Church of the Churchless

James Austin's "Just this" meditation practice

I'm an admirer of Zen, albeit from afar. Meaning, I enjoy Zen philosophy, but diving into Zen practice doesn't appeal to me. 

Zen is unreligious compared to traditional faiths. However there's still too much bowing and scraping before Zen masters for my churchless non-soul. Also, Zen's disciplines seem needlessly rigid, rooted more in habit than in practicality.

That said, for a few days I've been trying out a meditation approach in James Austin's new book, "Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen." Austin, a clinical neurologist, is into the scientific side of Zen.

I like the approach. Nice and simple. It gives me a Just This taste of Zen without having to swallow a four-course meal. Give it a try yourself, if you're into meditating.

(WIth my iPhone I snapped some photos of images in Austin's book because I liked them, and they help to convey the essence of this mediation approach; my apologies to the illustrator for the off-color and off-focus photos).

A standard preliminary step in training your top-down form of attention is to label each part of the breathing cycle in a way that distinguishes the phase of breathing in from the phase of breathing out. A simple "just this" approach represents a variation of the usual silent, one-to-ten counting system.

For example, let its sequences begin by first prolonging the silent word "JUST..." throughout each in-breath. J-U-S-T signifies that your attention is now focusing on "Just" (on only) a single silent number -- from one to ten -- during each of your next ten expirations.

SImilarly, prolong each of these numbers throughout the entire out-breath. This enables each breathing cycle to resemble:

J-U-S-T W-O-O-N-N; J-U-S-T T-O-O-O; J-U-S-T T-H-R-E-E, etc.

After the next sets of these numbers (1 to 10) fade, change the first word. Now prolong the word "THIS..." throughout each in-breath, following it with the same series of ten numbers on the out-breath. T-H-I-S-S also takes on a specific meaning. It signifies that your attention will now be focusing on only this next particular number.

Because you have stretched out both the words and the numbers, each successive breathing cycle now fully occupies your entire mental field. No mental space remains at either edge into which any extraneous, discursive thoughts can intrude.

As your random thought energies slowly recede, the ordinary rising and falling movements down in your lower abdomen can increasingly occupy the perceptual foreground of your attention and awareness. The above sets of word-numbers will also fade.

At this point, introduce two more changes. First, let "J-U-S-T" return to be the silent beginning word that fully occupies each in-breath. Second, let "T-H-I-S" move over to replace each of the numbers. "T-H-I-S" becomes the new label for each out-breath, and closes each breathing cycle.

You may find it useful to reserve a particular meaning for JUST THIS. Let it signify that only this particular moment exists, right NOW, within a vast expanding awareness. This mental field is now free to open into the whole wide world. It's psychic contents have been reduced toward just this exquisite simplicity. 

Likewise, awareness of almost all of your physical Self has also been fading because it has been reduced to just each faint rising and falling movement down at the distant site of your lower abdomen.

After a few rounds of J-U-S-T T-H-I-S, both words also tend to fade out by themselves into your general awareness of each present moment. Now your mental field can become relatively clear and thought-free to register just those faint movements down in your lower abdomen. There, let each in-and-out signify the universal life force as it happens to express itself in this one body's innate rhythm of breathing.

You simply allow the faint natural rhythm to blend into the open mental background. All of your temporary discursive stuff has dropped out of this field of awareness.

Ultimately, during deep meditation, even the sense of a breathing rhythm in your lower abdomen can drop off. At this point, "all" that remains is Awareness per se.

With life, there's no possible comparison

A few days ago, during a dog walk, when insights often spring into my psyche, I was contemplating the fall colors and how the number of years I'll be able to enjoy changing seasons is falling with every passing birthday.

I had a brief relapse into a sort of semi-faithfulness, visualizing how nice it would be if life could be everlasting, eternal, without end.

But almost instantly a compared to what? echoed in my consciousness, drowning out the anti-death wish fulfillment chatter. Yes, indeed: when we complain about life, not its particulars, but life itself, there's no basis for comparison.

So why complain?

It's like saying, "Damn it! There should be two suns in the sky; that'd be so much more interesting." Or "I hate how there's only three dimensions of space, length, width, breadth; that's so constricting."

Well, that's the way the world is. Deal with it.

Likewise, an individual life begins and eventually it ends. No exceptions ever have been observed, yet virtually every religious person believes that he/she will live on after death.

In that compared to what? moment of insight I was confronted with the power of the human brain, which is capable to visualizing abstractions that don't exist in reality. Almost certainly no animal other than Homo sapiens imagines life after death. 

Our power of imagination leads to wondrous leaps of creativity, both artistic and technological. However, it leads us astray when we attempt to compare "what is" with "what might be" in cases where there is no alternative to a clear and present reality.

There's no comparison to life, just as there is no comparison to the universe. We can wish that each were other than what they are, but that wish never will be fulfilled. 

With that recognition, genuine faith, acceptance, love, and compassion blossom. Such is the glory of seeing things as they are, rather than through the lens of religious fantasy. We prostrate ourselves before reality as it is, praising cosmic inevitability instead of imagined human wish-fulfillment.

Do you want life to be experience, or memory?

Psychologist, Nobel laureate (in economics), and happiness researcher Daniel Kahneman describes a interesting thought experiment in his fascinating TED video, "The riddle of experience vs. memory." 

It seems to point to something really important about life, spirituality, meaning, well-being, and all that. I just can't quite figure out what it is -- which probably is a result of me being immersed in the riddle of experience vs. memory, as all of us are.

That is, I got an intuitive flash when I heard Kahneman talk about the thought experiment, but when I reflect upon it, as I am now, I'm focusing on a different side of me, the one that remembers intuitive flashes and tries to make sense of them.

Kahneman distinguishes the "experiencing self" and the "remembering self." Here's how Winifred Gallagher spoke of these selves (I'm quoting from an earlier blog post of mine on this subject.)

First, there's a gap between your real life and the stories you tell yourself about it, and you're apt to fixate on the latter. Stressing the importance of this divide, Kahneman says, "Attention both to what you choose to experience and what you choose to think about it is at the very core of how I approach questions of well-being." He traces this disconnect between reality and your thoughts about it to two different selves that pay attention to different kinds of things.

Your hands-on "experiencing self," which concentrates on just plain being in the here and now, is absorbed in whatever is going on and how you feel about it without much analysis. Your evaluative "remembering self," however looks back on an experience, focuses on its emotional high points and outcomes, then formulates thoughts about it, not always accurately.

The thought experiment is this: consider a vacation that you're planning. Then imagine that after your vacation is over, all of your photos and other mementos of it will be destroyed. Not only that, your very memories of the vacation will be obliterated through an amnesiac drug.

Would you still go on the vacation? If you have trouble answering this question, this points to a need to adjudicate a conflict between your experiencing and remembering selves.

In a milder sense, my wife and I face this conflict whenever we go to our habitual vacation spot on Maui, Napili Bay. Mostly we sit on the beach, not doing much of anything except enjoying the warmth and people/ocean watching. I boogie board, as I've done many times before; my wife snorkels, as she's done many times before.

When we return home, we don't have many travel stories to tell. No adventures to relate, no "you won't believe what happened..." tales.

