Church of the Churchless

A Theory of Everything is science's mythical "God"

Often my journey from true believing to churchlessness has felt like an exciting amusement park ride.

Descending from the heights of religious dogmatism, I'm both thrilled and unsettled by a sudden drop, Wheeeeee!, as beliefs drop out from under me. Then I hit a plateau and roll along comparatively smoothly until...

Wow! Another free fall, as I realize that the spiritual philosophy I embraced after discarding an Eastern form of fundamentalism is still unduly faith-based.

So I'm off on another abrupt descent, figuring that now maybe I've reached some sort of ontological ground floor where life's meaning, or the lack thereof, has a solid foundation.

I'm beginning to think that there's no end to my psyche's roller-coaster ride. A few days ago I started reading a book that I'd seen mentioned in the "Recommended" section of Scientific American and couldn't resist ordering.

Here's how Marcelo Gleiser's "A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe" was described in the magazine.

For centuries scientists have been searching for a single theory of the universe that reveals an elegantly simple order behind the apparent complexity of the natural world. That quest continues today with the hunt for a "grand unified theory" that joins Einstein's theory of relativity with the laws governing quantum mechanics.

This is a misguided mission, argues physicist and former "Unifier" Marcelo Gleiser of Dartmouth College. It is the messiness of the universe -- not the beautiful symmetries -- that holds the key to its origins.

Since I wrote a book about the teachings of Plotinus, a Neoplatonist Greek philosopher, called "Return to the One," I could instantly identify with the term former Unifier.

I've always enjoyed the notion of oneness. Ultimate simplicity, which I like to think of as pure existence (absent existents), sends a pleasurable chill up my philosophical spine.

Gleiser, however, points out in an early chapter that the quest of science for a unified Theory of Everything is the secular counterpart of religious belief.

Given that the Final Truth necessarily explains the origin of the Universe, we now see how these two quests are one and the same: the Final Truth contains the First Cause; the First Cause contains the Final Truth. Can we, limited beings that we are, explain creation in all of its astonishing complexity?

We know at least two answers.

"Sure!" exclaim the Unifiers. "There is a fundamental set of physical laws, writ deep into Nature's essence, behind all there is. Given time, we will uncover these laws and make sense of it all. Together, these laws are the embodiment of the unified field theory, the supreme expression of the hidden mathematical symmetry of Nature. We call it the Theory of Everything."

"Sure!" exclaim the Believers. "We already know all the answers. They are written in our Holy Book. Creation is the work of our all-powerful God. Only a supernatural power could exist before space. Only a supernatural power could be before time. Only a supernatural power could transcend material reality to create it."

Powerful. Eye-opening. Thought-provoking. And disturbing, in that above-mentioned Wheee!, there goes another cherished belief sort of way.

Reading just a few chapters of Gleiser's book made me realize that he's probably right: while science is much more justified in believing that a Theory of Everything lies at the end of the investigative rainbow than religion is in its God-belief, these are still beliefs.

Here's how Gleiser summarizes his alternative to the stance of the Unifiers and Believers.

For millenia, we have lived under the mythic spell of the One. Kneeling at our temples or searching for the mathematical "mind of God," we have yearned for a connection with what is beyond the merely human; we have dreamt of an abstract perfection that we could not find in our lives.

In doing so, we closed our eyes to ourselves, refusing to accept the fragility of our existence. It is now time to move on. It is now time to shake free of the old imperative for perfection and embrace the lessons of a new scientific worldview that explores the creative power of Nature's imperfections and accepts that there are limits to knowledge.

[Update: you can get a feel for Gleiser's book in less than four minutes via a video I found linked to on his university faculty page. Scroll down to "Research Interests," click on "Personal web page," then on the video.]

Psychedelics and placebos more effective than religion

For some churchless inspiration, check out Mark Morford's "Placebo effect beats out God, Prozac."

He discusses the finding that anti-depressants are pretty much useless, except for cases of extreme depression. A sugar pill works as well as Prozac, if the patient believes he or she is getting the real deal.

The placebo effect -- hereby defined as the sheer force of will and belief, of the mind's (and heart's) ability to heal and nurture itself sans external assistance -- applies to all sorts of constructs in our tortured modern world.

Organized religion? Hell yes. Is your life flawed and painful? Are you guilt-ridden and terrified of the world's swarm of demons and daggers? Of course you are, sinner. Here, have a giant, unknowable deity. Give to it all your faith, hope, belief, money, angst, sexual shame. Believe in it wholly and without doubt, to the point where you lose a sense of yourself and your true divine source, forever and ever, amen.

There now. Feel better? Are miracles starting to happen in your life? Do you feel uplifted and joyful? Are you healed? It's the power of Jesus! It's God in your life! It's because you have blind faith! No no no, it's not you, silly. Even though, in fact, it totally is. Shhh.

Of course, what we call the power of faith is just the power of the mind, soul, the Self, rather harshly rerouted through some external conduit that relieves us from having to figure s--t out for ourselves. After all, it's just much easier to give it all over to the god, the pill, the product, than it is to delve deep into one's own dark and inscrutable psyche. Same as it ever was.

Some drugs, though, are effective for bringing about lasting positive results. Unfortunately, they're illegal.

This research reveals, once again for the millionth time, that various psychedelics like MDMA, LSD and psilocybin really do, in fact, have a rather stunningly helpful -- and often permanent -- effect on the health and well-being of numerous patients, almost universally and without fail.

(Did you hear that? That's the sound of a million mystics and healers, teachers and gurus throughout history, sighing and rolling their eyes).

Of these drugs' power to dance and frolic with the brain's synapses, there is absolutely no doubt. This is no placebo effect. This is no sheer force of will. Psilocybin, for one, is an E-ticket to a shifting dimension, a dance on the blurrier edges of definitive reality. Ecstasy is a widening out, a warming up, an opening into the cold, cold heart of the human species.

Patients who get to dabble with these fine plants and chemicals are reporting astonishingly positive, almost impossibly curative reactions. Lives are forever altered. Ideas of the soul, heart, human connection forever reset and restored. Possibilities expand, PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] contracts, hearts open, fear and inhibition dissolve. Love expands. And man, the PTB [powers that be] hate that, too.

Feeling something spiritual doesn't mean it is real

Everybody has feelings, intuitions, hunches, gut-reactions. They always are real for us, because we're aware of them. Individual awareness equals subjective reality.

Trouble is, many people make a big leap of faith: they assume that a personal experience reflects a universal truth. Like, God. Or spirit, soul, Jesus' love, heaven, a guru's greatness, or whatever.

Thanks to a post on The Rambling Taoist, a blog I follow, today I came across a terrific piece by Greta Christina, "Why 'I Feel It In My Heart' Is a Terrible Justification for God's Existence."

Showing that I've haven't quite reached the final stages of egoless Buddha-nature, Christina's essay made me think, "Wow, this is brilliant. It reminds me of how I write, and what I like to write about."

In other words, Christina is clear, reasonable, passionate, and -- most importantly -- utterly correct in her expose of a common reason true believers give for holding onto their beliefs.

As vivid as the experience of our hearts and minds can feel, if we're going to treat it as evidence in support of a hypothesis, we can't give it any more weight than we would anyone else's experience. Intuition is important, but it's notoriously unreliable and subject to bias.

We have to step back from it, and view it like we'd view anyone else's experience. And when we look at human experience in general, we see that our hearts and minds can't automatically be trusted.

For starters: Lots of people have personal experiences of God. And those experiences are wildly different. Even completely contradictory. Some people experience a loving God who only wants us to be happy and take care of one another -- others experience a vengeful God who rigidly judges every petty detail of our lives.

Some people experience a nebulous World-Soul God, a fluid spirit animating all life -- others experience a personal God, with a distinct personality and strong opinions and feelings. (Opinions etc. that, again, vary wildly from believer to believer.) Etc.

The feelings people have in their hearts about God are almost as varied as the people having them. And these feelings change significantly throughout history.

If all these people were perceiving the same God... why would that be true?

Christina makes a bunch of other great points, echoing themes that get a lot of air time on this blog. For example, the problem with inferring that an individual's experience points to a universal truth:

When people say they've had a personal experience of God... that's not really what they mean. What they really mean is, "I had a personal experience (X) -- which I'm interpreting as a personal experience of God."

What they mean is, "I heard a clear voice in my head telling me to change my life -- which I interpreted as the voice of God." "I saw a flood of light filling my visual field -- which I interpreted as a vision of God." "I felt a force gripping my hand and pulling me away from the accident -- which I interpreted as the hand of God."

"I had an overwhelming experience of transcendent connection with something larger than myself -- which I interpreted as an experience of God." These people had mental and emotional experiences... which they interpreted as religious ones.

This is why I keep asking people who make some grand religious, spiritual, or mystical claim via a comment on this blog to describe, in as detailed and specific a fashion as possible, what evidence they have to support it.

Frequently I have big insights into the nature of life and the cosmos. For a moment everything becomes clear. This is the way it is. Sometimes I write about my big Aha!

