Church of the Churchless

Determinism and hope are good substitutes for karma and faith

I've always been scientifically-minded. What's changed is that I've realized the absurdity of trying to cram Eastern (or Western, for that matter) supernaturalism into a scientific worldview. 

For example, when I was a devotee of an India-based spiritual group, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, I wrote a book for RSSB called "Life is Fair." It set forth a karmic justification for vegetarianism.

Much of the book talked about the positive health effects of being a vegetarian rather than a meat eater. But some of the book discussed karmic theory in which causes and effects carry over from one life to another via reincarnation. 

Discarding that unproven speculative stuff leaves us with determinism.

Causes produce effects, which produce more causes, in an unbroken chain of causes and effects that goes all the way back to the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago. So nothing valuable was lost when I gave up a belief in the supernatural side of karma.

Because I'm left with determinism, the aspect of karmic theory that makes sense. 

Likewise, I used to have faith in God, a guru who was God in human form, soul, spirit, life after death, and journeying through higher supernatural realms of creation. 

I enjoyed believing in these entities, even though there was zero demonstrable evidence that any of them actually existed. I had faith that one day all would be revealed to me through copious meditation, adhering to certain ethical vows enjoined by Radha Soami Satsang Beas, and the grace of the Guru/God.

Now I've come to realize that faith is foolish.

People have faith in all sorts of mutually incompatible things. Christians have faith in God, Muslims in Allah. Members of opposing football teams each have faith that a divinity is on their side. Religious adherents have faith that their own peculiar rituals and theologies will lead to eternal salvation.

I much prefer hope in my current churchless frame of mind.

Hope is faith shorn of supernaturalism. Hope recognizes that almost always in everyday life the future can't be predicted with 100% accuracy. Yes, determinism rules. But often, if not usually, life is so complex some form of chaos theory comes into play, where small causes can have big effects.

Or, known causes can have unknown effects.

Either way, hope springs eternal, as the saying goes. Even when things look really dismal, and no way out seems apparent, there's the possibility of something unexpected happening.

Being found when you're lost in a wilderness. Recovering after a dismal diagnosis. Feeling better even though depression seems like it will be with you forever. Finding a true love after many years of loneliness. 

Hope is realistic. Faith isn't. Just as determinism is, and karmic theory isn't.

No, faith isn't better than doubt. Here's why.

When I saw the title of a New York Times opinion piece, "How Can I Possibly Believe That Faith Is Better Than Doubt?", I was pretty sure that I was going to disagree with it. 

After reading what Peter Wehner wrote, I know that I disagree with him. Here's what rubbed me the wrong way in Wehner's essay. Let's start with this paragraph.

But faith itself, while not the converse of reason, is still distinct from it. If it seems like that’s asking too much — if you think leaps of faith are for children rather than adults — consider this: Materialists, rationalists and atheists ultimately place their trust in certain propositions that require faith. To say that truth is only intelligible through reason is itself a statement of faith. Denying the existence of God is as much a leap of faith as asserting it. As the pastor Tim Keller told me, “Most of the things we most deeply believe in — for example, human rights and human equality — are not empirically provable.”

This is wrong. Materialists, rationalists, and atheists don't have faith in reason. Rather they, or rather we, trust in reason because it freaking works. 

Meaning, reason leads to demonstrable evidence supporting its propositions, when reason is reasonable. This is the power of science. Reason comes up with hypotheses that then are tested through a further extension of reason. The results are analyzed via reason, which leads to a provisional understanding that can be altered through additional applications of reason.

If something worked better than reason to understand reality, then us materialists, rationalists, and atheists would use that instead. 

Regarding many things not being empirically provable, this is obvious. To my knowledge no scientist ever has claimed that everything in life can be empirically proven. Value judgements are a big part of being human. But those judgements usually should be made on the basis of solid information, facts, evidence. 

My love for my wife isn't mathematically provable. But it stems from experiences that can be described. We met, we got to know each other, we got married, we've been wife and husband for 27 years. This isn't a matter of faith. It is a matter of lived experience.

By contrast, no one has direct experience of Jesus' life and death. All we have are stories put down in writing many years later. So it's no wonder faith is required to be a Christian. 

Next, consider this excerpt from the essay. 

Perhaps the key to understanding why faith is prized within the Christian tradition is that it involves trust that would not be needed if the existence of God were subject to a mathematical proof. What God is seeking is not our intellectual assent so much as a relationship with us. That is, after all, one of the purposes of the incarnation of God in Jesus.

Every meaningful relationship — parent-child, spouse to spouse, friend to friend — involves some degree of trust. It is better and more vivifying to be the object of someone’s trust rather than the last person standing after a series of logical deductions. That’s true for us as individuals, and it can be true for God as well.

This sort of circular reasoning drives me crazy when I read religious writings. Wehner assumes that God exists, and he even claims that he knows what God is seeking from us. He then uses those utterly unprovable assumptions to bolster his argument that trust, a form of faith, is a good thing. 

