Church of the Churchless

Humans are naturally optimistic. Which helps explain religion.

Most people's brains are hard-wired to generate an optimistic outlook on life. Evolution, it seems, has favored an ability to look into the future and see good things happening.

Such is the message of TIME magazine's cover story this week, "The Optimism Bias." It's a highly interesting article.

Tali Sharot, the author, says that "optimism starts with what may be the most extraordinary of human talents: mental time travel, the ability to move back and forth through time and space in one's mind."

This ability was naturally selected for in the course of Homo sapiens' evolution because it had so many survival advantages, such as planning ahead for a future reward. However, mental time travel comes with a big downside.

While mental time travel has clear survival advantages, conscious foresight came to humans at an enormous price — the understanding that somewhere in the future, death awaits. Ajit Varki, a biologist at the University of California, San Diego, argues that the awareness of mortality on its own would have led evolution to a dead end.

The despair would have interfered with our daily function, bringing the activities needed for survival to a stop. The only way conscious mental time travel could have arisen over the course of evolution is if it emerged together with irrational optimism. Knowledge of death had to emerge side by side with the persistent ability to picture a bright future.

For atheists and agnostics, their focus is on a bright future in this life. But religious believers use their mental time traveling ability to envision a wonderfully pleasant life after death, otherwise known as heaven, paradise, god-realization, and such.

Optimism is great. Feeling that the future is beckoning us to good times fuels us with energy, enthusiasm, and the courage to overcome bumps along the Happiness Road.

We should understand, though, that our brains are doing what evolution has wrought when a sunny happy face beams down upon us as we contemplate the next unseen bends on our life's course. Optimism can blind our ability to discern reality as it is, rather than how we'd like it to be.

Most people believe in life after death. Religiosity is the default for humans, since it fosters an optimism that can mentally time travel on into eternity. "God is guiding my life here on Earth, and after I die He'll usher me into everlasting heavenly bliss!"

Well, almost certainly not. It can feel good to think that way, and there's nothng wrong with feeling good. We just should know what's going on in our brains when realism takes a back seat to optimism.

The TIME article ends with:

Why would our brains be wired in this way? It is tempting to speculate that optimism was selected by evolution precisely because, on balance, positive expectations enhance the odds of survival. Research findings that optimists live longer and are healthier, plus the fact that most humans display optimistic biases — and emerging data that optimism is linked to specific genes — all strongly support this hypothesis.

Yet optimism is also irrational and can lead to unwanted outcomes. The question then is, How can we remain hopeful — benefiting from the fruits of optimism — while at the same time guarding ourselves from its pitfalls?

I believe knowledge is key. We are not born with an innate understanding of our biases. The brain's illusions have to be identified by careful scientific observation and controlled experiments and then communicated to the rest of us. Once we are made aware of our optimistic illusions, we can act to protect ourselves.

The good news is that awareness rarely shatters the illusion. The glass remains half full. It is possible, then, to strike a balance, to believe we will stay healthy, but get medical insurance anyway; to be certain the sun will shine, but grab an umbrella on our way out — just in case.

One million pageviews. Thanks, blog visitors.

Kind of fitting. It's Memorial Day here in the United States. And today this blog passed a memorable milestone: one million pageviews. 

Feels good. Thanks for the good feeling, blog visitors.

There's something about a million that's, well, substantial. Not that my ego cares about this meaningless stuff, of course. My many years of meditation have brought me enlightenment and ego-loss.

Also, delusions. 

Yes, us churchless folks are searching for truth

Ooh, I love good questions. Here's four. Nice! Marina offered them up in a comment to a recent blog post.

Is there anyone here on this blog who is looking to realise the truth or are we more interested in realising how right we are, how wrong others are?

Are we into defending our beliefs and condemning others for theirs?

Are we more interested in getting 'facts' about others then finding out 'facts' about ourselves?

Are we so much enjoying the 'dramas' that we don't care about the truth, the real truth about ourselves and realising that?

Just wondering........

I found these thoughts fascinating, mostly because at first read they surprised me. My reaction was, "Well, of course I and regular visitors to this blog are seeking what's true about ourselves."

Speaking for myself, and I'm pretty sure this holds generally for churchless folk, I gave up blind faith because I wanted a clearer view of reality. My motivation for ditching dogma was to find a better path to truth, not to give up the search for it.

Re-reading Marina's questions, that initial intuitive reaction didn't change.

But I better understood how she could interpret this blog's skepticism, challenging, and cynicism toward organized religiosity as discounting the possibility that there's more to the cosmos than what science and everyday experience point toward.

Rather than answer each of Marina's queries individually, I'll offer up a general response that encompasses her overall theme -- starting with a challenge to her ending words: "the truth, the real truth about ourselves."

Marina seems to assume that this exists, the truth, the real truth. If so, that's a big assumption, an unwarranted assumption. If not, then there are many truths, so no one can be criticized for not seeking THE truth, because such doesn't exist.

Understand: I'm not a solipsist.

I don't believe that we create reality in the sense "The Secret" does. But when it comes to ourselves, our subjective experiencing (which probably doesn't involve a "self"), there's little reason to expect that a real truth is to be found -- at least not in the way science seeks the real truth about observable/objective existence.

We're each a sample of one.

There's absolutely no way for me, or you, or anybody, to compare our subjective experiencing with someone else's subjective experiencing. Yes, we can tell stories about what it was like to eat that juicy strawberry. But the taste, the feel, the smell -- all that (what philosophers call qualia), it's ours alone.

So when it comes to the speed of light, there's a real truth. For us humans, that is. The brain of Homo sapiens has evolved to perceive the cosmos in a certain way. Other sentient beings in the universe might see things differently.

I'm deeply interested in this sort of scientific objective truth. However, I see the thrust of Marina's questions as pointing in a different direction. She wasn't asking whether visitors to this blog are committed to knowing external truth, but rather some supposed internal truth, "the real truth about ourselves."

I have no idea what this could be. Or how it could be.

If this "real truth" is objectively real, then there should be demonstrable evidence of it. Yet thousands of years of spiritual/ religious/ mystical searching has left humanity with just as many godly question marks as at the beginning of recorded history.

Thus I've concluded that it's fruitless to seek The Truth as if it were a rare butterfly capable of being captured in a net and put on display. And I sense that most people who visit this blog have come to a similar conclusion.

If knowing ourselves is a science, it sure isn't the sort of scientific pursuit that results in a consensus agreement about what the real truth is. So I've come to look upon it as art.

Our subjective experiencing is akin to an artist hearing music or seeing an image in his mind. Those inner sounds and sights are only real to the artist. If he wants others to get a taste of them, subjectivity has to be transformed into objectivity.

But there's always a gap between our experience and our telling about it. At this moment I'm struggling to fill it, searching for words I can type that approximate my wordless understandings and intuitions.

Marina asked if us churchless folks are looking to realize the real truth and facts about ourselves. There's no way not to. For anyone. Whatever is being experienced by us, that's our real truth, that's our facts.