However, we hugely enjoy our not-much-of-anything experience while we're on Maui. The lack is when it comes time to answer someone's question, "How was your vacation?" If it was important to us to entertain our friends and relatives with a fascinating slide show of our travels, we'd head somewhere that would buttress our remembering selves.

As it is, we favor our experiencing selves. So probably we'd be more likely to take a pleasant vacation that ended in amnesia than people focused on memories, photos, vivid stories, and such would be.

When I try to relate the thought experiment to spirituality, several notions come to mind.

First, religiously-minded people seem to be big on keeping their remembering selves happy. When it comes to their faith, they aren't centered on the here and now, but on the there and then. Heaven, satori, paradise, enlightenment, self- or God-realization -- these aren't experiences but anticipations (rarely, perhaps, memories, though I'm skeptical of this). 

When true-believers get together, there is lots of talk of what is to come, what needs to be done, what happened in the past. Such is the core content of sermons and other sorts of inspirational gatherings. Happily experiencing the present moment wordlessly and nonconceptually isn't part of most religions (Buddhism being a possible exception).

Second, there's nothing wrong with this. We humans are complex. We are divided in many ways. Daniel Kahneman's new book is "Thinking, Fast and Slow." Amazon just delivered it to my door. The cover jacket says:

Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional. System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical... Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how can tap into the benefits of slow thinking.

Life has many facets. There's a place for raw experience, and a place for considered contemplation. There's a time for immediate intuition, and a time for step-by-step rationality. 

If the options involved in the amnesiac vacation thought experiment are difficult to choose between -- is a wonderful experience worth having if we don't remember it? -- seemingly this is because both sides of ourselves are important, vital, and central to being human.

We experience. And we remember. We value the here and now. And also the there and then.

We may have some choice as to what we focus on, but where the balance falls between our experiencing and remembering selves likely is determined by forces beyond our control. (Guess I need to read Kahneman's book to learn if this is true.)

Here's a passage from the book that I came across while browsing through it just now. I love the "stranger to me" mention. Intuition tells me that my experiencing self is more important than I often look upon it. But, hey, that's my experiencing self talking, so what else would I expect?

For another thought experiment, imagine that you face a painful operation during which you will remain conscious. You are told you will scream in pain and beg the surgeon to stop. However, you are promised an amnesia-inducing drug that will completely wipe out any memory of the episode. How do you feel about such a prospect?

Here again, my informal observation is that most people are remarkably indifferent to the pains of their experiencing self. Some say they don't care at all. Others share my feeling, which is that I feel pity for my suffering self but not more than I would feel for a stranger in pain. Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.

If these notions fascinate you as much as they do me, take twenty minutes and watch Kahneman's TED video:

 

"War of the Worldviews" ends with clear win for science

Just like I thought after reading only four of the nineteen debates between spiritually-minded new age sage Deepak Chopra and scientifically-minded physicist Leonard Mlodinow in their book, "War of the Worldviews," I finished the final chapter feeling that science emerged the decisive victor.

Understand: I've got a lot of sympathy for mysticism, meditation, and unconventional ways of viewing the cosmos. I don't believe that science has all the answers, because I don't believe that anybody does. 

But I've always liked my "spirituality" (a term that doesn't mean to me what it used to, yet which I continue to use out of habit) to be based on something more than blind faith. And that's what Chopra mostly offers on his side of the debate.

Reading this highly interesting book lowered my respect for Deepak Chopra quite a bit. I don't know whether Chopra has gotten more preachy and irrational over the years, or whether I've become less accepting of those qualities. 

Regardless, there was nothing in the final Epilogue to make me change my earlier conclusion about Chopra's inanity. Worse, he isn't just innocently inane; to me he seemed maliciously inane. Chopra appeared set on misrepresenting Mlodinow's pro-science position, not just on refuting it.

For example, Chopra wrote:

Science shouldn't be the enemy of the inner journey, and I feel disheartened if Leonard believes that his view of a "higher authority" forbids inner exploration, as if table rapping in a Victorian seance should be our model for spirituality.

...Ordinary people aren't going to give up emotions and inspiration just because science sniffs at subjectivity.

...One must be decisive here: a world ruled completely by science would be hell on earth. Being wedded to rational thought is acceptable inside the lab, but once science ventures to dismantle faith, striving, love, free will, imagination, emotion, and the higher self as so many illusions cooked up in our fallible brain, a rescue effort must be mounted, and quickly.

Well, Deepak, I'll be equally decisive. You're spouting bullshit. Deeply irritating bullshit. Bullshit that has no basis in reality, like so much else of your supernatural worldview.

Here's some of what Leonard Moldinow actually said in his own Epilogue contribution, which is far removed from Chopra's nonsensical claim that science rejects human subjectivity, emotions, and such:

Even the materialism that Deepak tells us science holds sacred has been altered as our knowledge of the universe has increased. At first science considered only visible, palpable objects as real; then science grew to accept intangible force fields, unseen atoms, and even unseeable quarks. Science is open to accepting new truths. What it resists is accepting untruths.

...Science is open-minded because it has no agenda. ...As a scientist I cannot let the way I want the world to be drive my apprehension of the way the world is. 

...I'm not saying that science has all the answers. Consciousness lies at the heart of Deepak's worldview. It is also science's last frontier. ...Still, there is no reason to believe that consciousness won't be explained. We need not jump the gun and accept that its explanation lies in some unphysical realm.

...When I talk to other scientists about the possibility of identifying a phenomenon that pokes a hole in our current theories, the most common response I hear is a desire for such an anomaly to occur. For while metaphysics is fixed and guided by personal belief and wish fulfillment, science progresses and is is inspired by the excitement of discovery. The scientist's dream is to make new discoveries, especially when they mean that established theories must be revised.

...I've argued for a worldview grounded in observation and evidence, and I've argued that such a viewpoint need not deny the richness of the human spirit, or the wonder of the universe.

...Science may never have all the answers, but it will never stop looking for them, and it will never take the easy way as it continues on its search for understanding.

Count me in, Leonard. I'm with you. 

Deepak Chopra continually quotes religious figures of the past. His worldview, as Mlodinow notes, is fixed. Chopra is convinced that thousands of years ago whoever wrote the Upanishads and other classic Indian writings was privy to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

So if modern scientific findings differ from what those ancient sages proclaimed, then, gosh, science must be wrong. Chopra offered up exceedingly slim scientific evidence to bolster his faith-based proclamations about the primacy of consciousness and purpose in the universe. 

Mostly he resorted to bad-mouthing the scientific method, even though Chopra doesn't seem to understand it very well. Chopra also habitually leaned on arguments that superficially sounded appealing, yet didn't have any depth or strength to them.

Leonard wrote:

Events can be deceiving, and discovering their true explanations often isn't easy. The emergence of galaxies, stars, and people from chaos can appear, like tables apparently moving by themselves, to demand some supernatural explanation.

When philosophizing one can talk freely about unseen realms, invisible realities, and organizing forces that guide evolution. One can illustrate the ideas with stories and anecdotes, and argue by analogy. One can use everyday language, with its pitfalls of vagueness, and terms with multiple meanings.

One can pepper one's prose with satisfying terms like "love" and "purpose." One can even appeal to ancient sages and texts. These arguments may seem attractive. But science answers to a higher authority -- the way Nature actually works.

Me, I'll take actual over imaginary any time. That said, there's nothing wrong with imagination, so long as we recognize the difference between imaginings that are only inside our head, and those which supposedly reflect how the world works.

