Church of the Churchless

Sant Mat's close connection with Hinduism

Sant Mat is a spiritual system historically centered in northern India, but which now has spread internationally, with initiates of various Sant Mat gurus scattered around the world.

It often is billed as a "science of the soul" that transcends religious boundaries and distinctions. For example, the branch of Sant Mat that I was a member of for thirty-five years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), has published books that show the purported connection between Sant Mat and Christianity, as well as Sant Mat and Judaism.

This requires considerable leaps of faith, though, and some creative reinterpreting of Bible verses.

The commonalities between Sikhism and Sant Mat are much more apparent, especially since both spiritual practices are centered in the Punjab region of India. (A central difference, however, is that Sikhs consider their holy scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, to be the final eternal guru, while Sant Mat groups are led by a human guru.)

When I was a member of RSSB I liked to think of this group's philosophy as unique. Meaning, Sant Mat was something special, over and beyond the tenets that it shared with other religious faiths. And for some reason I rarely thought of Sant Mat as rooted in Hinduism.

Reading the Hinduism chapter in Stephen Prothero's "God is Not One" helped disabuse me of both notions. As noted in a previous post, Prothero describes the major world religions in an appealingly straightforward manner that casts them in a fresh light for me. 

Here's some of the connections between Hinduism and Sant Mat that struck me as I read through the chapter:

The goal of Sant Mat is to reunite the soul with its "God" in heaven (or Sach Khand), no longer being forced to reincarnate in various bodies under the dictates of karma. Ditto with Hinduism.

Although Hindus disagree on how to reach the religious goal, there is considerable consensus on both the human problem and its solution. The problem is samsara, which literally means wandering on or flowing by but in this context refers to the vicious cycle of life, death, and rebirth. We are born and die, and then we are born and die again.

To most people this doesn't sound like a bad thing. Isn't it better to be reborn than to be dead forever? But Hinduism, along with Sant Mat, seeks eternal bliss -- which is to be found neither on Earth nor in Heaven (a.k.a. astral planes) but beyond both.

Even heaven is subject to the flux and frustrations of the iron law of samsara. It, too, was created and will be destroyed, as will whatever gods reside there. The Hindu goal, therefore, is not to escape from this world to some heavenly paradise, but to escape from heaven and earth altogether.

So how is this to be accomplished? Traditionally, Hindu practice is broken into karma yoga (discipline of action), jnana yoga (discipline of wisdom), and bhakti yoga (discipline of devotion). Similarly, Sant Mat enjoins all three practices, but like Hinduism, emphasizes bhakti above the others.

The third, bhakti yoga, or the discipline of devotion, is now by far the most popular form of Hinduism. It affirms that neither priestly sacrifice nor philosophical knowledge is necessary for release from the bondage of samsara. All that is needed is love -- heartfelt devotion to the god of your choosing.

Hindus embrace a dizzying variety of gods. Sant Mat devotees, on the other hand, focus their love on the living guru of the time. But otherwise there is little difference between the way Hinduism and Sant Mat view bhakti yoga.

Philosophical Hinduism was functionally atheistic; while the gods existed, they were largely irrelevant to the task at hand. Moksha [spiritual liberation] was something you achieved by yourself, not something handed to you from on high.

Over time, however, moksha became a product not of self-effort but of other power. In devotional Hinduism, samsara remains the problem and moksha the solution, but now the path to spiritual liberation is quicker and easier. Instead of relying on yourself, as jnana yoga practitioners did, you can get moksha through the mercy and grace of your chosen god.

Again, in Sant Mat it is the guru who bestows mercy and grace, being a human embodiment of God. Aside from this, both Hinduism and Sant Mat are alike in their emphasis on fervent devotion to a being who is believed capable of bestowing liberation on a soul who would be trapped in samsara without this extra spiritual boost.

Hindu worship, however, is first and foremost about sight. Whereas Protestants go to church to hear the gospel reading and the sermon, Hindus go to temple to see and be seen -- to gaze at their beloved gods and to be gazed at lovingly in return. Worshippers build up to this key moment in puja [making a food offering] by circumambulating the temple itself and then their image of their god.

Only then do they take darshan by engaging their deity in an intimate, eye-to-eye encounter. "When Hindus go to a temple, they do not commonly say, 'I am going to worship,' but rather, 'I am going for darshan," writes Harvard professor Diana Eck inher book on this "religious seeing." Not without reason have Eck and others referred to darshan as "the central act of Hindu worship."

Same in Sant Mat. Westerners like me who became RSSB initiates weren't familiar with the Sant Mat version of darshan. The guru walks onto a dais before which hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of his disciples are sitting.

He takes his seat. Then he starts looking around while each disciple hopes the guru's gaze will fall on him or her, since this is believed to erase a whole bunch of bad karma. The guru's devotees will unblinkingly focus on the guru's face, viewing this as one of the highest spiritual practices.

That's darshan. No words are spoken. After a while the guru gets up and leaves. The disciples exit also, supposedly having had a marvelously uplifting spiritual experience.

Myself, I never got much out of darshan.

Having learned that this practice is based on a Hindu ritual, I can better understand why: I'm not a ritualistic guy. I'm more attracted to the jnana yoga meditative practices that have been largely supplanted in both Hinduism and Sant Mat by devotional bhakti yoga.

At any rate, I found it interesting to learn how closely Sant Mat is connected with Hinduism.

To me, this is more proof that Sant Mat is a blend of well-known Indian religious practices, not a unique "science of the soul" that has managed to disentangle itself from outmoded rituals and dogmas.

The spirituality of my sickness

I don't get sick very often.

So the past five days -- during which I've been suffering through a feverish flu/cold gifted to me by my three year old granddaughter, who, as you can see below, doesn't look capable of such a dastardly deed -- have cast me into an unfamiliar state of consciousness.

Ever eager to suck some philosophical insights out of any sort of experience, I wanted to share a few thoughts from the not-quite-well side of my psyche while I was still doing some serious coughing.

What I've found most interesting about being sick is this: in many respects the blah feeling that comes with illness is akin to what many religions view as an elevated spiritual state.

Minus the bliss. (But not all monks, yogis, mystics, and such appear to be blissed-out, either. Many people who are heavy into meditation strike me as being depressed and listless, which is how I feel when I'm sick.)

I mean, my needs and wants have become simple. I eat less and do less. If I can accomplish a few basic "chop wood and carry water" necessities, like emptying the dishwasher, I feel a sense of accomplishment for the day.

I'm much more detached from the world. Coming across political news in my sick state that ordinarily would make me outraged elicits only a "so what?" from my psyche. I'm focused on what is right before me (notably my congested nose) rather than distant world affairs.

I feel like existence is still objectively the same, yet minus many of the personal valuations that used to color events with vibrant shades of meaning. Now things seem much more neutral -- not right or wrong, good or bad, just there.

And all of this change in consciousness has been produced utterly effortlessly, by, I assume, some viruses that invaded my body. Is this all that different from the effects of intensive meditation, rigorous austerities, lengthy rituals, or other supposedly "spiritual" practices?

Here's another insight. Last night I shared it with some friends, prefacing my remarks with:

Frequently I get insights into the nature of the universe and myself that strike me as having an equal possibility of being (1) a marvelously brilliant, wise observation, or (2) the stupidest, most useless thing you've ever heard. Here's an example. You can decide which applies.

Yesterday I was getting ready to venture out to the Salem World Beat Festival, an event that I didn't want to miss even though I wasn't feeling like my usual self. (Photographic blog report here.)

Preparing my scooter for a ride into town, a thought popped into my mind: I hope I'll feel OK when I get there.

Which was followed almost instantaneously by a response from the other side of my head: You are your feeling, not someone else -- and that's what is OK.

Intuitively, this made a lot of sense to me at the time. And it still does, which is why I tried to explain it to our monthly Salon discussion group. Nobody commented on my insight though, which leads me to believe that it got a (2) rather than a (1) from the attendees.