Well, anything can be shown to be good if we just make up crap. For example: fairies want us to believe in them without any evidence of their existence; I do believe in fairies; so fairies are pleased with me. 

If you can believe that, then you probably also believe other ridiculous stuff. Like, Jesus died for our sins.

Moving on, here's another part of the essay that I disagree with.

Faith can allow us to understand things in a different way than reason does, in a manner similar to what J.R.R. Tolkien meant when he said that pagan myths weren’t lies but rather pointed toward deep truths. The imagination could be integrated into reason, he believed, in a way that helped us to see reality a bit more clearly. Reason is one way to perceive reality; faith — rooted not in partisan ideology but in grace and a sense of the sacred — is another.

Well, one person's pagan myth is another person's religion. And vice versa. Billions of people in the world look upon Christianity as a myth. Other billions believe in the Bible. People have faith in all kinds of supernatural beliefs. How would Wehner have us sort of which sorts of faith are justified, and which are not?

By reason and evidence? No, because he has said that faith is greater than reason. Thus apparently Wehner is fine with Muslims having faith in the Koran and Allah, since no one can disprove faith. 

Again, Wehner believes that the New Testament is true despite plenty of scholarly evidence that little of it can be substantiated by evidence, contemporaneous or otherwise. So his whole essay about faith is based on faith.

Which is fitting, I guess. Just not persuasive. 

 

What if Jesus died on the cross and was dead forever?

Since I'm an atheist who doesn't believe in Christianity or any other religion, I'm free to imagine alternatives to theological myths that would be more beneficial to society.

For example, Jesus dying on the cross and then remaining dead. 

I'd find this way more inspiring than the Biblical story of his subsequent resurrection. Sure, dying on a cross so that the sins of humankind can be washed away is an admirable thing to do.

But Jesus' sacrificial altruism is markedly lessened if we assume that the final outcome was being brought back to life and spending eternity with God in heaven. 

Hey, who wouldn't be willing to be crucified if the choices were (1) eventually dying and being dead forever, or (2) dying on a cross and then living forever? I'd choose the latter, for sure, and I make no claims to any sort of righteousness.

This is why I much prefer viewing Jesus' death as a secular, not supernatural, story.

I can envision him believing that he was atoning for the sins of humankind by his crucifixion, even though this belief was just a fantasy. And I see Jesus expecting that he would die and be dead forever, yet willing to be crucified anyway for a greater good.

Everybody loves heroes who sacrifice themselves to save others. 

My father's mother comes to mind. She died giving birth to him. Now, she didn't know this would happen when she became pregnant. However, in the early 1900s childbirth was a heck of a lot more risky than it is now, so every woman who had a child was a hero, as is still true today.

So as long as I'm messing around with the New Testament, I'd like to change the virgin birth to a regular birth. This makes Mary, Jesus' mother, like every other woman, just as my refashioned Jesus is like every other human in that he died and was dead forever.

I readily admit that my revisions to the Jesus story wouldn't attract many adherents. However, I can see numerous benefits if people didn't believe in an afterlife that almost certainly is a religious fantasy. Here's a few of them. 

Accepting that each of us has just one life to live would automatically make that life exceedingly precious. So atheism actually is the most pro-life worldview. Religious believers can be rather cavalier about sending soldiers off to die, taking health insurance away from children, or putting up with dangerous pollutants. 

Hey, their thinking goes, no problem. God is in charge and will usher the faithful into the Pearly Gates after they die, so what's the big deal with foreshortening some people's lives when eternity awaits them?

Well, this is a hugely big deal if instead of dying and being reborn, everybody dies and is dead forever. Which again, is almost certainly the way reality works.

Now I'm not saying that every atheist acts in the life-affirming fashion that I'm describing here, so please refrain from leaving a comment on this post about the horrors that unbelievers like Stalin have wrought. Atheists can be horrible people just as religious believers can be. 

My point is just that when someone sacrifices themselves for a greater good without expecting a reward in heaven, this is a more exemplary act than if the person believed that a wonderful afterlife awaits them.

Thus Jesus would have been a better example for humanity if he had willingly died for our sins (or any other selfless purpose) knowing that after being crucified, that was the end of the line for him. After all, this is the stark human condition known to anyone who sees how things are without religious blinders: 

We are born. We live. We die. Forever. 

That's scary. We have a natural desire to cling to life and avoid death, since any living organism without this attribute wouldn't be an evolutionary success story.

Thus when someone faces death bravely or willingly, putting their own self-interest and fear aside for the benefit of others while knowing that no afterlife awaits, this is way more admirable in my view than someone like the Biblical Jesus who dies with the expectation of heaven.

(I'm no expert on the Bible, but I just Googled "did Jesus know he would be resurrected" and found a bunch of Yes's on the first page of the search results, so the Great God Google has spoken. See here, here, here, and here.)

