Church of the Churchless

Putin is an autocrat. So are many religious leaders.

Today Vladimir Putin, the autocrat who controls Russia with extremely little opposition or checks and balances, did what authoritarians like him do.

Act horribly.

In Putin's twisted psyche, he has the right to unilaterally declare that four regions of eastern Ukraine now are part of Russia, following sham referendums in those regions where soldiers knocked on doors and demanded that people vote yes or no on joining Russia.

Not surprisingly, the fake voting produced strong majorities in favor of becoming part of Russia. Now Putin can claim that if Ukraine attacks those regions, as it certainly will keep on doing, that's an attack on Russia.

So nuclear weapons could be used to defend the fictitious motherland. 

That's crazy. But few people in Russia will call out Putin's craziness, because he holds virtually all of the power in his country, having smashed dissent and a free press.

On the whole, I prefer religious authoritarians who preach their own brand of craziness, because they don't control nuclear weapons or command armies. At least, I hope they don't. If Iran or ISIS were to get a nuclear weapon, I'd be deeply worried at religious zealots being able to carry out their destructive fantasies. 

The appeal of autocrats is perplexing. 

Many gurus, for example, attract throngs of disciples who want to be told how to behave and what to believe. I guess not thinking for yourself is easier than being spiritually independent. I fell partly into this trap when I was a member of a guru-centered religious organization for 35 years.

However, I retained a healthy amount of skepticism even as I outwardly complied with various rules. And almost certainly a large proportion of the Russian population is skeptical about Putin's ability to rule their country.

Problem is, autocrats -- whether political or religious -- appeal to the darker side of human nature. They put forward a vision where following their dictatorial orders will lead to great rewards, material or spiritual. Reportedly Putin's speech was autocratic in both regards, political and religious.

Thankfully, Putin has few allies in the world. Even China and India are lukewarm toward his claim of eastern Ukraine now being part of Russia, though they do business with Putin in other regards.

I can only hope that autocrats have a steadily diminishing fan base.

Yes, it can be easier to follow an authoritarian than to chart your own course in life. But I've never regretted leaving behind the religious autocracy of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, led as it is by a guru whose utterances are viewed as divine commands.

One day, perhaps in the far future, Russia will become a democracy. I'm less confident that autocratic religious organizations will do the same, but it's certainly possible. 

A physicist demolishes the argument in favor of free will

Ian caused a tremendous amount of damage today. Countless cars were destroyed. Lots of homes and business were rendered unusable. Emergency 911 calls largely weren't responded to, because Ian created so much trouble over such a large area.

If Ian was a person, he'd be charged with innumerable crimes. But Ian was a massive Category 4 hurricane that struck Florida today, so there won't be any jail time for the perpetrator of all that havoc.

Watching cable news cover the hurricane, I was impressed (as I have been with previous hurricanes) with how accurately forecasters were able to predict the path Ian would take and how dangerous the storm would be: wind speed, rainfall amount, amount of storm surge, and so on.

Science makes this possible through computer models, weather satellites, storm-chasing airplanes filled with instruments, and other accomplishments of modern meteorology. But at the root of the capacity to predict what a hurricane will do, or what anything will do, is an understanding that reality is deterministic, governed by lawful causes and effects.

Ah, but most people believe humans have free will. (Not that they have any choice in this.)

One day, I'm confident, a belief in free will shall be viewed in much the same way as we regard a belief that the earth is flat. A product of ignorance that was disproven by science and now is held by just a few cranks.

In her book Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions, Sabine Hossenfelder tackles the question, "Has physics ruled out free will?" Short answer: yes. Here's passages from this chapter that provide a longer answer.

The major problem with discussions about free will is that philosophers have put forward a heap of definitions that have nothing to do with what nonphilosophers think free will means.

I am tempted to write "normal people" as opposed to "philosophers," but maybe that's a little uncharitable. And I don't want to be uncharitable. Certainly not.

For this reason, let me begin by stating the problem without using the term free will. The currently established laws of nature are deterministic with a random element from quantum mechanics. This means the future is fixed, except for occasional quantum events that we cannot influence.

Chaos theory changes nothing about this. Chaotic laws are still deterministic; they are just difficult to predict, because what happens depends very sensitively on the initial conditions (butterfly flaps and all that).

Our life is thus not, in Jorge Luis Borges's words, a "garden of forking paths" where each path corresponds to a possible future and it is up to us which path becomes reality. The laws of nature just don't work that way.

For the most part, there is really only one path, because quantum effects rarely manifest themselves macroscopically. What you do today follows from the state of the universe yesterday, which follows from the state of the universe last Wednesday, and so on, all the way back to the Big Bang.

...For your will to be free, it shouldn't be caused by anything else. But if it wasn't caused by anything -- if it's an "uncaused cause," as Friedrich Nietzsche put it -- then it wasn't caused by you, regardless of just what you mean by you.

As Nietzsche summed it up, it's "the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far." I'm with Nietzsche.

This is how I think about what's going on instead: our brains perform computations on input, following equations that act on an initial state. Whether these computations are algorithmic is an open question that we'll come to later, but there's no magic juice in our neocortex that puts us above the laws of nature.

All we're doing is evaluating what are the best decisions to make given the limited information we have.

A decision is the result of our evaluation; it does not require anything beyond the laws of nature. My phone makes decisions each time it calculates what notifications to put on the lock screen; clearly, making decisions does not necessitate free will.

...If free will doesn't make sense, why, then, do many people feel it describes how they go about their evaluations? Because we don't know the result of our thinking before we are done; otherwise, we wouldn't have to do the thinking.

As Ludwig Wittgenstein put it, "The freedom of the will consists in the fact that future actions cannot be known now." His Tractatus is now a century old, so it's not like this is breaking news.

...The easiest way to deal with it [incompatibility of free will and physics] is through dualism, according to which the mind has a nonphysical component. Using dualism, you can treat free will as an ascientific concept, a property of your soul, if you wish.

This will be compatible with physics as long as the nonphysical component does not interact with the physical one, because then it'd be in conflict with evidence -- it'd become physical. 

Because the physical part of our brain is demonstrably the thing we use to make decisions, I don't see what one gains from believing in a nonphysical free will, but then this isn't a new problem with dualism, and at least it isn't wrong.

Emotional highs and lows are a big part of our humanity

Last Saturday I watched a couple of college football games that put me through an emotional wringer.

I summarized those ups and downs in the first paragraph of a post I wrote on my HinesSight blog, "Pushing the pile" doomed Oregon State against USC.

