Church of the Churchless

We humans think we're special. What makes us believe that?

Oh, you're so special! Just about every parent has thought this about a child. Their child. Because in the realm of parenthood, as in Lake Woebegon, every child is above average. 

Ditto for us humans as a whole.

Why, it's just so obvious that Homo sapiens is a unique species. Somewhat like other animals, of course. But on the whole we're so special. 

Ditto for every religion humans have come up with.

Every religion, faith, spiritual belief system, mystical practice, and meditation approach considers that it is uniquely able to bring believers closer to truth, God, ultimate reality, enlightenment, whatever.

It isn't difficult for people to come up with reasons for why they're so special. There's a tougher question, though, that doesn't even get asked very often, much less answered.

What makes us believe that we are unique? Here's how neuroscientist Robert Burton looks at this question in his book, "A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind."

Perhaps one of the major driving forces in modern neuroscience is the belief that we are uniqiue and that this uniqueness can be established through biological evidence. How ironic, given that our own sense of uniqueness is itself driven by our biology.

It is our sense of agency, ownership, and a unique sense of self that propels both our need to understand our uniqueness and the concurrent sense to make this determination. I am reminded of the myth of Sisyphus, where poor old Sisyphus is condemned for all eternity to push the rock up the hill, watch it roll down to the bottom, and then begins again.

If it is our fate to have evolved a brain that believes it can solve a problem it is instrumental in creating, aren't we better off recognizing this paradoxical aspect of our biology rather than continuing to draw far-reaching metaphysical conclusions about the nature of man based upon our inherent mental limitations?

Interesting. I think Burton is on to something here. Something that needs to be considered by everybody. Scientists, religious believers, everybody. 

It relates to Burton's earlier book, "On Being Certain," which I blogged about here. When we have a feeling of knowing something, we don't know where that feeling comes from. However, the conscious sense of "I know" arises from unconscious mysterious depths.

Likewise, our feeling of uniqueness -- which just seems so damn obvious -- emanates from brain processes we have no awareness of. It is only through neuroscience that we can even get a glimpse of what we don't know.

Burton writes:

It is hard to imagine how we might think of ourselves if we could step back from those involuntary mental sensations that steer our thoughts about the mind into a maze of blind alleys and inescapable paradoxes. Even so, such a vision must be our idealized albeit unobtainable goal.

Though we cannot step outside the cognitive constraints imposed by these involuntary mental sensations, we can at least acknowledge the profound role they play in generating our thoughts about our minds.

...If there is anything unique about the human condition, it is our biologically prompted feeling of uniqueness that drives much of contemporary thought about the human condition.

Economic Times story casts light on guru's business connections

Ah, Indian gurus have come a long way. Question is, a long way from what? Meaning...

The traditional image of Indian gurus was of a deeply spiritual, ascetic, non-materialistic seeker of cosmic truth. The guru eschewed the maya of worldly entanglements, having his (or rarely, her) sights on lofty enlightenment.

Times have changed, at least when it comes to the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh. His predecessors pretty much followed the traditional guru role. 

However, Gurinder Singh has devoted himself to making his family one of the richest in India through complex financial dealings with some relatives who are disciples, Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, a.k.a. the Singh Brothers.

(See Dirty money tied to RSSB guru's Ranbaxy wealth, which has links to other posts on this subject.)

Understand: I have no problem with people making money. I just find it more than a little interesting -- this tale of how an ordinary business man becomes a guru after being appointed by his uncle, then becomes vastly wealthy.

And we're not talking about straightforward aboveboard business dealings here. Not at all.

Read a lengthy recent story in India's Economic Times, "Brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh: Business builders or deal makers?" to learn more about the guru's business connections.

It isn't a pretty picture, though unfortunately the portrait painted of how the Singh brothers make their money probably is all too common these days: corporate executives out to feather their own private financial nest through short-term deals who pay little attention to business ethics and creating value for public shareholders. 

Since June 2008, when the brothers sold their stake in Ranbaxy, Fortis shareholders have earned a compounded annual 4.5%, against a broad market that has returned 5.7%. The story is no different in Religare Enterprises—their other big business.

This company, which is effectively their holding company in financial services and has applied for a banking licence, has seen its balance sheet grow five times in five years. But, in this period, it has eroded shareholder wealth at a compounded rate of -2.5%. In just over a decade in business— Malvinder, 40, and Shivinder, 38—have seen a blur of corporate activity, a level most entrepreneurs of a comparable size see in a lifetime.

..."They haven't articulated a clear strategy in business building," says Shriram Subramanian, founder and MD, InGovern Research Services, a proxy advisory services firm.

"This is another instance where the promoter does not consider other investors as partners and works towards creating shareholder wealth. The promoters largely work towards satisfying their own egos and enhancing personal wealth." 

The relationship between the Singh brothers, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, and the RSSB guru comes up at the end of the Economic Times story.

The family's close ties with the Radha Soami sect—a spiritual movement—and its shadow on business choices has also intrigued corporate watchers. Several members on the Fortis and the Religare boards are either followers or have some connection with the sect. According to a distant relative of the brothers, some of this can be traced to the circumstances in which they were thrown into business.

"Remember, they were young when they lost their towering father untimely," he says. "There was tremendous pressure to keep the torch alight. He (Malvinder) saw the paternal side feuding in courts, and believed they were hostile.

He was looking for advisors within the family whom he could trust. So how surprising is it that he fell back on the maternal side of family, who happened to have roots in the Radha Saomi?" Their mother, Nimmi Singh, is the daughter of Maharaj Charanjit Singh Ji, the sect's previous guru. His nephew, Gurinder Dhillon, is the current guru.

