Church of the Churchless

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:
--------------------
“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.

No false "facts" and other commenting policies

It's time to remind visitors to this blog of the Church of the Churchless commenting policies. I approve comments that are in line with these policies.

Which is almost all comments. But some people continue to disregard them. Note that I've added a new policy regarding false information about COVID-19 and other critical topics, number 7.

After 16 years of running this blog, which as gotten 58,484 comments, I'm used to commenters saying all sorts of crazy stuff about their religious beliefs. That's the nature of religion, subjective and unprovable.

But spouting false stuff about COVID-19 is way different. Saying COVID-19 is just like the flu, for example, is dangerous because it is completely wrong and can lead people into not wearing a mask, practicing physical distancing, and other essential safety measures.

Here's a reminder of the commenting policies.

You're welcome -- even more, encouraged -- to leave comments on Church of the Churchless posts. Some of the most interesting writing on this blog comes from other people, not me, Brian the Blogger.

All I ask is that comments be in accord with the following policies. Otherwise a comment probably will be deleted or edited.

(1) No personal attacks on me or other commenters. Challenge the message, not the messenger. Best: You're wrong, because... Semi-OK: You're a fool, because... Not-OK: You're a fool.

(2) No extreme obscenity. Write as if you were in a congenial coffeehouse discussion group, not a high school locker room after your team lost the game in the final seconds. Mild swear words are fine. But goddamn it, don't go over the top.

(3) No rants about the uselessness of this blog. If you're a religious believer, I can understand why this blog could make you angry. Solution: don't read it. If you need to vent, leave a comment on my "I Hate Church of the Churchless" anti-site, not here.

(4) No commercial or religious spam. Advertising, in a comment or a URL, obviously isn't acceptable. Neither are lengthy quotations from a religious scripture, or preachiness. See #5 below.

(5) No irrelevant comments. Please stick to the subject matter of a post in your comment. If you want to talk about something else, leave your comment in an Open Thread, email me with a blog post suggestion, or use the Google search box in the right sidebar to find a previous post on this blog concerning your "something else." (Note: Open Thread comments also should adhere to the policies above.)

(6) No trolling. On the Internet a "troll" is someone who tries to disrupt normal discussions through various annoying behaviors. Here's some ways to recognize a troll. Best response to them: no response. Their sad lives thrive on attention, so ignore them.

(7) No false "facts" about critical issues. As the saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. This applies to this blog, especially about COVID-19 and other critical issues. Blatantly false comments won't be published if they're about life and death or other critical topics such as global warming.

Lastly, one of my pet peeves is how uncourteously many people behave on the Internet. "Flame wars" aren't productive, so try to keep your cool if you disagree with what somebody has said.

I agree with Wikipedia's take on Flaming: 

An Internet user typically generates a flame response to other posts or users posting on a site, and such a response is usually not constructive, does not clarify a discussion, and does not persuade others. Sometimes, flamers attempt to assert their authority, or establish a position of superiority over other users. Other times, a flamer is simply an individual who believes he or she carries the only valid opinion. This leads him or her to personally attack those who disagree. In some cases, flamers wish to upset and offend other members of the forum, in which case they can be called "trolls".

Inside the cult of Trump, his rallies are church and he is the Gospel

I blame MSNBC's Chris Hayes. Every weekday I record his hour-long program, then watch it while doing my at-home exercising. 

Today a guest of his was Jeff Sharlet, who talked about a piece he wrote for Vanity Fair about the religious nature of Trump devotees. 

Being anti-Trump and anti-religion, naturally I couldn't wait to read what Sharlet had written. But I didn't anticipate how scary it would be.

Tomorrow Trump holds his first rally since the COVID-19 crisis hit.

Since Trump likes to do the stupidest, most anti-scientific thing possible, the rally is going to be at an indoor arena that holds 19,000 people, where Trump supporters will be packed shoulder to shoulder, masks optional, screaming in adoration as they behold their Savior. 

In short, COVID-19's dream, a marvelous way to spread itself.

I've always thought that the people who attend Trump rallies were crazed, but until I read "He's the Chosen One to Run America," I pictured those people as being more politically crazed than religiously crazed.

It turns out that they're both -- a really dangerous combination. The only good news is that Trump's approval ratings have been sliding the past few months. According to the highly-respected FiveThirtyEight web site, polls show Joe Biden with a nine-point national lead over Trump at the moment.

So most Americans aren't buying what Trump is selling, namely himself. Still, the fanaticism of his most ardent supporters is deeply worrisome. Hopefully they won't go berserk when, as I sure hope, Trump loses his re-election bid this November.

Here's some excerpts from "Inside the Cult of Trump, His Rallies are Church and He Is the Gospel."

In 2016, I attended Trump rallies around the country to witness the role played by religion. I found it in the fervor for oft-traded stories of the candidate’s riches, his private plane, “Trump Force One” and its golden interior, and in the promises of D-list preachers who opened his rallies with sermons ranging from the staples of abortion and decadence to the miraculous wealth with which God had anointed Trump.

Back then, the candidate was taken as living proof of what’s known as the Prosperity Gospel, a kind of country cousin to establishment Christian conservatism, not so much about saving society as it is about getting right with God by getting rich. Show your faith in his blessings, as revealed in the opulent lives of his anointed preachers, and good fortune will trickle down.

Like Trump, the Prosperity Gospel is transactional—a ready-made religion for a man who came by it, like so little else in his life, honestly. In the books he claims to have written, Trump invokes a personal trinity: his father, Fred, who taught him strength; his mentor, the red-hunting mafia lawyer Roy Cohn, who taught him cunning; and his childhood pastor, bestselling Christian self-help author Norman Vincent Peale, who taught him The Power of Positive Thinking.

Believe in it, preached Peale, and it can be yours. Quid pro quo, a deal with God: affluence (or the dream of it to come) in return for unquestioning loyalty. Trump’s campaign channeled a convergence of conservatisms: Fred Trump’s brutality, Cohn’s corruption, and the cross wrapped in a flag preached by Peale.

As Trump knows, the best kind of deal—the kind that pays—is not only transactional, it’s transformative. With some minor exceptions, the establishment Christian right has embraced the gospel of Trump, and it has prospered: Trump’s administration stocked top to bottom with its apostles, the movement mightier now than it was under George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan.

Trump, meanwhile, has fused his penchant for self-pity with the paranoia that runs like a third rail through Christian conservatism, the thrilling promise of “spiritual war” with dark and hidden powers.

In 2016, the Trump faith was name it and claim it, Make America Great Again, the prospect of the restoration of a mythic (read: white) past. Now, though, the kingdom has come. Trump is no longer storming the gates; he holds the power.

The faith for 2020, I learned at his rallies, is a secret one, its password a wink that’s really a warning, its enemy invisible and everywhere: the deep state, the pedos and the FBI, Democrat-ruled sanctuary cities and the “illegals” they send forth to pillage the heartland. MAGA has become KAG, Keep America Great—which requires not a new prosperity but the eradication of America’s enemies within. “If you do not bring forth what is within you,” as the gospel of Thomas puts it, “what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

...Four years ago, the mood at Trump’s rallies was electric but heavy, a mix of anger and the possibility of “winning”—winning so much, Trump promised, that we’d get tired of winning. Since then he has won; and won and won and won. The energy now is victorious—and even darker.

If the arena is a safe space for Trumpers, a church where the like-minded can join together in a sea of red hats, the world outside is scarier than ever. “Secret murders everywhere,” says Pastor Sean, his voice low and growly. “Pedophiles and evil.” That’s why he loves Trump: because he believes God has chosen Trump for this hour. That which Trump’s critics see as crude and divisive, Pastor Sean takes as proof of his anointing. He is God’s champion, a fighter, a “counterpuncher.”

...Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,” declares the divine voice of perhaps the most famous gnostic text, a poem called “The Thunder, Perfect Mind.” So it is in the arenas of Trump, thousands of red hats just like his, the hats that at each rally he throws to the crowd, giving of himself. Such are the miracles of Trump, adored for his golden tower, his golden faucets, his generosity. He who has taken the most also gives the most.

...“He wants to discipline us,” Dave says. He, in this instance, means not Trump but his father: God. Like Trump, COVID-19 is an instrument of his will, and he has allowed the virus as a punishment for our “corporate” sin, our failure as a nation to fully embrace him and his messenger, Trump, a view not so distant from that of many Christian right leaders, including Franklin Graham, Fox News preacher Robert Jeffress, and Ralph Drollinger, who leads a White House Bible study.

...Only the truly initiated—Dave, Diane, QAnon—know the name of “The Storm” that’s coming, but nearly all of Trump’s devotees can read the signs, red flares over blue seas: A CNN crew arrested on camera, live, in Minneapolis; in New York, a viral video of a riot cop flashing the O.K. symbol; and in Washington, following a gas processional, the president of the United States marching through the sterile aftermath to hold aloft a Bible, upside down—a sign? A signal?—its red ribbon dangling along his wrist like a snake’s tongue.

What does it mean?

“Pray over it,” says Dave, of that which is given for our witness. “Let it settle.”

RSSB guru sounded like a heretic in 2006

In the course of looking for posts I wrote in the early years of this blog so I could include some favorites in my next book, I just came across "Another RSSB initiate sees the light" from November 24, 2006. 

Here's the post, which I've copied in below. My words are above the dotted line. Howard's words are below the line. In light of recent videos showing Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current RSSB guru, it's interesting to see what Dhillon was saying back in 2006. 

As Howard says, "Gurinder really is the number one heretic in the organization." Nice. I like to think that back then I was in the Top 10.

Howard and I are kindred souls. We’re of a similar well-aged Radha Soami Satsang Beas(RSSB) vintage, each of us having been initiated into this mystical meditation-based spiritual path over a third of a century ago.

We’ve also both come to view RSSB in a manner that seems heretical to true believers, but which seems eminently sensible to Howard and me.

Howard, who lives in Berkeley, and I have been carrying on an email conversation the past few days. He said it’d be fine if I shared his thoughts on the Church of the Churchless. I’ve mildly edited them, taking out only a few extraneous personal references and correcting some typos.

The two of us are alike in another way, as Howard pointed out:

Maybe you can use some of the things I have written to good use. Don't worry about editing it in any way you like. I am like you. I just write things out to get them clear in my own head.

While most readers of this blog aren’t associated with RSSB, many are. So I decided to share almost all of what Howard had to say in his email messages, even though it's lengthy.

I realize that his thoughts will be of most interest to fellow RSSB initiates, but his evolving take on spirituality and religious authority has its universal side as well.

The first part of Howard’s message is below. To read the rest, click on the post extension link [already included here]. I've added some explanations of RSSB-specific terms in [brackets].
--------------------------------------------
Funny finding you here [at the Church of the Churchless blog]. I’m a satsangi [RSSB initiate] of thirty-five years and just now beginning to see I have been deceiving myself for most of them.

I was at the Dera [headquarters of RSSB in India] two years ago and someone at my table said "Brian Hines [me, the blogger] is having difficulty on the path right now." I always want to talk to such people because I figure they are at least being real. I have had it with fundamentalist satsangis. Really, I just can't listen to them anymore, kind of makes me want to gag.

Looks to me like you are just starting to understand the path. I still am quite fond of Gurinder [Singh, current RSSB guru], but primarily because the last time he came to Petaluma [RSSB center in California] and spoke I came to the conclusion that if a tape of his satsang [spiritual talk] had been sent to the satsang reviewing panel he would never be invited back again.

He is not a party liner, even though everyone tries to make him into one. Very few are willing to accept that most of what they hold on to is a fragile belief system that does not give them what they need. Gurinder calls them on this and it is refreshing. Not that anyone does anything about it, but at least it appears he is doing his job.

