Church of the Churchless

Sam Harris on not finding a center of consciousness

Some time ago, can't remember exactly when, I added guided meditations via Sam Harris' Waking Up iPhone app to my morning meditation routine. (I also enjoy listening to the daily guided meditations by Tamara Levitt on the Calm app.)

Sam Harris

Here's a transcript I made of part of one of Harris' guided meditations. It followed an exercise where Harris asked the listener to breathe in a vision of the world on an inbreath, and to breathe out themselves into the world on the outbreath. 

Well, the point of that exercise is to notice, once again, how much the sense of self, the sense of being, is located, is anchored in vision. You might find it useful to play with this as you meditate with open eyes and you look for the seat of attention. 

You might notice there’s a transition between breathing the world in, and breathing yourself out into it. And it’s that implied center of consciousness, that place where you seem to be, that point toward which you could inhale everything, and from which you could exhale yourself out into the world — it’s that point you are looking for.

And the moment you look, it’s not seen. And it’s in that awareness of there being no thing to see, that you should rest your mind. And if that’s confusing, rest assured it won’t always be. 

This is a common theme of Harris, how it isn't possible to find the see'er of what is being seen, the hear'er of what is being heard, the think'er of what is being thought, and so on. 

Which is a thoroughly Buddhist notion, of course: the reality of no-self.

This is very different from other meditation practices that try to withdraw attention from the world into some sort of "eye center" or "third eye," with the aim of realizing oneself as immaterial consciousness or soul.

Here's some other notes I've taken after listening to Harris' guided meditations. These aren't exact quotes, like the passage above is. But they're very close to Harris' own words.

-- Follow the breath back to the one who is breathing. Toward what? Who is the one that is seeing?

-- Breathe with yourself into the world. Look for the place between breathing in the world and breathing yourself out. Look and find there is nothing to be seen.

-- Is there a center to consciousness, a place from which you're being conscious. Look for it briefly, then rest your mind.

-- Everything that appears is a wave on the surface of consciousness.

-- Is there a hearer in addition to the fact of hearing?

-- Where is the self, if every sign of it is appearing in consciousness?

-- Don't lean forward to breathe. Lean back. Receive like a mirror would.

-- Drop back into the space into which thoughts and sensations are appearing.

-- Don't feel like attention is coming from some point. Rather, that feeling also is coming from the open space of consciousness.

-- Cover the breath. Just receive each new sensation. The point is not the breath. It's the quality of awareness you are paying attention to it.

-- A feeling of "I" is also an appearance in consciousness. It feels a certain way to feel you are directing attention. Drop back and be the space in which that feeling too is arising. Is there a center of consciousness?

Here's my 12 favorite churchless blog posts of 2018

Why, this is almost like the Twelve Days of Christmas -- aside from the Days and Christmas part. It's my Twelve Favorite Blog Posts of 2018 here on the Church of the Churchless. (Image below came from here.)

I picked one post from each month, because that was easier.

And I generally chose posts that I'd written mostly by myself, rather than posts where I quoted a lot from someone else. But since rules are made to be broken, a few posts don't contain mostly my own words.

So here they are, the decidedly non-sacred Twelve Favorite Blog Posts of 2018, with an excerpt from each.

January
"Free Will Explained" is a poor explanation of free will

I'm a free will junkie.

I find this subject fascinating. I've read most of the books that argue free will doesn't exist, even though we humans believe we possess it. So since the subtitle of Barker's book is How Science and Philosophy Converge to Create a Beautiful Illusion, I expected a rational, reasonable, factual explanation of not only why free will is an illusion, but the benefit of giving up a belief in it.

Well, even before I got through the introduction, I found myself writing more and more question marks in the margins, because what Barker was saying made so little sense.

February
Pay attention to the small things of life, because they're the important things

Walking back to our rural home after a dog walk, I was struck by how a leafless oak tree at the edge of our yard looked against the late afternoon sky. It was a lesson in fractals, those amazing shapes that repeat at many levels.

Each twig was a reflection of each branch which was a reflection of the entire tree.

Which got me to thinking about how the small things in life are a reflection of the big things in life. To put it another way, the meaning we get from small things is the same meaning we get from big things. 

March
My atheist interpretation of the Lord's Prayer

Sometimes I feel like praying, even though I don't believe in God. The only prayer that I remember from my brief time in Catholicism as a child is the Lord's Prayer.

So I enjoy interpreting the familiar words from a scientific atheist point of view. 

April
A quest for spiritual liberation can lead to new illusions

Some scientific findings contained in an article in the April 2 issue of The New Yorker, "Are We Already Living In Virtual Reality?" bear on the question of what meditation is all about, and the extent to which meditation liberates us from anything.

The article is about Thomas Metzinger, a philosophically-minded neuroscientist.

As you can read in the excerpt below, Metzinger speaks about our inability to recognize the unconscious mental models that determine how we experience reality.

May
Five reasons why I don't believe in God

Since 2004 I've written 2,365 posts on this here Church of the Churchless blog. That's a scarily large number, which testifies to my commitment to churchlessness after spending 35 years being firmly churched in an Indian guru-based form of religiosity.

During the past fourteen years I've talked a lot about why I no longer believe in God. I've put forth numerous reasons for my conversion to atheism. Here's a fairly brief description of five key reasons. 

June
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.

...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." 

July
Devastating criticism of Guru Gurinder Singh by a RSSB insider

Gurinder Singh Dhillon is the current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a spiritual organization headquartered in India that has a worldwide reach.

In this post I'm sharing 27,000 words worth of comments left on this blog by "Tara," a woman who had an up close and personal view of both Gurinder Singh (photo below) and the RSSB organization prior to her becoming disillusioned by what she saw, which led to her leaving the RSSB fold.

August
Bloomberg story shows Gurinder Singh Dhillon's shady business dealings

Today Bloomberg, a business publication, published a tell-all story about Gurinder Singh Dhillon's hugely complicated, and ethically dubious, financial dealings with Shivinder and Malvinder Singh, nephews of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru.

Ari Altstedter wrote the story, "The Billionaires and the Guru: How a Family Burned Through $2 billion." I spoke with Altstedter by phone about the 35 years I spent as a RSSB devotee, and was quoted in the piece.

September
Nasty criticisms of me from some "spiritual" RSSB defenders

I find it entertaining to see how supposedly "spiritual" followers of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the Indian organization headed up by a guru that I was a member of for 35 years, can write such wonderfully insulting comments about me.

I'm sharing some recent comments below, along with my response in italics.

October
Join the godly, supernatural, mystical "I Don't Know For Sure" club

It gives me great pleasure to invite not only visitors to this blog, but everybody in the whole freaking world, to join a non-exclusive club I've just formed:

The I Don't Know For Sure club. 

Admission is free. There are no dues. Also, no meetings. Nor any sort of organization. This club exists only in the minds of those who answer "no" to a simple question.

Are you 100%, completely, absolutely, without-a-doubt confident that what you believe about god, the supernatural, and mystical experiences is objectively true?

November
We humans have selfhood without a self

Here's a big question, one of the biggest when it comes to understanding reality and how religions typically view what it means to be human:

Do we have a self? Or adding an (important) capital letter, Do we have a Self?

To kick off my discussion of these questions, here's some recent right-on comment observations from "JB."

December
Here's my foolproof guide to wise spiritual "investing"

The past couple of days have been ugly for investors in stock markets around the world, including here in the United States. But I've been pretty much unmoved and unworried by the downturn. 

Why? Because quite a few years ago I decided to embrace index investing, where you don't try to be smarter than all the other guys/gals who invest, you just have a goal of doing as well as the general investment climate.

A few years ago I wrote about this on one of my other blogs in "Index investing lets me relax in a stock market crash." And I've come to take the same approach to spirituality.

Great message from someone who doubts dogma about Gurinder Singh and RSSB

Getting an email like the one below makes me feel good about what I've been able to accomplish through this blog from its founding in 2004 to the present. 

Every person who comes to recognize the downside of religiosity -- whether this be in an Eastern or Western guise -- contributes to an upswing in the world's respect for truth. 

And truth-telling is in danger right now, as evidenced by TIME magazine choosing the 2018 Person of the Year to be journalists, guardians of the war on truth. But really, we all need to take on that job, guarding truth.

As you can read below, the young person who wrote to me about their doubts regarding Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization headed by a guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, is standing tall for truth even though this means going against the grain of his religiously-minded family.

Hopefully this person's story will inspire others to break free of dogmatism and enjoy the wide open spaces of the truth about reality. Enjoy...

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Brian,

First of all, I would like to thank you for your work on your blog and the diligent reporting of the flaws present in Radha Soami Satsang Beas. You are one of the few objective sources of information about it, free from dogma.