We're free to have all sorts of crazy subjective notions, but these shouldn't be mistaken for the reality beyond the confines of our cranium. Such is the basic difference between spirituality and science.

Should a presidential candidate's faith matter?

I've argued before that religious beliefs have no place in politics. (See here, here, and here.) This isn't the same as saying that religious people can't be politically active. Heck, if that were the case the vast majority of American citizens would be apolitical.

I just feel that when it comes to policy-making, elected officials should offer up good reasons for why they want to do X rather than Y. Then those who disagree with that choice can engage in a rational debate rather than being met with a faith-based "just because."

Pastor Robert Jeffress has a different point of view.

And even though I find most of his arguments in "Why a candidate's faith matters" unconvincing, I have to give Jeffress credit for being a straightforward, honest, engaging advocate for his Christian religion. (Jeffress has taken heat for calling Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Mormon faith a "cult," which of course it is -- along with every other religion, including mainstream Christianity).

On a recent episode of his HBO "Real Time" program, Bill Maher interviewed Jeffress. I found the pastor eminently likable, even as my churchless psyche found his fundamentalist attitudes decidedly unappealing.

In a column that was published in the Washington Post, Jeffress said:

Interestingly, John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court and co-author of the Federalist Papers, thought a candidate’s religious beliefs should be a primary consideration in voting. Jay wrote, “It is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” According to Jay, preferring a Christian candidate is neither bigoted nor unconstitutional.

Second, discussion of a candidate’s faith is relevant. During a time of rising unemployment, falling home prices and massive deficits, it is easy to relegate religion as an irrelevant topic. Yet our religious beliefs define the very essence of who we are. Any candidate who claims his religion has no influence on his decisions is either a dishonest politician or a shallow follower of his faith.

...Conservatives spent most of the 2008 election calling for an investigation of Barack Obama’s religious beliefs in relationship to his membership in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church. Did he embrace the views of his pastor? Again, a fair question because no religion I’m familiar with allows for a separation of faith from behavior. The question is not whether personal spiritual beliefs shape a politician’s values and policies, but what spiritual beliefs mold those values and policies.

Well, I wish this wasn't the case, because I'd much prefer that our nation's policies be based on facts and values that aren't contaminated by religious dogma. As noted above, when people are unable to offer up solid reasons for why X is preferable to Y, debate quickly degenerates into a "my weird belief is better than your weird belief" exchange that is inimical to open-minded discussion.

I have to admit, though, that Jeffress is telling it like it is.

The United States is a deeply religious nation, god damn it! Atheists and agnostics are a tiny minority of voters. It's difficult to imagine someone non-religious being elected president, or any leader of our country failing to end a State of the Union speech with "And may God bless the United States of America."

So my fallback position is to reluctantly accept that religious values are going to be part of our political discourse. Given that fact, I'll agree with Pastor Jeffress' contention that discussion of a candidate's faith is relevant. 

Back in 2007 I said, "Questioning a politician's religious belief isn't unconstitutional." Indeed, it is essential so long as candidates embrace other-worldly beliefs that affect their preferred policy prescriptions. Here's an excerpt from that blog post:

However, the framers of the Constitution didn't intend religion to be off limits when considering a candidate's qualifications. The Republican presidential candidates, though, want to have it both ways.

They bring up their religious beliefs at every opportunity. Then when someone asks them to answer some specifics about those beliefs, such as whether every word in the Bible is to be taken literally, they're offended that this oh-so-personal aspect of their lives is being brought out for public scrutiny.

Well, if you don't want your religious belief scrutinized, keep it to yourself. If you're running for office, say "I'm a religious person, but my beliefs won't have any impact on how I go about deciding political or policy questions."

If you can't say that, then you've got to expect some serious questioning about what sort of unsubstantiated, subjective, and unscientific world view is going to support your decisions if you're elected.

Will Zeus guide your thoughts and actions? Or God? How about Jesus? And how will you know what your divine source of inspiration requires of you? Do you pray? Study a holy book? Hear messages from above in your head?

These are important and valid questions. I just wish they were asked more often at press conferences and debates.

Good news, bad news: this moment will never come again

Over the years, as I've become less and less religious, my take on "spirituality" has become similarly pared down. I used to believe that a being a spiritual person had something to do with rising above or beyond this world into some ethereal realm.

Now, I consider that being fully present is most, if not all, of what it means to be spiritual -- which removes supernatural connotations from this word and places it firmly in this world, not the next.

The older and more churchless I get (the two qualities being closely tied together in me) the more frequently a strong intuitive feeling bursts into my awareness that whatever I'm experiencing at this moment, I'd damn well better appreciate it, because it's never coming my way again.

Like how religious grace is described, this feeling arrives unbidden. However, it seems more like a recognition of what always is there, but dimly perceived, than a mystery newly revealed. 

After all, what could be more obvious than the fact that each of us will die, that there is no demonstrable reason to believe this is anything other than our one and only life, and that even if somehow consciousness continues after death, this moment never will come again as it is right now?

Becoming fiercely alive to this potentially ever present awareness makes me feel, not surprisingly, much more appreciative of life. Not life in the abstract, not some concept of what the meaning of life is, but the simple stark reality that existence exists, I'm aware of it, and such is freaking amazing. 

Somehow the cosmos has conspired (not literally, but in a laws of nature sense) to produce a Me, a being with a capacity for awareness.

So a few days ago, I could walk along the sidewalk in downtown Salem after my Tai Chi class and suddenly be struck by the awesome, stupendous, mind-blowing fact that I was, along with everything that I was aware of: people, buildings, cars, trash cans, a Starbucks on the corner that I was heading toward with my coffee mug in hand.

Wow. Which, spelled backward, is still Wow. Likewise, however I turn life, it is starting to look the same to me -- a marvelous melding of good news and bad news: this moment will never come again.

In truth, of course, I suspect that I should ditch the "good" and "bad," because this moment is neither.

For a somewhat related take on all this, check out Mark Morford's recent column, "Hurry up, get more done, and die." I liked it a lot. The piece ends with:

What do you want to say at the end of it all? How do you want to go out? Do you wish to say, "Hey, check out my amazing life, I filled every crevice and crease with work, a thing, a scan or a blip to the point where I wasted no time doing anything like sitting still for a moment and feeling the air on my skin?" Do you wish to set the world record for task completion? Hey look, that's a new task for you right there. Awesome.

Me, I am not sure what I want on my epitaph. Probably something about love and whisky, bliss and consciousness, sex and the yoga of wordplay. Or maybe nothing at all.

But I know what I don't want it to say: "Here lies Mark Morford. He sure got a lot done."

I get mail: an "Atta boy" and a "Come home"

I enjoyed an email message from Tamara so much, I asked her if I could share it in a blog post.

Her OK reply was equally enjoyable: "By all means, Brian, throw my golden prose onto the godless telegraph. ha. My opinions are always liberally (double meaning) expressed to everyone within earshot--or email. Accreditation is no prob." Here's her message:

Brian, baby,

LOVE LOVE the Oct. 12 "God is too good..." piece. At last, a kindred spirit in this religion-soaked world.