While yesterday's Oregon vs. Washington State football game had an emotional arc for Ducks fans like me that went pre-game optimism - most of second half despair -- last few minutes elation (amazing comeback by Oregon), the Oregon State vs. USC game was pretty much the opposite.

In discussing the games with a friend the next day during our traditional Sunday coffee get-together, I tried to extract some philosophical wisdom from my football watching experience.

I told Jim that the reason I felt so happy when Oregon scored three touchdowns in about 2 1/2 minutes at the end of the game and ended up beating Washington State was that I'd felt so unhappy for most of the second half when it looked like defeat was heading Oregon's way.

Now, this is a pretty damn obvious observation. 

But it's easy to overlook for those -- me included -- who think at times that life should be unalloyed positivity, filled with love, happiness, truth, virtue, and other desirable qualities. 

As Taoism points out though, with Alan Watts popularizing the Taoist notion of yin and yang being inescapably interrelated, there's no up without down, no love without hate, no virtue without vice, and so on for any pair of seeming opposites.

Which aren't really opposites, because they're better thought of as being two sides of the same coin. 

That philosophical coin also has an edge, of course. Meaning, there's a neutral aspect to most qualities. However, I'm not attracted to that sort of blandness. Most people aren't. We want life to be vibrant, not blah.

When the Winter Olympics are on, occasionally I catch a glimpse of a curling competition. I don't understand the rules of curling. I don't care about curling. Even if an American team is being shown on TV, I have little interest in whether the team wins or loses.

So I watch curling with very little emotion. 

Yes, I'm calm and peaceful as I watch people sweep the ice after a teammate sets the stone (if that's what it's called) in motion. I'm also bored. I'd much prefer to be watching a football game where I do care which team wins or loses.

That caring produces good feelings when the team I want to have win, actually does. And it produces bad feelings when my favored team loses. But that's how emotions work. If you love somebody, it hurts when something bad happens to them.

Again, what I'm saying is obvious to most people.

The only way we can recognize a positive feeling is because it stands out from the background of a negative feeling. If I was happy from birth until death, there would be no way for me to grasp what happiness is, since I never would have experienced unhappiness. 

I'm bringing this up because some people do believe that a goal of spirituality is to be in a steady state of detached calm, no matter what happens in their life.

This sounds horrible to me. 

Finally, some news about the Singh Brothers/RSSB financial scandal

It's been quite a while since there's been any news about the financial scandal involving brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, their relative, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), and others connected with RSSB such as Sunil Godhwani. 

Here's screenshots of a story in The Times of India that was published yesterday. I'll comment on the story below.

It's difficult to understand why, exactly, the Singh brothers were jailed. In 2019 I wrote about how the Supreme Court had issued a contempt decree against them, but didn't enforce it. Here's part of what I said in that blog post.

Not being familiar with Indian legal language, which differs some from what's used here in the United States, I'm assuming that "reserved its order' means that for now Malvinder and Shivinder Singh aren't being served with a contempt of court order, even though they haven't paid the Rs 3,500 crore [$507 million] arbitration award to Daiichi Sankyo.

So it appears they're being given more time to come up with the money, though the story goes on to say that the Supreme Court justices weren't happy with the progress made by the Singh brothers on this front.

The "baba" who duped the Singh brothers, according to Malvinder Singh's attorney, is Gurinder Sigh Dhillon -- who allegedly siphoned off Rs 6,300 crore from companies once controlled by the brothers. That's $913 million.

It looks to me, from the last paragraph in the excerpt above, that Malvinder wanted the court to order the sale of properties owned by the Dhillon family (and maybe others also) that were bought via the siphoned/fraudulently-obtained Rs 6,300 crore worth of money.

But the court said, "No, you sell the properties on your own."

Much, if not most, of the above-mentioned money went into real estate investments made by the Dhillon family. Another Business Today story, "How Singh brothers got into trouble -- bit by bit," includes mentions of the RSSB guru and his role in the downfall of the Singh brothers business empire. Here's excerpts from the timeline.

It still appears that Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru, is responsible for financial fraud. At the moment Dhillon is akin to Donald Trump: people close to him have been indicted and jailed, while so far the guru hasn't been held to account.

But this situation could change, though I've heard that the legal system in India doesn't always hand out justice fairly or in a timely manner. (Same is true in the United States, but India reportedly is more prone to legal favoritism.)

In June 2019 the RSSB guru was among those ordered by the High Court of Delhi to repay money owed to the Singh brothers that could then be used by Malvinder and Shivinder to pay the award to Daiichi.

The guru and his family owed a lot, $842 million -- which is an outlandish amount of money for a guru who is considered to be God in Human Form and preaches about the need to make god-realization the top priority in life.

For other people, I guess. Gurinder Singh Dhillon seems to view making money through means fair or foul as his top priority. 

 

"Living as a River" is a great non-religious Buddhist book

A few days ago I was drawn to look over the Buddhism section of my bookcase to see if a title appealed to me as something to re-read.

One did. Bodhipaksa's Living as a River: Finding Fearlessness in the Face of Change. (The author was born as Graeme Stephen in Scotland before he took on a Buddhist name.)

After buying the book in 2011, I've written several blog posts about it.

Live as a river -- fluid, dynamic, interconnected
We have a conventional self, but not a soul-self

And I mentioned the book in Overcoming the fear of non-existence, where I tried to answer a question from a commenter, Chris, about how I've been doing in this regard.

Chris, if you haven't done this already, I encourage you to delve into what I look upon as "neuroscientific Buddhism." Or, "Buddhist neuroscience."

Namely, writers and researchers who are trying to make sense of the apparently solid fact that the self (or soul) doesn't exist as a separate, distinct, independent entity. Currently I'm reading, and enjoying, "Living as a River" -- a book I've blogged about recently.

I think the approach Bodhipaksa, the author, takes is right on for dealing with a fear of non-existence. HIs subtitle is fearlessness in the face of change. Well, what's a bigger change than death?

Fear, of anything, usually doesn't disappear suddenly.

The Six Element Practice described in "Living as a River" is traditional Buddhism, yet pleasingly updated with modern scientific insights and stripped of unnecessary religious dogma (such as rebirth).

Again, it seems to be that the best way to deal with a fear of not-existing is to undertand -- really understand, intutively, emotionally, in your gut -- that you have never existed as the self that is afraid of non-existence.

The Introduction is available to read at no charge. When I re-read the Introduction yesterday, I was much impressed by how clearly Bodhipaksa writes, with a pleasing focus on melding science and Buddhist philosophy.

His take on consciousness makes a lot of sense. 