 

Your work exposing the flaws behind this path has helped me tremendously.

 

I was born into a satsangi family and raised to believe in Gurinder Singh as a perfect master. I found your blog at least a decade ago, when I was in my teens, and you helped me to discover the truth and learn things about Gurinder Singh and RSSB that no satsangi would tell me. Your work is so important because you discuss things few others are willing to on the internet and are a source of true information for me.

 

I also want to thank you for your reporting on the recent financial scandal involving Gurinder Singh and his family.

 

Despite having found your blog around 10 years ago (more or less) and neither believing in Gurinder Singh nor considering myself a Radha Soami for about as long, I had kept my personal doubts and beliefs a secret from my very satsangi parents. Because of their expectations, I still felt the need to go to satsang and attend official visits even though I did not believe in it at all.

 

I was quite afraid to communicate to them my true thoughts about it because they are so dogmatic and I didn't think they would understand my point of view. As a young person, the feeling of not being understood by my satsangi family was very much a deterrent to me and pushed me to just go through the motions of attending satsang to avoid their disapproval.

 

In recent years, I have been going through some things which has pushed me to live more authentically and to stop pretending things for the benefit of other people. Perhaps, this is a part of my natural growing up process. Therefore, I totally stopped going to satsang, including official visits, 2 years ago but always danced around the issue as to why when asked or pressured by my family.

 

When you reported the financial scandal, when I saw this being published in a reputable news source like Bloomberg, and when I read Sheena's book, I felt like I finally had enough information to explain my point of view to my parents with backed up arguments that are hard to refute. I felt that a lot of people would finally see the flaws present in the RSSB organisation as it is hard to reconcile the image of a perfect master with financial crime.

 

It was very naive of me to believe that the Bloomberg story would be the catalyst for truth I hoped it would be.

 

I did express my views out in the open to my parents and explained very clearly why I neither follow Gurinder Singh nor support RSSB or have any intention to get initiated at any point in the future. The point of this long-winded email is to report to you what the general mood seems to be among satsangis after the news broke, as told from my personal viewpoint and with my personal opinions attached.

 

My parents seemed to experience a lot of cognitive dissonance between their beliefs versus the news. Several things came up in my discussion with them:

1. They believe Gurinder Singh to be totally unaware of the financial goings on and the victim of someone else's shady behaviour. 
2. The above is reinforced by the fact that my uncle, who is a regional head and has spoken to Gurinder Singh personally, says that Gurinder Singh feels and has said that "they are all blaming me". 
3. Apparently my uncle had a "vision" of Charan Singh telling him not to believe what he reads.
4. Regarding the private plane and it being inappropriate for a spiritual leader to own one in the first place when the funds could be used towards charity, my parents think that "times were different" when Charan Singh was master and now that we are living in "modern" times we need a "modern" master who does not need to live as "simply" as previous ones. 
5. My father claims that the Bloomberg article was sponsored and written with an anti-RSSB agenda in mind.

You might think to yourself, okay this is just one person's parents and not representative of the general population of satsangis, but actually the sentiment seems to be shared among most within the satsangi community where I live. 

 

I have spoken to friends who do believe in Gurinder Singh and what I was told was that when the news first broke it was a very "hot topic" in satsang for a few weeks until it died down. My friend speaks for the younger group of sevadars and what I am told came out of those discussions is that:

1. People have concluded that Gurinder Singh is an innocent victim who was totally unaware of all that occurred (as stated above).
2. Sheena is motivated by hatred of Gurinder Singh as her reason for publishing her book (not true! I read her book and felt her to be very genuine and compelling). Regarding Sheena, one person said that Gurinder only made comments about her supposedly sleeping with many men to "diminish her karma". I don't really know how that would work and there are so many problems with this statement I don't know where to begin.
3. Many in the group said they don't really know what is true and what is not but they don't really believe Bloomberg is telling the truth as regards what went on nor believe that Gurinder Singh could knowingly do such a thing.

It seems to me that the cognitive dissonance between what people want to believe versus the reported news is leading many to choose to believe either that the Singh family is totally innocent or that their actions are justified in some ways than to confront the possibility that the person they believe in is not what they believed him to be. 

 

It is now December, months have passed, and no one talks about it anymore. My parents went to Beas as normal this month and are raving about their visit as usual. I feel like people have concluded that the scandal "cannot possibly be true" and everything just returned to business as usual.

 

I am quite disappointed that more people did not use this opportunity to reexamine the nature of the organisation they support. I know that cognitive dissonance is a very well known phenomenon so I should not be surprised but I think it is a wasted opportunity but from my part, I feel glad to have finally found the courage to state my beliefs, or rather non-beliefs, even if others don't believe me or support my decision. 

 

I credit you, in part, for helping me find the courage to do so through your extremely valuable work. Please keep it up, we need you to be the voice of sanity in a sea of dogma. This is an important thing for young people especially who have grown up only hearing dogma about RSSB rather than objective facts.

 

I just wanted to share with you my experience as many may be wondering how satsangis are reacting to and processing the news. If you want to publish my words please keep me anonymous.

 

Kind Regards,

Here's our irreligious 2018 Hines Christmas letter

Trigger alert: if you're religious or conservative (i.e. a Donald Trump lover), or worse, religious and conservative, you may find the 2018 Christmas letter fashioned by my wife and me -- well, actually, just me -- to be not your cup of Holiday tea.

Anyway, here it is in all its semi-dark glory. Enjoy. 

And Merry Christmas to all, churchless of the world and religious believers of the world alike. Deep down, there's more that binds us than what divides us, even though this is difficult to discern if you spend a lot of time on Facebook, or watch cable news.
Download 2018 Christmas Letter PDF

 

Jesus without Christianity makes a lot of sense

Wow. Atheist me is sharing a USA Today opinion piece about Jesus. That's because the only problem I have with Jesus is his connection with Christianity. Take that away, and we're left with the teachings of a regular human being.

This assumes, of course, that Jesus actually existed, and the New Testament contains at least a somewhat accurate description of what Jesus said and did -- two debatable assumptions.

Nonetheless, I like the general thrust of this opinion piece. I've added some comments on it in red. 

Jesus doesn't need Christianity. His example is powerful without any religion at all.
Tom Krattenmaker, Opinion columnist

In the Christmas story being told in households and churches across the land, Jesus was born in a manger. Although romanticized in tales and hymns, the bed of hay and company of livestock do not constitute an ideal setting for birthing a baby. But Mary and Joseph had no choice. There was no room at the inn.

Will there be room at the inn for Jesus in our setting as we become more of a post-Christian society in the years and decades ahead?

We can hope so, whether we are Christian or not.

Not sure I agree, but the author does make a decent case for this.

Potent cultural forces are vying to crowd him out, of course. Chief among them is secularization, which has advanced to the point where roughly a quarter of Americans  — and upwards of 40 percent of younger Americans — belong to no church or any other kind of religious organization. Many who have left organized Christianity, or were never part of it to begin with, throw out the baby (Jesus) with the bathwater.

Yay! Churchlessness is on the march! The times they are a'changing. Less religion, the better. 

Along with that, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat sees paganism seeping into the vacuum left by the recession of traditional Christianity. In a recent column, Douthat, who is Catholic, notes that a kind of this-world spirituality is gaining ground as more people eschew the transcendent God of the Bible. Not atheistic, this spirituality seeks meaning and succor in nature, ritual, even in supernatural forces. Douthat predicts, gloomily, that this pagan “religion” might be on its way to becoming Christianity’s successor.

What's gloomy for Douthat sounds like cheerful news to me. I'd prefer paganism to shun supernatural forces, of course. But paganism is any form is way better than traditional Christianity. 

Jesus gets no mention in Douthat’s piece. That’s telling. Because in the traditional religious formulation, as in the secular one, Jesus plays little if any role in the world other than the Christianized one that frames him as the divine son of God, the savior in whom we must believe and whose divinity we must accept, if we’re to avoid hell and reach heaven’s gate.

I'm fine with embracing hell and rejecting heaven, since there's no evidence either exists. The Big Bad Wolf can't scare us if it is a fantasy. 

But is it really such an either/or? Can’t Jesus have a future beyond Christianity as we’ve known it?

He can. And should.

Law professor and blogger Bruce Ledewitz was quick to pick up on the omission of Jesus in Douthat’s column. Doubtful that paganism has much of a foothold or future, Ledewitz writes that there’s another possibility: the emergence of a “secularized” Christianity built around the values of Jesus.

Intriguing idea. 

The professor gets it right. Just as the person of Jesus came before Christianity, so might the figure of Jesus — philosopher, teacher, moral exemplar — outlast American Christendom. If secular people can focus on the values and teachings of Jesus without getting tripped up by the religious context — which comes naturally for some, not so easily for others — they might find a surprisingly relevant source of guidance and uplift.

