Church of the Churchless

Mystic atheism is a cool non-belief

I've found a new way to describe myself philosophically: mystic atheist. Along with agnostic, humanist,Taoist, and existentialist. 

Maybe I'll make up a non-business card with this title, since it fits with my non-belief system. The card would stimulate some interesting conversations when I handed it out, I bet.

Thanks for discovering mystic atheist go to two people: one guy who emailed me about another guy. The first wanted to tell me about "Kissing Hank's Ass," a marvelous irreligious fable that I'd already blogged about several years ago.

The second is James Huber, who wrote the piece. When I followed the email link to his web site, I noticed a couple of other writings that looked interesting. "Mystic Atheism" then led me to "Materialistic Enlightenment."

Interestingly, I'd mentioned "Mystic Atheism" in my 2006 blog post about "Kissing Hank's Ass." But I guess I wasn't ready to appreciate it's profundity back then.

Now that I've reached a higher stage of mystic atheist materialistic enlightenment, I'm better able to resonate with Huber's insights -- an excerpt from which you can read a few paragraphs down in a continuation to this post.

I love how he speaks about a "presence" that he sensed when he was experiencing some form of religiosity or spirituality. Eventually he realized that this presence was the common denominator between all religions and spiritual paths:

Everyday physical reality.

What I understood in that shining moment were that all the mystic experiences I had ever had could easily be unified with a single, simple principle: they're all 99.9% bullshit. What truth they hold is simple, ordinary, reality. They look exotic and mysterious because they go to great lengths to hide reality. The truth at the center of all religion shines through despite the metaphysical trappings, not because of them.

Read on, and you'll find out that God spoke to Huber, revealing that God doesn't exist. Ah, that's my kind of enlightenment.

Religious belief, Dumbo, and the placebo effect

After reading a fascinating article in Newsweek about how antidepressants appear to be no more effective than a placebo, I got to wondering whether religions operate the same way.

Patients on a placebo improved about 75 percent as much as those on drugs. Put another way, three quarters of the benefit from antidepressants seems to be a placebo effect.

When people believe that a placebo -- a sham medical intervention -- is an effective treatment, that belief often is self-fulfilling. Meaning, they get better because they believed they should get better.

How this happens is largely a mystery. But there are some promising hypotheses. A sidebar to the Newsweek article says:

In addition to depression, many illnesses show a strong response to placebo treatments. These tend to be conditions for which the body's own biochemicals, such as opiates and dopamine, act as natural medications. Because placebos trigger the production of these compounds, dummy pills can be almost as effective as real ones.

...Illnesses that do not respond to the body's natural opiates and other compounds show little to no placebo response either.

Interesting. Can't help recalling Karl Marx's quote, "Religion is the opiate of the people." Believe and you shall get high. Or cured.

What's wrong with that?

This is one of the questions Sharon Begley, author of the Newsweek piece, struggles to answer. She was asked by a friend if she knew of research that would help him decide whether a new antidepressant recommended by his doctor might finally lift his depression.

Begley is well aware of the placebo effect, so she decided to keep her mouth shut.

Explain that it's all in their heads, that the reason they're benefiting is the same reason why Disney's Dumbo could initially fly only with a feather clutched in his teeth -- believing makes it so -- and the magic dissipates like fairy dust in a windstorm.

If you're not familiar with Dumbo (an elephant), or have forgotten the story, here's a synopsis courtesy of Wikipedia.

To cheer Dumbo up, Timothy takes him to visit his mother. On the way back Dumbo cries and then starts to hiccup so Timothy decides to take him for a drink of water from a bucket which, unknown to him, has accidentally had a bottle of champagne knocked into it. As a result, Dumbo and Timothy both become drunk and see hallucinations of pink elephants.

The next morning, Dumbo and Timothy wake up in a tree. Timothy wonders how they got up in the tree, and concludes that Dumbo flew up there using his large ears as wings. With the help of a group of crows, Timothy is able to get Dumbo to fly again, using a psychological trick of a "magic feather" to boost his confidence.

Back at the circus, Dumbo must perform his stunt of jumping from a high building, this time from a much higher platform. On the way down, Dumbo loses the feather and Timothy tells him that the feather was never magical, and that he is still able to fly. Dumbo is able to pull out of the dive and flies around the circus.

Ah, a great lesson! Get drunk and then you'll be able to fly. They don't make Disney movies like that anymore.

Here's another lesson: Dumbo knew how to fly, but he forgot. Losing confidence in himself, he needed the crutch of a supposedly magic feather for a while. But when Dumbo lost the feather, he learned he could still fly.

This is why I feel fine having a churchless blog. I'm not worried, as Begley was, that I'll  be depriving people of a feel-good benefit if they stop believing in a placebo -- religion.

There's no proof of the effectiveness of religion in curing the problems true believers are seeking help for: cheating death via a happy afterlife; having sins, or karmas, forgiven; understanding the whys and wherefores of how the cosmos came to be, and so on.

Now, I can sympathize with doctors who prescribe a placebo because believing in the effectiveness of an ineffective drug seems to stimulate real biochemicals in the body that really make people feel better and help healing.

But the situation is different with religion. It's more of a Dumbo sort of deal.

The "magic feather" of religious belief isn't really doing anything substantial. There's no actual cheating of death going on, no genuine absolution of sins/karma, no true grasping of truth about the ultimate nature of the cosmos.

Each of us already knows how to find meaning and happiness in our lives. We just need to live life meaningfully in a happy fashion.

I realize that it may seem easier to fly with someone else's wings, to adopt their beliefs, teachings, philosophy, dogmas, theologies. However, there actually isn't any "their" there.

Meaning, whatever meaning we find in life always comes from us. Like Dumbo, we just get deceived into believing that some religious magic feather is the reason our hearts seem to be soaring higher than usual.

Lose the feather, and you'll realize that the feeling hasn't been lost. It's still with you. Except, now you know that it comes from you. Or is you.

The sugar pill has been seen through. The placebo of blind faith has been thrown away. You've become your own cure, because you've come to understand that you were never sick.

Now its clear: Religion was making you think there was something wrong with you, so it could continue to peddle its useless nostrums. From now on, your medicine chest of meaning only will be filled with what genuinely works for you.

If "God" is mystery, there's no pointing to God

Religion is strange. Most faiths teach that God, or whatever the highest divinity is called, is transcendent, mysterious, ineffable, incapable of being described in words.

Yet these faiths also aren't shy about using a whole lot of words, concepts, dogmas, and such to tell us what God is like and why it is so important to believe in Him, Her, or It. They want to have their cake of mystery and eat it too.

Obviously there are degrees to which something can be precisely described. We can analyze the chemical composition of a strawberry, measure it, photograph it, write reams about it.

But when I pop a delicious Oregon strawberry into my mouth, that's a whole different sort of reality from all of those descriptions. I can't really describe what my direct experience of the taste of a sweet strawberry is like.

Religious believers are fond of saying that this is the same with God: He/She/It can be experienced but not elucidated. In a comment on this post, I acknowledged that argument yet rejected it.

It's sort of like pointing at a strawberry field and saying, "I can't really describe what the berries taste like, or prove to you that I love their juiciness, but I invite you to pick one, put it in your mouth, and taste for yourself."

