Church of the Churchless

Guru Gurinder Singh Dhillon gets wild and crazy

Below is another interesting message from Osho Robbins. He relates how he saw the current Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru behaving in a way that is far from traditional.

Here's my take on this: It is only when we put gurus up on an undeserved pedestal, viewing them as other-worldly beings rather than ordinary humans, that behavior like Robbins describes appears unusual.

For many years I was a devotee of Gurinder Singh's predecessor, Charan Singh. People would be amazed at Charan Singh doing everyday things, like reading a newspaper. Likewise, in the early days of Gurinder Singh's realm, people would email messages saying things like "I saw the guru wearing blue jeans!," or "The guru was kicking a soccer ball around!"

Well, so what? People read newspapers, wear blue jeans, and kick soccer balls.

I saw Gurinder Singh flying first class, looking utterly ordinary. It's nice to know that he's now acting even more un-guru'ly. I wouldn't be surprised if one day he gave up his guru position. After all, he has become hugely rich by Indian standards (really, by any standards).

Could be one reason Gurinder Singh has loosened up. Super wealthy people can afford to have a "who cares?" attitude. This is what Osho Robbins emailed me:

Gurinder Singh Dhillon breaks the ‘Satguru’ mold.

Traditional sant mat teachings elevate the guru to a status equivalent to God himself. In fact the teachings even say the guru is greater than God.

So now imagine the scene at Haynes Park, UK. It’s Bank holiday Monday and it’s a ‘seva day’ which means only the ardent followers are present. So Gurinder can let down his guard and relax. And that is exactly what he does.

It’s around 5pm and the sevadars have gathered in the canteen and are waiting hopefully for the guru to show up. The guru arrives and sits on his elevated chair for all to have darshan. Now the fun begins. Members of the sangat sing songs and the guru sings along (but he has no microphone) and he makes funny gestures from time to time. He taps his feet to the tune of some of the songs. He moves his head like a drunkard. Actually he’s having good fun.

The songs continue: Love songs, Hindi songs, funny songs and the occasional shabd. Also featured was the Beatles song “with a little help from my friends.”

I watched the faces of shocked followers as Gurinder Singh sat there making a fool of himself, clearly enjoying the process. And not really caring what anyone else thinks. Talk about pushing their boundaries.

This continues for 3.5 hours. As for me – I’m done after 2.5 hours – I can’t sit very comfortably for that long on the floor – so I leave and take a walk in the deserted Haynes Park grounds.

“What the heck is going on here?” is what the majority of the sangat must be thinking. 

According to traditional sant mat teachings a satguru would not behave in this manner.  The teachings have all kinds of standards for a master to live up to. And they state that his life is exemplary and beyond  question because he is GIHF. So you wouldn’t expect a Satguru to be interested in love songs. You certainly would not expect him to spend 3.5 hours getting the sangat to sing love songs while he sings along with them.

Now before I go any further – let me make it clear that I am not saying it is a ‘bad’ thing. In fact I am rather impressed with him, because he is consciously dropping the image of being the ‘divine satguru’ and instead being just plain Gurinder Singh and he is quite happy making a fool of himself.

Why is he doing all this? Well my opinion is that he is shaking people out of their comfort zones. He always tells people to laugh and relax and have fun. So now he is demonstrating. By making a fool of himself he is opening the way for them to do the same and not be so stuck up. 

After all – he is the guru and his image is the most important and he’s not at all bothered about it. I’m impressed with his laid back attitude. It would be a very different path if the followers also became just as laid back.

Just imagine the incident I reported last time about the sevadar asking me to stand on the other side of the walkway. It could just not happen – instead he would say: “Stand where you like – just so long as you keep to the primary directive – have FUN!”

Be like Keats: embrace your "negative capability"

The final chapter in Oliver Burkeman's marvelous book, "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking," is called Negative Capability. I liked it a lot. 

Get your negative on! You'll feel better. Here's some excerpts from the chapter.

That letter [by the poet John Keats] records what one Keats biographer has called a 'touchstone moment' in the history of literature:

I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously: I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason...

...Sometimes the most valuable of all talents is to be able not to seek resolution; to notice the craving for completeness or certainty or comfort, and not to feel compelled to follow where it leads.

...The point here is not that negative capability is always superior to the positive kind. Optimism is wonderful; goals can sometimes be useful; even positive thinking and positive visualisation have their benefits.

The problem is that we have developed the habit of chronically overvaluing positivity and the skills of 'doing' in how we think about happiness, and that we chronically undervalue negativity and the 'not-doing' skills, such as resting in uncertainty or getting friendly toward failure.

...You might choose, of course, to dedicate your life to Stoicism, like Keith Seddon in his wizard's cottage in Watford; you might undergo a completely life-transforming experience in the manner of Eckhart Tolle. 

But you can also treat these ideas as a toolkit, from which tools can be borrowed as necesssary. Anyone can become somewhat Stoic, or a bit more Buddhist, or practise memento mori a little more frequently; unlike far too many self-help schemes, which purport to be comprehensive guides to life, the negative path to happiness isn't an all-or-nothing affair.

...Ultimately, what defines the 'cult of optimism' and the culture of positive thinking -- even in its most mystically tinged, New Age forms -- is that it abhors a mystery. It seeks to make things certain, to make happiness permanent and final.

And yet this kind of happiness -- even if you do manage to achieve it -- is shallow and unsatisfying. The greatest benefit of negative capability -- the true power of negative thinking -- is that it lets the mystery back in.

...The real revelation of the 'negative path' was not so much the path as the destination. Embracing negativity as a technique, in the end, really makes sense only if the happiness you're aiming for is one that can accomodate negative as well as positive emotions. 

...The negative path to happiness, then, is a different kind of path. But it is also a path to a different kind of destination. Or maybe it makes more sense to say that the path is the destination? These things are extraordinarily hard to put into words, and the spirit of negative capability surely dictates that we do not struggle too hard to do so.

'A good traveler has no fixed plans,' says the Chinese sage Lao Tzu, 'and is not intent upon arriving.' There could be no better way to make the journey.

Our physical self dies; our symbolic self believes it won't

When I'm in a complaining mood, I like to curse the cosmos for crap that particularly annoys me. Who asked for this stuff? We'd be better off without it. 

For example...

Fourteen billion or so years after the big bang, life on Earth has evolved to the point that we humans can envisage the possibility of our self existing forever, even though it is obvious that every single Homo sapiens who has ever lived, has died.

This is totally fucked up. Whoever is in charge of the cosmos, and it seems pretty damn clear that nobody is, there's obviously hugely better ways of arranging human consciousness. Here's two.

(1) Make it so we always die and are gone forever, and we can't envision any alternative to this inescapable reality.

(2) Make it so we never die and live forever, and we can't envision any alternative to this inescapable reality.

Either way would leave us satisfied with what actually is. Either death and eternal non-existence, or life and eternal existence.

However, what has transpired is a splitting of our awareness. We are conscious of both our concrete physical self, and also of our abstract symbolic self.

In his book, "The Antidote," that I've blogged about recently, Oliver Burkeman describes this viewpoint, first expressed by Ernest Becker in his classic The Denial of Death.

Indeed, an enormous proportion of all human activity, in Becker's view, is 'designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.'

We are able to sustain this denial, he explains, because we possess both a physical self and a symbolic one. And while it is inevitable that the physical self will perish, the symbolic self -- the one that exists in our minds -- is quite capable of convincing itself that it is immortal.