Mentally, we are each "networked" to other minds through the action of mirror neurons, which allow us to share other people's experiences. You could not in fact have a conscious self, in the sense that you have one now, without having encountered other conscious selves.

Consciousness is something "caught." In fact, there's no such "thing" as consciousness. Consciousness is not an entity that sits within us, awaiting contact with the outside world; rather it's a series of activities that arise in dependence upon contact with the world.

The ultimate act of letting go is to abandon the delusion that consciousness and the world are separate things. The more we reflect, the more we can recognize that there is nothing permanent or separate in the body or mind that can constitute the very limited and limiting kind of self we commonly assume we have.

I also like how Bodhipaksa views the Buddha.

The Buddha wasn't a god, or a prophet, but an introspective philosopher who attempted to live a life of ethics and intellectual integrity, based as much as possible on truths discoverable by the unaided (although not untrained) mind.

Because the title "Buddha," which means "awakened one," can be a bit offputting for some people, for the purposes of this chapter I won't refer to him as "the Buddha," but by his family name, Gautama. Perhaps this may bring him down to earth and make him seem less of a "religious" figure.

Here's what makes something scientific or ascientific

Recently I was talking with someone about Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the India-based religious group centered on a guru that I was a member of for 35 years. 

I mentioned to this person that I'd always loved science, so one thing that attracted me to RSSB way back in 1970 was that it sometimes used Science of the Soul to describe itself. 

I liked the idea of a spiritual science. But back then I hadn't given a lot of thought to what makes something a science.

There's lots of different definitions. In her book, "Existential Physics," here's how Sabine Hossenfelder speaks about science and what she calls ascience or nonscience.

The distinction between scientific and nonscientific explanations is central to this book, so it deserves a closer look. Science is about finding useful descriptions of the world; by useful I mean they allow us to make predictions for new experiments, or they quantitatively explain already existing observations.

...The belief that an omniscient being called God made the chemical elements is not a good scientific theory. You might say it is in some sense a simple explanation, and maybe you find it compelling. However, the God hypothesis has no quantifiable explanatory power. You can't calculate anything from it. That doesn't make it wrong, but it does make it unscientific.

So while Science of the Soul sounds nice, my current conclusion is that it has nothing to do with science. After all, there's no evidence that soul even exists, much less that it is capable of revealing hitherto unknown knowledge about reality.

God is a belief. Soul is a belief. Returning to God via one's soul is a belief. These can be comforting beliefs, but if we're concerned about truth rather than mere comfort, it has to be admitted that those notions are thoroughly religious, not scientific. 

Which as Hossenfelder said, doesn't make them wrong. It is very difficult, maybe impossible, to prove conclusively that something doesn't exist. God and soul may exist. However, there is no demonstrable evidence that they do. 

Hence, God and soul are ascientific, which is pretty much the same as nonscientific. Atheism simply means not-theistic with the addition of a beginning "a." Same applies to ascientific.

Hossenfelder views theories about the multiverse (other universes that can't be observed) as ascientific even though many scientists speak and write about them a lot. She writes:

The scientific status of these multiverse ideas is thus the same as that of the many-worlds interpretation [of quantum mechanics]. Assuming the reality of something unobservable is unnecessary to describe what we observe. Hence, assuming that these other universes are real is ascientific. 

This isn't a particularly difficult argument, so I find it stunning that my physics colleagues can't seem to comprehend it.

...Well, as I have explained so often, this isn't about what I believe or not; it's about what we can know or not. I am saying that what's beyond what we can observe is purely a matter of belief. Science doesn't say anything about whether it exists or doesn't exist.

Hence, claiming it [the multiverse] exists is ascientific, and so is claiming it doesn't exist. If you want to talk about it, fine, but don't pretend it's science. At that point they're [her physics colleagues] usually either confused or offended or both.

...No one should be denigrated for what they believe in. If you want to believe in the existence of infinitely many universes with infinitely many copies of yourself, some of whom are immortal, that's fine with me. 

But please don't pretend it's science.

Now, I feel the same way about nonscientific religious beliefs, which I used to embrace. I realize how appealing those beliefs can be. They supported me for many years. I can't blame anyone for holding on to such beliefs. 

Life can be painful, difficult, scary, frustrating, sad. If an unscientific belief helps you get through life with more ease, great. Keep on believing if that works for you.

But as Hossenfelder says, please don't pretend that what you're doing is science, a reflection of what reality actually is like. Religious belief doesn't cause problems when the believer understands that what they have faith in is purely subjective with no clear connection to objective reality.

However, when religious belief is wrongly considered to be Truth From On High, that's when harmless belief turns into dangerous dogma.

I'm pretty sure Sam Harris' "pure awareness" doesn't exist

As much as I like Sam Harris' approach to meditation, which basically is Buddhism (Vipassana variety) minus the Buddhist part, I'm still left with a key question.

Which if asked of a Zen master likely would earn me a smack on my head or kick of my butt -- or more mildly, a quizzical look and an admonition to return to my meditation mat and seek more diligently for the true nature of my self.

That self, of course, doesn't really exist in Buddhism, nor in Sam Harris' guided meditations on his Waking Up app.

So whoever it is who has this question about meditation isn't an enduring standalone Soul or Self with a capital "S." That who is something else. Which means my question might be unanswerable, since an answer seemingly would have to come from an entity that doesn't exist.

Confusing? Absolutely. So let's leave those thoughts behind and focus on the question.

Who or what is aware of the contents of my consciousness?

Harris, echoing the Buddhist notion of emptiness, that everything in existence is dependent on causes and conditions existing in a vast web of interdependency, likes to say that everything in a human mind is a modification of consciousness.

This includes the idea, everything in a human mind is a modification of consciousness.

Or, the feeling of being a self that has such an idea. No matter where you turn in the mind, no matter what elevated sensation of this'ness or that'ness that makes you think, ah, unvarnished truth, it's all just a modification of consciousness in Harris' view.

OK.

This assumes a dualism that sort of bothers me, since we have (1) consciousness and (2) contents of consciousness, even though I'm not aware of ever being purely consciousness, and can't imagine what this would be like or how one would know they were pure consciousness since Harris says that consciousness isn't something we possess but what we are.

Nonetheless, in his Waking Up book Harris claims to have attained a state of pure consciousness without any content during a lengthy meditation retreat.

But his consciousness must at least have contained the sensation, or memory, or perception, or something that allowed him to conclude that he experienced consciousness without any content. In other words, at minimum Harris' consciousness must have included the content of I'm not experiencing any content.

Which returns me to my question.

I doubt there is such a thing as pure awareness, or pure consciousness. Anyone who claims to have experienced such a state, including Sam Harris, almost certainly is mistaking a feeling or thought of pure awareness for the actual thing. 

