Church of the Churchless

Meditation comes in two forms: "focused attention" and "open monitoring"

It's easy to be distracted by the seemingly many forms of meditative practices. Wikipedia offers a pretty good rundown of them. 

Naturally, devotees of the various practices almost always believe that theirs is the best. I fell into this delusion during the 35 years or so when I meditated every day for one to two-and-a-half hours.

After all, my meditation practice was based on a secret mantra -- the Five Holy Names! Which, actually, weren't so secret.

But no matter. The power of the mantra supposedly came from the divine energy of the guru who initiated me. So even if some non-initiate repeated the Five Holy Names in meditation, this wouldn't have the same effect as us Real Disciples thought we enjoyed.

Pretty crazy, in retrospect.

Thankfully I've now come to understand that while claims of special meditation wonderfulness abound, meditative practices only come in two forms: focused attention and open monitoring. 

Evan Thompson explains them in his book, "Waking, Dreaming, Being."

These terms, although derived from traditional Buddhist meditative vocabularies, were recently coined by scientists and contemplative scholars in order to delineate the specific kinds of mental processes involved in various Buddhist and non-Buddhist meditation practices, ranging from Vipassana to Yoga to Zen.

...In focused attention or concentration meditation, you direct your attention to a chosen object, such as the sensation of the breath entering and leaving your nostrils, and you keep your attention focused on that object from moment to moment. 

Inevitably your mind wanders as distracting thoughts and feelings arise. At some point, you notice your attention is no longer focused on the object. You're instructed simply to recognize that your mind has wandered, to release the distraction, and to return your attention to the object.

...In open monitoring meditation -- or "open awareness" meditation, as I prefer to call it -- you cultivate an "objectless" awareness, which doesn't focus on any explicit object but remains open and attentive to whatever arises in experience from moment to moment.

One way to do this is to relax the focus on an explicit object in focused attention meditation and to emphasize instead the watchful awareness that notices thoughts and feelings as they arise from moment to moment. Eventually you learn to let go of the object of attention and to rest simply in open awareness without any explicit attentional selection.

The meditation practice I was taught back in 1969 by an American yoga teacher was pretty much the same technique as I was taught by an Indian guru in 1971, and is pretty much the same as I engage in now every morning.

How could it be otherwise?

Focused attention and open monitoring -- these are the two flavors meditation comes in. Mix and match as you like; add whatever extra toppings you desire; you'll still be left with focused attention and open monitoring.

Sure, people claim that it is best -- maybe even essential -- to concentrate on this or that (there are, of course, countless this's and that's) in order to benefit the most from meditation.

Others would have us believe that open awareness/monitoring needs to be done in a certain fashion, which obviously seems to belie the point of being open to whatever. 

For most of my meditating years I engaged in both types of practice. I'd repeat a mantra for a while (focused attention), then rest in closed-eyed internal silence, aside from mind chatter, where I simply paid attention to whatever was present in my psyche (open awareness).

I find it amusing how some current devotees of the meditative practice I followed for those 35 years leave comments on this blog along the lines of, "You must have done something wrong to not get any results from your meditation."

That's laughable.

It shows how little they understand about meditation. I diligently engaged in both focused attention and open awareness for an hour or two every day. Currently I do the same, but just for 20 minutes or so.

I enjoyed meditation in the past; I enjoy it now; I expect I'll continue to enjoy it in the future. Over the years I've concentrated on different things, and my sense of open awareness has altered also. 

Where the closed-minded devotees mentioned above go wrong is assuming there's only one way to meditate, and that way will have similar outcomes for everybody who practices it. Both assumptions are false. 

Focused attention and open awareness/monitoring meditation practices can be done in many different ways. Results will vary for every individual.

It's a lot like exercise, which also comes in a limited variety of basic forms: aerobic, strength-building, flexibility/balance, maybe others -- but also in a vast array of specific techniques.

Believing that repeating this mantra or sitting in that posture is the only way to meditate is as misguided as believing that the jogging and lifting free weights are the only ways to exercise.

Open your mind. That's the real benefit of meditation.  

Ten years of Church of the Churchless blogging. I'm thankful.

With the Thanksgiving holiday coming up here in the United States tomorrow, I was trying to decide whether to write something thanks giving'ly for today's blog post. 

Problem is, I don't like forced or expected expressions of any sentiment, including thankfulness.

If it isn't spontaneous and natural, an emotion isn't truly genuine. At least, that's the way I feel. Telling someone, "Say that you love me" -- pointless.

But then I thought about the month and year, November 2014, and realized that it's been almost exactly ten years since I started this Church of the Churchless blog. My first post was November 21, 2004.

(The first month's posts can be perused here.)

This realization stirred up some genuine thankfulness in me. Mostly toward the people who have read my writings, commented on posts, emailed me with praise, criticism, and questions.

I'm deeply grateful to each and every one of you -- including those who have showered me with some wonderfully creative insults and profanity. For them I started a "I Hate Church of the Churchless" blog where haters could leave their entertaining comments. 

For me this blog has been a terrific learning experience. Also, fun.

I never really know what I'm going to say until I finish writing a post. Meaning, the act of trying to communicate my churchless ideas brings out fresh insights. 

As of today this blog has totaled 1,998 posts; 29,056 comments; 2,303,753 page views. Yay, us! You, me, everybody. 

The posts serve as a sort of diary for me. A diary that I can search via the Google box in the right sidebar, something I do frequently. I enjoy going back in time and seeing how my views on various subjects -- God, meditation, morality, whatever -- have changed over the past decade.