Well, I'll explain some more.

When I thought, I hope I'll feel OK, I posited an "I" who was somebody different from the me who would be walking around the World Beat Festival. But who the heck are these two entities?

It sure seems like there's only one me. And Buddhism, along with other spiritual traditions, says that even this singular feeling of I-ness is an illusion, that there's no one permanently at home inside our head -- just an ever-shifting series of experiences.

So, I told the group, as humans we excel in setting up idealized images of ourselves, other people, and the world, which we consider to be as real as what is actually present here and now.

When there is a discrepancy between my ideal (no cough, no runny nose, no fever) and the real (all of those symptoms present), I feel like something is wrong, not OK. And in one sense that is true.

I want my body to be healthy like it was before, and it isn't. That discrepancy between my goal and actuality causes a sensation of wrongness. However, this is different from the much less justifiable conclusion that there is an "I" which may not be feeling OK at the World Beat Festival.

A memory of myself when I was healthy isn't me. It's a recollection of me. Who I am is who I am. Heck, I learned that from Popeye a long time ago when I was a kid. (More accurately, I yam what I yam.)

Religiosity essentially is founded on a belief that there is an enduring self, soul, atman, or whatever you want to call it, which is our real nature -- just as I had assumed that there was an "I" separate and distinct from what I was experiencing at the moment.

Maybe.

All I can say is that when I realized that however I was going to feel at the World Beat Festival was how I was going to feel, I stopped worrying about how I was going to feel.

Again, this is either a brilliant insight into the nature of the cosmos, or another idiotic emanation from my Brian'ish brain. Whatever, whichever, who cares? It is what it is.

"Saint" Sarah Palin shows danger of mixing religion & politics

Often people say, "What's the harm if people believe in whatever religion they want to, no matter how weird it might seem to others?"

Well, here's a good example of some harm: the June 21, 2010 cover of Newsweek. The caption under the photo of Palin with a halo and hands prayerfully folded reads:

Saint Sarah

What Palin's appeal to conservative Christian women says about feminism and the future of the religious right.

I've been told by a friend who was born in Germany, visits Europe regularly, and keeps up on European goings-on directly via reading online news sources that politicians in Europe keep religion almost completely separate from their professional lives.

She says that if someone bragged about how religious they are during a political campaign, he or she probably would lose. Whereas in the United States, it's almost imperative for anyone who aspires to a high national office to profess their faith.

I'm not disturbed about Palin's Christian religiosity. But when she makes it a central feature of her political views, and even states that she's on a "mission from God," that's dangerous.

(Which reminds me: the Vatican recently announced that "The Blues Brothers" movie, where Jake and Elwood are on a mission from God to save the orphanage they were raised in, is a Catholic classic. Good move, Vatican. We finally agree on something.)

I've argued before that religious values have no place in politics.

Reading the Newsweek cover story only strengthened my conviction that when people choose a political leader on the basis of his or her religious beliefs, we're much less likely to end up with someone competent.

Here's some quotes from the story. Part of what's so scary about them is how many American voters would find them totally acceptable as a reflection of the political process.

To millions of women, Palin's authenticity makes her a sister in arms...

To a smaller number she is a prophet, ordained by God for a special role in the cosmic battle against the forces of evil. A 2009 profile in the Christian magazine Charisma compared Palin to the Old Testament Queen Esther, who saved her people, in this case the Jews, from annihilation. 

...Like many evangelicals, Garza believes a great cosmic battle is underway for the soul of America and that Palin has been singled out by God for leadership: "The annointing on her is so strong," she says. Assaults on Palin by the press only strengthen Garza's conviction, for as any Christian knows, martyrs most deserve to gain God's kingdom.

"She's just fearless," Garza says. "Jesus said, 'They persecuted me; they'll persecute you." To her Christian audiences, Palin talks about her own life in terms of mission and destiny.

She was the keynote speaker at a Women of Joy conference in April... Upon mounting the stage, Palin immediately thanked her "prayer warriors" for the "prayer shield" they built around her.

Wow. Sometimes I wish I Iived in Europe.

(If Palin ever became president of the United States, I might be seriously drawn to do that -- at least one poll early this year had her leading the Republican presidential pack for 2012.)

When lots of voters think that criticism of a candidate makes him or her more appealing, because more Christian martyr'ish, this is flat out weird. When lots of voters believe that a political leader has been annointed by God to hold high office, that's doubly weird.

Elections should be based on how well a candidate is believed to be able to solve problems and guide the ship of state, not on their "saintliness."

I doubt very much that Palin ever will become President, but if she does, this will show beyond a shadow of doubt that religion should be kept far distant from politics.

Be as little as you can be...and real

"Be All You Can Be" was a longstanding slogan of the United States Army. I like it, though the big question is what that all consists of. (In part, clearly, a soldier.) Compared to the cosmos, "not much."

I used to be pretty darn grandiose in my spiritual goals. The organization I was a member of, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, taught that it was possible -- indeed, imperative -- to experience God as a living inner presence.

At the core of the RSSB philosophy is a belief that there is a spiritual purpose to human life – to experience the divinity of God who resides in all of us... By performing the meditation practice according to the teacher's instructions, individuals can realize the presence of God within themselves.

Well, after treading this path for some thirty-five years I've made a U-turn.

The focus of my morning meditation now is on becoming as little as I can be. If God supposedly is some sort of all-encompassing ultimate reality, I'm attracted to the other direction: the most minimal state of awake-and-aware being.

I exist. I'm alive. I'm conscious. What does it feel like to be an existent, living, conscious being who isn't doing, thinking, and feeling most of the other stuff that courses through my psyche?

This meditative approach makes sense to me for several reasons.

One is that it is poles apart from the goal-orientation that marks the rest of my day, where I'm zeroed in on doing something, thinking something, feeling something. So it adds some relaxing quasi-nothing yin-yang balance to my otherwise something-filled life.

Another is that it is scientifically real. On the scale of the universe, I'm closer to being zero than 100%. Much closer. Greta Christina hits on this fact in a right-on essay, "Do You Care Whether the Religious Ideas You Believe in Are True or Not?"

I like questioning my fundamental axioms. So, why should we care whether the things we believe are true?

Why should we treat the external, objective reality of the universe as more important than the internal, subjective reality of our personal experience?

Why is the universe more important than me?

Well, for starters: The universe is about 13.73 billion years old, and it's about 93 billion light years across. I am 48 years old, and I'm five foot three. Not to be ageist or a size queen... but really. When I look at those numbers, do I honestly have to ask why the universe is more important -- and more interesting -- than the inside of my head? Or of anybody's head?

I'm not saying the insides of people's heads aren't important or interesting. Of course they are. They're what make art interesting, and literature, and so on. And they're what make psychology and neuropsychology interesting as well. The insides of people's heads are fascinating. And they matter.

But the world inside a person's head is just one tiny fragment of the vast, ancient, wildly freaky complexity of existence. Why would I give that tiny fragment greater priority than the vast, freaky complexity? Even if the head that this tiny fragment is inside happens to be my own? To me, that seems like the absolute height of arrogance.

Religions talk a good game about humility, egolessness, and self-abnegation, but they don't play it very well. For me, and many others, science is the best approach to understanding how little we are in comparison to the cosmos.

And how, according to neuroscience (along with Buddhism) the "I" which I consider to be so important doesn't even exist in anything close to the way most of us look upon the entity we call "me."

If we love life, and most of us do, it's natural to want to cling to it.

For a long time I enjoyed believing that after I died I'd be ushered into a permanent divine realm of existence. That's much more appealing than feeling that Finis is what accompanies our last breath.

But now I've come to realize that the larger I consider myself to be, the more I have to lose. This realization doesn't erase the fear of non-existence. Yet it points toward the direction where peace and acceptance appear to lie.

