Church of the Churchless

Recognizing the reality of your death is key to living life

One of the best things about being human is also one of the worst things: understanding that your death is inevitable.

We have this capacity because of our evolved brain. Other animals, almost certainly, lack the ability to envision a far-off future that bears no resemblance to what's being experienced in the present. 

This enables us to construct civilizations that have transformed our planet. Cell phones, symphonies, electric cars, and so much else wouldn't exist without our ability to imagine possibilities that could exist, but don't at the moment.

But there's a dark side to what evolution has wrought. We members of Homo sapiens know that along with every other living thing, each of us will die one day. 

I call this dark because the fear of death isn't pleasant. Nor is dying itself, unless our suffering is so great, death is a longed-for release, not a dreaded tragedy. 

As I wrote about in Death and the primal fear of non-existence, I've had glimpses of the void that follows our last breath. It's more frightening than anything I've ever experienced, because nothingness is an absence, not a thing.

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

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

This experience has come to me about a dozen times. Mostly while I’m going to sleep. Occasionally in meditation. It isn’t something that I can bring about on my own. It isn’t a thought; it isn’t an emotion; it isn’t a perception. It’s as if a curtain covering non-existence opens for a moment, giving me a peek into a nothingness that is absolute.

Because I’m not there. I mean, I’m obviously there at the moment, looking into the depths of not-existing for eternity. Yet what I feel all the way down to the marrow of my being is what it means to live for a time and then to not live for all the rest of time.

Yesterday I had a milder version of what I tried to describe above. I was exercising at our athletic club, doing my usual thing in the room with weight-training machines, when a sudden realization hit my mind with the force of a heavy bar-bell striking a mat.

Eventually I'm going to die. That will be the end of exercising. Also, of life, of consciousness, of existing as anything else but insentient atoms.

I let that feeling wash over me for a few seconds. Then I moved to the next machine. Soon I felt "normal" again, though that word has ceased to carry a definite meaning for me. I really have no idea what is normal and what is abnormal when it comes to the deepest questions of life.

Is it normal to go through life without a stark realization of our inevitable upcoming death? When I was younger, I thought so, given that dying typically is far from the forefront of what youthful people are concerned about.

Now I'm 70. 

I've had friends and family members die. Many of them. When I get together with others my age or older, health problems often are a prime conversation topic. We don't talk a whole lot about death in a direct fashion, but the prospect of it lurks in the background.

This is good. In fact, I do my best to keep death in the foreground, since I find that life feels sweeter when I have the attitude of Not only will this moment never come again, there will come a time when no moment will ever come again.

Sure, I still get upset, frustrated, angry, worried, and all the other negative emotions that come with being human. But embracing the reality of my eventual death puts things in perspective. Compared to (1) being dead and not-existing at all, I find (2) dealing with life's problems as best I can a lot more appealing.

No matter how joyful I feel about doing something -- and sometimes the joy is minimal -- I'm grateful that the cosmos has conjured up my brain, body, and consciousness as existing for a certain amount of time on a planet circling one of the hundreds of billions of stars in a galaxy that is one of hundreds of billions of other galaxies in a universe some 14 billion years old.

That is so freaking far out, I don't even need to be high on (totally legal) homegrown Oregon marijuana to be blown away by the marvelousness of it all.

Would I prefer to not know that I'm going to die? Well, I have no choice about it, though I suppose there's a slim chance I'll develop some sort of condition that makes it impossible for me to envision my eventual demise.

Unfortunately, that condition likely would also make it impossible for me to do most of the things I enjoy doing: write, read, ponder, plan, look forward to the future, engage in citizen activism aimed at improving the world for future generations.

So I'm happy with being fearful about death.

That anxiety adds an extra "spiritual" dimension to my life, using that word in a decidedly non-supernatural sense. I'm pleased that I've given up the fantasy of life after death, since believing that this world is merely a stepping stone to some imagined eternal existence diminishes the priceless value of our one and only human existence.

Mary Oliver, the poet, put it beautifully. (Paraphrased in the image.)

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?

Don't look within for inner peace. Look without.

This Pearls Before Swine comic humorously sums up my evolving approach to meditation. Which, as you can read below, also is the approach favored by my new favorite mindfulness teacher, Amit Sood, M.D.


Now, actually I'm more of a blend of Rat and Pig. I still enjoy closed-eyed meditation, but I no longer am devoted to what the spiritual organization I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, referred to as "going within."

That notion was based on religious assumptions I've come to reject.

Namely, that supernatural realms of reality exist, and it is possible to experience them through meditation aimed at bringing every bit of conscious attention away from one's body and the outside world through concentration on what lies within one's head.

I have no problem with focusing attention on what lies within -- thoughts, emotions, imaginings, visions, inner speech, and such -- but this is a one-sided approach to meditation and mindfulness. 

At its worst, and I experienced this during my time as an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, avid devotees of "going within" can become seriously damaged psychologically. They lose interest in work, family, and other normal human pursuits, having become fanatically committed to detaching from the world and entering imagined non-physical domains of existence.

Not good. Meditation should make us a better person, not a worse one. If we aren't becoming a more loving, caring, and compassionate friend, relative, spouse, employee, volunteer, or parent, meditation isn't working for us.

After all, what makes us feel better when we're listless, lacking energy, down in the dumps, sad? (1) Sitting by ourselves in a room with eyes closed, focused on the contents of our mind, or (2) Getting out and doing something like walking in nature, talking with friends, patting our dog or cat?

I don't know about you, but I find #2 much more appealing.

Here's some quotes from Amit Sood's book, Mindfulness Redesigned for the Twenty-First Century, along these lines. I shared Sood's seven tenets in my previous post. The third tenet is: Intentional attention, external or internal, engages the same brain network. Focus your meditation on the world if you struggle with the mind.

In the third tenet, we explored ways to develop meditative attention by cultivating curiosity and focusing on meaning in the outside world. This helps us with engagement and flow.

These externally oriented practices are not only easier but also more effective than trying to see the light in an inwardly focused meditative stance.

The pursuit also makes you a more engaged spouse, parent, employee, and citizen. Attention so strengthened loses its rigidity, It becomes supple and flexible. Flexibility gives you freedom. In most situations, flexibility is a sign of health.

