Church of the Churchless

Investigation into Singh brothers and RSSB guru financial fraud saga continues

The Economic Times has a new story about the investigation into financial fraud involving the Singh brothers (Malvinder and Shivinder), Sunil Godhwani, Gurinder Singh Dhillon (guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas), and others.

I've boldfaced some passages for emphasis. Basically the story shows that authorities in India are still engaged in finding out in whose hands the illegal money transfers ended up, and where the money is now. So the financial fraud saga continues...

 

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is in the process of approaching foreign jurisdictions, to get details of more people and entities that may have involved in laundering money linked to the alleged Religare fraud.

In its charge sheet that accused former Religare promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Singh of money laundering, the agency said it is in the “process of issuing letters rogatory (LRs) to foreign jurisdictions”.

The agency also told a local court that of the total Rs 2,036.69 crore of estimated proceeds of crime, investigation over Rs 300 crores has been completed. “Investigation in respect of identification of remaining proceeds of crime and accused that are involved in money laundering is in progress,” it said in the charge sheet, which ET has seen.

The matter came up for resumed hearing on Wednesday when copies of the charge sheet were supplied to the accused.

On account of the ongoing legal battle between Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, a copy of the charge sheet could not be supplied to RHC Holding, a company privately owned by the brothers which is also an accused in the charge sheet. This is because there was no legal representative to appear for RHC Holding.

Special public prosecutor for the ED, Nitesh Rana, told the court that the brothers, along with co-accused Sunil Godhwani and others, are “involved in process of acquisition, layering, possession, concealment, use and projection of proceeds of crime generated out of criminal activities”.

Singh brothers and Godhwani had denied any wrongdoing.

Elaborating on the alleged role of the two brothers, the charge sheet said, “Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh incorporated and used multiple conduit companies for the purpose of siphoning off public funds from Religare Finvest Limited (RFL) by way of sanctioning and disbursal of loans under corporate loan book (CLB)”.

It said the conduit companies were associated with the Singh brothers. This is “clearly established on the basis that the directors of the said companies have accepted that they were relatives or associates of the promoters (Singh brothers). And that properties owned by the conduit companies were being utilised for the benefit of the promoters as also the fact that some of these companies were purchased by the promoters in 2017-18,” the charge sheet said.

It alleged that the funds “siphoned off” by the brothers and Godhwani through “sanctioning, evergreening, layering of CLB loans were ultimately utilised for repaying existing liabilities” of the company of Singh brothers “or the acquisition of properties for the benefit of Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh”.

The agency said it may file a supplementary charge sheet if its investigation in India as well as abroad ascertains involvement of more individuals involved in laundering and parking of proceeds of crime.

Underlining the role of RHC Holding, the agency said the company acquired Rs 150 crore of proceeds of crime and “utilised the said amount in repayment of its existing liability towards RFL by projecting it as untainted”. It added: “RHC group entities have not only been used as conduit companies but in some cases are the ultimate beneficiary of the proceeds of crime.”

Elaborating on the alleged modus operandi, the agency said proceeds of crime “through a complex maze of interconnected transactions” have been layered and “integrated in the main stream economy for evergreening of old loans”. The proceeds were also used for other purposes and for the acquisition of property, it claimed.

ET was the first to report on January 22 that the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police, in its separate charge sheet, had alleged that the Singh brothers had “diverted public money from group entity Religare Finvest to shell companies and used it to square off their personal liabilities”.

Executives at Religare Finvest, the group’s lending arm, had approved unsecured loans worth hundreds of crores to the shell companies within two hours of getting the proposals, even when these companies themselves had not sought the loans, the EOW said. The Singh brothers had joined the board of Religare Finvest in 2016 with the intention of diverting money to these 19 shell companies, the EOW alleged.

Reality: it's not all about you

Many years ago, too many to count, a friend brought a tape recording to our house (yes, tape) of a talk that contained a marvelous little poem by David Ignatow. I wrote down his words. I've thought a lot about them ever since.

I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not as a comment on my life.

In my religious-believing days, I would look for portents, signs, indications that the cosmos had something to say to me. If I was late getting to a meeting of my spiritual group and every traffic light would be green as I approached it, I'd consider that God was on my side.

(Or the guru, since I belonged to an organization headed up by one.)

Even after I embraced atheism, I'd still occasionally wonder, what message is the universe sending to me? My present-day answer: no message at all, because reality, like a mountain, is what it is. It's not about me. Or you. Or anybody else.

Today I was late for my 4:30 pm Tai Chi class, per usual. I felt like I'd get there close to on time, until I noticed flashing lights of several police cars that were diverting traffic from the street I was on because of an accident.

I had to go out of my way to detour around the blockade. Pleasingly, a car pulled out of a parking space as I got close to the building that houses the Tai Chi class. Somehow I was almost on time, a remarkable feat that a classmate remarked on.

But I didn't look on this as a comment on my life. It was just life, just a sequence of events that had nothing to do with me, even though I was experiencing them.

A few days ago I had coffee with someone who wanted to talk about local politics, one of my favorite subjects. Our conversation went in many different directions, so I can't remember what led me to quote the Ignatow poem, which I managed to mangle while still conveying the meaning accurately.

I told this person that my goal is not only to be able to look at a mountain as not being a comment on my life, but something more radical: to look upon my own life as not being a comment on my life.

Meaning, it'd be nice to be content with viewing the things that happen in my life as what they are, and not as a reflection of me. Which probably won't make a whole lot of sense to other people, though it does to me -- more intuitively, than rationally. 

Recently I jotted down something Sam Harris said on his Waking Up daily guided meditation that I listen to on my iPhone. It kind of fits with what I'm talking about here. He's speaking about our conscious awareness.

Drop back into the condition of everything arising on its own, the ground of experience.

Harris, being a fan of Dzogchen Buddhism, doesn't consider that we have, or are, a self. There's nobody inside our head watching and doing stuff. There is simply life happening, "everything arising on its own." 

Fact gap in the Singh brothers and RSSB guru financial fraud saga

A few days ago I wrote about the latest turn of events in the fascinating drama of two once-billionaire brothers (Malvinder and Shivinder Singh), their guru relative (Gurinder Singh Dhillon), and the guru's right hand man (Sunil Godhwani). 

In that post, "Delhi Police financial fraud charges point to RSSB guru's involvement," I noted that there is a fact gap between the Singh brothers and Godhwani being charged with money laundering, and the apparent funneling of much, most, or all of that money into the pockets of Dhillon, his family and close associates.

So important questions remain to be answered.

Such as: (1) Are investigators in India going to reveal who ended up with the money diverted into loans to shell companies, who orchestrated this financial fraud, and what the purpose of the fraud was?

(2) Assuming Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family were the ultimate beneficiaries of much or all of this money, will Indian investigators have the political backing to delve into the Dhillon family's involvement in the illegal money transfers and hold them to account if they were active participants in the fraud?

Another way of looking at this admittedly confusing, complex case is to recognize that there are criminal and civil components to it. The Delhi Police charges address the current status of the criminal component.

And the High Court of Delhi has been addressing the civil component in the course of trying to figure out how the Singh brothers are going to be able to pay a $500 million settlement they owe to Daiichi, a Japanese company that bought their Ranbaxy pharmceutical firm.