...If Becker is right, the 'wondrous' fact that we behave as if we're immortal isn't so wondrous after all. You don't fail to think about your mortality. Rather, your life is one relentless attempt to avoid doing so -- a struggle so elemental that, unlike in the case of the 'white bear challenge', for much of the time you succeed.

Don't think of a white bear for the next two minutes. This almost-impossible feat ("Mustn't think of a white bear... damn, I just did!"'; "Am I not thinking of a white bear?... damn, now I am!") somehow is made semi-possible when white bear is replaced by death.

But that's only because we put so much effort into distracting ourselves from the reality of death.

Which is why I say it would be much better if we could just accept what freaking is, rather than feeling compelled to conjure up a possible future where our symbolic self lives on after our physical self dies.

Keeping that symbolic self tidily in order, psychologically well-fed, protected from messy realizations like Woody Allen's below (from his 1975 movie Love and Death), this is a wearying job.

BORIS: Nothingness. Non-existence. Black emptiness.
SONIA: What did you say?
BORIS: Oh, I was just planning my future. 

I look at our dogs and envy them. They seem to enjoy their lives. Every day. Eat, go for a walk, sleep, play, get patted, sleep, eat... start over. One of our dogs likely only has a year or two to live. But she doesn't know that. She is happy being alive now; doesn't worry about being dead later.

In a different way, I envy people who are sure they will live forever, albeit in a different bodily or non-bodily form. I used to be one of those people. It was comforting to believe that my symbolic self was more lasting and real than my physical self, despite any convincing evidence that this was so.

Being stuck with the knowledge that (1) I will die, and (2) I won't live after I die -- that sucks. Not that I have any alternative. For me now, trying to forget about (1) and (2) is like trying to forget about a white bear. 

When I try to do it, I fail. The only approach that makes sense to me is to enthusiastically embrace those two almost certainly true facts. Such is the approach that Burkeman advocates in his book, a subject for another post.

More thoughts on being your own "religion of one"

I've been enjoying the comments that have been left on my previous post, "Become your own weird religion of one." Thanks particularly to commenters "cc" and "Willie R." 

You've made me think. About my own thinking. And wonder. About my own wondering. 

In the post I said that I found it difficult to believe that I believe what I believe. That's true, but "cc" correctly noted there still is an illogical intuitive consistency in the weird stuff that courses through my psyche.

Yes, everyone holds irrational beliefs and most of us believe we're not irrational people, but no one can hold a belief that violates their sense of who they are.

We believe what serves our sense of identity, regardless of how mistaken we may be, so our beliefs are always consistent with some notion of who and what the believer is. If I believe the guru's words are The Truth, I know who I am and behave accordingly. Likewise when I know I can always be mistaken and deluded. Your beliefs, no matter how loony or lucid they may be, are consistent with a notion of yourself, so you can't hold a conflicting belief without changing your sense of yourself.

Nicely said. Definitely better said that how I said what I said. In fact, the comment above says what I meant to say better than I could have said it.

I didn't mean to imply that I'm amazed at the weird beliefs, assumptions, feelings, and what-not about reality that have taken up residence in my mind. After all, my mind is my brain in action, and I am nothing other than that.

So "cc" points out why a personal disorganized religon of one makes much more senseless sense than a public organized religion of many. As he said, there's no way my idiosyncratic weird beliefs can be at odds with my general sense of myself. 

Thus I'm going to be more comfortable with my own Religion of One than a shared Religion of Many. Given that there is no demonstrable proof either is true, might as well go with what feels the best.

Regarding the comments of "Willie R.," as noted in a reply I enjoyed his reminiscing of psychedelic trips in the late 60's, when I also did my LSD/mescaline inspired delvings into the nature of reality. Here's some of what Willie R. had to say.

I used to drop a lot of acid in the late 60's/early 70's. During one of my earlier trips, I was a back seat passenger in my friend's vehicle - he was driving and his brother was riding shotgun. I had just come to realize a profoundly deep insight into the nature of Reality, and I wanted to tell my friend and his brother about it.

They were engaged in a conversation themselves, and would brook no interference despite my vocal supplications. By the time I finally gave up trying to solicit their attention, I had totally forgotten what I wanted to say to them. Then the further and more important insight into the nature of Reality hit me: they don't give a shit what's going on between my ears. Nor was I capable of giving a shit about what was going on between their ears.

I never forgot that realization. Even now, this very message flies in the face of that realization.

We all have a tendency to think that we know something that all others do not know, and that if they did know it, they would be all the better for it (or the worse for it, if that knowledge would make things difficult to accept).

I am smug and condescending when it comes to my beliefs. They work for me, and I know you, the reader, do not give a shit about that. In turn, I do not give a shit about what you think, either.

That's my religion, and mine alone.

Thanks for sharing those thoughts, Willie R.

They fit with what I said in my previous post, "I recommend keeping the farther reaches of your far-out Religion of One to yourself. After all, you have no reason to believe in your own craziness. So anyone else is going to be even more mystified by what transpires in the most mysterious regions of your psyche."

But talking about how difficult it is to talk about our unique Religon of One -- hey, go for it.

After all, we've got to talk about something, or this blog, or conversations of any sort, wouldn't be possible. I didn't mean to suggest that we all should go around with mute Buddha-smiles, merely lifting a flower when someone asks What do you believe?

That would be boring. I enjoy getting glimpses into the weird stuff other people believe. Of course, my own stuff doesn't seem at all weird to me, because it is mine. 

Become your own weird religion of one

I'm churchless. I don't belong to any organized religion. But actually I'm still religious. In a marvelously disorganized sense. 

Meaning, I believe in a religion of one -- my own. It's all about me, myself, and I. There are no other members of my religion than moi. 

And I seek no other members. In fact, it would be impossible for anyone else than me to believe in my religion, because not even I do. 

Likely you're confused about what I just said. Join the club. I am also. Believe me, I find it difficult to believe that I believe what I believe. Yet... I do.

Let's start with something you probably will believe.

I'm stranger than I appear from the outside. Inside my head, some weird shit happens. I try to look fairly normal from the outside, because if people were aware of the often-bizarre thoughts and feelings I've got going on inside, they'd think this guy is fucking crazy.

But you know what? I'm pretty damn sure you are the same. Along with everybody else in the world.

We all believe in some freakily strange stuff that, if these mental emanations were made transparent to others, would cause reactions of "How could anyone think or feel that way?"

So I'm fine with irrational, unproven, far-out, evidence-free belief systems. They just need to be restricted to the confines of a single human brain. Mine. Yours.

No proselytizing. No absolutism. No conviction of I'm right and you're wrong. Rather: this is how I see things... uniquely, privately, personally.

The beauty of being your own crazy unbelievable religion is that you can be even crazier and more unbelievable than any organized religion. Since your religion is utterly disorganized, incomprehensible even to yourself, you don't have to wory about little details like...

Making some sort of sense.
Putting beliefs in words.
Compiling a coherent theology.
Remaining within cultural bounds.
Adhering to moral strictures.

Go wild! Let loose!

After all, no one other than you will know what bizarre weird unbelievable stuff you believe in -- unless you want them to know.

I recommend keeping the farther reaches of your far-out Religion of One to yourself.

After all, you have no reason to believe in your own craziness. So anyone else is going to be even more mystified by what transpires in the most mysterious regions of your psyche. 

