ultimate reality, have to be perfect? What's perfect about perfection?

I got thinking about this when I came to the first page (p. 276) in Richard Carrier's "Sense and Goodness Without God" where I was impelled to pencil in (actually, highlighter in) some marginal question marks. Carrier says:

For example, it is obvious that a perfect being, by any definition, could not and would not create an imperfect universe, yet the universe is imperfect, therefore God cannot be perfect. This does not prove there is no God, but it does prove that given the way the universe plainly is, if any God exists, he is imperfect.

My first reaction to this was, "Who the heck can say what perfect is?" I sure can't. Wouldn't you have to be the essence of perfection yourself in order to perfectly recognize perfection?

Assuming that such a creature, perfection, even exists. Intuitively, I suspect this is a human conception, not an inherent quality of the cosmos. It makes a lot more sense to me that the universe simply is what it is. If someone wants to call that "perfection," I could agree with that.

But to posit some hypothetical state that is completely different from what can be experienced in our earthly state of existence – what purpose is there in that?

To make his argument, Carrier assumes, along with religious believers, that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being wouldn't have created us or the universe as we are.

Why death, suffering, disease, injustice...all the stuff that makes for a bad day (or life). Shouldn't all this negative crap have been eliminated from the creation by a perfect Creator?

Even a heartless deity would at least make his creation less messy and chaotic, unless mess and chaos were the very things he wanted.

Ah. Now there's a notion that resonates with my Taoist soul. Chaos is embraced by Taoist philosophy.

Hun-tun, that is Chaos, is not to be confused with the chaos as typically seen in the western world as in "chaotic." It is the supreme ideal of Taoism. Chaos is wholeness, oneness and Nature. Chaos represents the natural state of the world. Digging holes on the head of Chaos means destroying the natural state of the cosmos. Therefore, to the ancient Chinese chaos not only has the meaning of disorder but also presents a respectable aesthetic state. This idea of chaos may be very different from its western counterpart.

Recently I got a decidedly imperfect coffee cup. I love it. It's perfect for me.

So is an imperfect God. Which, for me, is better called Nature. I understand why people like the notion that somewhere or sometime perfection will make an appearance.

But I'd rather grasp imperfection in my hand than continually be running after a perfect will of the wisp.

Jesus’ body found in the trash! For real!

What a beautiful sight for churchless eyes: here's a photo of Jesus lying in a trash bin, pierced with a rusty nail and in the company of some banana peels (plus coffee grounds and other assorted discards).

If you're not a Catholic, you may not recognize the Son of God. But if you're a believer, there he is, in the form of a communion wafer – which the faithful consider to be transformed into the body of Christ at holy communion.

In a fascinating blog post, "The Great Desecration," biology professor P.Z. Myers relates how his wafer trashing has caused his email inbox to be filled with messages chastising and threatening him for mutilating a little piece of bread. An example:

Professor Myers,

I was saddened to hear of your plans to harm our Lord Jesus Christ. It obviously isn't the first time and it won't be the last.

I know you do not believe, but what if it truly is Jesus that you are attempting to hurt? You are in my prayers.

The credulity (I started to write "idiocy," and probably should have) of these people is amazing.

They have pretty much the same mentality as Catholics in the middle ages who killed Jews and others who were accused of desecrating communion wafers. (See the beginning of Myers' post for details.) Myers says:

You would not believe how many people are writing to me, insisting that these horrible little crackers (they look like flattened bits of styrofoam) are literally pieces of their god, and that this omnipotent being who created the universe can actually be seriously harmed by some third-rate liberal intellectual at a third-rate university (the diminution of my vast powers is also a common theme).

Congratulations, Professor Myers. You've done a terrific service to those of us who subscribe to the Religion of Reality, by pointing out that bread is just bread, no matter what other illusory qualities are ascribed to it.

Of course, I haven't always believed in reality as strongly as I do now, a confession I made last year in "Ridiculing my own religious fundamentalism." An excerpt:

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

Well, I've come a long ways. Much closer to the Eastern religion version of hellfire, to many . But I'll take my chances.

