Church of the Churchless

Reality -- a horrible thing to waste (but Trump does)

Yesterday I wrote about Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis over on my Salem Political Snark blog in "Reality is the big winner in Trump's COVID-19 infection." Here's the most philosophical part of the post.

Being as deeply philosophical as I am deeply political, I now want to broaden my take on the meaning of Trump coming down with COVID-19. It's a big win for reality!

Not that reality needs any help. Reality always comes out on top in the end, because, well, reality is the only thing that is truly real. 

A short blog post isn't the place to discuss what I mean by "truly" and "real." So here's my brief take on those words. Everything that exists is real, or it wouldn't exist. Thus dreams are real, as are hallucinations. Fantasies are real, as are lies. Those things exist, but not truly.

To exist truly, something has to posses a certain substance and objective nature. As I said in "The best one-sentence metaphysics ever written," I love Phillip K. Dick's definition of reality.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

Donald Trump didn't believe in the seriousness of the coronavirus. He thought it would go away when the United States had just 15 cases. He thought it would go away in warmer weather. He thought this country had turned the corner on the pandemic. Those beliefs, and many more, were spectacularly wrong. 

No matter. Whatever Trump or anyone else believes about COVID-19 has no bearing on the coronavirus. It just keeps on doing what viruses are so good at: spreading. We humans have learned a lot about how to slow or stop that spread. Those measures work whether or not anyone believes in them.

Trump and others in his administration have a strong bias against reality. They believe that if a lie is repeated often enough and strongly enough, many people will believe it. Sadly, this is true. But I'm optimistic that most people won't.

Presidential election polling bears this out.

More Americans favor Biden than Trump. Biden has a vastly stronger truthfulness rating on PolitiFact than Trump does. Biden accepts the science of global warming; Trump doesn't. And Biden has been following public health guidelines in his campaigning, including wearing a mask, while Trump hasn't. 

Now Trump has COVID-19. He's been admitted to the Walter Reed Medical Center. He faces a potentially lengthy recovery period, though there is a chance that even at the age of 74 and with underlying conditions such as obesity, Trump will get well fairly quickly. Time will tell. 

What won't change with time is the primacy of reality. It always wins out in the end. Always. 

So it's fitting that in the month before the election where, hopefully, Trump is tossed out of office by voters, the Liar-in-Chief is suffering from the disease that he has been downplaying for many months. To adapt a familiar phrase, the wheels of reality turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine. 

Religions also have a shaky relationship with reality.

They love to talk about things for which there is no demonstrable proof of their existence. God. Heaven. Soul. Spirit. Devil. Afterlife. Angels. Etc. Etc. And they are reluctant to talk about things that clearly exist, such as evolution and the Big Bang.

In my morning reading today I came across some mentions of reality. I'll share those also. Here's passages from Steve Hagen's, "Buddhism Plain and Simple," one of my favorite books. 

The buddha-dharma is grounded in Reality. It is not pie in the sky, or wishful thinking, or a denial of what human life is. There's no attempt to cover up, to gloss over, to reinterpret the facts.

...You are already in reality, whether you see it or not. Reality is what's here, now. Thus you're here now, too. You know all this already, from direct experience. You're not separated from Reality. It's not "out there" somewhere, but right here.

And here's a passage from Sam Harris' fascinating book, "Making Sense: Conversations on Consciousness, Morality, and the Future of Humanity." Harris says:

One difference between religious dogmatism and scientific curiosity is the boundedness of the worldview that results and one's consequent tolerance of ambiguity and complexity. 

For a dogmatist, the final answers are already given. Reality can't be more complex than what's spelled out in his favorite book. 

But for a scientist, or for any truly curious person, the investigation of reality is open-ended. Who knows what we will learn in the future, and who knows how it may supersede our current understanding?

It feels good to be getting back into yoga

When I was about 20 or 21, I was a yoga dude. My college girlfriend and I had been studying yoga and meditation with (in retrospect) a crazed Greek teacher who managed to cobble together a blend of Eastern religion, yoga, and Christianity.

We used to drive around with him in a VW van with Christananda Ashram on the side. Yeah, it was weird, but this was 1969 and 1970, when weirdness permeated the San Francisco Bay Area, where we attended San Jose State College. 

Here's a photo of me from my yoga days. I got pretty damn good at Hatha Yoga postures. Meditation, maybe not so much. But I became one of Yogiraj's lead students, until the weirdness went over the top in a dramatic health food store confrontation.

At any rate, I never forgot some of the many yoga postures that I learned back then. For many years I practiced a short yoga routine that I did at our athletic club after doing aerobic stuff, lifting weights, and some Tai Chi.

But in February of 2020 I developed a pretty serious sciatica problem in my right leg. An X-ray showed that my lower back just showed normal wear and tear for a 71-year-old. So the cause of the leg pain remains a mystery. 

l'm much better now, thankfully. I've been doing physical therapy exercises every day, walking two miles up and down hills every day, and using home exercise equipment for strength building every day. Still...

When I realized a few weeks ago that I hadn't done my yoga routine for a long time, I got out my mat and gave it a try. Wow. I wasn't nearly as flexible as I was six months ago. Not a huge surprise, but it still shocked me -- since I'd been exercising so much and doing other kinds of stretches.

So I started doing my yoga routine every day also.

I'm already seeing some improvement, flexibility-wise. And it feels good to be doing the yoga moves. Wanting to broaden my repertoire, I downloaded several yoga apps for the iPhone. They were OK. I can see how many people would benefit from them. However, I concluded that I'd rather get back into yoga on my own, choosing my own postures, and doing them at my own speed.

That led me to buy the Yoga Bible.

It's got over 1,200 mostly positive reviews on Amazon. I took the advice of many reviews and had the book spiral bound at the FedEx copy center in Salem. That allows the pages to fold flat, making it much easier to follow directions while laying on my mat or standing up (the book stands up nicely also, after being spiral bound).

There's a nice overview of what yoga is all about in an introductory section. Here's some excerpts. I hadn't thought before that the body always is in the present moment, but this does make sense. 

Yoga is actually a state of mind. Achieving the goal of stilling the mind is a tall order, so practices have been developed that allow you to move toward this state. Quieting the mind is a rather intangible goal.

In contrast, the progress made on accomplishing a yoga posture can be evaluated by alignment, length of stretch, and the length of time it can be held. It's much easier for you to relate to something tangible -- the body -- and then move on to something intangible -- the stillness of the mind.

During yoga practice, you begin somewhere known and, using your body and breath, you move toward an unknown. As you open your body and mind with yoga postures and breathing, you become receptive to the delightful and profound experience of inner stillness.

While the human mind tends to drift off into thoughts of the past or future, the human body exists only in the present moment. Hatha yoga, a type of yoga that emphasizes strenuous and persistent effort, encourages awareness of the body.

Coming back to your body draws your mind back to the present. Then, worries drop away and there are no more "shoulds" or "musts." One of the reasons yoga is so refreshing is that, even if only for an instant, there is only the reality of the present moment. Each time you come to the present moment, you drop a certain amount of baggage.

You may pick it up again shortly thereafter, but the point is that you have practiced letting it go. Eventually you will be able to reduce the stress more often and for longer periods of time. 

In this respect, yoga is like life training. Its practice is a fabulous tool for transformation. 

...However, yoga may be anything that gives you a sense of unity, helps you better connect with yourself, and helps you remember who you are. It might be a walk along the beach, a luxurious yawn, or simply taking a single conscious breath.

Any practice that helps you center yourself is important. When you operate from a space that is close to your center, it is easier to be calmer and more focused. Being off balance is a huge source of stress.

When things go wrong when you are already off balance, it is like swimming against a strong tide. The farther out you are, the harder it is to swim to shore. 

Yet, distractions and sensory stimulation often cause you to look outward rather than gazing inward. The real challenge in life is to manage to stay "with" yourself while at the same time interacting with others; to respond appropriately to people and events while maintaining a sense of connection to yourself.

What is the problem religions are trying to solve?

One of the reasons I'm now an atheist after having embraced an Eastern form of religion for 35 years is that it eventually dawned on me that religions are trying to solve problems that don't really exist. 

This isn't the case with other cultural institutions. 

For example, health care agencies try to solve the problem of people getting sick. Environmental groups try to solve the problem of pollution. Educational advocates try to solve the problem of helping children learn.

It's possible to disagree with how these problems are being addressed, but not with the fact that these are real problems. By contrast, Christianity, along with other religions, sees a big problem with sin. Which raises the question, what are they talking about?

"Sin" is a concept. It isn't something real in the same way sickness, pollution, and a lack of learning are. It's an idea that sprang from the minds of humans. "God" is another concept that doesn't refer to anything real. It's another idea that sprang from the minds of humans.

Put those two concepts together, "sin" and "God," and you've got the makings of a religion -- Christianity. 

Most religious people, though, fail to realize how thoroughly they've bought into the concepts of their faith. So thoroughly, they never question the reality of those concepts. 

Notions like God, heaven, sin, karma, soul, spirit, and such are discussed as if they possessed the same reality as trees, air, sunlight, water, dogs, and other entities that clearly exist.

So my advice to religious believers is this.

Think clearly about what problem, or problems, your chosen faith is trying to solve. If all you can come with is a self-referential statement like "The Bible says humans have original sin that only Jesus can forgive," then you've embraced a bunch of concepts that have no grounding in reality.

An exception is Buddhism, which is why Buddhism often isn't considered a religion, but a way of living. 

Buddhism says that life is suffering. That's appealingly concrete. We know that life exists. We also know that suffering exists. Finding a way to deal with the problem of suffering is the foundation of Buddhism.

Somewhat similarly, my take on Taoism is that the problem it addresses is how to live in a flowing fashion, not being bound by rigid rules or attitudes.

"Flow" is a bit more conceptual than "suffering," but having been an avid student of Tai Chi for sixteen years -- Tai Chi being a physical expression of Taoist principles -- I can confidently say that flow is something that can be observed by others and felt by oneself.

Contrast that with the central concept of the Eastern religion that I belonged to for three and half decades: God-realization under the guidance of a Perfect Living Master. There's no evidence that God exists, so no evidence that God-realization exists.

Likewise, there's no evidence that a Perfect Living Master (or guru) exists. As I've observed before, if you stuck a supposed Perfect Living Master in with a bunch of other people and asked someone to pick out the perfect master/guru, there would be no way they could do this, because there is no concrete reality underlying the abstract concept of "perfect living master."

A recent issue of New Scientist has a column by Graham Lawton called "The war against reality." It deals with the thoroughly absurd notions promulgated by those who embrace QAnon. As Lawton writes:

To cut a long story short, QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory that contends the world is run by satan-worshipping paedophiles who traffic children for sex and for a life-extending compound that is extracted from their adrenal glands. 

It is named after a shady character called Q, who posts "inside information" on internet message boards. While it is all total and utter nonsense, two US presidents loom large in the QAnon narrative: Obama as one of the controlling elites and Trump as Q himself or the leader of the fight against the elites and the "deep state", a shadowy organisation that really runs the US.

Totally crazy, right? There's no evidence of what QAnon believes in. Yet a disturbingly large number of people think QAnon speaks the truth. Likewise, there's no evidence of what religions believe in, yet billions of people are religious.

Here'a another quote from Lawton's column that is a great summary of what turns me off about religion.

On a good day, I think of QAnon as a fascinating case study of human psychology and behaviour, laying bare how far from reality our minds can stray, how social forces can drag people into parallel universes and how we can sustain beliefs in the face of what is irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

Get off the satisfaction treadmill where you always want more

I've got several stacks of books in my office that I've read, found interesting, but haven't yet written a blog post about. So I'm going to make a start on them by picking the one on top, "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" by William B. Irvine. 

Well, I decided to check and see whether I'd written about Irvine's book and it turns out that I had last June, in Past and present are outside our control. So here's my second post about the book.

Irvine, a philosophy professor, wants to make Stoicism relevant to us in the 21st century. He succeeds in that, offering up a bunch of tips about how to live life in a Stoic fashion.

Which definitely doesn't mean unhappily, or with a suck-it-up attitude -- the usual way "Stoic" is viewed by people who know just a little about Stoicism. That's why Irvine made his subtitle The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. Stoics don't want to be, well, stoic. At least not in the usual sense of that term. They want to be happy, to be joyful. 

Here's some passages that illustrate the Stoic approach to happiness.

We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.

The psychologists Shane Frederick and George Lowenstein have studied this phenomenon and given it a name: hedonic adaptation. To illustrate the adaptation process, they point to studies of lottery winners. Winning a lottery typically allows someone to live the life of his dreams.

It turns out, though, that after an initial period of exhilaration, lottery winners end up about as happy as they previously were. They start taking their new Ferrari and mansion for granted, the way they previously took their rusted-out pickup and cramped apartment for granted..

...As a result of the adaptation process, people find themselves on a satisfaction treadmill. 

They are unhappy when they detect an unfulfilled desire within them. They work hard to fulfill this desire, in the belief that on fulfilling it, they will gain satisfaction. The problem, though, is that once they fulfill a desire for something, they adapt to its presence in their life and as a results stop desiring it -- or at any rate, don't find it as desirable as they once did.

They end up just as dissatisfied as they were before fulfilling the desire.

One key to happiness, then, is to forestall the adaptation process. We need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted, once we get them, the things we worked so hard to get. 

And because we have probably failed to take such steps in the past, there are doubtless many things in our life to which we have adapted, things that we once dreamed of having but that we now take for granted, including, perhaps, our spouse, our children, our house, our car, and our job. 

This means that besides finding a way to forestall the adaptation process, we need to find a way to reverse it.

In other words, we need a technique for creating in ourselves a desire for the things we already have. Around the world and throughout the millennia, those who have thought carefully about the workings of desire have recognized this -- that the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.

This advice is easy to state and is doubtless true; the trick is in putting it into practice in our life. How, after all, can we convince ourselves to want the things we already have?

The Stoics thought they had an answer to this question.

They recommended that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value -- that our wife has left us, our car was stolen, or we lost our job. Doing this, the Stoics thought, will make us value our wife, our car, and our job more than we otherwise would. This technique -- let us refer to it as negative visualization -- was employed by the Stoics at least as far back as Chrysippus. 

It is, I think the single most valuable technique in the Stoics' psychological tool kit.

...But what about those individuals who clearly aren't living the dream? What about a homeless person, for example? The important thing to realize is that Stoicism is by no means a rich person's philosophy.

...Consider the person who has been reduced to possession of only a loincloth. His circumstances could be worse: He could lose the loincloth. He would do well, say the Stoics, to reflect on this possibility. Suppose, then, he loses the loincloth. As long as he retains his health, his circumstances could again be worse -- a point worth considering.

And if his health deteriorates? He can be thankful that he is still alive.

It is hard to imagine a person who could not somehow be worse off. It is therefore hard to imagine a person who could not benefit from the practice of negative visualization. The claim is not that practicing it will make life as enjoyable for those who have nothing as it is for those who have much. 

The claim is merely that the practice of negative visualization -- and more generally the adoption of Stoicism -- can take some of the sting out of having nothing and thereby make those who have nothing less miserable than they would otherwise be.

This fits with the many stories I've seen on our local TV news about people who lost their homes in the recent devastating wildfires here in Oregon. When interviewed, typically they say how sad it was to have their beloved house destroyed. However, they usually add something like, "But we're alive. We have each other. And the help we've gotten from total strangers has been so wonderful."

So they envisioned an even worse thing than having their house burnt down -- having a loved one die, or themselves die. That took some of the sting out of their tragedy. 

On a smaller scale, I felt something similar in the days after we lost power during the high winds that caused the wildfires to spread so rapidly. Living out in the country, surrounded by large firs and oaks, along with a lot of brush, I was happy that our neighborhood didn't have a fire. 

A few days ago I got up on our roof and removed leaves and other debris from our gutters with a backpack blower. It isn't a fun job, being somewhat dangerous. But I enjoyed it more than usual because I'd spent so much time wondering  if our house might burn down, as hundreds did throughout Oregon.

Negative visualization does seem to work.

An ordinary life is all I need. Being religiously special, no thanks.

There are various reasons why I'm happier after ditching religion some fifteen years ago. Feeling ordinary is one reason. I get a lot of satisfaction from no longer believing that I'm on a special path that leads back to God.

Of course, virtually every religion believes that same thing. 

So religious people are like the children in Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon. Everybody is above average. Or at least that's what those who embrace religion think.

Supposedly they've been singled out for special treatment by God, Jesus, a guru, good karma, whatever. So the pressure is on to live up to a belief that they're destined to enjoy a life, and/or an afterlife, in a fashion denied to ordinary people.

This leads to constant questioning by the Chosen Ones.

Am I falling short from what is expected of me by the divinity I believe in? Is there more I can do to live up to the moral standards, or commandments, of my faith? What worldly desires stand between me and the exalted spirituality I aspire to?

By contrast, us ordinary people are content with living an ordinary life in ordinary ways. 

We don't agonize about whether we're doing God's will because we don't believe in God. We don't worry about what will happen to us after we die because we don't believe in an afterlife. We don't worry about meeting a divine moral standard because we don't believe in divinity.

Sometimes I'm struck by an overwhelming sensation of gratitude for having found the freedom to simply be who I am, where I am, how I am.

I feel deeply happy to have been deconverted from religious fantasies. No longer do I consider that there is a gap between what I should become and the reality of my present state of being.

Sure, I still have goals. I still worry about this and that. (Such as whether Biden will defeat Trump this November.) My mood goes up and down. 

But all of this takes place against a backdrop of an ordinary life. I feel a stronger kinship with other people, because I no longer identify with a religion that taught its devotees to feel special, being on a path to God-realization denied to others. 

I understand the appeal of feeling special. All I'm suggesting is that feeling ordinary is a wiser way to live.

 

There is nothing but now -- no past, no future

"Live in the now."

That is an utterly meaningless statement. It's akin to saying, "Exist in existence." Well, yeah. As if we had a choice. There's no place to exist but in existence. 

Where else are I supposed to exist? Non-existence? That'd be impossible.

Equally impossible is for anything, naturally including we humans, to exist anywhere but in the present -- now. So save your money on books that claim to teach you how to live in the now.

You're already expert at this. There's no place to be except now.

But what about thoughts of the past and future? Those are taking place now. Do you really believe that you can time travel into the past or future? I hope not. There is no evidence that this is possible. 

So if you consider that you can exist in the past or future, you're deluded. 

Ah, but what about the Theory of Relativity? People or clocks traveling at different speeds experience time differently. And light doesn't experience time at all.

(Leaving aside the fact that almost certainly, light lacks the ability to experience anything.)

Doesn't matter. Someone traveling at a speed that approaches 186,000 miles per second, light-speed, still would be having that experience now, not in the past or future. 

Yes, conscious beings in the space-time continuum can disagree about the order in which things happen. Past can be future, or the future can be past, depending on one's perspective according to the Theory of Relativity.

Still, my argument is that these perspectives are still occurring now, in the present moment experience of each observer.

Given my affection for mindfulness practices, I do consider that generally speaking it is good for us to be attending to what is physically present now, as opposed to thoughts of the past or future that are occurring now.

It's all now. We have no choice about that. But we can choose whether to be present to the world outside of us now, or present to the world within us now. 

True, in one sense everything is within us, since conscious awareness resides in the brain, and the brain is inside our head.

What I'm talking about is what the focus of our consciousness is -- the present moment of the physical reality that surrounds us, or the present moment of our thoughts, emotions, and such.

So enjoy the fact that you already possess the power of now, the title of an Eckhart Tolle book. And you didn't have to pay any money to Amazon, or another bookstore, to enjoy this power.

Failure can be fabulous. Perfectionism can be pitiful.

Most of us have experienced a lot of failures. Probably we feel bad about those. Most of us have some sort of perfectionist tendency. Probably we feel this is a good thing, since it spurs us toward success. 

But maybe we should look upon ourselves differently, viewing failure more positively than perfectionism.

Here's excerpts from Oliver Burkeman's book, "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking." Dome is a reference to the failed Millennium Dome, built as a monument to the dawn of the year 2000.

There is an openness and honesty in failure, a down-to-earth confrontation with reality that is lacking at the higher altitudes of success. 