In July 2019 I wrote about the Dhillon family's role in this part of the case in "Delhi High Court requires recovery of money from RSSB guru." I shared a Business Today story in that post. Here's an excerpt from that story.

RSSB chief Gurinder Singh Dhillon, wife Shabnam Dhillon, sons Gurkirat and Gurpreet and daughter-in-law Nayan Tara Dhillon are among the 56 entities from whom Delhi HC has ordered recovery of monies Singh brothers-Malvinder & Shivinder-owe to Daiichi. Money will also be recovered from former Religare chief Sunil Godhwani and brother Sanjay Godhwani, according to the Delhi HC order.

BusinessToday.In had reported on March 12 that Singh brothers can only pay the $500 million order against them to compensate Daiichi, provided the money owed to them by RSSB chief Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family is recovered. In his submission, Malvinder has maintained that he can pay the arbitration order provided he can recover the money owed to him.

So we're left with the above-mentioned fact gap.

Malvinder, Shivinder, and Godhwani have been charged with money laundering. But Malvinder says that the laundered money, basically fraudulent loans, ended up with Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family.

Since the adage "follow the money" usually holds true in criminal financial conspiracies, loose ends will remain in this case until there's a definitive answer to who got the laundered money, why the laundering took place, and who organized the fraud.

There's a variety of ways to tie together what's currently known, or strongly suspected, in this case.

One of the best summaries was put together by Spence Tepper, a frequent commenter on this blog. Tepper appears to have modified his views to some extent, but I still consider what he wrote in July 2019 to be an excellent overview of the case, even though almost certainly it isn't a completely accurate description.

I shared Tepper's comment in a post called "Great overview of RSSB guru's financial fraud involvement." Here's the comment again. As noted in the post, I added some links and made a few corrections.

Hi Osho. You wrote, "I don’t think it’s a matter of 'guilty or not guilty' but more a matter of recovery of the money."

Logically that makes little sense nor does it reflect the High Court of Delhi order. The court determined responsibility, and therfore guilt, and on that basis moved guilt away from Malvinder and onto Gurinder and company.

The Singh brothers held the legal responsibility to pay the Daiichi FDA penalty against Ranbaxy. But the High Court transferred that to Gurinder and company in June.

Malvinder claimed that he and Shivinder had loaned money to Gurinder, his family and associates, amounting to more than enough to cover the penalty. At first the Supreme Court indicated that they didn't care about the Singh's other business dealings, and held them directly responsible for repayment.

But when Malvinder was unable to pay up he filed a criminal complaint with the EOW (Economic Offences Wing) of the Delhi Police pleading his case that Gurinder, his wife, sons and associates owed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and interest and hadn't repaid for years. These were the monies he needed to pay the Daiichi penalty.

Malvinder went further to document his efforts, pleading repeatedly in writing with Gurinder to help, but with no response from Gurinder.

Even before Malvinder filed his complaint the SEBI and the Fortis board had conducted separate audits that showed fraudulent loans being siphoned through shell companies.

Business journals had conducted their own audits and found that Gurinder and his family were the recipients of nearly a billion dollars in loans through a variety of shell companies. And some of Gurinder's family were involved in the creation and maintenance of the frauds.

All the participants and recipients of the fraudulent loans are satsangis who pledged vows of loyalty to the Master, in this case Gurinder.

By June various additional detailed and indiependent audits had been conducted by the Serious Crimes Division of the Delhi police, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, and the new board at Religare (who filed their own complaint directly implicating the loan recipients and claiming this was all a big scheme involving several people who had knowingly participated in the construction and execution of several frauds).

Then in June, after much deliberation, the High Court of Delhi rendered a judgment that Gurinder, his family and associates, among others, were directly responsible for repayment of their delinquent loans, in full.

The High Court, essentially, verified what Malvinder claimed, and placed responsibility, and therefore culpability, directly onto Gurinder et al's shoulders. The High Court further froze Gurinder et al's assets as they were delinquent over several years in payment.

Guilt, culpability and responsibility have already been determined and payment ordered. For the funds Gurinder et al took, Malvinder is no longer responsible to repay that portion of the Daiichi penalty. The full responsibility is now directly upon Gurinder and company's shoulders, by judgment and order of the High Court of Delhi.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Delhi Police financial fraud charges point to RSSB guru's involvement

Below is a story in today's The Economic Times that appears to confirm previous reporting in the Indian financial press about the involvement of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), in financial fraud.

I've boldfaced the mentions of Dhillon and RSSB. 

The story restates what already was known. Money from Religare Finvest was diverted into shell companies, many or most of which were controlled by followers of RSSB. These were unsecured loans that reportedly went into the pockets of the Dhillon family. See two previous posts of mine on this subject.

RSSB guru identified as beneficiary of fraudulent funds
RSSB guru had better have a big bank balance

It's difficult to tell what exactly happened here, but the following Bloomberg graphic I've shared previously seems to reflect the basic money flows mentioned in today's The Economic Times story.

The Singh brothers (and Sunil Godhwani) used shell companies to extract money from Fortis and Religare and funnel it into the Singh brothers' private holding company, RHC Holding. Unsecured loans then were made to Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family, sometimes through other shell companies.

It's unclear why the money was never paid back.

There's been reporting that the Dhillon family invested the money they got into real estate deals that went bad. This would explain why the Singh brothers and Godhwani had to keep money circulating back and forth through shell companies to disguise the fact that money had gone out in unsecured loans that wasn't being paid back.

So important questions remain to be answered.

Such as: (1) Are investigators in India going to reveal who ended up with the money diverted into loans to shell companies, who orchestrated this financial fraud, and what the purpose of the fraud was?

(2) Assuming Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family were the ultimate beneficiaries of much or all of this money, will Indian investigators have the political backing to delve into the Dhillon family's involvement in the illegal money transfers and hold them to account if they were active participants in the fraud?

Here's the story in The Economic Times.

NEW DELHI: Religare EnterprisesNSE -2.10 %’ former promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh had diverted public money from group entity Religare Finvest to shell companies and used it to “square off their personal liabilities”, the Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has said in its charge sheet against the brothers.

Executives at Religare Finvest, the group’s lending arm, had approved unsecured loans worth hundreds of crores to the shell companies within two hours of getting the proposals, even when these companies themselves had not sought the loans, the EOW said. The Singh brothers had joined the board of Religare Finvest in 2016 with the intention of diverting money to these 19 shell companies, it alleged.

The procedure adopted to peruse documents for approving loans was nothing but a “paper formality”, said the charge sheet filed last week in a local court, in a funds-misappropriation case filed by Religare Finvest. ET has seen the charge sheet.

Malvinder and Shivinder Singh had denied any wrongdoing on their part.

A “prominent feature” of the entire process was that these “shell/dummy companies” never made any request for loans, the charge sheet said.

It noted certain instances where the loan approvals were given almost immediately. On September 1, 2016, a loan of Rs 162 crore to Modland Wears Pvt Ltd was proposed at 3:14 pm and was approved at 4:36 pm — within 82 minutes. On the same day, another loan of Rs 165 crore to Artifice Property Pvt Ltd was approved in 103 minutes, it said.