So my attitude is that one part of my conscious brain is aware of other parts of my conscious brain, which could include a sensation of Wow, I'm experiencing pure awareness! My meditation rocks!

This leaves mindfulness as an activity, or ability, to be aware of the contents of consciousness, with mindfulness being part of those contents. Thus Harris is on the right track when he says that mindfulness practice leads us to see that the contents of consciousness are constantly shifting and changing within our mind.

Where I disagree with him is his assumption that somehow we are clear pure consciousness. This is at odds with modern neuroscience, as I wrote about in Brain's "dark energy" casts doubt on pure awareness. 

I wrote about my problem with Harris' claim of pure awareness in this post. What I said in 2016 still makes sense to me now.

But as I said in the previous post, I can't grasp what Harris is getting at when he writes about what he experienced while meditating:

There were periods during which all thought subsided, and any sense of having a body disappeared. What remained was a blissful expanse of conscious peace that had no reference point in any of the usual sensory channels. 

Many scientists and philosophers believe that consciousness is always tied to one of the five senses -- and that the idea of a "pure consciousness" apart from seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching is a category error and a spiritual fantasy. I am confident that they are mistaken.

Hmmmm. I'm just as confident that they are not mistaken.  It seems obvious that everyday consciousness isn't limited to sense experiences. Dreaming is a conscious act. It doesn't involve seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching via the five senses. 

Likewise, I can believe that in a state of deep meditation, Sam Harris did indeed lose any sense of having a body, and wasn't thinking in any ordinary sense. But Harris was still conscious of something, right? He speaks of this as "a blissful expanse of conscious peace." 

That doesn't sound like "pure consciousness." It sounds like consciousness of a blissful expanse of conscious peace. No thought. No sensory impressions. But there were contents within Harris' consciousness: bliss, an expanse, peace.

Harris appears to view consciousness as something separate and distinct from what the brain does. Yet Harris makes clear that brains are us. For example:

We know, of course, that human minds are the product of human brains. There is simply no question that your ability to decode and understand this sentence depends upon neurophysiological events taking place inside your head at this moment. But most of this mental work occurs entirely in the dark, and it is a mystery why any part of the process should be attended by consciousness.

This passage makes good sense. Aside from the final part of the last sentence. 

Harris sees a mystery where there doesn't have to be one. He distinguishes between (1) brain processes and (2) consciousness. But if consciousness is a product of the human brain, not something separate and distinct from the brain, then consciousness is part of what the brain does.

Consciousness is a brain process.

Sam Harris and I make up. All is good between us now.

For those worried about my previous post where I expressed some criticism of Sam Harris' approach to meditation -- are Harris and Hines at risk at breaking up? -- I want to reassure all of you, who likely number in the low single digits, that our relationship is back on track now.

Well, more accurately, my relationship with Harris is back on track. Harris has no idea that I exist, which makes for a decidedly unbalanced relationship, since my contact with him is limited to his writings and some recordings by Harris on his Waking Up app. 

Regarding the app, a few days ago I decided to do the beginner's mind thing and re-listen to the Introductory Course in the Practice section of Waking Up. I'm even taking notes!

One reason I'm doing this is that I realized I was doing to Harris what I dislike when it's done to Democratic politicians like Joe Biden. Namely, expecting that I should agree with everything Harris says. 

This is like Democrats who say things like, "I can't support Biden any more because he gave in too much to Joe Manchin when negotiating the Inflation Reduction Act." OK, maybe that's true. But the act has lots of good things in it, and it's a heck of a lot better than what Trump or Republicans could come up with.

Likewise, I agree with Harris on most things he writes and talks about. I like his approach to meditation. I just don't go along with everything he says about meditation. But almost everything is pretty damn good, since sometimes I buy a book about meditation and disagree with lots in it.

Here's most of the notes I've taken while listening to the "Getting Started" section of the Introductory Course.

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

In mindfulness we observe the nature of our own mind. We train it. Usually we spend little time content in the present moment. Through meditation we discover a sense of freedom, learning to dissolve the apparent boundary between meditation and everyday life.

A simple meditation is to become aware of the sensation of breathing. Notice other sensations, then come back to the feeling of breathing. When thoughts arise, observe the thought, then return to your breathing.

Paying close attention to mind is transformative. It's like a telescope observing the sky of the mind.

The unexamined life is less interesting. We can want the wrong things. The quality of our life depends on the quality of our mind. Changing our mind often is better than changing the world. Cease producing needless suffering for yourself and others. We manufacture our emotions.

Mind, not circumstances, determines quality of life. Vipassana is a Buddhist term for insight meditation, or mindfulness. It's a passion for discerning what is real in experience. Meditation is the act of being less distracted, then we can discover truths about the mind.

There's nothing especially significant about paying attention to the breath. Eventually, we pay attention to all that arises in consciousness. No need to control breathing. Just observe it.

The only tool we have is mind. Every decision you make, every relationship with people, depends on mind. But typically we find that mind is totally out of control. Thinking is the main obstacle to attention. The goal is not to stop thoughts, but to recognize them as soon as they arise. Just observe and come back to the breath.

You will do less in meditation. Discover what life is like when not controlled by contents of mind/thought.

We view minds as distinct from bodies. We like people who lose 100 pounds and become a tri-athlete. Their results are obvious. However, it also is possible to change our mind. Growth is possible all through life. When do we learn to have better conversations with our self?

Meditation is an essential part of growth. Most chaos is born of minds being totally out of control. How long do you stay locked in the prison of emotions? Meditation helps you decide how long to be angry. A multi-front war is being waged for our attention. Just see how many are addicted to their smartphones.

We learn to begin again in each moment. There is clear noticing of the next thing in consciousness. Notice self-judgment. Observing frustration is just as good as observing the breath. Beginning again is the essence of forgiveness.

Restart the clock in the present moment. Exorcise the ghost of mediocrity lingering around by beginning again. Notice any present thought as an appearance in consciousness, then just begin again.

Sam Harris isn't crystal clear about meditation

A few days ago I shared some brief thoughts from Sam Harris on what makes life worth living. He ended with:

I don't think there's just one answer to this question. We might want to say that love is what makes life worth living, or doing meaningful and creative work, or appreciating the beauty of nature, or helping other people and making their lives better.

And I'd probably say all of these things. 

But all of these things have a common property. They all depend on real attention, real presence of mind, real connection with life in the present.

And that's what meditation is, whether most people know it or not. Meditation is the essence of everything else that makes life worth living.

