Church of the Churchless

Guru Gurinder Singh is sounding a lot like Alan Watts

Since there are quite a few devotees of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) who use the comment sections of my blog posts as sort of a Sant Mat discussion venue, I wanted to revisit the question of how the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh, has been altering Sant Mat teachings to a surprising degree.

A blog post of mine from 2011, "Has Gurinder Singh revised Sant Mat to v. 3.0?" summarized these changes.

Five years ago I wrote a post about "Sant Mat, version 2.0." This is how I summarized the changes that Gurinder Singh apparently has made to the RSSB teachings.

(I say apparently because the current guru doesn't allow his talks to be recorded, and he doesn't write anything himself. So this makes it difficult to pin down what he's telling people.)

Sant Mat v. 1.0
--The guru is God in human form
--The guru is perfect, possessing God’s divine qualities
--God has chosen certain souls to return to Him
--God delegates the guru to initiate these “marked souls”
--Without initiation by a perfect guru, God-realization is impossible

Sant Mat v. 2.0
--The guru is a human who is seeking God, just like us
--The guru is imperfect, just like us
--Whether we want to pursue God-realization is up to us
--The guru is a spiritual guide, not a savior
--There are many paths to God, not just Sant Mat

Now it looks like Gurinder Singh is wandering even farther from the tradtional Sant Mat path. On a recent Church of the Churchless post, someone who signed his/her comments "A Typical Follower" shared these thoughts:

I was at the national satsang [gathering of disciples] in the UK last weekend. Gurinder has changed from the old days. His teachings are going through a noticeable change - and so is he himself.

What I noticed is that
(1) He talks a lot about The ONE
(2) He laughs and jokes a lot
(3) He tells people not to be so serious
(4) He tells them that the master will not come at the time of death - that they have misunderstood the teachings. Just as it does not take four lifetimes.
(5) He says there are no regions - that Sach Khand does not exist - neither does Sat Purush. He says they are levels of consciousness

He says the purpose is to REALIZE that there is only the ONE - and that we are caught in maya - duality.

Having the darshan of the physical master is not even mentioned anymore. He says seva will not help you make any progress - it simply makes you humble if done correctly. There is no spiritual merit.

You will NOT be able to succeed through meditation. Meditation is just to make you give up. You can never get there through your efforts.

Now these kind of teachings have never been given before in rssb.

It struck me that the philosophy Gurinder Singh is now espousing bears a considerable resemblance to what Alan Watts talks about in his marvelous book, "The Wisdom of Insecurity." 

Recently someone emailed me, noting that they had some addiction problems and wanted to know if I could suggest a mystical/spiritual book that might help them with this. After a bit of thought I took "The Wisdom of Insecurity" off of my bookshelf, thumbed through it, and sent this person the following excerpts from the book.

These passages fit with Gurinder Singh's observation that we are caught in duality, which is maya, illusion. Part of that illusion, according to Watts, is believing that there is a true self within us that is different from our bodily self. We divide ourselves into two when we view ourselves as "I" and "me."

For example, we'll say to ourselves, "I wish that I didn't have such a craving for chocolate," as if the "I" that wishes is separate and distinct from the "me" that likes chocolate so much. On a broader scale, this is akin to the false distinctions we make between man and nature, mind and body, creator and created. 

Here's the excerpts from Watts' book:

It is as if we were divided into two parts. On the one hand there is the conscious “I,” at once intrigued and baffled, the creature who is caught in the trap. On the other hand there is “me,” and “me” is a part of nature — the wayward flesh with all its concurrently beautiful and frustrating limitations. 

 

“I” fancies itself as a reasonable fellow, and is forever criticizing “me” for its perversity — for having passions which get “I” into trouble, for being so easily subject to painful and irritating diseases, for having organs that wear out, and for having appetites which can never be satisfied — so designed that if you try to allay them finally and fully in one big “bust,” you get sick. 

 

…How are we to heal the split between “I” and “me,” the brain and the body, man and nature, and bring all the vicious circles which it produces to an end? How are we to experience life as something other than a honey trap in which we are the struggling flies?

 

…We do not need action — yet. We need more light. Light, here, means awareness — to be aware of life, of experience as it is at this moment, without any judgments or ideas about it. 

 

…The principal thing to understand is that there is no safety or security. One of the most vicious circles is the problem of the alcoholic. In very many cases he knows quite clearly that he is destroying himself, that, for him, liquor is poison, that he actually hates being drunk, and even dislikes the taste of liquor. 

 

And yet he drinks. For, dislike it as he may, the experience of not drinking is worse. It gives him the “horrors,” for he stands face to face with the unveiled, basic insecurity of this world.