My mother made a half-hearted attempt to get me indoctrinated into Catholicism when I was a kid. I made it through first communion but flamed out before I got to the "confirmation" stage. (Too much to remember, all those venial and mortal sins, among other stuff.)

At first communion, I kneeled down and stuck out my tongue. Then I started coughing like crazy as the wafer stuck to the top of my dry mouth and wouldn't go down.

I remember being scared that I was going to spit out the body of Christ onto the floor of the church. After considerable effort I managed to swallow the communion wafer and proceeded to my first confession where, because I was too young to have done much sinning, the best I could come up with was that I hadn't been going to mass every Sunday.

Before too long, my nine or ten year old mind couldn't swallow any part of Catholicism. My mother let me stop going to those unpleasant noon hour get-togethers with the nuns that cut into recess time (and which, in retrospect, must have violated the constitutional separation of church and state).

Myers reminds us, nothing must be held sacred.

By the way, I didn't want to single out just the cracker, so I nailed it to a few ripped-out pages from the Qur'an and The God Delusion. They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet.

You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanities' knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind.

With nature, no need for God

God is all there is. Nature is all there is.
God is infinite. Nature is infinite.
God works in mysterious ways. Nature works in mysterious ways.
God is omnipresent. Nature is omnipresent.

You get the idea. And that's the simple essence of Richard Carrier's "Sense and Goodness Without God," though he takes 424 pages to explicate it.

I've read a bit over half of Carrier's book, which I was drawn to buy after reading (and writing about) his From Taoist to Infidel essay.

I'm enjoying it. A lot. Probably because Carrier thinks much like me, aside from the fact that he's much more knowledgeable than I am in many areas of science, philosophy, history, and what not.

It's easy for me to recognize wisdom in someone who believes in the same stuff I do. I also appreciate his self-publishing "Sense and Goodness Without God." It's a lot better than most of the crap non-fiction that populates the spiritual section of bookstores.

But since his book requires some thinking (gasp!), I imagine Carrier got a brush off from publishers who couldn't imagine that there's a market for spirituality minus other-worldliness.

Here's a taste of what Carrier's metaphysical naturalism is all about.

Given the lack of clear evidence for a god, and the fact that everything we have seen happen, which was not caused by humans, has been caused by immutable natural elements and forces, we should sooner infer the opposite: that immutable natural elements and forces are behind it all.

…For now, observe that the only things we have ever proven to exist are matter, energy, space, and time. Since we can explain everything by appealing to only those things and their properties, then (all else being equal) such an explanation is the most plausible one around – leaving no need and no sound reason to go beyond them and invent all manner of unproven entities, like gods and spirits and miraculous powers.

…It follows that no matter how you look at it, there can be no "ultimate" explanation in the sense people want. The very concept is a logical impossibility. Even the idea of an infinity of explanations would itself be in need of some inexplicable "brute fact."

…Thus the question for us really is: Where do we stop? What is the one, ultimate "brute fact" that needs no explanation? Certainly, most people say this is God, that God is self-explanatory, having no origin, that God exists necessarily as the one brute fact.

But that requires resting on a huge number of assumptions. Why not just stop with what we actually know – the natural world? Certainly this is just as viable. After all, if a god needs no explanation, then why does nature need one?

Excellent question. Which really doesn't require an answer. Just a brute fact: no explanation needed.

Religion is all about me, me, me

Narcissism and religiosity go hand in hand. With rare exceptions, a religious believer considers that the cosmos centers around them.

(Buddhism, for example, would be an exception – but I don't consider authentic Buddhism to be a religion.)

I got to thinking about this today after noticing a New York Times story, "Here's looking at me, kid." It featured a great graphical encapsulation of a narcissist:

Which reminded me of me in my true believing days.

Looking at life as the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) theology had taught me to do, I considered that much of what happened to me either was occurring (1) under the direction of the satguru, who had taken over the administration of my karma and was doling it out in a manner for my benefit, or (2) otherwise was orchestrated so that I could learn lessons that were part of my schooling in enlightenment.

So if I was late for a meeting and found that someone had just pulled out of a parking spot right in front of where I was going, I'd say to myself, "Thank you, guru, for your grace."