However, in this case there is evidence for a strawberry field. Just not the taste. I read Myers as saying that if religion posits supernatural forces which operate in the physical world, this is akin to a strawberry field -- something demonstrable, albeit with effects that are essentially immeasurable.

Absent this sort of evidence, Taoism's and Zen's pointing finger really isn't different in kind from religious dogma, such as a Christian saying "I can't show Jesus' love to you, but if you open your heart to him, you'll discover it for yourself."

Pointing a finger at the moon to draw someone's attention to it (as opposed to a reflection in water, say) makes sense because the moon clearly exists.

However, those who claim that some mysterious gesture, utterance, koan, scripture, ritual, or whatever is a means of pointing toward an experience of what God, or the cosmos, is all about are unnecessarily complicating things.

Why not leave mystery alone?

Why give it a name -- "God," "Brahman," "Tao," "Buddha nature" -- and then say, it's beyond all names and descriptions. What's wrong with admitting, the ultimate reality of the cosmos is a big fucking mystery to me, so I'm clueless.

In the introduction to Karen Armstrong's new book, "The Case for God," she says, "People of faith admit in theory that God is utterly transcendent, but they seem sometimes to assume that they know exactly who 'he' is and what he thinks, loves, and expects."

Well, I'd say more often than sometimes.

Most religious believers aren't reticent about telling us what God, spirit, soul, the afterlife, and other supposedly metaphysical realities are all about. Yet Armstrong challenges this, and is hopeful that mystery can be re-embraced.

We are seeing a great deal of strident dogmatism today, religious and secular, but there is also a growing appreciation of the value of unknowing... There is a long religious tradition that emphasized the importance of recognizing the limits of our knowledge, of silence, reticence, and awe. That is what I hope to explore in this book.

Great. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.

However, a well-written and thoughtful Amazon reader review by Paul Fidalgo of "The Case for God" leads me to think that Karen Armstrong's approach to religion is still going to be too religious'y for me, notwithstanding her embrace of mystery.

Armstrong has a particular bone to pick with what we understand today as atheism, most vigorously with the New Atheists, who she says choose the idol-God of the incorrectly-religious to assert the non-existence of.

But Armstrong herself, as many have pointed out before me, defines God out of all notions of existence anyway, leaving nothing to believe in to begin with. Speaking for atheists (if I may for the moment), I think it is safe to say that whether we are talking about a vengeful Old Testament Yahweh or a non-definable, quasi-existent infinite ultimateness of the divine logos, both are equally unprovable, devoid of evidence, and not worthy of acceptance.

Like many of the New Atheists' critics, she complains that they are not sufficiently well-versed in theology, and are therefore in no position to weigh in on the question of God's existence.

This is akin to saying that one cannot assert the nonexistence of the Starship Enterprise unless one has studied every episode of every Star Trek series, earned a degree in startrekology, and published scholarly articles on the debate as to whether resistance truly is futile.

To Armstrong, this rationalist line of thinking shuts out alternate means of arriving at "truths," for Armstrong rests on the also-unprovable notion that truth is a fluid, utterly subjective concept that can be realized by means other than reason. This mindset obviously opens up a formidable can of worms, as any cockamamie "methodology" that someone chooses, and any absurd answers they turn up, suddenly become equally valid.

For Armstrong, there is rational truth and religious truth, and religion--something she insists should be viewed as a discipline and practice rather than a belief system--is equally capable of arriving at truth as science.

What truths religion is supposed to reveal is, of course, not terribly well defined, and one is forced to infer that the correct truths are those that Armstrong has revealed to us; God is too out-there for mere existence, thinking otherwise is wrong, and we should only talk about what God is not, though we're pretty sure it's all about love and tolerance.

Throw in a few dashes of meaningless terms like "the infinite," "ultimate truth," "inner essences," and things that have "no qualities," and you have some idea of what Armstrong is talking about. Or, more likely, you don't.

I want my "spirituality" to be physical

I had an interesting experience this morning. Sitting in my meditation area, sipping a strong cup of coffee, I settled down to enjoy reading a spiritual book.

I'd already read about half of Scott Kiloby's "Love's Quiet Revolution." My churchless psyche was enjoying his subtitle theme, the end of the spiritual search. I wasn't agreeing with everything Kiloby said, but his general stance seemed agreeable enough.

Until... it didn't.

I started using my highlighter to pen in yellow question marks in the margins. Lots of them. I skipped through pages that now struck me as ridiculous.

Why? Because scientific reality had caused me to see spiritual speculation for what it is: an unfounded belief system, even if it is presented in a non-dogmatic, non-religious fashion.

My previous post about how the brain's "dark energy" cast doubt on the possibility of pure awareness had led me to look at statements like these in Kiloby's book with much more skeptical eyes.

Notice that all cravings and obsessions arise from a formless awareness within you, and dissolve back into it. Allow that formless awareness to become aware of itself.

..Nothing needs to happen for awakeness to be realized. It is no different than simply opening your eyes to awaken from a dream at night. It is seeing the whole movement of the self and its entire dream that it is the center of life and separate from everything it sees.

This is just flat wrong, given what neuroscience knows about how the brain works. It isn't possible to see the "entire dream" of the self which supposedly arises from a "formless awareness."

The human brain/mind is much more complex than that. It filters and interprets reality through unconscious processing systems.

Our thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and what-not "bubble up" from sources considerably deeper than what appears to us as the surface of a stream of consciousness. 

This doesn't negate the value of meditation, contemplation, mindfulness, positive thinking, and the many other activities often called "spiritual practices." However, they really aren't spiritual, if this word is taken to mean non-physical.

That's why I want my spirituality to be physical: I want it to be real.

That, um, realization hit me this morning, hard. Suddenly I wasn't at all interested in reading airy-fairy notions that weren't grounded in at least a semblance of what science knows about how the brain and mind work.

Would anyone want to go to a fitness coach or trainer who didn't grasp the essential nature of the human body? If he or she said "I'll teach you how to jump 100 yards and run a mile in 30 seconds" you'd be justified in walking away, fast.

The body has limitations. It can only do what it is capable of doing. Same with the brain and mind, which naturally are part of the body.

My wife has been listening to an audio book about modern neuroscience. She's a retired psychotherapist, so knows a lot about how the brain functions. When I mentioned to her that I'd been reading books that talk about "pure awareness," Laurel said "that's impossible."

I agree. Pure awareness is a belief, a concept, an abstraction -- just like "Jesus saves," except in a much less religious (or at least, monotheistic) context.

Neuroscience has a lot to learn about the brain's default mode network, which I discussed in my "Brain's dark energy casts doubt on pure awareness" post. The entire Scientific American article that I cited isn't available online, but a scholarly (yet readable) review of the subject by Marcus Raichle (author of the article) and Abraham Snyder can be found here.

Here's an excerpt:

Finally, there is another reason for difficulty and that lies in a difference in perspective regarding one's view of brain function. One view posits that the brain is primarily reflexive, driven by the momentary demands of the environment.

The other view is that the brain's operations are mainly intrinsic involving the maintenance of information for interpreting, responding to and even predicting environmental demands.

The former has motivated most neuroscience research including that with functional neuroimaging. This is likely the case because experiments designed to measure brain responses to controlled stimuli and carefully designed tasks can be rigorously controlled whereas evaluating the behavioral relevance of intrinsic brain activity can be an illusive enterprise.