But I don't form a religion around it. I don't expect people to become my devotees and follow The Brian Way. When it comes to finding meaning in life, we're all our own meaning-makers. As Christina points out in another post of hers: 

Even if you believe that there is a God and we're here to fulfill his or her divine plan, you still have to choose which of your religion's specific teachings you should follow, and what to do when different teachings conflict -- and of course, which basic religion to follow in the first place, and indeed whether to believe in God at all.

So it's not as if believing in God gets you off the "What is my purpose?" hook (although many believers do act as if it does). All of us -- believers, non-believers, doubters, everyone -- we all have the same freedom, and the same responsibility, to decide what our purpose is, and to act on it.

Absolutely.

However, we don't get to decide what objective reality is, the shared world of common experience. That way lies madness ("there's a pink elephant in the kitchen, there really is!") and religious dogmatism, with all the divisiveness that entails ("according to God, homosexuality is a sin, it really is!").

For so many centuries, so many people have had so many different religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences. And what's so obvious is that they don't add up to any sort of consistent metaphysical view.

In the first Christina essay I read, she says:

When we look at a tree, we can all pretty much agree about its basic features: how tall it is, what color it is, whether it still has leaves on it, etc. We might disagree about its taxonomy, or who it belongs to, or whether it's prettier than another tree.

But for the most part, our perceptions of the basic properties of the physical world are remarkably consistent. Especially when compared to our "perceptions" of the spiritual world. Our perceptions of the physical world are pretty consistent. Our "perceptions" of the spiritual world are all over the map.

All of which strongly suggests that, whatever people are experiencing when they experience God, it's not something they're perceiving in the external world. It's something their brains are making up.

There's nothing wrong with this. This is what brains do: make stuff up.

We don't experience reality directly (whatever that might mean). Our consciousness is inherently and inescapably subjective. The brain/mind filters impressions of the external world, then acts on these through all sorts of internal neurological functions.

Result: conscious experience.

Which as Christina notes in another thoughtful piece, is marvelously mysterious. There's no need to worry that a lack of belief in God means that life is any less Wow!

There is plenty of mystery in the natural world: mystery enough for a lifetime, for a trillion lifetimes. I'm not going to pretend the world is not the way it really is -- fascinating, awe-inspiring, profoundly bizarre, but ultimately a product of natural laws and of physical cause and effect -- just because some people find it exciting to ponder the mystery of the darkness.

Focus on experiences or the experiencer? The big spiritual divide.

When we get down to the essence of religion, spirituality, and mysticism, it seems to me that the broad divide between various sorts of faiths can be boiled down to this question:

Is the focus on experiences, or the experiencer?

This isn't an either/or, a crisp choice between one or the other. Still, Zen and Advaita Vedanta are decidedly on the experiencer side. Meaning, what's more important is how the consciousness of a practitioner perceives reality, not what is perceived.

Pouring a cup of tea (or for me, sipping a mug of coffee) is as significant, or not, as soaring to the highest heaven and beholding the radiant face of... whatever.

Monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam are much more into experiences. Their theologies are pretty weak when it comes to explaining how our human subjectivity relates to so-called "objective" reality, which is a central concern of Buddhism.

Rather, the goal is to experience God's love, embrace Jesus after death, spend eternity with the angels in heaven.

I was inspired to ponder this subject after I started reading "Open Secret." The author is Wei Wu Wei, the pseudonym of Terence Gray. Between 1958 and 1974 this Taoism aficionado (who also was attracted to Zen and Advaita) wrote a series of books.

Previously I'd heard of Wei Wu Wei, a Taoist term meaning action that is non-action, but this is my first foray into his writings. I like his blend of logical Western philosophizing and indirect Eastern "pointing at the moon."

As several reader reviews of Open Secret on Amazon say, this book is best read slowly. The author frequently crams a lot of meaning into a few words.

Like many other "non-dual" writings, Wei Wu Wei's prose stimulates conflicting feelings in me. Sometimes I'm convinced that the guy is just talking gibberish. Then I'll come across a passage that strikes an intuitive just so chord, leading me to think, Ah, this indeed is what life is all about.

Wei Wu Wei/Terence Gray zeroes in on the nature of subjectivity and objectivity. Here we are, conscious. We're aware of all kinds of things. However, we can't make a "thing" out of our consciousness, since it isn't possible to step outside of our subjective awareness.

These are some quotes from a concluding chapter that I skipped ahead to and read this morning:

If you can't find it by looking -- don't look, if you can't find it by thinking, don't think! It is where there is no looking, and no thinking.

Not because it cannot be seen or thought, but because there is no "one" to look or to think!

If a phenomenon could be "enlightened" then "enlightenment" would be phenomenal, like inebriation or any other psycho-somatic condition. If it is not phenomenal -- and anything the word could mean metaphysically certainly is not -- then there is no "self" to experience it.

The sought is the seeker that is no thing, absence is the presence of no presence and no absence. What we are, apart from one another's objects, is the absence of all objects, whereby all objects appear to be!

In-seeing does not mean looking in one direction instead of in another, "in" instead of "out," from the same centre as is commonly supposed, but seeing from within instead of from without, seeing from the source, which is noumenon, not from manifestation, which is phenomenon. 

I am not an identity which understands something: understanding that there is no one to understand and nothing to be understood is understanding what I am!

Reading Wei Wu Wei, I was reminded of how my wife and I have friends who do a lot more traveling than we do.

They're off to Europe, a Caribbean cruise, hiking in New Zealand, exploring Bryce Canyon, and such while we usually hang around fairly close to home here in Oregon. Even though sometimes they'll urge us to take a trip that they've enjoyed, I never feel like they consider their experiences to be superior to our experiences.

After all, each of us is always experiencing something (assuming that dreamless sleep and other states of unconsciousness are experiences). So no one has an experience deficit; people simply have different experiences.

Each to his own. That's the general attitude in everyday life, even when someone tells me "You absolutely must try this new restaurant. It's marvelous!"

I know what they mean. They had a really good experience dining there, and they think I'd like the place also. But they aren't saying that my life will be worthless if I don't do what they did. It's just a suggestion for a new experience.

However, when it comes to religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences, often people who supposedly have had a special vision, insight, or whatever will speak as if anyone who hasn't shared that experience is missing out on something vitally important.

Well, maybe I was sipping my coffee instead. Or mowing the lawn. Or cooking spaghetti. I now tilt much toward the experiencer side of the divide I mentioned at the beginning of this post, than the experiences side.

What I do doesn't seem to be nearly as important as the quality of the doing -- using "quality" to mean something that I can't really describe, yet is real to me.

I'll let Alan Watts say it better than I can.

If I may put it in a way which is horribly cumbersome and inadequate, that fleeting glimpse is the perception that, suddenly, some very ordinary moment of your ordinary everyday life, lived by your very ordinary self, just as it is and just as you are -- that this immediate here-and-now is perfect and self-sufficient beyond any possibility of description.

You know that there is nothing to desire or seek for -- that no techniques, no spiritual apparatus of belief or discipline is necessary, no system of philosophy or religion. The goal is here. It is this present experience, just as it is.

...You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now -- otherwise you would not be here. Hence the infinite Tao is something which you can neither escape by flight nor catch by pursuit; there is no coming toward it or going away from it; it is, and you are it.

So become what you are.

My 100% guaranteed spiritual investment scheme

With all the talk going on these days about sleazy financial deal-making, I've been wondering why Wall Street doesn't hire more religious experts. They seem even better suited than mathematical wizards to be able to fashion can't-miss investment schemes.

By "can't-miss," naturally I'm referring to the 100% certainty that the purveyor of the deal will profit. As is so often the case, the poor suckers who buy into it aren't guaranteed anything -- which is why the scheme is structured as it is.

There are lots of variations on the religious "Invest Now and Reap the Rewards Later" pitch. I'm most familiar with the guru-centered mystical/meditation variety, so that's how my scheme will be focused.

However, this is a template for how most religions try to reel in the gullible and unwary. If you've ever been a true believer, I'm sure you'll be able to recognize your own faith in some or all of the promises below.

Want to be spiritually wealthy?
You've come to the right place!
Invest with us.
We guarantee salvation!

Prospectus

We promise to teach you how to save your soul, know God, become enlightened, and/or reap the reward of heavenly bliss in your eternal afterlife.

Do what we tell you, and results are guaranteed.

But not necessarily in this life. So don't worry if your spiritual investment returns aren't obvious on your deathbed.

In your next life, which might be here on Earth, or it might be in some heavenly region, you'll be able to reap the rewards that you didn't enjoy in this lifetime.

Skeptical? Don't be. Trust us.

You have to. Because regretfully we are able to provide any evidence of the spiritual wealth that our clients have accumulated. This isn't in our control.

The Divine Securities and Exchange Commission has certain regulations that must be complied with. (Sorry, but we can't show you those either; you'll have to trust us about this also.)

If anyone, including our Guru/CEO, revealed the extent of the wealth that has been accumulated by investing with us, those assets would be taken away.

You might be wondering, "Why?" By asking this question, you are demonstrating a lack of trust in our investment approach.