OK. Like I said, I'm fine with Jesus. It's Christianity that I reject. 

Here is a figure who, with his unwavering commitment to honoring the dignity and humanity of all people, has much to say to the issues that roil society today: Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the arrival of traumatized immigrants at our border, and the despair in our bursting-at-the-scenes prisons and forgotten rural communities.

What would happen if our moral and policy evaluations were injected with the ethic of Jesus, who taught that the ultimate test of our character is how we treat those with the least power and status, those we can most easily get away with abusing and forgetting?

Jesus sounds like a progressive/Democrat/liberal -- just like me! Not an original observation, of course. Quite a few have pointed out that the Jesus loved by conservatives isn't the Jesus of the Bible. It's a made-up Jesus who hates gays, abortions, and other right-wing obsessions.

This is a figure who stands in stark contrast with the prevailing norms of a culture obsessed with the acquisition of status, wealth and consumer products. President Donald Trump promised that our “wins” would be so many under his leadership that we’d get sick of winning. No chance of that happening. Materialism’s hunger is never satisfied and its thirst is never slaked.

True. The United States is a supposedly "Christian nation" that acts in a very un-Jesus-like way.

How different would our society and lives be if we found real meaning and truth in a story that finds the protagonist racking up zero wins of the political or economic variety, but instead gets executed in the most humiliating way imaginable?

As Christians will quickly remind, the story does not end there. Resurrection anyone? But you will note that in the Bible telling, Jesus’ brief and ethereal appearances post-crucifixion continue to be other worldly. No thrones. No riches. No overturning of harsh Roman rule over Jesus’ people.

In this case as in many biblical stories, secular meaning is there for the taking, along with the religious significance. Can’t we take resurrection as a signifier that the story and values of Jesus endure and, indeed, trump the values of power and privilege?

Sure. This is a much more believable and appealing way of looking at Jesus than the whole fantastical Son of God thing.

Whether we celebrate it in churches or not, Christmas furnishes a prime opportunity to reflect on the meaning of this child whose family found no room at the inn. In his brief career, that child would go on to convey profound insights that remain as relevant today as they did 2,000 years ago: the value of philanthropic love, especially for those we find hardest to tolerate; the reality that we become truly strong only when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable; and the truth that we experience the fullness of life only when we stop living for ourselves.

Will there be room at the inn for Jesus in the years and decades to come? We really ought to make some.

Sounds good. But I doubt that most Christians will accept a secular view of Jesus anytime soon. Us atheists already do that. It just will take a while for fundamentalists to embrace our enlightened perspective on Jesus.

A member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, Tom Krattenmaker is a writer specializing in religion in public life and author of "Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower." Follow him on Twitter: @TKrattenmaker

If this life is all there is, what should we do during it?

Poet Mary Oliver asked a great question in the last two lines of "The Summer Day." The poem ends with:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Obviously the question isn't for others to answer. Oliver addresses it to each of us, every reader of her poem. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I'm not sure why Oliver added the Tell me. The question remains the same without it. But I like that Tell me. It forges a bond between the poet and the reader. as does the previous Tell me, what else should I have done?

Frequently I have intimations of my mortality. This isn't just because I turned 70 a few months ago. Death always has been lurking around in my consciousness, sometimes scarily. Of course, death is impossible to ignore, given that everything which lives, dies. 

What I'm talking about, though, when I speak of intimations, is this: I'll be doing something utterly ordinary, when suddenly I'm struck by a vivid awareness of the fact that life is limited and one day I will die. 

I used to believe in life after death, but now I don't. However, that vivid awareness was just as strong -- maybe even stronger -- when I was a devotee of an Eastern form of mysticism that taught an immaterial soul survives physical death. Sure, I accepted that concept. 

But since no one knows for sure what happens after we take our last breath (my bet now is nothing, because we're dead and gone forever), even the most fervent religious believer still has to face the stark reality that this life could well be, as Oliver says, our "one wild and precious life."

Last night my wife and I were watching TV. In the midst of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert a thought unexpectedly popped into my mind: Brian, you're doing to die one day. Should you be spending these precious present moments watching Colbert make jokes about Donald Trump?

It only took my mind a few moments to come up with an answer to my mind's own question. (Weird how the brain engages in conversations with itself.)

Sure. What would be better to do than what I'm doing right now?

Sort of like Mary Oliver, minus her refined poetic sensibilities, I responded to myself with a question that nonetheless contained an answer. 

In my current churchless frame of mind it seems senseless to view any activity of life as lacking meaning. A few hours ago I walked our dog, ZuZu. When we got home, I grabbed a stick from a tree branch where I store our dog's favorite toy, high enough so she can't reach it. 

Like most pet owners, I talk to ZuZu as if she speaks English. "Let's play stick, little dog!" My preparing to throw the stick was all she needed to get excited, the words being superfluous.

We then spent ten minutes or so engaged in her favorite game: not bringing a stick back, reverse fetching. I throw the stick. ZuZu runs and gets it. Then she runs away from me when I say, "Bring it here!" We repeat this until ZuZu lies down, with the stick nearby, for her other favorite activity: being patted.

Is playing stick what I want to do with my one wild and precious life? Absolutely. In fact, I consider that everything I'm doing, including writing this blog post, is what I want to do, given that I am doing it. 

Circular reasoning? No. 

I just have reached a point in my life where I consider that the whole Bucket List thing has no attraction for me, because it assumes that some things are really important to do before we die, while other things are less important. 

In my opinion, and I'm really just speaking for myself, going down that way leads to, if not madness, dissatisfaction. When our doings are divided into less and more important, less and more meaningful, it seems to me that we're always questioning whether what we're engaged in is what we really should be doing.

I think Oliver's first question gets it just right: Tell me, what else should I have done?

Attention isn't what meditation is all about

I'm in book bliss.

Someone emailed me with a book recommendation, "The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness," and I'm loving what I've read so far -- the first couple of chapters.

Here's a few early thoughts about the book.

First, it confirms my belief, which isn't shared by some religious fundamentalists (Eastern mysticism variety) who've been frequent commenters on this blog, that there are many forms of useful meditation. 

In fact, the inward looking, world-denying, mantra-focused type of meditation favored by Sant Mat/Radha Soami Satsang Beas, which I embraced for 35 years, is much different from what is likely the most common form of meditation in the world: mindfulness based on Buddhist principles.

This is clear from the opening pages of The Mind Illuminated. The primary author, John Yates, lays out in summary form the ten stages of meditation practice discussed in the book. The final stage, Stage Ten, is described in this fashion:

When you have mastered Stage Ten, the many positive mental qualities you experience during meditation are strongly present even between meditation sessions, so your daily life is imbued with effortlessly stable attention, mindfulness, joy, tranquility, and equanimity.

Since Yates bases the ten stages on his study of ancient Buddhist writings, which often are largely incomprehensible to the modern reader, Stage Ten is firmly in line with Buddhist teachings. Yates writes:

The modern road map offered in this book combines experience, tradition, and science. It is a synthesis based on firsthand experience, and expanded on through the shared experiences of many other dedicated practitioners. To make sense of my own meditations and find guidance about where my practice should go next, I turned to my teachers, the Pali suttas, and the commentaries of several Buddhist traditions. 

Over and over, these traditional sources gave me the information I needed and provided an appropriate context to fit the pieces together. By integrating this information and my own experiences with the insights of psychology and cognitive neuroscience, I've "reverse engineered" traditional meditation instructions to create a contemporary map of meditation.

So there is no mention of God; no mention of supernatural entities; no mention of heavenly realms separate from this world.

Instead, Yates writes clearly about how the human mind works, and how meditation can help it function better. It's great how the book is based, as noted in the quote above, both on Buddhist tradition and current neuroscience. 

Second, in my reading this morning I was struck by the wisdom of clearly distinguishing attention from awareness. A Glossary in the back of the book defines these terms.

Attention: The cognitive ability to select and analyze specific information and ignore other information arising from a vast field of internal and external stimuli. Attention is one of two forms of conscious awareness. Peripheral awareness is the second: we pay attention to some things, while simultaneously being aware of, but not attending to, others. 

Awareness: As used in this book, awareness always has the same meaning as peripheral awareness. It never means attention, nor does it refer to covert or non-conscious awareness. 

Any meditation approach that doesn't combine the benefits of attention and awareness is like a bird trying to fly with one wing. Both are needed. When we drive a car, we can't focus all of our attention on staying in our lane and keeping a safe distance from the car ahead of us. 

We've got to have peripheral awareness also. What if a car unexpectedly runs a stop light at an intersection? What if a child chasing a ball runs into the road? There are so many things we need to be aware of, other than what our primary focus is.