...An important aspect of the brain is that thinking about an activity engages similar brain areas to those engaged in actually practicing the activity. Thus research shows that imagining playing piano or violin or imagining dancing can help you improve your piano, violin, or dance performance.

When I read all this research, I speculated that the same networks should be engaged whether you focus externally or internally (playing piano versus thinking about playing piano). Thus meditation with eyes closed (internally directed) or eyes open (externally directed) should engage the same or similar parts of the brain. I was excited to see that an interesting study supported precisely this speculation.

In this study, investigators evaluated which brain areas activate based on two variables: external versus internal focus, and intense versus low-grade attention. Researchers found that the intensity of focus had much greater effect on the activation than did the direction of focus.

Thus, very similar areas were activated when the participants were intensely focusing, whether looking out at an object externally or thinking about the details of the object internally. An additional research team has recently corroborated these findings.

Realizing this has freed me. I meet so many colleagues who find the internally focused meditation practice very difficult. I have similarly struggled with sitting meditation. I feel comfortable now in suggesting externally focused meditation, in which you experience your world with full attention.

Because from the brain's perspective it doesn't matter whether you are focusing externally or internally. Therefore, in addition to or in lieu of sitting with the eyes closed, you could meditate immersed in the world, with your eyes open. It will activate the same or similar areas of the brain.

Since we spend most of the day in the world and not sitting on a cushion, we could get ten thousand hours of training (which some but not all experts suggest is needed to become really good at anything) in just a few years.

The third tenet builds on intentionality and emerging research, offering you a different way to meditate: instead of meditating with eyes closes, you meditate with eyes open by intentionally projecting your attention externally. 

...A few thousand years ago, when our threats were mostly external, training attention would have meant pushing it toward the depths of the mind, the basis of most meditation practices. A lot has changed since then, such that the definition of escape isn't escaping into the mind but escaping from the mind.

Dalai Lama isn't big on single-pointed attention

Here's some good news for everybody who has difficulty concentrating during meditation. The Dalai Lama does too! And he doesn't think that single-pointed attention is the best way to meditate. Analytical meditation is. 

A few days ago, in a blog post I shared a lengthy passage from my new favorite book, Mindfulness Redesigned for the Twenty-First Century, by Amit Sood, M.D.

That passage ended with Sood mentioning that it was the Dalai Lama who provided the final push that got Sood to break away from the traditional meditation approach he learned growing up in India, and to embrace a modern version of mindfulness founded in a blend of modern science and ancient spirituality.

This is how Sood describes his conversation with the Dalai Lama at a Mayo Clinic event. The boldfacing is in Sood's book. I've added a section from the following chapter where Sood summarizes the seven tenets that have become the basis for his redesigned approach to mindfulness -- each of which makes a lot of sense to me.

It was a dramatic ninety minutes. I found the Dalai Lama to be kind, gentle, encouraging, fun, and wise. Spending time with him was like learning from my very sweet, very loving grandpa.

I asked the Dalai Lama lots of questions --- about human struggles, compassion, his childhood, and more. Then, in his presence, I asked these two questions to the audience of about five hundred people, the who's who of the meditation world.

(The answers would truly shock me and steer me forward in my path.) "How many of you have practiced meditation?" and "How many of you have found meditation a piece of cake, very easy?" 

As expected, the majority of the participants raised their hands in response to the first question. In response to the second question, barely one or two hands went up.

At that point, the Dalai Lama, in all his humility, shared his insights about meditation. I have watched this clip several times on YouTube. He described two types of meditation: analytical and single pointed.

Analytical meditation cultivates a sense of curiosity -- an alert mind that is busy exploring the nature of the body, world, humanity, and mind. Such a mind analyzes all it sees and connects different experiences to learn about the world.

Analytic meditation helps develop a holistic view. It decreases the gap between appearance and reality. This form of meditation he found easy, and he thought it was more important than the second form of meditation -- focused attention.

For the second form of meditation, which creates a single-pointed mind (in which you focus on a single object of attention), the word Dalai Lama used was impossible. It needed a lot of time -- four, five, or six hours a day.

...Talking to the Dalai Lama was a moment of great realization for me. I felt uplifted, absolved, freed. My cage had been opened. This hummingbird was ready to fly.

If the Dalai Lama struggles with single-pointed meditation and promotes a more wisdom-seeking analytical process, why was I seeking single-pointed meditation as a first step. Why were many other programs doing the same?

I realized my folly. I was copying and pasting practices I had learned without much thinking. I had picked cliches. I was talking about the "now" without knowing what it meant. I was evangelizing about being in the present moment without knowing how difficult it was.

I was sharing practices that didn't work for the majority of the people for the long term. They were just too polite to tell me. I was setting them up for failure, swapping one trap for the other. This wasn't right, and I needed to fix it.

If the basic concepts of diet and exercise are simple and can be learned in a very short time, why shouldn't mindfulness resilience, happiness, and stress management be equally simple and accessible? I thought.

...Here are the seven tenets presented as seven tweets. 

(1) Ancient wisdom relied on philosophy; modern wisdom increasingly consults twenty-first century science.
(2) Time is fleeting and untethered. Anchor presence by intentionality instead of time.
(3) Intentional attention, external or internal, engages the same brain network. Focus your meditation on the world if you struggle with the mind.
(4) If the short-term is challenged, think about the long term; if the long term is challenged, live for the next moment. Keep a flexible zoom.
(5) A non-judgmental stance can be comforting but is unachievable. Being grateful and compassionate is an easier and more accessible solution.
(6) Mindfulness isn't a practice; it is a way of life.
(7) Instead of emptying the mind, fill it with hope, inspiration, and courage.

You can see the Dalai Lama's response to the questions Sood asked the audience in this video of the event. I've set the You Tube video to start at the appropriate place, a bit after 1:05.

Musings of an ex-Christian atheist

Here's another email I got from a guy I correspond with regularly. I always enjoy his messages. This time it is about the irritating nature of fundamentalist Christians, plus some right-on observations about the Bible.

Enjoy.

Hey Brian, how are you?

I’m… ok.