To achieve something impressive -- as might have happened had the dome ever become, as Tony Blair predicted, 'a beacon to the world' -- is necessarily to erect a kind of barrier between yourself and everyone else. To be impressed by something, meanwhile, implies feeling yourself to be in the presence of something different from, and better than, yourself. 

Failure, by contrast, collapses these boundaries, demonstrating the fallibility of those who might otherwise try to present themselves as immune to defeat. It cuts people down to human size. The vulnerability revealed by failure can nurture empathy and communality.

...Still it can be exceptionally hard to adopt this attitude towards your own failures. As Christopher Kayes' notion of 'goalodicy' suggests, we too often make our goals into parts of our identities, so that failure becomes an attack on how we are.

Or, as Albert Ellis understood, we alight upon some desired outcome -- being happily married, for example, or finding fulfilling work -- and elevate it into one we feel we must attain, so that failing at it becomes not just sad but catastrophic. To use the Buddhist language of attachment and non-attachment, we become attached to success.

All these counterproductive ways of thinking about failure manifest themselves most acutely in the phenomenon of perfectionism. 

This is one of those traits that many people seem secretly, or not so secretly, proud to possess, since it hardly seems like a character flaw -- yet perfectionism, at bottom, is a fear-driven striving to avoid the experience of failure at all costs. At its extremes, it is an exhausting and permanently stressful way to live. 

(There is a greater correlation between perfectionism and suicide, research suggests, than between feelings of hopelessness and suicide.)

To fully embrace the experience of failure, not merely to tolerate it as a stepping-stone to success, is to abandon this constant straining never to put a foot wrong. It is to relax.

'Downfall', writes the American Zen Buddhist Natalie Goldberg, 'brings us to the ground, facing the nitty-gritty, things as they are with no glitter. Success cannot last forever. Everyone's time runs out.' She goes on: 'Achievement solidifies us. Believing we are invincible, we want more and more.'

To see and feel things as they really are, 'we have to crash. Only then can we drop through to a more authentic self. Zen transmits its legacy from this deeper place. It is a different kind of failure: the Great Failure, a boundless surrender. Nothing to hold on to, and nothing to lose.'

...Her [J.K. Rowling] words chime with many of the insights of the Stoics, the Buddhists, and others into the benefits of negativity, and they are worth quoting at length:

I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.

An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless. 

The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure that I knew. 

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea there was going to be what the press has since represented as a fairytale resolution. 

I had no idea how far the tunnel extended... so why do I talk about the benefits of failure?

Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

... I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive. [Failure] gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.

...Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

RSSB guru agrees to submit "sealed" tax returns to Delhi High Court

More news on the financial fraud scandal involving the Singh brothers and their relative, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

After the story I'll comment on something that I neglected to mention in a previous post on this subject -- how the guru has admitted to "round trip" financial transactions that appear to be illegal. Below is the Live Mint story.

Note: from what I can tell, a sealed court document means that only the court and parties directly involved in a court case can see it. The general public doesn't have access to it, which makes sense if the document contains sensitive information.

New Delhi: Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the spiritual head of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas and his family on Tuesday informed the Delhi high court that they are willing to file their income tax returns in a sealed cover before the registrar of the court.

The copies of the document will also be given to the decree holder --Daiichi Sankyo-- and the concerned judgment debtors, subject to their filing an undertaking to maintain confidentiality in the matter.

Dhillon had filed an exemption application against the court order citing “severe prejudice" to them.

The court has disposed off the application now.

The legible documents related to bank statements have to be filed within two weeks.

The court had deferred its order last week as the counsel for the applicant had prayed that final orders in the application be deferred to enable him to obtain instructions on whether the garnishees are willing to file their income tax returns in a sealed cover.

Former Fortis Healthcare promoter Malvinder Singh had filed an affidavit last month in the Delhi high court alleging that Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family owe him ₹1,473 crore, lent to them over a 10-year period till 2016.

In the affidavit filed on 13 August, Singh alleged that over 2007-12, the Dhillon family took loans totalling ₹578 crore from RHC Holding Pvt. Ltd and Today's Holdings, both funded by him and his brother Shivinder Singh.

In 2016, a Singapore tribunal asked the Singh brothers to pay ₹2,600 crore to Daiichi Sankyo in a case involving Ranbaxy Laboratories’ regulatory issues. The dues have now ballooned to ₹3,500 crore, including interest.

In a previous post about the Dhillon family tax returns, an Economic Times story was shared that said in part:

In an affidavit filed before the Delhi High court on November 12 last year, Dhillon had disclosed about the financial transactions between RHC holdings Ltd and his family members dating back to 2006. In fact he has also tried to establish that his sons Gurpreet and Gurkirat Singh Dhillon were young at that time, Gurkirat being minor and both his sons did not manage their financial affairs personally.

He had also revealed that RHC devised such a mechanism that transactions essentially involved transferring money from one subsidiary to a bank account of Dhillons and then transferring the same money either on the same day or shortly thereafter to another subsidiary of the group or usually to RHC holdings Ltd.

That second paragraph describes what's been called "round trip" financial transactions. These caught the eye of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), which called them fraudulent. The SEBI report contains a diagram of one day's circular, or round trip, transactions. 

So it seems significant that the RSSB guru has admitted to getting money put into his account through this sort of complex round trip transaction. The Economic Times story calls the entities other than FHL and RHC subsidiaries, but a better term seems to be shell companies.

There have been reports that at one time those shell companies were controlled by the Dhillons and their associates. Thus it appears very unlikely that loaned money could appear to the Dhillon family bank accounts without their knowing how it got there.

This is how I summarized things in a 2019 post, "Why the RSSB guru is responsible for financial fraud."

Some core facts are clear:

(1) The Securities and Exchange Board of India has determined that funds were fraudulently siphoned out of a public company into shell companies. 

(2) Those illegal money transfers involved "round trip" transactions that required the collusion of conspirators at both the public company and the shell companies.

(3) The RSSB guru, his family, and close associates controlled the shell companies that received the fraudulent funds. 

(4) The Dhillon family and their close associates used the fraudulently-obtained money, in large part or entirely, to buy real estate and the High Court of Delhi has ordered that this money be recovered from the RSSB guru, his family, and other entities.

At any rate, this saga has more twists and turns ahead, almost certainly. I'll share them as I learn about them. 

RSSB guru has to submit tax returns to Delhi High Court

There's another development in the lengthy saga of the Singh brothers' financial scandal that involves the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB0, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. 

The Delhi High Court says that the Dhillon family has to submit income tax returns and other documents to the court. Here's the Economic Times story.

The Delhi High court has dismissed an application filed by the head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) Gurinder Singh Dhillon seeking exemption on filing income tax returns and other financial documents.

“In my view, these documents are essential to enable the learned Joint Registrar/Court to determine the merit in the stand of the garnishees who are disputing their liability qua the JDs,” said the court in its order dated September 11. ET has seen a copy of the order.

The court said that it sees no reason to exempt the applicants from filing copies of their income tax returns, bank statements and the balance-sheets.

Dhillon had sought exemption from filing Income Tax returns (ITR) in the Delhi High Court, citing that it contains “personal information” and it was not an “appropriate stage” to produce such documents.

The court had earlier asked Dhillon along with his family members to file ITRs after he denied of any liability towards RHC holdings Ltd, promoted by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh.

In an affidavit filed before the court, Dhillon has said that being individuals, the Dhillons do not “maintain balance sheet” and filing ITR would cause “severe prejudice” to them.

Dhillon had earlier admitted of his financial dealings with the Singh brothers by annexing copies of bank statements. However, he had denied of any liability to RHC holding, to which the court had asked those of who were disputing their liability to file their ITR, bank statements and balance sheets.

In an affidavit filed on January 30, Dhillon had sought an exemption from filing ITRs for himself, his wife, Shabnam Dhillon, his sons-Gupreet and Gurkirat and his daughter-in-law Nayantara Dhillon.

“In this regard it is submitted that the applicants have already placed on record in this court their relevant bank statements. Further, the applicants being individuals do not maintain balance sheets and hence the direction to that extent is not application to them,” read the 14-page affidavit.

In an affidavit filed before the Delhi High court on November 12 last year, Dhillon had disclosed about the financial transactions between RHC holdings Ltd and his family members dating back to 2006. In fact he has also tried to establish that his sons Gurpreet and Gurkirat Singh Dhillon were young at that time, Gurkirat being minor and both his sons did not manage their financial affairs personally.

He had also revealed that RHC devised such a mechanism that transactions essentially involved transferring money from one subsidiary to a bank account of Dhillons and then transferring the same money either on the same day or shortly thereafter to another subsidiary of the group or usually to RHC holdings Ltd.

He had also claimed that over the course of 2011-2015, out of the surplus of Rs 103.5 crores with RHC he and his family drew only Rs29.38 crores, leaving the balance surplus of Rs 74.12 crores. “Thus an amount of Rs 74.12 crores continued to be due from RHC holdings Ltd”.

Life is best lived by embracing insecurity

One of the things I talked about in my first book, a shorter and simpler version of which I published a few years ago, is that happenings in the world can be deterministic while also being unpredictable.

This is what chaos theory is all about. Complex systems are made up of causes and effects, yet in such a fashion that it is virtually (and maybe totally) impossible to know what they are going to do next. 

An example I cited in my book is tossing a cork into a stream above some rapids.

Every movement of the cork is determined by the laws of physics, yet there is no way to predict exactly where the cork will end up a few hundred yards downstream, because a slight movement at any point in its journey can lead to big changes in its final destination.

Such is one reason why our longing for security, for predictability, for being assured that what we want to have happen actually will happen, is doomed to failure. 

Another way of looking at security and insecurity is wonderfully discussed by Alan Watts in his book, "The Wisdom of Insecurity." I've written many posts about this book over the years, since it is one of my favorites. You can find those posts by using the Google search box in the right sidebar.

I'm making my way through Oliver Burkeman's book, "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking." This morning I finished a chapter called The Safety Catch. 

It contains a nice summary of how Alan Watts looks upon our quest for security. Here's how the chapter ends.

To understand the final flourish that Watts has in store, think back to the end of the previous chapter and the challenge it presented to our assumptions about the nature of the self. 

There we confronted the fact that there seems to be no straightforward place at which to draw the line between 'self' and 'other' -- and that the boundary itself, even if we settle on somewhere to draw it, is more of a meeting point than a dividing line. 'Self' and 'other' rely on each other for their very existence.

If that's true, it follows that 'security' is a mistake -- because it implies a notion of separate selfhood that doesn't make much sense. What does it even mean to separate yourself from an ecosystem that is, in fact, what constitutes you? 

The point is not to 'confront' insecurity, but to appreciate that you are it. Watts writes:

To understand that there is no security is far more than to agree with the theory that all things change, more even than to observe the transitoriness of life. 

The notion of security is based on the feeling that there is something within us which is permanent, something which endures through all the days and changes of life. We are struggling to make sure of the permanence, continuity, and safety of this enduring core, this center and soul of our being, which we call 'I'.

For this we think to be the real man -- the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler of our feelings, the knower of our knowledge. We do not actually understand that there is no security until we realize that this 'I' does not exist.

This extraordinary passage, once you grasp the point -- and it took me a while -- explains in the most complete sense why our efforts to find happiness are so frequently sabotaged by 'ironic' effects, delivering the exact opposite of what we set out to gain.

All positive thinking, all goalsetting and visualising and looking on the bright side, all trying to make things go our way, as opposed to some other way, is rooted in an assumption about the separateness of 'us' and those 'things'. But on closer inspection, this assumption collapses.

Trying to flee from insecurity to security, from uncertainty to certainty, is an attempt to find an exit from the very system that makes us who we are in the first place.

We can influence the system of which we are a part, certainly. But if we are motivated by this misunderstanding about who we are and what security is, we'll always risk going to too far, trying too hard, in self-defeating ways. Watts concludes:

The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the 'I' out of the experience.

...Sanity, wholeness and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate 'I' or mind can be found.

...[Life] is a dance, and when you are dancing, you are not intent on getting somewhere. The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.

This, then, is the deep truth about insecurity: it is another word for life. That doesn't mean it's not wise to protect yourself, as far as you can, from certain specific dangers. But it does mean that feeling secure and really living life are, in some ultimate sense, opposites.

And that you can no more succeed in achieving perfect security than a wave could succeed in leaving the ocean.

Oregon wildfires reflect the uncertain nature of reality

Religions are prone to all sorts of ridiculous errors, but one of the worst is believing that reality can be tamed. Meaning, eliminating uncertainty, chance, randomness, unpredictability.

It's a psychological truism that we humans are uncomfortable with uncertainty. So we make up stories to fill the gap between what is known and what we have questions about where answers are lacking.

How did existence come to be? Nobody knows. Science is content with leaving this question as a mystery. Religions, though, make up a tale about how God created the cosmos -- ignoring the obvious problem of how God came to be.

(If it is assumed that God always has existed, then it also can be assumed that the cosmos always has existed.)

Here in Oregon, and also in our neighboring states of Washington and California, massive wildfires are burning. Today I saw a tweet by a reporter that said, "Since 1900, Oregon has never had more than 2 mega fires (100K acres or more) in a single year, said Jim Gersbach from ‪@ORDeptForestry‬. Now depending on how you count them we have 3 or 4 all burning at once."

Earlier in the summer it seemed that Oregon would have a mild wildfire season. There were some fires, but they weren't creating  big problems.

Then an unexpected combination of circumstances combined to create a Perfect Storm for wildfires.

Oregon has been in a long-standing drought. Very little rain has fallen for many months. And a rare September snow storm in the Rockies was followed by high pressure in that region that created strong east winds in the Pacific Northwest.

The National Weather Service realized the danger. They designated much of Oregon as being at high risk for wildfires. That turned out to be an accurate prediction. Yesterday I took this photo at 9 am while standing in our almost pitch black driveway. 

Smoke from what now is called the Santiam Fire was so thick, blown by the east winds in the direction of Salem, where I live, that the sun was completely obscured. All that could be seen in the sky was an eerie red glow. Later in the day it was still strangely dark, which made me think darkness at noon.

Thousands of people living in the Santiam Canyon east of Salem had to evacuate in the early morning hours on Tuesday. A small fire in the mountains that seemed to be posing little danger grew astoundingly rapidly, pushed by the strong east winds. This map shows the current size of the fire from satellite imagery.

(Yellow is satellite fire detections 24-48 hours ago. Orange is 12-24 hours. Red is 0-12 hours. So the red dots show where a fire has moved most recently. Note: on a slow Internet connection like what I have, the dots take a while to load.)

So far two people are known to have died in the Santiam Fire, a grandmother and her grandchild, who were in a car trying to escape the flames. Many homes and businesses have been destroyed. And this fire is just one of many ravaging Oregon.

Bad things happen.

This isn't news to anybody. It's the way the world is. If bad things could be predicted with certainty, we could stop them from happening. But usually we can't do that. Sure, meteorologists knew that the strong east winds could fan dangerous wildfires. 

Yet whether this actually would come to pass wasn't known until the winds arrived. And yes, now Oregon is suffering through the worst wildfires in the state's history.

My Tai Chi instructor and his wife have had to evacuate their home. They live near the road that links Silverton and Molalla in the map I shared above. They got out safely, along with their dogs, horses, and goats. That's good news, though better news would be if their house ends up being untouched by fire.

I can hope for that. Yet I can't know that. Life is uncertain. That's for sure. Which is why I started to work on an evacuation checklist yesterday, just in case.

"Mystical" experiences aren't what meditation is about

Today someone asked me and someone else some questions about the meditation I did during the 35 years I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization headquartered in India. 

Here's what Tony Wims said in a comment.

Hey Brian or Osho. Just curious: Did either of you ever see the light or hear the sound during meditation?

If you did, what stopped you from developing your perception further?
If you didn't, I'm actually really surprised that you didn't and you were initiated.

Were you following the precepts? ( If you didn't see/hear).
Did you not start by placing your attention at the 3rd eye center?

I know I shouldn't be, because anything is possible, but I'm very surprised to hear of initiates who left the path. Especially if they had even a brief glimpse of the light or a snippet of the sound.

Thank you in advance for your answer. Forgive me for asking if you don't feel like it.

Hey, I have no problem with questions about my meditation experience. But before I get to the answers, I'll share some observations about the assumptions underlying Tony's comment.

The main assumption is that there's such a thing as supernatural light and sound emanating from higher spiritual regions of reality. I used to believe this was true, but beliefs are different from what actually is the case.

There's no demonstrable evidence of anything supernatural, much less mystical light and sound. So the burden of proof rests on those who claim that there is, not skeptics like me who doubt the existence of realms beyond the physical.

Another assumption is that meditation is aimed at anything other than being fully in touch with what appears in one's consciousness. Yes, I realize that Tony is talking about a very special form of meditation, Surat Shabd Yoga, or uniting one's soul with a divine sound current. 

Again, this is a religious belief, not a proven reality.

In fact, a comment Sonia left today appears to accurately describe how the current guru of RSSB, Gurinder Singh Dhillon (GSD), looks upon meditation. What Sonia says fits with the notion that Dhillon has moved RSSB to what's been termed v. 2.0 and v. 3.0. 

@Tony Most people don’t recognize the light or sound.

GSD just said some people go to the doctor thinking they have tinnitus when really it’s the “sound”. He also said if you want to see lights go to a disco. He’s made it abundantly clear that seeing the light or hearing sound is not what meditation is about. Many people won’t recognize it. He said just do your meditation.

The reason he says all of this is because satsangis complain over and over and over again to him about not hearing the sound or seeing light during meditation.

And the only reason I’m sharing this with you is so that you will understand that your Master never promised you a rose garden—he never promises you’ll see light and sound and most of your fellow satsangis don’t have that experience.

That was my clear impression also from the three-plus decades I spent talking with countless (more or less) RSSB initiates, or satsangis. i used to do a lot of speaking on behalf of RSSB, where one of my favorite lines was "The easiest vow to uphold is the one against talking about your mystical experiences, because no one is having any."

The line always got a laugh.

And no one ever came up to me afterwards and said I was wrong. As Sonia said, most RSSB devotees aren't focused on experiencing inner lights and sounds. They're focused on other things: the guru, going to RSSB meetings, being a vegetarian, socializing with RSSB friends, and such.

Getting back to Tony's questions, in 2014 I wrote a blog post called "I'm asked about my RSSB meditation experience." These lengthy excerpts address the more recent questions from Tony.

In "Why I'm justified in complaining about Sant Mat" I wrote:

I was initiated in the spring of 1971. For over thirty years—until 2002 or so—I was damn near a model satsangi (disciple).

I never missed a day of meditation. Mostly it was for the full proscribed two and a half hours. Sometimes less. One and a half hours was a minimum, such as when my daughter needed after-work attention and I was working full time. I followed the other vows perfectly, aside from having a single drink at my ten year high school reunion, which was just too freaking weird to endure without a dose of alcohol.

So don't tell me that I can't complain about Sant Mat and Radha Soami Satsang Beas. I'm totally justified in doing so. Because I know more about this philosophy and this organization than most initiates. Not just book knowledge—direct experience also.

Or, lack of experience, when it comes to meditation. I'm typical in this regard. Over those three decades I talked with hundreds, maybe thousands, of RSSB meditators. Very few, perhaps none, had experienced what they were told to expect. Those flights to inner mystical regions and the meeting with their guru's radiant astral form.

With me, it wasn't for lack of effort. Again, I did everything right. And the results were wrong. Now, many of the faithful would say, "Brian, you expected too much, too soon." Give me a break.

Thirty years isn't too soon. A glimpse of the promised spiritual land isn't too much.

In "Q and A about me and Sant Mat" I wrote this in response to another question that I'd gotten:

(2) Why do you think you never had a spiritual experience despite 30 years of devoted meditation?

Like I've been saying in several posts lately, including here, I'm not sure what "spiritual" means anymore. I had plenty of experiences in meditation.

What I didn't have was the sort of out-of-body, astral projecting, soul-flying, blasts of cosmic light and sound experiences that the Radha Soami Satsang Beas version of Sant Mat tells disciples to expect in meditation.

A few days after I was initiated I heard loud bell sounds inside my head while I was meditating. These never came back. I've had other glimpses of inner light and hearings of inner sound, but these could be (and probably are) produced by the brain, not immaterial soul or spirit.