Another benefit of accepting that each of us is living the only life that we ever will have is so obvious, I won't dwell much on it here other than to point it out: this produces a sense of gratitude and preciousness in every moment insofar as we are able to keep in mind our inescapable mortality.

Meaning, recognizing that our lifetime is limited, not eternal, infuses our earthly existence with a large dose of Make the freaking most of it! that is absent when a religious mentality gives us a false assurance of an afterlife.

It's like a reverse Pascal's Wager. Betting on an afterlife dilutes our ability to enjoy and appreciate life to the fullest, while accepting the finitude of life enhances our ability to view every moment as infinitely precious, since no other sort of infinity exists for us.

 

Heart and head need to find agreement

I'm a big fan of Jack Haas' book, "The Way of Wonder." Click on that link to a Facebook post by Haas and you'll be able to read it. For free.

Recently I came across an interesting comment by Chad Royer on a post on Haas' Facebook page. I don't claim to understand everything Royer says below, but maybe that's why I like what he said. Give it a read.

I wrote the following to a friend who posted on FB “Never let your head overthrow your heart.”  (This was shortly before reading your book.)  

I'd say the reverse is almost as true. We really cannot be whole with ourselves or anything else if we are not willing to do the work to sift through issues until our heart and head find agreement. The heart might need to slightly lead the way, but unless each treats the other as an indispensable and revered partner we are bound to be hiding or suppressing a big part of reality.

I personally go back and forth between believing my heart must take a slight lead or dominant role and thinking they ought to be equal revered partners of each other and then oddly I normally decide there is no actual difference between the two approaches. If both are treating the other as completely revered/trusted partners they will listen to the other until a consensus if found and that will be the nearest thing to truth for that situation and moment in time.

At this point another friend asked, "Perhaps the more significant question: Who is this “I” you speak of who goes back and forth between your head and your heart?"  To which I replied:

This probably will not make any sense to anyone else, but I view this “I” as my Experiencing and Integrating Mind (EIM) from which my thinking (head) and emotions/feelings (heart) originate. My thinking and emotions are the result of this deepest and oldest self (EIM) experiencing and trying to integrate itself into the world it experiences.

Oddly, in order to fit into its surroundings and world that it intuitively knows it is hopelessly an inseparable part of our EIM has to adopt the collective paradigms of our clan and culture, which are mostly unconsciously agreed upon illusions. It starts to do this from a very young age with emotions, well before we develop any reliable thinking or reasoning, as we figure out what leads to feeling secure or scared and otherwise good or bad in our family/preschool/etc environment.

Later we are taught how to reason and view things from our culture and clan’s perspective. Sometimes our emotions and/or reasoning do rebel against part or all of our culture’s perspective/paradigms but we are still stuck in them if we are fighting for or against them.

Ironically, as our original, oldest and deepest self (EIM) is experiencing and integrating ourselves into our world it is tragically writing itself mostly out of the script/picture because the emotions and reasoning required to fit into our cultures paradigms are actually blocks/barriers from experiencing true reality.

I’m not a big fan of true self and false self lingo because if we are operating out of what is meant by our false self then that is what we are and a real part of our reality at that moment. At the same time the traditional meaning of the concepts of true self and false self might be helpful, compared to my own mumbo jumbo, if anyone is actually trying to understand what I am saying.  Basically what I am saying is our true self (EIM) creates our false self/ego in order to fit into the world we find ourselves.

It does this because this EIM/true self/image of God within each of us is the part of us that knows we are unavoidably a part of our surroundings and everything else. Being a part of something inescapably means we are vulnerable to the fate of that which we are a part.

We intuitively, through our emotions bolstered by our reasoning, realize the last thing we want to be is vulnerable. As such, we hide and deny our true self in order to try to fit into our world safely. In the process, generally without realizing it, we try to make ourselves less vulnerable at the expense of others by shifting our inherent burden, which is the creation and living out of our false self. And since most of the world operates out of this paradigm any vulnerability/weakness exposed is generally a target to receive another’s burden, reinforcing the need to hide and deny our true self with its known vulnerability.

We generally do not try it unless we are out of options to hide and deny it, but everyone’s greatest yearning is to get to be with their own true self and experience the world through it. Since our true self has created our false self by developing emotions and thinking to try to fit into our world, the path back to our original/true self is to evaluate/contemplate these emotions and thoughts/concepts from their source within, our deepest/original/true self.

And this process of contemplation/evaluation always consists of a gentle interplay between the heart (emotions) and head (reasoning) until they align into an epiphany of sorts from their common source within for at least that moment when that source or true/deepest/oldest/original self is experiencing and present/whole with its surroundings. This is of course commonly described as letting go, because it is the head helping the heart or the heart helping the head to let go of block/barriers to our true self.

If we go yet deeper we actually find this “I” or true/deepest/original self vanishes into union with everything else (including the past and future) to the extent we are successful in letting go of our false self/ways of the flesh/ego/shell/emotional and mental blocks.

