Church of the Churchless

The truth of who we are lies without, not within

For about 35 years my daily meditation practice was aimed at "going within." This was the teaching of the Indian guru I followed, Charan Singh. 

The assumption was that there is an unchanging conscious essence within us that could be termed soul. By leaving aside both impressions of the outside world and mental images (thoughts, emotions, and such), what remained in closed-eye meditation would be revealed as Who We Truly Are.

Well, my ideas have changed. 

I now realize that this was a highly limiting view of what spirituality and self-knowledge is all about. It was a notion founded in traditional Hinduism and Sikhism, which is merely one way of looking upon the nature of reality.

A book I'm reading, "The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life," presents a much different approach to living. 

Often people speak glibly, and overly simplistically, of "Eastern philosophy" as if this was a monolithic thing. That's as crazy as looking upon "Western philosophy" as having a unified perspective.

Chinese philosophy is very different from Indian philosophy. Notions of soul, God, and higher realms of existence are largely absent in Chinese philosophy, while they play a large role in Indian philosophy. 

So Chinese philosophers such as Lao Tzu, Confucius, Mencius, and Zhuangzi (who I'm used to calling Chuang Tzu) are much more down to earth than their Indian counterparts -- even Buddha, who was a pretty earthy guy.

Here's an entire section from the first chapter of The Path.

It seems to provide a good overview of the book's central themes. (I'm about halfway through reading it, so there could be some surprises ahead.) I also included some passages from a later chapter that follow the ellipsis.

Myth: The Truth of Who We Are Lies Within Us

The breakdown of old aristocratic religious institutions left the people of the Axial Age in search of new sources of truth and meaning. Similarly, in our own age, we feel we have broken free of older, confining ways of thinking and are looking for new sources of meaning.

Increasingly, we have been told to seek that higher truth within. The goal of a self-actualized person is now to find himself and to live his life "authentically," according to an inner truth.

The danger of this lies in believing that we will all know our "truth" when we see it, and then limiting our lives according to that truth. With all this investment in our self-definition, we risk building our future on a very narrow sense of who we are -- what we see as our strengths and weaknesses, our likes and dislikes.

Many Chinese thinkers might say that in doing this, we are looking at such a small part of who we are potentially. We're taking a limited number of our emotional dispositions during a certain time and place and allowing them to define us forever. By thinking of human nature as monolithic, we instantly limit our potential. 

But many of the Chinese thinkers would argue that you are not and should not think of yourself as a single unified being. 

Let's say that you think of yourself as someone with a temper; someone who gets angry easily. The thinkers we are about to encounter would argue that you should not say, "Well, that's just the way I am," and embrace yourself for who you are. As we will see, perhaps you aren't inherently an angry person.

Perhaps you simply slipped into ruts -- patterns of behavior -- that you allowed to define who you thought you were. The truth is that you have as much potential to be, say, gentle or forgiving as you do to be angry.

These philosophers would urge us to recognize that we are all complex and changing constantly. Every person has many different and often contradictory emotional dispositions, desires, and ways of responding to the world. Our emotional dispositions develop by looking outward, not inward. 

They are not cultivated when you retreat from the world to meditate or go on a vacation. They are formed, in practice, through the things you do in your everyday life: the ways you interact with others and the activities you pursue. 

In other words, we aren't just who we are: we can actively make ourselves into better people all the time. Of course, this is no simple task. It requires us to change our mind-set about our own agency and about how real change happens.

Nor is it a quick process: change comes incrementally, through perseverance. It comes from training ourselves to broaden our perspective so that we can grasp the complicated tangle of factors (the relationships we're in, the company we keep, the jobs we hold, and other life circumstances) that shape any given situation and slowly transform our interactions with everything around us.

This broad perspective enables us to behave in ways that gradually bring about true change.

While we have been told that true freedom comes from discovering who we are at our core, that "discovery" is precisely what has trapped so many of us in the Age of Complacency. We are the ones standing in our own way.

...Being active consists of creating optimal conditions and responding to whatever various situations arise. It means laying the ground in which change can grow. Think of yourself as a farmer, rather than thinking about who you are and arranging your goals around that. Your goal then becomes laying the ground for various interests and sides of yourself to grow organically.

Most of us have hobbies and interests we pursue on the weekend or in our free time. We often don't think of these things as relevant to figuring out what we want to do with our life.

And yet laying the ground means something as simple as scheduling time to take part in activities that speak to the different sides of yourself that you are interested in developing: joining a wine tasting class, learning how to paint in watercolor, or brushing up your high school French once a week in a language swap.

By proactively building room in your life for all sorts of possibilities, and then remaining open and responsive, you are akin to a farmer preparing his field so that his crops can flourish. 