There's a trajectory here. Difficult to sum up in a few words, or any words. Yet evident to me. 

By writing every other day or so about what's on my mind philosophically/ spiritually/ scientifically, I feel like I've grown more than I would have if I'd kept my ideas to myself. Everybody is different. For me, trying to express what is ultimately inexpressible -- how I see myself and the world -- brings me more in touch with whoever or whatever the heck I really am.

More and more, I feel there is no such thing as I really am. Which is refreshing. When I started this blog, I felt there was some hidden inner essence of me and reality -- soul and spirit -- that needed discovering. 

Now I've become... I don't know how to say it. 

A mash-up believer of non-religious Buddhism, Taoism, and neuroscience perhaps is the best way I can put it. I don't believe in an unchanging self or soul, nor in life after death. The questions I tried to unravel for over thirty-five years have mostly dissolved for me. 

I haven't arrived at any answers that make sense for anyone other than myself. That's enough for me now: living as happily as possible; doing what I can to make my neighborhood, city, state, nation, and planet a better place; trying to know what can be known, while letting the unknowable rest as it is.

I'll keep on with this here Church of the Churchless until I feel like not keeping on. Don't know when, or if, that will happen. I'm fine with not knowing this, as well as lots of other things. 

What I do know, though, is that I'm thankful for everybody who reads my posts and comments on them. Without you, this blog would be a lonely place.

There are no believers in God at funerals

I really like Julian Baggini's retort to the oft-heard saying, "There are no atheists in foxholes." (Meaning, in desperate situations.)

Which, by the way, isn't true. I can also affirm that there are atheists/agnostics in dentist's chairs. 

Here's what Baggini said in his book, The Ego Trick.

But third, it seems that the charge can be turned around: there are no theists at funerals. Many people say that they believe that death is not the end, but the way people behave at graveyards and crematoria suggests that they don't really believe it.

You may cry and be upset at the prospect of a long separation from someone you love. But I don't think that's how death feels to most people. The parting feels absolute and final.

...Beliefs about what follow life can alter how we respond to death, but it seems that the vast majority of human beings at all times and all places react to the deaths of loved ones in ways which only make sense if at some level they really did think that was the end.

This is perhaps a rare heartening example of the inability of obvious falsehoods to really convince, even when most people officially believe them.

Great points.

The gap between what religious believers pretend to believe is true for them -- death is just a transition to heaven or some other "better place" -- and what they quite obviously actually believe -- death is the end of a person's existence -- is huge. 

On the local evening news I frequently hear Christians saying things like this about a loved one's death: "I know he is joyful with Jesus now," "She's looking down from heaven and is still with us," "The Lord took her for a special reason."

Yet scenes of the funeral show faces of sadness. Nobody is laughing, dancing, ecstatic about the death.

(I leave open the possibility that this might happen in some other cultures with a different attitude toward dying.)

So I think Baggini has pointed out how flimsy most religious faith is. If people truly believed that a better life in heaven awaits the faithful after they die, why don't they kill themselves? Or failing that, rejoice when death befalls a loved one who shared their faith?

The reason is that religious believers aren't sure there is a God, life after death, or heavenly realms. They just hope there is. But that hope is at odds with the facts:

No evidence of God, life after death, or heavenly realms.

Thus as Baggini said, "This is perhaps a rare heartening example of the inability of obvious falsehoods to really convince, even when most people officially believe them." 

Genuine enlightenment is a simple intellectual understanding

Ooh! I bet the title of this blog post will irk spiritual types who believe that enlightenment is some sort  of mystical transformation of consciousness requiring lots of meditation and/or other practices to achieve.

I certainly would have felt that way myself prior to my enlightenment about enlightenment.

But as noted in this recent post, I've come to the understanding that spiritual realization (if this term really means anything) involves seeing through the illusion of a soul/self that is separate and distinct from the body and brain.

In short, there is no self.

No soul. No person sitting inside our head and watching what is being experienced. This is Neuroscience 101. Also Genuine Spirituality 101. (See "Real spirituality is realizing you aren't a soul, or self."

So when non-dual authors and speakers blab on about how there is nothing to do or become in order to realize the truth of non-duality, they're right. In fact, they're so right, they shouldn't be charging for this oh-so-obvious insight.

It's like saying, "Nothing needs to be done to realize the truth of gravity." OK, no argument there.

Gravity is a physical fact, a law of nature. So is non-duality. The human brain isn't divided dualistically. Again, there is no detached observer inside the head who is observing experience. Experience and the experiencer are a single entity: the brain doing its thing as what we call "mind."  

I've begun to lean toward the attitude that, contrary to what Harris and De La Rouviere say in their books, it isn't necessary to engage in meditation practices aimed at a direct intuitive experience of non-duality.

Rather, I argued:

When I look at the Sun set or rise, I still have the sensation that it is moving, while the Earth stands still. However, science tells me this is an illusion. I believe science. My mental image is of the Earth orbiting the Sun. It is only my eyes which deceive me.

Likewise, I don't believe that I have a self or soul. I haven't for quite a while. Yet I still feel like I am looking out at the world in the same way as a rider looks out from his position astride a horse: in control, separate from body.

...Again, after I understand that the Earth revolves around the Sun, I won't look upon a sunrise or sunset in the same way. Eventually that cognitive understanding may morph into an experiential realization of Earth moving and Sun staying still.

Buddhist meditation -- Harris favors the Dzogchen variety -- surely is a proven way of experiencing more fully the reality of no-self. Simply living life with eyes wide open is another way. I doubt that sitting at the feet of a Dzogchen master is necessary to realize there is no self or soul inside my head.