There definitely has been a shift to 2.0 Sant Mat. I can tell you about a personal exchange I had with Gurinder that you may like.

A few years ago at Dera I got up and said "I just don't believe any of it anymore. None of it makes any sense to me. It used to feel so good when I knew all the answers and I could just look in my Sant Mat Recipes for Life book whenever I needed an answer. Now if someone asks me a question about the path I tell them to go talk to a seeker [someone interested in RSSB but not yet initiated]. They seem to have it all figured out while I have no idea!"

He told me that was real progress. That the people who seem to have it all together and look like they know what is going on are all faking it. He further said being in this state allows you to be open minded like a child. He said this is very important in order to be open to God. He also said that as soon as we adopt a rigid belief system we are cutting ourselves off from the spiritual world because now we can only see what our belief system filters and validates.

He also said spirituality has nothing to do with your beliefs but that it was more a matter of the heart and sincerity. He said it is the sincerity that counts and not the belief system. It does not really matter what you believe because beliefs are ultimately meaningless. God does not look at your beliefs. At the end he joked and said "When you meet someone like that who has all the answers, you really don't know if you should be happy for him or feel sorry for him!"

For me it showed Gurinder as being more like a Socrates than a God-man. He also put responsibility for our spiritual growth on us rather than on a flimsy belief system. I also asked him about the four lifetime guarantee [that an initiate will only be reincarnated for a maximum of four more times before reaching God permanently].

He said there is no four lifetime guarantee and just to forget about that. Kind of blew a much comforting thought we all had right out of the water. He said this, I was at the microphone, he said it directly to me. He also said we need to take responsibility for our spiritual life in this lifetime because as far we know this is the only life we have.

Most of us are still in the 1.0 belief system and I admit I still think in those terms. I just spent too much time being willingly indoctrinated for the last thirty years. As one friend of mine noted, B.S. stands for Belief System and any of us who believe the Sant Mat fairy tale that was given to us in the early days and in the books are following a bunch of B.S.

It is impossible to avoid this without mystical experience. Gurinder calls mystical experience "understanding" and opposes this to "concepts." As soon as you talk about or conceptualize a mystical experience it automatically sounds like bullshit unless you have actually had that experience yourself.

Even if you have had the experience it is impossible to describe with words something that is beyond words. Gurinder has also many times said "My experience cannot be the basis of your faith, you need to have your own experience" I am reminded of a wonderful Rumi poem that you may be familiar with.

"All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern. When I get back around to that place, I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile, I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary. The day is coming when I fly off, but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?

Who says words with my mouth? Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all."

Gurinder really is the number one heretic in the organization, very much like Kabir and other masters. I just think the organization is way beyond what one person can control no matter how enlightened. He has to delegate and people who accept the authority are by default usually the least loving.

They drive everybody crazy, themselves most of all. I was there at the inception of Petaluma when all of the millionaires were taking over and bickering with everyone. The atmosphere was the exact opposite of love and harmony. I still don't go out there because for me it is the loneliest coldest place in the world. Early on I was getting upset because the old harmony we had felt in my then home Santa Rosa sangat had disappeared with the advent of Petaluma.

During this time an old 85 year old satsangi told me "If it stinks, don't put your nose in it" and that is what I started to do. Just stay away from those people if you can, they have probably succeeded in driving you away anyway. I admit it is a bit disheartening to see so many close disciples behave worse than the average slaughterhouse worker.

Concerning talking about inner mystical experiences, I heard Gurinder speak about this once saying it was not a big deal to talk about inner experiences but that it wouldn't do others or yourself much good to do so. There was none of that "You'll burn in hell if you do!" that I hear from disciples. He was quite matter of fact and did not seem to be all that against it if you got something out of it.

I am not quite at zero [mystical experiences], but not too far away either. The mystical experiences have been so minor and so seldom. Seems like everyone is at zero, certainly everyone acts that way. I remember looking at the satsangis and wondering why all of the initiates are such failures. Then I looked at myself and saw that I am also a huge failure. I either had to blame the practice or the disciples.

I am not sure where I land on that one. My very best friend told me about hearing the bell sound and seeing the inner star while we were roommates at Dera. I know he was telling the truth. He said it took a tremendous amount of hard work in meditation and he has never been able to work that hard again. Somehow he could not hold onto it though and is now struggling like the rest of us.

I remember Gurinder once saying "The reason a school such as Harvard is so renowned and considered so good is because of the quality of its graduates. It is the same with Sant Mat." I don't know where that puts us. I sometimes wonder if this practice is an anachronism. Living within the discomfort of being uncertain is the only honest place to be. Did you hear about the time Gurinder called everyone a bunch of Moonies?

It is a very awkward situation if you happen to be a mystic in charge of a multinational corporation that is supposed to promulgate an inward mystic practice. Gurinder definitely has the Greek understanding of philosophy and encourages open mindedness and direct experience. He has emphasized over and over again that you only know what you have experienced.

When he says "How do you know I am not a fraud?" he means it. He does his best to call us on our hypocrisy and ignorance because without realizing this we can go nowhere. I know what he told you about not molding Plotinus into the image of RSSB is what he really wanted.

Did you know that there is a publication in India that succinctly explains to people why they should not follow RSSB and that this is a recommended book for seekers in India? He really wants people to be open minded and from what I have seen the times he becomes the most animated and engaged is when somehow talks to him outside of party lines.

Maharaj Ji [Charan Singh, Gurinder’s predecessor] used to say that once a saint leaves this world his lofty teachings are taken up by lesser minds who then turn their teachings of universal love and the fatherhood of God into something rigid and intolerant. This is happening to RSSB right now, this is happening in spite of a living master. Visit any corporate satsang center and you will see what I mean.

It is hard to differentiate between what is coming from the master and what is coming from the management because the management is supposed to reflect what the master wants. In reality this rarely happens. At Dera the management fights and bickers all the time over the very smallest matters. No one will cooperate unless the master steps in and makes the final decision.

One of the big issues is whether or not the basic tenet of the path which claims the need for a living master has completely broken down because of the sheer weight of the organization. We are told that we need a master so that we have someone to go to with questions and with whom we can develop a loving relationship on this plane which leads to a loving relationship on the spiritual planes.

Maharaj Ji used to say that a dead master cannot help us because a dead master is as far away from us and as inaccessible as the lord himself. Now, you can't even write the master a letter, let alone have any type of meaningful relationship. In the present environment access to the master is a practical impossibility and to my mind this nullifies the basic tenet that the living master is the main difference between Sant Mat and a dead religion.

In other words, what is the difference between looking up what a dead master said in a book and hearing what a living master says in a two hour question and answer session every six years, especially when you don't even have a chance to ask one of the questions? I don't see much of a difference except that the book will probably have had meaningless extraneous material edited while the question and answer session does not.

I noticed something interesting about the claims that guru is god. In earlier days when disciples actually had a lot of physical contact with the master most of the writings emphasized that the guru was not like you and me. There is an old Sawan Singh initiate in Petaluma who told me when he was a young man the master used to chase the disciples around rather than the way it is now.

Everyone knew him and felt like he was their friend. People had to be reminded of his spiritual attainments because while interacting with him on a daily basis they noticed that the guru for the most part acted just like any normal human being. There was therefore a tendency to forget the spiritual nature of the master and people needed to be reminded that the guru was a messenger from God.

I believe this is why the earlier writings often emphasize the spiritual attainments of the guru in such exaggerated grandiose terms. Gurinder has often said "familiarity breeds contempt" when asked about having more contact with the master. I imagine there is a lot of truth to this. On the other hand, according to earlier writings of mystics it should also breed a lot of love and affection if the master is indeed a loving spiritual being that leads us to our spiritual home.

Now that practically no one has any contact with the master and the books have already taught the disciples to deify him, the master strongly emphasizes the human side of the master. One of his most common sayings is "Look at the master as your friend, walking beside you. Don't put him on a pedestal where you cannot reach him."

The fact of the matter is that he is not a friend and we cannot reach him. This is a fact and there is no getting around it unless you simply identify the master as a spiritual presence in your life.

No one appears to have a monopoly on this presence whether you call it Jesus, the master, the Holy Ghost, Allah, or whatever. Gurinder would be the first one to agree with this.

So the modern disciple has neither a relationship with the master nor an understanding of his spiritual greatness except conceptually. In other words, most of us have no relationship with the master at all. Now we have to ask ourselves if those who do have closer contact with the master have an advantage. I have seen none based on their behavior, in fact someone once told me, "A representative [of the guru] represents what we should not be like. If you want to see the wrong way to behave, just watch your rep."

My relationship to the Sant Mat path is changing and it seems like it is always changing. I try not to hold onto it very tightly. I know it will change again.

I gave a home satsang the other day and I came right out and said we know the master will come and get us at death just as surely as the Christians know Jesus will come down from heaven on a cloud. Unless we have some kind of mystical understanding to confirm our beliefs it is just another empty concept which Baba Ji [Gurinder] has been hammering on us about for years.

I think people took it just fine, though I was a little worried they wouldn't. I simply had to tell the truth like I saw it. People liked hearing something real and heartfelt for a change rather than the same old broken record. I think you should continue to give satsang but call people on their B.S. and hypocrisy.

Gurinder would like this. The worst they will do is excommunicate you just as the church did to Tolstoy. Now that would be an honor!

Howard and I are kindred souls. We’re of a similar well-aged Radha Soami Satsang Beas(RSSB) vintage, each of us having been initiated into this mystical meditation-based spiritual path over a third of a century ago.

We’ve also both come to view RSSB in a manner that seems heretical to true believers, but which seems eminently sensible to Howard and me.

Howard, who lives in Berkeley, and I have been carrying on an email conversation the past few days. He said it’d be fine if I shared his thoughts on the Church of the Churchless. I’ve mildly edited them, taking out only a few extraneous personal references and correcting some typos.

The two of us are alike in another way, as Howard pointed out:

Maybe you can use some of the things I have written to good use. Don't worry about editing it in any way you like. I am like you. I just write things out to get them clear in my own head.

While most readers of this blog aren’t associated with RSSB, many are. So I decided to share almost all of what Howard had to say in his email messages, even though it's lengthy.

I realize that his thoughts will be of most interest to fellow RSSB initiates, but his evolving take on spirituality and religious authority has its universal side as well.

The first part of Howard’s message is below. To read the rest, click on the post extension link [already included here]. I've added some explanations of RSSB-specific terms in [brackets].
--------------------------------------------
Funny finding you here [at the Church of the Churchless blog]. I’m a satsangi [RSSB initiate] of thirty-five years and just now beginning to see I have been deceiving myself for most of them.

I was at the Dera [headquarters of RSSB in India] two years ago and someone at my table said "Brian Hines [me, the blogger] is having difficulty on the path right now." I always want to talk to such people because I figure they are at least being real. I have had it with fundamentalist satsangis. Really, I just can't listen to them anymore, kind of makes me want to gag.

Looks to me like you are just starting to understand the path. I still am quite fond of Gurinder [Singh, current RSSB guru], but primarily because the last time he came to Petaluma [RSSB center in California] and spoke I came to the conclusion that if a tape of his satsang [spiritual talk] had been sent to the satsang reviewing panel he would never be invited back again.

He is not a party liner, even though everyone tries to make him into one. Very few are willing to accept that most of what they hold on to is a fragile belief system that does not give them what they need. Gurinder calls them on this and it is refreshing. Not that anyone does anything about it, but at least it appears he is doing his job.

There definitely has been a shift to 2.0 Sant Mat. I can tell you about a personal exchange I had with Gurinder that you may like.