As always, I enjoyed your latest post. This part really stood out to me:

“Atheists like me have seen through the trickery. We're no longer willing to play the God Game. We have no patience with those who promise salvation after death. We recognize the con job being promulgated by religious leaders who lust after money and power while hypocritically preaching worldly detachment and humility.”

I have a friend who has offered me some free career counseling. She is very good at it so it sounds great, right? Right. 

She is a very devout, hardcore Christian. Shouldn’t be a problem right?  Right…

She is a woman that my wife prays with and does not know that I am an atheist. I can tell by some of the things she talks to me about that my wife has said something to her about certain changes in what I believe.  So instead of career counseling, most sessions so far turn into a Bible study of sorts. 

Yesterday’s session started out on the right track, talking about my resume and other opportunities in the field that I’m currently in. By the time I politely let her know that I had to go teach a self defense lesson, it had turned into her talking about us living in the last days and that there is a call on my life to teach and I need to seek God regarding that. Ugh.

I was surprised at the anger that came up in me later in the day. 

Seek God about the “call” on my life? Yeah, I did that for about 30 years. You know what God said to me about it? Nothing! Not a damn thing! Because he’s not there. And if he is, in the Christian sense, he’s an asshole.  Now that I’ve learned to use logic and reason and common sense, it’s amazing how glaringly obvious things about religion are to me now.

My wife could tell something was up, so she asked me. I watered it down a little, but I think I shocked her a bit.  LOL  Some things I threw out there…

Let’s assume, for just a minute, that the Bible is true/accurate. Isn’t it interesting that there are only a handful of people, all from the same small part of the world, who had spectacular encounters with God, and many of these folks tell the rest of “us” that we just have to believe by faith. 

If I told someone that I was abducted by aliens, but had no proof, they just have to believe because I said so, they’d probably think I’ve finally lost it. Yet, that is what religion is asking us to do. 

Preachers from the flavor of Christianity I came out of talk about how God wants to have this real and amazing relationship with humankind. But he is markedly silent and the amazing encounters we read about in the Bible cannot be proven and apparently, only happened during that time.

She said something about getting into the word of God more often, meaning the Bible. I should have just left it alone… but I did not. I basically said that I do not believe the Bible to be “the word of God”.  It’s a collection of books/stories, songs, poems, letters, etc. The book of John clearly states that Jesus is the Word of God. Not a book. Yeah, that went over well.

Anyway. Like you said about no longer being willing to play the God game, I’m not sure how much longer I can pretend that I’m not an atheist.  I’m pretty sure people close to me will start to figure it out.

Helium balloons are a bad way to grieve someone's death

Yesterday my wife and I went on our usual late afternoon dog walk. Meandering along a trail here in rural south Salem, Oregon, I spotted something unusual about twenty feet away. 

Walking over to it, I realized it was a deflated helium balloon. Here's what was written on it. (Hard to tell whether the words came from one person, or several people.)

Dear Grandma, I really wish you were here. I love you so much. Thank you so much for having your kids. They are a blessing. I love them so much.

I wish you were here. See you in heaven, someday soon. Have fun in heaven, Grandma. I love you so much.

Leaving aside the sentiments, it's a really bad idea to set loose a helium balloon for any reason. They litter the landscape. They can be harmful to animals. And helium is a rare element that is needed for reasons other than sending a message to a dead woman. 

I understand why people want to engage in some sort of ceremony after a loved one has died.

Whoever wrote on this ballon obviously was religious. But why would someone think that Grandma was better able to read words written with a sharpie on a balloon, than to tune into a relative's thought?

I've talked to my mother after she died. I didn't believe she could hear me, yet it felt good to speak to her as if she was still alive.

I never had the slightest inclination to write to her, though, especially not on a balloon. 

So Christians, or any other religiously-minded group, should ponder the absurdity of believing that someone who supposedly is in heaven needs to be communicated with via decidedly materialistic means. 

If you believe in the supernatural, shouldn't it be possible for a deceased person to use a divine means to tap into the sentiments of those here on Earth?

Sure seems so. Thus ditch the writing on balloons thing and simply think, Grandma, I love you so much. That will be cheaper, easier, and way more environmentally-friendly.

Mindfulness Redesigned for the Twenty-First Century -- my new favorite book

A quantum experience led me to a book that I'm loving a lot, Mindfulness Redesigned for the Twenty-First Century, by Amit Sood, M.D.

More precisely, it was an absurd mention of "quantum" in another book that led me to Sood's creative re-imagining of what mindfulness is all about.

There I was, semi-happily reading Loch Kelly's Effortless Mindfulness, which I wrote about in a recent blog post, when I came to a passage that caused me to give up on the book.

Self-essence is an invisible source, prior to energy. In turn, Self-energy is both wave -- flowing, boundless dynamism with relational qualities -- and particle -- active, compassionate, embodied, and full of vitality. The waves and particles are made of the invisible potential of the quantum field of Self-essence.

Those incomprehensible words violated one of my current Book Commandments: thou shalt not invoke quantum theory in an area where it has no application. Like, awareness and mindfulness. 

I then headed to Amazon to reinvigorate my brain by searching for a book that took a genuinely scientific approach to mindfulness. After a bit of browsing I came across Sood's book, and ordered it. 

I'm enjoying it a lot.

I intend to discuss Sood's approach to mindfulness in some detail in future posts. But for now I want to share a section where Sood describes how he came to an understanding that the ancient Asian Indian spiritual teachings he grew up with needed to be updated for the 21st century. 

Sood came to the United States in 1995 from India. Here's his "About the Author" bio on Amazon:

Dr. Amit Sood is a Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic. He directs the Mind-Body Medicine Initiative, and is the creator of the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Resilient Mind Program. He is the author of the books, The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living, The Mayo Clinic Handbook for Happiness, and Immerse: A 52-Week Course in Resilient Living.

Dr. Sood received the 2010 Distinguished Service Award, the 2010 Innovator of the Year Award, the 2013 Outstanding Physician Scientist Award and the 2016 Faculty of the Year Award from Mayo Clinic. He was honored as Robert Wood Johnson Health Care Pioneer in 2015. The Ode magazine selected Dr. Sood as one among top 20 intelligent optimists helping the world to be a better place.