His wife, Shabnam Dhillon, owned 8.6% of Religare in March. Their two sons, Gurpreet and Gurkirat, owned 6.48% of Religare in March 2012 but have since exited. Transactions between the listed companies and group entities has not been viewed kindly by the market. In the two-month period following the transfer of their international healthcare assets from a private company to the public listed company, the Fortis stock lost 25%.

"The deal will not pass as squeaky clean if evaluated from the corporate governance and ethical points of view," says Ambareesh Baliga, an analyst. "In fact, it may raise a few logical questions even though it may be flawless, legally speaking." "They should have revealed the number of employees on the payroll of the private company," says another analyst, on the condition of anonymity.

From my perspective it seems kind of strange that, here in the United States at least, leading politicians have to file annual financial statements regarding their income, net wealth, investments, and so on.

But with Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family we have a spiritual leader who is much more secretive about his financial dealings, even though supposedly his moral/ethical stature is much higher than that of politicians. After all, to RSSB devotees the guru is considered to be God in human form.

A very rich God.

Three ways of dealing with anxiety about death

Nicholas Humphrey's "Soul Dust" is one of those books that I both want to never end, and am eager to come to the end of. Like I said in a previous post, I'm loving the book. 

So I want to keep enjoying the chapter or so that I read each morning. However, I also am curious to learn how Humphrey ends his book (last chapter comes up tomorrow).

Thus reading this book is somewhat akin to dealing with the knowledge that each of us will die one day. We don't like the idea of living coming to an end, while having an understandable curiosity about what that end will be like.

Here's how Humphrey neatly encapsulates the ways people use to deal with the peculiarly human knowledge of life's finitude (other animals apparently don't anticipate their eventual demise).

I will review -- or at any rate visit -- three strategies of restoring meaning to life that are widely on display as human responses to anxiety about death.

Discount the future -- and live for the present.
Disindividuate -- and identify yourself with cultural entities that will survive you. 
Deny the finality of bodily death -- and believe the individual self to be immortal. 

None of these strategies works perfectly.

Each has its place in the anxiety-reducing armamentarium. I've used all three, and continue to do so, albeit in a much different fashion from what I did before in my religious true-believing days. (In another post I'll explain how I can both accept and deny the finality of bodily death.)

Humphrey discusses each.

Living for the present is great. However, it is the extremely rare person (proably nonexistent) who can always be in the now without thinking of then. Like, the moment of one's death. So anxiety lingers about that immutable future event.

Becoming less of a discrete individual is fine. This is the basic notion of Buddhism: tone down your individualism, and you won't mind no longer existing as an individual so much. Creating legacies (children, art, work, social action, etc.) that live on after you are in the same vein. But symbolic survival isn't the same as actual survival.

As Woody Allen said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying."

The last approach, believing in an immortal soul/self, is how most people in the world deal with anxiety about death most effectively. Virtually every religion posits survival of the individual into some sort of afterlife.

Even Buddhism, though its "theology" of rebirth is rather confusing.

Believing, though, isn't the same as knowing. I can know that I am experiencing the present moment, and I can know that I am creating some sort of effect that will most likely live on after me (again, children and resulting grandchildren are a good example). 

Continued existence of my immortal soul, however, is a huge leap of faith. Humphrey does offer up persuasive reasons why people make this leap, including the fact of dreaming and deep sleep -- which show that we can consciously exist when the body is "dead," and wake up again after failing to be aware.

But this doesn't in any way prove the existence of a soul that survives actual bodily death. No matter, for the vast majority of humans. They find comfort and meaning in believing that when they die, they will continue to live in an immaterial form.

Humphrey is dubious that this belief will become extinct anytime soon. Yet...

Given all this, and how much the spiritual health of future generations of our species could depend on it, you may wonder, as I do: is people's belief in the afterlife secure? I suggested above that the one thing that might potentially undermine the belief would be modern science.

...the day may come -- even come soon -- when science will have revealed the illusion of consciousness for what it is, and any rational person will have no choice but to accept the game is up.

Is God a substitute for the social safety net?

It sure seems like people turn more toward God when they face tough times.

If life doesn't give us what we need, the anticipation of better things to come in an afterlife offers hope that eternity in heaven will be much more pleasant than the time we spend on Earth.

Thus an interesting letter in New Scientist hypothesizes that as near-universal health insurance through Obamacare/Affordable Care Act becomes more and more of a reality, religiosity in the United States will decline.

We can only hope.

From Rev Dr Derek Suchard
In his review of Ara Norenzayan's Big Gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict (28 September, p 52), Michael Bond wonders why the US, one of the most economically developed countries, is still among the most religious. This contrasts with the fact that the world's most secure countries tend to be the least religious.

As a systematic theologian, I have been fascinated by that very phenomenon and have a working hypothesis. This Suchard contention is that, in comparison with much of Europe, the US has an underdeveloped healthcare network and social security safety net, which leaves millions of citizens facing catastrophic illness and abject poverty. Such insecurity, either experienced or feared, means active religiosity and membership in a religious organisation proclaiming that God takes care of his own becomes an attractive source of immaterial comfort and hope, as well as often providing real and tangible material support.

If health and social programmes were implemented in the US to the same level of effectiveness and outcome as in much of Europe, religious society in the US would more closely resemble the unchurched Europeans. Obamacare – which seeks to widen healthcare provision – may provide us with a means of testing this hypothesis.

I am willing to predict that, if implemented in full, it will contribute, probably within one child-bearing generation, to the decrease in church attendance and literalist religious beliefs. European levels would be seen within half a century.
Haarlem, The Netherlands

This makes sense. However, even a fully functioning social safety net can't prevent all distressing things from happening to a country's citizens. Most notably, death. 