Not surprisingly, I took those words to mean that meditation is about real attention, real presence of mind, real connection with life in the present.

But since those qualities can be had outside of meditation, it seemed to me that meditation is just one way of manifesting those qualities -- which Harris said above also can be had through love, meaningful work, the beauty of nature, and helping other people.

This morning I re-read the "Meditation" chapter in Harris' book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. I came away confused about what he means by meditation, a confusion that I've felt since the first time I read Waking Up in 2014. 

I included this quote in I've finished Sam Harris' "Waking Up." Guess I have, sort of.

The form of transcendence that appears to link directly to ethical behavior and human well-being is that which occurs in the midst of ordinary waking life... The freedom from self that is both the goal and foundation of spiritual life is coincident with normal perception and cognition -- though, as I have already said, this can be difficult to realize.

Here we see three things: (1) Transcendence can occur in ordinary waking life and also in meditation; (2) Freedom from a sense of self is what Harris sees as the goal of spiritual life and meditation; (3) Freedom from a sense of self can be difficult to realize.

Note that while Harris said "freedom from self," I changed that to "freedom from a sense of self," because Harris is clear that there is no enduring self in the human psyche, no supernatural soul, no ghost in the machine, as Arthur Koestler put it in his book.

Here's a quote from another post I wrote about Waking Up, "How Sam Harris views Dzogchen."

Nothing that a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu can experience -- self-transcending love, ecstasy, bliss, inner light -- constitutes evidence in support of their traditional beliefs, because their beliefs are logically incompatible with one another. A deeper principle must be at work.

That principle is the subject of this book. The feeling that we call "I" is an illusion. There is no discrete self or ego living like a Minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. And the feeling that there is -- the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes looking out at a world separate from yourself -- can be altered or entirely extinguished.

Although such experiences of "self-transcendence" are generally thought about in religious terms, there is nothing, in principle, irrational about them. From both a scientific and philosophical point of view, they represent a clearer understanding of the way things are.

Deepening that understanding, and repeatedly cutting through the illusion of the self, is what is meant by "spirituality" in the context of this book.

OK, I'm good with that. It's how we cut through the illusion of the self that I have questions about. The way I see it, there are lots of ways to diminish the feeling of being an "I" looking at a world separate from us.

This is how I put it back in 2014 in Questions I had in Sam Harris' "Waking Up" meditation chapter.

To me, this sense [of not being a separate self] is very common. Harris studied Dzogchen under various teachers to achieve the insight he describes. Other people experience it naturally in the course of everyday life.

It sounds virtually identical to "flow." That pleasant feeling when the thing you are doing isn't different from the doing itself. Athletes feel it. Dancers feel it. Musicians feel it. Thinkers lost in thought feel it. People having sex feel it.

For sure, I'm no enlightened being.

But often I feel little if any distance between what I'm experiencing and my experience of it. After I finish this post I'm going to return to reading an engrossing novel. Like an engrossing movie, I get absorbed in the fictional world and temporarily forget that it isn't real.

Well, actually it is real. For me. My mind makes it so. 

I think Harris makes this notion of selflessness more complicated than it needs to be. After all, since I agree with Harris (and Buddhism, and modern neuroscience) that we humans don't possess or are a self separate from the world and the goings-on of the human brain, there is no self to be gotten rid of, as is implied when people talk about losing the ego.

It's confusing that in his meditation chapter, Harris uses the analogy of looking through a window and seeing our own reflection in the glass. The way I see it, this would be a bad thing if the window is consciousness and the reflection is our sense of self. Aren't we supposed to be losing that sense? 

Yet Harris writes:

Of course, you could easily direct her attention to the surface of the window by touching the glass with your hand. This would be akin to the "pointing-out instruction of Dzogchen." However, here the analogy begins to break down. 

It is very difficult to imagine someone's not being able to see her reflection in a window even after years of looking -- but that is what happens when a person begins most forms of spiritual practice. 

Most techniques of meditation are, in essence, elaborate ways for looking through the window in the hope that if one only sees the world in greater detail, an image of one's true face will eventually appear. Imagine a teaching like this: If you just focus on the trees swaying outside the window without distracting, you will see your true face.

Undoubtedly, such an instruction would be an obstacle to seeing what otherwise be seen directly.

But there's nothing to see. The self doesn't exist. Harris is clear about this. His main approach in the guided meditations on his Waking Up app, which I've been listening to for several years, is to look for the self that is doing the looking. 

When you can't find it, that's what you're looking for: an absence, not a presence. So I favor more of a relaxed Taoist approach to meditation rather than Harris' rather serious Buddhist approach. There's no self to be found, so everywhere you look, you've succeeded in not finding it.

Congratulations! End of spiritual search!

Good video on "Does the past still exist?"

Today commenter Appreciative Reader clued me in to a video by physicist Sabine Hossenfelder about whether the past still exists. This is a fascinating topic that I wrote about recently since I'm reading Hossenfelder's book, Existential Physics.

Here's what Appreciative Reader had to say about the video, along with the video.

Just watched this Youtube video of Sabine Hossenfelder speaking about just this topic, about how and whether the past might exist per theoretical physics. (Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwzN5YwMzv0.) Short enough video, around 15 minutes. She speaks very well, and explains all of these complex concepts and ideas in an extremely clear and layman-friendly, jargon-free (and largely math-free) talk. Disclaimer, though: There's a commercial hook there, a two-minute or so plug at the end of the presentation for some course she's part of. But it isn't in the least obtrusive -- sitting as it does at the very end of the video -- and does not detract, in the least, from the rest of this excellent aimed-at-the-layman presentation. Apparently she’s got a few more videos out there, that can be explored with this one as the starting point. I’m looking forward to checking them out as well.

Sam Harris answers "What makes life worth living?"

I came across a tweet by Sam Harris that was a (mildly) animated GIF with Harris' narrated words scrolling at the bottom. 

He asks a good question. Whether you think his answer is New Age bullshit, ancient spiritual wisdom, or something in-between is another good question.

What makes life worth living? This is an important question, probably the most important question, because if we don't know, then we can't prioritize what we actually value.

We tend to live as if we've answered this question for ourselves. But most of the time we're just doing one thing after the next, following our desires, reacting to what happens out in the world.

And only rarely do we step back and ask what it is that actually matters.

I don't think there's just one answer to this question. We might want to say that love is what makes life worth living, or doing meaningful and creative work, or appreciating the beauty of nature, or helping other people and making their lives better.

And I'd probably say all of these things. 

But all of these things have a common property. They all depend on real attention, real presence of mind, real connection with life in the present.

And that's what meditation is, whether most people know it or not. Meditation is the essence of everything else that makes life worth living.