We are what we are. Something, for sure, but nowhere near everything.

Each of us is a minute speck of an incomprehensibly vast existence. There's no harm in trying to become all that we want to be. We just need to recognize that whatever that is, it isn't much.

And that's all right. Because reality is what is is.

Why we're all Muslims (a teeny, tiny bit)

I'm making my way through Stephen Prothero's "God is Not One," a book about how the eight major religions of the world are not at all the same -- much more like roads that head off in different directions than paths leading to the same summit.

In my first post about "God is Not One" after only reading the introduction, I predicted that I'd like Prothero's book. I was right. The next chapter on Islam was clearly written and offered up some fresh insights on what the author considers to be the world's most influential religion.

Here's what struck me the most about it, an insight that likely will be repeated in the next seven chapters: religions are mostly nonsense, but sometimes (or always) a religion's core tenet reflects an important human truth.

Note my churchless qualifier: human. 

In my true-believing days, I considered that this physical world was a reflection of some higher reality, a copy rather than the original. Even when I turned to a study of Greek philosophy and wrote a book about Plotinus, a Neoplatonist, the notion of idealized metaphysical "forms" that comprise the foundation of earthly existence appealed to me.

Now, I see this world as the clear and present reality that it is, with religions taking truths evident here and projecting them into an imaginary supernatural realm.

Consider Islam. Prothero writes:

The word Islam means "submission" or "surrender," however. So Islam is the path of submission, and Muslims are "submitters" who seek peace in this life and the next by submitting themselves to the one true God. They do this first and foremost by prostrating themselves in prayer.

"Are you prostrate or are you proud?" this tradition asks. Masjid, the Arabic term for mosque, literally means "place of prostration." And some who surrender to this practice develop a mark on their foreheads that the Quran refers to as a "trace of prostration."

Well, it seems ridiculous to believe that Allah is pleased by someone pressing his or her forehead to the ground so often that a permanent mark appears on the skin.

But here's why I say that we're all Muslims -- just a teeny, tiny bit.

It makes sense to submit... to reality. The universe is a lot bigger and more powerful than we are. The laws of nature are going to do what they do, regardless of how we feel about it. The cosmos, along with our Earth, is interconnected in multitudinous astonishing ways.

In short, no man or woman is an island. Rather, we're each very small parts of an incomprehensibly vast whole.

Where Islam goes wrong, as does every religion that posits a transcendental divinity, is submitting to a concept, an abstraction, instead of reality. A notion of Allah/God is viewed as the gospel (or Quranic) truth rather than the purely human imagining that it almost surely is.

Which brings me to a strange contradiction in Islam that seemingly should get a lot more quizzical attention from believers than appears to be the case: Muslims detest representations of Allah or Muhammad, but they are fine with concepts that represent their God.

Christians, of course, are monotheists, but theirs is a soft monotheism in which the one God appears as a Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Islamic monotheism is harder. Like Jews, Muslims reject the Christian and Hindu notion that God can incarnate in a human body.

Muslims also join Jews in rejecting visual images of God on the ground that such images, which cannot possibly capture the reality of the divine, tempt us toward idolatry. God is, for Muslims, absolutely and totally transcendent -- far beyond all human conception of Him.

Hmmmm.

If this is true, then why is the Quran viewed as a perfect guide to the nature of Allah and Allah's will, even though it was dictated by the eminently human Muhammad and written in an eminently human language, Arabic?

If God is indeed "absolutely and totally transcendent," then why all the Islamic customs, rituals, and what-not that dictate how Muslims should behave in sometimes excruciating detail (Islamic banks, for example, neither charge nor give out interest, because the Quran proscribes this).

Moreover, the scripture Muhammad brought into the world attends to more topics than the Christ-inspired New Testament. As much about society as it is about spirituality, the Quran speaks of prayer and providence, marriage and divorce, breastfeeding and menstruation, lending and law.

I don't see any reason to take those aspects of the Quran seriously. But when it comes to submission -- hey, I'm up with that, as long as it's reality that I'm submitting to.

After all, what choice do I, or anyone else, have in the matter?

The universe is expanding into nothing

For a long time I've been fascinated by the fact that our universe is expanding because of the Big Bang that brought it into existence. I've visualized an edge to the universe, where a incomprehensibly vast tidal wave of raw existence cascades onward, into...

What?

This is the question that always stymied me. What is the universe expanding into, if the universe is all that exists? Or at least, all that we know to exist. Even if we say the universe is expanding into nothing, doesn't "nothing" thereby become a something?

The marvelous mind-blowing nature of these cogitations is one reason why I've become so non-religious. I don't feel much of a need for supernatural speculating when the natural world is so mysterious and awe-inspiring.

In the July 2010 issue of Scientific American I read an article by Tamara Davis about the expansion of space that, fittingly, stretched my mind even further. It's title was a question: "Is the Universe Leaking Energy?"

Answer: no, even though the expansion of space causes photons to have a longer wavelength ("redshift"), which have less energy than shorter wavelength photons. The article ended with:

Thus, the universe does not violate the conservation of energy; rather, it lies outside that law's jurisdiction.

Meaning, if I grasped the author's point correctly, that laws of nature which apply to things within the universe don't necessarily apply to the universe as a whole. After all, the universe isn't a "thing," since there is nothing (no thing) outside of it.

This wasn't my favorite quotation in the article, though. That honor goes to:

The point is that our metaphor of the expanding rubber balloon, though useful to visualize the expansion, should be taken with a grain of salt: empty space does not have a physical reality.

Wow.

I read those words, empty space does not have a physical reality, just before I went to bed. Falling asleep last night, I tried to visualize how the universe could be expanding if this were true -- if additional empty space wasn't physically real.

Today I fired up Google and did some research into the question of what, if anything, the universe is expanding into, since this bears on the notion of empty space not having a physical reality.

As is increasingly common these videocentric days, You Tube had a clear and concise presentation of both the question and the likely answers.

Basically, one possibility is that the universe is infinite. Adding more space-time to infinity doesn't change anything. Infinity plus any amount is still infinity.

Another possibility is that the universe is finite. It has an edge. But since the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, we can never know what, if anything, if beyond the edge.

So the question of what the universe is expanding into is unanswerable. However, my admittedly brief foray into the science of the expanding universe led me to feel that the title of this post, "The universe is expanding into nothing," is defensible.

As noted above, our everyday intuitions and visualizations don't serve us very well when it comes to cosmic questions regarding the universe as a whole. As Wikipedia explains:

The metric expansion of space is the averaged increase of metric (i.e. measured) distance between distant objects in the universe with time.

It is an intrinsic expansion—that is, it is defined by the relative separation of parts of the universe and not by motion "outward" into preexisting space. (In other words, the universe is not expanding "into" anything outside of itself).

A Cornell astronomer offers up a similar explanation:

If the universe is infinitely big, then the answer is simply that it isn't expanding into anything; instead, what is happening is that every region of the universe, every distance between every pair of galaxies, is being "stretched", but the overall size of the universe was infinitely big to begin with and continues to remain infinitely big as time goes on, so the universe's size doesn't change, and therefore it doesn't expand into anything.

If, on the other hand, the universe has a finite size, then it may be legitimate to claim that there is something "outside of the universe" that the universe is expanding into. However, because we are, by definition, stuck within the space that makes up our universe and have no way to observe anything outside of it, this ceases to be a question that can be answered scientifically. So the answer in that case is that we really don't know what, if anything, the universe is expanding into.

If this doesn't make much sense to you, join the club. I don't claim to grasp the cosmic implications of Einstein's Theory of Relativity and other tenets of modern science either.

What entrances me about the expanding universe isn't what I know about it, but what I don't. And that lack of knowledge extends even to the world's most competent physicists and cosmologists.

To everybody, in fact. We simply don't know what the universe is all about.

We don't know now; we won't know tomorrow; we will never know, so far as we know. The ultimate secrets of the universe are far beyond our comprehension, for reasons that, not surprisingly, can't be fully comprehended.