To whatever extent we are successful in this letting go process at any given moment we will discover we have removed what keeps us separate or lost or broken (off) from complete union/communion. This is what Jesus was alluding to when he would talk about he and the Father being one and only doing his Father’s will, and is how Jesus was in this sense fully human and fully divine, after relinquishing all of his false self/ways of the flesh/ego/shell/emotional and mental blocks. It is also what the Buddha was alluding to when he said “Actions do exist, and also their consequences, but the person that acts does not.”

To the extent we are not using our emotional and mental faculties to protect ourselves and seek advantages for ourselves and our group we will be united with God (The Entirety). And we will feel united, which is bliss. We will still have this creating part of us within, but we will know it is a small indistinguishable part of The Creator, and we will accurately recognize this as our Source.

Unfortunately, I am not implying I spend much of my time being very successful in this letting go process. Unconsciously adopting the opposite as the wise approach I started out as someone almost entirely and exclusively committed to emotional and mental blocks with their commonly resulting behaviors, including the frivolous pleasure seeking and worldly success since meaningful enjoyment only comes from some variety of union.

Through this approach becoming repeatedly untenable and an enormous amount of luck/good fortune/grace, including great people wanting to be helpful and viable paths to a better way, I have stumbled into some mystical adventures that at times bring great clarity, when I successfully surrender to the letting go process. When considering the tremendous amount of grace I have received and how guarded I still am most of the time though my life is still mostly only a shell of what it could and can be

Here's my darkly humorous irreligious 2017 Christmas letter

Old habits die hard. I still write a Christmas letter for my wife and me. Except we call it "Holiday Greetings." 

Below is  the 2017 letter that I wrote last night. Oh, as long as I'm blogging...

I'm not a strong law-and-order guy, so I'm not going to strictly enforce the commenting rule that I talked about in my previous blog post. I simply am hoping that Church of the Churchless commenters will keep preachiness to a minimum, and use the Open Thread for drastically off-topic comment conversations.

Our Christmas letter can be viewed two ways:

PDF: 2017 Laurel and Brian Hines Holiday Letter
Download 2017 Christmas Letter PDF

JPEG: (below)

Please keep comments on-topic

Reminder: as noted in Open Thread 11, comments on a post need to be related to the topic of a post. Don't veer off into using a comment as a way to preach about how wonderful your chosen faith is, or talking about some other subject. It's irritating for a reader of a blog post to click on comments, then find a bunch of irrelevant comment conversations. Use an Open Thread to talk about whatever you want (there should be an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar). 

Open Thread 11 (free speech for comments)

It's been a while, but Open Thread has been resurrected. This blog has been getting comments that don't fit with the topic of the post in which the comment was made.

So here's another Open Thread (previous OTs are still open, of course). Leave a comment about anything you want to talk about. I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar.

Comments on other posts need to be related to the subject of the post, or they will be candidates for deletion. So an Open Thread is the place for pro-religion remarks and whatever. 

Back in 2015 I wrote "No preachiness" reminder for commenters. Click on that link to learn what is acceptable as a comment on a post other than an Open Thread. I'll also copy in that post below for easy reading.

 

 

"The Prize," my ready-to-steal spiritual screenplay idea

I've never written a screenplay. I've only read one screenplay. But I know from watching TV and movies that pitches for screenplays often take the form of X meets Y. And I can do that much.

The Da Vinci Code meets Contact.

There... million dollar screenplay contract, please. Major movie studios can reach me at the email address in the right sidebar.

But actually I'm fine with someone stealing my idea, which is a mixture of spiritual (a la The Da Vinci Code) and far-out scientific (a la Contact), since I'd love to see the movie that I'm unable to write a screenplay for.

Not only because I don't know how to write a screenplay. Also because in my current irreligious state of mind I have no idea how the plot would come to a satisfying conclusion. 

Here's the notion that came to mind quite a few years ago. 

My mental movie starts with a view from afar of a fancy corporate jet making its way to somewhere or other. Zooming in, going right through the glass of a window on the plane, we see the interior. 

Lavish, but not Trumpian ostentatious. Beautiful flight attendants are serving food and drink to a few well-dressed passengers. One passenger, though, a gray-haired older man, is too absorbed in his reading material to partake. The camera pans around to the cover of his book. 

It is Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. 

We soon learn that the man, let's call him Victor, is a multi-billionaire, one of the richest people in the world. He founded some sort of high-tech company that now rules a lucrative product sector. Victor is viewed as an eccentric genius in the mold of Steve Jobs.

He has numerous passions, of which making shit-loads of money is one. But that isn't his #1 passion, which is known only by close friends:

Understanding the nature of ultimate reality. 

Now, Victor isn't sure what "ultimate" means. He's exceedingly well-versed in modern science. This isn't what he is thinking of, though. Victor also knows more about the world's major religions than most believers in them do, thanks to his genius IQ and voracious drive To Know. 