In order to become rich -- not that anyone will ever know you are, maybe not even yourself -- you'll need to stifle the negativity that raises questions. Focus on two simple positive words, "Trust us."

Remember: you can't become spiritually wealthy if you're not actively investing your faith, time, money, emotions, and intellect.

Give up on our investment strategy, even if it seems like your assets are declining or staying steady, and that's how you become a loser.

Remember: all of our clients become rich. Some day. In some life. Outside of sight. Secretly. You can take that to the bank. Some day...

Guaranteed.

You can rest easy knowing that each of our clients enjoys a deeply personal relationship with his or her very own investment advisor, a clone of our CEO. The clone will be with you every moment of every day, overseeing your spiritual wealth-building.

You won't see any sign of this person. The clone isn't visible. And won't communicate with you. Or show any other sign of its presence.

But as we like to say, trust us.

None of our clients has failed to gain tremendous spiritual wealth. You'll see for yourself after you sign up with us. 

Eventually. Probably in another life-time. Because our CEO clones like to preserve your new riches by not letting you be aware of them.

That way you won't be able to waste your capital by spending it on silly stuff. Like knowing that you've saved your soul, known God, become enlightened, and/or reaped the reward of heavenly bliss in your eternal afterlife.

The richest person is the one who doesn't know that he or she is rich. That motto works for us, for sure.

So sign up now for our 100% guaranteed spiritual wealth-building program. It'll take a hell of a lot of time and effort for you to make it work, but here's the best thing about it:

You'll never know if it worked. You can't lose, if you have no way of knowing whether you won!

Morality shouldn't depend on the supernatural

How do we decide what is right and wrong? Is there even such a thing, or just "right" and "wrong"? Who are we trying to please, or relate to, when we act ethically, outwardly or inwardly?

All intriguing questions, which are ably addressed by anthropologist David Eller in his "Christianity Does Not Provide the Basis for Morality." This is a chapter in a book I'm reading, The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails.

Every religion is deluded, of course -- not just Christianity. Likewise, no religion, spiritual belief, or mystical practice can provide the basis for morality. Eller shows how they all make invalid assumptions that mess up moral decision-making.

I found his observations about "agency" to be particularly interesting. 

If there is, nevertheless, one quality that religions seem to share, it is what has been called "agency." Agency essentially means "intelligence" or "will" or, perhaps most profoundly, "intention."

Agents are the kinds of beings who have intelligence or will or intention, who are not mere objects of natural forces but who make some choices on the basis of their own nature and interests.

Agents are, in short, "persons," and human beings are the agents or persons with which we are most familiar.

Sure. There's nothing strange about this.

We humans recognize our own intentionality, and we also know that other people share our capacity to act willfully (some animals also can do this). So we can visualize how what we decide to do will affect others. Religious weirdness only creeps in when agency is attributed to inanimate objects or supernatural entities.

In a seemingly mild form, this is reflected in the frequently-heard comment, "It looks like the universe is trying to teach me a lesson." As non-religious as I am, I've said this myself.

But after reading Eller's chapter, I now recognize how religous'y are the words trying and teach when used in reference to the universe. Not to mention in reference to God, angels, Jesus, cosmic consciousness, an ascended master, or some other divine entity.

There is no evidence that the universe is an "agent," in the sense described above. Nor is there any demonstrable evidence of supernatural beings who are agents.

Yet most people believe that something or someone non-human takes an interest in them, has intentions toward them, and is pleased or displeased depending on what they do.

What is important is that humans are inveterate agent-detectors, looking for will or intention or purpose or goal-oriented behavior in each other and in the world around them. And we tend to find it, whether or not it is there.

Thus the characteristic feature of religion is the claim that there are nonhuman and superhuman agents in the world, lacking some of the "qualia" of humans (like bodies or mortality) but possessing the most important one -- mind or personality or intention.

This "religious perspective," if you will, humanizes the world or, more critically, socializes the world, because these nonhuman religious agents (like a god) not only can be spoken with but also must be spoken with. They are understood by members of the religion to be a real and inescapable part of their social world.

I used to consider that God, or my guru, (who were pretty much the same thing, to my believing mind) knew both what I was doing and what I was thinking about. Most religious people have a similar belief.

This can be pleasantly reassuring, as you always have a secret invisible friend around who cares about you. Even if you're physically alone, a conversation, albeit one-sided, always can be carried on with a supernatural being.

But here's one problem, among many, with this sort of religosity: basing one's morality on a relationship with an imaginary metaphysical entity can, and usually will, screw up our relationships with people and other living beings here on Earth, in addition to how we relate to our self.

Our attention is focused on how we believe God or some other supernatural being will react to what we're doing, not on how human beings (including ourselves) will be affected by an action or thought.

Examples of this abound in every religion. I'll offer one from my own experience as a member of an India-based mystical/meditation organization.

Vegetarianism was a core moral commandment. This went so far as to include eggs, whether fertilized or not. Eventually animal rennet, found in most cheeses, was included in the No Eat list.

I used to be very strict about trying not to eat even a speck of meat, fish, egg, or other animal'ish product. If you'd asked me "why?" at the time, I wouldn't have been able to offer any coherent answer. I simply believed that there would be negative consequences, bad karma, from ingesting the tiniest bit of proscribed food.

If I'd had a single bite of an egg-filled pastry, I wouldn't have hurt any human being -- including myself. But I imagined that a metaphysical entity was aware of me. And this supernatural being would be disturbed or disappointed if I ate a speck of egg.

Weird.

Yet entirely in line with the "agency" assumptions of religious teachings. You'd better be good, not for goodness's sake, but because God/ guru/ karma/ whatever knows what you're thinking or doing, and will be pissed off if you do it.

This sort of morality isn't really moral. It passes off the responsibility for deciding what is right or wrong to someone other than us. Worse, that someone other isn't real. So our morality becomes fake as well.

What religion does for morality and for society in general is move the authority, the responsibility, for rules and institutions out of human hands. Each religion adds some idiosyncratic elements to the nonreligious human tendency to create and enforce behavioral norms and appraisals and then attributes the whole system to a nonhuman and superhuman source.

...In the end, the return of morality back to earth, to the natural world and the human world, puts morality in the hands of humans who create and sustain it in the first place. It does not "solve" the moral problems of humanity -- since there is still no agreement on what the solution or what the very problems are -- but it empowers us to be the ones to decide.

(Here's a short piece by Eller that covers some of the same ground as his considerably longer chapter.)

Getting small: solution to all of my problems?

Last week I heard a Taoist scholar/practitioner say, "Feel small, and your problems will be small."

Makes sense. A similar intuition has been taking root in me since embracing the non-faith of churchlessness six or so years ago.

Most religions teach that bigger is better. We're supposed to expand our consciousness, rise up to heaven, grow in spiritual understanding, enlarge our connection with God.

I used to enjoy the feeling that my devotional practices enjoined by a religious organization -- meditation, volunteering, vegetarianism, tee-totaling, and such -- were helping me to become more.

More detached from this lower world of materiality. More attached to a godly power that was omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient. More virtuous and ethical. More in touch with my soul, which would endure for eternity after my physical body/mind died.

Like virtually all religious believers, I was out to solve life's problems (including death) by becoming larger, stronger, and indestructible. Not in a material sense, of course. Spiritually.

Eventually I came to feel that this was a misguided way to go. There's no demonstrable evidence that any person ever has been able to overcome human limitations by becoming larger than life.

However, both logically and experientially I'm attracted to a less is more alternative.

Since we Homo sapiens are so puny, weak, and clueless in comparison to the vast, wild, mysterious cosmos, why not humbly acknowledge our littleness? And perhaps cultivate some shrinking to become even less than we already are.

This isn't any sort of original idea.

Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism/Vedanta, and other "eastern" faiths promote various varieties of no-self or ego-loss. So do the more mystical sides of the world's monotheistic religions.

Striving to become nothing seems contradictory to me, though. When I pull the plug on our bathtub drain, the water doesn't go through any effort to disappear. It just swirls away. Until...it's gone.

Similarly, I suspect that simply observing the nature of what we are -- basically, natural -- is all that needs to be done, or not done, to get one's psyche pleasantly small. (Again, not at all an original idea.)

Modern neuroscience doesn't find any enduring self or soul reflected in human consciousness.

I haven't found one either. It sure seems like there's no difference between me and the rest of the natural world, aside from the fact that, being a self-aware human, I can imagine/ manufacture/ produce/ create a seeming difference.

Isn't it true that what is bothersome are differences? Such as: The difference between what I want to have happen and what does happen. The difference between an enduring universe and a time-limited me. 

The smaller I feel, the less these differences matter to me. That may sound paradoxical, but it isn't.

If I consider that I can play golf fairly well, then comparing myself to Tiger Woods makes me feel lowly on the links. But if I see myself as utterly incompetent at playing the game, I've got no pride to defend, so the difference between me and a top pro isn't bothersome.

