Church of the Churchless

What else is there to say?

Once again, Edward nailed it (or rather, me) right on the head in a cogent comment. Regarding my previous musing, he said:

Brian, reading this post I got the feeling that you won't have to write much longer, you are almost done...

I like those words, almost done.

Conjures up an image of being slowly cooked, like a roast pig turning on a spit. I've been feeling a non-Biblical apple in my mouth make me grin more. Doesn't seem like the churchless heat has been turned up all that high, but clearly it's been causing some changes.

Anyway, you're right, Edward.

There's times when I wonder what else I have to say. Maybe it's the upcoming election, because I was drawn to start this Church of the Churchless blog after Bush won in November 2004.

Now, almost four years later, a lot has changed in this country. And, in me.

I haven't figured out what either a lot amounts to. It's enough to know that seismic shifts have occurred, and I hope they're movements in a good direction.

As if I, or anyone, could know what's good or bad. Or what sort of moral compass points toward them. I used to think that I had some understanding about this stuff.

Now, as I wrote before, the whole idea of a misguided universe – or me – that needs a direction finder is losing meaning. That sense of loss doesn't seem quite the same as when I worked in the health policy/planning arena, but maybe it is.

For many years I dedicated myself to trying to fix what's wrong with health care. I cared a lot. Then, I didn't, almost instantly. One day I realized, "This doesn't matter to me anymore." I went off in a different direction, writing some books about the Meaning of It All.

Meaning still matters to me. However, life is seeming considerably simpler these days, so I may be getting to a point where there isn't a whole lot to say about the big questions of life.

With health care, the overwhelming complexity of problems (cost, end of life decisions, new technologies, payment systems, to name a few) helped lead me to feeling what's the point?

With spirituality and metaphysics, the astounding simplicity of a cosmos that is just what it is (lacking the human concepts of sin, fallen nature, need for salvation, enlightenment, and such) could lead me to feeling the point is…no point.

I'm not there yet. Not quite.

But I'm enjoying looking through the window of pointlessness and wondering what it would be like to play outside.

No problem, no religions

Life is full of problems. But is life itself a problem?

At the moment I feel like my wife and I have more than our usual quota of difficulties to deal with. Our septic system is acting up, not draining as it should. The dog had diarrhea last night, with a result best left undescribed. Jury duty calls me tomorrow morning at a time much earlier than I usually function. My dentist gave me a referral to an endodontist for a possible gum graft, which hopefully sounds worse than it actually is.

No doubt about it: life, at times, is suffering. Buddha got it right. Even when things are going smoothly, there's always an underlying anxiety – how long will the good times last?

Not forever, for sure. Death takes care of that.

But all the individual problems of life don't necessarily add up to a conclusion that life as a whole is a problem needing solving.

I can see a toilet overflowing, dog poop on the floor, a jury notice in the mail, a dental bridge next to a receding gum line. I can deal with each of these issues. I can understand, at least to some extent, how the problem came into my life.

Where, though, is the evidence for the maxi-problem that religions claim to be capable of solving?

Christianity says that humans have fallen away from God and into sin, thereby needing salvation. Ditto, with some wrinkles on the theme, in Judaism and Islam. Buddhism is more psychological and less theological, but still sees suffering as something that can be fixed. Hinduism sees the individual soul, Atman, as needing to be united with the universal being, Brahman.

In each religious case, it's assumed that the core purpose of life is to deal with a fundamental cosmic mix-up. Things are screwed up on a root existential level. Humans need to figure out what the problem is and get it solved.

Well, maybe.

But what if, as I've observed before, believing in problems is our only problem? What if life is just doing what it does, and we're part of it? What if "cosmic problem" is merely a conceptual product of our thinking, and nothing more?

I've got to get up early tomorrow for jury duty. My wife will be meeting with a septic system specialist while I'm gone. Our dog is on a special diet. Next month I'll learn what the endodontist recommends for my gum line.

Problems aren't pleasant. However, there's always a way to deal with them. Or to ignore them, which is one way of coping.

Over the past few days I've found that when I simply focus on what needs to be done at each moment, life is eminently manageable, though not necessarily pleasant (for instance, my two and a quarter hours in a dentist's chair last week).

What makes things worse is the feeling, this shouldn't be happening, or its companion sentiment, there's a way to be content all of the time.

Which assumes that life is a problem needing solving. If this isn't the case, that's a big problem cast aside.

Along with the need for religions, whose main reason for being wouldn't exist.

Who needs useless Universism?

My frustrating involvement with Universism ended a few years ago when this supposed non-religion turned out to be as fundamentalist freaky as any other faith (if you click on that link, scroll down past this post to find the history of my Universist involvement).

I hadn't thought about this naturalist philosophy, which foundered under the massive ego and administrative cluelessness of its founder, Ford Vox, until I received an email a few days ago from someone who wondered Why Universism?

Good question. I've shared Alexander Szeto's message below. His list of humanist / naturalist organizations is a handy guide. I enjoyed taking a quick look at the web sites.

Religious naturalism and pantheism seem to be philosophies compatible with my world view. But so is Taoism, which has a several thousand year philosophical head start on modern non-religious conceptions of the cosmos.

Universism was much more of a gimmick than a substantive evolution of naturalistic understanding. At first I liked the idea of people meeting locally under a non-dogmatic banner, discussing the big questions of life. It turned out, though, that it's tough to organize folks who resist top-down metaphysical organizations.

The groups Alexander mentioned serve a purpose, for sure. I just feel comfortable with my not-belonging now, so haven't felt a need to join up with any of them.

Here's the message:
---------------------------------------------

Dear Brian,

I am a big fan of you.  I agreed with most, if not all, of what you have said on your blog.  I have a question regarding Universism. I asked because I have personally considered it seriously and found it appealing but I have one thing that I don't understand.

I asked you because I am aware that you were into it and have called for local meet-ups. Although it is dead now, something I still don't understand.

If Universism is a naturalistic (non-supernatural) religion, there are already non-supernatural philosophies around. The two most notable are humanism and naturalism.

Why people don't just go to humanism or naturalism and flock to Universism (though briefly)? Especially non-understandable is that organisations subscribing to these existing philosophies are already around for a long time.