 

Herein lies the crux of the matter. To stand face to face with insecurity is still not to understand it. To understand it, you must not face it but be it. 

 

It is like the Persian story of the sage who came to the door of Heaven and knocked. From within the voice of God asked, “Who is there?” and the sage answered “It is I.” “In this House,” replied the voice, “there is no room for thee and me.” So the sage went away and spent many years pondering over this answer in deep meditation.

 

Returning a second time, the voice asked the same question, and again the sage answered “It is I.” The door remained closed. After some years he returned for the third time, and, at his knocking, the voice once more demanded, “Who is there?” And the sage cried, It is thyself!” The door opened.

 

…We do not actually understand that there is no security until we realize that this “I” does not exist.

I respond to criticism of my book that I no longer fully believe in

As noted in a post three weeks ago, I've gotten God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder back in print, even though I no longer believe in much of the mystical/spiritual aspect of the book. 

Spencer Tepper, a frequent commenter on this blog, bought a copy of the book, which I appreciate. I also appreciate a comment he left where he critiqued some of what I said in the first part of God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder.

It's a bit strange that I feel the need to defend a book that I don't totally believe in, but Tepper focused on a topic that I do consider to be absolutely true: that materiality is different from spirituality -- at least as spirituality is viewed through the lens of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) or Sant Mat, which was the perspective from which I wrote the book back in the 1990s. 

So it's sort of weird that Tepper is criticizing part of a book that was welcomed by the current RSSB guru, who arranged for several thousand copies of my book to be bought by RSSB, which greased the wheels for its initial publication by Threshold Books. 

I say this because Tepper is an RSSB devotee, albeit seemingly not a standard one, since his views differ from the RSSB teachings in certain important respects. Anyway, here's Tepper's comment, and my responses in blue. 

Hi Brian I'm working my way through your book and it did strike me in a completely different way today. It is elegant in its prose. But it's logic, at least in the first few pages, seems hopelessly flawed. You wrote "Materiality can be observed and measured with the physical senses of sight. hearing, touch, small, and taste. This distinction is important because it separates material science from spiritual science."

Yes, I consider this to be true. If something is material, meaning part of the physical universe, it isn't "spiritual" in the sense I'm using that term. The mystic philosophy of Sant Mat (which, again, is what I based the spiritual aspect of my book on) teaches that there are five regions of reality beyond the physical. The goal of Sant Mat meditation is to raise one's soul consciousness to those regions, aided and guided by spiritual light and sound.

This may be a case of reductum ad absurdum. The "material sciences" measure many things well beyond the range of the physical senses. From the distant cosmos to subatomic waves of pure energy, to brain waves and the firing of dendritic interlaces, science extends our vision and understanding. And in distinction to your claims, it often does so measuring indirectly.

When Tepper reads more of my book, he'll see that I note that science uses instruments to aid the human senses. Telescopes aid the eye, for example. And other instruments allow humans to detect electromagnetic frequencies beyond the range of the senses. But the measurements Tepper refers to all have to be cognized by one or more of the physical senses. How else would scientists know about the results of their experiments and observations? I talk a lot about quantum theory in my book, and this area of science deals almost entirely with indirect measurements, since there isn't agreement about the nature of the quantum realm.

We learn about gravity from objects that fall or move in space, not a direct measurement of gravity waves. When you wrote this you faulted, I believe falsely, the physical sciences for being unable to measure spiritual events because they have no apparent measurement in physical reality. Today you fault spirituality for exactly the same reason. Despite your development, your reasoning remains based in the same argumentation.

I don't understand what's being said in the comment above. Gravity waves are a physical phenomenon. Human senses interpret the observations made by highly sensitive machines that are able to detect gravity waves emanating from deep space. Given my definition of spiritual events, which is that used by Sant Mat, it isn't possible for a physical entity to detect a non-physical entity, such as the shabd or sound current posited by the RSSB teachings.

These days I regularly point out on this blog that there is no demonstrable evidence of a spiritual reality. This is consistent with what I said in my book, because physical reality is distinct from any spiritual reality that might exist. Thus any spiritual reality can only be known by an experiencer of it, since as I say in my book, that reality would be non-symbolic -- incapable of being described in words, symbols, images, numbers, or such.

Earlier you constrained science to what could be measured at the time. Today you constrain spirituality because of those same constraints. But in both cases the argument is premature. Your argument extends well beyond your evidence. Even thoughts are correlated to biochemical events. What happens to us is connected to this world.