Bottom line: becoming churchless doesn't entail discarding strange beliefs. It just means that now your strangeness is uniquely your own, not borrowed from an organized religion.

Religions' search for security is self-defeating

My last post was about an over-zealous "security" volunteer at a meeting of a religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas. 

Coming across some quotes today from Alan Watts' marvelous book, "The Wisdom of Insecurity," in another excellent book -- "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking" -- made me realize that the problem with the irritating security volunteer was his attachment to a religious teaching which promises security in the form of god-realization, salvation, eternal life in a heavenly realm.

Security. This really isn't the solution to our problems, but the problem itself.

Watts cogently points out that we want to find changelessness, failing to understand that life is change. So the more we seek false security, the more we feel estranged from life, which makes us even more eager to find a sense of security that doesn't exist.

To understand that there is no security is far more than to agree with the theory that all things change, more even than to observe the transitoriness of life. The notion of security is based on the feeling that there is something which endures through all the days and changes of life. 

We are struggling to make sure of the permanence, continuity, and safety of this enduring core, this center and soul of our being, which we call 'I.' For this we think to be the real man -- the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler of our feelings, the knower of our knowledge. We do not actually understand that there is no security until we realize that this 'I' does not exist.

...The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the 'I' out of the experience.

...Sanity, wholeness and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate 'I' or mind can be found.

...[Life] is a dance, and when you are dancing, you are not intent on getting somewhere. The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.

Religious devotees like the volunteer cling to obedience as a life preserver. Obeying commandments, a holy book, a guru, practices enjoined by a spiritual teacher -- this is believed to be the path to some sort of lasting security that isn't evident in everyday life.

Nor, of course, is it evident in religious life. But beliefs don't have to be founded on reality. Mental concepts do just fine. 

A big reason for my being turned off by religiosity after spending several decades as a true believer was this: I got tired of believing that I was special. That's what religions offer: specialness.

Out of all the people in the world, you, lucky soul that you are, have been chosen by God, guru, or some other divine power to understand and experience Higher Truths that are unknown by the unchosen. I vividly remember how this was expressed on a Radha Soami Satsang Beas discussion group:

Disciples feel like they are technicolor people in a black and white world.

Exactly. This relates to the whole security thing. Religious people consider that they are humble servants of God who happen to be living life much more vividly than those who aren't so blessed.

In other words, their massive sense of egotistical specialness is thinly veiled under a hypocritical mask of "I'm nobody special." (Saying that, they feel really special.)

Look: I can understand why this happens, because I've been there and done that. When you're clutching onto a religious security blanket, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. You can't imagine living without it.

Until you do. Then the words of Oliver Burgeman, author of "The Antidote," ring true.

...[W]hat we are really doing when we attempt to achieve fixity in the midst of change, Watts argues, is trying to separate ourselves from all that change, trying to enforce a distinction between ourselves and the rest of the world. To seek security is to try to remove yourself from change, and thus from the thing that defines life.

'If I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life,' Watts writes, 'I am wanting to be separate from life.'

Which brings us to the crux of the matter: it is because we want to feel secure that we build up the fortifications of ego, in order to defend ourselves, but it is those very fortifications that create the feeling of insecurity.

...We build castle walls to keep out the enemy, but it is the building of the walls that causes the enemy to spring into existence in the first place. It's only because there are castle walls that there is anything to attack. 

'The desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing,' concludes Watts. 'To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath retention contest, in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.'

Other posts I've written about "The Wisdom of Insecurity" can be found here, here, here, and here. It's one of my all-time favorite books.

Sevadar egos gone wild at RSSB's Haynes Park center

Below is a message from Osho Robbins about how cult'ish meetings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) devotees have become. 

I can relate to what he says, based on my own experience. In the 1990's I was a "security" volunteer at RSSB gatherings featuring the current guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. I got carried away with my own supposed importance, just like the person Robbins encountered.

After all, if the guru is God, and the chain of command emanating from the guru instructs you to perform certain duties, then... you're doing God's will!

Sure, that's bullshit, but bullshit is what fuels religions. Read on. Here's a photo of Haynes Park that I got from a Google Images search. It's in England.

Hi Brian,

You are welcome to use this email on your blog. I went to the Haynes Park satsang today (18th August) and this incident happened before the satsang started.

I was walking along the path when I stopped to talk to my associate who was walking alongside. A perfectly reasonable thing to do in normal day to day living.

The sevadar asked me why I have stopped walking and asked if I was waiting for someone. Just to give him an answer I said yes.

He then asked me to step to one side so I don't obstruct the way. So my associate and I stepped to one side. So far this was pretty reasonable. But then it all changed.

 "Can you stand on that side?" the sevadar asked, pointing to the other side of the walkway, but it was clearly not a request but an order.

 And on that particular day and time I was in the mood for a little playful confrontation. So I said the magical word, "NO."

The sevadar then pointed out that he was asking me politely to stand on the other  side. To which I said that I was politely saying no.

I then pointed out to the sevadar that I was standing on the side out of the way of the people who were walking. I said that I would happily stand on the other side of the pathway if he can give me one logical reason for it.

His response was this: “I have been told to do this and I am carrying out my orders.” I pointed out that his response was not a logical reason, so I would not be complying.

He then goes around the corner and calls for backup. Not wanting to cause a major incident, I left the scene. However, If I had stayed, you can pretty much guess what was going to happen next.

Backup would have arrived and they would have ‘asked me’ politely to comply. 90% of the time, the person would now comply and the incident would end. But just for the sake of argument, let’s say I still refused to comply.

What would happen next? Well, I would imagine that they would ask me to leave the site and if I still refused I guess the last resort would be to call the police and tell them that I was trespassing. And the police would then escort me off the premises.

Now here’s my point.

RSSB is becoming a very authoritarian organization. I can walk into a gurudwara or a Hindu temple or a mosque and I would not get treated in this manner. I would be free to walk anywhere and sit anywhere.

Nobody would be standing around to tell me which way to go. So, the big question is why is RSSB so authoritarian? And when exactly did it become so?

I remember in the previous master’s time – it was nothing like this. There were still sevadars – but they were there to HELP you – not order you about.

Now they tell you exactly where to sit. If you decide to sit somewhere else – they look at you like you are a trouble maker.

Why are the sevadars so obsessed with authority, and who has authorized all this?

It has to come from the top. There is a saying: the fish rots from the head. So I can only assume that the authoritarian attitude comes from the top.

RSSB is no longer a peaceful spiritual organization. Next time you are at satsang take a close look at the ‘sevadars’. They walk around with an air of authority like they are police officers.

They have no compassion and don’t care to help anyone. They are there to follow orders from above. They are not there to make anyone’s life any easier. They just follow orders blindly.

They will gang up on anyone who fails to obey their orders. They carry radios so they can call for backup if anyone fails to comply.

And this is a peaceful, spiritual organization that leads to god-realisation? Give me a fu?*!ing break!

The sevadars are on a power trip. They want to get ‘higher up’ in the organization. The higher up they get – the more power and privileges they enjoy. Forget all about spiritual aspirations, at this point the disciple is caught firmly in the web of ego and his desire is for power and status.

RSSB reminds me more of the type of organization that appears once a master leaves. There is no humility or service in sight. Just as Sikhism is a far cry from the humble beginnings of Guru Nanak, so RSSB is a far cry from the humble beginnings in Agra.

Or course the followers claim they have the truth. But so do the Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and the followers of all other religions.