The charge sheet alleged that after the Reserve Bank of India in 2014 redflagged abject lack of rigour deployed by Religare Finvest (RFL) in its corporate loan book, as opposed to strict scrutiny in SME loans, it resorted to “Google check”, as well Board of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction, Registrar of Companies, Cibil and KYC checks. “But no assessment of repayment capacity was done,” it said.

The agency said the only “precaution” it took was that the credit notes used to read “the corporate is known to the promoters of Religare and based on their comfort, we are proposing the deal”. The loans were cleared on "verbal instructions" of the promoters, it added.

Filing the charge sheets against the Singh brothers, former Religare chairman Sunil Godhwani and two others, the EOW said “despite being a listed company, no corporate governance norms were adhered with respect to the disbursal of loans”.

The EOW has questioned directors of the 19 shell/dummy companies named by it. Five of the directors told EOW that they were “namesake” directors and that they all were “followers of Radha Soami Satsang Beas and old acquaintance of late Parvinder Singh, father of Singh brothers”, the charge sheet said.

The “dummy” directors further claimed that they “signed the documents which were sent to their house through a messenger/employee of promoters at the year end and received salaries from the companies”, the EOW said. They also said none of them were signatories of the bank accounts of the companies.

According to the charge sheet, these directors claimed that all the 19 entities “were controlled and owned/operated by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh through their employees of RHC Holding Pvt Ltd (owned by the brothers) and its subsidiaries”, and that the companies were “not separate entities and were operating from the office of RHC Holding…”

“Malvinder and Shivinder used shell/ dummy entities along with the management of REL (Religare Enterprises) and RFL to divert the money from REL to their holding company, by adopting circuitous transaction to conceal the fake transactions and to make them appear genuine,” the EOW said.

During his questioning, Malvinder Singh told EOW that "Sunil Godhwani and his team at Religare managed and ran the affairs of RHC and its subsidiaries, decisions of money movement between REL, RFL, Babaji (Radha Soami Satsang chief Gurinder Singh) entities and RHC group entities".

Fastening entire responsibility on Godhwani and his team for "mismanagement" of RFL, Malvinder Singh told the EOW that "the management changes at REL in July 2016 were done at the direction and instructions of Babaji”.

Malvinder Singh has further alleged that "Religare and its subsidiaries owe money to RHC Holdings and not the other way around. Fern Healthcare, Modland (which are described as shell companies by the EOW) owe money to RHC Holdings and its subsidiaries and were fraudulently made part of the RHC Group without any diligence, valuation or any board approval. This was done by Shivinder Singh to shield Babaji and his family members to personally owe over Rs 1,000 crore to these entities," he has alleged.

Shivinder Singh, on the other hand, has denied the allegations stating that he took retirement from active life and went to Radha Soami Satsang Beas in 2016. He said he was completely unaware of the operations at REL and RFL.

Woman who doesn't feel pain shows mind-body connection

I'm 71. I've experienced a lot of pain and anxiety in my life, as has everyone. Well, almost everyone. Because a 72 year old woman who lives in the Scottish Highlands says she has never felt pain or anxiety, and scientists are making progress at learning why.

I learned about Joanne Cameron via a fascinating article in a recent issue of The New Yorker, "A World Without Pain." Here's how it starts out.

Joanne Cameron

We like to think that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, or more resilient, or . . . something. Deeper. Wiser. Enlarged. There is “glory in our sufferings,” the Bible promises. “Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” In this equation, no pain is too great to be good. “The darker the night, the brighter the stars,” Dostoyevsky wrote. “The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”

We atheists get in on the action by insisting that the agony of loss elucidates the worth of love. The hours spent staring into the dark, looping around our own personal grand prix of anxieties, are not a waste of time but a fundamental expression of our humanity. And so on. To be a person is to suffer.

But what if our worst feelings are just vestigial garbage? Hypervigilance and pricking fear were useful when survival depended on evading lions; they are not particularly productive when the predators are Alzheimer’s and cancer. Other excruciating feelings, like consuming sadness and aching regret, may never have had a function in the evolutionary sense.

But religion, art, literature, and Oprah have convinced us that they are valuable—the bitter kick that enhances life’s intermittent sweetness. Pain is what makes joy, gratitude, mercy, hilarity, and empathy so precious. Unless it isn’t.

“I know the word ‘pain,’ and I know people are in pain, because you can see it,” Joanne Cameron, a seventy-two-year-old retired teacher, told me, in the cluttered kitchen of her century-old stone cottage in the Scottish Highlands. Cameron has never experienced the extremes of rage, dread, grief, anxiety, or fear. She handed a cup of tea to Jim, her husband of twenty-five years, with whom she’s never had a fight. “I see stress,” she continued, “and I’ve seen pain, what it does, but I’m talking about an abstract thing.”

Because of a combination of genetic quirks, Cameron’s negative emotional range is limited to the kinds of bearable suffering one sees in a Nora Ephron movie. If someone tells Cameron a sad story, she cries—“easily! Oh, I’m such a softie.” When she reads about the latest transgression by Boris Johnson or Donald Trump, she feels righteous indignation.

“But then you just go to a protest march, don’t you? And that’s all you can do.” When something bad happens, Cameron’s brain immediately searches for a way to ameliorate the situation, but it does not dwell on unhappiness. She inadvertently follows the creed of the Stoics (and of every twelve-step recovery program): Accept the things you cannot change.

It's endlessly fascinating to me how the mind and body are so intimately connected.

Of course, the mind is the brain in action, and the brain obviously is part of the human body, so in that sense it isn't surprising at all that the "genetic quirks" mentioned above allow Cameron to go through life in such a blissful fashion.

Some people spend years, decades, or an entire lifetime trying to achieve through meditation and other practices what Cameron has been able to achieve simply by virtue of her genetic inheritance.

This shows that notwithstanding unsubstantiated claims about human consciousness being something immaterial and separable from the body, there's plenty of solid evidence that we are physical beings living in a physical world.

I was tempted to also say, end of story, but that wouldn't have been true. There's so much complexity in the brain, including how the brain interacts and communicates with other parts of the body, that it will be a very long time, if ever, before we understand all of the mysteries of human experience.

Being a fan of marijuana, which is legal here in Oregon, I found this part of The New Yorker article interesting.

Cameron does not have neuropathy: she can feel all the sensations the rest of us do, except pain. The most striking difference between her and everyone else is the way she processes endocannabinoids—chemicals that exist naturally in every human brain. Endocannabinoids mitigate our stress response, and they bind to the same receptors as the THC in the kind of cannabis you smoke.

Normally, they are broken down by an enzyme called fatty acid amide hydrolase, or faah. But Cameron has a mutation on her faah gene that makes the enzyme less effective—so her endocannabinoids build up. She has extraordinarily high levels of one in particular: anandamide, whose name is derived from the Sanskrit word for “bliss.”

About a third of the population has a mutation in the faah gene, which provides increased levels of anandamide. “That phenotype—low levels of anxiety, forgetfulness, a happy-go-lucky demeanor—isn’t representative of how everyone responds to cannabis, but you see a lot of the prototypical changes in them that occur when people consume cannabis,” said Matthew Hill, a biologist at the University of Calgary’s Hotchkiss Brain Institute, who was a co-author of the Cameron paper.