As you make room for interests, opportunities open up to you. You might learn that you love working with your hands, but would rather try woodworking than painting. Or you decide that French isn't for you, but you want to explore other cultures by offering to tutor immigrants at the public library instead, which could eventually lead to other things: new friends, a trip abroad, a change of career down the road.

By being responsive to how your interests change over time, you will not be locked in -- you will be more able to alter your life and your schedule to allow for growth.

Rather than going into all this thinking, I can be anything I want to be, the approach you're taking is I don't know yet what I can become. 

You don't know where any of this might take you; it's not possible to know that now. But what you learn about yourself and what excites you won't be abstract; it will be very concrete knowledge born of practical experience. Over time you open up paths that you could not have imagined, out of which emerge options that you never would have seen before.

Over time, you actually become a different person.

Jesus and Mohammed talk about truth vs. facts

Here's a good cartoon from the Jesus and Mo web site. Yeah, what if the truth isn't factual? 

Well, then it isn't true. Not that this would bother religious believers, because their "truth" is whatever they want it to be, whatever their faith commands. 

Which doesn't make it true, of course.

Doesn't something have to be factual to be true? It seems obvious that this is the case with objective reality, where facts are the common ground that enable different people to understand the same phenomenon. 

Yet it also appears that even subjective reality, such as an emotion or dream, also requires factuality to be true. If there is no fact-ness to a supposed truth, whether objective or subjective, how could it exist? 

Problem is, for religiosity, even if a subjective perception is factual, this still leaves it in the realm of Minimal Truth. Meaning, it truly is a perception in the mind of a person (like Jesus or Mohammed), but it doesn't possess any objective truth.

Watch this "Adam ruins death" video. Truthful, blunt, non-religious.

My wife and I are big fans of "Adam Ruins Everything." Here's how TruTV describes this entertaining and informative series.

In Adam Ruins Everything, host and investigative comedian Adam Conover embarks on a comically inventive yet unrelentingly serious quest to reveal the hidden truths behind everything you know and love. Tackling topics ranging from the workplace and voting to forensic science and security, he gives you not just fun facts to share with your friends, but information that will make you see the world in a whole new way. If knowledge is power, then Adam Conover will have you laughing all the way to the top.

Well, the Adam Ruins Death episode wasn't exactly hilarious, though it did have some funny moments. The part I liked the most was the opening few minutes where Adam looks directly into the camera and offers up some straight talk about death.

We're all going to die. There's no way to avoid it. When death happens to us, that's the end. Of everything for us. We won't even know that we're nothing, because a nothing can't know anything. Or be aware of anything. Our brain, our body, our faculties -- they're going to steadily deteriorate until death comes.

On the positive side... if we fully face the reality of death, life becomes more precious.

The only way to truly live is to realize the fantasy of eternal existence, heaven, and all the other trappings of religion designed to make people feel better about not existing after taking their final breath.

Here's a video of the opening. Enjoy. (As much as you can.) The truth about death may be uncomfortable, but it's hugely better to live honestly than to live a lie.

My wife, Laurel, is on an atheist letter-to-the-editor writing mission. Every month she submits another letter to our local newspaper, the Salem (Oregon) Statesman Journal. 

Here's her March letter (click on the link to read the online comments). Nicely done, Laurel. 

Question those who flaunt "religious arrogance"

Could religious beliefs survive if children were not indoctrinated into religion from an early age by their families and cultures, and instead were allowed to decide whether religions make sense when they are old enough to examine the evidence and logic?

Why do almost all religious believers believe in the religion their parents or their immediate culture/community believes in, and not one of the thousands of other possible beliefs about supernatural beings?

Would religions survive if they were not systematically protected from criticism, by arrogant expectations that non-believers respect their belief and believers were not discouraged from questioning the aspects that make no sense scientifically?

It is religiously arrogant thinking that makes claims that can never be proven by science and then attempts to expect or force everyone else to comply with that interpretation of reality and what is moral.

That is exactly what the “religious right” is attempting to do in our country, even though a growing percentage (about a quarter) of our citizens no longer consider themselves religious. This is “religious arrogance.”

Some religious believers feel so sure they are right that they try to force their unfounded beliefs on others.

Laurel Hines
Salem

Have faith that reality is better than any belief

One of my first Church of the Churchless posts, "Just have faith," was written in November 2004. It's still one of my favorites. Re-reading it today, I was pleased that I still agree with just about everything in it. 

The reason: even though thirteen years ago I was more open to the hypothesis of God and life after death than I am now, the method of open-minded scientific faith that should be used to investigate all sorts of hypotheses -- both worldly and spiritual -- rings as true to me today as it did back then. 

My personal research into the nature of reality has led me to the conclusion favored by most other scientifically-minded people: there is no demonstrable evidence for the existence of a conscious being, power, or force we could call "God." 

So I have come to reject the God hypothesis, even though my previous belief that God exists was highly pleasing to me.