Over more than three decades I've talked with lots of fellow RSSB initiates about their experiences in meditation. More accurately, their lack thereof.

When these people spoke honestly and openly (which usually isn't done in the formal satsangs, or talks), I learned that my lack of mind-blowing meditation experiences was par for the course in Sant Mat.

So there you have it.

Naturally I had lots of experiences in meditation. It was impossible not to have them, since I was awake and aware for most of the 1.5 to 2.5 hours of meditation I did each day for over thirty years. (Yeah, I'd fall asleep occasionally.)

I feel like I gained a lot from all that meditating.

It was a mix of "mantra meditation" (repeating a word or words to concentrate the mind) and "open awareness" meditation (trying to be still, mentally and physically, and being aware of what passes through consciousness).

Thus even though Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) views its meditation technique as something special, actually it is very much in the meditation mainstream. Mantras and open awareness are used in many other meditative practices.

The RSSB meditation did focus on "going within," though, to a much greater extent than mindfulness practices do. That is, the initiate was supposed to direct his/her attention to the third eye, or eye center, which supposedly was a gateway to higher realms of consciousness.

Now my daily meditation usually involves more of a balanced approach.

I like to follow my breathing for part of the time, either counting breaths or simply being aware of my breathing body doing its thing. I also enjoy mantra meditation. Usually I choose different words than the Five Holy Names taught by RSSB, but for old time's sake I'll occasionally return to the mantra I repeated for so many years.

It's difficult for me to describe what I experienced during my RSSB meditation years. As noted before, I've sat for tens of thousands of hours in meditation. How is it possible to sum that up in a few words? 

I laughed; I cried; I was joyful; I was sad; I was peaceful; I was restless; I felt at one with the cosmos; I felt alone. And so much more.

One of the key things I learned was the difference between what my conscious mind does, and what the rest of my mind does. Well, let me rephrase that, because I no longer believe there are two entities inside my head: me, and my mind. 

There is just one: brain/mind, or whatever you want to call it.

I used to enjoy, and still do, the sensation of either repeating a mantra, or doing nothing, and being aware of what happens inside my head when the brain/mind aspect called "I" isn't trying to direct the show of consciousness.

As anyone who meditates knows (or anyone who is alive knows)... a lot happens.

The brain/mind, like an iceberg, consists of a whole lot more than our conscious awareness, will, intention, and such. Dualistic forms of meditation, which see a distinction between soul and mind, or pure consciousness and impure consciousness, consider those unintended goings-on to be a distraction. Non-dual forms of meditation, such as mindfulness and Zen, don't.

To them, as to me these days, what happens in the brain/mind is what is happening. To deny it is to deny reality. Thoughts come and go. So do emotions, perceptions, intuitions, and much else. 

Thus whereas I used to believe that God and the guru were responsible for what happened within my consciousness when I wasn't trying to make anything happen, now I realize that the part of brain/mind outside of conscious awareness is responsible.

I still feel that I'm part of something much larger than myself. I just don't call it God, or divine. It is me. And the world, which really isn't different from me. 

Comic strip wisdom about combatting stupidity

Here's some excellent advice from the Pearls Before Swine comic strip.

RSSB guru's finances investigated by Delhi Police

Here's a September 3 story in The Economic Times about an investigation by the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police into financial transactions involving Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), and other members of the Dhillon family.

lt's good to see that allegations made by Malvinder Singh, a relative of the guru, are being looked into. A RSSB book is titled "Honest Living." The Dhillon family tax returns and other documents requested by the Delhi Police will cast light on how honestly the guru has been living.

Radha Soami Satsang Beas chief summoned by EoW of the Delhi Police

Businessman Malvinder Singh had earlier filed a complaint against the spiritual guru Gurinder Singh Dhillon, and his family members, with EOW for allegedly siphoning off proceeds from the sale of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd.

Teena Thacker

The Economic Offences Wing (EoW) of the Delhi Police has sought details from the head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family members regarding the multi crore scam.

Businessman Malvinder Singh had earlier filed a complaint against the spiritual guru Gurinder Singh Dhillon, and his family members, with EOW for allegedly siphoning off proceeds from the sale of Ranbaxy Laboratories NSE 5.63 % Ltd.

He had also filed an affidavit last month in the court detailing transaction history of the loans transferred to the Dhillon family from 2006 onwards, along with the supporting Bank Statement showing such transactions.
The summons were issued by the EoW basis a FIR filed by the Religare Finvest.

The EoW in its summons dated Aug 26 has asked Dhillon to explain why the amount was transferred to him and his wife’s personal account from various entities. Dhillon has been asked to provide documents to show how these transactions in his income tax returns. “It was a loan transaction or otherwise,” the notice said.

“For the purposes of investigation, you are requested to provide documents,” it further said. Information has been sought regarding over Rs 26 crore which were transferred to him and his wife Shabnam Dhillon. Dhillons have been told to furnish details by September 7. An email sent to Dhillon did not elicit any response till the press time.

The Dhillons are among 55 individuals and entities ordered by the court to pay over Rs 6000 crore owed to RHC holding in connection with the settlement of a dispute to Daiichi Sankyo’s acquisition of Ranbaxy laboratories.

Earlier in the High Court, Dhillon had said that in 2010, RHC holdings Ltd through Singh brothers had approached him to assist them in subscribing for the rights issue, suggesting that they would finance Dhillons to subscribe to the rights issue. Dhillon has said that it was agreed that he and his family members would not be made liable to repay any amount or interest. “It was also agreed that upon the shares being sold or disposed of if the price realised was below the subscribed price, then the entire amount would be shared 50:50 between RHC and Dhillons family who had subscribed to the shares”.

He had further said that on the basis of “verbal agreement” in February 2010, RHC transferred Rs 219 crore each to his sons, which was then used to subscribe to the rights issue, resulting in an allotment of 61,83,013 shares of REL to each of his sons.

In a separate notice to his sons Gurpreet and Gurkirat Dhillon, the EoW has now asked both Gurpreet and Gurkirat to clarify how the transaction “was reflected in their income tax returns, whether the amount is loan from the RHC holding pvt Ltd or otherwise and what is the present status of these shares,” it said. ET has seen the copy of the notices.

The EoW has also asked the Dhillon brothers to explain the reason for transferring the money from their personal account to RHC holding. Both brothers have been asked to appear in person and file the reply by September 7.

In an affidavit filed in the Delhi High court last week, Singh had submitted that Dhillon and his family members owed Rs 1472.72 crores along with interest which is still outstanding.

He has further said that over the period of 2006-2010, a sum of over Rs 500 crores was directly transferred from his accounts to Dhillon and his family members.

In addition, between 2011-2016 approximately Rs 488.83 crores were advanced as loans to Dhillon and his family members from the companies of Best group, which at the time of advancement of loans were not subsidiaries of Singh. The Best group comprised of Best healthcare Pvt Ltd, Modland wears private Ltd, Fern healthcare private Ltd, Devera developers private Ltd, greenline buildwell Private Ltd and Adept Lifespace pvt Ltd.

“The monies received from the Best group was camouflaged by Dhillon and his family members to appear as if they were clearing their debt towards answering respondent and its subsidiaries with a view to window dress and attempt to show that there is no amount receivable from Dhillon and members of his family to the answering respondent,” the affidavit has said. ET has seen the copy of the affidavit.

The stories we tell ourselves can go awry

A few days ago I wrote about how amazing it is that fictional stories can seem so real. In that post I was speaking about stories told to us by others in the form of movies, TV shows, novels, and the like. 

But we humans also tell stories to ourselves. Not just a little, but a lot. 

After all, much, if not most, of our inner dialogue, that voice speaking inside the head of the vast majority of people (I've read that some individuals don't experience that inner speech) has to do with explaining to ourselves what did happen, is happening, or will happen.

For example, at the moment I'm sipping a cup of coffee before I take our dog for our usual late afternoon two-mile walk. I've envisioned how that plot line will play out. 

Begin writing this blog post. Finish the coffee. Put the cup in the dishwasher. Call "Mooka!" Put Mooka's harness on. Change my shoes. Fill the dog-friendly water bottle I take along, since it is pretty hot and both dog and I like to drink along the way. Head off up our driveway.

Likely this is what will actually happen. But there's no guarantee of this. Something pressing could come up. I could have a sudden heart attack. The "Big One" earthquake could hit the Pacific Northwest. Lots of possibilities, albeit of low probability. 

Thus most of the stories we tell ourselves are grounded in reality. They are based on observations of how the world works, which includes how our own mind and body work. We make plans for how our day will go accordingly. I'd planned to mow the grass today since it will be getting considerably hotter later in the week.

I did just that. The story I told myself turned out to be accurate, basically non-fiction. However, while using my Toro battery-powered trimmer to edge the grass after mowing it, the blue trimmer line ran out. 

I'd been thinking that it had been quite a while since I changed the trimmer cartridge, so that wasn't a complete surprise. However, I had no idea when exactly that would occur, so my grass-cutting story didn't include the part where I had to walk back to our garage, get a new cartridge, and replace the old one.

This is a mild example of a story we tell ourselves going awry, of not reflecting reality. Often our stories are like this. We set off to meet a friend, expecting that we have plenty of time to get there, then find that traffic is really heavy and we're going to be late. 

We had one idea of what is going to happen. Reality had another idea. Reality being way more powerful than we are, it won. 

I just got back from a walk by myself. Mooka, our dog, just wasn't into walking. We started off, but she stopped and didn't want to keep going. That's unusual. So I took her home, then went for a walk on my own. Reality had a different idea than the story I'd told myself. 

Maybe Mooka didn't like the 88 degree temperature. Maybe she isn't feeling well. Regardless, I had to change my story in accord with what was actually happening -- a dog who didn't want to go for a walk.

I'm trying to be more aware of the sorts of stories I tell myself. Most are just fine. They involve realistic thoughts about what I need to do right now, have done in the past, and will do in the future. But there's another category of stories that I'm working on tamping down, because those stories aren't productive or helpful.

In general, the stories I tell myself that could go in my brain's trash bin involve me getting ahead of what reality is telling me.

That's the core of needless anxiety and worry, anticipating that something bad is going to happen when there is minimal or no actual evidence of this eventuality. It's just in our mind. And since, as I said in my previous post, fictional stories can seem real, I can get worked up about something that I have no way of knowing will actually occur.

Like, Donald Trump being re-elected.

There's a decent chance this will happen. But there's a greater chance Joe Biden will be our next president. So the wisest thing for me to do is wait and see what the outcome is of the November election, paying attention to what the polls show between now and then, so I'm keeping in touch with what reality is saying, as contrasted with what my anxious mind is saying.

Along this line, there's an interesting discussion of goals in a book I wrote about recently, Oliver Burkeman's "The Antidote." A goal is akin to a positive story we tell ourself. It is what we want to have happen, after which we believe we'll be better off. 

Religions are big on goals.

For example, loving Jesus with all our heart. Or surrendering unconditionally to what a guru asks us to do.  But it's important to keep in mind that goals need to be continually reassessed so they match up with reality. If I'm a 71 year old guy who can't jump very high, an accurate description of myself, I'd better give up on the goal of being an NBA star.

Burkeman relates how an excessive attachment to the goal of reaching the top of Mt. Everest led to the tragic deaths of eight climbers in 1996. Chris Kayes tried to understand how this happened.

But the more Kayes learned of what had happened, and as he continued to follow the case after returning home, the more it reminded him of a phenomenon he had witnessed all too frequently among businesspeople.

The Everest climbers, Kayes suspected, had been 'lured into destruction by their passion for goals'. His hypothesis was that the more they fixated on the endpoint -- a successful summiting of the mountain -- the more that goal became not just an external target but a part of their own identities, of their senses of themselves as accomplished guides or high-achieving amateurs.

If his hunch about the climbers was right, it would have become progressively more difficult for them to sacrifice their goal, despite accumulating evidence that it was becoming a suicidal one. The climb would have become a struggle not merely to reach the summit, but to preserve their sense of identity. 

In theology, the term 'theodicy' refers to the effort to maintain belief in a benevolent god, despite the prevalence of evil in the world; the phrase is occasionally used to describe the effort to maintain any belief in the face of contradictory evidence. Borrowing that language, Chris Kayes termed the syndrome he had identified 'goalodicy'.

...[Regarding a separate 1963 expedition] A bizarre and self-reinforcing loop took hold: team members would actively seek out negative information about their goal -- looking for evidence of weather patterns, for example, that might render the West Ridge approach even more risky than usual -- which would increase their feelings of uncertainty.

But then, in an effort to extinguish that uncertainty, the climbers would increase their emotional investment in their decision. The goal, it seemed, had become a part of their identity, and so their uncertainty about the goal no longer merely threatened the pain; it threatened them as individuals.

...Ed Viesturs, who watched the 1996 tragedy through his telescope, spoke of this lure in vivid terms. 'When you're up there, you've spent years of training, months of preparation, and weeks of climbing, and you're within view of the summit, and you know, you have -- in the back of your mind, you're telling yourself, "We should turn around, 'cause we're late, we're gonna run out of oxygen..." 

But you see the summit, and it draws you there. And a lot of people -- it's so magnetic that they tend to break their rules, and they go to the summit. And on a good day you can get away with it. And on a bad day, you'll die."

It's amazing how fictional stories can seem so real

If you ever wonder how religious stories -- Adam and Eve, Krishna, Moses, so many others -- are believed by billions of people, go into a movie theater. (Or remember doing this, if theaters are closed where you are because of the Covid crisis.)

If it's a horror film, likely you'll hear shrieks of terror. If a thriller, gasps of surprise. If a romance, tears being wiped away.

We humans have no problem being drawn into a fictional story to such an extent it arouses much the same emotions as if the drama was happening to us in real life. Yet part of us recognizes that we're watching something made-up.

So we embrace a "willing suspension of disbelief."

This has been on my mind lately because a few days ago I re-discovered a series on Netflix that I watched a single episode of years ago, "Designated Survivor."

I've become addicted to the show, having watched about half of the first season. It features Kiefer Sutherland, who I loved in "24," though he plays a very different character this time. I love politics, mysteries, thrillers, and intelligence agency intrigue -- all of which feature prominently in Designated Survivor.

The strange thing is, and given what I said above, actually it isn't really very strange, I get so immersed in the engrossing plot lines that I become worried about what will happen to the main characters who are heroes, not villains. 

"No, Hannah, don't trust him," I'll scream inside my mind, "likely he's part of the scheme to kill the President." (Hannah being a FBI agent.)

Yet I'm watching the plot play out on our TV or my laptop. I'm perfectly aware that I'm streaming a Netflix show. I know that I'm seeing actors speak scripted lines. I can tell the difference between reality and this bit of fiction.

But I still worry that the good guys will be fooled by the bad guys. I agonize if there's a cliff-hanger at the end of one episode, being eager to find the time to fire up Netflix again and see what happens in the next episode. 

In short, I'm acting almost exactly like religious believers do when they feel deep emotions upon, say, hearing a moving sermon about how Jesus' love for humanity was so great, he died for our sins. 

I don't think this is true, of course.

And I strongly suspect that if pressed, a large percentage of Christians would admit that they aren't sure this is true either. They simply love the story as told in the New Testament, which I readily admit is a compelling piece of fiction -- in my atheist opinion.

A big difference between my devotion to Designated Survivor and the devotion of people to religious stories is how serious we are about the object of our attention.

I have minimal interest in converting people to become a Designated Survivor fan. When I've watched every episode I'll move on to viewing or reading other works of fiction. If someone tells me they can't stand Designated Survivor, I wouldn't argue with them. I completely understand that what I'm fixated on is made-up, not an inherent aspect of reality.

Still, there's a common element between me and religious people. We both love a good fictional story.

Malvinder Singh provides proof of financial deals with RSSB guru

Here's two new stories in the Indian financial press about the fraudulent loan saga involving the Singh brothers and their relative, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

It sure looks like the guru wasn't being truthful when he reportedly said that he has never received money from anyone other than his parents, and also when he filed an affidavit saying he didn't owe money to Malvinder Singh. But I'm sure there will be more twists and turns in this seemingly never-ending scandal.

If my calculation is correct, 1,743 crore rupees equals about $200 million in U.S. dollars. That's how much Malvinder says he is owed by the Dhillon family.

First, here's an Economic Times story.

NEW DELHI: Former promoter of Ranbaxy, Malvinder Singh has filed an affidavit in the Delhi High Court detailing transaction details of loans he gave to Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family to back his complaint against the spiritual guru.

The undertrial businessman had earlier filed a complaint against Dhillon, head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, among others, with Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) for allegedly siphoning off proceeds from the sale of Ranbaxy Laboratories.

In an affidavit filed in the Delhi High Court last week, Singh submitted that Dhillon and his family members owed Rs 1,472.72 crore along with interest to him.

Between 2006 and 2010, more than Rs 500 crore were directly transferred from his accounts to Dhillon and his family members, Singh claimed in the affidavit.

Further, approximately Rs 488.83 crore were advanced as loans to Dhillon and his family members between 2011 and 2016 through companies of Best group, he claimed.

Best group – which includes Best Healthcare, Modland Wears, Fern Healthcare, Devera Developers, Greenline Buildwell, and Adept Lifespace – was not owned by Singh at the time of advancement of loans. Earlier Malvinder had in a complaint filed with EOW alleged that his brother had fraudulently acquired Best group companies under RHC holding, which was Singh brothers holding company.

“The monies received from the Best group was camouflaged by Dhillon and his family members to appear as if they were clearing their debt towards answering respondent and its subsidiaries with a view to window dress and attempt to show that there is no amount receivable from Dhillon and members of his family to the answering respondent,” SINGH’S affidavit said.

ET has seen the copy of the affidavit.

Singh has attached supporting bank statements showing transactions history of the loans transferred to the Dhillon family, and claimed Rs 1,472.72 crore remained outstanding towards Best group as on March 2020.

Earlier Dhillon had filed an affidavit claiming that he did not owe money to Singh.

Singh has also accused his brother Shivinder Singh, family members of Dhillon and his former associates Sunil and Sanjay Godhwani of conspiring to misappropriate funds.

The Singh brothers are at present in judicial custody and are also facing contempt proceedings in the Supreme Court of India.

Here's a Business Today story on the same subject.

Ranbaxy case: Malvinder Singh submits 'proof' of Rs 1,473 cr Dhillon family owes him

BusinessToday.In

Former Ranbaxy promoter Malvinder Singh, in an affidavit filed in the Delhi High Court, has submitted proofs of loans worth Rs 1,472.72 crore owed to him by Gurinder Singh Dhillon, head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, and his family members.

The development comes days after the undertrial businessman filed a complaint against Dhillon and others with the Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing. He alleged Dhillon and others siphoned off funds from the proceeds of the sale of Ranbaxy Laboratories, and that Dhillon owed Rs 1,472.72 crore along with interest to Malvinder Singh.

Also read: The Baba, Singh Brothers and the Squandered Rs 225,00,00,00,000

The affidavit filed by Singh says huge sums of monies -- over Rs 500 crore -- were transferred from the accounts of Malvinder Singh to Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family members between 2006 and 2010.

Additionally, between 2011-2016, around Rs 488.83 crore were advanced as loans to Gurinder Singh Dhillon and family members from the companies of 'Best Group', which at the time of advancement of these loans were not subsidiaries of Malvinder Singh.

The Best Group comprises Best Healthcare Private Limited, Modland Wears Private Limited (JD16), Fern Healthcare Private Limited (JD17), Devera Developers Private Limited, Greenline Buildwell Private Limited and Adept Lifespace Private Limited.

Also read: Fortis Healthcare to be renamed 'Parkway'; hospital's logo to change

The affidavit alleges around December 2017, Shivinder Mohan Singh 'misused' his position, while concealing the precarious financial health of the companies under the Best Group. It alleges that Shivinder initiated the process to acquire these companies through Malvinder without any due diligence.

"Shivinder Singh misrepresented that this takeover is profitable. However, in October-November 2018, it was pointed out by the auditors that these companies are in fact debt-ridden. These companies had extended financial facilities to either Gurinder Dhillon, his family members, his close associates or the companies owned, controlled or managed by the Dhillon family," the affidavit alleged.

Dhillon and his family members received monies not only from Malvinder and his subsidiaries between 2006 and 2010 but also from companies of the Best Group (2011-2016), which weren't his subsidiaries when the loans were given and were acquired in December 2017.