I'm sure Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other believers in a personal God who intervenes in human affairs do much the same thing. Except they thank another form of divinity, such as Jesus.

In retrospect, the whole thing was deeply and disturbingly narcissistic. But I would have vociferously denied that at the time. I thought that I was becoming more and more humble, what with all of my devotion to a being greater than myself.

However, that devotion was founded on an egotistical assumption: that somehow God or the guru (who were the same entity, at heart) had chosen me for special favors. To the RSSB faithful, even suffering is a gift from the guru, because it's a sign that karma is being paid off at a high rate – which is all to the good if the goal is to get the karmic account down to zero so the devotee isn't tied down spiritually by it.

Way back I read a marvelous entry on a Radha Soami discussion group that included the line (as best I remember it), "RSSB initiates see themselves as living a Technicolor life in a black and white world."

So true, as it is for believers in every other religion. Just as the NY Times graphic indicates, "others" are on the periphery of the religious devotee's worldview, which centers around the dogma to which he or she subscribes. Outside that is a big fat "nothing" – the realm of infidels, heathens, maya, illusion, the devil, unbelievers.

Yesterday I bought a piece of garden art at the Salem Art Fair. Sitting in a chair to sign a credit card slip for it, I set down a paper bag with my other artistic purchases: a coffee cup and a bamboo pencil holder.

I'd carted the heavy piece of garden art (which features three stones) all the way to my car, several blocks away, before I realized that the bag wasn't in hand. Or anywhere else on my body either.

My wife and I speed-walked back to the booth where I'd set down the bag. In the old ways, I would have thought "I'm supposed to learn something from this," or "The artist and I must have some karma that we need to work out."

But now I just think, "I forgot the bag. Hope nobody walked off with it." That sentiment is a lot less me-centered.

The bag was there. I thanked the artist for keeping track of it. I walked back to my car. Drove home.

No big deal. Just something that happened. Along with countless other things in the universe yesterday. Nothing special.

That's the way I see my life now: as nothing special. Which is why religion and me have parted company.

How marvelous: to be alive!

Religion, spirituality, mysticism, philosophy, theology – all this stuff can be pretty damn complicated. So many beliefs, thoughts, concepts, dogmas, imaginings, speculations.

I've enjoyed throwing myself into this complex stew, and have even contributed to thickening it through some books, my Church of the Churchless musings, and countless conversations.

But more and more, the essence of my attitude toward the big questions of life is…less and less.

By which I mean: one intuitive direct experience is coming to overshadow all of the other religio-spiritual contents of my psyche.

It feels much more real and true than these other meanderings of my mind, which tend to be second-hand or hypothetical in nature.

I'm alive! And I won't always be. How marvelous!

Nine words. A whole lot of meaning.

To me, at least. If you haven't experienced the sensation I'm talking about – on a gut, not a thought, level – then what I'm saying may elicit a "Huh?" rather than a "Yes!"

It happens to me frequently. Usually a couple of times a day intensely; otherwise it's sort of background music to my life, a feeling that's always there but not always consciously attended to.

Yesterday it happened again in my Tai Chi class. Listening to the instructor make some point, about the sword form, I believe, the room and everyone in it came into extra-sharp existential focus.

This is happening, right now. I'm alive and able to be a part of it. Someday I'll be dead. How precious is this moment!

That sentiment sounds a bit trite and Hallmark card'ish expressed in words. The feeling itself was wordless. It was an ah…, a big breath of clear and present reality sucked into my psyche.

To my mind (and I don't have any other one to work with), this is the most authentic "spiritual" sensation I've ever had. I put that word in quotation marks, because the feeling really doesn't have anything to do with other-worldliness or non-materiality.

I guess it's somewhat akin to the thisness or thatness of Buddhism. But I don't know. I'm not a Buddhist. And it feels universal, not something attached to any particular creed.

Here each of us is, alive. It's absolutely astounding, the most marvelous thing. Fourteen billion years ago the universe came into being. It'll ramble on for many tens of billions of years more.

And I'm able to live for a miniscule span of time (in comparison to the cosmos' longevity) in the midst of all this. Experiencing my experience. Conscious of my consciousness. Aware of my awareness.

