Church of the Churchless

Greatest comment about the RSSB guru ever. Behold!

l am awestruck. I bow down before the glory. I marvel at every inspired word. No, I'm not talking about God or a holy book. I'm extolling a comment "j" left today on a recent blog post.

Here it is. (UPDATE: it seemed obvious that this comment is fictional, but in case anyone thinks it is real, it was made up -- though there is considerable truth in the fictional exchange.)

The guru being referred to is the leader of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization based in India that I belonged to for 35 years until I deconverted. The comment is absolutely right-on as regards some of the contradictions and absurdities in the RSSB teachings.

It should appeal to anyone, though naturally it will resonate most with those who are familiar with those teachings.

If you aren't, know that shabd refers to a supposed divine power/energy that manifests as sound and light -- a sort of universal mystical consciousness. Charan Singh was the RSSB guru prior to the current guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Questioner: Are you saying you have actual powers that make you the most evolved spiritual person in the world? And that only you can guide me to the True God?

RSSB Guru: No, the real guru is the shabd.

Questioner: Then who are you? What is your role?

RSSB Guru: I am merely doing the work that my guru dumped on me.

Questioner: I feel that your answer begs the question. Do you have actual powers of a guru or not?

RSSB Guru: Everyone who wants to find God needs a Spiritual Master to guide them on the Path.

Questioner: Okay, well, are you saying you're such a Spiritual Master?

RSSB Guru: The real spiritual master is the shabd. People who wish to find God need to take initiation from a competent Spiritual Master.

Questioner: So you're saying that if I take this initiation from you, you'll guide me on the inner planes and back to God?

RSSB Guru: Not necessarily. First of all, only marked souls are eligible for initiation. If you're not a marked soul whose karma it is to be initiated, I can not accept you.

Questioner: You're saying you have the spiritual powers to determine who is favored by God to return to God?

RSSB Guru: I do not say that. It is everyone's karma as to whether they are fit to be initiated. Karma is everything.

Questioner: Let me try another question. Are you saying that initiation by you is necessary to return to God?

RSSB Guru: RSSB teaches that all religions teach the very same spiritual truths. I am claiming nothing special. In fact, you'll see spiritual quotes on the RSSB website from Mother Teresa and Iggy Pop. And notice the statue of the Buddha right behind me. We are merely a philosophical organization, not a religion.

Questioner: I see. Then which sant mat guru today is your spiritual equal? Rajinder Singh perhaps?

RSSB Guru: Please do not ask me to give my opinion on any mystics or their teachings.

Questioner: Huh? I thought you just said that all religions are the same, and that "karma" (our efforts) are everything in the journey back to God.

RSSB Guru: No, the teachings of Sant Mat require that one be initiated by a genuine guru.

Questioner: OK then, who is a genuine guru? Can you name one?

RSSB Guru: Yes, Charan Singh ji Maharaj.

Questioner: OK fine. But can you name any genuine gurus outside of your own line of spiritual masters?

RSSB Guru: All saints and mystics teach the same spiritual truths.

Questioner: Fine, then just name one who you'd certify as being as authentic as yourself.

RSSB Guru: You see, we must all make our own spiritual search to choose an authentic guru.

Questioner: But doesn't the RSSB website strongly imply that you are one of these authentic gurus?

RSSB Guru: I am merely the leader of the RSSB organization, and it is not a role of my own choosing. RSSB is a philosophical organization, not a religion. I make no claims for myself.

Questioner: But by accepting the role of Perfect Master, aren't you implicitly making the public claim that you indeed are a Perfect Master?

RSSB Guru: You see, the real Master is the shabd.

Questioner: OK. How about teaching me this technique of getting the shabd?

RSSB Guru: Oh, I could teach the mere technique, but real contact with the shabd requires initiation from a Perfect Master, otherwise the special mantras will have no power whatsoever.

Questioner: Alright, fine, I'll take this initiation then. Will you initiate me now?

RSSB Guru: Now (much laughter). No, you need to get sponsored by an RSSB member and follow 3 vows for a year. Then, maybe I'll initiate you once the paperwork is complete. Bear in mind that once you receive initiation you must accept me as your spiritual master -- a "Godman" in fact -- for the rest of your life.

Questioner: Excuse me reverend sir, but I don't think so.

RSSB Guru: Too bad for you then. There is no other way back to God.

Questioner: But I thought you just said? Nevermind.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, current RSSB guru

RSSB says don't directly quote the Master. So naturally I did.

Today someone sent me this hot-off-the-press notice from Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization based in India that I belonged to for 35 years before I saw the churchless light.

It decrees that even though videos of the RSSB guru are now online, directly quoting Gurinder Singh Dhillon isn't permitted.

Only paraphrasing of what the guru said is allowed. And for some inexplicable reason, the notice isn't supposed to be shared with all devotees of RSSB, only those who have some official capacity in the organization.

Well, after reading this I had two heretical thoughts: (1) I've got to share this notice on my blog so anyone who wants to can read it; and (2) I'm going to quote Dhillon directly. Ah, the pleasure of defying ridiculously rigid religious rules!

So here's the notice.

And here's a You Tube video of a Q&A session with the guru.

My transcript of the first question and answer follows. I did my best to make it as accurate as possible. One word was unclear to me, so it has a question mark associated with it. After the transcript I'll share follow-up questions that deserve to be asked of the guru.

QUESTION: Hazur, I have read that we have to live in master's will. And in bigger incidents like death, serious health, we all say that it is master's will and we accept it. But in our day to day life, small things don't allow us to accept his will. And there's a lot of confusion regarding that.

GURU'S ANSWER: First we have to divide it into two portions. One is on the spiritual aspect and the other is on the administrative side. So on the spiritual there should be no question. On the administration I don't think anybody creates that kind of a focus where he looks deep into everything.  

And that is why all of you are there as HODs [?] as sevadars, to look into it, to give the different perspectives. So definitely somebody could have a better perspective, and something could be more in tune to what the sangat needs. So sometimes in a hurry you overlook so many things. 

So in day to day life, in administrative things, you should use your own discrimination. Give your suggestions, and at the ending of the day if he takes a decision, then you follow that. This is why right from the beginning I have said in spirituality there is no question, and in administration you are most free to give your suggestions.

And where the spiritual aspect is concerned, also you see, learning to stay in his will means understanding his will first. If you don't know what his will is, how will you be able to stay in his will?

So it also is reaching that level of consciousness that we understand what his will is. Today everything for us is our perspective. We are searching in the dark as to what we think his will is. So again, only an elevated soul will know what that real will is and to be able to stay in that.

For modern people like us, we are all sort of searching in the dark trying to understand the why and when of this creation, why has this happened to us, why has this happened to somebody else.

These are some of the questions that came to mind about how Gurinder Singh Dhillon answered the woman:

(1) By "his will," do you mean God's will or the guru's will? Sounds like the guru is speaking about God's will, but this isn't crystal clear. If somehow the guru is talking about his own will, wouldn't it be easy for the guru to simply describe what that will consists of? Regardless, RSSB considers the guru to be God in human form, so I'm assuming God's will and the guru's will are one and the same.

(2) Since it appears that God's will is being talked about, why is God referred to as a "he"? Does God have XY chromosomes? Does God have a penis? Inquiring minds want to know. 

(3) How can anyone be sure that God exists? That's a prerequisite for God having a will.

(4) Assuming God exists (a huge assumption), where's the evidence that God has a will that humans are supposed to understand? This presupposes free will, since apparently we're supposed to choose to search for God's will, find it, and then remain in it.