The hypothesis that intrinsic activity is critical to brain function and behavior can be traced back over two millennia:

“The fact that the body is lying down is no reason for supposing that the mind is at peace. Rest is... far from restful.” Seneca (Seneca, ∼60 A.D.)

“...though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself...” Immanuel Kant (Kant, 1781)

“Enough has now been said to prove the general law of perception, which is this, that whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes (in Lazarus's phrase) out of our own head.” William James (James, 1890)

“This concept, that the significance of incoming sensory information depends on the pre-existing functional disposition of the brain, is a far deeper issue than one gathers at first glance...” Rodolfo Llinas (Llinas, 2001)

So neuroscience tells us that it's a mistake to believe that we can be aware of impediments to a supposedly "pure" consciousness -- that we can somehow see all the way to the bottom of the brain's well from which the objects of awareness bubble up.

We can say "yes" to the possibility of becoming more aware, more conscious, more mindful of what rises to the surface of our stream of consciousness, while saying "no" to the prospect of understanding what lies within the unconscious intrinsic default mode activities of the brain.

Thoughts and thinking are disparaged, or at least severely downplayed, by most believers in pure awareness.

However, there's good reason for arguing that grasping the fundamentals of modern neuroscience -- an intellectual pursuit -- is necessary to become "enlightened" to what consciousness/awareness is all about.

Brain's "dark energy" casts doubt on pure awareness

I like my spirituality (if there is such a thing) to be as scientific as possible.

Fantasy, imagination, and speculative philosophizing are fun, but when it comes to understanding myself and my place in the cosmos, getting real is more appealing to me.

So an article in the March 2010 issue of Scientific American struck me as having important implications for an oft-heard assumption of meditation-based spiritual and mystical paths:

That it's possible to arrive at a state of pure, or mostly pure, awareness. Meaning, basically, that one's consciousness isn't contaminated by thoughts, emotions, and other egocentric manifestations of me, me, me.

For example, in "Love's Quiet Revolution" Scott Kiloby writes: 

Thoughts, opinions, and beliefs belong to the world of form. You can express these things and play with them. But there is a formless awareness within you that sees that you are only sharing the details of your particular conceptual overlay.

...True spiritual awakening is realized when the entire movement of self is owned and transcended through pure awareness. Action can then be taken from awareness, not from a repressed or projected (unconscious) story of self.

This notion is central to meditative practices in Buddhism, Hinduism/Vedanta, and other faiths.

It presumes that humans are capable of becoming aware of mental activities that usually are unconscious or unattended to, so life can be more free, genuine, spontaneous, honest, and in-the-moment.

Rupert Spira is another writer on nonduality who has been inspired by Ramana, Rumi, Shankara, Nisargadatta, and other sages. He writes in "The Transparency of Things":

Meditation is simply to abide as oneself... Consciousness is transparent, colourless, Self-luminous, Self-experiencing, Self-knowing, Self-evident. That is our experience in this moment.

Now, I'm not completely sure what Spira is referring to here. I sort of do, and I sort of don't.

It seems that he, like Kiloby, assumes that it is possible to be subjectively aware without being "captured" by either external (in the world) or internal (in the brain) objects of awareness.

Maybe. But let's take a look at the Scientific American article, "The Brain's Dark Energy." The summary Key Concepts are:

• Neuroscientists have long thought that the brain’s circuits are turned off when a person is at rest.
• Imaging experiments, however, have shown that there is a persistent level of background activity.
• This default mode, as it is called, may be critical in planning future actions.
• Miswiring of brain regions involved in the default mode may lead to disorders ranging from Alzheimer’s to schizophrenia.

Fascinating stuff.

Most of us have seen photos of brain scans that show what part of the brain is active when a person is doing something, such as reading. Researchers would figure out what brain areas are important to reading aloud, as contrasted with reading silently, by looking for differences between two scans of someone engaged in each activity.

But the article says:

Any of what is called intrinsic activity, the constant background activity, would be left on the cutting-room floor. Representing data in this way makes it easy to envision areas of the brain being "turned on," during a given behavior, as if they were inactive until needed for a particular task.

However, researchers now have found that the brain is always doing something. They just don't know exactly what that "something" is. But whatever it is, "a large fraction of the overall activity -- from 60 to 80 percent of all energy used by the brain -- occurs in circuits unrelated to any external event."

A collaborating group of brain regions known as the default mode network (DMN) appears to account for much of the activity when the mind is unfocused and to have a key role in mental functioning.

Seemingly the DMN prepares the mind/brain for action, which often (or always) is a reaction to stimuli in the outside world or, I presume, an internal thought, emotion, or whatever. 

So bubbling away below the surface of our conscious awareness is the DMN's constant background activity, which strikes me as being akin to the unseen maintenance procedures of a personal computer -- keeping things in working order (more or less), allowing the user to be able to do what he or she wants to.

But there's more to the story, because the article says that what we are aware of is a whole lot less than what there really is. The brain/body is highly selective about what makes its way into our feeling of "this is how things are."

Researchers have known for some time that only a trickle of information from the virtually infinite flood in the surrounding environment reaches the brain's processing centers.

Although six million bits are transmitted through the optic nerve, for instance, only 10,000 bits make it to the brain's visual processing area, and only a few hundred are involved in formulating a conscious perception -- too little to generate a meaningful perception on their own.

The finding suggests that the brain probably makes constant predictions about the outside environment in anticipation of paltry sensory inputs reaching it from the outside world.

Well, I guess it's still possible to believe in "pure awareness."

But whatever pure awareness is -- and again, I'm kind of vague about this -- this notion needs to be compatible with an emerging neuroscientific world view if it is to make sense to me.

The mind/brain filters unadorned reality markedly before perceptions become conscious. All the while, unconscious mental systems are churning away unrecognized, apparently laying the groundwork for interpreting those heavily filtered perceptions based on past experience and for taking action in response to some event.

How "pure awareness" enters into all this is a very open question. It sure looks like modern neuroscience is challenging some of the fundamental assumptions of spiritual belief systems.

This doesn't negate the benefits of meditation, mindfulness, and non-judgmental awareness of the present moment.

To my mind (the only one I have), research such as I learned about in the Scientific American article simply helps us look upon meditative and contemplative practices realistically rather than idealistically.

We may not be able to negate brain processes that function automatically in guiding human perceptions and actions. But we can become more aware of how the mind works, and what leads to more satisfying ways of living this marvelously mysterious life.

Nice Duhism

A recent Duh of the Day explained how to make money from a spiritual belief.

A Hindu yogi told me, "I have never been born so I can never die." So, I made myself the beneficiary on his life insurance. Thanks for the Lexus, dude-ji!

Dan Barker's "Godless" is marvelous

There's atheists, and then there's Atheists! Dan Barker is one of the latter, an activist, in-your-face, eloquent promoter of "Who knows?" over "I have faith that..."

I've mentioned Barker's book, "Godless," in quite a few previous posts. (To find them, scroll down and use the Great Genuine God Google search box in the right column of this blog; type in "Dan Barker.")

Barker speaks of what he knows when he writes about religiosity, because he used to be an ardent evangelical Christian preacher. Eventually he saw the light and became an atheist agnostic.