This eccentric billionaire also has delved into lots of spiritual, mystical, and New Age paths. Here his drive To Know often came head-to-head with his notorious (to employees of his enterprises) Refusal to Put Up With Bullshit. 

Yet even after all of his discarding and debunking of false prophets, Victor is left with a lingering question: could there be more to reality than what science and everyday experience reveals?

He's had his share of psychedelic experiences. He's proficient in several meditation practices. He's had glimpses of something beyond, something ineffable, something mysterious. But whether this something is anything really real, that remains unknown. And he'd like to know before he dies.

So Victor decides to offer a prize. Which gets me to the title of my imagined movie, "The Prize." We're talking serious prize here. A billion dollars. And the winner would be...

Whoever is able to provide Victor with proof of a substantial reality that lies beyond the physical. Meaning, supernatural, divine, other-worldly, godly -- the words don't matter; the reality does.

Victor didn't make his billions by trusting people who are untrustworthy. His reputation for sniffing out charlatans, whether of the financial or spiritual variety, is well-founded. Yet Victor also is a creative, open-minded guy who is ready to push the envelope, think outside the box, go where few have dared to venture.

So he sets up the machinery for publicizing what soon comes to be known the world over as simply The Prize. Victor realizes that someone who knows the seemingly unknowable may not be motivated by money. He makes clear that the billion dollar prize doesn't have to be accepted; it can be gifted. Or, even refused.

Victor simply wants To Know. Naturally he isn't sure if there is anything to be known beyond the bounds of science, reason, and everyday experience. It is worth a billion dollars to him to throw out this question to the world and see what results.

Not surprisingly, fakes abound. Victor has various levels of personnel assigned to ferret out the most obvious bullshitters. He reserves the right to personally review the evidence submitted by people with the most believable claims to knowing ultimate reality.

Now I have more scene ideas of my never-to-be-written screenplay, but there's no reason to share them. My main reason for sharing this idea of The Prize is to point out how difficult the finale of the movie is to figure out. I never was able to come close to a satisfying "third act."  

After all, in thousands of years of recorded human history, nobody has presented convincing demonstrable evidence that reality extends beyond the physical. Thus it takes more creativity than I can muster to imagine what sort of evidence could convince Victor that someone deserves to win The Prize.

And I don't want to settle for a warm and fuzzy ending such as "love is ultimate reality." Remember, this movie is a mixture of the spiritual and the scientific. I'm fine with a bit of ambiguity, just not a lot of it.

I'm highly skeptical that if some actual billionaire were to offer a big-money prize for evidence of a supernatural reality, than anyone would win it. Religions and other spiritual paths already compete for the minds of believers. One would think that they currently are putting forth their most credible claims to knowledge of ultimate reality.

And all fall short.

I readily admit that my imagined screenplay has a large blank spot when it comes to the ending. I content myself with visualizing movie audiences leaving theaters saying, "Wow, that ending blew my mind." 

I just wish I knew what it was.

1986 murder of two RSSB initiates raises serious spiritual questions

I just came across a LA Weekly story, "A 1986 Murder Cold Case in the Mojave Desert is Finally Unraveling," about the gruesome killing of two members of an Indian spiritual organization that I used to belong to, Radha Soami Satsange Beas. 

 

Here's some excerpts from the well-written piece about the disappearance of Barry and Louise Berman, whose bodies were found almost three years later after heavy rains uncovered a skull seven miles from a remote campground.

The late summer of 1988 brought flash flooding to Saline Valley. On Nov. 12, 1988, a hiker stumbled upon a human skull. He marked the spot with a cairn and carried the skull to camp.

Tom Ganner, the new campground host, called the sheriff on his two-way radio. Sgt. Lucas found the skull jauntily arranged atop a picnic table with flowers in its eye sockets and a patch of moss for a hairpiece. "I quickly took care of that," he says.

Lucas, Mottweiler, Ganner and the hiker drove up the Corridor for miles, beyond where most of the searching took place in 1986. The hiker led the way up a dry wash, and Ganner soon found the second skull.

Then, in a narrow side channel of the wash, which easily could have been overlooked, the men discovered a grave-sized pile of rocks.

The next day a forensics team unearthed human remains, the underwire from a bra and the waistband from a pair of underwear. There was no sign of Louise's wedding ring or Barry's silver belt buckle, unique pieces that Korb, the jewelry maker at El Capitan, had handcrafted. And the forensics team found an item of spine-chilling significance: a handcuff key.

Dental records confirmed the remains were Barry and Louise. "Barry was our only child," the grieving Jules [Berman, father of Barry] said in a Nov. 16, 1988, Los Angeles Timesarticle. "It just leaves our lives completely empty."

...Some of Barry and Louise's fellow spiritualists believe that, in the truest sense, they are still alive. Healer-acupuncturist Mary Sullivan says, "We have a living master, his job is to take you back home — it doesn't matter how you die."