How does RSSB stand out from other religions?

In the beginning the ‘master’ used to conduct satsang. It was unheard of that anyone not realized could deliver a satsang. Satsang was never considered to be an exposition of theory.

In fact – the story of Vivekananda asking Ramakrishna if he has seen God or is just speaking from book-knowledge clearly illustrates this point.

Giving out theory is not satsang. Bulleh Shah also says “Kaush raulla paya aalmah….” Which means: “The unrealized speakers are just making a noise (talking nonsense)”

That is what RSSB has become. The satsangs are given by those who have no experience and are simply re-citing from scriptures, and giving theory.

Swami Ji would be turning in his grave if he saw what Radha Soami has become today. The focus is on expansion and acquiring property and becoming a wealthy organization.

The followers have clearly forgotten the story of Baba Sawan Singh being told by Jaimal Singh that if he constructed the Dera – he would get bound here and it would one day become just another religion. That day has arrived.

Jaimal singh would not even build a single building – choosing instead to live in a mud hut. What Sawan Singh started has now become a huge business empire and another trap for true seekers.

Any true seeker would run away as fast as they can before they get caught up in the power struggle and rituals of RSSB.

The poor followers are brain-washed into thinking they are the privileged ones and that the master will come and save them at the time of death. This was clearly said at that very satsang at Haynes Park – even though Gurinder Singh clearly says this is not the case.

The followers are so confused – they just hear what they want to hear and believe what they want to believe. 

Metacognition tip: don't worry about your worrying

I used to believe in positive thinking.

Now, that seems like way too much trouble. I've become a lot more accepting of myself the way I actually am, rather than setting up some sort of Ideal Me that I'd compare myself to unfavorably.

This is one of the big problems with religiosity. Being human is viewed as not good enough. Divinity, perfection, enlightenment -- that becomes the goal of life.

So when I was browsing in central Oregon's marvelous Paulina Springs Bookstore and saw a book called "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking," I had to buy it.

No regrets. A few chapters in, I'm enjoying Oliver Burkeman's book a lot. His main thesis, echoed by many philosophers, psychologists, and even a few self-help gurus:

The startling conclusion at which they had all arrived, in different ways, was this: that the effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable. And that it is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative -- insecurity, uncertainty, failure, or sadness -- that is what causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain, or unhappy.

Burkeman talks about the investigations of Daniel Wegner, a psychology professor who runs the Mental Control Laboratory at Harvard University.

Wegner's intellectual territory is what has come to be known as 'ironic process theory,' which explores the ways in which our efforts to suppress certain thoughts or behaviours result, ironically, in their becoming more prevalent.

There are many examples of this in all sorts of religions and spiritual paths, both of the East and West. Believers are enjoined to avoid sins, negativity, temptations, doubts, questions, and other deviations from The Way.

Which, often, leads them right into the clutches of what they hoped to avoid. The basic problem is metacognition: thinking about your thinking, feeling about your feeling, worrying about your worrying, and such. Religiosity, including some forms of meditation, are big on this.

Not productive, says Wegner.

What is going on here, Wegner argues, is a malfunctioning of the uniquely human capacity for metacognition, or thinking about thinking. 'Metacognition,' Wegner explains,'occurs when thought takes itself as an object.'

Mainly, it's an extremely useful skill: it is what enables us to recognise when we are being unreasonable, or sliding into depression, or being afflicted with anxiety, and then to do something about it.

But when we use metacognitive thoughts directly to try to control our other, everyday, 'object-level' thoughts -- by suppressing images of white bears, say, or replacing gloomy thoughts with happy ones -- we run into trouble.

'Metathoughts are instructions we give ourselves about our object-level thinking,' as Wegner puts it, 'and sometimes we just can't follow our own instructions.'

...A person who has resolved to 'think positive' must constantly scan his or her mind for negative thoughts -- there's no other way that the mind could ever gauge its success at the operation -- yet that scanning will draw attention to the presence of negative thoughts.

(Worse, if the negative thoughts start to predominate, a vicious spiral may kick in, since the failure to think positively may become the trigger for a new stream of self-berating thoughts, about not thinking positively enough.)

So what we should we do? Be in touch with what is. Reality is something different from what the mind imagines it could be.

It simply means approaching the whole of life -- inner thoughts and emotions, outer events and circumstances -- without clinging or aversion. To live non-attachedly is to feel impulses, think thoughts, and experience life without becoming hooked by mental narratives about how things 'should' be, or should never be, or should remain forever. 

How beautiful it is to do nothing and rest afterwards

This morning I rode my bike around a Camp Sherman, Oregon loop. Cabin to store to bike path to Lake Creek Lodge to trail-through-woods to gravel road to cabin.

Along the way, which involved considerable pedaling, I came across a sign which led me to stop and do almost nothing -- except stand, pull my iPhone out, and snap a photo.

This seems to be a Spanish proverb. Totally believable. Isn't the siesta a significant part of the Spanish lifestyle?

(If not, don't tell me; I'm a habitual napper who enjoys feeling like I've got some Spanish heritage that impels me at siesta time.)

Given my admiration of the proverb, it wouldn't be fitting to spend too much energy talking about it in a blog post. I'll simply observe that doing nothing is a centerpiece of many spiritual traditions.

Buddhism and Taoism, for sure. Along with the contemplative side of numerous others.

I summoned up enough energy to Google "spirituality doing nothing." Then I took a quick look at some of the search results. Here's some links to explore. Unless you prefer doing nothing.

doing nothing, just being

The Joy of Nada -- Doing Nothing for Lent

All Nothing, All the Time

Do you know how to relax? Why you should make time to do nothing.

The idler has realized the illusion of control

'Doing nothing' a place of surprising activity

Update: damn, I'm so nothing, so humble, so ego-less, I forgot to search my own blog via Google. Discovered that I've written a lot about nothing. Some would say, yeah, everything you write is a bunch of nothing.

Doing Nothing. Sounds like my sort of anti-religion.

Doing nothing is the best meditation. 

Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become.

Doing nothing, do everything. Taoism is cool!

"Nothing" is my spiritual resolution for the New Year

Mysticism is all about doing...nothing

And if you'd rather just press a "play button" and watch a God is Nothing video, feel free:

 

Near-death experiences could be hyperactivity of dying brain

Here's another nail in the near-death experience (NDE) coffin for those who believe that NDE's point to some sort of supernatural, non-physical, soulful, heaven'ish aspect of reality.

The brains of dying rats show signs not of a lack of brain activity, but of hyperactivity. A last neurological gasp, so to speak. 

A burst of brain activity just after the heart stops may be the cause of so-called near-death experiences, scientists say.

The insight comes from research involving nine lab rats whose brains were analyzed as they were being euthanized. Researchers discovered what appears to be a momentary increase in electrical activity in the brain associated with consciousness.

This goes a long way toward disproving the notion that when people have a near-death experience, the brain isn't functioning. Or at least, barely is.

Quite the contrary, according to the rat experiment (rats are notoriously physiologically similar to humans in many ways).

Borjigin wanted to find out if there was something happening in the brains of these people who had close calls with death that could help explain these experiences.

"If the near-death experience comes from the brain, there's got to be signs — some measurable activities of the brain — at the moment of cardiac arrest," she says.

But it's really hard to study this in people. So Borjigin and her colleagues decided to study rats. They implanted six electrodes into the brains of nine rats, gave the animals lethal injections and collected detailed measurements of brain activity as they died.