If that sounds funny, Barker explains:

People are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, "Well, are you a Republican or an American?" The two words serve different concepts and are not mutually exclusive.

Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief. The agnostic says, "I don't have a knowledge that God exists." The atheist says, "I don't have a belief that God exists." You can say both things at the same time. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic.

...Agnosticism is the refusal to take as a fact any statement for which there is insufficient evidence... Basic atheism is not a belief. There is a difference between not believing there is a god and believing there is no god -- one is the absence of belief and the other is the presence of belief.

Here's some selections from Dan Barker's final chapter which I liked.

On the increased value of human life when you don't believe

We atheists believe in life before death. Before we were born, there was a very long time, perhaps an eternity, when we did not exist, and it did not bother us one bit. The same will be true after we are dead. What matters is that we are alive now. These living, breathing, hurting, singing, laughing bodies are worth something, for their own sake.

...If life is eternal, then life is cheap. If we waste any moment of our precious lives on the hope of an afterlife, we rob ourselves of real joy and value in the here and now. Our lives are all we have, and we should enjoy them to the fullest, minute by fragile minute.

On the purpose of life

"If there is no hope of eternal life, then what is the purpose of life?" is a question we atheists often hear. My response is that there is indeed no purpose of life. There is purpose in life. If there were a purpose of life, then that would cheapen life. It would make us tools or slaves of someone else's purpose.

Like a hammer that hangs on the garage wall waiting for someone to build something, if we humans were designed for a purpose then we would be subservient in the universe. Our value would not be in ourselves. It would exist in our submission to the will of the toolmaker. That is slavery to a master, or infant dependency on a father figure. Besides, if there is a god, what is the purpose of his life? If he doesn't need a purpose, why do we?

...There is no purpose of life. Life is its own reward. But as long as there are problems to solve, there will be purpose in life. When there is hunger to lessen, illness to cure, pain to minimize, inequality to eradicate, oppression to resist, knowledge to gain and beauty to create, there is meaning in life.

A college student once asked Carl Sagan: "What meaning is left, if everything I've been taught since I was a child turns out to be untrue?" Carl looked at him and said, "Do something meaningful."

On the reality of spiritual experiences

"But my personal religious experience of knowing and loving God is so special," believers will often say, "that I feel sorry for you atheists who have nothing like that." Oh, really? I play jazz piano.

...Suppose I were to say, "Oh, you poor non-jazz musicians; you don't know what you are missing. I can't describe it to you, and even if you listen to us you are not going to understand what is happening in our minds. It's very real and you'll just have to take our word for it."

You would understand that I am talking about something that is happening to me, not to you, and the fact that you lack my inner experience is no threat to your own self-worth or worldview. What if I were to say that the only way you can have true meaning in your life is if you practice piano for four hours a day for 20 years and learn to play jazz, like I did? You would think I was joking, or seriously deluded.

I do not deny that spiritual experiences are real. They happen all over the world, in most religions. I deny that they point to anything outside of the mind. I had many religious experiences, and I can still have them if I want. As an atheist I can still speak in tongues and "feel the presence of God."

...I know some atheists who pooh-pooh religious experiences, thinking they are all made up, purely psychological tricks of an unsophisticated mind. But they are wrong. Religious experiences are very real. I had them as a believer, and I can duplicate them as a nonbeliever.

Most of us have had convincing dreams. Suppose you had a horrible nightmare that a bogeyman was crawling in your bedroom window. You sit up screaming, waking up the rest of the house. Your hands are sweating and your heart is pounding and your breath is shallow. No one would deny that you just had a very real experience. That nightmare was a powerful moment, with physical consequences. Based on your behavior alone, we would conclude that something happened to you. 

But there is no bogeyman crawling through the window. Once you realize it is a dream, you can relax and go back to sleep. That's how it is with me. I have realized that these religious experiences that I had, and can still duplicate if I should desire, are all in the mind. Of course, why would I want a phony religious experience -- especially the nightmare of hell? -- when I can have something more beautiful playing the piano?

Why be shy about sharing mystical experiences?

I'm an admirer of Taoism. I resonate with these lines in the Tao Te Ching:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.

Makes sense.

How could the essence of the cosmos be encompassed by words? The human mind wasn't around at the big bang some 14 billion years ago, so it's difficult to see how a verbal explanation could capture the fullness of ultimate reality.

But silence has another side: speaking. Yin and yang are manifestations of the Tao. Too much of anything, for too long, is unnatural. We've got to have balance.

So I don't understand or agree with the reticence of many mystics, gurus, sages, and such to talk about their "inner" experiences (or lack thereof) of a supposed enlightened state of being.

Another Tao, tAo, is a frequenter commenter on this blog. Today he shared some interesting thoughts on this post.

Referring to gurus in the Sant Mat tradition who are considered by their devotees to have traversed higher spiritual regions of the cosmos, tAo said (with some typos corrected):

you see this is also where i disagree with you slightly. you say that this is "their claim". but they have not claimed any such thing. if you or anyone can produce any book or lecture where they have made such a claim, i will be willing to consider it. but i have not seen it. i have read all the books and i don't remember ever reading them making that claim. they talk all around it, but they don't actually claim to have experienced it. that is the thing that tricks most people (like yourself) into ASSUMING (and then believing) that these so-called masters have experienced what is described in the literature. but the truth of the matter is that they never actually admit that.

Good points.

I've been to India twice. I've attended numerous talks by two gurus, Charan Singh and Gurinder Singh, who are considered to be "God in human form (GIHF)." Like tAo, I've read every book published by the Radha Soami Satsang Beas organization (and there are lots of them), many of which were written by GIHF gurus.

But until today it hadn't fully dawned on me how rare it is for a direct claim of an inner mystical experience to be made by them. Not only rare, it may well be non-existent.

Why is this?

Well, two possible reasons leap out. (1) The gurus have never had a mystical experience of some spiritual domain of existence. (2) The gurus don't want to talk about their experiences.

Skeptics and true believers, not surprisingly, favor different hypotheses. Having been in the latter camp myself for several decades, I can understand how silence can be viewed as being akin to godliness.

"Ah, this shows how divinely humble the guru is," a devotee will say after hearing the guru respond to "Are you really God?" with "I'm no one special. I'm just a servant of my own guru."

Nice sentiment. But what if he is actually telling the truth? He hasn't had any special mystical experiences, and he doesn't have any special knowledge about the cosmos.

This is the problem with assuming that those who know do not talk, because those who don't know also do not talk -- since they have nothing to say. If you ask me how to fix the brakes on your car, I might smile and shrug my shoulders while pointing to the auto repair shop down the street.

If you believe that I'm a master mechanic who wants to hide his expertise under a mantle of enigmatic mystery, you'd be wrong. I'm simply clueless about most matters related to automotive inner workings.

The most honest thing for me to do would be to explicitly say, "I've got no idea how to fix your brakes. And for sure you don't want me to learn how on your car."

Of course, someone knowledgeable about brake jobs should be equally eager to offer you some advice. Either way, silence would be a cop-out, impolite, an unnecessary deception. Why not acknowledge one's experience, or inexperience, about something?

Often you hear that gurus don't want to speak about their mystical experiences to avoid being idolized by devotees, or out of a sense of humility.