Here's a thought experiment that I enjoy playing around with:

What if I learned that, ala the Matrix, I wasn't the "me" that I've always considered myself to be, but a computer simulation? (Some scientists take seriously the notion that the universe is simulated reality.)

This knowledge wouldn't change how I experience life directly. But it sure would affect how I experience my experiencing of life.

How? I can't say, because I'm only imagining that I've learned I'm part of a computer simulation. But is this so different from the "real" thing? After all, how could I know for sure that the unveiling of the Matrix wasn't another aspect of an illusion?

As I said on this post recently, in the end imagination is what we're left with when we approach the limits of thing-ness (when we pass from considering discrete things to the seeming unity that things exist in, or as).

So I can imagine that once I've realized that I'm not really the separate "me" I thought I was, but rather part of a simulated whole that includes a representation of the self I seem to be, dying wouldn't bother me nearly as much as it does now.

My substantiality would have been recognized as a mirage. My simulated consciousness would have come to understand that it was a simulation, part and parcel of a wholeness that was out of my control and would continue (or not) with or without me.

Increasingly, it seems to me that what people call "enlightenment" is nothing more than what I've just described: recognizing that the separate enduring self each of us appears to be is just that, an appearance.

Which makes me feel really, really small. Yet also really, really relaxed. Like Janis Joplin said:

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

Taoism and imagination

Reality is what it is. That's difficult, if not impossible, to argue with. And it's a central proposition of Taoism, which is one reason I'm so attracted to this philosophy.

We humans like to name things, conceptualize things, analyze things. But what if something isn't really a "thing"? Then how do we relate to it?

Like, the universe, the cosmos, the whole shebang.

Not a piece of it, which could reasonably be viewed as a thing. Rather, the entire mysterious ungraspable stupendous all-encompassing entirety of everything -- that can't be divided into this thing and that thing.

A few days ago I went to a talk by Qiguang Zhao at Salem's Willamette University. He's a Taoist scholar who practices Tai Chi, and has written a book about Taoism: "Do Nothing and Do Everything."

On my other blog I wrote about Qiguang's talk. Here I won't repeat what I said there. I'll start in where I left off, with some thoughts about imagination. After his talk, I asked Qiguang how imagination relates to Taoism.

I liked his subtle answer, which basically was that nature is real and imagination is, well, imaginary by comparison. However, we can't grasp the essence of the natural world, or Tao.

Why? Because we are that essence. We are nature. We are Tao. 

So we imagine what it is like, because that's all we can do. We tell stories about it. We name what can't be named, conceptualize what is beyond concepts, and analyze what can't be broken into parts.

All this imagining is fun. It's enjoyable. I'm doing it right now. So are you, as you read and ponder what I've written.

Why? Well, I don't know. I guess because we can. Humans can do these things. My dog can't, so far as I can tell.

It's good, though, to be reminded that whatever we think we understand about the cosmos, it isn't much. Through science, art, music, poetry, philosophy, religion, and simply living we get glimpses of what The Big Picture is, but our perspective is inescapably narrow, restricted, incomplete, partial.

I recall saying to Qiguang, after he replied to my question, "Imagination is fine, so long as we know that we are engaging in it. Problems only arise when we mistake our imagination for reality."

Religions start off with imagining. For example, true believing Christians imagine that God exists, that Jesus saves, that sins can be washed away, that heaven awaits after death.

I like how Taoism ends with imagining. The message I got from Qiguang's response to my question is that imagination fills the gap between what we can comprehend and what is real.

We do our best to understand what can be understood. But some things can't be understood. Especially things that aren't a thing, as noted above.

We could follow Wittgenstein's advice: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." That isn't much fun, though. We're social, communicative creatures. So we use our imagination to detour around the roadblock of what can't be spoken of, because it can't be understood.

Whee! We're still driving on the understanding road!

As fast as we want. Even going offroad... then onroad... wherever. No problem. After all, it's an imaginary road, and we're not getting anywhere in really real reality. Just our imaginary reality.

Taoists do a lot of laughing. At themselves. At the world. At the Tao. They don't take themselves very seriously. This came through in Qiguang's entertaining talk.

Near the end of his presentation he told a story, showing an illustration from his book that he'd drawn himself in a Taoist style: people small, nature large.

A Chinese man is driving a cart pulled by a horse. There's a jug of wine sitting behind his seat. No luggage. No other belongings. Just a large jug of wine. What else does he need?

A boy is walking in back of the cart. He's carrying a hoe. Qiguang said that the man hired the boy to follow him. When the man dies and falls off the cart (too much wine?) the boy's job is to bury him where he lies with the hoe.

Confucianism, Qiguang said, has rules about how a person is supposed to be buried. The Taoist attitude is, whatever. So the man is flaunting Confucian rigidity and pretentiousness.

If we feel like imagining what reality is like, no problem. Whatever. We just shouldn't take our imagining very seriously, or expect other people to share in it.

Religious myths can be entertaining. Fun. Comforting. Inspiring. If we don't feel like remaining silent regarding what can't be spoken about, why not imagine away?

Knowing what we're doing. With a smile on our face.

Believers need to take the "Outsider Test for Faith"

Why and how do religious believers choose to accept a particular faith out of the many choices available to them? (4200 is one estimate)

Great question. Here's an ever better one: What makes someone confident that the religion they've chosen is true, while all the other religions are false?

John W. Loftus examines these issues in a book he edited, "The Christian Delusion." The first chapter I read was by Loftus, "The Outsider Test for Faith Revisited." He used to be a minister, until his deconversion.

I loved the chapter.

It lays out problems with religious belief that I've been aware of for a long time, but had never considered so clearly and cogently. The first version of Loftus' Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) can be read here. What I perused this morning includes some responses to objections true believers raised to OTF version 1.0.

Here's how Loftus lays out his thesis:

1) Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the religious diversity thesis.

2) Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one's religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the religious dependency thesis.

3) Hence the odds are highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false.

4) So the best way to test one's adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate other religious faiths. This expresses the OTF.

Nicely said.

It's been observed that every religious believer rejects countless gods and/or other metaphysical entities, accepting just one: what he or she believes in. An atheist just goes one small step further: rejecting that one as well.

So Loftus makes the entirely reasonable argument that people should test their chosen faith in the same way they test other (rejected) religious, spiritual, mystical, or metaphysical belief systems.

Given these facts, the central thesis of the OTF is a challenge to believers to test or examine their own religious faith as if they were outsiders with the same presumption of skepticism they use to test or examine other religious faiths.

Its presumption is that when examining one's own religious faith, skepticism is warranted, since the odds are good that it is false. Remember, brainwashed people do not know that they have been brainwashed.

...I've investigated my faith as an insider with the presumption that it was true. Even from an insider's perspective with the Christian set of control beliefs, I couldn't continue to believe. Now, from the outside, it makes no sense at all.

Christians are on the inside. I am now on the outside. Christians see things from the inside. I see things from the outside. From the inside, it seems true. From the outside, it seems bizarre. As Stephen Roberts quipped, "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

People will reject unsubstantiated claims in holy books... except the book they believe in. People will reject miracle stories... except miracles related by their own faith. People will reject the divinity of living prophets or messengers of God... except the person they accept as a genuine spiritual teacher.

Every religious believer, aside from the few who are genuinely open-minded, considers that he or she has found the One True Faith among the 4,199 or so false faiths. Yet how is this possible, logically or realistically?

It's like Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegon, where all the children are above average.

Nine out of ten people say that other people are influenced by nonrational factors to believe in weird things, and yet these same respondents turn around and say that they are the exceptions to this. How is it possible for nine out of ten respondents to be the exceptions to what nine out of ten of them recognize to be the rule?

There are good reasons for belonging to a religious, spiritual, or mystical group. But having a lock on cosmic truth isn't one of them. Nobody knows what lies at the heart of reality, or even if there is such a thing: a heart, a core, a central truth.

So the only honest attitude is "I don't know." Along with, "You don't know either." This leaves us all on the same unknowing level.

A non-religious level.

In his chapter Loftus answers an objection to his Outsider Test for Faith: that skeptics and atheists hold onto an unfounded belief system -- skepticism -- just as religious believers do.

This is a pleasingly pithy response:

It's patently false to say atheism is a religion or a worldview which Keller and other Christians do. "If atheism is a religion" as David Eller quips, then not collecting stamps is a hobby."

My super-simple view of Buddhism

Yesterday, during my Tai Chi class, I had an insightful flash moment that encapsulated how I look upon Buddhism (and also other forms of spirituality) these churchless days.

We started off by doing the Yang Long Form. I'm familiar with the form, which, not surprisingly, is long. About twenty minutes worth of prescribed movements, though we usually breeze through the form a bit more quickly.

Tai Chi often is described as "moving meditation."

Yeah, it seems that way to me. Just as when I do my unmoving meditation, sometimes while doing Tai Chi my mind is calm and centered, and other times it is chaotically active.

Because I know the Long Form so well, I don't have to think much about what movement comes next. This left me free to do other things with my psyche. Like, daydream about what I'll eat for dinner, what's on my "to do" list after class, and such.