So Obamacare may lessen the pressure to believe in a loving, caring, nurturing God. But no government program can take away the fear of dying and being non-existent forever. Religions always will be able to promise a benefit -- life eternal -- that earthly institutions are powerless to provide.

Even religious believers, though, appear to care more about the evident here-and-now than an unknown there-and-then. 

For example, here in Oregon climbers regularly get lost on Mt. Hood during stormy winter conditions. Their family typically assembles at Timberline Lodge, where search parties take off from. Understandably, worried relatives express hope that their loved one will be found safe and sound.

But if the lost person turns out to have died, usually a TV interview will include the words: "We know that ____ has gone to a better place and is looking down upon us now." 

That's a wonderful sentiment. I completely understand why a grieving family member will say this. It's a normal human reaction.

Yet my churchless self also can't help but think, "If life is a worse place than the afterlife, why do Christians and other religious believers worry about people dying on a mountain?"

The reason, I suspect, is that religious beliefs are hopes, not certainties.

So the more life seems hopeless, the stronger is the impetus to look forward to a better afterlife. Conversely, when our basic needs are met, whether through our own actions or a social safety net, the certainty of being supported here on Earth makes supernatural "maybe's" seem flimsy.

"Soul Dust" shows how we create an enchanted world

Here's my new loving it book: "Soul Dust," by Nicholas Humphrey. I loved his "Seeing Red" also. Blogged about that earlier book of Humphrey's here and here.

Intimations of "Soul Dust" are evident in this quote from "Seeing Red" that I included in the second post.

My suggestion is that in the course of human evolution, our ancestors who thought of their own consciousness as metaphysically remarkable -- existing outside normal space and time -- would have taken themselves still more seriously as Selves.

The more mysterious and unworldly the qualities of consciousness, the more seriously significant the Self. And the more significant the Self, the greater the boost to human self-confidence and self-importance -- and the greater the value that individuals place on their own and others' lives.

In which case it is easy to see how the very qualities of consciousness that seem to render it so mysterious and magical would have been the occasion for consciousness's becoming a runaway evolutionary success. In fact, those qualities would soon have been designed in. 

Read the Amazon description of "Soul Dust." Check out the reader reviews. I heartily recommend the book to anyone who wants to preserve a sense of an enchanted world while also embracing what science knows about reality.

Having read about half of "Soul Dust," I've filled the margins with lots of highlighted exclamation marks. Humphrey is an excellent writer, an engaging thinker, and seemingly a highly competent psychologist (he's a professor emeritus at the London School of Economics). 

With so many interesting ideas to choose from, I'll take the easy way out in this post and share some of what I read this morning about how humans attribute what actually is within to without -- the world outside our craniums. 

Frequently I take issue with those who claim it is possible to know reality "as it is."

Huh?

First, we Homo sapiens' know reality as it is possible to be known by the unique capabilities of the human brain/body. Second, every person experiences reality in his or her own unique fashion.

My "first" is evident to anyone who goes on a walk with a dog, which posseses a vastly different sense of smell. My "second" is evident to anyone who is married or otherwise knows another person intimately.

Vive la différence, as they say. 

It's difficult to do justice to Humphrey's prose by paraphrasing it. So here's some quotes from his The Enchanted World chapter. 

The attribution of these phenomenal qualities to impersonal things really is a category mistake -- a philosophial error where a property is being ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property.

....If it is an error, however, is it one that you ought to regret? My answer, as I trust you will have seen by now, is no: quite the opposite. For it is precisely this misattribution of phenomenal qualities that gives conscious human beings the impression that they live surrounded by things of unaccountable loveliness in their own right.

What matters is psychological impact, not philosophical rectitude. And, psychologically, the result is that you come to inhabit an enchanted world. What would persuade you that it is indeed you who are the enchanter, you who are, as it were, coloring things with the fairy dust of your own consciousness? 

...Borrowed phenomenality transforms the world into an awesome place. How often have you stared into a flaming fire, listened to the hoot of an owl in a dark wood, dangled your feet in a cold stream, or watched the sun setting in a blaze of color and been knocked back by the transcendent beauty of it? 

...The impression you got that the qualities inhere in the things as such is, we have seen, all part of the illusion. But even as you celebrate the things for being themselves, it will not escape you that it is a peculiarly generous kind of self-sufficiency, where things are self-sufficient in ways that are the very qualities you care about.

The things are singing your song. No wonder that people sometimes lose track of who is the object and who is the subject of this magical relationship. 

...So what is going on? I want to describe it as follows. It is as if when you see and hear and touch and taste things, some of the magic of your phenomenal sensation is rubbing off onto the things as such. And this has the extraordinary result of making it seem to you as if the things themselves possess phenomenal qualities. 

As if things out there in the world have an extra dimension of subjective presence. Maybe even as if you have a private line to them, as if they are imbued with your subjectivity. 

But of course none of this makes sense! We have established in the first chapters of the book that the phenomenal properties of sensation are the properties of a very special kind of activity you are creating inside your head. 

What is more, they are illusory, "impossible" properties. There is therefore no way that these properties can be properties of things out there in the world. 

...At every opportunity you find yourself projecting your own phenomenal experience out into the world of things. Or rather, I should say, you do not find yourself doing this except when, as with the table, the result seems so bizarre: most of the time you never notice your own role in giving things their marvelous qualities -- you simply assume that is the way they are made.

Marvelous. Modern neuroscience is telling us...

There is no God. But each of us is a god of sorts.

We make the world in our own image. Then behold it and say, "Creation is good." Or perhaps, "Creation sucks." Either way, what we sense outside of us is what we have fashioned inside of us.

Sung: the only Tai Chi most people need to know

Relax. Relax. Relax. 

There. Really understand what "relax" means, and you've pretty much mastered the essence of Tai Chi. So said Cheng Man-ch'ing, one of the most eminent teachers of Tai Chi.