Many people are attracted to religiosity because they love mystery. Well, there's plenty of mysteriousness in science, in the natural world, in what lies at the farthest reaches of physical reality.

The expanding universe can expand our consciousness.

We just need to allow the majesty of the unknowable some room in our psyches, rather than wrongly believing that our all-too-human notions about ultimate reality have succeeded in placing bounds around the boundless.

"God is Not One" shows how different religions are

A few days ago I was drawn to buy "God is Not One" by Stephen Prothero after seeing Stephen Colbert interview him in Colbert's always entertaining fashion. Prothero gives his take on the interview here, and you can watch it below.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Stephen Prothero
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

I liked how Prothero emphasized how different are the problems religions attempt to solve. Christianity is all about being saved from sin; Buddhism aims to eliminate suffering; Hinduism seeks freedom from reincarnation's rounds of birth and death; Daoism teaches how to live life naturally and freely.

(If you're curious about what other four religions are discussed in the book, they're Islam, Confucianism, Judaism, and Yoruba, which I'd never heard of before.)

I've only read the introduction to "God is Not One." So far, I don't find much to disagree with. Here's some cobbled-together quotes that summarize Prothero's basic thesis.

At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true...The most popular metaphor for this view portrays the great religions as different paths up the same mountain.

...This is a lovely sentiment but it is dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue. For more than a generation we have followed scholars and sages down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world in which all gods are one.

...The world's religious rivals do converge when it comes to ethics, but they diverge sharply on doctrine, ritual, mythology, experience, and law. These differences may not matter to mystics or philosophers of religion, but they matter to ordinary religious people.

...One of the most common misconceptions about the world's religions is that they plumb the same depths, ask the same questions. They do not. Only religions that see God as all good ask how a good God can allow millions to die in tsunamis. Only religions that believe in souls ask whether your soul exists before you are born and what happens to it after you die.

And only religions that think we have one soul ask after "the soul" in the singular. Every religion, however, asks after the human condition. Here we are in these human bodies. What now? What next? What are we to become?

Well, here's one thing in the introduction that I do question -- the implication that mystics agree about what God or ultimate reality is like.

I used to consider that there was a lot of commonality in mystical experiences. But now I see that I was ignoring the differences, focusing almost entirely on mystics who appeared to be seeking the sort of elevated consciousness that I was hoping to attain myself at the time.

Some mystics experience glorious visions of celestial sound and light. Others see this world just as it is, yet in a fresher, clearer way. So I doubt that mysticism leads to a conclusion that God is one any more than religions do.

All in all, I'm pretty sure that the rest of Prothero's book is going to appeal to me. He's already helped me to better understand the source of a lot of disagreements and misunderstandings on this blog, as well as the world at large.

Namely: people who favor a certain faith assume that others with a different religious preference still share their goal -- the problem their faith sets out to solve.

So, for example, frequently I'll get comments on a blog post that talk about how disappointed I must be to never have succeeded in rising to higher spiritual regions of consciousness through my meditation practice.

But this assumes that such regions exist. And that it is a worthy goal to attempt to detach my awareness from material reality and experience non-physical realms of the cosmos.

Similarly, some people are deeply concerned with "saving their soul." They can't understand why others aren't passionately devoted to religious practices that claim to absolve sin, or karma, which keep the soul weighted down and unable to return to God.

But this assumes that souls exist. And that God can save them. As Prothero points out, Buddhism doesn't agree with this assumption. So the notion of salvation is foreign to Buddhist practice, while it is central to Christian belief.

Here's a short description of "God is Not One" that I found on Prothero's website. As above, he talks about the claim of mystics that religions differ only in the inessentials, citing Lao Tzu and Rumi as some exemplars of this mystical premise.

Being familiar with Lao Tzu's and Rumi's teachings, I really don't think that if they were able to sit down and chat with each other, they'd agree on what life is all about to the extent Prothero seems to feel they would.

If I'm a guru, where are my devotees?

A few days ago I got an email from someone who thinks that I've become a guru. That struck me as a strange thing to say.

After all, I'm not aware of anyone in the world who views me that way (certainly not my wife, and definitely not my dog -- except when she wants to go on a walk or get her favorite chew stick treat, when she'll temporarily get a look of absolute devotion to manipulate me into doing her canine bidding).

My correspondent asked for a blog response, so here it is. I've interspersed my comments in regular type in between portions of his indented and italicized email. Which I've edited slightly to remove some personal references and add some explanatory information.

-------------------------------

Brian. I guess I have been a signed up R.S. [Radha Soami Satsang Beas] member about as long as you have, spent time recently at the Dera (free), been to look at the new land by the river, do seva [volunteer work] from time to time. All that harmless stuff that passes the time more peaceably than many other activities. 

I've been to the RSSB headquarters in the Punjab, India, a.k.a. the "Dera," twice myself. Like you said, it's a nice place to relax and have some different experiences. However, I don't know if the Dera is any more peaceful than many other places, or if the activities there are especially "harmless."

Also spent much effort on tai chi and yoga of various kinds. Even read your books, which I thought were pretty good. So, we share much the same background, including some of the doubts and anxieties about the whole thing.

Hey, "pretty good" is a pleasing -- if less than wildly enthusiastic -- books review. Thanks. I'd write them differently now, of course, but what I believed then was what I wrote about then. Nice to hear that we share spiritual doubts and anxieties. Are you interested in becoming my first devotee?

BUT, Why are you, after giving the role of 'guru' a good lambasting, setting up as one yourself? I'm sure you will deny this. The leader of the new Church of the Churchless. I enjoy reading your criticisms, they are often valid and always healthy. Baba Ji [Gurinder Singh, the R.S. guru]  himself said- 'read them all, make up your own minds, think for yourselves.' ( I heard him say this.)

What makes you call me a "guru" rather than simply a "blogger"? I never have had anyone else call me a guru, though it sounds like a cool title. I read quite a few blogs, which are an avenue for people to express opinions about ... whatever. I'm curious why you seem to feel that my Churchless blog is anything other than this -- a way for me to talk about subjects I'm interested in, and for people to respond to those ideas via comments.

Why feel obliged to preach, to gain converts, to be the centre of a movement? OK, so it's fun, extends the living circle of friends etc. but at the same time drags you into the very  place that you criticize the guru for. Do you really, after all your well thought through and well expressed arguments, want to be a guru?

In line with the above, what "movement" do you see being promoted on my blog? I certainly don't feel that I have a well-defined cause, other than what the blog tag line says: "preaching the gospel of spiritual independence." Personally, I lean toward a scientific sort of Taoist sensibility, but I don't claim this is the only way of viewing reality. So it's hard for me to see how I could gain converts, when I've got no special dogma for people to be converted to.

Here's a challenge; not in any way because I think this might be a cunning way to stop criticism, as it absolutely isn't, but, could you say NO to gurudom? Just become a parish member of the universal church of the uncertain -- among which are many another satsangi [member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas], I assure you. 

I agree that many RSSB initiates feel much as I do. Back when I gave satsangs (talks) at gatherings of satsangis, almost always some people would come up to me afterwards and say something like, "Thanks. I thought I was the only initiate who looked at things the way you talked about meditation, God, and what not. Now I know I have some company."

Why would I want to stop doing what I enjoy doing, if I enjoy it? I don't mean "gurudom," because I'm not into that; those are your words, not what I feel. But you seem to be implying that there's some reason I should stop blogging. What reason would there be for that?

I'm sure there are many sources of satisfaction in your life -- personal relationships, hobbies, professional activities, and such. How would you respond if I said, as you did to me, "Could you say NO to ... ?" I mean, could you say NO to your home, your love interest, your pets, your whatever? You'd probably reply, sure, if I had to, but I don't want to. That's my own reply, at least.