Jules Berman, who died in 1998, didn't enjoy such peace. Three years before he died, Berman told UCLA's oral history program that, because of the brutal killings of his son and daughter-in-law, "My philosophy is, if there's a God, he's not for me; he's for someone else."

Michael Westerman says his mom and Barry "were two souls headed in the same direction." That direction led them to the vanishing point.

The spiritual significance of this tale connects to how Sant Mat believers like Mary Sullivan, who was quoted near the end of this LA Weekly story, look upon “bad things happening to good satsangis.” It’s a lot like how Christians rationalize bad things happening to good believers in God/Jesus.

 

In brief, God or the guru works in mysterious ways.

 

                                            Louise and Barry Berman at the ashram in India known as the Dera (from LA Weekly story)

Sant Mat teaches that the Bermans had the radiant form of the guru implanted in their consciousnesses at the time of initiation. This form supposedly was aware of everything that happened to them, and could communicate with the physical form of the guru at any time.

 

So a true believing satsangi, which I definitely am not now, would have to accept that the horrendous murder of the Bermans was allowed to happen by the guru — perhaps with some theorizing that the Bermans had some sort of Bad Karma relationship with the killer.

 

Another weird thing is that a la Jesus, satsangis believe the guru takes on himself much or most of the disciple’s karma, “turning a sword thrust into a pinprick,” as a favorite Sant Mat saying goes.

 

Well, damn, if this is true the Bermans got a hell of a pinprick from the guru. Which is one more reason, among many, that I’ve given up believing in not only Sant Mat, but any form of religion. 

Donald Trump has some (mild) Buddhist leanings

OK, I get what this guy is saying in "Donald Trump, Accidental Buddhist." Let's just stress the accidental. Have a read on the New York Times site. 

Or, the piece is short, so I've shared it below. 

      Donald Trump, Accidental Buddhist

By BEN DOLNICK
DEC. 7, 2017

Donald Trump is the contemporary master of a little-used literary device: the narcissistic third person. On the indictment of Paul Manafort: “There’s not even a mention of Trump in there.” On the possibility of Russian interference in the 2016 election: “Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?” Even his very first tweet, back in the innocent days of 2009, employed this peculiar mirror-gazing perspective: “Be sure to tune in and watch Donald Trump on Late Night with David Letterman ….”

Like so much else that Mr. Trump favors — red baseball hats, caps lock — referring to oneself in the third person has, these past few years, come to seem tainted, almost pathological. It has entered the cultural lexicon — suitable only for the toweringly grandiose (LeBron) or the deeply immature (Elmo). When the writers of a drama wish to signal that someone is soon to die of tuberculosis, they have her cough blood into a handkerchief. When they wish to signal that someone suffers from a terminal case of self-regard, they have him refer to himself in the third person.

Which accounts for the sheepishness I feel when I tell you about my recent discovery: that referring to yourself in the third person is, well, kind of wonderful. Lately I’ve been walking around with an inner monologue that runs something like this: Ben is feeling tired; Ben is considering blowing off the gym; Ben is feeling regret about eating that entire baguette while walking home from the grocery store.

And I’ve not only found my ego swelling from all this Ben-ing. I’ve also found it tamer than ever before, as manageable and mild as a baby panda. Much as it pains me to admit, I’ve come to believe that our egotist-in-chief may have stumbled onto something profound.

Allow me to explain.

At the core of Buddhism is the concept of non-self. The idea, basically, is that the thing you think of as you — the entity whose well-being occupies your every waking thought — is an illusion. This doesn’t mean that your body is a hologram — that Uniqlo-clad lump of meat is indisputably there. What non-self refers to, rather, is the thing that you think of as your true self — the little captain who lives somewhere behind your forehead and looks out through your eyes. The thing that says, “I hope people like me” or “I can’t stand another minute on this train” — that, Buddhists believe, is what needs to be seen through and rooted out.

This teaching, Buddhists insist, has the potential to eliminate your suffering entirely. But it is destined to remain so much inert philosophy, no more life-changing than the quadratic equation, until you’re able to actually glimpse your little impostor, to fix him in your mental cross hairs. Which is where the Trumpian third person comes in.

Because it turns out that what we refer to, when we refer to ourselves in the third person, is the very thing that Buddhists believe causes us so much trouble. When I say, “Ben can’t stand the taste of turnips,” I am forcing myself, at grammatical gunpoint, to inhabit a perspective outside my usual one. From this new vantage point, my feelings about turnips — not to mention the very thing that I’m used to thinking of as myself — appear as objects, separate from the one doing the speaking. Which means that I, just by shifting into the speech patterns of a narcissistic lunatic, have stationed myself out in the hard-to-describe spaciousness where Buddhists say we’d do well to set up shop.