I readily admit that mostly I sleepwalk through my day, doing what I need to do, lacking the ah… feeling that washes over me like a cosmic tsunami when the seawall of mundaneness is breached for a moment.

Yet when that wonder is present, it's wonderful – making any other form of religiosity or spirituality seem dry as dust.

More religious craziness: a fertilized egg is a person?

Just when I thought Christian fundamentalists couldn't do anything stranger than they already have (like believing the Bible is the literal word of God), up pops a newspaper story about a bizarre ballot initiative in Colorado.

Read all about it in the Washingon Post's "Colorado voters will be asked when 'personhood' begins."

Yeah, that's just the sort of thing that should be decided in the voting booth: when someone becomes a human rather than merely a bunch of embryonic cells.

Don't get me wrong: I'll all for philosophical and moral discussions on this (and any other) deep questions. The thing is, the folks behind the ballot initiative aren't interested in discussion. They want to cram their personal beliefs down society's throat.

That irks me. And it should really irk Coloradoans, who I expect will roundly defeat the initiative this November.

It should become obvious that Colorado for Equal Rights is a front group for fundamentalists and anti-abortionists who are backing this attempt to define a person as existing from the time of fertilization because they want to have the United States governed by their brand of religiosity, just like the Taliban sought.

I took a look at their information sheet for the initiative. It made as little sense as I thought it would.

Because of breakthroughs in science, we know that from the moment of fertilization a unique human comes into existence. We are defining these humans as persons so they will have basic human rights.

Hmmm. I read several science magazines, and I haven't come across that breakthrough. I'm pretty sure the reason is, these idiots are lying.

There's no evidence that a unique human being comes into existence at the moment of fertilization. Consciousness is a long ways from coming into being. The only way you could say this is if your religion tells you it's true.

This is the dangerous dark side of religion. People spout inanities because they've heard them from the pulpit, or read them in the Bible, and mistake them for really real reality.

Here's another example of a ludicrous statement from the info sheet:

Basic Biology tells us that once an egg is fertilized it becomes a unique human life and is no longer an egg. We believe that unique human is a person, like you only smaller.

No, basic biology doesn't tell us that. It simply tells us that when an egg is fertilized, the process of becoming a human is underway. If you look at those few cells under a microscope, you won't see anything that resembles you or me.

People are free to believe that those cells are a person, just like they're free to believe in Santa Claus. Or, God. But please, don't ask me to share in your fantasies.

I'm looking forward to Colorado voters smashing this initiative to bits at the ballot box this fall. Hopefully that will quash any more attempts to force this sort of unfounded religious belief onto public policy.

Meditation as a work out

I've been meditating every day for a long time. About thirty-eight years. It never gets old. There's always something fresh going on in my head, which is both a delight and a frustration.

For most of my meditating life, I've approached it with a spirit of devotion. Or at least, semi-devotion. Meaning, I viewed meditation as a means of approaching what It's All About.

I felt that maybe "It," "All," and "About" pointed to God. Maybe Nature. Maybe something else. Whatever, the act of opening myself up to it seemed deserving of a bit of reverence.

So I got into the habit of bowing before I entered my meditation area. I wasn't sure who I was bowing to – guru, God, myself, Tao, ??? – but it felt right to do so.

I've given that up. I don't know whether this is a sign of progress or of retrogression, assuming there's any direction signs on a meditative path, but here's my current attitude.

It's a work out. Just as I exercise my body several times a week at an athletic club, so do I spend some time every morning putting my psyche through some concentrative/contemplative paces.

I've written about how meditation teaches the brain new tricks. It also seems to increase brain size. (For some reason I don't get junk email about this, in contrast to pitches for increasing the size of another organ.)

The brain size study looked at meditators who practiced Buddhist insight meditation, which the article says "focuses on whatever is there, like noise or body sensations. It doesn't involve 'om,' other mantras, or chanting."

But I suspect the same benefits to the gray matter would accrue from just about any form of meditative practice. A researcher says:

"The goal is to pay attention to sensory experience, rather than to your thoughts about the sensory experience," Lazar explains. "For example, if you suddenly hear a noise, you just listen to it rather than thinking about it. If your leg falls asleep, you just notice the physical sensations. If nothing is there, you pay attention to your breathing." Successful meditators get used to not thinking or elaborating things in their mind.