In 2016, he was selected as the top impact maker in healthcare in Rochester, MN - a community of over thirty-thousand dedicated health care professionals. Personally, he loves power naps and dark chocolate, detests flossing, likes love and logic, and cares a lot about children - all the children. Dr. Sood lives with his lovely wife of twenty-five years, Richa, and their two princesses, Gauri and Sia, in the occasionally frosty, but always caring and compassionate, Rochester, MN.

Impressive guy. Here's how he came to embrace a scientific approach to mindfulness, as described in his book's "Guilty and Back" chapter.

Feeling Guilty

Challenging an age-old practice was extremely difficult for me. If you understand my background, it will make sense to you.

Meditation practices and teachers are highly respected in Asian Indian families. Many teachers are revered as spiritual leaders of the society. 

Their images are placed in each room. In daily prayer, people bow to the images, decorate them with flowers, and light incense sticks in front of them. People see their teachers in dreams to solve personal problems.

In families with a faith-based practice, these teachers are considered a conduit to God. Annoying or disbelieving them or their instructions would be considered worse than heresy.

I have met several teachers who indeed deserve a high pedestal, but some do not. Nevertheless, if a teacher is caught committing nefarious practices, as has happened numerous times, instead of lowering the pedestal, the unsuspecting students often reframe by saying that the teacher is testing their spiritual resolve by creating the drama.

With this cultural perspective etched within me, my guilt, conflict, and anxiety grew along with the doubts I shared in the previous chapter. I felt vulnerable. 

Will these doubts bring bad luck, illness, or curse to my family? I thought. The scientist in me conflicted with myths and rituals I had learned as a child. A master at overthinking, I did what I do best with such conflicts. I stopped thinking about it and tabled the idea.

Overcoming guilt

I didn't stay put with the idea for very long. My return journey started when I heard about people with no meditation experience who were perceiving the deepest samadhi states as a result of acute stroke. I read about brain tumors and seizures causing sacred visions and spiritual experiences.

Could these states and visions just be a product of the brain's electrical activity? I asked myself. If that is the case, will it be worthwhile to spend my entire life seeking such experiences?

Then I read about swamis who had obtained these experiences but were doing very bad things. I heard stories about self-styled gurus who claimed to be adept at awakening people's kundalini (and many of their followers felt their "energy" and saw the "light" with their help) but were nothing but greedy, immoral charlatans.

They were illegally usurping money and property, abusing women and children, and committing other unspeakable crimes. 

I saw a few of them get caught, was amazed at how low they could go in trying to defend themselves, and could clearly see the selfish psychopath beneath the long hair and saffron color. My uninformed faith in some of these traditions began to crack.

That worked wonders on my guilt. (I should mention that not all swamis are fake. I have personally met several masters of meditation who I deeply respect, who are humble, selfless, and kind, and are truly living each day to help the world.)

Looking deeper

With my blind faith unblinded the more I studied, the deeper I looked and the more learners I worked with, the more convinced I became that most mindfulness programs in their current form need editing  before they can optimally help twenty-first-century brains.

In our effort to make mindfulness simpler, despite our good intentions we have misrepresented some of its constructs. 

Further, some of the language and philosophy is 2,500 years old. It simply needs to be refreshed. What is old and practiced for thousands of years doesn't always have to be perfect or even right.

After all they anointed cow dung on umbilical cords that caused tetanus, didn't believe in pasteurization, practiced child labor, and bad-mouthed any woman who stepped outside the house to join the workforce. (Unfortunately all of these are still happening in some parts of the world.)

The result of my deeper search was freedom. While I still revere the timeless wisdom of many scriptures, I have largely escaped my childhood blinders, partly because I feel confident in the new tool we now have to study the truth: science.

Using the scientific method polished with common sense I came up with a few key ideas for how to better align our understanding of mindfulness with twenty-first-century challenges so it can better serve resilience.

Few ideas

Here is what I thought was needed:

-- Integrate twenty-first-century neuroscience to help better understand the human condition. Philosophy alone isn't enough.
-- Offer skills that emphasize uplifting emotions and not just attention training.
-- Have more explicit focus on compassion, gratitude and forgiveness.
-- Abbreviate the training time.
-- Offer practices that are shorter and more relevant to people's lives.
-- Enhance focus on relationships to decrease perceived loneliness.
-- Integrate hope, inspiration, and courage in the program.

In addition to above, I felt adding humor to the program (and life) was vital. Fun and laughter are great sources of bonding and inspiration, and if we keep the training and the skills dry, they will remain inaccessible, particularly to the younger generation.

I debated and doubted these thoughts for months but couldn't negate any one of them. As a next step, I considered a three-part solution:

(1) Educate people about their brains, emphasizing how our neural traps generate negative emotions and hurt our attention.
(2) Offer different (briefer and deeper) attention practices that are easier to practice and adopt, that provide uplifting emotions, and that center on relationships.
(3) Return mindfulness to its ecosystem in the company of compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, relationships, hope, inspiration, and courage.

I strongly believed I was moving in the right direction, but received pushback from some old colleagues in the field. Pushbacks often demoralize me and they worked their magic this time also. But each time I saw someone struggling whom I couldn't optimally help, the thoughts creeped up again.

I needed one final push. Then His Holiness the Dalai Lama came to my rescue.

Magic is in the details of everyday life

One of the most important things I've learned in my 70 years of living is this: the world is way more interesting than I am.

So the more I can get out of my head, and into what surrounds me, the happier I am. By and large. There are exceptions to every rule, including this one. 

As I've noted before, and surely will note again, mindfulness has become my meditation. I'm no longer seeking enlightenment, mystical uplift, or even self-knowledge. 

In fact, I don't believe that I have, or am, an enduring self. The world exists. I exist. When I'm fully aware of the world, that's enough for me.

Sure, I also spend time aware of my thoughts, emotions, memories, anticipations, and such. These internal experiences just have come to seem less real, less absorbing, and less interesting than what lies outside of me.

Today's guided meditation on my iPhone's Calm app was titled Immersion. Tamara Levitt ended the meditation with the following words. I liked them so much, I transcribed what she said to share in this blog post. 
       