(5) Every religion has a different idea of what God wants people to do. The guru says that only an "elevated soul" can know what the real will is. So why are there so many differing views of what God's will is? And how can someone recognize an elevated soul who supposedly knows for sure what God's will is?

(6) Is the guru claiming that he is an elevated soul who knows God's will? This is unclear, since he says "we are all searching in the dark" as to what that will is. Does this include the guru?

(7) And why should anyone care what God's will is? If God doesn't exist, obviously there's no such thing as God's will. And if God does exist, isn't the notion of God having a will regarding what people do horribly anthropomorphic? The guru's answer makes it sound like God is a bizarre ruler who demands that their subjects figure out what the ruler wants instead of the ruler making this clear directly.

Comments not posting

Typepad, the blogging service I use, is having a problem with comments. They aren't being posted correctly. Only the name of the poster and the date show up, and apparently sometimes not even that. I've let Typepad know about the problem. I'm getting the comments and am publishing them, but they aren't showing up at the moment.

UPDATE: Comments seem to be posting OK. I suspect the problem could have been a comment that someone posted with HTML that wasn't correct. I've noted that incorrect HTML in a comment can cascade and affect other comments. So generally it isn't a good idea to use HTML. URLs will be converted to live links automatically without HTML.

There's no reason to doubt that the mind is material

Well, today I got to the chapter in The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience that I was most interested in reading. (See here and here for my previous posts about the book.)

Since the author, Matthew Cobb, is exceedingly well informed about past and present history of research on the brain, I was curious what he would have to say about "Consciousness," the final chapter in the Present section of the book.

Not surprisingly, Cobb says there is no reason to doubt that the mind is material, being the brain in action, basically. Below I've shared excerpts from the chapter about this. 

The first excerpt talks about split-brain patients where the corpus callosum that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain is severed to control severe epileptic seizures. This is done rarely now, but was fairly common in 1962 when Bill Jenkins had the surgery.

Jenkins agreed to participate in what turned out to be a decades-long study by Michael Gazzaniga into how Jenkins' brain functioned after the surgery. The details are fascinating. Here's how Cobb sums them up.

These results were simply extraordinary. It was not only the brain of an animal that could be harmlessly split in two -- the same seemed to be true of a human brain, and the human mind. Each half of the brain was, on its own, sufficient to produce a mind, albeit with slightly different abilities and outlooks in each half. From one mind, you had two. Try that with a computer.

Read on for the excerpts dealing with the material nature of the mind.

The brain does not work as two separate halves, but as an integrated whole. In some way we do not understand, consciousness is unitary by nature, but it can be divided in split-brain patients, with the weird results that Gazzaniga and his colleagues have revealed. These differences between the two hemispheres strongly support the general working hypothesis that the mind emerges from the structure of the brain.

Any non-materialist explanation of the mind-brain link, like Eccle's suggestion that the brain somehow 'detects' the non-material mind, has to explain how, when separated, the two hemispheres enable such different minds to appear.

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Crick's starting point was a materialist assumption that everything we feel and perceive is 'in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules'. As he emphasised, there was no absolute proof of this hypothesis (there still is not), but there is a lot more evidence in support of it than there is for any of the competing views, all of which view mind as non-material.

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These amazing results contribute to the growing mountain of evidence that our conscious experiences and the activity of our brains are the same thing and suggest that, eventually, the great mystery of how it all works will be solved. As [Patricia] Churchland pointed out:

Even in this century, some philosophers have grandly announced that consciousness, for example, cannot possibly be a property of the human brain. For all the philosophical finger wagging, however, it is more than modestly auspicious that a few milliamps of current applied to the human mACC [midregion of the anterior cingulate cortex] can spawn a complex cascade of feelings, feelings that vanish with cessation of the current ... So far as anyone knows, non-physical souls do not respond to milliamps of current.

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[David] Chalmers is one of several modern philosophers who have embraced non-materialist explanations of consciousness, claiming that it does not obey the physical laws of the universe, and that new laws of physics will be necessary if we are ever to understand it.

This possibility cannot be logically excluded, but at the moment there is no reason to support this view, beyond frustration at our current perplexity and the desire for something novel.

For scientists to abandon the materialist approach that has got us so far, and which provides experimental tools for investigating mysterious phenomena such as consciousness, we would need far stronger motivations, such as inexplicable experimental results that contradict the materialist working hypothesis.

No such data have been forthcoming.

Memory is material, yet still quite mysterious

Whenever a person claims to have experienced something mystical or supernatural, the memory of that experience which enables them to make the claim is thoroughly material. 

I remember that this thought came to mind while I was reading the "Memory" chapter in Matthew Cobb's fascinating book, The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience. (See here for my first post about the book.)

But that could be a false memory, though I don't believe it is, since I finished the chapter just a few days ago.

My wife, a retired psychotherapist, learned about false memories during a period in the United States, and maybe elsewhere also, when women, mostly, would recollect being sexually abused as a child in decidedly strange ways, such as at a Satanic ritual.

Eventually it became clear that false memories could be implanted in a person's brain when a counselor, say, would ask leading questions about being abused. 

Since there is no way for us to tell if a memory is true or false other than comparing the recollection to some sort of objective standard, or perhaps by asking others who had the same experience, sometimes accusations against supposed child abusers were made that had no basis in fact.

This is very much in line with what Cobb writes about at the end of his "Memory" chapter, which I've shared below.

The definition of "engram" is: a hypothetical change in neural tissue postulated in order to account for persistence of memory. Here's an explanation of the reference to Penfield. 

At the beginning of the chapter Cobb relates how, from the 1930s onwards, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield carried out hundreds of brain operations in an attempt to relieve chronic debilitating temporal-lobe epilepsy. 

He'd stimulate conscious patients with delicate electrodes to determine what part of the brain was a candidate for removal, if stimulating that part indicated a seizure was imminent.

Cobb writes:

This procedure revealed something rather eerie: sometimes the stimulation led the patient to relive very precise events. These experiences were vivid and detailed, like a waking dream.

... These strange sensations would occur only when the relevant area was being stimulated; if the electrode was removed, or if the patient was told that stimulation was occurring when it was not, nothing happened.

Now, here's how Cobb concludes the "Memory" chapter.

The research on the cellular basis of memory highlights what many psychological studies has previously demonstrated: memory is malleable. It is not simply a recording of ongoing events, it is constructed, and it can be false.

Above all, however, it has a material basis. 

We have found elements of the engram, and it is not like memory on a hard disk in a computer. Biological memory is rich, unreliable and highly interconnected, with access to it taking place via multiple routes, not through a single address.

The link between our ordinary sense of how we remember things and precise memories that could be evoked by Penfield is not clear. 

We do not appear to be perpetually recording our whole lives and yet those experiments reveal that highly specific and apparently inconsequential moments can be recalled, either by some external event, or by the pulse of an electrode.

The engram has given up a few of its most basic secrets, but we are still far from understanding what is happening when we remember.

Our brains might be like a computer in terms of how they sometimes process information, but the way we store and recall our memories is completely different. We are not machines -- or rather, we are not like any machine we have yet built or can currently envisage.

These advances in identifying the physical basis of memory raise the question of how sensory information -- the stuff of memory -- is processed by the brain in the first place.

Memories are held in particular sets of neurons, but that does not explain how the brain is able to work out what is in the world, and what exactly is being remembered. 

The last paragraph is an introduction to the next chapter, "Circuits."

History of ideas about the brain shows how clueless religions are

I've got a new favorite book: The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience. It's beautifully written by Matthew Cobb, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester. 

l love reading books about neuroscience, because the brain fascinates me. And indeed, it is me.