Religion is based on thinking, concepts, imagination, visualization, anticipation. You're told what a supposed divinity is like, and you try to tune yourself into this entity that isn't there – but is promised to await you around the corner.

All that is exactly the "elaborating things in their mind" that meditators try to avoid. So it's an antidote to religious fantasy, when practiced correctly.

A healthy work out.

Repent! Believe in science!

Often a cartoon speaks more truth than thousands of words. Thanks to Pharyngula, here's a great example:

The complete comic says even more. Yes indeed, "the truth will set you free."

Which leaves religion out of the picture, because it puts barriers between us and reality – substituting wishful thinking for clear-eyed understanding of the universe.

A recent comment conversation over on last year's "Atheists crush Christians at 'Does God Exist?' debate" post is a good example.

I appreciate that "C," a Christian, was willing to enter into a dialogue with us churchless heathens (see his July 7, 2008 comment and subsequent responses).

C said that scientific conceptions about the big bang and evolution are theories. That's true.

But I pointed out that there's a big difference between: (1) a theory with lots of evidence to back up, and (2) a theory backed up by little or evidence.

A belief that Jesus died for our sins falls into the second category. A belief that the universe began with a stupendous "explosion" some 14 billion years ago that eventually led to life on Earth evolving into creatures capable of pondering where we came from falls into the first category.

I heartily disagreed with C's statement to Adam:

One thing I'd like to hear you admit is that evolution and the big bang are theories, they are not facts, and that it takes just as much faith to believe in that as it takes for me to believe in Christ.

This betrays a serious lack of understanding of the scientific method. And of theology.

In Christianity, faith is a virtue. In science, it's a defect that has to be minimized as rapidly as possible if a theory is to be considered anything more than blind belief.

I've read some big thick books about evolution, such as Richard Dawkins' "An Ancestor's Tale." It was a subject of my "Evolution is sacred, religion is profane" post.

Yesterday C wrote this to me in a comment:

Just to close, could you please just show me the tons of evidence evolution has? I'm not asking this sarcastically, I'd just like to see the evidence that you speak of and that I've never heard. Thanks.

P.S. Please don't send me links, not that I'm being ignorant. I just like hearing it better from learned people like yourself.

Well, C, you didn't want links, but I suggest you click on the two a few lines above. There's no reason for me to repeat what I've already said, and what Dawkins' book is all about.

There's just as much evidence, albeit of different kinds, for the big bang. With both the big bang and evolution theories, many truths remain to be revealed in detail, but the foundations of understanding are well fleshed out.

What these theories answer, and Christianity (nor any other religion) can't, is a simple question: How did things come to be as they are?

If an all-powerful God exists, he or she could have created everything all at once. In fact, that's what Genesis erroneously says. "All at once" being over the course of a few days, which is close enough for religious work.

Yet, everything we know about the universe and Earth points to a different conclusion. Living and non-living things have been changing continuously. In short, stuff happens.

And there's no evidence that all this happening is under any sort of conscious guidance. Unless you want to call the laws of nature "conscious," which I feel there's good reason to do. But Nature is a far cry from the notion of a personal God who sets into motion and subsequently guides both cosmic and human affairs.

So I'll continue to kneel at the altar of science. I'm devoted to reality. I also admit that I'm devoted to having reality turn out to be the way I want it.

I do my best to resist having the first devotion undermined by the second. That resistance is a big part of what science is all about: honoring the way things really are above how we'd like them to be.

Which is why I like that comic so much. "The truth will set you free." Yes, Amen to that.

What does it mean to be “spiritual”?

That's a great question. I ask it of myself frequently.

Even though I don't have a firm answer, I've continued on with using the words "spiritual" and "spirituality" a lot – in talking with people, in writing on this blog, in musings within my own mind.

I used to think that spiritual was opposed to material, that it had something to do with an ethereal soul, an aspect of ourselves that is disconnected (potentially, at least) from physical reality.

But this would mean that you'd have to leave this world to be genuinely spiritual. Since everyone on Earth is, obviously, earthly, spirituality would be impossible here.