International Humanist and Ethical Union www.iheu.org
Council for Secular Humanism www.secularhumanism.org
American Humanist Association www.americanhumanist.org
The Humanist Institute www.humanistinstitute.org
Religious Naturalism http://www.religiousnaturalism.org
World Pantheism Movement http://pantheism.net

What is the difference between Universism and humanism/naturalism?

Best!
yours,

Alexander Szeto
President
Spiritual Seekers Society (Unitarian Universalist)
ssshk.tripod.com
ssshk.freeforums.org

I’m praying that Sarah Palin never becomes V.P.

Though Sarah Palin's hotness makes her more appealing to look at, compared to the usual wrinkled right-wing religious white guys, her Christian zealotry is just as scarily ridiculous.

Scary, because here's a God is on my side true believer who could, just possibly, heaven help us, be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Oh, wait! We already have a president like that. So what's the problem with another one?

Lots. By comparison, Sarah Palin actually makes George Bush look minimally competent and well-informed. So her astounding fatuous cluelessness, when combined with her trite Christian fundamentalism, results in an exceptionally dangerous political mix.

Sam Harris nails her to his non-believer cross in a cogent Newsweek piece, "When Atheists Attack."

We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist.

Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment.

Recently I opined that craziness can be a dose of sanity. Absolutely. We all need some sort of way out there to balance the humdrum, practical, sensible side of life.

But my caveat is that our healthy weirdness shouldn't unduly interfere with other people's ability to live their own lives as they see fit. If you want to ski black diamond runs in an icy snowstorm, great. Just don't run into someone else.

Sarah Palin's religiosity, like that of so many other fundamentalists, crosses way over the line in this regard.

I've got no problem with her believing that God speaks to her. However, when she uses this supposedly divine inspiration as a foundation for public policy, now Palin becomes a freaky true believer who shouldn't be allowed to get near the Oval Office.

In her church, Palin has prayed that the Iraq war is a "task that is from God." Ditto for a natural gas pipeline through Canada.

This probably explains why Palin is so fond of saying that she "doesn't blink." Meaning, I guess, that when fresh facts come into view, she keeps on staring at God's vision that she's fantasized in her mind. Harris writes:

What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents – and her supporters celebrate – the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson [Charlie, of ABC News] that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Plain would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:

"Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?"

"Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter."

"But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind."

"That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."

Well, Palin can pray in her fashion, and I'll pray in mine.

Dear God, if there is one, which there probably isn't, but just in case, hear my plea: Do not, repeat do not, allow Sarah Palin and John McCain to win the election in November.

Craziness can be a dose of sanity

The older I get, the more appealing a little craziness appears to me. I'm not talking about whacked out psychosis, but something milder – in the immoral, illogical, illicit, or ill-understandable sphere of strangeness.

Stuff that soothes a person's far out! soul, while making others question why he or she is marching out of the beat of the ordinary.

I'm not religious. However, there are aspects of religiosity that fill the crazy bill. Of course, theologically every religion is certifiably nuts. Intellectual or conceptual craziness isn't a positive sort of far out-ness.

On the other hand, when I watch TV and see church-goers dancing in the aisles, waving their hands in the air, praising Jesus with huge smiles on their faces – now that is weird enough to make me say "right on."

In general, though, religions discourage eccentric individualism. That's strange, given that the major figures of every religion, plus revered mystics of many varieties, thought and acted in decidedly unconventional ways.

Once spirituality becomes institutionalized, believers are expected to toe the dogmatic line and express their exuberance for life within well-defined bounds. You can do this, but not that. Intuitive feelings of right and wrong are repressed in favor of what a holy book or ecclesiastical hierarchy demands.

Sad. We lose a lot when we give up our personal passions.

I admire people who go their own way, regardless of how others view them. Eric, a childhood friend who was older than me, had a marvelous collection of surplus British Army and Navy uniforms (World War II vintage). He'd be seen riding his bike down the street, wearing a plumed "Bengal Lancer" helmet, whipping his rear fender with a riding crop.

At an early age he taught me the value of eccentricity. Which is a loaded word, because what's strange to other people is absolutely normal to the supposed "eccentric."

The way I see it, something in us longs to be way out there. There's also a part of us that likes to curl up with safe and sane conformity. Honoring both sides of ourselves, allowing each to come out and play naturally, seems to be key to living life happily and fully.

Summer is motorcycle/scooter time here in Oregon. I had a motorcycle for a while about a dozen years ago. Now I'm lusting after a maxi-scooter, being much more of a Suzuki Burgman than a Harley Davidson guy.

I ponder the pros and cons of getting around on two highly motorized wheels. When I had my motorcycle, just about everybody had a story about someone getting killed or maimed on one (many tales, though, were along the lines of "this dude I know drank a couple of six packs, then got on his bike and was going 110 mph when he hit a parked car…" – much more an indictment of stupidity than motorcycles).

Sure, motorcycles and scooters are dangerous. Yet it's even riskier to go through life without living it the way you want to. Trusting that after death you'll have another chance at happiness is how religions play the game, but it's a bet with a high probability of going bust.

Older people often turn exceedingly cautious, adoring routine. But since they have fewer years left to live, they should be the ones out there on the edge, since there's less to lose if they fall off.

There's all kinds of ways to embrace your inner crazy. Jumping on a high-powered scooter might turn out to be one way I do it. However, everybody has their own I've always wanted to…. that's never been gotten around to.

When? That's the question.

When are we going to answer the call of our own self? When will we choose to ride the desire-horse that has been chomping on its bit, ready to gallop? When is our inner sense of what's right for us going to overwhelm the "No, don't!" coming from the world outside?

When?

[Update: for a good example on the Oregon coast of what I'm talking about, check out my HinesSight post about Aunt Mary's -- a unique purveyor of vegan food and porn.]

Best reason for why you don’t exist

Got to be fair. Can't play favorites. A few days ago I talked about the best reason why God doesn't exist. Now, here's the flip side: why you, and I, don't exist.

This is a central Buddhist notion, anatta, no-self. But my big fat ego has resisted the notion, despite the many times I've read about it. Somehow I just seem so…I don't know…me.