My opinion of god is, if we entertain the premise of that existence--he/she/it does not DESERVE my worship. This crap about omniscience and higher plans for us all, knowing all the sparrows etc. is as u so eloquently say, "wish fulfillment through unfettered fantasy." (I think I found a bumper sticker for my '51 Buick!) 

Until god does a better job  -- or shows the slightest inkling --  to clean up evil, injustice, cruelty, ignorance, malice, war, poverty, starvation, waste, and other assorted misery, I am not onboard the adoration train.  (Now, Mother Nature, we're pals. There's the domain of artistry, beauty and for me, peace and appreciation.)

Well, I could rant on, but I'm using the faster computer at the library while my steam-powered one at home rests, and my time is limited.

Just saying, "Atta boy," & I'll wade through your considerable other writing with anticipation as time allows.

Thanks again.

Another faint voice in the wilderness,
Tamara 

I also recently got an email with a considerably different tone from someone who urged me to return to the Radha Soami Satsang Beas fold. My initial reaction was, hey, I'm not "far left." I'm middle of the road. But the right has gotten so much righter in the United States, they've redefined what "moderate" means.

We are probably the same age- I turn 65 in December. We were both initiated in 1971. You were a devoted disciple for 30 years, and I mostly ignored it. But, I have come home, with great enthusiasm. Sawan Singh said once that the Master is interested in cleaning the cloth (the disciple), either gently through Satsang, or more firmly, by beating against the rocks.

I was beat against the rocks.

When I die I hope to be taken to Trikuti where I get to meditate for lots of eons-I have a lot of karma to burn up.

I see you have become a far left activist. I like to sit at home, do as little as possible, and read my library of SRSS books.

You should come home.

Radha Soami

Well, each to his/her own.

Seven years ago, after I registered the "Church of the Churchless" domain name, I wanted a tagline to put under this blog's name. It took me about two seconds to come up with Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence. Since, I've never had a desire to change it.

Religious believers don't bother me. What bugs me are people who want me to believe as they do, but without providing any good reasons for their chosen beliefs. "Just have faith" doesn't cut it for me any more.

Regarding Tamara's email message, re-reading her comment about God needing to do a better job with starvation, war, and other earthly nasties reminded me of similar sentiments expressed by physicist Leonard Mlodinow in a chapter I read today in "War of the Worldviews," where he's responding to some New Age'y notions of Deepak Chopra.

Deepak wrote that we humans are "the growing tip of the cosmos, the fresh spark of life being pushed forward by all that exists," and that the universe is loving through us, creating through us. He says that "to accept the spiritual life of all," that truth must be real for us.

In taking the view of science, and rejecting Deepak's version of spirituality, I sometimes find myself feeling like the haggard and unshaven Humphrey Bogart sending away beautiful Ingrid Bergman at the end of Casablanca, offering up my cold, calculated assessment that the problems of us little people -- and our feelings -- don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy universe.

But if Deepak is right about a universal consciousness, and that the universe is loving through us, then it must also be hating through us, murdering and destroying through us, doing all the things that humans do in addition to loving, including the acts that blew up my mother's faith in God [losing her family in the Holocaust]. Deepak avoids talking about this dark side, but if the universe is working through each of us, then this universal connection must be a double-edged sword.

Though I believe in neither the God of the Bible nor the immaterial world Deepak advocates, I don't agree with him that to embrace the scientific view is to turn my back on spirituality.

Ditto, Leonard.

Deepak Chopra's inanity makes my head explode

Like I said before, I'm enjoying the series of mini-debates between Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow in "War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality." Now that I'm more than halfway through the book, it's more obvious than ever that Mlodinow is kicking Chopra's intellectual/philosophical butt.

Here's a non-verbal depiction of my reaction to Deepak Chopra's New Age'y, mostly fact-free arguments on some Big Questions of Life. This photo is of the second page in Chopra's eight page answer to "Does the Brain Dictate Behavior?"

Those are nine -- count them, nine -- marginal question marks that I highlighted in on a single page of Chopra's attempt to convince readers that the human mind is the non-physical hidden controller of the physical brain.

On the previous page, I penned in three words that summarize both my overall take on the mind/brain connection, and that of modern neuroscience: We are us.  I wrote that in a mental-pressure relieving attempt to keep my head from exploding after reading this bit of Chopra inanity:

Spirituality is about widening your choices. Science can aid in this project or hold it back. It aids by giving us control over mechanical switches, whether they are in the brain or in our genes. It holds back the project when it insists that our brains or genes control us. No issue is more critical because ultimately there is only one master, either you or the mechanisms built into your body.

Wow.

About three hundred and fifty years have passed since Descartes posited a strict mind-body dualism, and Chopra is still spouting the "spirit is separate from matter" party line. Of course, the Indian philosophy that forms the foundation of Chopra's worldview is much older than that -- and equally discredited by science.

Understand: not long ago I also was a true believer in mind (or soul)/ body (or brain) dualism.

So when I question Deepak Chopra's perspective on the cosmos I'm also questioning the "me" who I used to be. I guess this gives me an edge in critiquing Chopra's arguments, because I know them from the inside out, so to speak.

Again, the core issue is what I said above: We are us.

There simply is no evidence that I am something different from the body/brain which others see when they look at me. Sure, I (like you) can feel that my consciousness springs from some supernatural realm, that my true nature is ethereal soul or spirit, that no matter what happens to my brain my eternal essence will live on unchanged.

The problem is, feelings are a lousy guide to reality.

Feelings are fine when it comes to love, art, walks on the beach, laughing at a TV show -- really, the entire subjective side of human life. Science, though, is our most effective means of understanding the objective aspect of reality, truths which are true not just for me or you, but for everybody.

And one of these truths is that the mind is what the brain does. Interestingly, oneness is the philosophical core of neuroscience, whereas Deepak Chopra's spirituality is thoroughly dualistic. Neuroscience doesn't make a distinction between mind and body, as Chopra does. 

Here's how physicist Leonard Mlodinow convincingly demolishes Chopra in his own take on the question, "Does the Brain Dictate Behavior?"

Deepak compares the neurons in our brain to a piano, and our conscious mind to the music it plays. In this view, consciousness is expressed by our physical brain just as musical notes are brought to life by a physical piano. Deepak says, "You can't play 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' on a piano without a piano... But if someone told you that the piano composed 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,' the statement would make no sense."

That is true. But if somebody told you that "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" was composed in an immaterial realm of universal consciousness, that would also sound illogical -- and that, if you follow Deepak's analogy, is the alternative he offers.

Let's not be misled by analogies. While both viewpoints -- that consciousness comes from an outside realm, and that it arises within the brain itself -- are admittedly challenging, the way to make progress in elucidating the connection between mind and brain is to examine the brain, and see how much of what we do and feel can be accounted for by its actions.

...But when one looks at the brain, one does find that there is plenty of evidence to indicate that the brain is the source of consciousness... We cannot transcend the workings of the physical brain.

I wish we could. I wish my consciousness could sail out of my body when I die and live on in some spiritual plane of existence. I wish superpowers could be mine, unfettered by bodily limitations. 

Yet I also wish... for reality. For truth. For facing life honestly. So I have to part company with Deepak Chopra, who says, in a wishing sort of way:

The human brain, like the universe itself, delivers whatever you expect it to, in accordance with your deepest beliefs. So why not believe that your brain can deliver mastery?

Why not?