Reading Andre Comte-Sponville's "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality," I came across an understanding of "spiritual" that makes sense to me. More sense, in fact, that the sense I was speaking to myself.

Spirituality is the life of the spirit. But what is the spirit? "A thing that thinks," said Descartes, "that is to say, that doubts, affirms, denies, that knows a few things, that is ignorant of many, that wills, that desires, that also imagines and perceives."

And I would add: a thing that loves, that does not love, that contemplates, that remembers, that mocks or jokes…Little does it matter whether the thing in question is the brain, as I believe it to be, or an immaterial substance, as was Descartes's conviction. Whatever it is, we use it to think, to want, and to imagine.

…The spirit is not a substance. Rather, it is a function, a capacity, an act (the act of thinking, willing, imagining, making wisecracks…) – and this act, at least, is irrefutable, since nothing can be refuted without it. "The spirit is not a hypothesis," as Alain put it, because hypotheses can exist only by and through the spirit.

In short, it's our inner life. Not something mystical, airy-fairy, mysteriously divine, other worldly. It's what we are at every moment, when we're aware of what we are at every moment (and also, not aware).

Today, during my Tai Chi class. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrors that run along one wall of the studio. I don't like to look directly at my image. It creeps me out. Usually I keep my focus close to the bottom of the mirrors.

Probably that isn't good for my Tai Chi posture, but I don't care. I'd rather not be reminded for an hour and a half of what the outer Brian looks like, now that he's reached the graying age of 59.

But this afternoon a thought popped into my head: "That's not you." At that instant I found that looking at myself didn't bother me as much. I'd made a disconnect between the inner me and the outer me, the spirit and the body. This is how Comte-Sponville sees things also.

Taken in its broadest sense, spirituality can be said to include virtually all aspects of human life and spiritual is more or less synonymous with "mental" or "psychic." Today, this use of the word has pretty much gone out of use, and when people talk about spirituality, they are usually referring to a rather limited part of our inner life (though it may contemplate limitlessness) – the part that involves the absolute, the infinite and the eternal. It is, in a sense, the spirit's farthermost point and its greatest amplitude.

Spirituality, then, doesn't necessarily entail religion. In fact, there's no necessary connection between them.

We are ephemeral beings who open onto eternity and relative beings who open onto the absolute. This "openness" is the spirit itself. Metaphysics means thinking about these things; spirituality means experiencing them, exercising them, living them.

…This is what distinguishes spirituality from religion, which is merely one of its possible forms. The two can be conflated only by virtue of metonymy or misnomer. They are as whole and part, genus and species. All religions involve spirituality, at least to some extent, but all forms of spirituality are not religious.

Whether or not you believe in God, the supernatural or the sacred, you are confronted with the infinite, the eternal and the absolute – and with yourself. Nature suffices. The truth suffices. Our own transitory finiteness suffices. Otherwise we could not conceive of ourselves as being relative, ephemeral or finite.

Single gesture, whole of reality

What's in a word, a movement, an expression? Everything. Potentially, at least. This is the intriguing premise of "The Beauty of Gesture: The Invisible Keyboard of Piano and Tai Chi," by Catherine David.

To be present in every step means that the forward motion of one's foot, if experienced fully, embodies the whole of reality at a given time.

Being a Tai Chi practitioner myself, I understand what David is saying. The key word here is "fully."

When I'm moving through a Tai Chi form, often my mind is only partially engaged in what I'm doing. So my reality is split between the here and now and the there and then that's the subject of my mental meanderings. This is half-assed Tai Chi.

In Asian traditions, it sometimes takes an entire lifetime to reach that state of consciousness which opens the way to a genuine act. Turning a handle, soldering a joint, cleaning the house – each gesture contains the entire being of the person who performs it.

It's also half-assed anything, as David points out.

Part of the problem is that we don't fully embrace our self as we are at every moment, continually changing in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

How to be sure we are not half-kissing, mechanically stroking, laughing too loudly, simulating emotions? How not to doubt my own sincerity when I smile, when I flirt? How can I fill my gestures, make them real, harmonious, efficient? How can I give the present moment – the only reality – the attention it deserves?