Last night, though, I heard myself talking as if I believed that there's no enduring central core to me. Laurel and I went out to dinner with some visiting relatives and two of their old college friends, who drove up from Eugene.

The conversation turned philosophical near the end of the evening. There wasn't a religious soul in the bunch, so we were all on the same churchless wavelength.

I shared my "don't know" rap, which segued into mentions of Douglas Hofstadter's notion that humans are a strange loop. We're simultaneously aware, and aware of our awareness. [See "You're a strange loop (and that's OK)" and "If I'm not an 'I', what am I?"]

I talked about how Hofstadter considers that his wife lives on in his memories, and other traces that she has left behind. But not otherwise.

And that, if all of our memories and other experiences could be transferred into a sophisticated computer, wouldn't that device be indistinguishable from who we feel ourselves to be now, in a non-bodily sense?

So where am "I" in all this? Well, in the past I've enjoyed believing that it could be possible to enter a state of pure consciousness where you're just a blissful bubble of being, or something equally (and indescribably) ethereal.

After all, if I could simply exist, not as anything outside of myself but as existence plain and simple, then seemingly this would be a really real me – separate from everything else.

I've never been able to do this, though.

And the more I've pondered the possibility, the less likely it seems. How would I know that I existed if there wasn't anything to be aware of except my own awareness? What's the difference between being dead and not knowing that you're alive?

This morning I picked up a constant companion in my meditation enclave, Alan Watts' "The Wisdom of Insecurity." Thumbing though a few pages, these thoughts hit me with a fresh anatta'ish force.

In each present experience you were only aware of that experience. You were never able to separate the thinker from the thought, the knower from the known. All you ever found was a new thought, a new experience.

To be aware, then, is to be aware of thoughts, feelings, sensations, desires, and all other forms of experience. Never at any time are you aware of anything which is not experience, not a thought or feeling, but instead an experience, thinker, or feeler. If this is so, what makes us think that any such thing exists?

Watts then talks about how memory enables us to recollect what we've experienced previously. This allows us to fashion a self out of the bits and pieces of prior experiences – not the whole shebang, obviously, because our memories are so incomplete and selective.

He says:

But, as a matter of fact, you cannot compare this present experience with a past experience. You can only compare it with a memory of the past, which is a part of the present experience. When you see clearly that memory is a form of present experience, it will be obvious that trying to separate yourself form this experience is as impossible as trying to make your teeth bite themselves.

There is simply experience. There is not someone or something experiencing experience! You do not feel feelings, think thoughts, or sense sensations any more than you hear hearing, see sight, or smell smelling.

…No one ever found an "I" apart from some present experience, or some experience apart from an "I" – which is only to say that the two are the same thing.

Pretty persuasive. I still feel like me, but the foundation on which I'm standing is beginning to seem more like quicksand rather than concrete.

I could slip away at any moment. Which, for Watts, is the wisest thing to do.

The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the "I" out of the experience. We pretend that we are amoebas, and try to protect ourselves from life by splitting in two.

Sanity, wholeness, and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate "I" or mind can be found.

Churchlessness is more godly than religion

How can people believe that giving up religiosity makes someone less spiritual, less loving, less humble, less of a truth seeker?

Actually, becoming churchless brings one closer to God. (Let's define that term: "God," for me, is shorthand for "ultimate reality." It denotes mystery, not the known.) Here's why:

You're religious if you believe…

-- there's only one path to God, and you're on it
-- God looks with special favor on the members of your faith
-- after death, you're headed in a better direction than non-believers
-- God likes certain thoughts and actions, and you know what those are
-- aside from God, there's also a devil or negative power who misleads people (but not you!)
-- ultimate truth can be described, and you know the holy words that say it best

You're churchless if you believe…

-- the mystery of God has no limit or boundaries, nor a defined entrance
-- God is omnipresent and omnibenevolent, not playing favorites
-- nobody knows what happens after death, which makes us all equal
-- the nature of God being unknown, morality springs from our own knowing and choosing
-- God is more likely to be oneness rather than twoness, but nobody knows
-- whatever ultimate truth is, no human concepts and words can encompass it

To be unrestrictedly open to God in whatever form this being, power, principle, or whatever might be experienced … this seems to me to be the most spiritual attitude one can have.

In the "churchless" description above, there's a no on every line. That's because no boundaries can be placed around God. How can ultimate reality be put in a box?

It's ultimate! Beyond every other beyond. Further than all furtherness.

I don't see it playing favorites. I can't believe that it smiles on some and frowns on others. I reject the notion that anyone can describe it.

You're free to disagree. Most people on Earth do. That's why religions are so popular. They offer a feeling of "I'm a special beloved of God."

Me, I enjoy a different feeling: I'm nothing special; I know nothing about God; I may be nothing after I die.

Nothing is a fine place to be, once you get used to its unfamiliar spaciousness.

Best reason for why God doesn’t exist

Big topic: why God doesn't exist. And an uncomfortable one, for most people. So I'll ease into it, before doing my best to burst some believing bubbles.

I experienced a quasi-miracle this morning. "Quasi," because it really wasn't one. But to someone religious what happened to me would be nothing short of miraculous. Aside from the fact that the miracle pointed to no-God.

A few days ago I wrote about multiple universes and my newly founded Church of Holy Fuck! Because that's what I say when I ponder the notion of many me's (and you's) populating the infinite cosmos.

I don't come across mentions of multiple universes very often. My reading usually goes off in different directions. Such as "Why I Became an Atheist: a former preacher rejects Christianity," by John Loftus.

So there I was this morning, making my way through the "Does God Exist?" chapter, and I came across…

What is the possibility of our particular universe having arisen out of an infinite VOID where there may be up to an infinite number of universes each arising out of the VOID, and where there may be no ordered laws prohibiting something coming from nothing, or something existing without beginning? Who knows?

Not me, surely. No one, really.

But I did know at that moment, or rather, feel, that something was sending a message to me. After all, what is the chance that I'd read the same sentiment about multiple universes just a few days apart, in two widely dissimilar books, when in my whole life I'd only been exposed to these thoughts a handful of times?