It's always nice to come across someone else who agrees with this basic outlook. My most recent find in this regard is Evan Thompson, the author of "Waking, Dreaming, Being: self and consciousness in neuroscience, meditation, and philosophy."

Thompson's introduction to the book said that it's fine to jump around in it, since the chapters were written to stand by themselves. So I've done just that. After reading about consciousness, pure awareness, and deep sleep, I headed to the final chapter, Knowing: Is the Self an Illusion?

These excerpts from the last few pages of the chapter, and the book, seem right-on to me -- from the perspective of both non-religious Buddhism and modern neuroscience. Enlightenment is a cognitive understanding about the nature of the self, nothing more and nothing less.

The illusion -- or delusion -- is taking the self to have an independent existence, like taking the mirror image to be really in the mirror. Notice that the image as such isn't an illusion; it's the taking of the image to exist in the mirror that's the illusion.

Similarly, it's not the appearance of the self as such that's the illusion; it's taking the self to exist independently that's the illusion.

...Another important point is that undoing this illusion -- through highly developed meditative concentration combined with acute analytical insight -- doesn't mean destroying the appearance of the self as independent; it means not being taken in by the appearance and believing that the self is independent.

This ignorant and deep-seated belief, not the appearance of the self as such, habitually deludes us into thinking, feeling, and acting as if the self were independent.

in my view, the appearance of the self as independent is entirely natural. Whenever we perceive a mind-body stream, either from within or from without, the idea of self -- a subject of experience and an agent of action -- naturally arises.

And when this happens, the self must appear as something distinct from the stream, because that's precisely what a self is -- the dependently arisen and constructed appearance of an independent subject of experience and action.

What I take from this perspective -- and here I state my own view and make no claim that any other Indian yogic philosopher would agree -- is that "enlightenment" or "liberation" -- at least in any sense I would want to affirm -- doesn't consist in dismantling our constructed sense of self, as may happen in certain meditative states.

Rather, it consists in wisdom that includes not being taken in by the appearance of the self as having independent existence while that appearance is nonetheless still there and performing its important I-making function. 

Nor does "enlightenment" or "liberation" consist in somehow abandoning all I-making or "I-ing" -- all self-individuating and self-appropriating activity -- though it does include knowing how to inhabit that activity without being taken in by the appearance of there being an independent self that's performing the activity and controlling what happens.

We could say that the wisdom includes a kind of awakening -- a waking up to the dream of independent existence without having to wake up from the dreaming.

Early on in his book, Thompson discounts the possibility that a non-material self or soul exists. Thus whatever the self is, it is a process, not a thing. Meaning, the self is produced by the actions of a brain/mind/body. It isn't anything independent.

But as he says above, the appearance of an independent self is entirely natural, albeit illusory. It is very much like the appearance of the sun setting: our eyes and brain naturally come to the conclusion that the Earth stands still and the sun moves. 

Through knowledge, though, we can achieve the wisdom to understand that what appears to us as real, actually isn't.

It isn't necessary (or perhaps, possible) to do away with the illusion. However, we can understand its unreality for what it is -- just as shimmering pavement on a desert road is recognized as a mirage, not a pool of water, even though this recogniton leaves the illusion intact.

So if you seek enlightenment, you're better off reading books on neuroscience (along with secular Buddhism, if you like) than sitting at the feet of a guru or meditating a long time. The truth about our "self" isn't hard to find.

No special rights for religion: three churchless thumbs-up

Here's three godless good news pieces that popped into my web browser recently. 

I liked Russ Belville's (a.k.a. Radical Russ) "No More Special Rights for Religion" a lot.

I learned about Belville, who lives in Portland, via our shared interest in supporting Measure 91 -- which was passed by voters this month, leading to legalized recreational marijuana in Oregon.

Along with him, I've also wondered why religious reasons for doing this or that should get more legal standing than personal reasons for doing this or that. After all, holding a religious belief is a personal decision. Why should it be treated as deserving of more respect than a non-religious belief?

Excerpt:

Why do people who claim belief in something objectively unprovable get a free pass for their silly superstitions? You don’t have to be Sikh or Rastafarian or Mormon or Muslim, it is a creed you choose to live by. That creed may require sacrifices of you, like not shaving, smoking weed, wearing sacred undergarments, or praying prostrate five times a day. Great, make your sacrifices, live your life.

But why do these people then demand that public, secular institutions bend to conform to their silly superstitions based on a non-existent authority? What, the Sikh should be able to keep his long hair and beard and funny hat in the Army, but the hippie shouldn’t? Because the Sikh says God told him to, but the hippie says he just prefers it? Sorry, hippie, your own preferences don’t matter; you should have picked a mythological authority to back you up?

If your belief system, your creed, contains inviolate articles of behavior that are inconsistent with a public institution’s inviolate articles of behavior, at what point does the believer’s faith require sacrifices like being unable to join the military? If this guy were fighting for anyone to have long hair, beards, and funny hats in the military, he’d have my respect. Instead, he just wants a special exemption to the rules because he subscribes to a certain mythology.

Another Oregon story struck a blow for common sense: "Atheists Score Major Win in Federal Court." The subject here is akin to what Belville talked about above -- making sincerely-held non-godly beliefs and ethical values equivalent to religious beliefs in the eye of the law.