Another problem is imitation. Though proverbially it's the finest form of flattery, and necessary to learn Tai Chi or almost any other skill, at some point it becomes a barrier to future progress.

Accurate aiming is no artifice: it is his own self the archer sends into the center of the target. If the archer is absent from the bow and arrow, the success of his shot becomes a failure, a parody. True accomplishment goes beyond skill and frees itself from the rules, providing the rules have been previously mastered. From up there, they say, the view is unobstructed all around.

My Tai Chi instructor encourages every student to find his or her own unique expression of this art. And everyone does. There's no way around it, because each person has a unique body, a unique mind, a unique spirit, a unique energy.

Metaphysical awe is converted into research. Reflexive consciousness merges into action. The why retreats behind the how. Anxiety is lifted by creating a technique. The question, How can I really be myself? is instantly followed by, What can I do about it?

Behind the question how, calling for immediate practical answers and lifelong reflection, the ontological vertigo begins to fade. I don't know who I am; we'll look into that later. But for the time being, how shall I manage to truly live my life, be who I am, eat what I eat, walk when I walk, hear what I listen to, see what I see, savor my feelings, my sensations, enjoy the world's and art's creatures, make them mine?

Is there, by any chance, a task more important than to live one's own life?

Gestures…

Charan Singh, the Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru back when I joined the organization in 1971, habitually used certain gestures when he gave talks. They were graceful, part of his unique demeanor.

When he'd speak about concentrating during meditation at the "eye center," his right hand would trace a smooth arc up to the spot between his eyebrows, an index finger pointing at the purported spiritual centering point. Other gestures were used when discussing additional meditative techniques.

Charan Singh's gestures were his own, part and parcel of him. But I remember listening to a disciple give a talk who, obviously, wasn't the guru.

This guy did his best to copy Charan Singh's mannerisms, gestures, and speaking style. It was ghastly. I'm sure he thought this was how one honored the guru: by imitating him and setting aside the speaker's own personality.

How it came across, though, was as fakery. Authenticity was absent from the talk. I lost interest in what he was saying almost from the first word. He was like a puppet, the strings being pulled by a misguided sense of what reducing the ego means.

How can I unite the expression of my feelings with their inner truth? Is it possible to overcome that instinctive cheating which causes us to act other than what we really are, makes us foreign to our gestures as if they were someone else's, prompts us to look for truth in its caricature?

The way I see it, to honor whatever has made us who we are – call this God, Nature, Cosmos, Tao, Ultimate Reality, Laws of Nature, anything else you like – is to be just who we are, honestly, truthfully, sincerely, fully.

In the smallest things as well as the largest. In a single step as well as the longest journey.

Nothing has prepared us for the concept that everyday gestures might be philosophical exercises. No one has advised us to pay attention to them, to stop viewing them as chores, to start loving them and perfecting them.

Desiring God isn’t a proof of God

Oh, my God! I'm absolutely loving "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality." So much so, this morning I finished it, fueled by a strong cup of pre-meditation coffee and the joy of reading good writing.

As I said before, Andre Comte-Sponville has a wonderful approach to spirituality.

I started to say "in spite of the fact that he's a philosophy professor," but there's no spite involved here. Comte-Sponville's book springs as much from his life experience as his philosophical experience (assuming there's a difference between life and philosophy, which, really, there isn't – living includes everything).

There's so much that I like in these 206 pages, it's hard to know what to choose as a blog subject. Here's a rundown on a subchapter that made me go Oh, yeah, so true: "Desire and Illusion."

First, some personal sharing, because it relates to what Comte-Sponville is getting at. My parents divorced when I was just a few years old. I had no contact with my father until my mid-30s. No phone conversations. No letters. No visits.

Just a Christmas card, most years, with a small check and a single word: "John." Not, "love, John," or anything else. Just his first name.

So my father was a lot like God to me as I was growing up: unseen and unknown.

I believed he existed, because my mother told me a few things about him (not much, though). And I wanted to know him, because I felt that I was missing something – a lot, actually – by not having a father, like the rest of my friends did (divorce was much rarer in the 50's and 60's).