This is why mantra meditation, where a word or words is repeated (usually soundlessly) as a focus of attention, is very limited. Repeating a mantra was emphasized by the RSSB teachings that I followed for so many years. And not only during the time of meditation, but as much as possible throughout the rest of the day.

I eventually realized that this had some major drawbacks.

I found that when I put too much attention on the mantra, I distanced myself from the reality of what was around me. Like, the person I was talking with, or nature, if I was out on a walk. I also observed that many RSSB devotees acted a lot like robots, lacking spontaneity, naturalness, social awareness. 

They were so focused on keeping their attention from scattering out into the world, they were clueless about what was happening in the world -- the exact opposite of mindfulness, which requires a wise balancing of attention and awareness. There's a time to be focused on one thing, and there's a time to be aware of the entirety of what surrounds us.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about The Mind Illuminated as I read more of it. For now, I simply can say that I highly recommend it to anyone who is meditating, or wants to meditate. 

The danger of religious abstractions

Here's an interesting letter in the October 6, 2018 issue of New Scientist:

From Steve Brewer,
St. Ives, Cornwall, UK

Sofia Deleniv describes self-awareness as an illusion, and on your cover you call it a "delusion" (8 September, p 28). What wasn't discussed was its power to turn the whole world as we view it into "illusions" by the process of forming abstract concepts and ideas about it.

By developing and interconnecting these abstractions, we have produced our various sciences. Through them we have achieved enormous power over ourselves and the natural world.

Self-awareness may yield this great power, but it also results in the broader illusion -- held by many -- that this world of abstractions is more real than the natural one. In this world of concepts, individuals have become just another concept and so are dehumanized.

Recognizing this as the most dangerous delusion may help defend our humanity.

It's impossible to know exactly what the letter writer is referring to when he speaks of the dehumanization of individuals via abstract concepts.

But, hey, I'll jump in and share my idea: it is religion. 

After all, what else has very little connection with the natural world, being almost wholly made up of abstract concepts? Religion is nothing but concepts. So is mysticism. So are all other forms of supernatural spirituality.

As I frequently point out on this blog, there is no way to discern whether a person standing in front of us has an intimate connection with God or some other supposed divinity. 

If they claim to be an athlete, we can ask to see their athletic prowess. If they claim to be a musician, we can ask them to play a song. If they claim to be a scientist, we can ask for their academic and professional credentials. 

When it comes to all things godly, though, words, concepts, and abstractions are all we're going to get. Sure, maybe the person appears to be a moral, upstanding, compassionate human being. And so are countless other people who don't claim any connection with God.

Further, religions often downplay the importance of this world, and of the human body, because they embrace concepts about some more perfect supernatural realm, often called "heaven." 

So as the letter writer says, individuals become just another concept. Instead of being who they are, in all of their human complexity, they become categorized as a sinner, a fallen soul, someone trapped in maya, a person needing redemption, a shadow of their true spiritual self.

Again, these are just a bunch of concepts.

Science, at least, engages in concepts about the real world. Religion engages in concepts about imaginary worlds, which is why religious dogma has no predictive power. That's why I much prefer science over religion. 

Christian weirdness: same-sex sex considered a sin

Following up on my previous post, "Churches shouldn't be able to discriminate against gays," yesterday I wrote another post on my Salem Political Snark blog about how a sermon given by the Salem Alliance Church lead pastor said in no uncertain terms that same-sex sex goes against the grain of God.

I transcribed part of a podcast of  a sermon given by Pastor Steve Fowler in 2016 sermon and shared it in the post (Boldfacing is mine, obviously.) This is how Fowler supported his conclusion about the sinfulness of same-sex sex.

When Adam and Eve have sex, it is not just union. It is a reunion. It is the image of God as represented by Adam. the image of God represented by Eve. And when these two opposite genders come together it is not just union, it is a reunion. It is a beautiful picture of what God is trying to get us to understand of relational intimacy that is represented in the Godhead.

And you will see a consistent sexual code from Genesis all the way to Revelation. In fact, in Revelation there is the marriage supper of the lamb. What is that? It’s reunion. It’s all the saints. It is everyone with Christ. And this physical oneness is a beautiful picture of that.

And you will never find in the scriptures any positive pictures of a same sex union. It just isn’t there. There’s this consistent sexual code. There’s this beautiful metaphor that’s presented in sexual oneness, as a picture of people of the opposite sex coming together. 

So we talk about running from sexual sin. Here’s what we’re saying. Any kind of sexual activity outside of a marriage with a male and a female, this is something we should not be engaged in. So if you’re married and you’re having sex with someone who is not your spouse, you don’t just need to resist, you just don’t need to fight it, you need to book it, you need to run.

And if you’re sexually active with someone you’re not married to, you need to run. If you’re engaged in porn or you’re going to strip clubs, you need to run. And on this topic, what God is saying is that if you’re engaged in same-sex sex, if you’re using a same-sex relationship in that way, you also need to run, you also need to book it.

And I just want to say to you, I don’t want you ever coming to Salem Alliance Church and walking out of here, and saying that guy never told us. This is exactly what it says. And we can work hard, and we can say we know better, or that’s the ice cream cone in the pocket, but friends, it’s what God’s word reveals.

It's easy to critique what Fowler said. He makes a series of unsupported assumptions.

(1) God exists.
(2) The God that exists is the God of the Bible, not some other God.
(3)  The words in the Bible are God's words, not human words. 

I've been enjoying bantering on Facebook with some Christians who don't like what I said in my second Salem Political Snark post about why a boycott of the Broadway Coffee House, which is run by the Salem Alliance Church, is justified.

Some people defend the Salem Alliance Church by saying this is a matter of religious liberty.

Well, sure, people are free in believe in whatever crazy thing they want to. But usually it isn't so obvious that the crazy people are running a business aimed at attracting the general public -- most of whom don't believe in the crazy ideas held by the crazy people.

The situation isn't all that different from the KKK operating a restaurant back in the days when the United States tolerated racial discrimination. If you disagreed with the KKK's views about African-Americans, you wouldn't feel good supporting the KKK's restaurant, right?

A somewhat milder analogy would be if Planned Parenthood operated a coffee house that didn't make clear to customers that all profits from the business go to support Planned Parenthood.

I'm pretty sure that anti-abortion Christians would urge people not to patronize the coffee house once they learned where the profit from a latte or muffin purchase goes -- to an organization whose values they disagree with.

Lastly, here's a blog post comment interchange I had with a Christian believer, Nate.

Brian, So for you to say theirs NO proof of God's existence, is like you have proof of the contrary. Let me assume, you believe something...all things come from nothing? So, you believe that a big bang happened and from chaos came order? Take a Rolex Brian, take this time piece and all its parts and pieces; shake it for a million, billion years. Will it become a perfect time piece? No Brian, it will not. Show me your demonstrable proof, your absolutes and I will show you mine.

-----------------------------

Nate, I've had an active Church of the Churchless blog for 14 years, so I've a lot of experience dealing with religious people who make thinking/reasoning errors. Which now includes you. You can check out my arguments for why you're wrong by going to this link and doing some searches about "existence God" or such by using the search box in the right sidebar.

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/

Briefly, in both science and everyday life it usually is impossible to prove a negative. It is up to the person making a positive claim to provide solid evidence for that claim. Let's say that I claim that it is invisible fairies who are making the flowers grow in our yard. Can you provide proof to me that the fairies don't exist? Remember, they are invisible and show no signs other than the flowers growing.

No, you couldn't. You''d just tell me, correctly, "Brian, you're crazy. There's no proof of the fairies, so they must be just in your mind." Which is exactly how us atheists view God: as a crazy idea that only exists in the minds of believers.

Regarding your watch analogy, this has been thoroughly disproven by modern knowledge of how evolution works. There's even a book, I believe the title is "The Blind Watchmaker," that discusses how evolution/natural selection produces the complexity of life from simple principles without the need of a designer God.

So try again, Nate. I know you can't provide demonstrable proof of God's existence, and that you believe on faith. Just accept this is the case. And understand that it is perfectly reasonable for people who don't support the Salem Alliance Church's teachings to boycott businesses of the church that funnel money into the church coffers.

Churches shouldn't be able to discriminate against gays

On one of my other blogs, Salem Political Snark, I wrote a post this afternoon that already is getting a lot of online attention here in semi-sleepy Salem, Oregon -- the state capital that often is referred to (especially by me) as the centerpoint of places in Oregon that people really want to go to: the coast, the Cascade mountains, Portland, and Eugene.

Check out "Two reports of how Broadway Coffee House/Commons discriminates against LGBT people." Excerpts:

Someone contacted me about a year ago about how the Broadway Coffee House here in Salem refuses to allow gay people to be employees, because the business is controlled by the Salem Alliance Church.