When I noticed myself drifting off into non-Tai Chi'ish thoughts, I gave myself a mental reprimand. "I should be focused on the here and now, not the there and then. I'm not really doing moving meditation if my mind isn't absorbed in the Tai Chi movements."

I went back and forth in this fashion for a few minutes while we were doing the Long Form, bouncing between (1) absorption in the moment, (2) distracting thoughts, and (3) noticing that I was engaged in (2) rather than (1) -- which was mildly annoying.

Then, as I turned toward the north wall in Grasp the Sparrow's Tail, I got a message from... who knows? Doesn't matter. Wherever it came from, my brain suddenly was filled with a wordless realization.

Expressed in words, it sounded something like this:

It doesn't matter what you're thinking, or not thinking. It doesn't matter how you're moving, or not moving. Whatever is happening now, it's going to change before too long. Thoughts come and go. Movements come and go. Relax. Accept what's here, then let it go. And accept what happens next.

During the rest of the Long Form, I didn't feel any pressure to be focused rather than distracted. Or to be thoughtless rather than thinking. Flowing with whatever was passing through my mind, or being expressed through my body, was enough. Nothing else to do.

This is pretty much how I've come to view the essence of Buddhist philosophy, which bears a lot of resemblance to Taoism (Tai Chi also can be called "Taoism expressed in movement").

For the past few nights my wife and I have been watching parts of a recorded PBS documentary, "The Buddha," a film by David Grubin. We're past the Buddha's enlightenment, which was described in a wonderfully clear fashion.

Here's some enlightenment-related quotes from the film by Buddhist experts who appeared in "The Buddha."

"It’s not like entering a new state; it’s uncovering or surrendering to the reality that has always been there. He realized he’d always been in Nirvana that Nirvana was always the case; your reality itself is Nirvana. It’s the unreality; it’s your ignorance that makes you think you’re this self-centered separate being trying to fight off an overwhelming universe and failing. You are that universe." -- Robert Thurman

"You’re already enlightened. He’s saying the capacity for enlightenment, that your awake-ness already exists within you." -- Mark Epstein

"Nirvana is this moment seen directly. There is no where else than here. The only gate is now. The only doorway is your own body and mind. There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing else to be. There’s no destination. It’s not something to aim for in the afterlife. It’s simply the quality of this moment." -- Jane Hirshfield

"Just this, just this, this room where we are. Pay attention to that. Pay attention to who's there, pay attention to what isn't known there, pay attention to what is known there, pay attention to what everyone is thinking and feeling, what you're doing there, and pay attention. Pay attention." -- W.S. Merwin

In the film, Buddha is shown experimenting with various sorts of traditional religious/spiritual practices common in the India of his time (as now).

He meditated like crazy, trying to find some mystical center of both himself and existence at large. He engaged in extreme austerities, such as supposedly eating only one grain of rice a day. He'd already done the sensual enjoyment thing before he left the family palace, so he knew that didn't bring lasting satisfaction.

Then the Buddha gets it. The Middle Way. Nothing special. Nirvana is right here. Enlightenment is right here. There's nothing to strive for.

"Buddha meets someone who doesn’t see anything special about him because the awakened Buddha doesn’t look any different from anybody else. He is ordinary. Buddhism is not about being special. Buddhism is about being ordinary. And it is not about the continual exudation of bliss. It is about walking a normal human life with normal human beings, doing normal human things."

And this reminds you that you yourself might be a Buddha. At this moment, the person you’re looking at might be one. It’s an interesting practice. Just each person you see as you walk down the street; “Buddha? Buddha? Buddha? Buddha? Buddha?” -- Jane Hirshfield

It was strange, watching the parts of the film where modern Buddhists are shown practicing their rituals, to realize how far removed Buddhism now seems to be from what the Buddha is considered to have taught.

People go on meditation retreats where they sit still on mats for many hours a day, even though the Buddha explored the depths of yoga and meditation -- concluding that it didn't lead him anywhere.

People go on pilgrimages to Buddhist shrines, holy places, and temples, while revering Buddhist teachers, Zen and otherwise, even though the Buddha taught that truth is to be realized within oneself, not in any outside place or person.

As Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche says, the Buddha wasn't a Buddhist (just as Christ wasn't a Christian).

I strongly suspect that if we could be transported back to the time of Buddha, seeing him as he was, not as hundreds of years of legends and oral traditions made him out to be before Buddhist teachings were encapsulated in writing, we'd find a much different "Buddhism" from what is practiced now.

Much simpler. A lot less metaphysical. Non-religious. That's the Buddhism that appeals to me. Again: nothing special. Just this. Here. Now.

RSSB's ties to Religare mix money and spirituality

As shown in my previous post, there's an intimate relationship between Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious/mystical organization headquartered in India, and Religare -- a large global financial services group.

The current RSSB guru is Gurinder Singh Dhillon. His sons, though only 26 and 20 years old, are among the 400 richest Indians owing to millions of Religare shares having been transferred to them at a very low cost via insider trading deals.

And the guru himself has acquired about half a million dollars worth of Religare shares in a similar fashion. (For details on all this, read "Religare's money connections with the Radha Soami guru.")

When I first received an email from somebody who was knowledgeable about the RSSB - Religare relationship, my first reaction was there's nothing wrong with making money. 

I still feel that way.

However, the more I learned about the ties that bind RSSB and Religare, the more I was bothered by how the "vibe" of the spiritual organization I was an active member of for over thirty-five years has changed. 

The guru who initiated me back in 1971 was Charan Singh. My recollection is that his family owned quite a bit of farm land in the Punjab, and this is how he and various relatives supported themselves.

Back then it appeared to us Western disciples that business dealings and spiritual pursuits were kept entirely separate in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas organization. If there were ties between members of the group becoming rich, and becoming godly, this wasn't obvious. The emphasis was on "selfless service," not self-aggrandizement.

Times have changed. I've been told that almost all members of the board of directors of Religare are Radha Soami Satsang Beas initiates, or "satsangis."

Also, that the RSSB guru literally runs the company -- he makes all the important decisions and spends a considerable amount of time driving the business. The children of high-ranking satsangis, along with family members and friends of the guru, work for Religare.

All Religare establishments reportedly are strictly vegetarian, in accord with one of the rules for RSSB initiates. No employee, whether a member of RSSB or not, is permitted to bring any sort of non-vegetarian food inside the gates of the buildings. So no pepperoni pizza delivery for a guy or gal working late on company business.

Charitable activities of RSSB reportedly have been cut back considerably, with the guru being quoted as saying, "We are a spiritual organization, not a charitable one." This strikes some initiates as hypocritical, given how busily the guru and those close to him are acquiring wealth through RSSB connections.

Apparently now the only organized RSSB charitable activity for the poor is the Beas hospital that was built many years ago, when Charan Singh was the guru. The annual "eye camps" that provided free medical care for cataracts and other problems have been discontinued. (Another guru's "dera" offers them, though.)

Sunil Godhwani, Religare's Chairman and Managing Director, is a Radha Soami Satsang Beas follower and the guru's closest aide. Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh, the brothers (nephews of the guru) who founded Religare and transferred millions of shares in the company to the guru's sons also are RSSB initiates.

I have some personal experience with insider transactions, since my father was a co-founder of a company -- Systems and Computer Technology Corporation -- back in the 1980's or thereabouts. (My mother divorced my father when I was very young and I never had any contact with him until I was in my thirties, so I'm sort of vague on details.)

Feeling guilty over how he had ignored one of his sons, my father transferred several thousand shares in the company to me. As a founder, he'd gotten them dirt cheap. And over the years, as I followed the company's fortunes, I saw how frequently shares were traded back and forth in insider deals.

In general, this is completely legal. Also, common.

However, there's something strange about the sons of a guru, who is considered by disciples to be "God in human form" and master of their spiritual destiny, becoming some of the richest people in India after being gifted millions of shares in Religare without ever having worked for the company.

(Gurpreet, the oldest son, is a director of Religare's British affiliate; I've been told that Gurkirat, the youngest son who is still in college, has no connection with the company.)

My wife worked as a psychotherapist in private practice for quite a few years. Through her I learned about the issue of "dual relationships." 

Dual relationships exist whenever a therapist interacts with a client in any capacity beyond the one role as therapist, for example, also being their client’s teacher, consultant, business partner, or sexual partner. If you perform a role other than therapist for your client, it may introduce desires and goals that are yours rather than the client’s and can risk the possibility that you will place your needs above theirs. Maintaining unselfish judgment is critical to your role as an effective, professional therapist.

If this is true of someone who merely functions as a guide to living a more satisfying worldly life, it sure seems that a guru who is viewed by his clients/initiates as being the master of their spiritual life (including an afterlife) needs to be even more careful about mixing up money with a therapeutic relationship.

Here's another view of dual relationships: 

Dual relationships between psychotherapists and their clients/patients are in the most general sense considered inappropriate or unethical.  In nearly all situations a dual relationship involves a risk that treatment may become biased or influenced by a non-treatment relationship between the professional and consumer.