Immersion -- part of a guided meditation by Calm's Tamara Levitt

By quieting our mind and body and tuning in, we can open up to our inner landscape. And in doing so we also develop the capacity to be fully present with our external environment.

When we really notice our surroundings, we can tune in to a universe of detail, discovering magic in places we normally pass through on autopilot. 

And we don't have to be at the top of a mountain. Our practice can help us find that fascination even in the mundane places we go each day. 

The next time you find yourself in a familiar setting, use your practice to see it anew.

You might be standing on a subway platform, sitting in your car waiting for the light to change, or standing in a cafe waiting for your morning coffee. 

First, make a conscious effort to slow down and tune in to your senses.

Let them fully immerse you in your environment. Get really present, and tune into the orchestra of sounds around you. Take in all the sights and smells. Notice any movements. The spin of a ceiling fan. The quiver of a beam of light coming in the window. 

Take in the sounds, the voices, or vehicle. Notice the expressions on people's faces. Observe colors and patterns with an intricacy you never had before. 

Pour over all the details of this space you've seen a million times before, but have never really seen. And then bring that attentiveness into your day. And see what happens. Who knows what moments you might capture. 

A furry caterpillar climbing on a leaf. A sunset. Or a new friend sitting right beside you. 

To quote from the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." 

Ten reasons why Radha Soami Satsang Beas is a cult

For 35 years I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization with headquarters in India. Back then I believed that RSSB taught a semi-scientific approach of uniting one's personal consciousness, soul, with universal consciousness, God. 

But now that I've been able to look upon RSSB more objectively, I view it as a cult. Here's how a knowledgeable person defined a cult. I've boldfaced certain parts for emphasis.

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s. He delineated three primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults.

1. A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.

2. A process [of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion or thought reform [commonly called "brainwashing"].

The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of the group and its leader.

Lifton's seminal book Thought Reform and Psychology of Totalism explains this process in considerable detail.

3. Economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie.

So based on my extensive personal experience with Radha Soami Satsang Beas, which encompasses many communications with people associated with RSSB, including the current guru of the organization, here's ten reasons why RSSB is a cult.

(1) The guru is viewed by the RSSB teachings as God in Human Form. As a supposed Perfect Living Master, the guru is considered to be infallible. His commands are to be carried out without question.

(2) Volunteer service to the guru, or seva, is viewed as highly important. RSSB devotees commit vast amounts of time, energy, and money to the organization, which operates as a strict top-down hierarchy. 

(3) Doubts about the RSSB teachings are strongly discouraged. Thinking for oneself is a no-no, as the human mind is considered  to be the agent of a negative power, much as the Devil is viewed in Christianity.

(4) The current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, has garnered hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and his family through shady financial transactions orchestrated by his close associates, some of whom are being investigated by authorities in India.

(5) Dhillon has been accused of making death threats through RSSB devotees who do his bidding.

(6) There is no independent board or other entity that serves as a check on the RSSB guru's power. The group's finances are largely a secret, though RSSB owns expensive properties all around the world, including private residences for the guru.

(7) Credible reports show that RSSB has allowed volunteers to act violently toward someone who attended a meeting of the group, and the guru has ignored sexual harassment at the RSSB headquarters.

(8) Most RSSB devotees consider that the guru can do no wrong, even in the face of evidence that he has indeed acted wrongly.

(9) The RSSB guru enjoys a lavish lifestyle while preaching that the central purpose of human life is to return to God, not make huge amounts of money.

(10) Well-off people, political leaders, and RSSB insiders receive favored treatment at gatherings of the organization, while ordinary Indians receive second-class treatment.

There are more reasons why RSSB is a cult, so feel free to share your own in a comment, if you're familiar with this group. For example, the current RSSB guru forbids people to photograph him without his consent, and has issued an edict against taking notes at his talks.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru

Effortless mindfulness versus deliberate mindfulness

Mindfulness has been my meditation for quite a few years. As I wrote about recently, being mindful of what actually exists here and now strikes me as way preferable to fantasizing about supernatural realms and mystical mumbo-jumbo.

Thought I'm not 100% sure about anything -- the way of science -- I consider it highly probably that these premises are true.

(1) The mind is the brain in action
(2) There is no enduring, unchanging self or soul
(3) Free will is an illusion
(4) We humans see reality through a species-specific lens
(5) Consciousness is created by the brain
(6) All living beings exist in a web of interconnections

So my favorite books about mindfulness and meditation recognize that those six statements most likely are how us Homo sapiens relate to reality. The six truths are grounded in modern science and neuroscience, though naturally there's room for quibbling about the exact nature of what I've summarized above in a half dozen pithy sentences. 

I'm not saying that every author who writes about mindfulness/meditation needs to explicitly agree with each of the principles above to get my stamp of approval. However, at least what they say shouldn't conflict with those principles, or my highlighter is quick to insert question marks in the margin of their book's pages.

A book by Loch Kelly, "The Way of Effortless Mindfulness," came to my attention via an interview Sam Harris conducted with Kelly and shared on Harris' Waking Up iPhone app that I'm a fan of. 

Any book about meditation that has effortless in the title is going to get my attention.

For thirty-five years I practiced a mystical meditative practice that involved considerable effort via repeating a mantra, sitting in a particular posture, and adhering to various other rules (such as ideally meditating for 2 1/2 hours a day, which I did for many years).

By comparison, mindfulness involves much less effort, since the focus is on attending to what is right before us, notably the breath.

In his interview with Harris, Loch Kelly talked about how his mindfulness approach derives from Tibetan Buddhism, which differs in some regards from other forms of Buddhism. Basically Kelly (along with Harris) considers that awareness itself is key to mindfulness, with the contents of awareness, though important, being secondary. 

Here's an excerpt from Kelly's book that describes how effortless mindfulness differs from deliberate (or effortful) mindfulness.

One simple way to distinguish the two types of mindfulness is to say that they are both being mindful but from different levels of mind. This is important because what you can be mindful of depends on what level of mind you're mindful from.