No brain, no me. Also, no brain, no you. Without a brain we're nothing. Yes, the body can be kept alive if someone is brain-dead, or nearly so. But there's nobody home inside the body, since the mind is the brain in action, and without a mind there's no conscious awareness.

But I wasn't sure that I'd enjoy this book, since half of it -- the half that I've finished -- deals with the history of how humans have viewed the brain. I was worried that this part would be boring. However, actually it is gripping reading.

What Cobb shows is how over the centuries, thousands of years really, humans have steadily come closer to understanding the brain. The chapter titles in the "Past" section reflect this: Heart, Forces, Electricity, Function, Evolution, Inhibition, Neurons, Machines, Control.

There's little mention of religion in Cobb's book, because religion almost universally either has nothing to say about how reality is, or gets reality wildly wrong. Obviously this makes religious teachings about the brain and consciousness laughably irrelevant. Western and Eastern religions alike were founded in a pre-scientific time when the brain was a mystery.

So it isn't surprising that dualistic notions of the mind or soul being separable from the body were so much in fashion in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and other religions. Ignorance of the brain led people to assume that because consciousness feels ethereal, it actually is.

Now, of course, we know better. No neuroscientist that I'm aware of believes in mind/body dualism. There simply is no evidence in support of dualism, and plenty of evidence in opposition to it.

Which doesn't mean that we in the 21st century fully understand the brain, consciousness, and such. That, I'm pretty sure, is going to be a central theme of the second part of this book that deals with the Present. Chapter titles in this section: Memory, Circuits, Computers, Chemistry, Localisation, Consciousness. 

Being a life-long admirer of science and the scientific method, I'm enjoying Cobb's detailed descriptions of how people (almost entirely men) have looked upon and studied the brain, starting with the 4,000 year old Epic of Gilgamesh and the 3,200 year old Indian Rigveda. Both religious texts viewed the heart as the source of thought -- a view shared by ancient Jews.

Common sense and everyday experience is a lousy substitute for rigorous scientific investigation. Cobb writes:

Heart-centred views correspond to our everyday experience -- the heart changes its rhythm at the same time as our feelings change, while powerful emotions such as anger, lust or fear seem to be focused on one or more of our internal organs, and to course through our bodies and change our way of thinking as though they are transported in, or simply are, our blood.

This is why those old phrases about being 'down at heart' and so on have persisted -- they correspond to the way we perceive an important part of our inner life. Just as with the appearance that the sun goes around the earth, everyday experience of being human provided a simple explanation of where we think -- our hearts. People believed this idea because it made sense.

Of course, that viewpoint appears ridiculously wrong to us today. But Cobb lays out the reasons now-discredited ideas about the brain were held at various points in human history. In retrospect it's easy to see why they were wrong. Yet we need to remember that future humans will look upon how the brain was viewed in 2020 as ridiculously wrong.

That's the beauty of science: it progresses. Sure, often in fits and starts, and sometimes even by going backwards for a while. Cobb shows, though, that over the centuries incorrect ideas about the brain fell out of favor, to be replaced by ideas that were closer to the truth, albeit still incorrect by modern standards. 

As I often note on this blog, religions don't make progress in knowing the truth about reality. Only science does. One big reason for this is that scientists engage in vigorous debate, subjecting competing theories to intense scrutiny, demanding solid evidence for their correctness. Religions, on the other hand, are big on faith and not questioning authority.

Which is why I liked this passage in Cobb's book. I've boldfaced part of it for emphasis. 

Müller had a relatively brief academic career -- he died in 1858, apparently having committed suicide at the age of fifty-seven -- but he attracted a remarkable array of brilliant students and researchers, including some of the greater figures in nineteenth-century science. These included Hermann von Helmholtz and Ernst Haeckel, as well as less well-known but equally significant individuals such as Rudolf Virchow and Emil du Bois-Reymond.

These young men, imbued by Müller with a taste for applying the methods and outlook of physics to the study of physiology, formed part of the long academic tradition of students trying to prove their teacher wrong. In this case, they rejected Müller's vitalism in favour of a consistently materialist approach. As du Bois-Reymond and Ernst Brücke put it in a manifesto they wrote in 1842: 'no forces operate in the organism other than those common to physics and chemistry.'

That appears to be true. So the students had a better understanding of reality than their teacher did. This also happens when members of a religion break away from it because they've come to realize how false the religion's teachings are.

So a big thumbs-up to science. It's by far our best way of knowing objective reality. When I finish the second part of The Idea of the Brain, I'll write another post about present-day neuroscience.

You could be a fundamentalist satsangi if...

Here's another early (July 13, 2006) blog post that I came across while selecting Church of the Churchless posts to be in my next book. It rang true to me when I wrote it, and still does. Enjoy.

I enjoyed reading “Top ten signs you’re a fundamentalist Christian.” That stimulated me to jot down my own list for Satsangis, a.k.a. followers of the contemporary Sant Mat movement.

It’s a work in progress. If you're acquainted with this philosophy, feel free to add on to the list via a comment, if you like.

I need to point out that when I say “you,” a few years ago I could have said “I.” For I know whereof I speak with this list, having been a fundamentalist Satsangi myself for many years.

Now I’ve seen the light. And I like to believe that as a result I’m closer to the light.

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(10) You have never had a profound mystical experience yourself, and you don’t know any other initiates who have had one. But you’re convinced that this is the highest mystic path.

(9) You believe that rites and rituals are useless for attaining God-realization. Yet you go to satsang every Sunday, folding your hands and saying “radha soami” when you walk in the door.

(8) You consider that engaging in pilgrimages and visits to holy places are pointless religious practices. However, the trip you took to India to spend time at the Dera was a highpoint of your spiritual life.

(7) You feel the guru’s loving presence keeping you company throughout the day. However, when you aren’t thinking about the guru or doing the practices he enjoins, you aren’t aware of him. You never wonder, “If someone is only here when I imagine him, is he real?”

(6) You look down on deluded intellectuals, Vedantists, and jnanis who believe they can think their way to God-realization. You know this isn’t possible because you read thoughts in a Sant Mat book that said just that.

(5) You feel terrible if you don’t read the label on a box of cookies and inadvertently eat some egg whites. You never give money to street people, no matter what condition they’re in, because that would be interfering with their karma.

(4) You have worked diligently for years toward merging your soul with God’s spirit, establishing a direct personal relationship with the divine. However, if an impulse or intuition comes to you that isn’t given a thumbs-up by the Sant Mat books, you’re afraid it’s a trick of the “negative power.”

(3) You are grateful that you’ve broken free of traditional religious dogma that required you, without evidence, to have faith that a dead Son of God will save your soul after you die. Yet the only difference is, now you have the same unfounded faith in a living Son of God.

(2) You are committed to expanding your circle of love, compassion, and selfless service beyond the narrow confines of sectarianism. But almost all of your friends are satsangis. And you believe that it is much more important to perform seva for the guru at a local, regional, or national satsang center than to volunteer at a nursing home.

(1) You are absolutely sure that you’re on the direct path of light and sound back to God. Except, you have never seen the light. Or heard the sound. But that doesn’t matter, because the Bible tells you so. Oops, did I write “Bible”? I meant to say “Guru.”

"We must accept there is no grand design" -- physicist Brian Greene

There's only good news in the final pages of physicist Brian Greene's new book, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe." (See here, here, and here for my previous posts about the book.)

Yes, there's no evidence for a grand design to the cosmos. No god fashioned our universe. The laws of nature didn't spring out of a divine mind. They just are what they are.