The faah gene, like every gene, comes in a pair. People who have the mutation in one allele of the gene seem a little high; people who have it in both even more so. Jo Cameron is fully baked.

It could be that one day, after much more research, scientists will be able to concoct a drug that mimics what comes naturally to Cameron: a pain and anxiety free life.

However, there's a valid argument that this wouldn't be desirable, since pain and anxiety have some useful functions. 

I asked Matthew Hill—a renowned expert on cannabinoids and stress—if there was any downside to Cameron’s biology, and he laughed out loud. “Yes! From an evolutionary perspective, it would be tremendously destructive for a species to have that,” he said. Without fear, you drown in waves that you shouldn’t be swimming in; you take late-night strolls in cities that you don’t know; you go to work at a construction site and neglect to put on a hard hat.

“Her phenotype is only beneficial in an environment where there is no danger,” Hill asserted. “If you can’t be concerned about a situation where you’d be at risk of something adverse happening to you, you are more likely to put yourself in one. Anxiety is a highly adaptive process: that’s why every mammalian species exhibits some form of it.”

The New York Times had a story about Cameron in March 2019, "At 71, She's Never Felt Pain or Anxiety. Now Scientists Know Why." It's shorter than The New Yorker piece and also is well worth a read. Here's an excerpt.

In retrospect, she sees how her genetic disposition may have aided her at work. After years as a primary-school teacher, she retrained to work with people with severe mental disabilities. Erratic, aggressive behavior never riled her, she said.

But though having this mutation may sound like a dream, there are downsides. One is that she is quite forgetful; prone to losing her keys and her train of thought midsentence. The other is that she’s never felt the “adrenaline rush” that other people talk about, she said.

Calm clear consciousness -- my new favorite "mantra"

OK, calm clear consciousness isn't really a mantra for me, notwithstanding the title of this blog post.

Those are just three words that I've been saying to myself a few times a day, because they do a good job of summing up my current approach to meditation and spirituality.

Here's some additional words that explain part of the meaning that I attribute to calm clear consciousness. 

Consciousness. Everything we have experienced, are experiencing, and will experience is dependent on consciousness. No consciousness, no experience. 

But there are degrees of consciousness.

There's a big difference between someone comatose, in a dreamless deep sleep, awake, and so on. We also can be conscious but not aware, such as when we do something yet don't know that we did it -- like locking a car and then wondering if the car is locked as we walk away from it. 

And consciousness is inherently subjective. Humans have a different form of consciousness from other primates, and even more different from bats, birds, bees, and the many other living creatures that appear to possess consciousness to one degree or another.

Thus consciousness is private. No one has direct access to anyone else's consciousness. At least, there is no demonstrable evidence of this.

Some people view consciousness as something separate from what we are conscious of. I'm skeptical about this, since I have no idea what consciousness without some conscious content would feel like or be like. 

That, though, is a peripheral issue for me. The brain produces consciousness. Whether consciousness is something that can stand alone, or is always associated with some conscious experience -- that's scientifically unanswerable at the moment, and may always be.

Clear. We don't see things as they are, but as they appear to us. That's the nature of conscious experience. Just as there are degrees of consciousness, so are there degrees of conscious clarity.

This is difficult to put into words, though I think almost everyone knows what I'm talking about. 

Sometimes life seems murky, shadowy, difficult to discern. In my experience, this occurs most often when too many things are competing for my attention at the same time, since the human brain isn't equipped to multi-task. 

Typically we can do one thing at a time well; two things with some difficulty, like driving while having a phone conversation; three things at a time is very difficult, like driving, talking on the phone, and changing the station on a car radio.

So to me, "clear" has a lot to do with being mindful.

Meaning, knowing what we're experiencing while we're experiencing it. If I lock my car, that's an experience. However, if i don't know that I've locked the car because I was thinking of what to have for dinner while performing this habitual action, i'm into murky conscious territory, not clear territory.

In other words, I aim to be as clear as possible about what I'm doing, feeling, thinking, and otherwise experiencing. Not in the sense of watching myself as an outside observer, but rather as a conscious undistracted subject.

Calm. Even if water isn't murky or clouded, it still can be difficult to see what's beneath the surface of it if the water is rocked by waves.

Likewise, even if my consciousness is quite clear, if I'm focused on one thing and am well aware of it, my emotions can make it difficult to really tell what is happening with my experience. Or, can make it difficult for me to respond appropriately to what I'm experiencing. 

For about 30 years I've practiced some form of martial arts. Karate at first, then a mixed form of martial arts, and Tai Chi for the past 16 years. 

So this has offered me a lot of direct experience of what happens when my mind isn't calm. Being anxious about getting hit in the face doesn't help with not getting hit in the face. All it does is make me tense up, which reduces my ability to dodge a punch and respond in an effective fashion.

Likewise with other situations where I'm not calm. Arguing with someone when I'm angry doesn't help me "win" the argument (assuming anyone ever wins an argument; I just can't think of a better word).

But I've also found that it doesn't help to pretend that my mind is calm when it actually isn't.

Which gets me back to mindfulness. Simply saying to myself, "I'm upset," has a way of making me less upset, because speaking those words to myself creates some distance between the emotion and my awareness of it.

Anyway, I'm enjoying playing around with using calm clear consciousness as words that represent a sort of goal for me.

I'm a believer in the power of our unconscious or non-conscious mind, which modern neuroscience and psychology tell us is by far the greatest part of our mind. Since most of us talk to ourselves a lot, it makes sense to me to speak some words, now and then, that point to how I'd like my mind to be.

Not all of the time, obviously, since I don't have that much control over my mind. But more of the time.

Calm clear consciousness. Something to aspire to.

 

Don't be 100% sure about anything, including God and life after death

In the course of looking through old blog posts yesterday to find those related to death, because I'm working on another book based on my writing on that subject, I came to a couple of posts that made me think, in my usual humble way, Dude, these are fantastic! They make so much sense, it's a freaking secular miracle!

So, behold...

Some ten years later, this is still my best guess about God. Also, about life after death, existence, and the nature of the self. Looks like I’ve reached a pretty stable stage of my atheism.

My best guess about God
May 3, 2010

Nobody knows what ultimate reality is, which religious believers call "God." All we have are guesses, some more defensible than others.

Here's mine — after some forty years of delving into mysticism, spirituality, religiosity, and philosophy. Subject to change, of course. If I've learned anything, it's that there's always more to learn. Or guess about.

I'll be as pithy as possible, a shift from my usual wordiness.

(1) God doesn't exist. Not in the sense of an all-knowing, all-powerful personal or individual consciousness. Or even a universal consciousness, though this is more likely than an anthropomorphic God.

(2) The cosmos is, always has been, always will be. In some form or another. Existence always has existed. If you want an eternal "God" to worship, there it is: existence.

(3) It may well be that our universe is just a very small part of the cosmos. But reality is thoroughly natural, not supernatural. Other universes, if they exist, are as natural as ours.

(4) We'll never understand the ultimate laws of nature. Or even know whether they exist. "Ultimate laws" probably is a human conception, not the way things really are.

(5) The biggest problem with being a member of Homo sapiens also is our biggest evolutionary advance: self-awareness. We are aware of being aware. Unlike other animals, we construct an ego, I-ness, by looping our awareness back onto ourselves.