But they already are put on a pedestal by their followers. And aren't enlightened beings supposed to be beyond the vagaries of an ego, which entails worrying about the proper level of humbleness to project to other people? What's the matter with simple straightforward honesty?

"Yes, I have experienced such and such. It's hard for me to describe those experiences. Yet if you want me to try, I'll do my best. What questions do you have?"

This would be a refreshing response from a guru, mystic, or sage. As would, "I'll be straight with you. I've never experienced anything out of the ordinary in my meditation. I'm sorry to disappoint my devotees, but I don't know what you think I do."

Naturalness is appealing to me. Fakery isn't.

Most gurus and spiritual leaders look like they're playing the role of a guru or spiritual leader. This is to be expected, but it also is off-putting to me.

In normal human conversations, people aren't evasive. If I ask someone, "Have you ever been to Paris?" they don't respond with "What is the reality of the one who is asking this question?" or "If I told you, how would this benefit your own international traveling?"

They just answer the simple freaking question! "Yes." "No." There's nothing difficult in uttering one of those two words.

Likewise, gurus should be able and willing to answer this question: "Have you personally experienced the mystical states that your teachings describe?" And entertain follow-up questions if the reply is "Yes."

Why every religion and spiritual path is wrong

I've just finished reading my bajillionth (more or less) spiritual, mystical, religious, or philosophical book. You could call me a slow learner, but today I had a mini-enlightenment.

It dawned on me -- more clearly than ever before -- why every religion and spiritual path is wrong. More precisely, wrong for everybody but one person: the guy or gal who had the initial religious or spiritual experience that led to a claim that it is right for everybody.

A personal experience is just that: one person's experience. End of story.

But if that person shares his or her tale with others, and it ends up getting written down, documented, formed into dogma, systematized, conceptualized, cast into philosophical stone, then a unique perspective on the cosmos can turn into a claim of universal truth.

Science, of course, doesn't work this way.

The laws of nature don't depend upon Newton's, Einstein's, Darwin's, or anybody else's personal experience. Confirmation of a scientific hypothesis is independent of the originator's individual perspective.

It's very different in the world of religion and spirituality. Jesus's supposed sayings are taken on faith as a reflection of divine reality. The Buddha's teachings are much less fundamentalist, but even here many devotees revere the messenger as much as the message.

I've read lots of books where the spiritual teaching is based on the author's questionable assumption: "I did this and that and experienced such and such, so this is how you can do it too."

For example, Ramana, an Indian sage, advised asking "Who is the seer?" So Ramana formed his own teachings around the question, "Who am I?" 

Well, that worked for Ramana. But why should it work for anyone else?

Similarly, the founder of another Indian spiritual path, the Radha Soami branch of Sant Mat, is said to have meditated almost continuously in a dark room for seventeen years before supposedly realizing some great mystical truth.

Now, the essence of the Radha Soami meditation system is to do as the founder did: meditate for lengthy periods (two or three hours a day), ignoring the physical world as much as possible.

Since this is Valentine's Day, I'll relate this sort of approach to spirituality with falling in love.

I enjoy hearing stories of how a couple met, got to know each other, and became romantically connected. However, every story necessarily is different. There's no "cookbook" approach to meeting that special someone.

We'd think, that's ridiculous, if someone claimed there's only one way to meet your soul mate, because this is how it happened for him or her. "Go to Joe's Bar on 23rd Street. Sit on the third stool from the end. Order a beer. Turn to your right and look into the eyes of the person you're meant to be with."

Yet I can't tell you how many books I've read, including the holy texts of the world's best known religions, which really are nothing more that a "We met at Joe's Bar" story.

This is why all religions and spiritual paths are wrong: none of them points the way to a demonstrably true reality that can be confirmed to be more than one person's unique experience. 

Life, deep down, is a mystery. The cosmos, deep down, is a mystery. Death and any possible afterlife, deep down, is a mystery. Existence, deep down, is a mystery.

Some people claim to have unraveled the mystery, seen through illusion, become enlightened, heard the voice of God, been initiated into divine truths. Well, good for them.

I'm pleased they've experienced something so interesting and appealing. I'm also pleased whenever someone tells me they've fallen in love. 

But one person's romantic fulfillment is another person's "What does he/she see in that person?" Similarly, one person's communion with God or ultimate reality is another's "Huh?"

Find your own way. It's good to learn about religious, mystical, and spiritual practices other people find attractive. However, you're you, not them. Roughly similar in some ways, yet different in so many others.

Every love affair is unique. So is each person's connection with whatever it is we call reality. Embrace that uniqueness. Don't march in step with someone's else's drum beat.

The sweet taste of imperfection

Religions and most forms of spirituality strive for perfection. Or at least, improvement. They teach that we're fallen, sinful, deluded, enmeshed in maya/karma, ego-ridden, desirous, lustful, selfish.

In short, imperfect. 

Well, yeah. That's what being human is. That's what being alive is. Perfection is an abstraction, a concept, an idea.

Maybe it exists. Maybe it doesn't. Perfection is a state of mind. Sometimes we're filled with a sense of everything is just as it should be. Then that moment passes.

And we're left with life in its everchangingness. Ups and downs. Happiness and sorrow. Good news and bad news. Smiles and frowns.

This afternoon I took my watch in to have its battery replaced. I was getting irritated by having to strain to make out the fading digital numbers. For $9 I got a nice crisp screen back.

Also, a watch band that fell off the first time I took the watch off my wrist. I just spent ten minutes with a teeny-tiny screwdriver trying to get it back on. Couldn't do it.

Bummer.

A return visit to the watch guy wasn't on my agenda for tomorrow. But who says an imperfect life isn't as sweet as life is ever going to taste? That thought, when it passed through my mind a few hours ago, raised my spirits.

I was finishing my regular exercise routine at our athletic club. I realized that I didn't feel quite as buoyant as I usually do. I started to think, "I wonder why..."

Then an intuitive flash stopped my ruminating.

Expressed in words, it was like this: It's OK. Life isn't perfect. You aren't perfect. Nobody and nothing is perfect. Things and people are just what they are.

Instantly I felt better. A weight lifted off my psyche. So what if I wasn't feeling as good as I usually do? If I was in the same state all the time I'd be a machine. Or dead.

For most of my life I've worked hard at trying to improve myself. That's why I started meditating and doing yoga when I was twenty. Now, at sixty-one, I'm much more into enjoying myself as I am.

But old habits die hard. I'm still prone to wonder whether I'm kind enough, charitable enough, romantic enough (Valentine's Day is coming up), social enough -- to name a few "enough's."

I get irritated at myself when I'm irritated; I get angry at myself when I'm angry; I get unhappy at myself when I don't feel happy.

Sure, logically this is ridiculous, self-defeating, useless.

But who says life isn't often absurd, paradoxical, meaningless? It is what it is. Comparing my experience at any given moment to a notion of perfection just makes me feel like I'm lacking more than I really am.

So embracing imperfection is therapeutic. Relaxing. Healing. Most of all, human.

My watch won't stay on my wrist. This blog post isn't making complete sense. I probably won't enjoy watching the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics as much as I'm anticipating I will. My wife said she'd fix dinner tonight, but she isn't home yet and I'm hungry.

In other words, my life is normal: SNAFU. (More accurately: semi-SNAFU.)