Which leads to another positive yes: So, yes, it is up to us to determine the meaning that we find in our otherwise meaningless universe.

Greene urges us to look inward for that meaning, since it won't be found by looking outward. Here's how Greene ends his book.

Whereas most life, miraculous in its own right, is tethered to the immediate, we can step outside of time. We can think about the past, we can imagine the future. We can take in the universe, we can process it, we can explore it with mind and body, with reason and emotion.

From our lonely corner of the cosmos we have used creativity and imagination to shape words and images and structures and sounds to express our longings and frustrations, our confusions and revelations, our failures and triumphs.

We have used ingenuity and perseverance to touch the very limits of outer and inner space, determining fundamental laws that govern how stars shine and light travels, how time elapses and space expands -- laws that allow us to peer back to the briefest moment after the universe began and then shift our gaze and contemplate its end.

Accompanying these breathtaking insights are deep and persistent questions. Why is there something rather than nothing? What sparked the onset of life? How did conscious awareness emerge? We have explored a range of speculations, but definitive answers remain elusive.

Perhaps our brains, well adapted for survival on planet earth, are just not structured for resolving these mysteries. Or perhaps, as our intelligence continues to evolve, our engagement with reality will acquire a wholly different character, with the result that today's towering questions become irrelevant. 

While either is possible, the fact that the world as we now understand it, remaining mysteries and all, holds together with such a tight mathematical and logical coherence, and the fact that we have been able to decipher so much of that coherence, suggests to me that neither is the case.

We are not lacking the brainpower. We are not staring at Plato's wall, unaware of a radically different kind of truth, just beyond reach, with the power to suddenly provide startling new clarity.

As we hurtle toward a cold and barren cosmos, we must accept there is no grand design. Particles are not endowed with purpose. There is no final answer hovering in the depths of space awaiting discovery. Instead, certain special collections of particles can think and feel and reflect, and within these subjective worlds they can create purpose.

And so, in our quest to fathom the human condition, the only direction to look is inward. That is the noble direction to look. It is a direction that forgoes ready-made answers and turns to the highly personal journey of constructing our own meaning. It is a direction that leads to the very heart of creative expression and the source of our most resonant narratives.

Science is a powerful, exquisite tool for grasping an external reality. But within that rubric, within that understanding, everything else is the human species contemplating itself, grasping what it needs to carry on, and telling a story that reverberates into the darkness, a story carved of sound and etched into silence, a story that, at its best, stirs the soul.

Become an unknowing fool. It's the wisest thing to do.

Here's another post from the early years of this blog that I just came across in the course of choosing content for my second book of Church of the Churchless posts.

I'll probably keep on doing more of this "blast from the past" stuff until I'm finished with the second book, which doesn't have a name yet. The less time I spend on writing new content for this blog, the more time I'll have to work on that book.

As before, the italicized introduction is what will accompany the post. I like to share a few thoughts about how I view each old blog post now. Sometimes I still whole-heartedly agree with a post. Sometimes I'm half-hearted about it, since my views are evolving.

I’m still pretty sure that existence, life, and consciousness are unknowable, since they are the mysterious foundation of all our knowing. But I’m not absolutely sure about this. That’s the beauty of not-knowing. It leaves us open to all sorts of possibilities.

God calls me a fool. I agree.
May 28, 2006

Churchless brothers and sisters, God spoke to me this morning. Now the spirit is calling me to share the word. I’m just a tool. Also, a fool.

That was the message: “Brian, you don’t know.” To which I replied, “Oh God, you’re so right. I don’t know.”

Now, I can hear the skeptics asking, “How do you know that God was speaking to you if what you heard was, You don’t know?” Well, all I can say is that I know what I know, and I don’t know what I don’t know. And I know that God was letting me know that I don’t know.

Seems clear to me.

As so much often does in the morning when the caffeine is flowing through my hyped-up neurons and reading one of my holy churchless books tunes me into the harmonies of the cosmos’ deepest mysteries.

Like, the ultimate mystery: existence. And, the penultimate mystery: why something exists within existence. In this rarefied philosophical territory, I’m gasping fruitlessly for the air of even the slightest understanding.

As are we all. 

Such was the divine inspiration stimulated by my reading of John Horgan’s “Rational Mysticism.” In a concluding chapter he says that no one — not Jesus, not Buddha, not Muhammad, not Moses, nor any other guru, sage, or prophet, no one — could ever know the ultimate whys and wherefores of creation.

Why is there something rather than nothing? No one knows. And if you don’t know that, then any claim to knowing It All is spurious.

Laughingly so. Ridiculously so. 

Which helps explain why, after my not-knowing revelation had been revealed to me, I felt so good. For quite a while my meditation mantra became “I don’t know…I don’t know…I don’t know.” With every repetition I became more connected to the great Don’t Know.

There’s a joy in being a religious fool. 

I could feel the pressure of got to know… got to know… got to know dissipating. I felt emptier, lighter, freer. I realized that I’ll never know, you’ll never know, no one will ever know. Not everything. Not the deepest mysteries. They’re unknowable.

Existence. Life. Consciousness. Science doesn’t have a clue. Religion doesn’t have a clue. Humanity is clueless. That brought a foolish smile to my meditative face. The pressure to know is off. Accept it.

You exist. You’re alive. You’re conscious. 

But nobody can know what existence is, what life is, what consciousness is. To penetrate those mysteries you’d have to be non-existent, not-alive, unconscious. Who, then, would be around to do the penetrating? Or to be aware of what lies at the bottom of it all?

We are what we’re trying to know. It isn’t possible to know when there isn’t a sub-atomic particle’s distance between us and the object of knowledge. There can be no knowing when there isn’t a knower and the known.

But there can be fools who don’t know. I’m happy to be part of this august group. Which includes everybody on the planet. Including those who believe that they know.

Are they even bigger fools? Good question. Have to say, though: I don’t know.

When a guru is an asshole

Now that I've got a Brian Hines, Author Facebook page, I'm more eager to fashion a second book from the posts I wrote during the early years of this Church of the Churchless blog. (On Amazon you can buy my first book, Break Free of Dogma.)

So the past few days I've been diligently working away at selecting blog posts that carry on from where my first book left off in February 2006.  Like Marie Kondo, I touch each post with my writer's mind, deciding whether the post still leaves me with a feeling of joy and inspiration that warrants including it in the second book.

Here's a post from April 2006 that I came across today which definitely will be included.

After all, any blog post with "asshole" in the title surely deserves to be in a book. The italicized introduction follows the format of my first book, where I make brief comments on how I currently look upon the blog posts from, in this case, fourteen years ago.

If someone is considered to be God in human form by their devotees, yet knows that they don’t deserve that divine title, what should we call them? I suggest, “Asshole.” 

God-man or Asshole? The guru conundrum. 
April 27, 2006

Ever since I met her, I’m been trying to convince my wife that I’m God. 

It just seems so obvious: I understand Windows XP and can fix her computer when something goes wrong; back when we used a VCR, I could program it to do whatever we wanted; I know how to hang a picture so it is centered perfectly over a piece of furniture.

Yet my husbandly divinity remains unrecognized. 

For some reason Laurel focuses more on such things as: my inability to put the kitchen sponge in its holder, rather than on the bottom of the sink; my incapacity to fold t-shirts properly and place them neatly in their designated drawer; my reluctance, after cutting off a slice of bread, to reintroduce the whole wheat loaf back into the bag where it is supposed to stay fresher.

Guess I should start calling myself a guru. Then my human failings could be construed as signs of my godliness.