A few years ago at Dera I got up and said "I just don't believe any of it anymore. None of it makes any sense to me. It used to feel so good when I knew all the answers and I could just look in my Sant Mat Recipes for Life book whenever I needed an answer. Now if someone asks me a question about the path I tell them to go talk to a seeker [someone interested in RSSB but not yet initiated]. They seem to have it all figured out while I have no idea!"

He told me that was real progress. That the people who seem to have it all together and look like they know what is going on are all faking it. He further said being in this state allows you to be open minded like a child. He said this is very important in order to be open to God. He also said that as soon as we adopt a rigid belief system we are cutting ourselves off from the spiritual world because now we can only see what our belief system filters and validates.

He also said spirituality has nothing to do with your beliefs but that it was more a matter of the heart and sincerity. He said it is the sincerity that counts and not the belief system. It does not really matter what you believe because beliefs are ultimately meaningless. God does not look at your beliefs. At the end he joked and said "When you meet someone like that who has all the answers, you really don't know if you should be happy for him or feel sorry for him!"

For me it showed Gurinder as being more like a Socrates than a God-man. He also put responsibility for our spiritual growth on us rather than on a flimsy belief system. I also asked him about the four lifetime guarantee [that an initiate will only be reincarnated for a maximum of four more times before reaching God permanently].

He said there is no four lifetime guarantee and just to forget about that. Kind of blew a much comforting thought we all had right out of the water. He said this, I was at the microphone, he said it directly to me. He also said we need to take responsibility for our spiritual life in this lifetime because as far we know this is the only life we have.

Most of us are still in the 1.0 belief system and I admit I still think in those terms. I just spent too much time being willingly indoctrinated for the last thirty years. As one friend of mine noted, B.S. stands for Belief System and any of us who believe the Sant Mat fairy tale that was given to us in the early days and in the books are following a bunch of B.S.

It is impossible to avoid this without mystical experience. Gurinder calls mystical experience "understanding" and opposes this to "concepts." As soon as you talk about or conceptualize a mystical experience it automatically sounds like bullshit unless you have actually had that experience yourself.

Even if you have had the experience it is impossible to describe with words something that is beyond words. Gurinder has also many times said "My experience cannot be the basis of your faith, you need to have your own experience" I am reminded of a wonderful Rumi poem that you may be familiar with.

"All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern. When I get back around to that place, I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile, I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary. The day is coming when I fly off, but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?

Who says words with my mouth? Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all."

Gurinder really is the number one heretic in the organization, very much like Kabir and other masters. I just think the organization is way beyond what one person can control no matter how enlightened. He has to delegate and people who accept the authority are by default usually the least loving.

They drive everybody crazy, themselves most of all. I was there at the inception of Petaluma when all of the millionaires were taking over and bickering with everyone. The atmosphere was the exact opposite of love and harmony. I still don't go out there because for me it is the loneliest coldest place in the world. Early on I was getting upset because the old harmony we had felt in my then home Santa Rosa sangat had disappeared with the advent of Petaluma.

During this time an old 85 year old satsangi told me "If it stinks, don't put your nose in it" and that is what I started to do. Just stay away from those people if you can, they have probably succeeded in driving you away anyway. I admit it is a bit disheartening to see so many close disciples behave worse than the average slaughterhouse worker.

Concerning talking about inner mystical experiences, I heard Gurinder speak about this once saying it was not a big deal to talk about inner experiences but that it wouldn't do others or yourself much good to do so. There was none of that "You'll burn in hell if you do!" that I hear from disciples. He was quite matter of fact and did not seem to be all that against it if you got something out of it.

I am not quite at zero [mystical experiences], but not too far away either. The mystical experiences have been so minor and so seldom. Seems like everyone is at zero, certainly everyone acts that way. I remember looking at the satsangis and wondering why all of the initiates are such failures. Then I looked at myself and saw that I am also a huge failure. I either had to blame the practice or the disciples.

I am not sure where I land on that one. My very best friend told me about hearing the bell sound and seeing the inner star while we were roommates at Dera. I know he was telling the truth. He said it took a tremendous amount of hard work in meditation and he has never been able to work that hard again. Somehow he could not hold onto it though and is now struggling like the rest of us.

I remember Gurinder once saying "The reason a school such as Harvard is so renowned and considered so good is because of the quality of its graduates. It is the same with Sant Mat." I don't know where that puts us. I sometimes wonder if this practice is an anachronism. Living within the discomfort of being uncertain is the only honest place to be. Did you hear about the time Gurinder called everyone a bunch of Moonies?

It is a very awkward situation if you happen to be a mystic in charge of a multinational corporation that is supposed to promulgate an inward mystic practice. Gurinder definitely has the Greek understanding of philosophy and encourages open mindedness and direct experience. He has emphasized over and over again that you only know what you have experienced.

When he says "How do you know I am not a fraud?" he means it. He does his best to call us on our hypocrisy and ignorance because without realizing this we can go nowhere. I know what he told you about not molding Plotinus into the image of RSSB is what he really wanted.

Did you know that there is a publication in India that succinctly explains to people why they should not follow RSSB and that this is a recommended book for seekers in India? He really wants people to be open minded and from what I have seen the times he becomes the most animated and engaged is when somehow talks to him outside of party lines.

Maharaj Ji [Charan Singh, Gurinder’s predecessor] used to say that once a saint leaves this world his lofty teachings are taken up by lesser minds who then turn their teachings of universal love and the fatherhood of God into something rigid and intolerant. This is happening to RSSB right now, this is happening in spite of a living master. Visit any corporate satsang center and you will see what I mean.

It is hard to differentiate between what is coming from the master and what is coming from the management because the management is supposed to reflect what the master wants. In reality this rarely happens. At Dera the management fights and bickers all the time over the very smallest matters. No one will cooperate unless the master steps in and makes the final decision.

One of the big issues is whether or not the basic tenet of the path which claims the need for a living master has completely broken down because of the sheer weight of the organization. We are told that we need a master so that we have someone to go to with questions and with whom we can develop a loving relationship on this plane which leads to a loving relationship on the spiritual planes.

Maharaj Ji used to say that a dead master cannot help us because a dead master is as far away from us and as inaccessible as the lord himself. Now, you can't even write the master a letter, let alone have any type of meaningful relationship. In the present environment access to the master is a practical impossibility and to my mind this nullifies the basic tenet that the living master is the main difference between Sant Mat and a dead religion.

In other words, what is the difference between looking up what a dead master said in a book and hearing what a living master says in a two hour question and answer session every six years, especially when you don't even have a chance to ask one of the questions? I don't see much of a difference except that the book will probably have had meaningless extraneous material edited while the question and answer session does not.

I noticed something interesting about the claims that guru is god. In earlier days when disciples actually had a lot of physical contact with the master most of the writings emphasized that the guru was not like you and me. There is an old Sawan Singh initiate in Petaluma who told me when he was a young man the master used to chase the disciples around rather than the way it is now.

Everyone knew him and felt like he was their friend. People had to be reminded of his spiritual attainments because while interacting with him on a daily basis they noticed that the guru for the most part acted just like any normal human being. There was therefore a tendency to forget the spiritual nature of the master and people needed to be reminded that the guru was a messenger from God.

I believe this is why the earlier writings often emphasize the spiritual attainments of the guru in such exaggerated grandiose terms. Gurinder has often said "familiarity breeds contempt" when asked about having more contact with the master. I imagine there is a lot of truth to this. On the other hand, according to earlier writings of mystics it should also breed a lot of love and affection if the master is indeed a loving spiritual being that leads us to our spiritual home.

Now that practically no one has any contact with the master and the books have already taught the disciples to deify him, the master strongly emphasizes the human side of the master. One of his most common sayings is "Look at the master as your friend, walking beside you. Don't put him on a pedestal where you cannot reach him."

The fact of the matter is that he is not a friend and we cannot reach him. This is a fact and there is no getting around it unless you simply identify the master as a spiritual presence in your life.

No one appears to have a monopoly on this presence whether you call it Jesus, the master, the Holy Ghost, Allah, or whatever. Gurinder would be the first one to agree with this.

So the modern disciple has neither a relationship with the master nor an understanding of his spiritual greatness except conceptually. In other words, most of us have no relationship with the master at all. Now we have to ask ourselves if those who do have closer contact with the master have an advantage. I have seen none based on their behavior, in fact someone once told me, "A representative [of the guru] represents what we should not be like. If you want to see the wrong way to behave, just watch your rep."

My relationship to the Sant Mat path is changing and it seems like it is always changing. I try not to hold onto it very tightly. I know it will change again.

I gave a home satsang the other day and I came right out and said we know the master will come and get us at death just as surely as the Christians know Jesus will come down from heaven on a cloud. Unless we have some kind of mystical understanding to confirm our beliefs it is just another empty concept which Baba Ji [Gurinder] has been hammering on us about for years.

I think people took it just fine, though I was a little worried they wouldn't. I simply had to tell the truth like I saw it. People liked hearing something real and heartfelt for a change rather than the same old broken record. I think you should continue to give satsang but call people on their B.S. and hypocrisy.

Gurinder would like this. The worst they will do is excommunicate you just as the church did to Tolstoy. Now that would be an honor!

Excellent analysis of RSSB guru's absurd response to a question

lt's great that videos of Gurinder Singh Dhillon are being posted on You Tube by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the religious organization that is led by Dhillon -- a guru who is considered to be God in Human Form by the RSSB teachings.

This allows people to critique what the guru says.

Sure, RSSB devotees, like true believers everywhere, typically consider that Dhillon can speak no wrong and do no wrong, which ignores the fact that he is enmeshed in a financial scandal involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

Below is a comment on a recent Church of the Churchless post by "j" that I like a lot. It starts with a reference to a previous comment. Satsangi means an initiate of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. I've corrected a few typos.

The question asked of the guru pertains to why someone would leave RSSB, as many have done. I'm one of them. Dhillon's response is typical of fundamentalist religions, which denigrates anyone who chooses to deconvert from the religion. 

This is strange, since religions have no problem with someone leaving a different religion to join that one. But when a person decides that they've found a better spiritual path than the religion they joined, suddenly leaving a religion becomes a horrendous moral failure.

Doesn't make sense. Which isn't surprising, since religions don't make sense. Here's the comment from "j." After it you can view the portion of a video referenced in the comment.

"It was one sentence."

With all due respect, it was not one sentence. Gurinder Singh goes on at length to explain that leaving RSSB for any reason is inexcusable, and is due to:

1) The mental weakness and moral cowardice of the satsangi.

2) A personal rejection of the satsangi by God, who "only takes those he wants to take."

3) The satsangi acting like a willful and rebellious child, for whom the Guru has created a "conducive atmosphere."

4) The satsangi was done in by the "weight of his karmic burden" (huh?)

5) The satsangi is taking "the easy way out." "Then he will have to bear the burden" (again, huh? Wasn't Gurinder just saying that it's a misconception to believe that a Guru can take anyone's karma or bear anyone's burden?)

6) The Guru cannot "study" for the satsangi. This is an ironic choice of words for Gurinder to use, for it's study of our experience of the path and the guru's bold claims that leads many satsangis to abandon RSSB.

7) It is an error for the apostate satsangi to "choose his own path." Gee, I thought that Gurinder taught that all spiritual paths can lead to salvation. Or so I've been told by fans of Gurinder.

8) "The Lord is going to give what he's going to give." Gurinder is supposed to be the Lord, so that's just doubletalk.

9) To the question of whether errant initiated satsangis "get another chance" to come back to the path: This question has been answered ad infinitum by previous gurus that the guru never leaves the initiate for all eternity and watches over him until he finally returns to God.

But here Gurinder hedges and stops to think about the question as if he's never heard it before.