Relax (sung). My teacher must have repeated these words many times each day. 'Relax! Relax! Relax completely! The whole body should completely relax!' Otherwise he said, 'Not relaxed, then you are like a punching bag.' 

To comment on the single word sung is extremely difficult. If you can relax completely, then the rest is easy. Here I have written down what my teacher told me daily in order to make his teachings understandable to others.

Relax means to soften the tendons and blood vessels of the whole body. You cannot permit even a little tension. This is known as "A soft waist that can fold a hundred times as if it had no bones." If you had no bones and only ligaments, then the ligaments could relax and open up.

But most people aren't interested in learning Tai Chi as a movement art. The forms take a long time to learn. Even longer to feel comfortable doing. Longer still to practice (or "play") proficiently. 

I've been learning Tai Chi for about nine years. I'm still a beginner. Nonetheless, I'm starting to appreciate the importance of sung, relaxation, physical and psychological movement without tension.

Everybody can benefit by letting go, relaxing, becoming like flowing water instead of rigid ice.

Last week I saw a demonstration of how sung, relaxing, works in Tai Chi push hands. My instructor, Warren, was pushing hands with Eric, a fit, strong fellow Tai Chi student. 

Here's a video that shows what pushing hands looks like. It's much more of a collaborative dance than a competition. An opportunity to practice sung, relaxation. Which isn't limpness. Sung is tensionless energy.

 

Warren and Eric were pushing hands much like the two men were at the beginning of the video. Except maybe a bit more freestyle. Periodically Warren, the instructor, would take Eric's center -- moving him off balance.

After they finished, Warren asked Eric "How did that feel?" Eric replied, "Good. Except when you took my center." Warren said, "And when did that happen?" 

Eric thought for a few seconds. During that time a thought popped into my head. When Eric tried too hard. That was Eric's answer also.

Warren elaborated. "When I felt you tighten up, push too hard, I re-directed that tension back into you. This is the key to push hands. Wait until you feel tightness in the other person. Then connect to that tension and use it against them."

That was the gist of what he said, at least. Nothing really new to me. However, it also was.

Watching Warren and Eric, I better understood how self-defeating rigid reactions are, whether physical or psychological. Since, I've been doing some sung practice of my own without any physical Tai Chi involved.

Some common sayings (in the United States, at least) capture what the issue is. He yanked my chain. Or She pushed my buttons. 

Meaning, the other person got me upset, rattled, off balance. Why? Because of a lack of sung, relaxation, looseness.

If a chain isn't firmly fixed to something, it can't be yanked. If a button isn't tightly wired to an apparatus, it won't have any effect when pushed. 

It is much more difficult for someone or something to bother us if we soften up, just as it is much more difficult for someone or something to push us off balance physically if we relax. (This video shows how re-direction can work in Tai Chi from a marital arts perspective.)

So I've been paying more attention to that moment when something happens and I start to tighten up. Again, either psychologically or physically.

Immediately relaxing, softening, letting go of tension -- that helps a lot. Most disturbing happenings in life don't require an "all hands on deck" reaction. A driver who cuts me off. A comment that offends me. A news story that irks me.

Letting it go. Redirecting the incoming energy (which, of course, is mine, since almost always what I have to deal with is my own psychological response, not someone else's physical action).

I don't like the word "spirituality" any more. Doesn't mean much to me, since I no longer believe in spirit as a supernatural entity. Still...

There's good reason to say that sung, relaxation, not trying so hard, this is the key to being spiritual. After all, Cheng Man-ch'ing also says:

Sink (ch'en). If someone can relax completely, then this is ch'en. If the ligaments and blood vessels relax, then the whole body (of which they are a part) sinks down.

Basically, ch'en and sung are the same thing. Ch'en means not floating. Floating violates Tai Chi Chuan. If your body can sink, this already is good, but you must also make the chi sink. If the chi sinks, then the spirit (shen) gathers. That is very useful note: "When the shen is gathered the mind becomes clear."

Unbiased thought or pure perception is impossible: Neuroscience 101

Like I said before, now it's really tough for me to read books that reflect pre-scientific understanding of the human mind.

Or to seriously consider any form of spirituality/meditation/philosophy that doesn't address what Robert Burton, M.D. says in the opening pages of his "A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves."

Our brains possess involuntary mechanisms that make unbiased thought impossible yet create the illusion that we are rational creatures capable of fully understanding the mind created by those same mechanisms.

Our brains have evolved piecemeal; contradictions, inconsistency, and paradox are hardwired into our cognitive machinery.

We are hardwired to experience unjustified feelings about ourselves, our thoughts, and our actions; we possess an irrepressible curiosity and desire to understand how the world works; we have developed an uncanny ability to see patterns whether or not they exist outside of our perceptions.

...For neuroscientists and philosophers, as with the rest of us, the visceral feeling of knowing you are right is far more convincing than the thought that we have limits to our powers of reason.

...At the purely intellectual level, even the most science-impaired among us understand that mental states, no matter how seemingly psychological in origin, ultimately arise out of brain states. Everything we experience is generated by mindless brain cells and synapses.

Nevertheless, we cannot shake the contrary feeling that there is a personal "I" that is sufficiently separate from these states to have an understanding of this proposition.

Pay special attention to that last sentence from Burton.

This applies not only to the everyday sense of me-ness, but to the almost ubiquitous religious belief in a soul or some other form of non-material consciousness separate from the goings-on in the brain.

Burton says that he, along with everyone else, has a feeling of a special "I" that is both writing and reading the sentence being composed. I have that same feeling as I write this blog post. Yet that feeling is generated by the brain which is doing a hell of a lot of unseen, unknown work behind the scenes of conscious awareness.