Tomorrow I'll wake up, get the newspapers, make a cup of coffee, and go into my meditation area for my morning retreat. I'll spend an enjoyable half hour or so reading some inspirational spiritual literature about how everything is happening as it should, the self/ego is a fabrication of the human mind, and my consciousness actually is one with the cosmos.

Beautiful.

I'll meditate for a while, leave my worries behind (or above, or sideways, or beneath, or wherever the heck they go when I'm not thinking about them), and then re-enter the world of home life, web surfing, blogging, chores, errands, exercising, tai chi, and all the rest that makes up my decidedly imperfect life.

Beautiful. 

(Here's a few other perspectives on imperfection: "The Elegance of Imperfection" and "Why Brands Should Strive for Imperfection." Excerpts:)

There is an anecdote, told and retold through translated Japanese literature, of a Zen master who is staying with a priest at a temple close to Kyoto. The priest is having guests over that evening, and he has spent much of the day in the garden—shaping the moss, plucking weeds, and gathering up the leaves in tidy arrangements, all in order to achieve the state of perfection the temple builders had originally designed.

“Isn’t it beautiful,” the priest asked the master…

The master nodded. “Yes…your garden is beautiful; but there is something missing…”

The old gentleman walked slowly to a tree growing in the center of a harmonious rock and moss combination. It was autumn and the leaves were dying. All the master had to do was shake the tree a little and the garden was full of leaves again, spread out in haphazard patterns.

“That’s what it needed,” the master said.

–Janwillem van de Wetering, The Empty Mirror

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But there is a strong case to be made for imperfection. Nothing is ever perfect, and even when it appears to be so, we are subconsciously looking for the flaw. Because our point of connection lies in imperfection--it's what makes something unique and, ultimately, authentic. Since perfection can now be had at the stroke of a digital brush, and the food we eat can be manipulated to look brighter and fresher, rounder, and yes, perfect, we have an increasing need to know what's real.

Deconversion is as natural as conversion

I enjoy hearing deconversion stories -- how people changed from being religious believers into atheists or agnostics.

But "conversion" and "deconversion" are two sides of the same coin. Everybody who is converted to a faith, such as Christianity, was simultaneously deconverted from some other philosophy, belief system, religion, or point of view.

Our lives are ever-changing. When change stops, we're dead. So it's natural to convert, deconvert, convert, deconvert... for as long as we're alive.

I converted to mueslix for a while, then deconverted to granola. Now I've converted to raisin bran. (Leaving out many other earlier cereal choices, such as Kix and Wheaties.)

However, religious conversions and deconversions are considerably more meaningful to most people than other sorts of changes from one kind of like to another.

I'm not particularly interested in why someone alters their breakfast habit, but a thoughtful You Tube video about deconverting from Christianity held my interest for nine minutes and thirty-two seconds.

The guy's central point is his realization that everything he ascribed to God made just as much sense (more, really) if there simply is no God.

Absolutely.

What happens, in my personal experience, is an encrustation process. Years of believing in a religious teaching form a mental drip, drip, drip akin to how water flowing through mineral deposits slowly creates stalactites and stalagmites in a cave. 

Thoughts build upon thoughts, concepts build upon concepts, emotions build upon emotions, devotion builds upon devotion, experiences build upon experiences.

My guru, Charan Singh, was fond of saying "We are unable to look upon simple things in a simple way." But he really didn't practice what he preached, because the Sant Mat philosophy and cosmology that he taught is quite complex.

Complexity isn't undesirable if it reflects reality.

However, if notions are added on to a situation that doesn't require them -- like assuming that the sun rises every morning because a god decrees this should happen -- then we're running afoul of Occam's Razor. 

Which is basically the KISS adage: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

I'm not sure whether I'm wiser now than I used to be. For sure, though, I'm different. A friend recently shared with me some photos he'd taken of a thirty-something Brian (more like 29, probably, since I know two of the photos were taken in 1977).

Here I am with my first wife, Sue, shortly after we moved to Salem, Oregon. She's looking at me thoughtfully with a smile that says... I don't know what it says. Regardless, whatever I was saying undoubtedly deserved bemusement (and amusement).

This 1977 photo was taken in India at the headquarters ("Dera") of the spiritual group, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, that I belonged to for over thirty years. I'm the guy in a white shirt with my chin on my hand -- at the one o'clock position in the circle.

I was listening to one of the old-timers at the Dera. I recall how much sense he made. That was then, this is now. Change happens.

The last photo my friend shared with me was of a bunch of Westerners waiting for the guru, Charan Singh, to arrive at the umbrella-shaded table after his morning talk ("satsang").

I'm the white-shirted guy on the right side of the group. It was nice to be so close to the guru, just a few feet away. And at his feet, literally.

Looking back, I really can't say that I consciously and willfully decided to convert to Sant Mat in 1970. Nor can I say that I consciously and willfully decided to deconvert after 2000.

I simply changed. Naturally. Uncontrollably.

This morning I was reading Jay Michaelson's "Everything is God" and came across this passage.

Naturally, since spiritual practice takes a lot of time and effort, and since it gets sneered at by many smart people, those of us who do it spend a lot of time explaining why it's so important.

Not just something we want to do, and not just something which helps life be a little juicier, a little more meaningful -- but really Important. Thus one hears all the time that "the purpose of our being here is to awaken to who we are," or that people who aren't "awake" aren't truly happy.

Nonsense. That's just the New Age version of Jews thinking they're the only Chosen People, or Christians thinking that only Christ can save you.

Spiritual practice is about letting go, and that includes forgoing justification, specialness, pleasure, power, particularism, ego. At some point, it might be better to just admit that we are doing what we want to do, because any holding on to a sense of purpose is going to be counter-productive.

...Admit it all, and say so what. Let Being simply be what it is, whatever it is, without label or ascription, without looking for God, labeling an experience as God, or in any way claiming something is or isn't God.

And then, what might you notice? Perhaps a tone of relaxation, a quieting in the mind. The sound of the breeze, the feel of the air, ordinary sights of trees and sky. In other words -- whether God is delusion or not, your experience would be the same.

Conversion. Deconversion. No big deal.

We're simply doing what we want to do, without really understanding why or how we're doing it.

Church of Reality is a good place to worship

Ask, and you shall receive. A few months ago I wrote "Wanted: a religion that reflects reality." Recently someone left a comment on that post pointing me toward The Church of Reality.

It's worth browsing around. I like the tagline, If it's real, we believe in it! Also, We are realists practicing realism, winning souls for Darwin!

Welcome to the Church of Reality. Welcome to the Real World. That's our church greeting. Thank you for visiting our web site. If you are frustrated with the current state of the religious world and looking for some sanity, you came to the right place. The Church of Reality is a positive force for change and you can be part of it. You can help make it happen. There is a lot of material here. We hope you will invest the time to read it.

The Church of Reality is a religion based on the practice of Realism, which means believing in everything that is real. Our motto is, "If it's real, we believe in it." Since no one knows all of reality, the Church of Reality is a religious commitment to the pursuit of reality the way it really is. We think about thinking. We wonder about wondering. We try to understand the understanding of understanding. We are Explorers, not followers. The phrase "What is Real?" is our Sacred Question and the word "Reality" is our Sacred Message. We talk about reality, think about reality, and aim to make reality more important in society.