He then goes on with a bit of philosophical gymnastics to argue that since the satsangi has issues with the Guru now (like, for questions of financial impropriety, false claims about possible meditation experiences, false claims about the salvific power of the shard, false claims about RS history, false claims about the guru's power, false claims about the "law" of karma, disaffection with the guru's triumphalist claims for himself, etc), it follows that he may never come back to the path in future lives.

I find it curious that Gurinder equates initiation and RSSB's theological claims of the Guru's power and the power of initiation with "atmosphere."

We're told before initiation that it and the guru have the actual power to hasten our spiritual development, but here this is downgraded to "atmosphere," which seems to portray the path as nothing more than theater. Gurinder also likens initiation to a meal (gurus dearly love analogies, though an analogy is never an explanation for anything).

I've studied guru controversies for over 30 years now, and I know this pattern all too well. Gurinder is simply using the same trick that every guru uses when questioned: He blames the person leaving the path for being a weak and spoiled child.

If I may be so bold: READ CLOSELY (or should I say listen closely, since Gurinder never writes anything down) when the guru speaks.

Is he really facing the questions put to him, or is he dodging them with rhetorical BS? As as ex member of a sant mat path, I've found that it's easy to still buy into the guru's arguments even after one leaves the path. But a close reading of the guru's words can show the evidence of his linguistic sleight of hand.

Never forget, everyone joins Sant Mat because they were SOLD on it through words. People join Sant Mat because of the argument Sant Mat makes. But that argument is a sales pitch, it's not a description of reality.

It's important to really look closely at a guru's words to see if what he says actually makes sense.

There are a lot of things that gurus say that seem like strong and reasonable arguments, but they're just piles of analogies that never address the question being asked them. This latest Gurinder video is an example of that.

Above is the video, which I've made start at the 8:45 mark, the beginning of the interchange with a questioner discussed by "j."

Blast from the past: "I reveal my mystical experiences"

To inspire myself, an admittedly circular task, I've been reading a mini-chapter from my "Break Free of Dogma" book every morning before I meditate.

Naturally I like everything in the book, because it consists of posts I selected from the early years of this Church of the Churchless blog, 2004-06.

But some of those old posts appeal to me more than others, which gets them highlighted in the Contents section. Here's the first of a two-part Blast From the Blog Post Past, the second being a follow-up I wrote on the theme of mystery.

Enjoy...

I reveal my mystical experiences

There: Right there. See the blank space after “There:” That’s where I revealed my mystical experiences.

I was impelled to disclose the status of my inner spiritual realization after reading a comment by A fellow bubble-bursted soul on my recent “Bursting Belief Bubbles” post. This person, a fellow Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) initiate, said that he/she was still pursuing the experiment of meditation even though positive results to date had been lacking.

The commenter said, “Unfortunately if I have a break through I won't be able to tell you because us satsangis [initiates], conveniently, aren't suppose to reveal our inner experiences.”

Yes, that’s true. And “conveniently” is the operative word here.

I used to think that the reason for the injunction against revealing inner experiences was that if you had a profound experience and talked about it, other people would start looking upon you as a divine being. This could inflate your ego, thereby causing you to be dropped from the Mystic Experience Club.

However, that reasoning doesn’t make sense to me anymore. Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, and many other supposedly elevated souls have spoken about their inner godly experiences. They don’t seem to have been spiritually harmed by sharing their contacts with divinity.

If I hike up to an alpine lake, then descend and tell people how lovely the scenery was, am I now an egotistical maniac who should forever be barred from entering the mountains again? Of course not. I’m just telling about my experience.

So I’ve concluded that the main reason RSSB initiates aren’t supposed to reveal their inner experiences is that hardly anybody is having any. Maybe nobody. I can say this quite confidently because over the past thirty-five years I’ve talked to lots of mystic meditators. Plus, I talk to myself all the time.

The constantly-recurring theme that I hear is “My meditation sucks.” Not always said quite so bluntly, but that’s the message. Now, “sucks” is a value judgment made by comparing one’s actual experience with an expected experience. Some mystical paths (such as Zen) don’t speak much about what is going to happen along the way.

But RSSB does. There are various metaphysical regions that the initiate is told about, along with the sights and sounds that will be seen and heard in each higher domain of the cosmos.

So if you’re stuck in the dark silence of your own brain, repeating your guru-given mantra over and over like an obsessive-compulsive parrot, it’s difficult not to eventually come to the conclusion, “My meditation sucks.”

That said, and I’ve said it countless times, I still meditate every day for an hour or so. I enjoy my meditation. But I’ve never experienced anything that I could conclusively call “mystical,” “spiritual,” or “divine.” I’ve felt like I was rising up into a blissful void, but neuroscientists theorize that this could be the result of sensory deprivation (I usually use earplugs and a blindfold).

I’m a strong believer in inner meditation. It seems to me that this is the best way to grapple with eminently scientific questions about the essential nature of consciousness, life, and existence. If I can simply be conscious, simply live, and simply exist in meditation, I feel that I’m going to be closer to getting some answers.

Who knows? Maybe I am indeed closer. But close doesn’t count in scientific research. You either get a definitive finding or you don’t. I’m still waiting for results. And believe me, I’ve been experimenting for many years—most of that time doing just what I was instructed.

Now I’m modifying my meditation, tinkering with alternative approaches, becoming more open to different ways of opening myself to whatever reality may lie beyond that which I know now. This feels right and good to me. Why should I keep on doing the same thing in meditation when I’m not getting the results that were anticipated?

Life is too short to spend bumped up against a dead end. When I hear a whisper—“back up, turn around, and head in a new direction”—I’m going to listen to that inner voice. And I’ll let you know how the advice turns out.

I have a friend who likes to say, “Nobody’s life is ever completely wasted. He always can serve as a horrible example for others.” Great saying. Science progresses by researchers sharing the results of their experiments and investigations. A negative result can be almost as valuable as a positive result, helping to guide research in a more productive direction.

I wish more meditators, of the RSSB variety or whatever, would speak more clearly, honestly, and forthrightly about their inner experiences (or, lack of them), even though spiritual practice always will be highly individualistic and personal. I doubt that a foolproof, 100% effective, guaranteed-results system of meditation ever will be discovered or developed.

However, if people who meditate talked more openly about what works and doesn’t work for them, I think we’d be more likely to achieve the illusive goal of making spirituality a genuine science rather than merely a collection of competing unproven beliefs.

American's support for Black Lives Matter has risen sharply

With the coronavirus crisis still going strong, and Donald Trump still acting as badly as ever, it's great to have some good news to celebrate. Behold...

This graphic comes from a story in today's New York Times. Net support is the difference between the percent of people supporting a policy minus the percent of people opposing the policy. Here's how the story starts out.

American public opinion can sometimes seem stubborn. Voters haven’t really changed their views on abortion in 50 years. Donald J. Trump’s approval rating among registered voters has fallen within a five-point range for just about every day of his presidency.

But the Black Lives Matter movement has been an exception from the start.

Public opinion on race and criminal justice issues has been steadily moving left since the first protests ignited over the fatal shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. And since the death of George Floyd in police custody on May 25, public opinion on race, criminal justice and the Black Lives Matter movement has leaped leftward.

Over the last two weeks, support for Black Lives Matter increased by nearly as much as it had over the previous two years, according to data from Civiqs, an online survey research firm. By a 28-point margin, Civiqs finds that a majority of American voters support the movement, up from a 17-point margin before the most recent wave of protests began.

And this trend is evident from more than the Civiqs surveys.

The survey is not the only one to suggest that recent protests enjoy broad public support. Weekly polling for the Democracy Fund’s U.C.L.A./Nationscape survey shows a significant increase in unfavorable views of the police, and an increase in the belief that African-Americans face a lot of discrimination.

Perhaps most significant, the Civiqs data is not alone in suggesting that an outright majority of Americans agree with the central arguments of Black Lives Matter.

A Monmouth University poll found that 76 percent of Americans consider racism and discrimination a “big problem,” up 26 points from 2015. The poll found that 57 percent of voters thought the anger behind the demonstrations was fully justified, while a further 21 percent called it somewhat justified.

Polls show that a majority of Americans believe that the police are more likely to use deadly force against African-Americans, and that there’s a lot of discrimination against black Americans in society. Back in 2013, when Black Lives Matter began, a majority of voters disagreed with all of these statements.

What this shows is that public opinion on a moral issue can be slow to change, but when it does, the change can be rapid.

Being 71, I remember when homosexuality was considered abhorrent, and same-sex marriage being legal didn't enter peoples' minds. But now Americans are generally accepting of LGBTQ people, with same-sex marriage being taken for granted. The New York Times story notes that inequality pushes a moral button in most people.

And whether on gay marriage or civil rights, American public opinion tends to drift toward the side advocating equal treatment. Public opinion doesn’t have nearly as clear a record of drifting toward the left on issues that don’t hinge on equal treatment under the law, like gun control and abortion.

Obviously, then, morality is a social construct, not a God-given commandment. And there's plenty of evidence that animals other than us have similar reactions to inequality. 

But sadly, all too often us humans, who like to believe we possess an elevated sense of justice, don't act as morally as monkeys. To give a current example, President Trump is refusing to rename military bases that carry the names of Confederate generals, even though the Army Secretary and Defense Secretary were open to this. 

So the president of the United States is fine with honoring generals who fought against the United States in an effort to keep slavery alive and well in the southern states. 

It's understandable that Trump wasn't aware that these bases were named after Confederate generals. I sure wasn't. However, now that it is been pointed out to him, it definitely is a moral injustice which needs to be rectified. When Joe Biden becomes president, it will be.

The Army bases in question, all in Southern states, are Fort Bragg, N.C.; Forts Benning and Gordon in Georgia; Forts Pickett, A.P. Hill and Lee in Virginia; Fort Polk and Camp Beauregard in Louisiana; Fort Hood, Texas; and Fort Rucker, Ala.

George Floyd protest brought my community together

There are lots of ways to feel a sense of community with our fellow humans.

Going to a religious gathering is one way, but definitely isn't the best way, because religions are divisive -- if you aren't a member of a particular faith, likely attending a "service" there is going to feel out of place.

Yesterday I took part in a protest here in Salem, Oregon against the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman. I was deeply moved by thousands of people coming out to protest the needless killings of so many black Americans at the hands of police officers.

What connected us was a commitment to justice for all.

It is deeply wrong to treat people of color differently from white people. But my country's racist past -- slavery -- is still being manifested today. This has to stop. Hopefully the massive protests around the United States will help bring about positive changes in not only policing, but other areas such as education and health care where blacks still are not treated equally.

Have a look at the photos I took at the protest, plus a video of part of the march that followed a rally. I used an Adobe Spark web page to share the images.

Two examples of how religion is screwing up George Floyd protests

Here in the United States it's been great to see so many people protesting the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on Floyd's neck for about nine minutes while he was saying, "I can't breathe."

Of course, this is just the latest person of color who has been killed by police for no good reason. Black Lives Matter protests have been going on years, but I'm hopeful our country finally is sending a clear message to police that the unjust killings have to stop. 

Many people of faith have been taking part in the protests, so I readily admit that religious groups can play a strong role in social justice movements. 

But then there's Donald Trump, who has an unerring ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

A New York Times story explains how Trump screwed up an opportunity today to bring our country together. Here's excerpts from "Trump Says Jobs Report Made It a 'Great Day' for George Floyd, Stepping on Message."

WASHINGTON — President Trump drew immediate criticism from Democrats on Friday for declaring that new unemployment numbers made it “a great day” for George Floyd, the black man whose death in the custody of white police officers has touched off protests and rioting across the country.

“Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country,” Mr. Trump said. “This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”

After a week of unrest in the capital, Mr. Trump had gone to the Rose Garden to declare victory over a coronavirus pandemic that ravaged the economy, promoting the new numbers and planning to carry that message with him on a trip to Maine later in the day. But his jarring reference to Mr. Floyd overshadowed it.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was among those who immediately criticized the president’s remarks.

“George Floyd’s last words — ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’ — have echoed all across this nation and, quite frankly, around the world,” Mr. Biden said. “For the president to try to put any other words in the mouth of George Floyd I, frankly, think is despicable.”

Mr. Biden pointed out that the economic news that Mr. Trump was so intent on celebrating did not extend to black Americans, whose unemployment rate had actually risen to 16.8 percent from 16.7 percent.

“The fact that he did so on a day when black unemployment rose,” Mr. Biden added, “tells you everything you need to know about this man.”

Trump isn't religious. He just uses religion for his own political purposes now and then.

Still, how could any sensible person (which doesn't describe Trump) believe that someone who recently died in a horrible fashion, tearing him away from loved ones, would be "looking down" from heaven, or wherever, saying that a jobs report was a great day for himself?

Aside from being an incredibly stupid thing to say, it was horribly insensitive to George Floyd's family and friends. This just shows how narcissistic Trump is, being incapable of empathy and compassion for others.

Then there's a small story close to home, right here in Salem, Oregon, that has a more tenuous connection with religion -- but a connection nonetheless. Below is how I described it on Facebook posts today. This is a quote from the no such thing as secular story mentioned in the post which, naturally, I heartily disagree with:

“Said another way,” Vande Griend continues, “this class is about learning to practice in our real lives what Abraham Kuyper declared when he said, ‘There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!’”

SALEM MAN CALLS POLICE FOR WRITING BLACK LIVES MATTER MESSAGES IN CHALK ON PUBLIC SIDEWALKS. Only in Salem... hopefully. Amazing display of concern by Doug Vande Griend, who spelled out his name during the phone call to police that was captured on video.

Naturally I Googled this name. Unless there are two men with the same name in Salem, Vande Griend appears to be an attorney who writes about deep Christian notions such as "there is no such thing as secular." (subject of his third-year thesis in law school)

Interesting. I definitely consider there is such a thing as secular, being decidedly non-religious myself. But, hey, each to his own. Along that line, a Doug Vande Griend wrote a piece, "The Role of the Church in Society," that concluded with the passage below the line.

It seems to me that Vande Griend certainly was trying to "lord it over others" when he objected to peaceful writing of timely messages on a sidewalk. Likely the coming rain will wash the chalk away, so an "appropriate sense of humility" would have been to smile and applaud this display of civic activism.
-------------------
"People instinctively want their perspectives, whatever the topic, to prevail over those of others. But that want can be sinful. An appropriate sense of humility should restrain us from trying to 'lord it over others (Church Order, Art. 85). May we pray for that sense of humility."

Our minds collaborate in the creation of the world

l'm re-re-reading a book about Buddhism that is wonderfully mind-blowing, Introduction to Emptiness by Guy Newland. Yes, that wasn't a typo in the previous sentence, I'm on my third reading of the book, each time with a different colored highlighter in my hand. 

So I may not completely understand what emptiness is all about in Buddhism, but I definitely have a colorful book on this subject.

I've shared links to six previous posts I've written about Introduction to Emptiness at the end of this post. If you aren't able to grasp all that Newland says in the passages below -- and I sure don't -- read those posts and some things likely will become clearer.

A basic notion is the distinction between ultimate and conventional truth. Here's how they are defined in an appendix to the book:

Conventional truth -- objects found by conventional minds that are not analyzing the ultimate nature of things. This includes everything that exists except emptiness. Nonexistents are not included.

Ultimate truth -- the object known by a mind discerning the final nature of things -- emptiness

So what is emptiness? Here's the definition, along with that for a related term, inherent existence.

Emptiness -- the sheer nonexistence of intrinsic nature. For example, the table's emptiness is the table's lack of existence by way of an intrinsic nature.

Intrinsic nature -- an essential nature whereby something comes to have an independent way of existing without being posited through the force of consciousness. The sheer absence of this is emptiness.

Here's challenging, though fascinating, passages relating to how the world is created by our minds, though it also exists in an objective fashion.

We usually suppose that the world is already and always fully real, independent of our minds, out there waiting to be revealed by the searchlight of consciousness. In fact, our minds are actually collaborating in the creation of the world, moment by moment.

This does not mean that hallucinated snakes have the same status as people and cars and tables. Snakes falsely imputed to be ropes do not in fact exist, while tables and people do exist because they have a valid, conventional existence. This is a vitally important distinction.

Suppose I very much want gold. I may see a rainbow and, affected by my desire for gold, think, "Over there I will find a pot of gold." This is rather in the nature of seeing a rope and, out of fear, believing it is a snake. There is no snake, no gold, in those places at all.

But there is a rope; there is a rainbow. These things exist conventionally. We can appropriately impute them, saying, "There it is." They function.

Another way to make this clear is to consider the case of dreams. The objects that appear to our minds in dreams, under the influence of sleep, are not able to perform the functions that they appear to have. A dream cup does not hold functioning water.; a dream gun does not shoot deadly bullets.

The water and the bullets that appear in the dream cannot quench or kill. The dream mind to which a gun appears is impaired by sleep and is not a conventionally valid consciousness. Likewise, if my eyes are bad and I see two moons in the sky over the earth, I have not thereby created a second moon.

...So we can recognize that this idea -- that things depend upon minds -- does not destroy conventional existence. At the same time, it is definitely not just another way of talking about what we already know. It does not leave our usual sense of the world unscathed. 

To take the snake example: When a person sees a rope and imagines a snake, there is no snake at all in the rope. But even when there actually is a snake and we perceive a snake, the snake as we perceive it is also completely absent. It is just as nonexistent as the rope-snake.

This is profound and important to reflect upon. As we perceive it, the snake is inherently existent. It appears to our minds as something objectively real, existing in and of itself. Such a snake does not at all exist right now -- and it never could exist.

Thus when we feel that Tsong-kha-pa's emphatic validation of conventional reality is pulling us too far in the direction of affirming the ordinary way that things appear, we can recall: snakes and ropes are equally devoid of the kind of snakes I perceive, believe in, and fear.

Tables are utterly devoid of the kind of table that I believe in. People exist, but people just as I now conceive of them have never and could never exist to the slightest degree.

Unlike some Buddhist systems, Tsong-kha-pa's Prasangika Madhyamaka system does assert that there is a fully functioning external world, a world that exists outside of our minds. However, in the same breath it emphasizes that this external world is utterly dependent upon consciousness.

For example, when a god, a human, and a ghost each look at a bowl of fluid, the god sees nectar, the human sees water, and the ghost sees a mixture of pus and blood. Each being correctly perceives the fluid in accordance with the constitution of her respective sense and mental faculties. 

We cannot talk about what is really in the bowl apart from the correct perspective of the various perceivers. 

...When I teach this, sometimes I point out the tiny spiders clinging to the corners of the room. We are present together with them, here and now. We each have healthy minds and sense faculties. Our perceptions of the immediate environment are both correct, and yet they are so radically different as to be mutually incomprehensible.

Which of us sees what is really there?

Or think about taking a dog for a walk. Going down the street together, there is only a partial overlap between the dog's valid perceptions and my valid perceptions. 

We living beings all inhabit functioning worlds that arise through the unimpaired operation of our respective mental and sensory faculties; these worlds are external to -- but never independent of -- our minds. Thus it is that the worlds of our experience intersect and overlap in astonishing ways, in infinitely complex patterns.

All of this would be completely impossible if in fact each thing actually existed objectively, out there on its own, by way of its independent and intrinsic nature.

Here's the links to my previous posts about Introduction to Emptiness.

In Buddhism, ultimate reality is an absence, not a presence
Emptiness is ultimate reality: nothing, including us, has an intrinsic nature
How consciousness is related to Buddhist "emptiness"
Buddhism: the illusion of life is believing in a fixed reality
Religious belief: a delusion about an elephant in the house
Why Buddhism doesn't believe in self-realization

Future of brain research is filled with "or's"

Here's some passages from the "Future" chapter in The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience by Matthew Cobb that I've blogged about recently. (See here and here and here for my previous posts about the book.)

I especially like the passage that begins with "A related view" below. Almost certainly the brain isn't at all like a computer, for reasons Cobb describes. 

I also enjoyed the open-ended possibilities of where brain research is heading that concludes Cobb's book -- the last passage i've shared. 

With science, research can go in many different directions. That's a big appeal of science, how it follows truth wherever it might lead. Dead-ends aren't a failure, since they indicate more productive avenues of knowledge.

Here's the excerpts.

These repeated calls for more theory may be a pious hope. It can be argued that there is no possible single theory of brain function, not even in a worm, because a brain is not a single thing (scientists are even hard put to come up with a precise definition of what a brain is).

As Crick observed the brain is an integrated, evolved structure with different bits of it appearing at different moments in evolution and adapted to solve different problems.

...The nature of the brain -- simultaneously integrated and composite -- may mean that our future understanding will inevitably be fragmented and composed of different explanations for different parts. After all, as Marr put it, the brain is composed of 'a whole lot' of information-processing devices.

...The metaphors of neuroscience -- computers, coding, wiring diagrams and so on -- are inevitably partial. That is the nature of metaphors, which have been intensely studied by philosophers of science and by scientists, as they seem to be so central to the way scientists think.

But metaphors are also rich and allow insight and discovery. There will come a point when the understanding they allow will be outweighed by the limits they impose, but in the case of computational and representational metaphors of the brain there is no agreement that such a moment has arrived.

...A related view of the nature of consciousness turns the brain-as-computer metaphor into a strict analogy. Some researchers view the mind as a kind of operating system that is implemented on neural hardware, with the implication that our minds, seen as a particular computational state, could be uploaded onto some device or into another brain. 

In the way this is generally presented, this is wrong, or at best hopelessly naive. The materialist working hypothesis is that brains and minds, in humans and maggots and everything else, are identical. Neurons and the processes they support -- which somehow include consciousness -- are the same thing.

In a computer, software and hardware are separate; however, our brains and our minds consist of what can best be described as wetware in which what is happening and where it is happening are completely intertwined. 

Imagining that we can repurpose our nervous system to run different programs, or upload our mind to a server, might sound scientific but lurking behind this idea is a non-materialist view going back to Descartes and beyond. It implies that our minds are somehow floating about in our brains and could be transferred into a different head or replaced by another mind. 

It would be possible to give this idea a veneer of scientific respectability by posing it in terms of reading the state of a set of neurons and writing that to a new substrate, organic or artificial.

But to even begin to imagine how that might work in practice, we would need both an understanding of neuronal function that is far beyond anything we can currently envisage and would require unimaginably vast computational power that precisely mimicked the structure of the brain in question.

...Every cell is not like a binary switch that can be turned on or off, forming a wiring diagram. Instead, the main way that the nervous system alters its working is by changes in the pattern of activity in networks of cells composed of large numbers of units; it is these networks that channel, shift, and shunt activity.

...When we extend this insight to understanding the brain, the key implication is that, as the title of a 1997 article strikingly put it, 'The Brain Has a Body.' And the body has an environment, and both affect how the brain does what it does. 

This might seem trivially obvious, but neither the body nor the environment feature in modeling approaches that seek to understand the brain. The physiological reality of all brains is that they interact with the body and the external environment from the moment they begin to develop.

...Animals are not robots piloted by brains, we are all, whether maggots or humans, individuals with agency and a developmental and evolutionary history. Those factors are all involved with how our brains work and need to be integrated into our models.