During the more than three decades I was involved with Radha Soami Satsang Beas, I frequently observed first-hand the astounding devotion initiates, which naturally included me, had toward the guru.

I've seen destitute Indians happily placing a rupee (23 cents) or two into a "seva" (donation) container. I've seen initiates working tirelessly without pay for hours, days, and weeks in a spirit of service to the guru. I've seen disciples jump at the chance to do the most dirty or difficult volunteer work if this would further a project ordered by the guru.

It's well known that when people are in different positions of power (such as boss/employee or teacher/student), different interpersonal dynamics come into play. The lower-ranking person really isn't "free" in the usual sense of the word. 

This is why psychotherapists are so concerned about the dangers of dual relationships. Power imbalances can easily result in people being taken advantage of, even when they appear -- and may even feel themselves -- to be acting voluntarily.

What I've learned about the dealings between Radha Soami Satsang Beas and Religare doesn't feel right to me.

It definitely goes against the grain of what I used to enjoy about being a member of RSSB: the focus on meditation, mysticism, charitable giving, and service to a spiritual community where everybody did their share, and nobody (seemingly) tried to get more than their share.

That said, maybe I'm old-fashioned.

Maybe I don't understand how modern-day gurus and their relatives can engage in insider trading deals with disciples while still remaining true to their philosophical principles. Maybe I'm missing the benefit to RSSB of having an inner circle derive large financial benefits that aren't available to other initiates.

All I know is that philosophically and ethically, there are reasons for concern here. This morning I dug out a couple of RSSB books that I've got stored away in our garage. 

I wanted to remind myself what was said in "Honest Living," one of the core Radha Soami Satsang Beas publications, about materialism.

Since it is a natural tendency of all human beings to strive for happiness and to improve their situation in life, the success of our spiritual journey depends on what we put first, our spiritual or material goals.

...The danger lies in making material goals our priority. We are then equating riches with happiness and we immediately become vulnerable to compromising those very principles established to safeguard us.

Now, everybody has to support themselves in some way. The RSSB teachings certainly don't discourage initiates from trying to make money.

However, it strikes me as discordant when the RSSB guru, his family, and high-ranking members of the RSSB organization are so deeply involved in the business of Religare. Should a religious group whose aim is release of the soul from the bonds of worldly attachment be so heavily focused on materialistic corporate goals?

It's also important to keep in mind that relationships between people in a guru's family can be quite different from the usual sorts of familial ties.

I can understand why at first glance my arguments above about "dual relationships" would be discounted -- given that the founders of Religare who gifted shares of the company to the guru's sons (and Gurinder Singh himself) are related to the guru. What's wrong with family members giving gifts to each other, and going into business with each other?

Usually, nothing.

But being related to a guru who is considered to be God in human form is a much different deal than being related to an everyday Homo sapiens. This really often is a dual relationship in the classic sense, because the guru functions both as an infallible spiritual guide and a relative: father, grandfather, uncle, son, or whatever.

In Legacy of Love, a RSSB biography of Charan Singh, Gurinder Singh's predecessor (and uncle), this special relationship of a guru with devoted family members is described:

Sardar Harbans Singh, Marharaj Ji's [Charan Singh's] father, was the third son of Great Master. More than anything else, he was remembered for his absolute obedience to Great Master. When he was told by him to send his boys -- Maharaj Ji and Shoti -- to Dera for their education, he never questioned Great Master's wish.

He handed them over so fully into Great Master's trust that for many years the boys had no idea he was their father and thought of him as an uncle. His complete faith first in Great Master, and later, in his son, needs to be seen in the context of the practical difficulties those very close to a Master face in accepting his divine power and role.

For someone to accept a close relation or friend as the Master, he or she has to be able to relinquish all self-interest in the relationship. Since, as Maharaj Ji so often pointed out, most of these relationships are based on some level of self-interest, it is a rare person who can make such a sacrifice. It is a gift of grace, Maharaj Ji would say, to recognize a saint.

Fascinating.

First Sardar Harbans Singh gave all his obedience to his father, who also was his spiritual guru. Then, when Charan Singh became the guru, Sardar Singh transferred his "complete faith" to his own son.

This is difficult to understand for those, like me, who aren't steeped in Indian culture. I, along with my psychotherapist wife, can't believe that any human being is capable of rising above any form of self-interest -- and is worthy of unconditional obedience and trust.

Yet this is how a "perfect guru" is viewed by ardent disciples, including members of his own family. As the saying goes, if the guru says jump, the only question for them is how high?

This offers a different perspective on financial dealings among and between initiates of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. When the guru is involved in these dealings, they take on a deeply spiritual perspective since Gurinder Singh is considered to be (1) infallible and (2) utterly unself-interested.

Well, as I often say, maybe. But that's highly unlikely.

So when profound religious faith in a guru is intertwined with business transactions that involve him, there's a strong possibility of spirituality becoming strangely mixed up with material concerns and desires.

Religare's money connections with the Radha Soami guru

Religious institutions often have an intimate relationship with money. The hugely rich Catholic Church comes to mind, naturally. There's nothing inherently wrong with this.

People simply should be aware when spirituality gets tangled up with financial dealings, and make up their own minds about what, if anything, it means to them.

In that spirit, someone forwarded me an email message regarding Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) that reportedly has been circulating among members of this India-based organization.

RSSB, as a branch of the Sant Mat ("Path of Saints") religious philosophy, is led by a guru who is considered by the faithful to be God in human form. Or at least, as divinely realized as any human being can be.

The current RSSB guru is Gurinder Singh Dhillon. The email says that he has two sons, Gurpreet Singh Dhillon (age 26) and Gurkirat Singh Dhillon (age 20). I wasn't able to confirm this by any online information, but I checked with the sender of the email and it seems like the information is correct.

(Note: in this blog post I'm sticking to Internet-accessible facts as much as possible. In another post on this subject, I'll be more subjective and share how I feel about those facts, perhaps along with some thoughts from others about the financial dealings related below.)

Gurpreet and Gurkirat are substantial shareholders in a company called Religare. Religare and Fortis, another large Indian company, are part of a family conglomerate headed by Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh.

[Update: a commenter on this post wrote, "Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh of Ranbaxy are the grandsons of Charan Singh, which makes the current Guru their uncle." This casts a somewhat different light on the facts below, but doesn't affect a central point: spiritual and financial affairs have become intimately intertwined in RSSB.]

As this story says:

Malvinder Singh, who will earn some Rs.100 billion ($2.4 billion) from selling his family’s stake in the pharmaceutical firm to Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo, is now planning to make huge investments in Religare and Fortis, the family’s financial service and healthcare companies. “Healthcare and financial services are two areas where we have existing businesses, where we will make investments,” Ranbaxy CEO and managing director Malvinder Singh said Sunday.

For some perspective, the average per capita income in India is about $1,000 (U.S.), while in the United States it is about $39,000. So millions and billions that seem like a lot of money here are considerably farther out of the ordinary for most Indians.

Malvinder Singh, an initiate of RSSB, is deeply involved in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas organization, as is the rest of his family.

This helps explain why the RSSB guru's sons, Gurpreet and Gurkirat, each ended up with about 10% of the shares in Religare according to a 2007 prospectus. On page 25 it says that Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh were allotted 49,575,000 equity shares in Religare at 10 rupees (about 23 cents) a share. 

Malvinder then transferred 6,250,000 shares to Gurpreet Singh, and Shivinder transferred 6,250,000 shares to Gurkirat Singh under guardianship of Ms. Shabnam Dhillon -- almost certainly because Gurkirat is only twenty years old.

The cost also was 10 rupees a share. So the guru's sons each got 6,250,000 shares of Religare for $1,437,500 or thereabouts through an insider deal. The share price on April 6, 2010 was 395.80. Thus, converting into dollars, 6,250,000 shares of Religare currently are worth $55,716,271 (today's exchange rate shows 1 rupee = .022523 US$).

This explains how Gurpreet and Gurkirat appear on a 2009 "Billionaire Club" list of wealthy Indians. They're ranked near the bottom at 364 and 365.

(A billion rupees is only $22,523,000, so it's a lot easier to be a billionaire in India. Interestingly, though, the rupee is worth about 1/44 of a dollar, and the per capita income in India is about 1/39 of the United States per capita income. So seemingly Gurpreet and Gurkirat's net worth makes them the Indian equivalent of an American billionaire.)

The guru's sons seemingly acquired even more Religare shares recently, according to this insider trading report. It appears that each son got 6,183,000 additional shares (for a total of about 12,400,000 shares).

And the RSSB guru himself -- Gurinder Singh Dhillon -- got 26,333, leaving him with a total of 65,833 (or about $587,000 worth).


So the question is... so what?

Well, as I said above, that's a subject for a follow-up post. What I've shared here simply are publicly available facts, accessible to anyone with a web browser via some Google'ing.

As this Indian blogger notes, "Gods and Godmen have always had their role to play in the world of business."

For instance, the patriarch of the Radha Soami sect headquartered at Beas (he is also called the Beas Sant or the saint of Beas) is reported to have played his role in the succession drama at Ranbaxy after the death of then CEO and promoter Parvinder Singh in 1999.