In effortless mindfulness, it is not as important to focus on what thoughts and emotions are arising but rather to ask, "Who or what level of mind are they arising to?" In effortless mindfulness, we shift from focusing on what we are aware of into focusing on awareness itself -- moving from a detached observer and into a view from interconnected awake awareness.

In deliberate mindfulness, we are aware, from our mindful witness, of things arising and passing. Effortless mindfulness invites us to be more intimately interconnected with our experience and all that is happening.

This begins when we shift out of both our conceptual mind and our mindful witness and into awake awareness. Deliberate mindfulness focuses on the contents of consciousness, while effortless mindfulness turns back to be aware of the context -- awareness itself. 

With deliberate mindfulness, we discover who we are not. With effortless mindfulness, we discover who we essentially are.

By and large, this makes sense to me.

I'm not convinced that it makes sense to speak of consciousness without content, since seemingly this would leave us completely unaware of everything, including consciousness itself. But I agree that awareness does appear to be the backdrop of all that we've experienced from the moment of our birth.

Each of us has been aware of countless different things during our lifetime, while awareness itself hasn't changed.

Kelly doesn't view awareness and consciousness as being the same, even though in everyday speech we often consider them to be equivalent. Kelly says, rather mysteriously, "Awake awareness is what makes consciousness conscious. Thoughts, feelings, and sensations are dancing patterns made of awake awareness."

Also: "Awake awareness is the same in all of us, yet our individuality arises from it." And: "Once we experience awake awareness as the foundation of our identity, we experience our conditioned thoughts, emotions, and sensations as waves within the ocean of our life."

Mindful Glimpses are the key teaching method in Kelly's book. They're designed to show us what awake awareness is all about. Here's two of his early Mindful Glimpses.

Background Awareness

(1) Take one slow, deep breath.
(2) Let out a sigh.
(3) Now, let your awareness open to discover the background awareness that is already effortlessly awake and aware without your help.
(4) Notice that you can effortlessly focus from this background awareness.

Eyes of Awareness

(1) With a soft gaze, simply see what is here in front of you.
(2) Notice the awareness that is looking through your eyes.
(3) Now close your eyes and notice the same awareness that was looking out is still here.
(4) Simply rest as this wordless awareness, which is now aware of itself.
(5) Without creating a thinker, be the awareness that welcomes and includes everything.

Shocking tale of a punch in the face at a RSSB meeting

Here's Part 2 of Osho Robbins' (not his real name) tale of what happened to him at a meeting of Radha Soami Satsang Beas devotees at the RSSB Haynes Park center in England.

Part 1 can be read in "Osho Robbins' 'Crime of the Century' at a RSSB Haynes Park satsang."

Part 2 is long, so you'll need to click on the continuation link to read the full account. Here's some definitions of a few words Robbins uses in his report. "Satsang" is a spiritual talk. "Baba Ji" refers to the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. "Sevadar" is a volunteer.

I'm sharing this story because it illustrates the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of religious people, whether of the East or West. When volunteer devotees act much worse than ordinary human beings, and apparently no higher-ups care about their bad behavior, this reflects badly on their religious organization -- in this case Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

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

17 August 2019 Haynes Park
Seven sevadars attack one satsangi,
completely unprovoked and without reason

This account from Saturday 17^th August 2019, describes how I was peacefully walking towards the exit of Haynes Park to leave, and was stopped and held by seven people and dragged to a private spot and then intimidated and punched in the face and then later pushed into the back of a pitch black van to intimidate me further. Further threats were also made.

You can make up your own mind as to whether the actions of those seven people were reasonable. What I can guarantee is that this account is accurate. Furthermore I have no reason to lie because I am not seeking any specific outcome. I am simply presenting the facts of what happened. Beyond that it is not of my concern. I don’t even care about being “re-instated.”

So, I got banned from satsang. How the heck did that happen?

Oh yes, now I remember: it was because I took a mobile phone into satsang and recorded 5 minutes of an English speaker.

But wait a minute… LOTS of people do much much much more than that.

A quick search on YouTube shows there are MANY satsangs / Q&A of BabaJi already online. I stopped counting at 200. Clearly its not a big issue, otherwise RSSB would have done something about it.

Here’s a few examples: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPsz5Z2JvpA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXX6t1F9ZBA&t=113s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2E86eQPNwU

Now contrast this with what the sevadars did:

1. Took my phone, lied about where it was, refused to return it for approx. 5 hours. 
2. Sent a lower sevadar to officially take responsibility for it – if it got lost.
3. Fabricated a story about me threating to “kick a sevadar in the nuts” : something I can prove 100% to be a lie because it’s simply out of character.
4. Forced another sevadar to lie 
5. Banned me without authority because it was based on a lie.

Now I know that sevadars are not perfect, but give me a break.

We’re not talking about perfect here. 

We’re talking about NORMAL, DECENT human beings.

If this is the result of following RSSB for maybe 30+ years, then clearly it’s not working.

“By their fruits Ye shall know them.” Says the Bible. 

But no matter…  Let’s carry on…because the show must go on…

Now we get onto Day 2: the Saturday satsang. There was simply no way the ban was real as it was based on a lie. I also did not think that the person who banned me had any authority to ban me. He also gave me nothing in writing, giving me even more reason to question its validity.

And to add to it all, I had a dream that night. In the dream, I was on the mic, and it was a Q&A session, and BabaJi was saying “Absolutely, the master loves every disciple like his own child.”

I can only guess, my subconscious mind created the dream from the words of the old satsangi I had met that day who had moved me to tears by saying “Does anyone ever forget his own son?” when I had asked him if he recognised me.

Anyway, I took that to mean that BabaJi wants me to attend satsang that day and if he wants me to attend, who am I to fight against that? I am not saying it was some inner revelation – just what I took the dream to mean.

So I decided I would attend satsang that day (Saturday). nThis time I took my own car because I did not want to inconvenience anyone else. I drove into Haynes Park and nobody paid any special attention to me. So clearly I was not banned, because if I was banned, at least some sevadar would have recognized me. 

If I was banned, they would all have a photo of me. So I parked up and walked to the satsang tent. Once again, nobody paid any special attention to me. Even more evidence the ban was a lie.