As you can read below, the pastor of the church believes this gives them a religious license to discriminate, sort of like how Agent 007 had a license to kill, even though under normal circumstances this is illegal. 

According to the Oregon State Bar, it is legal for religiously affiliated businesses to engage in discrimination against LGBT people. But this doesn't make it right.

Here's what the person who contacted me, who wanted to remain anonymous, said. I recall that this message came through Facebook after I'd written a blog post about how Hobby Lobby mixes religion with its business practices. 

I saw your post about hobby lobby, so I think I feel comfortable sharing more ...the "business" I am referring to is Broadway Coffee house. Turns out it is not an actual business and all proceeds go to pay church staff and support the church ministries of Salem Alliance Church .

Seems like something the public should be aware of, especially since I was told gay people would not be able to work there

Yes. I met with the head pastor a year ago to confirm that it was true . The pastor told me that the baristas are church staff and have to be employees of the church and follow church rules to work there . He also said that they do not need to follow non discrimination laws because they are an outreach ministry...not a licensed business. I think the general public should know this.

It feels very underhanded to keep that info from consumers. Myself and about 40 others who live around the coffee shop have been boycotting Broadway for over a year now . We just want them to put up a sign that says the coffee shop supports the ministry of the church and is not an equal opportunity employer. If they do that, we will end the boycott.

 

...I've never understood why our country tolerates discrimination in the name of religion when the same behavior is illegal for non-religious people to engage in.

What's next, allowing religious people to drive drunk if this is part of their belief system? Allowing anyone with a hateful belief system to discriminate? Why should a collective discriminatory belief system be treated differently than an individual discriminatory belief system?

The City of Salem has held a number of meetings at the Broadway Commons.

But recently public meeting for the Downtown Streetscape and Our Salem projects have been held elsewhere. It'd be good to know if this was because of the Broadway Commons' discrimination policy against LGBTQ members of the Salem community.

If so, great. Kudos to the City of Salem.

If not, then the City of Salem and other government agencies should make it a policy to never hold meetings at the Broadway Commons until the Salem Alliance Church starts acting in the name of love, not discrimination, like religious organizations are supposed to do.

        Broadway Commons

Want to be preachy? Head to this other blog, please.

Preachiness, fundamentalism, dogmatism... not welcome here. If you've got an overwhelming urge to leave a comment praising God, a guru, your spirit guide, or any other religious entity, do it on Atheist and Believer, a blog that welcomes proselytizing (within bounds). Comments may be moderated here, and won't be approved if off-topic or preachy. If not moderated, a comment may be removed if off-topic or preachy. Scroll down for the real posts. 

"Atheist and Believer" blog begins, so comments have returned here

My atheist "prayer" has been answered. Praise No-God! 

As noted in an earlier post today, I said that I'd bring back comments to this blog if someone would start a different blog where true believers in Sant Mat/RSSB could discuss their adoration for the guru and his teachings rather than cluttering up the Church of the Churchless with religious dogmatism -- where comments like that aren't welcome.

Spence Tepper, a frequent commenter on this blog, has started the Atheist and Believer blog. An initial Welcome post presents an appealing perspective.

To keep my end of the blog post bargain, I'm going to resume allowing comments on this blog, albeit with comment moderation where I approve comments before they're published. 

My expectation is that anyone who visits this blog and wants to share off-topic comments about how marvelous their religion, mystical experience, or spiritual beliefs are will head to Atheist and Believer where those sorts of comments are welcome.

Within bounds, though. You can read about those bounds on the Welcome post of Atheist and Believer. 

Look: I realize that the believers in Sant Mat/RSSB who have been using this blog as a message board aren't doing this to drive me crazy, but rather have needs for connection and communication with other believers that weren't being met in other ways. 

But now that Spence Tepper has started his blog with an open door policy (again, within certain bounds), I feel much better about not approving comments that are off-topic or excessively preachy. In the past my boundless Buddha-like compassion has made it tough for me to crack down on people who abuse the commenting privilege on this blog.

Now that those people can find a home on Atheist and Believer, my attitude will be "If this comment doesn't fit, it's going into the unpublished pit." (Couldn't resist the O.J. Simpson trial allusion.)

Comments could come back if someone sets up a RSSB/Sant Mat blog

I've gotten emails from several regular commenters on this blog who wish that comments on my posts would be allowed again. Here's what I said to one of these people.

It’d be great if someone, like you, would start a blog or message board — blogs are easier to set up and run, in my view — focused on discussions of Sant Mat and the RSSB teachings. Then I could publicize that blog/board as The New Place to share comments and messages on those subjects, including the RSSB gurus, both past and present. 

 

Yes, David Lane has been doing this. Assume he still is, because I haven’t visited his RSSB/Sant Mat discussion group in many years. And I’m sure this sort of thing exists elsewhere on the Internet. It may be a forlorn hope, but for quite a while I’ve been thinking, “I wish the religious crazies had another place to leave their comments and messages.”

 

As it is, those people are abusing my blog through their off-topic commenting. 

 

Over 14 years and many thousands of posts, I’ve built up a readership that is relatively small, but pretty steady. This isn’t easy to do. When I started, I was thrilled to have 20 page views a day. The Internet is so vast, as you know, that getting noticed in a gigantic cyberspace is tough to accomplish.

 

So it bothers me that my blog is being hijacked by people who are unwilling to start their own RSSB/Sant Mat blog, either because this is (or was) discouraged by the guru/Dera, or they don’t want to go through the trouble of what I’ve done for those 14 years — write (hopefully) interesting content regularly day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

 

Anyway, give this some thought. 

 

It would be easy to set up such a blog. I like Typepad, which offers free blogs, I’m pretty sure, if some advertising is accepted. Otherwise the yearly cost is minimal. Blogger is free, I believe.

 

You are sort of a bridge between me and the crazies (I understand you may not view them that way, but I do). They would be interested in a Sant Mat/RSSB blog that you set up. Again, hopefully this would take comment pressure off of my blog, and I could go back to allowing comments, either moderated or non-moderated.

Basically, I'm willing to try allowing comments again, so long as the people who have been using my blog as a Sant Mat/RSBB discussion group do their religious thing someplace else. If someone sets up a Sant Mat/RSSB blog, I'd be pleased to publicize it.

I just Googled "Sant Mat RSSB blog." Not surprisingly, several of my posts turned up on the first page of Google results. But I don't see any site/blog that allows comments and has regular posts about Sant Mat/RSSB subjects. Interestingly, a RSSB Facebook page has guidelines that are much stricter than my commenting policies have been. 

Break-in attempt to my account

So, after turning off comments on this blog last night because religious crazies were spewing wildly off-topic comments on my posts to a greater degree than ever before, I wake up this morning to find from my email inbox that one of those crazies has been trying to break into my Typepad blogging account.

My laptop's screen couldn't show all of the attempts to reset my password. There were 126 in total. 

They failed, and I've notified Typepad of the break-in attempts. I've also asked Typepad, which is familiar with hacking, to do their best to identify the person who is trying to break into my account.

Whoever you are, and I suspect you're one of the regular religious crazy commenters on this blog, I want to let you know that you've strengthened my conviction that eliminating comments from this blog is a good thing.

There's no reasoning with religious dogmatism. Likely you think you're doing God's work by trying to break into my account. You feel superior and entitled, so you think it's perfectly fine to do something illegal and immoral. 

Instead of meditating, reading a holy book, or pondering the mysteries of the cosmos, you engaged in many efforts to reset my Typepad password. Wow. Very spiritual of you. So spiritual. 

You've made me feel even happier to be an atheist. Thanks for that, religious crazy.

Religious crazies cause no more comments on this blog

I'm done with comments here on the Church of the Churchless. Comment moderation means more work for me.

But when I allow unfettered comments, the religious crazies who have chosen to abuse this blog as a forum for them to blab about their chosen form of dogmatism litter their comments with abandon -- paying no attention to my oft-repeated request to keep comments on-topic with the subject of a post, and to limit their religiosity to Open Threads where I've allowed complete free speech.

So I've decided to do two things: (1) turn off comments on new posts, and (2) moderate comments on existing posts, because it doesn't seem to be possible for me to not allow comments on old posts.

Now it's going to be easy to moderate comments, because I'm also turning off email notifications of new comments, so they won't be cluttering up my inbox. 

Bottom line: I'm fed up with having this blog used to discuss Sant Mat and Radha Soami Satsang Beas dogmas, since this blog is called Church of the Churchless, not Church of the Churched. I've been exceedingly patient with comment abuse over the years, but my patience has run out.

You know who you are, religious crazies.