Also read: Former Fortis promoter Shivinder Singh gets bail in money laundering case

"The monies received from the Best Group was camouflaged by Dhillon and his family members to appear as if they were clearing their direct debt towards Malvinder and his subsidiaries to window dress that there is no amount receivable from Dhillon and members of his family directly to Malvinder," the affidavit says.

However, the monies advanced by the Best Group directly to the Dhillon family i.e. a sum of Rs 1,472.72, crore along with interest is still outstanding towards the companies of the Best Group, Malvinder says.

He says Dhillon had earlier attempted to mislead the court by confusing the two sets of loans advanced to him and his families. "The same are to be paid back, along with applicable interest at the rate of 14.75 per cent quarterly compounding," he says, adding that this interest rate was mutually accepted.

Response from Malvinder came after Dhillon via an affidavit claimed he owed no money to Malvinder. Malvinder also alleged that Shivinder Singh and former associates Sunil and Sanjay Godhwani also conspired to misappropriate funds.

Both Malvinder and Shivinder are in police custody in a fraud case involving their former company Ranbaxy. The Singh brothers sold Ranbaxy to Daiichi Sankyo in 2008. In 2013, Daiichi paid $500 million as felony charges in the US for selling adulterated medicines, following which it filed an arbitration case against Singh brothers.

Open Thread 34 (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, as is hate speech. 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 non-dualistic view of meditation

It's usually rather simplistic to start off by saying "There are two kinds of...", because generally nature, or reality, doesn't come in two well-defined flavors -- like vanilla and chocolate. Instead, there are many flavors, many shades of gray between black and white.

That said, in general I consider there are two views of meditation, dualistic and non-dualistic. 

Dualistic approaches typically see us humans as being comprised of an immaterial soul and material body. The goal of meditation is to detach the soul from the body, which enables it to return to god, or merge with god, as in the Hindu conception of atman (soul) and brahman (god).

Non-dualistic approaches typically see us humans as being part and parcel of the natural world, physical beings in a physical world. The goal of meditation is to accept this reality, not being attached to the world being any particular way, but coming to accept things as they are.

After some thirty-five years of embracing dualism, I'm now firmly in the non-dualistic camp. So I've been enjoying a book by Oliver Burkeman, "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking." Today I finished a chapter about the Buddhist approach to not thinking positively. 

Here's some excerpts from the chapter that I liked.

The idea of meditation as a path to calmness is somewhat more realistic, since calmness -- unlike unbroken ecstasy -- can indeed be one of its side effects. Yet all these associations have contributed to a modern image of meditation as a sophisticated form of positive thinking, which is almost the opposite of the truth.

In fact, meditation has little to do with achieving any specific desired state of mind, no matter whether blissful or calm. At Buddhism's core, instead, is an often misunderstood notion that is starkly opposed to most contemporary assumptions about how to be happy, and this places it squarely on the 'negative path' to happiness: non-attachment.

...Rather than merely enjoying pleasurable things during the moments in which they occur, and experiencing the unpleasantness of painful things, we develop the habits of clinging and aversion: we grasp at what we like, trying to hold on to it forever, and push away what we don't like, trying to avoid it at all costs.

Both constitute attachment. Pain is inevitable, from this perspective, but suffering is an optional extra, resulting from our attachments, which represent our attempt to try to deny the unavoidable truth that everything is impermanent.

...Non-attachment need not mean withdrawing from life, or suppressing natural impulses, or engaging in punishing self-denial. It simply means approaching the whole of life -- inner thoughts and emotions, outer events and circumstances -- without clinging or aversion.

To live non-attachedly is to feel impulses, think thoughts, and experience life without becoming hooked by mental narratives about how things 'should' be, or should never be, or should remain forever. The perfectly non-attached Buddhist would be simply, calmly present, and non-judgmentally aware.

Which, let's be frank, isn't going to happen for most of us any time soon.

...When you start meditating it soon becomes apparent that thoughts -- and emotions -- bubble up in much the same uncontrollable, unbidden fashion in which noises reach the ears, smells reach the nose, and so on.

I could no more choose for thoughts not to occur than I could choose not to feel chilly when I was woken by the ringing of the morning bell at five-thirty each day -- or, for that matter, that I could choose not to hear the bell.

...In the analogy most commonly used by contemporary Buddhists, mental activity begins to seem more like weather -- like clouds and sunny spells, rainstorms and blizzards, arising and passing away. The mind, in this analogy, is the sky, and the sky doesn't cling to specific weather conditions, nor try to get rid of the 'bad' ones.

The sky just is. 

In this the Buddhists go further than the Stoics, who can sometimes seem rather attached to certain mind-states, especially that of tranquility. The perfect Stoic adapts his or her thinking so as to reman undisturbed by undesirable circumstances; the perfect Buddhist sees thinking itself as just another set of circumstances, to be non-judgmentally observed. 

RSSB guru's personal life should be closely examined

Somebody sent me this screenshot from the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) web site. The message says that RSSB devotees shouldn't pay attention to the personal life of the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, nor his private family matters.

I disagree, for reasons I'll share below.

Dhillon is a public figure. He is the leader of a religious organization with millions of followers. He is shown in You Tube videos that are viewed by many.

And Dhillon also has been the subject of many stories in the Indian financial press regarding the involvement of the guru, his family, and close associates in a financial scandal where allegedly hundreds of millions of dollars were illegally siphoned off from companies once controlled by the Singh brothers, who are relatives of the guru, into shell companies and unsecured loans to the Dhillon family.

Here's a sampling of blog posts I've written about the questionable activities of the RSSB guru.

Malvinder's criminal complaint casts light on RSSB guru's role in financial fraud
Devastating criticism of Gurinder Singh Dhillon by a RSSB insider
Delhi Police financial fraud charges point to RSSB guru's involvement
Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru, accused of making death threats
Sheetal Talwar talks about death threat made from RSSB satsang office
Sheena's "Memoirs of a Seeker" throws light on Gurinder Singh Dhillon
Bloomberg story shows Gurinder Singh Dhillon's shady business dealings
RSSB guru appears to have lied about his financial problems

It is easy for a guru to appear all spiritual, loving, and trustworthy when he or she is sitting on a stage, surrounded by fawning followers, with nobody asking tough questions about the guru's personal life outside of his religious duties. 

But none of us is only who we are at our best public moments. There's much more to us that only comes to light in private moments. Knowing the full picture isn't important when it comes to most people we know.

For example, I don't need to know the private life of my doctor, hair cutter, plumber, or electrician, because this isn't relevant to my relationship with them. However, in the case of a guru who is considered to be God in Human Form by his devotees, a trusted spiritual guide with upstanding morals, it definitely is highly relevant how the guru behaves in his private life.

I just spent an enjoyable four days, Monday through Thursday, watching every prime time minute of the Democratic National Convention. It didn't feature just the public side of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It also showed lots of details about their personal and private life.

That's the only way to understand who a politician really is. And it's also the only way to understand who a guru really is. You can't claim to be a "perfect" guru if in your personal life you're doing some decidedly imperfect things.

So if you're a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, ignore the admonition to not be interested in the guru's personal life. Sure, usually a person's private life should be off-limits to public scrutiny. But not when a person occupies an important public role, like wanting to be President or Vice-President of the United States.

In that case, as in the case of a guru who supposedly is a highly elevated spiritual being capable of guiding people back to God. it makes sense to get to know the entire person, not just their public persona.

RSSB guru vents his anger, but says no one else should

Ah, the hypocrisy of so-called "spiritual" leaders. The rules don't apply to them, only to everybody else. I love pointing out how absurd this is.

Here's an example.

The guru of an India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), is featured in You Tube videos where his devotees ask questions and get answers.

Not good answers. Not reasonable answers. But answers, which sometimes are wildly hypocritical. I don't watch the videos, since I don't enjoy being exposed to religious mumbo-jumbo.

However, a commenter on one of my blog posts recently shared a link to a video where the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, answered a question a woman had about anger.

You can see this exchange in the video below, which I've made start a few seconds before the woman's anger question. I'm also sharing a written transcript.

Note that Dhillon interrupts the woman when she starts to explain what leads her to get angry. So we don't know whether someone is abusing her, whether she is upset about an injustice, or if there is some other reasonable justification for her anger.

Astoundingly, Dhillon then tells the woman there is never a circumstance that justifies anger. Oh, that isn't correct -- because right after that the guru says that he often gets angry, at everyone. 

How does Dhillon justify this? By saying there is a purpose behind his anger, while supposedly there is no purpose behind the woman getting angry.

Of course, he interrupted her before she could explain what causes her to lose her temper. But whatever it is, the guru tells her not to be angry, but to be more loving. 

Meanwhile, the guru can continue being angry with everyone, because his anger supposedly has a purpose.

That's astoundingly egotistical and self-centered, since the woman may have a better reason to be angry than the guru does. Fortunately, the woman doesn't promise to only be loving, since anger sometimes is justified.

Lesson is, don't take the advice of a guru. They often have less understanding of psychology and mental health than the average person.

Here's the interchange.

Woman: Okay, Baba Ji, my next question is that I get very angry, and then when my anger crosses a certain limit, I cannot control it. So when I lose my temper, what should I do to calm down?

Dhillon: Should I get angry with you?

Woman: No.

Dhillon: So then why do you get angry with anyone?

Woman: Sometimes circumstances...

Dhillon: No, there is no such circumstance. What you can achieve with love never can be achieved with anger. It is true. I often vent my anger on everyone, but there's a purpose behind it. Now there's no purpose behind you losing your temper. And you see, most of the time, we take our anger out on our parents. If we take it out on anyone else, they will shout right back at us. We know that our parents will not say anything to us. So that is why we should be even more loving. Now promise me, "In future, I will only be loving."

Woman: You have a beautiful smile.

Here's a compelling story of how someone deconverted from Christianity

I love reading deconversion stories. It's hugely more interesting to learn how someone came to reject a religion, than how they embraced it.

Here's a message I got from a person who used to be a devout Christian until they saw the light of rationality. What's fascinating is how they used the Bible to come to a conviction that Christianity didn't make sense.

I also liked how they discovered what happened after they deconverted. Nothing bad, though this is what preachers claimed would happen. Actually, this person says they are happier now in a number of ways. 

So don't hesitate to leave a religion if this is what you feel like doing. I was an active member of a guru-centered Eastern religion for 35 years.

Like the person who sent me this message, the religion I belonged to claimed that bad karma would befall anyone who came to doubt its teachings. And also like this person, I'm happier now with no regrets. 

Read on to learn a compelling de-conversion story.

I was a Christian from 1980 until around 2016, 36 years of varying levels of indoctrination. I was a very zealous believer from around 1992 until 2014.

I went to Bible college, was on worship teams, taught in various capacities in three different churches, did some traveling ministry, and was a youth pastor and associate pastor. My wife was, and still is, a very devout Christian. So, what would possibly cause me to leave my Christian beliefs behind?

Short answer, it was mostly because of the Bible.

The church I went to, and the corresponding Bible college, was an evangelical/word of faith flavor. We were taught, God/the Bible said it, I believe it, and that settles it. We were discouraged to read any books outside of our group. We were taught that we should not question anything in the Bible because that would start to “contaminate” our faith.

I was effectively brainwashed. And I did my share of brainwashing. With this kind of indoctrination, it’s amazing what a person overlooks in the Bible, or just doesn’t see it.

The first time I remember a major doctrinal question coming up, it was about tithing. We were taught that, according to the Bible, we were to give 10% of our income to our local church. And if you really love God, you will give more than that! And, if you don’t give, you are stealing from God himself.

I had a good friend who was questioning the teachings we had received on tithing and asked if I would study it out, and he would do the same.

In the Old Testament, I found that there were basically three kinds of tithes. One was to go to the religious leaders so they could give themselves full time to the service of God. The second tithe was basically a savings program. You would set 10% aside and use it to basically have a giant religious party. It was called the feast tithe, but I like party tithe.

I don’t ever remember any pastors encouraging people to put a tithe away for themselves. And the third was to take care of the poor and widowed. Again, I don’t hear that one much.

In the New Testament, there is NO instruction to tithe, at all! None. Zero. Zip.

In fact, the instruction in the NT basically tells people to give where you feel you should and if you are able to do so. WTF?!?! That’s not what I had been taught! So, if that teaching can’t be backed up with scriptures, what else is bull shit? Oh, there is plenty of bull shit!

Around this time, I had also quit attending church on a regular basis. And by 2012, I wasn’t going at all.

This had an interesting effect on me. Without the weekly brainwashing/indoctrination, I began to think for myself, more and more. GASP! I know, right? In 2014 I decided to do an in-depth study of the Bible, without the church glasses on.

By this time, I had probably read through the Bible 10 times, and much of it many more. But this was different. I was diving in with as few preconceived ideas as possible. I studied the Bible, its history, and the history of the Christian church.

The list of things that I found would take several writings to cover. But here are a few things.

The creation story in Genesis. Nope. Way too much scientific evidence to the contrary. And, without the “fall of man” in the garden, everything else kind of falls apart. The worldwide flood of Noah. Holy shit. Outside of God completely suspending all natural laws that we know of, and then some, this could not have happened.

Not to mention the fact that a so called, all loving God, wiped out almost all life on earth in one of the most frightening ways possible. Assuming that it really happened. And the list goes on. For an evangelical Christian, when the Bible loses its credibility, that’s a huge step towards becoming a non-believer.

There are no original copies, or even copies of copies of copies, of any books of the Bible. Men have been adding to and taking away and changing things for hundreds of years. The idea of hell as we know it today didn’t come along until five centuries after Jesus was supposed to have lived.

And yet, so many Christians preach it like it’s in the Bible. It’s not! Only vague references. If there is a hell, God did a terrible job of making sure that mankind has a clear understanding of who goes there, and how to not go there. Not even all Christians can agree on that! If there is a God, he/she is a terrible communicator.

If you do an internet search for inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible, there are a lot. And since many Christians believe that the Bible is the perfect word of God, even one is too many. To me, it is quite obvious that the Bible is a work of men.

One of the most telling things to me about my experience, is what didn’t happen when I left my faith behind.

We were basically told that if a person walks away from God, their life will just go to shit. Your pet will die, your car will break down, you’ll be consumed by your sin, etc. Well, so far, none of that has happened. If anything, my life has gotten better.

I’m in a better place mentally and emotionally. I think I’m a better, more compassionate human than I was when I was a Christian. I’m better off financially. I have good, healthy relationships in my life. My physical health is good. So any changes that have taken place have been positive ones.

Today, I’m not convinced that there is no god (divine, invisible being, creator, etc) of any kind. But I’m certainly not convinced that there is. In fact, I lean much more towards believing there is no god. But if there is a god, I doubt we humans can really comprehend that god.

The road manager for AC/DC, Barry Taylor, said, "God is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape." LOL.

The road manager for AC/DC makes more sense to me than most theologians! And maybe that’s part of what religion tries to do, other than controlling people and making money, that is. Maybe part of religion is throwing a blanket over mystery to give it shape?

Don't be proud of losing your self. You never had one.

Today I heard Sam Harris say something interesting, yet rather obvious, in a dialog with Loch Kelly on Harris' Waking Up app.

Basically, Harris said that no one should feel proud of having become selfless through their meditation, because they never had a self to begin with.

The self is a mirage. So teaches Buddhism, and so teaches modern neuroscience. It's akin to the illusion of seeing water ahead on a hot desert road. When you get closer, you realize there's no water there at all. It's a mirage.

I've written quite a bit about the illusion of a self. It's common in some religions, being manifested as the illusion of an enduring soul rather than the equal illusion of an enduring self. 

Hinduism falls prey to this illusion. So does Christianity. By and large, Buddhism doesn't. Nor does Taoism. Here's some of my blog posts on this subject.

Self, no-self...what's the difference?
We humans have selfhood without a self
Not-self a teaching of Buddhism, not Hinduism
The self as illusion
Self/Soul is evolution's trick to make us think "I'm important!"
Spiritual illusions are as deceptive as worldly illusions

I also liked how Harris spoke about the importance of making everyday life the touchstone, or test, of whether you're gaining more equanimity through meditation or some other spiritual practice.

He said that back when he actually had to be someplace at a particular time, before the COVID era did away with a lot of traveling, at times he would get irritated when he was late. Then he'd do something unthinkingly, like break a glass while putting it in the sink. Having to clean the mess up would make him even later. And more irritated.

It's easy to have an inflated sense of spiritual progress when you feel all calm and one with the cosmos while sitting cross-legged on a cushion in the morning with no stressors acting on you.

If you can feel that way when things are going to shit in your life, that's a much stronger sign that your meditation is having some positive effects. 

RSSB guru back in Singh brothers financial scandal spotlight

Here's a hot-off-the-press (August 13) story from The Economic Times about the latest turn of events involving the Singh brothers and their relative, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

Dhillon has been accused by Malvinder Singh of using his influence as a trusted spiritual guide and family advisor to siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars from a company once controlled by Malvinder.

Fraudulent "loans" allegedly funneled money into the pockets of the guru and his family via shell companies headed up by directors associated with the Dhillon family and RSSB.

I've boldfaced portions of the story that mention the RSSB guru. It does seem extremely suspicious that the criminal complaint Malvinder filed against Dhillon and others back in February 2019 hasn't been investigated. 

Many people have left comments on blog posts I've written about this financial scandal and the guru's involvement in it. Fairly frequently it is observed that the Indian justice system has a lot of corruption and favoritism embedded in it. So powerful well-connected people get treated lightly, or not at all, while others get punished.

This is a test case of sorts for whether international investors can trust that the Indian justice system will investigate alleged corporate financial misdeeds fairly and openly.

So far, India is getting poor marks on this question. Malvinder presented compelling evidence in his criminal complaint that Gurinder Singh Dhillon was a mastermind of the fraudulent transactions that ended up enriching the Dhillon family.

Until the RSSB guru either is cleared or indicted by Indian authorities, there will always be reason to suspect that the supposedly "spiritual" leader of a large religious group is getting special treatment from the Powers-That-Be in India.

Malvinder Singh, former promoter of Religare NSE -0.56 % Enterprises who is under custody for alleged money laundering, has accused spiritual leader Gurinder Singh Dhillon of engineering “systematic downfall” of Religare group by misusing his influence over the former.

In his bail petition filed last week, Singh alleged that he has been falsely implicated and is “being made a scapegoat to shield certain individuals and the management of the complainant company (Religare) from legal action and claims”.

He alleged that Dhillon, head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), is the “culprit who has contrived the systematic downfall of the Religare group of companies as well as RHC group by misusing his filial and spiritual influence over the applicant as well as committing fraud” in conspiracy with Sunil Godhwani and Shivinder Singh, co-accused in the Rs 2,100-crore fraud case.

ET has accessed a copy of the petition filed before a local Court

“Gurinder Singh Dhillon has unwittingly left a trail of breadcrumbs revealing his involvement, including the appointment of many of his devotees as directors in the defaulting companies,” it said.

Malvinder’s lawyer Manu Sharma argued that a commercial dispute of loan default and alleged violations of prudential and corporate governance norms are being given the colour of a criminal offence, which ought not to be countenanced by the court.

Malvinder has claimed that he had filed a complaint against Dhillon and several others in the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Delhi police in February last year, seeking investigation against their alleged fraudulent activities. “However, to the prejudice of the applicant (Malvinder), the same has not been investigated,” the petition said.

It also claimed that he has no relationship with borrower entities used for the alleged fraud. There is not even a shred of credible material to show that Malvinder controlled the affairs of these companies, it claimed.

“Most of the directors of borrower entities were not only devout followers of Radha Soami Satsang Beas with unassailable reverence for Gurinder Singh Dhillon but were also inimically disposed to the Malvinder as he had filed a complaint against Dhillon with the EOW in February 2019”, Malvinder has stated in his petition.

Dhillon has denied allegations of wrongdoing.

Malvinder in his petition also claimed that the agencies' accusation that public money is involved in the instant case is nothing but a “myth”. He has contended that it is imperative to note that Religare Finvest, the group firm which the money was allegedly siphoned off, itself was not a public listed company and did not accept public deposits.

Malvinder is in custody for over eight months. He stands booked by the EOW and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in separate cases of fraud.