(6) This creates a fear of death, because we know we're going to die. This creates a desire to exist forever, because we can ponder our non-existence.

(7) Thus springs up religion. Along with notions of God, soul, spirit, eternal life, heaven, and such. All are products of a self-created "self," which actually doesn't exist in the sense a stone, sunflower, star, or snake does. It is conceptual, not physical.

(8) Enlightenment — seeing reality as clearly as possible — is recognizing that ego, I-ness, selfhood, individuality, or whatever you want to call it doesn't exist.

(9) We're part of the cosmos. And the cosmos is part of us. We just happen to be beings who can conceptualize ourselves as separate from everything else, which we really aren’t.

(10) So when we die, we're dead, inasmuch as "I" consider myself to be a "Me." But the cosmos continues. And so will I. Just not as me. Whether this is a chilling or reassuring realization depends on how much "Me" is attached to my "I."

I’m confident that there’s no life after death. But not 100% confident. This is the way of science, and also of wise living. Never be absolutely sure about anything. Then you won’t fall prey to rigid dogmatism. And if a cherished belief turns out to be untrue, you’ll be more prepared for this.

Keep open a crack in your belief system
August 31, 2010

Ah, it feels so good to let in the light, to freshen the atmosphere, to relieve the pressure of a claustrophobic enclosure. Not anywhere outside — within our psyche.

All we need to do is keep open a crack in our meaning-of-life belief system, that conglomeration of thoughts, feelings, intuitions, knowings, and what-not which enable us to get out of bed in the morning, move through life with a sense of purpose, and offer us some answers to what's it all about?

Nothing is 100% certain. Including what I just said.

Hey, there might well be something that is 100% certain. So far, though, it isn't apparent. Even the most intensively validated theories of science, such as quantum theory, are considered by the scientific method to always be open to falsification.

So living in touch with reality requires that we remain open to the possibility that whatever we fervently believe to be true, isn't. Otherwise truth could smack us in the face and we'd pretend that we didn't feel a thing.

If you're absolutely sure that God exists, erase the absolutely in your mind. Ditto if you're absolutely sure that God doesn't exist. Double ditto for any other belief that you don't see yourself ever letting go of, or modifying.

Loosen your hold. Lighten your dogmatism. Lessen your certainty.

I'm not saying that we should uncritically embrace every alternative belief path that appears before us. The human mind generally moves along well-trod patterns for good reasons. Sticking with the tried and seemingly true allows us to learn from experience rather than having to figure out again today what was known yesterday.

However, whenever we find ourselves defending some position with unusually rigid zeal, that could be a sign that a retreat is in order. How far we move back from our personal 100% Certain Maginot Line is up to us.

I don't think it matters much how large the doubt gap is. Truth can slip through the eye of a psychological needle, or a wide open mental barn door.

What counts is that some crack exists in the otherwise solid structure of our belief system. This is where the benefits will come from that I mentioned above: lightness of being, freshness of attitude, relaxing of rigidity.

Recently I was lying in bed, about to fall into sleep, with thoughts of what one day will come, death, running through my mind. I mulled over one of my favorite frightening fascinating topics, non-existence.

I recalled how in a conversation with friends a few days ago, someone told a story about an atheist she knew who was in a hospice, close to dying. He kept asking staff and visitors, "What happens next? What happens next?"

Meaning, after death.

Now, since he was an atheist, one would expect that he already had an answer to his own question: nothing. When you're dead, you're dead. No more consciousness, no more existing.

But that prospect can be scary, especially if life feels like it's well worth living. If you're happy being alive, it's only natural to want to hold onto that good feeling for as long as possible.

That's why eternity is so appealing to religiously minded people. They don't believe they'll ever stop existing. To them death is just a transition to an even better life.

I could feel some familiar anxiety arising as I visualized my own non-existence (yes, I know that's impossible). I could tell that it was going to be difficult to fall asleep so long as I felt trapped within the bounds of a reality marked by an absolute finis at the moment of my last breath.

Then I thought, "That isn't absolutely certain. No one knows for sure what happens, or doesn't happen, after death. There's a slight possibility that my consciousness will continue to exist, just as I used to believe.”

Instantly I felt the mental pressure subside, like I'd opened a stress-release valve. I relaxed into a pleasant state of who knows? Sure, I still considered that the vastly most likely possibility is that death is The End.

But allowing even a small likelihood of To Be Continued into my mind changed everything. And the same would have been true if my certainty had been in life after death.

Cracks in belief systems are beneficial no matter what the content of our convictions are. It's never healthy to believe that you can't be wrong. That's egotistical, dogmatic, and, well, wrong.

In one of Huston Smith's books he talks of meeting a Zen practitioner who tells him, "I've got a new koan: I could be wrong.” Beautiful. Fully embrace that koan and it seems like enlightenment would be close at hand.

Another mini-enlightenment visits me on a yoga mat

I'm assuming, and hoping, that my many mini-enlightenments are adding up to an eventual maxi-enlightenment -- in the same way saving spare change found in pockets eventually totals to some real money.

Today I added to my mini-enlightenment score card while standing on a mat in an exercise room at my athletic club where I do some Tai Chi and yoga after doing my elliptical trainer and weight lifting thing.

I decided to take a photo of the just-after-mini-enlighentment moment in case I ever attain maximal Buddha nature, and those who revere me want documentation of something analogous to the Buddha's realization under the Bodhi Tree. Plus, I like how the sunlight illuminated the mat, and how marvelously the color of my Darn Tough socks matched the mat.

Naturally the wisdom that flowed into my psyche as I was doing a yoga movement can't be expressed in language, being an ineffable showering upon me of cosmic truth. 

But I'll try to distill my mini-enlightenment into a few inadequate words.

This, right here and now, that's all there is, and will ever be. Experiencing that truth had an immediate emotional impact on me. Namely, relief.

I recall that I'd been thinking about what to have for dinner, what time the Democratic presidential debate tonight was, and other mundane thoughts. But when my mini-enlightenment hit, I realized that no matter what happens in my life, no matter what I do, no matter if pain, pleasure, or anything in-between becomes my lot -- in a very real sense, it's all the same.

Reality. This. Right here and now.

Sure, the details of here and now are ever-changing. But that everything anyone ever can be aware of is localized in here-and-now was a realization that relieved any pressure on me to be somewhere there-and-then.

Because that place would turn out to be another here-and-now.

And so it goes, for every moment of every person's life, until a last breath brings an end to here-and-nows. (Since I'm a proud atheist, I view life after death as an extremely low probability; greater than zero, but not much greater, like maybe .0001%, or a thousandth of one percent.)

If you want to peruse some of my other mini-enlightenments, the Great God Google has revealed them to me. See here, here, and here. Pleasingly, one of them involves another photo of my legs and feet!

Money laundering case leaves questions about Dhillon family involvement

It's difficult to know what to make of a development in the financial fraud saga involving the Singh brothers, Sunil Godhwani, and Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

Godhwani was the guru's right-hand man and personal financial advisor.

An India Today story (see below) says that India's Enforcement Directorate has charged Shivinder and Malvinder Singh, plus Godhwani, with money laundering. But details are lacking as to how and why this occurred, and who the ultimate beneficiary was of the laundered funds.