I can't show mine to you. You can't show yours to me.

So when someone claims that a person's subjective experience, unsupported by demonstrable evidence, should be accepted as The Truth that applies to everybody -- my skepticism causes me to cry "Bullshit!"

Doesn't matter if that claim is backed up by a holy book. I still say it's bullshit. This attitude isn't a denial of truth. It's an acceptance of the difference between experiential subjective truth and demonstrable objective truth.

Say "I experienced X, but I can't prove it to you," and I'll reply "Great." I've got no problem with that statement. What irks me is "I experienced X; I can't prove it to you; yet you should accept that what I say is true -- both for me and for you."

That's bullshit.

Rapture did happen last week -- spiritually, not physically

Well, I shouldn't have made fun of Harold Camping, Christian evangelical, after his prediction that the Rapture (basically, the second coming of Jesus) would happen a week ago, on May 21.

It turns out that Camping was right about the Rapture. But it was an invisible judgment day, not physical. So says Harold Camping, a seemingly reliable source about all things Camping'ish.

I have to believe him, in the same sense that I have to believe the Bible, because it says in the Bible "believe the Bible." Anyway, I'm not worried about the Rapture. I was baptized Catholic and had my first communion.

Shouldn't that guarantee me a seat on the Rapture Express, notwithstanding a minor theological detail?

Namely, that I don't have faith in Jesus and never have been a practicing Christian, aside from being forced as a kid to briefly study catechism in preparation for that first communion (which I choked on and could barely swallow -- really).

Camping says there will still be a physical Rapture. It's just been postponed five months, from May 21 to October 21. 

This is great news!

My birthday is in the earlier part of October. I'll be able to get my presents and also be raptured! It would have been a bummer to spend eternity in heaven with Jesus without some new books to read and a fresh downloaded album or two on my iPod.

I enjoyed this video that shows what the world will be like after the Rapture. With all the Christians gone, Earth is going to be a better place. So if I'm not part of the rapture-fest in October, that's great news also!

Have a look. And laugh.

Indian guru manifests to a dead person

I got an email message from a friend recently. He keeps up on media reports of what's going on in the life of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, a.k.a. "Baba Ji," the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas in India.

Devotees believe that the guru appears to his disciples at the time of their death. So I appreciated the clever one line message -- which included a link to a news story.

Who says Baba ji doesn't appear when someone dies?

Worship should be of something real (which leaves out God)

Yesterday I finished listening to a Philosophy Talk podcast on "Worship." As always, I enjoyed the intelligent insights of the discussants, hosts John Taylor and Ken Perry of Stanford University, plus guest Daniel Speak of Loyola Marymount.

This Philosophy Talk program had a different feel, though. Usually religion takes a backseat to secular humanism on the show, as befits the emphasis on philosophy (literally, from the Greek, "love of wisdom").

In this case, while Speak didn't broadcast his Christianity at full volume it was an obvious murmur that could be heard to some degree in just about every statement that he made. This put him at odds with almost all of the audience commenters and questioners, as well as Taylor and Perry.

Me too.

Much of the discussion revolved around Speak's definition of worship. Which was, essentially: Praising the excellence of something, with a view toward making it a fundamental organizing principle of your life.

So what is most excellent? Well, God, according to Speak -- in line with Anselm's ontological argument. God is the greatest, most excellent, most perfect being that can be conceived of.

Hence it makes sense to worhip this marvelous entity, especially since God can respond to your worship. Nature, on the other hand, can't.

So Speak didn't think much of the notion proposed by Perry or Taylor (can't remember which) that the Earth, nature, was the most deserving of our adoration and worship, since it is the ground of our being, what sustains us and makes life possible.

Listening to the discussion, I never could stop thinking of an objection to Speak's stance which seemed so obvious to me, I kept wondering why the hosts didn't keep pounding away philosophically on this point. (A couple of audience members did, to some degree.)

Namely: if the most excellent entity that can be conceived of, God, isn't real, then worshipping it, making it the fundamental organizing principle of your life -- that's crazy.

Well, maybe "crazy" isn't quite the right word. I can understand why it could make sense for someone to fill their head with imaginary ideas which then become the centerpiece of his/her life.

After all, that's what art is all about, using your own subjective mind to create something. But who wants to worship themselves? That seems terribly solipsistic to me. Yet this is what Daniel Speak and other religious believers advocate: worshipping the thought of a perfect being.

Human thoughts only exist within the human brain.

When asked what evidence there was for the existence of the God he reverences, Speak couldn't come up with any. So the worship-worthy organizing principle of his life, God, isn't anything objectively real. It's a concept which he and other theistic believers use to justify other concepts in a dizzying display of circular reasoning.

Personally (as if there is any other way to talk about this stuff), I don't resonate with the whole worship thing. Even when I followed the teachings of an Indian guru, I never felt like I worshipped him. Or God. Or any other divine being.

The Philosophy Talk guys say "Worship is the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for something." Hmmmm. Maybe.

But when I feel reverential and adoring toward the majesty of nature, including the incomprehensible vastness of our universe, that doesn't feel like worship to me -- not in the way this word usually is used. Thus I can understand why Speak considers that there needs to be a reciprocity in worship; the object of our worship needs to know how worshipful we are, and respond in some fashion.

(Or at least be capable of responding to us.)

However, this undercuts his argument for worshipping God. If I worship Lady Gaga, for many people an entirely reasonable act, I can attend one of her concerts and be part of a crowd that she is demonstrably able to see, talk to, and interact with. 

Can God do this? There's no evidence of it, because there's no evidence God exists.

So I listened to the Philosophy Talk podcast wondering how the heck such an obviously bright guy as Daniel Speak could fail to see the flaws in his religiously-based attitude toward worship.

His emphasis was on centering one's life around a praise-worthy form of excellence. Yet if this entity isn't objectively real, then we end up worshipping the content of our own mind, an imaginary excellence. That will feel good, since mental masturbation can be as enjoyable as physical self-pleasuring.

I just don't want to worship myself. Or anyone else, for that matter.

But if you want to worship me, feel free. So far I've only got one confirmed devotee: my dog, for a few moments a day, when I reach into a cupboard and grab her favorite jerky treat and chew sticks. As she waits for me to give them to her, I briefly sense a worshipful look on her canine face. For an instant, I'm God to her. Or at least the doofus who hands over valuable treats in exchange for a half-hearted paw shake.

Which reminds me... this You Tube video of a talking dog is hilarious. My wife discovered it and now worships it, along with all other things doggish. Have a look, and laugh:

 

"The Ultimate Twist" -- honest, creative, appealingly unconvincing

Suzanne Foxton, author of "The Ultimate Twist," is an occasional commenter on this blog. She has her own nonduality-oriented blog, Nothing Exists, Despite Appearances. (Tagline: "All there is, is this, exactly as it is")

That last sentiment sums up how I felt about her book after I finished reading it. I liked Suzanne's honesty and creativity. Yet my attitude toward nonduality was unchanged by her 116 well-written pages.