Well, obviously the chance is 100%, because it happened to me. Anything that happens, in fact, is absolutely certain to occur – since it did.

Religious types like to emphasize how unlikely it is that our universe could have come into being in the life-compatible fashion that it did, with gravity and other forces of nature supposedly fine-tuned to allow the formation of stars and such, which allows enough time for planets (and eventually humans) to evolve.

But Loftus points out:

Stating the odds as intelligent design (ID) theorists do is highly misleading since they presume that life must have turned out exactly as it has. All we are left with is rarity. But "rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable." [quote from John Allen Paulos, "Innumeracy"]

So here's the best reason for concluding that God doesn't exist: there's no need for God.

At least, not as an explanation for why the universe is what it is. God may fulfill various human needs (sense of meaning, relief from fear of death, and so on), but there's no reason the cosmos needs a reason for existing.

Bertrand Russell observed in an interesting radio debate on the existence of God, " I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all. " Of course, he still had a lot else to say. Russell was a philosopher, after all.

This makes increasing sense to me. The more I read scientific, religious, metaphysical, mystical, and philosophical speculation about the origin of the universe, the more ludicrous all this seems.

Russell said in the interview that "the concept of cause is not applicable to the total." Similarly, Loftus writes:

Whenever it comes to unexplainable "brute facts," we reach an impasse. We all must begin with something that exists as a "brute fact." Since this is the case, agnosticism is the default intellectual position. When leaving the default position, Christians must have reasons for struggling up the ladder to a full-blown Christianity, past pantheism, deism, Judaism, and Islam. Me? It's just easier to move in the direction agnosticism already pushes me toward, atheism.

In his book Loftus discusses (and demolishes) the classic arguments for God's existence. Everyone has their favorite reasons for believing or not believing. To me, the best reason for disbelief is that no reason for the universe is necessary.

When you ask a religious believer "Who or what created God?" likely they'll answer, "God simply is. Always has been, always will be."

OK, fine answer. Seemingly there has to be a point where rationality ends, where chains of cause and effect come to an end, where human consciousness runs up against a blank wall of primal Mystery.

However, there's no need for God to be that point. The universe serves just as well. So we can just as well say, "The cosmos simply is. Always has been, always will be."

Now, this doesn't mean for certain that there is no God. It simply means that there is no need to hypothesize that God exists. Which pretty much comes to the same thing, given the lack of evidence for God's existence.

Every religion, spiritual path, or mystic teaching that I'm aware of involves a belief that the essence of God or ultimate reality is a mystery. Why, then, look far afield in a speculative transcendent realm for the Great Unknown?

The edges of the physical universe are just as mysterious. What, if anything, lies beyond the time and space we experience now? Nobody knows.

Bow down before the mystery close at hand. There's no need to believe in any other.

Join the Church of Holy Fuck!

There's nothing wrong with churches that some churchlessness won't fix. After all, that's what this blog is. This morning I was inspired to become the first member of another churchless church, that of Holy Fuck!

In chartering this institution within my own psyche, my first decision was whether the exclamation point was necessary.

Grammatically, it could be confusing – as in the title of this post.

Does the ! go with the entire sentence, or just with Church of Holy Fuck! I've concluded that it's better to be confused than lackadaisical. Hence, I'm decreeing that an exclamation point shall always be part of the church's name.

If you don't agree, tough. Start your own church.

I'm hoping you'll convert to the Church of Holy Fuck! though, because it's a marvelous faith. It blends divinity and profanity, which strikes me as the only way to go through life.

Proving that my experience is in line with my philosophy, I can testify that Holy fuck! is a mantra that frequently springs to mind. I'm constantly being amazed and surprised by reality. And that's the church's only form of worship.

Befuddlement. At which point we believers in our own unknowing honor Most Majestic Reality with a heartfelt Holy fuck!

The cosmos has countless ways of revealing its holy fuckness. If you haven't encountered one of them by noon, you're probably still sleeping. Or, brain dead.

Today I was blessed with several Holy fuck!'s early in my day, before meditating. I'd reached the final chapters of "Decoding the Universe" by Charles Seife (subtitle: "How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes").

I find that science books are one of the best means of eliciting a Holy fuck! in me. Religious, spiritual, metaphysical, and philosophy books usually start with a mystery, then try to explain it in a reasonable and pleasing fashion.

For example, the mystery of death. Explanation: Jesus died so that you might have eternal life (Christian version). Problem solved.

Religion appeals to those who want neat and tidy explanations that elicit a Praise the Lord! Science, on the other hand, often begins with a question and ends with a Holy fuck!

I like that. It just seems like whatever reality really is, it's unlikely to be understandable by a human consciousness. So I feel like I'm coming closer to ultimate reality, rather than further away, when my mind is blown.

Not by absurdity, which is what religion offers up. But by a reasonable chain of logic that ends by dangling us over an abyss of Holy fuck!

For example, Seife describes the extent of the knowable universe:

Since information travels no faster than the speed of light, if you draw an invisible, enormous (but finite) sphere around the Earth that has a radius of tens of billions of light-years, you encompass all of the universe that has been able to send information to us since the moment when light was set free [about 400,000 years after the big bang].

He calls this sphere the Hubble bubble. It has a radius of about 40 billion light-years. That's more than the 13.7 billion light year age of the universe, because the fabric of space has been expanding faster than the speed of light.

But for the Church of Holy Fuck! it doesn't matter what the size of the Hubble bubble, the potentially observable universe, is. The key word in the quote above is "finite."

Because Seife says that "at the moment, scientists believe that our universe is infinite in extent – that it has no borders – and that it doesn't have a funky shape that curls around on itself, as a handful of scientists have unconvincingly argued."

OK. That was news to me. I'll accept it, in part because I enjoy the Holy fuck! that comes from doing so.

If the Hubble bubble where we are is finite, and the universe is infinite, then quantum theory leads to some mind- blowing conclusions.

The wave function captures every single piece of information about all the stuff – all the matter and energy – in our Hubble bubble, whether we are aware of it or not. It encodes the location and momentum of every single atom in that Hubble bubble, as well as everything else you can possible imagine about our bubble.