You have an astounding sense of entitlement and egocentricity. You've failed to appreciate the time and energy I've put into this blog over the past 14 years, instead using it to spew your fundamentalism, Eastern variety, in a daily flurry of comments.

I'd say "Good luck with finding another web site willing to embrace your religious nuttery," but that'd be a lie. I wish you no luck, except insofar as you follow the light of truth, reason, and demonstrable evidence toward reality rather than fantasy.

Woody Allen talks about the meaning of life, or lack thereof

Thanks to Jen for sharing this Woody Allen video in a comment. Allen says that artists, and I guess we're all artists of life, have to provide reasons for living in a universe that doesn't possess inherent meaning.

Meaning is provided by us humans, not by the cosmos. Allen also observes at the end of the video that everybody needs illusions to get us through the harsh realities of life. I agree. But our goal should be to embrace the wisest sorts of illusions.

(Defining "wise" in this context is what keeps this blog going, along with almost everything else in life -- philosophy, politics, hobbies, relationships, etc. etc. etc.)

 

No more comment moderation

I've decided to stop moderating (approving) comments, after a brief time doing otherwise. It's a burden on me, and an inconvenience to commenters, to have to do this. 

What I hope is that people will stay on-topic as much as possible with their comments, putting comments unrelated to a blog post in an Open Thread. I've just added a new Open Thread. Old ones can be found by clicking on that category in the right sidebar.

I believe in free speech. I also believe that speech should be founded on love, caring, and compassion to the degree us fallible human beings can do this. Life is tough. Life is short. Let's support each other, even when we disagree with each other.

The two are compatible. We should be able to say "I don't agree with you" while also feeling "I love that we have different views and still enjoy each other's company." (either in physical reality or cyberspace)

Open Thread 18 (free speech for comments)

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open Thread that way.

So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments.

Singh brothers get into fight over loans to RSSB guru and his family

Well, it's been a while since Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, cousins of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas in India, have been in the news. 

(Being bad at genealogy, I used to think they were nephews; now I'm pretty sure they are cousins.)

But that changed yesterday. December 7 is remembered here in the United States as the day in 1941 when the Japanese attacked ships at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. 
Looks like the Singh brothers wanted to make that date memorable in India for their own brotherly fireworks. Check out a December 7 The Times of India story, "Brother attacked me: Malvinder; no, he hit me, claims Shivinder."

Shivinder Singh has been mentioned as a possible successor to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, a guru who is considered to be God in Human Form by his devotees. 

But the guru isn't so divine as to shun worldly wealth, since as I've been reporting on this blog, Dhillon and his family have amassed hundreds of millions of dollars during his reign as RSSB guru. 

 

As reported by Bloomberg and others, this money accumulation was funded in part by shady loans made to the Dhillon family by companies controlled by the Singh brothers at the time. The chart above shows the money trail. 

 

The Singh brothers' business empire has fallen apart, leaving them as destitute as billionaires can be. So the fight between them involved money, not surprisingly -- the loans associated with the guru's family shown on the right side of the chart. I believe 2,000 crore rupees equals $20 billion in U.S. dollars. TOI is Times of India.

Since Shivinder Singh had gone to the RSSB headquarters to do volunteer work, perhaps in anticipation of his becoming guru one day, he seems to be the most "spiritual" of the brothers. But not so spiritual as to avoid getting into a fight with his brother over the loans to Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family.

Just goes to show that religion does nothing to make people better human beings. In fact, religion often makes people worse, feeding their ego and sense of entitlement. "God is guiding me; God wants me to be wealthy."

Here's my foolproof guide to wise spiritual "investing"

The past couple of days have been ugly for investors in stock markets around the world, including here in the United States. But I've been pretty much unmoved and unworried by the downturn. 

Why? Because quite a few years ago I decided to embrace index investing, where you don't try to be smarter than all the other guys/gals who invest, you just have a goal of doing as well as the general investment climate.

A few years ago I wrote about this on one of my other blogs in "Index investing lets me relax in a stock market crash." And I've come to take the same approach to spirituality.

Here's links to posts I've written on this subject, along with an excerpt from each. They're listed in the order I wrote them.

Spiritual diversification, a sound salvation strategy (May 2005).
Wise financial professionals advise that if you want to save money for retirement, it’s best to invest in index funds. Increasingly, people do. But when it comes to saving their souls for eternity, most of those same people will put all of their spiritual nest egg into one basket—a single religion that they expect will support them both here and hereafter.

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

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

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

Here’s the interesting thing: my faith is stronger now. As I’ve lost faith in particular religious approaches, my faith in a universal spirituality has become stronger. Again, this is akin to how my financial philosophy has changed: I’ve lost faith in the value of choosing individual stocks and bonds, but I’ve gained faith in the wisdom of investing in the entire universe of equity and debt investment possibilities.

Spiritual investing takes nothing (May 2005)
There’s a difference between worldly and other-worldly markets that I neglected to address sufficiently before. When you buy a monetary index fund such as the Total U.S. Stock Market, you end up owning a piece of every single company stock in the United States. Thus diversification is accomplished in a manner that is easy to understand: own a little bit of everything.

But to invest one’s soul in the Total Cosmic Spirit Market means taking an exactly opposite approach: owning nothing. You diversify widely into the One by not clinging to any part of the Many—anything that can be demarcated by name or form.

“God,” after all, isn’t part of this world. Whatever or whoever God is, the unknown ultimate reality that is given this utterly meaningless name (which is why I like to put it in quotation marks) obviously isn’t something that we can point to and say, “There it is! And this is what it is like!” If knowing God were that easy, there wouldn’t be any divine mystery to unravel.

...Most religious believers like to think that the mystery of God is elusive except for the special revelation to which they, and they alone, are privy. Not true. There are no exceptions to maya. If you can give it a name or a form, nama or rupa, it’s part of maya. A revelation, by definition, is something revealed. That means you can point to it, describe it, define it, delineate it.

Thus the Bible is maya, illusion. All of it, New and Old Testament alike. Ditto the Talmud, Koran, Dhammapada, Tao Te Ching, Upanishads, Adi Granth, Course of Miracles, Conversations with God, and, naturally, the Church of the Churchless. Everything I’ve written on this weblog is part and parcel of maya, including that last sentence.

There’s only one way out of maya: nothing. You get out of an enclosure by finding the empty space—a door. The door is useful because it is empty. It isn’t composed of the same substance as the walls, floor, and ceiling. If it were, then it too would be part of the enclosure.

Something empty and hidden connects everything that can be sensed or conceived of. That something we don’t know is what we really want, not all the things and ideas we do know. It alone will satisfy, because only it is permanent, real, substantial. It goes by lots of names: Spirit, Tao, Buddha Nature, countless others.

Profitable spiritual investing (October 2008)

Last night I was with a group of people who discussed the ins and outs (not to mention the ups and downs) of investing in tough times like these.

I didn't have a whole lot to say.

Briefly I held forth on the Buddha-like nature of index fund investing, where you don't try to beat the market through some clever scheme but rather rest content with rising and falling in concert with the overall financial tide.

I told my friends, "If the world and national economy go to hell, so will our investments. If things improve, so will our portfolio. It's a humble way to invest, since you're happy to be average."

This is pretty much the same way I feel about my spiritual investing strategy now.

For many years I thought I could beat the system. That is, find a way to salvation, God-realization, enlightenment, or whatever, that would lead to a better result than others would enjoy who weren't privy to the inside knowledge I possessed.

...Mystics and theologians often speak of God as unspeakable. They urge us to think of God as being beyond thought. Rather than seek a divine light, embracing darkness is recommended – the via negativa.

I'm no longer so big on embracing Nothing. I still love the notion of emptiness, of becoming a receptive vessel that can be filled with truth, happiness, knowledge, and other good stuff (including money).

However, the notion that there's a Nothing on the other side of Everything – Christians would call this "God," Taoists "Wu Chi" – maybe this is just a meaningless concept lacking any foundation in reality. People who want to make money don't ask, "What is the ineffable source of wealth?"

They just invest. Not in nothing, but in something. Hoping to get more of it: something.

...The ultimate questions of life basically are answered (or ignored) by "Things are what they are; the universe is what it is." That's real spiritual index investing.

Why atheists are more "spiritual" than religious believers (November 2014)
Maybe this statement seems paradoxical to you: I feel more genuinely spiritual now that I've stopped believing in God. But it makes good sense to me. Here's the main reason why.

I no longer feel special.

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

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

I understand that feeling special has its own delights.

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

Cool!

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

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

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

Not surprising.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spiritual illusions are as deceptive as worldly illusions

I enthusiastically embraced spiritual illusions for 35 years.

I believed in God. I believed that God could be found by following the teachings of divine incarnations, God in human form. I believed I'd live on after my death. I believed in an eternal heaven beyond time and earthly tribulations. I believed spirituality required following certain commandments.