Also, the story says that the amount of money in question is only Rs 150 crore, which I believe is about $20 million. Yet the total amount Religare Finvest Ltd. reportedly lost via fraudulently diverted funds was 2,397 crore, or over $300 million. So this seems to be an initial step by the Enforcement Directorate, not a final one. 

The company involved here, Star Artworks Pvt Ltd, was one of 21 entities mentioned in a March 2019 Business Today story that I cited in a blog post, "RSSB guru had better have a big bank balance."

I titled the post the way I did because it's been reported that the Dhillon family was the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars from companies once controlled by the Singh brothers and Godhwani, money that now is being required to be paid back by Indian courts.

A graphic I included in the blog post indicated that the Dhillon family got huge amounts of money via loans from RHC Holding, a holding company of Malvinder and Shivinder Singh. The address of Star Artworks Pvt Ltd. is the same as RHC Holding Pvt Ltd, which points to the tangled web of shell companies and financial transactions that authorities in India are trying to unravel.

Here's the January 10 India Today story.

The Enforcement Directorate Friday filed a charge sheet against former Fortis Healthcare promoters Shivinder Singh and his brother Malvinder before a Delhi court in a case related to alleged misappropriation of funds at Religare Finvest Ltd (RFL).

The final report, filed before Additional Sessions Judge Sandeep Yadav, also named former CMD of Religare Enterprises Ltd (REL) Sunil Godhwani (58) as an accused.

In the charge sheet, filed by ED's Special Public Prosecutor Nitesh Rana, the probe agency has accused all three of money laundering, punishable under sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

The court took cognisance of the charge sheet and issued production warrant against them for January 20. All the three accused are currently in judicial custody.

The ED also named RHC Holdings Pvt Ltd as an accused in its charge sheet.

It said the accused had acquired proceeds of crime to the tune of Rs 150 crore through Star Artworks Pvt Ltd, derived out of criminal activities and utilised the amount in repayment of its existing liability towards RFL by projecting it as untainted.

"Therefore, accused persons were involved in acquisition and utilization of proceeds of crime generated out of criminal activities and its projection as untainted property, thereby have committed the offence of money laundering as defined under sections of PMLA," said the charge sheet, filed through advocate A R Aditya.

The ED had alleged that both the brothers, along with others, transferred an amount of about Rs 1,000 crore to various persons from entities linked to the corporate loan book and finally, the money was siphoned off.

The EOW registered an FIR after it received a complaint from RFL's Manpreet Suri against Shivinder, Godhwani and others, alleging that loans were taken by them while managing the firm but the money was invested in other companies.

"They put RFL in a poor financial condition by disbursing loans to companies with no financial standing and controlled by them. The companies to which the loans were disbursed willfully defaulted in repayments and caused a loss to RFL to the tune of Rs 2,397 crore," the police had alleged.

RFL said in a press release that since the time the offence took place, the company has undergone a complete revamp of its Board of Directors.

"All efforts continue to be made to rebuild the business, mobilise fresh capital and correct the transgression and legacy issues of the past. The management and internal controls at the Group and all subsidiaries' level have also been revamped, bringing in much needed assurance to employees about a stable and action-oriented management," it said.

On being a Technicolor person in a black and white world

Recently someone sent me a message saying that it had been quite a while since I'd written about Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the spiritual organization based in India that I was an active member of for 35 years.

This person wanted another RSSB post.

Well, though usually I write about what's on my mind (I have three blogs that represent different parts of my mind), and RSSB rarely makes an appearance in my psyche unless there's some news about the RSSB guru being reported in the Indian financial press, responsive blogger that I am, here's a RSSB-related post.

The theme -- Technicolor people in a black and white world -- popped into my head for a couple of reasons.

One is that when I've talked to journalists in India who want to learn about my history with RSSB and how I view the current guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, I try to convey to them the "magical thinking" that permeates ardent RSSB devotees and their gatherings, especially when the guru is present. 

Here's how I tried to describe that feeling in a 2005 post, "Bursting belief bubbles."

I used to believe in belief. It felt good to believe that my religious beliefs were better than other peoples’. I recall standing in line at a movie theatre, feeling exactly like someone standing in line at a movie theatre, when I remembered to do my guru-given mantra.

Instantly I thought to myself, “I’m special. I’m unique. I’ve got a spiritual practice known to only a few.” I stood straighter. I looked at the spiritually impoverished human beings around me with proudly compassionate eyes. “Ah, I have something they don’t. How fortunate I am not to be them.”

Now I pray, “God, whatever or whoever the hell you are, burst my belief bubbles and lead me not into self-righteousness. Blessed be reality.”

My believing now is centered around the notion of pressure. This isn’t something I believe in as much as I feel. I no longer like the feeling of being inflated more highly than the surrounding world. It takes too much effort to keep my ego-pump running all of the time.

Once I read on the Internet how members of my spiritual group, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, considered themselves Technicolor people in a black and white world. That’s a telling and accurate image. It is true for virtually all types of religious people, though, not just a few.

That last line still rings true for me, but from my current perspective I'd enlarge it beyond religious people.

Sure, I still think religions encourage their followers to believe that they possess a certain vividness that those who belong to other religions lack. However, so do political parties, sports teams, colleges/universities, corporations, and so many other examples of how we humans collect ourselves into "tribes."

Religiosity really turns up distinctions, though, since true believers have so much at stake. Notably, life after death, heaven and hell, all that sort of stuff. 

I'd try to explain to the Indian journalists how devotees of the RSSB guru create an atmosphere of blind faith that makes it very difficult for ordinary reality to break through their thoroughly indoctrinated minds. I speak from experience, since I used to be one of those devotees.

Every little thing that happens in a gathering where the guru is present can take on an importance that seems ridiculous to those who don't share the RSSB belief system. OMG! The guru looked me in the eyes! OMG! Did you see how he smiled at that lady's question! Etc. Etc.

The thing is, though, that sort of We're so special mentality isn't founded in any sort of objective reality. My wife, who wasn't a RSSB initiate, attended a meeting in Palm Springs where she got to sit in a front row just a short distance from the guru. After the meeting was over, I asked her what she thought of Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

He just seemed like a regular person, she said. Which is true. For most people. But to those who are RSSB devotees, the guru is a hyper-Technicolor person in a black and white world. Otherwise, he's just an ordinary person, as I noted in "Did I see God in first class?"

I may have seen God in first class. The first class section of an Alaska Airlines flight from San Francisco to Palm Springs, to be exact. Or, maybe I didn’t.

In the early ‘90s I was traveling from Portland to attend a “bhandara," or spiritual gathering, of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) devotees in Palm Springs. After changing planes in San Francisco I found myself in a right side aisle seat in the coach row directly behind first class, idly watching other passengers board.

A middle-aged Indian gentleman caught my eye. Bearded, he was wearing a white turban and blue jeans. His first class seat was across the aisle and one row up from mine. Before sitting down he glanced around the rear of the plane and our eyes briefly met. Then he took his seat and I returned to perusing a magazine. Nothing special seemed to have happened.

But it had, to quite a few other people sitting near me. For they were Bay Area RSSB members who also were heading to Palm Springs for the bhandara where the satguru (true guru) was to speak. And that Indian gentleman sitting a few feet away from me was the satguru—Master Gurinder Singh.