On Thursday, October 30, Senior District Judge Ancer Haggerty issued a ruling on American Humanist Association v. United States, a case that was brought by the American Humanist Association (AHA) and Jason Holden, a federal prisoner. Holden pushed for the lawsuit because he wanted Humanism — which the AHA defines as “an ethical and life-affirming philosophy free of belief in any gods and other supernatural forces” — recognized as a religion so that his prison would allow for the creation of a Humanist study group.

Haggerty sided with the plaintiffs in his decision, citing existing legal precedent and arguing that denying Humanists the same rights as groups such as Christianity would be highly suspect under the Establishment Clause in the U.S. Constitution, which declares that Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Lastly, what's not to like about... "Satanic Temple challenges policy allowing religious materials to be distributed at public schools."

Hey, if we truly have religious freedom in this country, every religion (and also belief system, in my opinion) needs to be treated equally. Some people revere God; others Satan; still others, their personal values.

Each to his own, since there is no proof that either God or Satan are anything other than imaginary.

The Orange County School Board in Florida currently allows religious groups to distribute religious material, such as Bibles, at public high schools. Atheists sought the same right — to counter the distribution of Bibles — and won. But the school board decided that things had “gotten out of hand” when members of The Satanic Temple recently announced that they wanted to disseminate material on the “philosophy and practice of Satanism.”

The board will vote in the next few months on whether to alter or eliminate the policy. Perhaps ironically, the Satanic Temple will applaud if religious materials are banned because it believes strongly in the separation of church and state.

Who do you want to be? Someone, Anyone, or Nobody?

The existential alternatives in the title of this post were named by brain researcher Susan Greenfield. I came across a mention of them in Julian Baggini's intriguing book, "The Ego Trick: What Does It Mean to be You?"

Here's how Baggini describes the alternatives, based on an interview he did with Greenfield at the 2009 Bristol Festival of Ideas. After sharing these excerpts from his book, I'll add some observations of my own.

Where Greenfield gets a little more speculative is when she imagines the variations in types of selves which might emerge if different types of connections become dominant. She bases this speculation on what I think is a quite useful way of simplifying three forms of subjective experience.

The first she calls the 'Someone' scenario, which is the normal case of 'you being different from someone else'. This is how we almost all, almost always, feel ourselves to be. 'In brain terms, the Someone scenario could be reflected in the forging of idiosyncratic connections, and associations that are unique to your particular experiences, and also leave you open to modification by those.'

Although we tend to think of ourselves as Someones, we are on occcasion also 'Anyones', the second of her scenarios. 'Sometimes in our everyday life, we're all parts of a team, it's where we subsume our own interests, our own individuality, we sacrifice what we personally want to do in favour of the group.' Instead of 'living out an individual life story', Anyone lives out a collective life story.

Although this is benign in moderation, Anyones are malign when they are created by ideologies in which 'you are so constrained in what you do, what you think, what you eat, how you live out your life, what your agenda is, that really you're subsuming your life into the collective life story of that particular ideology... You're living out life as a component, you're just a small part in the very big picture, to the extent that in extreme scenarios, as we know tragically happens at the moment, the individual can be disposed of or can dispose of themselves in the service of the greater narrative.'

The neural basis of this could be that there are 'connections that are so strong that they are more resistant to modification by subsequent experience'.

We also sometimes live life under the third scenario, as Nobodies. 'Human beings have stalked this planet for 100,000 years, [and] we have from time to time indulged in wine, women and song; or drugs and sex and rock and roll, the modern equivalent.

There are moments in most of our lives when we want to "let ourselves go", "blow our minds". The very word "ecstasy" in Greek means to stand outside of yourself. These are moments when we abrogate our sense of self, when we are no longer self-conscious, we're just conscious.' This is what psychologists call depersonalization.

Dancing is one of Greenfield's favourite examples. 'The whole point of dancing is that you let yourself go. You're having a sensational time, that is to say you're putting a premium once again on the senses, as you would as a small child, you're back in the booming buzzing confusion.'

What's interesting about the feeling of being Nobody is that it can be wonderful and dreadful. For instance, most people who take marijuana report depersonalization effects, sometimes quite strongly, and find them pleasant.

But as Roy J. Matthew points out, in clinical psychology 'depersonalization is associated with such unpleasant states of mind as fatigue, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, anxiety, depression, temporal lobe migraine, temporal lobe epilepsy and so on.' Depersonalization disorder is a recognised, distressing condition.

Well, I think Greenfield doesn't emphasize the positive side of Nobody enough. She worries about how video games and other forms of computer technology could suck people into a Nobody Scenario of excessive passive sensation and insufficient active cogitation. 

But her favorite example of Nobody'ness, dancing, certainly doesn't seem dreadful. Not does the general notion of "flow," that pleasant feeling when you're so immersed in an activity, you and the activity come to be almost one. 

I might be garbling what Greenfield is getting at. However, to me the words "I," "You," and "Us" seem to closely relate to her Someone, Anyone, and Nobody respectively. 

Yes, most people identify with "I." We view ourselves as individual entities, selves or souls or whatever. Our nature appears to be distinct from the world. Our subjectivity looks upon the rest of reality as an object. 

Many religions, cults, mystic practices, and spiritual paths offer up a "You" alternative, the Anyone scenario Greenfield describes. In another article about her three ways of being, the dark side of Anyone is laid out.

In the "Anyone" scenario people subsume their individuality to a mass collective mindset, typically revolving a David and Goliath story. The Nazis believed there was a Jewish world-wide conspiracy while Al Qaeda thinks the same about the US. Group members generally all behave the same and lack individuality. On the other hand they are generally emotionally fulfilled, content within the group but angry and contemptuous of outsiders.