This is what I learned by reading the May 2006 issue of the Western U.S.A. Newsletter, published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) America. Every month the RSSB representative for the Western states, Vincent Savarese, writes an article about some aspect of this organization’s teachings.

The issue that just arrived in the mail speaks about the guru as God-man, someone who has merged with God and so has no imperfections. If you want to know God, supposedly you have to be accepted by a guru.

The saints tell us that we need to find and associate with someone who is perfect. We say God is perfect and is absolute reality. But we haven’t seen or met God. Can we see that Perfect Being without an intercessor? Unequivocally all saints and masters say we cannot. We need a teacher who has met God and merged with God, an enlightened being, a God-Man, a Sat Guru, or Perfect Master.

Isn’t that amazing? Walking around on Earth are perfect beings who are incarnations of God, just as Jesus and Krishna were considered to be.

Why is it, then, that the multitudes don’t fall at their feet and worship them? What explains the fact that, back in the early 1990s, my wife got to sit just a few feet away from a purported God-man (Gurinder Singh Dhillon) and came away from a lengthy meeting with him saying, “I didn’t feel anything special. He just seemed like a regular person to me”?

Savarese offers up the reason:

Saints and mystics tell us only the soul is perfect and so also the Perfect Master. The Perfect Master is perfect within at all times and can be perfect outside if he wishes, but he guards his perfection very carefully… What is confusing to many people is that Masters may act forgetful, show fatigue or annoyance, may mispronounce a written name or call a female a male or vice versa.

Ah! This is exactly what I’ve been telling my wife! 

My seeming imperfections are just a necessary disguise to cover my Godliness. Otherwise, I’d be spending all of my time fending off wanna-be disciples who would desire to give me their devotion, money, and, in the case of young attractive women, their bodies. (Hmmmm. Now that I think about it, why would I want to disguise myself?)

So it turns out that there is no way to judge whether a guru is merged with God. 

If the guru acts perfectly divine, this is proof that he is an enlightened being. If the guru acts imperfectly human, this is proof that, in Savarese’s words, “He chooses to play the role of an ordinary man much of the time.” Why? Because, “If he didn’t he would attract all manner of miracle seekers and not the truth seekers he was meant to meet.”

Pretty good gig. Perfection means godliness. Imperfection also means godliness. It’s akin to a band being able to play as many off-key tunes as they wanted, because the audience would believe them when they said “We mean our songs to sound that way; if you are our fans, love the way we play them, not how you want to hear them.” 

Savarese writes:

For the disciple of the perfect Master, for the gurmukh, for the servant of the King, there is one simple and urgent rule… obedience. Logic and self-preservation, self-importance, must be set aside. He will provide everything for the thoroughly obedient disciple.

But not, apparently, for the disobedient disciple. As someone else put it, “He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!” Santa Claus, guru, God: what’s the difference? They all reward obedience and punish independence.

The nagging problem, though, is that nasty old fly in the ointment: reality. 

If Santa Claus, guru, or God aren’t really what we believe them to be, what then? Does it make sense to keep believing in the absence of evidence? What makes children stop believing in Santa Claus? Is this a mark of increasing maturity or a disturbing loss of faith?

Which brings me to the question with which I began: is the guru a God-man or an Asshole? Perhaps these seem like harsh choices. Indeed, previously I’ve suggested another option, the guru as loyalist (adding to the three traditional “L” options of the Lord, a liar, or a lunatic).

However, upon further reflection I’m beginning to think that loyalist and liar belong together in the broader “Asshole” category. This reduces the choices to two: God-man or Asshole, assuming that lunatic doesn’t fit. 

I realize that this may offend those who consider that the guru is God.

But here’s why it shouldn’t: if the guru truly is God, notwithstanding the lack of evidence, he, like God, isn’t affected by anything I or anyone else says about him. 

Heck, the same is true even for ourselves, really. I get put down, insulted, and criticized all of the time by other people who comment on my blog postings and send me emails. By and large, it washes off my back. With God, it wouldn’t even come close to his back.

On the other hand, if the guru really isn’t God, I don’t see how he deserves any other title than Asshole. 

What else should you call a man (or woman) who accepts the fervent devotion of his followers, who fails to dissuade those who consider him to be God incarnate, and who encourages absolute obedience to his dictates as the only means of spiritual realization — yet isn’t who he claims to be?

For many years, before I’d meditate in the morning I would carry on a one-sided conversation with the guru who initiated me: Charan Singh. “Good day, Master. How are you? Hope to see you soon, inside or outside, in the heavenly regions or when you come to visit us physically.” And so on.

I still talk to him. But in a different fashion now. 

“How’re you doing, Asshole? Don’t like that name? Well, either you’re God and am aware of me speaking to you, or you were a fake and aren’t aware of anything now that you’re dead. So, if you’re God, come and talk to me now that I’ve got your attention. If you’re not, then Asshole is the perfect name for a man who claimed to be a Perfect Master for almost forty years, but knew that he wasn’t."

It’s a conundrum. I don’t know which is true: God-man or Asshole. 

All I know is that for me, seeing is believing. I’ll believe someone is God when I see unequivocal evidence of this (as to what that might be, all I can say is that I’ll know it when I see it). Until then, if you say you’re God, I’m going to use my alternative title for you.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas

I have a "Brian Hines, Author" Facebook page. And an extra copy of Steve Hagen's book.

Last week I got around to fixing two typos in my Break Free of Dogma book. That took some emailing back and forth with the folks at ebookpbook, as they had designed my 2019 collection of selected posts from the early years of this blog, 2004-06. 

After getting print and Kindle files with the typos corrected, I uploaded them to Amazon and basked in the good feeling of finally having a typo-free book. Which led me to think, "Now is the time to do some promoting of Break Free of Dogma," something I hadn't done much of before.

Being familiar with buying ads, or boosted posts, on Facebook due to my political advocacy of local progressive candidates here in Salem, Oregon, I wanted to start that way. 

And that meant fashioning a Brian Hines, Author Facebook page. Since I'd done that several times, it went smoothly. The toughest part was getting our dining room table set up for a cover photo to be taken by my wife. Here's the iPhone result. Not bad. It fits nicely on my Facebook page.

Only two of my four books would fit in the photo. Hopefully they aren't jealous of the books that were chosen to frame my face. I've given Facebook $100 to plug a post about Break Free of Dogma with atheists, agnostics, and free thinkers in the United States. 

If you want, give my Brian Hines, Author Facebook page a like by clicking on, not surprisingly, the "Like" button under the cover photo. 

In the course of re-reading the first part of my book to make sure there weren't any unnoticed typos, I came across a January 2005 post where I mentioned Steve Hagen's book, Buddhism Plain and Simple. I bought another copy a few weeks ago, having forgotten that I already had one. 

I'm glad that I did.

After 15 years of increasing churchlessness, my view on reality has become considerably more godless than when I first read Hagen's book. So reading it again was like the very first time. (Of course, even if my views hadn't changed, my memory of the book would have been dim.)

The 2005 post was called "Religious questioning is natural." Here it is. I've added a few extra paragraph breaks to make the post easier to read. (Blogs were called weblogs way back when.)

Like most bloggers, I love getting email. Making connections with like-minded (or unlike-minded) people from anywhere in the world is a wonderful reward for the time and effort that goes into a weblog.

Recently I got a message from another member of the spiritual group, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that I’ve been involved with for thirty-five years. This is how my correspondent ended his email:

I do not know whether you will feel the following questions too personal to answer, but if you do not mind , will you mind answering them?: Are you or were you ever a satsangi? What is your spiritual philosophy these days? Can you comment at all on the Sant Mat Gurus, especially Maharaj Gurinder Singh? How do you recommend one seeks the Ultimate Truth?