"We were just so astonished," Borjigan tells Shots.

Just after the rats' hearts stopped, there was a burst of brain activity. Their brain suddenly seemed to go into overdrive, showing all the hallmarks not only of consciousness but a kind of hyperconsciousness.

"We found continued and heightened activity," Borjigan says. "Measurable conscious activity is much, much higher after the heart stops — within the first 30 seconds."

Borjigin and her colleagues think they essentially discovered the neurological basis for near-death experiences. "That really just, just really blew our mind. ... That really is consistent with what patients report," she says.

Patients report that what they experienced felt more real than reality — so intense that it's often described as life-altering.

But Borjigan thinks the phenomenon is really just the brain going on hyperalert to survive while at the same time trying to make sense of all those neurons firing. It's sort of like a more intense version of dreaming.

"The near-death experience is perhaps is really the byproduct of the brain's attempt to save itself," she says.

This is a great example of how the scientific method can cast light on quasi-religious beliefs. Eben Alexander claimed that he almost died and went to heaven. That claim deserves extreme skepticism, for reasons described here.

Rats aren't people, obviously.

But this study will stimulate research on what happens to human brains when death approaches. It is likely that rats and people are much alike. Which means that glimpses of "heaven" really are akin to dreams: creations of the brain, not a manifestation of supernatural reality.

It’s called a near-death experience, but the emphasis is on “near.” The heart stops, you feel yourself float up and out of your body. You glide toward the entrance of a tunnel, and a searing bright light envelops your field of vision.

It could be the afterlife, as many people who have come close to dying have asserted. But a new study says it might well be a show created by the brain, which is still very much alive. When the heart stops, neurons in the brain appeared to communicate at an even higher level than normal, perhaps setting off the last picture show, packed with special effects.

“A lot of people believed that what they saw was heaven,” said lead researcher and neurologist Jimo Borjigin. “Science hadn’t given them a convincing alternative.”

Preachiness on my churchless blog is irritating

I'm pretty patient with people who want to leave religious'y comments on this blog. But eventually my patience wears thin. 

I don't mind a few "I love [insert name of divine being] so much!" kinds of comments. Hey, I've been there and done that -- wanted to share my religious zeal with the world. 

Eventually, though, the situation becomes akin to an alcoholic coming to a 12-step group where the members are dedicated to weaning themselves from a dependency on excessive drinking. And supporting each other in finding non-alcoholic ways of living life.

The first question is: why is an alcoholic coming to a place where people don't drink a lot? That's the same sort of question I ask myself when a religious person starts leaving comments on this blog. 

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, members of a 12-step group first would assume that the alcoholic wants help in breaking his addiction. If not, why isn't he in a bar or at home getting drunk? Likewise, I figure that anyone who visits a Church of the Churchless blog is interested in churchlessness.

At first, though, an alcoholic might want to talk some about how much he enjoys drinking, how good it makes him feel, what delights he gets from losing himself in an inebriated state of consciousness.

After all, it isn't easy to break free from a long-established excessive-drinking habit. Nor is it easy to release oneself from the bondage of religious dogma. Hey, it feels good to think "I'm special! God has a plan for me! I'm going to heaven while others are going to hell!"

However, what if an alcoholic never stops talking about how much he likes to drink? What if he shows no sign of wanting to become sober? Or at least a controlled moderate drinker? 

Then members of the 12-step group would be justified in viewing him as an intruder, a trouble-maker, an alcoholic who is in denial about his alcoholism and only is interested in justifying his addiction to other people.

Other people who know what it is like to be an alcoholic. Other people who have "been there and done that" with excessive drinking. Other people who aren't interested in regressing now that they've progressed to a healthier way of living.

They'd be entirely justified in saying to the preachy alcoholic, "You need to take your act to a bar. Other drunks likely would enjoy what you're saying. We don't."

This is how I feel about preachy religious people who try to dominate comment conversations on this blog. I'll tolerate them for a while. Proabably longer than I should, because I prefer to let people have their say, so long as their saying is at least somewhat related to the purpose of this blog:

Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence. Not preaching religious dogmatism. 

Try going into a biker bar and screaming "Guys who ride Harley's are pussies! American cycles are crap!" Try going into a meeting of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and yelling, "Animals have no rights! Eat them and beat them!" Try going into the Vatican and loudly proclaiming "The Pope is a fraud! There is no God!" 

I deeply respect freedom of speech. But there's a time and a place to freely speak. Not all times and all places are appropriate for certain sayings. 

So if you're religious, have at it. Proclaim your religiousness. Just not here. Not much, at least. When your dogmatism gets obnoxious, your comments won't be published. Time to find another place to preach.

Two poems by Mary Oliver and Wei Wu Wei

Mary Oliver: The Lilies Break Open Over the Dark Water

Inside
 that mud-hive, that gas-sponge,
  that reeking
   leaf-yard, that rippling

dream-bowl, the leeches'
 flecked and swirling
  broth of life, as rich
   as Babylon,

the fists crack
 open and the wands
  of the lilies
   quicken, they rise

like pale poles
 with their wrapped beaks of lace;
  one day
   they tear the surface,

the next they break open
 over the dark water.
  And there you are
   on the shore,

fitful and thoughtful, trying
 to attach them to an idea—
   some news of your own life.
     But the lilies

are slippery and wild—they are
 devoid of meaning, they are
  simply doing,
   from the deepest

spurs of their being,
 what they are impelled to do
  every summer.
   And so, dear sorrow, are you.

 

Wei Wu Wei: For Síle (in "Open Secret")

When the beetle sees, it is I that am looking,
When the nightingale sings, it is I that am singing,
When the lion roars, it is I that am roaring.

But when I look for myself, I can see nothing --
  for no thing is there to be seen.

Síle cannot see me either, for when she tries to see me it is
  I who am looking: she can do nothing -- for only I can do anything.
The beetle can say that also, and Síle, for we are not three,
  nor two, nor one.

I am the sea too, and the stars, the wind and the rain,
I am everything that has form -- for form is my seeing of it.
I am every sound -- for sound is my hearing of it,
I am all flavours, each perfume, whatever can be touched,
For that which is perceptible is my perceiving of it,
And all sentience is mine.

They have no other existence, and neither have I --
  for what they are I am, and what I am they are.
What the universe is I am, and what I am the universe is.
And there is no other at all, nor any one whatsover. 
Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi! Svaha! 

"Scientism" is a compliment, not an insult

I've never understood why so many people fear science. Science has never harmed me. In fact, I have no idea how I'd ever recognize this "Science." 

Kind of difficult to be afraid of something that doesn't exist.

Science isn't an actual entity. It is an abstraction. Likewise, nobody has ever listened to Music. They have heard actual pieces of music, compositions of one sort or another, but never Music with a capital "M."

So when people criticize Science, I have no idea what they are talking about. Often their dislike is expressed through the supposedly perjorative word, "scientism."

Another abstraction.

Because what actual scientist believes that the scientific method/approach has universal applicability to all human affairs? I've never run across one. I'm pretty sure that none of the people who decry scientism has either.

One of the reasons I enjoyed Stephen Pinker's essay, "Science is Not Your Enemy," is his proud embrace of the term scientism. 