I agree that attention, presence of mind, and connection with the present moment are key to a satisfying life. But obviously there's a chicken-and-egg issue here.

It's much easier to have those qualities when we're engaged in an activity that demands them. Yet almost every activity is more satisfying when we pay close attention to it in the present moment. 

I scrolled through some of the comments on Harris' tweet. I liked this one: "people need to live their lives like they're climbing a 50,000 foot tall ladder. gotta pay attention to whats right in front of you, or you'll fall."

That fits with a comment by Tucson, a frequent commenter on this blog some years back, who said something along the same line.

Namely, that we should be as attentive to our life as if we were walking through a forest in the middle of the night that was inhabited by a dangerous wild animal that could kill us.

A more positive image would be that we're walking in the middle of the day along a busy city sidewalk filled with people, one of whom reportedly is hugely attractive and has expressed a romantic interest in us, but told us only "Watch for my sign that I'm the person you're looking for." 

In each of these scenarios -- and we could think of many more, such as a combat patrol that has penetrated into enemy territory -- it behooves us to pay rapt attention in the present moment and not be distracted by thoughts of the past or future.

But then there's always someone with a more down-to-earth approach to what makes life worth living, like whoever left this comment on Harris's tweet: "Range day. Smoked meats. Blowjobs. Sci-fi novels. Boobs. Cats!"

All it takes are particles to make a conscious being

Here's an excerpt from Sabine Hossenfelder's book, Existential Physics, that I liked a lot. In another post I'll share some subtleties about her emphasis on reductionism as being how the universe works.

Does it take anything more than particles to make a conscious being?

I have found that many people reflexively reject the possibility that human consciousness arises from interactions of the many particles in their brain. They seem wedded to the idea that somehow something must be different about consciousness.

And while the scientifically minded among them do not call it a soul, it is what they mean. They are looking for the mysterious, the unexplainable, the Extra that would make their existence special.

They find it inconceivable that their precious thoughts are "merely" consequences of a lot of particles doing whatever the laws of nature dictate. Certainly, they insist, consciousness must be more than this. 

In a 2019 survey, 75.8 percent of Americans subscribed to this idea of dualism -- that the human mind is more than a complicated biological machine. In Singapore, the percentage of dualists was even higher: 88.3 percent.

If you are among the dualist majority, we have to make a deal before we can move on. You put aside your belief that consciousness requires some Extra that physics doesn't account for and hear what I have to say. 

In return, I promise that if you, at the end of this book, still insist the human brain is exempt from the laws of nature, I'll let you get away with it. 

Having said that, as a particle physicist by training, I have to inform you that the whole is the sum of the parts, not more and not less. Countless experiments have confirmed for millennia that things are made of smaller things, and if you know what the small things do, then you can tell what the large things do.

There is not a single known exception to this rule. There is not even a consistent theory for such an exception.

Just as a country's history is a consequence of the behavior of its citizens and their interactions with the environment, so is the behavior of the citizens a consequence of the properties and interactions of the particles they are made of.

Both are hypotheses that have withstood any test they have been subjected to -- so far. As a scientist, I therefore accept them. I accept them not as ultimate truths, for they may one day be revised, but as best current knowledge.

A lot of people seem to think it is merely a philosophical stance that the behavior of a composite object (for example, you) is determined by the behavior of its constituents -- that is, subatomic particles. They call it reductionism or materialism or, sometimes, physicalism, as if giving it a name that ends in -ism will somehow make it disappear. 

But reductionism -- according to which the behavior of an object can be deduced from ("reduced to," as the philosophers would say) the properties, behavior, and interactions of the object's constituents -- is not a philosophy. It's one of the best established facts about nature.

Nevertheless, I am not a reductionist hard-liner. Our knowledge about the laws of nature is limited, much remains to be understood, and reductionism may fail in subtle ways I will discuss later. However, you have to learn the rules before you can break them.

And in science, our rules are based on facts. Fact is, we have never observed an object of many particles whose behavior falsified reductionism, though this could have happened countless times. 

We have never seen a molecule that didn't have the properties you'd expect, given what we know about the atoms it is made of. We have never encountered a drug that caused effects that its molecular composition would have ruled out. We have never produced a material whose behavior was in conflict with the physics of elementary particles.

If you say "holism," I hear "bullshit."

We certainly know of many things that we cannot currently predict, for our mathematical skills and computational tools are limited. The average human brain, for example, contains about a thousand trillion trillion atoms.

Even with today's most powerful supercomputers, no one can calculate just how all these atoms interact to create conscious thought. But we also have no reason to think it is not possible. For all we currently know, if we had a big enough computer, nothing would prevent us from simulating a brain atom by atom.

In contrast, assuming that composite systems -- brains, society, the universe as a whole -- display any kind of behavior that does not derive from the behavior of their constituents is unnecessary. No evidence calls for it.

It is as unnecessary as the hypothesis of God. Not wrong, but ascientific. 

The big problem with life is...life. So what to do?

Yesterday I wrote a post for my HinesSight blog about a stand-up comedian I like a lot, Taylor Tomlinson. The post started off with a bit of semi-tongue-in-cheek philosophizing.

My big problem with life is... (drumroll please)... LIFE. 

Meaning, insofar as I know what I mean, but now that I just wrote this blog's topic sentence, I'm stuck with explaining it, no matter how many problems get fixed in my life, new ones pop up like a perpetual motion machine designed by a sadist.

I suspect most people feel this way. So what are we to do? 

Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll only can take us so far, especially if we're (OK, me) so old, sex is starting to  look like the car that zipped by in the other lane and now is so small in the rearview mirror it's barely discernible; drugs are limited to marijuana because dealers of harder stuff are find to find when you're 73; and the last rock band truly worth listening to in your entirely personal opinion was Cream over fifty years ago.

Meditation? Yeah, I've been there and done that for a really long time.

The fact that I'm still as messed up in 2022 as I was in 1969 when I started to meditate every day tells me that based on that extensive flat trend line, the chance of me taking a sudden quantum leap to a blissful state of enlightenment is vanishingly small.

So I'm becoming increasingly convinced that television is the solution to my problems.

Well, maybe.

But even if television isn't the solution to my problems, the question still remains: if not television, then what else is the solution to my problems? Or your problems? Or the problems of anyone else in the world?

It seems virtually undeniable that no one's life is problem free. At least, anyone who is capable of recognizing problems. If someone lacks that capacity, then sure, they can be free of problems. For the rest of us, though, problems are always going to be a part of life.