Thus the "I" of the individual is subsumed into the "You" of a belief system, which may be embodied in an charismatic leader or guru. The devotees offer their all to the collective, doing whatever is asked of them.

I no longer find this appealing, having experienced both the delights and downsides of belonging to an India-based, guru-centered spiritual organization for many years. After all, what's the point in trying to give up one's "I" just to have it replaced by another "I" -- the personal characteristics demanded by a belief system, religious leader, or such?

One self-centered way of being in the world, "Someone," simply is replaced by another, "Anyone." "I" becomes "You" -- a different someone.

So I'll take Nobody. Or Us.

This strikes me as being both the most scientific and most pleasant way of being. After all, the world is known to be seamlessly interconnected. Neuroscience tells us there is no enduring self or soul inside (or outside) our cranium. 

We are all changeable, malleable beings, albeit with an enduring sense of psychological continuity. We are the world, and the world is us. 

My wife and I have enjoyed learning ballroom dancing over quite a few years. As Greenfield notes, dancing is a good example of the Nobody/Us manner of experiencing. When in the flow, there just seems to be me, my partner, our movement, and the music.

Yes, there are distinctions between us, but blurry ones. She, and I, and our moves, and the music... we are all together. It feels good to be Nobody. Because at that moment Nobody seems like Everybody.

South Park's "Grounded Vindaloop" holds key to reality (or...not)

I'm a big fan of getting my cosmic inspiration from the comic pages and Comedy Central. This week has been a bonanza in that regard. 

Here's what today's Pearls Before Swine had to say about the meaning of existence. In three panels, it nicely encapsulated the human condition. (click to enlarge)

Even more profound was the most recent South Park episode, "Grounded Vindaloop." It blew my mind, and I wasn't even under the influence of any psychoactive or hallucinogenic substances. 

If you watch the episode after taking LSD, I predict that instant enlightenment will be yours. Or insanity. Or both. 

Thankfully, since spending twenty-some minutes watching "Grounded Vindaloop" will tell you much more about the nature of reality than any religious book, the episode can be viewed on Hulu for free. And currently there is a You Tube video of the episode.

Enjoy. While it lasts.

 

There's already a detailed description of the episode on Wikipedia, but naturally it doesn't capture the full existential, paradoxical, and The Matrix'ish flavor of "Grounded Vindaloop." Read it if you must, though.

The episode starts off with Cartman fooling Butters that he is wearing an actual virtual reality (VR) device, Oculus. Which is a real product, slated to be sold in 2015. I'm excited about it, having just watched a You Tube video of a 90 year old grandmother trying out a pre-production Oculus.

I found lots of philosophical profundity in "Grounded Vindaloop." Along with mindless humor, a nice blend. 

Right off the bat, Cartman's assurances to Butters that he was experiencing a virtual reality-enhanced world, even though Butters was just looking through fake goggles and listening to Cartman over a headset, struck me as a metaphor for how religions do much the same:

Make people think they are experiencing another dimension of reality, whereas actually they are living in the same world they always were -- along with the rest of us.

Butters is astounded at what he sees: "My hands!" Yeah, Butters, they look so real because they are real. You've just been fooled by Cartman into believing that the fake goggles give you a heightened perspective.

"Grounded Vindaloop" really gets rolling when the calls start coming from Oculus customer support, who naturally is an Indian guy, "Steve." Soon we are completely confused about what is real reality, and what is virtual reality.

The episode puts The Matrix to shame, having more illusion within illusion loops. Is what's happening a dream? Or could it be a dream within a dream? Or maybe the real world that just seems to be a dream? Or something else entirely?

Steve plays a central role in all this.

I loved how Steve comes to need customer support himself and ends up talking to a version of himself (or maybe it was himself; couldn't tell). This scene fulfils the fantasy of everybody who ends up calling customer support and getting a pleasant guy or gal with an Indian accent who asks, "Have I answered all of your questions and provided good customer service?"

I was curious how the South Park writers would get out of the looping paradoxes and bring the episode to a satisfying conclusion. Pleasingly, Steve's oft-repeated question above was the key. All the South Park guys needed to do was say "Yes."

Make sense? No. Which is why this was a wonderfully fitting way to resolve the episode. One disgruntled reviewer of the episode said:

I have no idea what actually “happened” in “Grounded Vindaloop.”

Well, duh, dude. His next sentence was right-on, though.

I don’t think I’m supposed to.

Just like life, man. Just like life. Get used to it.

Why atheists are more "spiritual" than religious believers

Maybe this statement seems paradoxical to you: I feel more genuinely spiritual now that I've stopped believing in God. 

But it makes good sense to me. Here's the main reason why.

I no longer feel special.

Virtually every religion and spiritual path considers that its adherents have a special relationship with God or whatever other supernatural entity they believe in. 

There are so many chosen people on Earth, they vastly outnumber the unchosen, the non-special group I'm pleased to be a part of.

I understand that feeling special has its own delights.

In my case, I was a member of an India-based spiritual organization which taught that those approved for initiation by the guru had been "marked" to return to God/heaven after a karma-cleansing meditation process.

Cool!

For about 35 years I embraced the enjoyable belief that, out of all the billions of people on this planet, I was one of a relative few who were the special beloveds of the supreme being. 

Of course, devout Christians, Jews, and Muslims feel the same way, along with countless believers in other theological belief systems. 

Eventually I started to realize that all the talk I was hearing about being "humble servants of the Lord and the guru" was, to put it bluntly, a crock of shit. Genuine humility wasn't much to be seen among devotees of my spiritual organization.