...The significance of remembering that brains are in bodies can be seen from the way that brains interact with the gut microbiome. 'Germ-free' mice have no microbes living in their gut, and as a result show altered levels of serotonin in the brain and lower levels of anxious behavior. 

The unlikely causal link between microbes and behaviour was shown when the introduction of a normal microbiome into the mice reversed both these effects: fundamental aspects of brain biochemistry can be affected by the microbes that live in the gut.

...Perhaps the various computational projects will come good and theoreticians will crack the functioning of all brains, or the connectomes will reveal principles of brain function that are currently hidden from us.

Or a theory will somehow pop out of the vast amounts of imaging data we are generating.

Or we will slowly piece together a theory (or theories) out of a series of separate but satisfactory explanations.

Or by focusing on simple neural network principles we will understand higher-level organisation. 

Or some radical new approach integrating physiology and biochemistry and anatomy will shed decisive light on what is going on.

Or new comparative evolutionary studies will show how other animals are conscious and provide insight into the functioning of our own brains.

Or models developed to explain simple brains will turn out to be scalable and will explain ours too.

Or the default mode network identified in humans will turn out to be applicable to other animals and to hold the key to overall function.

Or unimagined new technology will change all our views by providing a radical new metaphor for the brain.

Or our computer systems will provide us with alarming new insight by becoming conscious.

Or a new framework will emerge from cybernetics, control theory, complexity, and dynamical systems theory, semantics, and semiotics.

Or we will accept that there is no theory to be found because brains have no overall logic just adequate explanations of each tiny part and we will have to be satisfied with that.

Or --

Greatest comment about the RSSB guru ever. Behold!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RSSB Guru: Yes, Charan Singh ji Maharaj.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questioner: But I thought you just said? Nevermind.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, current RSSB guru

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

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

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

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

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

So here's the notice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comments not posting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No such data have been forthcoming.

Memory is material, yet still quite mysterious

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cobb writes:

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

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

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

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

Above all, however, it has a material basis. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

History of ideas about the brain shows how clueless religions are

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You could be a fundamentalist satsangi if...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seems clear to me.

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

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

As are we all. 

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

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

Laughingly so. Ridiculously so. 

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

There’s a joy in being a religious fool. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When a guru is an asshole

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet my husbandly divinity remains unrecognized. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Savarese offers up the reason:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Savarese writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm glad that I did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear ________:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warm greetings, Brian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear ________:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warm greetings, Brian

Open Thread 32 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

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

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

As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is an Open Thread.

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks on someone are an exception. Argue with ideas, not insults.

Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open Thread that way.

So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments.

Buddhism's hard truths

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

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

Enjoy. Or, not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Life is a boundless sea of uncertainty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hagen writes...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Buddha called this awareness right wisdom. 

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

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

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

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

 

Repurpose your outmoded religious beliefs

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

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

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

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

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

Like, seva. Which means selfless service.

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

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

Or, right at home. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But who is?

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

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

Our dog teaches me about spirituality

Mooka, our Husky mix dog, has a lot of talents. One of them that struck me on our daily two-mile dog walk this afternoon reflected how I feel about religion and spirituality.

In short, prove it. 

Mooka does a lot of sniffing as we walk along. More accurately, she both sniffs as we walk, and also stops to sniff when I'd prefer to keep walking. Here she'd just sniff-inspected a small branch that had fallen from a large oak tree in-between our walk yesterday and today.

I'm fine with her doing this because I recognize that a dog's sense of smell is hugely more sensitive that what we humans are capable of. 

So we inhabit different sorts of sensory realities. I'm focused mostly on what I can see as we walk on the two-lane rural road that winds through our neighborhood. Mooka also is highly aware of those sights, but she has a smell talent that I lack.

Now, how do I know this?

I see Mooka stopping frequently to press her nose close to some blades of grass, a spot on the road, countless other stuff. I can't sense anything special about those places her nose is so interested in. What leads me to conclude that Mooka has a capability I lack, in contrast to a conclusion that she's a neurotic dog who keeps pressing her nose against random items we pass?

Many reasons. Here's one of them.

Laurel, my wife, is by far the most experienced and capable dog trainer in our family. One trick she's taught Mooka is to find an item that she hides somewhere in our house after placing a few drops of vanilla on it. When Mooka finds it, she gets a dog treat.

It may take Mooka a while to earn the treat depending on how cleverly Laurel has hidden the item. But she always finds it eventually. Thus Mooka passes the smell test, so to speak. As do dogs trained to find drugs, warn of a cancer on a person, or, as I read today, possibly detect the coronavirus. 

Thus dogs have an ability that can be demonstrated to be true, even though the scents they're able to smell are undetectable by humans. 

Which is also what genuine spirituality should be about: a demonstrable ability to do something tangible. Like, sit still while meditating. Not becoming angry when someone insults you. Helping other people. Uttering kind words when a person is upset.

Yet much of religiosity, spirituality, and mysticism is abstract with no connection to the real world. It is filled with talk of God, soul, heaven, spirit, angels, demons, supernatural powers, and such. When asked to perform the equivalent of a "smell test," religious believers come up with excuses for the absence of any evidence that what they incessantly blab on about actually exists.

Meanwhile, our dog is finding vanilla-scented items quite easily. 

I understand the allure of repeating fantasies to ourselves, because those fantasies are pleasing. I did that myself for about thirty-five years, until I realized that there was no substance to the fantasies I enjoyed playing over and over inside my head.

"I am on a path that leads to God." "A higher power is watching over me." "After death I'll enter a higher realm of reality." Like every other religious beiiever, I could talk the talk, but not walk the walk, as the saying goes. Meaning, I had beliefs about spirituality that weren't grounded in reality, because neither I nor anyone else could show that what we believed was in fact true.

Our dog can.

Mooka doesn't simply believe that she can smell scents undetectable to humans. Mooka can actually demonstrate this. And that puts the family canine way above all the religious fakes -- gurus, preachers, imams, yogis, rabbis, etc. etc. -- who talk a good game but are utterly unable to play it in reality.

I've repeated this quote from Thoreau's Walden several times before. Here it is again, courtesy of one of the first posts on my HinesSight blog, "Corn on the cob: my calling."  

A passage from the last chapter of Thoreau’s “Walden” comes to mind: “Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. ‘Tell the tailors,’ said he, ‘to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch.’ His companion’s prayer is forgotten.”

I love that line, Any truth is better than make-beiieve. Our dog lives it. I aspire to it. 

Steve Hagen's "Buddhism Plain and Simple" appeals to churchless me

What a difference a second book makes. I found most of Steve Hagen's Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense very difficult to read. As I said in a critical blog post, it was that book which didn't make sense to me, not the world.

The end of the book was decidedly better, though. So that encouraged me to order a book Hagen wrote some seven years later, Buddhism Plain and Simple. As befits its title, I'm enjoying the much more straightforward style of this book.

Back in 2004, when I started this blog, it took me less than a minute to come up with the tagline that has been under "Church of the Churchless" for the past sixteen years: Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence.  

Since I believe in spiritual independence as much now as I did back then, Hagen's description of the central tenets of what the Buddha taught resonate with me. 

Here's some excerpts from the first part of the book, which is all I've read so far. I've made some comments before each indented excerpt.

For 35 years I was under the illusion that there were people who deserved the title "God in human form." Now I know better. And that's why I enjoy learning about the Buddha's teachings, since they have zero connection with any god.

The Buddha never considered himself to be something other than a human being -- only someone who was fully awake. He never claimed to be a god, or to be inspired by God, or to have access to any occult or supernatural power. He attributed his realization and understanding solely to human endeavor and human ability.

A crazy thing about the world's religions, mystical paths, and other forms of supposed spirituality is that they all have conflicting beliefs, yet those who follow these creeds all believe that their particular faith is correct. Buddhism has a different view of reality.

Buddhism is not a belief system. It's not about accepting certain tenets or believing a set of claims or principles. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It's about examining the world clearly and carefully, about testing everything and every idea. Buddhism is about seeing. It's about knowing rather than believing or hoping or wishing. It's about not being afraid to examine anything and everything, including our own personal agenda.

Christians think they're going to heaven. Eastern meditation practices, such as the one I used to follow, teach that there is a "journey of the soul." But that's bullshit. Nobody goes anywhere. Pleasingly, Buddhism embraces going nowhere.

Generally we think of a journey as involving movement and direction, either going out somewhere into the world or else leading inward, into the self. But in Buddhism our journey must go nowhere -- neither in nor out. Rather, ours is a journey into nearness, into immediacy. Our journey must be to awaken here and now, to awaken to here and now. To be fully alive, we must be fully present.

Religions pull in devotees, and their money, because they make people feel they're lacking something that the religion can provide. Like, salvation, life after death, heavenly bliss. Buddhism disagrees. 

The question is: how do we do it?

In order to experience the answer to this question for yourself, you must come to three realizations. First, you must realize hat life is fleeting. Next, you must understand that you are already complete, worthy, whole. Finally, you must see that you are your own refuge, your own sanctuary, your own salvation.

Most of us wrongly think that what we lack is around some corner. So we do our best to get there. Where we discover that what we supposedly lack is around another corner. Actually, says Buddhism, what we're looking for is here, now.

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.

I never was a fawning devotee of the guru who I followed for over three decades, Charan Singh. But I saw plenty of people who thought the guru could do no wrong. They thought they needed to completely surrender to him. How mistaken they were, according to the Buddha.

In his final talk before his death the Buddha said, "Each of you be a light unto yourself.; betake yourself to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth. Look not for refuge to anyone beside yourself."

You are the final authority. Not me. Not the Buddha. Not the Bible. Not the government. Not the president. Not Mom or Dad. You. No community of philosophers, scientists, priests, academicians, politicians, or generals -- no school, legislature, parliament or court -- can bear responsibility for your life, or your words, or your actions. That authority is yours and yours alone. You neither get rid of it nor escape from it.

Why are we so distrustful of our own capacity to live a fulfilling life, to be spiritually independent, to find our own way to contentment and happiness? Perhaps because thousands of years of false religious teachings have told us that we are weak fallen creatures who need to follow someone else.

Far from being a burden, this ultimate authority is actually quite wonderful. It means that you have the power to wake up. You have it now -- in your own hands. You don't have to go anywhere else. You can wake up right now, on the spot. You are fully equipped to do this now, in this moment. You already have all the power you'll ever need to realize happiness.

I have to admit that the following Buddhist precept is difficult for me to accept, because I'm so used to wanting something better than what I have now. However, it makes sense to me. Wanting never ends, though life does. So acceptance of what we have and are at every moment seems decidedly wise, since we don't know which will be our last breath.

To completely end your unease of mind, all you need to do is see that there is really nothing "out there" to get because, already, within this moment, everything is whole and complete.

I'm tired of abstractions. That's why I enjoy science and politics so much, along with Tai Chi, walking our dog, and doing chores around our house. Religious concepts like "God," "soul," and such have no meaning for me any more. I want my reality to be really real.

The buddha-dharma does not invite us to dabble in abstract notions. Rather, the task it presents us with is to attend to what we actually experience, right in this moment... So you don't have to do the long search, the frantic chase, the painful quest. You're already right where you need to be. The table is spread before you. Let's look at how to eat.

Check out my top 10 bright spots during the coronavirus period

Head on over to my HinesSight blog and learn what's been keeping my mood up during the enforced isolation of Oregon's Stay Home, Save Lives orders. 

Tonight I wrote, "My top 10 bright spots during Oregon's stay-at-home period." Number 1 is:

This afternoon I came home from a dog walk to find my wife taking part in a Zoom dance party celebrating her grand-niece's birthday. Naturally I had to grab my iPhone and upload a short video to You Tube.