If you carry on, you could even become a Pope of this new church, and what a fate that would be! Could you face yourself? Wearing the funny hat and blessing the people.  Just being a lone tai chi'er, log sawer, dog walker,-- could you do it?

I'm not going to hold my breath on this one but your blog response will be interesting.

Well, I'm pretty sure that there will come a time when I don't feel like carrying on with this blog any longer. Everything comes to an end sooner or later. For now, though, I'm enjoying what I'm doing, or I wouldn't be doing it. And I see no sign that I'm founding a "church," since the name of this blog is ironic -- as you should have noticed.

Actually, I do consider myself to be a lone person. Aren't we all? I mean, I don't feel like I am more than the individual who I seem to be. I assume that what you mean by "being a lone..." is not communicating my views about life with other people via the Internet.

However, I communicate with people in other ways all of the time. My wife and I talk about philosophical/spiritual stuff frequently. I talk about meaning of life issues with fellow students in my Tai Chi classes, with fellow members of a monthly Salon discussion group, and with friends at coffeehouse meetups regularly.

So I'm not sure what you're getting at when you speak of me, or anyone for that matter, being a lone individual. Like I said, I consider that we are all alone, existentially. Yet we're also interrelated through our human social connections.

People communicate in all sorts of different ways. Since I like to write, and have done a lot of writing since I was a pre-teen, I'm drawn to sharing my thoughts via blogging. Others prefer verbal communications.

Again, I don't see any sign that I'm on the way to becoming a Pope of some sort. That said, some friends recently went to Europe and showed us photos of their visit to Rome. St. Mark's Square (if I've got the name right) where the Pope does his appearances/ blessings is impressive. I wouldn't mind standing in front of a huge crowd and being adored.

Especially if there were collection plates being passed around. And if the Popemobile was a Mini Cooper S, which I've been praying for (fruitlessly) for quite a while.

Finding meaning in an accidental universe

Looking around, the universe seems to be flowingly interconnected, a seamless web of smoothly functioning laws of nature.

Sure, there are lots of nasty things we humans find distasteful -- earthquakes, diseases, tornadoes, and such -- but even these have causes. They're just often extremely difficult to discern or predict, given our lack of knowledge about the details of how things operate in the world.

But there's another way of looking at the cosmos. Here's an excerpt from the jacket on Marcelo Gleiser's "A Tear at the Edge of Creation," a book that I blogged about before. (Subtitle: a radical new vision for life in an imperfect universe.)

For millenia, shamans and philosophers, believers and nonbelievers, artists and scientists have tried to make sense of our existence by suggesting that everything is connected, that a mysterious Oneness binds us to everything else.

People go to temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues to pray to their divine incarnation of Oneness. Following a surprisingly similar notion, scientists have long asserted that under Nature's apparent complexity there is a simpler underlying Reality.

...Overturning more than twenty-five centuries of scientific thought, award-winning physicist Marcelo Gleiser argues that this quest for a Theory of Everything is fundamentally misguided, and he explains the volcanic implications this ideological shift has for humankind.

All the evidence points to a scenario in which everything emerges from fundamental imperfections, primordial asymmetries in matter and time, cataclysmic accidents in Earth's early life, and duplication errors in the genetic code.

Imbalance spurs creation. Without asymmetries and imperfections, the universe would be filled with nothing but smooth radiation.

I used to find the notion of Oneness deeply compelling. But like Gleiser says, there's something fundamentally off-kilter about the appeal of unity.

After all, that longing for the One takes place in the psyche of beings who are, obviously, separate entities -- since we don't yearn for something that we already possess, or are.

Modern science swings both ways on the lawful/accidental front. For example, relativity theory is all smooth and connected; the space-time continuum is just that: continuous. 

Then we have the herky-jerky realm of quantum mechanics, where particles pop in and out of existence unpredictably, manifesting here from there without any apparent connection between those states of existence.

Reading the final chapters of Gleiser's book this morning, I learned the lessons for our living that he draws from the strong evidence for an accidental universe. The book jacket sums up his thesis:

All life, but intelligent life in particular, is a rare and precious accident. Our presence here has no meaning outside of itself, but it does have meaning. The unplanned complexity of humankind is all the more beautiful for its improbability.

Makes sense.

What if life here on Earth truly is as rare, precious, and unlikely as Gleiser argues? What if we Homo sapiens are the only self-aware conscious beings in the galaxy, or even the universe?

True, with 200 billion or so stars in our galaxy, and 100 billion or so galaxies in the universe, it certainly seems like we must have sentient company in the cosmos. However, there is no evidence of this. So until there is, we can't say "We are not alone."

Which means...

Life on Earth is astoundingly precious. Both for each of us as individual humans, and for the planet as a whole.

Yet all too often we take life for granted. In part, because religions promise that there will be an afterlife (much better than this one!), and God has a plan for our planet, so why worry? (about extinctions, pollution, resource depletion, disastrous climate change).

Gleiser's thesis -- which I mostly agree with -- is that when we understand where we stand in a incomprehensibly vast and uncaring cosmos, we should recognize the imperative of finding meaning in our lives by caring for what has been improbably bestowed on us. 

We are soulful creatures in a harsh cosmos. This, to me, is the essence of the human predicament. The gravest mistake we can make is to think that the cosmos has plans for us, that we are somehow special from a cosmic perspective.

We are indeed special, but not because the cosmos has plans for us, or somehow is just right for life. The cosmos couldn't care less for us. Think of the billions, probably  trillions, of barren worlds in our galaxy alone. I can't read the message "just right" for life written in so many dead worlds.

...If the constants of Nature are so fit for life, why is life so difficult to find? We are special for being rare, for being alive and conscious of it. The communion we must establish is much more immediate and urgent: it is with our planet and its rapidly dwindling life forms and resources.

Our mission is filled with the epic spirit of the chosen, but this is not because we are mythically connected with a purposeful cosmos. Rather, it is because we are dramatically and irreversibly connected with our planet, the only harbor for life that we know.

Science is open to the supernatural

Many people mistakenly believe that modern science rules out the possibility of God, soul, spirit, and other supernatural entities. They think that scientists are only interested in the natural world -- this physical universe of space and time, plus everything within it.

Not true.

Thanks to a link emailed to me by Alex Szeto of the Hong Kong Unitarian Universalists, I was able to read and enjoy "Is Scientific Inquiry Restricted to Nature?" by Tom Clark and Ursula Goodenough (seems like that was the name of a James Bond femme fatale; at least, it should have been).

Actually, Goodenough is a noted biologist with a strong interest in religious naturalism. Wikipedia has this quote from her:

“I profess my Faith. For me, the existence of all this complexity and awareness and intent and beauty, and my ability to apprehend it, serves as the ultimate meaning and the ultimate value. The continuation of life reaches around, grabs its own tail, and forms a sacred circle that requires no further justification, no Creator, no super-ordinate meaning of meaning, no purpose other than that the continuation continue until the sun collapses or the final meteor collides. I confess a credo of continuation. And in so doing, I confess as well a credo of human continuation”.

Nice. Tom Clark is the director of The Center for Naturalism, where Goodenough serves on the advisory board. Here's how the Center's web site describes their approach. 

The Center for Naturalism promotes science-based naturalism as a comprehensive worldview - a rational and fulfilling alternative to faith-based religions and other varieties of supernaturalism. The under-standing that we are fully natural beings is the foundation for an effective approach to personal and social concerns, and highlights our intimate connection to the awe-inspiring universe described by science.

Now, this seems at odds with the article's thesis that science is open to the supernatural. But actually, it isn't. Clark and Goodenough say:

It is often said that the scientific enterprise is in the business of studying the natural world, the implication being that there’s some pre-established, pre-packaged thing out there called Nature that scientists get to study, after which there are other domains that scientists don’t get to study and indeed aren’t supposed to study.