Knowing that she'd written a novella based on her own life, I was eager to learn about Suzanne's struggle with addiction and other problems that come with being human. However, I also was afraid that this would be one of those A Book About Me treatises which I find annoyingly self-centered.

My fear was misguided.

"The Ultimate Twist" doesn't have the feel of an autobiography thinly disguised as fiction. Rather, I was drawn into an engrossing story of a woman, Lucy, who is trying to defeat her inner demons, the therapist who guides her along a path of recovery, and her husband -- who tries to understand how nondual teachings reflect his wife's fresh outlook on life, yet keeps being put off by the blather he reads in All there is, is this, exactly as it is writings.

That's a nice touch, to have your main message undercut by a skeptical central character. In a short chapter also titled The Ultimate Twist, Lucy reads over her first attempt to describe how she now sees reality.

Awakening is so simple. Enlightenment, or whatever you want to label it, realization as some call it, is simply what you are, right now. It's no different than what is happening -- here, now. The thoughts that label whatever reality is for you, the thoughts that tell you that this isn't it, even they are it.

The feelings that seem to be discontent or frustration, they are it too. Those thoughts that tell you that it couldn't be so simple.. that it couldn't be any different than whatever it is you seem to have been experiencing all your life... they are what you are looking for.

The thoughts that say "How could this possibly be it? This is boring!" Well, the boring-ness is it too, as are the thoughts that label it "boring". Those thoughts are just what's coming up in what you are. What you are is here and now. What you are is everything.

What you are is not dependent on what your mind makes of it all. You will never be any closer to what you are than you already are. Those thoughts that it might be something different... those are it, too. Nothing is not it. Everything is what you are looking for. What looks is what you are looking for. Looking is what you are looking for. Here it is!

Well, I find sentiments like these almost equally balanced between infuriating and inspiring. So I resonated with Lucy's husband, Alistair, who was similarly repelled by and attracted to his wife's newfound insight that what is, is. Dude.

I wrestled with my "it is what it is" love-hate relationship in a recent blog post. My basic take on these five words is that if everything is fine just as it is, saying this is both deeply meaningful and utterly useless.

It's much like I felt after an Argentine Tango lesson a few weeks ago. Dancing with a woman I'd just met, I couldn't resist sharing some thoughts about the philosophy of leading and following in Tango.

But after I did that, I felt it would have been better if I'd simply shut up and danced. Doing is different from talking. Experiencing is different from analyzing.

I'm not saying that Suzanne shouldn't have written her book. There's a time to live life without comment, and there's a time to talk about life. My point is that I'm pleased with how my reading "The Ultimate Twist" left me feeling this isn't it, in much the same way as I'm pleased to realize that talking about dancing Tango isn't it either.

Not quite the same way, though.

Because Tango requires some conceptual knowledge before someone can dance it properly. You might be able to pick it up just by watching, but even then you'd need to recognize the nature of basic moves.

Nonduality, on the other hand, claims to be an all-encompassing approach to life. It isn't a skill, technique, approach, method, or whatever. Supposedly a nondual vision of reality leads to everything looking different. Or perhaps, just the same -- yet sharper, clearer, closer.

So I get confused when I read about nonduality. Suzanne's book left me less perplexed than usual, because she doesn't take this stuff as seriously as other "this is it" authors.

An interview with her in non-duality magazine does show, though, that Suzanne has a good grasp of philosophy. I just don't understand how the interviewer managed to ask so many questions, and raise so many issues, about a viewpoint which supposedly is amazingly simple.

Here's how the interview starts out. And arguably could have ended.

NDM: Suzanne, can you please tell me about your awakening, when this happened, how this happened exactly, why you believe this happened. What was going on in your life at the time?

Suzanne Foxton: Let me start by saying that the overwhelming quality of "my awakening" was the realisation that there is no such thing. That "I" couldn't  "awaken" because there was no me to awaken, and what I had taken myself for was a whimsical fabrication, albeit a fascinating one. Within that paradox lies enlightenment, or whatever we're calling it today.

I could be wrong (the truest thing I've ever said). But this is how I'm coming to see nonduality, Zen, Advaita, and all the other teachings which propose that what we're looking for is what is doing the seeing:

Such is the natural reaction of those who persisted in banging their heads against a spiritual wall for a long time, and then had the bright idea, "Stop!"

Thus there isn't anything special about a nondual outlook on life. It's basically irreligious common sense.

What's apparent, is. What's not apparent, isn't. However, to anyone who once had a strong belief in something marvelous that exists beyond the physical, and strived mightily to realize it, having that dream dashed can be such a profound experience, it gets called "enlightenment."

Several years ago I blogged about a previous Argentine Tango lesson. Carlos, the instructor, didn't like how I was leading. He wanted me to experience what it was like to be the follower (usually, a woman). So he led, and I followed.

Or rather, tried to follow. Mostly I tried to anticipate what move Carlos wanted me to do. When I failed, which was every few seconds, Carlos would stop and say "No! That isn't what I led!"

I got a little frustrated. Then I got a lot frustrated.

So much so, I said to myself, "Fuck it. I give up. Carlos can do whatever he wants without me." At which point, after a minute or thereabouts of my relaxed I don't care'ness, Carlos smiled and said, "Yes! That's it!"

I hadn't done anything. All that I'd done is learn how not to do anything. (For a while, at least.) This is a big part of what makes a good follower in dance -- letting the leader lead, fully.

Likewise, a big part, maybe almost the entirety, of what often is called "spirituality" involves letting life be as it is, not trying to guide unguidable events, not trying to control what is uncontrollable.

When I tried to follow Carlos, I failed. Trying is inimical to following, just as seeking is inimical to finding. So long as someone is looking for what isn't there, the presence of what is here isn't fully realized.

I enjoyed Suzanne Foxton's "The Ultimate Twist." However, I didn't get anything from it in a wow, I never knew that before! sense. Reading the book left me unchanged, so far as I can tell.

And that, I suspect, will please Suzanne. Like she writes on the next to last page of her book:

Perhaps if there is nowhere to go and no one to get there, every obstacle dissolves.

How Sant Mat is moving from duality to oneness

OshoRobbins has put up an interesting series of three videos that explain the difference between Sant Mat 1.0 and Sant Mat 2.0.

I've blogged about this in "Sant Mat, version 2.0" and "Has Gurinder Singh revised to Sant Mat to v. 3.0?"

Whatever the version number, these YouTube presentations do a good job of making clear how the Radha Soami Satsang Beas version of the Sant Mat philosophy has evolved to become a far different creature from the traditional teachings.

More broadly, OshoRobbins points out how a dualistic view of God, heaven, soul, and such can't co-exist with a monistic perception. If the heart of reality is indeed one, no amount of journeying on a dualistic vehicle will get you there.

Have a look and listen. The three videos total about 15 minutes, with the first 30 seconds common to each. They're worth your time if you're at all interested in this sort of stuff. 