This sounds like I was a Christian, right? No, wrong. I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an Eastern form of religion known as Sant Mat. Its headquarters were in India, and the organization was led by a guru.

Eventually I came to realize that what I believed was real actually was an illusion. I simply wanted to believe so badly, it took three and a half decades for the truth to break through the dogmas that I held on to so tightly. 

Today I finished reading "No Self, No Problem," a Buddhist book by Anam Thubten that talks a lot about illusions. My first post about the book is here.

I liked the book a lot. I don't agree with everything Thubten says, such as the supposed ability to go beyond pain and suffering by realizing that the notion of a permanent self is an illusion. But I agree with him that our sense of being, or having, a self that's independent of the goings-on in our brain is the most important illusion to come to grips with.

Why? Because our exaggerated sense of ego is the cause of many of our problems. (Thubten might say all of them, but I wouldn't go that far.)

A key reason I deconverted from religiosity to atheism is what Thubten speaks about in his book. Just because someone is on a supposedly "spiritual" path doesn't mean anything. They can still be ignorant, self-centered, and full of themselves. All that changes is that now they believe it is OK to be that way, because God is on their side.

Below are some additional excerpts from the last chapters of "No Self, No Problem." Like I said, I think most of what Thubten says is true. Meditation for me now is exactly what he speaks of: doing as little as possible so I can be in contact with what is true to the greatest degree possible.

I'm no longer aiming at self-realization, because along with modern neuroscience and Buddhism, I no longer believe that my self exists (at least, not as a detached conscious observer separate from the physical brain). And I no longer aim at God-realization, because I no longer believe in God.

This makes me a semi-Buddhist, I guess. But since Buddha himself wasn't a Buddhist -- Buddhism came along long after his death -- I suppose I'm in good company. 

Here's the excerpts from Thubten's book.

When we come to the spiritual path we have to be very cautious. We have to be certain that we are not adding another illusion on top of the illusions we already have. When we look into our consciousness we see that we have many illusions.

Everything is an illusion, especially this notion of "I."

The story of my life is an illusion, my birth, my relationships, and so forth. They are all a story just like a movie. If something happens to my brain, much of this story will be immediately forgotten. Therefore in the ultimate sense it is not truly existent. It is illusion.

We have to be careful when we come to the spiritual world so that we do not fall into the trap of accumulating new illusions. Believe it or not there are very beautiful illusions along the path, the journey, and the practices. Sometimes celebrating illusions can be very entertaining but the problem is that sooner or later illusions collapse.

...Here in the West many people like Eastern illusions because they have already become disillusioned with American illusions. Now they are going around trying to buy Eastern illusions. These new illusions may work for a while because we don't have any heartache associated with them, no bad memories.

But ultimately we must dissolve every illusion: American illusions, Eastern illusions, European illusions, and finally our own illusions.

What is our main illusion? The illusion is that I am real. I am truly existent. This final illusion is the one we want to hold on to.

...We are all carrying this imaginary self around day and night. We are trying to secure it at any cost. Sometimes, the spiritual path that we are on might be just another way to enforce it.

Obviously people have been using the notion of God or eternal life as a way to solidify this illusion. Eternal life in heaven somewhere means that this "I" never has to die.

The idea of surrender itself can be very beautiful. It is the direct doorway to the truth. It is the powerful art of dropping the self right away. 

People often have the tendency to surrender to something or someone outside of themselves. Surrendering to the guru is not true surrender, because then you become the surrenderer, which is another version of self. For that very reason, Buddha discouraged people from surrendering to his personality. Of course, we always surrender to his wisdom. 

The problem is that when we surrender to his personality we don't surrender to his wisdom. He told devotees not to take even his words on blind faith. He said we should question them before accepting them as such. 

...So meditation ultimately stops everything. We stop pushing that rolling snowball and we stop pedaling the bicycle. We don't do anything because there is nothing we can do. From that moment on, we are no longer in charge. The truth is in charge, From that moment on truth is going to voluntarily destroy the foundation, the basis of all sorrow, all misery. 

Truth does that work for us. All we have to do is stop everything. That is what meditation is all about. 

In the ancient times, spiritual seekers used various methods to practice meditation, Yet, there is only one meditation. That is a state of nondoing. When we stop trying to get somewhere and let go of all of our inner exertions, surprisingly the ineffable truth reveals itself to us.

Then that's it. There is nothing else to be found.

...We have a egoic mind that is trained and habituated to do something, to construct this world of illusion. Ego is working very hard. Ego is always talking. Ego is making up stories for the sake of perpetuating all of the stories of the notion of "I." "I" am meditating. "I" am truly existent. "I" am truly meditating and now "I" am getting somewhere. "I" am chasing enlightenment. 

This very thought is just ego's way of perpetuating itself.  

Why do religious people go on atheist sites?

Here's a positive review of my new comment policy on this blog, where I now moderate (approve) comments before they're published. One day in, I'm enjoying the lack of off-topic crazy comments from dogmatic religious believers. 

I regularly exchange emails with the person who wrote what follows. John used to be religious, but now, like me, he's seen the atheist light. 

John makes some good points. I don't know any atheists, which includes me, who go to religious sites and try to convert believers to atheism. But this churchless blog gets many visits and comments from religious people.

Why? Well, like John says, I agree that believers in God get a lot more defensive when someone questions their religion, than atheists do when someone questions their lack of belief in God.

Which makes sense.

I don't get upset when someone questions why I don't like country music. Since I don't have any attachment to that type of music, it doesn't bother me if a country music lover thinks I'm a fool for not being a fan of that genre.

Plus, atheists are used to being put down by religious people, while this is much less common for believers -- given that the vast majority of people in the world believe in some form of supernatural divinity.

This is the message I got from John today.

Hey Brian, I saw where you are moderating comments again.  Good for you!  I think I’ve talked about this before, but I can’t understand why religious folks go on sites like yours and try to convert people, or “prove” that others are wrong, or whatever.  It seems very common. 

I wonder if atheists go on religious sites and rant and rave and such?  I would think there are some, but my suspicion is that it’s less common.

I kind of understand why the religious folks like to argue their points.  I was never really zealous in my religious days.  I was very serious about my faith, but I didn’t argue with many people who didn’t believe like I did.  But I think it’s more threatening to have a believer’s beliefs questioned than it is for a non-believer to have their non-beliefs questioned.  LOL  If you know what I mean?

There were a few times that I got into a discussion with an intelligent atheist or agnostic and they would ask me questions that I just didn’t have the answers to.  That was very unsettling!

I thought the cartoon that you posted was great, as well.  Oh man, how accurate is that?  I remember, in my early days of walking away from religion, I read a lot of Wayne Jacobsen’s material.  At that time, he talked a lot about how religion always seems to have a hook in it. 

“Invite your non-churched friends to the church picnic!”  Why?  Just so you can get to know that and bless them and see that they have a good afternoon getting to know some great people?  NO!  It’s so we can get them to come back, and eventually get them saved.  And then they will tithe, of course. 

And inevitably, if they get worked on long enough without getting saved, then they are normally discarded and the believers move on to someone else.  Often with the attitude from your cartoon.  I’ve heard many a church member say something along the lines of, “well, I’m glad they are going to hell”.  Really?!?!? WTF?  Ugh.

I have yet to hear of a blogger whose mind was changed by the religious comments on their blog.  And vice versa. 

In my experience, and in others that I’ve talked to, any time a person makes a big change in their beliefs, it’s usually because something happened to make them start thinking and seeking answers.  Now, in that seeking they may come across someone who says something that will help them down the road a bit. 

But the classic knocking on someone’s door out of the blue and converting them to your beliefs, or flooding someone’s comment section, usually doesn’t have the desired result.  Most of the time, it actually works in the opposite direction!  The person being preached to normally walks away just that much more sure of their own beliefs.

Thanks, as always, for the great posts.

Talk to you again soon.
John

Comments are back to being moderated. Religious craziness is the reason.

I just turned comment moderation back on for this blog. That felt good. My experiment is over with allowing people to post comments on their own, saying whatever they like (pretty much; I did have my limits).

The breaking point came today when I scrolled through a bunch of comments on my most recent post, "Buddhist wisdom: pay attention to the breath until the self dissolves." 

Those comments surpassed the usual level of religious dogmatism, inanity, incomprehensibility, and plain gibberish that I'm used to seeing from a group of core commenters who have been using this blog basically as a message board to reinforce among themselves their faith in an Eastern form of mysticism known as Sant Mat.

Um, I kept reminding them that the name of this blog is Church of the Churchless, not the Church of Sant Mat. And the tag line is "preaching the gospel of spiritual independence," not "bowing down at the holy feet of the guru."