Not surprising.

Since members of this group were told over and over that they've been singled out by a higher power to learn cosmic truths and experience realms of reality not available to other human beings, naturally a pervading sense of "tribal" pride was evident throughout the organization.

We were the cool kids in the spiritual lunch room. Other faiths were inferior, since they didn't have the direct connection to God we did. 

I'm happy that this form of egotism has been discarded.

Sure, I've still got lots of other self-centered tendencies rattling around in my psyche, as we all do. But to get rid of The Big One, a belief that God had chosen me to be his best buddy for eternity, whereas my infidel wife wasn't going to get the same afterlife prize -- this increased my humility quotient by a lot.

Now I don't expect that I'm going to have any different sort of afterlife anyone else does. Namely, I strongly suspect, none at all. 

I also don't expect that there is any power guiding my life which isn't also directing the lives of every other entity on Earth. 

Thus I've embraced a sort of "index fund" approach to spirituality.

Meaning, I don't try to beat the market. I don't assume that I have any special knowledge, any special talent, any special relationship with reality. Whatever laws of nature apply to everybody else, I'm content with.

Back in 2005 I wrote about this in Spiritual diversification, a sound investment strategy. My views have changed since then, but much of what I said in that blog post still rings true to me.

Here's some excerpts:

In financial investing, it’s well accepted that attempting to beat the market is a fool’s game. This is why index funds are so popular (and lucrative). You don’t bet on particular stocks or bonds. Instead, you put your money in the entire universe of investments represented by an index fund, such as the U.S. Total Stock Market or the U.S. Total Bond Market.

Wise financial professionals advise that if you want to save money for retirement, it’s best to invest in index funds. Increasingly, people do. But when it comes to saving their souls for eternity, most of those same people will put all of their spiritual nest egg into one basket—a single religion that they expect will support them both here and hereafter.

We here at the Church of the Churchless say, “that’s foolish.” Spiritual diversification makes as much sense as financial diversification. No, even more sense. For sometimes savvy (or lucky) investors do beat the market by buying stock in a single company. And they can prove it by having their CPAs work up a statement of net worth.

But no such proof exists in the sphere of spirituality. No religious figure can show you how his or her investment in a particular spiritual practice has paid off in terms of salvation. The claims made in supposedly holy scriptures such as the Bible, Koran, Talmud, Dhammapada, Adi Granth, Vedas, and so on are just that, claims. Unsubstantiated, unproven, unbelievable.

...I no longer believe that I am among the blessed few who know the truth about God and will reap the corresponding spiritual rewards. I came to embrace a “nothing special” philosophy. I don’t consider that my spiritual practice is anything special, just as I don’t consider that my index fund investment practice is anything special.

Yet, I’m confident that both work. I know that I haven’t lost any money by giving up trying to beat the market. Instead, I’ve watched our index funds outperform most actively managed funds. It’s more difficult to assess my soulful net worth, but my self-assessment is that I haven’t lost any spirituality by giving up my previous faith in a path that claimed to occupy a special exalted position among all of the world’s religions.

In short, I’ve become spiritually diversified. I try not to set rigid boundaries around what I believe and what I do. I try to look for inspiration in lots of different places, people, and writings. I try to become aware of all that is real about both physical existence and whatever metaphysical realities exist beyond the world I know now. I try to be content with what the cosmos brings me rather than considering that I’m entitled to unique dispensations.

"Spiritual oneness" is embracing your bodily being

Having written a well-received book called "Return to the One," I've obviously thought a lot about oneness. My views have changed considerably since I wrote the book.

I used to believe that the goal of a spiritual or self-realized life was to merge the soul's immaterial consciousness with universal consciousness, which often is termed God or The One. 

Now, I've got another view of oneness. A simpler one. A more easily achieved one. A considerably more scientific one.

What I am, what we all are, what everything in the universe is -- its the stuff of physics. Julian Baggini puts it this way in his book that I'm re-reading, "The Ego Trick." (See my previous blog post.)

To these we can add the third truth: that there is no stuff in the universe other than the stuff of physics. Not so long ago, you could have put that same basic thought in simpler terms and it would probably have been more perusasive: there is nothing in the universe apart from matter.

That formulation has become both less persuasive and less accurate, since developments in physics have changed the way we think about the fundamental constituents of the universe. The best simplification we can now come up with is that the universe is at root comprised of energy, but at the smallest, quantum level, this energy is so weird and mysterious it's difficult to know how to describe it in ways that aren't contentious and question-begging.

...So we have these three facts: thoughts and feelings are real, they are not describable in purely physical terms, but the universe has within it only the physical things described by the equations of physicists. It seems the only way to make sense of this is that mental events emerge from physical ones, without being strictly identical with them.

As the neurologist Todd E. Feinberg puts it, "your life is not a pack of cells; your life is what yuor particular pack of cells collectively do, though I cannot observe such a thing as your life, touch it, put it under a microscope, or keep it on a bottle on a shelf."

Thought and feeling are what matter does, when it is arranged in the remarkably complex ways that brains are. Matter is all that is needed for them to exist, but they are not themselves lumps of matter. In this sense, "I" is a verb dressed as a noun. 

...There is nothing about the very concept of the psychological that requires us to think of it as being separate or separable from the physical.

In one sense, what Baggini says is so obvious, it hardly needs saying. But actually, it does.

Because what he calls the "ego trick" is so strong, so compelling, so intuitively attractive, we humans find it easy to believe that our essential being is some sort of immaterial consciousness floating somewhere behind our eyes, inside our head.