In fact, the scientific enterprise is engaged in analyzing anything that comes along using its agreed-upon empirical methodologies, developed over the years as the most effective means to reduce subjective and cultural bias when modeling reality.

If, for example, someone were to come up with a robust God hypothesis that suggested observational tests to evaluate its validity, then rest assured, scientists would be hopping all over it — what better way to the vaunted goal of scientific fame and glory than documenting the existence of God?  Indeed, scientists have already applied their wares to testable hypotheses along these lines, such as whether intercessory prayer is effective, and have thus far come a cropper.

Read the entire piece. It's pretty short, and right on about faith vs. facts.

There's no need to choose between science and spirituality. Reality is what we're after. Wherever it leads us, that's where the truth seeker goes. There are, of course, different levels of real.

Imagination is real, but only in the sense of neurons coming up with fantastical notions in a physical brain. So far, this is the best explanation for the God hypothesis. But, hey, one day it could be proven. Science has an open mind, as should we all.

So, could science stumble upon and observationally confirm the existence of the supernatural, or something besides nature? If we define nature as what’s confirmed to exist by science-based inquiry, then it would seem that any confirmed scientific discovery, however bizarre, will get added to the list of natural phenomena. This implies that sticking with science results in naturalism, that only nature exists.

But such is not necessarily the case. Although the God-as-agent hypothesis hasn’t yet panned out, this isn’t because science is biased against the existence of God or the supernatural.

If an observationally robust phenomenon comes along that, for good theoretical or explanatory reasons, forces us to conceptually divide reality into nature and something besides nature, then so be it. We’d have stayed true to the scientific method, unrivaled in giving us reliable models of reality and for scientists in their professional capacity that’s what matters.

Pope gets some (deserved) profanity

If defenders of religious authority think gurus get insulted too much on this blog, take a look at Tim Minchin's "Pope Song," for comparison. The lyrics are profanely basic, but true.

Yeah, I'm enlightened. Deal with it.

After writing a couple of recent posts about boundless existence (see here and here), I've decided that it's time to reveal a truth that I've been reluctant to even tell myself.

So let's learn it together: I'm enlightened. 

Ah, it feels so good to say those two words, "I'm enlightened." I don't know why its taken me so long to do this -- to embrace the realization that I know what's really real.

For me. Which brings me to another truth that we need to acknowledge together: You're also enlightened, if you also know what's really real. For you.

I have no idea what "enlightenment" means. But whatever it is, I like the idea of being enlightened. So since I have the power to bestow upon myself whatever spiritual, philosophical, or mystical title I take a fancy to, I'm now an Enlightened Being.

If you disagree, I've got three words for you: Deal with it.

Then, choose some cool title for yourself. Feel free. Just don't expect me, or anyone else, to endorse your self-appointed status, just as I don't expect you, or anyone else, to endorse me as an Enlightened Being.

I do enjoy offering up some reasons for why I'm enlightened, though. Not because I need to; because I want to.

I don't think there is any such thing as enlightenment. That's my main claim to enlightened fame. However, I do know that existence exists. And that before this indisputable fact all blather about God, soul, spirit, heaven, hell, miracles, gurus, and other metaphysical/supernatural claptrap is just so much ridiculous conjecturing. 

The older I get, the more enlightened I become. So if you're younger than my sixty-one years, you've got some enlightening of your own to look forward to, since it seems to me that the closer we come to death, the more we understand what life is all about.

Here I am. Here you are. Here we are, spotlighted at this very moment against a backdrop of boundless existence. Which is... nothing.

Nothing that we can ever understand, grasp, experience, or know a single thing about. For the moment we exist. Eventually we won't. Almost certainly (nothing is 100% certain, except that existence exists) for forever.

Isn't that amazing? Along with wonderful, scary, mysterious, awe-inspiring, and whatever other adjective you want to ascribe to what can't be described.

I'm alive. As are you. One day, one hour, one minute, one second, I won't be, and you won't be. If we can keep that awareness as an empty backdrop to all of the fullness of our living, we're enlightened. 

That's how I see it. Not hearing any objections to the reality of that vision from anyone else inside my head, I conclude that it is true. For me, Enlightened Being.

Yesterday I put clean workout clothes in my athletic club locker, and put the dirty clothes/towels in a cloth shopping bag. I put the bag on a bench while I used the restroom before I went grocery shopping.

When I got home, unpacking the other shopping bags reminded me of the athletic club bag. Where the hell is it? I inspected my memory bank. I saw myself walking past the front desk to the parking lot with nothing in my hands.

Damn, I left the bag on the bench. I phoned the club. Told the girl who answered that I'd left a bag of gym clothes in the men's locker room. Said that if they find them, I'd be by tomorrow to pick them up.

Then I went for a walk with the dog -- which is when I do some of my best enlightened thinking. Such as, Did you check the floor of the car in front of the passenger seat when you got home? 

Bingo. The bag was there. I eagerly rushed to the phone to call the athletic club.

The same girl answered the phone. "We couldn't find your bag," she said. "That's because I have it," I told her. "I thought that I'd forgotten my bag, but actually I'd forgotten that I hadn't forgotten it. Which is great news."

"OK," the girl said. I could tell that she wasn't recognizing, as I was, how this episode clearly pointed to my Enlightened Being status. So I just said, "Thanks. Goodbye."

That's what I'm going to say to my life eventually. Not necessarily in words. It's the awareness that matters. Enlightenment.

Boundless Existence -- meaningless backdrop to a meaningful life

As I said in my previous post about Milton Munitz' marvelous book, "Does Life Have a Meaning," the notion of boundless existence sends a chill up my churchless spine.

This isn't really a "notion," though. Munitz makes clear that the awareness of That -- That existence exists -- can never be anything more than exactly That: simple awareness, without any cognitive content of What boundless existence is.

At best, all we can have is an awareness of Boundless Existence. But this awareness is not an exercise in understanding, of making possible a kind of intelligibility. Nor is it a case of our finding some value in our awareness of Boundless Existence because of the presence and activation of certain properties or powers it possesses.

The only contribution to the resultant experience of awareness is made from our human side. It is the combination of this absence of all normal conditions and sources of meaningfulness (such as we find in the case of our interactions with existents) that distinguishes our experience of Boundless Existence from all other human experiences.

When we find meaning in life, it always is the result of our interacting in some fashion with someone or something else.

A beautiful sunset leads us to feel the wonder of nature. Gazing at our baby's peaceful sleeping face causes us to marvel at the continuity of life and the love that binds. Kneeling before the altar to take communion, a religious believer is reminded of the sacrifice that Jesus supposedly made to absolve humanity's sins.

In his book, Munitz answers the question of his title with a strong "yes." Life does have a meaning. Lots of meanings, though. Not one, since each and every person finds meaningfulness in different ways.

So how does an awareness of Boundless Existence, which I seem to feel in much the same way Munitz describes, contribute to a meaningful life if the only thing we can say about Boundless Existence is nothing?

Since it is devoid of all properties, Boundless Existence is another way of interpreting and sanctioning the use of the concept of "Nothing." Yet how can the admission of such Nothing into our lives perform a crucial and important role? How should we make room for it in our manifold interactions with various Somethings?

...How can our awareness of it be the source for achieving meaning, if (as we have argued earlier) meanings are to be found only in the interactions of human existents with other existents?

Well, how does a blank canvas contribute to the creation of a painting? How does an open mind contribute to the acquisition of knowledge? How does a clear blue sky contribute to the perception of a jet streaking across the horizon?

These are backdrops. In a sense they are inseparable from the focus of our attention -- a painting needs a canvas to exist, as a bird needs the sky to fly in -- and in another sense they are separable. Similarly, says Munitz:

The relation between Boundless Existence and the existent observable universe is not one of Creation of the latter by the former. Boundless Existence is not a creator, not a person, not an infinite mind, not a being possessed of the attributes, qualities, or properties of power, wisdom, or goodness, nor indeed of any other.