By “satsangi” he meant specifically an initiate of the mystical path known variously as Sant Mat, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Science of the Soul, Surat Shabd Yoga, or Radha Soami. Satsangi is a generic word that literally means “one who associates with truth (sat).”

Since many spiritual groups in India and elsewhere consider that they are on the path to knowing truth, you can be a “satsangi” of various denominations—to use a rather ill-fitting Christian term. “Satsang” is a meeting of satsangis, a service if you will.

I was asked good questions, some obviously much easier to answer than others. Though personal, I didn’t mind making a stab at answering them and have shared my response below.

I realize my language will seem foreign to many people. But substitute, for example, “Pope” for “Master” and “Catholic Church” for “Radha Soami Satsang Beas” if my message seems too distant from your own experience.

My basic point is universal: after you’ve belonged to a religious or spiritual organization for more than a few years, it’s natural to be more critical of it. The more knowledgeable you become about a church, faith, philosophy, or theology, the more flaws you’ll find.

The ultimate reality we call “God” can’t be confined within any manmade system. Religions try to put bounds around boundlessness, but this is a futile exercise. Truth always finds a way to express itself. So I encourage people to trust their direct experience over abstract concepts.

When something seems wrong about the spiritual path you’re following, likely it is. If it appears that you can drop some inessential ritualistic practice, almost certainly you should. Keep what works for you; discard what doesn’t.

Here’s my mildly edited response to the questions I was asked:

Dear ________:

I am indeed a Sant Mat (RSSB) initiate, dating way back from the class of 1971. I now am inclined to shy away from labels such as “satsangi.” My wife is a non-initiate and I have found that this satsangi/non-satsangi distinction is unproductive, just as the Christian/non-Christian distinction is.

Sometimes a satsangi will phone us; my wife answers and hears the greeting, “Radha soami.” She then says, “Hello.” The caller again says, “Radha soami.” She refuses to go further with the conversation until the person communicates like a normal human being rather than a cult member.

I’ve become a bit of a Sant Mat “heretic,” just as you seem to be. Maybe more than “a bit of” in fact.

My quest these days is to discern the essential in spirituality. The rest seems to be in the realm of religion, not mysticism or what I like to call spiritual science. There is a lot of religiosity in RSSB even though this path supposedly isn’t a religion. When blind belief and faith are elevated over direct experience and questioning, I call that a religion.

I still feel a lot of fondness for RSSB/Sant Mat and continue to attend satsang most Sundays. But I’ll admit that I go more for the socializing than for the satsang. Our post-satsang coffee shop conversations go on for considerably longer, and with considerably more enthusiasm, than the 45 minute satsang.

My spiritual philosophy keeps evolving in the direction of Advaita and non-religious Buddhism, assuming those terms really mean anything, which I suspect they don’t. Immersing myself in the teachings of the Greek philosopher Plotinus exacerbated my existing tendencies in that direction.

I think you would enjoy my book “Return to the One,” though since I’m the author, I’m obviously horribly biased. Plotinus’ philosophy is remarkably close to that of Sant Mat, with the notable exception of not mentioning the need for a living “guru.” Or, for that matter, a dead guru.

I’ve been reading several books by Steven Hagen, who I like a lot.

His “Buddhism Plain and Simple” reverberates with me, as does “Buddhism is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs.” I don’t agree with everything Hagen says, but I very much appreciate his attempt to get beyond the religiosity of Buddhism and reach the essential core, which he says is simply seeing.

I empathize with your frustration with Sant Mat meditation, and RSSB in general. We’re different people, so my experience may have no relevance to your own.

All I can say is that I’ve been energized by taking a fresh look at what seems to work for me in meditation, and what doesn’t, regardless of whether it is 100% Sant Mat certified. The goal in Sant Mat meditation, after all, is to do nothing. No mantra, no visualization. Just being there as soul, pure consciousness, and experiencing whatever is there.

This is perfectly compatible with Hagen’s plain and simple Buddhism, and also with Ramana’s plain and simple Advaita. Ramana is another teacher whom I’ve enjoyed reading, finding in him the core of mystic practice without the distractions of complex concepts and suppositions.

Re. Master Gurinder Singh, since I don’t know who I am, I certainly would make no claim to understanding anyone else. Only Master Gurinder Singh knows who Master Gurinder Singh is.

Since he doesn’t make any claims of godliness for himself, one can either surmise (1) that he is a humble god-man, or (2) that he isn’t a god-man. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter which is true. It’s my own experience that I’m concerned about, not the Master’s.

That is, my current approach to spirituality is basically this: I’ll do my best to meditate and discover what lies beyond appearances.

I believe that if the cosmos is One, and I’m part of it, that whatever the essence of me is, also is the essence of the cosmos. Wherever this journey leads, I’ll believe in what I see and experience directly. Everything else is just a hypothesis: Guru is God, spirit creates and sustains the universe, soul can unite with spirit, and so on.

I muse about this stuff on my Church of the Churchless weblog. I haven’t arrived at any real answers yet, but I’m enjoying the questioning. Trust yourself. If I have faith in anything, it is that the Truth with a capital “T” is able to burst through any and all barriers, and it makes its presence known in all sorts of highly individualistic ways.

My guess is that you already know what spiritual path attracts you, and you are just looking for validation.

I could be wrong, but I do this all the time myself, so the process is familiar to me. I look for books and people to affirm what I already am quite sure of, deep down. If I didn’t already know what I was looking for, I wouldn’t be attracted to it when I saw it.

Warm greetings, Brian

Like most bloggers, I love getting email. Making connections with like-minded (or unlike-minded) people from anywhere in the world is a wonderful reward for the time and effort that goes into a weblog.

Recently I got a message from another member of the spiritual group, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that I’ve been involved with for thirty-five years. This is how my correspondent ended his email:

I do not know whether you will feel the following questions too personal to answer, but if you do not mind , will you mind answering them?: Are you or were you ever a satsangi? What is your spiritual philosophy these days? Can you comment at all on the Sant Mat Gurus, especially Maharaj Gurinder Singh? How do you recommend one seeks the Ultimate Truth?

By “satsangi” he meant specifically an initiate of the mystical path known variously as Sant Mat, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Science of the Soul, Surat Shabd Yoga, or Radha Soami. Satsangi is a generic word that literally means “one who associates with truth (sat).”

Since many spiritual groups in India and elsewhere consider that they are on the path to knowing truth, you can be a “satsangi” of various denominations—to use a rather ill-fitting Christian term. “Satsang” is a meeting of satsangis, a service if you will.

I was asked good questions, some obviously much easier to answer than others. Though personal, I didn’t mind making a stab at answering them and have shared my response below.

I realize my language will seem foreign to many people. But substitute, for example, “Pope” for “Master” and “Catholic Church” for “Radha Soami Satsang Beas” if my message seems too distant from your own experience.

My basic point is universal: after you’ve belonged to a religious or spiritual organization for more than a few years, it’s natural to be more critical of it. The more knowledgeable you become about a church, faith, philosophy, or theology, the more flaws you’ll find.

The ultimate reality we call “God” can’t be confined within any manmade system. Religions try to put bounds around boundlessness, but this is a futile exercise. Truth always finds a way to express itself. So I encourage people to trust their direct experience over abstract concepts.

When something seems wrong about the spiritual path you’re following, likely it is. If it appears that you can drop some inessential ritualistic practice, almost certainly you should. Keep what works for you; discard what doesn’t.