I began to hear whispers. “That’s him.” “The master is sitting in first class.” “I don’t believe it.” I hadn’t recognized Gurinder Singh, even though I’d seen him before at a bhandara in Vancouver, B.C. Fervent RSSB devotees consider the satguru to be God in human form, much as Jesus is regarded by devout Christians.

The difference being, Jesus is dead and Gurinder Singh was sitting alive and well in an Alaska Airlines first class seat. Imagine that a Christian gets on a plane and sees Jesus seated a few rows ahead of him and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the atmosphere on the flight to Palm Springs—among the RSSB disciples, at least.

I got mildly caught up in the excitement. However, even back then, when I was much more involved—psychologically and otherwise—with RSSB than I am now, I didn’t consider that seeing the satguru was a big deal. And until I made the connection between “Indian man wearing a turban” and “Master Gurinder Singh,” seeing him wasn’t even a small deal.

For I didn’t feel a hint of anything special until the disciples around me started up the “It’s him!” whispering campaign. Wouldn’t you think that if a person truly is God in human form, such would be obvious? Not just to those who already believe in the person’s divinity, but to everyone—believer and unbeliever alike. Jesus, of course, suffered the same lack of recognition. If his purported godliness had been transparently apparent, impossible to deny, by the time he died Jesus would have had a lot more than a handful of followers.

Psychedelic researchers speak of the importance of set and setting in determining the nature of a LSD (or similar drug) experience. “Set” includes the personality of the individual; “setting” includes cultural views about what is real. If someone with a devotional frame of mind joins a group like RSSB that affirms the divinity of a guru, then this person may very well see God sitting in first class. I, on the other hand, just saw an Indian man.

Open Thread 28 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread.

This hasn't been happening recently, as some commenters have been using blog posts as a "chat room," basically, so from now on I'm going to vow to do better at not approving comments submitted on a regular blog post if the comment doesn't deal with the subject of the post. 

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 almost 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 on someone are an exception. Argue with ideas, not insults.

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.

Psilocybin helps people die without fear or regret

I'm not a big fan of death.

Being alive strikes me as, well, a heck of a lot more appealing. More than infinitely so, in fact, since the difference between (1) being alive, and (2) dead and gone forever, is the same as the difference between something and nothing. 

How many zeros does it take to equal one? The answer is... not even an infinity, because no amount of nothing can equal even the smallest something.

But since death is inevitable, the next best thing is to not fear it. Or at least, not to fear it too much.

Which is why I've been enthralled by a 60 Minutes episode, Psilocybin Sessions: Psychedelics Could Help People with Addiction and Anxiety. Not just once, but twice, since it was repeated after its initial showing.

Click on that link and you can read a transcript of the episode. Here's some excerpts that include the part I found most interesting, since it dealt with a cancer patient's fear of dying.

For most of us, psychedelic drugs conjure up images of the 1960's. Hippies tripping out on LSD or magic mushrooms. But these powerful, mind-altering substances are now being studied seriously by scientists inside some of the country's foremost medical research centers. They're being used to treat depression, anxiety and addiction. 

The early results are impressive, as are the experiences of the studies' volunteers who go on a six-hour, sometimes terrifying, but often life-changing psychedelic journey deep into their own minds.

...We were told we couldn't record anyone participating in the study while they were on psilocybin because it might impact their experience, but we were shown how it begins – without the psilocybin. 

You lay on a couch, with a blindfold to shut out distractions and headphones playing a mix of choral and classical music – a psychedelic soundtrack with a trained guide, Mary Cosimano, watching over you.

Everything is done the same way it was for the LSD experiments scientists conducted in the 1950s and 60s. Some of the most dramatic results have been with terminal cancer patients struggling with anxiety and paralyzing depression. 

Kerry Pappas: I start seeing the colors and the geometric designs and it's like 'oh this is so cool, and how lovely' and, and then, boom. Visions began.

Kerry Pappas was diagnosed with stage III lung cancer in 2013. During her psilocybin session, she found herself trapped in a nightmare her mind created.

Kerry Pappas: An ancient, prehistoric, barren land. And there's these men with pickaxes, just slamming on the rocks. So… 

Anderson Cooper: And this felt absolutely real to you?

Kerry Pappas: Absolutely real. I was being shown the truth of reality. Life is meaningless, we have no purpose. And then I look and I'm still like a witness, a beautiful, shimmering, bright jewel. And then it was sound, and it was booming, booming, booming. Right here right now.

Anderson Cooper: That was being said?

Kerry Pappas: Yes. "You are alive. Right here right now,  because that's all you have." And that is my mantra to this day.

Kerry Pappas

Later in the segment, Michael Pollan, who took psilocybin in the course of writing his book, How to Change Your Mind, described why he thinks psilocybin has such a potent power to alter someone's perspective on reality. Then Pappas talks some more about how psilocybin has eliminated her fear of dying.

Michael Pollan: It seemed so implausible to me that a single experience caused by a molecule, right, ingested in your body could transform your outlook on something as profound as death. That's-- that's kind of amazing. 

...Michael Pollan: There is a reason [that love is on a Hallmark card]. And one of the things psychedelics do is they peel away all those essentially protective levels of irony and, and cynicism that we, that we acquire as we get older and you're back to those kind of "Oh, my God. I forgot all about love." (Laugh)

Pollan said he also experienced what the researchers describe as ego loss, or identity loss - the quieting of the constant voice we all have in our heads. 

Michael Pollan: I did have this experience of seeing my ego-- burst into-- a little cloud of Post-It notes. I know it sounds crazy.

Anderson Cooper: And what are you are without an ego?

Michael Pollan: You're, uh… (Laugh) You had to be there.

Researchers believe that sensation of identity loss occurs because psilocybin quiets these two areas of the brain that normally communicate with each other. They're part of a region called the default mode network and it's especially active when we're thinking about ourselves and our lives.

Michael Pollan: And it's where you connect what happens in your life to the story of who you are. 

Anderson Cooper: We all develop a story over time about what our past was like and who we are.  

Michael Pollan: Right. Yeah, what kind of person we are. How we react. And the fact is that interesting things happen when the self goes quiet in the brain, including this rewiring that happens.

...Michael Pollan: Maybe the ego is one character among many in your mind. And you don't necessarily have to listen to that voice that's chattering at you and criticizing you and telling you what to do. And that's very freeing.

It was certainly freeing for Kerry Pappas. Though her cancer has now spread to her brain, her crippling anxiety about death is gone.

Kerry Pappas: Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, I feel like death doesn't frighten me. Living doesn't frighten me. I don't frighten me. This frightens me.

Anderson Cooper: This interview frightens you, but death doesn't?

Kerry Pappas: No.

It turns out most of the 51 cancer patients in the Johns Hopkins study experienced "significant decreases in depressed mood and anxiety" after trying psilocybin. Two-thirds of them rated their psilocybin sessions as among the most meaningful experiences of their lives. For some, it was on par with the birth of their children.  

Kerry Pappas: To this day, it evolves in me.

Anderson Cooper: It's still alive in you--

Kerry Pappas: It's still absolutely alive in me.

Anderson Cooper: Does it make you happier?

Kerry Pappas: Yeah. And-- and I don't necessarily use the word happy. 