Referring to bail granted by the Delhi High Court to his brother Shivinder Singh last month, Malvinder has argued that he “deserves the benefit of parity”.

ED is expected to present its arguments on Malvinder’s bail plea next week.

In its charge sheet filed against the Singh brothers, ED had alleged in January that Malvinder and Shivinder Singh along with co-accused Sunil Godhwani laundered Rs 2,100 crore from Religare, using 19 ‘shell’ companies.

Live as if you could die at any moment

A few days ago I tried to explain my relationship with reality. Given how meaty, or in my case, tofuy, that subject is, I necessarily had to leave out some of the maxims that currently guide my life.

The title of this blog post is another one: live as if you could die at any moment. 

Practically speaking, i really mean live as much as possible as if you could die at any moment, because likely it would be counterproductive to always have a sensation that death could come in the next instant. Or, maybe not. I'm unsure about this.

Regardless, I like this maxim better than how it often is phrased: live as if this could be your last day.

That strikes me as problematic for a couple of reasons. First, until it really is the day of my death, I'm going to be wrong about this being my last day.

So it doesn't make sense to spend every day doing things that I wouldn't engage in if I wasn't going to die that day, since the odds are strongly in favor of that being the case. For example, on my last day I might want to have lengthy heartfelt talks with my daughter, granddaughter, and wife about how much I love them and what they mean to me.

If I did that every day, before too long they'd be justified in telling me, "Um, we really need to cut down on those talks, because they're taking up too much time in our own busy days."

Second, life is uncertain, as is death. We don't know when our life will end. If we're young, the odds are that we have many more years to live, but that isn't guaranteed. Those odds go down the older we become. However, the uncertainty remains. 

Thus living as if every day could be our last day introduces more of a sense of certainty into our lifespan than I feel comfortable with. 

This is why I prefer the feeling that I could die at any moment. This takes away the "day" restriction, making the sensation of life's fragility as ever-present as possible -- again, I emphasize the "as possible." Feeling pressure to squeeze every last drop of meaning out of each moment would be exhausting and life-defeating.

Instead, periodically throughout the day I simply enjoy thinking, "If I were to die in the next moment, how would I feel?"

Now obviously I wouldn't feel great about dying, to put it mildly, unless I were in so much pain, or otherwise fed up with living, that death would be a welcome event. 

Rather, what I'm getting at -- and this is rather difficult to put into words -- is feeling that at this moment I'm doing the best I can to be happy, productive, and aware. A no regrets sort of feeling. A feeling largely or entirely lacking in "I should have done _____" instead.

Again, I'm not saying that I want to always be doing something dramatic and heartfelt, a last day on earth sort of thing. Mostly my days are filled with ordinary stuff: emptying the dishwasher, going for a dog walk, grocery shopping, brushing my teeth, watching TV. 

My goal is to be content with doing all those things. That's what would make dying in the next moment easier, more acceptable, less jarring. I don't like the idea of dying with an angry thought in my head: "Why is that goddamn driver ahead of me going so freaking slow!"

If a semi-truck suddenly crosses into my lane and is about to hit my car head on, I'd prefer that my mind at that moment were to be filled with something more positive, like the idea of President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris. Ah, bliss...

Thus I'm not concerned very much with what I might be outwardly doing when death unexpectedly pays me a visit, as what my inward state of being is at that moment. I'd rather die with an inner smile than a frown. Knowing that to be the case helps me try to be as calm and positive as possible when things go wrong in my day, as they always do.

Our coffee grinder stopped working this morning in the midst of grinding beans. Not exactly a huge problem, but it irked me, because I then had to take the time to see what Consumer Reports recommended for a replacement, then order the highest rated grinder from Amazon.

If I'm going to die while my web browser is focused on Amazon, I'd like my online shopping to be a pleasant experience, not an unwelcome one.

That's what I mean by live as if you could die at any moment. Being content with whatever I'm doing, no matter how mundane it might me. This is the OXO Brew coffee grinder I ordered. Time will tell if it brings contentment. But it has to be better than no grinder at all.

Why are beliefs so important?

Here's a guest post from Osho Robbins, who emailed what follows to me.

He points out the difference between the beliefs held by devotees of a particular India-based religious organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, and the reality of what the current leader of the organization, a guru (Gurinder Singh Dhillon) says the RSSB teachings are.

Why are beliefs so important?

What do you think of a person who still believes that the earth is flat?  Or someone who knows it's a sphere, but believes it is the centre of the universe and that the sun rotates around the earth?

What about a follower of Ram Rahim, who still thinks he is innocent and is just being persecuted?

I dont think you would be very impressed with such a person. In fact you might consider a person like that to be insane. But now - what if that person was YOU?

Do you think its important that your beliefs are accurate? Or is it okay to have false beliefs?

Beliefs run your life. It is a well known fact that you don't live life. You live a limited life based entirely on your beliefs. Whatever you believe appears to be TRUE for you.

You alter your perceptions to make the world fit into your beliefs, so you never experience the world. You experience only YOUR VERSION, which is the world, seen through the filter of your beliefs.

Now look at the beliefs of an RSSB (Radha Soami Satsang Beas) follower and let's see how they have changed over the years. Does the follower have inaccurate beliefs?

Traditional beliefs about the master: 

1. The master is ALL KNOWING. He literally knows what you are thinking and he knows the future.

2. The master is ALL POWERFUL. He has the power to do anything he chooses.

3. The master is a super human with amazing powers beyond your comprehension. Do not consider him to be just a man. The Sar Bachan actually states "Do not consider the guru to be a mere mortal. He is the darling of Sat Purush." (God)

4. The master has the power to alter your karmas. So many stories and anecdotes portray this as true.

5. The master never makes a mistake - literally. How can the master make a mistake? There is a higher meaning and purpose in everything he does and says.

6. The master is perfect.

7. The master has the highest moral standard you can imagine

8. The master is an HONEST and decent human being

9. The master is not subject to karmas as he is God in human form

10. The master is above pride and ego

11. The radiant form of the master will come at death to meet each disciple and personally take charge of his soul.

Now compare this to the REALITY. I wont go into detail, but any intelligent person can make a realistic asessment of the truth. If the master himself says that he is not 'perfect' why would you insist he is? If evidence shows you something different, why would you ignore the evidence?

So then you have to re-assess what you really believe if you are intelligent. It is insanity to continue to hold outdated and inaccurate beliefs and you will pay the price because your expectations will not be met.

Traditional beliefs about the RSSB path and the teachings:

1. God is called Sat Purush and resides in Sach Khand, the fifth region. Just Google "Radha soami spiritual regions" and you will get graphic pictures of them (click on images). Your purpose is to meet him.

2. in meditation your soul leaves your body via the third eye and reaches the astral region where it meets the radiant form of the master, who then takes the soul through all the regions, and eventually to Sach Khand.

3. Once you are initiated, you will always come back only as a human and not lower species, and within four lifetimes you will reach Sach Khand.

4. The purpose of the spiritual path is to reach Sach khand. Others (like Krishna, Buddha and Jesus) never reached Sach Khand. They only reached the lower regions (region 2 or 3 of the 5).

5. The master will come at death and take your soul into safe care and put it where is can meditate and eventually reach Sach Khand

6. Sach Khand is a real place and so are the regions.

7. The advaita type of teachers were of a much lower standard and never got to Sach Khand

8. Only the people with the highest karma will find a true guru and Sant Mat is the ONLY valid way to get to Sach Khand. All other religions failed to reach Sach Khand. Read Dr Johnson's "The Path of the Masters" for validation of this point. The book even goes into a detailed comparison with other religions.

9. It's not just about Realisation or ONENESS. There are regions to traverse in the inner world.

How much of this still applies?

Some people justify the changes by saying "The gurus change and adapt with the times" but this is simply not true when the teachings fundamentally change. A person following RSSB in the 70's and 80's would not recognise RSSB today as the same path. There are just too many differences.

So then the uncomfortable truth has to be faced: that maybe i am following just another belief system but am convinced this is the real truth and that ONE DAY I will see this for myself, after lots of meditation.

But when will that ONE DAY arrive?

In the latest video Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru, clarifies many of these beliefs we hold: invalidating them. Like that he is not knowing and there are no miracles and the guru cannot take on your karmas, etc.

GSD video no 16: 

05:24  As human beings we never learn in life. We are making the same mistakes again and again. We dont use our vivek (discrimination). We bring the suffering on.  

10:30  Seva (service) is not real seva because you cannot avoid the 'calculation' unless you are very elevated spiritually. 

12:00   Karmas have to ba PAID - cannot be forgiven except by "Shabd".

13:00 Books refer to miracles such as Bhai Shaadi when he was bitten by a snake and Sawan Singh healed him. Is this not a fact?  How do we know the snake was even poisonous? Video is then edited when the questioner says "But that is what is written in the books". 

The only miracle is that someone like me became the master.

14:00 I know some people who like to come back to this world again and again. Heaven would be so boring. (not me - others). He laughs. 

15:00  When did you get to know you would be the next master? No - I never knew - I was told. 

I shouldn't question, but I do! I should have faith in what Maharaj Ji did. (previous RSSB guru)

Let's say, I wonder "why me?" In my entire life I can't say that I excelled.

Maharaj Ji put me here to say "If such an average person can succeed, you can all succeed".

"That's your humility, Baba Ji..."

That's one thing I don't have (humility). Humility is not my strong point. Baba Vaswani was (humble) not me.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, RSSB guru

I try to explain my relationship with reality

Periodically I like to ponder my relationship with reality. Like, now.

Hey, movie theaters aren't open here in Oregon. My wife and I aren't eager to test our COVID luck by going to a gym or restaurant. My Tai Chi classes are on hold, though this week we started meeting on Wednesday afternoon in a park.

So I've had some extra time to contemplate ways reality and I can improve how we get along.

Of course, the first thing I realized is that the burden of improving the quality of our relationship falls on me, not reality, since I'm the one who is concerned about this, not the big wide wonderful world that exists beyond the confines of my cranium. 

Here's some of my current conclusions on this subject, which are definitely open to change at any moment, including the next one.

(1) When in doubt, look without, not within. I used to be a big fan of "going inside," as the meditation approach I followed for 35 years termed it. Meaning, ignore sensory impressions and focus on what lies within my mind or consciousness. 

Well, now I believe the exact opposite is, in general, a better approach. I feel happier and more grounded when I'm in tune with my physical surroundings. Also, less anxious.

A few minutes ago I watched our dog, who was sitting on our deck, tied to a railing by a leash, watch several deer passing through our rural Oregon yard, munching their way on whatever delicacies (like clover) caught their eye and nose. Our dog found the deer fascinating. I found the whole scene fascinating. 

Way more interesting than looking at the contents of my own mind, though I'm having to do that now as I compose this blog post.

(2) Pay closest attention to the physical now, not a mental past or future. The most real things are here and now. Not long ago this included our dog on the deck and deer in our yard. But now those things are a memory, so they exist only in my mind when I'm remembering them.

Ditto for everything that comes after me typing the word I'm typing now. I have a vague idea of what I want to say next. However, until a thought becomes converted to pixels on my laptop screen, it possesses less substantial reality. 

I often find myself worrying about what might happen in the future, or regretting something that happened in the past. It helps when I shift my attention to what is happening right here, right now. I remind myself that reality is immeasurably more vibrant when it is a concrete physical presence.

Memories. Thoughts. Worries. Anticipations. All the mental stuff inside my head is hugely less substantial. So I do my best to take it less seriously than my immediate physical surroundings.

(3) "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." As I've noted in numerous blog posts, and surely will note in more of them, I consider these words by Phillip K. Dick to be the best one-sentence bit of metaphysical philosophizing ever written.

I close my eyes. I stop believing in my MacBook Pro. I open my eyes. My laptop hasn't gone away. I'm sure of this, because my wife would let me know if I possessed the power of making my computer disappear by not believing in it. (If I could do this, rest assured that Donald Trump would disappear from the presidency.)

So what does go away when I stop believing in it? Or more generally, stop any mental activity about it. Notably, the past and future, since they are entirely mental constructs -- leaving aside the time-space continuum posited in Einstein's theory of relativity. 

Yes, the past and future may exist as a concrete reality if time is inextricably linked with space. But I'm not aware of anything other than the physical reality of the present moment. 

(4) Rumi has it right, even in translation. I've grown out of my previous obsession with Rumi, when I devoured every translation of his words I could find in English. Yet I still love this Rumi quotation, which I've committed to memory.

Fear the existence in which you are now!
Your imagination is nothing, and you are nothing,
A nothing has fallen in love with a nothing,
a nothing-at-all has waylaid a nothing-at-all.
When these images have departed,
your misunderstanding will be clear to you.

Wow, so seemingly true. What would reality be like without (a) our imaginings about what reality is like, and (b) our sense that each of us exists as a separate self?

That sense of independent selfhood is part of the imagining that keeps us from really knowing reality. As Rumi says, our imagination and our sense of self have fallen in love with each other. They have waylaid each other.

Yet neither truly exists. They are both nothings, or nothings-at-all. The departure of those images leaves behind... reality. At least, that's my current understanding. Tomorrow, or the next moment, I might look upon things differently. 

"Consciousness" might be a meaningless word

Below you can read a letter in New Scientist that raises a question I've pondered. Is there really such a thing as consciousness? 

It's clear that, along with other living beings, we humans are aware of both our external surroundings and internal states like hunger, thirst, fear, sexual attraction, thoughts, and such.

However, since that awareness is the brain in action when neurons reach a certain level of complexity, is it necessary to call that brain activity by a special name? Perhaps. Perhaps not. 

As the letter writer notes, at one point people thought that there must be some medium that allows light waves to move through space. But when electromagnetism came to be understood, the need for that medium vanished. 

Likewise, it is possible that what we now call consciousness is the product of our ignorance about how brains function. When the mechanisms of brain activity are more fully understood, "consciousness" may come to be viewed as a concept that no longer is relevant.

On a related note, today I listened to part of a dialogue Sam Harris had with Loch Kelly regarding dual and non-dual awareness. Because they are both deep into esoteric Buddhist philosophy, I'm finding their hour and a half discussion both interesting and irritating. 

Irritating, because both Harris and Kelly like to talk about how consciousness is unbounded, not being confined to the space within the head. I sort of get why they say this, but it seems obvious that (1) the brain is inside the head, and (2) the brain is necessary for consciousness.

Thankfully, today I heard Harris say something that went a long way toward alleviating my irritation. He noted that there is a difference between how we experience consciousness, and the ontology of consciousness.

Meaning, there is the reality of what consciousness actually is, how it arises, what its nature is, and all that, and then there is the felt subjective experience of consciousness or awareness. Harris and Kelly are mainly, if not entirely, speaking about the experiential aspect of consciousness, not how science currently objectively understands it.

So two things can both be true. Consciousness feels like it is unbounded, and consciousness also is the product of brain activity within the limited area of a human head.

Here's the New Scientist letter.

Consciousness could be another aether

Published 1 July 2020

From Ólafur JÓnsson, Mendrisio, Switzerland

I do enjoy the frequent letters and occasional articles on the subject of consciousness (Letters, 6 June). I am, however, bewildered by how the concept is defined. It seems to me that no two people can agree on what it is they are trying to describe.

Maybe because I have learned a spattering of languages in my life, I’m used to trying to guess a word’s meaning from its context, and the context seems to me to vary significantly in writing on the matter of consciousness. I wonder if the search for it is like that for the luminiferous aether, the proposed medium that would allow light waves to move through space. What reason do we have to assume consciousness exists, however much we “feel” it must?

Magic fairies, like God, don't exist. But we do.

Comic strips can say a lot in just a few words and pictures. Here's one in yesterday's Sunday paper that I like a lot.

Wouldn't it be great if everybody worked to make the world a better place without resorting to supplications to imaginary beings like gods and fairies? 

(Of course, John Lennon wrote a song along that line.)

The coronavirus doesn't care what people think of it

Philosophically, the coronavirus (novel coronavirus, actually, since COVID is a new version) has some interesting aspects. Most obviously, the virus is teaching us something important.

It doesn't give a shit what people think of it. It just does what it is designed to do by evolution -- spread between individuals whenever it has a chance. 

You can't pray your way out of getting it. You can't wish your way out of getting it. You can't positive-think your way out of getting it.

The only way to protect yourself is to avoid contact with the virus. Wear a mask. Physically distance from other people. Wash your hands often. Don't touch your face. You know, familiar advice.

Which a whole lot of Americans are ignoring, along with other clueless people around the world. People who believe they are smarter than a dumb virus, even though it's obvious that from the chart above, the virus has the upper hand in the United States right now.

Americans aren't very scientifically literate. And we have a president, Donald Trump, who takes pride in ignoring science, facts, and experts. 

So this country had a moderate decline in COVID cases after a peak in early April. Then people got complacent, figuring they knew more that public health experts, and now we're suffering from a steep unswing in cases. Also, in deaths.

It isn't a coincidence that the United States also is one of the most religious countries in the world. Denial of facts about the physical world goes hand-in-hand with an embrace of fantasies about God, heaven, and such. Too many Americans consider that belief has a magical power.

Actually, it doesn't. Only in the human mind do beliefs have an influence. Nature couldn't care less what people believe. Nature just does what comes naturally: act in accord with the laws of nature.

The coronavirus is immune to human thought. It can only be controlled by preventing its spread through specific physical actions, not by wishing it away. The same is true of global warming.

What's hugely disturbing is how badly the United States is doing at controlling COVID in comparison to Europe,

That's because we never had a unified national response owing to the incompetence and uncaring'ness of Trump, combined with governors and mayors who failed to maintain stay home/shelter in place orders for a long enough time. 

UPDATE: Just came across this tweet that supports what I said above.

So even though the European Union has more people than the United States, our cases have been skyrocketing whiie Europe only has a modest uptick. 

Perhaps some good will come of this. Maybe it will dawn on Americans that science is our best way of understanding the world around us, not religion or other fantasies. Maybe...

Know when to step back, to reassess, to go in a different direction

As I make my way through Maria Konnikova's book about learning poker, "The Biggest Bluff," I keep my eye out for insights by this Ph.D. psychologist that pertain to a churchless way of life.

Below are some passages I read this morning that are pertinent to those who are wondering whether they should stick with a religion, spiritual path, or mystical teaching that no longer seems to make sense.

Konnikova speaks of the sunk cost fallacy. Basically, it means that you keep on doing something because you're invested in it. The investment could be money, but it also could be psychological, mental, emotional. 

You're reluctant to give the thing up even though if you had to do it over again, you wouldn't want that thing. But those sunk costs make you think that you need to hold on, even though this is irrational, as in the saying "Don't throw good money after bad." A Wikipedia entry on this subject offers an example:

In an everyday example, a person may purchase a ticket to a baseball game and find after several innings that they are not enjoying the game. Their options at this point are:

• • Accepting the waste of money on the ticket price and watching the remainder of the game without enjoyment; or
  • Accepting the waste of money on the ticket price and leaving to do something else.

The economist will suggest that, since the second option involves suffering in only one way (wasted money), while the first involves suffering in two (wasted money plus wasted time), option two is preferable.

In either case, the ticket-buyer has paid the price of the ticket so that part of the decision should no longer affect the future. If the ticket-buyer regrets buying the ticket, the current decision should be based on whether they want to see the game at all, regardless of the price, just as if they were to go to a free baseball game.

Many people, however, would feel obliged to stay for the rest of the game despite not really wanting to, perhaps because they feel that doing otherwise would be wasting the money they spent on the ticket.

They may feel they have passed the point of no return. Economists regard this behavior as irrational. It is inefficient because it misallocates resources by taking irrelevant information into account.

With that introduction, here's excerpts from Konnikova's book.

Why not exercise some creative thinking in what my journey is going to be?

I am too married to what it is all "supposed" to look like, and not critical enough of the fact that I simply made some decisions earlier on with incomplete information -- and now that I know more, I should change course. No one is telling me to quit poker, merely to reassess where I am.

But somehow I convince myself that swerving wouldn't be a demonstration of my adaptability and flexible thinking. Instead, it would be a hit to my reputation, a demonstration of failure, of a lack of ability.

It's the classic sunk cost fallacy in action: you keep to your course because of the resources you've already invested. 

I've written about it many times. Only it seems that when it comes down to it, I don't quite apply it to myself, right now. In my mind, sunk costs are supposed to be physical. Somehow it doesn't occur to me that they can also be intangible. 