All of which is to say that referring to yourself in the third person — if you do it thoughtfully, and probably silently — need not be a step on the path toward “Celebrity Rehab.” It can instead be a means of finally realizing a life-altering truth. You are not your thoughts; you are not your feelings. Now that my inner narrator has alternatives to I think and I feel, these seem not like self-help platitudes but like observable facts.

Does this mean that Donald Trump, when he goes on and on about “Donald Trump,” is demonstrating his enlightenment? That when he refers to himself in the third person, he is expressing not a personality disorder but an intuitive grasp of the subtlest Buddhist teachings? Ben highly doubts it.

How deluded are you? (If you're religious, you'll score higher.)

The most recent issue of New Scientist has a story called "Delusional You." The online version is differently titled: Grand delusions: Why we all believe the weirdest things.

Now, most of us consider that it is other people who are deluded, and that we're an exception, being nicely connected to reality. Which, I suppose, is another delusion. Here's an excerpt from the story.

That we are all prone to delusions may not be so surprising. A range of cognitive biases makes the human mind fertile soil for growing all kinds of irrational beliefs. Confirmation bias, for example, means we ignore inconvenient facts that go against our beliefs and uncritically accept anything that supports them. Desirability bias leaves us prone to shoring up beliefs we have a vested interest in maintaining because they make us or our group look good. Clustering bias refers to our tendency to see phantom patterns in random events, impairing our ability to draw logical conclusions from the available evidence.

The New Scientist story includes the Peters Delusion Inventory, "which is the most widely used measure of delusional proneness."

I was pleased to find that I scored in the low range, having answered "yes" to only two of the 21 questions. And one of them seemed problematic to me, Do you ever feel as if some people are not what they seem to be? Yeah, I feel this often, particularly when I'm around politicians. This can be reality, not delusion.

Anyway, below is the Peters Delusion Inventory. I couldn't resist putting four decidedly religious'y questions in red, and three more spiritual/New Age'y questions in purple. This shows that religiosity, or more generally, belief in special powers, makes it more likely that someone will be delusional.

This is somewhat at odds with how the story says we should look upon delusions. 

First we need to be clear about what a delusion is. "There's a loose way of talking about delusions -- like when we talk about the 'God delusion' --“ which simply means any belief that's likely to be false and is held despite lack of evidence, or even in spite of the evidence," says Lisa Bortolotti at the University of Birmingham, UK. The psychological take is more nuanced.

Delusions are still seen as irrational, but they are also idiosyncratic, meaning the belief is not widely shared. That rules out lots of things including most religious beliefs, conspiracy theories and the denial of climate change. Furthermore, the idiosyncratic nature of delusions makes them isolating and alienating in a way that believing, say, a conspiracy theory is not. Delusions also tend to be much more personal than other irrational beliefs, and they usually conform to one of a handful of themes.

Hmmmm. The way I see it, just because a delusion is widely shared doesn't make it less of a delusion. Consider the four religious'y questions in red below. 

Lots of true believers do feel they are especially close to God, have been chosen by God in some way, believe in the occult, and sometimes feel they have sinned more than the average person. These aren't idiosyncratic beliefs; they rest at the heart of some major religions and mystical paths.

And the questions in purple are widely held by those who follow certain meditation practices.

In the thirteen years since I started this Church of the Churchless blog, I've seen many comments from people who believe in telepathic communication, consider that it is possible to completely stop thinking, and view thoughts as alien to the supposedly pristine "soul consciousness" that is separate from the mind.

Now, feel free to take the delusion test.

How Deluded Are You?

Almost everyone is vulnerable to delusions, but some of us more than others. These 21 questions constitute the Peters Delusion Inventory, which is the most widely used measure of delusion proneness. Give yourself one point for each “yes” and zero points for each “no”, then tot up your score.

1 Do you ever feel as if people seem to drop hints about you or say things with a double meaning?

2 Do you ever feel as if things in magazines or on TV were written especially for you?

3 Do you ever feel as if some people are not what they seem to be?

4 Do you ever feel as if you are being persecuted in some way?

5 Do you ever feel as if there is a conspiracy against you?

6 Do you ever feel as if you are, or destined to be someone very important?

7 Do you ever feel that you are a very special or unusual person?

8 Do you ever feel that you are especially close to God?

9 Do you ever think people can communicate telepathically?

10 Do you ever feel as if electrical devices such as computers can influence the way you think?

11 Do you ever feel as if you have been chosen by God in some way?

12 Do you believe in the power of witchcraft, voodoo or the occult?

13 Are you often worried that your partner may be unfaithful?

14 Do you ever feel that you have sinned more than the average person?

15 Do you ever feel that people look at you oddly because of your appearance?

16 Do you ever feel as if you had no thoughts in your head at all?

17 Do you ever feel as if the world is about to end?

18 Do your thoughts ever feel alien to you in some way?

19 Have your thoughts ever been so vivid that you were worried other people would hear them?

20 Do you ever feel as if your own thoughts were being echoed back to you?

21 Do you ever feel as if you are a robot or zombie without a will of your own?

0-5 You are less prone to delusions than most. Your thinking style is probably more analytical than intuitive.
6-7 Congratulations! You are normal. The average score is 6.7, with no difference between men and women.
8-21 You are more prone to delusions than most. You are likely to think intuitively and jump to conclusions.