I totally agree, given my current materialist perspective. However, mysticism as taught by the RSSB gurus has a different perspective: that soul consciousness is separable from the human brain, and it is possible to be aware of spiritual realms of reality that have no connection with this physical universe.

Spirituality and all the classic experiences noted repeatedly in mystic literature and mythic symbols throughout recorded history must at some point find measurable correlates. You quote Max Planck "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and, therefore, part of the mystery we are trying to solve."

Tepper is wrong on this point. Most mystical literature teaches that God, and associated"heavens," are incapable of being described symbolically. They must be experienced, not talked about. The Planck quote cited above supports this notion. Spiritual mystery can be comprehended only by becoming it, or at least grasping it in a non-conceptual fashion. So it is entirely wrong to claim that mysticism seeks "measurable correlates" of mystical experience.

This echoes the same argument for analogous reasoning made by Thomas Aquinas, when he wrote that God cannot be understood by deduction, since God is not a reducable element that can be manipulated, but is in fact greater than this creation. And this echoes Kant's argument that reason cannot accurately extend too far beyond its premeses of common experience to explain metasphysic experience.

Agreed, in the sense that I noted above: mysticism teaches that reasoning can't reach into spiritual realms of existence, a point I stress repeatedly in my book.

But as the tools of science are honed in studying mystic experience we certainly can and will gain greater insights into it. All the modern research into meditation and its physiological effects are evidence, hard evidence of this. I think the same flaw in reasoning from your book pervades your current thinking. You once dismissed scientific inquiry as too limited to capture the full range of reality. Your argument then seemed to be 'If science can't test it today, science must be too constrained to witness true mystic experience' . You now dismiss mystic experience for the same reason.

I disagree, given the RSSB/Sant Mat form of mysticism I based my book on. Again, the RSSB  teachings aim at merging the drop of the soul with the ocean of shabd, the sound current that is believed to be the source from which lower levels of creation spring. This is very different from meditation approaches that aim at making the mind (which is the physical brain in action) more relaxed, concentrated, and such. Tepper's definition of "mystic experience" isn't the one I use in my book, which is the same as that taught by the RSSB gurus.

You seem to now be saying 'If mystic experience can't be tested it must be false, non-existent.' Brian, I hope you can see both of these are unscientific and fallacious claims, based as they area on a single false premise: Your arguments are too final for either science or statements of divinity, based as they are on flawed human limitations, either in meditation or science. But in both cases development invalidates that argument.

Tepper clearly hasn't finished reading my book. What he says above is the exact opposite of what I say in the book. God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder is founded on the premise that there are objective, yet non-symbolic, realms of reality that lie beyond the bounds of material science. So I say over and over in the book that it isn't possible for material science to find signs of a spiritual reality.

You site [sic ] Joe Rosen's definition of science based in the study of what is reproducible and predictable (reliable). All meditation practice and specifically the internal experiences that accrue must at some point meet these same criteria in order for the practitioner to conclude they are witnessing truth. Your approach to criticizing science as a means of creating a space to defend meditation is based on a flaw that had to crumble at some point.

Yes, I correctly describe what material science is all about. Spiritual science is not material science. As I say in my book, if there are spiritual realms of reality that are non-physical, a physical science can't be aware of them. This is why I say that non-symbolic contemplative meditation is the only way of (possibly) contacting a spiritual reality. The fact that there is no agreement among the world's religions and mystical teachings about what a spiritual reality is like now leads me to believe that no such reality exists. 

I wonder why you would choose to write this book without first having a thorough grounding of spiritual experience that met the conditions for reliability and repetitive reproducibility at your volition, so that you could test it, and get beyond imagination and subjective experience.

Well, I spent 35 years meditating every day for several hours, as instructed by Charan Singh, the guru who initiated me in 1971. I consider that a "thorough grounding" in the Sant Mat mystical teachings. I conducted the experiment of  contemplative meditation with fortitude, diligence, and attention to detail. Tepper is free to engage in judgmentalism, and he appears to consider himself superior in spiritual wisdom. Maybe he is. But there is no way to know, because I continue to believe that genuine spirituality isn't capable of being communicated in words or any other symbols.

I'll end by noting to Tepper that this book was reviewed and read by numerous "higher-ups" in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas organization, and was approved by the guru Gurinder Singh himself. So even though Tepper believes that my book doesn't accurately reflect the mystical teachings of Sant Mat, the guru and other leaders of Radha Soami Satsang Beas considered that it did.

Zen's tiger and strawberry story is about dealing with death

The older I get -- I'm 69 -- the more I resonate with the Zen story of a man who had a bad day when he was chased by a tiger. Which turned into a much worse day when another tiger and a couple of mice showed up. 