 

 

 

Religion is like a placebo with no active ingredient

So you don't believe in God, but you want the benefits that come with being religious: feeling special, not being afraid of dying, embraced by a loving divine power, and such.

No problem.

You can keep your atheism or agnosticism and have your Godly presence also. This is the message that I draw from a fascinating study about placebos, which found they can be medically effective even when people know they're getting a fake drug.

Patients can benefit from being treated with sham drugs even if they are told they contain no active ingredient, scientists have found. The finding suggests that the placebo effect could work without the need for any deception on the part of the doctor, as had been previously thought.

...To investigate the limits of placebo, Prof Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard Medical School's Osher Research Center divided 80 patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) into two groups: one received no treatment and the other was given dummy pills to take twice a day. The second group was told by the doctors that they would be taking "placebo pills made of an inert substance, like sugar pills, that have been shown in clinical studies to produce significant improvement in IBS-symptoms through mind-body self-healing processes".

"Not only did we make it absolutely clear that these pills had no active ingredient and were made from inert substances, but we actually had 'placebo' printed on the bottle," said Kaptchuk. "We told the patients that they didn't have to even believe in the placebo effect. Just take the pills."

The results, published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, showed that the placebo pills were more effective at relieving symptoms compared with doing nothing at all.

The mind is marvelously mysterious. Expectations can become reality, even when what we hope to have happen is relief from a physical problem which seemingly wouldn't be affected by faith in a sugar pill.

It makes sense that relief from a spiritual or meaning-of-life malaise would be even more easily produced by a placebo.

Since there's no demonstrable evidence that God exists, or that religious dogma is founded in some sort of objectively real divinity, I've assumed that the benefits of faith only accrue to those who genuinely believe in the truth of their chosen religion. But this study implies that even a belief in a fake God can make someone feel better.

Why not?

Anyone who gets deeply immersed in a well-written novel knows how easy it is to feel the truth of a false narrative. That is, we can simultaneously (1) realize that we're engaged in an act of fiction, while (2) enjoying the story being played out in our mind.

(Whenever I order coffee, am smiled at by the charming youthful female barista, and think "Some women are attracted to gray-haired older guys," I'm doing exactly that: fooling myself with a fantasy which makes me feel good even though I know what I'm doing.)

After reading about this placebo study in a science magazine, I've been experimenting with bringing back some religious rituals into my morning meditation. It's been kind of fun, this play-acting.

I'll repeat the familiar mantra that I spoke silently in my mind for many years when I followed the teachings of an Indian guru. Or I'll pretend that I'm a mystic Christian and use "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me" as a meditation focus, even though I don't believe in the saving-power of Jesus.

Saying "Namu amida butsu" also feels good, regardless of the fact that Pure Land Buddhism and me don't have much in common.

Sugar pills can work, whether of the physical or mental variety, even when we know that they contain no active ingredients other than what we imagine them to have.

Thank God -- the excessively religious 2011 Survivor is over

My wife and I barely survived watching Survivor: Redemption Island. There was so much irritating God-talk from Matt Elrod and his fellow Christians, we felt like we were going to overdose on religious absurdity.

Our greatest fear was that some "Praise God, it's all His will!" contestant would win this reality show. Thankfully, pleasingly duplicitous (and seemingly non-religious) Boston Rob came through, finally becoming the Sole Survivor after four tries.

Not surprisingly, the Christian Post loved Matt. The guy kept saying that God was keeping him going during his extended stay on Redemption Island, where he had to win duel after duel to stay in the game.

Well, you're welcome to your beliefs, Matt, ridiculous though they are.

I just wish you'd kept them to yourself, as they grated on my irreligious sensibilities. Hey, I'm a vegetarian, but I don't go around giving speeches about how wonderful it is to not eat meat.

Matt's faith would have been more convincing if he hadn't felt the need to blab about it incessantly. And near the end, he played the whatever card. What a copout.

"Whatever your will is for me, God, that's what will happen." Duh. Of course. Something has to happen, Matt. You were either going to lose the final duel (as you did), or you would win it (as you didn't).

After extolling God as the reason you stayed in the Survivor game for so long, when you realized there was a good chance you were about to be kicked off the island, suddenly you embraced God's will that you become a loser.

Win, it's God's will. Lose, it's God's will. Christianity is a joke.

A poetic debate about hell

Some influential Christians are starting to say "Perhaps there is no hell." Others hold firm to a belief in heaven's antithesis.

Recently I got together with a friend, Patricia Herron. She's both philosophically and artistically minded. During our chat she gave me a copy of a poem, introduced with some prose, that she wrote.

It's a dialogue between a believer and nonbeliever in hell. The nonbeliever gets to say the most, probably because Patricia, like me, doesn't put much stock in all of this hell talk.

Have a read. And then, add a comment if you like. As Patricia says in her introduction, open communication is what the world needs more of.

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

Prose and poem by Patricia Herron, Salem, Oregon

God is an instrument of madness. Also, the idea of God is a symbol of inner sanctity and true being. There's a confusion between these two extremes, ideas swinging back and forth through the centuries. And it is still so.

There are no judges -- so no rules -- in this scenario. Thus, it will be an open debate. However, following the debate there will be a conclusion whereby Jürgen Habermas' thinking concerning communication will be addressed.

Distorted communication prevents freedom, undistorted communication moves us toward emancipation or the unforced force of a better argument. In this manner we will be able to use our common sense and critical thinking to decide the unforced force of a better argument.

According to Jacob Needleman's What is God?, "A quality of attention was passing between [two people] that is becoming more and more rare in our common world. And it is this 'something' that desperately needs to pass between people. It is the mutual flow of this special quality of attention between human beings that all people, whether they know it or not, are starved for."

This is not the case with X and Y.

Y (believer in hell)

There is a hell. God said this is so.
And God is all knowledge,
All good, all powerful, all just
And all loving
This is so as the Bible is the word of God
Hell is located as God sees fit
And spirits without bodies
Are also taken to task -- bar none
Can enter without faith in God

X (nonbeliever)

If what you say is true
Then these words must belong to God
Spare the rod and spoil the child,
What brutality, blindness, egotism it claims
How can this be so?
Toxic punishment seeding toxic ideas unto our world
Punishment; ages upon ages of pure pain and suffering
Presuming to be realistic only because
We fight against an equally religious arrogance
How can this be so?
Toxic punishment, people feel powerful, toxic though it may be.
Forgoes a sense of wonder and awe,
Seeding in our culture, when will it stop?
Is this not so?
An invitation to a hanging, bring a picnic basket
Hold your hands still little boy,
Tap-rap-atap-rap, a-rap-atap
Smothers real life of the God within,
The God of the unknown
Hold your self still young man, it will soon be over
The fruit of the hanging tree
Dangle, dangle feet off the ground
Throwing stones at a woman's head
Her body buried seeding, seeding our world
Toxic punishment has run amuck
Ages upon ages with God at the stern
A God with human attributes
Take a good look, this image of God
Is an instrument of madness
A God who can locate hell where he sees fit
Humans clap and praise such a God
Made in their own image
A God so powerful that a hell for punishment
Goes beyond what tortures mankind have
For ages and ages made do.