As I walked along, I saw the same guy who I had met the previous day: Sevadar #2. The one with the short term memory problem. This time he did not ask me “do you know who I am?” so his memory may have improved. A good sign I guess.

He asked me to step to the side of the main walkway, but after the previous day’s experience, I decided to ignore his request. After all, it was only a request, and it was a free country.

I said “No thank you. I am going to attend satsang. I have no mobile phone with me. You can check.”

Then something happened that frankly shocked me.

He started physically pulling me to the side, by grabbing my arm. This was uncalled for.

“Please let go of me, this is assault” I said as I tried to get free of his grip.

Next thing I know, another guy grabs my other arm. 

Now I was getting a little concerned as this was not normal behaviour. If they had an issue, all they had to do was get one guy to watch where I sit and phone the police to get me removed. That would be the legal and proper procedure to follow. Physically grabbing me was going beyond the call of duty.

“Let go of me, and I will leave” I said. Still they held onto me as if I was some criminal, which I guess in their mind I was.

Open Thread 24 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

I appreciate that off-topic comments have been going in a previous Open Thread. As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is an Open Thread.

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks devoid of substantive content are an exception.

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.

Crackdown on off-topic comments coming on Wednesday

I've been engaged in a blog "Tune-Up" with Typepad staff that is leading to some appearance and content changes. For example, a Navigation bar has been added at the top of the page.

So I figure I might as well make a long-considered change to my commenting policy.

Well, it isn't really a change, since I've always asked visitors to this blog to keep comments related to the subject of a post, with off-topic comments going either in an Open Thread or in a post related to whatever the commenter wants to talk about.

Since this request has been widely ignored, starting next Wednesday, September 11, I'm going to stop approving comments that aren't related to the subject of a blog post. That gives a two day (secular) grace period for people to adjust to this new policy.

Remember: there are still two ways to say what you want on this blog, so long as a comment isn't excessively critical of another person, insulting, or profane.

(1) Leave a comment in an Open Thread. These free speech posts can be found either by looking in the Recent Posts section in the sidebar, or by clicking on the Open Threads category in the sidebar.

(2) Search for a post related to what you want to say. This can be done via the Google search box at the top of the sidebar. Since 2004 I've written about a great many spiritual, religious, philosophical, and scientific subjects. Most likely someone will be able to find a post related to whatever they'd like to share in a comment.

I'm cracking down on off-topic comments because I find them annoying. I read a lot of news stories online, and regularly visit blogs and web sites with information I'm interested in. 

When I click on a "comments" link, I want to read what other people think about the subject of the article or story. When there's a bunch of off-topic comments, that makes it difficult to find the comments that actually relate to what I care about.

A relatively small number of commenters on this blog have been using it as a sort of message board where they engage in personal discussions, debates, criticisms, and such unrelated to the subject of the post the comments are appearing in.

That's fine in an Open Thread from now on, because an Open Thread has no subject.

However, as noted above, on September 11 my time (Pacific Coast of United States), I won't be approving comments outside of an Open Thread that don't relate to the subject of the blog post the comment has been left on.

Thomas Nagel on why free will doesn't exist

I'm really enjoying my decision to buy a used copy of Thomas Nagel's The View from Nowhere via Amazon. But after reading the "Freedom" chapter this morning, I'm convinced that I didn't freely choose to buy the book.

It felt that way to me, though. Which doesn't mean a whole lot, truth-wise, because reality is what it is, not how we consider it to be.

I've written a lot about free will on this blog. (You can find those posts by using the Google search box in the right sidebar.)

I don't believe it exists. Neither do many neuroscientists and philosophers, including Nagel. Pleasingly, he approaches this subject in a different way than other people whose writings on free will I've read and enjoyed. Yet he comes to the same basic conclusion.

Free will as commonly conceived is highly unlikely, if not impossible. Here's a passage that encapsulates Nagel's basic approach to this question.

I wish to act not only in light of the external circumstances facing me and the possibilities that they leave open, but in light of the internal circumstances as well: my desires, beliefs, feelings, and impulses. I wish to be able to subject my motives, principles, and habits to critical examination, so that nothing moves me to action without my agreeing to it.

In this way, the setting against which I act is gradually enlarged and extended inward, till it includes more and more of myself, considered as one of the contents of the world.

In its earliest stages the process does genuinely seem to increase freedom, by making self-knowledge and objectivity part of the basis of action. But the danger is obvious.

The more completely the self is swallowed up in the circumstances of action, the less I have to act with. I cannot get completely outside myself. The process that starts as a means to the enlargement of freedom seems to lead to its destruction.

When I contemplate the world as a whole I see my actions, even at their empirically most "free," as part of the course of nature, and this is not my doing or anyone else's. The objective self is not in a position to pull the strings of my life from outside any more than TN [Thomas Nagel] is.

At the end of the path that seems to lead to freedom and knowledge lie skepticism and helplessness. We can act only from inside the world, but when we see ourselves from outside, the autonomy we experience from inside appears as an illusion, and we who are looking from outside cannot act at all.

Part of what Nagel is getting at here is that human actions are determined by a host of influences outside of our control. Genetics. Culture. Education. Experiences of many varieties. Society. Other people. Unconscious influences. Emotions. Instincts. Nature. And more besides.

From the inside, most of us feel that we're freely choosing to act. However, when we look at other people, it is easy to think "They're acting that way because of _______," with that blank being filled by many possibilities of determining factors. 

That's easy to do, because we view other people much more objectively than we view ourselves. Yet as Nagel says, when we subject our own actions to the same sort of analysis we apply to others, it becomes obvious that we are equally influenced by factors beyond our control.

I don't have a problem with that. 

Being strongly inclined to philosophical Taoism and Buddhism (leaving out their religious aspects), I like the idea of being a humble part of the whole, a tiny bubble of being whose movements are directed not by me (whoever that is), but by my interactions with the big wide world that surrounds me.

Sure, like almost everyone I have a feeling that I'm free to choose what to do, think, and such. However, I also have a feeling that the sun sets, which also is an illusion, since actually it is our planet which is moving.

Nagel has some ideas about how to deal with the fact that it is very difficult to avoid feeling that we possess free will, in much the same way that it is very difficult to avoid feeling "the sun is setting" -- even if someone is an astronomer. 