Here’s my mildly edited response to the questions I was asked:

Dear ________:

I am indeed a Sant Mat (RSSB) initiate, dating way back from the class of 1971. I now am inclined to shy away from labels such as “satsangi.” My wife is a non-initiate and I have found that this satsangi/non-satsangi distinction is unproductive, just as the Christian/non-Christian distinction is.

Sometimes a satsangi will phone us; my wife answers and hears the greeting, “Radha soami.” She then says, “Hello.” The caller again says, “Radha soami.” She refuses to go further with the conversation until the person communicates like a normal human being rather than a cult member.

I’ve become a bit of a Sant Mat “heretic,” just as you seem to be. Maybe more than “a bit of” in fact.

My quest these days is to discern the essential in spirituality. The rest seems to be in the realm of religion, not mysticism or what I like to call spiritual science. There is a lot of religiosity in RSSB even though this path supposedly isn’t a religion. When blind belief and faith are elevated over direct experience and questioning, I call that a religion.

I still feel a lot of fondness for RSSB/Sant Mat and continue to attend satsang most Sundays. But I’ll admit that I go more for the socializing than for the satsang. Our post-satsang coffee shop conversations go on for considerably longer, and with considerably more enthusiasm, than the 45 minute satsang.

My spiritual philosophy keeps evolving in the direction of Advaita and non-religious Buddhism, assuming those terms really mean anything, which I suspect they don’t. Immersing myself in the teachings of the Greek philosopher Plotinus exacerbated my existing tendencies in that direction.

I think you would enjoy my book “Return to the One,” though since I’m the author, I’m obviously horribly biased. Plotinus’ philosophy is remarkably close to that of Sant Mat, with the notable exception of not mentioning the need for a living “guru.” Or, for that matter, a dead guru.

I’ve been reading several books by Steven Hagen, who I like a lot.

His “Buddhism Plain and Simple” reverberates with me, as does “Buddhism is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs.” I don’t agree with everything Hagen says, but I very much appreciate his attempt to get beyond the religiosity of Buddhism and reach the essential core, which he says is simply seeing.

I empathize with your frustration with Sant Mat meditation, and RSSB in general. We’re different people, so my experience may have no relevance to your own.

All I can say is that I’ve been energized by taking a fresh look at what seems to work for me in meditation, and what doesn’t, regardless of whether it is 100% Sant Mat certified. The goal in Sant Mat meditation, after all, is to do nothing. No mantra, no visualization. Just being there as soul, pure consciousness, and experiencing whatever is there.

This is perfectly compatible with Hagen’s plain and simple Buddhism, and also with Ramana’s plain and simple Advaita. Ramana is another teacher whom I’ve enjoyed reading, finding in him the core of mystic practice without the distractions of complex concepts and suppositions.

Re. Master Gurinder Singh, since I don’t know who I am, I certainly would make no claim to understanding anyone else. Only Master Gurinder Singh knows who Master Gurinder Singh is.

Since he doesn’t make any claims of godliness for himself, one can either surmise (1) that he is a humble god-man, or (2) that he isn’t a god-man. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter which is true. It’s my own experience that I’m concerned about, not the Master’s.

That is, my current approach to spirituality is basically this: I’ll do my best to meditate and discover what lies beyond appearances.

I believe that if the cosmos is One, and I’m part of it, that whatever the essence of me is, also is the essence of the cosmos. Wherever this journey leads, I’ll believe in what I see and experience directly. Everything else is just a hypothesis: Guru is God, spirit creates and sustains the universe, soul can unite with spirit, and so on.

I muse about this stuff on my Church of the Churchless weblog. I haven’t arrived at any real answers yet, but I’m enjoying the questioning. Trust yourself. If I have faith in anything, it is that the Truth with a capital “T” is able to burst through any and all barriers, and it makes its presence known in all sorts of highly individualistic ways.

My guess is that you already know what spiritual path attracts you, and you are just looking for validation.

I could be wrong, but I do this all the time myself, so the process is familiar to me. I look for books and people to affirm what I already am quite sure of, deep down. If I didn’t already know what I was looking for, I wouldn’t be attracted to it when I saw it.

Warm greetings, Brian

Open Thread 32 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

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

If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an 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 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.

Buddhism's hard truths

Here's the last part of the appendix to Steve Hagen's book, Buddhism Plain and Simple. it contain some hard Buddhist truths. But I like them, even though they aren't all that pleasant. 

Truth is better than wishful religious thinking. Which is why I much prefer Buddhism stripped of supernaturalism over traditional religions.

Enjoy. Or, not.

There are two forms of grasping. First there is the grasping at sense objects. You see the object of your desire out there and you take hold of it.

The second kind of grasping is holding tight to belief. The Buddha identified three common types of belief. The first is belief in something "out there" that will set everything right and make everything perfect -- a heaven or paradise.

But even the nihilistic view that "after I die, that's it" is still a form of grasping onto such a belief. Grasping at any thoughts or opinions fits this category, since this grasping is an attempt to make sense of our existence.

A second kind of belief is belief that ritual or ceremony can somehow save us from pain, confusion, and ignorance. It's only in learning to see this very moment, as it has come to be, that liberation occurs -- not in wearing robes or performing ritual acts.

The third belief we grasp at is the belief in a self, a permanent existence. This is the belief that's most deeply rooted in us, and that causes us the most pain.

And now we have the tenth link, being: persistence or existence. This in turn will link to ignorance, since, in Reality, nothing persists. But with being comes birth, the eleventh link, and with birth comes death, the twelfth link. 

Thus birth and death, the great problem we all face, are linked to the grasping of a self. This is duhkha in its most gripping and pervasive form.

But duhkha need not grip us. To see this moment as it comes to be -- to see that all is fluidity, that nothing separate is born, and that nothing dies -- is to break the chain of bondage.

Get out of your own way. Good TEDx Talk by Judson Brewer.

Here's ten minutes of inspiration from Judson Brewer. This is an excerpt of the video description. Scroll down for the video.

We have all experienced moments in our lives where everything just comes together in some almost magical way --whether playing music, participating in a sport, or just getting totally absorbed in a project. These moments are timeless, effortless, completely free of worry and delicious!

As described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, this is "flow" and is often a hallmark of exemplary performance --whether it is Michael Jordan scoring 50 points in a basketball game, or someone rising to a challenge that they never thought they would be able to handle. We're lucky if we get into this "flow state" a few times in our entire lives. Is this flow state that hard to achieve? Is it more accessible to all of us than we think? And are we the only barrier that is keeping us getting into flow?

Judson Brewer MD PhD, an addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Yale University outlines several common ways that we get in our own way. Using examples such as Lolo Jones tripping on a hurdle in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and smokers resisting their cravings, he describes how we can get caught up in thinking, as well as resisting our own body sensations as ways that we prevent ourselves from performing optimally, in whatever situation arises.

He details how his clinical research has found that techniques that help us get out of our own way, such as mindfulness training, can have large effects; for example, in a randomized controlled clinical trial for smoking cessation performed at the Yale University School of Medicine, Dr. Brewer's laboratory found that mindfulness training showed twice quit rates compared to the American Lung Association's Freedom From Smoking program.

He also describes the brain processes behind getting in our own way, which involve a network of brain regions dubbed the "default mode network" because of how often it gets activated --for example, when we are regretting something we did in the past or worry about something in the future.

Importantly, he details some of the neuroimaging research his laboratory at Yale University has performed using experienced meditators, and how he found that a key region of the default mode network, the posterior cingulate cortex, gets deactivated during meditation. This work suggests that the posterior cingulate cortex may be a key brain marker for both getting in our own way and stepping out.