Kerry Pappas: Comfortable. Like, comfortable. I mean, I've suffered from anxiety my whole life. I'm comfortable. That, to me, okay. I can die. I'm comfortable. (LAUGH) I mean, it's huge. It's huge.

Sounds good to me. No, more than good. Great!

Which is why I'm hoping that the Oregon Psilocybin Society is successful in gathering enough signatures to put an initiative on the November 2020 ballot that would legalize the use of psilocybin in my state. And then, that voters approve the measure.

Measure 34 will legalize access to “psilocybin services” – also known as psilocybin assisted therapy – statewide.  Psilocybin, currently a Schedule 1 drug, would be administered in licensed therapeutic environments, supervised by trained facilitators. Rooted in research, the service model involves a sequence of sessions, including preparation, psilocybin administration, and integration afterwards. Each client will be screened for contraindications prior to scheduling a psilocybin session. Clients would not need a mental health diagnosis to qualify.

Why science can be trusted

I'm an admirer of science.

My mother played a big part in fostering this when, in my childhood years, she bought me science kits, chemistry sets, and the like. I fondly remember cramming a card table into my bedroom closet, putting a light bulb over the clothing rod, and happily conducting experiments in my very own "laboratory."

Our home also featured a subscription to Scientific American, which I still get, along with the British science magazine, New Scientist. I rarely read religious or spiritual books anymore, because I'd rather learn about reality instead of myths.

But until I finished reading Naomi Oreskes book, Why Trust Science?, I hadn't given much thought to why science has been so effective in learning truths about the world.

Often on this blog I've extolled the virtues of the scientific method. However, early on in her book, Oreskes -- who is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University -- dispelled this as a reason for why science works so well. She writes:

There is no identifiable (singular) scientific method. And if there is no singular scientific method, then there is no way to insist on ex ante [before the event] trust by virtue of its use.

OK. I'll agree with a Harvard historian of science on this point, since obviously she knows much more about the scientific method, or lack thereof, than I do. 

By the way, some Googling of my own blogs revealed that in 2012 I'd written about Oreskes' previous book, Merchants of Doubt, which is about how mercenary scientists aided tobacco and chemical companies in hiding the scientific truth about the products they were peddling, something that is happening now with the fossil fuel industry's attempts to make global warming denialism look reasonable.

So if the scientific method isn't why we should trust science, what is?

This quotation from Why Trust Science? provides an overview of Oreskes' argument. Which basically is that, as the book jacket says, "the trustworthiness of scientific claims derives from the social process by which they are rigorously vetted."

My arguments require a few caveats. Most important is that there is no guarantee that the ideal of objectivity through diversity and critical interrogation will always be achieved, and therefore no guarantee that scientists are correct in any given case.

The argument is rather that, given the existence of these procedures and assuming they are followed, there is a mechanism by which errors, biases, and incompleteness can be identified and corrected. In a sense, the argument is probabilistic: that if scientists follow these practices and procedures, they increase the odds that their science does not go awry.

Moreover, outsiders may judge scientific claims in part by considering how diverse and open to critique the community involved is. If there is evidence that a community is not open, or is dominated by a small clique or even a few aggressive individuals -- or if we have evidence (and not just allegations) that some voices are being suppressed -- this may be grounds for warranted skepticism.

Oreskes gives examples of where science seemingly has gone wrong. However, it turns out that these examples of bad science actually prove her thesis, because in each case there wasn't a genuine consensus among a scientific community -- just a small number of scientists who loudly claimed that something was true which later turned out to be false.

For example, in 1873 Edward H. Clarke, an American physician, argued against the higher education of women because it would cause their ovaries and uteri to shrink, thereby adversely affecting their fertility. Female physicians argued against this at the time, but since most doctors back then were male, Clarke's ideas were given more credence that they deserved.

Thus Oreskes persuasively argues that diversity in a scientific community is important if scientific findings are to be given a rigorous examination that will make them more likely to be defensible.

Our personal experiences -- of wealth or poverty, privilege or disadvantage, maleness or femaleness, heteronormativity or queerness, disability or able-bodiedness -- cannot but influence our perspectives on and interpretations of the world. Therefore, ceteris paribus [all other things being equal], a more diverse group will bring to bear more perspectives on an issue than a less diverse one.

...Put another way: objectivity is likely to be maximized when there are recognized and robust avenues for criticism, such as peer review, when the community is open, non-defensive, and responsive to criticism, and when the community is sufficiently diverse that a broad range of views can be developed, heard, and appropriately considered.

...The key point here is that often "assumptions are not perceived as such." They are so embedded as to go unrecognized as assumptions, and this is most likely to occur in homogeneous communities.

Of course, religious communities rarely exhibit any of the qualities that make science so successful. 

By nature, they are closed, not open. They resist criticism, viewing faith as superior to reasoned argument. They are defensive when their belief system is challenged. And religions are notably reluctant to change their views. 

On the other hand, says Oreskes:

When we observe scientists, we find that they have developed a variety of practices for vetting knowledge -- for identifying problems in their theories and experiments and attempting to correct them.

While these practices are fallible, we have substantial empirical evidence that they do detect error and insufficiency. They stimulate scientists to reconsider their views and, as warranted by evidence, to change them. This is what constitutes progress in science.

Ugh. Brady Breeze says fumble recovery in Rose Bowl was "gift from God."

Well, obviously my 2004 request to God for no more sky-pointing in televised sports events was met with deaf divine ears, probably because God doesn't exist, so has no ears (nor anything else, of course.)

Because here's Brady Breeze, safety for the Oregon Ducks football team (number 25), lifting his eyes skyward, along with his right hand, following his recovery of a fumble by the Wisconsin punter which he ran in for a touchdown.

Being a big Oregon fan, living as I do in Salem, about 60 miles north of Eugene, the home of the University of Oregon, naturally I was thrilled by Breeze's touchdown. And with the nail-biting 28-27 win that Oregon came away with, even though it seemed that Wisconsin outplayed Oregon for most of the game.

But when it came time for Breeze to make some remarks after he was named defensive player of the game, I wish he had kept his questionable theologizing to himself.

Breeze said on ESPN that the fumble recovery was a "gift from God." He then went on to use the word "blessings" several times in the rest of his remarks.

Hmmmmm.

I deeply doubt that Wisconsin players, and their fans, consider that Breeze scooping up the ball for a touchdown was a divine dispensation from God.

Assuming that God exists, for the sake of argument, it seems extremely unlikely that God would look down from heaven and decide that Oregon needed a break at that point of the game, so God made the Wisconsin punter drop the football so Breeze could recover it.

Of course, religious believers typically don't engage in this sort of reasonable logic. They just like to thank God for good things that happen to them, choosing to ignore the fact that often one person's good fortune is another person's bad fortune. 

For example, a believer might say "thank you, God" when a car pulls out of a parking space at just the right time for them to pull into it. Meanwhile, a person in a car behind them is disappointed that they have to keep on looking for a parking space. And both people could be devout Christians.

Here's an idea: religious believers should stop talking about what God does or doesn't do for them, since they have no idea whether (1) God even exists, and (2) what God is up to assuming God's existence. 

Will they act in accord with that good idea? Of course not. But that won't stop me from continuing to criticize sky-pointing and thanking God for fumble recoveries.