A man was walking across a field when he saw a tiger. Fearing for his life, the man fled, but the tiger gave chase. The man reached the edge of a cliff, and just as he thought the tiger would get him, he spotted a vine growing over the edge of the cliff. Grabbing on to it, he swung himself over the edge to safety.

The tiger came to the edge and snarled at him from above. While precariously perched like this, the man saw another tiger growling at him from below. Trembling, he held on to the thin vine that was keeping him from being dinner for the tigers. What could be worse than this, he wondered.

Just then, two mice scampered out and began gnawing at the vine. As they chewed and the man pondered over his fate, he saw a juicy, red strawberry on a ledge next to him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. Ah, how sweet it tasted!

Now, some Googling revealed to me that there are different views of what this story is intended to teach us. Live in the moment is a common interpretation. A contrary perspective is don't be distracted by pleasure. 

I'm much more in favor of live in the moment than don't be distracted by pleasure.

Whoever thought the man paid undue attention to the strawberry obviously hasn't spent much time clinging to a vine that's being chewed by mice while tigers await above and below.

You might be thinking, who has experienced this? To which I reply to that thought: Everyone. Without exception. 

Because my view of what the story is all about is that the tigers represent the fear of death, and the mice represent death itself. After all, virtually everybody does their best to run from death when the specter of it appears before us. We cling to whatever life-giving alternative is available.

But in the end, the mice of human mortality are going to nibble through the vine of living, 100% guaranteed. The only question is how long it will take them.

The strawberry represents... a strawberry. (I have strawberries on my oatmeal almost every morning, and I live in Oregon, which has some of the best-tasting strawberries in the world.)

Not only a strawberry, of course. The strawberry is everything in existence.

Or at least, that portion of everything that we humans can be aware of. So long as death hasn't completely nibbled through the vine of our life, we should taste every bite of existence with gusto.

What gives the strawberry an extra dose of sweetness is precisely the fact that our ability to taste it is limited. Nobody lives forever. In fact, nobody even lives very long, by cosmic standards. The universe is about 14 billion years old. We're lucky if we can live to 80, and very lucky to live to 100.

This being a Church of the Churchless blog, I'm going to conclude my interpretation of this Zen story with some jabs at religion. 

There's zero demonstrable evidence, nada, zilch, that anyone has ever cheated death. Those damn mice can't be stopped. Death is an unavoidable eater of life. Death can be postponed, but only for a while.

Given the inevitability of death, and the near-certainty that when we die, we're dead forever (being scientifically-minded, I realize that nothing is 100% certain, including what I just said), it makes sense to get as much sweetness from life as possible while we're still able to cling to its vine.

So here's a Big Problem with religion: every major religion, and most minor ones, claim that another life awaits after we die. Meaning, no mice! Death is a fiction. Thus tigers are optional, since fear of death is justified only if death exists.

This makes strawberries, and the rest of life, less sweet. 

In fact, religions are notorious for urging people to shun many of life's pleasures, such as sex, alcohol, recreational drugs, sensual indulgences, partying-on. They claim -- again, with zero evidence -- that a gigantic heavenly strawberry awaits those who obey whatever restrictions a particular religion enjoins.

Thus the way I see it, the Zen story only has meaning for those who reject religiosity.  

The Book of Chuang Tzu praises uselessness

There's religious, spiritual, philosophical, and mystical writings. Then there's The Book of Chuang Tzu. 

It stands apart, because there's nothing else like it. This Taoist classic is humorous, crazy, confusing, paradoxical, entertaining, wise, weird, and so much else besides. 

I've read it several times, in various translations. It's one of my favorite books, in large part because there's no way to pin down exactly what's being taught in the collection of, as the back cover says, "the stories, tales, jokes and anecdotes that have gathered around the figure of Chuang Tzu."

Since I'm feeling increasingly useless, the older I get, several parts of the book that praise uselessness have a special appeal to me. Enjoy. The first excerpt relates to a tree that doesn't get cut down because its wood just isn't good for much of anything.

When Master Shih was returning, the tree appeared to him in a dream, saying, "What exactly are you comparing me with? with ornamental fruit trees? Trees such as the hawthorne, pear trees, orange trees, citrus trees, gourds and other such fruit trees? Their fruits are knocked down when they are ripe and the trees suffer.

The big branches are damaged and the small ones are broken off. Because they are useful, they suffer, and they are unable to live out the years Heaven has given them. They have only their usefulness to blame for this destruction wrought by the people. 