The reasons we give for what we do: are they reasonable?

About a week ago Marina, a visitor to this blog, asked me to explain why I left the spiritual organization that I'd belonged to for about thirty-five years. She then reminded me that I hadn't answered her question, asking again:

What made you leave RS [Radha Soami Satsang Beas] – a major thing or a nagging feeling over the years?

I pointed her to a partial compendium of posts that I've written for this blog, quite a few of which addressed this question. But something kept nagging at me as I thought about her first three words.

What made you...

Had I answered this in my previous posts? Could I answer this query better if I made a fresh attempt? And more basically: Is it possible for anyone to answer a question that begins with "What made you..."?

Somewhat strangely, given my churchless inclinations, I'll address this last basic issue by starting with a memory from my true believing days.

A woman, Signe, who used to give talks at our local RSSB gatherings, liked to say, "We justify our karma." Meaning, when something happens to us that's the result of something we've done in the past, we make up a reason for why it happened.

Why?

Because we humans don't like unanswered why's. Mystery is irritating. Our ancestors didn't know what produced lightning and thunder, so they made up stories about Thor and other supernatural powers that govern worldly phenomena.

Now, I no longer believe in the sort of past-life karma that Signe was referring to. However, her essential point still rings true to me.

We are strongly drawn to stating reasons for what happens in our lives, whether a happening seemingly is outside of our control (a plane we're about to leave on has a mechanical problem) or is freely chosen (we order a large coffee rather than a small one).

Neuroscientists, though, know that most of what happens in the brain occurs outside of conscious awareness. I'm going to share a fairly lengthy excerpt from the book "Living as a River" because it is so interesting and germane to this question of whether we can offer up reasons for what we do.

[Background: when someone has split-brain surgery the corpus callosum that allows the two halves of the brain to communicate is severed, so the halves no longer can exchange information and work independently.]

In one intriguing experiment, split-brain subjects were presented with two cognitive tests simultaneously -- one to each side of the brain. (This is possible because of the way in which the left and right visual fields are wired up, respectively, to the right and left hemispheres of the brain.)

The subjects were presented with a picture and asked to point to an object that went with that picture. Both sides of the brain performed perfectly. When the left hemisphere was shown a chicken foot, the right hand would point to a chicken. When the right hemisphere -- simultaneously -- was shown a picture of snow, the left hand would point to a shovel.

But now the subject had to explain why he made his choice. And he had to do this using only his left hemisphere -- the side of the brain that deals with language. But the left hemisphere had only seen one of the pairs of images!

The responses -- typically something like, "I saw a claw and I picked the chicken, and you have to clean out the chicken shed with a shovel" -- made no sense at all. These "explanations" were in fact fictions -- post hoc rationalizations -- because there was in fact no causal connection whatsover between the actions of left and right brains, which were acting in an uncoordinated way.

Thus this experiment shows that even when "I don't know" is the true answer, people will still give made-up reasons for why they did something.

The human brain is largely unknown territory. It's got a lot of hidden layers. To scientists the brain is as difficult to fathom as "God" is for religious believers. Both the brain and God work (or in the case of God, is said to work) in mysterious ways.

I come down on the side of science, which finds our conscious explanations to be poor reflections of unconscious brain processes. But if someone is religiously inclined, he or she also is justified to doubt whether it's reasonable to offer up reasons for what we do.

Karma. God's will. Destiny. Fate. Influences of a higher (or lower) power. These are supernatural notions which, though quite different from scientific findings, point in the same direction:

We can't say why we do what we do, because that information isn't available to us.

So this is a long non-answer to Marina's short question.

I really don't know why I joined Radha Soami Satsang Beas, and I also really don't know why I left the organization. I also really don't know why I married and divorced my first wife, or why I ditched my Nokia cell phone for an iPhone.

Like someone with a split-brain, all I can do is say how things seem to me. Instead of seeing myself as justifying my karma, now I view myself as justifying my unconscious brain processes.

I'll end with this observation:

It seems to me that people are much more apt to ask for a specific reason why someone left a religious organization, than for a specific reason why they joined it. Christians, for example, are pleased to accept "I was moved by the spirit" as an explanation for why someone accepted Jesus as his or her savior.

But if that same person leaves the church, true believers aren't nearly as willing to accept "I was moved by the spirit" as a reason for the de-conversion.

Why not, though?

Isn't it as likely that a mysterious divinity guided someone to join up, as to leave, a spiritual faith? Or, more scientifically, that no good reason can be given for either action, because we aren't privy to the most powerful because's in our brains?

Someone asks about my failure to reach heaven

Today I got an email from someone who has a theory about why I've been occasionally critical of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) and the guru of this India-based organization, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

I could have responded to him privately, but I figured that I might as well make a blog post out of his message and my reply. (My responses are in plain type below; my correspondent's words are indented and italicized.)

Sach Khand, which is mentioned in the message, is the Sikh religion's "heaven." As described here, Sach Khand is considered to be both a state of consciousness and an actual spiritual place.

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I came across you blog and I read it. I would not like to make any analysis or to Vent anger at you for this is what Radha Soami faith exactly preaches us that we should not be angry at anyone.

Whenever someone starts off talking to me by saying something like this, my guess is that they actually are damn angry at me. It'd be refreshing if someone expressed this sort of sentiment and then simply said, "So, goodbye and best wishes." However, almost always there is a "but..." Like:

But I still dare you to ask one simple question.

No problem. I like questions. And it's good to be daring.

Have you ever asked yourself that your enormous " frustration" and targeting of Baba Ji [Gurinder Singh] may be because of fact that in spite of being a devotee for 35 years you were not able to achieve destination to Sach Khand and hence you express you own failure by splashing mud at others.

Oh, this is a great paragraph. So much here to talk about. I'll do my best to be succinct, but that'll be tough, given all the ideas this single sentence stimulates in me.

First, I'm not frustrated. And certainly not "enormously." I enjoyed most of the time I spent as an active member of RSSB, just as I enjoyed most of the time I was married to my first wife.

Change happens in life. We grow; we come to see things differently; we move on to fresh pursuits, beliefs, and passions.

As to not being able to reach heaven (Sach Khand), I haven't been able to reach the home of Santa Claus either. Nor the abode of the Easter Bunny. Maybe these places exist, just as Sach Khand may exist in the way Sikhs and RSSB conceive of it. However, there's no evidence that they do.

Every religion has an ultimate goal that devotees strive to attain. These usually are mutually exclusive. A Christian would consider that someone who doesn't feel the loving presence of Jesus has failed. A Buddhist, on the other hand, aspires to enlightenment, or Buddha-nature.

I wonder if the person who wrote me feels that he or she has reached Sach Khand. If so, I hope a description of what his or her attainment is like is forthcoming. If not, I think I'm entitled to throw this person's words back at them: "Hence you express your own failure by splashing mud on others."