The term “scientism” is anything but clear, more of a boo-word than a label for any coherent doctrine. Sometimes it is equated with lunatic positions, such as that “science is all that matters” or that “scientists should be entrusted to solve all problems.” Sometimes it is clarified with adjectives like “simplistic,” “naïve,” and “vulgar.” The definitional vacuum allows me to replicate gay activists’ flaunting of “queer” and appropriate the pejorative for a position I am prepared to defend.

Scientism, in this good sense, is not the belief that members of the occupational guild called “science” are particularly wise or noble. On the contrary, the defining practices of science, including open debate, peer review, and double-blind methods, are explicitly designed to circumvent the errors and sins to which scientists, being human, are vulnerable.

Scientism does not mean that all current scientific hypotheses are true; most new ones are not, since the cycle of conjecture and refutation is the lifeblood of science. It is not an imperialistic drive to occupy the humanities; the promise of science is to enrich and diversify the intellectual tools of humanistic scholarship, not to obliterate them. And it is not the dogma that physical stuff is the only thing that exists.

Scientists themselves are immersed in the ethereal medium of information, including the truths of mathematics, the logic of their theories, and the values that guide their enterprise. In this conception, science is of a piece with philosophy, reason, and Enlightenment humanism. It is distinguished by an explicit commitment to two ideals, and it is these that scientism seeks to export to the rest of intellectual life.

This passage made me recall a blog post I wrote last year: "Science loves being wrong. Religion hates it." Those two ideas Pinker speaks of are The world is intelligible and The acquisition of knowledge is hard. Regarding the latter, Pinker writes:

The world does not go out of its way to reveal its workings, and even if it did, our minds are prone to illusions, fallacies, and superstitions. Most of the traditional causes of belief—faith, revelation, dogma, authority, charisma, conventional wisdom, the invigorating glow of subjective certainty—are generators of error and should be dismissed as sources of knowledge.

To understand the world, we must cultivate work-arounds for our cognitive limitations, including skepticism, open debate, formal precision, and empirical tests, often requiring feats of ingenuity. Any movement that calls itself “scientific” but fails to nurture opportunities for the falsification of its own beliefs (most obviously when it murders or imprisons the people who disagree with it) is not a scientific movement.

My favorite part of Pinker's essay was his right-on critique of traditional religions and cultures.

There may be a lot to like about them. However, Pinker correctly  points out the plain fact that they were, and are, factually mistaken about how the world (and universe) works. Any religion that ignores or disaparages findings of modern science in favor of ancient myths isn't worth taking seriously as a source of meaning.

To begin with, the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken.

We know, but our ancestors did not, that humans belong to a single species of African primate that developed agriculture, government, and writing late in its history.

We know that our species is a tiny twig of a genealogical tree that embraces all living things and that emerged from prebiotic chemicals almost four billion years ago.

We know that we live on a planet that revolves around one of a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, which is one of a hundred billion galaxies in a 13.8-billion-year-old universe, possibly one of a vast number of universes.

We know that our intuitions about space, time, matter, and causation are incommensurable with the nature of reality on scales that are very large and very small.

We know that the laws governing the physical world (including accidents, disease, and other misfortunes) have no goals that pertain to human well-being.

There is no such thing as fate, providence, karma, spells, curses, augury, divine retribution, or answered prayers—though the discrepancy between the laws of probability and the workings of cognition may explain why people believe there are.

And we know that we did not always know these things, that the beloved convictions of every time and culture may be decisively falsified, doubtless including some we hold today.

In other words, the worldview that guides the moral and spiritual values of an educated person today is the worldview given to us by science. Though the scientific facts do not by themselves dictate values, they certainly hem in the possibilities. By stripping ecclesiastical authority of its credibility on factual matters, they cast doubt on its claims to certitude in matters of morality.

The scientific refutation of the theory of vengeful gods and occult forces undermines practices such as human sacrifice, witch hunts, faith healing, trial by ordeal, and the persecution of heretics. The facts of science, by exposing the absence of purpose in the laws governing the universe, force us to take responsibility for the welfare of ourselves, our species, and our planet.

For the same reason, they undercut any moral or political system based on mystical forces, quests, destinies, dialectics, struggles, or messianic ages. And in combination with a few unexceptionable convictions— that all of us value our own welfare and that we are social beings who impinge on each other and can negotiate codes of conduct—the scientific facts militate toward a defensible morality, namely adhering to principles that maximize the flourishing of humans and other sentient beings.

This humanism, which is inextricable from a scientific understanding of the world, is becoming the de facto morality of modern democracies, international organizations, and liberalizing religions, and its unfulfilled promises define the moral imperatives we face today.

Robert Kuhn's nine levels of nothing: mind-blowing

I'm a big fan of the age-old question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

However, after spending many years marveling at the evident fact that existence exists, I'm inclined to take out the why. A statement seems more apt than a question.

"There is something rather than nothing." 

In other words, I'm highly dubious that the question is meaningful. We can ask why things within existence exist. But to ask why existence itself exists... absurd. My attitude is: It just is, dude.

Nonetheless, I can understand the appeal of asking why there is something rather than nothing. I haven't entirely given up on the question myself.

So I had to buy a recent issue of Skeptic magazine when I saw it contained an article by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, "Levels of Nothing: There are Multiple Answers to the Question of Why the Universe Exists."

Well, more accurately Kuhn lays out the kinds of nothing that are the alternative to something.

This frames the question more neatly, depending on which level of nothing one chooses, yet doesn't get us closer to understanding why this sort of nothing doesn't exist rather than the something that does.

Kuhn writes:

Defining “Nothing” may seem simple -- no thing, not a thing. But what’s a “thing?” I invoke the term “thing” in the most general possible way, and therefore, given some possible notions of Nothing, it is no contradiction to find “things” that compose these different kinds or levels of Nothing. Teasing apart these constituent things, as if scaffolds or sinews of Nothings, may help enrich understanding of the nature of Nothing, yielding a taxonomy that arrays opposing kinds of Nothing that could be conceived and might have existed.

This taxonomy is structured as a deconstruction or as a dissection, as it were, a reverse layering, a peeling, a progressive reduction of the content of each Nothing in a hierarchy of Nothings. As such, this taxonomy takes its heritage from the so-called Subtraction Argument, which seeks to show that the absence of all concrete objects would be metaphysically possible.

...Developing this way of thinking, there might be nine levels of Nothing, with a general progression from Nothing most simplistic (Nothing One) to Nothing most absolute (Nothing Nine).

...Following are nine levels of Nothings.

• (1) Nothing as existing space and time that just happened to be totally empty of all visible objects (particles and energy are permitted) -- an utterly simplistic, pre-scientific view.
• (2) Nothing as existing space and time that just happens to be totally empty of all matter (no particles, but energy is permitted -- flouting the law of mass-energy equivalence).
• (3) Nothing as existing space and time that just happens to be totally empty of all matter and energy.
• (4) Nothing as existing space and time that is by necessity -- irremediably and permanently in all directions, temporal as well as spatial -- totally empty of all matter and energy.
• (5) Nothing of the kind found in some theoretical formulations by physicists, where, although space-time (unified) as well as mass-energy (unified) do not exist, pre-existing laws, particularly laws of quantum mechanics, do exist. And it is these laws that make it the case that universes can and do, from time to time, pop into existence from “Nothing,” creating space-time as well as mass-energy. (It is standard physics to assume that empty space must seethe with virtual particles, reflecting the uncertainty principle of quantum physics, where particle-antiparticle pairs come into being and then, almost always, in a fleetingly brief moment, annihilate one another.)
• (6) Nothing where not only is there no space-time and no mass-energy, but also there are no pre-existing laws of physics that could generate space-time or mass-energy (universes).
• (7) Nothing where not only is there are no space-time, no mass-energy, and no pre-existing laws of physics, but also there are no non-physical things or kinds that are concrete (rather than abstract) --no God, no gods, and no consciousness (cosmic or otherwise). This means that there are no physical or non-physical beings or existents of any kind -- nothing, whether natural or supernatural, that is concrete (rather than abstract).
• (8) Nothing where not only is there none of the above (so that, as in Nothing 7, there are no concrete existing things, physical or non-physical), but also there are no abstract objects of any kind -- no numbers, no sets, no logic, no general propositions, no universals, no Platonic forms (e.g., no value).
• (9) Nothing where not only is there none of the above (so that, as in Nothing 8, there are no abstract objects), but also there are no possibilities of any kind (recognizing that possibilities and abstract objects overlap, though allowing that they can be distinguished).