It is the same with all things. I have spent a long time studying to be useless, though on a number of occasions I was nearly destroyed. However, now I have perfected the art of uselessness, and this is very useful to me. If I had been of use, could I have grown so vast?"

Not only trees benefit from being useless. People, also.

"Crippled Shu, now, is a man with his chin lost in his navel, his shoulders higher than the top of his head and his topknot pointing to Heaven, his five vital organs all crushed into the top of his body and his two thighs pressing into his ribs. By sharpening needles and washing clothes he earns enough to eat. By winnowing rice and cleansing it he was able to feed ten people.

When the officials called up the militia, he walked about freely, with no need to hide; when they are trying to raise a large work gang, because of his deformities, no one bothers him. Yet when the officials were handing out grain to the infirm, he received three great portions and ten bundles of firewood.

If a man like this, deformed in body, can make a living and live out the years Heaven sends him, how much more should a man who is only deformed in terms of his Virtue?"

Then there's the advantage one gains by, in modern vernacular, not giving a shit. Or, by doing the only thing that is possible to do.

A man whose feet have been chopped off casts aside fancy clothes, because his external appearance is incapable of being admired. A criminal condemned to death will scale the highest peaks, because he has no fear of life or death. If someone ignores the advances of friendship, he forgets about others and through forgetting others he is viewed as a man of Heaven.

Such a person can be treated with respect, which will not please him, or be treated with contempt, which will not make him angry. This is because he is part of the Heavenly unity.

Anybody who expressed anger but is not really angry will exhibit non-anger. Anyone who acts yet is not really acting, his actions will be non-action. If he wants to be still, he must be at peace. If he wants to be spiritual, he must calm his heart. When he wants to act, and to be successful, then he is moved by a force beyond him. 

That which one does because it is impossible to do other, that is the Tao of the sage. 

"Burner on!" episode shows danger in trusting our intuition

Many religiously-minded people put a lot of stock in feelings. Meaning, those intuitions that appear full-blown in the mind, seemingly from out of nowhere, that just seem So Absolutely True, they demand to be believed. 

Like, God is love, Jesus is watching over me, and such.

Well, last weekend I had an experience that calls into question the veracity of intuitions like that. It started with my Sunday morning habit of making pancakes for breakfast. 

More accurately, one large pancake. Which I cook in a correspondingly large pan, that's heated by a large burner on our electric cooktop. 

After eating the pancake, which I'd topped with butter, sliced strawberries, and maple syrup, it was time for me to head off to another Sunday habit: a coffeehouse get-together with an old friend, Jim. 

Driving into Salem from our rural home south of town, I was idly listening to the news on satellite radio, not thinking about much of anything except, most likely, about the latest episode in the ongoing Trump administration drama.

Then it hit me -- a message suddenly popped into my mind as if it had been beamed in from an outside source. There was no mistaking what I was being told. 

BURNER ON! YOU LEFT THE PANCAKE BURNER ON! 

I shifted my attention from the car radio to what seemed like a Red Alert in my brain.

My wife was in central Oregon. I'd stayed home rather than accompany her to the vacation home in Black Butte Ranch that we share with three other couples, because a company was scheduled to sealcoat our driveway on Monday, and I felt that one of us should be there in case any questions arose.

So calling my wife to check the burner wasn't an option. I tried to remember whether I'd turned the burner off, but no distinct memory surfaced. 

Logically, it seemed unlikely that I'd departed our house after leaving a pan on the stove with the burner on, since I hadn't done this for many, many years. In fact, maybe never. But that damn voice in my head, BURNER ON!, had been so clear and distinct. And it had appeared all on its own, since I hadn't been thinking about anything related to my breakfast when the alert popped into my mind.

Even though it would take me about 10 minutes to drive home, and I'd be late to meet up with Jim, I decided that I should attend to the intuition. After all, if somehow our house burned down after getting a mental message that I'd left the burner on, that would be a heck of a lot worse than being twenty minutes late for coffee with a friend.

When I walked into the kitchen I was unsurprised to find that... I'd turned the burner off. And also taken the pan off of the burner. Which is what I always do after making a pancake. 

So intuitions can be wrong, even when they seem oh-so-right.

Now, I realize this isn't earthshaking news. Naturally not everything that seems absolutely correct to us actually is. But my experience still surprised me, because the feeling that I'd left the burner on came with such suddenness, and with a strong sense of truth.

A seeming truth is just that, though, seeming, until it is verified. This applies both to mundane stuff like whether a stove burner has been left on, and to divine stuff like whether God, or the Universe, is sending a message to us. As the saying goes, trust, but verify. 