The spatial qualities of the experience of a mind arise from subconscious brain mechanisms. Our thoughts about the dimensions of mind aren't similarly constrained by our biology. Conceptually, the mind can be anything that we imagine.

Which explains the amazing imaginative quality of the world's holy books, mystical teachings, New Age fantasizing, blue sky philosophizing, and such. We can imagine anything. But imagination doesn't tell us how the brain is producing those imaginings.

Similarly, we aren't aware of how we are aware of sensory perceptions such as seeing things. This allows people to blather on in books about Buddhism and non-duality (among others) about "pure perception" lacking any cognitive component that could veil the reality of what is simply there.

Not true. Burton's speaks of seeing the flight of a moving Frisbee.

There is nothing in the retinal signal that can distinguish between the perception of the image moving as a result of eye movement or actual movement of the object in the external world. 

What your eyes see is insufficient to determine whether a Frisbee is zipping by at high speed, or is actually hovering motionless in front of you, with the illusion of the Frisbee's movement being created by your rapidly scanning eyes. 

It's only by having past knowledge of what a Frisbee flight path looks like and the knowledge that you are out playing Frisbee with a friend that allows you to unequivocally "see" the Frisbee in flight. 

This visual perception is made by the brain, not the eye, and is the result of the brain using both visual input and prior knowledge to calculate the likelihood that the Frisbee is actually in motion. (A similar visual ambiguity occurs when you try to decide whether it's your train or the train on an adjacent track that is pulling out of the station.)

Bottom line, given our inability to intuitively understand how the brain produces conscious awareness:

There is no alternative to the scientific method for studying the physical world.

Buddhism is too serious and unscientific for me

I must really be entering the churchless deep end. Which is great! I enjoy diving into the depths of reality, rather than swimming around in the shallows of religious and philosophical concepts.

For a long time I've enjoyed reading Buddhist books, so long as they aren't overly traditional. But now even edgy writings like "Rebel Buddha" seem too dogmatic to me. How can this quote be justified?

Is mind the brain or a by-product of the brain? Is it chemicals and neurotransmitters lighting up pathways in the brain that spark sensation, thought, and feeling, and lead up to the brilliance of consciousness? That's basically the materialist view of neuroscience, which sees mind as a function of the brain. 

From a Buddhist point of view, however, mind and body are separate entities. While the brain and its functions undoubtedly do give rise to certain coarse levels of mental phenomena, mind in its more subtle and ultimate sense is not material or necessarily tied to any physical base.

Well, those are nice thoughts. The author, Dzogchen Ponlop, won't be kicked out of the Buddhist Club for sticking with the standard party line. But it isn't very rebellious of him to accept some Buddhist dogma that doesn't have any demonstrable evidence standing behind it other than wishful thinking.

As I've noted before, a simple experiment will prove Ponlop wrong. Let Buddhist leaders select the most advanced, enlightened, meditation-expert among them. Then have this guy (or, unlikely, gal) be administered anesthesia that knocks him out.

Will his mind still be conscious? Will he be able to demonstrate that his "subtle and ultimate" form of mind is still operating, because it isn't material or tied to his physical brain? I seriously doubt it.

In some respects Buddhism is pleasingly in line with modern neuroscience. For example, both posit that we humans lack a "self" as that is usually understood: something permanent, likely non-material, different from the goings-on of the brain.

But when Buddhists revert to pre-scientific understanding of the brain/mind, I part company with them. The Buddha, assuming such a person actually existed, seems to have come to some wise observations about human nature.

However, he had an extremely primitive knowledge (zero, essentially) of how the brain works. Unfortunately, this ignorance seems to be shared by quite a few contemporary Buddhist writers/teachers, who can compose an entire book without a single mention of basic neuroscientific facts.

I'm also turned off by how serious Buddhism tends to be. Practices to be followed. Discipline to be adhered to. Lineages to be respected. Mindfulness to be attended to. 

Nothing wrong with all this.

I just get to wondering, lighten up, Buddhists; don't take this "end of suffering" thing so damn seriously. For people who don't believe they have a self, they sure can sound very pre-occupied with the condition of the self that they don't have.

Doesn't have to be this way. I'm a fan of Three Laughers at Tiger Ravine. That story shows that Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian precepts can be taken lightly. 

On the whole, though, I seem to be on the trajectory described by Richard Carrier in his "From Taoist to Infidel." 

I was a happy Taoist for many years... But I had never stopped my private readings in the sciences, and it did not take long for me to realize that everything I had experienced through Taoism had a natural explanation.

At the same time, the more I studied my religious text the more I came to disagree with certain parts of it. Since the One True Religion could not be faulty even in part, this brought me to realize that Taoism was not sacred or divine, but just an outpouring of very admirable and ingenious, but ultimately fallible human wisdom. That did not diminish its merit, but it did lead me to think outside the box.

More and more I found I agreed with Confucians against the Taoists, but still sided with the Taoists against the Confucians on other issues, and in the dance of thesis and antithesis I came to my own synthesis, which can now be described as a science-based secular humanism rooted in a metaphysical naturalism.

More and more I found brilliant wisdom in Western philosophers like Epicurus or Seneca, or Ayer or Hume, and so my worldview became more ecclectic and for that reason more perfect: by drawing the best from many points of view, I was purging myself of the faults of relying on only one.

One sip of coffee is more real than a thousand thoughts of God

I've drunk a lot of coffee in my life. Also, thought a lot about God.

What I've concluded after all these years (65, to be exact) is that a single sip of coffee brings me hugely closer to reality than a thousand God-thoughts.

I could have said "a million," because the gap is so wide between (1) something that actually exists in the world beyond the human brain, and (2) something that exists only as an abstract human conception.