An accurate self-reassessment would have shown that I was nowhere near ready to take on what I had planned, and that the bigger blow to my reputation might actually be proceeding with my set course. No matter.

It's easy to spot sunk costs in others. This person held on to their investment too long. That CEO didn't switch his management strategy in response to a new market environment. That company didn't recognize that their star product was going obsolete.

In yourself, it can become more difficult -- especially when you're dealing not with a concrete action but rather a lack of action.

One of the most important lessons of poker strategy, intimately connected to self-assessment, is this: sometimes, it's the hands you don't play that win you the title. We remember the hero calls. What about the hero folds? What you don't do rather than what you do -- that can be greatness.

The art of letting go can be the truly strong one. Acknowledging when you're behind rather than continuing to put good money after bad. Acknowledging when the landscape has shifted and you need to make a shift yourself as a result. 

It happens all the time in our lives. We find ourselves in an appealing situation -- and then we hold on to it for dear life, even when any objective outside observer would tell us that the appeal is long gone. We start at a promising job, only to be stymied in promotions over and over -- yet we cling to the notion that the job is great.

We embark on a promising relationship, only to find that we have less and less in common with our partner -- yet we forge ahead, refusing to admit that what seemed so right is now wrong.

Sometimes, the most difficult thing of all is to stop playing. All too often, we stay in a hand long after we should have gotten out.

...In 2018, Kaitlin Woolley and Jane Risen demonstrated that people will often actively avoid information that would help them make a more informed decision when their intuition, or inner preference, is already decided. 

They will, for example, avoid learning how many calories are in an attractive dessert, or how much they will be paid if they choose to take on a boring task instead of a more exciting one. Part of them knows that the information might mean they need to change their decision, so they choose to ignore it.

...Never feel like you have to do something just because it's expected of you -- even if you're the one who expects it of you. Know when to step back. Know when to recalibrate. Know when you need to reassess your strategy, prior plans be damned.

RSSB guru asks good question: "How do you know I'm not a fraud?"

Back in 2006 I wrote a post called "Who is the guru?" In it I said this about the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Gurinder Singh is fond of saying, “How do you know that I’m not a fraud?” and “Maybe I just have the gift of gab.” Devotees consider statements like these to be Zen-like pointers toward his divinity. But who knows? Maybe he’s pointing toward his humanity without being able to explicitly speak of who he directly knows himself to be.

I don't know if the guru has continued to say those words. But I was reminded of them yesterday when I responded to an email sent to me by a disillusioned RSSB devotee who asked me some questions about my previous involvement with the organization and Gurinder Singh.

In part I said:

There are thousands of religions in the world. There’s no demonstrable evidence that any of them is objectively true.

 

If such evidence comes along, I’d seriously consider believing in that religion. Absent that evidence, I consider all religions to be false, including Sant Mat/RSSB. There rarely is a way to prove that something doesn’t exist, so the burden of proof rests on those who claim that something does exist. We can’t be 100% sure about anything, of course. All we can do is pursue truth and evidence as honestly as possible, recognizing it always is possible that we could be wrong.

 

...All religious leaders sound convincing, but that doesn’t mean they are speaking the truth. Every good salesperson sounds convincing. But we still need to think for ourselves to make sure the product they’re selling really is as good as they say. Same applies to people trying to sell us on a religion.

 

...Soon after Gurinder became the guru he was fond of saying things like, “How do you know I’m not a fraud?” and “How do you know whether I just have the gift of gab? (of speaking persuasively) Those are still good questions. He’s now been viewed as God in human form by his followers for thirty years. I suspect that Gurinder either actually believes he is a mystical adept, or he has had so much practice acting as if this is true he now puts on a convincing show for his followers.

 

This morning I did some additional reading in a book about a woman's pursuit of becoming expert at poker, "The Biggest Bluff" by Maria Konnikova. In her Reading Myself chapter, she has some interesting observations about understanding (or reading) the motivations of other people at a poker table that pertain to the question of who the RSSB guru really is.

God? Or a fraud?

Basically, it's complicated -- in poker or elsewhere in life -- because we humans are complex beings. Here's an initial step at understanding, or reading, as described by Konnikova.

Frank Lantz has developed a poker concept that he calls "donkey space" about the dynamic between two expert players who understand the game at a high level and are playing a heads up match -- that is, one on one. There's perfect theoretical play, which is unexploitable by any opponent, and then there's adjustment to that play based on your opponent's strategy.

...You watch them act and react over multiple situations and you try to adjust based on that behavior, to be maximally profitable against that particular person.

But now, if your opponent is good, they realize what you're doing -- and they adjust in turn. It may even be the case that they moved to this particular spot in strategy space on purpose, Lantz points out, so that they now exploit you better. They've given up equity for a little bit to then kick you once you've moved.

"I call this donkey space because a donkey is a fish, a player who is not playing perfectly," Lantz explains. "But these two people are like fighter pilots, maneuvering around each other, because in a dogfight, what you want is to be on your opponent's tail. That's where you can shoot them." He continues, "You're doing barrel rolls and triple flips, and you're constantly trying to outmaneuver this other person."

So that's one lesson from poker, which I suppose most of us already know, at least intuitively. There are layers upon layers of possible deception. 

A guru says, "How do you know I'm not a fraud?" The person hearing this has to decide what to make of those words. Is the guru being honest? Is he admitting to being a fraud without outright saying this, making it into a question rather than a statement? Or is the guru casting the responsibility onto his devotees to find the truth about himself, which could be a positive thing?

But there are more complex possibilities. The guru knows he is a fraud, so he sounds like he is admitting this, knowing that most of his devotees will refuse to believe it and rather view his words as manifesting a divine humility that shows his godliness, not his fraudness.

Here's another factor Konnikova talks about: the importance of knowing yourself if you wish to know other people.

I've been so busy focusing on reading the motivations in play for other people that I forgot to factor in myself. 

...Through careful observation, you not only have to learn how to tell the difference between your faulty intuitions and real data, but understand how to exploit what you've seen -- and how to know if you're being exploited in turn.

That last part is the one I seem to have momentarily forgotten. I've been so busy reading others that I've missed the step of stopping to read myself. Blake can only tell me what I'm giving off physically [at the poker table]. He doesn't have enough to go on to unravel my inner psychology and understand the internal tug-of-war that may be governing my actions.

...In turning my mind to tells and reads at this stage in my learning, I may have missed a crucial step: the first person you have to profile -- psychologically, not physically -- is yourself.

Great point. When it comes to gurus, why does someone want to believe in them so much? What need is being fulfilled by embracing the notion that a guru is God in human form when there is no evidence of this? Why is blind faith so attractive in the realm of religion when so much care goes into not being taken advantage of in one's worldly life?

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

 

Let everything be just as it is

Here's part of what Sam Harris said yesterday in a guided meditation on his Waking Up app that I listen to most mornings, along with a guided meditation by Tamara Levitt on my Calm iPhone app.

What would this moment be like if there truly was nothing missing, and nothing to do? Nothing to improve. Nothing to wait for.

What if this is it? Is there any sign that it is insufficient? Is there any sign of its imperfection?

Is there something you’re trying to accomplish? Simply relinquish all effort to try to improve experience in this moment.

Let everything be just as it is. 

Give up all effort. Simply notice whatever appears, grasping at nothing, pushing nothing away. 

Just realize everything is in its own place. And everything is all there is in each moment. 

Isn’t everything enough?

There’s always just consciousness and its contents as a matter of experience. 

See if you can recognize this. 

Now, one thing that came to mind is that seemingly there's a considerably difference between (1) letting everything be just as it is while I'm sitting peacefully in a chair, headphones on, listening to a guided meditation, and (2) letting everything be just as it is while, say, I'm sitting in a dentist's chair having a tooth drilled into. 

Or having some other painful, unpleasant, or disagreeable experience. 

It's unclear whether Harris meant for his words to apply to all sorts of moments, rather than just peaceful moments. I have a feeling that he did mean just that, since later in the guided meditation I recall him saying that it is important to blur the distinction between formal meditation and activities of everyday life.

And it would indeed be strange if the advice above about pushing nothing away only was relevant to pleasurable experiences where there would be no inclination to push something away.

So I believe that Harris is pointing toward something universally applicable, as difficult as it may be to envision simply noticing whatever appears without trying to grasp at something or push something away. If we've got a painful headache, doesn't it make sense to push it away with an aspirin, or whatever?

Sure it does. I don't think Harris is espousing an extreme fatalism where no effort is made to improve our condition or that of others. Rather, he seems to be talking about a view of life that, as his app puts it, involves waking up. 

The question is, waking up to what? Having listened to a lot of what Harris has to say, and having read each of his books, here's some ideas about what he's asking us to wake up to.

-- The present moment, which by definition, can't be changed. It simply is what it is.
-- The interdependence of everything in existence. Emptiness, to use a Buddhist term.
-- The passing nature of reality, notably including our own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
-- Our lack of free will, even though most of us consider that we possess it.
-- Our incessant habit of dividing realty into good and bad, based on our own subjectivity.
-- Our constant desire to find something new and better.
-- The lack of evidence for an enduring self. A "me" separate and distinct from experience.

I'm not saying that what I just wrote actually reflects what Harris is getting at. This is just how I look upon his words that I shared at the beginning of this post.

If you have different ideas about Harris' meaning here, leave a comment with your own viewpoint. The screenshot below is from the Waking Up web site.

My talk about the One at a RSSB National Satsang Weekend

It's a discovery! Not of buried treasure, unfortunately, but of a post I wrote for my HinesSight blog a few months before I started this Church of the Churchless blog. 

I came across a link to it while looking through early churchless posts to include in a second book of post compilations. Since there has been recent discussion about oneness on this blog, I figured it would be good to share this May 2004 post.

Since I'd written a book about Plotinus' teachings, Return to the One, it was easy for me to talk on this subject.

Not lost in translation (May 30, 2004)

This morning I gave a 45 minute talk to the 500 or so National Satsang Weekend attendees at the Science of the Soul Center here in Petaluma, California.

No, I’m not a member of a cult, no matter what my wife says (jokingly, I should emphasize, just as I fondly call her “infidel” with a smile on my face). Aside from my talks, Laurel chooses not to attend meetings of my spiritual group, for reasons I can completely sympathize with.

I look upon spirituality as a science that investigates whatever may lie beyond the physical reality with which we are familiar now. So I resonate to the “science” aspect of the Science of the Soul. But other members take much more of a religious approach, believing that the mere fact of being accepted as an initiate by the Master who heads the organization makes you a Special Soul, marked for salvation while people like my wife are doomed to a lesser quality afterlife.

Today I couldn’t resist making some remarks about this annoying attitude.

I said that scientists the world over are united in their search for the truth about materiality. A physicist doesn’t care if a colleague comes from another country, another culture, another religion, another whatever. All that matters is their common commitment to unraveling the laws of physical nature through the scientific method.

So science unites people.

Strangely, most religions and spiritual paths divide people, even though they claim to be devoted to the one God, or the one metaphysical reality. Thus, I observed, it is strange that a materialistic enterprise, science, is a unifying force on our planet, while a supposedly non-materialistic enterprise, religion, is a divisive force.

My main theme was the One.

This is the best term for God, I argued, because it most clearly reflects an almost universal tenet of mystical philosophies: beneath all the manyness without and within us lies the ineffable, formless ground of being. Call it God. Call it the One. Trace anything in creation back to its source. There is the One.

Since the One is everywhere and everything, though also separate from everywhere and everything (statements like this are what make mysticism mystical), we too are the One. But this won’t be evident to us until we get rid of all the manyness that obscures our oneness. Meditation is the scientific practice that, theoretically, brings this about.

(I say “theoretically” because the practice is darn difficult to practice, for me as for most other people).

Yet meditation needs to be supported by a person’s whole approach to life. If this is divisive, as when someone thinks they are part of a special group that has a special claim to special spiritual knowledge, that attitude isn’t going to lead this person closer to unity. I think I got this point across pretty well, though it wasn’t my main emphasis. Mostly I talked about Plotinus’s teachings concerning the One and how we are able to return to this ultimate reality.

This was the first time I’ve had a talk translated.

Because many older members of the Science of the Soul group were born in India and don’t speak English well, 45 minute talks given in English get a 15 minute translation into Hindi (or maybe Punjabi, I don’t know which). The translator jotted down five or so pages of handwritten notes while I was talking, came out on stage and sat down next to me after I was done, and proceeded to summarize what I said.

It was sort of fun to listen to the cadences of a language I can’t understand, other than a few words. There were lots of “paramatmas,” which I’m pretty sure means God, or close to it. Heaven knows how some of my slang-infested English got translated, and whether “Stoic” means much to many of the traditional Indians—who also dress traditionally.

Laurel and I love the colorful attire of the Indian women, all the saris in every color of the rainbow. And the Indian food served at lunch and dinner brought smiles to our stomachs. All in all, a pleasant multi-cultural weekend, different sorts of people coming together in pursuit of the One.

Blind belief feels good, but isn't a reliable guide to truth

Here's a nice "guest blog post" from Osho Robbins, who emailed it to me yesterday. I like what he has to say. I"m continually amazed at how people can believe crazy stuff that has no basis in fact, reason, or demonstrable evidence. 

They've just heard it from somewhere and embrace it because it feels like it could be true.

That's incredibly lazy. It also is why there are so many defenders of Trump's countless lies, so many people who feel that masks aren't effective in combating the spread of the coronavirus, so many deniers of the reality of human-caused global warming.

I came across this video.

A few things stand out. 

 

1. The caller, like many people, doesn’t have a clear understanding of meanings of words and just guesses and makes it up. 

 

2. The caller, again like many people, is just going by their feelings, but feelings, while they might seem to be important to the individual, are not a reliable path to truth. You can feel many things, it doesn’t make it the truth. I might for instance trust someone because I feel they are truthful. It doesn’t make it true, even though it might feel like it. 

 

3. When pushed to reveal “how and why” they think “it’s God” that is doing or responsible for XYZ, there is no logical answer the caller can give. 

 

4. Another huge logical fallacy that is common among believers is the appeal to authority. For example “I believe God does everything because it says so in the Sikh Granth sahib.” 

 

The truth is “so what?” 

How do you know it’s true? 

The answer again is because of trust and blind belief. 

 

This explains why so many people continue to believe everything that Gurinder Singh Dhillon [an Indian guru] says simply because he says it, regardless of how absurd the statement is. The hidden belief is “If the guru says it, it HAS to be the truth." The Sikh has a belief “if it’s written in the Granth ahib, it HAS to be the truth because the Granth sahib is the word of god.” 

 

To challenge those underlying core beliefs normally brings a robot-like response like “Everyone knows that the Granth sahib is the word of god” or yet another quote. 

 

Once you take away the “quote proof” and the “everyone knows” proof, and similar, suddenly the person realises they have no foundation. This is extremely uncomfortable, hence people avoid it at all costs. 

 

Those core beliefs are their comfort blanket and they will not let them go. Not ever. Because their whole life depends on them. 

 

Take away those beliefs and they cannot continue to live unconsciously anymore. 

 

That is why they fight for those beliefs so vehemently. 

 

The first glimpse of truth comes only when we question our core beliefs and it’s not comfortable at all. 

Dalai Lama says, "We must listen to scientists."

Hey, I can dream. It'd be great if our science-denying president, Donald Trump, and his fact-phobic Republican colleagues would pay attention to what the Dalai Lama said in the most recent issue of TIME magazine.

Oh, plus religious people who embrace prayer and faith over positive action and reason. The Dalai Lama is speaking to them also. I've boldfaced the parts of what he said that I particularly liked. 

These are timely sentiments from the Daiai Lama, since the United States is experiencing the highest levels of COVID cases since the pandemic began, and Trump, along with some clueless Republican governors, is ignoring public health experts. The Republican Governor of Georgia has even forbidden cities in that state from requiring masks be worn. Astounding, but true.

We must act as one to preserve our world

This planet is our only home. Environmental experts say that over the next few decades, global warming will reach such a level that many water resources will go dry. So ecology and combatting global warming are very important.

For example, my country, Tibet, is the ultimate source of water in Asia. Rivers including Pakistan’s Indus, India’s Ganges and Brahmaputra, China’s Yellow River, as well as the Mekong, flow from Tibet’s plateau. So we should pay more attention to the preservation of Tibetan ecology. This is not only for the interest of 6 million Tibetans but all people in this region.

In the past, when I was flying over Afghanistan, there were clear signs that what used to be lakes and streams were already dry. I feel that Tibet also may become like that soon. Regarding Tibet’s political matters, I have already retired. But regarding Tibet’s ecology and very rich culture, I’m fully committed.

We human beings have these marvelous, brilliant minds. But we are also the biggest troublemakers on the planet. Now we should utilize our brains with compassion, and a sense of concern. This is why one of my commitments is promotion of deeper human values.

From birth, we rely on others, particularly our mothers. From then, each individual’s existence entirely depends on a community, because we are a social animal. Community is the source of our happiness, so we must take care of the community. So now, in modern times, the concept of humanity is one community. East, west, north, south: everyone is interdependent.

The modern economy has no national bound­aries. Therefore, now we need a sense of oneness of all 7 billion human beings. In the past, many problems were created because of too much emphasis on our differences, such as nationalities and religions. Now, in modern times, that thinking is out of date. We should think about humanity, about the whole world.

We must listen to scientists and specialists. Their voices and knowledge are very important. And religious people should pay more attention to scientists rather than just pray, pray, pray.

In the ancient Nalanda Buddhist tradition, which we Tibetans follow, everything is investigated and not accepted by faith alone. If through reasoning we find some contradiction, even in Buddha’s own words, then we have the right to reject them. From childhood, I was always engaged in a lot of debate. Our thinking was based not in faith but reasoning.

Buddha himself was not born in a palace but under a tree. He attained enlightenment under a Bodhi tree. When he passed, it was under a tree. One of the rules during our monsoon retreat is that we should not cut down anything green. So this shows that Buddha himself paid attention to green issues.

Hours, minutes and seconds: time never stands still. We also are part of that nature. The past is important, but already past. The future is still in our hands, so we must think about ecology at the global level.

Do you think this person likes me? Hard to tell.

It's sometimes said that love can masquerade as hate. If so, whoever wrote this comment on one of my blog posts really loves me. Oh, so sweet. Makes my day. (But I decided not to publish the comment, since it goes against the blog's commenting guidelines.)

Shame poor Brian defending his pathetic flock of denial driven derelict delinquency. You are the miserable little coward you dumb little asshole creep. No wonder your blog site has steadily degenerated into a pathetic little ass wipe between your godforsaken psychophant collection of irrelevant disgruntled groupie goons, and anyone who has the guts and temerity to speak outside of your narrow little gutless narrative of insidious and unscrupulous cowardice, has either left of their own accord or have been silenced by your gutless little megalomaniac tendency that you feign in your attempt to promote your lousy miserable useless inadequacy as the pathetic irrelevant egocentric punk you are behind your veil of vile arrogance. You're a lousy piece of insignificant trash and those with some inherent insight know it, the pity is you don't.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon says we already are One

Here's a message that Osho Robbins sent me. He said it'd be fine to share it as a blog post. Since I wrote a book called Return to the One, naturally I'm interested in notions of the One -- which appeal to me more than dualistic religious teachings.

Hi Brian

Finally a Q&A session that makes it clear - there is no journey - we are already ONE.

4 mins 30 secs in there is a 2.5 minute clear exposition in which Gurinder Singh Dhillon says:

 

1. We feel separated from the father - but the separation is not there.

2. We are working towards a certain understanding (of oneness) / experience.

3. It's not about "working towards something." 

4. We dont have to go anywhere - we dont have to do anything.

5. We just need to experience it (oneness) within ourself.

6. So we are not actually separate.

7. We have created that separation (i.e. a perception ONLY) when we see ourselves as the physical body. 

8. The moment you see yourself as the SOUL (i.e. ONE) then you will never see yourself as separated.

9. We are as separated from the lord as a ray of light is separated from the sun - we are separated from the ocean of the lord as much as a drop of water is separated from the ocean.

10. So that is more in our MINDSET - we need just to FEEL that divine essence within ourself, and that will take care of this question of "separation" and "wanting to go back" or "achieving something." We are (already) there.