Being religious won't save you from suicide

Just came across this piece by Jesse Bering in Skeptic, "No, Being Religious Will Not Save You From Suicide." Well worth reading. Makes some great points. Here's an excerpt.

Among the more obnoxious things I’ve read in the wake of Anthony Bourdain’s death is that if only he had been a man of faith, he wouldn’t have taken his own life.

Consider the almost sneering commentary offered by Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, in a syndicated piece written less than a day after the rogue chef’s body was found hanging by the belt of his bathrobe in a Strasbourg hotel room.

“If Anthony Bourdain had been a religious man, would he have killed himself? Probably not,” writes Donohue. “Bourdain was raised by his Catholic father and Jewish mother, though neither of them saw fit to raise him any religion … [Bourdain] said his views of religion were similar to those expressed by Christopher Hitchens, the British atheist. This is why the atheist organization, Freedom from Religion, was so proud of him.”

Not only is the tenor of Donohue’s sentiment completely tone-deaf and insensitive, his claim that Bourdain—or, for that matter, any other atheist suicide victim—could have been saved by religion is presumptuous and misleading.

In his unabashed efforts to show why Catholicism is superior to other religions (he touts his book The Catholic Advantage while writing about Bourdain’s suicide), Donohue points out that regular churchgoers are less likely to kill themselves. He’s right. But it turns out it’s a little more complicated than Donohue would have us believe.

The church buffering effect against suicide that he’s alluding to, in fact, has almost nothing to do with faith. Rather, the correlation comes from churchgoers being part of an active community, one with formal rituals encouraging social engagement and regulated moral support. It’s what’s known as the “network theory” of religion and suicide, first articulated by Émile Durkheim in the late 19th century.

In his famous treatise Suicide (1897), Durkheim reported that, despite their matched religiosity, Protestants were more likely to take their own lives than Catholics, a puzzling observation given that suicide is proscribed in both forms of Christianity. But Protestants are permitted free inquiry, have fewer formal rituals, and are characterized by more permeable groups.

This general trend—that it is church attendance, not simply religion, that protects people against suicide—has been found in study after study ever since. So, when Donohue writes that “those who are regular churchgoers have a much lower rate of suicide than atheists like Bourdain,” he’s conflating (and I suspect deliberately so) religious behavior and theism.

Mindfulness has become my meditation

Back in my true-believing religious days, when I embraced an Eastern form of mysticism that espoused several hours of daily eyes-closed meditation, I thought that the ultimate aim of life was to experience higher realms of reality beyond the physical.

Of course, I had a job to go to, a wife and daughter, worldly activities I enjoyed. But I viewed these as mostly distinct from my spiritual goal of god-realization -- those things were part of my karma; important, yet not what my life's highest purpose was all about.

I'm grateful that my eyes have been opened to the flaws in this point of view. 

Since there is no demonstrable proof that God or other supernatural entities exist, and clearly this world does exist, it makes sense to focus first and foremost on what is right before us rather than on some imagined immaterial domain. 

This is why, even though I'm by no means a practicing Buddhist, I find a lot to like in Buddhist philosophy that's been stripped of supernaturalism. Mindfulness has become my current preferred form of meditation.

Of course, mindfulness doesn't have any inherent connection with Buddhism, a point Jon Kabat-Zinn makes in his engaging book, "Mindfulness for Beginners: Reclaiming the Present Moment -- And Your Life."

In essence, mindfulness is universal because it is all about attention and awareness, and attention and awareness are human capacities that are innate in all of us. Still, it is fair to say that, historically speaking, the most refined and developed articulations of mindfulness and how to cultivate it stem from the Buddhist tradition, and Buddhist texts and teachings constitute an invaluable resource for deepening our understanding and appreciation of mindfulness and the subtleties of its cultivation.

On page 1, Kabat-Zinn describes what mindfulness is.

Mindfulness is awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a sustained and particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. 

It is one of many forms of meditation, if you think of meditation as any way in which we engage in (1) systematically regulating our attention and energy (2) thereby influencing and possibly transforming the quality of our experience (3) in the service of realizing the full range of our humanity and of (4) our relationships to others and the world.

Today, in the late afternoon on a sunny June day here in rural south Salem, Oregon, I had just set out on a walk through some paths on our ten acre property that lead to a community lake not far away.

I was idly thinking about what I was going to write about in a blog post when I got home. Which, as you might suspect, meant my mind was filled with thoughts about mindfulness. 

I wasn't being mindful. I was planning what to say about mindfulness, a whole other thing. But a flash of white caught my attention off to my left. Suddenly I had jumped into being aware of the present moment, not a future blogging moment. 