As noted in last night's post, I've meditated every day for over 50 years. So if meditation was going to make me look at problems with a so what? eye because they couldn't interfere with my blissful state of elevated awareness, it sure seems like that would have happened by now.

Which assumes that bliss is a goal of meditation. I'd pretty much thought it was since my first days of yoga meditation during college. Back then, in 1969, I embraced the Indian notion of sat-chit-ananda, truth-consciousness-bliss, as a hallmark of meditation.

This morning, though, I listened to a guided meditation on Sam Harris' Waking Up app where he says that no state produced in meditation is worth much. I generally agree with his point, though naturally I prefer pleasant feelings to unpleasant feelings when I meditate.

But I readily admit that this preference could simply show that I'm missing what meditation is all about, at least according to Sam Harris, someone I respect a lot. Harris said: 

If at any point when you're practicing, you begin to feel especially calm, peaceful, even blissful, and you think, well, there it is, meditation's finally working, notice that inclination to grasp a transitory experience.

And, relinquish it.

There's no state you can produce that matters. If it arises, it will pass away. The goal here is to recognize that which doesn't arise and pass away: a condition of empty, open clarity that precedes and transcends every other experience.

And as a matter of experience you're not meditating on that. You are that. It is the light by which everything else is being seen. 

A physicist answers the question, does the past still exist?

Here's how theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder answered one of Life's Biggest Questions in her book, Existential Physics -- which I wrote about a few days ago.  

This is the brief answer to "Does the past still exist?" (At the end of each chapter, Hossenfelder gives a one paragraph summary of her take on the Big Question tackled in the chapter.)

According to the currently established laws of nature, the future, the present, and the past all exist in the same way. That's because, regardless of what you mean by exist, there is nothing in these laws that distinguishes one moment of time from any other. The past, therefore, exists in just the same way as the present. While the situation is not entirely settled, it seems that the laws of nature preserve information entirely, so all the details that make up you and the story of your grandmother's life are immortal.

Her answer is in accord with Einstein's conception of the space-time continuum, as laid out in his special theory of relativity. 

A hundred years' worth of observation have confirmed that time has the properties Einstein conjectured at the beginning of the twentieth century. According to Einstein, time is a dimension, and it joins with the three dimensions of space to one common entity: a four-dimensional space-time.

...You can advance this argument for any two events anywhere in the universe at any time and arrive at the same conclusion: the physics of Einstein's special relativity does not allow us to constrain existence to merely a moment that we call "now." Once you agree that anything exists now elsewhere, even though you see it only later, you are forced to accept that everything in the universe exists now.

This perplexing consequence of special relativity has been dubbed the block universe by physicists. In this block universe, the future, present, and past exist in the same way; it's just that we do not experience them the same way. And if all times exist similarly, then all our past selves -- and grandparents -- are alive the same way our present selves are.

They are all there, in our four-dimensional space-time, have always been there, and will always be there. To sum it up in the words of the British comedian John Lloyd, "Time is a bit like a landscape. Just because you're not in New York doesn't mean it's not there."

More than a century has passed since Einstein put forward his theories of special and general relativity. But here we are today, still struggling to understand what it really means. It sounds crazy, but the idea that the past and future exist in the same way as the present is compatible with all we currently know.

In the course of discussing how the measurement in quantum mechanics is an exception to time-reversibility (the evaporation of black holes is the other exception). Hossenfelder speaks about the role, or more accurately non-role, of consciousness in quantum measurement.

This was music to my scientifically-minded ears, since New Age types are notorious for exaggerating the role consciousness plays in creating reality through measurements of quantum phenomena.

"But what is a measurement?" you may ask. Yes, good question. This certainly bothered physicists a lot in the early days of quantum mechanics. By now this question has, luckily, largely been answered.

A measurement is any interaction that is sufficiently strong or frequent to destroy the quantum behavior of a system. Only what it takes to destroy quantum behavior can be (and, for many examples, has been) calculated.

Most important, these calculations show that a measurement in quantum mechanics does not require a conscious observer. In fact, it doesn't even require a measurement apparatus. Even tiny interactions with air molecules or light can destroy quantum effects so that we have to update the wave function.

...This is also why you shouldn't listen to anyone who claims that quantum leaps allow you to think your way out of illness or that you can improve your life by drawing energy from quantum fluctuations and so on. This isn't just off-the-mainstream science; it's incompatible with evidence. Under normal circumstances, quantum effects don't play a role beyond the size of molecules.

"Existential Physics" -- great title for a engrossing book

As soon as I saw the title of this book mentioned in a recent issue of New Scientist, I ran to my computer and ordered a copy of Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions from Amazon. 

As expected, I'm enjoying the book.

I've only read the Preface and initial chapter, "Does the Past Still Exist?", but that's enough to tell me that theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder is a gifted writer with a talent for explaining complex ideas so ordinary people can understand them.

She describes her approach in the Preface. I like how she views the relationship between physics and spirituality.

After all, I'm just a physicist. I'm not competent to speak about consciousness and human behavior and such. Nevertheless, the young man's question drove home to me that physicists do know some things, if not about consciousness itself, then about the physical laws that everything in the universe -- including you and I and your grandmother -- must respect.

Not all ideas about life and death and the origin of human existence are compatible with the foundations of physics. That's knowledge we should not hide in obscure journals using incomprehensible prose.

It's not just that this knowledge is worth sharing; keeping it to ourselves has consequences. If physicists don't step forward and explain what physics says about the human condition, others will jump at the opportunity and abuse our cryptic terminology for the promotion of pseudoscience.

It's not a coincidence that quantum entanglement and vacuum energy are go-to explanations of alternative healers, spiritual media, and snake oil sellers. Unless you have a PhD in physics, it's hard to tell our gobbledygook from any other.

However, my aim here is not merely to expose pseudoscience for what it is. I also want to convey that some spiritual ideas are perfectly compatible with modern physics, and others are, indeed, supported by it. 

And why not? That physics has something to say about our connection to the universe is not so surprising. Science and religion have the same roots, and still today they tackle some of the same questions: Where do we come from? Where do we go to? How much can we know?

When it comes to these questions, physicists have learned a lot in the past century. Their progress makes clear that the limits of science are not fixed; they move as we learn more about the world. Correspondingly, some belief-based explanations that once aided sense-making and gave comfort we now know to be just wrong.

The idea, for example, that certain objects are alive because they are endowed with a special substance (Henri Bergson's "elan vital") was entirely compatible with scientific fact two hundred years ago. But it no longer is.

In the foundations of physics today, we deal with the laws of nature that operate on the most fundamental level. Here, too, the knowledge we gained in the past hundred years is now replacing old, belief-based explanations.