Anchor yourself by attending to here-and-now physical reality

I wanted to share a great image from a guided meditation I listened to this morning via my Insight Timer app. I clicked on a Ten Minute Pause by Judson Brewer called "Anchoring in The Present Moment."

(Looks like you can listen to it for free by clicking on the above link.)

Brewer's image was of an anchor in the ocean or in a flowing stream. That anchor can be any part of our body that we choose. Traditionally it is the breath, but it can be anything -- hands, feet, whatever works for you.

The idea, which is simple, is that the current of our thoughts can carry us away to places that we really don't want to go, but sometimes are powerless to resist.

Anxiety. Fear. Worry. Tension. Anger. Sadness. And so on.

It isn't that we should consider those sorts of thoughts and emotions as things to be fought against. That produces an unproductive conflict within ourself. And why should we fight against our own self?

But an anchor can keep us from moving too far downstream, so to speak. Remembering the sensation of breathing, to feeling air entering and leaving our nostrils, can anchor us in the present moment rather than some imagined nasty place in our past or future.

Yes, this isn't exactly groundbreaking meditation news. I just found it to be a useful way of visualizing what a focus on the breath or some other physical sensation can do for us. 

I've also heard a meditation teacher speak of this as our Home Base, a place to return to when we feel pulled away by unwelcome thoughts or emotions.

Trump's new crazy idea to kill the coronavirus

Since quite a few people from countries around the world visit this blog, I decided to put this post here rather than on one of my other blogs, Salem Political Snark and HinesSight.

I'm doing this out of a cry for help. Not a prayer, because I don't believe in God. Just a request that wherever you are in the world, send some kind thoughts in the direction of the United States.

I ask for this because today it became clearer than ever -- and believe me, it was exceedingly clear before -- that our president, Donald Trump, is the dumbest, most clueless, and incompetent leader of any major country in the world.

And probably I should have left out that qualifier, "major."

So what did Trump do today that surpassed all of his preceding cringe-worthy statements? At the daily White House coronavirus briefing, our Idiot-in-Chief suggested in all seriousness that a COVID-19 infection could be treated by somehow injecting light and disinfectant inside the body.

No, Trump wasn't making a joke. Nor is this a satire from The Onion, though The Onion did just publish a piece along the same line, "Potentially Promising Covid-19 Vaccine Hits Roadblock After Testing Reveals It's Just Shotgun."

See for yourself. (At about the 1:40 mark.)

NBC News has a story about this newest Trumpian insanity: Trump suggests 'injection' of disinfectant to beat coronavirus and 'clean' the lungs.

President Donald Trump suggested the possibility of an "injection" of disinfectant into a person infected with the coronavirus as a deterrent to the virus during his daily briefing Thursday.

Trump made the remark after Bill Bryan, who leads the Department of Homeland Security's science and technology division, gave a presentation on research his team has conducted that shows that the virus doesn't live as long in warmer and more humid temperatures. Bryan said, "The virus dies quickest in sunlight," leaving Trump to wonder whether you could bring the light "inside the body."

"So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn't been checked because of the testing," Trump said, speaking to Bryan during the briefing. "And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that, too."

He added: "I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that."

...Medical professionals, including Dr. Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist, global health policy expert and an NBC News and MSNBC contributor. were quick to challenge the president's "improper health messaging."

“This notion of injecting or ingesting any type of cleansing product into the body is irresponsible and it’s dangerous," said Gupta. "It’s a common method that people utilize when they want to kill themselves."

The president has repeatedly touted unproven treatments during the daily briefings on COVID-19, the disease associated with the coronavirus. For instance, he has touted hydroxychloroquine as a potential "game changer," but health officials have strongly cautioned against it.

What's almost as scary as Trump's astoundingly loose grip on reality is what I heard a Democratic pollster saying on MSNBC after the White House briefing. He didn't think that the 43% or so of Americans who approve of Trump would have their faith in him lessened by his notion of using disinfectant to do "almost a cleansing" of lungs infected with coronavirus.

People who embrace blind faith don't see what is really going on. This is as true for political blind faith as for religious blind faith. 

Secret of living: hear the cries of others

Recently I wrote a post about how much I disliked Steve Hagen's book, Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense. But I pressed on and managed to finish the book, continuing to dislike it until I reached the final pages.

I don't agree with everything Hagen said in his concluding chapters. However, I resonated with those chapters considerably more than the rest of the book.

If Hagen had switched things around and put what I've shared below at the beginning of his book, that would have helped me understand the otherwise mostly incomprehensible early chapters.

It turns out that Hagen was trying to convey some basic Buddhist ideas. Life is suffering. Compassion for the suffering of others, and of oneself, is all important. Nothing is permanent, including us. We lack an enduring independent self. Everything is interconnected.

I think I understand what Hagen means by just seeing: taking the world as it is, not as how we believe it to be, or as how we would like it to be. But I don't agree that concepts can be separated from what he calls bare perception. 

When I see my wife, Laurel, I don't just see a beautiful woman with blonde hair. I know that this woman is my wife, that we've been married for 30 years, that she has certain likes and dislikes, and so on. There's no way I could either simply see Laurel without everything else that connects me to her, not would I want to do this if it were somehow possible.

But other things Hagen says at the end of his book do appeal to me. See if they appeal to you...

Our task is to just see. Our direct experience -- i.e., perception itself -- is the Undefined that says with unimpeachable authority that all things appear not in being, but in becoming and in fading away.

If we try to hold to the view that a thing is merely what it is, we'll miss it totally. We'll confuse our abstraction with what's Really going on. Truth reveals itself only in the moment we stop making up a story. A story is not necessary. We only make up our story out of fear.

But what can be lost by seeing? Truth is Truth. It will not change upon being seen. What changes is simply that we no longer see incorrectly.

It's only through our faulty explanations, upon which we base so much, that we suffer pain, sorrow, loss, and lamentation. And it's only through just seeing that we may end such suffering. The end of suffering is correct seeing. 

However, just seeing -- pure perception -- doesn't mean the end of measuring, or the end of conceptualizing, or the end of discriminating consciousness. It simply means that we are no longer taken in by our objects of consciousness -- by our likes and dislikes, our preferences, our goals, our desires, and our fears.

Reality is inconceivable. But still, we can see It. We can, and do, perceive Reality. Our problem with just seeing lies in learning to get past the story being told to us by others, and to ourselves by ourselves, even now. We must learn to get past conception, past paradox and confusion.

For all our wanting of things to go a certain way, there's nothing for us to do but to simply be Here. When "good" times come, they're Here. When times are "bad," they're Here, too. As as the "good" times slip away, if we give them too much credit, they'll grow and grow and grow in our minds, until we long to get them back.

And we'll forever try to recreate those "good" times again. Thus we become spectators -- not of Reality, but of what we imagine is Real. 

We do this sort of thing endlessly, of course. What we forget is that -- as bare attention bears out -- the nature of good times, bad times, and everything else is to come and go, regardless what we do, or of what we think of them.

...We must learn to live by seeing and not by thought. We must learn to live and act from the Whole and not the part. We must learn to let the World come to us rather than thrusting ourselves upon the world.

And so, regarding that awful question, "What should I do?" coming up with an answer (as our habit demands of us) is not the point. We would only reduce Reality to concept once again. The point is simply to wake up.

Just awaken in each moment. With this you'll have right action, and so will the world.

Anything short of this, however, and you're acting out of a frozen idea -- a concept. You're carrying on in defiance of Reality, as though the world were not alive, but a corpse. Such life is exquisitely painful.

It is enough to simply act out of seeing. When we pay attention to actual perceptions instead of our concepts -- our hopes, our fears, our goals, our desires, our individual and cultural stories -- then no prescription or set of commandments is necessary. Action that grows out of seeing is naturally responsive and appropriate to the situation, whatever it may be.

This means you're not clinging to your cherished beliefs and opinions. You're ready to toss them when you notice they don't work, when you notice they're a source of pain and anxiety.

The focus always comes back to just becoming awake -- and once again, becoming awake. This is how we free ourselves, release the world, save the environment. Just this, and not another idea, another best laid plan. 

When we act based upon what arises in this moment -- rather than upon what we hope, or expect, or pretend -- we no longer need a script or set of guidelines to follow, because we have a clear view of Reality -- and of the Universe. We have the True evidence of direct experience to guide us.

Once we recognize this, we stop defying Reality.

Once you truly see the situation, you will act in the appropriate way. Action will take care of itself.

We commonly live as though at a banquet, starving -- slightly aware that something's amiss. Our feeling is that we're hungry. We look about for something to eat -- and somehow, fail to see anything. 

We don't get it.

We suffer from our thought. It tells us we must have the nugget defined. We want it defined. And it must be a jewel. A brass ring, a golden fish. It must be. 

We want life, to be sure. But we insist on having it embalmed. Generations come and go, yet we're still taken in by the tired, old, perennial issue. We long for permanence in a world of total impermanence and relativity.

Yet if we cease to create disharmony, harmony ceases to be an issue. If we cease to create meaninglessness, the desire for meaning ceases to nag at us. If we would just stop trying to hold it in our hand, nothing would be lost.

Liberation lies in just seeing, in being present, in living by experience, without reliance on belief or intent, in the true freedom that is sorrow's end.

...In that moment when we are together with the object of our desire, we may think or feel, "This is happiness." But then everything changes, and we lose our hold on that object. Suddenly we're unhappy. There's no way we can stop our circumstance from changing, however, for change is a mark of existence itself.

Then there are those things we don't want to come our way. We try to escape them or avoid them, but often we can't. We didn't want to get cancer, we didn't want our son killed in an automobile accident, we didn't want a toothache, we didn't want a nuclear waste dump built in our neighborhood, we don't want to die.

But everyone's life is full of such events, in spite of what we want. Though we try to hold them off, they come to us. We always try to push away what we don't want, but no matter what we do, undesired things and circumstances come along. They're part of the fabric of life, of existence.

If we don't see this, we'll only become frustrated and suffer still more. We'll fool ourselves into feeling that we could have made our life more pleasurable and secure if only we were more clever, or luckier, or richer, or whatever. 

We commonly try to deal with suffering by running from it, or barricading ourselves against it. But running and putting up barriers are precisely the opposite of dealing with suffering. Since dissatisfaction is built into the very fabric of existence itself, there's no way to escape.

...The person who sees Reality is the person who embraces the suffering of others and who takes on the suffering of the world. Those who can hear the cries of others have found the secret of living. They've removed all barricades. They've stopped running away. They leave themselves wide open to what others vainly try to shut out.

But in taking on our difficulties, which must include accepting the suffering of others, we no longer have such difficulties. The world is transformed, for we no longer deny Reality. 

 

Study shows hydroxychloroquine leads to more deaths -- so don't take it

Science and reason should be trusted hugely more than anecdotal reports. I've been saying that hydroxychloroquine shouldn't be taken to prevent or treat COVID-19. A recent study shows this caution is deserved.

So don't pay attention to people who claim that hydroxychloroquine is effective. Further research is needed, but so far those who advocate for its use are akin to faith-based religious believers who make assertions without evidence.

Here's the Politico story, "More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug in VA virus study."
------------------------------

A malaria drug widely touted by President Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported.

The nationwide study was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it’s the largest look so far of hydroxychloroquine with or without the antibiotic azithromycin for COVID-19, which has killed more than 171,000 people as of Tuesday.

The study was posted on an online site for researchers and has been submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine, but has not been reviewed by other scientists. Grants from the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia paid for the work.