Doesn't that sound ridiculous? It did when I first read it. And it also does when I've written it myself.

I don't feel like a failure because I wasn't able to reach a place that almost certainly doesn't exist. Rather, I feel like a success for changing course and heading in a more satisfying direction.

May be your own Ego is not allowing you to accept this simple fact.

What simple fact? There's nothing simple or factual about assuming that the Sikh religion's view of spiritual reality is true. Or that it is possible to reach the realm of Sach Khand. Anyway, who's to say that I'm not a denizen of heaven? Maybe I just don't talk about my godly attainments.

It is not my intention to start any arguments with you.  I wrote this email only to give you a question for introspection.

Again, no problem. I'm not arguing with you either. As they say in science, I feel you're not even wrong. Meaning, there's no way to test the hypothesis that heaven or Sach Khand exists, so it's ridiculous to fault someone for not reaching it.

Introspection is good. I've considered your question, and you should do some introspecting on my own queries: If you're so satisfied with your spiritual faith, why are you spending time and energy on a blog that questions it? What's your motivation in writing me? Have you considered whether your own ego is at work here?

If you consider it not worthy of your attention , you can just ignore it.

Obviously, I haven't.

Amazing changes in Radha Soami Satsang Beas teachings

Imagine the Pope saying, "Jesus wasn't really the Son of God. There isn't any heaven. God is just a state of consciousness. No one divine will meet you when you die."

It'd be more than a little shocking, to put it mildly. The head of a religion almost always defends the faith, preserving the core of traditional dogma while merely making small changes in other aspects of the teachings.

But reports keep coming in that the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based mystical/spiritual organization with millions of initiates in many countries around the world, has been undermining some of the group's central tenets in his English talks.

(Read my "Has Gurinder Singh revised Sant Mat to v. 3.0" for the new version of the teachings, including the comments to that post -- which have been interesting and informative.)

Since I was an active member of RSSB for about thirty-five years, I find this transformation of what supposedly was a "science of the soul" to be fascinating.

After all, each Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru supposedly was a Perfect Living Master who had attained God-realization. When a guru appointed his successor, it was assumed that the new RSSB leader was the same universal spirit in a different body.

Apparently not.

Because the current guru, Gurinder Singh, now is saying that God, heaven, and the savior (using Christian terms) are fictions. This message isn't just tinkering with peripheral points of the RSSB philosophy; it blows up the foundation of Radha Soami Satsang Beas' reason for being.

Namely, the assumption that initiation by a guru who is GIHF (God in Human Form) is the only way to return to God, thereby escaping an endless round of karma-powered births and rebirths. This is accomplished by diligent following of "four vows," notably including a strict vegetarian diet and meditating 2 1/2 hours a day.

The guru then will take the disciple under his wing and escort him/her through spiritual regions of reality back to the highest heaven. The promise has always been that this would take no more than four lifetimes, and almost always the guru would meet devoted initiates at the time of death, guiding them in the right direction.

Again, apparently not.

This is Big News in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas world. Except the guru doesn't allow his talks to be recorded, and he never writes anything, so the news is only slowly trickling out to RSSB disciples.

Many of whom must be thinking, What the fuck?! I put in years or decades of devoted spiritual practice under the guidance of the guru, and now I'm being told that the teachings aren't true.

Well, change happens. Join the real world. The only certainty when it comes to God and all things religious is that there's nothing to be certain about.

The profundity -- or not -- of "it is what it is"

An Urban Dictionary entry for it is what it is shows that this phrase is deeply irritating to some people.

A trite, overused and infuriatingly meaningless cliche that is utilized by provincials who think they are adding some deep, meaningful insight during a discussion when all they are offering is senseless, unwarranted repetitiveness to what would otherwise be a far better conversation had they not shown the shallowness of the gene pool they spawned from by using this asininely useless and redundant phrase to begin with.

An interesting conversation is being had, when quite suddenly:

Robin: My house burned down last night. It is what it is.
Aidan: Fuck you, provincial.

Wow, lighten up, dude.

Me, I like the phrase's meaninglessness. Zenlike, it points to the this'ness of is'ness (a truth'ness that will make a lot more sense to you if you're stoned or drunk, which is the best state of mind to read Church of the Churchless blog posts like this).

If you live in a part of the world where it is what it is isn't as common as here in the United States, give this informative Slate article a read: "It Is What It Is. But What Is It?"

As the article says, this phrase is often heard in sports interviews, such as when a basketball player is asked about his missed free throw with one second left in the game that would have won a national championship for his team.

"It is what it is, man. What more can I say?"

The author of the Slate piece decries this sort of talk as not adding anything to what we already know about a situation. That's true. Which to me isn't a drawback; it's what makes It is what it is such a marvelously profound commentary on the human condition.

Almost always people try to make more out of something than is obviously evident.

Offhand comments supposedly have a deeper meaning. A beautiful sunset is thought to be a reflection of what life is all about. Chance meetings are considered to be part of one's destiny.

Religiosity is a prime example of humankind's propensity to prefer it isn't what it is.

For example, Jesus wasn't simply another man of his time who was crucified on a cross for running afoul of the authorities. This is the apparent physical fact, but Christians ladle a big heaping mound of blind belief on top of it, making an is into an isn't.

Religions can't survive on it is what it is. They thrive on dogmas which regard the evident truths of this world as being an illusion, maya, a deception, a veil hiding divine reality.

Religious believers also love to make more out of an experience than meets the eye. A baseball player hits a home run. Before rounding the bases, he points skyward toward an imaginary God -- something I find hugely more irritating than a simple "That home run is what it is." (See my "Please God, no more sky-pointing.")

If someone has an urge to cancel a flight that later crashes; or has an unusual remission of a normally fatal cancer; or runs into a long-lost friend after taking an unplanned turn in a strange city...there's nothing wrong, and a lot right, with just saying It is what it is.

Sure, it feels good to think that we're special. Believing that we are able to discern hidden depths to the shallow material world that other people wade around in puffs up the spiritual ego.

But there's also something unspecially special about not viewing life through a Meaning Magnifying Glass. Just taking things as they are. Not making more or less of them than they seem to be. Embracing is rather than could be or maybe.

How to lose God

Here's an indication of how iconoclastic my morning meditation has become since I evolved into my churchless phase. Today a powerful intuition suddenly popped into my mind.

Lose God. It's the way to wisdom.

For over thirty-five years I was dedicated -- maybe even obsessed -- with finding God. I dove deeply into mysticism and meditation, hoping to locate divinity at the core of my consciousness.

No luck. So far as I can tell.

Of course, since no one knows for sure if God exists, and, if so, how God would appear to humans like us, it's possible that divinity is right in front of me, unnoticed. Possible. Just like lots of things which have a small chance of being true, yet almost certainly aren't.

What struck me this morning is how easy it is to lose God, and how difficult it is to find God. This tells us something. Indeed, a lot.