In no way do I call myself a Buddhist. But there are many aspects of Buddhism that I find appealing, along with many that I reject. The notion of spaciousness is one that I like, though I have my own take on it.

Usually people tend to relax the body by concentrating on different parts. Real relaxation comes when you relax from within, for then everything else will ease itself out quite naturally.

When you begin to practice, you center yourself, in touch with your "soft spot", and just remain there. You need not focus on anything in particular to begin with. Just be spacious, and allow thoughts and emotions to settle. If you do so, then later, when you use a method such as watching the breath, your attention will more easily be on your breathing.

There is no particular point on the breath on which you need to focus, it is simply the process of breathing. Twenty-five percent of your attention is on the breath, and seventy-five percent is relaxed. Try to actually identify with the breathing, rather than just watching it. You may choose an object, like a flower, for example, to focus upon. Sometimes you are taught to visualize a light on the forehead, or in the heart. Sometimes a sound or a mantra can be used.

But at the beginning it is best to simply be spacious, like the sky. Think of yourself as the sky, holding the whole universe.

Like Madonna, albeit with a lyrics sex change, I find myself a material guy living in a material world.

Pretending otherwise by embracing thoughts of God, soul, spirit, heaven, angels, and other supernatural imaginings not apparent to the senses either directly or indirectly leads to the non-spacious realm that exists only within the human brain.

Which, of course, is also material. However, looking out provides a vision of vistas unknown to those who focus on contents of their own psyche that have no connection with the outside world. 

A cup of coffee exists as objective fact.

Other people can testify to the reality of the coffee that I raise to my lips. Laboratory equipment can measure the coffee's qualities. Predictions can be made of the coffee's effect on my mind and body. God and other supernatural concepts, though, are merely abstract thought-objects, not real world-objects.

Buddhism, Zen variety, advises enlightenment seekers to chop wood and carry water. Note: not think thoughts and imagine imaginations. 

Chopping is done to wood. Carrying is done to water. But thinking thoughts and imagining imaginations are recursive, confining, within-cranium activities. Important and worthwhile, certainly. Unspacious and unsatisfying, though.

Compared to living spaciously in the real world beyond the human brain. I confirm this every time I go for an evening dog walk. Which is just about every day.

It's easy to get caught up in my own thoughts and imaginings while walking along with older dog Serena and younger dog Zuzu. Naturally at those moments I'm aware of where I am, but only marginally. To borrow a Buddhist term, I'm acutely mindful of what my own mind is churning out, yet only minimally aware of what surrounds me.

Which, when I return to focusing my material senses on the material world, is more satisfyingly solidly real than the thoughts, feelings, and such that exist only as private neurological productions.

Here's Serena ahead of me on a recent near-sunset dog walk along the Metolius RIver in central Oregon.

The golden soon-to-fall deciduous leaves contrasted beautifully with the reddish bark of the Ponderosas. Thinking about wispy supernatural nothings seems bizarrely absurd when such evocative natural somethings surround me.

A few days previous I'd paused the dog walk to take out my iPhone and capture an after-sunset shot of the moon perched over fir trees and Spring Lake near our western Oregon home.

i realize that religious believers would say, "Both of these photos reflect the glory of God's creation." To which I reply: nice thought. I'll stick with my directly experienced reality.

Life is too short and too precious to waste by living within the confines of one's own religiously confined mind, focused on unseen dogmas while failing to embrace the clearly present reality that beckons every waking moment.

Here's some good tips about how to live more spaciously. Check out "How to Be Fully Awake Instead of Living on Autopilot." I heartily agree with...

1. Sit in stillness. Stop moving, stop doing, stop planning and living in the future. You can sit on a cushion or sit in a chair.

2. Go outside and feel the wind on your face, smell the fresh air, and connect with nature. If it’s possible, lie in the grass, stare at the sky, and listen to the birds. Feel your heart open.

3. Connect with another person, smile, and make eye contact. If you observe yourself becoming judgmental or critical, try to see that person as another human being struggling to be happy, just like you.

4. If you have pets, connect with them through touch. Feel their affection. We can communicate with them and learn from them about how to stay in the moment.

5. Tune in to your body, let it move, and feed it well. Practice awareness of your senses. Feel what you are touching, listen to the sounds around you, and smell what’s cooking.

6. Breathe deeply. Count your breaths to 21 when you are driving in your car. Calm down and stay present. Repeat. 

 

Now is the simplest place and time to be

Here's how I've come to look upon now: its the best place to live out my life, because it is the simplest and least complex residence my psyche can reside in.

Also, my inescapable home.

So I might as well embrace what is impossible to be separate from. During my waking hours, I always have to deal in one way or another with what is happening now.

Even if I'm lying down doing nothing, that doing nothing is something.

Question is, how much extra do I add to the inescapable now? Dealing with now is an irreducible minimum experience; adding on some past and future seemingly is optional. (I say "seemingly" because how much free will we have, if any, is unknown.)

There I am, walking along in the Oregon countryside. Moving my legs, choosing where to step, aware of the sights, sounds, and other sensations my senses convey.

Pretty simple stuff to handle.

The only thing that can complicate my walking-along experience is how much my mind drifts into the future or the past, anticipating what is to come, remembering what has happened before.

Yes, it can be argued that those anticipations and rememberings also are happening now. But not in the same way that my walking-along is. I am conjuring up a future and past within my own mind. By contrast, what I experience now has a quality of simply being given to me.

Like they say, the present is a gift.

I'm happiest when life seems clear, simple, straightforward, uncomplicated. That's why I'm so attracted to now. The more I stick with it, the happier I am. Most of my anxieties arise from anticipations and remembrances.

Now, like I said, is inescapable.