In it are encoded the position and color of every lightbulb on Piccadilly Circus, the velocity of every fish in the sea, and the contents of every single book that exists on Earth. Our Hubble bubble's wave function even includes your wave function; it encodes every single morsel of information about you, down to the quantum states of each atom in your body.

Though this is an unbelievably large amount of information, our Hubble bubble's wave function contains everything about our visible universe. Just for the heck of it, let's call it wave function #153.

Now, here's where it gets fun.

I've read quite a bit about the "multiple universes" theory in quantum physics, and have discounted it as fanciful mumbo-jumbo. Seife, though, got me to see the Holy fuck! of it by emphasizing what happens if you have a finite Hubble bubble within an infinite universe.

There are only a finite number of wave functions for a Hubble volume. There are an unbelievably, unbelievably huge number of possible wave functions (call it a kergillion), but that number is finite nonetheless. So our wave function is one of kergillion possible wave functions.

…But remember, there are an infinite number of these Hubble bubbles in an infinite universe. Infinity is more than a kergillion – even more than a kergillion plus one. And once we reach a kergillion-plus-one Hubble bubbles, something incredible must have happened.

There are only a kergillion possible wave functions a Hubble bubble can have, so in a collection of a kergillion-plus-one Hubble bubbles, there must be at least one duplicate! Two Hubble bubbles must have exactly the same wave function. Every atom, every particle, every little dollop of energy is in exactly the same place, has exactly the same momentum, and is exactly the same in every single possible way you can imagine – and even in the ways that you can't imagine.

But in an infinite universe, there isn't just going to be one duplicate. Infinity just keeps on going… and going… and going.

If there's nothing particularly special about our wave function, then in a volume that contains a million kergillion Hubble bubbles, there are about a million identical copies of our universe.

…Each of those Hubble bubbles even contains an identical copy of your wave function – down to the quantum states of each atom in your body. There are a million copies of you, identical in every detail. In fact, those million dopplegangers are reading a doppelganger copy of this book and are finishing this paragraph as you are, right … now.

Holy fuck!

Doesn't matter if this is true. No one can know. Seife says, "Of all the insane things that I have tried to convince you of in this book, this is by far the craziest. I, myself, have a very, very hard time believing it…But the logic seems fairly airtight."

Do you want to live forever? In a sense, you will. Because "you" aren't at all unique, if the universe is infinite.

Each of us is purely and solely information – that's difficult to argue against, even (or especially) if one favors a mystical, non-material conception of the cosmos. After all, a soul, or spirit, must be something knowable, if only by God or the soul/spirit entity itself.

Yet there is good reason to believe that within the infinity of existence, everything exists an infinite number of times.

I like that notion. It makes eventually not being the particular being I call "me" more palatable. There are back-up Brian's scattered around all over. Just not close at hand.

Indeed, if the universe is infinite, then physicists estimate that an identical Hubble bubble should be roughly [10 to the 10^th to the 115^th] meters away from us. Of course, you'd never be able to communicate with your doppelganger, as it would be vastly, vastly more distant than the edge of our visible universe, but if the universe is infinite, that doppelganger should be there nonetheless.

Greetings, infinite number of identical Brian's!

I realize that we can't know each other, but I still want to extend a hearty Holy fuck! to each of you nonetheless – which each of us has just written on our IBM Think Pad simultaneously.

Way cool.

There's some downside to this finite Hubble bubble deal, though. A huge downside. Its description will have to wait for a post on another day.

And another Holy fuck!

If God is one, there’s no place to go

Like most people, I've got an affinity for one. It just seems so much more, well, together than two. Plus, nobody chants "We're #2! We're #2!" Or intones, "May we all realize our twoness."

Back when I was researching and writing a book about Plotinus, a Greek mystic philosopher, I spent a couple of years immersed in thoughts about oneness . After all, the title of the book is "Return to the One."

So some new comments on a well-commented older post caught my eye today. Adam said:

Tuscon,
you wrongly write:
"Philosophies like Sant Mat...are dualistic."

Sant Mat states that the reality is that God is oneness...and that duality is the illusion. The master and disciple play their parts in the play of illusion for the disciple to merge into oneness. Right?

tAo and Tucson disagreed. I did the same last year in "Is Sant Mat a non-dual spiritual practice?" It seems to me that anything can be made into one if you ignore enough parts. But is that really intrinsic oneness, especially when we're talking about ultimate reality?

If there's fifty puzzle pieces on a table top, and you ignore forty-nine of them, then you can speak of one. (Not very honestly, though.)

This seems to be Adam's argument, which is fairly common among religious believers who are attracted to unity but are members of a belief system that views God in a dualistic fashion.

They say, "Such and such, plus this and that, isn't really the foundation of our faith. These are just add-ons that obscure the simple truth that God is one."

Well, perhaps. In my previous post, though, I said:

If the overtly ritualistic and religious aspects of Sant Mat are discarded, you're left with a spiritual practice that could indeed be viewed as falling into the non-dual camp. Of course, this could be said of anything: if you take away the fluff, you're left with the essence.

What I wonder is, "Why not dive right into the essence, rather than spending time and energy wading through the fluff?" 

The older I get, the more I wonder this. Guess the next step would be to jump completely off the Wonder diving board.

Which, logically (and mystically) would land me right where I am: no movement at all.

Just about every mystic "path" has a story that runs along this line. Somebody is looking for something. He or she is frantic to find it. They run here and there, searching. And it turns out to be…right under their feet.

(For example, the In Baghdad Dreaming of Cairo tale.)

These stories resonate with me. They have a ring of truth. Especially after you've spent many years seeking in various directions.

The one place we usually fail to look for the meaning of life is right where we are. And even when a religion or spiritual path mouths the words, "Here and now," the faith's rites, rituals, and practices belie that message.

Discard all that, and where does that leave you? Probably, the place you want to be.

Taoism’s cosmic melody

Music. Sound. Vibrations. Dance. These aren't just worldly night club notions. They're also at the root of some of the world's most profound mystical and spiritual traditions.

Like, Taoism.

Yesterday I left a comment on a post, responding to some thoughts from Adam . I said:

Adam, I don't think it's accurate to say that the form of meditation practice you described differentiates RSSB/Sant Mat from all other faiths.