Something that's real, especially if it's Ultimate Reality, the realest thing in the cosmos -- it should be damn tough to make it go away, to disappear. God supposedly is the heart and soul of the universe, the creator and the destroyer, the Alpha and the Omega.

A galaxy is nothing compared to God.

Yet if I stop believing in Andromeda, if I stop thinking about the nearest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way home, if I stop giving it any of my attention, Andromeda still exists. Astronomers will continue to perceive it through their telescopes. Photons from the galaxy's billions of stars will still find their way through Earth's atmosphere.

Not so with God.

Even the most fervent religious devotee, not to mention someone churchless like me, can lose God in an instant. All you have to do is stop believing, stop having faith, stop trusting in holy books, stop imagining a divinity who exists only in your thoughts.

It's more important to learn how to lose God, than how to find God.

Why? Because this shows how real is the object of your losing and finding. The laws of nature can't be lost. They're part and parcel of reality. Try losing faith in gravity, then jump off a cliff. You'll fall just as fast as a physicist.

Atheists and agnostics threaten religious believers. I used to wonder why true believers in some dogma who visited this blog would get so upset at the skepticsm and questioning that's expressed here.

Now I feel like I know the answer: believers recognize, albeit often semi-consciously, how easy it is to lose their God. All it takes is a subtle shift in consciousness, a forgetting of the religious thoughts that generally are held firmly in their mind, and God disappears.

Again, why? Because God isn't real. It's easy to lose a memory, tough to lose a mountain. Hold on to what is genuine; let the rest go, or at least keep a loose grip on it.

Losing unreality isn't a loss. It's a gain.

Saints are imperfect

Here's something for believers in sainthood and heroic human perfection to reflect upon: Hampton Sides' "Shattered Faith" in Newsweek.

On some level, we still subscribe to the myth of the man in the white hat. We yearn to believe not only in his good deeds but in his inherent goodness as a person. Perhaps it’s something rooted in our Puritan past, but we seem to have a monochromatic view of heroism. We have a hard time believing that the doer of a heroic deed could have serious defects or even be rotten to the core. Heroes are supposed to be heroic—period. We prefer to take ours neat.

Yet all heroes and saints are imperfect—even the greatest ones. Mother Teresa, Mortenson’s professed role model when he was growing up, was widely criticized for the deplorable condition of her clinics—and for accepting large sums of money from mafia dons and Third World dictators. Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized parts of his Ph.D. thesis and engaged in marital infidelities. Gandhi had a decidedly weird habit of sleeping beside naked young women to test his vow of celibacy—and, according to a new biography out last month by Joseph Lelyveld, may have had a homoerotic relationship with a German-Jewish architect in South Africa.

So what? Their accomplishments seem all the more heroic for their having been complicated, multidimensional, flesh-and-blood human beings.

Scientific reasons for why people don't believe science

We all wear mental blinders. That's the nature of how the mind/brain works: we perceive reality through cultural, neurological, genetic, emotional, and other filters.

Science is one of the best ways to see things more clearly. Individually we're prone to significant biases. Collectively, though, it's possible to systematically correct for blind spots and home in on a truthful perspective.

I came across an interesting article by Chris Mooney in Mother Jones, "The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science." It starts off by describing a cult, the Seekers, who thought they were communicating with aliens, including an astral incarnation of Jesus Christ.

When a predicted alien cataclysm didn't strike the Earth on the appointed day, the cult had to either face the facts or continue on with their weird beliefs. No big surprise -- what happened is that their blind faith became even stronger.

Mooney writes:

In the annals of denial, it doesn't get much more extreme than the Seekers. They lost their jobs, the press mocked them, and there were efforts to keep them away from impressionable young minds. But while Martin's space cult might lie at on the far end of the spectrum of human self-delusion, there's plenty to go around.

And since Festinger's day, an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions.

This tendency toward so-called "motivated reasoning" helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, "death panels," the birthplace and religion of the president, and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.

The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience: Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it.

That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It's a "basic human survival skill," explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

We're not driven only by emotions, of course—we also reason, deliberate. But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn't take place in an emotional vacuum. Rather, our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that's highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about.

Consider a person who has heard about a scientific discovery that deeply challenges her belief in divine creation—a new hominid, say, that confirms our evolutionary origins.

What happens next, explains political scientist Charles Taber of Stony Brook University, is a subconscious negative response to the new information—and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations formed in the conscious mind. "They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs," says Taber, "and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what they're hearing."

In other words, when we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers. Our "reasoning" is a means to a predetermined end—winning our "case"—and is shot through with biases.

They include "confirmation bias," in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and "disconfirmation bias," in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial.

Has Gurinder Singh revised Sant Mat to v. 3.0?

Sant Mat is an Indian mystical philosophy that can be translated as "path of truth." I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), one of the various Sant Mat branches, for about thirty-five years.

Back in the old days, the RSSB guru taught that spiritual truth was unchanging. But with a new guru, we've got new truths. To me, that's refreshing. It's probably disconcerting to those who held a rigid fundamentalist view of Sant Mat, though.

Five years ago I wrote a post about "Sant Mat, version 2.0." This is how I summarized the changes that Gurinder Singh apparently has made to the RSSB teachings.

(I say apparently because the current guru doesn't allow his talks to be recorded, and he doesn't write anything himself. So this makes it difficult to pin down what he's telling people.)

Sant Mat v. 1.0
--The guru is God in human form
--The guru is perfect, possessing God’s divine qualities
--God has chosen certain souls to return to Him
--God delegates the guru to initiate these “marked souls”
--Without initiation by a perfect guru, God-realization is impossible

Sant Mat v. 2.0
--The guru is a human who is seeking God, just like us
--The guru is imperfect, just like us
--Whether we want to pursue God-realization is up to us
--The guru is a spiritual guide, not a savior
--There are many paths to God, not just Sant Mat

Now it looks like Gurinder Singh is wandering even farther from the tradtional Sant Mat path. On a recent Church of the Churchless post, someone who signed his/her comments "A Typical Follower" shared these thoughts:

I was at the national satsang [gathering of disciples] in the UK last weekend. Gurinder has changed from the old days. His teachings are going through a noticeable change - and so is he himself.

What I noticed is that
(1) He talks a lot about The ONE
(2) He laughs and jokes a lot
(3) He tells people not to be so serious
(4) He tells them that the master will not come at the time of death - that they have mis-understood the teachings. Just as it does not take four lifetimes.
(5) He says there are no regions - that Sach Khand does not exist - neither does Sat Purush. He says they are levels of consciousness

He says the purpose is to REALIZE that there is only the ONE - and that we are caught in maya - duality.

Having the darshan of the physical master is not even mentioned anymore. He says seva will not help you make any progress - it simply makes you humble if done correctly. There is no spiritual merit.

You will NOT be able to succeed through meditation. Meditation is just to make you give up. You can never get there through your efforts.

Now these kind of teachings have never been given before in rssb.