This is the power of faith. Real faith. Meaning, faith that whatever reality consists of, knowing this truth, even if it makes us uncomfortable, is preferable to embracing a false comforting belief.

Below is what I said in my "Just have faith" post. Note that in the last sentence I speak of "God" being another name for "ultimate reality." This is a rather unusual use of the word, God, but it makes sense to me.

I still pray to God, even though I'm an atheist. However, when I say "God, show me your true nature," I'm really saying "Reality, I want to know you as you are." 

Just have faith

Faith is wonderful.
Faith is all we need to be spiritual.
Just faith. Faith alone.
So we shouldn't have faith in anything other than pure, naked, empty faith.

What is faith stripped of thought, emotion, perception, expectation, imagination? Whatever it is, that's what we are seeking. Such is the message at the mystical core of every deep spiritual teaching. A few examples:

Christianity: "Be silent therefore, and do not chatter about God, for by chattering about him, you tell lies and commit a sin....Also you should not wish to understand anything about God, for God is beyond all understanding....If you understand anything about him, then he is not in it, and by understanding something of him, you fall into ignorance." Meister Eckhart (Selected Writings, Penguin Books)

Judaism/Kabbalah: "God is not what we think It is. God is not a thing, a being, a noun....Jewish mystics often refer to It as Ein Sof, which means Endlessness....Ein Sof precedes thought and it even precedes the Nothingness out of which thought is born. Nothingness is viewed as a level of awareness that is the result of the 'annhilation of thought.'" Rabbi David Cooper (God is a Verb, Riverhead Books)

Islam/Sufism: "Anything that has a beginning and an end is a 'shell.'...There is more to the pronouncement of faith than what is said with the tongue because it too has a beginning and an end....We know then that the 'soul' of prayer is not only its external form but also a state of total absorption and unconsciousness during which all these external forms, for which there is no room, remain outside." Rumi (Discourses of Rumi, Threshold Books)

Buddhism: "If you want to reach the other shore of existence, give up what is before, behind, and in between. Set your mind free, and go beyond birth and death....I have conquered myself and live in purity. I know all. I have left everything behind, and live in freedom. Having taught myself, to whom shall I point as teacher?" Teachings of the Buddha (The Dhammapada, Nilgiri Press)

Here's how to tell the difference between true faith and false faith: Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a bare windowless room. Two doors lead out of the room. Both are closed, but can be opened with a turn of the doorknob. The doors are marked with signs that describe what awaits on the other side: (A) Reality, (B) Belief

After you open a door, you have to walk through it. The door then will shut and you never will be able to leave the place you have entered. Choose Reality and you will know things as they really are, from top to bottom of the cosmos. You will know whether or not God exists and, if so, the nature of this ultimate divinity. You will know whether death is the final end of your existence or if it is the beginning of another form of life. You will know whether there is a meaning to the universe beyond what human beings ascribe to it.

Or, choose Belief and you will know only what lies within the confines of your current suppositions about the nature of the cosmos. For the rest of your life you will be confident that what you believe to be true, really is. Any evidence to the contrary will not make an impact on your mind. You will remain doubt-free, faithful to the beliefs you now hold about God, creation, life, death, and the purpose of human existence.

Which door would you choose to walk through?

Before answering, consider carefully the potential ramifications of your choice. Reality is an unknown, a mystery. It could be frightening or fabulous, painful or pleasurable, warmly loving or coldly uncaring. Do you want to embrace absolutely real reality? Or would you rather hold on to your beliefs about what is real?

Someone with the type of faith extolled by the Church of the Churchless would unhesitatingly choose Door A and boldly stride into Reality. For their faith is not in anything particular, but is a faith that truth can be known, should be known, and, indeed, must be known.

This is the faith Henry David Thoreau speaks of in Walden:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living it so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the Devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'" (Where I Lived, and What I Lived For chapter)

Such is a scientific faith, a faith that does not foreclose in advance any possibility about what reality may consist of, a faith not in the unproven pronouncements of some supposedly holy person or book but in one's own direct experience of divinity--or direct non-experience, as the case may be.

Still, there is nothing wrong with belief, so long as our beliefs remain subservient to reality. When reality extends its hand, we should be able to happily surrender even our most cherished beliefs. This will not be difficult if our faith is in the rightness of whatever spiritual experiment we have chosen to undertake, and not in the surety of realizing a particular outcome.

A material scientist adjusts his beliefs, or hypotheses, in accordance with the results of his experiments. He does not design an experiment to produce certain desired findings, for this would not be science. The scientific method is what a scientist has firm faith in; everything else is provisional until proven.

Similarly, the height of spirituality is to just have faith.
Faith that reality is better than any and all beliefs.
Faith that the ultimate reality we may call "God" will be reflected in an open mind...but not a closed one.