Sant Mat likes to claim that the "sound current" is at the foundation of every deep mystical practice. This is an exaggeration, but I have quite a collection of books that describe meditation practices involving hearing a subtle spiritual sound.

For example, Taoism, the mystical side of it, speaks of an audible energy that permeates all of the cosmos. However, Taoism obviously doesn't believe in the need for a "perfect master" to connect the meditator with this power, because the Tao is considered to be omnipresent -- the root of all things.

So meditation on an inner sound isn't unique to Sant Mat.

Adam replied with, "Brian, How does taoism recommend one be able to hear this audible energy?" Here's an answer.

This morning I reviewed some passages I'd highlighted in Livia Kohn's "Taoist Mystical Philosophy." She describes the teachings of the Xisheng jing ("Scripture of Western Ascension"), a text that dates to about the fifth century.

Here's a central goal of Taoism, understanding that wu wei, effortless effort, isn't aimed at forceful striving but at gently relaxing into what we already are.

To attain oneness with the Tao, one has to abandon all ego personality, blot out the intention and silence the will, go back to the center of the mind, isolate the spirit and make it stable and infused with Tao…Unity in thinking and feeling is attained, the inner spark of the mind joins with the pure cosmic energy of the Tao. Human beings not only intuit the divine reality within and without, but join it with all their being.

…Human beings are within the Tao because the Tao is the enveloping order of the whole universe. But the Tao is also within every human being inasmuch as he or she needs it to be alive, to be himself or herself.

How does a person become one with the Tao? Simple, but maybe not easy. Stop being so separate.

One first examines the structure of one's mind and finds the root of all problems in the development of an ego-identity, which must be abolished and eradicated completely. The process by which this is achieved is called "forgetting": first one forgets to make any distinctions between the various living beings without, then one forgets the value judgments attached to mental classifications within.

Increasingly one merges one's mind with the Tao, the underlying flow of existence as such. In the end there is no more knowing, no more clinging, no more definite identity. When there are no more categories of perception, life and death subjectively cease to exist.

Fully at one with the flow of existence, the mystic is then able to enjoy everything as it is, without ever wishing to change it, without the least desire or regret for anything.

Now we come to a seeming contradiction. I say seeming, because dualistic logic takes a hike in Taoism (as it does in quantum theory). Either-or is supplanted by both-and, or none of the above. On the one hand…

According to these descriptions, the Tao is a force that cannot be grasped, it is invisible, inaudible, and subtle…The realization of the Tao is a state of dissolution, of union where all sensual perception is replaced by the non-seeing and non-hearing qualities of the Tao itself.

On the other hand…

In the cosmology of Taoist mystical philosophy, one may imagine the Tao as a tone of a certain wavelength that pervades and encompasses all there is. Or, as the Taoists themselves have it, a certain quality of qi that underlies and furnishes all existence.

…In terms of Taoist mystical philosophy, this means that the more out of tune any individual is, the more "evil" he is from the point of view of the Tao, the more unhappy he feels, the less fortunate he appears. Such "evil" is not fundamental; it is not rooted in the cosmos. It is merely a deviation, a change in pattern, a different wavelength, an unmatched pitch.

Beings have the potential to be either in tune or out of tune with the true pitch of the Tao. It was the Tao itself that equipped them with the individual power of producing their own tones. The power and beauty of the Taoist universe lies exactly in this freedom that is yet a form of bondage.

The bond of the Tao is an inner tendency, a feeling of belonging, a natural affinity for the right sound, a deep longing for peace and harmony. Never fully free from the all-encompassing flow of nature, all beings feel the need to return to the perfect harmony that they had before they were born. Like fish out of water, they feel estranged away from the Tao.

…The sage, then, is one who has found perfect pitch in all his thoughts and actions. He happily goes along with the piping of the Tao and never adds even a trace of disharmony to the cosmic concert.

Sweet! Tell me more about how to dance with the universal music.

Overall, the more positive and relaxed qualities of human life and mind are therefore associated with the Tao. All violent emotions and tensions of humanity are linked to the conscious mind...Taoist mystical practice, then, reduces and controls the conscious mind in favor of the eternal Tao.

…Yearning and worry are forms of passions and desires; they always go together with fear and joy, anxiety and hope. The activity of the mystic consequently consists of reducing and eventually abandoning this misdirected power of thought, to keep all thinking in the present and on the Tao in a state of meditation.

…Thinking no longer with the mind, the accomplished mystic now lives by the spirit alone…Ordinary knowledge is nothing but a form of ignorance, a foolhardy way of taking outer manifestations of things for real while in truth they are only rippling waves on the surface of the deep and eternal Tao.

Then…

The Tao, itself invisible, inaudible, and subtle, is realized fully when all ordinary sensual seeing, hearing, and knowing is completely given up. When the intention dies and becomes a pure stream of consciousness, sensual input is turned into a series of floating images and sounds…Taoist mystics increasingly see themselves confronted with the central issue of epistemology: anything heard or described in human language or common metaphors is not ultimately identical with reality or truth as such.

Now we come to the music of the Tao, which may or may not be metaphor (no one can say, since the Tao can't be spoken).

To prepare one's ears for the Tao, the Xisheng jing continues, one first of all has to abstain from listening to ordinary talk. Very gradually one's senses become softer and finer, more attuned to the subtle movements of the Tao in the world.

The Tao is barely perceptible and its sounds are faint, like the gentle tones of the flute. As one becomes increasingly able to perceive the Tao, whatever it is that one perceives lends itself less and less to considering and naming.

…The tender cosmic melody of the Tao is the purest manifestation of the musical harmony of the universe, but all existence is sound or at least like sound.

I spend about thirty years as a Sant Mat true believer. Now Taoism is my favored philosophy, in part because I absorb it naturally through the Tai Chi that I've been practicing for four years.

The way I see it – and I understand that everyone has a unique vision of how things are – the Taoist notion of a divine melody pervading the universe is a more genuine reflection of Sant Mat's shabd, dhun, or "sound current."

That is, by and large Taoism lacks the religious dogma and metaphysical baggage that organized spiritual faiths carry along.