One of these old explanations is the idea that consciousness requires something more than the interaction of many particles, some sort of magic fairy dust, basically, that endows certain objects with special properties. Like the elan vital, this is an outdated and useless idea that explains nothing.

I'll be sharing Hossenfelder's conclusions about the big questions in future blog posts. To whet your appetite for them, here's the preview she shared in her Preface.

I will get to this [whether consciousness needs something besides particles] in chapter 4, and in chapter 6 I'll discuss the consequences this has for the existence of free will. Another idea ready for retirement is the belief that our universe is especially suited to the presence of life, the focus of chapter 7. 

However, demarcating the current limits of science doesn't only destroy illusions; it also helps us recognize which beliefs are still compatible with scientific fact. Such beliefs should maybe not be called unscientific but rather ascientific as Tim Palmer (whom we'll meet later) aptly remarked: science says nothing about them.

One such belief is the origin of our universe. Not only can we not currently explain it, but also it is questionable whether we will ever be able to explain it. It may be one of the ways that science is fundamentally limited. At least that's what I currently believe.

The idea that the universe itself is conscious, I have found to my surprise, is difficult to rule out entirely (chapter 8). And the jury is still out on whether or not human behavior is predictable (chapter 9).

How the RSSB teachings preserve the illusion of a "perfect master"

Religions evolve in accord with a sort of cultural natural selection.

If a religion is obviously false, not being able to back up its claims with demonstrable evidence even though that evidence supposedly is there for all to see, then it won't take long for people to reject the religion and it dies out.

So many religions rely on a claim that only after a believer dies are they able to know the truth of the faith that they followed while alive. That's an easy way out of the "where's the evidence?" problem.

But what's a religion to do when the divine being at the core of the faith is a human who looks just like everybody else, yet is believed to be God in Human Form possessing all of the powers of the Almighty? How does the religion reconcile the human's outward averageness with their supposed inward godliness?

Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) is an India-based religion led by a guru who is considered to be just that: God in Human Form. I was an active member of RSSB for 35 years, so I'm familiar with the techniques this religion uses to deflect pointed questions about the guru's divinity.

Here's some examples that I've taken from a book published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas, "Philosophy of the Masters (Abridged)" by Sawan Singh -- the RSSB guru from 1903-1948 who often is called the Great Master. So what he says has a lot of RSSB credibility.

My comments on the excerpts from the book (pp. 221-233) are in italics. 

To know a Master or to understand His real significance or reality is, in fact very difficult. To do this, discerning eyes like His own are necessary. Only a Godman can know a Godman. How can a person, who is confined in the case of the body, realize the Lord's glory? Unless we are as great as he is, we cannot understand Him.

OK. But the guru has, or is, a body just like everyone else. So how is someone able to know that the RSSB guru is God inside while being human outside? There's no way to know, it appears, unless someone becomes God in Human Form just as the guru is supposed to be. Nice way of making sure that no ordinary mortal challenges the divinity of the guru.

Unless the Lord or the True Being is Himself kind to a person, that person will not recognize the Guru as Guru. Unless the perfect Master, who is Truth incarnate, reveals himself, one cannot recognize him. Even if the Master should live next door, an undeveloped person would not know him. Very often, the members of a perfect Master's own family fail to recognize his stature.

Here too, we see that the RSSB teachings claim that no one can tell that the guru is perfect, Truth incarnate, unless the guru chooses to reveal himself. If that doesn't happen, the guru appears like an ordinary person, even to members of his own family. Again, this serves to deflect doubts about the guru's godliness, since if you have doubts, it's because the guru hasn't been kind to you.

A perfect Master can, with a single glance, find out one's inner condition. He then instructs us according to our condition. When anyone visits him he can see the visitor's inner condition as if that person were encased in transparent glass, but he keeps it a secret.

Ah, so the RSSB guru supposedly is all-knowing as regards a visitor's inner condition, yet doesn't reveal what he knows. Kind of like a magician who says, "I could show you this amazing trick, but I'm not going to, so you'll have to believe that I'm doing it even though there's no sign I'm doing it."

The perfect Master in an incarnation of the Lord. Just as the Lord communicates His teachings to the Saints without the agency of speech, similarly, the Saints impart their message to their disciples by means of internal experiences, and without the use of speech.

So the RSSB guru appears like an ordinary person to everyone who he chooses not to reveal his godly nature to, and the guru also teaches his disciples internally without the use of speech. Pretty crafty. Easy to understand why so many look upon the guru as a normal human being.

With perfect Masters it often happens that seekers after Truth have no need to put questions during discourses. They get answers to their questions without asking them.

Wow, it gets even better. Not only are the answers given by the guru communicated without speech, so are the questions. This means that when the guru is just sitting with disciples, wordlessly doing nothing. that's when everything is going on. If you're gullible enough to believe that.

Despite the fact that he is all-powerful, he does not boast that he can do anything out of the ordinary. He always says that it is the Lord who does something, or that it is being done by his Sat Guru. Truly, a fruit-laden branch bends humbly.

Thus it doesn't go any good to ask the guru if he is God in Human Form, because he won't admit that he is anything but ordinary. Yet as we've seen, if the guru appears ordinary, RSSB teaches that this is because the guru hasn't deigned to be kind to the person who sees him that way. 

He does not perform miracles like a juggler to please his audience. Although he is all-powerful, he keeps his powers hidden. But he does sometimes use them if he is so disposed. His disciples are always benefitted by his grace.

Hmmmm. The RSSB guru doesn't perform miracles to please an audience, so that's why no one sees him doing miraculous things. However, sometimes the guru does do miracles to please himself. So the RSSB teachings have it both ways: if you don't observe any miracles, that's what the guru wants; if you do observe a purported miracle, that's also what the guru wants.

Whenever Saints and holy men appear, they sometimes create an atmosphere which is not liked by the worldly-minded people. They do so, so that the slaves of the world and worshippers of mammon, who often gather round them like flies, may leave them, and the real seekers may not suffer. They intentionally provide some cause for criticism so that only the deserving will come to them.

This is probably my favorite RSSB ploy to prop up faith in the guru's Godman stature, no matter what the guru does. If the guru appears to act badly, as the current RSSB guru (Gurinder Singh Dhillon) has done, this is because he wants to make sure only the deserving will come to him and stick by him. And of course, if the guru acts in a good way, this shows his divinity. So whether the guru is bad or good, this shows he is a perfect Master. 

Reminds me a lot of how Donald Trump's devotees view their political master. He can do no wrong, because even when he seems to do wrong, there's a good reason for his actions.