Here's part of what Nagel has to say on this subject.

We might try, first, to develop as complete an objective view of ourselves as we can, and include it in the basis of our actions, wherever it is relevant. This would mean consistently looking over our own shoulders at what we are doing and why (though often it will be a mere formality).

But this objective self-surveilance will inevitably be incomplete, since some knower must remain behind the lens if anything is to be known. 

Moreover, each of us knows this -- knows that some of the sources of his actions are not objects of his attention and choice. The objective view of ourselves includes both what we can know and can use, and what we know that we do not know, and therefore know that we cannot use.

Let me call this the essentially incomplete objective view, or incomplete view, for short. The incomplete view of ourselves in the world includes a large blind spot, behind our eyes, so to speak, that hides something we cannot take into account in acting, because it is what acts.

Yet this blind spot is part of our objective picture of the world, and to act from as far out as possible we must to some extent include a recognition of it in the basis of our actions.

(My first post about Nagel's book is here.)

"The View from Nowhere" is a laudable goal

Quite a few years ago I heard of Thomas Nagel's book "The View from Nowhere," liking the provocative title. Nagel is better known for his What Is it Like to be a Bat? paper, which raised equally profound questions about subjectivity and objectivity. 

No human knows what it is like to be a bat. Only a bat does. 

The same is true of every species, and indeed of every individual within a species. I've been married to my wife, Laurel, for 29 years. So obviously I know her very well. But I don't know what it is like to be Laurel. Only she does. 

I perceive my wife from the outside, an objective perspective. She perceives herself from the inside, a subjective perspective. What Nagel seeks to achieve in The View from Nowhere is a philosophical argument for how subjective and objective views of the world can be harmonized.

I've only read part of this book, yet feel that I've grasped enough of Nagel's way of thinking to fashion a blog post based on the first five of his eleven chapters. 

Here's how Nagel encapsulates his goal.

A theory of reality with pretensions to completeness would have to include a theory of the mind. But this too would be a hypothesis generated by the mind, and would not be self-guaranteeing. ... The idea of a full conception of reality that explains our ability to arrive at it is just a dream.

Nevertheless, it's what we aim toward: a gradual liberation of the dormant objective self, trapped initially behind an individual perspective of human experience. The hope is to develop a detached perspective that can coexist with and comprehend the individual one.

That's certainly a laudable goal. It reflects what science is all about, though Nagel seeks a perspective that is universal, not limited to scientific investigations. 

Appealingly, he simultaneously asserts the truth of our inherent subjectivity -- the fact that each of us knows ourself from the inside, while everyone else knows us from the outside -- with a commitment to fashion our ways of knowing into a perspective that comes as close as possible to being a view from nowhere.

Meaning, an objective view that minimizes the biases of our species, and our personal individuality as a member of Homo sapiens. In the chapter that I finished today, Nagel says that a "double vision" is needed.

I'm not completely sure what he means by this, assuming that the rest of the book will lead to an explanation. It isn't bouncing back and forth between a subjective and objective view, but rather involves combining subjectivity and objectivity in some way that eludes me at this point in my reading.

Here's some additional passages from the Double Vision chapter.

When we view ourselves from outside, a naturalistic picture of how we work seems unavoidable. It is clear that our beliefs arise from certain dispositions and experiences which, so far as we know, don't guarantee their truth and are compatible with radical error.

The trouble is that we can't fully take on the skepticism that this entails, because we can't cure our appetite for belief, and we can't take on this attitude toward our own beliefs while we're having them.

Beliefs are about how things probably are, not just about what they might possibly be, and there is no way of bracketing our ordinary beliefs about the world so that they dovetail neatly with the possibility of skepticism. The thought "I'm a professor at New York University, unless of course I'm a brain in a vat" is not one that can represent my general integrated state of mind.

The problems of free will and personal identity yield similarly unharmonious conclusions. In some respects what we do and what happens to us fits very naturally into an objective picture of the world, on a footing with what other objects and organisms do.

Our actions seem to be events with causes and conditions many of which are not our actions. We seem to persist and change through time much as other complex organisms do. But when we take these objective ideas seriously, they appear to threaten and undermine certain fundamental self-conceptions that we find it very difficult to give up.

For sure.

Looking at other people and other living beings, we see that everything which lives, dies. Looking at other people and other living beings, we also see that if a brain is seriously damaged, the consciousness of the being with that brain is altered for the worse.

Yet most humans have a belief that some part of them will continue to live on after their death, often termed a soul, no matter what happens to their body and brain.

That's because from the inside our consciousness seems to be ethereal, unitary, and timeless in some sense -- since we have been conscious from birth until now, while our body and mental contents have changed in countless ways.

I share Nagel's goal of doing our best to view ourselves, and the world, in as objective a fashion as possible.

This requires that we subject our own beliefs and ways of knowing to scrutiny, which isn't at all easy, because how see our own self and the world typically seems so natural, it's difficult for us to envision how that perspective could be any different.

One of Nagel's key ideas is that an objective viewpoint has to include the subjectivity of the viewer as one aspect of what is being perceived. Otherwise we make the mistake of considering that we know everything about some aspect of the world, whereas actually that knowledge should include the knower.

I enjoy learning about neuroscience and human psychology for this reason. I just wish that religious people also would consider that their sense of knowing what God, spirit, soul, heaven and such are like could be mistaken. Not just by a little, but by a lot. Still, we have to keep seeking truth while knowing that it won't be possible to grasp truth completely.

Nagel writes early on in his book:

I believe that the methods needed to understand ourselves do not yet exist.

So this book contains a great deal of speculation about the world and how we fit into it. Some of it will seem wild, but the world is a strange place, and nothing but radical speculation gives us a hope of coming up with any candidates for the truth.

That, of course, is not the same as coming up with the truth: if truth is our aim, we must be resigned to achieving it to a very limited extent, and without certainty.

To redefine the aim so that its achievement is largely guaranteed, through various forms of reductionism, relativism, or historicism, is a form of cognitive wish-fulfillment.

Philosophy cannot take refuge in reduced ambitions. It is after eternal and nonlocal truth, even though we know that is not what we are going to get.