...Note that among all these levels of Nothing, one of the "lesser Nothings" -- that is, a kind of Nothing with more "things" in it -- is the Nothing of physicists. What physicists contemplate -- the sudden emergence of "tunneling" of universes from "Nothing" -- is fascinating and indeed may be cosmogenic, but the tunneling process or capacity is not Nothing.

The Nothing of physicists is thick with the complete set of the laws of physics, and so between physicists' Nothing and Real Nothing lies a vast, unbridgeable gulf. On this taxonomic scale, physicists' Nothing is Nothing Level 5, barely halfway to utterly Nothing. 

If physicists' Nothing were in reality Real Nothing (i.e. ultimate reality), the laws of quantum physics (or whatever might turn out to be the most fundamental physical laws underlying quantum physics) would have to be either impossible to remove (meaning that removing them would involve logical contradiction) or a brute fact about existence beyond which explanation would be meaningless. I doubt I could ever get over the odd idea that something so intricate, so involved, so organized and so accessible as the laws of physics would be the ultimate brute fact.

As a separate consideration, some philosophers of religion argue that God is a "necessity" -- meaning that it would be impossible for God not to exist -- thus precluding Nothing 7 (which has no non-physical concrete things such as God but still has abstract objects) and crowning Nothing 6 (which has no space-time, no mass-energy, no laws of physics but still has God and other nonphysical things) as the metaphysical limit of what is to be explained.

I find the move challenging. Moreover, based on the levels of Nothing in this taxonomy, it would seem less of a leap to imagine a world without God (Nothing 7) than to imagine a world without abstract objects (Nothing 8). For the traditional God, that won't do.

...Setting aside my taxonomy and consulting my gut, I come to only two kinds of answers. The first is that there is no answer: Existence is a brute fact without explanation. The second is that at the primordial beginning, explanatorily and timelessly prior to time, some thing was self-existing. The essence of this something necessitated its existence such than non-existence to it would be as inherently impossible as physically immortality to us is factually impossible.

Various things or substances could conceivably contain this deeply centered self-existing essence, from the most fundamental meta-laws of physics to diverse kinds of consciousness, one of which could be God or something like god. Perhaps even these explanations are so mundane and bedrock is so bizarre that abstract objects or pure possibilities somehow harbor generative powers.

Why is there Something rather than Nothing? Why Not Nothing? If you don't get dizzy, you really don't get it.

Well, I get dizzy.

But I don't really get Kuhn's second kind of answer. His "self-existing essence" sure sounds a lot like God to me. Maybe not the Western personal sort of God, but a lot like the Eastern impersonal God, such as Brahman.

So why Brahman? Why a self-existing essence? Why should Kuhn's abstract Nothing 8 exist, but not Nothing 9?

Like I said, I lean toward Kuhn's first kind of answer: there is no answer. Existence just is.

Something is wrong with our understanding of reality

Love mystery? There's no need to embrace mysticism. Rather, embrace modern science. You end up with genuine mystery, not a religiously-tinged variety.

Case in point: the cover story in this week's New Scientist, "Reality Check." The online title is "Quantum Weirdness: the battle for the basis of reality."

This video, Reality's Hidden Layers, that is based on the story tells you the basics. Something has to go -- reality, relativity, causality, free will. They can't all coexist as how they are currently understood to be.

 

Here's how the cover story ends. 

Rudolph doesn't have an answer – no one does. But he reckons the problem is that we are still hopelessly anthropocentric.

The growing disconnection between our experience of the world and the results of quantum experiments, he says, are simply a modern version of the ever-more complex epicycles that Ptolemy and those who followed him used to explain the motions of the heavenly bodies. The problem back then was that we could only see the planets as revolving around Earth; it took Copernicus to turn things around, and suddenly all was plain and simple.

Perhaps we have constructed theories such as relativity and quantum theory with a similarly limited view, in thrall this time to a sense of space and time that might not exist beyond ourselves. "We think time and position and so on are important variables for describing the world because we evolved to perceive them," says Rudolph. "But whatever is going on down there doesn't seem to worry about them at all."

So there you have it. When the light shines on that the half-silvered mirror, what we see is hardly a reflection of the world as we would like to know it. Reality, relativity, causality, free will, space and time: they can't all be right. But which ones are wrong?

Maybe we will never know which ones are wrong. Maybe reality "as it is," if those words even make any sense, will be forever hidden from us. 

After all, the universe is some 14 billion years old. We humans came on the scene a few hundred thousand years ago. Our scientific understanding of the universe, and also of ourselves, is in its infancy. 

As the quotation above, plus the video, note, humans evolved to survive, not to comprehend the cosmos. What worked for us on the grassy plains of Africa -- such as understanding cause and effect as it related to prey/predator behavior, hunting/gathering, and such -- may not be attuned to how reality is on much subtler levels.

This doesn't mean that religiosity, spirituality, mysticism, supernaturalism, or other non-scientific ways of comprehending reality are any better suited to figuring out what reality is all about.

Limitations of the human brain, body, and mind are universal. Gurus as well as physicists have them; meditators as well as astronomers have them. We can't escape our peculiar Homo sapiens way of looking upon the world. 

What would be truly remarkable is that a species which recently evolved on Earth, one planet orbiting one sun that is one of several hundred billion stars in a galaxy that is one of a hundred billion of so in the visible universe that may be but one of countless in a multiverse cosmos, somehow quickly managed to understand the inner workings of reality.

I deeply doubt this has happened.

As the New Scientist story strongly implies, reality doesn't care about us; it isn't about us; how humans see things likely bears little or no resemblance to how those things are in themselves (again, if "in themselves" has any meaning -- another mystery we are clueless about).

Awe seems to me to be a perfectly appropriate attitude toward the cosmos. 

Believing that we are close to comprehending it... utterly inappropriate.

Wei Wu Wei (Terence Gray) on non-duality

Wei Wu Wei's "Open Secret" is a fascinating book. I took a stab at talking about this attempt to describe the indescribable here and here. 

I've been re-reading the first few chapters.

Though sometimes I get irritated by Wei Wu Wei's (pen name of Terence Gray) often-obscure way of writing, he draws me in with a feeling of There's something he's trying to say that is really interesting and important, but the truth of it is beyond the saying.

Every time I pick up "Open Secret," I get a different sort of glimpse of what that might be -- because I've changed; the words in the book haven't.