Taoism and Sant Mat both teach that mental conceptions obscure a wordless primal reality. However, Taoism (like Buddhism) espouses no-mind, not-knowing. Sant Mat, however, is based on an involved belief system. Once someone has bought into the beliefs, further questioning and conceptualizing is supposed to stop.

So while Taoism has no-mind, Sant Mat has locked-in-place mind. The aspiring Taoist mystic seeks to embrace mystery directly; the aspiring Sant Mat mystic considers that cosmic mysteries will be revealed after travelling a well-defined path.

A final Kohn quotation:

The underlying ground is deep within; it is shrouded in darkness. One approaches it by deepening, darkening, closing in…The ideal state of mind is not so much one of joy and freedom, rather it is characterized by innocence and utter simplicity.

Life in the Tao here is a state of purity in the sense of originality. It is unsophisticated, neither brilliant nor radiant. Comparable not a glittering gem, it is more like an uncut block of wood.

Great news! Being a blockhead is just fine for a Taoist.

Anti-Pascal’s wager bets on life

Pascal's Wager frequently is held up as a reason to believe in God. As I noted in a previous post ("You're religious, but are you right?"), Pascal argued that it's best to gamble on belief.

There are four possible outcomes to the wager: (1) You believe in God and God exists, (2) You believe in God and God doesn't exist, (3) You don't believe in God and God exists, (4) You don't believe in God and God doesn't exist. Pascal held that the best and worst outcomes are (1) and (3) in which God exists. Then, a belief in God leads to eternal salvation, while disbelief leads to eternal damnation.

Even if God doesn't exist, Pascal argued that you should believe in God because this offers consolation and peace of mind while you're living—though no benefit after death. All in all, then, the benefits of believing seem to markedly exceed the benefits of not believing.

Well, not really. It's easy to refute Pascal's Wager in various ways (see here and here).

One refutation is that even if God exists, we have no idea what God's nature is. So how is it possible to believe in an entity about which, or whom, nothing is known? The belief would have to be without content – an acceptance of raw existence without attributes.

In line with this, who can say that God wants us to believe? This is the position of Clifford Pickover, which I quoted in my earlier post. He says:

I think it's even possible that God could be unhappy with those who are not rational, who believe in all sorts of things without being logical about it…I even think that such a God might punish believers for their credulity and reward clear thinkers that don't succumb to peer pressure and so forth. Of all the creatures on Earth, humans are the only ones that God gave the most intelligence, so obviously God wants us to use our intellect and to be freethinkers. So when we die, God will reward freethinkers. He won't be happy with people who tossed their reason away in favor of ignorance.

That's an appealing hypothesis for the churchless. But it's still just conjecture. The anti-Pascal Wager, however, has a lot more foundation in clear and present reality: the life we're living now. Richard Dawkins put it this way:

Suppose we grant that there is indeed some small chance that God exists. Nevertheless, it could be said that you will lead a better, fuller life if you bet on his not existing, than if you bet on his existing and therefore squander your precious time on worshipping him, sacrificing to him, fighting and dying for him, etc.

Undeniably, there's a lot to like about religion. Believers meet nice people. They do good works. They feel part of a community. They have a way of looking at the world that gives meaning to their lives.

Question is: does any of this good stuff require a belief in God? In other words, can you get all of the benefits of religion, without the nasty side effects, from an agnostic, atheistic, or non-deistic (such as a Buddhist or Taoist) stance?

I say, "sure."

A big benefit of living life without religion is that it commits you to living in the here and now, rather than the there and then. You don't have one mental foot in an imaginary after life, which causes believers to be unbalanced in earthly reality.

Interestingly, the anti-Pascal wager ends up being in line with many deeply mystical teachings. Meister Eckhart, for example, said that it is necessary to give up "God" in order to know the Godhead.

That is, our conceptions of divinity prevent us from realizing the wordless mystery of ultimate reality. We believe we know truths that we're actually ignorant of. So sincere not-knowing turns out to be a more spiritual course of action than fraudulent believing.

Pascal's Wager is founded on a belief that we can know God's payoff. The anti-Wager is a more honest bet: nobody knows what will occur in the next life, so we need to make the most of this one.

Reality offers plenty of mystery

It's baffling why people feel the need to fantasize about God and the supernatural when here-and-now reality is so full of bedazzlement.

This is one of the reasons why I liked Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God" so much. I resonated with her embracing science after discarding traditional religions and New Agey speculation.

My morning meditation corner usually has a selection of books near at hand. I bounce back and forth between mystical/spiritual and scientific themes, because I find just as much inspiration in a down to earth discussion of material reality as in a soaring paean to soulful wonders.

You want wonder? Wonder about this – some thoughts echoed in Sweeney's monologue.

The universe is some 14 billion years old. Earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years. For most of that time, nothing much was happening, life-wise, on our planet. Bacteria, single-celled creatures, slime, that sort of stuff.

To exist as that…not very enthralling.

Yet here we are, humans, able to be both aware of our awareness and conscious of our evolutionary history. We can stand back and say Wow! to where we are now.

As Sweeney says, we carry all of life within our genes. We've been everything, literally. And still are. There's an unbroken connection between the first stirring of life on Earth and us. If there wasn't, we wouldn't be here.

It's easier to recognize this in our most recent human ancestors. Mother + father = me. And you. We're entirely the product of two people, as they were. And so on, and so on.

If any one of those couplings, going back tens of millions of years, hadn't been consummated…no me or you.

Of course, this "miraculous" happenstance also is entirely predictable. Our existence is testimony to the fact that each of our ancestors successfully got it on, merging eggs and sperm countless times, the end result being a being who can read or write a blog post like this.

So there's another way to look at death, other than fearfully: with wonder and gratitude.

Yes, it's too bad that we can't live for a thousand years, or forever. Yes, it's too bad that life is filled with problems, suffering, misfortune, confusion, uncertainty.

However, the fact is that each of us is alive to ponder life. Didn't have to be that way. There was no cosmic guarantee at the beginning of time that you'd be you and I'd be me.

Yet here we are!

Wow!