In reality, says Baggini:

This helps us to understand how the Ego Trick works. It is able to create something which has a strong sense of unity and singleness from what is actually a messy, fragmented sequence of experiences and memories, because all mental experience emerges from a messy, fragmented and hugely complicated set of processes in the brain.

We do not yet fully understand how this trick works, but we know that it does. Those who hold on to the idea that something other than a functioning brain is required to create persons with a sense of self are simply not looking the evidence in the face. 

Just because some mysteries remain, that does not mean that everthing is a mystery, and it certainly doesn't mean we are justified in appealing to other mysteries, like souls, to plug the gaps in our understanding. On the question of whether we are physical beings or not, the case should be closed.

OK. I agree. The case is closed. We are physical beings. 

So if we want to continue to use the word "spiritual" to mean a pursuit of the most refined nature of our humanity, this search will be pursued through the physical. Namely, the body. Our bodies. My body. Your body. The body every living entity is.

Note: I didn't say "The body every living entity inhabits." I'll admit that this word popped into my mind as I was composing the last sentence in the preceding paragraph, because old habits die hard. 

For me, they die happily. 

The more I'm able to not only intellectually realize that I am physical body (not immaterial soul or spirit), but to feel this in the depth of my being as an intuitive truth about my true nature, the more joyous I feel.

Most of my life I've been searching for The One, for unity, for the single reality behind appearances. After looking in the wrong place -- somewhere distant from the here-and-now of this world -- I've come to understand that the one I've been looking for is what I've always been.

Matter. Energy. The stuff of physics. The body that is me. I'm no different from everything else in the universe. It and me, we're one. Always have been. Always will be. 

Yes, the material form called "me" will pass away, change form, disintegrate, be reconstituted into other material forms. I never was separate from everything. Everything just temporarily came together into a form with the capacity for consciousness -- me. 

I hope you can see how beautiful this is. If not, that's fine. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 

The self exists, but not independently of its parts

My journey from churched to churchlessness pretty much can be summed up in this fashion:

I used to believe that I had (or was) a distinct, unified, immaterial soul or self. Now, I rejoice in the understanding that there's no non-physical "pearl" of Me; I'm a collection of material stuff just like everything else in the universe is.

Julian Baggini says this in his terrific book, The Ego Trick: What Does It Mean to Be You?

A cart is not an illusion just because it has no existence other than by the correct arrangement of its parts. The only thing that doesn't exist is an object which is somehow independent of its parts. In the same way, the self clearly exists, it is just not a thing independent of its constituent parts.

I borrowed the "pearl" imagery from Baggini, who contrasts this with the more accurate notion of a "bundle"  in explaining the nature of the self.

Image courtesy of MyPoolSigns.com

This, of course, is very much in line with the essence of Buddhist philosophy.

Baggini just bases his view of the self on solid neuroscientific and psychological evidence, whereas Buddhism is prone to mix valid semi-scientific insights with metaphysical speculation. Buddhism and Baggini agree, though, on the ever-changing, dynamic, relational, interconnected nature of what we call "self."

Here's a good summary from Baggini.

To put it another way, the self is a construction of the mind, one flexible enough to withstand constant renovation, partial demolition and reconstruction, but one that can be brought down if the foundations are undermined.

The idea of the self as a construction is one that many want to resist, because it seems to imply that it is not real. But of course constructions can be perfectly real. It is important to distinguish between "mere constructs," which exist solely as ideas, and real constructions, which we pick up, use and live in.

The "average American family" is a mere construct, but the house at 127 Acacia Avenue is a real construction.

There's much beauty in this bundle understanding of the self. More so, really, than in the religiously-based pearl conception of an enduring soul or self. 

And this isn't only because almost all of the demonstrable evidence, both experiential and scientific, testifies to the truth of the bundle theory (truth is more beautiful than falsity).

There's something inherently appealing about perceiving myself as a humble interrelated part of the whole that is our universe, rather than a lofty independent bit of being whose genuine home lies in a separate supernatural realm.

This is tough stuff to talk about. Hard to express even to myself; harder still to convey in words to someone else.

My main point is this: sometimes commenters on my blog posts accuse me of giving up on the spiritual search. That's absurd. I've been looking for truth my entire life. (As have we all, right?) 

After about forty years of believing that through meditation and other means it was possible to cast off crude layers of materiality -- body and mind, basically -- and reveal the pristine pearl of the soul that was my genuine immaterial self, I realized this conception was almost certainly wrong.

I'm nothing special. I'm not separate from everything else in the universe. I'm transitory, not eternal. A complex collection of physical parts and processes, not a pure pristine blob of godly something or other.

I can relax. Let go. Let be. There's no mystery of self or soul to reveal, no journey back to heaven to fret about, no worries about salvation or sinning.

I've talked about this before in several previous posts about Baggini's book. Probably will again. Like his subtitle says, What does it mean to be you? is an all-important question. See:

"The Ego Trick" -- selves exist, but not as we believe
How to be happy without a soul

 

Thoughtful criticism of the Radha Soami "cult" by an Indian woman

A few days ago "Tanvee" left a great comment on a recent post, "More weird news from the world of Radha Soami Satsang Beas."

It deserves to be upgraded to its own post, which I've done below. This is a thoughful, well-written look at how the RSSB way of life can turn into a hypocritical, judgmental, rigid, dogmatic pseudo-spirituality.

What is said below fits with my own thirty-five year experience with this Indian religious-mystical organization, which is currently led by Gurinder Singh Dhillon -- who has grown wildly rich while serving as the RSSB guru. 