Either I had missed the daisies on previous walks, or now simply was the time for the daisies to blossom forth. Regardless, I was pleased to be jolted out of my mental machinations into an appreciation of beauty in the world outside my cranium.

A bit further along, the setting sun illuminated the fronds of ferns that grow copiously here in Oregon.

I always enjoy this part of the path that leads to the lake, because it disappears around a bend. Like life itself, the path only shows what is close at hand, not what is around the corner. 

Ah, the shape of trees, backlit by the setting sun. I've seen this sight so many times in the 28 years we've lived where we are now. But that word, now, means that never before had I seen this sight, in this way, on this day.

Which made it magical. In a supremely ordinary fashion. Such is the power of mindfulness, which really is nothing more than what Kabat-Zinn speaks about in his first mini-essay, Beginner's Mind.

Suzuki Roshi, the Japanese Zen Master who founded the San Francisco Zen Center and touched the hearts of so many, is famous for having said, "In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."

Beginners come to new experiences not knowing so much and therefore open. This openness is very creative. It is an innate characteristic of the mind. The trick is never to lose it.

That would require that you stay in the ever-emerging wonder of the present moment, which is always fresh. Of course, you will lose beginner's mind in one way, when you cease to be a beginner.

But if you can remember from time to time that each moment is fresh and new, maybe, just maybe, what you know will not get in the way of being open to what you don't know, which is always a larger field. Then a beginner's mind will be available at any moment you are open to it.

Happiness lies in ordinary things

Am I happier since I gave up the fantasy of religion? Probably.

It's a big relief to not have a cosmic weight on my back -- the expectation that I need to do this and that, plus that and this, in order to be worthy of being admitted to God's heavenly realm. 

That's a lot of pressure, believing that the fate of my supposedly immortal soul rests on whether I've been fortunate enough to find a path that leads to God-realization, and, having hopefully found the right path, on whether my efforts to follow it will meet with success.

In my current atheist days I'm much more satisfied with finding happiness in small things, ordinary things.

Before, I had my sights set on a Very Big Thing: ultimate reality. Now, scratching our dog's stomach when she rolls on her back in newly-mown grass makes me feel like life is good. As does a cup of coffee, which I'm enjoying right now.

A TIME special edition, "The Science of Emotions," contained a short essay by Meg Wolitzer that resonated with me. Here's an excerpt from her The Psychology of Happiness that I like a lot.

Everyone talks incessantly about stress now, and how it has changed our lives and made us so unhappy. Less obviously, I think stress has also changed the quest for happiness itself, making it more aggressive and occupying more of our time.

Ever since antidepressants and sexual-enhancement drugs hit the airwaves and ever since we were told that we had a right to our happiness, damn it, and that we could ask for it -- no, demand it -- from our doctors, spouses, friends, or employers, it seems that the desire for happiness has increasingly become a source of anxiety.

Which is why I have taken a few steps back. At this point, being happy is about having the space to appreciate the ordinary things that do in fact make me "happy," though at first glance they might not be seen that way. 

An absence of chaos; an absence of phone calls with disturbing news; an absence of business emails that up-end your day and demand attention right then and there; no acutely ill parents; no fragile children calling shakily from college.

Being able to sit down with a glass of wine and some really good, tiny little olives with your husband; having a nice meal with your kids that's not rushed or fraught.

These seem like small things, perhaps pedestrian things, but I protect them fiercely, knowing that on the other side of an imaginary wall waits the possibility that all of them will soon be gone and that something terrible will replace them.

But I no longer quake in fear.

I used to think that happiness was something a person was so lucky to find that, like Lord Voldemort (a.k.a. He Who Must Not Be Named), it should never actually be mentioned. Now, with happiness taking on a new, modest cast, the fear of losing it is smaller too.

You might think: Good god, woman! This isn't happiness. Happiness has wild colors and flavors; it involves bodies draped across a bed, or things that come in gift wrap. Or even, once in a while, Carvel. Don't you want any of that?

Of course I do.

But being allowed to enjoy some of the more modest pieces of my life happens right now to be my own personal Carvel; my own dachshund, gift-wrapped present, snow day and secret lover. Perhaps for most of us -- or anyway, for me -- happiness has gotten smaller over time, becoming endlessly and exquisitely refined, though somehow never diminished.

Death of 14-year-old boy shows appeal of religion

Death sucks. But death is inevitable. It happens to everybody. There's no exceptions.

Yet for senior citizens  like me -- I'm 69 -- we've had many years of living that make our eventual demise seem, if not appealing, at least part of the natural course of things.