Because beliefs aren't reality. Imagination isn't the same as the way things are. What we want isn't identical with what we get. New Age platitudes crumble beneath the weight of observation, experience, and experiment.

That's why. 

"Dot, an ordinary life" shows limits of Zen -- and meditation

Yesterday my wife and I watched "Dot" at the Salem Film Festival. It's a documentary about an extraordinary 82 year old woman from Ashland, Oregon who believably claims that her life is ordinary. From the film's web site:

Dot Fisher-Smith is a mystical masterful artist, a war resister, an environmental activist, a community presence, a jailbird.

As a great-grandmother, she chained her neck to a log truck to protest salvage logging of old-growth forest.

Yet she calls herself a mistaken Buddha and her own life ordinary.

This moving documentary is an intimate portrait of life and death through the eyes of 82-year-old Dot.

I really liked the film.

You could do a lot worse with a $20 entertainment budget than buy a DVD of "Dot," invite some friends over, open a bottle of wine, spend a couple of hours watching the flick, then discuss people's reactions to it. (I bought a DVD myself with this in mind, right after viewing the film.)

There's a lot of lessons about spirituality in "Dot."

Around the 30 minute mark, Dot speaks about a commitment to Zen practice which was one of the reasons she moved from a home in the Ashland countryside to the city itself -- so she could be closer to the town's Zen center.

"Discipline," her Zen teacher told her, "makes you strong." His analogy was that discipline was like putting a snake in a bamboo tube. 

One of my favorite parts of the film shows Dot bowing respectfully before a singing bowl on the floor of her home, while some other women look on. She strikes the bowl, eliciting a pure Zen'ish tone. She bows traditionally again.

Then...

She yells, "blow it all to hell" while waving her arms. The women laugh. "Come out of the bamboo tube," Dot says. "The bamboo tube of discipline where everything is squirming... and, no, I hate it!...I don't want to do this discipline!"

(You've got to see the film to get the whole message of this scene; Dot's expressive body language speaks as loud as her words.)

Eventually Dot was made the head honcho of the Zen center's meditation hall, a duty she performed for two years. Her snake burst the bamboo tube, though, while on a trip to Tibet. Dot speaks of realizing there wasn't any more need for Zen practice.

She was hiking along at 17,000 feet. Followed by 18,000 feet. She was putting one foot after the other. She was there, doing what she was doing. What else was there to do? Thus ended her formal Zen practice.

Today George, a frequent visitor to this blog, left a comment on a recent post that posed some excellent questions. 

Brian, on the issue of meditation, you've been doing it for quite a while. If you had never meditated for a day in your life, would it have made any difference to your understanding of:

1. the universe?
2. yourself?
3. your peace of mind? or
4. any kind of unexplained experience including an awareness of lights, sounds, god, spirit, the tao, nonduality, oneness, or transcendental spheres of existence?

Yes. No. I don't know. Each of those answers sounds about right. George, here's a down payment on a response to what you asked.

Because "Dot" was being shown at a film festival, both Dot Fisher-Smith and the filmmaker, Patricia Somers, were in the theatre. They walked down in front of the screen after the applause ended and the lights came on.

I got to ask a question of Dot, who was as feistily/energetically engaging in person as in the film.

"Dot," I said (more or less), "it seems that after engaging in formal Zen practice for a while, you gave it up. I've meditated every day for most of my life, so I'm curious about whether you currently do any sort of organized meditation. Or is simply living life your meditation, being mindful of what is present at each moment?"

Dot told me that she'd been involved with Zen for about thirty years. And no, she doesn't feel any need now to meditate. Looking at me, she said "All there is... like this," pointing a finger in my direction. 

Yeah, I got it. At least, I feel like I got it.

There Dot and I were, two people in a theatre filled with quite a few other people, having an interchange. We'd never met before; we may never meet again; but at that moment we were doing something together, and that's all that mattered. 

No philosophy required. No religion required. No spiritual discipline required. No big Meaning of Life interpretation required. 

Today I got up, made a pot of coffee, poured myself a cup, picked up the Oregonian sports page, and, per usual, went into my meditation area for some morning quiet time -- reading and meditating. For many years I meditated for several hours a day. Now, it's twenty minutes or so.

I don't feel that all that time I spent in closed-eyes contemplation was wasted, not at all. Yet I also don't feel that it gave me any great insights into the nature of the cosmos, or of myself. It just was something I did for about thirty years, about the same length of time Dot was into Zen.

I'm also coming to the realization that ordinary everyday life is -- duh -- what life is all about. Doesn't seem like something so obvious should take thirty-plus years to realize. Which is why I liked what Dot says near the end of the film so much.

"What is Buddha? In the Blue Cliff record, it's like... shit on a stick. So I can say that. Yeah, I'm the Buddha way. Life is one big mistake. And I'm doing that. I'm a mistaken Buddha, a Buddha who makes mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. I'm human."

(Here's a newspaper story about Dot and the film.)

My meditation: learning how unfree I am

Even though I no longer follow an organized system of meditation (for over thirty years I was a member of an India-based group, Radha Soami Satsang Beas), I still enjoy meditating every day.

Sometimes I follow my breath. Sometimes I repeat a simple mantra of one or two syllables.

Since I practice Tai Chi and resonate with Taoism, the words "wu chi" appeal to me. It's the readiness posture in Tai Chi, an embrace of empty fullness. And it's the core of the Wu Project that I've been blogging about.

I also like to listen to a mantra in my mind when I'm doing everyday stuff -- driving around, exercising, walking the dog. Falling asleep at night is another favorite mantra repetition time.

Way back in my meditating experience I realized that life often, if not usually, goes along better with less thinking.

This isn't a unique insight, of course. Most athletes, dancers, and musicians are familiar with being "in the flow," a state where doing happens naturally and almost effortlessly, little or no conscious intention required.

Religiously-oriented meditators, of whom I used to be one, consider that stilling the mind through a mantra or some other means produces a let go and let God sort of state. Meaning, when we stop trying to control our thoughts and actions, a divine power is better able to fill our consciousness and guide us.

Well, maybe. But neuroscience has a much more believable interpretation of why less thinking frequently results in better doing: my conscious intention is the last to know what I'm about to do.

"Neuroscience vs. philosophy: taking aim at free will" is a good overview of how brain research is casting doubt on our subjective feeling that we can consciously freely decide whether to do this, or that.

As humans, we like to think that our decisions are under our conscious control — that we have free will. Philosophers have debated that concept for centuries, and now Haynes and other experimental neuroscientists are raising a new challenge. They argue that consciousness of a decision may be a mere biochemical afterthought, with no influence whatsoever on a person's actions. According to this logic, they say, free will is an illusion. "We feel we choose, but we don't," says Patrick Haggard, a neuroscientist at University College London.

You may have thought you decided whether to have tea or coffee this morning, for example, but the decision may have been made long before you were aware of it. For Haynes, this is unsettling. "I'll be very honest, I find it very difficult to deal with this," he says. "How can I call a will 'mine' if I don't even know when it occurred and what it has decided to do?"

The science isn't settled. But meditation, both the sitting and everyday life kind, offers me (or anybody else) a way to conduct some free will personal experiments.

What happens when I don't try to make anything happen? Do happenings still occur even when I'm doing as little as possible? Will desires, intentions, and such continue to arise even when I'm not consciously trying to make this happen?