My first question, of course, was "What does the Church of Reality consider reality to be?" I haven't done enough exploring on the site to answer this query conclusively. The FAQs offer up some statements that make good sense, though.

You say you believe in real reality. How do you know your view of reality is real?

We don't. Our claim to believe in reality the way it really is, actually is a goal. As we all know, no one knows everything about reality. So the Church of Reality is really a religious commitment to the pursuit of reality the way it really is. What we do is make reality important in our personal lives and to raise the importance of reality in society.

An important concept is that there is no "our reality" that the Church of Reality believes in that is either right or wrong. Our church doesn't usually declare what is real and what isn't. Our religion is a commitment to pursue reality wherever that leads us. So there is no "our reality" to get wrong. We are more properly judged in respect to whether our pursuit of objective reality is genuine. So - if we took a position on something and you can show us we are wrong, we are committed to changing our minds.

What about personal reality? Isn't everyone's reality different?

There's one's own personal perception of reality, and there is one's personal life and thoughts. But then there's the "real world" or objective reality that we all live in and share. If reality was all personal, then perhaps the universe was created on October 10, 1955 - the day I was born - and the universe will end the day I die. Maybe the world is just an illusion and that you all don't really exist? Maybe my brain is in a jar in a laboratory somewhere and this all is just a computer generated illusion - that some day I'm going to wake up and be back home on my own planet and this all will be nothing more than a dream.

One illustration I like to make about personal reality and objective reality is this: suppose that a Buddhist who has a personal relationship with God and a Christian who has a personal relationship with God both jump off the Golden Gate Bridge at the same time, both believing that their God can make them fly. Which one will hit the water first? (In a vacuum)

Becoming a Realist involves giving up some of your personal beliefs and personal realities because real reality is different and the Church of Reality is about the way it really is - not what you want to believe in.

I also liked how the Church of Reality looks upon politics. Amen! to the following.

Different religions have different world views and our world view is Reality. We want to inject reality into the political process. Reality is our Sacred message. We want our leaders to take reality into account when making decisions that affect all of us. We want to make reality important in society. We want our science classes to teach our children about reality. We want people who propose projects to ask, "is this really going to work?" We want real solutions to real problems. We are a culture of thinkers who are not satisfied with sound-bite politics. We want to see a plan and we want the plan to be a realistic plan. We want our nation states to make sense. So as realists we take a position, as a church and as individuals, to influence nation states toward real solutions to real problems.

Another great thing about the Church of Reality is that its founder, Marc Perkel Rantz, has applied to get a religious exemption for the use of marijuana by church members. 

Sadly, the application initially was denied, but it is being appealed. I can prophesy that if Rantz succeeds in his legal action, Reality will bless him with a large number of new devotees. 

He deserves to win the case. After all, who can argue with this reasoning?

The Church of Reality is the first case that the DEA processes under the new rules set out by the Supreme Court in 2006. Unlike other religious use of marijuana cases the Church of Reality is a real religion that wasn’t concocted for the purposes of getting around marijuana laws. The connection between the church of Reality and Pot is that the founder was stoned when he came up with the idea and is often stoned when writing the Church of Reality doctrine. Other than that – the Church of Reality is about reality and is dedicated to the evangelizing of the importance of making reality part of your life.

If there are any attorneys reading this, listen up:

The Church of Reality is currently looking for assistance and ideas for those who are versed in first amendment law and paralegals to help do research to prepare briefs. People with such skills should contact Marc Perkel. This is also under reported news so spread the word.

Non-dualism is non-sensical, but I like it

Many things in life don't make sense, yet are enjoyable. Lost, the TV series, comes to mind.

After every episode my wife and I look at each other and say, "What the heck was that all about?" Most of the time we've got no idea what's going on. It's an entertaining ride on the Confusion Express, though.

I feel similarly about nondualism, as noted in a recent post. This is the "not two" (but also not one) mystical philosophy that underlies Vedanta, some forms of Buddhism, and various other faiths.

I'm enjoying a book I've started reading: "Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism" by Jay Michaelson. However, I don't agree with, or understand, a lot of it.

It's refreshing to have nondualism discussed from a Jewish perspective, rather than a Hindu, Buddhist, or New Age outlook. I like Michaelson's thoughtful, quasi-intellectual  style.

Having read about a third of the book, here's my favorite quote so far:

Rather, nonduality may be said to be the place where mysticism and atheism shake hands. The cosmology may be identical, as there are no puppet-masters pulling the strings of our reality. Yet the stage is now a cathedral.

This is an astute observation.

My take on nondualism is that it is the place many religious skeptics end up after they've dropped fundamentalist, faith-based, and ritualistic dogma. Yet they don't want to embrace a fully rational and scientific view of the universe that seemingly leaves little place for a mystical vision.

Indeed, Michaelson says in his introduction:

I like to think of it this way. First, if you have some belief in God, drop it. Let the atheists, or your own doubt, totally, utterly win: there is no one minding the store, just matter and energy combining and separating. There is nothing in this moment that cannot be explained by science and reason.

But then, take science seriously, and remember that there is no self either: consciousness is an illusion of the brain, after all. Believe the postmodernists, the Buddhists, the Darwinists, the cognitive materialists, and the Hasidim when they say that this sense of ego, while essential for our survival, causes us to mistake a pattern of phenomena for something that's actually there. Really, there is no soul, just a buzz of neurons. So: no God, no self. And then...what?

What's left, after the self is subtracted, is what nondualists mean by "God." Other names are fine as well. Empty phenomena, rolling on; the Divine Play; Indra's Net; the Dharma; causes and conditions; the substance of Nature, and its laws; the Shechinah and the Holy One; as you like it. YHVH, the primary Jewish name for God, basically means "Is."

OK. So what "Is" is, is what is. That's cool.

It's great to have a philosophy whose central adage can fit on a bumper sticker. ("Form is emptiness and emptiness is form" is a bit longer, but also pithy.)

Thus anything and everything is included in the nondual vision. Transcendence. Immanence. Emotions. Detachment. Silence. Speaking. Thoughts. No mind. Heaven. Hell. Sinning. Saintliness. Materiality. Spirituality.

This sounds wonderful, just as the above-mentioned cathedral seems more attractive than a plain old stage. But when everything on the stage is in the cathedral, the only difference between the two is...what?

What's difficult to understand about nondualism is what's the point of it? 

The answer, if there is one, might be: to realize that there's no one to get the point, or any point. The self which is doing the asking doesn't really exist, so existential questions are pointless. (Practical questions, though, like "who will win the Super Bowl?" aren't, especially if you have a bet on the game.)

At first, most of us imagine that we are essentially selves, and some of us believe that there is a God as well. Nonduality invites us to suppose nothing, believe nothing: that there is no God, but also that there is no self. When there is merely no God, we remain as we were. But when there is also no self, then what is left is the Ein Sof, the God beyond "God." Simply what is; simply this; and not-this as well, "surrounding as well as "filling" all that can be predicated.

And from that fullness, which is also utter emptiness, God reappears, and the self reappears as well -- only now as masks, perspectives, ways of seeing, modes of speech. Some masks are more real than others; some are merely imaginary. But that becomes a subject for a different conversation. In silence, all disappears. From silence, all is born.

Well, like I said, nondualism doesn't make sense. It's likable, though. When I finish Michaelson's book I'll let you know whether I've grown even fonder of nonduality.