11. When he gave us human birth - we are there.

12. We come into life seeking to understand what it is to be human - the moment we learn what it is to be human - the merger will take place automatically.

 

However, how does repeating 5 holy words get us to a greater understanding? Greater understanding can come by contemplating on the nature of ONENESS and time/space and the meaning of eternal, which is exactly what the Japji of Guru Nanak explains.

 

Japji then defines the exact meaning of TRUE / REAL.

 

Aad Sach, jugaad Sach, hai bhi sach, nanak hosee bhi sach

translation: TRUE in the beginning, true, TRUE throughout all time,

TRUE now, TRUE forever and eternally.

 

All it's saying is: the ONE is beyond all time and space. (eternal)

and the JAP at the end means : think / contemplate

 

If you do this, it will dawn on you that YOU are not eternal, and that YOU will die (the YOU means the body) and that there is something (call it God or the ONE) that is the opposite to you - it does NOT die nor is born because it is outside of time.

 

If you DO this - i.e. contemplate - it's quite possible that you will UNDERSTAND the nature of us versus ETERNAL, and that we are not real - only the eternal is real.

 

Now that's not really a God - it's just a contrast between us (who die) and ETERNAL. The gurbani then says that eternal is your TRUE nature because it cannot be anything else (because all else is untrue). Only the TRUE exists - the rest (bodies) is MAYA (illusion) and MAYA is defined as everything that is NOT eternal.

 

Now that is just a simple true statement that cannot be refuted. It's made of definitions - not beliefs.

 

Once you accept these definitions - the rest all falls into place, nothing to argue over. 

 

You cannot say "I don't believe in the ONE" because it doesn't require belief. It is a definition. That which is beyond time and space is called the ONE by definition.

 

You cannot argue with a definition. 

 

So I can understand that contemplating on this can lead to a deeper understanding and then you can get insights. But simply repeating the scripture or repeating 5 holy names cannot get anywhere.

 

The gurbani even has a verse that says "Ram Ram sab koi kahe" - everyone says "god, god" by saying that he doesn't manifest. Yet still the religious person follows these rituals of repeating some words hoping for a miracle. This is the very thing the gurbani is preaching against. 

 

CONCLUSION

Gurinder Singh Dhillon is clearly saying that ONENESS is the reality and we have to realise it. There is nothing to do or attain.

 

It's not an attainment - but just a realization of what already IS the case. A realisation that this ME is a false identification with the body and that my true identity is the ONE which means there is no individual - no separation, only ONE.

 

That is what the gurbani says about dropping the haumi (ego) or sense of "I")

 

This notion that you are already there does not fit in with the RSSB path of effort and trying to achieve and intense meditation.

 

This is more a "drop all the doing" and just realise you are not the body. It's a deeper understanding of the nature of eternity. 

 

Anything that enhances the sense of a ME doing something (meditation or seva) is part of the delusion that keeps me stuck in maya and identified with a separate self so cannot possibly help in the realisation of the oneness.

 

A person sitting down and meditating is obviously trying to attain something, so he obviously believes he is separate and has to meditate to merge.

 

Yet GSD is saying clearly that he is already the ONE. So the old teachings have to be dropped.

Youthful vitality is mine now that I have the not-so-secret Five Rites

The cosmos must have a wonderful message for me. Or so I like to believe. Consider this chain of events, each of which appears completely normal, but which taken together leave me with the key to an ancient Tibetan practice of longevity.

Cosmic message #1: I notice a book mentioned in a recent issue of New Scientist, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. Amazon offers next day delivery, so I get the book rapidly.

Cosmic message #2: After a few days of reading Breath, and trying out some of the initial breathing exercises, I arrive at the "Exhale" chapter. There i learn about a booklet written by Peter Kelder in 1939 that supposedly was based on esoteric stretches called the Five Tibetan Rites. 

Nestor is properly skeptical about Kelder's claim that he learned the Five Rites from a Colonel Bradford (not his real name) who uncovered them in a Tibetan monastery. Nestor writes:

Kelder described these techniques in a slim booklet titled The Eye of Revelation, published in 1939. Few people bothered to read it; fewer believed it. Kelder's yarn was likely fabricated, or at minimum grossly exaggerated.

However, the lung-expanding stretches he described are rooted in actual exercises that date back to 500 BCE. Tibetans had used these methods for millennia to improve physical fitness, mental health, cardiovascular function, and, of course, extend life.

Cosmic message #3: The universe delivers the Five Rites to my doorstep! All I had to do was revisit Amazon, search for "Peter Kelder Five Rites," pay $9.99, and behold, a copy of Ancient Secret of the Fountain of Youth is mine. It even has a foreword by Bernie Siegal, M.D. and testimonials from pleased readers. 

Being 71, I like this one:

"I not only feel younger, but am told by people who know my age (seventy-three) that I look twenty years younger. My doctor, who is fifty-eight, complained that although he jogs fifteen to twenty miles per week, I look younger than he does. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to halt the aging process."
       -- Jack Smithson, Grass Valley, CA

Me, Me, Me! -- I want to halt the aging process! (As an aside, I had a girlfriend in high school who ended up going to a private school in Grass Valley; clearly this is another sign from the cosmos that this book will transform my life.)

This morning I tried out the first four stretches/Tibetan Rites. I could do the first three without much trouble. The fourth is tough. The fifth looks part of the Sun Salutation that I've been doing as part of my yoga routine for many years.

Kelder's book describes the Five Rites in just a few pages. They're also many places on the internet, such as this HealthLine page. And naturally there's You Tube videos. The one below has amassed 2,362,000 views.

The woman demonstrating the Five Rites is easy on the eyes, so I'll be studying her form closely as I try to master the stretches as well as my senior citizen body allows. (Note that you have to watch the video on You Tube, so click on the link that appears after the play arrow is pressed. The ads are annoying, but can be skipped after a few seconds.)

Flow is key to poker, and also to life

I'm reading a fascinating book about poker, "The Biggest Bluff." The author, Maria Konnikova, has a Ph.D. in psychology from Princeton after graduating from Harvard.

So she's obviously smart. But she knew nothing about poker until she decided to learn the game under the guidance of Erik Seidel, a poker champion with tens of millions of dollars in earnings.

That would make for interesting reading all by itself. What makes this book much more intriguing is how Konnikova's background in behavioral science enables her to discover important life lessons as she starts to play poker with the goal of entering the World Series of Poker in just a year's time.

Here's excerpts from the Texting Your Way Out of Millions chapter that I read this morning. Having practiced Tai Chi for sixteen years, with about a dozen years of hard style (karate) martial arts experience before that, I can relate to what Chewy says below. Chewy got his nickname by always having a stack of chewy bars on the table next to him when he played poker. 

This is the first time I am seeing him in person, and what I notice right away isn't the beard or the hair or the washed-out sweats. It's the poise with which he carries himself at the table. His posture is perfect. Both hands rest lightly on the felt, long fingers perfectly quiet, resisting the rustle of chips or flip of cards.

His gaze is even and intense, absorbing the whole of the room. He's the embodiment of focus. When I glance at him two hours later, the only thing that has changed is the size of the stack of chips in front of him. It has tripled.

...The image of Chewy sitting, Zen-like, amid the clinking chips and flashing phones and constant call of "Drinks, beverages" from the cocktail waitresses walking around the tables doesn't leave me. I ask him if we could meet and talk about his approach to poker. I'm hoping some of that unruffled poise may transfer by osmosis.

He agrees, and I soon find myself in a nondescript Starbucks, doing my best to get to the heart of his aura. Is that intensity of focus a conscious decision or a sort of by-product of his personality? Is it natural or learned, cultivated or coming easily?

I'm not surprised to hear that there's nothing easy about Chewy's ability to summon what seems like infinite focus. Yoga is just the beginning of his practice -- and, he says, it's not quite enough. 

He is also a kung fu and tai chi practitioner.

"The element of flow that yoga does, typically through vinyasa, is different in kung fu. It's more approached in kind of a tai chi qigong series. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that." I have no idea what tai chi qigong is, but it seems natural that military discipline would hold part of the answer.

"It's really simple," he explains. "Tai chi just means energy movement, and qigong means energy pulsation. It's just mostly standing form, just movements. The idea is, you're letting your body freely flow in such a way that each movement is determined by the previous movement. So it can be an endless flow, continuous movement where the functionalities maintain."

Each movement is determined by the prior: there is no preset plan; just a way of constantly reacting to the moment. Of course, that approach necessitates focused attention. An Edward follows the plan. A Chewy follows the flow.

And flow is how he sees the entirety of the game.

"There is a flow to poker, to the way the events unfold," he says. "I sort of look at it in a macro sense similar to tai chi. It's all about the movement of energy. Take even simple boxing. If I jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab and do no blocking, I"m going to get taken out. Someone's going to kick me or something. You have to be tactful in your movements, strike when it's right to strike, block when it's right to block, move when it's right to move."

And to do that, it's not enough to just watch your own energy. You have to keep track of the entire table. The energy flows between players.

"Everything in poker is always some sort of flow of energy, where whoever can apply the right amount of pressure and allow the right amount of retreat will win. If you find that balance, it's really nice. That's what will allow for success," Chewy says.

The idea seems solid, to be sure. But how to attain it in practice? Chewy, it turns out, also has an incredibly Zen attitude toward losing. Like Dan Harrington, he firmly believes that losing is essential to learning how to win -- but the atttitude toward loss is a very different one.

Where Dan views it as a way of teaching yourself strategic lessons and analyzing your game, finding your mistakes and plugging your leaks, Chewy sees it in more cosmic terms. When he loses, he sees the loss as part of a larger pattern.

"Maybe in the big picture of life, beyond what we can see immediately in this moment, we weren't meant to win that hand because some other stream of events had to transpire for us to be successful," he says. It's the same idea of flow, of one event causing another in a seamless succession of ripples whose pattern you have no way of predicting in advance.

Philosophically, it's a powerful way of viewing life. ("Poker is exactly like life, but with instant karma," Chewy remarks.)

One death is unbearably sad -- 132,218 is beyond imagining

How the United States has managed, and mismanaged, our Covid crisis response occupies a lot of attention. Just about every conversation includes some variation of "How are you coping?"

It's the most frequent topic on cable TV. Also, local television news.

Yet I worry that we're ignoring what to me is a vital thing to focus on: the infinite treasure that is life. Which has a flip side: the unbearable sadness of death.

Naturally I look upon this from my own perspective. A 71 year old man. An atheist. Someone who doesn't like the idea of his own inevitable death and has felt the primal fear of non-existence. 

But even if you're a young religious believer who is comfortable with dying, I believe we could agree on this. The life each of us is living now is infinitely precious, because it will never come again.

Each moment is a unique one-of-a-kind. It won't ever recur. Once gone, that's it.

For me, human life as a whole has the same quality. I don't believe in life after death. I don't believe in reincarnation. I don't believe in heaven or hell.

What I believe with great confidence is that each of us needs to pay rapt attention to our current life experience, since there is no guarantee that after our last breath we will ever have even a single second of conscious awareness.

From this point of view every death is unbearably sad. It represents a snuffing out of a person's loving and living; their thoughts and emotions; their hopes and fears; their memories and hopes.

I don't see any way to balance the rich plentitude of earthly existence with the stark nothingness of death. The two don't belong in the same equation. There is no common denominator that connects life and death. They inhabit different dimensions of reality.

Still, we all have experienced death. Not our own, obviously. That of others. Friends, loved ones, relatives, strangers. Death surrounds us, though it remains a mystery that no one in the long history of humanity can say, "I've been there and done that."

Near-death experiences are just that, near.

Thus when I hear glib talk from national leaders like President Trump and Vice-President Pence about how even one Covid death is too many, but we should feel grateful that only 132,218 people have died from Covid so far, rather than the two million that supposedly could have died, I want to scream at the TV.

You fucking idiots! You say that one death is too many but you're OK with 132,218. That's insane!

I fear that as the weeks and months go on with the spread of the Covid virus in the United States continuing virtually or entirely unabated, we Americans are getting used to hundreds of people dying every day (the past few days it's been almost a thousand).

I don't ever want to get used to anyone dying needlessly, much less hundreds or thousands. Yes, I realize death comes to everyone, and thousands of people die every day from all causes in the United States. 

However, there's something unique about Covid deaths, since they are largely preventable, and we're not preventing them -- unlike many other advanced nations that have gotten their death rates much below ours.

Every day the Oregon Health Authority sends out an email message with the most recent case and death count for my state. They give a bit of humanizing detail to the deaths. Here's the deaths reported today.

Oregon’s 221^st COVID-19 death is an 85-year-old woman in Benton County who tested positive on May 31 and died on June 28, at her residence. She had underlying conditions.

Oregon’s 222^nd COVID-19 death is a 55-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on June 22 and died on June 28, at his residence. He had underlying medical conditions.

Oregon’s 223^rd COVID-19 death is a 91-year-old woman in Marion County who tested positive on June 18 and died on July 5, at her residence. She had underlying medical conditions.

Oregon’s 224^th COVID-19 death is a 36-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on June 3 and died on July 7, at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center. He had underlying medical conditions.

"Underlying conditions." But they were alive with their underlying conditions before the Covid virus infected them. Each was a living, breathing person. Until they weren't. 

Each of these deaths is sad. I don't want to rank order them by their degree of sadness. Still, when I see a 36-year-old person die from Covid, I can't help but feel more of a sense of loss than with the 91-year-old just above him in the list.

One day, hopefully, the Covid crisis will be behind us.

Hopefully we'll be left with an increased sense of compassion for our fellow human beings, and a vow to do our best to never again let a pandemic run roughshod over our country. Or to elect leaders who allow this to happen.

May I accept reality as it is (if only Trump would)

For quite a while I've enjoyed a loving-kindness form of meditation where I contemplate these words, repeated twice more with "May you..." and "May all...."

May I be happy.
May I be safe.
May I be healthy.
May I be at peace.

Lately, though, I've been experimenting with more of a catchall phrase.

May I accept reality as it is.

Perhaps this sentiment has become more attractive to me after three and a half years of suffering through the presidency of Donald Trump, who lies incessantly and wrongly believes that reality is something that can be bent to fit his own desires.

Like, to be re-elected. So Trump has taken to claiming that everything is going fine with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, ignoring the inconvenient truth that cases have skyrocketed after states began reopening too soon.

But leaving Trump aside -- which is what American voters need to do in the November election -- there's still a lot to like about "May I accept reality as it is."

In a sense, it is a shortcut way of saying much the same thing as "May I be happy; May I be safe; May I be healthy; May I be at peace."

Most obviously, happiness and peace of mind have a lot to do with accepting reality as it is, rather than as we would like it to be. If there is no difference, or at least a minimal difference, between what is actually happening with our life and what we want to happen, then happiness and peace of mind are more likely to be ours.

When it comes to being safe and healthy, these appear to be more objective than happiness and peace of mind. So whether or not I accept the reality of how safe and how healthy I am seemingly wouldn't affect the actuality of my safety and health.

Even so, it makes sense that being firmly in touch with the reality of my current safety and health increases the chance that I'll be able to maintain or improve how safe and healthy I am. For example, if I haven't checked to see whether a smoke detector is working, my safety is at risk. Ditto if I'm unaware of my blood pressure and cholesterol level.

So on the whole I'm becoming a fan of May I accept reality as it is. Sure, I can quibble with myself about "as it is," since apart from the rigorous methods of science, reality appears differently to different people. Thus part of me prefers May I accept reality as it appears.

Either way, though, reality is our best friend and we should do our best to accept it. I just wish Trump felt that way. Thankfully, Joe Biden does, so there's hope after November.

Spiritual independence should be celebrated every day

Tomorrow, the fourth of July, is Independence Day in the United States. It commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence from Britain's King George on July 4, 1776. 

Here's another blast from my blog post past that I wrote on July 4, 2005. Some of my views have changed over the past fifteen years, but I still like the basic theme of this post.

Celebrate your spiritual independence

The fourth of July is when we in the United States celebrate our country’s declaration of independence from Great Britain. It’s also a good day for anyone in the world to celebrate his or her independence from Small-Minded Religion.

Religions don’t start out this way, though: small-minded. Without exception the source of each great religion can be traced to people who somehow were able to break the bounds of normal human consciousness and experience truths beyond the sphere of everyday existence.

Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Nanak, early Hindu sages: all shared with humankind a remarkably original revelation or philosophy. While culturally they necessarily followed in the footsteps of historical predecessors, their spiritual attainments broke new ground.

As is the case with mystics in general. It’s difficult to make contact with the divine. Reading holy books, worshipping in holy places, obeying holy men and women, carrying out holy works—these things are easy to do. They’re within the capability of almost anyone.

Such is the province of small-minded religion, where the limitless experience of great mystics is reduced to narrow confines. Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, and their spiritual brethren refused to be constrained by the accepted religious teachings of their day. This is why they are called “great”: they stood above shallow traditions, possessing a vision that pierced the clouds of conventional wisdom.

In short, they were spiritually independent. But independence only grows well in the wild. It doesn’t thrive when transplanted into the rows and furrows of garden-variety religion, for the priestly classes consider spiritual independence to be a vice, not a virtue.

The strange thing, of course, is that the revered founder(s) of every religion possessed the very quality that “protectors of the faith” now assiduously attempt to stamp out in followers. Namely, an aversion to following. More precisely, an aversion to following any practice that doesn’t lead to direct experience of the highest truths.

Jesus overthrew the small-minded dogmas of the Judaism of his time. But when Meister Eckhart attempted to overthrow the small-minded conceptions of the Catholicism of his time, he was condemned by the Pope as a heretic. Thus spiritual independence becomes a vice after an original independent spiritual vision has become codified into a rigid theology of do’s and don’ts, rights and wrongs, approved truths and condemned heresies.

In my opinion, anyone who reads widely in the diverse literature of the world’s religions, and approaches these writings without preconceived notions of truth and falsehood, must almost necessarily come to this conclusion: There are many ways to the One, or God. For given the marvelous variety of spiritual and mystical experience, it must be that either (1) all but a few of those who report direct contact with the divine are deluded, or (2) divinity appears in a myriad of guises.

I lean strongly toward the second option. I find it extremely difficult to believe that only one person, or one religion, or one spiritual practice leads to the One. If ultimate reality is viewed as a mountain, with the highest truth lying at the summit, then many paths can be taken up the slopes. Only at the very top do the paths converge at unity; diversity otherwise marks the way.

So independence is the hallmark of genuine spirituality. An independent seeker of God, the One, allows divinity to reveal itself without constraints, without preconceptions, without manmade boundaries. There are no hard and fast rules in spiritual mountaineering; you make your way from where you find yourself, blazing your own trail—because your experience belongs to no one but you.

Certainly others can help support and guide you, but obviously they aren’t you. Only you can honor, preserve, protect, and, most importantly, expand, your spiritual independence.

Along these lines, as an addendum to this post I’ll share an excerpt from a 1974 essay, “Live Not by Lies,” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Writing in the Soviet Union shortly before he was arrested and exiled to West Germany, he speaks of spiritual independence in a much more political context.

But I liked how he spoke of the choice that must be made for truth or falsehood, spiritual independence or spiritual servitude, regardless of the consequences. The applicability to those who desire to be free not of political domination, but of religious domination, is clear (a seeming typo has been changed, “talk” to “walk”).

The fourth of July is when we in the United States celebrate our country’s declaration of independence from Great Britain. It’s also a good day for anyone in the world to celebrate his or her independence from Small-Minded Religion.

Religions don’t start out this way, though: small-minded. Without exception the source of each great religion can be traced to people who somehow were able to break the bounds of normal human consciousness and experience truths beyond the sphere of everyday existence.

Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Nanak, early Hindu sages: all shared with humankind a remarkably original revelation or philosophy. While culturally they necessarily followed in the footsteps of historical predecessors, their spiritual attainments broke new ground.

As is the case with mystics in general. It’s difficult to make contact with the divine. Reading holy books, worshipping in holy places, obeying holy men and women, carrying out holy works—these things are easy to do. They’re within the capability of almost anyone.

Such is the province of small-minded religion, where the limitless experience of great mystics is reduced to narrow confines. Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, and their spiritual brethren refused to be constrained by the accepted religious teachings of their day. This is why they are called “great”: they stood above shallow traditions, possessing a vision that pierced the clouds of conventional wisdom.