It sure seems to me that, in line with what the neuroscientific experiments have found, something wordless and unconscious within my psyche first propels me in a certain direction. Only after that force does its thing do I consciously think, "I should get out of bed," "It's time to have lunch," or whatever.

I seem to be explaining to myself what already has been decided. An old friend used to call this justifying our karma, which is pretty close to what modern neuroscience is finding, albeit absent any supernatural connotations.

So I don't feel any need to surrender myself to a divine higher power when I meditate. The higher power which is guiding me is right inside my head: the hidden brain.

God is too good to believe in Him/Her/It

One big reason I don't believe in God is that descriptions of the Supreme Being almost always are unbelievably perfect. 

Show me a flawed, clueless, unknowing, emotionally infantile God and I'd be a lot more inclined to sign up as a true believer. But then I'd wonder "What's the point in being devoted to a supposedly divine being who actually is no better than us humans are?"

It's deeply suspicious that virtually every religion posits a super-good God. Sure, the Old Testament God and similar gods exhibit some nasty character flaws -- jealousy, cruelty, egotism, to name a few -- but somehow religious dogma manages to put a positive spin on such negativity.

"God works in mysterious ways." "God knows what is best for us, even when it seems wrong." "God sends suffering to those He loves so our sins/karmas can be cleansed more quickly." "God tests our faith to see if we are worthy of Him."

That's all bullshit, of course. Yet billions of people fall for it. 

Why?

Because religion is humankind's most powerful Wish Fulfillment Mechanism. Whatever you want, religion offers it. Not in reality, but in fantasy. Still, fantasies are pretty damn appealing to us Homo sapiens. We've become so sapient, our big brains are capable of manufacturing concepts, abstractions, imaginings, and such which can become substitutes for really real reality.

Religiosity reminds me of an iPhone slogan: There's an app for that. Except instead of a smart phone application that can fulfill a need/desire, religions offer up a theology.

Afraid of dying? Want to live forever? No problem. Join our religion and you'll spend eternity in a heavenly realm! (Along with loved ones, and maybe even your dog.)

Dismayed by suffering? Perplexed about bad things happening to good people? No problem. God has a plan for you, for me, heck, for everybody! (Details are secret, so just have faith.)

Frustrated by how little you know? Want the truth about ultimate reality? No problem. One day all will be revealed. (Can't say when, but remember that eternity promise.)

Science, by contrast, seeks to know what the universe is like, rather than claiming, as religion does, that whatever you like, that's how the supernatural side of reality is. Since I can't accept that the cosmos revolves around the desires of human beings, scientific knowledge seems a lot more credible to me. 

But, hey, if wish fulfillment through unfettered fantasy is your thing, there's an app for that. Just download a religion into your brain.

Mlodinow beat Chopra in "War of the Worldviews"

I've only read four of the nineteen debates between New Age "guru" Deepak Chopra and top-notch physicist Leonard Mlodinow in their fascinating book, War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality. 

But I'm ready to declare a clear winner: Mlodinow.

Highlighter in hand, I'm filling the pages Chopra authored with marginal question marks. By contrast, so far I haven't found anything obviously questionable in what Mlodinow wrote. That's because science sticks with facts, by and large, while spirituality is prone to fluttering all over the place with ethereal unproven pronouncements.

You should make up your own mind, though. That's the best thing about this highly readable and well-organized book: it serves as a literary Rorschach test for where someone falls on the science vs. spirituality balance beam.

Meaning, I'm finding that my reactions to the Chopra/Mlodinow mini-debates (such as "How did the universe emerge?" "Is the universe conscious?" "Is the universe evolving?") are as much emotional as rational.

I'll feel irritated or pleased upon reading a passage before I'll start thinking about the truth or falsity of what Chopra or Mlodinow said.

Before I opened up the book, I expected that I'd agree quite a bit with Chopra's spirituality, since he isn't a dogmatic theistic fundamentalist but more of a "All is One" sort of guy. However, after my true believing days I must have gone over more to the scientific side than I knew, judging from the aforementioned question marks that fill the pages where Chopra expresses his viewpoint.

So I recommend this book to anyone who is unsure where they stand on the Big Questions of Life, which likely includes most readers of this blog.

One of my favorite sayings is, "I don't know." It bothers me when Chopra pretends that he knows, whereas Mlodinow readily admits when science doesn't have the answer to some question -- while being optimistic that the truth eventually will be revealed.

It's difficult to summarize even the four chapters I've read so far, because the subjects addressed are so meaty tofuy. I'm sure I'll have more to say about the book in another blog post. For now I'll simply share some of the Chopra passages that elicited a marginal question mark, along with my reason (in italics) for giving Deepak a big ???.

(1) "The worldview [science] that triumphed over religion..." Huh? The vast majority of people in the world are religious believers. In the United States you couldn't be elected president if you're not religious, but the Republican candidates are showing that being anti-science is highly popular with a distressingly large proportion of voters. 

(2) "The cosmos is ruled by creativity." Who says? Where's the evidence? Coming up with a catchy phrase (one of Chopra's talents) isn't the same as speaking the truth.

(3) "To arrive at DNA, life on Earth, and the human mind, the universe was self-aware and could understand what it was doing." Again, what's the evidence for this? It's a stretch to even say that the universe is conscious in some sense. But to claim that the cosmos is self-aware, purposeful, creative, capable of understanding what it is doing -- there's little difference between this viewpoint and traditional religious dogma about a personal creator-god.

(4) "If consciousness underlies everything in Nature, it is the force that directs evolution. If not, then evolution becomes, along with everything else, the result of blind random activity." That's two if's too many. And the second if reveals Chopra's ignorance about how biological evolution operates (Mlodinow points out that Chopra mostly uses "evolution" in a popular sense, as progress, rather than what is meant by Darwin's theory). Natural selection is anything but blind and random. As Mlodinow says, "Natural selection is a process by which organisms better able to cope with their environment tend to have more offspring, which creates a new generation that on average has more traits favorable to survival than reproduction than the last."

(5) "The field of neuroscience has largely accepted that the mind doesn't exist but is merely a by-product of the brain." Untrue. Neuroscience says that the mind is what the brain does, in much the same sense as walking is what legs do. Chopra wants us to believe that the mind exists separately from what brains do, which, I guess, implies that walking exists separately from what legs do.

Steve Jobs warns against dogma

Early in the 1980's I got my first Apple computer, a II Plus. I remember taking it into work (Oregon's state health planning agency) and wowing my fellow employees with how VisiCalc could automate a spreadsheet, showing results on a small green screen.

Since, I've owned and enjoyed many other Apple products. So I felt sad, along with countless other people, when I heard that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had died.

Watching tributes to him on TV, I was exposed to Jobs' philosophy of life. Until now I hadn't realized how appealing his outlook on life and death was. I knew that he had struggled with pancreatic cancer and obviously was a technological visionary, yet didn't know much about Jobs otherwise.

Here are some passages from his 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford University. I've picked out sections of his talk that appealed to my churchless side. (Those who would rather listen to Jobs, than read him, can see the fifteen minute address on You Tube.)