“Letting go of God” – great churchless inspiration

After learning about Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God" monologue several years ago, I wrote a post about her evolution from Christian believer to scientific skeptic – without having heard her entire take on the God thing.

"Letting Go of God" has been sitting on my iPod, but until yesterday I'd hadn't gotten around to listening to all of it. A long car trip to central Oregon and back was the perfect opportunity to fill my questioning psyche with Sweeney's words.

Which, it turned out, described a spiritual journey that bore considerable resemblance to mine. And, I'm sure, that of many other people.

Sweeney talks about her up and down relationship with faith. She'd discard one conception of God, then latch on to another.

This is the part of her monologue that I enjoyed the most. The first section about her childhood, viewable on You Tube, was entertaining but not particularly interesting to me.

But when she gets into how Buddhism seemed so right, and then so wrong (along with New Age thinking and Deepak Chopra), I loved Sweeney's honesty.

She's a truth seeker, along with being an actress and comedian. She has a talent for pithy one-liners. Such as (to my recollection), "it turns out that the invisible and the non-existent have a lot in common."

I particularly liked her judgment of Deepak Chopra's pop science after Sweeney took a class in quantum physics: "He's full of shit!" Absolutely true. I've read a lot about quantum physics myself, and what Chopra promulgates in his books and talks is quantum B.S.

Sweeney ends up engrossed by science, finding as much mystery in the physical cosmos as religion attributes to God. She deals with death not by fantasizing this reality away via religious fantasies, but by facing the prospect of her eternal non-existence head-on.

You can peruse a list of the Top Ten Things Julia Sweeney learned from letting go of god. And listen to the 2006 NPR interview that introduced me to her.

There's no substitute for her entire monologue, though. You can get the CDs from Amazon, Audible, or iTunes.

The strange side of guru devotion

Today I got an email about the recent visit of an Indian guru, Gurinder Singh, to Petaluma, California. The guru's organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), has built a large center there. It's mainly used for gatherings of devotees during Gurinder Singh's periodic, and often unscheduled, visits.

I found the following tale interesting, not least because I was an active member of RSSB for many years. Since most people who read this post won't be familiar with the group, or with a few Indian words, here's some background.

"Seva" means service, volunteering.

It takes on a special cast when done for the guru, as opposed, say, to helping out at a senior center. Seva is supposed to make you humble. But as you'll read below, there's some question about how well it serves that purpose.

"Sevadars" are people who do seva.

As is the case in most organizations, there's a sevadar hierarchy. Since access to the guru is prized highly (he is viewed as God in human form), the ability to see him close-up and personal sends RSSB initiates into devotional heaven. So "face time" with the guru is the compensation most desired by sevadars.

I used to do a lot of seva, of various kinds. During several organized tours by the guru I was a security sevadar, which is pretty high on the seva pecking order.

Once, in Palm Springs, I stood next to the auditorium stage while Gurinder Singh was giving his talk. That meant I couldn't see him, since I was supposed to watch the audience for attackers, or whatever. But I was close to him! So that was great seva.

That experience made me less humble, in retrospect. By contrast, another time I did child care seva during the guru's talk – missing it completely. Yet I didn't mind, because parents of the children were benefitting.

After all, if "selfless service" isn't making people less self-centered, what's the point of it? Read the following and see if you think RSSB seva is doing the job.

I've left off some personal identifiers, since those who provided this information might prefer to remain anonymous.

Hi Brian, I am not sure if you heard about this but I got it from 2 of my friends in Petaluma.

When the "Core Sevadars", I think that means those who did seva twice a month on a regular basis, showed up to help with the logistics of Baba Ji's [the guru's] visit, they were broken into 4 categories.  The yellow badges (the executive class), the green badges (the managerial class), the red badges (the secretarial class), and the no color badges (those who were looked upon as having no class).

At around 11:30 on Tuesday the no class sevadars were told to go to Building 7 to eat lunch, which is what they did.  After this guards were posted at all the exits and told not to let anyone out.  When management was asked why they were being held they were told that they did not want the sevadars to be given priority seating just because they were there before the general public and because they were supposed to do seva out of love, not so that they could get a better seat.  They were told that 15 minutes after the general population began showing up at 2 they would be released.  The general population starting showing up at 1 and they were still kept caged up till 2:15.

One guy even broke out and while the guard was frantically calling for help on his walkie talkie others reasoned with him and asked if he wanted to start a fist fight with the guy. 

 In the end, all the yellow, red, and green badge people sat up front, the white badges sat behind them, and R.S. began to look more and more like the weird cult it has become. 

The following day all the sevadars who had been coming every Wednesday (one of my friends had been coming for 10 years every week on Wednesdays and Saturdays) were told by phone that Petaluma would be closed on Wednesday and not to come.  One of the Wednesday sevadar group was told this and also assigned the task of calling the other Wednesday sevadars to keep out. 

 On Wednesday there was an invitation-only party with Baba Ji.  It had a list of about 100 people.  This included the sevadar elites and their family members and friends.  If someone tried to get in their name was compared to the guest list and they were not allowed to come in if their name was not on the list. 

I live in ______ now and I can't imagine the people here behaving this way, but then again, once upon a time I could not imagine this happening anywhere.

Hope you are well and that you are continuing to seek the truth (whatever the hell that is) as Maharaj Ji [Gurinder Singh's predecessor] taught us to. Maybe this atrocity against truth will make for a good blog subject. 

Well, yes, it did.

What strikes me the most about this story (my wife too, when I read it to her) is the part about keeping people locked up in a building to enforce their humility.

Why not have someone stand up during lunch and say, "Here's something to consider, everyone. We're able to be here early as volunteer sevadars. It might be nice to give other people a chance to enter the meeting hall first, especially since some of them will have travelled quite a ways to hear Baba Ji."

And leave it at that.

This was one of the things I didn't like about RSSB: the artificial efforts to lessen egos, which seemed to be carried out by those who had the biggest egos of all.

Once I was at a meeting where people were advised never to thank speakers who gave talks locally, because this would enlarge the speakers' egos. I disagreed, saying that normal human courtesies are just that, normal.

Keeping volunteers locked up in a building for two and a half hours so they won't rush into an auditorium before others coming to hear a talk, is that normal?