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yes - things are changing and they're changing fast. If a satsangi (just imagine for a moment) from charan Singh's time was in deep meditation (just humour me!) for the last 35 years - isolated from the world, and if he had reached Sach Khand and shared amazing moments with Sat Purush Himself, can you imagine the culture shock if he came back to satsang? So all his 35 years were for nothing and the Sat Purush thing is just his own personal illusion.

I am sure he would get just a little upset when he realised he had wasted 35 years trying to get to a fictional Sach Khand.

It would be kind of funny really - but that might just be because I have a wierd sense of humour.

Anyway - the point is - that older generation - from the 80's and earlier still don't understand that the teachings have been definately changed. Gurinder is currently teaching a hybrid version of sant mat - a sort of halfway station between the old teachings and Advaita / Enlightenment.

Many of the statements he now makes have never been heard of in sant mat. And he sometimes says that he is trying to confuse everyone - well - he's not doing a bad job there because most people who follow it - and listen to what he is saying - have no idea what is going on at all.

And confused people make good subjects - the just do as they're told without thinking - which might just be his strategy.

Having written a book called "Return to the One" about Plotinus, a Neoplatonist Greek philosopher, I like the new emphasis on The One. I have no idea what The One is, and neither did Plotinus, because The One is -- obviously -- not something separate that we can have ideas about.

"Return to the One" started off as a RSSB publication back when I was a true believing disciple. Eventually I published it myself, partly because I didn't want to change Plotinus' teachings to make them conform to what RSSB editors wanted.

I guess I was ahead of the times.

Now it sounds like Gurinder Singh is embracing much of Neoplatonism, a monism that bears quite a bit of resemblance to Vedanta/ Advaita/ Buddhism if you unfocus your mental eye and don't pay too much attention to philosophical details.

Anyway, it's nice to see that the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas is loosening up, laughing more, letting go of a lot of rigid traditional Indian supernatural beliefs.

Some have suggested that this is what happens when a guru makes over $250 million while on the job. Being super-rich can encourage people to say how they really feel. However, it isn't possible to say with certainty what is causing Sant Mat to morph into version 3.0.

I just like it better.

Life lessons I've learned boogie boarding

Here's another in my series of What I've learned about life by boogie boarding. (For previous posts, see here, here, and here.

This guy could be me. Except I was holding the camera on the beach and my hair is gray. But a little while earlier I was catching some similarly middling-sized waves at this exact spot on Maui, enjoying myself hugely.

I've done a lot of boogie boarding, a.k.a. bodyboarding. A few years ago I wrote some do's and don'ts, quasi-humbly noting that my style was "not bad." Since, I've improved my boogie boarding. Both on the physical and philosophical front.

Whenever I head for shore after playing with the waves, I always feel more alive, more energized (even if I'm tired), more content with life. While I'm boogie boarding I don't spend much time thinking about why I enjoy it so much.

Here's an attempt to put into words what I intuitively learn from the Hawaiian ocean -- life lessons that are taught me so pleasurably by liquid nature.

-- You can't control the big things. Visiting Maui, I want large waves. My wife wants small waves, because she's into snorkeling. All our wanting, though, has exactly zero effect on what the ocean does. Waves do what they're going to do. Ditto with the major currents of life.

-- You can control how you relate to big things. My boogie boarding begins with watching from the beach. I pay attention to what's happening with the waves; where they're breaking, their size, how often " big ones" are coming in. The key is being in the right place at the right time, fitting in harmoniously with what's uncontrollable.

-- Change is the only constant. I've learned to always take my board and fins to the beach, even if conditions are calm. WIth the ocean, as with life, things can change quickly. You just never know. That's a really important thing to know.

-- Don't be afraid of being the only one. The more skilled I get at boogie boarding, the less I worry about being all alone in a wave-catching spot. Yes, sometimes there's a reason no one else is doing what you are. However, often other people either don't know how to catch the waves I can, or they don't want to. March to the beat of your own drummer, even if you're all by yourself.

-- Rushing isn't necessary. Paddling out to catch my first wave, or the twentieth one, I'm often tempted to go as fast as possible. But I've learned not to rush. Waves come in their own time. Flowing with their rhythm, not trying to push the ocean, I enjoy myself a lot more.

-- Missing an opportunity is no big deal. Looking out to sea, I'll spot a large approaching wave and think "this is going to be a great ride!" Then I'll miss it. Wrong place. Bad timing. Didn't kick hard enough to catch up to it. No biggie. I adjust, move to a better spot. There's always a next time. (Well, until there isn't.)

-- Patience. Acceptance. Mindfulness. These qualities are natural while waiting for a wave. I used to wonder how a surfer or boogie boarder could bob out on a calm sea for a long time. I thought that'd be boring. Actually, it isn't. There's no such thing as "not doing anything." The ocean always is doing a lot. So is life. We just need to pay attention to the small currents, the little flowings, as much as the big ones.

-- Not knowing what you're doing is really doing it. Sometimes when I'm boogie boarding I realize that I don't know how I'm successfully catching waves. I just am. Less thinking often makes for better doing, especially with physical activities. Trust yourself, once you're minimally competent. Dance like nobody is watching, not even you.

-- Get out of your mind! Go a little (or a lot) crazy! My considered opinion is that at times we all need to set reasonable considerations aside, along with the opinions of other people. Just freaking do what feels good, what turns you on, even (or especially) if it's on the wild or dangerous side.

The anthem for this: "Get out of your mind!" Is boogie boarding on big waves near dangerous rocks/reefs sort of crazy? Of course it is. That's why I love it. Find your own craziness. Embrace it. Life is too short to be lived totally sane.

Hate mail about me going to hell. Oh, well.

Well, wish me luck in hell. That's where I'm going according to this email message. But at least my dog likes me! (When I give her chew sticks after her dinner, at least.)

But seriously... if there's a hell, it's hate. I don't hate. I just disagree and express my honest opinion. So I feel like I'm far away from hell.

HINES [PIG]

I WENT THRU YUR BLOG COC AND I SEEN U HAVE WRITTEN ALL BULLSHIT ABOUT ALMIGHTY BABAJI WHO IS THE ALMIGHTY GOD IN HUMAN FORM

U BLOODY PIECE OF SHIT U HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD TO WRITE BLOGS AND CRITICISE THE ALMIGHTY BY DOING THIS UR NOT ONLY SPOILING YUR HUMAN BIRTH BUT ALSO RESERVING A PLACE IN HELL IN WHICH U WILL DWELL FOR AGES

THE HELL AND THE SATAN AWAITS YOU WITH OPEN ARMS FOR THE DEEDS YOU HAVE DONE FOR WHICH YOU WILL NOT BE FORGIVEN

IF U THINK BY WRITING A BLOG U CAN INFLUENCE ANY1 THATS YUR WRONG CONCEPT BCOZ EVERYBODY KNOWS THE PIG LIKES DIRT AND A PIG LIKE U LIKES THE FILTH OF THIS WORLD SO DWELL IN SHIT WHERE U BELONG ETERNALLY

HAVE A NICE TIME IN HELL