The use of gurus isn’t an oddity in the global business environment. After all they fall in the same category as mentors, executive coaches, and consultants.

Hmmmm. I can't agree with that last statement.

But maybe I have an old-fashioned view of what the role of a spiritual guru is supposed to be. I'll have more to say on this subject in my next post.

"Hidden brain" shows how religion traps people

Humans are social creatures. We are drawn toward conforming with what other people are doing. Being a "lone wolf" usually is less comfortable than being part of a group.

Sometimes herd-like behavior pays off.

It surely did for our ancestors, or evolution wouldn't have produced such powerful pressures to go along and get along in us. If a saber-toothed tiger is attacking, running off by yourself likely isn't the favored survival strategy.

Safety in numbers is the watchword in such situations. But not in others, as Shankar Vedantam shows in an intriguing chapter of "The Hidden Brain,"  a book I've blogged about before.

He talks (in The Siren's Call) about how individuals end up doing the wrong thing because they're attuned to how people around them are acting.

The same pressure to conform is evident in religious groups, where someone who starts to question a consensus of the faithful will be made to feel that something is wrong with him, not the group.

When an alarm goes off, it triggers anxiety, and the hidden brain instructs you to turn to the group because groups provided our ancestors with comfort and safety more often than they exposed them to danger and risk.

In modern disaster situations, the comfort of the group regularly puts individuals at risk because threats are now so complicated that none of the members in the group knows what is happening. The point is not that groups always do the wrong thing. The point is that groups diminish our autonomy.

Vedantam tells the story of what happened to people who worked in a firm that occupied two stories of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

After the second hijacked plane hit the tower, "of the sixty-seven people at the firm who died, sixty-six worked on the eighty-ninth floor. Only one person who died worked on the eighty-eighth floor, and, as we will see, that death was the result of a conscious act of courage."

So what was the difference between the two floors?

Why did almost everyone survive who worked on one floor, while almost everyone died who worked on the other floor? All employees had the same information, the same training, the same confusion when they heard the explosion in the North Tower.

Nearly everyone on one floor left. Nearly everyone on the other stayed... If you happened to be part of the group on the eighty-eighth floor, you ran for the stairs because everyone else was running for the stairs. If you happened to be part of the group on the eighty-ninth floor, you stayed because nearly everyone else was staying, too. 

It is crucial to note that the people on the two floors, just like the bystanders on the Belle Isle bridge, did not explicitly think about their actions this way. No, every person felt they were making autonomous decisions. But the evidence shows that the decision that made the difference between life and death that morning was not made by individuals. That decision was made, for lack of a better term, by groups.

...The first response of people who are trapped is not to review what they have been taught and make reasoned decisions, but to turn decision-making over to the group. Trapped people seek consensus with those around them, even if acquiring such consensus wastes precious seconds. They follow one another, even if they know their comrades are going the wrong way.

Religions also trap people.

They keep true believers confined within the narrow bound of rigid dogmas, theologies, orthodoxies, commandments. They constrain freedom of action, because religious institutions teach that obedience will bring salvation, while disobedience will be followed by hellfire (or at least bad karma).

It isn't easy for someone to start acting independently after becoming immersed in the consensus culture of a religious belief system. Vedantam says, "the hidden brain makes us feel self-conscious when we do something that few other people are doing."

But if we are confident that we know the right thing to do, we need to follow that conviction even if everybody around us is acting like sheep, content to remain fenced within the enclosure of a religion.

Our comrades may not know what they are doing, but following them is much easier than going our own way. The group provides comfort, whereas going your own way triggers anxiety. But in disaster situations, anxiety is the right response; it is false comfort that is deadly.

It may seem that life isn't a "disaster situation." However, no one gets out of it alive. So we need to guide our life as wisely as possible, getting as much meaningful living as possible out of the time we have here on Earth.

No one knows better how to live your life than you. Don't let yourself be trapped by a religion into acting against your better judgment. If the "Exit" sign beckons, run -- don't walk -- through that door.

Finding meaning in small things...without God

God has become too big for me. So has heaven. Along with more scientific notions like ultimate reality.

No longer do I have an idea about what super-consciousness would be like. Or how merging my supposed soul with a supposed all-pervading Oneness would change things for me.

Along with other religious true believers, I used to have some pretty damn grandiose spiritual plans.

I was going to save my soul. I was going to meet God in heaven -- maybe in this very life! I was going to know divine truths that few people on earth had a clue about. I was going to be liberated from sin through the intervention of a God-man who had been sent by the Lord to take care of me. 

Me. Me. Me.

The longer I believed in this massive, huge, transcendent, illusion-shattering stuff, the larger I became. All of the faithful followers I knew did.

We felt that we were special, destined for much greater things than the rest of humanity, part of a few lucky sheep who were fortunate enough to be singled out by God to follow a shepherd back to the Big Green Grassy Meadow in the sky (or higher region of reality).

Grandiosity was fun for a while. But it got to be a strain, all the pretending that I was someone different than the person I knew myself to be.

Who was ordinary. Human. Puny in comparison to the cosmos. Imperfect. 

At times I still enjoy a bit of way-out-there philosophizing. I haven't completely surrendered my long-held fantasy that before I die, Everything (whatever the heck that is) will become clear to me. Or at least semi-transparent.

But what's meaningful to me now is much smaller than before.

Leaving God out of my meaning-equation has resulted in a sum that is considerably humbler. Yet I've found that less is more when it comes to living a satisfying life. Less conceptualizing, imagining, fantasizing, theologizing, and blind faith'ing leaves me more rooted in solid lowly ground.

Before, when I did chores around the house, often I'd pretend that this was some sort of service to a higher power. That made me into someone important, a guy working for the Big Man Upstairs.

Yesterday, on a cold and rainy Oregon afternoon, I distributed the eleven bags of organic fertilizer that had been sitting in our carport. It took me several hours to toss an appropriate amount of manure-smelling fertilizer under the drip zone of countless (almost) plants in our non-easycare yard.

I just did it. I didn't make a special deal out of it. I didn't visualize spreading fertilizer as anything other than what it was: spreading fertilizer.

No destiny was unfolding. No karma was being cleared. No service to some divinity was being performed. No ego loss was occurring.

In every waking moment, there is something to be done, even if that is "do nothing." Making those moments meaningful doesn't involve bringing in something from outside -- some metaphysical, spiritual, religious, mystical, or philosophical teaching/ concept/ abstraction.

I've found that simply attending to what is right before me, here and now, is more satisfying than trying to create a layer cake of extra meaningfulness by adding on all sort of extra dogma-frosting.

Wrapping a birthday present for my granddaughter this morning, life felt complete. Finding a box for it. Picking out some paper. Cutting it to fit best I could. Folding the paper over the box. Taping it down (rather messily). Adding some ribbons and a bow.

There are moments -- maybe they could be every moment -- when I feel, "This is as good as it gets; there's nothing more than this."

No God needed. No theology needed. No vast plan for my life, and afterlife, needed. Just this. Spreading fertilizer. Wrapping a present. Just this.

Ooh, Easter eve! Time for a blasphemous un-sermon

Being both non-Christian and non-religious in general, I don't pay much attention to Easter.

But since so many other people in the United States do, I feel drawn to play my part in this holiday/fantasy by dedicating a fresh blog post to the occasion -- drawing on some of my previous ponderings.

My secular attitude toward Easter was summed up a few years ago by "Easter infringes on my religious freedom." It doesn't seem right that my normal Sunday life gets disrupted by a national shut down in honor of someone (Jesus) I couldn't care less about.

My athletic club is going to be closed all day.

Why not just in the morning, so any devout Christians who have to work tomorrow can attend church if they want to? Which would allow us unbelievers to carry on with our own worship at the altar of shopping, fitness, latte-sipping, and such.

Regarding my spiritual attitude toward Easter, I can't do better than to quote from a 2004 post on my other blog, " 'He is risen!' No, almost certainly not."

Tomorrow countless Christians will consider that they have been saved through their belief that Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected several days later. Almost certainly they are wrong. Probably, both about being saved and about the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection. I find Blackburn’s analysis of people’s beliefs about God highly persuasive.

He says that it makes sense for any thinking person to be skeptical of all the conflicting claims about miracles, one of which, of course, is the Christian claim that Jesus died and then bodily lived again—as also will, supposedly, the Christian faithful.

“Which is more likely?” Blackburn asks: that something miraculous happens which is totally surprising, that in normal life just never happens (like the dead coming back to life), or that the purported miracle is the result of causes we encounter all the time: delusions, memory lapses, misunderstandings, metaphors mistaken for literal truth, deliberate fabrications for selfish ends, and so on.

In the course of browsing through my archives, looking for these previous writings, I came across one of my favorite posts: "Ten undeniable metaphysical truths." Marvelous title. Simple, strong, confident.

And utterly accurate. To date I've gotten 14,699 comments on this blog. None has undermined those ten undeniable truths. Here's my first three Easter-related truths:

(1) Nobody on Earth knows what happens after death. Why? Because if you're still alive on this planet, you aren't dead yet. My logic is impeccable. Near death or mystical experiences don't count as pointers toward a possible afterlife, because they're experienced in this life.