A child's death, though... that's a whole different thing.

Today I read a story in our local newspaper, the Salem Statesman Journal, about the death of a 14-year-old boy from a rare form of bone cancer. 

It was heartbreaking. 

Jack Schumacher lived for baseball. He was good at math, loved LEGOs and loved his family.

A year ago, the Straub Middle School student was honing his pitching skills at Capitol City Sports, and looking forward to summer.

Then, a nagging pain began in his left hip. Within three months, there was a diagnosis: Osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer. Four months later, he learned there was no hope.

“What he was truly facing was his own mortality, knowing he was going to die,” said his mother, Tammi Huber.

There were tears, there was anger, there was questioning, Huber said. But by the time Jack died at 14, on May 18, he had come to terms with it.

That's inspiring, courageous, exemplary. The story explains one of the reasons Jack was able to face death with equanimity. Huber is Jack's mother.

Jack spent a lot of time talking about the afterlife, Huber said. And by the time he died, in her arms on May 18, he had made peace with it.

I'm an atheist. I don't believe in God. I don't believe in an afterlife. But I can totally understand why a 14-year-old boy dying of bone cancer that has spread throughout his body would want to envision himself living on after he takes his last breath.

In fact, I can understand why anybody facing death would seek solace in what almost certainly is a fantasy, albeit a comforting one. 

Understand: I'm not saying that all atheists, or even most of them, experience death bed conversions. This simply isn't the case.

I'm simply pointing out the obvious: that a major appeal of religions is the reassurance they offer about death being not an end to existence, but the beginning of another form of life. 

This doesn't make an afterlife true. It just makes an afterlife a comforting belief.

And the question of why God allows children to die remains unanswered. This is part of the broader question of theodicy,  how a good God permits the manifestation of evil. 

Us atheists have an easy response. God doesn't exist, so there is no problem with bad things happening in the world. That's just the nature of reality. Pain, suffering, death, and other nasty stuff simply accompany living because this is how things are.

End of story. 

"God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder" is back in print, shorter and simplified

Big news! Also, kind of weird news. 

Now-atheist me has gotten a second edition of the book written by previous-religious-believer me back in print. It took me many years to do this after the initial publisher went of business, but I finally got around to it.

(Note: the paperback version was available May 8 on Amazon, but it took this long for a Kindle version to be prepared, then linked to the paperback listing on Amazon.)

Yes, Amazon has "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder: Echoes of Spiritual Reality in the New Physics" available for $13 in paperback and $3.99 for the Kindle version. 

I readily admit that it is more than a little strange for an author to republish a book that he currently doesn't believe is true -- at least a considerable portion of the book.

But since I'm scientifically minded, and there's a lot of science in the book, I figured that: (1) Many people would be interested in reading my take on how a particular form of mysticism relates to the new physics, and (2) Since science always is open to new possibilities, there's a small chance that what I believed some 25 years ago actually is true, even though I've deconverted from my belief in Sant Mat as practiced by Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

In another post I'll write about how I edited the book to be less preachy, shorter, and simpler. For now I'll be content with sharing the back cover copy -- which is the same as what appeared on the first edition published by Threshold Books.

In this ground-breaking study, Brian Hines shows the connection between the findings of the new physics and the insights of the great mystics. He presents the theories of contemporary physics with elegant simplicity and a sense of humor that makes for an intellectual tour-de-force.



In addition, the experimental methods of contemplative meditation are described in detail to show how one can confirm the facts of spiritual science. While quoting from the mystics of the great traditions, the author has chosen the great 12th Century Sufi mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi, as the mystic scientist par excellence.

As the new physics attempts to describe the subject of its experiments and theories, it is forced to resort to the language of poetic metaphor to convey its speculative concepts. Physics now deals with what cannot be perceived but only inferred, and the myth of the materiality of existence is dissolving.

The spiritual “scientist,” on the other hand, explores through his or her own being levels of reality which both encompass and transcend the laws of science. By refining the instrument of human consciousness according to verifiable principles developed over countless centuries of experimentation, the spiritual scientist seeks an empirically rigorous and objective experience of reality.

The reader will find his or her appreciation of these two fields deepening as the core principles of both are analyzed and compared. Viewed in this light, modern science is no longer seen to be in conflict with faith and spirituality. A seeker after truth can learn about both material and spiritual planes of reality with complete confidence that knowledge of one is consistent with knowledge of the other.



In truth, there is only one Law running throughout all of existence, one Voice producing all of the myriad sounds. When God whispers, creation thunders.