Jobs briefly attended classes at Portland's Reed College, a free-thinking liberal arts college an hour north of my Salem home. He took a calligraphy class which seemed impractical to him at the time. Later, Jobs used what he learned in designing the first Macintosh computer, observing:

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Jobs was fired from Apple, the firm he started, when the Board of Directors lost faith in his vision for the company, preferring another guy's ideas. These thoughts reminded me of how leaving a religion can be freeing in a similar way.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

A year previous, Jobs had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In 2005 it appeared that the cancer was curable. Still, death was on his mind, as it had been for many years before.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Here's some great advice:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

"Stay foolish." I can do that. No problem.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

And thank you, Steve. Before you died, you changed the world in many positive ways. Today, you still are.

Embrace the ordinary (because it's special)

This morning I found myself wondering what the day would bring as I walked up our long driveway to get the newspapers. I had a feeling, hopefully there will be more...

What came after the ellipsis was left unsaid in my mind. I wasn't sure what more I wanted, just that whatever it was, it should be more than what I was doing at the moment: walking up our long driveway to get the newspapers.

I've been doing this sort of thing for most of my sixty-two years. Looking for something extra, the frosting on life's bare cake, the final meaning that will make my existence super-meaningful.

Religion, spirituality, mysticism, philosophy, science, music, art, business, politics, environmentalism. It's difficult to think of any sphere in life that isn't founded on a presumption of more.

That more could be less, of course.

Making more progress for an environmentalist could mean using less energy and consuming less of the world's resources, just as another person could consider that being less egotistical and self-centered is a way to be more spiritual.

Regardless, most of the time we humans seem to be focused on the unordinary. We tend to look past what is right in front of us, seeking a special experience.

Today I was reading Phillip Shepherd's "New Self, New World" before I meditated. A section on The Wonder of the Ordinary struck me as containing a lot of wisdom.

We take transcendence as our polestar and are guided by the urge towards it in everything we do... Our tyranny over every facet of the natural world is relentless, and everywhere that tyranny exerts itself, it reinforces our culture's fantasy of what it is to be human: to rise above the mundane -- literally, "what is of the earth."

And so we transcend earth and meadow with the help of concrete and asphalt and homogenized lawns; we transcend time with facelifts and jet travel and instant meals; we transcend ordinary death by buying our meat prepackaged at the grocery store, and making up our corpses to look like they are sleeping, and watching death every day on the news as if it belonged to another, somehow smaller and more remote reality. We transcend everyday weather with air conditioners and heated cars, and with malls and underground concourses where you can buy anything and never see the light of day.

...People tend to turn their backs on the ordinary in order to seek an experience of the extraordinary; but in fact it is through our connection with the ordinary that the truly extraordinary unfolds before us: the ordinary, resplendent with the weave of the world, awakens us to it.

The word extraordinary literally means "outside of the ordinary" -- and what lies outside of any ordinary event is the extraordinary web of time and process that births that event from the universe.

During a Tai Chi class this week, my instructor said, "I had a big insight recently: nothing matters." He didn't elaborate much on what he meant. But his words stuck in my mind.

A few minutes later, as we were playing (in Tai Chi parlance) a form, I had my own big insight after watching myself perform a move that I'd done thousands of times before: everything matters.

Which is the same as saying, nothing matters, because if everything matters, then nothing matters more than anything else. Drinking a cup of tea is as matter'ful as finding a cure for cancer.

That may sound ridiculous. But it makes a lot of sense to me.

Once we draw a firm line between the ordinary and the extraordinary, between meaningless and meaningful activities, we use abstractions to divide the vibrant lived reality of life -- the root of which is, and likely always will be, a mystery.

Here's a poem by Alden Nowlan that was quoted in "New Self, New World." I liked Great Things Have Happened a lot. Enjoy.
--------------------------------------------
Poem: "Great Things Have Happened," by Alden Nowlan from What Happened When He Went to the Store for Bread (Nineties Press).

Great Things Have Happened

We were talking about the great things
that have happened in our lifetimes;
and I said, "Oh, I suppose the moon landing
was the greatest thing that has happened
in my time." But, of course, we were all lying.
The truth is the moon landing didn't mean
one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
(our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I'm sure),
on a street where by now nobody lived
who could afford to live anywhere else.
That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
woke up at half-past four in the morning
and ate cinnamon toast together.

"Is that all?" I hear somebody ask.

Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness
and, under our windows, the street-cleaners
were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and
everything was strange without being threatening,
even the tea-kettle whistled differently
than in the daytime: it was like the feeling
you get sometimes in a country you've never visited
before, when the bread doesn't taste quite the same,
the butter is a small adventure, and they put
paprika on the table instead of pepper,
except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love.

Physicists may have discovered extra dimensions

Note the word "may" in this blog post title. That's the most important thought in the potentially super-exciting story of how CERN researchers may have discovered that neutrinos travel slightly faster than the speed of light.

If this is true, the implications would be astronomical. Literally.

Because a leading explanation for the Einstein-defying neutrinos (his theory of relativity makes the speed of light an absolute speed limit) is that the nearly massless particles are taking a short cut through extra dimensions of reality on their way from CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, to a particle detector near L'Aquila, Italy.

An article in the most recent issue of New Scientist describes how this would leave Einstein's theory valid, while allowing the appearance of faster-than-light neutrinos.
Download 'Light-speed' neutrinos point to new physical reality - physics-math - 28 September 2011 - New Scientist

In 2006, Pakvasa, Päs and Weiler came up with a model that allows certain particles to break the cosmic speed limit while leaving special relativity intact. "One can, if not rescue Einstein, at least leave him valid," Weiler says.

The trick is to send neutrinos on a shortcut through a fourth, thus-far-unobserved dimension of space, reducing the distance they have to travel. Then the neutrinos wouldn't have to outstrip light to reach their destination in the observed time.

In such a universe, the particles and forces we are familiar with are anchored to a four-dimensional membrane, or "brane", with three dimensions of space and one of time. Crucially, the brane floats in a higher dimensional space-time called the bulk, which we are normally completely oblivious to.

The fantastic success of special relativity up to now, plus other cosmological observations, have led physicists to think that the brane might be flat, like a sheet of paper. Quantum fluctuations could make it ripple and roll like the surface of the ocean, Weiler says. Then, if neutrinos can break free of the brane, they might get from one point on it to another by dashing through the bulk, like a flying fish taking a shortcut between the waves (see illustration).

This is way cool. Again, if it is true.

For thousands of years mystics have been attempting to reach higher dimensions of reality, but no convincing demonstrable evidence of a successful trip has been revealed.

So science might be on the verge of doing what religion, mysticism, and other forms of spirituality have failed to accomplish: discover extra spatial dimensions of reality beyond the three we know of now.

What distinguishes the scientific method is the caution with which this potentially revolutionary finding is being treated.

Rather than making grandiose claims, as so many religious types do, the scientists who observed the seemingly faster than light neutrinos spent years trying to prove that they were wrong.

The researchers at Cern in Switzerland and Gran Sasso in Italy have tried really hard to find what they might be doing wrong - over three years and thousands of experiments - because they can hardly believe what they are seeing.

The publication of their results is a call for help to pick holes in their methods, and save physics as we now know it.

"The scientists are right to be extremely cautious about interpreting these findings," said Jim Al-Khalili, a physicist from the University of Surrey, who suggested that a simple error in the measurement is probably the source of all the fuss.