It does not stand to the existent observable universe and its contents in the relation of one entity (being, object, substance) to another. It is not "separated" from the world in the way in which we think of the relation between a craftsman and the work he produces.

...in one respect we can (with proper qualifications) affirm that Boundless Existence is a "property" of the existent observable universe, whereas in another respect it is not a property at all.

Boundless Existence simply is what it is. Which is, nothing that we can know, understand, experience, feel, comprehend, or cognize. It's akin to looking into emptiness and saying, "There's nothing there."

Exactly.

Yet that nothing also is everything. Existence is the background to essence, philosophically speaking. Also, realistically speaking -- if existence didn't exist, there would be no place for anything to be what it is.

So an awareness of Boundless Existence leads us to this conclusion: the meanings in our lives come from us. There's no ground floor to the cosmos that everything rests on, other than the Nothing of Boundless Existence.

Meaninglessness thus is the backdrop to a meaningful life.

Hunger and satiety, boredom and excitement, routinized performance and genuine creativity, restricted and shared experience, evil and good, welcome accidents and disastrous ones -- these and many other parameters for mapping the course of interactive meanings are everywhere germane, applicable, and reapplicable to the lives of individuals.

But they play no role whatsoever insofar as we think of our lives under the aspect of Boundless Existence. Boundless Existence has no powers of its own, no cares or concerns, no standards, no goals, no plans, no order of operation -- not even a blind, purely causal one.

...When we take this perspective, what can we say? We cannot point to any wider scheme in terms of which the enormous variety of human experiences takes on a role, fills a place, or contributes to our understanding of how or why they are what they are.

We must remain silent; there is nothing to say that would give our lives meaning in the cosmic sense because, in living in a world that has this dimension of Boundless Existence, our lives, too, are surrounded by and immersed in meaninglessness.

The only sources of genuine, redeeming positive meaningfulness of our lives are on the level of interactive meanings -- as human existents living in a universe that is itself an existent, and by interacting with other existents, but whose Existence, in general or in part, is without meaning, without intelligibility or value.

Right here, right now, you are the source of meaning in the universe. Only you. Meaning doesn't come from anywhere else.

No God. No guru. No holy book. No philosophical treatise. No manifestation of nature. Your interactions with the world are the fountainhead of meaning. Flow on, freely and happily.

Integral egos gone wild: Wilber and Cohen relish worship

As I said in this post, I used to have a love-hate thing going on with Ken Wilber and his Integral philosophy. (Click on that link and you'll be led to examples of what I liked and disliked.)

Last night, though, I got around to reading the September - November 2009 issue of EnlightenNext, a magazine devoted to uncritical lauding of Wilber's work, along with that of his Integral comrade, Andrew Cohen.

When I got through reading "The Second Face of God," I'd reached a clear conclusion: Wilber and Cohen aren't aiming to go beyond the limitations of religiosity in their quest for an Integral spirituality; they're out to found a new religion -- with themselves as the worshipful objects of devotion.

Of course, this won't be a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the steadily increasing signs of cult behavior in the Integral community, as documented by Integral World. 

For example, this article by Elliott Benjamin discusses his personal experiences of the cult dangers at the Integral Institute. A piece by Be Scofield documents the abuse lavished on his students by Andrew Cohen, who calls himself a "guru." (William Yenner does the same in "American Guru.") And Ken Wilber's slide into narcissism is the subject of V. Gunnar Larsson's essay.

I've read many, if not most, of Wilber's books. At first his Integral Vision appealed to me. But the more I've reflected upon it, the less I like it. In two paragraphs, here's the basic reason why.

Wilber is a masterful organizer of other people's ideas. His grandiose goal is to take every idea about anything that humans have ever come up with and fit it into his complicated typology of quadrants, levels, states, stages, and what not. Wilber doesn't really try to sort out truth from fiction. Everything is true, just in different ways.

So there isn't a way to prove that Integral philosophy is right or wrong. It's simply a big conceptual filing cabinet in which all kinds of ideas about all sorts of subjects (science, morality, religion, evolution, child development, etc.) have been arranged in a hugely complicated fashion that reflects the hugely complicated mind of Ken Wilber.

OK, so now I'll return to "The Second Face of God" and show how this dialogue between the "guru" (Andrew Cohen) and the "pandit" (Ken Wilber) points to some serious shortcomings of their Integral Vision.

First, Wilber and Cohen assume that God is real without offering up any evidence that this is true. They don't feel that they have to, because in the Integral scheme everything is true. That's why it's integral: nothing is left out, no matter how crazy some notion might be.

Thus Cohen starts out by saying:

I’ve always been very interested in what the word “God” means. If God represents the Absolute dimension of life, the highest spiritual reality we can conceive of, then what does God look like? And what does God feel like—what is the experience of God?

Well, it is whatever people say they experience. And this can be divided into first, second, and third person experiences.

Thus some people experience God as their own "I am" subjectivity (first person); others experience God as everything in existence (third person); while still others experience God as a "thou" who is an object of devotion, submission, and gratitude (second person).

Again, Wilber and Cohen don't present evidence that God exists. Nor do they even claim that if God exists, this divine being is more truly experienced in a first, second, or third person fashion.

No, since Integral philosophy is about integrating everything, no matter how crazy (or non-existent) some notion might be, Wilber and Cohen talk about how important it is for people to embrace the second person "I/Thou" relationship with God -- which is, of course, exactly what Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are all about.

Submission. Devotion. Prostration before the Almighty.

Which, it turns out, includes Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber. But before I document their desire to be worshiped in much the same fashion as they want God to be, here's what they say about the need to bend one's knee before God.

But second person means a Being with intelligence. Many religions the world over conceive of spirituality in second person. They practice it, for example, with guru yoga, where you see your master as the embodiment of Spirit, and you use your interaction with your master to help learn how to interact with God or Goddess or Spirit.

...Ultimately, to become an integrally and evolutionarily enlightened individual, the ego is going to have to come down at least on one knee, if not both.

...the fact of the matter is that guru yoga, done correctly, is a way the student faces God as Other. The guru is apparently other -- his or her consciousness is other than mine. Therefore, I need to submit to that guru, but I need to do it in very specific and careful ways.

...Then at the level of consciousness, we must accept that some people are actually more developed, more evolved than others.

...But to really put into practice this understanding of hierarchy and generate awareness of the second face of God, we need to enter into relationships with individuals who have demonstrated to us that they are more evolved than we are.

Well, it's not hard to guess who Cohen and Wilber are talking about here: themselves.

After all, their life mission is to bring about an evolution of consciousness through the magic of the Integral Vision. Their magazine is filled with offers to attend workshops, buy books and videos, and make donations to the EnlightenNext movement.

If Wilber and Cohen aren't viewed as the elevated dispensers of spiritual wisdom that they claim to be in the bios that accompanied the "Second Face of God" article, their revenue stream could suffer. So we read:

Andrew W. Cohen: Guru [n. Sanskrit]: one who teaches spiritual liberation from his or her own direct experience or realization.

Ken Wilber: Pandit [n. Sanskrit]: a scholar, one who is deeply proficient and immersed in spiritual wisdom.

Ego-loss apparently isn't part of the qualifications for being a guru or pandit, because Wilber bemoans people who just don't understand how important it is to bend their knees and accept the authority of teachers like him.

Consenting to the presence of God has a necessary component of submission, and that's exactly the component that the second face of God always required. That's what gets it in trouble with people who don't understand it and who mistake it for authoritarianism.

But, on the contrary, that's actually the component that is so deeply uprooting to the ego's authoritarian ways. The people who criticize these types of practices with teachers as being authoritarian are right, from a certain point of view. There is something that's authoritarian, but it's actually the ego of the practitioner!

So the guru and the pandit are always right. Even if...

Cohen coerced donations from disciples, in one case to the tune of $2 million. His students were slapped, ridiculed, made to do thousands of prostrations before his photo, forced to immerse themselves in a near-freezing lake for an hour, and other humiliations.