I'd lie in bed as a kid, talking to God, asking why I didn't have a father and requesting that one be sent to me, ASAP. But no response. From God, or my father. Until events led to me seeing my father for one hour.

Here's what I said at the end of that post:

When the door shut behind me and I started walking down the corridor to my rented car, I was so happy. Not happy that I had finally gotten to meet my father—happy that I would never have to see my father again.

Which I never did.

Moral to this story? If there is one, it's that fantasies aren't reality and what you get in life often is better than what you want in life. Growing up, I wanted my father. When I was grown up, that one hour with him taught me that I was hugely better off fatherless.

Now, we could psychoanalyze the relationship between my physical-father and Godly-father desires. But, let's not. Believe me, I've done a lot of that over my 59 years, and it doesn't lead to much. Everybody's childhood was screwed up somehow.

That's the nature of life, of reality, of existence. Imperfection. Suffering. Desires, some fulfilled, some unfulfilled.

Here's the beginning of Comte-Sponville's "Desire and Illusion" section:

Yes, I desperately wish that God existed, and I see this as a particularly convincing argument not to believe he does. This is only apparently contradictory. To be an atheist is not necessarily to be against God. Why would I be against what does not exist? Personally, I would go even further and admit that I would definitely prefer that there be a god. This is just why, in my eyes, all religions are suspicious.

Isn't it amazing, a remarkable stroke of luck, the good news that every religion brings us: fulfillment of our deepest human desires is precisely how the cosmos has been fashioned, if we follow the tenets of a particular faith.

Now, what does religion tell us – and the Christian religion in particular? That we shall not die, or not really; that we shall rise from the dead and thus be reunited with the loved ones we have lost; that justice and peace will prevail in the end; and, finally, that we are already the object of an infinite love. Who could ask for more? No one, of course! This is what makes religion so very suspicious. As the saying goes, it is too good to be true!

If there's anything I've learned in my nearly six decades of life experience, it's that life doesn't always (or even usually) give me what I want. Hmmmm. I recall hearing that sentiment before.

Yet religions tell me that this evident fact actually is an illusion. I can have what I want; I just need to belly up to a particular religious bar and be served a divine drink that, Wow!, takes all my troubles away. Price: submission, faith, obedience.

What a deal! Like Comte-Sponville says, it seems too good to be true. For a good reason: almost certainly it isn't true.

I threw in "almost." I have to, just as Comte-Sponville does. Nobody knows whether God exists, what happens after death, if some religion really does have a corner on the Ultimate Truth market. We're simply talking about the preponderance of evidence here.

And that points to a different way of looking at life.

What I care about is not my own advantage, but truth – and nothing can guarantee that the two go hand in hand. Indeed, it is rather unlikely that they should, given the particular nature of my advantage and the universal nature of truth.

…Given an alleged reality that nothing attests but which corresponds to our most powerful wishes, we have every reason to suspect it of being the expression of those very wishes, and indeed (as Freud says) directly derived from them – to suspect it, in other words, of having the structure of an illusion.

…An illusion [quoting Freud] is "a belief derived from human wishes" – a desiring credo, you might call it, or a credulous desire.

…Thus illusion is not a particular sort of error; it is a particular sort of belief. To be deluded is to believe that something is true because one wants it to be true. Humanly speaking, nothing could be more comprehensible. Philosophically speaking, nothing could be more dubious.

Anything is possible.

My father could have turned out to be a sterling example of male humanity, simply one who, for some mysterious reason, chose to distance himself from me for some thirty years and engage in seemingly uncaring behavior (like never paying child support to my mother).

Likewise, God could turn out to be real, a being who loves us and will take care of us in every respect after we die, assuming we win his favor beforehand. Maybe God has his own reasons for not fulfilling our desires now. Maybe the cosmos really has been designed for our eternal, but not temporal, satisfaction.

Maybe. But it's doubtful.

"We are inclined by nature to find it easy to believe what we hope for, and hard to believe what we fear," Spinoza wrote in his Ethics. "Whence," he added, "the superstitions by which men are everywhere dominated." All the more reason to be wary of our beliefs, when they start resembling our hopes too closely!