In short, they were spiritually independent. But independence only grows well in the wild. It doesn’t thrive when transplanted into the rows and furrows of garden-variety religion, for the priestly classes consider spiritual independence to be a vice, not a virtue.

The strange thing, of course, is that the revered founder(s) of every religion possessed the very quality that “protectors of the faith” now assiduously attempt to stamp out in followers. Namely, an aversion to following. More precisely, an aversion to following any practice that doesn’t lead to direct experience of the highest truths.

Jesus overthrew the small-minded dogmas of the Judaism of his time. But when Meister Eckhart attempted to overthrow the small-minded conceptions of the Catholicism of his time, he was condemned by the Pope as a heretic. Thus spiritual independence becomes a vice after an original independent spiritual vision has become codified into a rigid theology of do’s and don’ts, rights and wrongs, approved truths and condemned heresies.

In my opinion, anyone who reads widely in the diverse literature of the world’s religions, and approaches these writings without preconceived notions of truth and falsehood, must almost necessarily come to this conclusion: There are many ways to the One, or God. For given the marvelous variety of spiritual and mystical experience, it must be that either (1) all but a few of those who report direct contact with the divine are deluded, or (2) divinity appears in a myriad of guises.

I lean strongly toward the second option. I find it extremely difficult to believe that only one person, or one religion, or one spiritual practice leads to the One. If ultimate reality is viewed as a mountain, with the highest truth lying at the summit, then many paths can be taken up the slopes. Only at the very top do the paths converge at unity; diversity otherwise marks the way.

So independence is the hallmark of genuine spirituality. An independent seeker of God, the One, allows divinity to reveal itself without constraints, without preconceptions, without manmade boundaries. There are no hard and fast rules in spiritual mountaineering; you make your way from where you find yourself, blazing your own trail—because your experience belongs to no one but you.

Certainly others can help support and guide you, but obviously they aren’t you. Only you can honor, preserve, protect, and, most importantly, expand, your spiritual independence.

Along these lines, as an addendum to this post I’ll share an excerpt from a 1974 essay, “Live Not by Lies,” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Writing in the Soviet Union shortly before he was arrested and exiled to West Germany, he speaks of spiritual independence in a much more political context.

But I liked how he spoke of the choice that must be made for truth or falsehood, spiritual independence or spiritual servitude, regardless of the consequences. The applicability to those who desire to be free not of political domination, but of religious domination, is clear (a seeming typo has been changed, “talk” to “walk”).

COVID reality is kicking Donald Trump in the butt

Reality can be harsh. And always, truthful.

That's why reality is feared by religions and politicians alike. At least, religious believers and politicians who have a vested interest in denying facts because the truth is inconvenient for them.

There's nothing positive that can be said about the COVID crisis here in the United States. According to a story I read in today's newspaper, the United States has 4.3% of the world's population but has suffered 25.5% of the COVID-19 deaths.

Why? 

Largely because we have a president who is utterly incompetent to manage a Little League team, much less a nation's response to a pandemic. Months ago Trump said that COVID was going to go away on its own. He repeated that lie today. 

Fortunately, facts don't lie.

Currently there are more new cases being reported than at the previous height of the pandemic in April. At Trump's urging, states reopened their economies before public health experts said they should. In fact, before White House's own reopening guidelines said they should.

Trump wanted a strong economy ASAP to bolster his reelection chances. However, his poll numbers have been dropping as the number of COVID cases has been increasing.

Americans aren't as dumb as their president. They realize that the COVID crisis in this country has been made much worse by Trump's habitual inability to listen to experts who know more than he does about a subject, and to act in accord with that wise advice.

Here's how the United States compares to the European Union, which has a population roughly comparable to ours.

The United States and the European Union have comparable population sizes, but the trajectories of their COVID-19 outbreaks have been vastly different. Data recently released by the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that while there are around 4,000 new COVID cases in the EU each day, the United States is now recording over 40,000 new cases of the virus each day.

At least 11 US states broke records for the number of new cases reported over the past week. And while some politicians in the US have ascribed the difference to discrepancies in testing, a close analysis shows that the United States and the EU are conducting roughly the same number of tests per million people. Here's a look at the seven-day rolling average of new COVID cases in the EU and the US since March.

In the European Union science is broadly accepted by national leaders, while the United States suffers under the inept leadership of  a president who refuses to wear a mask in public, disparages people who do wear a mask, and said as recently as today that COVID will go away on its own one day.

No, it won't. That's a fact. 

COVID-19 is an especially dangerous virus. It is transmitted easily from person to person. It damages many different organs in the human body, not just the lungs. Unlike the flu, a COVID infection can leave a person debilitated for months. Check out this story by Portland's KGW News about a woman who is still suffering from an infection she got sick from on March 15.

I'm not saying that everything is fine here in Oregon, where I live. It isn't. The chart above shows that cases have been increasing since Governor Brown relaxed stay at home orders, allowing businesses to gradually reopen.

But unlike Trump, Brown listens to public health experts. She learns on the job. She changes her mind when fresh facts replace outdated ones. Masks have been advised in Oregon, but not mandatory, in indoor public places until recently (aside from a few counties, including mine, where COVID cases were higher).

Now, though, Governor Brown is requiring the wearing of masks in indoor public places everywhere in Oregon, with some exceptions for children and people unable to wear a mask because of a medical condition. That's leadership, since masks are proven to be effective in slowing the spread of COVID. 

(Not convinced? See here, here, and here.)

Like I said, the only good thing I see coming from the COVID crisis in my country is that Trump finally is being held to account for his failure to acknowledge reality. That's sort of worked for him when the truth of a situation can be disguised by lies. But death and disease don't respond to lies.

So the steadily increasing COVID cases and deaths testify to the ineptness of the Trump administration's response to this crisis. I'm confident that voters will keep that in mind when, hopefully, they kick him out of office in November. 

Open Thread 33 (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, as is hate speech. 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.

Mystery and Reality have an intriguing relationship

I'm a fan of both Mystery and Reality. I'm capitalizing their names to personalize them, as if they were beings we could actually interact with rather than abstract ideas.

Mystery is, well, mysterious. (I'll use "she" to talk about her because, being a man, I find females to be more of a mystery than males.)

You can't say much about her because there's not much to be said. She's what lies outside the bounds of our knowing. That makes Mystery intriguing, just as a beautiful woman in a suggestive dress makes us want to learn what lies beneath the surface of the cloth, while a fully naked woman leaves nothing to the imagination.

Reality obviously is open to view. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be calling him Reality. He isn't totally transparent to our understanding, of course, since there are many levels to him. It's fair to say that he's a complex guy. Just when you think you're privy to all of his secrets, Reality surprises by revealing hitherto unknown dimensions.

Frequently Mystery transforms into Reality. Less frequently, perhaps, Realty transforms into Mystery.

We can come to know something that previously we were completely clueless about. We also can realize that what was once a confident object of knowledge has become an enigma.

So Mystery and Reality are constantly dancing together.

But it's an unusual dance, because one of the partners is mostly, if not completely, unseen, while the other looks like he is shadow boxing (or rather, shadow dancing) all by himself. Together, they make a pair that provide endless enjoyment to humans as long as Homo sapiens has existed as a species.

Without Mystery, life would be boring, sterile, almost lifeless. Without Reality, life wouldn't exist as we know it, and probably not at all.

To offer up a familiar example -- TV shows -- last night I watched the final episode of Homeland, a captivating Showtime series that has engrossed me for quite a few years. It wasn't the final episode of a season. It was the final episode, period. Homeland is done.

I don't want to give too much away in case someone reading this is, like me until yesterday, making their way through a bunch of recorded episodes of the final season. Suffice it to say that, not surprisingly, I had no idea how Homeland was going to end up. It was a mystery.

However, I knew that within an hour or so all would be revealed. Mystery would transfer herself into Reality in an ontological sex change operation. From not knowing what would happen with the main characters would come a knowing.

Plots that preserve an ever-changing air of mystery are highly watchable. In truth I had no idea what was going to occur next, though often I wrongly believed that I did. My emotions were pulled this way and that as Mystery changed herself into Reality and then back again.

I'd silently scream things like "Carrie, you can't kill Saul! You just can't!"

But I knew that no matter what I wanted, the episode was a solid reality implanted on the hard disk of my DVR, digital video recorder. It was both pleasurable and painful to have my emotions manipulated in such a skillful way by the writers, actors, and director of Homeland.

In the end, Reality held center stage, as he typically does in TV shows and movies. I knew how Carrie and Saul ended their lengthy relationship, and it was exceedingly satisfying to me.

(Thank you for that, Homeland. I was worried you were going to pull a "Lost" on me; the final episode of that series left me with a What the Fuck? feeling, almost a sense of betrayal after so much time invested in following the unfolding mystery of the island, only to be met with a blah denouement.)

This points to a psychological truism, not quite a fact, but almost so: Often we want Mystery to reveal herself in a certain way. Of course, that goes against the grain of who she is -- hidden, unpredictable, enigmatic. So we love Mystery, until she disappoints by turning into a Reality we're uncomfortable with.

Naturally there's more to say about the relationship between Mystery and Reality. Likely I'll be doing that before too long.

I'll finish this blog post by saying that it turned out way different from what I first intended when I typed in the title, Mystery and Reality have an intriguing relationship. That's the beauty of writing, and of life. We set out in a certain direction, with a certain goal in mind, and before we know it we're exploring a very different territory.

Past and present are outside our control

I bought "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" back in 2011. Soon after, I'd read most of it, then set it aside. Now I've finished the book. 

It's an interesting look at ancient Stoicism from a modern perspective.

The author, William Irvine, is a Professor of Philosophy who, unlike most academic philosophers these days, believes philosophy should have something to say about how we should live our lives -- which is how the ancient Greeks viewed philosophy.

Here's some passages regarding the past, present, and future that I like. Somehow I'd never really grasped that while the past is out of our control, so is the present. Only the future is uncertain and potentially controllable.

We should be fatalistic with respect to the external world. We should realize that what has happened to us in the past and what is happening to us at this very moment are beyond our control, so it is foolish to get upset about these things.

...In your practice of Stoicism, you will also want, in conjunction with applying the trichotomy of control, to become a psychological fatalist about the past and the present -- but not about the future. 

Although you will be willing to think about the past and present in order to learn things that can help you better deal with the obstacles to tranquility thrown your way in the future, you will refuse to spend time engaging in "if only" thoughts about the past and present.

You will realize that inasmuch as the past and present cannot be changed, it is pointless to wish they could be different. You will do your best to accept the past, whatever it might have been, and to embrace the present, whatever it might be.

Here's what the above-mentioned "trichotomy of control" means.

According to the Stoics, we should perform a kind of triage in which we distinguish between things we have no control over, things we have complete control over, and things we have some but not complete control over; and having made this distinction, we should focus our attention on the last two categories. 

In particular, we waste our time and cause ourselves needless anxiety if we concern ourselves with things over which we have no control.

I'm inspired by speaking truth to power. Here's an example from Salem.

I've never been much of an organization man. Which, I suppose, now needs to be phrased as "organization person." Regardless, I can recall numerous instances when I haven't been shy about rocking an organizational boat when I felt that was deserved.

So I get inspired by people who do this in their own way. Probably most of us do. There's something about an individual, or a small group, standing up for values they believe in against a more powerful entity that resonates in most hearts and minds. 

We admire underdogs of the canine variety who aren't afraid to bare their teeth and snarl at the big German Shepherd. We love movies about a solitary crusader who takes on a malevolent corporation. We applaud musicians who share songs of protest with us.

And because this is a Church of the Churchless blog, I never tire of hearing about members of a religion who risk ostracism, or worse, by speaking out about bad things happening in their faith.

Thus it isn't surprising that I was energized last night by watching on You Tube a meeting of the Salem-Keizer school board here in Oregon that I thought would be considerably less interesting than it turned out to be.

Students in the school district, which is the second largest in the state, have been engaged in Black Lives Matter protests for several weeks or more. They've been calling for the removal of school resource police officers for reasons that make a lot of sense.

Last night the school board, which currently is dominated by conservatives, met to approve a $1.5 billion budget that includes money for the school resource officers. I decided to watch the meeting online because I'd written on my Salem Political Snark blog about the Salem City Council addressing this issue, since the Police Department supplies some of the officers for that program.

But the school board meeting turned out to be gripping, filled with drama. I wrote about it today in "Superintendent calls out Salem-Keizer school board for not being anti-racist."

Along with the students who called, with good reason, for the resignation of two school board members, the heroine of the evening was Superintendent Christy Perry.

She stood up against the school board in a marvelous message that she read near the beginning of the meeting. This was a surprising moment, as I noted in my blog post about the meeting.

The good news is that after the low point of Heyen's self-absorbed opening remarks, I was mesmerized by a powerful statement from Salem-Keizer Superintendent Christy Perry. 

It was amazing.

I've included the entire statement at the end of this post, boldfacing parts that stuck out for me. Perry courageously criticized the school board for their weak-kneed responses to student demands in the wake of weeks of Black Lives Matter protests here in Salem.

Here's a few excerpts to whet your appetite for reading the whole statement.

We have provided opportunities to help understand our own biases. Our board members barely engage in the training. We have instances of social media display of white supremacy, a black face mask and mockery over that mask. All actions I can’t defend.

... I will advocate for Director Blasi as your next board chair because she is one of the few leaders who have at least the embers of trust from our communities of color.

... I am so committed to this, that I will only continue to do this work if I can have will and the strength to do this even if it means calling you out.

... I commit to the vision for creating the conditions for safe and welcoming schools, especially for our students of color, which includes an antiracist agenda and truly listening to our communities of color. I urge you to reaffirm your commitment to my contract as well knowing full well my support for anti-racist learning.

Really gutsy of Perry.

The school board hires and fires superintendents. Yet she was willing to publicly call them out for failing to do their duty to protect and serve students of color and other disadvantaged students. I liked her statement that she wants the board to reaffirm their commitment to her contract.

Sure, it's fair to say that Perry, being the Superintendent, is a powerful person who was speaking truth to other powerful people on the school board. But that doesn't take away from her inspiring message. 

Most people reading this post will have no interest in the Salem-Keizer School District. However, I urge you to read Perry's message by clicking on the continuation to this post if you have any interest in those who stand up for their values even when this is risky for them. Again, I've boldfaced parts that I found particularly moving.

Eastern Oregon churchgoers thought Jesus would protect from COVID-19. He didn't.

Here's another in the endless supply of reasons not to be religious. Or, if you want to be religious, to not be a fundamentalist. It destroys your ability to engage in critical thinking.

Meaning, using reason to learn how the world works, and to act in accord with that wisdom.

Oregon, where I live, has done much better than most states during the COVID-19 crisis. In large part that's because we have a Democratic governor, Kate Brown, who put in place a stay at home order early on and has managed reopening in a judicious fashion, allowing counties to relax social distancing rules only if they meet certain guidelines.

In the generally wide open spaces of Eastern Oregon, Covid cases have been minimal. But that changed when a massive outbreak occurred in Union County. 

It didn't take long to figure out that the source of the outbreak was a church that defied public health rules that were in effect. Today the Portland Oregonian has a story about the idiocy of the Lighthouse Pentecostal church.
Download Everything we know about the eastern Oregon church at the center of state’s largest coronavirus outb

Apparently members of the church somehow thought that Jesus, or God, would overrule the laws of nature and virus transmission in favor of their true believing selves.

Well, that blind faith didn't work out well for them. I'd like to think that this will make them put more trust in science and reason than in the fantasies embodied in their Pentecostal teachings, but almost certainly this won't come to pass. 

Here's excerpts from the Oregonian story. 

A church in a small eastern Oregon county linked to the state’s largest coronavirus outbreak held worship services in the weeks before hundreds fell ill.

At least 236 coronavirus cases are tied to Lighthouse Pentecostal Church, near La Grande in Union County. The number of cases in Union County increased tenfold, from 22 to 240, in three days after the outbreak came to light. The outbreak led Union County to voluntarily return to Phase 1 of Gov. Kate Brown’s phased reopening plan — the county had been at Phase 2 when the outbreak happened. There are now 258 coronavirus cases in the county of 27,000 people.

Leaders of Lighthouse Pentecostal Church have remained silent for the most part about the outbreak. Yet social media posts and interviews with other faith leaders shed light on how the church came to be at the center of Oregon’s largest coronavirus outbreak, and how it has responded since.

The church, which operates in Island City near La Grande, has held several gatherings since May that appear to have violated Brown’s restrictions to limit the spread of coronavirus.

In a May 22 Instagram post, Lighthouse Pentecostal Church said it would begin in-person services Memorial Day weekend “in accordance” with President Donald Trump’s demands that states allow churches to open. At the time, Union County was still in Phase 1 of reopening, in which religious groups are not allowed to convene in large groups. The governor allowed faith groups to meet in gatherings of 25 people if congregants stayed a certain distance apart.

A Facebook video uploaded May 24 by the church showed hundreds of worshipers in the church dancing, singing and moving around in close proximity. The video was later deleted.

A faith leader at the church wrote in a Memorial Day Facebook post that he was proud to be an American, listing one of the reasons as being “able to attend church in our building.”

...Pastor Dan Satterwhite, who leads an affiliated Lighthouse Church in Pendleton, pointed to a Bible verse that he said may have guided the decision to hold services in Union County: Hebrews 10:25.

The verse instructs Christians to have personal contact with each other in order to live out the faith they proclaim, Satterwhite said. It tells believers how to help each other move toward love and good deeds, “Not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

...Before the outbreak, the church’s Facebook page published updates nearly every day. The posts included videos of preachers delivering daily devotionals, livestreams of church services and advertisements of free supplies the church offered to people in need earlier in the pandemic.

The church stopped posting on its public Facebook page Wednesday and has deleted all posts from after June 12. On June 17, it created a private Facebook page.

A person who answered the phone at the church June 15 hung up when The Oregonian/OregonLive asked about the Union County coronavirus outbreak. Every day since, the church has not answered the phone or responded to emails.

Three different leaders of the church declined interviews with The Oregonian/OregonLive.

In a now-deleted daily devotional video published June 16 on Facebook, Pastor James Parker appeared to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I appreciate everybody being cooperative with what was decided and doing your best to help,” Parker said. “In the end, our fruit will show that what we’re doing is the right thing, and more people need to do what we did. The more people that do the right thing, the easier it’s going to be for the rest of the world to combat this pandemic that we’re going through.”

Parker did not further explain what “the right thing” is, and the church did not respond to a request for clarification.

Musings on my Father's Day get-together with an old friend

Over on one of my other blogs, HinesSight, yesterday I shared some thoughts about getting together with a friend, as we have been doing for many years, for coffee and conversation. 

Have a read: "Having coffee with an old friend on Father's Day is a great gift."

Here's how I introduced the post on Facebook.

Hey, I'm actually sharing my feelings about how much I've enjoyed getting together with Jim Ramsey, an old friend, for 49 years. Of course, being a man, I'm going to send him a link to this blog post rather than tell him in person how I feel.

As a bonus, I also copied in a post from 2005 that i still like a lot, "Why men don't share their feelings." Here's how it starts out:
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“How’re you doing?” says Dennis as I walk into the Pacific Martial Arts changing room. Instead of replying with my habitual robotic “Fine, how’re you?” I have a crazy impulse to actually tell him. I’ll share my feelings!

“Well, my feet have been tingling for about a week. I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve got an appointment to see a doctor tomorrow.” Without missing a beat (appropriately: Dennis is a drummer) I hear, “You’ve got a brain tumor. No doubt about it. You’re going to die.”

For the rest of our hour and a half training session, whenever I stop to check on how my feet are doing Dennis again says, “Oh yeah, you’ve got a brain tumor. Your time is up.”

Sensei Warren, our regular martial arts instructor, came in late. After telling him my tale of tingling feet I got a marginally better prognosis: “You’ve got diabetic neuropathy. No doubt about it. You’re going to lose your feet.” And I don’t even have diabetes.

Now, I know both Dennis and Warren care a lot about me. They demonstrated their manly concern by telling me that I’m either going to die or lose my feet. If one of them had given me a big hug and said “Don’t worry, everything is going to be all right,” I would have begun to worry that he had a brain tumor.