Hey, that's all part of getting rid of the student's/disciple's ego. If you can't recognize that, you're not worthy of being part of the Integral Vision cult.

In another article in the same EnlightenNext issue, Cohen talks about how important it is for students to submit to the teacher's authority, since hierarchy is the nature of the cosmos according to Integral philosophy.

The real question to pose to students is, "Are you capable of humbling yourself enough so that Spirit will be able to move through you as it moves through me?"

...You love them so much that you actually don't care about their ego at all.

...So a truly enlightened teacher sees all individuals who come to them as potential vehicles for Spirit and doesn't really care so much about the personal, psychological, emotional predicaments of the particular individuals and the predicaments of their egos.

That's just what wife-beaters say, along with would-be gurus like Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber: I'm hurting you for your own good; you deserve it.

Well, I say: bullshit to that.

Run, don't walk, from Cohen and Wilber, EnlightenNext, and any attempt to entice you into a religious cult masquerading as Integral enlightenment.

What they're pushing is old-fashioned religion in a New Age guise. Cohen and Wilber are the high priests, and they're looking for submissive acolytes who will worship them and submit to their authority.

The beauty of boundless existence

"Existence" is one of my favorite things to ponder, mostly because existence (the boundless variety) is imponderable. It's just what it is: Isness, Thatness, whatever you want to call primal That -- which isn't a What.

A few months after I started this blog, I wrote "Existence exists. Amazing!" And said in that post:

My head hurts when I think too much about existence. But I get an enjoyable chill up my spiritual spine when I simply try to wrap my psyche around existence. Not in a wordy way. In, well, an existential way. This happens when I try to let the stark reality of existence blow the roof off all my notions about what exists, when I try to strip away thoughts about all that is until the skeleton of a bare is remains.

For me, existence pure and simple is absolutely real, though I’ve never seen, heard, smelled, touched, or tasted it. I have no idea what it is, this essence of everything that can’t be a thing itself and certainly isn’t nothing either. I feel it much more than I think it. Not emotionally, but like sensing an invisible presence in a dark room that you know you’ll never be able to put your finger on.

Nothing has changed about my relation to the almost-Nothing that I talked about above. Except, I'm less inclined to agree with my "certainly isn't nothing" conjecture about existence pure and simple.

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it is and it isn't. Impossible to know.

That's the existential beauty of boundless existence, a term used by Milton Munitz in one of my favorite books, "Does Life Have a Meaning?" This morning I was drawn to pull it from my bookcase, the first time I'd visited this paean to boundless existence since I wrote a post about it back in 2007. 

I enjoyed flipping through the short (114 pages) book and reading passages I'd highlighted the first time through. This paragraph in the Summing Up section not surprisingly sums up Munitz' central theme nicely.

Boundless Existence consists in the fact that the universe Exists. It marks the ontological locus of the impenetrability by any humanly devised scheme of conceptual bounds to go beyond the awareness of this basic fact. It blocks all attempts to explain how or why the universe Exists. 

...Awareness of Boundless Existence as a fundamental feature of Reality is tantamount to denying the possibility of making the Existence of the universe intelligible by appealing to any conceptual scheme -- whether philosophic, religious, or scientific. Any such scheme, whether purportedly descriptive, explanatory, or valuational is, from the vantage point of the world picture here advocated, altogether lacking in convincingness or plausibility.

Milton Munitz explored life deeply: scientifically, philosophically, and most importantly, experientially.

Though he talked with Einstein, wrote books about the philosophical ramifications of cosmology, and had a distinguished academic career, the sense I get from him through his last book -- "Does Life Have a Meaning?" -- is that of a guy who I would have loved to have a coffeehouse chat with over a couple of lattes, because he felt much the same as I do about existence.

He just had the smarts to describe those feelings much more clearly and intelligently than I'm capable of doing. Munitz wrote:

To become aware of Boundless Existence calls for entering a different mode of experience. It is not reached by a leap of faith. Nor does it consist in a type of access that affords a special source of knowledge. It is simply a wholly unique mode of awareness that reveals a different level of Reality from that which comes from observation and the use of concepts of any sort.

The correct use of the term "Boundless Existence" lacks all reference to what is observable, conceptually interpretable or capable of serving as subject for propositions that can be judged as true or false. It is that of which no scientifically warranted, factual knowledge at all can be obtained.

Boundless Existence is unobservable, unintelligible, unknowable -- beyond all space, time, or any other conceptual distinctions -- hence not subject to changing horizons either of an observational or conceptual sort.

In the June 2010 issue of Scientific American I came across a paragraph in an article, "Extra Dimensions," that Munitz would have liked.

The discovery [of extra dimensions] would transform not only physics but also its allied disciplines. Extra dimensions might explain mysteries such as cosmic acceleration and might even be a prelude to reworking the entire notion of dimensionality -- adding to a growing sense that space and time emerge from physical principles that play out in a spaceless, timeless realm.

Cool. And close.

Yet Munitz' Boundless Existence isn't a "realm." It isn't anything, because it isn't a thing. Yet this "it" that isn't an it, but That, is beautiful -- because without That, there wouldn't be any beauty, or anything else.

Awareness of Boundless Existence is approached with silence. But noisy words are necessary to communicate this. I tried in "Meaningful meaningless meditation."

Religion should be seen as an art from

Lately I've been surprising myself. My churchless psyche isn't nearly as down on religion as it was a few years ago, when I was closer to my saying "goodbye" to an organized spiritual, mystical, and metaphysical belief system.

This is natural.

Right after I got divorced from my first wife some twenty-one years ago, I thought about her much more, and considerably differently, than I do now. We've each moved on to other relationships. Emotions and attachments, whether positive or negative, almost always fade with time.

It still bothers me when fundamentalists expect other people to accept their view of reality on faith, rather than on the basis of demonstrable evidence. If you want me to believe that abortion should be illegal, or intelligent design taught in schools, you'd better bring better reasons than "the Bible tells me so."

However, I'm coming to realize that if religiosity is seen as akin to an art form, a means of creative expression and a way of conveying human dreams/desires, then expressions of faith aren't nearly as objectionable.

Indeed, they can even be admirable.

Many atheists and agnostics enjoy the atmosphere in religious services. They like the often-astounding architecture of places of worship. Devotional music can be profoundly moving to unbelievers. (When I hear the "Hallelujah Chorus," I feel a chill.)

I understand the appeal of worshiping a divine being who loves, guides, and protects. I grasp why people are so attracted to the prospect of immortality and an eternity spent in a pleasant heaven. I resonate with a desire to experience the mysteries of higher domains of reality and/or consciousness.

I've had these feelings myself for most of my life. Indeed, I still have them to some extent. They've just changed form -- in the direction of the above-mentioned artistry, and away from realism.

I still talk to God.

Along with alien beings, ascended masters, departed souls, divine gurus, and any other being who might be listening in on my consciousness when I meditate every morning. Now, though, I don't expect a response, an answer, a two-way conversation.

When I feel like expressing myself religiously, spiritually, or mystically, I do. Occasionally I even drop to my knees before I go to bed (never when my wife is in the room; that would be too embarrassing) and repeat the Lord's Prayer just as I did in the days of my Catholic youth.

I'm curious to see how it feels to do that now. I want to experience how different the prayer's words sound at the age of 61 rather than eight. I'm interested in walking in a Christian's shoes for a minute, even if it is just pretending.

There's the key to religious artistry, as I see it: knowing the difference between personal expression, and universal reality.

We can admire all sorts of art -- paintings, music, sculptures, books, poetry, weavings, photography, whatever -- without believing that the artist's vision is anything more than a manifestation of his or her subjective view of life and the world.

The same can be true of religious devotion, ritual, and worship. It's what people do, when they feel drawn in that creative direction. We're all artists in our own way, religious believers included.