This time I'm realizing that non-duality, a prime focus of Wei Wu Wei, really isn't as complicated as a lot of New Age'y types make it. 

Religions, of course, are almost always thoroughly dualistic.

They posit soul distinct from body, heaven distinct from the world, mind distinct from matter, God distinct from creation, eternity distinct from time, spirit distinct from sensuality, and so on. 

So the notion of non-duality is pleasingly scientific. Reality isn't comprised of both natural and transcendent entities. There isn't another level to the cosmos. What there is, is seamlessly connected. 

Wei Wu Wei speaks of something that rings true to me: there aren't really "subjective" and "objective" aspects of reality. These too are interconnected. Well, even more: not so much connected, as two sides of the same coin.

There isn't any subjective "me" or "you" that is separate from an objective world outside of us. In fact, as modern neuroscience also posits, there isn't any "me" or "you" separate and distinct from the brain/body. 

Our perceiving and what is perceived is one thing. Our doing and what is done is one thing. Our thinking and what is thought is one thing. Our awareness and what we are aware of is one thing. Problems fall away with this understanding.

Not because there aren't difficulties that need to be dealt with; because there is no one separate and distinct from these difficulties. "I" no longer have a problem, since it is recognized that "I" am a fiction. 

Here's some quotes from Wei Wu Wei's book that I liked upon my second (or third) reading.

There is no cogniser apart from the "thing" cognised; there is no "thing" cognised apart from the cogniser of it. But the "cogniser" is only an act of cognition (a cognising), of which the "thing" cognised is the counterpart.

Therefore the "cogniser" and the "cognised" are not different, "not two": they can only be the "function of congnising..."

...All is am is "seeing" when I see,
All I am is "hearing" when I hear,
All I am is "sentience" when I feel,
All I am is "understanding" when I know.

True seeing is non-seeing -- no one looking.
True hearing is non-hearing -- no one listening.
True action is non-action -- no one doing.
True thinking is non-thinking -- no one thinking.
Spontaneity alone is non-volitional -- and there is no I.

...The apparent universe neither arises via, nor independently of, sentient beings. The apparent aspect of sentient beings arises with that of the universe, and the universe becomes apparent concurrently. 

...All things considered,
Bondage is wholly the notion of "I,"
And liberation is liberation from the idea of liberation.
Is there any one to be bound, any one to be free?
So what?

...Whatever you may be, you are being "lived." You are not travelling, as you think: you are being "travelled."

Remember: you are in a train. Stop trying to carry your baggage yourself. It will come along with you anyhow. 

Ken Wilber's error: mistaking personal experience for universal reality

I used to enjoy reading Ken Wilber's writings. Then, I didn't. As I said in a 2009 post:

I've got a love-hate thing going with Ken Wilber, a prolific writer and creative thinker who relentlessly preaches the marvels of an Integral approach to understanding reality.

Sometimes I like what Wilber says (see here and here). Sometimes I don't (see here and here).

David Lane's essay, "Ken Wilber's Eye: Exploring the Danger of Theological Reifications," encapsulates my reasons for don't. 

Basically, Wilber has an annoying egocentric attitude. I talked about this in Integral Egos Gone Wild: WIlber and Cohen relish worship.

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

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

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

Lane expresses some similar sentiments, albeit not as bluntly.

There is a sort of ontological hubris in Wilber’s writing that lacks the open ended sense of wonder that an adventurer in this field should have, particularly when even in this state of awareness we know so little, what to speak of realms yet to be explored.

...The problem with such statements as “I have seen It [God] myself” is that it lacks skepsis and tends by its very language to cut off further discussion or inquiry. Wilber’s continued use of such flowery descriptors as “Divine Spirit itself,” “naked and spontaneous, all pervading and all embracing”, “Buddha nature”, etc., suggests that his real goal is to bring us into his theological ballroom, but in order to accomplish this he misleadingly dresses us up with plausible personal and scientific possibilities.

...I say all of this because Wilber has given us many valuable insights, but they seem hamstrung by his apparent conceit to prefigure and finalize that which is still open for vigorous debate and refutation.

...One yearns for more of Wilber as the explorer and less of Wilber as the pontificator. Perhaps the recent downfall of Andrew Cohen will be the necessary lesson to shock Wilber into realizing this.

As noted above, a well-justified criticism of Ken Wilber is that he doesn't differentiate properly between experiences that can be validated and shared by other people, and experiences that belong only to the person having them.

When I look at a lake in the company of another person, we can validate each other's experience of the scene. "Do you see those cute ducklings? Seems like there are ten of them." "Yes, you're right. I count ten also."

A dream, though, is entirely different.

There's no way I can confirm that your description of a dream is what you actually experienced. And of course, the contents of a dream exist only within the consciousness of the dreamer --not in a shared reality. 

Ken Wilber considers spiritual experiences to be more akin to looking at a lake than to dreaming. This doesn't make sense. Wilber correctly says that only someone who is in the same state of awareness, such as dreaming, can begin to understand what someone else is experiencing.

However, when an experience is private, when it isn't possible for other people to confirm that what is being experienced is part of a shared reality, then trying to equate seeing God with seeing ducklings on a pond strikes me as ludicrous. 

David Lane, also. 

For instance, you cannot appreciate dreaming unless you too have dreamt. That seems obvious. But that doesn’t mean that the dreamer is somehow privileged because of that ability to know the causation or ontological status of that dream.

Thus, while I applaud Wilber’s insistence that we should explore varying regions of consciousness (via mediation or otherwise), I think it is misleading to then pontificate about the “reality” or “truth-value” of such experiences by trying to equate seeing an apple in the sensorimotor arena with seeing God in contemplation and then lambasting those who argue that there may be a difference between them.

Here are some observations that Lane made about Sant Mat's meditation system, especially as taught by Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based organization that he and I were both active members of in the past.

The problem, as I often note on this blog, is that true believers in a religious, mystical, or spritual tradition uncritically accept that their "inner experiences" are objectively true, rather than merely being expressions or results of their beliefs.

I can draw upon my own spiritual tradition to underline this epistemological conundrum. In shabd yoga circles (particularly within Radhasoami branches), it is almost axiomatic that when an initiate goes within during meditation he or she will see the radiant form of their guru who will guide them by light and sound to higher and higher regions of awareness and bliss.

Within Radhasoami Satsang Beas, to give an example from the largest sect of the tradition, meditators almost universally believe that the radiant form is a vision created by their Master’s grace from the audible life stream.

However, Faqir Chand, a longtime practitioner of shabd yoga and later an acknowledged adept, came to an entirely different realization. Due to a series of now famous events, Faqir realized that inner visions of his guru and other fantastic apparitions were projections of his own mind.

I still remember when I gave a copy of Faqir’s life story and teachings (see The Unknowing Sage: The Life and Work of Baba Faqir Chand) to my satsangi friend who was also my local mail woman. I caught up with her a few days later and see looked slightly distraught. I inquired about why and she said, “I started crying after I read about Faqir Chand’s revelations. It made me doubt all that I believed before concerning meditation and the Master’s radiant form.”

So let’s agree with Wilber that in order to access the inner sound current and explore subtler and subtler realms of consciousness one has to engage in some sort of meditation technique (or something similar to it). But what does that then mean in terms of “reality” or truth value?

Isn’t the real issue not one of worldspaces (that is an obvious given) and not even Kosmic addresses (don’t we already know this from from drugs and dreaming?), but of competing interpretations of what such inner and outer states mean?