         Schizophrenia Bulletin

Death and non-existence is scary. Not facing reality, even scarier.

I'm afraid of death. This is natural. It is normal for a living being to try to cling to life and avoid death for as long as possible. 

But as I wrote about twelve years ago in "Death and the primal fear of nonexistence," I regularly get glimpses into what it means to not exist forever.

I don't mean a glimpse into the actuality of non-existence, because I won't be around to experience either that, or anything. What I feel is an existential terror that seems different to me from a fear of dying. It is the stark reality that one day I will cease to exist for eternity after my brief stint of living here on Earth.

My most recent Holy Shit! moment came while I was listening to a guided Daily Calm meditation on my iPhone's Calm app. I like Calm a lot. I just found this particular Daily Calm to be anything but calming. 

Here's the more positive image and quote that accompanied the guided meditation.

For sure, Mr. Pinker. You've got that right.

If, as is almost certainly true, each of us has only one life to live -- this one -- then there is indeed an incalcuable value to each and every moment. The sad thing is that most people either realize this too late, or never.

At least, this seems sad to me.  

It may well be that not being able to visualize our impending non-existence until our last breath is an even greater gift. Frequently I envy our dog for being able to simply live her life without worrying about death and her eventual non-existence.

But I'm a human and she's a canine.

Our self-awareness brings along with it the realization that Steven Pinker speaks of: that our capacity to be conscious of existence is exceedingly precious, since in the grand scheme of the cosmos, that consciousness is rare and brief.

I've written quite a bit about death and non-existence. Here's a good sampling of my posts, with an excerpt from each. 

Death and the primal fear of non-existence
I’ve come face to face with not-existing. It’s scary. Really scary. I’ve never experienced anything scarier. I can call it “fear,” but it’s more than that. Worse than that. Regular fear arises when something bad is happening or could happen.

But primal fear is looking into the maw of nothing happening to you, because there will be no you around for anything to happen to. Do you get the difference? I hope so. I don’t know if I can describe it any more clearly.

Overcoming the fear of non-existence 
For me, the warmest, coziest, most reassuring thought-blankie is this: there's really no "me."

If I don't exist in the fashion that I have assumed to be true for most of my life, then not-existing after I die takes on a different meaning. This is hard to explain in words, because what I'm getting at is as much emotional as thoughtful.

It's sort of akin to worrying about losing a precious ring that you've always believed was a family heirloom, then having an older relative tell you, "It's not really worth much; we had it appraised a long time ago."

How I deal with the fear of death and non-existence
Thus whatever will happen to me, will happen to everybody. This realization takes away a feeling that I’m missing out on some special Salvation Treat others will enjoy. Knowing that billions of people have died before me, and billions will die after me, with the same thing happening to all of us after we take our last breath — that is comforting.  

Yet I readily admit: I’d like to live forever. Who wouldn’t? We just don’t always get what we want, though, as I recall the Rolling Stones saying in a song. In a way, we do though — since it seems that as people grow older, and their health gradually declines, death becomes, if not welcome, something not to be feared. In other words, nature seems to have a way of naturally reducing our youthful fear of death.

Uncertainty: the key to dealing with death and non-existence
Believers in life after death don't know that for sure. Believers in non-existence after death don't know that for sure. Nobody knows! Nobody. Not with certainty. And therein lies a viable way of dealing with death: acknowledge that it's an unknown, and focus on the known. Living, here and now.

Coping with death and the fear of non-existence
It may well be that this life is all there is. After death, finis. The end. If that's the case, I want to make the most of the moments that I have left. By contrast, people who believe in eternal life, or a lengthy afterlife in some heavenly paradise, are partly here and partly there. 

Their imaginings of what awaits them beyond get mixed up with what is here, now. I don't want that to happen to me. So I try to use my glimpse of nothingness as motivation to embrace more fully the everything I'm currently aware of.

More thoughts about the fear of non-existence
For me, the beginning (and perhaps also the end) of genuine spirituality is confronting the fear of non-existence head on. I’m getting tired of being afraid. It seems that I’m approaching the point where I’m more afraid of being afraid than of the original fear itself.

Scientific quasi-remedies for a fear of death
However, as I just said, there's still a lingering sense (or wish) in me that something conscious and aware exists beyond our commonplace understanding of the physical. Since I now find it extremely difficult to accept that this is a supernatural divine being, I'm left with exploring the furthest reaches of scientific speculation.

Furthest reaches is a big subject. By nature, almost boundless.

So I'll simply throw out a few approaches for allaying a fear of absolute extinction at death that scientifically-minded folks like me can look into. If anyone has additional suggestions, feel free to share them in a comment.