Read on....

Being married into an Indian Radha Soami Family:

I came from a happy, nurturing and fun loving family, with a conscience to live an ethical, righteous life, but not religious. We are at best agnostics and my father leans towards being an atheist. Born Hindus, we were never told to follow any rituals and my mother constantly reminded us that like one chooses his/her name, geography, profession, spouse; similarly he/she has the right to take up a religion and spiritual way of life at any stage. 

And I did decide to marry this person from a family that was blindly Radha Soamiites. All conversations started and ended on Babaji and Maharajji.

All social conversations were looked down upon because they were not religious enough to suit their palate. It was tough to dine together because all they did and made people do is to read labels of products so that they were not consuming any egg, meat and alcohol ingredients. Their presence till date is socially discomforting not because of the choices they make but more because of the noise they make in exercising their choices. 

From reading and forcing me to be part of prayers to insisting that I go for satsangs, I was every living minute being forced to live the power of the so called Guru and convert from a religion less life to a Radha Soami life. Almost like they were doing me a favor by bringing me to light from darkness. The air was always heavy with this pseudo spirituality. They didn't laugh, they didn't enjoy a light moment. Just a silent sense of superior existence.

They didn't discuss religion, rapes, riots and give a perspective to anything. It was always a safe silence, muted existence and a constant determined push to make me a radha soami. There were days when I was woken up at 5am to drive my mother in law to her satsang. And as we reached the venue, I would be pushed to walk in to hear the golden words but every time I resisted. In 45 degree Celsius heat of Delhi, I sat in the car waiting for her.

My logic was simple, If 30 years of blind following has made you what you are, I rather not hear this guy for a minute. 

I saw the family as strongly materialistic. Less sensitive about people and their resources and a constant need to fulfil their own agendas in any given environment. I found them clever, selfish and unethical. Every thing they did was an effort to show someone down. I also saw them quite unsure of their stance. They weren't rooted in their philosophy and the philosophy was more a cover for appearing happy, spiritual and giving. 

It took me time but I maintained my stance. I still find them so miserably living a life that they weren't meant to. But I do think we all have a choice in how we live.

I met a lot of so called spiritual people through my immediate family. They are all in a miserable journey of hypocrisy. Some honest enough to let you know that they were volunteering at Beas because it is a good, safe, retired life with state of art medical services and everything else taken care of. There was another guy in his late 40s who was phasing down his own business to move into Radha Soami volunteering full time.

I probed him on the reasons and he was honest enough to tell me that he had two daughters going to senior school and if he becomes a full time volunteer, the girls education will be fully sponsored by Babaji in any foreign country. He also mentioned that old age was comfortable in Beas and what better post retirement life could he get for himself. 

I have nothing against cults and religions of the world. I know we all will choose our journey but if the journey is about throttling other peoples lives, then it hardly is a spiritual way of life.

If 3 other people have to disturb their schedule for your satsang, it is not a satsang. If you plan to plant pictures of your babaji all over the house, it can't make you spiritual. When you are spiritual, you don't have to go about coaxing people to convert to becoming a satsangi, they will ask you they reason for your glow & inner light. And if it doesn't, then stop fooling people. You came to live on this earth your own reality not someone else's. 

Babaji, your are a rich guy taking charter flights across the globe, wearing pashmina shawls. Your son is a CEO and may become your successor too. I know you have taken the middle class of India by storm. Your satsangs leads to the worst traffic jams and the largest carbon footprint in Delhi. Why do these people need to see you and hear you?

I have in so many years not come across a single educated enlightened person from Radha Soami Satsang. If you do come across one, let me know. I go for SN Goenka meditations- Vipassana. He is still not my guru but he has given me the science of meditation. He doesn't want followers, he doesn't want to make it a religion and he doesn't want meditators to keep coming back for the 10 days vipassana course, if they have learnt the science of meditation.

Do you have the power to be SN Goenka? Or is this blind following by unvirtuous souls the only way you make money? Why not do some good and giving to people who refuse to follow you. You have made your millions but a lot of people will lose their sons and daughters because their blindness is not letting them love and accept unconditionally.

Why I feel killing animals for sport is wrong

I just wrote a post on my other blog, "Why a photo of a dead deer makes me feel hunting is wrong." The post includes thoughts about the nature of consciousness, the value of wildness, and such. Give it a read. 

Here's an excerpt.

It bothers me when people de-animalize themselves.

Humans are animals. After billions of years of evolution, we are related to every other living entity, including bacteria, insects, fish, and other animals. There isn't any sort of gulf or divide between us and them. Life on earth is a continuum.

I've read a lot of books about neuroscience and the philosophy of consciousness. This can be complicated stuff. A key simple idea, though, is that what it means to be conscious is this: there is something like to be a conscious creature, something it is like for that organism. 

This seems undeniable.

I know there is something it is like to be me. You know this also, for you. Every dog or cat lover understands their pets also have conscious lives. Farm animals too. And wild animals. Including deer. 

Before being killed by my relative, the buck was going about its life as a conscious being. Just like we do.

Sure, we don't know what it is like to be a deer. Or a bat. Or any other human, for that matter. It is entirely possible, though, to feel empathy and compassion for other conscious organisms even if we can't know what their consciousness is like.

I've been a vegetarian for forty-six years. As I describe in the post, I killed one animal for "fun" when I was a child, then never did this again.

My attitude toward many philosophical, moral, and spiritual issues has changed over time. How I feel about killing animals hasn't.