I can always deal with it, because I have to. Now is impossible to run away from, to add anything to, to subtract anything from. Even if I'm in a dentist's chair, getting a root canal, that's now. I may not like it; I may feel horrible about it; but whatever now brings, it's something I can handle, since I must.

I've started reading Dzogchen Ponlop's "Rebel Buddha." Looks to be a good book. Buddhism without the religious and cultural bullshit. This section helped stimulate my thoughts about now.

Normally our mind is a whirlwind of thought, so "peace" is the calming down of the mental agitation and stress caused by this whirlwind.

Not only are our minds busy thinking, our thoughts are usually aimed backward or forward, as we relive past events or obsessively imagine and prepare for the future. We usually don't experience the present moment at all.

As long as this process continues, our mind never comes to rest. It's difficult to feel any sense of contentment or satisfaction living in a remembered past or in a future that's mostly projection and speculation.

If we ever do arrive at a moment we've imagined, we're already preparing for another future -- a better, brighter one... When we're not being pulled into the past or future, we can relax and begin to genuinely experience the present moment. 

Sorting out your wantings with a thought cloud

Obviously I don't know how your brain/mind works.

Heck, I don't even know how my brain/mind works, even though so far as I, neuroscience, and Buddhism can tell, there is no difference between me and my brain/mind.

(From here on out I'll just say "mind" instead of "brain/mind," since the mind is the brain in action.)

Nevertheless, what I feel when I ponder some subject is that thought clouds, for lack of a better term, start to form and float around within conscious awareness. 

Each is a concept of sorts. But maybe more like a feeling. Or an intuition. Regardless, they arrange and rearrange themselves in fascinating ways, clustering together here, breaking apart there.

I can't say that I see the thought clouds. Also can't say that I don't see them. It isn't like physical seeing, in any case. Yet more than an abstraction. These suckers have some substance, albeit mental or psychological.

Anyway...

This morning during my alone meditative time I had the notion of blurting out to myself, as spontaneously, honestly, and quickly as I could, stuff that I wanted. Desired to have happen. Lusted and longed for.

Interesting experience. Give it a try yourself. It felt like therapy, in a way. Me relating to me. Me telling me my innermost wants and desires. Me feeling free to be brutally frank with me.

I'm not going to share very much of what popped into my head. I don't think this is desirable for anyone who does this. The point isn't to communicate with someone else. It is to better get in touch with yourself, to get a feel for the (likely) wild and crazy wantings cascading out of the recesses of your mind.

What I found is that pretty quickly my thought cloud wantings began to sort themselves out. Some rose, while some descended. Some had a magnetic attraction with other wantings; some were repelled by antagonistic desires.

For example:

I want to live forever. 
I don't want to die. 
I want to know the truth about reality.
I want to be happy.
I want to enjoy life as long as I can. 

All true. But not all friendly compatible. 

I realized that the truth is, I'm not going to live forever. Believing this conflcts with my desire to know the truth about reality. 

Not wanting to die -- a negative "want" that also is true. Yet the anxiety of denying death conflicts with wanting to be happy and enjoying life. Brooding over dying in a neurotic Woody Allen manner isn't my idea of a great time.

Now, this may sound rather trite.

But my thought cloud experience actually was pretty darn enlightening. I saw more clearly than I had realized before that some wants floating around in my mind were both more important to me than other wants, and that, indeed, these want-clusters were at odds.

Well, I guess I knew this before. But I didn't know that I knew it, if you get what I mean (not even sure that I do).

There's a part of me that still wants religious fantasies to be true. That part blurted out "I want to live forever" when I asked myself what I wanted. Yet...

I value truth. I value knowing reality as it is, not as how I want it to be. I value being happy in the here-and-now, not an imagined there-and-then. I value smiling over frowning.

So I learned something about my wants. Which fit together well. Which don't. Hard to explain beyond this what I got out of my Wanting Thought Cloud Experiment. Like I said, try it yourself. Your results will vary. 

Imagine how you felt when you still believed

Almost everybody has believed in imaginary things. 

God. Angels. Bigfoot. Flying saucers. Soul. That the barista at the coffee shop is really attracted to you when he/she smiles while handing over your drink.

The list is endless. Because it feels good to believe in things that we want to be real, but almost certainly aren't. 

How do we tell the difference between reality and illusion, fact and belief, actuality and hope? By using an everyday form of the scientific method: predict what would happen if your belief really is true.

If that prediction comes to pass, or if the experiment is repeated, turns out to happen more often than would be expected by chance, you might have yourself a real live fact here, not a hoped-for belief.

Here's a problem, though: it's tough to test predictions when the thing being tested is nowhere to be found.

You could see how the barista reacts to a friendlier than business-like conversation, but how is it possible to see how God, angels, Bigfoot, or flying saucers react to an experimental interrogation? 

I'm not saying that only readily evident things exist. Gravity is real, yet invisible. All we see are its effects, not the thing itself (which, according to Einstein, is curved space-time). But predictions about invisible entities can be made if the thing has demonstrable regular effects in the world.

So this is one reason beliefs about God, soul, angels, the afterlife, heaven, hell, and such can't be tested. There is no sign that they even exist. Not surprisingly, religions usually stress faith over experimentation.

I used to believe in God. Also, in a guru who was considered to be God in human form. I believed that I had, or rather was, a soul which could travel back to God -- either after I died or in this very lifetime. I believed that God, guru, and karma were directing what happened to me, which meant that both pleasant and unpleasant experiences were linked to a Big Cosmic Picture.

All of those beliefs felt good.

They felt like a warm coccoon, sheltering me from the harshness of reality. Though I followed an Eastern meditative practice, I wasn't much different from a Christian who takes comfort in believing "Jesus loves me; He has a plan for me."