Frequently I get criticized by true believers who don't think that skepticism, questioning, and doubting should be part of a religious, mystical, or spiritual practice. Yet many of these same believers consider that they are devotees of a science of the soul.

Well, you can't have it both ways.

If you want to embrace science, then open and vigorous debate is how erroneous findings are distinguished from valid findings. If you don't want your faith to be questioned, then forget about calling yourself a spiritual scientist and admit that you're just another religious believer who embraces blind faith.

I hope the CERN results are substantiated, because it's been a long time since physics has experienced a massive paradigm shift, and I'd like to be an observer of it. But there's a way to go before "faster than the speed of light" becomes a truism rather than a remote possibility.

Here's how a Wired article describes the caution of the CERN researchers (which tends to get overlooked by breathless stories in the mainstream media).

The final paragraph is what appears to be overlooked all too often in the reporting on this finding:

Despite the large significance of the measurement reported here and the stability of the analysis, the potential great impact of the results motivates the continuation of our studies in order to investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the observed anomaly. We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of the results.

This is an important paragraph. This is the group of physicists, together, stating that they don’t know how they came to a result that shows neutrinos apparently exceeding the speed of light. They are not drawing any conclusions in this article and are simply providing the finding and the methods used to obtain the finding. They are trying to find where there could be errors in their measurements. They do not claim that the neutrinos are actually exceeding the speed of light, only that the measurements to date show something unexpected.

They are reaching out to the high-energy physics community to improve the experiment and data analysis. They are not looking to fundamentally change physics but to ensure that they are producing sound data. We may find that nothing comes of this. We may find that there is an effect known in physics that accounts for the difference. We may find that neutrinos are capable of moving slightly faster than the speed of light. It is simply too early to make definitive, wide-reaching conclusions.

The conclusion that can be drawn from this article is that a group of experimenters found an unexpected result using some of the most amazing and precise instruments and techniques ever created. No matter what is found to be the actual cause of this 60.7 nanosecond variation, the conclusion you can draw is that it is an amazing time in history where such measurements can be made and an exciting time to be a practitioner or admirer of science.

Imagine the findings that will be made by the next couple generations of scientists who are sitting in elementary classrooms right now and just learning that a rainbow is the spectrum of sunlight. Einstein wouldn’t be disappointed by these findings; he would be intrigued and proud to see the legacy of great science continuing forward.

Unmediated experience doesn't exist

A comment conversation between me and "cc" on a recent blog post got me to thinking about whether any human experience can be unmediated. Meaning: not communicated or transformed by an intervening agency

In a comment I said:

But sometimes people do need to be talked out of an erroneous belief system. That was the job of my wife, when she worked at a state mental hospital, and then also (to a different degree) as a private psychotherapist.

Just because someone feels like they are one with the cosmos doesn't mean this feeling has any basis in reality. People also feel they are God, or they are being abducted by space aliens, or that their minds are being read. Every weird feeling doesn't point to mental illness, but sometimes it does.

"cc" replied:

"But sometimes people do need to be talked out of an erroneous belief system."

Perhaps then, you should talk yourself out of your belief in separation, because the immediate (unmediated) experience of inseparability is beyond belief.

To which I commented:

cc, a dream also is an immediate unmediated experience. As is a mirage. Or some other illusion. So experience isn't the touchstone of reality, that's for sure. Whenever someone claims that an experience is "beyond belief," as you just stated, I wonder how they know this.

Dreams are a form of belief, as are mirages. Yet at the time they seem absolutely real to the dreamer, or the mirage perceiver. It's only after we wake up, or come close to the mirage and see its unreality, that the truth of the situation becomes apparent.

Neuroscience has learned about the "hidden brain." This is where unconscious beliefs/assumptions arise. So someone can consider that they are having an immediate unmediated experience and not be aware of how that experience is being mediated by the workings of the hidden brain.

Now, when I said "a dream also is an immediate unmediated experience," what I meant is that a dream feels like there is no intervening agency between me and what is being experienced.

Actually, my brain is producing the experience. But since I'm sleeping, I'm not aware that I have a brain, so the dream feels like immediate unmediated reality while I'm in a dreaming state.

When I wake up, I realize that I was dreaming.

Even when awake, though, nobody can experience anything in an unmediated fashion. Without a brain, we can't be conscious (I realize some people disagree; well, show me human consciousness without a brain, and I'll likely change my mind).

Understand: I'm open to the possibility of an unmediated experience. This basically would be a "pure consciousness experience" or "pure awareness," something that I'm attracted to, but can't bring myself to believe in.

Here's an excerpt from my blog post on Brain's "dark energy" casts doubt on pure awareness.

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

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

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

Regarding "cc's" comment that "the immediate (unmediated) experience of inseparability is beyond belief," I'd say: so is every experience.

Right now, I don't believe that I'm typing on my laptop at our kitchen counter. Neither does my wife believe that she is chopping broccoli and putting it into a glass bowl for microwaving.

Like everybody else (aside from, perhaps, some mentally ill people) we simply experience life; we don't believe that we're experiencing life. This is because humans aren't aware of how the brain produces awareness. All we know is what we experience, not how the brain processes experiences outside of conscious awareness.

I don't see how an experience of inseparability is different from any other experience.

Again, every experience is ineffable, seemingly (but not really) unmediated, and unquestionable to the experiencer (though others might reasonably question the validity of an experience, as when a driver in a desert is sure he sees water on the road, which really is a mirage).

Various spiritual and mystical faiths believe in something variously called enlightenment, pure awareness, satori, and such. This is a belief, because that state only demonstrably exists as a cultural phenomenon.

For example, supposedly the Buddha was an enlightened being. He then passed on his enlightenment to someone else. And then that person did the same. At least this is my crude understanding of traditional Zen Buddhism: only a Zen master can validate someone's enlightenment, and the master's enlightenment was validated by his or her master, etc. etc.

So if I walk into a Zen monastery and say "I don't need this crap; I'm already enlightened!" -- almost certainly I won't be believed. Nobody will bow down to me, or make me the head Zen honcho.

Why not, though?

If an experience of inseparability (which basically is what Buddhism is all about) is unmediated and beyond belief, then why is it necessary for someone to believe in my enlightenment? Why all this testing, koan stuff, mysterious interchanges with the Zen master?

Just accept that I've had an unmediated experience of inseparability, a.k.a. enlightenment.

My point is this: those who claim that it is possible to have an unmediated experience of reality belie that claim through their utterance of it. Again, I don't go around asking people to believe that I'm writing a blog post on my laptop here in Salem, Oregon at 9 pm on a Sunday night.

I simply experience that I am. Even if this is a dream, or a computer simulation of some advanced alien civilization, I sure feel like I'm doing what I'm doing, and experiencing what I'm experiencing.

So when someone expects that I should believe in their experience of inseparability or enlightenment, this makes me think that they aren't very confident in the reality of that experience. Which makes sense, because every experience is questionable, being mediated through the often-flawed (or at least, deceptive) human brain.

Such is the attitude of an essay, "The Only Unmediated Experience You Ever Know." Travis Eneix basically says that every experience other than you are is mediated. That's pretty much what Descartes said hundreds of years ago, and it makes fairly good sense.

My only quibble with that contention is that a person's sense of I am can't exist without a human brain. So even that experience of I am arguably is mediated.