He finishes by listing some simple ways that we can pay attention so we can get out of our own way in our everyday lives. He also unveils a new fMRI neurofeedback tool that can track and potentially augment training of this elusive flow state.

 

Life is a boundless sea of uncertainty

I've finished reading Steve Hagen's book, Buddhism Plain and Simple. As noted before, I found it much more agreeable than his previous book, Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense. 

Yes, Hagen's conclusion is the same in both books. It's just that I like how he got to that conclusion better in Buddhism Plain and Simple. 

Basically, Hagen takes the very Buddhist'y position that nothing stands by itself.

Everything is interrelated, interconnected, interwoven. So when we abstract out some particular thing -- like our own self -- if we see that thing as separate and distinct, naturally it won't make sense, because we fail to see the larger whole in which that thing is an integral aspect.

So what we are looking for isn't distant, supernatural, mystical, or to be sought for. It is right here, right now, directly in front of us. That's reality -- the MacBook Pro screen I'm looking at as I type these words, along with the sound of the dishwasher running that I can hear, and Hagen's book that is lying on the table next to my laptop.

When we drink in reality in a single big gulp, rather than a series of small conceptual sips, that's when we see things rightly. Zen 101. 

Here's some passages about concepts from Buddhism Plain and Simple. By and large, I agree with what Hagen is saying here. We need to hold concepts lightly, not clutch them tightly. If we're not changing our mind regularly, our mind is frozen, even though the world is an ever-flowing stream.

Hagen writes...

By their very nature, all our ideas and beliefs are frozen views -- fragments of Reality, separated from the Whole. In other words, because we rely on what we think (conception), rather than on what we see (perception), there's unrest in our mind. Underneath it all, we're uneasy -- and furthermore, we know it. 

The fact is, we are already enlightened, even now. We know Truth. We just habitually overlay our direct experience of Truth with thoughts -- with beliefs and opinions and ideas. We pile them all into our conceptual frame, not recognizing the consequences of what we're doing.

The problem is not so much that we do this. In fact, we can hardly help but conceptualize. I couldn't write this book, and you couldn't read it, if we didn't conceptualize. 

The real problem is that we are caught by our concepts. We don't have to grant them power or accuracy or validity that they don't have. We simply need to recognize that our concepts are not Reality.

The mistake we make, over and over again, is to automatically posit something in our thoughts, without realizing what we've done. And then we run away with our idea, thinking we've captured some aspect of Reality.

What we overlook is that underneath the ground of our beliefs, opinions, and concepts is a boundless sea of uncertainty. The concepts we cling to are like tiny boats tossed about in the middle of a vast ocean. We stand on our beliefs and ideas thinking they're solid, but in fact, they (and we) are on shifting seas.

Any ideas or beliefs we hold in our minds are necessarily set against other ideas and beliefs. Thus we cannot help but experience doubt.

...When buddhas conceptualize (and they do), they realize what they're doing and aren't taken in by it. After all, it's not conceptualization itself that's the problem, but getting caught up in it, mistaking our concepts for Reality. 

The awakened may have thoughts and concepts just like anyone else. The difference is that they're aware that what they actually see differs from what they think. 

The Buddha called this awareness right wisdom. 

...Relative truths are the concepts we use to get an easy handle on the world. They help us in our everyday lives with a huge variety of practical matters. But the more closely we look at them, the less Real they show themselves to be.

Nevertheless, relative truths aren't to be avoided. They're not necessarily evil, or harmful, or wrong. Indeed, they're essential. In order to get through the day, we need to know things -- telephone numbers, store hours, potatoes, growing seasons, fractions, love, speed limits, how to fasten shoes.

We get into trouble when we forget that all these things, thoughts, and feelings are relative -- that they are not Real, independent entities at all. They exist only in relation to other things, thoughts, and feelings.

...Ultimate Truth, on the other hand, is direct perception. And what is directly perceived (as opposed to conceived) is that no separate, individual things exist as such. There's nothing to be experienced but this seamless, thoroughgoing relativity and flux.

 

Repurpose your outmoded religious beliefs

When something has gotten worn out and doesn't work well for you anymore, it's natural to lean toward discarding it. But often it's possible to find another use for the item. 

For example, in my closet I've got a place where I keep my work-in-the-yard clothes -- old pants and t-shirts that I put on when I'm going to get dirty or sweaty. I didn't buy them for that purpose. They've just been repurposed from their original use.

Likewise, it makes sense to do this with outmoded religious beliefs. You've moved on from the dogmas that you used to embrace. Probably there's something about them you still enjoy, though. So adapt them to your new atheist, agnostic, or whatever frame of mind.

I thought of this yesterday when I was doing chores in our yard, trying to get as much of the grass mowed as possible before it started raining heavily. 

For 35 years I belonged to a guru-led religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that had its headquarters in India. Thus many of the central tenets of RSSB were expressed in Indian words. 

Like, seva. Which means selfless service.

Obviously this can be done by anyone, anytime, anywhere. We're seeing seva expressed wonderfully during the coronavirus crisis. Medical personnel, grocery clerks, cleaners, delivery truck drivers, and so many others are doing their jobs with steadfast dedication.

So it's ridiculous to view seva as something that one does for a religious leader or organization. However, that's how it was generally viewed by RSSB. People would travel to India or to RSSB centers in their country so they could perform selfless service. Which is totally unnecessary, of course, since there are plenty of opportunities for seva close to home.

Or, right at home. 

After I finished mowing, which took longer than usual because the light rain that had been falling, combined with tall lush grass, caused the discharge chute of my large walk-behind DR Field Mower (with lawnmower attachment) to keep clogging with wet clippings, I was ready to go inside and relax.

But then I realized that the lawn hadn't been edged for several weeks. And that the mower had left some pieces of mud and grass clumps in the carport as I was pushing it into the garage.

So I got out my battery-powered edger. Followed by my Stihl backpack blower. 

I knew that my wife, Laurel, enjoys seeing the edges of the lawn neat and clean. Probably more than I do, because Laurel does a lot of weed pulling, and that's more difficult when you can't see what's sprouting in the bark mulch that surrounds our lawn. And I also knew that if I left the clumps of dirt and grass in the carport, Laurel would get a broom and clean them up herself.

Doing those additional jobs, edging and blowing, felt good, even though I was tired and hungry. In fact, it felt exactly like the feeling I'd have when I was setting up chairs for the weekly meeting of our local RSSB group here in Salem, Oregon. 

I'd put extra effort into lining up the chairs just so, because I was imbued with the notion of seva, selfless service. That was a fine thing to do. What largely escaped me at the time, though, was something that now strikes me as obvious: as noted above, service to others can be done by anybody, anywhere, anytime.

During my religious believing years, though, I made the mistake of viewing seva on behalf of RSSB and the guru as somehow being more important than seva to my family, community, and others. 

Having seen the error of my ways, I've repurposed that word, seva, to encompass any and all forms of selfless service. Plus, I've pretty much discarded the "selfless" part. I really have no idea if my edging the grass and blowing off the carport was selfless or not. Since I got pleasure from imagining my wife feeling good about what I'd done, arguably I wasn't really selfless. 

But who is?

If Mother Teresa felt pleasure from serving the poor, does this take away from her "selfless service"? I don't think so. It would be crazy to think that we have to be miserable while serving others. If that makes us feel good, so much the better, because then we'll want to do more selfless service, more seva. 

Anyway, I could give more examples of how I'm repurposing outmoded concepts from my previous religious life. Another time, perhaps.