But those warnings fell on deaf ears, because religious craziness is an addiction, and addicts can't break their habit easily. 

I'm sympathetic to those addicts. I used to be one myself, back in the days when I too believed in the teachings of Sant Mat. But I  was nowhere near as fanatic as the above-mentioned commenters. I liked to give reasons for my belief, and I didn't consider that what I believed was 100%, for-sure, absolutely true.

So from now on I'll be moderating comments to see if they relate to the subject of a post and aren't filled with religious preachiness. It's bothered for me for quite a while that this blog was being used to spread religious craziness via comments, but I managed to stifle my feelings about this.

No more.

I'd rather have one intelligent, reasonable, thoughtful comment on a post I write than a hundred incoherent comments about how wonderful holy sound and light are, and how lucky the commenters consider themselves to have found the One True Way. Which is complete bullshit that I don't want contaminating this blog any longer.

Further, I know that normal human beings who want to express their opinion about a post get turned off by the mass of comments that have nothing to do with what I wrote, and often insult anyone who expresses a view that challenges their dogmatic religious sensibilities.

My commitment is to seeking truth and encouraging respectful discussions about that quest. I've allowed that commitment to be diluted by being overly accepting of wacko comments. Again, no more. 

Understand: I still very much welcome comments on my blog posts. What's unwelcome are off-topic comments that contain religious dogmatism unrelated to the subject of the post. Geez, I write a post about Buddhist meditation and virtually all of the comments are about how awareness of breathing is the Devil's workshop.

Why? Because Sant Mat fundamentalism says so. Not good enough. Not even close. If you can't think for yourself, don't even think of leaving a comment on this blog, because it won't be published. Like I said, intelligent, reasonable, thoughtful comments will be approved, whether or not I believe in them.

But if you want to use this blog to spread religious craziness, start your own blog or message board. I'm done with allowing this blog to be used that way.

Buddhist wisdom: pay attention to the breath until the self dissolves

My spiritual evolution has been a lot like my marital arts evolution. I'll explain.

For about nine years I practiced traditional Shotokan karate. I got to the brown belt level, and did quite well in tournaments where I sparred against black belts with considerably more experience, and who were much younger than me. But when it came to testing, I was stuck. I wasn't being advanced from the initial brown belt level.

Eventually it dawned on me that I was learning martial arts skills.

But what I was learning wasn't what the Shotokan higher-ups wanted to see when it came to testing. So I switched to a more flexible style of karate. It was a big relief to realize that for those nine years, I'd been learning about martial arts. What I was learning just wasn't what traditional Shotokan karate expected me to learn.

Likewise, for about 35 years I practiced a form of meditation that involved devotion to a supposedly "perfect guru." The technique involved repetition of a mantra with a focus on the center of the forehead, drawing attention away from the body and external world. The goal was to "go within" and experience realms of existence beyond the physical.

I learned a lot during those years of meditating from one to two-and-a-half hours a day.

Eventually, though, it dawned on me that what I was learning wasn't what this particular spiritual path of Radha Soami Satsang Beas wanted me to learn. So for quite a few years I've shifted to a Buddhist style of meditation centered on awareness of the breath -- along with whatever else is happening within me and without me.

There are various forms of Buddhism, of course. I don't have much use for the more religious forms. But I very much enjoy the forms that are either wholly secular, or keep the supernatural side of Buddhism to a minimum (such as rebirth).

I'm about halfway through a book that I saw mentioned in a comment on this blog, "No Self, No Problem," by Anam Thubten. I agree with the positive Amazon reviews. Even though Thubten appears to believe in rebirth, he puts very little emphasis on this. Rather, Thubten has an engaging, honest, direct way of speaking about spirituality and meditation.

What I most like about this book is that it reassures me that the meditation path I'm on is the path taught by the Buddha. Not that I revere the Buddha, since I don't know the guy, and one of my favorite Buddhist adages is "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" 

Not literally, of course. But in the sense of not being led astray by theological or religious concepts, or bowing down to an external authority, trusting instead in your own experience.

Here's excerpts from the first half of "No Self, No Problem" where Thubten talks about how a true spiritual path doesn't involve devotion to dogmas, concepts, complex belief systems. Rather, the Buddhist approach is to observe the breath, and everything else in this world, in a wonderfully simple fashion until the illusion of the self dissolves.

This opening, this receptivity, is basically related to our ability to resist arming the ego with concepts and ideas. A true spiritual path transcends all concepts and belief systems. It is not about reinforcing the mind's illusion of self as an identity. It is not about being a Buddhist, a saint, or a better person. It is really about deconstructing all of our illusions without any mercy.

...Sometimes our ego convinces us that we are realizing this sense of no fixed self at the same time we are holding on to another concept like trying to be sacred or spiritual. Holding on to conceptions such as "sacred" or "spiritual" while we are working toward transcending self-attachment is very subtle.

...Often we discover that we have been chasing illusions. Sometimes they are beautiful illusions like the illusion of enlightenment and spiritual transformation. Nevertheless, as long as we allow our mind to chase such illusions, there is no true liberation.

...On the spiritual path people sometimes get attached to all kinds of sacred and bizarre concepts to make sense out of their place in this giant mysterious universe. 

...Nirvana is not some kind of beautiful, celestial garden filled with peaches and mangoes, a place where everyone is walking around with beautiful halos... It's not a place, a destination we are going to travel to. It's not even a transcendent state of mind that we are going to achieve. It is not a beautiful, ecstatic, trancelike state of mind we can cherish. That's not really nirvana. Rather, nirvana is a great cessation of the separation between us and the truth. It is the mere acknowledgement of what has been the case all along. It is like waking up from a nightmare. It's a great relief to discover that nothing has to be done.

...Sometimes the spiritual search itself prevents us from seeing the truth that is always with us. We have to know when to stop the search. 

...When we meditate, when we sit and simply pay attention to our breath, we begin to see that there is an "I, a self, who is searching for enlightenment and liberation from suffering. But if we keep paying attention to our breath and body sensations, then eventually all of those ideas, concepts, and illusions begin to dissipate one after another and truth reveals itself.

...Nobody is there. "I" is completely nonexistent in that place. There is no separation between samsara, bad circumstances, and nirvana, good circumstances, and there is nobody pursuing the path or chasing after enlightenment. In that moment we realize the essence of the Buddha's teaching.

...Believe it or not, we often use the spiritual or religious path to construct ego identity, even when this is not conscious at the time.

...Sometimes the very self that is fighting ego is actually ego and that's even trickier. But sometimes we can just look directly into our consciousness and ask, "Who is fighting against ego?" Often everything collapses right there. Therefore the path of bliss is really not about declaring war on the ego in order to get rid of anything we see as a stumbling block on the road to our imagined final destination. Rather, it is about allowing the self to dissolve spontaneously by giving up nothing and going nowhere.

...Ego is trying to seduce us into chasing some beautiful exotic illusion. But if we just surrender and remain in that present awareness, paying attention to our breath, amazingly the self dies. There is no longer a self who says, "I don't like what is going on. I don't like this ordinary moment. I don't like just sitting here paying attention to breath." The "I" who doesn't like what is unfolding is completely gone and that is all that matters in the ultimate sense.

...When self dissolves, everything is already awakened. 

...The hindrances to inner awakening can be so subtle they are almost unperceivable, and usually they sneak in through the back door. Many spiritual traditions teach us that we cannot be free in this lifetime. But even if they teach us that it is possible, they make it sound like it is some kind of a super attainment unlikely for us to reach. Some even go to the extreme of saying that it can only be achieved by surrendering to an outer authority. As long as we believe those rumors, we're not going anywhere but in circles. Our practice won't amount to anything more than a dog chasing its tail.

...Therefore, the essence of all spiritual paths is about dissolving everything here and now without waiting. And again, how do we dissolve that self ecstatically? We are just present, paying attention to the breath, and then the self begins to dissolve. This sounds so simple.

...As long as we are building defense mechanisms, transformation will be exiled to the realm of improbability. And these defense mechanisms, wearing a spiritual mask now, comprise layers of denial, each one more subtle than the other. It is like finding a new cradle where we can be infantile again and have no responsibility for ourselves. Mommy and Daddy are projected onto an omnipotent god or guru who will take care of us eternally.

...True meditation is nothing but the art of abiding, without effort, where you don't try to get rid of anything. If you leave your mind as it is, you will see that nothing can bind you. 

...So whatever arises in your consciousness, bad thoughts, good thoughts, don't try to catch them. Watch them. It's like watching the waves on the surface of the ocean. They arise and they always go back. In the same way observe your mind without any effort. Remember that this is called the method of effortlessness. Don't try to alter or change the natural state of mind.