(2) There's no solid proof for God or any other unearthly divinity. If there was, religious skeptics wouldn't have a doubting leg to stand on. Everybody would believe. Plus, whatever religion preached the gospel that matched the proof would overwhelm competing faiths lacking the support of that evidence.

(3) No religion has more validity than any other. This follows from (2). Given that there's no evidence of God, in the sense of a personal (or even impersonal) entity that consciously creates and/or sustains the physical universe, every religion rests on the same foundation: the shifting sand of human speculation.

That said, I'm finding that as my churchless years go by, I'm becoming more comfortable with other people's religiosity. With this caveat: if they don't claim their beliefs are true for anyone else.

I'm up with (non-pathological) craziness, irrationality, absurdity, eccentricity, wildness, and far-out notions.

I'm still the same guy who spent a good share of his college years stoned on various psychoactive substances, listening to trippy music, and musing with my fellow "freaks" about whether on one of the atoms inside the water pipe there was another universe where beings were doing just what we were doing, while in turn we and this entire cosmos was merely a speck of smoke blown from the mouth of a much grander Turned-On Divine Poohbah. 

Hey, it's possible. It was fun to speculate on. We didn't take ourselves seriously. There was no proselytizing, no dogmas, no "thou shalt's."

I don't object to people believing in weird stuff. Everybody does that. When I go into a coffeehouse, order something to drink, and get an extra warm smile from the cute-young-thing barrista, I know that I'm off into la-la land when a crazy voice in my psyche says, "Some chicks are attracted to older gray-haired men."

What's almost certainly true is that she likes larger tips. But I enjoy my little fantasy, recognizing it for what it is: a subjective emanation of my male mind, not objective reality.

We all have ways to get through the days. And weeks. And years. And a lifetime. Life isn't easy. Happiness isn't always at hand. It's natural to seek solace from sources both inside and outside our heads.

Such as religion. Such as Christianity. Such as believing that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, was resurrected on the third day, and is waiting in heaven to receive those who believe in him.

That's a comforting belief. I can understand why someone would embrace it.

I don't have a problem with people believing in whatever they want to -- so long as they don't expect others to accept it as anything other than a weird, wonderful, irrational, and almost certainly untrue belief.

Here's how Owen Flanagan puts it in his "The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World."

What sort of theism can co-exist with the scientific image? What I mean by theism is a set of propositions about the existence and nature of God or gods.

...But theism of the sort that takes certain texts as authoritative, that asserts that certain facts that cannot possibly be known by humans to be true are uncontrovertibly true, is a problem. Assertive theism, but not what I will call expressive theism, is epistematically irresponsible and dangerous to boot.

...But since expressivism is not committed to truth, not even to reasonableness, the story can be as wild and imaginatively rich as one pleases. Forces of good and evil, multiplicities of gods -- a transfinite number of divinities in transfinite universes creating transfinite numbers of new worlds through worm holes between universes enacting the most fantastic battles between forces of good and evil. Whatever you wish that feels compelling, satisfying, rich and deep. We are only talking about stories.

...Because they are untestable, such stories can be said, expressed, even embraced, but they cannot be asserted as worthy of true belief. They are not evaluable in terms of the "true" and the "false." But you can like your story so much that you treat it as true, even if it can't be evaluated as such.

Or at least, something like this might be the best way to describe the self-understanding of the persons who tell a certain story that they conceive mythically: They do not quite believe their story to be true (they can't responsibly do so), but they believe that belief in their story is beneficial.

So if you want, go ahead and believe that Christ is risen tomorrow. There's no harm in believing in belief. It's believing that beliefs are true that is the problem.

Religions are founded on human egotism

It's strange that religiosity is so often associated with humility, selflessness, and lack of ego. Actually, the religious impulse is highly egotistical, as William James makes clear in his classic book, "The Varieties of Religious Experience."

The pivot round which the religious life, as we have traced it, revolves, is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny. Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.

There's nothing wrong with this.

We just need to remember that human nature is part and parcel of religious belief. People turn to religion in much the same way as they learned to turn toward a parent when something scared them as a child.

The warring gods and formulas of the various religions do indeed cancel each other, but there is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet. It consists of two parts: --

1. An uneasiness; and
2. Its solution.

1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand.
2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.

Pretty darn brilliant.

I got my copy of "The Varieties of Religious Experience" back in my college days (1967 edition, which cost me 95 cents). I haven't picked it up for a long time, so had forgotten how what James said in 1902 still rings true today.

Reading a few concluding chapters this morning, I admired James' crisp, clear, honest style. He admits in a postscript that he favors a "crasser" variety of supernaturalism which is piecemeal rather than universalistic.

Meaning, a universalistic view doesn't see the ideal world bursting into the world of phenomena -- answering prayers, guiding individual actions, performing miracles, and so on.

But even though James says he doesn't accept popular Christianity, he still believes that a higher power introduces itself into particular worldly facts/events/happenings.

I suppose that my belief that in communion with the Ideal new force comes into the world, and new departures are made here below, subjects me to being classed among the supernaturalists of the piecemeal or crasser type. Universalistic supernaturalism surrenders, it seems to me, too easily to naturalism.

Well, what's wrong with that?

Why can't we be content with the the big wide world as it is, rather than as how our little narrow egos wish it were? Can't we accept being an integral part of the natural world along with everything else in existence, not getting any special favors from a supernatural Big Man/Woman/Thing upstairs?

That said, I agree with James that generalized egotism of the subjective "I" variety is an inescapable aspect of human experience. We can't get away from our subjectivity. Even the objective facts of science are known through subjective personal consciousness.

The world of our experience consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner "state" in which the thinking comes to pass.

What we think of may be enormous -- the cosmic times and spaces, for example -- whereas the inner state may be the most fugitive and paltry activity of mind. Yet the cosmic objects, so far as the experience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose existence we do not inwardly possess but only point at outwardly, while the inner state is our very experience itself; its reality and that of our experience are one.

...it is absurd of science to say that the egotistic elements of experience should be suppressed. The axis of reality runs solely through the egotistic places -- they are strung upon it like so many beads.

Religions, though, enlarge our egotism.

They encourage us to believe that our "fugitive and paltry" inner state of mind can be connected with a vastly grander metaphysical presence which -- great news! -- takes an active interest in us.

James describes what happens when the better part of a man, the non-wrong part that isn't responsible for the uneasiness in (1) above, embraces religiosity.

He becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck.

So supposedly the higher subjective part of a human being somehow is able to merge or meld with a supernatural "more" that is an objective reality. Here's the problem, though.

There's no demonstrable evidence of that supernatural "more." It has to be taken on faith. Many people claim to have experienced a transcendental power of some sort, but there's no consistency in their descriptions of it.

As noted above, William James believed in an unseen, yet objectively real, higher power. However, he also recognized that the human mind contains a vast unknown realm: the subconscious self.

Since everything we experience is strung on the above-mentioned cord of subjective egotism, so are our religious, mystical, and spiritual awarenesses. These can be viewed as an expanded vision of our own subjective consciousness that manifests as an external objective reality.

Let me then propose, as an hypothesis, that whatever it may be on its farther side, the "more" with which in religious experience we feel ourselves connected is on its hither side the subconscious continuation of our conscious life.

Starting thus with a recognized psychological fact as our basis, we seem to preserve a contact with "science" which the ordinary theologian lacks. At the same time the theologian's contention that the religious man is moved by an external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of invasions from the subconscious region to take on objective appearances, and to suggest to the Subject an external control.

In the religious life the control is felt as "higher"; but since on our hypothesis it is primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of something, not merely apparently, but literally true.

That sense of union, literally true as it may be, is with our own self -- "the higher faculties of our own hidden mind." Such is the scientific, or quasi-scientific, hypothesis proposed by James.

Over a hundred years later, it is still a viable hypothesis. Modern neuroscience has confirmed that each of us does indeed have a hidden mind that underlies conscious experience without being accessible to it.

How would religious belief be affected if it was known that our sensations of being connected with, of under the care of, a higher power were entirely contained within our own personal mind/brain?

The mystical and spiritual experiences would feel the same. But no longer would we believe that we were contacting a transcendent divinity. We couldn't claim a special relationship with some supernatural being, because that "higher power" would be us. 

An expanded us, to be sure. An us that encompassed normally untapped areas of the mind/brain. An us that wasn't as split, searching, anxious, uncertain, and self-doubting as we are now.

This would eliminate a lot of unnecessary religious egotism. No one would be a member of a chosen people, or a special beloved of God. We'd all just be human beings, having human experiences, making the best use possible of our human psyches.

In James' postscript to his book, he admitted that the "more" which is felt in the many varieties of religious experience doesn't have to be infinite. It just has to be bigger than we are now, which certainly could be an expanded sense of self.

Nevertheless, in the interests of intellectual clearness, I feel bound to say that religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief.

The only thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.