The universe is a paper bag turned inside out

Some forty-two years ago, back in 1968, I had a revelation: The universe is a paper bag turned inside out.

Now, at the time I had some reasons to doubt the veracity of this insight into ultimate reality, since it was fueled by mescaline and dissipated the following day. But another guy and I intuited this truth at the exact same moment.

Far out.

Today I've gotten confirmation that, indeed, the universe is a bag turned inside out. Tucson, a regular Church of the Churchless visitor, left a comment on this blog post that said, in part:

Our perception is like a plain plastic bag. Turn it inside out and it is the same yet entirely different.

We do have a doctrinal difference, though. Is our perception of the universe a paper or plastic bag turned inside out? I don't want to get into a holy war over this. Let's just say that I'm right on that detail and Tucson is wrong. (Makes sense to me.)

The important thing is the confirmation that ultimate reality really is best explained by viewing it as a bag turned inside out. Those of us who have experienced this truth, via psychedelics or otherwise, know what we know because we know that our knowing is really knowledge.

While that last statement certainly should convince the skeptics, I devoted five minutes this afternoon to producing concrete experimental photographic evidence of the truthiness of what I and Tucson speak. 
Here is a paper bag. It is covered with information. This is the universe as normally perceived. Happiness is 15% off Everything. 
Here is the paper bag turned inside out. Doing this teaches valuable lessons. First, it's damn difficult to turn a large paper bag inside out. I ended up crumpling and ripping the bag. But that's the price of enlightenment.

Second, all is one. The appearance of the bag now is a seamless whole. (Leaving aside the crumpling, the rips, the dents, and the lettering that can be glimpsed through the paper if you look close enough.)
Third, samsara is nirvana, illusion is reality, atman is brahman, and whatever other out-dated non-dual adage people used to spout before the revelation the universe is a paper bag turned inside out replaced those lesser insights.

From my iPhone's God's-eye view we see that everything still is 15% off at Office Max. Manyness is completely compatible with oneness. Now it is just hidden on the inside rather than obvious on the outside -- having changed places with formless unity.

So all is revealed, praise Bag.

(However, if what I've said and shown isn't totally revelatory to you, consider taking some mescaline and then re-reading this post.)

Faith healing kills another Oregon child

Last year the father of Ava Worthington was convicted of criminal neglect for allowing his child to die rather than seek medical attention.

Ava had the misfortune of being born to parents belonging to Oregon's Followers of Christ church, where children die at an alarming rate because of crazy faith healing beliefs.

An investigation by The Oregonian claimed that at least 21 out of 78 minors found to be buried in the church cemetery died of preventable causes, including simple infections which would be easily treated with routine antibiotics.

Now, make that 23.

The parents of teenager Neil Beagley (grandparents of Ava) have been convicted of criminally negligent homicide for not having their son treated for a congenital urinary blockage. 

Instead of taking Neil to a doctor, his parents, members of the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City, attempted to heal him with prayer, anointing with oil and laying on of hands.

Oregonian columnist Susan Nielsen gets it right in criticizing laws that allow religiosity to be used as an excuse for behavior that is inexcusable.

So the jury voted to convict the Beagleys. Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 18. What's left now is a nagging feeling that Oregon remains an accomplice to faith-based crimes.
 
For example, it's considered child neglect under Oregon law to "fail to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter or medical care that is likely to endanger the health or welfare of the child." This law would be straightforward enough without additional language favorably singling out parents who choose religion as their sole form of care.
 
Also, Oregon gives faith-healing parents some legal protections from being charged with murder or first-degree manslaughter. The Legislature eliminated the spiritual defense for several types of crimes about a decade ago, after a string of child fatalities, but kept a few special protections in place.
 
To top it off, the state grants favorable treatment to faith-healing parents during sentencing. These parents get a rare exemption from the state's mandatory sentencing laws based not on their actions or individual circumstances but solely on their religious beliefs.
 
What a blessing that must be.

Non-duality both appeals and repels (appropriately)

Here's my bottom line on non-dualism: it's either (1) the best take on ultimate reality that humans have ever come up with, or (2) a total crock of shit.

Of course, if (1) is the case then seemingly both (1) and (2) are true -- since either/or distinctions don't have much of a place in non-dualism.

I got to pondering this stuff after Amazon sucked me in this morning with one of their irritatingly accurate emails. (If there is a God, his name is Jeff Bezos).

Amazon apparently looks at the books I buy and then correlates them with other books favored by people with my reading habits. I was prepared to hit the "delete" button after glancing at the email, but I couldn't resist clicking on a couple of astute suggestions.

One of which was "Love's Quiet Revolution: The End of the Spiritual Search" by Scott Kiloby.

I'd never heard of the guy. I read some reader reviews of his book and came across a mention of how marvelous his You Tube videos were. So I took a look at a couple.

"Freedom from your own insights" starts off with these words:

So whatever it is you think enlightenment is, that's what it's not. And that's where you're stuck.

Well, that struck me as good news. I don't have much of an idea about what enlightenment is, so this must mean that I'm fairly free to find it.

Except, there doesn't seem to be anything to find.

At least nothing that can be described in any way. The next video I watched, "Your Spiritual Teacher is Full of Crap," started off with: Never trust a spiritual teacher who appears to believe in his own crap.

Hmmmm.

This sentiment appealed to my churchless non-soul. However, I couldn't help but wonder whether Scott Kiloby believed in his own advice about not trusting a spiritual teacher who believes in his own crap.

That's what I find irritating about non-dualism. Those who espouse it often sound a lot like anyone else who has a religious, philosophical, or metaphysical position to defend.

Yet the non-dual claim basically is that there's nothing to defend, and no one to do the defending. Differences are illusory (though not unreal).

I headed over to Kiloby's web site to see if that would help me better understand his point of view. On the home page I read:

Enlightenment is not reserved for gurus or available only after years of practice or seeking. It is your birthright. It is not a special state, experience, thought, or emotion that one has to find or maintain. The word “enlightenment” is merely a label pointing to the direct and immediate recognition of timeless awareness. This awareness holds the key to your real identity. It reveals that there is no separate self.  It reveals that all boundaries are illusory including the boundaries between people, religions, programs, paths, groups, and nations.

Sounds good.

In the site's "writings" section I was advised to read this piece before perusing anything else. It started off with Present awareness is our real identity. Nice and simple.

But it took 72 pages to eludicate this thought. And this is just one of many essays by Kiloby, along with several books that he's written. Browsing through the piece, I kept coming back to my love-hate relationship with non-dualism.

I love how it focuses on awareness of the here and now.
I hate how it makes awareness into something esoteric and complex.

Now, I realize that advocates of non-dualism would take exception to my hate statement. I guess they'd argue that it takes countless books, videos, workshops, web sites, seminars, and what-not to communicate the non-dual message that there is nothing to communicate.

OK, maybe. The Buddha, though, did fine by simply holding up a flower. 

If there's nothing to say about non-dualism, then why do non-dualists use so many words to say that nothing? Alternatively, if there is something to say, then why criticize spiritual teachers for believing that their sayings are more than "crap"?

I don't get it. But I have sent off some bucks to Amazon for Kiloby's book. So there is indeed a reason to talk about non-dualism, $16.99 worth of reasons.