Researchers analyzed medical records of 368 male veterans hospitalized with confirmed coronavirus infection at Veterans Health Administration medical centers who died or were discharged by April 11.

About 28% who were given hydroxychloroquine plus usual care died, versus 11% of those getting routine care alone. About 22% of those getting the drug plus azithromycin died too, but the difference between that group and usual care was not considered large enough to rule out other factors that could have affected survival.

Hydroxychloroquine made no difference in the need for a breathing machine, either.

Researchers did not track side effects, but noted hints that hydroxychloroquine might have damaged other organs. The drug has long been known to have potentially serious side effects, including altering the heartbeat in a way that could lead to sudden death.

Earlier this month, scientists in Brazil stopped part of a hydroxychloroquine study after heart rhythm problems developed in one-quarter of people given the higher of two doses being tested.

Many doctors have been leery of the drug.

At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, “I think we’re all rather underwhelmed” at what’s been seen among the few patients there who’ve tried it, said Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control and prevention.

Patients asked about it soon after Trump started promoting its use, “but now I think that people have realized we don’t know if it works or not” and needs more study, said Safdar, who had no role in the VA analysis.

The NIH and others have more rigorous tests underway.

Photos and philosophizing of our rural yard in these COVID-19 times

Working in our rural south Salem property last Friday, I realized that nature is a wonderfully soothing antidote to anxiety about the coronavirus crisis. So I took photos of our spring-blooming yard and shared them in an Adobe Spark web page, along with some commentary.

There's no reason the world has to make sense

I've been reading a book by Steve Hagen that I thought I'd like, because the title was so intriguing: Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense. Unfortunately, it is the book itself that doesn't make sense. 

When I'm not liking a book, I enjoy going back to the Amazon listing and clicking on the 1 and 2 star reviews, the worst ones. I heartily agree with what I found there just now.

-- Drivel. I regret spending the money, and more importantly the time, to read this book.
-- A horrible, tedious book purporting to be an inquiry but more just a tired, pointless use of paper and ink.
-- Great topic and obviously intelligent author but very poorly written - confounding & confusing. A disappointment after his book, Buddhism, Plain & Simple, which it was. Author needs to apply same writing strategy to this book. This is the opinion of highly educated readers.
-- Very repetitious. Says the same thing over and over and over again. If the book was half as long as it is, it would still be too long.

However, I'm forcing myself to finish the book, because here and there I find ideas that resonate with me. Mostly, though, Hagen does indeed repeat himself without making any progress toward answering his key question: why the world doesn't seem to make sense.

I'll probably write another blog post about the book once I'm through with it. For now, I'll address the question Hagen should have asked himself before he embarked on writing this book: Why should the world make sense?

Hagen is a Buddhist. A Zen Buddhist, apparently. He goes to great lengths, none of them very persuasive, to argue that concepts and thinking are our main problem, and that we should simply see what is going on in the world with supposed "pure awareness" or "bare perception."

Pure awareness or bare perception doesn't exist, as I've pointed out numerous times on this blog. (Here's one example.) We're always aware of some thing, not of awareness itself. Someone may think that is possible, but in that case they are aware of a thing they call "awareness." 

Leaving that aside, my main problem with Hagen's book is the problem I have with Buddhism. Or at least, the aspect of Buddhism that believes in something called enlightenment. 

This seems to be what Hagen is after, because he repeatedly refers to Truth and the Real Thing -- which are capitalized to distinguish them from something called (lower case) truth and the real thing. The latter, if my memory serves me correctly, was part of a Coca-Cola commercial.

Or maybe Pepsi. I don't drink either one.

I also don't embrace any organized religion, philosophy, or form of spirituality, preferring to make my own way through life the best I can. But Taoism comes closest to how I've come to see the world.

Namely, simply as I see it. Though I used to believe in a transcendental mystical enlightenment, now I reject that notion and enjoy looking upon life however it appears to me. And I don't have any desire for the world to make sense, because I can't envision any reason why it would.

Make sense.

Big bang. Hundreds of billions, maybe trillions, of galaxies. Likely, countless other life forms in the universe beyond our imagining. Evolution producing us after starting with single-celled life. The human brain being the most complex entity known to us so far.

I could go on and on. We're surrounded by so much wonder and mystery. Sure, we can comprehend some of it -- such as why there is such a toilet paper shortage in the United States -- but there's no way little us can grasp the gigantic entire cosmos.

So whatever meaning we find in life comes from us. It isn't out there waiting to be found. It is here, a unique presence within each of us, our personal sense of meaning and purpose that is unlike anyone else's. 

Some days, the world makes sense to me. Other days, it doesn't. Regardless, everyday I'm able to get out of bed and do what I need to do, think what I need to think, feel what I need to feel. I don't expect that I'll reach a point when the meaning of my life is crystal clear, when all makes sense.

I'm fine with murky.

I'm fine with not knowing what the hell is going on, or why this and that is happening. Stuff goes on. Stuff happens. I enjoy trying to figure out the trajectory of my life, along with that of my state, my country, my planet, but I realize this is a journey with no destination.

Hagen does believe in a destination, along with believers in other faiths, religions, mystical paths, and such. That's OK. Each to their own.

Again, I just consider that Hagen wrote a book with a fatal flaw: the assumption that the essence of the world can be grasped by the human mind. 

Pastor's death shows that COVID-19 is larger than God

The evidence is in: the coronavirus, or COVID-19, is larger than God. Bishop Gerald Glenn, a pastor in Virginia who defied a social distancing warning, now is dead from an infection.

Despite warnings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to avoid mass gatherings and maintain social distancing, Glenn said in a sermon on March 22, "I firmly believe that God is larger than this dreaded virus," and announced he was not afraid to die.

Hopefully this will send a message to other people that they need to trust in science, not in irrational religious leaders.

Bishop Gerald Glenn

Jesus' blood won't save you from COVID-19. Not on Easter. Not ever.

Since I don't believe in god -- the Christian god or any other god -- today being Easter meant exactly nothing to me.

I "celebrated," using that word extremely broadly, by finishing up some field mowing that I started several days ago, and wrote about yesterday on one of my other blogs in The poetry of field mowing in the coronavirus era.

My wife had an online Zoom meeting of the atheist group that she leads at noon today. I didn't take part, but I listened to some of the discussion, which included talk about how some churches are continuing to hold services here in Oregon even though those gatherings are banned by our Governor's stay at home order.

Yes, religious people are acting irrationally and irresponsibly. What a non-shock. That's the nature of religion: ignoring reality and embracing fantasy.

Recently a CNN reporter talked to a woman who was in her car after leaving a church service in Ohio. She epitomizes the danger of zealous religiosity. As you can hear her say in the video below, the woman believes that "being covered in Jesus' blood" will keep her safe from the coronavirus.

What an idiot. There was no sign of Jesus' blood on her, naturally. So the blood is all in her crazed mind. Ordinarily that wouldn't bother me, since I'm used to religious fundamentalists believing all sorts of crazy crap.

However, as the reporter pointed out to her, that erroneous belief in Jesus' blood protecting her when she goes to Walmart or wherever could lead to other people becoming infected. So not only is this woman ignorant, she's selfish -- viewing her Christian fantasy as being more important than keeping others safe.

Here's the video.

 

A physicist speaks fondly of art and the stories we tell ourselves

Art and science aren't at odds with each other. They are just different ways of understanding the world, friends rather than foes. Many artists love science. Many scientists love the arts. 

The notion that scientists are cold-blooded creatures who only care about objective reality obviously is ridiculous. But some people believe in that ridiculous notion.

So that's why I'm sharing some passages from physicist Brian Greene's new book, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe."

Here's part of what Greene says about art in his book's Instinct and Creativity chapter.

Art may have had adaptive utility directly at the level of the individual, a perspective I find particularly compelling. The arts provide an arena unbounded by the strictures of flat-footed truth and everyday physical reality, allowing the mind to jump and twist and tumble as it explores all manner of imagined novelty.

A mind that assiduously sticks to what's true is a mind that explores a wholly limited realm of possibility. But a mind that becomes accustomed to freely crossing the boundary between what's real and what's imagined -- all the while keeping clear tabs on which is which -- is a mind that becomes adept at breaking the bonds of conventional thinking. Such a mind is primed for innovation and ingenuity.

...I'm partial to the view that sharpening ingenuity, exercising creativity, broadening perspective, and building cohesion provides a template for how the arts mattered to natural selection.

With this perspective the arts join language, story, myth, and religion as the means by which the human mind thinks symbolically, reasons counterfactually, imagines freely, and works collaboratively. Over the sweep of time, it is these capacities that have given rise to our culturally, scientifically, and technologically rich world.

All the same, even if your view of art's evolutionary role veers toward creamy desserts, we can surely agree that myriad forms of art have been a steady and valued presence throughout human history. Which means that inner lives and social exchanges have embraced modes of engagement that do not place a premium on factual information conveyed through language.

...The most arresting art can induce in us rarefied states of mind and body comparable to those reduced by our most affecting real-world encounters, similarly molding and enhancing our engagement with truth.

Discussion, analysis, and interpretation can further shape these experiences, but the most potent do not rely on a linguistic intermediary. Indeed, even for language-based arts, it is the imagery and sensations that, in the most moving experiences, leave the most lasting mark.

As elegantly described by poet Jane Hirshfield, "When a writer brings into language a new image that is fully right, what is knowable of existence expands."

Nobel laureate Saul Bellow speaks too to art's singular capacity for expanding the knowable: "Only art penetrates what pride, passion, intelligence and habit erect on all sides -- the seeming realities of this world. There is another reality, the genuine one, which we lose sight of. This other reality is always sending us hints, which without art, we can't receive."

And without that other reality, Bellow notes, channeling thoughts set down by Proust, existence is reduced to a "terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life."

Survival rests upon amassing information that accurately describes the world. And progress, in the conventional sense of increased control over our surroundings, requires a clear grasp of how these facts integrate into nature's workings. Such are the raw materials for fashioning practical ends.

They are the basis for what we label objective truth and often associate with scientific understanding. But however comprehensive such knowledge may be, it will always fall short of providing an exhaustive account of the human experience.

Artistic truth touches a distinct layer; it tells a higher-level story, one that in the words of Joseph Conrad "appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom" and speaks instead to "our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation... in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear... which binds together all humanity -- the dead to the living and the living to the unborn."

...Make no mistake. We are all bags of particles -- both mind and body -- and the physical facts about the particles can fully address how they interact and behave. But such facts, the particulate narrative, shed only monochrome light on the richly colored stories of how we humans navigate the complex worlds of thought, perception, and emotion. 

And when our perceptions blend thought and emotion, when we feel thoughts as well as think them, our experience steps yet further beyond the bounds of mechanistic explanation. We gain access to worlds otherwise uncharted. As Proust emphasized, this is to be celebrated.

Only through art, he noted, can we enter the secret universe of another, the only journey in which we truly "fly from star to star," a journey that cannot be navigated by "direct and conscious methods."

Although focused on the arts, Proust's perspective resonates with my own long-held take on modern physics. "The only true voyage of discovery," he once said, "would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others."

For centuries, we physicists have relied on mathematics and experiment to reshape our eyes, to reveal layers of reality untouched by generations of the past, to allow us to see familiar landscapes in shocking new ways. 

With these tools, we have found that the strangest of lands have emerged by intently examining the very realms we have long inhabited. All the same, to acquire such knowledge and to utilize the power of science more generally, we must follow the unshakable directive to look past the peculiarities of how each of our distinct collections and cells takes in the world, and home in on objective qualities of reality.

For the rest, the all-too-human truths, our nested stories rely on art. As George Bernard Shaw put it, "You use a glass mirror to see your face, you use works of art to see your soul."