I can still recall, even reexperience, those enjoyable feelings that came from believing. All I have to do is put myself back into the state of mind I was in during my true-believing days. 

Impossible? Self-deception? Not really. I look upon this as being akin to getting a benefit from a placebo, even though the patient knows there is no active ingredient in the fake treatment. 

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

I talk to God, even though I don't believe God exists. I also talk to my mother, even though she is dead and I don't believe she still exists in any conscious form. 

I do these things because they make me feel good. Almost as good as when I did believe in God, and when my mother was still alive. Why not? Pleasurable feelings aren't out there in the world; they are in here, in our personal brain-based consciousness. 

So if, like me, you have given up believing in this and that (such as God), try remembering how you felt when you did believe.

What produced that feeling? Does the feeling still exist? Do you need to believe in the exact same thing(s) with the same faith-based fervor to re-experience the feeling? If everything seemed right with the world when you believed in something that you now consider to be untrue, what prevents you from having that same warm feeling right now?

I don't claim to have firm answeres to these questions. I'm just suggesting that whatever benefits someone gets from a belief system don't have to be given up just because belief has been replaced by doubt. 

Those benefits were produced by the person's brain. Non-existent things like God or soul can't produce effects. Whatever warm and fuzzy feelings religious people have come from themselves, their own brains, not from an invisible entity that has no demonstrable effects in the world.

Just as it appears that a sugar pill can have positive health effects, even if recognized as a placebo, so can a belief, even if recognized as being untrue. Novels, television shows, and movies are recognized as being fictional, yet generate strong real emotions nonetheless.

No need to give up the good feelings a false belief brings. Keep the feelings. Give up considering the belief is true.

Make your own meaning... no validation required

I love the idea that life is meaningless.

It fills me with joy to think that the cosmos doesn't give a crap about me, nor does the God who doesn't exist, nor the oft-mentioned "universe" -- in the sense of the universe is trying to teach me a lesson.

No it isn't. Whatever lesson you or I are going to learn from an experience will come from us. Ditto for meaning.

I used to believe there was an objectively real Meaning of Life. The main goal of life was to figure out what that truth was.

But meaning isn't a fact like "the world is round (or nearly round)." Sure, many people consider there's a single fact which, when accepted, gives the most meaning to life. Such as, "Jesus died for our sins."

This is absurd. Just look around.

You'll find all kinds of people leading all kinds of meaningful lives who believe in all varieties of religions/ philosophies/ spiritual paths, or who embrace the lack thereof. It's crazy to consider that only some people who believe in certain things are able to lead meaningful lives.

Yet the habit dies hard of assuming that meaning is out there in a realm of objective reality, rather than in here inside our subjective consciousness.

More precisely: we lack confidence in our personal Meaning of Life, with those capital letters to show the importance of this notion; but we are fine with accepting mini-meanings in our daily lives. Most of us want validation for our big major overarching Meaning of Life, while standing proud, strong, and alone when it comes to those mini-meanings.

Question is, where's the dividing line between the two? In fact, is there one?

Each of us likes certain music. We like certain books. We like certain television shows. We like certain types of other people for love, sex, companionship, whatever. We like certain breeds of dogs, or mutts. We like certain parts of the world. We like certain phones, computers, cars, clothes, jewelry. We like certain sports, physical activities, artistic pursuits.

These "likes" are meaningful for us. When they are absent from our lives, we aren't as happy. Life doesn't seem as appealing. So obviously they are important. 

However, usually we don't obsess with finding validation for what we like, what attracts us, what turns us on. We don't read books or go to meetings where the question "Is Chinese food better than Italian food?" is discussed in depth.

We just know what we like. We trust that knowing. Going to a movie with a group of friends, it doesn't bother us when everyone else says afterward, "That movie was terrible." We just say, "Hey, I liked it."

So at what point do our likes become valid only if someone else affirms or shares them? At what point do we lose confidence in what we find meaningful in life, and worry about whether other people would agree with our meaning choices?

I can't tell how many books I've bought because I wanted to learn that someone else looked upon life in the same way that I do. Not knowing what number it is, I can at least say... lots.

I'm not seeking facts about the universe, about reality. No, I'm hoping that my subjective feeling of what makes life meaningful will get a validation stamp from another person. There isn't any good reason why I want this to happen; as noted above, I don't do this for my mini-likes, like strawberries.

I have spent exactly zero minutes in my 64 years of living worrying about whether I should like the taste of strawberries as much as I do. I simply enjoy eating strawberries.

But when it comes to whether I should like my philosophy of life, my overarching attitude toward existence, my feelings about The Meaning of It All -- for some reason I want outside validation for what, in essence, are simply other forms of "likes." 

I like strawberries. I like my weird unique way that I meditate in the morning. I like my cobbled-together mish-mash of a philosophy that combines Taoism, Buddhism, neuroscience, martial arts, progressive politics, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Really, I shouldn't need anyone else to give me a thumbs-up (or thumbs-down) on any of these likes. If someone told me, "You shouldn't like strawberries," I wouldn't take them at all seriously. I'd just smile and say, "Thanks for your opinion. Your useless opinion."

Again, I know what I like when it comes to food. Just as I do when it comes to what makes life meaningful for me in other ways. Yet I'm much more inclined to get defensive and argumentative when someone challenges my big Meaning of Life "like," than my mini-fruit on my cereal "like." 

Both are subjective. Both are purely dependent on me. Both are incapable of being proven demonstrably true by anyone else. But for most of my life I've wanted to look upon my Philosophy of Life as something objectively real, rather than a personal preference. 

Those days, thankfully, seem to be coming to an end. I'm much more comfortable now with accepting that whatever I find to be meaningful doesn't need validation. It is what it is. What I like.